“A poet! heaven protect us from such madness. Is he married?”
“No—he swears he’ll never wed any one but a poetess; and you know they’re a scarce article in the market.”
“Egad, I thought he was a bachelor, for who ever heard of a married man writing poetry? Flummery, sir, flummery—whipt cream and sugar—away with your poetry! Give me the real solid prose, your regular beefsteak, with a spice of wit to make it palatable, boy. Now there’s Oliver Oldfellow, he used to be as poetical as a scissors grinder before he got married, but after that he came to his senses, and—Lord love you!—he hasn’t written a line these twenty years.”
“You’re savage on the poets. But if what you say is true, there ought to be a law against poets marrying.”
“And what’s the use of law, to stop what one can’t help? No man—let me tell you—ever got married in his senses. No, no, my boy, they are crazy, bewitched, ‘non compos mentis.’ Did you ever meet a girl that didn’t say she’d never get married, and why then should she do it if she didn’t get possessed? But the poor victims are to be pitied more than blamed. It’s not their fault. It’s destiny, sir, destiny. When a thief’s hour comes he’s got to be hung—and when a man’s time is up he’s got to suffer matrimony. There’s no escape. Let him double like a hare, turn to the right or left, dive like a duck, or pretend to be dead like a dormouse, he’ll be sure to be found out at every trick, and made a Benedict of—even if it’s done by spirits—before he’s aware of it. Let me tell you a story to prove my position.
“Major Compton was a hale, hearty old fellow when I knew him in the last war, though I believe gout and morning drams have long since driven the nails in his coffin. He had been a gay chap when young—a soldier, a beau, a bit of a fop, and then—egad, sir—a poet of no little fashion. He could knock you off a sonnet on a lady’s charms sooner than old Tom the blacksmith could knock off a horse-shoe. But after a while he fell in love, and—to cut short my story—was married. Ah! many and many a time have I heard him tell me how he felt it coming on him as if he was bewitched; how he struggled against the malady but could not prevail; and how he shuddered when he found himself writing poetry, because, like the sight of water in the hydrophobia, he knew then that it was all over with him. But this happened years before we met. When I knew him he was a jolly, red-faced widower, and had a horror of all poets, women, and cold water—the last of which he used to say made men effeminate, in proof of which he said all savages who used nothing else, like the Tahitians, were cowards. Betwixt you and I, he must have married a Tartar.
“Well—he’d been out one night at a supper, and the bottle had passed around so frequently that every soul of the company, except the major, got under the table,—so, after amusing himself by blacking their faces with burnt cork, and moralising, as a gentleman ought to, over their deplorable condition, he set out to find his way home to his quarters. As he emerged into the cool air he felt his head getting light as if it were going up, balloon-like, with himself for a parachute; but holding his hat down with both hands, as he remembered to have seen them keep down an inflated balloon, he managed to get along pretty well, though he couldn’t keep his head from swinging about with the wind, which made him, he said, walk as crooked as if he had been drunk, though he was never soberer in his life.
“It was a wild, gusty night, and the clouds were drifting like snow-flakes overhead, when the major sallied out into the street, and began his journey to his lodgings. The wind roared around the corners, or whistled down the chimneys of the old houses around, whose tall, dark, chilly figures rose up against the November sky, until they seemed, to the major’s vision, fairly to shiver with cold. The stars, high up, were winking through the drift, except now and then a sturdy old fellow who stared right into the major’s face. One of these seemed determined to abash him whether or no. Go where he would it followed him, so that if he looked up he would be sure to see it staring full upon him with its dull yellow eye. It made him think, he said, of his spouse of blessed memory, when she would stick her arms a-kimbo, and make faces at him. Now the major was a good-humored soul, but there are some things, even Job couldn’t endure. The major bore it, however, until he reached a wild common, when taking a seat upon a heap of stones, he planted his elbows on his knees, buried his chin in his hands, and looking right at the saucy star, said,
“ ‘Hillo! up there—now take a good look, and let’s see who’ll give over first.’
“ ‘Hillo!’ said a voice close behind him.