And so, with a cordial pressure of the hand, we parted.
“Monte-Christo,” I said, as that very evening I bundled Bagsby into a fiacre on our way to the railroad station—“Monte-Christo, my good fellow, let me give you a slight piece of advice, which it would be well if all of our craft and calling would keep in memory,—‘Think twice before you write up another revolution.’”
THE CAXTONS—A FAMILY PICTURE.
CHAPTER I.
“Sir—sir—it is a boy!”
“A boy,” said my father, looking up from his book, and evidently much puzzled; “what is a boy?”
Now, my father did not mean by that interrogatory to challenge philosophical inquiry, nor to demand of the honest but unenlightened woman who had just rushed into his study, a solution of that mystery, physiological and psychological, which has puzzled so many curious sages, and lies still involved in the question, “What is man?” For, as we need not look farther than Dr Johnson’s Dictionary to know that a boy is “a male child”—i. e., the male young of man; so he who would go to the depth of things, and know scientifically what is a boy, must be able first to ascertain “what is a man?” But, for aught I know, my father may have been satisfied with Buffon on that score, or he may have sided with Monboddo. He may have agreed with Bishop Berkeley—he may have contented himself with Professor Combe—he may have regarded the genus spiritually, like Zeno, or materially, like Epicurus. Grant that boy is the male young of man, and he would have had plenty of definitions to choose from. He might have said, “Man is a stomach—ergo, boy a male young stomach. Man is a brain,—boy a male young brain. Man is a bundle of habits—boy a male young bundle of habits. Man is a machine—boy a male young machine. Man is a tail-less monkey—boy a male young tail-less monkey. Man is a combination of gases—boy a male young combination of gases. Man is an appearance—boy a male young appearance,” &c. &c., and etcetera, ad infinitum! And if none of these definitions had entirely satisfied my father, I am perfectly persuaded that he would never have come to Mrs Primmins for a new one.
But it so happened that my father was at that moment engaged in the important consideration whether the Iliad was written by one Homer—or was rather a collection of sundry ballads, done into Greek by divers hands, and finally selected, compiled, and reduced into a whole by a Committee of Taste, under that elegant old tyrant Pisistratus; and the sudden affirmation “It is a boy,” did not seem to him pertinent to the thread of the discussion. Therefore he asked, “What is a boy?”—vaguely, and, as it were, taken by surprise.
“Lord, sir!” said Mrs Primmins, “what is a boy? Why, the baby!”
“The baby!” repeated my father, rising. “What, you don’t mean to say that Mrs Caxton is—eh—?”