GETTING HOME AGAIN.
It is a good thing, said an aged Chinese Travelling Philosopher, for every man, sooner or later, to get back again to his own tea-cup. And Ling Ching Ki Hi Fum (for that was the name of the profound old gentleman who said it) was right. Travel may be "the conversion of money into mind,"—and happy the man who has turned much coin into that precious commodity,—but it is a good thing, after being tossed about the world from the Battery to Africa,—that dry nurse of lions, as Horace calls her,—to anchor once more beside the old familiar tea-urn on the old familiar tea-table. This is the only "steamy column" worth hailing with a glad welcome after long absence from home, and fully entitled to be heartily applauded for its "bubbling and loud-hissing" propensities.
We are not a Marco Polo or a William de Rubruquis, and we have no wonders to tell of the Great Mogul or the Great Cham. We did not sail for Messrs. Pride, Pomp, Circumstance, and Company; consequently, we have no great exploits to recount. We have been wrecked at sea only once in our many voyages, and, so far as we know our own tastes, do not care to solicit aid again to be thrown into the same awkward situation. But for a time we have been
"Placed far amid the melancholy main,"
and now we are among our own tea-cups. This is happiness enough for a cold winter's night. Mid-ocean, and mid tea-cups! Stupendous change, let us tell you, worthy friend, who never yet set sail where sharks and other strange sea-cattle bob their noses above the brine,—who never lived forty days in the bowels of a ship, unable to hold your head up to the captain's bluff "good morning" or the steward's cheery "good night." Sir Philip Sidney discourses of a riding-master he encountered in Vienna, who spoke so eloquently of the noble animal he had to deal with, that he almost persuaded Sir Philip to wish himself a horse. We have known ancient mariners expatiate so lovingly on the frantic enjoyments of the deep sea, that very youthful listeners have for the time resolved to know no other existence. If the author of the "Arcadia" had been permitted to become a prancing steed, he might, after the first exhilarating canter, have lamented his equine state. How many a first voyage, begun in hilarious impatience, has caused a bitter repentance! The sea is an overrated element, and we have nothing to say in its favor. Because we are out of its uneasy lap to-night, we almost resemble in felicity Richter's Walt, who felt himself so happy, that he was transported to the third heaven, and held the other two in his hand, that he might give them away. To-morrow morning we shall not hear that swashing, scaring sound directly overhead on the wet deck, which has so often murdered our slumbers. Delectable the sensation that we don't care a rope's-end "how many knots" we are going, and that our ears are so far away from that eternal "Ay, ay, Sir!" "The whales," says old Chapman, speaking of Neptune, "exulted under him, and knew their mighty king." Let them exult, say we, and be blowed, and all due honor to their salt sovereign! but of their personal acquaintance we are not ambitious. We have met them now and then in the sixty thousand miles of their watery playing-places we have passed over, and they are not pretty to look at. Roll on, et cetera, et cetera,—and so will we, for the present, at least, as far out of your reach as possible.
Yes, wise denizen of the Celestial Empire, it is a good, nay, a great thing, to return even to so small a home-object as an old tea-cup. As we lift the bright brim to our so long absent lips, we repeat it. As we pour out our second, our third, and our fourth, we say it again. Ling Ching, you were right!
And now, as the rest of the household have all gone up bed-ward, and left us with their good-night tones,
"Like flowers' voices, if they could but speak,"
we dip our pen into the cocked hat of the brave little bronze warrior who has fed us many a year with ink from the place where his brains ought to be. Pausing before we proceed to paper, we look around on our household gods. The coal bursts into crackling fits of merriment, as we thrust the poker between the iron ribs of the grate. It seems to say, in the jolliest possible manner of which it is capable, "Oh, go no more a-roaming, a-roaming, across the windy sea!" How odd it seems to be sitting here again, listening to the old clock out there in the entry! Often we seemed to hear it during the months that have flown away, when we knew that "our ancient" was standing sentinel for Time in another hemisphere. One night, dark and stormy on the Mediterranean, as we lay wakeful and watchful in the little steamer that was bearing us painfully through the noisy tempest towards Saint Peter's and the Colosseum, suddenly, above the tumult of the voyage, our household monitor began audibly and regularly, we thought, to mark the seconds. Then it must have been only fancy. Now it is something more, and we know that our mahogany friend is really wagging his brassy beard just outside the door. We remember now, as we lay listening that rough night at sea, how Milton's magic sounding line came to us beating a sad melody with the old clock's imagined tramp,—
"The Lars and Lemures moan with midnight plaint."