Yes, my lad, I think the glimpses I am about to give you of the old Virginia life will refresh your tired soul. Just as it refreshes mine to draw the pictures for you. For from me, as well, the reality has vanished. Our civil war (war of the rebellion, as the underbred among the victors still call it) swept that into the abyss of the past; but let me with such poor wand as I wield summon it before you.
In Pompeii, the tourist, looking from blank wall to dusty floor, wonders what there is to see in that little hall; but a native goes down upon his hands and knees; with a few brisk passes of his hand the sand is brushed away, and a Numidian lion glares forth from the tessellated pavement. So I, brushing aside the fast-settling dust, would make you see that old life as I saw it.
And, strangely enough, I, too, have a lion to show you. For, while my real object was by a series of sketches to bring into clear relief the careless ease, the sweet tranquillity, the unapproachable serenity of those old days, I did not see my way to making these sketches interesting. (For not alone in a repast for the body is the serving almost everything.) But the thought occurred to me to stitch them together with the thread of a story into a kind of panorama. For this story I had to find a hero. To invent one would have been, I am sure, quite beyond my powers; and what I should have done I am at a loss to conjecture had I not found one ready made to my hand: a very remarkable young man, that is, who in a very remarkable way suddenly made his appearance upon the boards of our little theatre, upon which were serenely enacting the tranquil scenes in which I would steep your care-worn soul. This is the lion that I have to show you. And when he begins to shake his mane and lash his sides, you will find things growing a trifle lurid in our little impromptu drama. Absolutely none of which was upon the original programme. But dropping from the sky, as it were, in the midst of our troupe, what should he do but straightway fall in love with one of our pretty little actresses. And then the trouble began and the tranquillity came to an end.
13.
As for me, the manager of the show, you will see that I have done my best to relieve the gloom. Between the acts,—between the scenes,—nay, even while they are going on,—you shall find me continually popping out before the foot-lights and interrupting the play, and raking the audience with a rattling rigmarole. All for the sake of keeping their spirits up. And on more than one occasion I go the length (or breadth, as Alice suggests) of standing on my head and making faces at Charley in the prompter’s box. How I should have gotten on had he not sat there, or without Alice in the wings (to superintend the love-passages), I am sure I cannot tell. And if, at the end of the play, I am called before the curtain, I shall refuse to budge unless hand in hand with my two co-workers; who, though content to be for the most part silent partners in this undertaking, have really put in most of the capital.
14.
It is understood, then, between us, Ah Yung, that while this story is composed for your delectation, the injunctions of my publisher force me to recognize the possibility of contemporary readers. The situation is awkward. As though a third person were present at a confidential interview. Ah, I have it.
While I am talking to you, the contemporary reader may nod; and when I turn to her, you have leave to nap it. And small blame to the contemporary reader. For what I shall say to you will seem to her (and especially my didactic spurts) the merest rubbish.
Every school-boy knows that, she will say.
But I am not to be put down by this crushing and familiar phrase of our day, which simply means that the fact in question is known to the Able-Editor, who looked it up in the cyclopædia on his desk an hour since. Every school-boy in ancient times knew, for instance, what kind of a school Aristotle went to, and how he was taught, and what. Aspasia, we may feel sure, knew no German, nor had even a smattering of French; while all conceivable ologies were so much Greek to her. And yet she must have known something. For statesmen and philosophers flocked to her boudoir, and, when she spoke, sat at her feet, silent and wondering. What had she been taught, and how? Every contemporary school-girl knew. What audience could be found now in the wide world that could keep pace with the eloquence of Demosthenes? How had the Athenian populace been taught? For they were more wonderful than their orator. Ah, how much would we not give to know! But no one thought it worth his while to set it all down in a little book; and we know not, and must darkly guess. Else would we rise as one man, and, rushing with torches to all the colleges and universities of the land, incinerate within their costly walls their armies of professors, along with the hordes of oarsmen and acrobats that they annually empty on the world.