Chapter III: Part 3

The ballet is drawing to a close. Only Venturola and Westmael are left. Venturola has outdone herself, and her fine _diminuendo_ whirl has gained for her not only a bouquet but the coveted encore. She is satisfied, and in her nervous manner she chatters French, German and English to everybody. The familiar music of Westmael's brief closing solo strikes up. She is standing, as at the first, quietly in the wing. She has paid no attention to the dance. By a stranger she would have been taken only for a listless observer. She is evidently in pain and very sick to-night, and the hard, dry cough grates upon the ear, but at the first bar of the music her face lights up and she springs upon the stage with no trace of trouble. Every movement is perfect, from the dainty, spirited, bold walk upon the toes to the final pose, and there is no mistaking the encore that follows. The encore does not seem to have any charm for her to-night, but the audience compel it, and by a tremendous effort of the will she repeats. I say by a tremendous effort, for as she returns she instantly relapses into her old state. Her breath comes and goes spasmodically and her chest is thumping as if a sledge-hammer were at work within it. She staggers along a few steps and faints, and pitying hands carry her to her room. To-morrow night she will be herself again, but to-night it has been a burden.

It would not be proper for me to disclose the workings of the last, or Transformation Scene; and if it were, I would not strip off the romance, grace and beauty that surround and pervade it. I can only admire the skill, taste and knowledge of effects--the genius which with the slightest of materials can produce an illusion so brilliant and captivating, both to the eye and ear. It requires a genius akin to that of the best worker in oils, and a taste and imagination of the highest order.

The calcium lights are extinguished. The colored fires have burned down. The prompter closes his book. The figures of the tableaux descend from their graceful but uncomfortable positions. The property man is looking after his properties. The manager is thanking "you, ladies, very well done." The lights are turned off. Rhine land and Rhine River vanish, and I leave the stage for this upper world.

December 14, 1867.

_A CHRISTMAS CAROL._

In the year 1 of our blessed Lord, a carpenter came with his wife to Bethlehem to pay his taxes, and it is to be hoped he did not have to shut his eyes and grit his teeth as I did when I paid mine in the year 1867 of our blessed Lord.

If the taxes at Bethlehem were on the scale of the taxes at Chicago, it is no wonder that the carpenter and his wife lodged in a stable.

On that night a Child was born among the cattle, and the angels opened the doors of Heaven and flooded the whole Bethlehem Plain with music, what time the shepherds leaned upon their staves to listen, and the sheep knelt down upon their knees in adoration. And wise, long-bearded Magi of the Orient came upon their camels, bearing gifts with them and following the star which never tarried until it stood over the young Child.

And from that Christmas to this Christmas, do I solemnly believe, that on each recurrence of the birthday of our blessed Lord, the angels open wide the doors of Heaven and smile upon each young child, and that some star still stands over each young child to guide Santa Claus on his beautiful errand.

Now I know that old Midas, who never had an aspiration of soul that soared higher than a quintal of codfish, nor an imagination that was not regularly ruled and indexed with a Dr. on one side, and a Cr. on the other, and a $ all over it; and that Mrs. Midas, whose theory of life is bounded by a bonnet-string and colored with the latest Bismarck shade, will shrug shoulders at the idea. And well they may, for I think it exceedingly doubtful whether the smallest star in the canopy would find it worth while to stand over either of them. And yet do I believe that there are choice spirits over whom a star stands, raining down blessed influences and ever bringing them closer together.

And thus the first Christmas was celebrated in that Bethlehem stable one thousand eight hundred and sixty-seven years ago, and when it was over, the carpenter took his tax receipt, unvexed by special assessments for lamp posts, Nicolson pavements, plank sidewalks, etc., and went on his way rejoicing.

It seems to me, furthermore, that I hang up my stocking--that stocking which all the rest of the year has held only a foot, terror to shoemakers, and a bunion worthy its namesake, the immortal Tinker--on the most beautiful day of the year. It comes set like a jewel in the very heart of winter; when all nature is at rest; when the days are shortest and the nights are darkest; when every bird is silent upon the hillside; when no leaf is green but the holly, and the ivy, and the winter-green; when the weather is bleakest without but cheeriest within; when the storms sweep through the streets and the house-fires glow ruddiest on the hearths; when the grayest sky is made bright by Santa Claus, Kriss Kringle and the Christ-Kindchen; and Christmas-tide runs joyfully with wassail and taper-lighted tree, and song and dance. New Year has come to be hedged in by fashion. Fourth of July is a matter of buncombe. Thanksgiving is dear to the stomach. But Christmas is the day of all days--the best and the brightest of the year.

I would like to be a little child, or an old woman, it matters little which, to really enjoy Christmas. I would like to have back all the angles which friction with the world has rubbed off, and to thoroughly believe in the existence of that Laplander who drives his team of reindeer athwart the housetops, tethers them to the chimneys, and fills up the small stockings on the bed-posts; and to stand before a Christmas tree under the firm conviction that there never was anything so beautiful in the world before.

Or I would like to be an old woman, to sit, with my feet to the fire, in the arm-chair, with my best cap on, and just one gray curl escaping from it--that identical curl which played the deuce with gouty, rheumatic, splenetic, dear old John Anderson, in the chair opposite, half a century ago, when we were the pride of the whole country-side; with not a single wrinkle on my smooth face; with my silk gown on, which will stand alone; with my flock of children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren trooping about me; with blessed memories of a long and well-spent life: with tender recollections of eighty Christmases, dead and under the snow, whose ghosts flit by me in the ashes; with the beautiful privilege of extending my hands over the young heads and blessing them, as the Lord Christ stretches his hands in benediction over the earth each Christmas, and confers upon it the gift of his grace.

Even the crisp brown goose, smoking upon the platter, down whose streaming sides the little rivulets of rich gravy are trickling, his breast bursting with all savory essences, happy in his side pieces and doubly blessed in his second joints, is to be congratulated on his culinary canonization. The bald eagle, flying from the Atlantic to the Pacific, gazing at the sun because it don't hurt him a particle, and stealing chickens and other small deer from the barnyards; and the strutting turkey of Thanksgiving, with his shrivelled, chippy breast and stringy legs, are unworthy of mention by the side of the Christmas goose. Is it not well worth the while of any feathered biped to be a fool through life, the scoff and scorn of dogs and men, if haply he may achieve an apotheosis like that of the Christmas goose? He dies that we may dine. He dies in the flesh to resurrect in the oven. He passes from mortal sight to reappear in _pate de foie gras_. He gives his head cheerfully to the block that his body may be the crowning glory and the holocaust of Christmas-tide. His life, homely and foolish as it is, is not altogether in vain. How many of us bipeds without feathers may lay claim to the same merits?

If there is a sad spot in all the earth, on Christmas morning, it must be the house where there are no children; over which no star stops; in which there is no small stocking to be filled; in which no juvenile carnival will be celebrated. The giving of gifts is one of the most blessed privileges of the day. Blessed, too, on that day, is the bachelor uncle or brother, who can confer gifts upon the little ones, and thrice blessed the good sister of every neighborhood, who makes glad so many little hearts. If there is a wretched person on earth, it must be the man who can't or won't make a Christmas gift.

And, in all our Christmas giving, let us remember this, that under many roofs no Christmas-tree will blaze, and on many hearths the ashes will be gray and cold; that in many homes the voice of the angel, proclaiming the Bethlehem message, "Peace on earth, and good will to men," will be silenced by the wolf at the door; that many little feet will be cold upon the pavement, wandering about in quest of food; that many little eyes will peer into the windows and wonder at the strange sights and sounds; that poverty, hunger and despair will be the only visitants at many firesides in this Christian land of ours, filled with feasting and plenty. Let us therefore in all our giving remember that "the greatest of these is charity." Let us remember that the abodes of poverty are doubly dear to us on this day of all the year. Let us cheer them with our bounty, and vivify them with words of joy and hope. Let us make our star stand over these homes. Let us remember the poor, for the first Christmas was celebrated in a stable among the cattle, and the Christ-child was born in a manger, for the carpenter and his wife, who came down to pay taxes, were very poor.

My carol would not be closed without my Christmas wishes. And therefore a merry Christmas-tide to all gentle people, and a blotting out of all enmities on Christmas morn. A merry Christmas to all, saints and sinners. A merry Christmas to Aurelia and Celeste basking in the sunshine, and to Bridget in the shade. A merry Christmas to my enemy, whom I forgive, and to my friend, in whose heart I live. A merry Christmas to all children whose little lips will syllable the sweet utterances of childhood. A merry Christmas to the homeless, and the outcasts, and the Pariahs--God help them. A merry Christmas to my creditors, and many returns of the same. A merry Christmas and a full wassail bowl to all good fellows. A merry Christmas to the TRIBUNE and all its readers, and, Mr. Editor, a merry Christmas to you upon your tripod, and may your stockings be well filled.

And "Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, and good will to men."

December 25, 1867.

_THE NEW YEAR._

The closing of the year offers some epistolary temptations which it is hard to resist. One fiend says "write;" the other says "don't."

One fiend shows me the admirable things I might say, as, for instance: The old man going out sadly, and the young man coming in gleefully. This, done up with allusions to biers and shrouds and angels and roses, would be a stunner.

Again, I could make a strong point out of the hour-glass, with the grains of sand slipping through, skilfully keeping up the interest until I got to the last grain, which I could manipulate up to a thrilling denouement.

And then what a touching picture I might draw of 1867 frozen on his bier, his crown tumbled off and his sceptre broken; and what a bacchanalian revelry I might paint in introducing the birth of 1868.

And again, I might draw a strong draft on the tears of tender readers by recalling recollections of the Old year and casting the horoscope of the New.

And think of the magnificent material I might have to use in doing all this: the dark shores of Eternity, the waves of Styx, old Charon, all the cheerful paraphernalia of the undertaker, and the appliances of the _accoucheur_, which would form the _piece de resistance_, not to speak of the garnitures of regrets, tears, sighs, resolutions, prophesies, flowers, cherubs, broken harp-strings and other properties which might be mixed in indiscriminately, and with a sort of blue-fire effect, which would be telling.

And as there is nothing else to write about, it shows that I have a good deal of moral courage when I solemnly assert that I am not going to say a word about them.

For, _cui bono_?

The world will continue to turn on its axis every twenty-four hours. Old Midas will continue to crust his soul over with $ marks, until he gets them on so thickly that he won't be able to give an account of himself on the Day of Judgment, without referring to his ledger or sending for his confidential clerk. Mrs. Midas will go on saying ungracious things about her next-door neighbor, who can "see" her bonnet and go ten dollars better every time. Celeste will continue to distract her pretty little empty head in solving the problem of a new bias. Aurelia and Mr. Peplum will continue to have their little differences over the muffins, which will begin to abate with the soup, and disappear in a torrent of regrets over the mediatory Souchong. Railroads will continue to cook people alive without a pang of remorse. Men and women will continue to air their dirty linen and haul each other through the mud of the divorce courts, under the insane idea that other people will be interested in their small vices, just as if other people hadn't any of their own which were just as interesting.

The coming year will be very like the going year, and thus the world will keep going round the sun for us, until the Great Manager sends the call-boy to summon us up for the last act. We shall then make our parting bow--pray God, all of us like gentlemen, and the curtain will come down.

But because our little stage grows suddenly dark, it does not follow that the great audience in front of the curtain will break up and go home, or that other actors will not play their parts on the same grand stage of life.

And a hundred years hence it is not altogether improbable that our little ant-hill, over which we have made such a fuss, and up and down which we have paraded so often, and on which we have expended so much effort to make it larger than the next hill, will be utterly forgotten; and that, in those far-off days, we may be blowing down Clark street on some fine, breezy, spring day, or sold in the form of cabbage from some itinerant Teuton's cart; or, if we have been good children, that we may be blossoming in a daisy, or looking out of the blue eyes of a violet at the great, white, lying slab close by, in a maze of wonder at the saints we were a hundred years ago.

You see all these things are to be considered in deciding whether to say anything about New Year's. And as I have before stated that I am not going to say anything about it, this relieves me from alluding to New Year's calls.

Because if I were to say anything about them I should have to hurt the feelings of the Dear Creatures. It would be unkind, for instance, to go to work deliberately and catalogue Aurelia's callers; Old Gunnybags, who carries into effect his business regulations, atoning on that day, by wholesale, his little retail visiting sins of the year; the bashful young man who remarks that it is a very fine day to-day, that it was remarkable weather yesterday, and that he shouldn't be surprised at pleasant weather to-morrow; and who, having fired off his little speech, falls back in good order to the refreshments; the mental leisure which Titmouse enjoys, who does a smashing day's business on a small capital by establishing a reputation for wit in three hundred families, upon whom he has palmed off the same brilliant remarks, the same carefully drawn out repartee and the same conundrum; the young man of florid complexion and rather heavy build, who makes the duration of his call conditional upon the character of refreshments, and who will not fail to mention your sins of omission to Mrs. Brown, next door, who has spread herself on London sherry and boned turkey; the bore who never calls but once a year, and then tries to become a permanent boarder; the nuisance whom you never saw before and never want to see again; old Deacon Glum, who tenderly inquires after your soul, in a business sort of way remarks on the brevity of time, and throws in a lot of those pretty metaphors which I threw out at the commencement of this letter; young FitzHenry, who has a wine supper for six wagered that he will do his four hundred calls before six o'clock, and is now on his last heat; that fellow Boodle, with the long nose and little eyes, who is making up a collection of small gossip which he will dish up for the next six months. It would be unfair to catalogue all these nice people, and I will spare Aurelia's feelings by refusing to do it.

Neither do I propose on this occasion to allude to the astounding number of resolutions which I make on the first day of the year and break regularly before I reach the second week of January. If I have one faculty better developed than another, it is that of making and breaking resolutions. Didn't I firmly resolve the first of last January that I would be very temperate in the use of the King's English for the space of three hundred and sixty-five days? And when two hours later I slipped down on the sidewalk, and in the operation sat down on my new hat and looked up to see a thoughtless young man laughing at me, didn't I break that resolution and address some remarks to that thoughtless young man which were rather more emphatic than elegant?

I fancy I did.

Equally when I was a little boy did I not resolve one New Year's Day that I would keep the whole Ten Commandments, and was I not caught in the preserve closet the same day and subjected to a degree of corporal punishment which made me break nearly all the rest of them before night?

I never saw but one person who succeeded in keeping a New Year's resolution, and he had pined away so rapidly in his physical and grown so abnormally in his moral man, that it was really painful to look at him. He was the nearest approach to an angel on half rations I ever expect to see. A good meal would have made him sick, but I really believe he would have bolted at one gulp the entire nine tons of tracts which some New York individual has kindly forwarded to the Young Men's Christian Association.

I cannot but admire the theological cheek of this man. His brass is of no ordinary description. It is sonorous, stately, magnificent. Nine tons of tracts! Twenty thousand one hundred and sixty pounds of appeal to the ungodly! Three hundred and twenty-two thousand five hundred and sixty ounces of the essence of doctrine! About thirty miles of grace!

December 28, 1867.

_OLE BULL._

My last recollection of Farwell Hall is connected with a tall, graceful, sweet-faced old man, his head lovingly bending over a violin that old Stradivarius made centuries ago, his eyes closed, transfigured in a vision of music, until he seemed to me to wear the face that Beethoven, the Master, might have worn. In his hands the dull wood was again in life. It was part of an organism, and it told the old man of the rustle of leaves in the summer gales; of the songs of birds in the branches; of the brawling waters of the brooks that moistened the roots; of the rude winds that smote the tree on Italian hills; of the star that looked down upon it in delicious Italian nights; of the vernal thrill, the summer glow, the autumnal decay, and the wintry death in life--the great miracle which Nature performs for us each year; and the old man interpreted it in bewitching strains to some who gave themselves up to the spell and were drawn nearer together by the sympathy which music produces, to some who heard the sound and not the soul, and to some who heard neither, in the sound of their own small gabble.

And the next day, when a heap of smoking bricks, and charred beams, and twisted iron was all that was left of the beautiful hall, it seemed to me that I had met with an irreparable loss--that some friend had suddenly vanished.

January 11, 1868.

* * * * *

One of the most charmingly chatty things Leigh Hunt ever wrote was his "Earth Upon Heaven," in which he imagined himself following out his earthly occupations in the upper world; dining with all the good fellows of past ages; reading new plays of Shakspeare and new novels of Scott; eating sugar that was not sanded, and drinking milk from celestial cows in the Milky Way.

It is to be hoped the earthly concert nuisances will be abated there also, and that we may hope to hear the Malibrans and the Linds, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Bach and Gluck in new and diviner symphonies and songs (think of that!), without being annoyed by a garrulous angel behind us commenting on the cut of this angel's wings, the color of that angel's feathers, and the awkward manner in which some other angel flies to her seat, and the dreadfully stupid way in which young Highflier sat down upon Blanche's wings. It would be horrible to think of an eternity of music with an eternity of nuisance.

Ibid.

_SMALL TALK._

There are two kinds of small talk--one which is very silly, and when it does not run to twaddle, takes the worse form of slander and cruel gossip. These two phases are not inconsistent with each other, for it takes a very silly person to be a good gossiper. The greater amount of nonsense that a woman can talk to your face, the worse will be the gossip that she will talk behind you. Her wits may be very small in one direction, but they will be very sharp in the other.

The other kind of small talk is very delightful. It is chatty, sunny, spicy and brilliant. It may not be as deep as the ocean, but is not a little brook, singing over the pebbles, flashing in the sunlight, and whispering pretty little stories it learned from the naiads in the fountain where it was born, to the scarlet cardinals and golden-rods that lean over to listen, just as delightful as the uncertain depths of the ocean with dim suggestions of dirty sea-weed, slimy monsters, ribs of argosies and dead men's bones? Is not the little brook which can take the most distant star right into its heart, just as beautiful as the heavy ocean into whose depths no star beam can penetrate?

This kind of small talk is an eloquent art, and fortunate are the favored few who have mastered it. It may commence with the weather, which you discover is not threadbare, for it is the weather which breaks the ice for you, and it runs from the weather to the opera, from opera to music in general, from music to art, art to books, and from books to men and women. Neat little criticisms; characteristic observations; flashes of wit; pleasant satire which never wounds--fragmentary yet always polished--superficial, perhaps, yet here and there giving you indications of lower depths which would be worth exploring at the proper time. These are the main characteristics of accomplished small talk.

This species of small talk can only exist between the opposite sexes. Between women, small talk becomes silly or it runs to confidences. In the one case it is soon exhausted, in the other it is vulgarly supposed to be eternal; and the amount of smothered grief, of heart-rending woe, of poignant anguish, of amorous doubts, of Sphynx-like mysteries, of secret grief which cannot be whispered even to her pillow, which one young woman will confide to four hundred other young women, is only equalled by the rapidity with which the latter will dispossess themselves of _les confidences_ and the fertile imagination which will clothe them entirely new even before they are divulged for the second time.

Between men, small talk is simply idiotic.

You pass an evening with Serafina, and you get only simpers and syllabubs. She will not give you the ghost of a thought, although her tongue has been running like a mill-clapper for two mortal hours. She will run the whole gamut of talk, and you shall never once get a taste of the amber wine beneath the foam.

_Per contra_, in an evening with Blanche, she will dive like a humming bird into every flower, sweet or bitter, beautiful or ugly, and extract honey from each. She does not linger long on anything. She does not go too deep to be tiresome, and yet you are aware that she would lead you a terrible chase into the real if you gave the word. With that infinite tact which no one but a clever woman possesses, she will draw you out and give you cues for conversation without your ever dreaming of it. If you have a hobby, she will quietly saddle it and help you to mount, and spur it up to a rattling pace with little ingenuous confessions of ignorance, and implied flatteries which show you at once your superiority over the rest of mankind; and she will take you off your hobby and turn him out to grass so gracefully that you will be thoroughly satisfied with your ride. She will read you a charming little homily on her gold cross, which "Jews might kiss or infidels adore," and she will lead you with that narrow edge of lace around her pretty throat, which a rude breath might dissipate, through meadows of talk, where every flower is "a thing of beauty" and "a joy forever."

But to effectually do this, she must have no hobbies, and she must assume an ignorance if she have it not. Ignorance is one of the strongest weapons in the female armory, and if the small talk assumes the form of an argument, a graceful yielding, especially if one is obstinate, is also politic.

January 18, 1868.

_FLAT ON THE BACK._

I write to you to-day with a sugar-coated pill and a small bottle of suspicious-looking fluid, which Æsculapius has designated with the cabalistic abbreviations "_Aq. Cret. Rhu. Pulv. 2 jiii_," between myself and the delirious chaos of fever.

My surroundings are not of a character to induce extravagant cheerfulness, or to resolve a very decided precipitate out of the mixture of virtue and necessity--a severely chemico-moral test I have been working at for the past three days.

I think a man might dig into a cucumber for sunbeams or a mushroom for moonlight, with better chances of success, than I shall have in attempting to extract humor from the scanty material at hand, viz: Several wet towels, ice water, a mustard plaster, sundry hot bricks, pills, potions and lotions _ad libitum_, and a small piece of toasted cracker.

The last item is the connecting link between myself and the good goddess Hygeia, and I regard it with an interest I never knew before, considering the clutch with which Febris has seized me.

Thus, skirting along the shore of Febris, sufficiently near to catch with full force the burning simooms which blow across its miasmatic lands--near enough to burn from its equator and to freeze from its poles, to feel its clamps and hooks, with which it is tugging at bone and muscle, while the soul has gone visiting, and not even left the Will at home to resist disease--near enough all night long, as I sail in the darkness, to see the will-o'-the-wisps, and goblins, and chimeras, the skeletons of dead fancies, the ghosts of dreams and the realities of horror which are the only inhabitants of this land over which Febris reigns--behind me the very bright light of day, and before, only a very uncertain star--under a red-hot bed quilt, flanked with a small drug store--the great world outside only recognizable by a confused hum--isolated from complete sights and sounds--I vegetate and moralize.

If one should feed luxuriously on almond paste and comfits all his life, he would never appreciate the products of sour apple trees and the extracts of much-maligned herbs. So also if one should forever pursue the beaten track of good health, which is only the case in perfection among buffaloes and Digger Indians, one would never know the luxury and the blessing of being sick. We must have, now and then, a cessation of the good to appreciate the bad.

I can conceive that it would be the height of wretchedness to be compelled to live with a saint on earth. This world was not made for saints, and those who have made the foolish attempt to be saints, have wisely climbed pillars, gone into caves or wandered in deserts, getting as far out of the world as possible. Those who have persisted in being saints and remaining in the world, have usually been hanged or burned by other saints.

Equally, the man who is always well, becomes a nuisance after a time. His ruddy face hangs out a constant banner of presumptuous defiance, and the only person who can conscientiously love him is a life insurance agent. He never knows the soft ministrations of small female hands, or the hygienic virtue in the hem of an old lady's robe. Consequently his milk of human kindness is very apt to freeze up. He can have but small sympathy, for no one can sympathize, who has not learned sympathy by experience. At this present moment I fairly burn with pity, and extend a red right hand of sympathy to every man, woman and child, who has ever had a fever, who has a fever now, or who is going to have a fever. In his great, strong animal existence he goes crashing and smashing about like a whale among minnows, with this difference--that the whale is bent upon legitimate prey, while your healthy man is simply trying to show that he _is_ a whale.

As who should say, "Here am I, Mr. Merryman, the great American Healthist. Any lady or gentleman in the audience, wishing to show liver, lights or lungs, will please step forward into the arena."

But, of course, there are compensations for all this. In the next world our healthy friend will probably take twice as much punishment as some of the poor devils who took half of theirs before they went there.

A person whose wings have sprouted and grown, and who has become a precocious angel in the prescribed three score and ten, is certainly leaving a very narrow margin for angelic growth hereafter, and, equally, a man who goes through his three score and ten without any terrene ails, I fancy will need Hippocrates and Galen when he gets to the other shore.

At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.

* * * * * * * * *

Which stars are to be considered equivalent to the time consumed in taking the sugar-coated pill before referred to, reminding one, in its passage down the æsophagus, of the cathartic literature which St. John swallowed, sweet above and bitter below.

Which recalls to me that the most of us are more or less sugar-coated--sweet outside, but quite bitter, or quite sad, or quite bad inside.

The partition between body and soul with some of us is so thin that the light shines through easily.

Some of us, again, cover up our little sepulchres so thickly with vines and roses, and fix such a laughing mask on the door, that we pass for very Ariels, God help us!

While others of us still, living in ourselves, isolated from all intimate relations, carry in our faces no sign of the toil and the weariness and the struggle. It is all blank on the outside; on the inside, it is isolation, death and expiation.

But, then, there are some of us who get our pills coated so badly that a child wouldn't touch them. For instance, good Deacon Jones, who slept all through Parson Primrose's sermon, and told Deacon Brown, who didn't sleep, that the Parson's doctrine was correct; Prof. Blather, who hitches himself to the tail of every high-flying kite, hoping thereby to be brought before the popular eyes; old Mrs. Peacock, who still persists in being young, making admirers, mincing through her spavined paces, leering with her faded eyes out of that painted face, when all Japonicadom knows there is not a genuine feather about her. And so one might go on for hours, for the number of these badly coated pills is legion.

At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.

* * * * * * * * *

More stars for the Doctor who has been to see me. He is a jolly, sanguine dog, and assures me I shall be up in time for the opera--if not for the whole season, at least that I shall have two days off--one for Bellini's _Englishman_ and one for Hermanns' _Mephisto_.

What a blessing these jolly doctors are. They give one an invoice of moral courage, wherewith to make a stout fight against disease. They light up your room as beautifully as the sun this morning kindled my frosty window-panes with burning gold. And my jolly doctor will not take it unkindly of me if I say that I have more confidence in his jolliness than in his cabalistic abbreviations.

On the other hand, I can conceive that if I were compelled to receive the attentions of one of those solemn, owl-like doctors--those funereal-looking personages in deep black, whose noses and chins meet--who wear heavy canes, the knobs of which do heavy thinking for the wearers--whose only remark is an ominous shake of the head, and the preparation of a bill at the neighboring drug store--who have made the very sunlight look mercurial, and who cut off the supply of that delicious Muscat which Blanche sent in--I think, after one visit from such a walking Bolus, I should say, with Elijah of old: "It is enough; now let me die. You may call in your friend Sir." For I should know that as soon as he came into the house Death would sneak after him, and wait outside the door.

At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.

* * * * * * * * *

Another night in the darkness, sailing along these shores of Febris, and this crystal Saturday morning, it seems all bright and clear ahead. I feel no more the breath of the burning gales, but in its place an ecstasy of pain. My hand wearies and the head tires with this trifling work which has run through three days of nullity.

At least, so it seems to a man flat on his back.

January 31, 1868.

_GETTING OUT OF BED._

Getting out of bed is one of the little circumstances which shows man in his abstract essence. He is then a pure animal with all his instincts on the surface. There is no dignity in him then, no majesty, no true religion, no concealment of his nature. In fact he is worse off than the lower orders of the brute creation, as they awake in the full plenitude of their life. A butterfly, which has slept all night in a tulip, rises from his gorgeously curtained couch just as beautiful as he is under the noonday sun, when he lazily flutters among the languid roses. Man, when he rises, is a fragmentary being and has to be set up piece by piece and arrayed in his conventional garments before he can say good morning to the world.

There are various methods of getting out of bed. One man in a thousand wakes up all over at once, kicks off his bedclothes and bounds out of bed as Minerva bounded out of Jupiter's brain, armed and equipped as the law directs. He never tasted lotus in his life. He owns no real estate in Spain, but a good deal of outside city property. He never saw the point of a joke in his life. He never dreams. He is fiendishly healthy, and will, therefore, have much to answer for in the next world. He has no idea of the _dolce far niente_. If he has imagination, he clipped its wings long ago. A _post mortem_ examination of his internal economy would reveal nothing to speak of but columns of logarithms, interest tables and bills of lading in his skull, a complete set of office furniture in his stomach, and his abdominal canal crowded with cargoes of lumber and perches of stone. And he is apt to forget to say his prayers.

There are men who get out of bed a little at a time. The first symptoms of life are uneasy movements and a gentle rustling of the bedclothes. Slowly one arm appears from under the coverlid, and is thrown over the head. Then out comes another arm, disposed of in a similar manner. His legs are uneasy. One eye opens in a very uncertain manner and blinks, and the other opens and winks, and then both blink and wink for some minutes. He then commences to uncoil himself and straighten himself out. This is the stretching process. He mutters to himself incoherent nothings. He tries to go to sleep again, but the charm is broken. He yawns, and the process fairly opens his eyes. He sneezes, and the grand currents of life are once more in motion. One more stretch all over, and he accepts the hard necessity of nature which condemns him to quit his lotus to feed on hash, and he slowly gets out of bed as one utterly disgusted.

There is another class of men who always get out of bed over the footboard, and are uncomfortable all day after it. Their idea of happiness is realized in making somebody wretched, and they are singularly fortunate in the realization of that idea. They are sour in aspect and in disposition. No one has any rights they are bound to respect. Mrs. Gilliflower and her daughter, who always come late and go away early from the concerts, get out over the footboard. The man who mistakes a horse car for a hog pen and acts accordingly, although in some respects he is not much mistaken, gets out over the footboard. The man who worries his butcher or his baker over an insignificant trifle, and is too mean to have the snow shoveled off his sidewalk; the man who makes his lady clerks stand on their feet all day whether engaged or not; the woman who has a keen scent for ferreting out other persons' foibles and attending to other persons' business; the woman who is constantly lamenting over the wickedness and follies of the times; the man whose clumsiness trips him over and who then anathematizes an innocent curbstone; the man who raises a domestic war every morning over a lost button which he ripped off the night before, over an open window which he left open himself, over the discovery of his boots under the bed, where he placed them himself, over a dried up beefsteak which has been waiting an hour for him; the man whose pious nose goes heavenward at the sight of innocent pleasure, and who doesn't give his clerks time enough for dinner; the man who is sour himself and sours everything he touches--all these people get up over the footboard, and they won't get up any other way. If the footboard was forty feet high they would go over it with a step ladder, and curse every rung of it all the way up.

Then, there are men who get up only half awake, and don't fairly wake up until it is time to go to bed again. These are the unlucky ones, against whom fate and nature have a grudge. In the grand lottery of life they draw all the blanks. They usually receive all the broken limbs and fractured legs. They have come within a hair's breadth of making a fortune a number of times, but the hair was always too much. Such a man is always the one killed on a railway train. If he hears of a case of small-pox in West Wheeling, he will catch it. He is always the man in the great crowd who loses his pocket-book, and although he is one of the best of fellows, it will be just his luck to be overlooked by St. Peter at the gate of Heaven.

My favorite way of getting out of bed is to wake up, bid good morning to the newly created day, quietly turn over and go to sleep again without disturbing any one, and sleep the sleep of the just. In that second nap, I visit my Spanish castles. Their architecture is more elaborate and ethereal than ever Wren dreamed of, and they float always in an amber haze just over the Pyrenees. I have leased them all to a goodly company of ladies and gentlemen, and they are the best of pay. Among them are the fair Rosamund; poor Beatrice Cenci; that other Beatrice, who has come down from her shining beatitudes and occupies one of the best of them with Dante; the yellow-haired Gretchen and Faust; the rare and radiant Countess Irma; Spenser's Fairy Queen and Titania; Aspasia, still reclining on beds of roses; Dame Durden, whose house is no longer bleak; Cinderella, with her tiny slipper; Joan of Domremy, still talking with the angels; Undine, bathing in eternal streams; Colonel Newcome, and that prince of good fellows, George Warrington; Wilkins Micawber and Samuel Weller, who are living together--(Uriah Heep and Mr. Chadband made application for one castle, but their references were not good)--Wilhelm Meister and Nathan the Wise; the Lady of Shallott and Hiawatha, who have become firm friends; the fair Florinda and the Princess Scherezade, who amuse each other with rare stories; Sinbad and Aladdin and Rasselas; and Donatello, who never can agree with Werter. When I arrive, they hang out the banners, and such music as Malibran and Sontag sing, which Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schubert have been writing for them, you don't hear in our concert halls. All the charming women and good fellows, of all times, come in to breakfast and we drink ambrosial wines, sweeter than the honey of Hymettus, and breakfast on fruits which have mellowed in the hanging gardens. There is no such lotus, by the bye, on the Nile banks as grows in those gardens. Time would fail me to narrate the sonnets that Dante is writing; the good jokes that George Warrington and Sam Weller have with each other over Wilkins, who is still waiting for something to turn up; the philosophical speculations of Rasselas, and the Munchausenisms of Sinbad; to tell you of a magnificent Spanish symphony that Beethoven has just finished, and the delight with which he listens to a new Ave Maria by Schubert, for the grand old master's hearing has been restored; the songs of Irma, as she looks down upon the mountains of her transfiguration; and the great joy of Faust and Gretchen, who have deciphered the vital problem they could not solve in the baneful shadow of Mephisto. The most beautiful castle is reserved for the friend who died years ago and passed away from me, but who is now like the living, because he greets me every morning in my castle with the warm grip of the hand and the cheery voice and the pleasant face of old times. He has not grown old since then, and I....

February 15, 1868.

_THE TEAPOT._

We were all sitting at the table together. All told, we were ten, viz: Celeste and her maiden aunt, who had a sorrow when she was young, a blighted affection, or something of that sort; Aurelia, now Mrs. Peplum; Mr. Peplum, who has become much more sedate since his family affair with Aurelia; Aurelia's mother, who is getting old and rather fussy; Blanche, and young Boosey, who is sweet on Blanche; Old Blobbs, the Water street indigo merchant, and Mrs. Blobbs; and myself.

"As I was about to say when I was interrupted, the teapot...."

Here I was again interrupted by young Boosey, who was filling himself to repletion with brandied peaches, and who rather scornfully remarked to Old Blobbs that tea might do well enough for old women, but that, for a steady diet, he preferred champagne punches. Old Blobbs silenced him by telling him that if he spent less for champagne punches, it would be for the interest of his landlady.

The rebuke was severe, but just.

As I was about to say when I was interrupted the second time, the teapot is one of the strongest links in the chain of society. If my friend Blobbs, across the way, will recall his youthful days, he will confess that all his subsequent prosperity and happiness are due to the teapot. He will remember that in those days, when, strange as it may seem, he was addicted to Byronic collars and bad rhymes, he accompanied the future Mrs. Blobbs home from singing-school one June night, and that, as they went across the fields instead of by the straight road, he felt excessively foolish at the manner in which the stars winked and blinked at each other. You see, my friend Blobbs thought that he was the first man in the world who had ever done that sort of thing; and my dear Mrs. Blobbs will pardon me if I say that she was excessively sheepish also over the fancy that, for the first time in the world, she was receiving the attentions of a young man. But the stars were used to it, and knew what would come of it. Ever since they peeped through the branches of the Tree of Knowledge and saw Adam sitting up with Eve, they had been looking at a young man and a young woman rehearsing this same old story, and, my dear Blobbs, long after you and I are under the daisies, they will shine down upon young men and young women, going across the fields and telling the same old story. It is the only story which can't be printed fast enough to supply the demand.

And my friend Blobbs will also remember that when they reached the gate, the air was full of the perfume of apple-blossoms and roses; that the bell of the village church over on the hill was striking eleven, and that its tones were borne on the night air, across the meadows, as softly and soothingly as if they were the audible pulsations of the moonlight; that an officious little insect, shrouded in the gloom of the fir tree in the front yard, was continually informing him that Katy-did; that, before they parted, they chose a mutual star which should ever be their symbol and souvenir; and that when at last he took her little white hand in his--it _was_ a pretty hand in those days, you know, Blobbs--she said: "Won't you come over to tea to-morrow night, Mr. Blobbs?" Did you refuse, Mr. Blobbs?

He will furthermore be so good as to remember that he walked on air as he went home; that he whistled as he went; that all the stars in Heaven, except that particular one, were laughing at him, and that he wouldn't have taken a thousand dollars for himself.

Now I put it to you, Mr. Blobbs, as a man of honor, if that teapot, the next evening, did not do the business and make a man of you all the rest of your life.

Blobbs looked rather uncomfortable, but I thought I detected some of the brilliancy of those days shining through all the conventionalities and financial callouses of his life, as he assented; and if a tear stood in the corner of Mrs. B.'s eye, as she looked at her consort in the indigo trade, it dropped immediately into the quince sauce and dissolved into sweetness.

And as I passed my cup to Aurelia's mother the second time, with a deprecating look at Boosey, I continued: I know of no pleasanter sight in the world than a steaming teapot upon the tray and five or six old ladies gathered about it, who have just dropped over and brought their knitting. They have all made the voyage of life, weathered the storms and gone into old age's winter quarters. Life's spring will never come for them again. The roses will not bloom for them, and the birds will miss them, but the frosts and the keen winter winds touch them kindly; and if they sometimes regard the blue, lichen-covered slate stones with the unutterable thoughts of old age, it is only because they feel the first breath of the gales blowing from the eternal springs, inhale the faint perfumes of the asphodels and the lilies on the banks of the River of Life, and hear, as in a dream, the sounds of music from the golden harps over the battlements of Heaven.

And as the cups go round and the dear old creatures become inspired with the delicate aroma, how they will compare their rheumatisms, and backaches, and headaches, and neuralgias--those inevitable signs that the silver cords are growing looser, and that the pitchers will soon be broken at the fountains! How they will yearn after the days when they were young, and lament the decadence of the present! How they will recall the scenes of fifty years ago! (Here the maiden aunt let her eyes fall, and I fancied her lips quivered some). How they will indulge in just the slightest gossip in the world, meantime mysteriously shaking their frosty heads, but just as harmless as the rage of Mignon's canary! How they will analyze and dissect the last new baby in the neighborhood, and lament over the weakness of its mother who will allow it to eat anything and everything! How they will deprecate the new-fangled notions of the young pastor who has just succeeded old Parson Tenthly, lately called home!

It is a mortifying fact that young Pastor Primrose _does_ prefer to visit Blanche and Celeste, who dote upon him and make book-marks and slippers for him, rather than be obliged to listen to the catalogues of the old ladies' physical and theological complaints. You see, Blanche and Celeste are not a severe tax upon his theological resources, while the old ladies are. Neither can the old ladies see why it is necessary that the young clergyman should be so particular about his back hair and the immaculateness of his neck-tie.

February 22, 1868.

_A MASQUE._

Did you ask me if the Masquerade, this week, was a success?

Considering that nine-tenths of the people who go to balls are idiots; that carnival folly without carnival license is Hamlet without Hamlet; that only they in whose veins the blood is tropical understand the real _esprit_ of the _bal masque_; and that among our masques every man insists upon being a Harlequin and every woman a nondescript, showing the inevitable tendency of human nature;--it was a success.