Now and then there would be found in the bay below the city a tremendous, square-shaped, hideous, unnatural piscatorial monster, known as a devil-fish, or briefly devil. It was a legend of my youth that two preachers or ministers of the Presbyterian faith once went fishing in those waters, and having cast out a stout line, fastened to the mast, for shark, were amazed at finding themselves all at once careering through the waves at terrible speed, being dragged by one of the diabolical “monsters of the roaring deep” above mentioned. Whereupon a friend, who was in the boat, burst out laughing. And being asked, “Wherefore this unrestrained hilarity?” replied, “Is it not enough to make a man laugh to see the Devil running away with two clergymen?”
There was a very excellent and extensive museum of Matters and Things in General, founded by an ancient artist named Peale, who was the head-central charm and delight of all young Philadelphia in those days, and where, when we had been good all the week, we were allowed to repair on Saturday afternoons. And here I may say by the way, that miscellaneous collections of “curiosities,” oddities, and relics are far more attractive to children, and stimulate in them far more interest and inquisitiveness and desire for general information, than do the best scientific collections, where everything is ranked and numbered, and wherein even an Etruscan tiara or a Viking’s sword loses much of its charm when placed simply as a “specimen” in a row of others of
the kind. I am not arguing here in the least against scientific or properly arranged archæologic collections, but to declare the truth that for children museums of the despised curiosities are far more attractive and infinitely more useful.
I owe so very much myself to the old Peale’s Museum; it served to stimulate to such a remarkable degree my interest in antiquities and my singular passion for miscellaneous information, and it aided me so much in my reading, that I cannot pass it by without a tribute to its memory. How often have I paused in its dark galleries in awe before the tremendous skeleton of the Mammoth—how small did that of a great elephant seem beside it—and recalled the Indian legend of it recorded by Franklin. And the stuffed monkeys—one shaving another—what exquisite humour, which never palled upon us! No; that was the museum for us, and the time will come when there will be such collections made expressly for the young.
“Stuffed monkey” was a common by-word, by the way, for a conceited fellow. Therefore the Louisville Journal, speaking of a rival sheet, said: “Reader, if you will go into the Louisville Museum, you will see two stuffed monkeys reading the Courier. And if you will then go into the office of the Louisville Courier, you may see two living stuffed monkeys editing the same.” The beautiful sallies of this kind which appeared in these two newspapers for years would make a lively volume.
Never shall I forget one evening alone in that Museum. I had come with Jacob Pierce’s school, and strayed off alone into some far-away and fascinating nook, forgetful of friends and time. All the rest had departed homewards, and I sought to find them. The dark evening shades were casting sombre tones in the galleries—I was a very little boy of seven or eight—and the stuffed lions and bears and wolves seemed looming or glooming into mysterious life; the varnished sharks and hideous shiny crocodiles had a light of awful intelligence in their eyes; the gigantic anaconda had long
awaited me; the grim hyæna marked me for his own; even deer and doves seemed uncanny and goblined. At this long interval of sixty years, I can recall the details of that walk, and every object which impressively half-appalled me, and how what had been a museum had become a chamber of horrors, yet not without a wild and awful charm. Of course I lost my way in the shades, and was beginning to speculate on having to pass a night among the monsters, and how much there would be left for my friends to mourn over in the morning, when—Eureka! Thalatta!—I beheld the gate of entrance and exit, and made my latter as joyously as ever did the souls who were played out of Inferno by the old reprobate of the Roman tale.
Since that adventure I never mentioned it to a living soul till now, and yet there is not an event of my life so vividly impressed on my memory.
My father took me very rarely to the theatre; but my Quaker school-mates had never seen the inside of such places at all, and therefore listened greedily to what I could tell them of the sights. One of the wonders of my youth was the seeing the great elephant Columbus perform in a play called “The Englishman in Siam.” It was indeed very curious, and it is described as such in works on natural history. And I saw Edwin Forrest (whom I learned to know in later years) in “Metamora,” and Fanny Kemble in “Beatrice,” and so on. As for George Boker, he went, I believe, to every place of amusement whenever he pleased, and talked familiarly of actors, some of whom he actually knew, and their lives, in a manner which awoke in me awe and a feeling as being humble and ignorant indeed. As we grew older, Boker and I, from reading “Don Quixote” and Scott, used to sit together for hours improvising legends of chivalry and marvellous romances. It was in the year when it first appeared that I read (in the New Monthly) and got quite by heart the rhyming tale of “Sir Rupert the Fearless,” a tale of the Rhine, one of the Ingoldsby legends, by Barham. I
can still repeat a great part of it. I bore it in mind till in after years it inspired (allied to Goethe’s Wassermädchen) my ballad of De Maiden mit Nodings on, which has, as I now write, been very recently parodied and pictured by Punch, March 18, 1893. My mother had taught me to get poetry by heart, and by the time I was ten years of age, I had imbibed, so to speak, an immense quantity; for, as in opium-eating, those who begin by effort end by taking in with ease.