Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Part 20

-The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermittent have been coming over me from time to time of late. Did you ever see that electrical experiment which consists in pa.s.sing a flash through letters of gold-leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of fire?

There are songs all written out in my soul, which I could read, if the flash might pa.s.s through them,-but the fire must come down from heaven.

Ah! but what if the stormy _nimbus_ of youthful pa.s.sion has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged _cirrus_ of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered _c.u.mulus_ of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer wors.h.i.+p,-the immortal maid, who, name her what you will,-G.o.ddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty,-sits by the pillow of every youthful poet, and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreams.

MUSA.

O my lost Beauty!-hast thou folded quite Thy wings of morning light Beyond those iron gates Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, And Age upon his mound of ashes waits To chill our fiery dreams, Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams?

Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair!- Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song?

Ah, wilt thou yet return, Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn?

Come to me!-I will flood thy silent s.h.i.+ne With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palm toss, plume-like, in the breeze.

Come to me!-thou shalt feed on honied words, Sweeter than song of birds;- No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note, When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, Thy ravished sense might soothe With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.

Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the cl.u.s.tered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,- Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight s.h.i.+nes, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.

Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,- Or stretched by gra.s.s-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away.

Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing!

Still let me dream and sing,- Dream of that winding sh.o.r.e Where scarlet cardinals bloom,-for me no more,- The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And cl.u.s.tering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars!

Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!- Come while the rose is red,- While blue-eyed Summer smiles On the green ripples round you sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer!

Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild sweet pain!- On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's, pa.s.sion-flowers are cast,- Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!- Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!"

CHAPTER XI

[The company looked a little fl.u.s.tered one morning when I came in,-so much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student,) what had been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions involving a quibble or play upon words,-in short, containing that indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the pa.s.sages from the distinguished moralist of the last century and the ill.u.s.trious historian of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a _pun_.

After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.-It was asked, "Why tertian and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." Some interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they _skip_ a day or two.-"Why an Englishman must go to the Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer proves to have no relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason is given than that island-(or, as it is absurdly written, _ile and_) water won't mix.-But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a virtue. "Why an onion is like a piano" is a query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these words,-"Because it smell odious," _quasi_, it's melodious,-is not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain and chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn't,-he made jokes.]

I am willing,-I said,-to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.-No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, "De Sancto Matrimonio." I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor.

[Picture: The Deacon]

THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS-SHAY."

A LOGICAL STORY.

HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-shay, That was built in such a logical way It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it-ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Scaring the parson into fits, Frightening people out of their wits,- Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.

_Georgius Secundus_ was then alive,- Snuffy old drone from the German hive.

That was the year when Lisbon-town Saw the earth open and gulp her down, And Braddock's army was done so brown, Left without a scalp to its crown.

It was on the terrible Earthquake-day That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, There is always _somewhere_ a weakest spot,- In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,-lurking still Find it somewhere you must and will,- Above or below, or within or without,- And that's the reason, beyond a doubt, A chaise _b.r.e.a.s.t.s down_, but doesn't _wear out_.

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell _yeou_,") He would build one shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it _couldn'_ break daown- -"Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk Where he could find the strongest oak, That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,- That was for spokes and floor and sills; He sent for lancewood to make the thills; The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees; The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese, But lasts like iron for things like these; The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"- Last of its timber,-they couldn't sell 'em, Never an axe had seen their chips, And the wedges flew from between their lips, Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, Steel of the finest, bright and blue; Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide Found in the pit when the tanner died.

That was the way he "put her through."- "There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew."

Do! I tell you, I father guess She was a wonder, and nothing less!

Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, Deacon and deaconess dropped away, Children and grand-children-where were they?

But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;-it came and found The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.

Eighteen hundred increased by ten;- "Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.

Eighteen hundred and twenty came;- Running as usual; much the same.

Thirty and forty at last arrive, And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer.

In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth.

(This is a moral that runs at large; Take it.-You're welcome.-No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER,-the Earthquake-day.- There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay.

A general flavor of mild decay, But nothing local, as one may say.

There couldn't be,-for the Deacon's art Had made it so like in every part That there wasn't a chance for one to start.

For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, And the floor was just as strong as the sills, And the panels just as strong as the floor, And the whippletree neither less nor more, And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, And spring and axle and hub _encore_.

And yet, _as a whole_, it is past a doubt In another hour it will be _worn out_!

First of November, 'Fifty-five!

This morning the parson takes a drive.

Now, small boys, get out of the way!

Here comes the wonderful one-horse-shay, Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.

"Huddup!" said the parson.-Off went they.

The parson was working his Sunday's text,- Had got to _fifthly_, and stopped perplexed At what the-Moses-was coming next.

All at once the horse stood still, Close by the meet'n-house on the hill.

-First a s.h.i.+ver, and then a thrill, Then something decidedly like a spill,- And the parson was sitting upon a rock, At half-past nine by the meet'n-house clock,- Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!

-What do you think the parson found, When he got up and stared around?

The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, As if it had been to the mill and ground!

You see, of course, if you're not a dunce, How it went to pieces all at once,- All at once, and nothing first,- Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.

Logic is logic. That's all I say.

-I think there is one habit,-I said to our company a day or two afterwards-worse than that of punning. It is the gradual subst.i.tution of cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of two great categories,-_fast_ or _slow_. Man's chief end was to be a _brick_. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of as being a _good deal cut up_. Nine-tenths of human existence were summed up in the single word, _bore_. These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual bankruptcy;-you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it sp.a.w.ns itself all over the talk of men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly the dishwater from the was.h.i.+ngs of English dandyism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial climate.