At dinner we were all animated. I partook with a relish of our own cheer, and was gladdened beside by a bottle of generous wine, which the old cellar had held for many a year; my return home; a favorable business-day; the cheerful voices of my wife and children; a good dinner; and the fine old Madeira wine: all combined to produce a comfortable and confident state of mind. 'We will weather it yet,' I exclaimed aloud, with a complacent nod.... There were some young people gathered in the parlor in the evening. They had danced a quadrille; they had talked and laughed. Now Alice was requested to sing. She seated herself at the piano, and began the convivial song fromTraviata. The music was particularly adapted to her voice, and as the tones floated through the room, I was gradually carried away by theabandonof the air. Insensibly I closed my eyes to enjoy it. Just then I heard the door open: the servant pronounced: 'Mr. Rollins, Sir.' I looked up. Rollins stood before me. He was very pale, but otherwise not excited; betrayed no unusual excitement. 'I want to speak with you a moment,' he said. I rose and walked with him as far as the pillar which separates the parlors, and leaning against it, I waited for him to speak. Alice meantime was continuing the song fromTraviata.
'Have you heard the news?' he said, in a low tone.
'No; what news?' I replied.
'The 'Caledonia' arrived this morning. We have her advices by telegraph. Barings have refused acceptance of ——'s bills.'
'How many with our indorsement must be still out?'
'At least seventy thousand dollars.'...
Alice was finishing the last strain of the convivial song. With the last strain I beheld fading away like a dissolving view those beautiful velvet carpets; vanishing, the fine sofas, and soft couches, and handsome furniture; gone, the rosewood piano; gone, the choice damask and silver; gone, the luxurious board, with the old wines and deliciousliqueurs: and the house, ourHOME, lost is the house; recorded against it is that mortgage for fifteen thousand dollars and interest; the value of property depressed, and we in the hands of a prompt creditor. Oh! why had I not paid off that mortgage? Oh! why? Wife and children; yes, wife and children remaining; but to suffer what discomfort, what unhappiness, possibly what destitution!
Not one quarter of a minute had elapsed since Rollings answer, 'At least seventy thousand dollars,' yet behold how much had rushed through my heated brain! I turned, for I felt a soft hand on my arm: it was my wife.
'Charles, what is it?'
'At present nothing, only I must step out for a few moments with Rollins.'
'Papa, papa, where are you going? Come back! You are always running away!'
BY RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
Itis a morn in winter,The air is white with snow;And on the chinar branchesJasmins seem to grow.The furrowed fields and hill-topsWith icy treasures shine,Like scales of silver fishes,Or jewels in a mine.The bitter wind has banishedThe silent nightingale,And the rose, like some coy maiden,Is muffled in a veil.Its silver song of summerNo more the fountain sings,And frozen are the riversThat fed the bath of kings!No flower-girls in the market,For flowers are out of date;And the keepers of the rosesHave shut the garden-gate.No happy guests are drinking,Their goblets crowned with vine,For gone are all the merchantsThat sold the merry wine!And gone the dancing women,Before the winds and snows;Their summer souls have followedThe nightingale and rose!
Itis a morn in winter,The air is white with snow;And on the chinar branchesJasmins seem to grow.
The furrowed fields and hill-topsWith icy treasures shine,Like scales of silver fishes,Or jewels in a mine.
The bitter wind has banishedThe silent nightingale,And the rose, like some coy maiden,Is muffled in a veil.
Its silver song of summerNo more the fountain sings,And frozen are the riversThat fed the bath of kings!
No flower-girls in the market,For flowers are out of date;And the keepers of the rosesHave shut the garden-gate.
No happy guests are drinking,Their goblets crowned with vine,For gone are all the merchantsThat sold the merry wine!
And gone the dancing women,Before the winds and snows;Their summer souls have followedThe nightingale and rose!
FOR THIS NUMBER ONLY, BY PARTICULAR REQUEST, THE OBSERVATIONS OF SLOPE MACER, ESQ.
Theywere all sitting together in the library, round the great walnut table, under the great bronze chandelier.
We're very proud of that chandelier by the way. Amelia designed it herself, and Hiram had it moulded out in Paris. It has spreading tree-branches; in between the forks lie a Turk, an Indian, a German, and a Calmuck, each smoking a long pipe, and out of the pipe-bowl comes the jet of flame. They do look just as natural as life: that's a fact. The Indian was drawn for Sam Batchelder; and the German for me. His is a good likeness; mine isn't. They tell Sam that bronze suits his style of face; I live in mortal fear that some body'll call us both a couple of gas-blowers; and so avail myself of this chance to head them all off, by originalling it myself. Remember, good folks, it has been done.
Well, there were the girls: Amelia, Bertha Sue, Little Sugar, and one or two others, not forgetting the immortal Nella Satanella, all sewing and snipping things with scissors, or knitting and hauling in the runaway worsted balls, every once in a while, with a jerk, as if they were children wandered off. Only Nella lay back in a great arm-chair snapping a little riding-whip she'd picked up, and doing nothing. Nella don't know that I've noticed it, but Ihave; and that's a way she has when other women are stitching and talking away, as all the sisterhood always do, all the world over, after a jolly tea-fight, of counting herself out, lying back on a chair, and eyeing them all round. There is nothing in it aggravating or conceited or insulting. Nothing vain or sarcastic. Nothing at all to take hold of, except once in a while a strange light as of a coming smile about to make daylight, but which never comes. And this smile-light seems to strike within as if she were watching herself, and amused at it. Nothing—that's to say, only one thing.
And that One is in its dimness something Awful.
I'm the only one who has seen it. I see that girl always watching human nature in every body, as one watches kittens at play. Children interest her like grown people, and she puts questions to watch the answers, and quietly raises topics to see how her little and great puppets will work. Where she loves and respects people she does this in such a way as to give them pleasant emotions and dignify them. I've seen her make Sam Batchelder say for an hour things just as creditable to his heart and head as any thing could be: and Sam hardly knowing it either. I've seen her draw out of Amelia the most artless indications of kindness and dignity. She's found out, and a strange art it is, through years of thought, just what keys to touch in peopleto bring out certain sounds. When she doesn't love, she goes in with the same interest, and treats herself to a good jolly monkey-show of miserable follies in red jackets dancing to the organ. Behind it all, even when Nella's with the wisest and best of people, is that mysterious philosophy, or whatever it is, which keeps comparing and comparing it all to other things laid away.... But just speak a word, and up Nella flies, all prompt and ready and spry; full of fun and jollity, ripe for any thing.
'Now,' said Bertha Sue, 'talking of young men—that is to say,veryyong men—I don't like them; that is, if they're notnice. I have known some real good fellows who'd keep you laughing all the time, and never vex you with a folly; and then there're so many who make suchgeeseof themselves: think if a lady only looks at them——'
'My dear child,' quoth Sugar, 'that would depend a great deal, I should think, on how the lady looked at the young man. Now the other evening at the opera—'twas reallytooabsurd in me, I declare——'
(Now Little Sugar is very conscientious, and always puts a story through, even at her own expense, if she has once begun it, thinking it wrong to disappoint people.)
'Well, I declare I couldn't help it; but there was a young gentleman in the parquette who lookedexactlylike my brother. And I looked straight at him thelongesttime; indeed I don't know what I could have been thinking of——I'm sureyou'dhave looked at him just in that way if he'd been likeyourbrother, wouldn't you?' quoth Sugar innocently, and addressing Nella.
'Oh! immensely,' replied that most unlikely of all young ladies.
'Well, he kept staring at me, in the most annoying way, all the evening, after that. Oh! it was justtooprovoking. I'd have givenworldsto've been home. He didn't know though that he looked like my brother. I do declare, I'd give any thing if he could only have known that it wasn'thimthat I was looking at.'
'You should have put next morning in the 'Personals' of theHerald,' quoth Sam, 'an advertisement, saying that 'The young lady in white satin cloak, white lace bonnet, and crimson roses, a fall of blonde, lavender kid gloves, and lavender silk dress, with little ruffles, pearl and white silk fan, and mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, wishes it to be understood by the young gentleman, at whom she stared for several minutes, during the last 'Martha,' that this was donesolelyin consequence of his extraordinary resemblance to a relative, and not because she was in the slightest degree attracted by the gentleman himself.''
'Feel better, Sam?' inquired Hiram.
'What wonderful power of extempore composition!' quoth Nella.
'Well,' said Sam, 'I'll print it any how.'
'Oh! please don't!' said Sugar. 'Indeed I'd rather you wouldn't. I know it's very kind of you, but I think I'd prefer not having it printed. I—I—wouldn't like putting you to such trouble and expense, you know.' And here Sugar looked anxiously and wistfully up at Sam, as if he were pronouncingher death-sentence. There was a general burst of indignation from all the ladies present, and Sam caught it severely. It doesn't take long for half-a-dozen women to bring one man to order, and they generally do it in about half-time when the offence is that of setting masculine quizzing against feminine weakness and tenderness. If you have any doubts, my ChristianKnickerbockerfriend, just try it on in the next tea-battle where you may find yourself. Just a little. Pick out the favorite—and three decent women never get together but what one tacitly becomes the pet—and undertake to quiz her, especially on some point in which the others are conscious of weakness! Don'tsayany thing, but justtryit. That's all. If you happen to find that it pays, just drop a line to me, addressKnickerbockerOffice, orVanity Fair.
'As regardsYoung Men,' said I, (I must have spoken very impressively, for all the girls at once slung up their heads as if I'd fired a revolver;) 'as regardsYoungMen, I'm certain that there isn't a sect in the whole community whose views, feelings and ideas—above all, whosesufferings, are so little thought of or described by writers.
'When a man gets to be old enough tomarry, then he's immensely interesting.Thenhe figures every where. He's tenor in the opera, first lover in the play, first fiddle in the whole orchestra of society.He'sprovided for.
'But as for the youth who hasn't graduated——'
(Here one or two of the young ladies picked up their sewing, and began tumbling the work-basket.)
'As for him whose beard is growing, and who hasn't 'got his set,' one may say that nobody in existence is treated with such inhumanity. Among all, except the most refined and cultivated people, it seems to be perfectly fashionable to establish a raw on him and snap it. If a girl is an angel to all the world beside, she can't resist the temptation of snubbing him like a devil. The poor youths in their earlier frock-coats! They feel the torture so keenly, and generally so foolishly. All they can do is to 'get mad.''
'Andthen,' said Nella, 'how demure and astonished Mademoiselle looks; how perfectly unable to understandsuchrudeness! Yes, goodness knows, Iwasguilty of such folly often enough myself, when I was a school-miss. In fact, I've gone to my room and cried after it; but I couldn't resist the temptation. It's delightful to feel and exercise power; particularly when you haven't much. There are two kinds of power developed at a gymnasium: that of nervous activity, (which is partly strength, you know;) and solid strength, which is altogether itself and nothing else. Now we girls come to full exercise of our activity before the poor boys get their strength. The fact holds good mentally, as well as physically; indeed, I wouldn't give much for any fact that hadn't a physical basis. Well, the boys grow up, marry the girls——'
'And take their revenge.'
'Exactly. But I've often thought that something might be done in education to relieve the sensitiveness and suffering of men at that age. Talk about boyhood, and the influences of childhood! bless your soul, the age I speak ofhas a hundred chances to make or mar where boyhood has one. Then it is, if ever, that the influences of woman should be most felt: those of cultivated women of the world especially. Haven't I seen that a few words of real interest and kindness from such a woman to a youth have changed the whole course of his thoughts for months? All his teachers and professors together couldn't give him in a year the impetus that she can with a few words of flattery and encouragement. He needn't be in love with her to have this miracle effected; and if heis, so much the better, for if there is any one thing which induces a youth to leave all that's bad and mean and degrading, it is the being in love. There's nothing that so stimulates the manly mind to become great and noble. Haven't I heard one of the greatest men who ever lived say, that the only times when he had ever been a good man were when he was in love?'
'I declare, Nella,' said Amelia, 'you talk as sympathetically as if you'd been a young man yourself.'
'So I have been,' said Nella, with enthusiasm. 'I've been every thing thateversuffered. An Italian monk told me once that he had beenChristagain and again; that by intense meditations onHissufferings he had felt all the pains of the crucifixion. If there is a human suffering which I haven't known it has not been for want of effort. Ah! only strive with all your might to sink down to sympathy with agony, find out its causes, and you'll begin almost to think there's no such thing as guilt. Folly thereis——'
'But I don't think it's manly in young men to suffer,' quoth Bertha Sue, very naturally.
'My dear child,' replied Nella, 'my sister's children used to be mortally ashamed of catching cold because a nurse ridiculed their coughing. Yet they caught cold quite the same. What theworldthinks of young men, and what it expects of them, causes a vast amount of hypocrisy. The very natural and creditable yearning for enjoyment, which is keenest in life at that age, is unnoticed or sternly repressed. It isn't, as a general rule, before a man becomes half-blasé that hebeginsto be knowing or free enough to be happy: and then he must drink when no longer thirsty. Bless me, why, didn't Dr. Maybaum tell us yesterday that when he was at college theonlyprovisions made there were to secure study and 'moral demeanor?' 'The boys would find amusement for themselves soon enough,' said the gouty, opium-steeped, old Incapable of a President. And theydidfind amusement: the amusements of fools and blackguards combined. Ah! for my part I don't see why as much pains shouldn't be given to supplying youth with recreation, as with 'education,' as people call education. Nature craves pleasure as much as food. I am only a woman, consequently I have been barred as in a cage my life long; but I have good strong eyes, and I have seen something through those bars. I tell you that, with all the suffering on earth—bereavements, poverty, hunger, disease and oppression, that which goads man most is the craving for pleasure, for recreation, or 'distraction.' Teachers and parents close their eyes to the existence of this terrible power, and moralists either treat it as an evil or try to feed it on gruel. The Puritans all hold it to bethe downright inspiration of the devil: as they do every thing which is beautiful and joyous like it. Ah! if they could feel as I do, what a stupendous flood of joy and of beauty life is capable of taking in! Whatmightbe done for the young if the true power of their minds was understood and provided for! What men of genius, what great andgoodmen might spring up by thousands, who now go to destruction, if it were only understood that enjoyment and pleasure, health and beauty, properly cared for, may be made the great stimulants to exertion. Yes, and to nobility of mind and tenderness. Ah! the sufferings of lonely young hearts in silent chambers for want of this.'
Nella's voice quivered with deep emotion as she spoke. I saw that she had touched one of the depths of her religion of humanity. As she went on, her fingers played with, and she unconsciously placed on her head a beautiful long Arab cap—a fez, which Hiram used to wear. Suddenly she sprang up, and as her ocean of black hair rolled down in ripples to one side, she threw up one beautiful white arm, and said: 'The dear boys, if I only had the governing of them all! Ah! I tell you I would captain them gloriously up to manhood! I have heart enough forallwho suffer, forallwho fail to get their rights; and the greatest of human rights is to attain the fullest development ofeverycapacity.Heart!!If giving a kiss with all my heart and soul to any youth living, would be a memory of joy to him for years, would lead him on like a light, and be a sweet memory in sorrow, I wouldgiveit: freely as a cup of water to the parched pilgrim. Freely! Yes, to thousands on thousands. 'Imeanit.''
Oh! that you could have seen the tears rise in her great black eyes. Or how beautiful Nella was when she said this. Wild, and strange, and inspired, as though she saw far in advance some beautiful solemn coming promise, too great for words. Then graceful as a cloud she sank down into the chair, and covered her forehead with her hands. And there was not one present who did not regard her with respect and love. She is a wonder, this Nella. One who in stormy times would be one of the women of the Nation and of History.
But it was not long before all the good folks had subsided into the old calm. The girls went on working: there was the old occasional snip of scissors and bump of worsted balls as they run over the floor; and as there is considerable Liberty Hall in our circle, I lit a segar, and rolling back into the big chair, (such a giant old nest of elastic softness you never did,) I began tothink.
First I turned to what Nella had been saying of the small amount of care the world's genius takes of the growing generation, just at the time when it needs it most.
Then what a raft of things—here I made a short discursion off, trying to recal a story I once heard of a nigger preacher, who was also a boatman, and who exhorted his hearers to flee frum de raft to come—de great big raft all on fiah dat'll smash yer boats and burn 'em up—glory!
Then I came up to time again, remembering what the world didn't care for, and what a wholesale careless, head-over-heels way it has of caring for what it does attend to, and crack up and idolize. There's history for instance.I'm not smart—wish I was—but one thingdon'thumbug me, and that's the fashion people teach the boys history.
'All the individualson our side, in all great times, were all saints. I don't believe it,' I spoke aloud.
'I wouldn't believe it, Mr. Sloper,' said Nella, smiling. 'Every revolution had some heroes in it and some fools.'
'A great many of every body, I shouldn't wonder,' I replied. 'Some of the cream and a great deal of skim. Lots of notional people, such as turn Mormons; lots of small-pattern folk, who do the loud talk for their corner-grocery; any quantity of owly follows, who've got hold of a Tom Paine or a Volney, and nothing much else—the same sort who get moony over tracts or perpetual motion. We lose sight of them, though. Yet they make up an immense lot of the rank and file in all great carryings-on which have a new idea in the middle.'
'There was acanailleon both sides in the great Protestant Reformation,' said Nella.
('French for tag-rag and bob-tail,' quoth Hiram.)
'And I suppose that even the Christians of the first age had one.'
'Bet your Cashmere on that,' quoth Sam. 'But you mustn't say it.'
'Mustn't say thetruth?' I replied. 'Was the American Revolution a lie, because it had Arnolds, and Tories, and all sorts of scallawags?'
'Come,' said Nella, 'this puts me in mind of something. I've got in my desk the queerest poem! It's on this subject. It tries to show, if I remember right, that even in a time which we always think of as being without low and vulgar people, there were probably some who went into ignorant extremes and abused every thing. Sam, suppose you read it.'
And in a few minutes she produced the document. It had been given to a friend of hers by the editor of theFamily Pudding, who couldn't quite make any thing out of it, except that the style was inelegant and the moral obscure, and who had therefore indorsed it as 'rejected.'
And turning himself round, so as to face the great multitude, Sam began:
The Legend of Crispin.
BY MEISTER KARL.
Whenthe Romans, the never-to-be-forgotten Romans—Romans, Roman citizens, S. P. Q. R.—Travelled out of Pompeii,Pompeii!When Mount Vesuvius was pouring down her lava,Dust—Ashes—Scoria,Ruin, Desolation,Eternal Misery!Fire-works, Annihilation,And Things.They left a Sentry standing at the door,They did.Citizens went rushing past him,Rushing like hurlycanes,Like hydrants,Like rifle-bullets on their travels,Carrying baggage—Some of it marked 'Lucius Sempronius,'Some of it 'Drusilla.'Band-boxes, inscribed with thenominaofMarcia Messalina;The trunks ofFlavius Gracchus,The bronzes ofSpurius,The Elephantine books ofLaufella,OfÆgle,Lalage,Chione,Dione,Clodia,Sulpitia,Lais,Bassa,And the traps of all that fast crowd,The jolly, half-Greek Romans of that Blue-Sea town.It was a fast party, and no mistake;Used to cutting up high old didoes,Going in on Falernian,Nunc pede libero,Myrrhine cups, Serican mantles, beautiful slaves,Harp and psaltery, kisses and wine,almaVenus!Live and love, you beauty—Beauty is Divine!Go it, girls—go it while you're young!Sic vita—hodie nobis.Disce bone clerice virgines amare,Quare sciunt dulcia oscula prestare.Juventutem floridam tuum conservare,Et cetera.Now they ran, shrieking, bewildered, pale-white,Scared to fits—Poor, pretty, little unfortunate devils,Having a hard old time of it:While a newly-escaped convict, a fellow namedCrispin,Who was to have been thrown to the lions in the circus,But who had got out of his cage andfeliciter evasitJust escaped martyrdom and canonization,Stood on a dung-hill, preaching MillerismTo the unfortunate Pompeians.'Sarves yer right,' quoth he,In uncommonly bad Latin. He was a Thracian shoe-maker!'Sarves yer right—Dives eritis—you used to be rich as blazes,Fat and sarcy—every thing but ragged,Dern you! Now things is workin'—ODomine Deus! an't I glad!Now you're all goin to thunderAlong with yer blamed old gods and goddesses,Jupiter Jovis,Mars,Apollo!Oh! git ëout!Diana!Talk aboutherbein' decent!Shaw!Law bless your soul! she an't no better than she should be.Juno!shewasa nice lot, she was Idon'tthink:Didn't marry her brother nor nothin', I spose!Hercules!There's a pretty character now, to make a god of!Why, he never was nothing better'n a sort of sporting man:Used to go boxin' rëound in a low way,An' killin' things.Worship him! I'd as soon worship an old chaw tobacco:Fact! Just as live's not.Mercury!Sounds well, don't it, to be prayin' tohim?Shows yer derned thieves any how, to think of such a thing.Why, he's nothin' but a pick-pocket,A common burgular; a hoss-stealer;A fellow who shoves the queer and buzzes blokes, as they say in their low slang.That's whatheis. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!'Fore I'd be seen in his temple, I'd go worshipCloacina. Fact!That's whatI'ddo.Oh! they're a putty set—these divinities of yourn:Minervy, for instance.Shedon't know nothin',She an't o' no account.She'sa humbug.Why, I know a gal,Paula Innocentia; lives round by the Forum; sells slop.Kin read the 'Pistle to the Romans right strut through—Wellshecan. That's more'nMinervyever did.Then, there'sNeptune! Now I arsk you as reas'nable men,Don'tyou consider him as an old blower—a regular gas-bag.Feller citizens: I arsk you to argy this point temperately and soberly, without usin' no aggravatin language.Don't you think a man must be a blarsted old fool to believe in any such narsty stuff as this beastlymy-thology of yourn?Shaw! There an't no use talkin',It's all a dead cock in the pit, the hull of this Olympus:I don't say nothin aginPluto, however,(Only you ought to call himSatanby rights.)Someof you'll find out mighty soon,Icalculate, whetherhe'sa smellin' rëound or not.Rather!Oh! go 'long with you. Sho-o-o-o!Yeu narsty, indecent, leëwd, unproper critters!Yeu miserable coots.Fellers with about half the interlect of a common-sized shad,Yeu goneys.Ya—ya—yap—yap—BOO!Yeu don't have an imparticularly hard time on 't. Sa-ay!Layin' off ontriclinia, drinkin' Falernian out 'erpocula, and snake-handled Etruskincalices,Serpans in patera Myronis arte,To the health ofVenus!Ea-au-au-a'a'a'h!You make me sick!Venus!!Bibis venenum, you drink serpent pison and no mistake under them 'ere circumstances.Venus!Sh-aw!She 's just the filthiest........dern'dest........ugh—ugh!'(Here he grew black in the face with howling and spitting.)'Beautiful indeed! Ihatebeauty. Blarst it!'Tan't moral. I'd rather see the lousiest old slave a-goin',Than all the clean-washed beauty of all Lesbos,Corinth, Athens, Rhodes,Or any other man.Look-a-here, you goneys! There's a statue ofVenusnow:Mighty putty—an't it?Vide, dico, vobis!Here's a big pavin'-stun. I'm a-goin' to smash her nose in.I'll spile some of your pretty for you—mœcha damnata!You carn't do nothin' to one of the Chosen, you know!Here goes at her! Rip! snap!—one, two, three!'And it flew from his hands. The multitude, in terror,Paused in their flight, shocked at the sacrilege,Waiting the wrath of the foam-white-limbed GoddessAphrodite, eternal daughter of sun-shine,Of the blue-sea and beauty infinite.Was it the accursed stone which struck the featuresChiselled byPhidiasorScopas?Was it the shock of the earthquake?But as the mountain gave a roar tremendous,As though all Orcus had burst loose on earth,And in a flash, as of allJove'slightning,Down fell the marble queen of loveliness,Crushing to kindred dirt, in one foul mass,Crispinthe Scoffer. Lo! the gods are just!
Whenthe Romans, the never-to-be-forgotten Romans—Romans, Roman citizens, S. P. Q. R.—Travelled out of Pompeii,Pompeii!When Mount Vesuvius was pouring down her lava,Dust—Ashes—Scoria,Ruin, Desolation,Eternal Misery!Fire-works, Annihilation,And Things.
They left a Sentry standing at the door,They did.Citizens went rushing past him,Rushing like hurlycanes,Like hydrants,Like rifle-bullets on their travels,Carrying baggage—Some of it marked 'Lucius Sempronius,'Some of it 'Drusilla.'Band-boxes, inscribed with thenominaofMarcia Messalina;The trunks ofFlavius Gracchus,The bronzes ofSpurius,The Elephantine books ofLaufella,OfÆgle,Lalage,Chione,Dione,Clodia,Sulpitia,Lais,Bassa,And the traps of all that fast crowd,The jolly, half-Greek Romans of that Blue-Sea town.It was a fast party, and no mistake;Used to cutting up high old didoes,Going in on Falernian,Nunc pede libero,Myrrhine cups, Serican mantles, beautiful slaves,Harp and psaltery, kisses and wine,almaVenus!Live and love, you beauty—Beauty is Divine!Go it, girls—go it while you're young!Sic vita—hodie nobis.Disce bone clerice virgines amare,Quare sciunt dulcia oscula prestare.Juventutem floridam tuum conservare,Et cetera.Now they ran, shrieking, bewildered, pale-white,Scared to fits—Poor, pretty, little unfortunate devils,Having a hard old time of it:While a newly-escaped convict, a fellow namedCrispin,Who was to have been thrown to the lions in the circus,But who had got out of his cage andfeliciter evasitJust escaped martyrdom and canonization,Stood on a dung-hill, preaching MillerismTo the unfortunate Pompeians.'Sarves yer right,' quoth he,In uncommonly bad Latin. He was a Thracian shoe-maker!'Sarves yer right—Dives eritis—you used to be rich as blazes,Fat and sarcy—every thing but ragged,Dern you! Now things is workin'—ODomine Deus! an't I glad!Now you're all goin to thunderAlong with yer blamed old gods and goddesses,Jupiter Jovis,Mars,Apollo!Oh! git ëout!Diana!Talk aboutherbein' decent!Shaw!Law bless your soul! she an't no better than she should be.Juno!shewasa nice lot, she was Idon'tthink:Didn't marry her brother nor nothin', I spose!Hercules!There's a pretty character now, to make a god of!Why, he never was nothing better'n a sort of sporting man:Used to go boxin' rëound in a low way,An' killin' things.Worship him! I'd as soon worship an old chaw tobacco:Fact! Just as live's not.Mercury!Sounds well, don't it, to be prayin' tohim?Shows yer derned thieves any how, to think of such a thing.Why, he's nothin' but a pick-pocket,A common burgular; a hoss-stealer;A fellow who shoves the queer and buzzes blokes, as they say in their low slang.That's whatheis. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!'Fore I'd be seen in his temple, I'd go worshipCloacina. Fact!That's whatI'ddo.Oh! they're a putty set—these divinities of yourn:Minervy, for instance.Shedon't know nothin',She an't o' no account.She'sa humbug.Why, I know a gal,Paula Innocentia; lives round by the Forum; sells slop.Kin read the 'Pistle to the Romans right strut through—Wellshecan. That's more'nMinervyever did.Then, there'sNeptune! Now I arsk you as reas'nable men,Don'tyou consider him as an old blower—a regular gas-bag.Feller citizens: I arsk you to argy this point temperately and soberly, without usin' no aggravatin language.Don't you think a man must be a blarsted old fool to believe in any such narsty stuff as this beastlymy-thology of yourn?Shaw! There an't no use talkin',It's all a dead cock in the pit, the hull of this Olympus:I don't say nothin aginPluto, however,(Only you ought to call himSatanby rights.)Someof you'll find out mighty soon,Icalculate, whetherhe'sa smellin' rëound or not.Rather!Oh! go 'long with you. Sho-o-o-o!Yeu narsty, indecent, leëwd, unproper critters!Yeu miserable coots.Fellers with about half the interlect of a common-sized shad,Yeu goneys.Ya—ya—yap—yap—BOO!Yeu don't have an imparticularly hard time on 't. Sa-ay!Layin' off ontriclinia, drinkin' Falernian out 'erpocula, and snake-handled Etruskincalices,Serpans in patera Myronis arte,To the health ofVenus!Ea-au-au-a'a'a'h!You make me sick!Venus!!Bibis venenum, you drink serpent pison and no mistake under them 'ere circumstances.Venus!Sh-aw!She 's just the filthiest........dern'dest........ugh—ugh!'(Here he grew black in the face with howling and spitting.)'Beautiful indeed! Ihatebeauty. Blarst it!'Tan't moral. I'd rather see the lousiest old slave a-goin',Than all the clean-washed beauty of all Lesbos,Corinth, Athens, Rhodes,Or any other man.Look-a-here, you goneys! There's a statue ofVenusnow:Mighty putty—an't it?Vide, dico, vobis!Here's a big pavin'-stun. I'm a-goin' to smash her nose in.I'll spile some of your pretty for you—mœcha damnata!You carn't do nothin' to one of the Chosen, you know!Here goes at her! Rip! snap!—one, two, three!'And it flew from his hands. The multitude, in terror,Paused in their flight, shocked at the sacrilege,Waiting the wrath of the foam-white-limbed GoddessAphrodite, eternal daughter of sun-shine,Of the blue-sea and beauty infinite.Was it the accursed stone which struck the featuresChiselled byPhidiasorScopas?Was it the shock of the earthquake?But as the mountain gave a roar tremendous,As though all Orcus had burst loose on earth,And in a flash, as of allJove'slightning,Down fell the marble queen of loveliness,Crushing to kindred dirt, in one foul mass,Crispinthe Scoffer. Lo! the gods are just!
'That's a rather Remarkable,' quoth Sam, as he wound up.
('How well you read!' exclaimed four voices at once.)
'It's a great pity!' said Amelia, 'that he broke that beautiful statue. How well it would have looked, Mace, on that pedestal in the corner of the library. I do wish you d buy something to put on it. It looks so empty. I saw a lovely bronze Psyche at Haughwout's the other——'
'Well,' said I, 'I 'spose I must hoe out my row and finish the furnishing: so send her up!'
'And the poem, Nella?'
'Lo! the gods are just,' replied Nella, repeating the last line. Ah! I hope so. I hope thatnoform of beauty which man ever looked at with love, everdid die, or ever will. I should think that something were wrong if I really believed that that statue which Crispin broke will never be seen again in all eternity by me. No; every lovely face and flower and breath of music lives somewhere, as a grain lies in the earth waiting for the spring. Nature has the germ and the secret: allwillrise again more beautiful than ever.'
BY HENRY P. LELAND.
Silenthe sat in the forest shade,Silent, but not alone—He and his hound and the unseen formOf one then dead and gone.Not dead, while she lives in his throbbing heart:Not gone, while her dark eyes make him start:Living alone!Heartless the trees, soulless the rocks,Nothing but wood and stones?No sympathy here for sorrowful hearts,No voices with gentle tones?Not heartless the forest while joy it yields!Not soulless the rock that a sad heart shields!Living alone!Silent he walked in the cloudless night,Her eyes the stars above;Her voice in the thrilling wind from the south;His world—her world of love!—Love, that will live and the loved one gone;Love, that will live and forever live on—Living alone!Heart of the forest, and soul of the rock,Star eyes in heaven that gleam,Voice of the wind that thrilled his heart,And are ye all a dream?Dream! then let him through life dream on.Dream! yes,Dreamtill life is gone!Living alone!
Silenthe sat in the forest shade,Silent, but not alone—He and his hound and the unseen formOf one then dead and gone.Not dead, while she lives in his throbbing heart:Not gone, while her dark eyes make him start:Living alone!
Heartless the trees, soulless the rocks,Nothing but wood and stones?No sympathy here for sorrowful hearts,No voices with gentle tones?Not heartless the forest while joy it yields!Not soulless the rock that a sad heart shields!Living alone!
Silent he walked in the cloudless night,Her eyes the stars above;Her voice in the thrilling wind from the south;His world—her world of love!—Love, that will live and the loved one gone;Love, that will live and forever live on—Living alone!
Heart of the forest, and soul of the rock,Star eyes in heaven that gleam,Voice of the wind that thrilled his heart,And are ye all a dream?Dream! then let him through life dream on.Dream! yes,Dreamtill life is gone!Living alone!
BY FITZ-HUGH LUDLOW.
——'Die, if dying I may giveLife to one who asks to live,And more nearly,Dying thus, resemble thee!'
——'Die, if dying I may giveLife to one who asks to live,And more nearly,Dying thus, resemble thee!'
'Ciel!Zat is ze true heroique! Zat is ze very far finest ting in all ze literature anglaise! Zere have not been made vun more sublime poesie by your immortel Villiams Shakyspeare! Glorieux! Vat a grandeur moral of ze woman who vill vonce die for her love!'
'Once?I knew a woman who diedthriceforhers.'
The enthusiastic admirer of Longfellow was a French Professor in one of our American Colleges, by name Gautier Bonenfant. The person who met his panegyric with such a strange response, was Orloff Ruricson, by birth a Swede, by adoption a New-Yorker, and by trade the proprietor of a Natural History Museum. These two, with myself, were sitting on the west piazza of the little inn at Kaaterskill Falls. All of us hard-working men in the hard-working season; but on this tenth day of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, soaking the dust out of our brains in a bath of sunlight and mountain air, forgetting in company that life was not all one sweet vacation.
Bonenfant and I looked at Ruricson with puzzled faces. Though a good fellow and a wisely humorous one, he seldom said any thing whose cleverness lay in a double-entendre.
'Pray, who is that remarkable woman?' said I.
'It is my wife,' replied Orloff Ruricson soberly.
'And she die, von, two, tree time?' asked Bonenfant, with uplifted eye-brows.
'And she died three times for her love,' repeated Orloff Ruricson.
'Perhaps you would have no objection to tell us exactly what you mean?' said I.
'None at all, toyou two. With this proviso. I know that you, John Tryon, write for the magazines. For aught I know, Bonenfant here, may be a correspondent of theConstitutionnel.'
'Mais non! I am ze mose red of Red Republican!'
'Perhaps you are Ledru Rollin, then, travelling in disguise to hunt materials for a book. At any rate, I must exact of both of you a promise, that if a single lineament of the story I am going to relate, ever gets into print through your agency, it shall be represented as fictitious, and under assumed names.'
'C'est fait!'
'It's a bargain!'
'You see, I live by my Museum. And if the public once suspected that I was a visionary man, the press and the pulpit and general opinion would run me down immediately. I should be accused of denying the originality of the human race inferentially, through my orang-outang; of teaching lessons of maternal infidelity through my stuffed ostrich; of seducing youth into a seafaring life by my preserved whale. No more schools, at half-price on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by their principal; no more favorable notices by editors, 'who have been with their families,' for you, Orloff Ruricson!
'And what I am going to tell you will seem visionary. Even to you. Nevertheless, it is as real as any of the hardest facts in my daily life. Take my solemn word for it.
'When I was ten years old, my parents emigrated from Sweden to this country. At the age of twelve, I lost my father. At thirteen, I was apprenticed to a man who stuffed birds in Dutch-street. At fourteen, I was motherless. At twenty, my term was out, and I began to think of setting up as a taxidermist on my own hook. There! The Biographical Dictionary can't beat that summary of ten years, for compactness!
'I made a very liberal offer to my master; in fact, proposed to take him into partnership. He nobly refused to avail himself of my generosity. Bird-stuffing, even in New-York, was not a very lucrative business, and would hardly support two, he suggested. What did I think of one of the river towns? Albany, or Hudson, or Poughkeepsie, for instance? I did not tell him what; but in reality, I thought so little of them, that within ten days after my indenture was cancelled, I had taken a little nook in the Bowery, with window enough to show off three blue-jays, a chameleon, and a very young wild-cat, (whose domesticity I may, at this day, acknowledge to have been slandered by that name,) and sufficient door to display the inscription: 'Orloff Ruricson, Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor.' Even at that day, you see, Bonenfant, we impostors had begun to steal your literary title.'
'Sacrebleu! I do very moshe vish zat ze only ting ze plenty humbug professors now-a-daysstuffvas zebirds!'
'Well,Imay have stuffed the public a little, too. At any rate, they patronized me far better than I had any reason to expect. By the time I was of age, I had moved my business one door farther up, to a shop treble the size of the first; and instead of sleeping under and eating on top of my show-case, as I began, I occupied lodgings with a respectable cutler's widow, second-story front of a brick house on Third Avenue, and came down to my store every morning at nine o'clock, like any wholesale grocer.
'I had been installed in my comfortable quarters only six weeks, when a new lodger came to the boarding-house. The first thing that I knew of it, was my beholding, directly opposite me at a Sunday dinner, the most preternaturally homely face I had ever seen. As I took my seat, and opened my napkin, the cutler's widow inclined her head in the direction of the apparition, and uttered the words: 'Miss Brentnall.' I cast a glance and a bow in the same quarter, pronouncing the name after her. 'Mr. Ruricson,' said the landlady laconically, and nodded toward me. 'Mr. Ruricson,' repeated themiracle of plainness, in a voice so sweet that I could not rid myself of the impression that it must be the ventriloquism of some one else. At the same moment she smiled. The smile was as incongruous with the face as the voice; and for that glancing half-minute, Miss Brentnall was a dozen shades more endurable.
'Cruikshank, acting as collaborator with Salvator Rosa, would fall short of any thing more ambitious than a slight sketch of the woman's unearthly homeliness. I dare hardly attempt describing her in words, but for your sake, let me try.
'Her hair was like Bonenfant's Republicanism, 'the most red of red,' but without the usual characteristic of that color, silky fineness. In fact, unless you have been through a New-England corn-field in the dog-days, and noticed the very crispest of all the crisp tassels which a brazen sun has been at work baking for the month previous; unless you have seen some peculiarly unsheltered specimen, to the eye like dried blood, and to the fingers like dust and ashes, you cannot imagine the impression produced by Miss Brentnall's hair. I really trembled lest our awkward waiter's sleeve should touch it, in serving the vegetables, and send it crumbling from her head in the form of a crimson powder. Her forehead was in every respect immense—high, broad, and protuberant enough for the tallest man who ever prided himself on his intellect; still, it might have been pardoned, if it had been fair withal, instead of sallow, wrinkled and freckled. A nose, whose only excuse for its mammoth maturity of size and its Spitzenberg depth of color, lay in the fact that it was exposed to the torrid glare of the tresses, depended, like the nest of the hanging-bird, between a pair of ferrety eyes, which seemed mere pen-knife gashes in a piece of red morocco. At that day, I could not swear to the pupils; but a profane man of sensitive mind, might have sworn at them, for they seemed to be a damp—not a swimming but a soaked damp—pale blue. Flanking the nose, imagine an inch and a half on either side, of dingy parchment, stretched almost to tearing, and you will get the general idea of the sides of Miss Brentnall's face; I will not travesty the word 'cheeks,' by calling them that. Below the nose, a mouth which would have been deformedly small for a child two weeks old; below that, a chin which hardly showed at all in front, and, taking a side view, seemed only an eccentric protraction of the scraggy neck to which it was attached. Now for the figure. High, stooping shoulders; a long, flat, narrow, mannish waist; the lower extremities immoderately short; immense feet: group these in one person, and you have a form to which I know only two parallels out of the world of nightmare, a German wooden doll, and Miss Brentnall.'
'Diable de laideur! You see zat viz your own eyes?'
'Yes, Bonenfant.'
'And yet you be yourself not vare ugly, after all!'
'So I have heard, Bonenfant. You will be still more surprised to feel that this is the case, when you know that I lodged in the same house with Miss Brentnall a whole year. Indeed, she occupied the very next room to me. Iwas second-story front, she second-story back, during all that time; and do you know that I became very well acquainted with her?'
'Ah! It is pos-siblefor a gentleman to be vare polite to vare ugly woman!'
'Yes, but from preference, I mean. I could shut my eyes, and hear her voice, or open them at the transient moment when she was smiling, and forget that she was homely at all. I discovered that she was the only remnant of a large family: that awakened my pity. In addition, that she was very well-informed, thought and conversed well: that aroused my respect. And when, in spite of a face and figure which by poetic justice should have belonged to Sin itself, I perceived that she had the kindest of hearts, and the most delicate of sensibilities, I am not ashamed to confess that I soon became attached to her.'
'Attach? You have fall in love viz zat e-scary-crow? You have marri-ed her?'
'Hear me through, Bonenfant, and you will find out. In the present instance, I mean, by the word 'attached,' nothing but a pure Platonic friendship. I do not make acquaintances easily. I visited nobody in New-York at that time. There was no one whose cheerful fireside I could make my own for an evening; and my natural tastes, to say nothing of any other feeling, kept me away from drinking-saloons. Moreover, I had an insatiate longing to make something of myself. I wanted the means for buying books, for travelling, for putting myself into what I considered good society. Accordingly, I often brought home, at evening, the specimens I had been working upon all day, and continued my labors long into the night. While I was busily engaged with the knife or the needle, the gentlest little tap would come at the door, so gentle, so unlike any other sound, that, however absorbed I might be, I always heard it, knew it was Miss Brentnall, and said: 'Walk in!' So, in hopped that little eighth world-wonder of ugliness, now with an orange for my supper, now with some pretty ornithological engraving, of which, by the merest chance, she always had a duplicate copy, and whose effect she would like to see on my wall. When she went out, she always forgot to take it with her; and in a few months, my room, through such like little kindnesses, became quite a portrait-gallery of celebrated birds. Sometimes, Miss Brentnall spent the whole evening with me. On such occasions, it was her greatest delight to stand by my table, and see some poor, mussed, shrivelled lark or Canary grow plump and saucy again, through the transformations of my art. She called it 'bird-resurrection.' For an hour at a time, she would stay close at my elbow, perfectly quiet, holding a pair of glass eyes in her hand. When I asked for one of them, she gave it to me with all the happiness of a helpful child; and, when at last both eyes were fixed in the specimen, I have seen her clap her hands, and jump up and down. In process of time, she became of real assistance to me. So apt a mind had she, that from merely witnessing my methods, she learned to stuff birds herself; and one evening, when I called 'come in,' to the well-known tap, I was surprised by seeing a parrot inher hands, prepared and mounted almost as well as I could have done it myself. It was a little present to the Professor, she said: she had been at work upon it for the last two days. From that time, her voluntary services were in my constant employ, whenever I worked of evenings.
'I was not so ungallant, however, as to let Miss Brentnall do all the visiting. Whenever a lazy fit took me, and I could not have worked, or studied, or walked, if I had been offered ten dollars an hour for those exertions, I always forestalled her coming to my room by going to hers. She had a large rocking-chair, which always seemed to run up to the fire-place of its own accord, and hold out its arms for me, the moment I came in. I would drop into that, shut my eyes, and say, 'Please talk to me,' or, 'Please read to me,' with as much abandonment as if I were speaking to my own mother. It never felt like exacting impertinent demands of a stranger, I was so marvellously at my ease in Miss Brentnall's room.'
'Ze man of mose mauvaise honte be not embarrass, I have observe, viz ze vare ugly lady.'
'I don't think it was that, Bonenfant. I used to ask myself if it might not be. But I always came to the conclusion that I should feel the same, were Miss Brentnall the most beautiful person in the world. There was something in her mind, especially as expressed in voice and style of talking, that lulled me when I was most irritable, that lifted the weight of self and pride quite off me for the time being. I knew that we both liked to be together; that was enough: I did not care, indeed I never once thought, how we either of us seemed to any one else.
'I could not help being aware that the other boarders talked about us. Having a pair of tolerably good ears, likewise of eyes, it was difficult not to know that old Mrs. Flitch, my landlady's half-sister, smelt a match in my intimacy with Miss Brentnall; that she considered it ill-advised, on the ground that I was twenty-one, and the lady at least forty; that she could imagine no possible motive in my mind, except a view to Miss Brentnall's snug little property; that, as a consequence of these premises, she regarded one of us a very mean knave, and the other a doting fool. It was difficult not to understand the meaning of Miss Simmons, an acid cotemporary of Miss Brentnall's, possessing all her chances of celibacy, half her homeliness, and one-thousandth of her mind, when, as I took my seat next her at the breakfast-table, she asked me, with a pretty simper, if I had spent the last evening as pleasantly as usual. It was difficult to avoid seeing the gentlemen wink at each other when they passed us talking together in the entry: it was also difficult, as I perceive from Bonenfant's face he would like to suggest, not to pull their noses for it; but reflection suggested the absurdity of such a course. This is one of the few objections I have to your native, and my adopted country, Tryon, that notwithstanding the great benefit which results from that intimacy between a man and a woman, in which each ismere friend, and neither present nor expectantlover, our society will not hear of such a thing, without making indelicate reference to marriage. Still, I suppose, they would have talked about us, any where.
'Miss Brentnall knew this as well as I, and like me, never gave it a thought after the momentary demonstration which recalled it. We passed one whole delightful year together in the Third Avenue boarding-house. I felt my own mind growing, becoming richer in all sorts of knowledge, freer and clearer in every field of thinking, with each succeeding day. And as for Miss Brentnall, she was so kind as to say, and I knew she sincerely meant it, that to her, all lonely in the world, our friendship was in all respects inestimable. At the end of the year, Miss Brentnall was taken ill. For the first few days, neither she nor I felt any serious alarm with reference to her case. The doctor pronounced it a mild type of typhoid fever. It proceeded, so he said to me in private, more from mental causes than any tangible physical one. Had she been unfortunate in any way? he asked me. I could only reply that, as her intimate friend, I was unaware of the fact. Probably she read late, then, he suggested. I said that might be. At all events, her mind had been very much overtaxed: what she needed was perfect quiet, good nursing, and as little medicine as possible. Upon his giving me this view of the case, I sought out the most faithful, judicious woman within reach, and hired her on Miss Brentnall's behalf, to stay by her bedside night and day. My own income, from the little shop in the Bowery, was now so fair, that I felt able to repay, in some measure, the debt of gratitude I owed my kind friend for her many contributions to the walls of my lonely room. Accordingly, whenever I lighted on any new engraving or book of art, or any embellishment to a sick-chamber, which seemed likely to attract without fatiguing a strained mind, I brought it up to her in the evening. If I had not been in her debt already, I should have been a thousand times repaid for these little evidences of friendship, by the appreciative delight with which the childlike woman talked of them, for their own sake, and the grateful enthusiasm she bestowed upon them for mine.
'The opportunity to be kind and thoughtful was very short. At the end of the third week, the doctor gravely told me that typhus pneumonia was becoming alarmingly prevalent in New-York, and that Miss Brentnall's disease had taken that form. Furthermore, that unless some change for the better occurred in the course of the next twenty-four hours, she would die.
'I heard this piece of news without the least outward sign of sorrow. It did not seem possible to me that I could lose this best, kindest friend I had in the world. You will think the reason whimsical perhaps; but, merely because she was not beautiful, I felt as if she would not be taken away from me. 'Only the beautiful die, only the beautiful,' I kept saying to myself all day, in the shop or at the work-table. In the evening, when I came back to the house, I found that two things had occurred. Miss Brentnall's pulse had become feebler, and she did not seem to me so plain as before. Then, for the first time, I began to be afraid.
'In the morning, the doctor took me into the entry, and told me that his patient might live till mid-night, but not longer. Would I take the painful office of breaking the intelligence to her? 'Yes,' I replied, hardly knowing what I said.
'I entered the sick-room. As I came toward the bed, Miss Brentnall opened her eyes and smiled.
''Martha,' said she, in a feeble voice, 'you may go down-stairs, and get me some arrow-root.'
'As soon as the nurse had shut the door behind her, Miss Brentnall continued:
''I shall be dead in a few hours, Orloff. I have something to say to you alone. I am sorry to go away from you. Very sorry. You have been kind to me, Orloff. More than any body else in the world.'
'I took Miss Brentnall's poor, parched hand, but could not answer. 'Orloff—kind as you are to me—in the bottom of your heart, you know that I have the most repulsive face you ever saw. Sayyes, Orloff. Youdoknow it. I have been sure of it, since I was a little girl, six years old, thirty-four years ago, yesterday. I was never sorry for it, more than a moment at a time,until a year ago. And now you may tell me you see it, without hurting me at all. Pride is past. Say that my face is the most unlovely in the world.Say it to please me.'
'I saw she was in deep earnest, and I brought myself to answer for her sake:
''Well. But your soul is the most lovely.'
''I thank you for saying it, Orloff. And now, now that pride is past, I may tell you something which life would hide forever, but death wrings out of my very soul. You have been afriendto me, a dear, kind friend, Orloff; but nothing more.Ihave been something else toyou. A dying woman may say it.I have loved you.'
'For a minute we were both silent, and then Miss Brentnall resumed: 'Passionately, passionately. Without once deluding myself; without once dreaming that there was a shadow of hope. Had you been blind; had you been deaf; so that you could never have seen what I am, or heard a word of it from other lips; even had you, under these circumstances, loved me, I would have felt it base to give you, in exchange for yourself, such a thing as I. But you did see, you did hear, and I knew that I lovedimpossibly. You came in, now, to tell me that I would not live till to-morrow, did you not, Orloff?'
''I meant to, if I could,' was my reply.
''I had a dream just before you came in. I thought I saw you, and you told me so. Do you know what a strange thing happened, just as you seemed speaking? But you are not angry with me, for what I have said already?'
''Angry? My dear friend, no!' said I instantly.
''The strange thing was this. As you spoke, my deformed face fell off like a veil, and my body, like a cloak, was lifted from me. At the same moment, I had the power of being outside of myself, of looking down on myself, and I was—very beautiful. I was not proud, but I was glad. I drank in a whole fountain of peace at every breath. At that instant, I began to float farther and farther from you; but as I went, I heard, oh! such a sweet voice! saying:'Again! Again! You shall meet again!' As you came into the room, I awoke. And I have dared to uncover my whole soul to you, Orloff Ruricson, because those words are still in my ears. Weshallmeet again! And when we meet, I shall bebeautiful!'
'With all my respect for Miss Brentnall, it was impossible for me not to feel that she was raving. Indeed, from this very belief I took hope. I had seldom heard of cases like hers, in which patients, almost in the very last hour, continued to be delirious. I therefore doubted the doctor's diagnosis, and persuaded myself that, since she had not arrived at the lucid interval preceding death, she was not so near it as he suspected.
'Comforting myself with the assurance that I should see her well again, or at least, that there was no immediate danger, I went down to my shop in the Bowery, leaving orders to send for me immediately, if any change took place in Miss Brentnall.
'After transacting the business of my trade, all day, I came back earlier than usual at evening, greatly depressed in spirits, but without any idea that I had seen my friend for the last time. As I put my latch-key into the door of the boarding-house, it opened. I saw the pale, frightened face of Martha, the nurse. She was just coming out after me. Miss Brentnall wasdead.
'And again I was alone in the world.'
'Therewas a quiet funeral where I was the only mourner. There were days of loneliness succeeding, in which it seemed to me that the small isthmus by which I had been for a year attached to my fellow-men, had been suddenly covered by the rising of a dark, cold tide; that I was an islander again, and the only one.
'There was a will to be proved in the Surrogate's Court. Miss Brentnall's nurse and the landlady had witnessed it. I thought this strange at first, remembering what a friend the dead had been to me; but my surprise at not being a witness was soon supplanted by the greater one of being sole legatee.
'There was a monument to be placed over the dead. To every detail of it I attended personally. I remember how heavy even that simple little shaft seemed to me, how much too heavy for a head that had borne so much of heaviness through life. Then I thought of her expression 'bird-resurrection,' of her perfect faith in the coming of better things; and if the monument had been a pyramid, I would have known that it could not pressherdown.
'It is one of my eccentricities that I fear good-fortune; not bad-fortune, at all. For I have seen so much of it, that it only looks to me like a grimmer kind of father, coming to wake his over-slept son and tell him that unless he leaps from his feather-bed, and that right suddenly, the time for every thing good in life will have gone by. I fear good-fortune, because I am not sure that I shall use it well. It may carry me till it has dwarfed me; I may lie on its breast till I have lost my legs; then whisk! it may slip away from under me and leave me a lame beggar for the rest of my life.
'I resolved, therefore, that I would not touch a farthing of my new propertyuntil I had become quite familiar with the idea of owning it. It was all in stocks when I found it. I converted it into real-estate securities, and as fast as my interest came in, deposited it in the bank. Meanwhile, I supported myself well upon the little shop; bought books, and laid something by.
'I was busy one morning at my stuffing-table in the back-room, when the bell over the street-door rang: and running into the front-shop, I found a new customer. He was a private bird-fancier, he told me, and had brought a specimen, which he wished mounted for his cabinet. As he spoke, he slid back the cover from a box which he carried under his arm; and as I looked in, expecting to see a dead bird, a live one hopped out and sat upon my finger.
''I declare that is very curious!' said the gentleman; 'the creature never did such a thing before! I have had it eight months without being able to domesticate it in the slightest. It will not even eat or drink when any body is in the room; yet there it is sitting on your hand.'
'I had never seen such a bird before. It resembled the northern meadow-lark in size and shape; in hue, its wings were like the quail's, its breast ash-color, its tail mottled above, like the wings, and of a delicate canary yellow beneath. But the greatest beauty it possessed was a bright crimson crescent, covering the whole back of the head. 'What is this bird?' said I.
''It is a Flicker,' answered the gentleman. 'It was sent me by a friend living in Florida.'
''Why don't you keep it alive?'
''For the reason I've told you. It's perfectly impossible to tame it. My children and I have tried every means we can think of without success. If we confine it in a cage, it mopes all day and eats nothing; if we let it fly about the room, it sculks under the furniture as soon as we enter; if we take it in our hands, it screams and fights. There is a specimen of the execution it can do in an emergency with that sharp, long bill!'
'And my customer showed me his finger, out of which a strip of flesh an inch long had been gouged as neatly as it could have been done with a razor.
''It is nothing but botheration, that confounded bird!' he continued. 'It does nothing but make muss and litter about the house from morning till night; and for all our troubles, it never repays us with a single chirp. Indeed, I don't believe it has any voice.'
'Just then the Flicker, still sitting on my finger, turned up its big, brown eye to my face and uttered a soft, sweet gurgle, like a musical-glass.
''Good heavens!' exclaimed the gentleman; 'it never did that before!'
''Suppose you let me take it for a month or so,' said I; 'it seems to be fond of me, and perhaps I can tame it. I never felt so little like killing any bird in my life. We may make something of its social qualities yet.'
''Very well,' answered the new customer. 'Keep it for a month. I'll drop in now and then to see how its education is getting on.'
''You may hold me responsible for it, Sir,' I replied; and the gentleman left my shop.
'All day the Flicker staid by me as I worked. Now it perched upon my shoulder, now on my head. At noon, when I opened my basket, it took lunchwith me. When I whistled or sang, it listened until it caught the strain, and then put in some odd kind of an accompaniment. The compass and power of its voice was nothing remarkable, but the tone was as sweet as a wood-robin's. I could not be enough astonished with the curious little creature.
'Still, every kind of animal takes to me naturally. I accounted for the previous wildness of the Flicker on the ground of mistaken management in the gentleman who owned it, and as a matter of professional pride, determined to make something of the bird, were it only to show, like your Sam Patch, Tryon, that some things can be done as well as others. When I went home in the evening I took the Flicker with me, and made it a nest in an old cigar-box on my mantel-piece.
'The next morning, when I awoke, the bird was perched above me on the scroll of the head-board! Again I carried it down-town with me; again I brought it up in the evening. After that it was my companion every where. You will hardly imagine how it could become better friends with me than it did immediately upon our introduction. Yet our acquaintance grew day by day, and with our acquaintance the little being's intelligence. It had not been with me a fortnight before it knew its name. You may think it curious, perhaps unfeeling, but you know it was my only friend in the world, and in memory of the one who had lately held that place, I called it 'Brenta.'
''Brenta!' I would say as I sat before my grate in the evening, and wherever the little creature might be, it would come flying to me with a joyful chirp, light on my finger, dance on the hearth-rug, eat out of my hand, or go through the pantomime of various emotions I had taught it. If I said, 'Be angry, Brenta,' it would scream, flap its wings, and fight the legs of the chair. 'Be sorry, Brenta,' and it would droop its little head, cower against my breast, and utter notes as plaintive as a tired child's.
'By the time the month was up, it could do almost any thing but talk. Its owner, who, to his great delight, had paid it several visits during the progress of its education, now came to take it home.
''I have become very much attached to the little thing,' said I; 'won't you let me buy it of you?'
''You should have asked me that when I first brought it,' was his answer. 'You have made it too valuable for me to part with now. To show you how much I think it is worth, here is a ten-dollar piece for your services.'
'I took the money, feeling very much as if I were receiving the price of treason. 'If you ever change your mind,' said I, 'remember that I am always ready with a generous bid.'
'When we came to look for the Flicker, it was nowhere to be found. I could not believe it possible that it had heard and understood our conversation, but other hypothesis to account for its disappearance was not at hand. After hunting every nook and corner of the shop, I forced myself into the traitorous expedient of luring it by my own voice. 'Brenta!' I called, and the poor creature instantly hopped out ofmy coat-pocket, climbed up to my shoulder, and nestled against my cheek.
''The little rascal!' exclaimed the gentleman.
'I could willingly have knocked him down! It was not until I had undertaken the business with my own hands that we could get the Flicker into the cage which the gentleman had brought with him. Even then, the poor thing continued clinging to my finger with claws which had to be loosened by force, and went out of my shop-door screaming piteously and beating itself against the bars of the cage.
'I had no heart for any thing the rest of the day. At night my room seemed lonelier than a dungeon. The very next morning, the owner of the bird came back with it in a terrible passion.
''You have been teaching the thing tricks!' was his first exclamation.
''To be sure, said I mildly. 'Wasn't that what you wished me to do?'
''Wished you to do?' To mope, and wail, and lie on the carpet like a dead chicken? Never to sing a note or eat a morsel? To peck at the hands that brought food, and—and——'
''I am sure I cannot help it, Sir, if the bird has become attached to me, and mourns when away.'
''You've taught the creature to do it! Look at this finger, will you! another piece taken clean out of it!Piece, I say!—steak, I mean! The bird's a regular butcher! Here, kill the creature directly, and have it stuffed for my cabinet by this day week.'
'And as he set down the cage on the counter, the Flicker, with a joyful cry, jumped to the wicker-door, and tried to pick a way out to me by its beak.
''There! you see what you've done! Why don't the wretch act so to me?'
''I really can't say, Sir. Perhaps because I've had a great deal to do with birds, and naturally know how to manage them.'
''Well, I don't care. Stuff the thing, and I shall be able to manage it then myself.'
''May I make you a repetition of my offer? If you haven't a toucan in your collection, there is a very fine one I'll give you for the Flicker, stuffed only last Saturday. Here's a young pelican—a still rarer bird. Or how would you like a flamingo?'
''Got 'em all,' replied the gentleman curtly. 'And if I hadn't, I count the Flicker. Kill the thing, I say, and stuff it.'
'Just then the bird cast on me a glance as imploring as ever looked out of human eye. For a thousand dollars I could not have done the wrong.
''Really, Sir,' said I, 'I prefer not to take the job. I am very much attached to your bird. I cannot bear to kill it.'
'''Pon my soul!' he exclaimed, 'if that isn't pretty for a taxidermist! I should suppose, to hear you talk, that you would faint at the sight of a dead sparrow! Well, you can get your courage up to stuff the bird, I suppose? As for the killing, I'll do that myself.'