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EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.
I really believe some people save their bright thoughts, as being too
precious for conversation. What do you think an admiring friend said
the other day to one that was talking good things,—good enough to
print? "Why," said he, "you are wasting merchantable literature, a
cash article, at the rate, as nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars
an hour." The talker took him to the window and asked him to look out
and tell what he saw.
"Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, "and a man driving a
sprinkling-machine through it."
"Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that water? What would be
the state of the highways of life, if we did not drive our
thought-sprinklers through them with the valves open,
sometimes?
"Besides, there is another thing about this talking, which you
forget. It shapes our thoughts for us;—the waves of conversation roll
them as the surf rolls the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the
image a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist models in
clay. Spoken language is so plastic,—you can pat and coax, and spread
and shave, and rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you
work that soft material, that there is nothing like it for
modelling. Out of it come the shapes which you turn into marble or
bronze in your immortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, to use
another illustration, writing or printing is like shooting with a
rifle; you may hit your reader's mind, or miss it;—but talking is
like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; if it is within
reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hitting it."
The company agreed that this last illustration was of superior
excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, "Fust-rate." I
acknowledged the compliment, but gently rebuked the expression.
"Fust-rate," "prime," "a prime article," "a superior piece
of goods," "a handsome garment," "a gent in a flowered vest,"—all
such expressions are final. They blast the lineage of him or her who
utters them, for generations up and down. There is one other phrase
which will soon come to be decisive of a man's social status, if it
is not already: "That tells the whole story." It is an expression
which vulgar and conceited people particularly affect, and which
well-meaning ones, who know better, catch from them. It is intended to
stop all debate, like the previous question in the General Court. Only
it don't; simply because "that" does not usually tell the whole, nor
one half of the whole story.
——It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have had a
professional education. To become a doctor a man must study some
three years and hear a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much
study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more
than this. Now most decent people hear one hundred lectures or sermons
(discourses) on theology every year,—and this, twenty, thirty, fifty
years together. They read a great many religious books besides. The
clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what they preach
themselves. A dull preacher might be conceived, therefore, to lapse
into a state of quasi heathenism, simply for want of religious
instruction. And on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent
hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, might become
actually better educated in theology than any one of them. We are all
theological students, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity
than have received degrees at any of the universities.
It is not strange, therefore, that very good people should often find
it difficult, if not impossible, to keep their attention fixed upon a
sermon treating feebly a subject which they have thought vigorously
about for years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I have
often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull discourse acts
inductively, as electricians would say, in developing strong
mental currents. I am ashamed to think with what accompaniments and
variations and fioriture I have sometimes followed the droning
of a heavy speaker,—not willingly,—for my habit is reverential,—but
as a necessary result of a slight continuous impression on the senses
and the mind, which kept both in action without furnishing the food
they required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with a king-bird
after him, you will get an image of a dull speaker and a lively
listener. The bird in sable plumage flaps heavily along his
straight-forward course, while the other sails round him, over him,
under him, leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black feather,
shoots away once more, never losing sight of him, and finally reaches
the crow's perch at the same time the crow does, having cut a perfect
labyrinth of loops and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was
painfully working from one end of his straight line to the other.
[I think these remarks were received rather coolly. A temporary
boarder from the country, consisting of a somewhat more than
middle-aged female, with a parchment forehead and a dry little
"frisette" shingling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, a
black dress too rusty for recent grief, and contours in basso-rilievo,
left the table prematurely, and was reported to have been very
virulent about what I said. So I went to my good old minister, and
repeated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him. He
laughed good-naturedly, and said there was considerable truth in
them. He thought he could tell when people's minds were wandering, by
their looks. In the earlier years of his ministry he had sometimes
noticed this, when he was preaching;—very little of late
years. Sometimes, when his colleague was preaching, he observed this
kind of inattention; but after all, it was not so very unnatural. I
will say, by the way, that it is a rule I have long followed, to tell
my worst thoughts to my minister, and my best thoughts to the young
people I talk with.]
——I want to make a literary confession now, which I believe nobody
has made before me. You know very well that I write verses sometimes,
because I have read some of them at this table. (The company
assented,—two or three of them in a resigned sort of way, as I
thought, as if they supposed I had an epic in my pocket, and was going
to read half a dozen books or so for their benefit.)—I continued. Of
course I write some lines or passages which are better than others;
some which, compared with the others, might be called relatively
excellent. It is in the nature of things that I should consider these
relatively excellent lines or passages as absolutely good. So much
must be pardoned to humanity. Now I never wrote a "good" line in my
life, but the moment after it was written it seemed a hundred years
old. Very commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen it
somewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but
I do not remember that I ever once detected any historical truth in
these sudden convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or
phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and never allow them
to bully me out of a thought or line.
This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number of the company was
diminished by a small secession.) Any new formula which suddenly
emerges in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of thought;
it is virtually old when it first makes its appearance among the
recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystalline group of musical
words has had a long and still period to form in. Here is one theory.
But there is a larger law which perhaps comprehends these facts. It is
this. The rapidity with which ideas grow old in our memories is in a
direct ratio to the squares of their importance. Their apparent age
runs up miraculously, like the value of diamonds, as they increase in
magnitude. A great calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites
an hour after it has happened. It stains backward through all the
leaves we have turned over in the book of life, before its blot of
tears or of blood is dry on the page we are turning. For this we seem
to have lived; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in
the cold sweat of terror; in the "dissolving views" of dark
day-visions; all omens pointed to it; all paths led to it. After the
tossing half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such an
event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at waking; in a few
moments it is old again,—old as eternity.
[I wish I had not said all this then and there. I might have known
better. The pale schoolmistress, in her mourning dress, was looking
at me, as I noticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once the
blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from a broken
barometer-tube, and she melted away from her seat like an image of
snow; a slung-shot could not have brought her down better. God forgive
me!
After this little episode, I continued, to some few that remained
balancing teaspoons on the edges of cups, twirling knives, or tilting
upon the hind legs of their chairs until their heads reached the wall,
where they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular
cosmetics.]
When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, new position of
trial, he finds the place fits him as if he had been measured for
it. He has committed a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the
State Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, privileges,
all the sharp conditions of his new life, stamp themselves upon his
consciousness as the signet on soft wax;—a single pressure is
enough. Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen to
see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam-engine at the Mint?
The smooth piston slides backward and forward as a lady might slip her
delicate finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of
its fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal; it is a
coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell a new race about it,
when the date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuries. So it is
that a great silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an hour or
a moment,—as sharp an impression as if it had taken half a lifetime
to engrave it.
It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale professional dealers
in misfortune; undertakers and jailers magnetize you in a moment, and
you pass out of the individual life you were living into the
rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery. Do the worst thing
you can, or suffer the worst that can be thought of, you find yourself
in a category of humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with
an expert at your elbow that has studied your case all out beforehand,
and is waiting for you with his implements of hemp or mahogany. I
believe, if a man were to be burned in any of our cities to-morrow for
heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies that knew just how
many fagots were necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole
matter.
——So we have not won the Good-wood cup; au contraire, we were
a "bad fifth," if not worse than that; and trying it again, and the
third time, has not yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as
any of my fellow-citizens,—too patriotic in fact, for I have got into
hot water by loving too much of my country; in short, if any man,
whose fighting weight is not more than eight stone four pounds,
disputes it, I am ready to discuss the point with him. I should have
gloried to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. I love my
country, and I love horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs
over my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary,—whom I saw
run at Epsom,—over my fireplace. Did I not elope from school to see
Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, and Peacemaker run over the
race-course where now yon suburban village flourishes, in the year
eighteen hundred and ever-so-few? Though I never owned a horse, have I
not been the proprietor of six equine females, of which one was the
prettiest little "Morgin" that ever stepped? Listen, then, to an
opinion I have often expressed long before this venture of ours in
England. Horse-racing is not a republican institution;
horse-trotting is. Only very rich persons can keep race-horses,
and everybody knows they are kept mainly as gambling implements. All
that matter about blood and speed we won't discuss; we understand all
that; useful, very,—of course,—great obligations to the
Godolphin "Arabian," and the rest. I say racing horses are
essentially gambling implements, as much as roulette tables. Now I am
not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some
other morning; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is
not republican. It belongs to two phases of society,—a cankered
over-civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the
reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a
civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real republicanism
is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in
the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it. This public
opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and
does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the
most public way of gambling; and with all its immense attractions to
the sense and the feelings,—to which I plead very susceptible,—the
disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody knows what it
means. Its supporters are the Southern gentry,—fine fellows, no
doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand the term,—a few
Northern millionnaires more or less thoroughly millioned, who do not
represent the real people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of
whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to have
near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley. In England, on the
other hand, with its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural
growth enough; the passion for it spreads downwards through all
classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a shelled
corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise
the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down
on his office-stool the next day without wincing.
Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a moment. The racer is
incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet upon, as much as
the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter is essentially and
daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting men.
What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most
cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that
the trotting horses of America beat the world? And why should we have
expected that the pick—if it was the pick—of our few and far-between
racing stables should beat the pick of England and France? Throw over
the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a
natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a
thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to.
We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we shall. As a moralist and
occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it. Wherever the
trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively
bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's wagon, the
cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child,—all
the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with
any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gambling, cursing,
swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps
and the middle-aged virtues.
And by the way, let me beg you not to call a trotting match a
race, and not to speak of a "thorough-bred" as a "blooded" horse,
unless he has been recently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying
"blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we send out Posterior
and Posterioress, the winners of the great national four-mile race in
7 18-1/2, and they happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave
like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how.
[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper condensed
in the above paragraph. To brag little,—to show—well,—to crow
gently, if in luck,—to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten,
are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I think we
have shown them in any great perfection of late.]
——Apropos of horses. Do you know how important good jockeying is to
authors? Judicious management; letting the public see your animal
just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is
too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals;
always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the
rein;—this is what I mean by jockeying.
——When an author has a number of books out, a cunning hand will keep
them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching
each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or
a quotation.
——Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in
the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new
edition coming. The extracts are ground-bait.
——Literary life is full of curious phenomena. I don't know that there
is anything more noticeable than what we may call conventional
reputations. There is a tacit understanding in every community of
men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy
respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various
reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich; one is
good-natured; one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be
safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The venerable augurs of the
literary or scientific temple may smile faintly when one of the tribe
is mentioned; but the farce is in general kept up as well as the
Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay with
you, with the implied compact between you that he shall by no means
think of doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would wantonly sit
down on one of these bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop,
which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefinitely, if you keep
it from meddling hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and
resolves itself into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the
Prince-Rupert's-drops of the learned and polite world. See how the
papers treat them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases,
that can be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their
service! How kind the "Critical Notices"—where small authorship
comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy—always
are to them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and
other fictions; so let them pass current. Don't steal their chips;
don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their
pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable
reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be
household words a thousand years from now.
"A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits
opposite, thoughtfully.
——Where have I been for the last three or four days? Down at the
Island, deer-shooting.—How many did I bag? I brought home one buck
shot.—The Island is where? No matter. It is the most splendid domain
that any man looks upon in these latitudes. Blue sea around it, and
running up into its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a
baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight the
hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging and flying in ribbons.
Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches, oaks, most numerous;—many of
them hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids; some coiled in the
clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun
gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely
sifted that they are as soft as swan's down. Rocks scattered
about,—Stonehenge-like monoliths. Fresh-water lakes; one of them,
Mary's lake, crystal-clear, full of flashing pickerel lying under the
lily-pads like tigers in the jungle. Six pounds of ditto one morning
for breakfast. EGO fecit.
The divinity-student looked as if he would like to question my
Latin. No, sir, I said,—you need not trouble yourself. There is a
higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and
Stoddard. Then I went on.
Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the like
of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing in the
shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has
not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has welcomed all who
were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergyman who came to breathe
the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman
who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and smoothed his
Olympian forehead, and flashed his white teeth in merriment over
the long table, where his wit was the keenest and his story the best.
[I don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world. I don't
believe I talked just so; but the fact is, in reporting one's
conversation, one cannot help Blair-ing it up more or less,
ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and
plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as prinking at the
looking-glass.]
——How can a man help writing poetry in such a place? Everybody does
write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in the
library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished
verse,—some by well-known hands, and others, quite as good, by the
last people you would think of as versifiers,—men who could pension
off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston
common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. Of course I had
to write my little copy of verses with the rest; here it is, if you
will hear me read it. When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in
an easterly direction look bright or dark to one who observes them
from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing
upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I
saw these perpetual changes, and moralized thus:—
As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green
To the billows of foam-crested blue,
Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen,
Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue:
Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray
As the chaff in the stroke of the flail;
Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way,
The sun gleaming bright on her sail.
Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,—
Of breakers that whiten and roar;
How little he cares, if in shadow or sun
They see him that gaze from the shore!
He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef,
To the rock that is under his lee,
As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf,
O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.
Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves
Where life and its ventures are laid,
The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves
May see us in sunshine or shade;
Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark,
We'll trim our broad sail as before,
And stand by the rudder that governs the bark,
Nor ask how we look from the shore!
——Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good
mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything
is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse
their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt
itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see
persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are
called religious mental disturbances. I confess that I think
better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their
wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any
decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or such
opinions. It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if
he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions
are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to
send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your
heads or any human feeling in your hearts. Anything that is brutal,
cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind
and perhaps for entire races,—anything that assumes the necessity of
the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,—no
matter by what name you call it,—no matter whether a fakir, or a
monk, or a deacon believes it,—if received, ought to produce insanity
in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one,
under the circumstances. I am very much ashamed of some people for
retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they
were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they
would become non-compotes at once.
[Nobody understood this but the theological student and the
schoolmistress. They looked intelligently at each other; but whether
they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not clear.—It would
be natural enough. Stranger things have happened. Love and Death enter
boarding-houses without asking the price of board, or whether there is
room for them. Alas, these young people are poor and pallid! Love
should be both rich and rosy, but must be either rich or
rosy. Talk about military duty! What is that to the warfare of a
married maid-of-all-work, with the title of mistress, and an American
female constitution, which collapses just in the middle third of life,
and comes out vulcanised India-rubber, if it happen to live through
the period when health and strength are most wanted?]
——Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. I have
played the part of the "Poor Gentleman," before a great many
audiences,—more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not
wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I
was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper
hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my
countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name
stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the
place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary essay
in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as the most
desperate of buffos,—one who was obliged to restrain himself
in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential considerations. I
have been through as many hardships as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my
histrionic vocation. I have travelled in cars until the conductors all
knew me like a brother. I have run off the rails, and stuck all night
in snowdrifts, and sat behind females that would have the window open
when one could not wink without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps
I shall give you some of my experiences one of these days;—I will not
now, for I have something else for you.
Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in country
lyceum-halls, are one thing,—and private theatricals, as they may be
seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are
another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who do
not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and stride, like most of
our stage heroes and heroines, in the characters which show off their
graces and talents; most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled,
highbred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant voice,
acting in those love-dramas that make us young again to look upon,
when real youth and beauty will play them for us.
——Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to write. I did not see
the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and that
somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him, and
somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, very
naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of course
ends charmingly; there is a general reconciliation, and all concerned
form a line and take each others' hands, as people always do after
they have made up their quarrels,—and then the curtain falls,—if it
does not stick, as it commonly does at private theatrical exhibitions,
in which case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which he does,
blushing violently.
Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to change my cæsuras and
cadences for anybody; so if you do not like the heroic, or iambic
trimeter brachycatalectic, you had better not wait to hear it.
THIS IS IT.
A Prologue? Well, of course the ladies know;—
I have my doubts. No matter,—here we go!
What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach:
Pro means beforehand; logos stands for speech.
'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings,
The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings;—
Prologues in metre are to other pros
As worsted stockings are to engine-hose.
"The world's a stage,"—as Shakspeare said, one day;
The stage a world—was what he meant to say.
The outside world's a blunder, that is clear;
The real world that Nature meant is here.
Here every foundling finds its lost mamma;
Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa;
Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid,
The cheats are taken in the traps they laid;
One after one the troubles all are past
Till the fifth act comes right side up at last,
When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all,
Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall.
—Here suffering virtue ever finds relief,
And black-browed ruffians always come to grief.
—When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech,
And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach,
Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops upon her knees
On the green—baize,—beneath the (canvas) trees,—
See to her side avenging Valor fly:—
"Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!"
—When the poor hero flounders in despair,
Some dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire,—
Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy,
Sobs on his neck, "My boy! My Boy!! MY BOY!!!"
Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite.
Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt
Wrong the soft passion in the world without,
Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere,
One thing is certain: Love will triumph here!
Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,—
The world's great masters, when you're out of school,—
Learn the brief moral of our evening's play:
Man has his will,—but woman has her way!
While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire,
Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire,—
The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves
Beats the black giant with his score of slaves.
All earthly powers confess your sovereign art
But that one rebel,—woman's wilful heart.
All foes you master; but a woman's wit
Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit.
So, just to picture what her art can do,
Hear an old story made as good as new.
Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade,
Alike was famous for his arm and blade.
One day a prisoner Justice had to kill
Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill.
Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed,
Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd.
His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam,
As the pike's armor flashes in the stream.
He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go;
The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow.
"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act,"
The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.)
"Friend, I have struck," the artist straight replied;
"Wait but one moment, and yourself decide."
He held his snuff-box,—"Now then, if you please!"
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze,
Off his head tumbled,—bowled along the floor,—
Bounced down the steps;—the prisoner said no more!
Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye;
If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die!
Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head;
We die with love, and never dream we're dead!
The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No alterations were
suggested by the lady to whom it was sent, for as far as I
know. Sometimes people criticize the poems one sends them, and
suggest all sorts of improvements. Who was that silly body that
wanted Burns to alter "Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the last
line, thus?—
"Edward!". Chains and slavery!
Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a committee for a
certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive and
convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems the
president of the day was what is called a "teetotaller." I received a
note from him in the following words, containing the copy subjoined,
with the emendations annexed to it:
"Dear Sir,—Your poem gives good satisfaction to the committee. The
sentiments expressed with reference to liquor are not, however, those
generally entertained by this community. I have therefore consulted
the clergyman of this place, who has made some slight changes, which
he thinks will remove all objections, and keep the valuable portions
of the poem. Please to inform me of your charge for said poem. Our
means are limited, etc., etc., etc.
"Yours with respect."
HERE IT IS,—WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS!
Come! fill a fresh bumper,—for why should we go
logwood
While the nectar still reddens our cups as they flow?
decoction
Pour out the rich juices still bright with the sun,
dye-stuff
Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubies shall run.
half-ripened apples
The purple-globed-clusters their life-dews have bled;
taste sugar of lead
How sweet is the breath of the fragrance they shed!
rank poisons wines!!!
For summer's last roses lie hid in the wines
stable-boys smoking long-nines.
That were garnered by maidens who laughed through the vines.
scowl howl scoff sneer
Then a smile, and a glass, and a toast, and a cheer,
strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer!
For all the good-wine, and we've some of it here
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all!
Long live the gay servant that laughs for us all!
The company said I had been shabbily treated, and advised me to charge
the committee double,—which I did. But as I never got my pay, I don't
know that it made much difference. I am a very particular person about
having all I write printed as I write it, I require to see a proof, a
revise, a re-revise, and a double re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified
impression of all my productions, especially verse. Manuscripts are
such puzzles! Why, I was reading some lines near the end of the last
number of this journal, when I came across one beginning
"The stream flashes by,"—
Now as no stream had been mentioned, I was perplexed to know what it
meant. It proved, on inquiry, to be only a misprint for "dream."
Think of it! No wonder so many poets die young.
I have nothing more to report at this time, except two pieces of
advice I gave to the young women at table. One relates to a vulgarism
of language, which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from female
lips. The other is of more serious purport, and applies to such as
contemplate a change of condition,—matrimony, in fact.
—The woman who "calc'lates" is lost.
—Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.
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