Chapter II: Letter I

SHOWING HOW OUR CORRESPONDENT CAME INTO THE WORLD: WITH SOME PARTICULARS CONCERNING HIS EARLY CHILDHOOD.

WASHINGTON, D.C., March 20th, 1861.

Judge not by appearances, my boy; for appearances are very deceptive, as the old lady cholerically remarked when one, who was really a virgin on to forty, blushingly informed her that she was "just twenty-five this month."

Though you find me in Washington now, I was born of respectable parents, and gave every indication, in my satchel and apron days, of coming to something better than this,--much better, my boy.

Slightly northward of the Connecticut river, where a pleasant little conservative village mediates between two opposition hills, you may behold the landscape on which my infantile New England eyes first traced the courses of future railroads.

Near the centre of this village in the valley, my boy, and a little back from its principal road, stood the residence of my worthy sire--and a very pretty residence it was. From the frequent addition of a new upper-room here, a new dormer window there, and an innovating skylight elsewhere, the roof of the mansion had gradually assumed an Alpine variety of juts and peaks somewhat confusing to behold. Local tradition related that, on a certain showery occasion, a streak of lightning was seen to descend upon that roof, skip vaguely about from one peak to another, and finally slink ignominiously down the water-pipe, as though utterly disgusted with its own inability to determine, where there are so many, which peak it should particularly perforate.

Years afterwards, my boy, this strange tale was told me by a venerable chap of the village, and I might have believed it, had he not outraged the probability of the meteorological narrative with a sequel.

"And when that streak came down the pipe," says the aged chap, thoughtfully, "it struck a man who was leaning against the house, ran down to his feet, and went into the ground without hurting him a mite!"

With the natural ingenuousness of childhood I closed one eye, my boy, and says I:

"Do you mean to tell me, old man, that he was struck by lightning, and yet wasn't hurt?"

"Yes," says the venerable chap, abstractedly cutting a small log from the door-frame of the grocery store with his jack-knife; "the streak passed off from him, because he was a conductor."

"A conductor?" says I, picking up another stone to throw at the same dog.

"Yes," says the chap confidentially, "he was a conductor--on a railroad."

The human mind, my boy, when long affected by country air, tends naturally to the marvellous, and affiliates with the German in normal transcendentalism.

Such was the house in which I came to life a certain number of years ago, entering the world, like a human exclamation point, between two of the angriest sentences of a September storm, and adding materially to the uproar prevailing at the time.

Next to my parents, of whom I shall say little at present, the person I can best remember, as I look back, was our family physician. A very obese man was he, my boy, with certain sweet-oiliness of manner, and never out of patients. I think I can see him still, as he arose from his chair after a profound study of the case before him, and wrote a prescription so circumlocutory in its effect, that it sent a servant half a mile to his friend, the druggist, for articles she might have found in her own kitchen, _aqua pumpaginis_ and sugar being the sole ingredients required.

The doctor had started business in our village as a veterinary surgeon, my boy; but, as the entire extent of his practice for six months in that line was a call to mend one of Colt's revolvers, he finally turned his attention to the ailings of his fellows, and wrought many cures with sugar and water Latinized.

At first, my father did not patronize the new doctor, having very little faith in the efficacy of sugar and water without the addition of a certain other composite often seen in bottles; but the doctor's neat speech at a Sunday school festival won his heart at last. The festival was held near a series of small waterfalls just out of the village, my boy, and the doctor, who was an invited guest, was called upon for a few appropriate remarks. In compliance with the demand he made a speech of some compass, ending with a peroration that is still quoted in my native place. He pointed impressively to the waterfalls, and says he:

"All the works of nature is somewhat beautiful, with a good moral. Even them cataracts," says he, sagely, "have a moral, and seem eternally whispering to the young, that 'Those what err falls'."

The effect of this happy illustration was very pleasing, my boy; especially with those who prefer morality to grammar; and after that, the physician had the run of all the pious families--our own included.

It was a handsome compliment this worthy man paid me when I was about six months old.

Having just received from my father the amount of his last bill, he was complacent to the last degree, and felt inclined to do the handsome thing. He patted my head as I sat upon my mother's lap, and says he:

"How beautiful is babes! So small, and yet so much like human beings, only not so large. This boy," says he, fatly, looking down at me, "will make a noise in the world yet. He has a long head, a very long head."

"Do you think so?" says my father.

"Indeed I do," says the doctor. "The little fellow," says he, in a sudden fit of abstraction, "has a long head, a very long head--and it's as thick as it is long."

There was some coolness between the doctor and my father after that, my boy: and, on the following Sunday, my mother refused to look at his wife's new bonnet in church.

I might cover many pages with further account of childhood's sunny hours; but enough has been given already to establish the respectability of my birth, despite my present location; and there I let the matter rest, my boy, for the time being.

Yours, retrospectively,

ORPHEUS C. KERR.