Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Part 24

A kind of harber it seems to be, Facing the flow of a boundless sea.

Rows of gray old Tutors stand Ranged like rocks above the sand; Rolling beneath them, soft and green, Breaks the tide of bright sixteen,- One wave, two waves, three waves, four, Sliding up the sparkling floor; Then it ebbs to flow no more, Wandering off from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e With its freight of golden ore!

-Pleasant place for boys to play;- Better keep your girls away; Hearts get rolled as pebbles do Which countless fingering waves pursue, And every cla.s.sic beach is strown With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone.

But this is neither here nor there;- I'm talking about an old arm-chair.

You've heard, no doubt, of PARSON TURELL?

Over at Medford he used to dwell; Married one of the Mathers' folk; Got with his wife a chair of oak,- Funny old chair, with seat like wedge, Sharp behind and broad front edge,- One of the oddest of human things, Turned all over with k.n.o.bs and rings,- But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand,- Fit for the worthies of the land,- Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in, Or Cotton Mather to sit-and lie-in.

-Parson Turell bequeathed the same To a certain student,-SMITH by name; These were the terms, as we are told: "Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde; When he doth graduate, then to pa.s.se To ye oldest Youth in ye Senior Cla.s.se.

On Payment of"-(naming a certain sum)- "By him to whom ye Chaire shall come; He to ye oldest Senior next, And soe forever,"-(thus runs the text,)- "But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, That being his Debte for use of same."

_Smith_ transferred it to one of the BROWNS, And took his money,-five silver crowns.

_Brown_ delivered it up to MOORE, Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four.

_Moore_ made over the chair to LEE, Who gave him crowns of silver three.

_Lee_ conveyed it unto DREW, And now the payment, of course, was two.

_Drew_ gave up the chair to DUNN,- All he got, as you see, was one.

_Dunn_ released the chair to HALL, And got by the bargain no crown at all.

-And now it pa.s.sed to a second BROWN, Who took it, and likewise _claimed a crown_.

When _Brown_ conveyed it unto WARE, Having had one crown, to make it fair, He paid him two crowns to take the chair; And _Ware_, being honest, (as all Wares be,) He paid one POTTER, who took it, three.

Four got ROBINSON; five got DIX; JOHNSON _primus_ demanded six; And so the sum kept gathering still Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill -When paper money became so cheap, Folks wouldn't count it, but said "a heap,"

A certain RICHARDS, the books declare, (A. M. in '90? I've looked with care Through the Triennial,-_name not there_.) This person, Richards, was offered then Eight score pounds, but would have ten; Nine, I think, was the sum he took,- Not quite certain,-but see the book.

-By and by the wars were still, But nothing had altered the Parson's will.

The old arm-chair was solid yet, But saddled with such a monstrous debt!

Things grew quite too bad to bear, Paying such sums to get rid of the chair!

But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, And there was the will in black and white, Plain enough for a child to spell.

What should be done no man could tell, For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, And every season but made it worse.

As a last resort, to clear the doubt, They got old GOVERNOR HANc.o.c.k out.

The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop And his mounted truckmen, all c.o.c.k-a-hoop; Halberds glittered and colors flew, French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth And the b.u.mble-bee ba.s.s-drums boomed beneath; So he rode with all his band, Till the President met him, cap in hand.

-The Governor "hefted" the crowns, and said,- "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead."

The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he,- "There is your p'int. And here's my fee.

These are the terms you must fulfil,- On such conditions I BREAK THE WILL!"

The Governor mentioned what these should be.

(Just wait a minute and then you'll see.) The President prayed. Then all was still, And the Governor rose and BROKE THE WILL!

-"About those conditions?" Well, now you go And do as I tell you, and then you'll know.

Once a year, on Commencement-day, If you'll only take the pains to stay, You'll see the President in the CHAIR, Likewise the Governor sitting there.

The President rises; both old and young May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair?

And then his Excellency bows, As much as to say that he allows.

The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; He bows like t'other, which means the same.

And all the officers round 'em bow, As much as to say that _they_ allow.

And a lot of parchments about the chair Are handed to witnesses then and there, And then the lawyers hold it clear That the chair is safe for another year.

G.o.d bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give Money to colleges while you live.

Don't be silly and think you'll try To bother the colleges, when you die, With codicil this, and codicil that, That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat; For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill, And there's always a flaw in a donkey's will!

-Hospitality is a good deal a matter of lat.i.tude, I suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves an African for a hut; his dwelling is all door and no walls; everybody can come in. To make a morning call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a long tunnel; his house is all walls and no door, except such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has.

One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation between these two extremes. In cities where the evenings are generally hot, the people have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to mean temperature.

Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may realize, by a sudden extension in his sphere of consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the most part.-Do you not remember something like this? July, between 1 and 2, P. M., Fahrenheit 96, or thereabout. Windows all gaping, like the mouths of panting dogs.

Long, stinging cry of a locust comes in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgotten there was such a tree. Baby's screams from a house several blocks distant;-never knew there were any babies in the neighborhood before. Tinman pounding something that clatters dreadfully,-very distinct, but don't remember any tinman's shop near by. Horses stamping on pavement to get off flies. When you hear these four sounds, you may set it down as a warm day. Then it is that one would like to imitate the mode of life of the native at Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroll into the market in natural costume,-buy a water-melon for a halfpenny,-split it, and scoop out the middle,-sit down in one half of the empty rind, clap the other on one's head, and feast upon the pulp.

-I see some of the London journals have been attacking some of their literary people for lecturing, on the ground of its being a public exhibition of themselves for money. A popular author can print his lecture; if he deliver it, it is a case of _quaestum corpore_, or making profit of his person. None but "sn.o.bs" do that. _Ergo_, etc. To this I reply,-_Negatur minor_. Her Most Gracious Majesty, the Queen, exhibits herself to the public as a part of the service for which she is paid. We do not consider it low-bred in her to p.r.o.nounce her own speech, and should prefer it so to hearing it from any other person, or reading it.

His Grace and his Lordship exhibit themselves very often for popularity, and their houses every day for money.-No, if a man shows himself other than he is, if he belittles himself before an audience for hire, then he acts unworthily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned authors who have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieutenants (of the press) stick a too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in England, instead of with a rapier, as in France.-Poh!

All England is one great menagerie, and, all at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being willing to become a part of the exhibition!

THE LONG PATH.

(_Last of the Parentheses_.)

Yes, that was my last walk with the _schoolmistress_. It happened to be the end of a term; and before the next began, a very nice young woman, who had been her a.s.sistant, was announced as her successor, and she was provided for elsewhere. So it was no longer the schoolmistress that I walked with, but-Let us not be in unseemly haste. I shall call her the schoolmistress still; some of you love her under that name.

When it became known among the boarders that two of their number had joined hands to walk down the long path of life side by side, there was, as you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess I pitied our landlady.

It took her all of a suddin,-she said. Had not known that we was keepin company, and never mistrusted anything particular. Ma'am was right to better herself. Didn't look very rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired haalp, she calc'lated.-The great maternal instinct came crowding up in her soul just then, and her eyes wandered until they settled on her daughter.

-No, poor, dear woman,-that could not have been. But I am dropping one of my internal tears for you, with this pleasant smile on my face all the time.

The great mystery of G.o.d's providence is the permitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of as that experiment of putting an animal under the bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it. [I never saw the accursed trick performed. _Laus Deo_!] There comes a time when the souls of human beings, women, perhaps, more even than men, begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society places its transparent bell-gla.s.s over the young woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal experiments. The element by which only the heart lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch her through its transparent walls;-her bosom is heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle, compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the gradual fire" were the images that frightened her most. How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!

Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self-saturated young person, whoever you may be, now reading this,-little thinking you are what I describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of such mult.i.tudes worthier than yourself. But it is only my surface-thought which laughs. For that great procession of the UNLOVED, who not only wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown or gray,-under the snowy cap, under the chilling turban,-hide it even from themselves,-perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills them,-there is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere,-somewhere,-love is in store for them,-the universe must not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive young persons seek to recommend themselves to the favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are impelled by their G.o.d-given instincts!

Read what the singing-women-one to ten thousand of the suffering women-tell us, and think of the griefs that die unspoken! Nature is in earnest when she makes a woman; and there are women enough lying in the next churchyard with very commonplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for whom it was just as true that "all sounds of life a.s.sumed one tone of love," as for Let.i.tia Landon, of whom Elizabeth Browning said it; but she could give words to her grief, and they could not.-Will you hear a few stanzas of mine?

THE VOICELESS.

We count the broken lyres that rest Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,- But o'er their silent sister's breast The wild flowers who will stoop to number?

A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them;- Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them!

Nay, grieve not for the dead alone Whose song has told their hearts' sad story,- Weep for the voiceless, who have known The cross without the crown of glory!

Not where Leucadian breezes sweep O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, But where the glistening night-dews weep On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow.

O hearts that break and give no sign Save whitening lip and fading tresses, Till Death pours out his cordial wine Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses,- If singing breath or echoing chord To every hidden pang were given, What endless melodies were poured, As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!

I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly off, after all. That young man from another city who made the remark which you remember about Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared at our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to me rather attentive to this young lady. Only last evening I saw him leaning over her while she was playing the accordion,-indeed, I undertook to join them in a song, and got as far as "Come rest in this boo-oo," when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned off, as one steps out of a procession, and left the ba.s.so and soprano to finish it. I see no reason why this young woman should not be a very proper match for a man that laughs about Boston State-house. He can't be very particular.

The young fellow whom I have so often mentioned was a little free in his remarks, but very good-natured.-Sorry to have you go,-he said.-School-ma'am made a mistake not to wait for me. Haven't taken anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since I heard of it.-_Mourning_ fruit,-said I,-what's that?-Huckleberries and blackberries,-said he;-couldn't eat in colors, raspberries, currants, and such, after a solemn thing like this happening.-The conceit seemed to please the young fellow. If you will believe it, when we came down to breakfast the next morning, he had carried it out as follows. You know those odious little "saas-plates" that figure so largely at boarding-houses, and especially at taverns, into which a strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogeneous of composition, which it makes you feel homesick to look at, and into which you poke the elastic coppery tea-spoon with the air of a cat dipping her foot into a wash-tub,-(not that I mean to say anything against them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin honey, or "lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white silver, with the Tower-stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy,-as people in the green stage of millionism will have them,-I can dally with their amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a shiver,)-you know these small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down the next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of solemn black huckleberries. But one of those plates held red currants, and was covered with a red rose; the other held white currants, and was covered with a white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and then a short silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the old gentleman opposite was in trouble to get at his bandanna handkerchief.

-"What was the use in waiting? We should be too late for Switzerland, that season, if we waited much longer."-The hand I held trembled in mine, and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herself before the feet of Ahasuerus.-She had been reading that chapter, for she looked up,-if there was a film of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not enough to accent the dimples,-and said, in her pretty, still way,-"If it please the king, and if I have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem right before the king, and I be pleasing in his eyes"-

I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or said when Esther got just to that point of her soft, humble words,-but I know what I did. That quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. We came to a compromise on the great question, and the time was settled for the last day of summer.

In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, much as usual, as you may see by what I have reported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain tenderness they all showed toward us, after the first excitement of the news was over. It came out in trivial matters,-but each one, in his or her way, manifested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, when we had chickens, sent the _liver_ instead of the _gizzard_, with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, though some landladies _appear_ as if they did not know the difference. The whole of the company were even more respectfully attentive to my remarks than usual. There was no idle punning, and very little winking on the part of that lively young gentleman who, as the reader may remember, occasionally interposed some playful question or remark, which could hardly be considered relevant,-except when the least allusion was made to matrimony, when he would look at the landlady's daughter, and wink with both sides of his face, until she would ask what he was pokin' his fun at her for, and if he wasn't ashamed of himself.

In fact, they all behaved very handsomely, so that I really felt sorry at the thought of leaving my boarding-house.

I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune.

You may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what _great merchants_ call very rich, I was comfortable,-comfortable,-so that most of those moderate luxuries I described in my verses on _Contentment_-_most_ of them, I say-were within our reach, if we chose to have them. But I found out that the schoolmistress had a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto been worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made her think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did,-modestly as I have expressed my wishes.

It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young woman, whom one has contrived to win without showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the world values so highly, in following the lead of her affections.

That was an enjoyment I was now ready for.