CHAPTER LXIX.
[Being an Essay on Military Glory; by Charles Frobisher, Esquire, M.A. (Univ. Va.); late Major of Artillery C. S. A.
Omnibus, mentis compotibus, SKIPIENDUM, utpote quod TINKERII MOLEM NON VALEAT.]
Charley shifted his manuscript to his left hand, and smoothing down the leaves with his right, and glancing at the paper, raised his eyes to mine. The tip of his forefinger, placed lightly against the tip of his nose, lent to that organ an air of rare subtlety.
“A julep,” he began, “differs from a thought in this: that while—”
“A julep!” cried Alice; “why, just now you began with Hannibal.”
Charley stood for a moment, smiling, as he toyed with the leaves of his essay with the forefinger of his right hand.
“True; I had turned the thing upside down, and was reading it backwards. A julep,” he began again, with an authoritative air—
“What connection,” interrupted Alice, “can there be between juleps and military men?”
“Innocence,” ejaculated Charley, raising his eyes to heaven, “thy name is Alice!”
“Go on; I shall not interrupt you again.”
“A julep differs from a thought in this: that while an average man goes to the bottom of the former, of the latter only philosophers can sound the depths.” With that he sat down.
“Is that the end of your Essay on Military Glory?” I asked.
“No. That is the first round. I call for time. I am exhausted by the vastness of the generalization.” And leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes with a sigh of profound lassitude. “My dear,” said he, presently, in a feeble whisper,—“my dear, don’t you think this lecture would go off better were it illustrated?”
Alice looked puzzled for a moment, then rose with a bright laugh, and, making a pass at Charley (who minds Jack?) which he dodged, tripped briskly out of the room.
“Charley,” said I, “you are a boundless idiot!”
“Too true; but there is method in my madness.” which I found to be so when Alice (who could have wished a more charming waitress?) returned with the illustrations.
Illustrations in the highest form of art; for they appealed to the ear with the soft music of their jingle, the nostrils by their fragrance, the touch by their coldness, to the eye by the fascinating contrast of cracked ice and vivid green; while the imagination, soaring above the regions of sense, beheld within those frosted goblets, jocund, blooming summer seated in the lap of rimy winter,—or the triumph of man over nature.
Ole Virginny nebber tire!
“What kind of an idiot did you say?” said Charley, as we chinked glasses.
“I couldn’t find any straws,” said Alice.
“I accept your apology,” said Charley. His voice sounded soft, mellow, and far away; for his nose was plunged beneath a mass of crushed ice. “Straws,” added he, growing magnanimous, “they are only fit to show which way the wind blows.” And with a magnificent sweep of his left hand he indicated his disdain for all possible atmospheric currents. “Ladies and gentlemen,” added he, as he rose from his seat; and this time there was an indescribable jumble in the voice of the orator—(not at all, Mr. Teetotaller! ’twas caused by the cracked ice),—for as Charley rose to continue the reading of his Essay on Military Glory, he had pointed the stem of his goblet at the ceiling; striving, at the same time, by a skilful adjustment of his features, to prevent its contents from falling on the floor,—such great store did Alice set by her new carpet. But, of course, when he opened his mouth to say ladies and gentlemen, a baby avalanche fell in upon his organs of speech; so that he didn’t manage to say anything of the kind. “That,” said he, placing the glass upon the table, “will do as a vignette; the illustrations we shall contrive to work in farther on.”
One julep gives Charley the swagger of a four-bottle man.
“Where was I?” asked he, drawing the manuscript from his pocket. “I’ll begin again. HANNIBAL! No, confound it! Ah, here we are: “An average man has strength to go to the bottom of a julep; only a philosopher can sound the depth of a thought.”
At these words Alice rose from her seat, and, leaning forward, first fixed a scrutinizing glance upon her husband, then advanced towards him with a twinkle in her merry-glancing hazel eye.
“If half the audience,” said Charley, with an imperious wave of the hand, “will persist in wandering over the floor, the reading is suspended.”
Alice took her seat, and did nothing but laugh till the end of the chapter. I laughed, too, but without exactly knowing why. But laughter (singularly enough,—for it is a blessing) is contagious. And then the julep had been stiff; so that the very tables and chairs about the room seemed to beam upon me with a certain twinkling, kindly Bushwhackerishness.[[1]]
“Here’s a lot of stuff that I shall skip,” began Charley; and he turned over, with careless finger, leaf after leaf. As he did so Alice rose slightly from her seat with a peering look.
“Who is reading this Essay on Military Glory?” asked Charley, with a severe look at his wife over his glasses (alas, alas, nec pietas moram?).
“Very well; go on,” said Alice, dropping back into her chair with a fresh burst of laughter. She had had no julep. What was she laughing at?
“It consists (my opening) of a series of illustrations, showing how much nonsense comes to be believed through people’s not going to the bottom of things. We suppose ourselves to have an opinion (there is no commoner delusion), but we fail to subject that opinion to any crucial test; though nothing is easier. The crucial test, for example, of sulphuretted hydrogen, is a certain odor which we encounter, when, with incautious toe, we explode an egg in some outlying nest which no boy could find during the summer—”
“That will do,” said Alice; though why women should turn up their blessed little noses at such allusions is hard to understand, seeing what keen and triumphant pleasure they all derive from the detection of unparliamentary odors at unexpected times and places.
“I have here,” continued Charley, carelessly turning the leaves of his manuscript, “a nestful of such illustrations.”
“We will excuse you from hatching them in our presence,” said Alice; and with wrinkled nose she disdainfully sniffed a suppositious egg of abandoned character.
“I have already passed them over. After all, what is the use of them? You and Charley can understand what I mean without them; and if you can, why not the reader, too? Are readers idiots? I’ll plunge in medias res. Let us begin here:” (reading) “It is the same with military glory. How many battles have been fought since the world began? Arithmetic stands pale in the presence of such a question! In every one of these conflicts one or the other commander had the advantage. How many of them are famous? Count them. For every celebrated general that you show me, I will show you a finger—or a toe—”
“You are too anatomical by half,” protested Alice.
“Why is this? Think for a moment? Why is this victor famous, that victor not? It is the simplest thing in the world if you will but apply the crucial test.”
Charley paused in his reading and peered gravely over his glasses. “What is it, goose?” asked his admiring spouse.
“The crucial test is disparity of numbers. Formulæ: equality, victory, obscurity,—disparity, victory, glory. There you have it in a nutshell. Example (from Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire): imperator of the West and imperator of the East, battling, with the world as a stake. Innumerable but equal hosts. Days of hacking and hewing. Victory to him of the East (or West). His name? Have forgotten it. Equality, victory, obscurity!
“See? By the way, Jack, does not the brevity of my military style rather smack of Cæsar’s Commentaries?
“Again—scene, Syria. Christians of the Byzantine empire, and Mahometans. Final struggle. Vast but equal armies. Three days of carnage. Remnant of Christians decline crown of glory. Name of victor? I pause?—and so on, and so on, and so on.
“But now, per contra, read, by the light of our hypothesis, the following:
PARADIGM OF GLORY.
| Nominative | Napoleon | Italy | disparity | victory | glory |
| Genitive | Cæsar | Pharsalia | ditto | ditto | ditto |
| Dative | Alexander | Persia | ditto | ditto | ditto |
| Accusative | Zengis Khan | Asia | ditto | ditto | ditto |
| Vocative | Sheridan | Winchester | ditto | ditto | ditto |
| Ablative | Hannibal—” |
“Ah, you have gotten to him at last,” said Alice.
“Yes, my dear,” said Charley, raising his eyes from the manuscript; “but the vignettes grow dim. Let’s have an illustration in honor of the victor of Cannæ. Let there be lots of ice as a memorial of the avalanches he defied, piled mountain-high because of the Alps he overcame. Typify with mint the glorious verdure of Italy as it first bursts upon his view.”
Alice typified—
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻ ✻
“After all,” said Charley, “this is a pretty good old world to live in.” And he fillipped, gently, the rim of his goblet with his middle finger. (Ching! ching!) “It was B flat when it was full, and now (ching! ching!) it is a good C sharp. Listen!” And shutting one eye, he cocked the other meditatively towards the ceiling. (Ching! ching!) “Acoustics or something, I suppose. A pretty good old world, I tell you, boys. (Ching! ching!) H’m! h’m! h’m!” It was a low, contented chuckle. “Jack-Whack, you ought to have a sweet little darling of a wife, just like—”
“Mr. Frobisher, you are positively boozy!”
“Well, well, my precious little ducky dumpling, I don’t write Essays on Military Glory every day. H’m! h’m! h’m! h’m! I left out my very best illustration, simply because I couldn’t work it into my paradigm. It is a little poem I heard once,—h’m! h’m! h’m! h’m! (Ching! ching!)
‘Dad and Jamie had a fight,
They fit all day, and they fit all night;
And in the mornin’ Dad was seen
A-punchin’ Jamie on the Bowlin’ Green.’
“One would say, taking the four lines together, that Dad probably got the better of Jamie in the end. But who thinks of ranking him, for that reason, with the world’s famed conquerors? Preposterous! They were obviously too evenly matched. See? No one knows, even, who Dad was, or Jamie; or what Bowlin’ Green drank their gore. (Ching! ching!) D natural. Nor even the name of the poet. Some old, old Aryan myth, I suppose, symbolizing the struggle between Light and Darkness,—‘in the morning Dad’—the sun—‘was seen a-punchin’ Jamie’—moon, of course—‘on the Bowlin’ Green,’—that is, this beautiful world. (Ching! ching!) What are you up to?”
Alice had made a dive at Charley, who, mistaking her object, defended himself vigorously. Meantime, she had darted with her right hand down into his breast-pocket, drawing out the manuscript.
“If you supposed I wished to kiss your juleppy moustache, you are much mistaken. This is what I wanted.” And she brandished the Essay high in the air in triumph. “I knew it! I knew it!” cried she. “Listen, Jack!”
“‘Baltimore, August 14, 1885.
“‘Charles Frobisher, Esq.:
“‘Dear Sir,—‘The guano will be shipped by to-morrow’s boat, as per valued order.
“‘Very truly yours,
“‘Bumpkins & Windup.’
“And look here—and look here,—nothing but a lot of business letters. He has not written one line! His so-called Essay on Military Glory is a myth!”
“We got the juleps, at any rate. Jack-Whack, you write it up.”
“If Alice will agree to illustrate again.”
“Not I!”
“Q minor!” sighed Charley, thumping his empty goblet. “Jack-Whack, my poor boy, we dwell in a vale of tears!”
| [1] | I need hardly say that I decline to be responsible for such sentiments.—Ed. |