SECOND SERIES.
FOR THIS NUMBER ONLY, BY PARTICULAR REQUEST, THE OBSERVATIONS OF SLOPE MACER, ESQ.
They were 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 I have; 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 people to 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, very yong men—I don't like them; that is, if they're not nice. 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 such geese of 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 really too absurd 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 looked exactly like my brother. And I looked straight at him the longest time; indeed I don't know what I could have been thinking of——I'm sure you'd have looked at him just in that way if he'd been like your brother, 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 just too provoking. I'd have given worlds to'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't him that I was looking at.'
'You should have put next morning in the 'Personals' of the Herald,' 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 done solely in 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 pronouncing her 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 Christian Knickerbocker friend, 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't say any thing, but just try it. That's all. If you happen to find that it pays, just drop a line to me, address Knickerbocker Office, or Vanity Fair.
'As regards Young 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 regards Young Men, I'm certain that there isn't a sect in the whole community whose views, feelings and ideas—above all, whose sufferings, are so little thought of or described by writers.
'When a man gets to be old enough to marry, then he's immensely interesting. Then he figures every where. He's tenor in the opera, first lover in the play, first fiddle in the whole orchestra of society. He's provided 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.''
'And then,' said Nella, 'how demure and astonished Mademoiselle looks; how perfectly unable to understand such rudeness! Yes, goodness knows, I was guilty 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 of has 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 he is, 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 that ever suffered. An Italian monk told me once that he had been Christ again and again; that by intense meditations on His sufferings 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 there is——'
'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 the world thinks 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 he begins to 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 the only provisions 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 they did find 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 be the 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! What might be done for the young if the true power of their minds was understood and provided for! What men of genius, what great and good men 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 for all who suffer, for all who fail to get their rights; and the greatest of human rights is to attain the fullest development of every capacity. 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 would give it: freely as a cup of water to the parched pilgrim. Freely! Yes, to thousands on thousands. 'I mean it.''
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 to think.
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 thing don't humbug me, and that's the fashion people teach the boys history.
'All the individuals on 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 a canaille on 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 the truth?' 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 the Family 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.
When the 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 the nomina of Marcia Messalina;
The trunks of Flavius Gracchus,
The bronzes of Spurius,
The Elephantine books of Laufella,
Of Ægle, 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, alma Venus!
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 named Crispin,
Who was to have been thrown to the lions in the circus,
But who had got out of his cage and feliciter evasit
Just escaped martyrdom and canonization,
Stood on a dung-hill, preaching Millerism
To 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'—
O Domine Deus! an't I glad!
Now you're all goin to thunder
Along with yer blamed old gods and goddesses,
Jupiter Jovis, Mars, Apollo!
Oh! git ëout!
Diana! Talk about her bein' decent!
Shaw!
Law bless your soul! she an't no better than she should be.
Juno! she was a nice lot, she was I don't think:
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' to him?
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 what he is. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!
'Fore I'd be seen in his temple, I'd go worship Cloacina. Fact!
That's what I'd do.
Oh! they're a putty set—these divinities of yourn:
Minervy, for instance. She don't know nothin',
She an't o' no account. She's a 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—
Well she can. That's more'n Minervy ever did.
Then, there's Neptune! Now I arsk you as reas'nable men,
Don't you 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 beastly my-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 agin Pluto, however,
(Only you ought to call him Satan by rights.)
Some of you'll find out mighty soon, I calculate, whether he's a 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 on triclinia, drinkin' Falernian out 'er pocula, and snake-handled Etruskin calices,
Serpans in patera Myronis arte,
To the health of Venus!
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! I hate beauty. 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 of Venus now:
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 Goddess
Aphrodite, eternal daughter of sun-shine,
Of the blue-sea and beauty infinite.
Was it the accursed stone which struck the features
Chiselled by Phidias or Scopas?
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 all Jove's lightning,
Down fell the marble queen of loveliness,
Crushing to kindred dirt, in one foul mass,
Crispin the 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 that no form of beauty which man ever looked at with love, ever did 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: all will rise again more beautiful than ever.'
[LIVING ALONE.]
BY HENRY P. LELAND.
Silent he sat in the forest shade,
Silent, but not alone—
He and his hound and the unseen form
Of 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, Dream till life is gone!
Living alone!
[THE TAXIDERMIST.]
BY FITZ-HUGH LUDLOW.