Chapter V (4)

He never said a word aginst any vittles that was set before him, but I mistrusted that he was more partickerlar in his eatin' than he wanted folks to know of, for I've know'd him make believe to eat, and leave the vittles on his plate when he didn't seem to fancy 'em; but he was very careful never to hurt my feelin's, and I don't belief he'd have spoke, if he had found a tadpole in a dish of chowder. But nothin' could hurry him when he was about his vittles. Many's the time I've seen that gentleman keepin' two or three of 'em settin' round the breakfast-table after the rest had swallered their meal, and the things was cleared off, and Bridget was a-waitin' to get the cloth away,--and there that little man would set, with a tumbler of sugar and water,--what he used to call O Sukray, --a-talkin' and a-talkin',--and sometimes he would laugh, and sometimes the tears would come into his eyes,--which was a kind of grayish blue eyes,--and there he'd set and set, and my boy Benjamin Franklin hangin' round and gettin' late for school and wantin' an excuse, and an old gentleman that's one of my boarders a-listenin' as if he wa'n't no older than my Benj. Franklin, and that schoolmistress settin' jest as if she'd been bewitched, and you might stick pins into her without her hollerin'. He was a master hand to talk when he got a-goin'. But he never would have no disputes nor long argerments at my table, and I liked him all the better for that; for I had a boarder once that never let nothin' go by without disputin' of it, till nobody knowed what he believed and what he didn't believe, only they was pretty sure he didn't believe the side he was a-disputin' for, and some of 'em said, that, if you wanted him to go any partickerlar way, you must do with him just as folks do that drive--well, them obstinate creeturs that squeal so,-- for I don't like to name such creeturs in connexion with a gentleman that paid his board regular, and was a very smart man, and knowed a great deal, only his knowledge all laid crosswise, as one of 'em used to say, after t'other one had shet him up till his mouth wa'n't of no more use to him than if it had been a hole in the back of his head. This wa'n't no sech gentleman. One of my boarders used to say that he always said exactly what he was a mind to, and stuck his idees out jest like them that sells pears outside their shop-winders, --some is three cents, some is two cents, and some is only one cent, and if you don't like, you needn't buy, but them's the articles and them's the prices, and if you want 'em, take 'em, and if you don't, go about your business, and don't stand mellerin' of 'em with your thumbs all day till you've sp'ilt 'em for other folks.

He was a man that loved to stick round home as much as any cat you ever see in your life. He used to say he'd as lief have a tooth pulled as go away anywheres. Always got sick, he said, when he went away, and never sick when he didn't. Pretty nigh killed himself goin' about lecterin' two or three winters,--talkin' in cold country lyceums,--as he used to say,--goin' home to cold parlors and bein' treated to cold apples and cold water, and then goin' up into a cold bed in a cold chamber, and comin' home next mornin' with a cold in his head as bad as the horse-distemper. Then he'd look kind of sorry for havin' said it, and tell how kind some of the good women was to him,--how one spread an edder-down comforter for him, and another fixed up somethin' hot for him after the lecter, and another one said, --"There now, you smoke that cigar of yours after the lecter, jest as if you was at home,"--and if they'd all been like that, he'd have gone on lectering forever, but, as it was, he had got pooty nigh enough of it, and preferred a nateral death to puttin' himself out of the world by such violent means as lecterin'.

He used to say that he was always good company enough, if he wasn't froze to death, and if he wasn't pinned in a corner so't he couldn't clear out when he'd got as much as he wanted. But he was a dreadful uneven creetur in his talk, and I've heerd a smart young man that's one of my boarders say, he believed he had a lid to the top of his head, and took his brains out and left 'em up-stairs sometimes when he come down in the mornin'.--About his ways, he was spry and quick and impatient, and, except in a good company,--he used to say,--where he could get away at any minute, he didn't like to set still very long to once, but wanted to be off walkin', or rowin' round in one of them queer boats of his, and he was the solitariest creetur in his goin's about (except when he could get that schoolmistress to trail round with him) that ever you see in your life. He used to say that usin' two eyes and two legs at once, and keepin' one tongue a-goin', too, was too sharp practice for him; so he had a way of dodgin' round all sorts of odd streets, I've heerd say, where he wouldn't meet people that would stick to him.

It didn't take much to please him. Sometimes it would be a big book he'd lug home, and sometimes it would be a mikerscope, and sometimes it would be a dreadful old-lookin' fiddle that he'd picked up somewhere, and kept a-screechin' on, sayin' all the while that it was jest as smooth as a flute. Then ag'in I'd hear him laughin' out all alone, and I'd go up and find him readin' some verses that he'd been makin'. But jest as like as not I'd go in another time, and find him cryin',--but he'd wipe his eyes and try not to show it, --and it was all nothin' but some more verses he'd been a-writin'. I've heerd him say that it was put down in one of them ancient books, that a man must cry, himself, if he wants to make other folks cry; but, says he, you can't make 'em neither laugh nor cry, if you don't try on them feelin's yourself before you send your work to the customers.

He was a temperate man, and always encouraged temperance by drinkin' jest what he was a mind to, and that was generally water. You couldn't scare him with names, though. I remember a young minister that's go'n' to be, that boards at my house, askin' once what was the safest strong drink for them that had to take somethin' for the stomach's sake and thine awful infirmities. _Aqua fortis_, says he, --because you know that'll eat your insides out, if you get it too strong, and so you always mind how much you take. Next to that, says he, rum's the safest for a wise man, and small beer for a fool.

I never mistrusted anything about him and that schoolmistress till I heerd they was keepin' company and was go'n' to be merried. But I might have knowed it well enough by his smartin' himself up the way he did, and partin' the hair on the back of his head, and gettin' a blue coat with brass buttons, and wearin' them dreadful tight little French boots that used to stand outside his door to be blacked, and stickin' round schoolma'am, and follerin' of her with his eyes; but then he was always fond of ladies, and used to sing with my daughter, and wrote his name out in a blank book she keeps,--them that has daughters of their own will keep their eyes on 'em,--and I've often heerd him say he was fond of music and picters,--and she worked a beautiful pattern for a chair of his once, that he seemed to set a good deal by; but I ha'n't no fault to find, and there is them that my daughter likes and them that likes her.

As to schoolma'am, I ha'n't a word to say that a'n't favorable, and don't harbor no unkind feelin' to her, and never knowed them that did. When she first come to board at my house, I hadn't any idee she'd live long. She was all dressed in black; and her face looked so delicate, I expected before six months was over to see a plate of glass over it, and a Bible and a bunch of flowers layin' on the lid of the--well, I don't like to talk about it; for when she first come, and said her mother was dead, and she was alone in the world, except one sister out West, and unlocked her trunk and showed me her things, and took out her little purse and showed me her money, and said that was all the property she had in the world but her courage and her education, and would I take her and keep her till she could get some scholars,--I couldn't say not one word, but jest went up to her and kissed her and bu'st out a-cryin' so as I never cried since I buried the last of my five children that lays in the buryin'-ground with their father, and a place for one more grown person betwixt him and the shortest of them five graves, where my baby is waitin' for its mother.

[The landlady stopped here and shed a few still tears, such as poor women who have been wrung out almost dry by fierce griefs lose calmly, without sobs or hysteric convulsions, when they show the scar of a healed sorrow.]

--The schoolma'am had jest been killin' herself for a year and a half with waitin' and tendin' and watchin' with that sick mother that was dead now and she was in mournin' for. _She_ didn't say so, but I got the story out of her, and then I knowed why she looked so dreadful pale and poor. By-and-by she begun to get some scholars, and then she would come home sometimes so weak and faint that I was afraid she would drop. One day I handed her a bottle of camphire to smell of, and she took a smell of it, and I thought she'd have fainted right away.--Oh, says she, when she come to, I've breathed that smell for a whole year and more, and it kills me to breathe it again!

The fust thing that ever I see pass between the gentleman inquiries is made about, and her, was on occasion of his makin' some very searchin' remarks about griefs, sech as loss of friends and so on. I see her fix her eye steady on him, and then she kind of trembled and turned white, and the next thing I knew was she was all of a heap on the floor. I remember he looked into her face then and seemed to be seized as if it was with a start or spasm-like,--but I thought nothin' more of it, supposin' it was because he felt so bad at makin' her faint away.

Some has asked me what kind of a young woman she was to look at. Well, folks differ as to what is likely and what is homely. I've seen them that was as pretty as picters in my eyes: cheeks jest as rosy as they could be, and hair all shiny and curly, and little mouths with lips as red as sealin'-wax, and yet one of my boarders that had a great name for makin' marble figgers would say such kind of good looks warn't of no account. I knowed a young lady once that a man drownded himself because she wouldn't marry him, and she might have had her pick of a dozen, but I didn't call her anything great in the way of looks.

All I can say is, that, whether she was pretty or not, she looked like a young woman that knowed what was true and that loved what was good, and she had about as clear an eye and about as pleasant a smile as any man ought to want for every-day company. I've seen a good many young ladies that could talk faster than she could; but if you'd seen her or heerd her when our boardin'-house caught afire, or when there was anything to be done besides speech-makin', I guess you'd like to have stood still and looked on, jest to see that young woman's way of goin' to work.--Dark, rather than light; and slim, but strong in the arms,--perhaps from liftin' that old mother about; for I've seen her heavin' one end of a big heavy chest round that I shouldn't have thought of touchin',--and yet her hands was little and white.--Dressed very plain, but neat, and wore her hair smooth. I used to wonder sometimes she didn't wear some kind of ornaments, bein' a likely young woman, and havin' her way to make in the world, and seein' my daughter wearin' jewelry, which sets her off so much, every day. She never would,--nothin' but a breastpin with her mother's hair in it, and sometimes one little black cross. That made me think she was a Roman Catholic, especially when she got a picter of the Virgin Mary and hung it up in her room; so I asked her, and she shook her head and said these very words,--that she never saw a church-door so narrow she couldn't go in through it, nor so wide that all the Creator's goodness and glory could enter it; and then she dropped her eyes and went to work on a flannel petticoat she was makin',--which I knowed, but she didn't tell me, was for a poor old woman.

I've said enough about them two boarders, but I believe it's all true. Their places is vacant, and I should be very glad to fill 'em with two gentlemen, or with a gentleman and his wife, or any respectable people, be they merried or single.

I've heerd some talk about a friend of that gentleman's comin' to take his place.

That's the gentleman that he calls "the Professor," and I'm sure I hope there is sech a man; only all I can say is, I never see him, and none of my boarders ever see him, and that smart young man that I was speakin' of says he don't believe there's no sech person as him, nor that other one that he called "the Poet." I don't much care whether folks professes or makes poems, if they makes themselves agreeable and pays their board regular. I'm a poor woman, that tries to get an honest livin', and works hard enough for it; lost my husband, and buried five children.... ....

Excuse me, dear Madam, I said,--looking at my watch,--but you spoke of certain papers which your boarder left, and which you were ready to dispose of for the pages of the "Oceanic Miscellany."

The landlady's face splintered again into the wreck of the broken dimples of better days.--She should be much obleeged, if I would look at them, she said,--and went up stairs and got a small desk containing loose papers. I looked them hastily over, and selected one of the shortest pieces, handed the landlady a check which astonished her, and send the following poem as an appendix to my report. If I should find others adapted to the pages of the spirited periodical which has done so much to develop and satisfy the intellectual appetite of the American public, and to extend the name of its enterprising publishers throughout the reading world, I shall present them in future numbers of the "Oceanic Miscellany."

THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA.

A NIGHTMARE DREAM BY DAYLIGHT.

Do you know the Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea?
Have you met with that dreadful old man?
If you haven't been caught, you will be, you will be;
For catch you he must and he can.

He doesn't hold on by your throat, by your throat,
As of old in the terrible tale;
But he grapples you tight by the coat, by the coat,
Till its buttons and button-holes fail.

There's the charm of a snake in his eye, in his eye,
And a polypus-grip in his hands;
You cannot go back, nor get by, nor get by,
If you look at the spot where he stands.

Oh, you're grabbed! See his claw on your sleeve, on your sleeve!
It is Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea!
You're a Christian, no doubt you believe, you believe;--
You're a martyr, whatever you be!

--Is the breakfast-hour past? They must wait, they must wait,
While the coffee boils sullenly down,
While the Johnny-cake burns on the grate, on the grate,
And the toast is done frightfully brown.

--Yes, your dinner will keep; let it cool, let it cool.
And Madam may worry and fret,
And children half-starved go to school, go to school;--
He can't think of sparing you yet.

--Hark! the bell for the train! "Come along! Come along!
For there isn't a second to lose."
"ALL ABOARD!" (He holds on.) "Fsht! ding-dong! Fsht! ding-dong!"--
You can follow on foot, if you choose.

--There's a maid with a cheek like a peach, like a peach,
That is waiting for you in the church;--
But he clings to your side like a leech, like a leech,
And you leave your lost bride in the lurch.

--There's a babe in a fit,--hurry quick! hurry quick!
To the doctor's as fast as you can!
The baby is off, while you stick, while you stick,
In the grip of the dreadful Old Man!

--I have looked on the face of the Bore, of the Bore;
The voice of the Simple I know;
I have welcomed the Flat at my door, at my door;
I have sat by the side of the Slow;

I have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend,
That stuck to my skirts like a burr;
I have borne the stale talk without end, without end,
Of the sitter whom nothing could stir:

But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake and I shake,
At the sight of the dreadful Old Man;
Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take,
To my legs with what vigor I can!

Oh, the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea!
He's come back like the Wandering Jew!
He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,--
And be sure that he'll have it on you!

* * * * *

THE GREAT EVENT OF THE CENTURY.

A LETTER FROM PAUL TOTTER, OF NEW YORK, TO THE DON ROBERTO WAGONERO, COMMORANT OF WASHINGTON, IN THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

22,728 Five Hundred and Fifty-First St., New York, May 1, 1858.

Dear Don Bobus,--Pardon my abruptness. _In medias res_ is the rule, you know, _formose puer_, my excellent old boy! Bring out the Saint Peray, if there be a bottle of that flavorous and flavous tipple in your extensive cellars,--which I doubt, since you never had more than a single flask thereof, presented to you by a returned traveller, who bought it, to my certain knowledge, of a mixer in Congress Street, in Boston. We drank it, O ale-knight, _sub teg. pat. fag._ more than five years ago, of a summer evening, in dear old Cambridge, then undisfigured by the New Chapel. That it did not kill us as dead as Stilpo of Megara (_vide_ Seneca _de Const_. for a notice of that foolish old Stoic) was entirely owing to my abstinence and your naturally strong constitution; for I remember that you bolted nearly the whole of it. You proved yourself to be a Mithridates of white lead; while I--but I say no more. I could quote you an appropriate passage from the tippler of Teos, and in the original Greek, if I had not long ago pawned my copy of Anacreon (Barnes, 12 mo. Cantab. 1721) to a fellow in Cornhill, who sold it on the very next day to a total-abstinence tutor. Episodically I may say, that the purchaser read it to such purpose, that within a week he rose to the honor of sleeping in the station-house, from which keep he was rescued by a tearful friend, who sent him to the country, solitude, and spruce-beer.

"It is useless," says the Staggerite, "for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses." It may also be useless for a sober man to try to write letters to "The New York Scorpion." In your perilous and unhappy situation you must be a rule unto yourself. But remember, O Bobus, the saying of Montaigne, that "apoplexy will knock down Socrates as well as a porter." You are not exactly Socrates; but your best friends have remarked that you are getting to be exceedingly stout. Stick to your cups, but forbear, as Milton says, "to interpose them oft." _In medio tutissimus_,--Half a noggin is better than no wine. For the sake of the dear old times, spare me the pain of seeing you a reformed inebriate or a Martha Washington!

Between Drunken Barnaby and Neal Dow there is, I trust, a position which a gentleman may occupy. Because I have a touch of Charles Surface in my constitution, I need not make a Toodles of myself. So bring out the smallest canakin and let it clink softly,--for I have news to tell you.

I remember, Bob, my boy, once upon a certain Fourth of July,--I leave the particular Fourth as indefinite as Mr. Webster's "_some_ Fourth" upon which we were to go to war with England,--while there was a tintinnabulation of the bells, and an ear-splitting tantivy of brass bands, and an explosion of squibs, which, properly engineered, would have prostrated the great Chinese Wall, or the Porcelain Tower itself, --in short, a noise loud enough to make a Revolutionary patriot turn with joy in his coffin,--that I left my Pottery, after dutifully listening to Mrs. Potter's performance of twenty-eight brilliant variations, _pour le piano_, on "Yankee Doodle," by H. Hertz, (_Op_. 22,378,)--and sought the punches and patriotism, the joy and the juleps of the Wagonero Cottage. I found you, Bobus, as cool as if Fahrenheit and Reaumur were not bursting around you. Well do I remember the patriarchal appearance which you presented, seated in your own garden, (I think you took the prize for pompions at the county exhibition soon after,) under your own wide-spreading elm-tree, reading for facts in one of those confounded cigars, with which, being proof against them yourself, you were in the habit of poisoning your friends. Solitary and alone, you would have reminded me of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,--three distinguished heads of families rolled into one,--but, surrounded as you were by the fruits of a happy union, the triple comparison was not to be resisted. Notwithstanding your hearty welcome, I was a little dispirited,--for I had come from a childless home. God had taken my sole little lamb,--and many miles away, with none to care for the flowers which in the first winter of our bereavement we had scattered upon her rounded grave, she who was the light of our eyes was sleeping. And while we were thus stricken and lonesome and desolate, your quiver was full and running over. I do not mind saying now, that I envied you, as I distributed the squibs, rockets, and other pyrotechnical fodder which I had brought in my pocket for your flock. I gulped it all down, however, with a pretty good grace, and went to my dinner like a philosopher. Do you not remember that I was particularly brilliant upon that occasion, and that I told my best story only three times in the course of the evening? I flatter myself that I know how to conceal my feelings,--although I punished your claret cruelly, and was sick after it.

I have a notion, dear Don, that I am not writing very coherently, as you, whether _pransus_ or _impransus_, almost always do. Under agitating circumstances you are cool, and I verily think that you would have reported the earthquake at Lisbon without missing one squashed _hidalgo_, one drop of the blue blood spilt, one convent unroofed, or one convent belle damaged. Your report would have been minutely circumstantial enough to have found favor with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., who for so long a time refused to believe in the Portuguese convulsion. But we are not all fit by nature to put about butter-tubs in July. I plead guilty to an excitable temperament. The Bowery youth here speak of a kind of perspiration which, metaphorically, they designate as "a cast-iron sweat." This for the last twelve hours has been my own agonizing style of exudation. And, moreover, the startling event of which I am to write has (to borrow again from the sage Montaigne) created in me "so many chimeras and fantastic monsters, one upon another, without design or order, that, the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to commit them to writing, hoping in time to make them ashamed of themselves." The novelty of my position causes me to shamble and shuffle, now to pause painfully, and then to dance like a droll. I go out from the presence of my household, that I may vent myself by private absurdities and exclusive antics, I retire into remote corners, that I may grin fearfully, unseen of Mistress Gamp and my small servant. I am possessed by a shouting devil, who is continually prompting me to give the "hip-hip-hurrah!" under circumstances which might split apex and base of several of my most important arteries,--which might bring on apoplexy, epilepsy, suffusion of the brain, or hernia,--which might cause death,--yes, Sir,--death of the mother, father, and child.

--Really, good friends, I ask your pardon! I do not know what I have done. Did I collar you, Dr. Slop? Send in your bill tomorrow! Did I smash the instruments beyond repair? And should you say now,--just speaking off-hand,--that two hundred and fifty dollars would be money enough to repair them? Of course, I can commit highway robbery, if it be absolutely necessary. My dear Mrs. Gamp, I fully appreciate the propriety of your suggestions. You want one quart of gin;--I comprehend. Shall it be your Hollands, your Aromatic Scheidam, your Nantz, or our own proud Columbian article? You want one quart of rum, _potus e saccharo confectus!_ You want one quart of brandy. You want one gallon of wine. You want a dozen of brown-stout. You want the patent vulcanized India-rubber pump. You want anise,-- _pimpinella anisum_;--I comprehend. You want castor-oil,--a very fine medicine indeed,--I tasted it myself when a boy. You want magnesia. You want the patent Vesuvian night-lamp. Madam, that volcanic utensil shall be forthcoming.

Do I rave, Don Bob? Has reason caught the royal trick of the century, and left her throne? Let me be calm, as becometh one suddenly swelled into ancestral proportions! This small lump of red clay shall inherit my name, and my estate, which I now seriously purpose to acquire. For her will I labor. For her I will gorge "The Clarion" with leading articles. For her I will write the long dreamed-of poem in twenty-four parts. For her I will besiege the private dens of my friends the booksellers. Dear, helpless little atomy! infinitesimal object of love! bud, germ, seed, blossom, tidbit, morsel, mannikin, tomtit, abbreviation, concentration, quintessence! tiny _multum in parvo!_ charming diamond edition! thou small, red possibility! weeping promise of glad days to come! For thee will I put the world under contribution! For thee will I master 'pathy and 'logy and 'nomy and 'sophy! All was and is for thee! For thee sages have written; for thee science has toiled; for thee looms are clanking, ships are sailing, and strong men laboring! Thou art born to a fortune better than one of gold! I am but thy servant, to bring all treasures and lay them at thy feet! Be remorseless, exacting, greedy of our love and our lore! Come, young queen, into thy queendom! All is thine!

Bobus, my friend, you undoubtedly think that I am beside myself. You are a tough, knotty old tree, and I have only one tender shoot. You may sneer, or you may pity,--I care not one baubee for your praise or your blame. I shall take my own course. I feel my responsibility, Sir! I shall not come to you for advice! I shall pursue the path of duty, Sir!--Come to you, forsooth! What could you give? A lot of rubbish from Confucius, with a farrago of useless knowledge anent the breeching and birching of babies in Japan. I shall seek original sources of information. What do you know, for instance, of lactation and the act of sucking, Sir? I have been, like a good Christian, to my Paley already. Hear the Archdeacon of Carlisle! "The teeth are formed within the gums, and there they stop; the fact being, that their farther advance to maturity would not only be useless to the new-born animal, but extremely in its way; as it is evident that the act of _sucking_, by which it is for some time to be nourished, will be performed with more ease, both to the nurse and to the infant, whilst the inside of the mouth and edges of the gums are smooth and soft, than if set with hard-pointed bones. By the time they are wanted, the teeth are ready." Now, dear Don, is not that an interesting piece of information? You are not a mother, and probably you never will be one; but can you imagine anything more unpleasant to the maternal sensibilities than a child born with teeth? Mentally and prophetically unpleasant, as suggestive of the amiable Duke of Gloser, who came into the world grinning at dentists; physically unpleasant, in respect of bites, and the impossibility of emulating the complying conduct of Osric the water-fly, whose early politeness was vouched for by the Lord Hamlet. Bethink you, moreover, Don, of a wailing infant, full furnished with two rows of teeth--and nothing to masticate! whereas he must have been more cruel than the "parient" of the Dinah celebrated in song as the young lady who did not marry Mr. Villikins, that does not have something ready for them to do by the time the molars and bicuspids appear. I know the perils of dentition. But have we not the whole family of carminatives? Did the immortal Godfrey live and die in vain? Did not a kind Providence vouchsafe to us a Daffy? Are there not corals? Are there not India-rubber rings? And is there not the infinite tenderness and pity which we learn for the small, wailing sufferer, as, during the night which is not stilly, while the smouldering wick paints you, an immense, peripatetic _silhouette_, upon the wall, you pace to and fro the haunted chamber, and sing the song your mother sang while you were yet a child? What a noble privilege of martyrdom! What but parental love, deathless and irresistible, could tempt you thus, in drapery more classical than comfortable, to brave all dangers, to aggravate your rheumatism, to defy that celebrated god, Tirednature'ssweetrestorer, and to take your snatches of sleep _à pied_, a kind of fatherly walking Stewart, as if you were doing your thousand miles in a thousand hours for a thousand dollars, and were sure of winning the money? Believe me, my friend, the world has many such martyrs, unknown, obscure, suffering men, whose names Rumor never blows through her miserable conch-shell,--and I am one of them. As Bully Bertram says, in Maturin's pimento play,--"I am a wretch, and proud of wretchedness." A child, the offspring of your own loins, is something worth watching for. Such a father is your true Tapley; --there _is_ some credit in coming out jolly under such circumstances. The unnatural parent, as those warning cries break the silence, may counterfeit Death's counterfeit, and may even be guilty of the surpassing iniquity of simulating a snore. _Nunquam dormio_; I am like "The Sun" newspaper,--sleepless, tireless, disturbed, but imperturbable. I meet my fate, and find the pang a pleasant one. And so may I ever be, through all febrile, cutaneous, and flatulent vicissitudes,--careful of chicken-pox, mild with mumps and measles, unwearied during the weaning, growing tenderer with each succeeding rash, kinder with every cold, gentler with every grief, and sweeter-tempered with every sorrow sent to afflict my little woman! 'Tis a rough world. We must acclimate her considerately.

Of the matter of education I also have what are called "views." I may be peculiar. School-committee-men who spell Jerusalem with a G, drill-sergeants who believe in black-boards and visible numerators, statistical fellows who judge of the future fate of the republic by the average attendance at the "Primaries," may not agree with me in my idea of bending the twig. I do believe, that, if Dame Nature herself should apply for a school, some of these wise Dogberries would report her "unqualyfide." I will not murder my pretty pet. So she be gentle, kindly, and loving, what care I if at sixteen years of age she cannot paint the baptism of John upon velvet, does not know a word of that accursed French language, breaks down in the "forward and back" of a cotillon, and cannot with spider fingers spin upon the piano the swiftest Tarantelle of Chopin.-- = 2558 Metronome? We will find something better and braver than all that, my little Alice! Confound your Italianos!--the birds shall be the music-masters of my tiny dame. Moonrise, and sunset, and the autumnal woods shall teach her tint and tone. The flowers are older than the school-botanies;-- she shall give them pet names at her own sweet will. We will not go to big folios to find out the big Latin names of the butterflies; but be sure, pet, they and you shall be better acquainted. And long before you have acquired that most profitless of all arts, the art of reading, we will go very deeply into ancient English literature. There is the story of the enterprising mouse, who, at one o'clock precisely, ran down the clock to the cabalistic tune of "Dickory, dickory, dock." There are the bold bowl-mariners of Gotham. There is "the man of our town," who was unwise enough to destroy the organs of sight by jumping into a bramble-bush, and who came triumphantly out of the experiment, and "scratched them in again," by boldly jumping into another bush,--the oldest discoverer on record of the doctrine that _similia similibus curantur_. There are Jack and Gill, who, not living in the days of the Cochituate, went up the hill for water, and who, in descending, met with cerebral injuries. There are the dietetic difficulties of Mr. and Mrs. Sprat, with the happy solution of a problem at one time threatening the domestic peace of this amiable pair. Be sure, little woman, we will find merry morsels in the silly-wise book! And there will be other silly-wise books. Cinderella shall again lose her slipper, and marry the prince; the wolf shall again eat little Red Ridinghood; and the small eyes grow big at the adventures of Sinbad, the gallant tar. Will not this be better, Don Bob, than pistil and stamen and radicle? --than wearing out BBB lead pencils in drawing tumble-down castles, rickety cottages, and dumpling-shaped trees?--than acquiring a language which has no literature fit for a girl to read?--than mistressing the absurd modern piano music?--than taking diplomas from institutes, which most certainly do not express all that young women learn in those venerable seats of learning? We will not put stays upon our pet until we are obliged to do so. Birdie shall abide in the paternal nest, and sing the old home-songs, and walk in the old home-ways, until she has a nice new nest of her own.

Do I dote, Don Bob? Is there a smirk, a villanous, unfeeling, disagreeable, cynical sneer, lurking under your confounded moustache? I know you of old, you miserable, mocking Mephistopheles!--you sneerer, you scoffer, you misbeliever! No more of that, or I will travel three hundred miles expressly to break your head. Take a glass of claret, Bob, and be true to your better nature; for I suppose you have a better nature packed away somewhere, if one could but get at it. Those who have no children may laugh, but as a _paterfamilias_ you should be ashamed to do so. And after all, this is a pretty serious business. As I sit here and dream and hope and pray, and try to compute the infinite responsibility which has come with this infinite joy, I am very humble, and I murmur, "Who is sufficient? who is sufficient?" And if you will look at the right-hand corner of this page, you will find a great splashy blot. Lachrymal, Bob, upon my word! 'Tis time to write "Yours, &c." Moreover, I am needed for some duty in the nursery. Pleasant dreams! Health and happiness to Senora Wagonero, and all the little doubleyous. With assurances, &c., I remain, &c., &c.,

PAUL POTTER.

P.S.--Could you tell me the precise age at which Japanese children begin to learn the use of globes?

P.P.S.--Do Spanish nurses use Daffy? Is there any truth in the statement of Don Lopez Cervantes Murillo, that Columbus was "brought up by hand"?

P.P.P.S.--Could you give me the aggregate weight of all the children born in the Island of Formosa, from 1692 to the present time, with the proportion of the sexes, and the average annual mortality, and any other perfectly useless information respecting that island?

P. P.

THE LAST LOOK.

Naushon, September 22d, 1858.

Behold--not him we knew!
This was the prison which his soul looked through,
Tender, and brave, and true.

His voice no more is heard;
And his dead name--that dear familiar word--
Lies on our lips unstirred.

He spake with poet's tongue;
Living, for him the minstrel's lyre was strung:
He shall not die unsung!

Grief tried his love, and pain;
And the long bondage of his martyr-chain
Vexed his sweet soul,--in vain!

It felt life's surges break,
As, girt with stormy seas, his island lake,
Smiling while tempests wake.

How can we sorrow more?
Grieve not for him whose heart had gone before
To that untrodden shore!

Lo, through its leafy screen,
A gleam of sunlight on a ring of green,
Untrodden, half unseen!

Here let his body rest,
Where the calm shadows that his soul loved best
May slide above his breast.

Smooth his uncurtained bed;
And if some natural tears are softly shed,
It is not for the dead.

Fold the green turf aright
For the long hours before the morning's light,
And say the last Good Night!

And plant a clear white stone
Close by those mounds which hold his loved, his own,--
Lonely, but not alone.

Here let him sleeping lie,
Till Heaven's bright watchers slumber in the sky,
And Death himself shall die!

A SAMPLE OF CONSISTENCY.

Mr. Caleb Cushing,--"the Ajax of the Union," as he has lately been styled,--for what reason we know not, unless that Ajax is chiefly known to the public as a personage very much in want of light,--Mr. Caleb Cushing has received an invitation to dine in South Carolina. This extraordinary event, while it amply accounts for the appearance of the comet, must also be held to answer for the publication by Mr. Cushing of a letter almost as long, if not quite so transparent, as the comet's tail. Craytonville is the name of the happy village, already famous as "the place of the nativity" of Mr. Speaker Orr, and hereafter to be a shrine of pilgrimage, as the spot where Mr. Cushing might have gone through the beautiful natural processes of mastication and deglutition, had he chosen. We use this elegant Latinism in deference to Mr. Ex-Commissioner Cushing; for, as he evidently deemed "birth-place" too simple a word for such a complex character as Mr. Orr, we could not think of coupling his own name with so common a proceeding as eating his dinner. It may be sectionalism in us,--but, at the risk of dissolving the Union, we will not yield to any Southern man a larger share of the dictionary (unless it be Webster's) than we give to a gentleman who was born at --we beg pardon, the place of whose nativity was--Newburyport.

Mr. Cushing has distinguished himself lately as the preacher-up of a crusade against modern philanthropy; and we do not wonder at it, if the offer of a dinner be so rare as to demand in acknowledgment a letter three columns long. Or perhaps he considered the offer itself as an instance of that insane benevolence which he reprobates, and accordingly punished it with an epistle the reading of which would delay the consummation of the edacious treason till all the meats were cold and the more impatient conspirators driven from the table. Or were those who had invited him _negrophilists_, (to use Mr. Cushing's favorite word,) and therefore deserving of such retribution? Not at all; they were all _leucophilists_, as sincere and warm-hearted as himself. Or perhaps this letter expresses Mr. Cushing's notion of what a proper answer to a dinner-invitation should be. We have no "Complete Letter-Writer" at hand, and consequently cannot compare it with any classic models; but, if we remember rightly, that useful book is not in as many volumes as the Catalogue of the British Museum is to be, and the examples there given must necessarily be denied so sea-serpentine a voluminousness. We suspect that the style is original with the Ex-Brigadier-Attorney-General, but, while we allow it the merit of novelty, we think there are some grave objections to its universal adoption. It would be a great check on hospitality; for, by parity of reason, the invitation should be as tedious as the reply, and a treaty of dinner would take nearly as much time as a treaty of peace. This would be a great damage to the butchers, whose interests (to borrow a bit of political economy from Mr. Cushing's letter) are complementary to those of the dinner-giver and the diner. Again, it would be fatal to all conversation, supposing the dinner at last to take place; for the Amphitryon, on the one hand, has already exploited everything he knows and does not know, from Sanconiathon, Manetho, and Berosus, to Dr. Hickok,--and the guests--but the thought of their united efforts is too appalling. In short, (if we may use that term in connection with such a subject,) we cannot believe, and certainly do not hope, that Mr. Cushing's system will ever become popular. Even if it should, we think that an improvement upon it might be suggested. We subjoin a form of invitation and answer, which any of our readers are at liberty to use, if they should ever need them.

_Punkinopolis_, 28th Sept., 1858.

My dear N. N.,

I send, by the bearer, the Correspondence of Horace Walpole and Burke's "Letters on a Regicide Peace" which are, probably, as entertaining and eloquent as anything I could write. I send also Cicero "De Amicitia," Brillat-Savarin's "Physiologie du Gout" the Works of Athenæus, and the "Banquet" of Plato. If, after a perusal of these works, you are not convinced that I entertain the most friendly feelings towards you, and that I wish you to dine with me on this day twelvemonth, I do not know what further arguments to employ.

Yours faithfully,

&c. &c.

Baldeagleville, Feb. 10, 1859.

My dear &c. &c.,

The wagon, which accompanies this, will bring you a copy of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The reading of this choice morçeau of contemporary literature will suggest to you nearly all I have to say in reply to your interesting communication of the 28th September last. By reading, in succession, the articles Confucius, Fortification, Sandwich Islands, and Æsthetics, you will form some notion of the mingled emotions with which I remain:

Yours truly,

N.N.

P. S. The amount of time required for mastering the Greek language, in order thoroughly to enjoy some passages of your charming note, alone prevents me from sending so full an answer as I should wish.

In these days, when everybody's correspondence is published as soon as he is dead,--or during his life, if he is unfortunate enough to be the Director of an Observatory, and there is a chance of injuring him by the breach of confidence,--we cannot help thinking that the forms we have given above are not only more compendious, but safer, than Mr. Cushing's. If his method should come into vogue, posterity would be deprived of the letters of this generation for nearly a century by the time necessary to print them, and then, allowing for the imperious intervals of sleep, would hardly contrive to get through them in less than a couple of centuries more. We leave to those who have read Mr. Cushing's reply to the Craytonville invitation the painful task of estimating the loss to the world from such a contingency. Meanwhile, the perplexing question arises,--If such be the warrior-statesman's measure of gratitude for a dinner, what would be his scale for a breakfast or a dish of tea? Cæsar announced a victory in three words; but in this respect he was very inferior to Mr. Cushing, whose style is much more copious, and who shows as remarkable talents in the command of language as the other general did in the command of troops.

On first reading Mr. Cushing's letter, its obscurity puzzled us not a little. There are passages in it that would have pleased Lycophron himself, who wished he might be hanged if anybody could understand his poem. Dilution was to be expected in a production whose author had to make three columns out of "Thank you, can't come." Even a person overrunning with the milk of human kindness, as Mr. Cushing, on so remarkable an occasion, undoubtedly was, might be pardoned for adopting the shift of dealers in the dearer vaccine article, and reinforcing his stores from a friendly pump. The expansiveness of the heart would naturally communicate itself to the diction. But, on the other hand, repeated experiments failed to detect even the most watery flavor of conviviality in the composition. The epistles of Jacob Behmen himself are not farther removed from any contamination with the delights of sense. Was this, then, a mere Baratarian banquet, a feast of reason, to which Mr. Cushing had been invited? Or did he intend to pay an indirect tribute of respect to his ancestry by sending what would produce all the hilarious effect of one of those interminable Puritan graces before meat? No, the dinner was a real dinner,--the well-known hospitality of South Carolina toward Massachusetts ambassadors forbids any other supposition,--and Mr. Cushing's letter itself, however dark in some particulars, is clear enough in renouncing every principle and practice of the founders of New England. We must find, therefore, some other reason why the Ex-Commander of the Palmetto Regiment, when the Carolinians ask the pleasure of his society, gives them instead the agreeable relaxation of a sermon,--an example which, we trust, will not prove infectious among the clergy.

It occurred to us suddenly that the next Democratic National Convention is to assemble in Charleston. It is not, therefore, too early to send in sealed proposals for the Presidency; and if this letter is Mr. Cushing's bid, we must do him the justice to say that we think nobody will be found to go lower. We doubt if it will avail him much; but the precedent of Northern politicians going South for wool and coming back shorn is so long established, that a lawyer like himself will hardly venture to take exception to it. Like his great namesake, the son of Jephunneh, he may bring back a gigantic bunch of grapes from this land of large promise and small fulfilment, but we fear they will be of the variety which sets the teeth on edge, and fills the belly with that east wind which might have been had cheaper at home.

If, nevertheless, Mr. Cushing is desirous of being a candidate, it is worth while to consider what would be the principles on which he would administer the government, and what are his claims to the confidence of the public. We are beginning to discover that the personal character of the President has a great deal to do with the conduct of the almost irresponsible executive head of the Republic. What, then, have been Mr. Cushing's political antecedents, and what is his present creed?

There are many points of resemblance between his character and career and those of the present Chancellor of the English Exchequer. Belonging to a part of the country whose opinions are to all intents and purposes politically proscribed, he has gone over to a party whose whole policy has tended to harass the commerce, to cripple the manufactures, and to outrage the moral sense of New England, and has won advancement and prominence in that party by his talents, contriving at the same time to make his origin a service rather than a detriment. Like Mr. Disraeli, he has been consistent only in devotion to success. Like him, accomplished, handsome, plucky, industrious, and dangerous, if unconvincing, in debate, he brings to bear on every question the immediate force of personal courage and readiness, but none of that force drawn from persistent principle, whose defeats are tutorings for victory. With a quick eye for the weak point of an enemy, and a knack of so draping commonplaces with rhetoric that they shall have the momentary air of profound generalizations, he is also, like him, more cunning in expedients than capable of far-seeing policy. Adroit in creating and fostering prejudice, acute in drawing metaphysical distinctions which shall make wrong seem right by showing that it is less wrong than it appeared, he is unable to see that public opinion is never moulded by metaphysics, and that, with the people, instinct is as surely permanent as prejudice is transitory. Like Mr. Disraeli, versatile, he is liable to forget that what men admire as a grace in the intellect they condemn as a defect in the character and conduct. Gifted, like him, with various talents, he has one which overshadows all the rest,--the faculty of inspiring a universal want of confidence. As a popular leader, the advantage which daring would have given him is more than counterpoised by an acuteness and refinement of mind which have no sympathy with the mass of men, and which they in turn are likely to distrust from imperfect comprehension. Ill-adapted for the rough-and-tumble contests of a Democracy, he is admirably fitted to be the minister or the head of an oligarchical Republic. We wish all our Northern Representatives had the boldness and the abilities, we hope none of them will be seduced by the example, of Mr. Cushing.

He is one of those able men whose imputed is even greater than their real mental capacity; because the standard of ordinary men is success, --and success, of a certain kind, is assured to those mixed characters which combine the virtue of courage with the vice of unscrupulousness. An ambitious man, like Louis Napoleon, for example, who sets out with those two best gifts of worldly fortune, a lace with nothing but brass and a pocket with nothing but copper in it, has a brilliant, if a short, career before him, and will be sure to gain the character of ability; for if ambition but find selfishness to work upon, it has that leverage which Archimedes wished for. But time makes sad havoc with this false greatness, with this reputation which passes for fame, and this adroitness which passes for wisdom, with merely acute minds. When Plausibility and Truth divided the world between them, the one chose To-day and the other To-morrow.

To enable us to construct a theory of Mr. Cushing's present position, we have two recent productions in print,--his Fourth of July Oration at New York, and his Letter to the Craytonville Committee. But he has seen too many aspirants for the Presidency contrive to drown themselves in their inkstands, and is far too shrewd a man, to elaborate any documentary evidence of his opinions. If we arrive at them, it must be by a process of induction, and by gathering what evidence we can from other sources. Mr. Cushing knows very well that the multitude have nothing but a secondary office in the making of Presidents, and addresses to them only his words, while the initiated alone know what meaning to put on them. If, for example, when he says _servant_ he means _slave_, when he says _Negrophilist_ he means _Republican_, and when he says _false philanthropy_ he means _the fairest instincts of the human heart_, we have a right to suspect that there is also an esoteric significance in the phrases, _Loyalty to the Union_, _Nationality_, and _Conservatism_.