A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.
Philetus Potts is dead. Like Grimes, he was a "good old man!" A true gentleman of the old school, he clung to many of the fashions of a by-gone period with a pertinacity, which, to the eyes of the thoughtless, savored somewhat of the ludicrous. It was only of late years that he relinquished his three-cornered hat; to breeches, buckles, and hair powder he adhered to the last. He was also partial to pigtails, though his earliest was shorn from his head by a dangerous rival, who cut him out of the good graces of Miss Polly Martine, a powdered beauty of the past century, by amputating his cue; while his latest one was sacrificed on the altar of humanity—but thereby hangs a tale.
If Mr. Potts was behind his age in dress, he was in advance of it in sentiment. In his breast the milk of human kindness never curdled, and his intelligent mind was ever actively employed in devising ways and means to alleviate the sufferings of humanity, and to change the hearts of evil doers. His comprehensive kindness included the brute creation as well as mankind, in the circle of his active sympathy.
We remember an instance of his sympathy for animals. We had been making an excursion into the country. It was high noon of a sultry summer day; eggs were cooking in the sun, and the mercury in the thermometer stood at the top of the tube. Passing out of a small village, we passed a young lady pleasantly and coolly attired in white, and carrying a sunshade whose grateful shadow melted into the cool, clear olive of her fine complexion.
Mr. Potts sighed, for she reminded him of Miss Polly Martine at the same age; and Polly Martine reminded him of parasols by some recondite association. Mr. Potts remembered the first umbrella that was brought into Boston. He always carried one that might have been the first, it was so venerable, yet whole and decent, like an old gentleman in good preservation. It was a green silk one, with a plain, mahogany handle, and a ring instead of a ferrule, and very large. Discoursing of umbrellas, we came upon a cow. Mr. Potts was fond of cows—grateful to them—always spoke of them with respect. This particular cow inhabited a small paddock by the roadside, which was enclosed by a Virginia fence, and contained very little grass, and no provision for shade and shelter. So the cow stood in the sunshine, with her head resting on the fence, and her tongue lolling out of her mouth, and her large, intelligent eyes fixed on the far distance, where a herd of kine were feasting knee-deep in a field of clover, beside a running brook, overshadowed by magnificent walnut trees.
"Poor thing!" said Mr. Potts; and he stopped short and looked at the cow.
The cow looked at Mr. Potts. One had evidently magnetically influenced the other.
"She is a female, like the lady we encountered," said Mr. Potts, "but," added he, with a burst of feeling, "she has no parasol!"
The assertion was indisputable. It was a truism, cows are never provided with parasols,—but then great men are famous for uttering truisms, and we venerated Mr. Potts for following the example.
"It is now twelve o'clock!" said Mr. Potts, consulting his repeater. "At half past four, the shadow of the buttonwood will fall into this poor animal's pasture. Four hours and a half of torture, rendered more painful by the contemplation of the luxuries of her remote companions! It is insufferable!"
Then Mr. Potts, with a genial smile on his Pickwickian countenance, expanded his green silk umbrella, mounted the fence, on which he sat astride, and patiently held the umbrella over the cow's head for the space of four and a half mortal hours. The action was sublime. I regret to add that the animal proved ungrateful, and, when Mr. Potts closed his umbrella on the shadow of the buttonwood relieving guard, facilitated his descent from the Virginia fence by an ungraceful application of her horns to the amplitude of his venerable person.
It was in the summer following, that the incident I am about to relate occurred. It was fly-time,—I remember it well. We were again walking together, when we came to a wall-eyed horse, harnessed to a dog's meat cart, and left standing by his unfeeling master while he indulged in porter and pipes in a small suburban pothouse, much affected by Milesians. The horse was much annoyed by flies, and testified his impatience and suffering by stamping and tossing his head. Mr. Potts was the first to notice that the poor animal had no tail,—for the two or three vertebræ attached to the termination of the spine could hardly be supposed to constitute a tail proper. The discovery filled him with horror. A horse in fly-time without a tail! The case was worse than that of the cow.
"And here I am!" exclaimed the great and good man, in a tone of the bitterest self-reproach, "luxuriating in a pigtail which that poor creature would be glad of!"
With these words he produced a penknife, and placing it in my hands, resolutely bade me amputate his cue. I did so with tears in my eyes, and placed the severed ornament in the hands of my companion. With a piece of tape he affixed it to the horse's stump, and the gush of satisfaction he felt at seeing the first fly despatched by the ingenious but costly substitute for a tail, must have been, I think, an adequate recompense for the sacrifice.
I think it was in that same summer that Mr. Potts laid before the Philanthropic and Humane Society, of which he was an honorable and honorary member, his "plan for the amelioration of the condition of no-tailed horses in fly-time, by the substitution of feather dusters for the natural appendage, to which are added some hints on the grafting of tails with artificial scions, by a retired farrier in ill health."
During the last year of his life, Mr. Potts offered a prize of five thousand dollars for the discovery of a harmless and indelible white paint, to be used in changing the complexion of the colored population, to place them on an equality with ourselves, or for any chemical process which would produce the same result.
Mr. Potts proposed to substitute for capital punishment, houses of seclusion for murderers, where, remote from the world, in rural retreats, they might converse with nature, and in the cultivation of the earth, or the pursuit of botany, might become gradually softened and humanized. At the expiration of a few months' probation, he proposed to restore them to society.
A criminal is an erring brother. The object of punishment is reformation, and not vengeance. Hence, Mr. Potts proposed to supply our prisoners with teachers of languages, arts and sciences, dancing and gymnastics. Every prison should have, he contended, a billiard room and bowling saloon, a hairdresser, and a French cook. Occasionally, accompanied by proper officers, the convicts should be taken to the Italian Opera, or allowed to dance at Papanti's. The object would be so to refine their tastes that they should shrink from theft and murder, simply because they were ungentlemanly. Readmitted to society, these gentlemen would give tone to the upper classes.
But Mr. Potts has gone in the midst of his schemes of usefulness. The tailless quadruped, the shedless cow, the unwhitewashed African, the condemned felon, the unhappy prisoner, actually treated as if he were no gentleman, in him have lost a friend. When shall we see his like again? Echo answers, Probably not for a very long period.
THE GONDOLIER.
O, rest thee here, my gondolier,
Rest, rest, while up I go,
To climb yon light balcony's height
While thou keep'st watch below.
Ah! if high Heaven had tongues as well
As starry eyes to see—
O, think what tales 'twould hate to tell
Of wandering youths like me.
Moore.
The traveller of to-day who visits Venice sees in that once splendid city nothing but a mass of mouldering palaces, the melancholy remains of former grandeur and magnificence; but few tokens to remind him that she was once the queen of the Adriatic, the emporium of Europe. But at the period of which we write the "sea Cybele" was in the very zenith of her brilliancy and power.
It was the season of carnival, and nowhere else in Italy were the holidays celebrated with such zest and magnificence. By night millions of lamps burned in the palace windows, rivalling the splendors of the firmament, and reflected in the still waters of the lagoons like myriads of stars. Night and day music was resounding. There were regattas, balls, and festas, and the entire population seemed to have gone mad with gayety, and to have lost all thought of the Council of Ten, the Bridge of Signs, and the poniards of the bravoes.
On a bright morning of this holiday season, a group of young gondoliers, attired in their gayest costume, were sitting at the head of a flight of marble steps that led up from one of the canals, waiting for their fares. A cavalier and lady, both gayly attired, and both masked, had just alighted from a gondola and passed the boatman on their way to some rendezvous.
The gondolier who had conducted them, an old, gray-headed, hard-looking fellow, had pocketed his fee, nodded his thanks, and pushed off again from the landing.
"There goes old Beppo," said one of the gondoliers on shore. "He will make a good day's work of it. I can swear I saw the glitter of gold in his hand just now."
"Yes, yes!" said another. "Let him alone for making his money. And what he makes, he keeps. He's a close-fisted old hunks."
"And what is he so scrimping and saving for?" asked a third. "He is unmarried—he has no children."
"No—but he is to be married," said the first.
"How! the man's past sixty."
"Yes, comrade, but he will not be the first old fellow who has taken a young wife in his dotage. Have you never heard that he has a young ward, beautiful as an angel, whom he keeps cooped up as tenderly as a brooding dove in his tumble-down old house on the Canal Orfano? Nobody but himself has ever set eyes on her to my knowledge."
"There you're mistaken, Stefano," said a young man, who had not hitherto spoken. He was a fine, dashing, handsome young fellow of twenty-six, in a holiday suit of crimson and gold, with a fiery eye, long, curling locks, and a mustache as black as jet.
"Let's hear what Antonio Giraldo has to say about the matter!" cried his companions.
"Simply this," said the young man. "I have seen the imprisoned fair one—the peerless Zanetta—for such is her name. She is lovely as the day; and for her voice—why—Corpo di Bacco! La Gianina, the prima donna, is a screechowl to my nightingale."
"Your nightingale! Bravo!" cried Stefano, in a tone of mocking irony. "What can you know about her voice?"
"Simply this, Master Stefano," replied the young gondolier. "When floating beneath her window in my gondola, I have addressed her in such rude strains of melody as I best knew how to frame. She has replied in tones so liquid and pure that the angels might have listened."
"By Heaven! the fellow's in love!" cried Stefano.
"Long live music and love!" cried Antonio. "What were life worth without them?"
"You're in excellent spirits!" cried Stefano.
"And why shouldn't a man be, on his wedding day?"
"Mad as a march hare," cried Stefano.
"Mark me," said Antonio. "That girl shall never marry old Beppo—my word for it. She hates him."
"She'll elope with some noble, then."
"To be cast off to wither when he is tired of her charms? No! the bridegroom for Zanetta is a gondolier."
"With all my heart," said Stefano. "But come, comrades, it is no use waiting here. Let us to our gondolas, and row for St. Marks. You'll come with us, Antonio."
"Not I—my occupation's gone."
"How so?"
"I have sold my gondola."
"Sold your gondola."
"Ay—that was my word."
"I wanted money."
"Your gondola was the means of earning it."
"Very true—but I had occasion for a certain sum at once."
"And why not have recourse to our purses, Antonio? Light as they are, we would have made it up by contributions among us."
"I doubted not your kindness—but my self-respect would not permit me to ask your aid. Good by, comrades; we shall meet again to-morrow."
"To-morrow. Addio!"
There was a brilliant masquerade that evening at the palazzo of Count Giulio Colonna. Invitations had been issued to all the world, and all the world was present. The finest music, the richest wines, the most splendid decorations were lavished on the occasion. Perhaps, among that brilliant company, there was more than one plebeian, who, under cover of the masque, and employing the license common at these saturnalia, had intruded himself unbidden.
Old Beppo, the gondolier, was in attendance at the vestibule of the palace, feasting his avaricious eyes on the glimpses of wealth and luxury he noted within doors, when a gentleman in rich costume, and wearing a mask, beckoned him to one side, and desired a moment's interview.
"Do you know me?" was the first question asked by the stranger.
"No, signor," replied the old gondolier.
"Do you know these gentlemen?" asked the mask, slipping a couple of gold pieces into the miser's hand.
"Perfectly," replied the boatman, grinning. "What are your lordship's commands?"
"Yes, signor. It lies below, moored to the landing."
"'Tis well; hast thou any scruples about aiding in a love intrigue?"
"None in the world, signor."
"Then I'll make a confidant of you."
"I will be all secrecy, signor."
"Briefly then, gondolier," said the mask, "I am in love with a very charming young person."
"Well."
"Well—and this young person loves me in return."
"Good; and you are going to marry her."
"Not so fast, gondolier. She has an old guardian, who, at the age of sixty, or more, has been absurd enough—only think of it—to propose to marry her himself."
"The absurd old fool!" cried Beppo, not without some twinges, for he thought of his own projects with regard to Zanetta.
"Now, then," said the mask, "I have resolved to run away with her to-night. I have the opportunity—for she is here in the Palazzo Colonna. Now will and can you aid me? I will recompense you liberally."
"Ah! my lord—your lordship has come to the right market," said the old sinner. "I'm used to affairs of this kind. Has your lordship a priest engaged?"
"I have not."
"Then I can recommend one. Hard by is a chapel dedicated to Our Lady, where there is a very worthy man, accustomed to affairs of this kind, who will tie the knot for a moderate fee, without asking any impertinent questions."
"His name?"
"Father Dominic."
"Good! he is the man for us—and you are the prince of gondoliers. Get your gondola ready, and I will rejoin you at the foot of the stairs with the lady in a moment."
Old Beppo hastened to prepare his gondola, and while so doing, muttered to himself,—
"Well, well—this is a good night's work. I'm getting old, and I must soon retire from business. Every stroke of luck like this helps on the day when I shall call Zanetta mine. So, there's another old fool to be duped to-night! Serve him right! Why don't he keep his treasure under lock and key, as I do? But men will never learn wisdom. Here they come."
The young cavalier reappeared upon the marble steps, leading a lady, masked and veiled, but whose elastic step and graceful bearing seemed to designate her as one moving in the highest circles. The young lovers took their seats in the centre of the light craft, and drew the curtains round them, while Beppo pushed off, and his vigorous oar soon sent the shallop dancing over the waters of the lagoon. After a few moments the motion ceased, and Beppo informed his patron that they had arrived at their place of destination. After making the boat fast, the gondolier landed, and entered the small chapel which stood on the brink of the canal. In a few moments he returned, and informed the masked cavalier that all was prepared. The gentleman then handed out the lady, and both entered the chapel, Beppo keeping guard without, to prevent or give notice of any intrusion.
The marriage ceremony was performed very rapidly by Father Dominic, for he was just going to bed when the gondola arrived, and was duly anxious to despatch his business, that he might consign his wearied limbs to rest.
"Is it all over?" whispered Beppo, in the ear of the cavalier, as he came out with his lady.
"All right," replied the mask, in the same tone of voice. "But one thing perplexes me. I have no place that I can call my home, to-night. The lady will be missed; my palace will be watched—I should incur the risk of swords crossing and bloodshed, if I sought to take her thither, to-night."
"If my house were not so very humble," said the gondolier, hesitatingly.
"The very thing," said the mask, joyfully. "No matter how humble the roof, provided that it shelter us. To-morrow we can arrange matters for flight, or for remaining."
"Then get into the gondola, my lord, and I will row you thither in a few minutes."
The party reëmbarked, and soon reached the gondolier's residence. After fastening his craft, he unlocked his door; and striking a light, conducted his distinguished guests up stairs. As he passed one of the chamber doors, the old gondolier, addressing the masked lady as he pointed to it, said,—
"You have made a moonlight flitting, to-night, signora, and I wish you joy of your escape. But if you had been as safely kept as a precious charge I have in this room, you would never have stood before the altar to-night, with your noble bridegroom."
"You forget that 'love laughs at locksmiths,'" said the cavalier.
At the door of their apartments, the old man, before bidding them good night, pausing, said,—
"Pardon me, signor, but I would fain know the name of the noble cavalier I have had the honor of serving to-night."
"You shall know to-morrow," replied the mask. "Buona notte, Beppo. Remember it's carnival time."
The next morning Beppo was up betimes, anxious to learn the mystery connected with the married couple. He was not kept long in suspense. His patron of the preceding evening soon made his appearance, but masked as before.
"Beppo!" said the stranger, "you rendered me an inestimable service last night."
"You rewarded me handsomely, signor, and I shall never regret it."
"Give me your word then, that you will never upbraid me with the service I imposed on you."
"I give you my word," said the old man, surprised; "but why do you exact it?"
"Because," said the stranger, raising his mask, "I am no Venetian noble, but simply Antonio Giraldi, a gondolier like yourself."
"You! Antonio Giraldi! And the lady—?"
"Was your ward, Zanetta. You locked her chamber door, and took the house key with you—but a ladder of ropes from a lady's balcony is as good as a staircase; and as I told you last night, 'love laughs at locksmiths.'"
Of course old Beppo stormed and swore, as irascible old gentlemen are very apt to do in similar circumstances, but he ended by forgiving the lovers, as that was the only act in his power. He not only forgave them, but gave up his gondola to the stronger hands of Antonio, and settled a handsome portion on Zanetta; nor did he ever regret his generosity, for they proved grateful and affectionate, and were the stay and solace of his declining years. Such is the veritable history of a carnival incident of the olden days of Venice.