And happy thus, I then will spend my life
Free from the world’s temptation, toil, and strife.
M.
THE COFFEE CLUB.
No. III
“At last he is as welcome as a storm; he that is abroad shelters himself from it, and he that is at home shuts the door. If he intrudes himself yet, some with their jeering tongues give him many a gird, but his brazen impudence feels nothing; and let him be armed on free-scot with the pot and the pipe, he will give them leave to shoot their flouts at him till they be weary.”
Fuller’s Profane State.
Summer, with its transforming influence upon all things natural and artificial, has come, and the Coffee Club feels somewhat of its power. We introduced you, reader, to our room in the depth of winter, we welcomed you with a blazing hearth and the cheerful light of an astral, and our mystic tripod lustily bore witness to the strife of the hostile elements. But now the aspect of the room and the temper of its occupants is changed. A solitary taper with all its light, can scarce effect a dim obscure—the thick warm carpet is superseded by a flimsier texture of straw—the point of concentration is transferred from the glowing fire to the open window—the center-table is drawn back and relieved from its superincumbent load, that the eye may not be oppressed with a sense of heaviness—in every chair you find a lazy pillow, and even the sofa which would once contain all four, will scarce suffice for the extended length of Apple Dumpling—our coffee simmers over the sickly flame of a spirit lamp, and is quaffed in cooler draughts, and from comparatively tiny cups.
The temper of its occupants is likewise changed. That equable hilarity which seldom rose to jollity and never sank below cheerfulness, is gone; and its place is ill supplied by a fitful state of noisy mirth and moody silence. Tristo is alternately more melancholy and less so—Nescio, more entirely sensual, or more acutely intellectual, as the whim seizes him—Pulito is absorbed in attention to earthly nymphs one week, and shuts himself up in his room with the heaven-born muses the next—and Apple, who formerly, like some auxiliary verbs, had but one mood, is now variable through the whole paradigm. The disturbing influence of warm weather and bewitching moonlight is also perceptible in the irregularity of our meetings. But few, very few times have we been together this term, and then we have employed ourselves in the most random conversation. Even to-night we have but an unpromising prospect before us. Pulito and Apple are not here, and Tristo and myself have hitherto kept our thoughts to ourselves with most unsocial chariness. But hark! Pulito’s ‘light fantastic toe’ is on the stairs, and he must say something as he enters.
Pulito. “Good evening, gentlemen. You certainly have the true atrabilious aspect; ’twould spoil my face for a week to sit in close proximity with two such melancholy phizes. With your leave, therefore, Messieurs, I will take a cup, adjust my flowing locks, and be off. What beautiful little acorn-goblets you have here, Nescio, and then the delicacy of the beverage, so nicely adapted to the season. You have a rare taste in these matters, Quod.”