HE verdant have an idea, that literary people are always under the influence of "the divine afflatus;" but, like the curious female who gazed through the bars of the doomed man's cell to gloat over his situation, and was told by her victim, that, although the gallows was impending, "he couldn't cry all the time," they are doomed to disappointment.
When a literary person's exhaustive work is over, the last thing he wishes to do is to talk book. The last person he wishes to meet is another unfortunate, who also has been cudgelling his brains for ideas. The person whom he wishes to see most, if, indeed, he desire to see anybody, is one who will stir up his mentality least. The laurel-wreath, which the verdant suppose he settles carefully and becomingly on his head, before the looking-glass, ere he goes forth, he would be glad to toss into the first ash-barrel; and, so far from desiring to regulate his personal appearance, according to the programme marked out by the sentimental, he feels only an insane desire to be let severely alone, and "let Natur caper," if, indeed, she has not forgotten how.
He wants—this wise man—to hear some merry little child sing:
"Hickory, dickory, dock,
The mouse ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
And down he ran:
Hickory, dickory, dock."
Or he wants to lean over a fence and see the turnips grow. It rests him to think that the fat, lazy pigs never think, but lie winking their pink eyes forever at the sun. In short, as I told you, he wants just the antipodes of himself.
The sentimental will perceive, from this, the small chance they stand for edification, or amusement, from "literary people" when off duty. Blithe ladies will see, how very jolly it must be to marry a poet or an author. But what shall we say of "the situation" when a literary man and a literary woman are yoked? When the world abroad demands the best of each, and nothing is left for home consumption? When, instead of writing sonnets to each other, and looking at the chaste moon in their leisure moments, as the sentimental have arranged it, they are too used up to do anything but gape? When a change of programme would not only be a blessing, but absolutely necessary, to stave off a Coroner's Inquest? When the sight of a book to either, is like water to a mad dog: particularly the sight of their own books, which represent such an amount of headache, and bother, and sleepless nights, to enable a critic to notice only a printer's mistake in a date, which is generally set down to the author's "want of knowledge of his subject?" When they wonder, in the rasped state of their nerves, what life is worth, if it is to be forever pitched up to that key? When they can't open their mouths on any subject, without perversely saying everything they don't mean, and nothing that they do?
Ah! then is the time for them to catch sight of that athlete—the day-laborer, in red flannel shirt-sleeves, whistling along home with his tools. Do you hear? Tools! Happy man! He won't have to manufacture his tools before he begins to-morrow's work. He can pound away all day, and sing the while, and no organ-grinder has power to drive him mad.