So, all my youthful readers, come—
Boys and girls, each shall have some.
Walk up, my friends—Blue Eyes and Black—
And let us ope the Pedler’s Pack.
There was no note or direction, which informed us clearly what the Old Man in the Corner intended we should do with his book; but we suppose that he intended we should publish it in Merry’s Museum. This we have accordingly concluded to do. We shall insert such articles as seem suitable for our columns—making occasional notes of an explanatory nature. The first article we shall insert, is entitled The Blues; and in order that our readers may understand it, we must premise that when people are sad, or unhappy, on account of troublesome thoughts, they are said to have the blues, or the blue devils. The same thing is meant by the terms, bad spirits, the vapors, low spirits, &c. The Old Man in the Corner seems to think that these troubles may be avoided by a proper course of life.
Here is his queer article about
The Blues.
How it rains! Patter, patter, patter! Well, let it pour! I love the rumble of the drops upon the roof, like the prolonged roll of a distant drum. Let it rain; I am secure. I shall not go out to-day, nor shall any one intrude upon my privacy. This day is mine!
A wet day is often considered a lost day. To me it is otherwise. I can shut the door upon the world—turn the key upon life’s cares, and give myself up freely to the reins of a vagrant fancy, without reproach of conscience. Providence has stepped in, and, arresting my tasks and my duties, gives me a sort of Sabbath of leisure and mental recreation. To me a wet day brings no blues, or, if it does, they are those which come on the wings of reverie, and are such as I am sometimes willing to entertain. Your reasonable blue is a communicative, suggestive thing, and I always court its society.
And, after all—what are “the Blues?” Everything else has been classified, analyzed, and reduced to scientific system; and why not these beings which figure so largely in the history of the human mind? This is a subject of profound inquiry, and I wonder it has not attracted the attention of the philosophical. Let us look at it.