V. THE AGE OF WONDERS.

My neighbour over the way, Colonel Swallowmore, thinks himself born in the age of wonders:—and no wonder he thinks so, for he reads the newspapers and believes them! It is astonishing how gravely the Colonel gulps down every crude lump of monstrous fudge the papers contain. Sea-serpents, crook-necked squashes, consumption cured, talking pigs, and three-legged cats, are nothing to an appetite like his. He believes electioneering speeches and predictions of political quidnuncs. All is fish that comes to his net.

“These are times! Mr. Titterwell, these are times, indeed!” says he to me, with a most rueful visage, as he lays down the newspaper. “What are we coming to! People have got to such a pass! Something is certainly going to happen before long. I’m really, really frightened to think of it. There never were such doings in my day. Positively I’ve got so now that I an’t surprised at anything!”

And so he shakes his head, hitches up his breeches, sticks his spectacles higher up his nose, and reads the wonders of the day over again.

Twenty-eight several times has this country been irretrievably ruined since I knew the Colonel. Seven times has the world come quite to an end. Nineteen times have we had the hardest winter ever known within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Twenty-one times there never was seen such a backward spring. Forty-seven times the approaching session of Congress has been one of uncommon interest; and thirteen thousand, nine hundred and sixty-six times has death snatched away the best man upon earth, leaving mortals inconsolable, and society with an immense void.

The mental agitations he has undergone in pondering upon the “wonderful wonders” that spring up as plenty as grasshoppers in this wonderful age, are not to be described; for the Colonel takes an immense interest in public affairs, and cannot see the universe go to ruin about his ears without pangs of sympathy. Whatever mole-hill he stumbles upon, he makes a mountain of it.

He thought the Salem mill-dam absolutely necessary to the balance of power, and was certain that the bridge over Peg’s Run was the only means of saving the nation.

He went to bed in a great fright on reading in the paper that Emerson’s Spelling-book would overthrow the liberties of the country; and he was struck with the deepest alarm when he heard of the feud that had broken out between the Houses of Correction and Reformation about a cart-load of chips.

I shall never forget the anxiety that beset him last summer when the City Council could not come to a choice about the Superintendent of Drains. The newspapers were full of the affair, and the Colonel, I verily believe, would have worried himself into a nervous fever, had this alarming schism between the two branches of the city government been carried much farther.

“A strange affair, Mr. Titterwell, a very mysterious affair,” said he. “There are some dark, under-ground manœuvres going on in this matter, depend upon it; and really the Mayor and Aldermen—” here he turned up the whites of his eyes and shook his head. Heaven only knows what he thought of those great dignitaries. However, the affair of the drains got through without any great catastrophe to folk above ground, that ever I could learn, and the Colonel’s consternation subsided for that time.

All the world were going mad the other day about white mustard-seed.

“Pray, Colonel,” said I, “what is white mustard-seed to you or me? Can’t we eat our bread and butter, and sleep till six in the morning, without troubling our heads about white mustard-seed? Didn’t we fight the battles of the revolution without white mustard-seed? Didn’t Samson carry off the gates of Gaza without white mustard-seed? Didn’t your blessed old grandmother knit stockings and live to the age of ninety without white mustard-seed? Then what’s the use of minding the dolts in the newspapers who tell you that white mustard-seed is better than meat, drink and sunshine, and that we shall all die untimely deaths unless we take white mustard-seed?”

The Colonel could not understand it: it was a great mystery indeed, but the newspapers were full of it, and he was convinced white mustard-seed had something in it, that would come out in due time. White mustard-seed, however, has had its day; and the Colonel has probably taken to saw-dust, as I heard him talk of Dr. Graham last week.

But of all mortals the Colonel is the most prone to sympathize with the unfortunate public upon the loss of great men. I popped in upon him the day before yesterday, and found him lamenting a huge public calamity.

Three great men had fallen in Israel—an eminent clergyman, an eminent country representative, and an eminent dealer in salt-fish on Long Wharf. The Colonel was triply dolorous upon the matter; society, business, politics, had suffered an immense loss; a loss incalculable, irreparable, and so forth.

I assured the Colonel there was no great cause for apprehension, for the world was pretty sure to turn round once in twenty-four hours, whether great men died or lived.

“The fact is, Colonel,” said I, “great men may die as fast as they please for aught I care. I have never been frightened by the death of them since an adventure that happened to me in my ninth year, when I lived in the country.”

“What is that?” asked the Colonel.

“I’ll tell you,” said I.

“On a certain day—a day never to be forgotten by me, news arrived in town that the Governor was dead. No sovereign prince, pontiff, or potentate on the face of the earth, ever appeared so gigantic and formidable to my childish eyes, as that harmless gentleman the Governor of Massachusetts. Imagine the shock occasioned by this announcement! Straightway the bells began tolling, people collected in groups, quidnuncs scoured from place to place, gossips chattered, children gaped in dumb astonishment, and old women with dismal faces ran about croaking ‘The Governor is dead!’

“To me these things seemed to betoken the general wreck of nature, for how the order of the universe could subsist after the death of the Governor, was beyond my comprehension. I expected the sun and moon to fall, the stars to shoot from their spheres, and my grandfather’s mill-pond to upset. The horrible forebodings under which I lay down to sleep that night, are not to be described, and it was a long time ere I could close my eyes. In the morning I was awakened by a dreadful rumbling noise. ‘The Governor is dead!’ I exclaimed, starting up in a terrible fright. The noise continued: I listened, and discovered it to be nothing more than my old grandmother, grinding coffee!

“The effect of this prodigious anti-climax can hardly be imagined; never in my life was I so puzzled and confounded as at the first moment of this discovery.

“ ‘What!’ said I to myself, ‘is the Governor dead, and yet people grind coffee? then it seems we are to eat our breakfast just as if nothing had happened. Is a great man of no more consequence than this?’

“A new ray of light broke in upon me. I fell to pondering upon the occurrence, and five minutes pondering completely demolished the power supreme with which many a pompous owl had stalked through my imagination.

“From that moment, governors, town-clerks, select-men, representatives, justices of the peace, and great people of every degree, lost nine-tenths of their importance in my eyes, for I plainly saw the world could do without them.

“How often, in after life, have I applied the moral of this incident! How much moving eloquence and dire denunciation have I passed by with the remark:

“ ‘That is a great affair, no doubt, but it won’t stop a coffee-mill.’ ”