Oysters!
He stood beside the oysters. Near him lay
A dozen raw upon the half-shell: he
With fork stood ready to engulf them all,
When to his side a reverend gray-beard came.
Pointing his index finger to the Natives,
Slowly he spoke, with measured voice and low:—
'They are the same, THE SAME! I've eaten them
In London, small and coppery; at Ostend,
A little better; and in the Condotti,
Yea, in the Lepré—'tis an eating-house
Frequented by the many-languaged artists
Of great imperial Rome. At Baiæ: also
I've tasted that nice kind described by MARTIAL,
Who calls them ears of Venus;—there I've had 'em.
Also at Memphis—now I'm coming to it:
I've seen amid the desert sands of Egypt,
Exposed among the hieroglyphs, these Natives.
(The hieroglyphs, you know, are outward forms
Of things or creatures which unfold strange myths,
Read by the common eye in vulgar way,
But to the learned are types of truths gigantic.)
Thus unto you those oysters are but bivalves;
But unto me they're—P'raps you'll stand a dozen?'
'Well, I will, old hoss; it seems to me you need 'em!'
'Good! Then to me they are as hieroglyphs
Of our poor human state; as PLATO says,
"The soul of man, a substance different from
The body as the oyster from the shell,
Does stick to it, and is imprisoned in it.
Its weight of shell doth keep it down and force it
To stay upon its muddy bottom. So does
Man's body hold his soul in these dark regions,
Keeping it ever steadily from rising
To those superior heights where are abodes
More fitting its serene and noble nature."
Good as a quarter-dollar lecture. Boy! fork over.'
'Another "doz." to this old gentleman;
For I perceive he plainly hath it in him
To swallow down two dozen oysters' souls.
See what it is to be a philosopher!'
This is indeed finding sermons in 'shells.'
'Punning is a power,' according to somebody, and, like most power, is sadly abused. Take, for illustration, the following specimen of the 'narrative pun:'
The reader knows that BYRON once punned on the word Bullet-in, and was proud of it; distinctly proud, be it remembered. After which comes the following:—
Some years ago it was summer time, and in the office of the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, one, as the French say, was preparing the daily paper. Along Third Street streamed Shinners, Bulls, Bears, and Newsboys,—in the sanctum, Editors wrote and clipped,—proof rose up and down in the dumb waiter,—there was the shrill scream of the whistle calling to the foreman far on high,—
Suddenly there was a tremendous run in the front office.
A maddened cow,—an infuriate, delirious, over-driven animal,—breaking loose from the cow-herdly creature who had her in charge,—careered wildly past the Ledger building.
One would have thought that the straw paper on which that sheet was then printed might have tempted her to repose.
It didn't.
Past FORNEY'S paper:—he was proprietor of the Pennsylvanian in those days. Those days!—when he was Warwick, the king-maker, and carried Pennsylvania for Old Buck. Bitter were the changes in aftertimes, and bitterly did Forney give fits where he had before bestowed benefits. On went the cow.
Right smack into the office of the evening paper, then engineered by ALEXANDER CUMMINGS, now held by GIBSON PEACOCK.
Rush! went the cow. Right into the next door—turn to the left, oh, infuriate—charge into the newsboys! By Santa Maria, little DUCKEY is down—ha! Saint Joseph! the beast gains the front office—she faceth streetwards—she jaculates herself outwards—she is gone.
By the door stood a Philadelphia punster.
The cow switched him with her tail; he heeded it not. His soul felt the morning gleam of a revelation,—the flash of a Boehmic Aurora,—
Far, far above the world, oh dreamer!—in the pure land of Pun-light, where the silent Calembergs rise in the sunset sea.
And he spake,—
'I see you have A COW LET OUT there, and a BULL LET IN HERE!'
This is going through a great deal to get at a pun, says some over-heated and perspiring disciple.
Well—and why not?
Have you never heard of the clergyman who preached an entire sermon on the slave-trade, and gave a detailed account of its head-quarters, the kingdom of Abomi?
And why?
Merely that he might ring it into them bitterly, fiercely, with this conclusion:
'My hearers, let us pray that this Abomi-Nation may be rooted out from the face of the earth.'
That was so. Consummatum est.
No wonder we hear so much of the sufferings and sorrows of the Third Estate—which is the editorial.
'Wine is sometimes wine, but not very often in these days:' what it very often is not when labelled 'Heidsick' and 'Rheims.' 'But then the cork proves it, you know,'—for, by a strange superstition, it is assumed that when the cork is correct the wine is not less so; a theory which is exploded by a revelation in the following by no means Bacchanalian lyric:—