Over the Teacups Part 20

Stall No. 8. Varieties.

Stall No. 9. Bookstall. (Books) "highly recommended for insomnia; friends we never speak to, and always cut if we want to know them well."

Stall No. 10. Icelandic.

Stall No. 11. Call Office. "Mrs. Magnusson, who is devoted to the North Pole and all its works, will thaw your sympathies, enlighten your minds," etc., etc.

All you buy may be left at the stalls, ticketed. A duplicate ticket will be handed to you on leaving. Present your duplicate at the Call Office.

At 9.45, First Concert.

At 10.45, An Address of Welcome by Rev. H. R. Haweis.

At 11 P. M., Bird-warbling Interlude by Miss Mabel Stephenson, U. S. A.

At 11.20, Second Concert.

NOTICE!

Three Great Pictures.

LORD TENNYSON. G. F. Watts, R. A. JOHN STUART MILL G. F. Watts, R. A.

JOSEPH GARIBALDI Sig. Rondi.

NOTICE!

A Famous Violin.

A world-famed Stradivarius Violin, for which Mr. Hill, of Bond Street, gave L 1000, etc., etc.

REFRESHMENTS.

Tickets for Tea, Coffee, Sandwiches, Iced Drinks, or Ices, Sixpence each, etc., etc.

I hope my American reader is pleased and interested by this glimpse of the way in which they do these things in London.

There is something very pleasant about all this, but what specially strikes me is a curious flavor of city provincialism. There are little centres in the heart of great cities, just as there are small fresh-water ponds in great islands with the salt sea roaring all round them, and bays and creeks penetrating them as briny as the ocean itself.

Irving has given a charming picture of such a quasi-provincial centre in one of his papers in the Sketch-Book,--the one with the t.i.tle "Little Britain." London is a nation of itself, and contains provinces, districts, foreign communities, villages, parishes,--innumerable lesser centres, with their own distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics, habits, pursuit, languages, social laws, as much isolated from each other as if "mountains interposed" made the separation between them. One of these lesser centres is that over which my friend Mr. Haweis presides as spiritual director. Chelsea has been made famous as the home of many authors and artists,--above all, as the residence of Carlyle during the greater part of his life. Its population, like that of most respectable suburbs, must belong mainly to the kind of citizens which resembles in many ways the better cla.s.s,--as we sometimes dare to call it,--of one of our thriving New England towns. How many John Gilpins there must be in this population,--citizens of "famous London town," but living with the simplicity of the inhabitants of our inland villages! In the mighty metropolis where the wealth of the world displays itself they practise their snug economies, enjoy their simple pleasures, and look upon ice-cream as a luxury, just as if they were living on the banks of the Connecticut or the Housatonic, in regions where the summer locusts of the great cities have not yet settled on the verdure of the native inhabitants. It is delightful to realize the fact that while the West End of London is flaunting its splendors and the East End in struggling with its miseries, these great middle-cla.s.s communities are living as comfortable, unpretending lives as if they were in one of our thriving towns.h.i.+ps in the huckleberry-districts. Human beings are wonderfully alike when they are placed in similar conditions.

We were sitting together in a very quiet way over our teacups. The young Doctor, who was in the best of spirits, had been laughing and chatting with the two Annexes. The Tutor, who always sits next to Number Five of late, had been conversing with her in rather low tones. The rest of us had been soberly sipping our tea, and when the Doctor and the Annexes stopped talking there was one of those dead silences which are sometimes so hard to break in upon, and so awkward while they last. All at once Number Seven exploded in a loud laugh, which startled everybody at the table.

What is it that sets you laughing so? said I.

"I was thinking," Number Seven replied, "of what you said the other day of poetry being only the ashes of emotion. I believe that some people are disposed to dispute the proposition. I have been putting your doctrine to the test. In doing it I made some rhymes,--the first and only ones I ever made. I will suppose a case of very exciting emotion, and see whether it would probably take the form of poetry or prose. You are suddenly informed that your house is on fire, and have to scramble out of it, without stopping to tie your neck-cloth neatly or to put a flower in your b.u.t.tonhole. Do you think a poet turning out in his night-dress, and looking on while the flames were swallowing his home and all its contents, would express himself in this style?

"My house is on fire!

Bring me my lyre!

Like the flames that rise heavenward my song shall aspire!

"He would n't do any such thing, and you know he wouldn't. He would yell Fire! Fire! with all his might. Not much rhyming for him just yet! Wait until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look at the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his hat while he knelt before her?

"My beloved, to you I will always be true.

Oh, pray make me happy, my love, do! do! do!

"What would Amanda think of a suitor who courted her with a rhyming dictionary in his pocket to help him make love?"

You are right, said I,--there's nothing in the world like rhymes to cool off a man's pa.s.sion. You look at a blacksmith working on a bit of iron or steel. Bright enough it looked while it was on the hearth, in the midst of the sea-coal, the great bellows blowing away, and the rod or the horse-shoe as red or as white as the burning coals. How it fizzes as it goes into the trough of water, and how suddenly all the glow is gone! It looks black and cold enough now. Just so with your pa.s.sionate incandescence. It is all well while it burns and scintillates in your emotional centres, without articulate and connected expression; but the minute you plunge it into the rhyme-trough it cools down, and becomes as dead and dull as the cold horse-shoe. It is true that if you lay it cold on the anvil and hammer away on it for a while it warms up somewhat.

Just so with the rhyming fellow,--he pounds away on his verses and they warm up a little. But don't let him think that this afterglow of composition is the same thing as the original pa.s.sion. That found expression in a few oh, oh's, eheu's, helas, helas's, and when the pa.s.sion had burned itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I have said, are its ashes.

I thanked Number Seven for his poetical ill.u.s.tration of my thesis. There is great good to be got out of a squinting brain, if one only knows how to profit by it. We see only one side of the moon, you know, but a fellow with a squinting brain seems now and then to get a peep at the other side. I speak metaphorically. He takes new and startling views of things we have always looked at in one particular aspect. There is a rule invariably to be observed with one of this cla.s.s of intelligences: Never contradict a man with a squinting brain. I say a man, because I do not think that squinting brains are nearly so common in women as they are in men. The "eccentrics" are, I think, for the most part of the male s.e.x.

That leads me to say that persons with a strong instinctive tendency to contradiction are apt to become unprofitable companions. Our thoughts are plants that never flourish in inhospitable soils or chilling atmospheres. They are all started under gla.s.s, so to speak; that is, sheltered and fostered in our own warm and sunny consciousness. They must expect some rough treatment when we lift the sash from the frame and let the outside elements in upon them. They can bear the rain and the breezes, and be all the better for them; but perpetual contradiction is a pelting hailstorm, which spoils their growth and tends to kill them out altogether.

Now stop and consider a moment. Are not almost all brains a little wanting in bilateral symmetry? Do you not find in persons whom you love, whom you esteem, and even admire, some marks of obliquity in mental vision? Are there not some subjects in looking at which it seems to you impossible that they should ever see straight? Are there not moods in which it seems to you that they are disposed to see all things out of plumb and in false relations with each other? If you answer these questions in the affirmative, then you will be glad of a hint as to the method of dealing with your friends who have a touch of cerebral strabismus, or are liable to occasional paroxysms of perversity. Let them have their head. Get them talking on subjects that interest them.

As a rule, nothing is more likely to serve this purpose than letting them talk about themselves; if authors, about their writings; if artists, about their pictures or statues; and generally on whatever they have most pride in and think most of their own relations with.

Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in thinking that slight mental obliquity is as common as I suppose. An a.n.a.logy may have some influence on your belief in this matter. Will you take the trouble to ask your tailor how many persons have their two shoulders of the same height? I think he will tell you that the majority of his customers show a distinct difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask a portrait-painter how many of those who sit to hint have both sides of their faces exactly alike? I believe he will tell you that one side is always a little better than the other. What will your hatter say about the two sides of the head? Do you see equally well with both eyes, and hear equally well with both ears? Few persons past middle age will pretend that they do. Why should the two halves of a brain not show a natural difference, leading to confusion of thought, and very possibly to that instinct of contradiction of which I was speaking? A great deal of time is lost in profitless conversation, and a good deal of ill temper frequently caused, by not considering these organic and practically insuperable conditions. In dealing with them, acquiescence is the best of palliations and silence the sovereign specific.

I have been the reporter, as you have seen, of my own conversation and that of the other Teacups. I have told some of the circ.u.mstances of their personal history, and interested, as I hope, here and there a reader in the fate of different members of our company. Here are our pretty Delilah and our Doctor provided for. We may take it for granted that it will not be very long that the young couple will have to wait; for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is certainly getting into business, and bids fair to have a thriving practice before he saddles his nose with an eyegla.s.s and begins to think of a pair of spectacles.

So that part of our little domestic drama is over, and we can only wish the pair that is to be all manner of blessings consistent with a reasonable amount of health in the community on whose ailings must depend their prosperity.

All our thoughts are now concentrated on the relation existing between Number Five and the Tutor. That there is some profound instinctive impulse which is drawing them closer together no one who watches them can for a moment doubt. There are two principles of attraction which bring different natures together: that in which the two natures closely resemble each other, and that in which one is complementary of the other. In the first case, they coalesce, as do two drops of water or of mercury, and become intimately blended as soon as they touch; in the other, they rush together as an acid and an alkali unite, predestined from eternity to find all they most needed in each other. What is the condition of things in the growing intimacy of Number Five and the Tutor? He is many years her junior, as we know. Both of them look that fact squarely in the face. The presumption is against the union of two persons under these circ.u.mstances. Presumptions are strong obstacles against any result we wish to attain, but half our work in life is to overcome them. A great many results look in the distance like six-foot walls, and when we get nearer prove to be only five-foot hurdles, to be leaped over or knocked down. Twenty years from now she may be a vigorous and active old woman, and he a middle-aged, half-worn-out invalid, like so many overworked scholars. Everything depends on the number of drops of the elixir vitae which Nature mingled in the nourishment she administered to the embryo before it tasted its mother's milk. Think of Cleopatra, the bewitching old mischief-maker; think of Ninon de L'Enclos, whose own son fell desperately in love with her, not knowing the relation in which she stood to him; think of Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Thrale, afterward Mrs. Piozzi, who at the age of eighty was full enough of life to be making love ardently and persistently to Conway, the handsome young actor. I can readily believe that Number Five will outlive the Tutor, even if he is fortunate enough rather in winning his way into the fortress through gates that open to him of their own accord. If he fails in his siege, I do really believe he will die early; not of a broken heart, exactly, but of a heart starved, with the food it was craving close to it, but unattainable. I have, therefore, a deep interest in knowing how Number Five and the Tutor are getting along together. Is there any danger of one or the other growing tired of the intimacy, and becoming willing to get rid of it, like a garment which has shrunk and grown too tight? Is it likely that some other attraction may come into disturb the existing relation? The problem is to my mind not only interesting, but exceptionally curious. You remember the story of Cymon and Iphigenia as Dryden tells it. The poor youth has the capacity of loving, but it lies hidden in his undeveloped nature. All at once he comes upon the sleeping beauty, and is awakened by her charms to a hitherto unfelt consciousness. With the advent of the new pa.s.sion all his dormant faculties start into life, and the seeming simpleton becomes the bright and intelligent lover. The case of Number Five is as different from that of Cymon as it could well be. All her faculties are wide awake, but one emotional side of her nature has never been called into active exercise. Why has she never been in love with any one of her suitors? Because she liked too many of them. Do you happen to remember a poem printed among these papers, ent.i.tled "I Like You and I Love You"?

No one of the poems which have been placed in the urn,--that is, in the silver sugar-bowl,--has had any name attached to it; but you could guess pretty nearly who was the author of some of them, certainly of the one just, referred to. Number Five was attracted to the Tutor from the first time he spoke to her. She dreamed about him that night, and nothing idealizes and renders fascinating one in whom we have already an interest like dreaming of him or of her. Many a calm suitor has been made pa.s.sionate by a dream; many a pa.s.sionate lover has been made wild and half beside himself by a dream; and now and then an infatuated but hapless lover, waking from a dream of bliss to a cold reality of wretchedness, has helped himself to eternity before he was summoned to the table.

Since Number Five had dreamed about the Tutor, he had been more in her waking thoughts than she was willing to acknowledge. These thoughts were vague, it is true,--emotions, perhaps, rather than worded trains of ideas; but she was conscious of a pleasing excitement as his name or his image floated across her consciousness; she sometimes sighed as she looked over the last pa.s.sage they had read from the same book, and sometimes when they were together they were silent too long,--too long!

What were they thinking of?

And so it was all as plain sailing for Number Five and the young Tutor as it had been for Delilah and the young Doctor, was it? Do you think so? Then you do not understand Number Five. Many a woman has as many atmospheric rings about her as the planet Saturn. Three are easily to be recognized. First, there is the wide ring of attraction which draws into itself all that once cross its outer border. These revolve about her without ever coming any nearer. Next is the inner ring of attraction.

Those who come within its irresistible influence are drawn so close that it seems as if they must become one with her sooner or later. But within this ring is another,--an atmospheric girdle, one of repulsion, which love, no matter how enterprising, no matter how prevailing or how insinuating, has never pa.s.sed, and, if we judge of what is to be by what has been, never will. Perhaps Nature loved Number Five so well that she grudged her to any mortal man, and gave her this inner girdle of repulsion to guard her from all who would know her too nearly and love her too well. Sometimes two vessels at sea keep each other company for a long distance, it may be daring a whole voyage. Very pleasant it is to each to have a companion to exchange signals with from time to time; to came near enough, when the winds are light, to hold converse in ordinary tones from deck to deck; to know that, in case of need, there's help at hand. It is good for them to be near each other, but not good to be too near. Woe is to them if they touch! The wreck of one or both is likely to be the consequence. And so two well-equipped and heavily freighted natures may be the best of companions to each other, and yet must never attempt to come into closer union. Is this the condition of affairs between Number Five and the Tutor? I hope not, for I want them to be joined together in that dearest of intimacies, which, if founded in true affinity, is the nearest approach to happiness to be looked for in our mortal, experience. We mast wait. The Teacups will meet once more before the circle is broken, and we may, perhaps, find the solution of the question we have raised.

In the mean time, our young Doctor is playing truant oftener than ever.

He has brought Avis,--if we must call her so, and not Delilah,--several times to take tea with us. It means something, in these days, to graduate from one of our first-cla.s.s academies or collegiate schools. I shall never forget my first visit to one of these inst.i.tutions. How much its pupils know, I said, which I was never taught, and have never learned! I was fairly frightened to see what a teaching apparatus was provided for them. I should think the first thing to be done with most of the husbands, they are likely to get would be to put them through a course of instruction. The young wives must find their lords wofully ignorant, in a large proportion of cases. When the wife has educated the husband to such a point that she can invite him to work out a problem in the higher mathematics or to perform a difficult chemical a.n.a.lysis with her as his collaborator, as less instructed dames ask their husbands to play a game of checkers or backgammon, they can have delightful and instructive evenings together. I hope our young Doctor will take kindly to his wife's (that is to be) teachings.

When the following verses were taken out of the urn, the Mistress asked me to hand the ma.n.u.script to the young Doctor to read. I noticed that he did not keep his eyes very closely fixed on the paper. It seemed as if he could have recited the lines without referring to the ma.n.u.script at all.

AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD.

The glory has pa.s.sed from the goldenrod's plume, The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom; The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red, The maples like torches aflame overhead.

But what if the joy of the summer is past, And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast?

For me dull November is sweeter than May, For my love is its suns.h.i.+ne,--she meets me to-day!

Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest?

Will the needle swing back from the east or the west?

At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate; A friend may prove laggard,--love never comes late.

Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet.