Now, 'midst the fairest glow,
The scene with clouds is drear,
And empty mansions crowd the street,
No hand to beckon, eye to greet,
Or friendly voice to cheer;
The colony of love is shaken,
And summer leaves our hall forsaken!
Away, then, summer flowers!
Thou glowing rose, away!
Come let me wreathe the gloomy bowers
With cypress bathed in stormy showers,
Where sunbeams never stray;
But let the flow'r of snowy crest
Impart its chillness to my breast.
[EQUIVOCAL GENTLEMEN.]
Equivocal Gentlemen! Pray, who are they? Why, they are rather a curious class of persons. But if you are in the habit of noting character, we rather think you must know them. They are to be seen in every city, and almost in every town.
The equivocal gentleman has, in general manner and bearing, and, as far as a very limited exchequer will allow, in dress also, a curious smack of the real gentleman about him, of whom he is, altogether, a sort of amusing caricature. His pretensions are high, very high, and, conscious of the doubtfulness of his claims, always noisy and obtrusive. He endeavours to bully the world into respect for him. But it won't do. When he turns his back, the world winks one of its eyes, and says, with a knowing smile, "that's a queer sort of chap." It does'nt, in fact, know what to make of him—how to class him. It has, however, a pretty good notion that, with all the equivocal gentleman's pretension, he has by no means an unlimited command of the circulating medium.
And this is not an incorrect notion. Scarcity of funds is, in truth, at the bottom of all the equivocal gentleman's difficulties, as, indeed, it is of almost all those of every body else. He, however, may be emphatically said to be born of a warfare between his poverty and "gentility."
It is, of course, in the matter of dress that the equivocal gentleman is most anxious to establish his claim to be considered a genuine article; and it is in this matter, too, that his peculiar position in the world is made most manifest; dress being in his particular case, as it is less or more in all others, a strongly marked and faithful expression of character.
The struggle here, then, to keep matters right, is dreadful. None but himself knows how dreadful—none but himself knows the thousand shifts and expedients he is compelled to have recourse to, to maintain appearances in this most important and most troublesome department.
First, of the hat. It is a merciless and unfeeling hat; for it is obstinately hastening to decay, though it well knows that its sorely perplexed owner does not know where on earth to get another. See what a watching and tending it requires to keep it from becoming absolutely unfit for the public eye, as the headpiece of a gentleman! Why, the watching and tending of a new-born infant is nothing to it.
Consider how carefully it must be examined round and round every morning, that no new outward symptom of decay has made itself manifest. Consider the brushing, the smoothing down, the inking of corners and rims, the coaxing and wheedling, by softly squeezing it this way, and gently pulling it that, to induce it to keep as near as possible to its original shape. Nay, desperate attempts may sometimes be detected to make it assume yet a smarter form, in defiance of decay and dilapidation.