OLLAPODIANA.

NUMBER XXII.

——As I was saying last month, beloved reader, that 'I am thine in promise,' or to that purport, I have anchored myself in my fauteuil, to the end that I may be thine in fulfilment. In our conversation about the Catskills, I omitted sundry pertinent matters, with the which, however, malgré the postponement, I shall not here afflict. Since that period, I have for the most part been pent i' the populous city, amid the wakeful noises by day thereof, and by night the calm security of the streets thereof. I affect the supernatural bawl of the watchman, as it rings up to my pillow; I love the serenade which the neighboring lover sings to his fair, and of which I get the good as well as herself; I like to see the straggling cloud go floating over the slumbering town at midnight, with the moon silvering its edge; or mayhap to note the sheen of a star greeting the vision over a chimney-pot. All these have charms for my eye and ear; I seem to see holy sights and shapes in the firmament; the winds come and go on their circuits, unknowing how many brows they fan; and at times they hush a whole metropolis to silence, insomuch that its wide boundary scarce produces so much noise 'as doth a chestnut in a farmer's fire.'

By-the-by, when the sun begins to set at right descensions, and make his winter arches, I always think of the roaring fires in the domicil of the rural husbandman, with feelings akin to envy. Ye who toast your heels by anthracite; who survey the meagre 'blue blazes' of Liverpool coal, and whose nostrils take in the dry odor thereof, being reminded thereby of those ever-burning brimstone beds, where Apollyon keeps his court, and Judas has his residence; ye, I say, who have a life-long intimacy with these sorts of fuel, can have but small conception of a winter's fire in the country. Far round doth it illumine the apartment where it rages; intolerable is proximity thereunto; and its 'circle of admirers' is always large, because they cannot come a-nigh. A pleasant disdain is felt for the snow which whirls on whistling winds against the pane; the herds are huddled in their cotes secure; and the storm has permission to mumble its belly full, and spit snow at its pleasure. Hugeous reminiscences of delight come over my spirit, in this connexion; post-school hours; the steaming bowl of flip, or those orthographical convocations, where buxom maidens exulted in their secret heart, as tall words were vociferously mounted, in correct emission, by greenhorn swain. Sleigh-rides likewise; amatory pressures, under skin of buffalo or bison; long processions through wintry villages, whose tall smokes rose from every chimney; pillars of blue, standing upright in the air, like columns of sapphire. Cider, with its acidity of remembrance; apples, that melted on the tongue, as they descended toward the diaphragm; landscapes of snow; and slides down hill!—not forgetting those skating achievements, which for the time being fill the mind with such pride, that one scarcely wishes to reach heaven at last, if that amusement be interdicted among the just made perfect! All these circumstances and events, with curious confusion, hang in a nucleus about my memories of a rural hearth; 'but these I passen by, with nameless numbers moe.' Shakspeare had a good notion of the comforts to which I refer. He puts a lovely sentiment into the mouth of King Richard II., when he causes him to utter to the royal lady this tender language:

I have not, howbeit, reader, as might be inferred from what has been herein before written, spent all the mean season spoken of, in the busy capital. I have made, with household appurtenances, and delights, and responsibilities, an autumnal tour or 'excrescence' into the country, round about the Empire Town. Quotidian columns have borne the register thereof; hence Benevolence prompt to crucify farther infliction. The landscapes surveyed were beautiful; though it may be said of the eminences, as Mr. William Lackaday observes in the play, of his boy-seen uplands: 'Them there hills wasn't clothed with much werder.'

How many steam-boat accidents are occurring constantly! One of late astonished the peaceful Delaware. But it did one good act. The explosion blew away a piece of very bad orthography in the cabin of one of those craft which ply between Philadelphia and Camden. Perilous voyages do they make, indeed! Nurses with their blooming charges, and who have never been to sea, embark in them to behold the wonders of the deep! The disaster I speak of arose from that which made the angels fall. 'Twas curst ambition. One boat was going several inches ahead of another, and urged its engine to the rate of at least fifty miles the hour. Rivalry was awakened; the captain of the hapless craft yelled to his assistant: 'Josey, we'll have a race with that t'other imperent boat! Put that other stick of wood into the furnace! My pride is elewated. Never mind the expense this time!'

The command was given; the boiler collapsed; and ambition was ended! The orthography blown from the steamer was this:

'No smoking aloud in the cabing!'

This was an injunction obeyed per force, for it could not be broken.[10] It specified tacit fumigation:

and the unnecessary monition was no great loss, either to luxury or learning.

Let me here register a letter which I have received from the Jehu who voted for Smith, of Smithopolis. He conveys several curious sentiments; and among other matters, records the demise of the person to whom he was indebted for a lecture:

'November the 5th, 1837.

'My Dear Sir:

'I have seen a piece which you made and put into a perryogue published down into the city of New-York, to which I am a-going to indict a reply. My indictment will be short, as some of the parties is not present to which you have been allusive. But with respect of that there diwine person you spoke of, I am sorry to remark, that he is uncommonly dead, and wont never give no more lectures. He was so onfortnight as to bu'st a blood-vessel at a pertracted meeting; and I ha'n't hearn nothing onto him sence. His motives was probable good; but in delivering on 'em, it struck me forcibly that he proximated to the sassy. However, I never reserves ill will, not ag'inst nobody; and I authorize you to put this into printing, ef'so be that you deem it useful. That's what Smith used to say, when he published his self-nominations in the newspapers, that a man with a horn (they tell me that he has a very large circle of kindred) used to ride post about, and distribit.

'In the sincere congratulation that there has not nothing been said in this communication unproper for the public ear, and for giving you the descriptions of the rackets, and other messuages respecting me, which you deeded to the public, I remain yours until death do us part.

'Post Tillion.'

'Mr. Ollapod, M.D.'

Now there is no finding fault with a correspondent of this description. Plain, unadorned, he gives his thoughts the drapery of ink—dresses them in black—and there they stand, ('what is written remains,') evidences at once of his frankness and his erudition. To me, such documents, though light, and perhaps unpalatable to those who prefer the heavier condiments of literature, form the cream or the dessert of life's plenteous table.

Talking of desserts—by which (whisper) I don't mean the boundless contiguity of western wildernesses, nor the sandy bounds of Zahara, but the after-glories of a dinner—I have of late arrived at some curious embellishments of delicacies, on the part of those who are bent upon improving the English language, at all hazards; upon extending it to the utmost latitude of dainty expression and culture. The Astor-House, I learn, at its Ladies' Ordinary, has furnished forth some glorious specimens of English improved. 'Sir!' said an exquisite, desirous of partaking a certain delicacy for himself and his fair:

'Have you at present any of the chastised idiot-brother?'

'Han't seen no relations of your'n here to-day,' murmured the waiter, 'with an imperturbable and 'furtive' smile.'

'Don't be impertinent, fellow!' was the reply; 'I mean something to eat!'

'If you want to eat any thing in the idiot line,' replied the servant, aside, as his inquisitor fingered his moustache, 'I guess you'd better put some butter on your hair, and swaller yourself!' And here the sacrilegious usher of sauces and glasses indulged in a half-suppressed guffaw.

'Dar' say you consider that funny, my short help,' said the inquirer: 'but what I want is what you call whipped-syllabub. Heaven help your ignorance!'

The requisite was handed—the exquisite appeased. But his quiet was brief. Calling to him the same locomotive assistance, he inquired:

'Now, individual, I want some sacrificed-threshed-indigent-williams. Have you got any?'

'Not one, upon my soul, your honor; that is, if you mean turnips.'

'Turnips!—curse turnips!—you double-distilled Vandal—you Goth—you Visigoth! I mean, have you any roasted whippoorwills?'

'Holy Paul!' said a Hibernian 'help,' who had drawn a-nigh, attracted by the discussion; 'in the name of the Vargin, what is them?'

Just at this juncture, the eaves-dropping by-stander who furnishes the mem. of this, came away, leaving the emerald son—more verdant to look at than his native isle—staring as if in a fit of astronomy, in eclipse-time.

One of my autumnal recreations, good my reader, is hunting. I pull a most fatal trigger. Venerie delighteth me, when the day is good and the game abundant. I love, (heaven forgive me!) to bring down the squirrel, with the half-munched chestnut in his teeth, what time his bushy tail, (no longer waving in triumph over his back, as he bounds from limb to limb,) quivers in articulo mortis. I confess me none of your cockney venators. Some of these I have seen place the deadly muzzle of a double-barrel rifle at the unsuspecting tail of a wren, while the proximity of metal and feathers was less than an inch; and when they fired, they plunged back some several yards, overcome with horror, though the bird had flown without injury, save indeed some blackened down, in extremis—a trifle, with life safe, and the world before her.

The poetry of gunpowder is in making it tell. To go out when the woods are so beautiful that you deem a score of dying dolphins hang on every tree,

to hear the delicate tread of the game on the leaves, rustling amid the murmur of solemn winds, as the westering sun scampers down the west, with a face as red as if he had disgraced the solar family by some misdemeanor; and then, in some thick recess of passing foliage, and innumerous boughs, then and there to bore wingéd fowl, and my gentleman quadrupeds of the sylvan fastness, with cold lead, is exhilarating. All kinds of volant things that wing the autumn air—all sorts of movers on four legs—to make these succumb to the behests of minerals, deadly salts, and a percussion cap to set them on, is a kind of great glory in a very small way. I miss in my excursions of this nature, the kind of sport which I fancy they who course the fields and glades of England must peculiarly enjoy; hare-hunting, namely. 'The ancients,' saith my choice 'Elia,' must have loved hares. Else why adopt the word lepores, (obviously from lepus,) but from some subtle analogy between the delicate flavor of the latter, and the finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly translate pleasantries. The fine madnesses of the poet are the very decoction of his diet. Thence is he hare-brained. Haram-scarum is a libellous, unfounded phrase, of modern usage. 'Tis true the hare is the most circumspect of animals, sleeping with her eyes open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in that wholesome exercise, which conduces them to form the very tit-bit of the admirers of this noble animal. Noble will I call her, in spite of her detractors, who from occasional demonstrations of the principle of self-preservation (common to all animals,) infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a hundred horsemen, with thrice the number of dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss, across three counties; and because the well-flavored beast, weighing the odds, is willing to evade the hue and cry, with her delicate ears shrinking perchance from discord, comes the grave naturalist, Linnæus, perchance, or Buffon, and gravely sets down the hare as—a timid animal. Why, Achilles, or Bully Dawson, would have declined the preposterous combat!' This is speaking sooth, and vindicates the fame of that class of tremulous tenants of rural haunts, whose ears, most unhappily, are sometimes longer than their lives.

Sometimes I surmount my pony, and traverse for miles the banks of the Schuylkill; moving, now fast, now slow, as humor prompts, or clouds portend. The city fades behind me; the beautiful eminence of Fairmount, its spouting fountains, its statues in the many-colored shade; the sheen of the river; the trellised pavilions that hang on its side; the hum of waters, or the cheerings of some regatta, mingle with far obscurity and airy nothing; and then, as I ride, I sing the song of Anacreon Little, laying every tone to my heart, like a treasure and a spell:

Thus I murder the post-meridian hours, when the weather-office is propitious, and its clerks attentive.

By-the-way, how often have I pondered on the extreme surprise experienced by Balaam, of Old-Testament memory, when he rode out one day on business. His meditations were most unexpectedly interrupted by the beast he rode; and he was immensely astounded, when he found out the garrulity of the animal. True to her sex, (for she was of the tender gender,) she commenced a few sentences of small-talk, greatly to his dismay. And who could marvel? What man but would listen, auribus erectis, when he ascertained that his own ass was opening a conversation with him? 'Twas thus with Balaam. He was well nigh demented. He pommelled his beast with great vehemence; but she turned her head to him, and said in the Hebrew dialect—'No Go!'

Is it not wonderful, that those who are skilled in biblical history, who weigh evidence by the ounce, and inference by the pound, is it not a marvel, that they have never traced the obstinacy of this four-footed individual to the right motive? She was, in sooth, the great progenitress of Animal Magnetism; and she presented, in her own person, the first instance of clairvoyance on record, either in prose or rhyme. It was at her hinder feet that Mesmer sat, in thought, and caught the inspiration of his science. Balaam sat on her patient back, burdened her hallowed vertebras, nor knew how much wisdom he bestrode. Blinded mortal! He looked ahead for the cause of his detention. He saw no reason why he should not push on; and in the Egyptian obliquity of his heart, he 'whaled' his ass to a degree. It did no good; on the contrary, 'twas quite the reverse. The ass and the angel were looking steadfastly at each other; but Balaam saw but one of the parties. He noted not the glittering and glorious obstacle that stopped the narrow way. The loose and expressionless lips of his ass spoke like a book; the clairvoyance was established; but the effect was slow. Henceforth, when the magnetic science is discussed, honor its foundress. Render unto that ass the things which are asses.'

I have achieved a victory which should fire the heart of any tasteful bibliomaniac. I stand seized of Lamb. Understand me, reader, 'tis no juvenile mutton, whereof I am possessed; not adolescent merino, or embryo ram. By no manner of means; contrariwise, it is Talfourd's brief memoir, and a most succulent correspondence, by the author of 'Elia.' 'Tis a thing over which a father may waken his boy, in the small hours of the morning, (being yet unmovéd bedward,) by a multitudinous guffaw. Rosy slumber, ruptured by obstreperous laughter; but ah! how decidedly unavoidable!

Yes; I write myself proprietor for the nonce of a London edition. My name is written in 'Lamb's Book of Life;' say rather, in a Book of the Life of Lamb. Most hugeously do I relish his quaint conceits, and those dainty sentences, the fashioning whereof came to him unbidden, from spirits of the olden time, bending from the clouds of fame. (By-the-by, what an unconscionable dog was Ossian! He always kept a score or two of heroes, sitting half-dressed on cold clouds, making speeches. 'Twas most unkind of him. But he lived in a rude age.) Lamb was one of those precious few of whom the world is not worthy. He wrote from the impulses of a noble heart, guided to new expression by a mind clear as the brook of Siloa, that flowed by the oracles of God. He was not one of your persons who are dignified by the phrase 'all heart,' for he had a prolific brain, which all-hearted people generally lack. Of course, he disciplined himself betwixt a desk at the India-House, and his social hours, or studious; but what golden fruitage sprang therefrom! None of your crude sentences, half-formed, unlicked, unpolished; but full of meaning; succinct to the eye, and harmonious to the ear. There is a light from his pen, which can illumine the saddest hour. He went forth to amuse and enlighten, as the sun gets up in the morning to cheer the world, 'with all his fires and travelling glories round him.' Essayist incomparable! How would he have looked writing a prize-tale for the horror-mongers!

In respect of these latter things, how many double-distilled atrocities of that kind are now and then committed at this day! They must be filled with blood and murder; piracy, thieving, villany of all sorts, must be thrown in, to make the mixture 'slab and good.' This is the result of the ten thousand pages of trash, which the want of a copy-right law entails upon us from England. Improbability is the first ingredient, to which assassination, seduction, and all kinds of crime, must approximate. Let me give a specimen:

'THE FATAL VOW.'

'It was late in the fall of 18—, (convenient blank!) when, as the night had come on, on a stormy evening, a dreadful tempest arose in the west. The lightning flashed, the thunder faintly bellowed for a time; but soon the lightning discontinued, though the thunder moaned on. It was pitch dark—darkness Egyptian. The sight was palsied and checked within an inch of the eye. At this juncture, two men on horseback might have been seen, at the distance of half a mile from the river ——, riding through a thick wood. One of them was of sallow complexion, with huge black whiskers; he rode a horse of the color called by rural people 'pumpkin-and-milk,' or cream-color, rather. In his holster were two pistols. He wore a broad slouching hat, apparently unpaid for. A frown, blacker considerably than hell, darkened his brow. Turning to his companion, a weazen-faced man, with a red head, mounted on what is called a 'calico mare,' he said:

'Well, Jakarzil, shall we do the deed to-night?'

'It would ill befit the noble Count d'Urzilio de Belleville,' said the dependant, 'to shoot that ill-fated lady at the present time. It would not look well.'

'I care not for the looks!' replied the count, curling his lip, and placing in his sinister cheek a piece of tobacco, 'I must have vengeance! If the candle is not at the casement, I shall bu'st the door. I want revenge!'

'TO BE CONTINUED.'

This is like the modern tales. Meditated butchery, successful scoundrelism, and other delectables, make up their sum. As the fragment just read may never be concluded, I will mention the fate of the parties. The hero shot his grandmother out of pique, and was hung; Jakarzil, his man, is in the penitentiary for horse-stealing.

Some of my unpoetical friends think I have underrated the Falls at Catskill. Heaven save the mark! They have never seen Niagara, and are therefore contented with a few grim rocks, the gate of a mill-dam, and grandeur by the gallon; for thus, in a manner, is it sold. No! Let these untravelled but clever fellows once hear the roar that shakes Goat-Island, and the region round about; see the river that pours its mile-wide breakers down, and mark the rainbow smile! Ever thereafter will they hold their peace.

One or two credulous persons have fancied that the sketch of 'Smith of Smithopolis' was designed as an imputation upon the name. The said imputation is disdained, by these presents. I have a decided regard for that style and title: companionship, familiarity, personal knowledge, (so grateful to the inquiring mind,) are its synonyms. Beside, I honor the name, for sundry associations. Who has never rode in a rail-car, a steam-boat, or a coach, with a person of the name of Smith? Or heard him speak at a public meeting? Or owed him a trifle? Or had a trifle due from him, the Smith aforesaid? Nemo—'I undertake to say'—(in fact I not only undertake this vocal enterprise, but I accomplish it.) Aside, reader, 'tis a criticism on the phrase; which whoso uses when he knows what he is about to set down in palpable chirography, is a sumph unqualified: Anglice, one of the flat 'uns, named of Stulti.

The Smiths are numerous, 'tis said. Grant it. Who pays more post-office revenue? Who more quickly resents a jeer upon the name? Tell me that. 'Not nobody.' Would you look for heroes? The Smiths could supply them. For female goodness and devotion? The same, from the same. For wit, genius, and elevated-talent? Vide Horace and James, of the Addresses, and Richard Penn; the studious scholar, good lawyer, quaint citizen, novelist, poet, dramatist—every thing clever.

I had many more things to say, courteous reader; but I fear, from what I have written, you may augur a bore. Heaven forfend! Consequently, thine in conclusion, I write myself, henceforth, now, and formerly,

Ollapod.