Yes, his memory is jest as fresh now as it ever wuz in them streets he wandered in durin’ his sad exile, while the solid stun his feet trod on has mouldered and gone to pieces, which shows how much more real the onseen is than the seen, and how much more indestructible. Iron pillars and granite columns aginst which his weary head had leaned oft-times 171 had all mouldered and decayed. But the onseen visions that Camoens see with his rapt poet’s eye wuz jest as fresh and deathless as when he first writ ’em down. And his memory hanted the old streets, and went before ’em and over ’em. How much more real than the tropical birds that wheeled and glittered in the luxuriant tropical foliage, though they couldn’t lay hands on ’em and ketch ’em and bring a few to me, much as I would liked to have had ’em. But these bein’ the real, as I say, they wuz also with me way over in Hongkong. I thought a sight on him all the time they wuz gone, and afterwards I thought of the honor and dignity his noble verse had gin to his country, and how princely the income they had gin him after they let him return from his exile. Twenty-one dollars a year! What a premium that wuz upon poesy; the Muse must have felt giddy to think she wuz prized so high, and his native land repented of the generosity afterwards and stopped the twenty-one dollars a year.
But then after his starved and strugglin’ life wuz ended his country acted in the usual way, erected monuments in his honor, and struck off medals bearin’ his liniment. The worth of one medal or one little ornament on the peak of one of his statutes might have comforted the broken heart and kep’ alive the starved body and gin him some comfort. But that hain’t the way of the world; the world has always considered it genteel and fashionable to starve its poets, and stun its prophets, with different kinds of stuns, but all on ’em hard ones; not that it has done so in every case, but it has always been the fashionable way.
Dorothy and Robert talked quite a good deal about the sad poet and his works, their young hearts feelin’ for his woe; mebby sunthin’ in their own hearts translatin’ the mournful history; you know plates have to be fixed jest right or the colors won’t strike in. It is jest so in life. Hearts must be ready to photograph the seens on, or they won’t be took. Some hearts and souls are blank plates and will 172 always remain so. Arvilly seemed lost in thought as they talked about the poet (she hain’t so well versed in poetry as she is in the license laws and the disabilities of wimmen), and when she hearn Robert Strong say, “Camoens will live forever,” she sez dreamily:
“I wonder if he’d want to subscribe for the ‘Twin Crimes’?” And sez she, “I am sorry I didn’t go over with you and canvass him.” Poor thing! she little knew he had got beyend canvassin’ and all other cares and troubles of life two hundred years ago. But Miss Meechim wuz dretful worked up about the gambling going on at Maceo, and she sez it is as bad as at Monte Carlo. (I didn’t know who he wuz, but spozed that he wuz a real out and out gambler and blackleg). And sez she, “Oh, how bad it makes me feel to see such wickedness carried on. How it makes my heart yearn for my own dear America!” Miss Meechim is good in some things; she is as loyal to her own country as a dog to a root, but Arvilly sez:
“I guess we Americans hadn’t better find too much fault with foreign natives about gambling, when we think of our stock exchanges, huge gamblin’ houses where millions are gambled for daily; thousands of bushels of wheat put up there that never wuz growed only in the minds of the gamblers. Why,” sez Arvilly, warmin’ up with her subject, “we are a nation of gamblers from Wall Street, where gamblin’ is done in the name of greed, down to meetin’ houses, where bed-quilts and tidies are gambled for in the name of religion. From millionaires who play the game for fortunes down to poor backwoodsmen who raffle for turkeys and hens, and children who toss pennies for marbles.”
Sez Miss Meechim, “I guess I will take a little quinine and lay down a spell.” Arvilly tosted her head quite a little after she retired and then she went out to canvass a clerk in the office. Arvilly is dantless in carriage, but she is too hash. I feel bad about it.
CHAPTER XV
Arvilly and I went out for a walk, takin’ Tommy with us. We thought we would buy some sooveneers of the place. Sez Arvilly, “I want to prove to the Jonesvillians that I’ve been to China, and I want to buy some little presents for Waitstill Webb, that I can send her in a letter.”