Or mad thoughts chasing you like hounds;
Don’t ask me how it drives and drowns,
But come and dine on Zounds and Sounds.
Finishing the song, I looked about for my flute to find a tune for it, but reflecting that I should wake the house, put it by again for another time. ‘After all,’ said I, ‘a flute couldn’t touch that z sound. Indeed what can? What is there like it? Has a church-bell any tone approximating it even? Has a violin? Has a hautboy? Has a French horn? Has a jew’s-harp? Ay, that’s the thing! A Jew’s-harp has something like it; and so—so has a bumble-bee. A thought strikes me! It is possible that Zounds and Sounds are—Yes,’ said I, rising and shouting with the excitement, ‘Zounds and Sounds are bumble-bees!—bumble-bees curiously prepared; gathered in some warm climate where they abound, and pickled! Henceforth let no man call that bee ‘humble;’ he is bumble, most decidedly!’ And with this thought I hurried off to bed. ••• It may have been an hour afterward, while I was in the maze between sleeping and waking, that the words ‘Zounds and Sounds’ escaped me, unawares. ‘What’s that?’ said Fanny, starting up. ‘Are you sure that I spoke?’ said I. ‘Indeed, I am; you said something about going down town.’ ‘Did I? Well, I forgot to tell you. I am going down town; so you must not be surprised at my rising early to-morrow. I think of breakfasting out.’ ‘You think! I should think you did; thinking aloud, and asleep too! Don’t think so again, dear; you woke me out of a sound sleep.’ ••• At an early hour the next morning, I was at my friend’s house. How I got there, I do not now remember; but I have a distinct recollection of a ringing sensation in my head, and of not being quite sure that I was awake, till the romping of a dozen children, and a buzzing sound every where of Zounds and Sounds aroused me to a full sense of the great treat that was coming. Then it was that I sang the last night’s song, and it took immensely, especially with the children. Harry was not there to hear it, and lost that pleasure, (as I have never repeated it,) unless he heard it in the kitchen, where he was superintending the burden of the song. Shortly after, came the call of ‘breakfast,’ and we all walked in, at least fifteen of us, and took seats at the table before the Zounds and Sounds were brought in. Harry was already seated at the head. Presently the Zounds came in, piping hot; but before they had reached the table, Harry turned to me and asked if I had any preference. ‘Have you taken the stingers out?’ said I, thinking of bumble-bees. ‘Stingers!’ said Harry. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon,’ said I; ‘only a joke;’ and making a bold guess at some white things that now appeared on the table, added, ‘A little of the breast.’ Harry smiled, but said nothing. Plates were now served all around. Breakfast went on, and Zounds and Sounds went down, and every body appeared to be perfectly charmed with the dish. One might say, to be sure, that they were a little saltish, and then again, with that exception, there was no remarkable flavor; but that might be the rarity, not to have any flavor. No one, however, thought aloud in this manner. On the contrary, there was a manifest inclination to detect resemblances of taste and flavor to those of very many rare and delicate cookeries; but after awhile there came a pause. It was during this pause, that my friend turned to his wife and inquired if she was quite sure they were seasoned properly. ‘I think they are a little salt,’ said Mrs. H——; but, my dear, you know you prepared them yourself.’ Harry looked thunder-clouds, and called one of the servants. ‘Mary,’ said he, ‘take the key and bring me a raw Zound. You will find two buckets-full in the wine-cellar.’ Wondering at this, we wondered still more at finding our coffee-cups all empty at the same time. Each one was waiting for drink. The raw Zound was now brought, and Harry, plunging his fork into it, while all eyes were fixed upon him, turned it over and over, examining it on all sides, and then, with his arm at a right angle, raised it deliberately to his nose. Almost instantaneously, and while still some distance off, there came a very wise expression about his nostrils, which, as the Zound came nearer, dilated still more and more, deepening the expression to a frightful extent, till, all doubts removed, he shouted out: ‘Codfish! by thunder!’
We had actually taken within us, and bepraised, the unfreshened tongues and bladders of codfish!
It is now more than a week, O Editor! since this breakfast came off, or rather since it went down, for it isn’t off yet; even now, that taste——Do you know what it is, Sir, to have your jaws hang?—to be always on the eve of a gape?—to be afraid of the tongs or the snuffers, or a tall man, especially in tights, lest the next yawn may wholly tear up your spinous process, your spheroid cartilage?—hang the doctors!—do you understand? Well; I am in that way; and it’s all from those confounded Zounds and Sounds!
Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—Coming home lateish to-night from the opera, we found the following, written in what Mrs. Malaprop would term ‘rather ineligible characters,’ as if hastily reduced to paper. Howbeit, we knew it at once for the ‘hand-write’ of our favorite, facile and felicitous historian of Tinnecum. He is one of your persons now who thinks, and not a member of that hum-drum class who only think they think; moreover, he knows ‘how to observe’ better even than Miss Martineau. It was an every-day thing which struck him, in the aspect of our winter-sleighs, as he rode up in one of them a day or two ago; but this sketch of ‘The Snow-Omnibus’ is not so common: ‘Past midnight! The embers are dying. The thunder of the city becomes a dull roar, the roar a murmur: then comes a dead pause, interrupted sometimes by the watchman’s club as it rings on the pavement, or the shrill, solitary whistler executing the threadbare airs of the opera, or ‘Life on the Ocean Wave.’ The door opens without noise. I lift up my nodding head and see Dr. Bartolo, his hat like a miller’s, and his whiskers fringed with white. With tread soft as a mouse or an apparition, he illumes his candle, turns on his heel, and says in a whisper very appropriate to the time, the place, and the fact conveyed: ‘It snows!’ Such is the only intimation to break the magic and the mystery of the early morning, unless it be the small tinkling of bells like frogs in a brook; a complete shifting or rather change of scene noiselessly wrought; a foul city purified, whitened, sparkling, and glorious, like a Scarlet Lady who emerges with her meretricious charms in chaste robes, chaste as Diana. She taketh the veil. The virgin-snow is unsullied upon her bosom, just as it dropped softly out of heaven, undefiled by footsteps, dazzling only to conceal. ’Tis but the momentary semblance of purity. The sun is up. Hark! the tumult and excitement is begun. The crowds throng and jostle through the pure element; the horses prance to the gay and perpetual chimes, and Broadway is the paradise of belles. Underneath all is the obscenity of filth! What attracts our attention, however, is your snow-omnibus, very different in looks, spirit and animation from the same lumbering carriage upon wheels. What do you see in the latter? A set of cross, hungry-looking men, going up town to dinner, packed together in a magnetizing attitude, with knees jammed against knees, and eyes wherever they can find a place to put them; women crushed between stout fellows, and indecently nudged at every apology of a jolt; in short, a penthouse of ill-humour; twelve ‘all full’ people; whiskerandi, gentle maidens, wives, and ‘live widders,’ ranged with solemn regularity like coffins in a vault. All fix their eyes where their minds are, on vacuity, and try to be for the time present, what they seem to be, as stupid as the devil, as if they dreaded some sympathetic contact, revealing bank-frauds and transactions in stocks. Who ever saw a smile in an omnibus, even when court-plasters have changed places? You might as well look into a slow-driven hearse for something sunshiny! Your broker dares not even chuckle. Your exquisite cannot resort for consolation to the suction of his cane, but all look grim and virtuous as Seneca, until they pull the leather, pass up six-pence through the port-hole, and as they open the door, their faces begin to expand, but only with the animal anticipation of dinner. Compare this with the grouping and animation of the Sleigh-omnibus; heads piled upon heads, as in a picture; black hats, feathers, plumage, barrel-caps, etc., bobbing about in a lively manner to the music of bells. Down they go into the gullies, through thick and thin, with a ludicrous contrast and juxtaposition of faces; all forced in spite of themselves to give expression to their several humors, mirth, deviltry, or spleen. Cheeks glow, eyes shine, spectacles sparkle, glances fly impudently to the windows where the face of beauty presses against the cold pane. The runner sinks into a ‘rut,’ and that makes the company bow to each other, and gives that old rascal of a sexegenarian an excuse to bring his gray whiskers very near to the blooming visage of a girl whose charming modesty is shrined in colors more delicate than the blush on the cheek of a magnum-bonum plum. Sixty must not aspire after such fruitage; but in an omnibus, where’s the harm? But we have a remark to make on nosology, or the noses of the group. So spicy a variety of folk cheek-by-jowl (Parthians and Elamites, Medes, Jews and Persians,) begets contrast. Nose-bridges of all styles show their peculiar architecture, Roman or Grecian; while straight, crooked, bottle, snub, pug; some flat and with no bridge at all, others very much abridged; are brought together in an amicable jostling, ‘comparing themselves by themselves,’ and setting off one another as a rose sets off a geranium. While I point out these peculiarities to my friend Phiz, a coral shriek rends the air, and by heavens! the whole load is upset!’ ••• We hear from all quarters ‘good exclamation’ on the Directions for Sonnet-Making, from the popular pen of our friend ‘T. W. P.’ in our last number. An eastern correspondent, however, questions the correctness of one assumption of the writer: ‘It would be well to avoid coupling such words as moon and spoon; breeze and cheese and sneeze; Jove and stove; hope and soap; all of which it might be difficult to bring together harmoniously.’ Our correspondent thinks that this decree was issued without due reflection; and he proceeds to substantiate his position by ‘the ocular proof:’
SONNET.
Through hazy clouds, scarce ruffled by the breeze,
Methought, last night, I saw the man i’ th’ moon;