MY AUNT.
By Oliver Wendell Holmes.
My aunt! My dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o'er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone;
I know it hurts her—though she looks
As cheerful as she can;
Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.
My aunt, my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray;
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a springlike way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell?
Her father—grandpa! Forgive
This erring lip its smiles—
Vowed she would make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.
He sent her to a stylish school;
'Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
"Two towels and a spoon."
They braced my aunt against a board
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;
They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,
They screw it up with pins—
Oh, never mortal suffered more
In penance for her sins!
So when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track);
"Ah!" said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,
"What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man?"
Alas, nor chariot nor barouche
Nor bandit cavalcade
Tore from the trembling father's arms
His all-accomplished maid.
For her how happy had it been!
And heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungathered rose
On my ancestral tree.
MISMATED MEN OF GENIUS.
Some Distinguished Writers, Artists, and Composers Who Were Rather Less Fortunate
in Choosing Wives With Congenial Temperaments Than in Following
the Paths That Led Them On to Fame.
In writing on the subject of the influence of matrimony on men of genius, E.P. Whipple, the Boston essayist and lecturer, mentioned the cases of several who, like Molière and Rousseau, have had unsympathetic wives. Among these was Sir Walter Scott, who while walking with his wife in the fields called her attention to some lambs, remarking that they were beautiful.
"Yes," echoed she, "lambs are beautiful—boiled!"
That incomparable essayist and chirping philosopher, Montaigne, married but once. When his good wife left him, he shed the tears usual on such occasions, and said he would not marry again, though it were to Wisdom herself.
A young painter of great promise once told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he had taken a wife. "Married!" ejaculated the horrified Sir Joshua; "then you are ruined as an artist."
Michelangelo, when asked why he never married, replied:
"I have espoused my art, and that occasions me sufficient domestic cares; for my works shall be my children."
The wives of Dante, Milton, Dryden, Addison, and Steele shed no glory on the sex, and brought no peace to their firesides.
The list of "unhappily married" is large and brilliant. It includes William Beckford, the author of "Vathek," who, however, does not seem to have deserved a happy life, and whose enormous fortune and great talents were alike wasted.
Lord Lytton was also unhappily, though romantically, married, and a large part, at least, of the subsequent misery was due to his temper and conduct. But perhaps full justice has not been done to the ill effects of the long and hard struggle with poverty, which he maintained with such success, but with such constant labor, during many years.
The temperaments of Charles Dickens and his wife were so different that they lived apart for several years preceding the great novelist's death.
Lord and Lady Byron separated about a year after their marriage, and they never met again.
Sir Henry Irving and his wife spent the last years of their married life in separate homes.
Haydn's marriage was unhappy. In 1758 the young composer had, after great struggles, got so far as to obtain a musical directorship with Count Morzin, and settled in Vienna. His salary was only two hundred florins, but he had board and lodging free. Many pupils came to him, and among others two daughters of the hairdresser Keller.
Haydn fell deeply in love with the younger, but his affection was not returned, for she entered a convent and became a nun.
Father Keller, who was very familiar with Haydn and had helped him oftentimes with small loans in his early struggles, persuaded the young composer to marry his elder daughter, and the marriage, after awhile, was celebrated November 26, 1760.
Maria Anna was, however, no wife for Joseph Haydn. She was extravagant, bigoted, scolded all day, and was utterly uncompanionable to a musician.
Finally she became so bad that she only did what she thought would annoy her husband. She dressed in a fashion quite unsuited to her position, invited clerical men to her table, tore Haydn's written musical scores and made curl-papers of them, etc., and yet the great composer bore it all as well as he could.
In one letter he says: "My wife is mostly sick, and is always in a bad temper. It is the same to her whether her husband is a shoemaker or an artist."
After he had suffered this state of things in a miserable marriage of thirty-two years he seemed exhausted, and wrote, then a renowned composer, to a friend from London:
"My wife, that infernal woman, has written me such horrible things that I will not return home again."
At last Haydn separated from his wife and placed her as a boarder with a schoolmaster in Baden, where she died in 1810. Her memory was always disagreeable to him, even after her death.
A Chapter on Puns.
By THEODORE HOOK.
Theodore Hook (1788-1841) belonged to that singularly fortunate class of writers whose fame was greater while they lived than after death closed the book of life. To present-day readers Hook is known only as the subject of many a merry anecdote, the coiner of epigrams, and one of the most celebrated practical jokers of his time.
But among his contemporaries Theodore Hook was something more. Before he was twenty years old farces and comic operas from his pen had been successfully produced on the London stage, and he was a pet of London society. When he was thirty he was the editor of the Tory paper John Bull, and the novels that he published at this period attained a high degree of popularity.
As a punster Hook had few equals, and "A Chapter on Puns," which is herewith reprinted for the readers of The Scrap Book, constitutes an excellent specimen of the sort of humor for which its author was famous.
There is one class of people who, with a depravity of appetite not excelled by that of the celebrated Anna Maria Schurman, who rejoiced in eating spiders, thirst after puns. If you fall in with these, you have no resource but to indulge them to their heart's content; but in order to rescue yourself from the imputation of believing punning to be wit, quote the definition of Swift, and be, like him, as inveterate a punster as you possibly can, immediately after resting everything, and hazarding all, upon the principle that the worse the pun the better.
In order to be prepared for this sort of punic war (for the disorder is provocative and epidemic), the moment any one gentleman or lady has, as they say in Scotland, "let a pun," everybody else in the room who can or cannot do the same sets to work to endeavor to emulate the example. From that period all rational conversation is at an end, and a jargon of nonsense succeeds which lasts till the announcement of coffee, or supper, or the carriages puts a happy termination to the riot.
Addison says, "One may say of a pun, as the countryman described his nightingale, that it is vox et præterea nihil, a sound, and nothing but a sound;" and in another place he tells us that "the greatest authors in their most serious works make frequent use of puns; the sermons of Bishop Andrews and the tragedies of Shakespeare are full of them; if a sinner was punned into repentance as in the latter, nothing is more usual than to see a hero weeping and grumbling for a dozen lines together;" but he also says, "It is indeed impossible to kill a weed which the soil has a natural disposition to produce. The seeds of punning are in the minds of all men, and though they may be subdued by reason, reflection, and good sense, they will be very apt to shoot up in the greatest genius that is not broken and cultivated by the rules of art."
Here is something like a justification of the enormity; and, as the pupil is to mix in all societies, he may as well be prepared.
Puns may be divided into different classes; they may be made in different ways, introduced by passing circumstances, or by references to bygone events; they may be thrown in anecdotically, or conundrumwise.
It is to be observed that feeling, or pity, or commiseration, or grief are not to stand in the way of a pun—that personal defects are to be made available, and that sense, so as the sound answers, has nothing to do with the business.
If a man is pathetically describing the funeral of his mother or sister or wife, it is quite allowable to call it a "black-burying party," or to talk of a "fit of coffin"; a weeping relative struggling to conceal his grief may be likened to a commander of "private tears"; throw in a joke about the phrase of "funerals performed" and a re-hearsal; and wind up with the anagram real-fun, funeral.
I give this instance first, in order to explain that nothing, however solemn the subject, is to stand in the way of a pun.
It is allowable, when you have run a subject dry in English, to hitch in a bit of any other language which may sound to your liking. For instance, on a fishing party. You say fishing is out of your line; yet, if you did not keep a float, you would deserve a rod; and if anybody affects to find fault with your joke, exclaim: "Oh, vous bête!"
There you have line, rod, float, and bait ready to your hand.
Call two noodles from the city in a punt, endeavoring to catch small fry, "East Angles"; or, if you please, observe that "the punters are losing the fish," "catching nothing but a cold," or that "the fish are too deep for them." Call the Thames a "tidy" river; but say you prefer the Isis in hot weather.
Personal deformities or constitutional calamities are always to be laid hold of. If anybody tells you that a dear friend has lost his sight, observe that it will make him more hospitable than ever, since now he would be glad to see anybody.
If a clergyman breaks his leg, remark that he is no longer a clergyman, but a lame man. If a poet is seized with apoplexy, affect to disbelieve it, although you know it to be true, in order to say—
Poeta nascitur non fit;
and then, to carry the joke one step farther, add, "that it is not a fit subject for a jest."
A man falling into a tan-pit, you may call "sinking in the sublime"; a climbing boy suffocated in a chimney meets with a sootable death; and a pretty girl having caught the smallpox is to be much pitted.
On the subject of the ear and its defects, talk first of something in which a cow sticks, and end by telling the story of the man who, having taken great pains to explain something to his companion, at last got in a rage at his apparent stupidity, and exclaimed, "Why, my dear sir, don't you comprehend? The thing is as plain as A, B, C." "I dare say it is," said the other; "but I am D, E, F."
It may be as well to give the beginner something of a notion of the use he may make of the most ordinary words, for the purpose of quibbleism. For instance, in the way of observation: The loss of a hat is always felt; if you don't like sugar, you may lump it; a glazier is a panes-taking man; candles are burnt because wick-ed things always come to light; a lady who takes you home from a party is kind in her carriage, and you say "Nunc est ridendum" when you step into it; if it happen to be a chariot, she is a charitable person; birds'-nests and king-killing are synonymous, because they are high trees on; a bill for building a bridge should be sanctioned by the Court of Arches as well as the House of Piers; when a man is dull, he goes to the seaside to Brighton; a Cockney lover, when sentimental, should live in Heigh Hoburn; the greatest fibber is the man most to re-lie upon; a dean expecting a bishopric looks for lawn; a sui-cide kills pigs, and not himself; a butcher is a gross man, but a fig-seller is a grocer; Joshua never had a father or mother, because he was the son of a Nun; your grandmother and great-grandmother were your aunt's sisters; a leg of mutton is better than heaven, because nothing is better than heaven, and a leg of mutton is better than nothing.
Races are matters of course; an ass never can be a horse, although he may be a mayor; the Venerable Bede was the mother of Pearl; a baker makes bread when he kneads it; a doctor cannot be a doctor all at once, because he comes to it by degrees; a man hanged at Newgate has taken a drop too much; the bridle day is that on which a man leads a woman to the halter. Never mind the aspirate; in punning all's fair.
Puns interrogatory are at times serviceable. You meet a man carrying a hare: ask him if it is his own hare, or a wig?—there you stump him. Why is Parliament Street like a compendium? Because it goes to a bridge. Why is a man murdering his mother in a garret a worthy person? Because he is above committing a crime. Instances of this kind are innumerable; and if you want to render your question particularly pointed, you are, after asking it once or twice, to say "D'ye give it up?"—then favor your friends with the solution.
Puns scientific are effective whenever a scientific man or men are in company, because, in the first place, they invariably hate puns, especially those which are capable of being twisted into jokes which have no possible relation to the science of which the words to be joked upon are terms; and because, in the next place, dear, laughing girls, who are wise enough not to be sages, will love you for disturbing the self-satisfaction of the philosophers, and raising a laugh or titter at their expense.
Where there are three or four geologists of the party, if they talk of their scientific tours made to collect specimens, call the old ones "ninny-hammers," and the young ones "chips of the old block"; and then inform them that claret is the best specimen of quartz in the world.
If you fall in with a botanist who is holding forth, talk of the quarrels of flowers as a sequel to the loves of the plants, and say they decide their differences with pistols.
In short, sacrifice everything to the pursuit of punning, and in the course of time you will acquire such a reputation for waggery that the whole company will burst into an immoderate fit of laughing if you only ask the servants for bread, or say "No" to the offer of a cutlet.
GREAT WRITERS OFTEN POOR TALKERS.
Among Those Who Were Singularly Deficient in the Art of Conversation Were Corneille,
Addison, Milton, Dante, and Goldsmith.
"He wrote like an angel and talked like poor poll," was the manner in which Oliver Goldsmith was described by one of his contemporaries, and all acounts agree that the author of "The Deserted Village" made a sorry figure as a conversationalist. But Goldsmith was far from being the only writer of undoubted genius whose conversation was devoid of charm. Indeed, there is a wealth of evidence to prove that the art of writing well and talking well are not akin.
Descartes, the famous mathematician and philosopher; La Fontaine, celebrated for his witty fables; Buffon, the great naturalist, were all singularly deficient in the powers of conversation.
Marmontel, the novelist, was so dull in society that his friend said of him, after an interview, that he must go and read his tales to recompense himself for the weariness of hearing him.
As to Corneille, the grandest dramatist in France, he was completely lost in society—so absent and embarrassed that he wrote of himself a witty couplet importing that he was never intelligible but through the mouth of another.
Wit on paper seems to be something widely different from that play of words in conversation, which, while it sparkles, dies; for Charles II, the wittiest monarch that sat on the English throne, was so charmed with the humor of "Hudibras" that he caused himself to be introduced in the character of a private gentleman to Butler, its author. The witty king found the author a very dull companion, and was of opinion, with many others, that so stupid a fellow could never have written so clever a book.
Addison, whose classic elegance has long been considered a model of style, was shy and absent in society, preserving, even before a single stranger, stiff and dignified silence.
In conversation Dante was taciturn and satirical.
Rousseau was remarkably trite in conversation—not a word of fancy or eloquence warmed him.
Milton was unsocial, and even irritable, when much pressed by talk of others.
FAMOUS LOVE POEMS.
An Elizabethan Dramatist and One of the Cavaliers of
Charles I Gave to Our Language Two of
Its Most Charming Lyrics.
The English language is particularly rich in poetical expressions of the tender passion, but among these two have long been regarded as preeminent.
One, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," was written by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), the only great predecessor of Shakespeare in the British drama. This lyric, which is described by old Izaak Walton as "that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlowe," is one of the most beautiful of its kind that has come down to us from the Elizabethan period. It has frequently been imitated by minor poets, and a delightful reply to it was made by Sir Walter Raleigh.
The second famous love poem published herewith was from the pen of the gay, loyal, brave, but unfortunate Cavalier, Sir Richard Lovelace (1618-1658). The exquisite verses constituting his address "To Althea from Prison" were written while the young poet was confined as a prisoner, by order of the Puritan Parliament, in the Gatehouse of Westminster, for presenting to the Commons a petition from Kentish royalists in the king's favor. He was released on bail which amounted to two hundred thousand dollars. The young woman to whom the lines "To Althea" were written subsequently became the wife of another. Lovelace died in the most abject poverty.