Lo! of night it is the noon!
See! the Hours their watch are keeping;
Lovely lieth Sappho sleeping!
G. H. H.
AN ALLIGATORICAL SKETCH.
NUMBER TWO OF LIFE IN FLORIDA.
How thoughtful in you, my kind Editor, to have inquired of me touching alligators! Think of my getting a summer’s day and a more than summer’s-day delight out of this March month and latitude of forty-two, and all by way of a thought alligatorical! Having taken that thought to bed with me last night, I awoke about sun-rise, at the first burst of a morning-hymn from the tree-tops at Picolata! The windows and doors were all open, and as I glanced here and there, with what unspeakable joy did I recognize the small cosy parlor with its comfortable lounges, the garden, the river, the hammock, and the barracks; and with what a feeling of delirium did I launch into the warm air to shout my delight!
Breakfasted upon hominy and syrup, fresh-made from H——’s plantation, with alternate mouthfuls of—you can’t think, Sir—straw-berries and cream! Large, ripe straw-berries, just gathered by a pretty girl and some one to help her, from the garden of Father Williams. Had a pleasant sail on the St. John’s after breakfast, and took the cool of the morning for a ride through the barrens to Augustine, where I have been all day running about town, half out of breath, dropping broken and hurried words on the familiar thresholds, with ejaculations of ‘Oh Lord!’ and ‘God bless you!’ and some things quite inarticulate and impossible to write; inspirations, so to speak; after all which I am just now returned, freighted with pleasant thoughts, to my closed windows, coal-fires, and other northerly necessities. But for this, Sir, I thought to have done with these ‘Sketches,’ as I like not that ambitious heading. ‘Gossip’ would have been better, Sir, and more appropriate; and under that modest title you would not have used the unintelligible stars that blaze to so little purpose in my last paper. Ah! Sir, you should have considered how difficult it is to gape—shocking word!—to gape gracefully!
And now to your queries: ‘Is the alligator fond of his grandmother? Does he devour his children? Does he hanker after little niggers? Is he wholly depraved and given up to the sins of the flesh, or hath he some social and playful qualities? And, lastly, what are his habits of life?’ You have given me quite too long a text, Sir: the more especially as I think, that upon most of these points the animal is decidedly non-committal; but not to hesitate for a single moment in answering your implied slanders, I declare, in short, that if the alligator affect his grandmother, it is not made public; and if he grieveth after little niggers, there are no leavings of evidence; as I take it, he hath no partialities, no mincing of morsels, no preference of parts.
I wish you to observe, Sir, at the start, that I have no resentments to gratify, no vengeance to wreak, no sins to compare, allegatorically. I am not rejoiced at being able to say, after some miserable deed, ‘So does the alligator.’ Nor do I think it necessary to impute evil from the difficulty of proving it. Such, to be sure, is the way of the world. The loftier, the more unimpeachable the character, the greater is the probability that it contain some hidden vice, some reach of horror quite worthy of concealment; and so it is, that after much sinning ourselves, (not before,) we attain to the relish of gossip, the deliciousness of scandal. A scandal proved, the excitement is over; but to imagine, to wonder, to embellish, to hover with a sneer, or a tear, as the humor happens, over a probable enormity, is the devil’s own pleasure, and to a taste properly matured, said to be very delectable. It is in this manner that unthinking fathers have amused themselves and their children with stories of an animal which on close acquaintance they would treat with far more respect.