The villagers are kindly people. They are rather incoherent on the subject of the war, but not more so, perhaps, then are people elsewhere. One citizen, who used to sustain a good character, subscribed for the Weekly New York Herald a few months since, and went to studying the military maps in that well-known journal for the fireside. I need not inform you that his intellect now totters, and he has mortgaged his farm. In a literary point of view we are rather bloodthirsty. A pamphlet edition of the life of a cheerful being, who slaughtered his wife and child, and then finished himself, is having an extensive sale just now.
We know little of Honore de Balzac, and perhaps care less for Victor Hugo. M. Claes's grand search for the Absolute doesn't thrill us in the least; and Jean Valjean, gloomily picking his way through the sewers of Paris, with the spooney young man of the name of Marius upon his back, awakens no interest in our breasts. I say Jean Valjean picked his way gloomily, and I repeat it. No man, under these circumstances, could have skipped gayly. But this literary business, as the gentleman who married his colored chambermaid aptly observed, "is simply a matter of taste."
The store I must not forget the store. It is an object of great interest to me. I usually encounter there, on sunny afternoons, an old Revolutionary soldier. You may possibly have read about "Another Revolutionary Soldier gone," but this is one who hasn't gone, and, moreover, one who doesn't manifest the slightest intention of going. He distinctly remembers Washington, of course; they all do; but what I wish to call special attention to, is the fact that this Revolutionary soldier is one hundred years old, that his eyes are so good that he can read fine print without spectacles—he never used them, by the way and his mind is perfectly clear. He is a little shaky in one of his legs, but otherwise he is as active as most men of forty-five, and his general health is excellent. He uses no tobacco, but for the last twenty years he has drunk one glass of liquor every day no more, no less. He says he must have his tod. I had begun to have lurking suspicions about this Revolutionary soldier business, but here is an original Jacobs. But because a man can drink a glass of liquor a day, and live to be a hundred years old, my young readers must not infer that by drinking two glasses of liquor a day a man can live to be two hundred. "Which, I meanter say, it doesn't foller," as Joseph Gargery might observe.
This store, in which may constantly be found calico and nails, and fish, and tobacco in kegs, and snuff in bladders, is a venerable establishment. As long ago as 1814 it was an institution. The county troops, on their way to the defence of Portland, then menaced by British ships-of-war, were drawn up in front of this very store, and treated at the town's expense. Citizens will tell you how the clergyman refused to pray for the troops, because he considered the war an unholy one; and how a somewhat eccentric person, of dissolute habits, volunteered his services, stating that he once had an uncle who was a deacon, and he thought he could make a tolerable prayer, although it was rather out of his line; and how he prayed so long and absurdly that the Colonel ordered him under arrest, but that even while soldiers stood over him with gleaming bayonets, the reckless being sang a preposterous song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with its Ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do; after which he howled dismally.
And speaking of the store, reminds me of a little story. The author of "several successful comedies" has been among us, and the store was anxious to know who the stranger was. And therefore the store asked him.
"What do you follow, sir?" respectfully inquired the tradesman.
"I occasionally write for the stage, sir."
"Oh!" returned the tradesman, in a confused manner.
"He means," said an honest villager, with a desire to help the puzzled tradesman out, "he means that he writes the handbills for the stage drivers!"
I believe that story is new, although perhaps it is not of an uproariously mirthful character; but one hears stories at the store that are old enough, goodness knows stories which, no doubt, diverted Methuselah in the sunny days of his giddy and thoughtless boyhood.