Nature and Human Nature

by Thomas Chandler Haliburton

“Now and then a brother officer visits him. Elliott is there now, not the last of the Elliotts, for there is no end of them, and though only a hundred of them have been heard of in the world, there are a thousand well known to the Treasury. But he is the last chum from his regiment he will ever see. As they sit after dinner he hands the olives to his friend, and suddenly checks himself, saying, I forgot, you never touch the ‘after-feed.’ Then he throws up both eyes and hands, and affects to look aghast at the mistake. ‘Really,’ he says, ‘I shall soon become us much of a boor as the people of this country. I hear nothing now but mowing, browsing, and ‘after-feed,’ until at last I find myself using the latter word for ‘dessert.’ He says it prettily and acts it well, and although his wife has often listened to the same joke, she looks as if it would bear repetition, and her face expresses great pleasure. Poor Dechamps, if your place is worth nothing, she at least is a treasure above all price.

“Presently Elliott sais, ‘By-the-by, Dechamps, have you heard we are ordered to Corfu, and embark immediately?’

“Dear me, what magic there is in a word. Sometimes it discloses in painful distinctness the past, at others it reveals a prophetic page of the future; who would ever suppose there was anything in that little insignificant word to occasion a thought, unless it was whether it is pronounced Corfoo or Corfew, and it’s so little consequence which, I always give it the go by and say Ionian Isles.

“But it startled Dechamps. He had hoped before he left the army to have been ordered there, and from thence to have visited the classic coasts of Greece. Alas, that vision has gone, and there is a slight sigh of regret, for possession seldom equals expectation, and always cloys. He can never more see his regiment, they have parted for ever. Time and distance have softened some of the rougher features of military life. He thinks of the joyous days of youth, the varied scenes of life, his profession exposed to his view, and the friends he has left behind him. The service he thinks not so intolerable after all, and though regimental society is certainly not what he should choose, especially as a married man, yet, except in a rollicking corps, it may at least negatively be said to be ‘not bad.’

“From this review of the past he turns to the prospect before him. But he discerns something that he does not like to contemplate, a slight shadow passes over his face, and he asks Elliott to pass the wine. His wife, with the quickness of perception so natural to a woman, sees at once what is passing in his mind; for similar, but deeper, far deeper thoughts, like unbidden guests, have occupied hers many an anxious hour. Poor thing, she at once perceives her duty and resolves to fulfil it. She will be more cheerful. She at least will never murmur. After all, Doctor, it’s no great exaggeration to call a woman that has a good head and kind heart, and the right shape, build, and bearings, an angel, is it? But let us mark their progress, for we shall be better able to judge then.

“Let us visit Epaigwit again in a few years. Who is that man near the gate that looks unlike a servant, unlike a farmer, unlike a gentleman, unlike a sportsman, and yet has a touch of all four characters about him? He has a shocking bad hat on but what’s the use of a good hat in the woods, as poor Jackson said, where there is no one to see it. He has not been shaved since last sheep-shearing, and has a short black pipe in his mouth, and the tobacco smells like nigger-head or pig-tail. He wears a coarse check shirt without a collar, a black silk neck-cloth frayed at the edge, that looks like a rope of old ribbons. His coat appears as if it had once been new, but had been on its travels, until at last it had got pawned to a Jew at Rag-alley. His waistcoat was formerly buff, but now resembles yellow flannel, and the buttons, though complete in number are of different sorts. The trowsers are homespun, much worn, and his boots coarse enough to swap with a fisherman for mackarel. His air and look betokens pride rendered sour by poverty.

“But there is something worse than all this, something one never sees without disgust or pain, because it is the sure precursor of a diseased body, a shattered intellect, and voluntary degradation. There is a bright red colour that extends over the whole face, and reaches behind the ears. The whiskers are prematurely tipt with white, as if the heated skin refused to nourish them any longer. The lips are slightly swelled, and the inflamed skin indicates inward fever, while the eyes are bloodshot, the under lids distended, and incline to shrink from contact with the heated orbs they were destined to protect. He is a dram-drinker; and the poison that he imbibes with New England rum is as fatal, and nearly as rapid in its destruction, as strikline.

“Who is he; can you guess? do you give it up? He is that handsome officer, the Laird of Epaigwit as the Scotch would say, the general as we should call him, for we are liberal of titles, and the man that lives at Cowcumber Falls, as they say here. Poor fellow, he has made the same discovery Sergeant Jackson did, that there is no use of good things in the woods where there is no one to see them. He is about to order you off his premises, but it occurs to him that would be absurd, for he has nothing now worth seeing. He scrutinises you however to ascertain if he has ever seen you before. He fears recognition, for he dreads both your pity and your ridicule; so he strolls leisurely back to the house with a certain bull-dog air of defiance.

“Let us follow him thither; but before we enter, observe there is some glass out of the window, and its place supplied by shingles. The stanhope is in the coach-house, but the by-road was so full of stumps and cradle-hills, it was impossible to drive in it, and the moths have eaten the lining out. The carriage has been broken so often it is not worth repairing, and the double harness has been cut up to patch the tacklin’ of the horse-team. The shrubbery has been browsed away by the cattle, and the rank grass has choked all the rose bushes and pretty little flowers. What is the use of these things in the woods? That remark was on a level with the old dragoon’s intellect; but I am surprised that this intelligent officer; this man of the world, this martinet, didn’t also discover, that he who neglects himself soon becomes so careless as to neglect his other duties, and that to lose sight of them is to create and invite certain ruin. But let us look at the interior.

“There are some pictures on the walls, and there are yellow stains where others hung. Where are they? for I think I heard a man say he bought them on account of their handsome frames, from that crack-brained officer at Cucumber Lake; and he shut his eye, and looked knowing and whispered, ‘Something wrong there, had to sell out of the army; some queer story about another wife still living; don’t know particulars.’ Poor Dechamps, you are guiltless of that charge at any rate, to my certain knowledge; but how often does slander bequeath to folly that which of right belongs to crime! The nick-knacks, the antique china, the Apostles’ spoons, the queer little old-fashioned silver ornaments, the French clock, the illustrated works, and all that sort of thing,—all, all are gone. The housemaids broke some, the children destroyed others, and the rest were sent to auction, merely to secure their preservation. The paper is stained in some places, in others has peeled off; but where under the sun have all the accomplishments gone to?