[OLLAPODIANA.]
NUMBER XXI.
We parted, good my reader, last at the Catskills—no? 'It was a summer's evening;' and with my shadow on the mountain mist, I ween, vanished in your thoughts the memory of me. Well, that was natural. A hazy, dream-like idea of my whereabout may have haunted you for a moment—but it passed. I cannot allow you to escape so easily. 'Lend us the loan' of your eye, for some twenty minutes; and if you are a home-bred and untravelled person, 'tis likely, as the valet says in Cinderella, that 'I may chance to make you stare!'
In discoursing of the territorial wonderments in question, which have been moulded by the hand of the Almighty, I cannot suppose that you who read my reveries will look with a compact, imaginative eye upon that which has forced its huge radius upon my own extended vision. I ask you, howbeit, to take my arm, and step forth with me from the piazza of the Mountain House. It is night. A few stars are peering from a dim azure field of western sky; the high-soaring breeze, the breath of heaven, makes a stilly music in the neighboring pines; the meek crest of Dian rolls along the blue depths of ether, tinting with silver lines the half dun, half fleecy clouds; they who are in the parlors make 'considerable' noise; there is an individual at the end of the portico discussing his quadrupled julep, and another devotedly sucking the end of a cane, as if it were full of mother's milk; he hummeth also an air from Il Pirata, and wonders, in the simplicity of his heart, 'why the devil that there steam-boat from Albany, doesn't begin to show its lights down on the Hudson.' His companion of the glass, however, is intent on the renewal thereof. Calling to him the chief 'help' of the place, he says: 'Is that other antifogmatic ready?'
'No, Sir.'
'Well, now, person, what's the reason? What was my last observation? Says I to you, says I, 'Make me a fourth of them beverages;' and moreover I added, 'Just you keep doing so; be constantly making them, till the order is countermanded.' Give us another; go!—vanish!—'disappear, and appear!''
The obsequious servant went; and returning with the desired, draught, observed, probably for the thousandth time: 'There! that's what I call the true currency; them's the ginooyne mint drops; HA—ha—ha!'—these separate divisions of his laughter coming out of his mouth at intervals of about half a minute each.
There is a bench near the verge of the Platform where, when you sit at evening, the hollow-sounding air comes up from the vast vale below, like the restless murmurs of the ocean. Anchor yourself here for a while, reader, with me. It being the evening of the national anniversary, a few patriotic individuals are extremely busy in piling up a huge pyramid of dried pine branches, barrels covered with tar, and kegs of spirits, to a height of some fifteen or twenty feet—perhaps higher. A bonfire is premeditated. You shall see anon, how the flames will rise. The preparations are completed; the fire is applied. Hear how it crackles and hisses! Slowly but spitefully it mounts from limb to limb, and from one combustible to another, until the whole welkin is a-blaze, and shaking as with thunder! It is a beautiful sight. The gush of unwonted radiance rolls in effulgent surges adown the vale. How the owl hoots with surprise at the interrupting light! Bird of wisdom, it is the Fourth! and you may well add your voice to swell the choral honors of the time. How the tall old pines, withered by the biting scathe of Eld, rise to the view, afar and near—white shafts, bottomed in darkness, and standing like the serried spears of an innumerable army! The groups around the beacon are gathered together, but are forced to enlarge the circle of their acquaintance, by the growing intensity of the increasing blaze. Some of them, being ladies, their white robes waving in the mountain breeze, and the light shining full upon them, present, you observe, a beautiful appearance. The pale pillars of the portico flash fitfully into view, now seen and gone, like columns of mist. The swarthy African who kindled the fire regards it with perspiring face and grinning ivories; and lo! the man who hath mastered the quintupled glass of metamorphosed eau-de-vie, standing by the towering pile of flame, and, reaching his hand on high, he smiteth therewith his sinister pap, with a most hollow sound—the knell, as it were, of his departing reason. In short, he is making an oration!