And I,—I was delighted at this aptness of quotation. Should I ever bring my capping lines to such a market? Here was a hit as good as the famous parliamentary retorts, which were so precious to us in the I. O. H. and in the Harvard Union. Should I ever live to see the happy day when I should find that it was wise, witty, and just the thing to say,
"Tu quoque litoribus nostris Æneia nutrix"?
or,
"Tityre dum redeo, brevis est via, pasce capellas,"
or any other of the T's? Or,
"Æsopus auctor quam materiam reperit,"
or,
"Æacus ingemuit, tristique ita voce locutus,"
or any other of the Æ diphthongs? It did not seem possible, but we would see.
Now it happened that, in the vacation following, a French steamer, I think the Geryon, came to Boston. And there was, perhaps a civic dinner, certainly an excursion down the harbor, to persuade her officers, and through them Louis Philippe, for this was in the early age of stone, that Boston Harbor was the best point for the projected line of French packets to stop at,—and somebody invited me to go. And it turned out that few of the Frenchmen spoke English, and few of the Common Councilmen spoke French, so that poor little I came to some miserable use as a half-interpreter. I remember telling a Lieutenant de Vaisseau that the "Centurion" rock was called so because the 74 Centurion was lost there; and that an indignant civic authority, guessing out my speech, told me they did not want the Frenchmen to know anything was ever lost in Boston Harbor! Perhaps that was the reason the French packets never came. Well, by and by there was the inevitable collation in the cabin. (A collation, dear boy, is a dinner where you have nothing to eat.) And we went down stairs to collate. I began to think of the speeches. Suppose they should call on the youngest of the interpreters, what could he say? What Latin quotation that would answer? Not Tityrus certainly! No. Nor Æneas's nurse certainly, for she went overboard,—bad luck to her!—or was she buried decently? Bad omen that! But—yes! certainly—what better than the thunderbolts of Jove? Steam-navigation forever,—Robert Fulton, Marquis of Worcester, madman in the French bedlam,—bolts of heaven secured for service of earth,—Franklin,—the great alliance,—steam-navigation uniting the world! Was not the whole prefigured, messieurs, quand le grand poète forged the very thunderbolts of the Dieu des Cieux?