OVER THE TEACUPS ......................................................................................................................................1

Oliver W. Holmes....................................................................................................................................1

PREFACE. ...............................................................................................................................................1

I. INTRODUCTION. ...............................................................................................................................2

II. TO THE READER. .............................................................................................................................8

III ............................................................................................................................................................17

IV...........................................................................................................................................................28

V .............................................................................................................................................................37

VI...........................................................................................................................................................47

VII ..........................................................................................................................................................58

VIII. ........................................................................................................................................................68

IX...........................................................................................................................................................80

X .............................................................................................................................................................91

XI.........................................................................................................................................................102

XII ........................................................................................................................................................114

The kind way in which this series of papers has been received has been a pleasure greater than I dared to

anticipate. I felt that I was a late comer in the midst of a crowd of ardent and eager candidates for public

attention, that I had already had my day, and that if, like the unfortunate Frenchman we used read about, I had

"come again," I ought not to surprised if I received the welcome of "Monsieur Tonson."

It has not proved so. My old readers have come forward in the pleasantest possible way and assured me that

they were glad to see me again. There is no need, therefore, of apologies or explanations. I thought I had

something left to say and I have found listeners. In writing these papers I have had occupation and kept

myself in relation with my fellowbeings. New sympathies, new sources of encouragement, if not of

inspiration, have opened themselves before me and cheated the least promising season of life of much that

seemed to render it dreary and depressing. What particularly pleased me has been the freedom of criticisms

which I have seen from disadvantageous comparisons of my later with my earlier writings.

I should like a little rest from literary work before the requiescat ensures my repose from earthly labors, but I

will not be rash enough to promise that I will not even once again greet my old and new readers if the

impulse becomes irresistible to renew a companionship which has been to me such a source of happiness.

This series of papers was begun in March, 1888. A single number was printed, when it was interrupted the

course of events, and not resumed until nearly years later, in January, 1890. The plan of the series was not

formed in my mind when I wrote the number. In returning to my task I found that my original plan had

shaped itself in the underground laboratory of my thought so that some changes had to be made in what I had

written. As I proceeded, the slight story which formed a part of my programme eloped itself without any need

of much contrivance on my, part. Given certain characters in a writer's conception, if they are real to him, as

they ought to be they will act in such or such a way, according to the law of their nature. It was pretty safe to

assume that intimate relations would spring up between some members of our mixed company; and it was not

rash conjecture that some of these intimacies might end in such attachment as would furnish us hints, at least,

As to the course of the conversations which would take place, very little could be guessed beforehand.

Various subjects of interest would be likely to present themselves, without definite order, oftentimes abruptly

and, as it would seem, capriciously. Conversation in such a mixed company as that of "The Teacups" is likely

to be suggestive rather than exhaustive. Continuous discourse is better adapted to the lectureroom than to

the teatable. There is quite enough of it, I fear too much,in these pages. But the reader must take the

reports of our talks as they were jotted down. A patchwork quilt is not like a piece of Gobelin tapestry; but it

Some will feel a temptation to compare these conversations with those earlier ones, and remark unamiably

upon their difference. This is hardly fair, and is certainly not wise. They are produced under very different

conditions, and betray that fact in every line. It is better to take them by themselves; and, if my reader finds

anything to please or profit from, I shall be contented, and he, I feel sure, will not be ungrateful.

The readers who take up this volume may recollect a series of conversations held many years ago over the

breakfasttable, and reported for their more or less profitable entertainment. Those were not very early

breakfasts at which the talks took place, but at any rate the sun was rising, and the guests had not as yet tired

themselves with the labors of the day. The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the

cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot be expected to reproduce. The toils of the

forenoon, the heats of midday, in the warm season, the slanting light of the descending sun, or the sobered

translucency of twilight have subdued the vivacity of the early day. Yet under the influence of the benign

stimulant many trains of thought which will bear recalling, may suggest themselves to some of our quiet

How early many of my old breakfast companions went off to bed! I am thinking not merely of those who sat

round our table, but of that larger company of friends who listened to our conversations as reported. Dear girl

with the silken ringlets, dear boy with the downshadowed cheek, your grandfather, your grandmother,

turned over the freshly printed leaves that told the story of those earlier meetings around the plain board

where so many things were said and sung, not all of which have quite faded from memory of this

overburdened and forgetful time. Your father, your mother, found the scattered leaves gathered in a volume,

and smiled upon them as not uncompanionable acquaintances. My teatable makes no promises. There is no

programme of exercises to studied beforehand. What if I should content myself with a single report of what

was said and done over our teacups? Perhaps my young reader would be glad to let me off, for there are

talkers enough who have not yet left their breakfasttables; and nobody can blame the young people for

preferring the thoughts and the language of their own generation, with all its future before it, to those of their

My reader, young or old, will please to observe that I have left myself entire freedom as to the sources of

what may be said over the teacups. I have not told how many cups are commonly on the board, but by using

the plural I have implied that there is at least one other talker or listener beside myself, and for all that

appears there may be a dozen. There will be no regulation length to my reports, no attempt to make out a

certain number of pages. I have no contract to fill so many columns, no pledge to contribute so many

numbers. I can stop on this first page if I do not care to say anything more, and let this article stand by itself if

so minded. What a sense of freedom it gives not to write by the yard or the column!

When one writes for an English review or magazine at so many guineas a sheet, the temptation is very great

to make one's contribution cover as many sheets as possible. We all know the metallic taste of articles written

under this powerful stimulus. If Bacon's Essays had been furnished by a modern hand to the "Quarterly

Review" at fifty guineas a sheet, what a great book it would have taken to hold them!

The first thing which suggests itself to me, as I contemplate my slight project, is the liability of repeating in

the evening what I may have said in the morning in one form or another, and printed in these or other pages.

When it suddenly flashes into the consciousness of a writer who had been long before the public, "Why, I

have said all that once or oftener in my books or essays, and here it is again; the same old thought, the same

old image, the same old story!" it irritates him, and is likely to stir up the monosyllables of his unsanctified

vocabulary. He sees in imagination a thousand readers, smiling or yawning as they say to themselves, "We

have had all that before," and turn to another writer's performance for something not quite so stale and

The idiot! Does the simpleton really think that everybody has read all he has written? Does he really believe

that everybody remembers all of his, writer's, words he may happen to have read? At one of those famous

dinners of the Phi Beta Kappa Society; where no reporter was ever admitted, and which nothing ever leaks

out about what is said and done, Mr. Edward Everett, in his afterdinner speech, quoted these lines from the

AEneid, giving a liberal English version of them, which he applied to the Oration just delivered by Mr.

His nephew, the ingenious, inventive, and inexhaustible. Edward Everett Hale, tells the story of this

quotation, and of the various uses to which it might plied in afterdinner speeches. How often he ventured to

repeat it at the Phi Beta Kappa dinners I am not sure; but as he reproduced it with his lively embellishments

and fresh versions and artful circumlocutions, not one person in ten remembered that he had listened to those

same words in those same accents only a twelvemonth ago. The poor deluded creatures who take it for

granted that all the world remembers what they have said, and laugh at them when they say it over again, may

profit by this recollection. But what if one does say the same things,of course in a little different form each

time,over her? If he has anything to say worth saying, that is just what be ought to do. Whether he ought to

or not, it is very certain that this is what all who write much or speak much necessarily must and will do.

Think of the clergyman who preaches fifty or a hundred or more sermons every year for fifty years! Think of

the stump speaker who shouts before a hundred audiences during the same political campaign, always using

the same arguments, illustrations, and catchwords! Think of the editor, as Carlyle has pictured him, threshing

the same straw every morning, until we know what is coming when we see the first line, as we do when we

read the large capitals at the head of a thrilling story, which ends in an advertisement of an allcleansing soap

The latchkey which opens into the inner chambers of my consciousness fits, as I have sufficient reason to

believe, the private apartments of a good many other people's thoughts. The longer we live, the more we find

we are like other persons. When I meet with any facts in my own mental experience, I feel almost sure that I

shall find them repeated or anticipated in the writings or the conversation of others. This feeling gives one a

freedom in telling his own personal history he could not have enjoyed without it. My story belongs to you as

much as to me. De te fabula narratur. Change the personal pronoun,that is all. It gives many readers a

singular pleasure to find a writer telling them something they have long known or felt, but which they have

never before found any one to put in words for them. An author does not always know when he is doing the

service of the angel who stirred the waters of the pool of Bethesda. Many a reader is delighted to find his

solitary thought has a companion, and is grateful to the benefactor who has strengthened him. This is the

advantage of the humble reader over the ambitious and self worshipping writer. It is not with him pereant

illi, but beati sunt illi qui pro nobis nostra dixerunt, Blessed are those who have said our good things for us.

What I have been saying of repetitions leads me into a train of reflections like which I think many readers

will find something in their own mental history. The area of consciousness is covered by layers of habitual

thoughts, as a seabeach is covered with wave worn, rounded pebbles, shaped, smoothed, and polished by

long attrition against each other. These thoughts remain very much the same from day to day, from week to

week; and as we grow older, from month to month, and from year to year. The tides of wakening

consciousness roll in upon them daily as we unclose our eyelids, and keep up the gentle movement and

murmur of ordinary mental respiration until we close them again in slumber. When we think we are thinking,

we are for the most part only listening to sound of attrition between these inert elements of intelligence. They

shift their places a little, they change their relations to each other, they roll over and turn up new surfaces.

Now and then a new fragment is cast in among them, to be worn and rounded and takes its place with the

others, but the pebbled floor of consciousness is almost as stationary as the pavement of a city thoroughfare.

It so happens that at this particular tine I have something to tell which I am quite sure is not one of rolled

pebbles which my reader has seen before in any of my pages, or, as I feel confident, in those of any other

If my reader asks why I do not send the statement I am going to make to some one of the special periodicals

that deal with such subjects, my answer is, that I like to tell my own stories at my own time, in own chosen

columns, where they will be read by a class of readers with whom I like to talk.

All men of letters or of science, all writers well known to the public, are constantly tampered with, in these

days, by a class of predaceous and hungry fellowlaborers who may be collectively spoken of as the

braintappers. They want an author's ideas on the subjects which interest them, the inquirers, from the

gravest religious and moral questions to the most trivial matters of his habits and his whims and fancies.

Some of their questions he cannot answer; some he does not choose to answer; some he is not yet ready to

answer, and when he is ready he prefers to select his own organ of publication. I do not find fault with all the

braintappers. Some of them are doing excellent service by accumulating facts which could not otherwise be

attained. Rut one gets tired of the strings of questions sent him, to which he is expected to return an answer,

plucked, ripe or unripe, from his private tree of knowledge. The braintappers are like the owner of the goose

that laid the golden eggs. They would have the embryos and germs of one's thoughts out of the mental

The story I have promised is, on the whole, the most remarkable of a series which I may have told in part at

some previous date, but which, if I have not told, may be worth recalling at a future time.

Some few of my readers may remember that in a former paper I suggested the possibility of the existence of

an idiotic area in the human mind, corresponding to the blind spot in the human retina. I trust that I shall not

be thought to have let my wits go wandering in that region of my own intellectual domain, when I relate a

singular coincidence which very lately occurred in my experience, and add a few remarks made by one of our

company on the delicate and difficult but fascinating subject which it forces upon our attention. I will first

"Remarkable coincidence. On Monday, April 18th, being at table from 6.30 P. M. to 7.30, with ________and

________ the two ladies of my household, I told them of the case of 'trial by battel' offered by Abraham

Thornton in 1817. I mentioned his throwing down his glove, which was not taken up by the brother of his

victim, and so he had to be let off, for the old law was still in force. I mentioned that Abraham Thornton was

said to have come to this country, 'and [I added he may be living near us, for aught that I know.' I rose from

the table, and found an English letter waiting for me, left while I sat at dinner. d copy the first portion of this

'20 ALFRED PLACE, West (near Museum) South Kensington, LONDON, S. W. April 7, 1887.

DEAR SIR,In travelling, the other day, I met with a reprint of the very interesting case of Thornton for

murder, 1817. The prisoner pleaded successfully the old Wager of Battel. I thought you would like to read the

Mr. Rathbone is a wellknown dealer in old Wedgwood and eighteenth century art. As a friend of my

hospitable entertainer, Mr. Willett, he had shown me many attentions in England, but I was not expecting any

communication from him; and when, fresh from my conversation, I found this letter just arrived by mail, and

left while I was at table, and on breaking the seal read what I had a few moments before been; telling, I was

greatly surprised, and immediately made a note of the occurrence, as given above.

I had long been familiar with all the details of this celebrated case,, but had not referred to it, so far as I can

remember, for months or years. I know of no train of thought which led me to speak of it on that particular

day. I had never alluded to it before in that company, nor had I ever spoken of it with Mr. Rathbone.

I told this story over our teacups. Among the company at the table is a young English girl. She seemed to be

amused by the story. "Fancy!" she said,"how very very odd!" "It was a striking and curious coincidence,"

said the professor who was with us at the table. "As remarkable as two teaspoons in one saucer," was the

comment of a college youth who happened to be one of the company. But the member of our circle whom the

reader will hereafter know as Number Seven, began stirring his tea in a nervous sort of way, and I knew that

he was getting ready to say something about the case. An ingenious man he is, with a brain like a tinderbox,

its contents catching at any spark that is flying about. I always like to hear what he says when his tinder brain

has a spark fall into it. It does not follow that because he is often wrong he may not sometimes be right, for he

The reader need not be startled at the new terms he introduces. Indeed, I am not quite sure that some thinking

people will not adopt his view of the matter, which seems to have a degree of plausibility as he states and

"The impulse which led you to tell that story passed directly from the letter, which came charged from the

cells of the cerebral battery of your correspondent. The distance at which the action took place [the letter was

left on a shelf twentyfour feet from the place where I was sitting] shows this charge to have been of notable

"Brain action through space without material symbolism, such as speech, expression, etc., is analogous to

electrical induction. Charge the prime conductor of an electrical machine, and a goldleaf electrometer, far

off from it, will at once be disturbed. Electricity, as we all know, can be stored and transported as if it were a

"Your incident is a typical example of cerebral induction from a source containing stored cerebricity. I use

this word, not to be found in my dictionaries, as expressing the braincell power corresponding to electricity.

Think how long it was before we had attained any real conception of the laws that govern the wonderful

agent, which now works in harness with the other trained and subdued forces! It is natural that cerebricity

should be the last of the unweighable agencies to be understood. The human eye had seen heaven and earth

and all that in them is before it saw itself as our instruments enable us to see it. This fact of yours, which

seems so strange to you, belongs to a great series of similar facts familiarly known now to many persons, and

before long to be recognized as generally as those relating to the electric telegraph and the slaving `dynamo.'

"What! you cannot conceive of a charge of cerebricity fastening itself on a lettersheet and clinging to it for

weeks, while it was shuffling about in mailbags, rolling over the ocean, and shaken up in railroad cars? And

yet the odor of a grain of musk will hang round a note or a dress for a lifetime. Do you not remember what

Professor Silliman says, in that pleasant journal of his, about the little ebony cabinet which Mary, Queen of

Scots, brought with her from France,how 'its drawers still exhale the sweetest perfumes'? If they could

hold their sweetness for more than two hundred years, why should not a written page retain for a week or a

month the equally mysterious effluence poured over it from the thinking marrow, and diffuse its vibrations to

I have said that although our imaginative friend is given to wild speculations, he is not always necessarily

wrong. We know too little about the laws of brainforce to be dogmatic with reference to it. I am, myself,

therefore, fully in sympathy with the psychological investigators. When it comes to the various pretended

sciences by which men and women make large profits, attempts at investigation are very apt to be used as

lucrative advertisements for the charlatans. But a series of investigations of the significance of certain popular

beliefs and superstitions, a careful study of the relations of certain facts to each other,whether that of cause

and effect, or merely of coincidence,is a task not unworthy of soberminded and welltrained students of

nature. Such a series of investigations has been recently instituted, and was reported at a late meeting held in

the rooms of the Boston Natural History Society. The results were, mostly negative, and in one sense a

disappointment. A single case, related by Professor Royce, attracted a good deal of attention. It was reported

in the next morning's newspapers, and will be given at full length, doubtless, in the next number of the

Psychological Journal. The leading facts were, briefly, these: A lady in Hamburg, Germany, wrote, on the

22d of June last, that she had what she supposed to be nightmare on the night of the 17th, five days before. "It

seemed," she wrote, "to belong to you; to be a horrid pain in your head, as if it were being forcibly jammed

into an iron casque, or some such pleasant instrument of torture." It proved that on that same 17th of June her

sister was undergoing a painful operation at the hands of a dentist. "No single case," adds Professor Royce,

"proves, or even makes probable, the existence of telepathic toothaches; but if there are any more cases of

this sort, we want to hear of them, and that all the more because no folklore and no supernatural horrors

have as yet mingled with the natural and well known impressions that people associate with the dentist's

The case I have given is, I am confident, absolutely free from every source of error. I do not remember that

Mr. Rathbone had communicated with me since he sent me a plentiful supply of mistletoe a year ago last

Christmas. The account I received from him was cut out of "The Sporting Times" of March 5, 1887. My own

knowledge of the case came from "Kirby's Wonderful Museum," a work presented to me at least thirty years

ago. I had not looked at the account, spoken of it, nor thought of it for a long time, when it came to me by a

kind of spontaneous generation, as it seemed, having no connection with any previous train of thought that I

was aware of. I consider the evidence of entire independence, apart from possible "telepathic" causation,

I referred, when first reporting this curious case of coincidence, with suggestive circumstances, to two others,

one of which I said was the most picturesque and the other the most unlikely, as it would seem, to happen.

Grenville Tudor Phillips was a younger brother of George Phillips, my college classmate, and of Wendell

Phillips, the great orator. He lived in Europe a large part of his life, but at last returned, and, in the year 1863,

died at the house of his brother George. I read his death in the paper; but, having seen and heard very little of

him during his life, should not have been much impressed by the fact, but for the following occurrence:

between the time of Grenville Phillips's death and his burial, I was looking in upon my brother, then living in

the house in which we were both born. Some books which had been my father's were stored in shelves in the

room I used to occupy when at Cambridge. Passing my eye over them, an old dark quarto attracted my

attention. It must be a Bible, I said to myself, perhaps a rare one,the "Breeches" Bible or some other

interesting specimen. I took it from the shelves, and, as I did so, an old slip of paper fell out and fluttered to

What was the meaning of this slip of paper coming to light at this time, after reposing undisturbed so long?

There was only one way of explaining its presence in my father's old Bible;a copy of the Scriptures which

I did not remember ever having handled or looked into before. In christening a child the minister is liable to

forget the name, just at the moment when he ought to remember it. My father preached occasionally at the

Brattle Street Church. I take this for granted, for I remember going with him on one occasion when he did so.

Nothing was more likely than that he should be asked to officiate at the baptism of the younger son of his

wife's first cousin, Judge Phillips. This slip was handed him to remind him of the name: He brought it home,

put it in that old Bible, and there it lay quietly for nearly half a century, when, as if it had just heard of Mr.

Phillips's decease, it flew from its hidingplace and startled the eyes of those who had just read his name in

the daily column of deaths. It would be hard to find anything more than a mere coincidence here; but it seems

The second of these two last stories must be told in prosaic detail to show its whole value as a coincidence.

One evening while I was living in Charles Street, I received a call from Dr. S., a wellknown and highly

respected Boston physician, a particular friend of the late Alexander H. Stephens, vicepresident of the

Southern Confederacy. It was with reference to a work which Mr. Stephens was about to publish that Dr. S.

called upon me. After talking that matter over we got conversing on other subjects, among the rest a family

relationship existing between us,not a very near one, but one which I think I had seen mentioned in

genealogical accounts. Mary S. (the last name being the same as that of my visitant), it appeared, was the

greatgreatgrandmother of Mrs. H. and myself. After cordially recognizing our forgotten relationship, now

for the first time called to mind, we parted, my guest leaving me for his own home. We had been sitting in

my library on the lower floor. On going upstairs where Mrs. H. was sitting alone, just as I entered the room

she pushed a paper across the table towards me, saying that perhaps it might interest me. It was one of a

number of old family papers which she had brought from the house of her mother, recently deceased.

I opened the paper, which was an oldlooking document, and found that it was a copy, perhaps made in this

century, of the will of that same Mary S. about whom we had been talking downstairs.

If there is such a thing as a purely accidental coincidence this must be considered an instance of it.

All one can say about it is that it seems very unlikely that such a coincidence should occur, but it did.

I have not tried to keep my own personality out of these stories. But after all, how little difference it makes

whether or not a writer appears with a mask on which everybody can take off,whether he bolts his door or

not, when everybody can look in at his windows, and all his entrances are at the mercy of the critic's skeleton

The company have been silent listeners for the most part; but the reader will have a chance to become better

I know that it is a hazardous experiment to address myself again to a public which in days long past has given

me a generous welcome. But my readers have been, and are, a very faithful constituency. I think there are

many among them who would rather listen to an old voice they are used to than to a new one of better

quality, even if the "childish treble" should betray itself now and then in the tones of the overtired organ. But

there must be others,I am afraid many others,who will exclaim: "He has had his day, and why can't he

be content? We don't want literary revenants, superfluous veterans, writers who have worn out their welcome

and still insist on being attended to. Give us something fresh, something that belongs to our day and

generation. Your morning draught was well enough, but we don't care for your evening slipslop. You are

Alas, alas! my friend,my young friend, for your hair is not yet whitened,I am afraid you are too nearly

right. No doubt,no doubt. Teacups are not coffeecups. They do not hold so much. Their pallid infusion is

but a feeble stimulant compared with the black decoction served at the morning board. And so, perhaps, if

wisdom like yours were compatible with years like mine, I should drop my pen and make no further attempts

But suppose that a writer who has reached and passed the natural limit of serviceable years feels that he has

some things which be would like to say, and which may have an interest for a limited class of readers,is he

not right in trying his powers and calmly taking the risk of failure? Does it not seem rather lazy and cowardly,

because he cannot "beat his record," or even come up to the level of what he has done in his prime, to shrink

from exerting his talent, such as it is, now that he has outlived the period of his greatest vigor? A singer who

is no longer equal to the trials of opera on the stage may yet please at a chamber concert or in the

drawingroom. There is one gratification an old author can afford a certain class of critics: that, namely, of

comparing him as he is with what he was. It is a pleasure to mediocrity to have its superiors brought within

range, so to speak; and if the ablest of them will only live long enough, and keep on writing, there is no

popgun that cannot reach him. But I fear that this is an unamiable reflection, and I am at this time in a very

I confess that there is something agreeable to me in renewing my relations with the reading public. Were it

but a single appearance, it would give me a pleasant glimpse of the time when I was known as a frequent

literary visitor. Many of my readersif I can lure any from the pages of younger writers will prove to be the

children, or the grandchildren, of those whose acquaintance I made something more than a whole generation

ago. I could depend on a kind welcome from my contemporaries,my coevals. But where are those

contemporaries? Ay de mi! as Carlyle used to exclaim,Ah, dear me! as our old women say,I look round

for them, and see only their vacant places. The old vine cannot unwind its tendrils. The branch falls with the

decay of its support, and must cling to the new growths around it, if it would not lie helpless in the dust. This

paper is a new tendril, feeling its way, as it best may, to whatever it can wind around. The thought of finding

here and there an old friend, and making, it may be, once in a while a new one, is very grateful to me. The

chief drawback to the pleasure is the feeling that I am submitting to that inevitable exposure which is the

penalty of authorship in every form. A writer must make up his mind to the possible rough treatment of the

critics, who swarm like bacteria whenever there is any literary material on which they can feed. I have had as

little to complain of as most writers, yet I think it is always with reluctance that one encounters the

promiscuous handling which the products of the mind have to put up with, as much as the fruit and provisions

in the marketstalls. I had rather be criticised, however, than criticise; that is, express my opinions in the

public prints of other writers' work, if they are living, and can suffer, as I should often have to make them.

There are enough, thank Heaven, without me. We are literary cannibals, and our writers live on each other

and each other's productions to a fearful extent. What the mulberry leaf is to the silkworm, the author's

book, treatise, essay, poem, is to the critical larva; that feed upon it. It furnishes them with food and clothing.

The process may not be agreeable to the mulberry leaf or to the printed page; but without it the leaf would not

have become the silk that covers the empress's shoulders, and but for the critic the author's book might never

have reached the scholar's table. Scribblers will feed on each other, and if we insist on being scribblers we

must consent to be fed on. We must try to endure philosophically what we cannot help, and ought not, I

It is the custom at our table to vary the usual talk, by the reading of short papers, in prose or verse, by one or

more of The Teacups, as we are in the habit of calling those who make up our company. Thirty years ago,

one of our present circle "Teacup Number Two," The Professor,read a paper on Old Age, at a certain

Breakfasttable, where he was in the habit of appearing. That paper was published at the time, and has since

seen the light in other forms. He did not know so much about old age then as he does now, and would

doubtless write somewhat differently if he took the subject up again. But I found that it was the general wish

that another of our company should let us hear what he had to say about it. I received a polite note, requesting

me to discourse about old age, inasmuch as I was particularly well qualified by my experience to write in an

authoritative way concerning it. The fact is that I,for it is myself who am speaking,have recently arrived

at the age of threescore years and twenty,fourscore years we may otherwise call it. In the arrangement of

our table, I am Teacup Number One, and I may as well say that I am often spoken of as The Dictator. There

is nothing invidious in this, as I am the oldest of the company, and no claim is less likely to excite jealousy

I received congratulations on reaching my eightieth birthday, not only from our circle of Teacups, but from

friends, near and distant, in large numbers. I tried to acknowledge these kindly missives with the aid of a

most intelligent secretary ; but I fear that there were gifts not thanked for, and tokens of goodwill not

recognized. Let any neglected correspondent be assured that it was not intentionally that he or she was

slighted. I was grateful for every such mark of esteem; even for the telegram from an unknown friend in a

distant land, for which I cheerfully paid the considerable charge which the sender doubtless knew it would

It is in A Song of Moses that we find the words, made very familiar to us by the Episcopal Burial Service,

which place the natural limit on life at threescore years and ten, with an extra ten years for some of a stronger

constitution than the average. Yet we are told that Moses himself lived to be a hundred and twenty years old,

and that his eye was not dim nor his natural strength abated. This is hard to accept literally, but we need not

doubt that he was very old, and in remarkably good condition for a man of his age. Among his followers was

a stout old captain, Caleb, the son of Jephunneh. This ancient warrior speaks of himself in these brave terms:

"Lo, I am this day fourscore and five years old. As yet, I am as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses

sent me; as my strength was then, even so is my strength now, for war, both to go out and to come in." It is

not likely that anybody believed his brag about his being as good a man for active service at eightyfive as he

was at forty, when Moses sent him out to spy the land of Canaan. But he was, no doubt, lusty and vigorous

for his years, and ready to smite the Canaanites hip and thigh, and drive them out, and take possession of their

Grand old men there were, three thousand years ago! But not all octogenarians were like Caleb, the son of

Jephunneh. Listen to poor old Barzillai, and hear him piping: "I am this day fourscore years old; and can I

discern between good and evil? Can thy servant taste what I eat or what I drink ? Can I hear any more the

voice of singing men and singing women? Wherefore, then, should thy servant be yet a burden unto my lord

the king?" And poor King David was worse off than this, as you all remember, at the early age of seventy.

Thirty centuries do not seem to have made any very great difference in the extreme limits of life. Without

pretending to rival the alleged cases of life prolonged beyond the middle of its second century, such as those

of Henry Jenkins and Thomas Parr, we can make a good showing of centenarians and nonagenarians. I

myself remember Dr. Holyoke, of Salem, son of a president of Harvard College, who answered a toast

"Father Cleveland," our venerated city missionary, was born June 21, 1772, and died June 5, 1872, within a

little more than a fortnight of his hundredth birthday. Colonel Perkins, of Connecticut, died recently after

Among nonagenarians, three whose names are well known to Bostonians, Lord Lyndhurst, Josiah Quincy,

and Sidney Bartlett, were remarkable for retaining their faculties in their extreme age. That patriarch of our

American literature, the illustrious historian of his country, is still with us, his birth dating in 1800.

Ranke, the great German historian, died at the age of ninetyone, and Chevreul, the eminent chemist, at that

Some English sporting characters have furnished striking examples of robust longevity. In Gilpin's "Forest

Scenery" there is the story of one of these horseback heroes. Henry Hastings was the name of this old

gentleman, who lived in the time of Charles the First. It would be hard to find a better portrait of a hunting

squire than that which the Earl of Shaftesbury has the credit of having drawn of this very peculiar personage.

His description ends by saying, "He lived to be an hundred, and never lost his eyesight nor used spectacles.

He got on horseback without help, and rode to the death of the stag till he was past fourscore."

Everything depends on habit. Old people can do, of course, more or less well, what they have been doing all

their lives; but try to teach them any new tricks, and the truth of the old adage will very soon show itself. Mr.

Henry Hastings had done nothing but hunt all his days, and his record would seem to have been a good deal

like that of Philippus Zaehdarm in that untranslatable epitaph which may be found in "Sartor Resartus."

Judged by its products, it was a very short life of a hundred useless twelve months.

It is something to have climbed the white summit, the Mont Blanc of fourscore. A small number only of

mankind ever see their eightieth anniversary. I might go to the statistical tables of the annuity and life

insurance offices for extended and exact information, but I prefer to take the facts which have impressed

The class of 1829 at Harvard College, of which I am a member, graduated, according to the triennial,

fiftynine in number. It is sixty years, then, since that time; and as they were, on an average, about twenty

years old, those who survive must have reached fourscore years. Of the fiftynine graduates ten only are

living, or were at the last accounts; one in six, very nearly. In the first ten years after graduation, our third

decade, when we were between twenty and thirty years old, we lost three members,about one in twenty;

between the ages of thirty and forty, eight died,one in seven of those the decade began with; from forty to

fifty, only two,or one in twentyfour; from fifty to sixty, eight,or one in six ; from sixty to seventy,

fifteen,or two out of every five; from seventy to eighty, twelve,or one in two. The greatly increased

mortality which began with our seventh decade went on steadily increasing. At sixty we come "within range

Our eminent classmate, the late Professor Benjamin Peirce, showed by numerical comparison that the men of

superior ability outlasted the average of their fellowgraduates. He himself lived a little beyond his

threescore and ten years. James Freeman Clarke almost reached the age of eighty. The eighth decade brought

the fatal year for Benjamin Robbins Curtis, the great lawyer, who was one of the judges of the Supreme Court

of the United States; for the very able chief justice of Massachusetts, George Tyler Bigelow; and for that

famous wit and electric centre of social life, George T. Davis. At the last annual dinner every effort was made

to bring all the survivors of the class together. Six of the ten living members were there, six old men in the

place of the thirty or forty classmates who surrounded the long, oval table in 1859, when I asked, "Has there

any old fellow got mixed with the boys? "11 boys" whose tongues were as the vibrating leaves of the

forest; whose talk was like the voice of many waters; whose laugh was as the breaking of mighty waves upon

the seashore. Among the six at our late dinner was our first scholar, the thorough bred and accomplished

engineer who held the city of Lawrence in his brain before it spread itself out along the banks of the

Merrimac. There, too, was the poet whose National Hymn, "My Country, 't is of thee," is known to more

millions, and dearer to many of them, than all the other songs written since the Psalms of David. Four of our

six were clergymen; the engineer and the present writer completed the list. Were we melancholy? Did we talk

of graveyards and epitaphs? No,we remembered our dead tenderly, serenely, feeling deeply what we had

lost in those who but a little while ago were with us. How could we forget James Freeman Clarke, that man of

noble thought and vigorous action, who pervaded this community with his spirit, and was felt through all its

channels as are the light and the strength that radiate through the wires which stretch above us? It was a pride

and a happiness to have such classmates as he was to remember. We were not the moping, complaining

graybeards that many might suppose we must have been. We had been favored with the blessing of long life.

We had seen the drama well into its fifth act. The sun still warmed us, the air was still grateful and

lifegiving. But there was another underlying source of our cheerful equanimity, which we could not conceal

from ourselves if we had wished to do it. Nature's kindly anodyne is telling upon us more and more with

every year. Our old doctors used to give an opiate which they called "the black drop." It was stronger than

laudanum, and, in fact, a dangerously powerful narcotic. Something like this is that potent drug in Nature's

pharmacopoeia which she reserves for the time of need,the later stages of life. She commonly begins

administering it at about the time of the "grand climacteric," the ninth septennial period, the sixtythird year.

More and more freely she gives it, as the years go on, to her greyhaired children, until, if they last long

enough, every faculty is benumbed, and they drop off quietly into sleep under its benign influence.

Do you say that old age is unfeeling? It has not vital energy enough to supply the waste of the more

exhausting emotions. Old Men's Tears, which furnished the mournful title to Joshua Scottow's Lamentations,

do not suggest the deepest grief conceivable. A little breath of wind brings down the raindrops which have

gathered on the leaves of the tremulous poplars. A very slight suggestion brings the tears from Marlborough's

eyes, but they are soon over, and he is smiling again as an allusion carries him back to the days of Blenheim

and Malplaquet. Envy not the old man the tranquillity of his existence, nor yet blame him if it sometimes

looks like apathy. Time, the inexorable, does not threaten him with the scythe so often as with the sandbag.

He does not cut, but he stuns and stupefies. One's fellowmortals can afford to be as considerate and tender

There was not much boasting among us of our present or our past, as we sat together in the little room at the

great hotel. A certain amount of selfdeception is quite possible at threescore years and ten, but at three score

years and twenty Nature has shown most of those who live to that age that she is earnest, and means to

dismantle and have done with them in a very little while. As for boasting of our past, the laudator temporis

acti makes but a poor figure in our time. Old people used to talk of their youth as if there were giants in those

days. We knew some tall men when we were young, but we can see a man taller than any one among them at

the nearest dime museum. We had handsome women among us, of high local reputation, but nowadays we

have professional beauties who challenge the world to criticise them as boldly as Phryne ever challenged her

Athenian admirers. We had fast horses,did not "Old Blue" trot a mile in three minutes? True, but there is a

threeyearold colt just put on the track who has done it in a little more than two thirds of that time. It seems

as if the material world had been made over again since we were boys. It is but a short time since we were

counting up the miracles we had lived to witness. The list is familiar enough: the railroad, the ocean steamer,

photography, the spectroscope, the telegraph, telephone, phonograph, anesthetics, electric

illumination,with such lesser wonders as the friction match, the sewing machine, and the bicycle. And

now, we said, we must have come to the end of these unparalleled developments of the forces of nature. We

must rest on our achievements. The nineteenth century is not likely to add to them; we must wait for the

twentieth century. Many of us, perhaps most of us, felt in that way. We had seen our planet furnished by the

art of man with a complete nervous system: a spinal cord beneath the ocean, secondary centres,

ganglions,in all the chief places where men are gathered together, and ramifications extending throughout

civilization. All at once, by the side of this talking and lightgiving apparatus, we see another wire stretched

over our heads, carrying force to a vast metallic muscular system,a slender cord conveying the strength of

a hundred men, of a score of horses, of a team of elephants. The lightning is tamed and harnessed, the

thunderbolt has become a common carrier. No more surprises in this century! A voice whispers, What next?

It will not do for us to boast about our young days and what they had to show. It is a great deal better to boast

of what they could not show, and, strange as it may seem, there is a certain satisfaction in it. In these days of

electric lighting, when you have only to touch a button and your parlor or bedroom is instantly flooded with

light, it is a pleasure to revert to the era of the tinderbox, the flint and steel, and the brimstone match. It

gives me an almost proud satisfaction to tell how we used, when those implements were not at hand or not

employed, to light our whaleoil lamp by blowing a live coal held against the wick, often swelling our cheeks

and reddening our faces until we were on the verge of apoplexy. I love to tell of our stagecoach experiences,

of our sailingpacket voyages, of the semibarbarous destitution of all modern comforts and conveniences

through which we bravely lived and came out the estimable personages you find us.

Think of it! All my boyish shooting was done with a flintlock gun; the percussion lock came to me as one of

those newfangled notions people had just got hold of. We ancients can make a grand display of minus

quantities in our reminiscences, and the figures look almost as well as if they had the plus sign before them.

I am afraid that old people found life rather a dull business in the time of King David and his rich old subject

and friend, Barzillai, who, poor man, could not have read a wicked novel, nor enjoyed a symphony concert, if

they had had those luxuries in his day. There were no pleasant firesides, for there were no chimneys. There

were no daily newspapers for the old man to read, and he could not read them if there were, with his dimmed

eyes, nor hear them read, very probably, with his dulled ears. There was no tobacco, a soothing drug, which

in its various forms is a great solace to many old men and to some old women, Carlyle and his mother used to

Old age is infinitely more cheerful, for intelligent people at least, than it was two or three thousand years ago.

It is our duty, so far as we can, to keep it so. There will always be enough about it that is solemn, and more

than enough, alas! that is saddening. But how much there is in our times to lighten its burdens! If they that

look out at the windows be darkened, the optician is happy to supply them with eyeglasses for use before

the public, and spectacles for their hours of privacy. If the grinders cease because they are few, they can be

made many again by a third dentition, which brings no toothache in its train. By temperance and good Habits

of life, proper clothing, wellwarmed, welldrained, and wellventilated dwellings, and sufficient, not too

much exercise, the old man of our time may keep his muscular strength in very good condition. I doubt if Mr.

Gladstone, who is fast nearing his eightieth birthday, would boast, in the style of Caleb, that he was as good a

man with his axe as he was when he was forty, but I would back him,if the match were possible, for a

hundred shekels, against that overconfident old Israelite, to cut down and chop up a cedar of Lebanon. I

know a most excellent clergyman, not far from my own time of life, whom I would pit against any old

Hebrew rabbi or Greek philosopher of his years and weight, if they could return to the flesh, to run a quarter

We must not make too much of such exceptional cases of prolonged activity. I often reproached my dear

friend and classmate, Tames Freeman Clarke, that his ceaseless labors made it impossible for his coevals to

enjoy the luxury of that repose which their years demanded. A wise old man, the late Dr. James Walker,

president of Harvard University, said that the great privilege of old age was the getting rid of responsibilities.

These hardworking veterans will not let one get rid of them until he drops in his harness, and so gets rid of

them and his life together. How often has many a tired old man envied the superannuated family cat,

stretched upon the rug before the fire, letting the genial warmth tranquilly diffuse itself through all her

internal arrangements! No more watching for mice in dark, damp cellars, no more awaiting the savage gray

rat at the mouth of his den, no more scurrying up trees and lampposts to avoid the neighbor's cur who

wishes to make her acquaintance! It is very grand to "die in harness," but it is very pleasant to have the tight

It is natural enough to cling to life. We are used to atmospheric existence, and can hardly conceive of

ourselves except as breathing creatures. We have never tried any other mode of being, or, if we have, we have

forgotten all about it, whatever Wordsworth's grand ode may tell us we remember. Heaven itself must be an

experiment to every human soul which shall find itself there. It may take time for an earthborn saint to

become acclimated to the celestial ether,that is, if time can be said to exist for a disembodied spirit. We are

all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly

existence is but a narrow and bare dwellingplace, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably

comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it. The prisoner of Chillon

and a tenderhearted mortal might be pardoned for looking back, like the poor lady who was driven from her

dwellingplace by fire and brimstone, at the home he was leaving for the "undiscovered country."

On the other hand, a good many persons, not suicidal in their tendencies, get more of life than they want. One

of our wealthy citizens said, on hearing that a friend had dropped off from apoplexy, that it made his mouth

water to hear of such a case. It was an odd expression, but I have no doubt that the fine old gentleman to

whom it was attributed made use of it. He had had enough of his gout and other infirmties. Swift's account of

the Struldbrugs is not very amusing reading for old people, but some may find it a consolation to reflect on

the probable miseries they escape in not being doomed to an undying earthly existence.

There are strange diversities in the way in which different old persons look upon their prospects. A

millionaire whom I well remember confessed that be should like to live long enough to learn how much a

certain fellowcitizen, a multimillionaire, was worth. One of the, three nonagenarians before referred to

expressed himself as having a great curiosity about the new sphere of existence to which he was looking

The feeling must of necessity come to many aged persons that they have outlived their usefulness; that they

are no longer wanted, but rather in the way, drags on the wheels rather than helping them forward. But let

This is peculiarly true of them. They are helping others without always being aware of it. They are the

shields, the breakwaters, of those who come after them. Every decade is a defence of the one next behind it.

At thirty the youth has sobered into manhood, but the strong men of forty rise in almost unbroken rank

between him and the approaches of old age as they show in the men of fifty. At forty he looks with a sense of

security at the strong men of fifty, and sees behind them the row of sturdy sexagenarians. When fifty is

reached, somehow sixty does not look so old as it once used to, and seventy is still afar off. After sixty the

stern sentence of the burial service seems to have a meaning that one did not notice in former years. There

begins to be something personal about it. But if one lives to seventy he soon gets used to the text with the

threescore years and ten in it, and begins to count himself among those who by reason of strength are

destined to reach fourscore, of whom he can see a number still in reasonably good condition. The

octogenarian loves to read about people of ninety and over. He peers among the asterisks of the triennial

catalogue of the University for the names of graduates who have been seventy years out of college and

remain still unstarred. He is curious about the biographies of centenarians. Such escapades as those of that

terrible old sinner and ancestor of great men, the Reverend Stephen Bachelder, interest him as they never did

before. But he cannot deceive himself much longer. See him walking on a level surface, and he steps off

almost as well as ever; but watch him coming down a flight of stairs, and the family record could not tell his

years more faithfully. He cut you dead, you say? Did it occur to you that he could not see you clearly enough

to know you from any other son or daughter of Adam? He said he was very glad to hear it, did he, when you

told him that your beloved grandmother had just deceased? Did you happen to remember that though he does

not allow that he is deaf, he will not deny that he does not hear quite so well as he used to? No matter about

his failings; the longer he holds on to life, the longer he makes life seem to all the living who follow him, and

Every stage of existence has its special trials and its special consolations. Habits are the crutches of old age;

by the aid of these we manage to hobble along after the mental joints are stiff and the muscles rheumatic, to

speak metaphorically,that is to say, when every act of selfdetermination costs an effort and a pang. We

become more and more automatic as we grow older, and if we lived long enough we should come to be

pieces of creaking machinery like Maelzel's chess player,or what that seemed to be.

Emerson was sixtythree years old, the year I have referred to as that of the grand climacteric, when he read

It was early in life to feel that the productive stage was over, but he had received warning from within, and

did not wish to wait for outside advices. There is all the difference in the world in the mental as in the bodily

constitution of different individuals. Some must "take in sail" sooner, some later. We can get a useful lesson

from the American and the English elms on our Common. The American elms are quite bare, and have been

so for weeks. They know very well that they are going to have storms to wrestle with; they have not forgotten

the gales of September and the tempests of the late autumn and early winter. It is a hard fight they are going

to have, and they strip their coats off and roll up their shirtsleeves, and show themselves barearmed and

ready for the contest. The English elms are of a more robust build, and stand defiant, with all their summer

clothing about their sturdy frames. They may yet have to learn a lesson of their American cousins, for

notwithstanding their compact and solid structure they go to pieces in the great winds just as ours do. We

must drop much of our foliage before winter is upon us. We must take in sail and throw over cargo, if that is

necessary, to keep us afloat. We have to decide between our duties and our instinctive demand of rest. I can

believe that some have welcomed the decay of their active powers because it furnished them with peremptory

Age brings other obvious changes besides the loss of active power. The sensibilities are less keen, the

intelligence is less lively, as we might expect under the influence of that narcotic which Nature administers.

But there is another effect of her "black drop" which is not so commonly recognized. Old age is like an

opiumdream. Nothing seems real except what is unreal. I am sure that the pictures painted by the

imagination,the faded frescos on the walls of memory,come out in clearer and brighter colors than

belonged to them many years earlier. Nature has her special favors for her children of every age, and this is

No man can reach an advanced age without thinking of that great change to which, in the course of nature, he

must be so near. It has been remarked that the sterner beliefs of rigid theologians are apt to soften in their

later years. All reflecting persons, even those whose minds have been half palsied by the deadly dogmas

which have done all they could to disorganize their thinking powers,all reflecting persons, I say, must

recognize, in looking back over a long life, how largely their creeds, their course of life, their wisdom and

unwisdom, their whole characters, were shaped by the conditions which surrounded them. Little children they

came from the hands of the Father of all ; little children in their helplessness, their ignorance, they are going

back to Him. They cannot help feeling that they are to be transferred from the rude embrace of the boisterous

elements to arms that will receive them tenderly. Poor planetary foundlings, they have known hard treatment

at the hands of the brute forces of nature, from the control of which they are soon to be set free. There are

some old pessimists, it is true, who believe that they and a few others are on a raft, and that the ship which

they have quitted, holding the rest of mankind, is going down with all on board. It is no wonder that there

should be such when we remember what have been the teachings of the priesthood through long series of

ignorant centuries. Every age has to shape the Divine image it worships over again,the present age and our

own country are busily engaged in the task at this time. We unmake Presidents and make new ones. This is an

apprenticeship for a higher task. Our doctrinal teachers are unmaking the Deity of the Westminster Catechism

and trying to model a new one, with more of modern humanity and less of ancient barbarism in his

composition. If Jonathan Edwards had lived long enough, I have no doubt his creed would have softened into

Some twenty or thirty years ago, I said to Longfellow that certain statistical tables I had seen went to show

that poets were not a longlived race. He doubted whether there was anything to prove they were particularly

shortlived. Soon after this, he handed me a list he had drawn up. I cannot lay my hand upon it at this

moment, but I remember that Metastasio was the oldest of them all. He died at the age of eightyfour. I have

had some tables made out, which I have every reason to believe are correct so far as they go. From these, it

appears that twenty English poets lived to the average age of fiftysix years and a little over. The eight

American poets on the list averaged seventythree and a half, nearly, and they are not all dead yet. The list

including Greek, Latin, Italian, and German poets, with American and English, gave an average of a little

over sixtytwo years. Our young poets need not be alarmed. They can remember that Bryant lived to be

eightythree years old, that Longfellow reached seventyfive and Halleck seventyseven, while Whittier is

living at the age of nearly eightytwo. Tennyson is still writing at eighty, and Browning reached the age of

Shall a man who in his younger days has written poetry, or what passed for it, continue to attempt it in his

later years? Certainly, if it amuses or interests him, no one would object to his writing in verse as much as he

likes. Whether he should continue to write for the public is another question. Poetry is a good deal a matter of

heartbeats, and the circulation is more languid in the later period of life. The joints are less supple; the

arteries are more or less "ossified." Something like these changes has taken place in the mind. It has lost the

flexibility, the plastic docility, which it had in youth and early manhood, when the gristle had but just become

hardened into bone. It is the nature of poetry to writhe itself along through the tangled growths of the

vocabulary, as a snake winds through the grass, in sinuous, complex, and unexpected curves, which crack

I had a poem that I wanted to print just here. But after what I have this moment said, I hesitated, thinking that

I might provoke the obvious remark that I exemplified the unfitness of which I had been speaking. I

remembered the advice I had given to a poetical aspirant not long since, which I think deserves a paragraph to

My friend, I said, I hope you will not write in verse. When you write in prose you say what you mean. When

I did not ask "some" or "others." Perhaps I should have thought it best to keep my poem to myself and the

few friends for whom it was written. All at once, my daimonthat other Me over whom I button my

waistcoat when I button it over my own personput it into my head to look up the story of Madame Saqui.

She was a famous danseuse, who danced Napoleon in and out, and several other dynasties besides. Her last

appearance was at the age of seventysix, which is rather late in life for the tight rope, one of her specialties.

Jules Janin mummified her when she died in 1866, at the age of eighty. He spiced her up in his eulogy as if

she had been the queen of a modern Pharaoh. His foamy and flowery rhetoric put me into such a state of

goodnature that I said, I will print my poem, and let the critical Gil Blas handle it as he did the archbishop's

It must be premised that a very beautiful loving cup was presented to me on my recent birthday, by eleven

ladies of my acquaintance. This was the most costly and notable of all the many tributes I received, and for

After the reading of the paper which was reported in the preceding number of this record, the company fell

The Mistress. "I could have wished you had said more about the religious attitude of old age as such. Surely

the thoughts of aged persons must be very much taken up with the question of what is to become of them. I

should like to have The Dictator explain himself a little more fully on this point."

My dear madam, I said, it is a delicate matter to talk about. You remember Mr. Calhoun's response to the

advances of an overzealous young clergyman who wished to examine him as to his outfit for the long

journey. I think the relations between man and his Maker grow more intimate, more confidential, if I may say

so, with advancing years. The old man is less disposed to argue about special matters of belief, and more

ready to sympathize with spiritually minded persons without anxious questioning as to the fold to which they

belong. That kindly judgment which he exercises with regard to others he will, naturally enough, apply to

himself. The caressing tone in which the Emperor Hadrian addresses his soul is very much like that of an old

More and more the old man finds his pleasures in memory, as the present becomes unreal and dreamlike, and

the vista of his earthly future narrows and closes in upon him. At last, if he live long enough, life comes to be

little more than a gentle and peaceful delirium of pleasing recollections. To say, as Dante says, that there is

no greater grief than to remember past happiness in the hour of misery is not giving the whole truth. In the

midst of the misery, as many would call it, of extreme old age, there is often a divine consolation in recalling

the happy moments and days and years of times long past. So beautiful are the visions of bygone delight that

one could hardly wish them to become real, lest they should lose their ineffable charm. I can almost conceive

of a dozing and dreamy centenarian saying to one he loves, "Go, darling, go! Spread your wings and leave

me. So shall you enter that world of memory where all is lovely. I shall not hear the sound of your footsteps

any more, but you will float before me, an aerial presence. I shall not hear any word from your lips, but I

shall have a deeper sense of your nearness to me than speech can give. I shall feel, in my still solitude, as the

I said that the lenient way in which the old look at the failings of others naturally leads them to judge

themselves more charitably. They find an apology for their shortcomings and wrongdoings in another

consideration. They know very well that they are not the same persons as the middleaged individuals, the

young men, the boys, the children, that bore their names, and whose lives were continuous with theirs. Here

is an old man who can remember the first time he was allowed to go shooting. What a remorseless young

destroyer he was, to be sure! Wherever he saw a feather, wherever a poor little squirrel showed his bushy tail,

bang! went the old "king's arm," and the feathers or the fur were set flying like so much chaff. Now that same

old man,the mortal that was called by his name and has passed for the same person for some scores of

years,is considered absurdly sentimental by kindhearted women, because he opens the flytrap and sets

all its captives free,outofdoors, of course, but the dear souls all insisting, meanwhile, that the flies will,

every one of them, be back again in the house before the day is over. Do you suppose that venerable sinner

expects to be rigorously called to account for the want of feeling he showed in those early years, when the

instinct of destruction, derived from his forestroaming ancestors, led him to acts which he now looks upon

"Senex" has seen three generations grow up, the son repeating the virtues and the failings of the father, the

grandson showing the same characteristics as the father and grandfather. He knows that if such or such a

young fellow had lived to the next stage of life he would very probably have caught up with his mother's

virtues, which, like a graft of a late fruit on an early apple or pear tree, do not ripen in her children until late

in the season. He has seen the successive ripening of one quality after another on the boughs of his own life,

and he finds it hard to condemn himself for faults which only needed time to fall off and be succeeded by

better fruitage. I cannot help thinking that the recording angel not only drops a tear upon many a human

failing, which blots it out forever, but that he hands many an old recordbook to the imp that does his

bidding, and orders him to throw that into the fire instead of the sinner for whom the little wretch had kindled

"And pitched him in after it, I hope," said Number Seven, who is in some points as much of an optimist as

any one among us, in spite of the squint in his brain,or in virtue of it, if you choose to have it so.

"I like Wordsworth's 'Matthew,'" said Number Five, "as well as any picture of old age I remember."

"I can recall two verses of it," said Number Five, and she recited the two following ones. Number Five has a

very sweet voice. The moment she speaks all the faces turn toward her. I don't know what its secret is, but it

The sweet voice left a trancelike silence after it, which may have lasted twenty heartbeats. Then I said, We

all thank you for your charming quotation. How much more wholesome a picture of humanity than such stuff

I hope I am quoting correctly, but I am more of a scholar in Wordsworth than in Byron. Was Parson Young's

If it was, he had better have stripped off his surplice. No,it was nothing but the cant of his calling. In

Byron it was a mood, and he might have said just the opposite thing the next day, as he did in his two

descriptions of the Venus de' Medici. That picture of old Matthew abides in the memory, and makes one

think better of his kind. What nobler tasks has the poet than to exalt the idea of manhood, and to make the

We have two or three young people with us who stand a fair chance of furnishing us the element without

which life and teatables alike are wanting in interest. We are all, of course, watching them, and curious to

know whether we are to have a romance or not. Here is one of them; others will show themselves presently.

I cannot say just how old the Tutor is, but I do not detect a gray hair in his head. My sight is not so good as it

was, however, and he may have turned the sharp corner of thirty, and even have left it a year or two behind

him. More probably he is still in the twenties, say twentyeight or twentynine. He seems young, at any

rate, excitable, enthusiastic, imaginative, but at the same time reserved. I am afraid that he is a poet. When I

say "I am afraid," you wonder what I mean by the expression. I may take another opportunity to explain and

justify it; I will only say now that I consider the Muse the most dangerous of sirens to a young man who has

his way to make in the world. Now this young man, the Tutor, has, I believe, a future before him. He was

born for a philosopher,so I read his horoscope,but he has a great liking for poetry and can write well in

verse. We have had a number of poems offered for our entertainment, which I have commonly been

requested to read. There has been some little mystery about their authorship, but it is evident that they are not

all from the same hand. Poetry is as contagious as measles, and if a single case of it break out in any social

circle, or in a school, there are certain to be a number of similar cases, some slight, some serious, and now

and then one so malignant that the subject of it should be put on a spare diet of stationery, say from two to

three penfuls of ink and a half sheet of notepaper per diem. If any of our poetical contributions are

It must be understood that our company is not invariably made up of the same persons. The Mistress, as we

call her, is expected to be always in her place. I make it a rule to be present. The Professor is almost as sure to

be at the table as I am. We should hardly know what to do without Number Five. It takes a good deal of tact

to handle such a little assembly as ours, which is a republic on a small scale, for all that they give me the title

of Dictator, and Number Five is a great help in every social emergency. She sees when a discussion tends to

become personal, and heads off the threatening antagonists. She knows when a subject has been knocking

about long enough and dexterously shifts the talk to another track. It is true that I am the one most frequently

appealed to as the highest tribunal in doubtful cases, but I often care more for Number Five's opinion than I

do for my own. Who is this Number Five, so fascinating, so wise, so full of knowledge, and so ready to

learn? She is suspected of being the anonymous author of a book which produced a sensation when

published, not very long ago, and which those who read are very apt to read a second time, and to leave on

their tables for frequent reference. But we have never asked her. I do not think she wants to be famous. How

she comes to be unmarried is a mystery to me; it must be that she has found nobody worth caring enough for.

I wish she would furnish us with the romance which, as I said, our teatable needs to make it interesting.

Perhaps the newcomer will make love to her,I should think it possible she might fancy him.

And who is the newcomer? He is a Counsellor and a Politician. Has a good war record. Is about fortyfive

years old, I conjecture. Is engaged in a great law case just now. Said to be very eloquent. Has an intellectual

head, and the bearing of one who has commanded a regiment or perhaps a brigade. Altogether an attractive

person, scholarly, refined has some accomplishments not so common as they might be in the class we call

There is also a young Doctor, waiting for his bald spot to come, so that he may get into practice.

We have two young ladies at the table,the English girl referred to in a former number, and an American

girl of about her own age. Both of them are students in one of those institutionsI am not sure whether they

call it an "annex" or not; but at any rate one of those schools where they teach the incomprehensible sort of

mathematics and other bewildering branches of knowledge above the common level of highschool

education. They seem to be good friends, and form a very pleasing pair when they walk in arm in arm; nearly

enough alike to seem to belong together, different enough to form an agreeable contrast.

Of course we were bound to have a Musician at our table, and we have one who sings admirably, and

Such is our company when the table is full. But sometimes only half a dozen, or it may be only three or four,

are present. At other times we have a visitor or two, either in the place of one of our habitual number, or in

addition to it. We have the elements, we think, of a pleasant social gathering,different sexes, ages, pursuits,

and tastes,all that is required for a "symphony concert" of conversation. One of the curious questions

which might well be asked by those who had been with us on different occasions would be, "How many poets

are there among you?" Nobody can answer this question. It is a point of etiquette with us not to press our

inquiries about these anonymous poems too sharply, especially if any of them betray sentiments which would

I don't doubt that the different personalities at our table will get mixed up in the reader's mind if be is not

particularly clearheaded. That happens very often, much oftener than all would be willing to confess, in

reading novels and plays. I am afraid we should get a good deal confused even in reading our Shakespeare if

we did not look back now and then at the dramatis personae. I am sure that I am very apt to confound the

characters in a moderately interesting novel; indeed, I suspect that the writer is often no better off than the

reader in the dreary middle of the story, when his characters have all made their appearance, and before they

have reached near enough to the denoument to have fixed their individuality by the position they have arrived

My reader might be a little puzzled when he read that Number Five did or said such or such a thing, and ask,

"Whom do you mean by that title? I am not quite sure that I remember." Just associate her with that line of

You cannot forget who Number Seven is if I inform you that he specially prides himself on being a seventh

son of a seventh son. The fact of such a descent is supposed to carry wonderful endowments with it. Number

Seven passes for a natural healer. He is looked upon as a kind of wizard, and is lucky in living in the

nineteenth century instead of the sixteenth or earlier. How much confidence he feels in himself as the

possessor of halfsupernatural gifts I cannot say. I think his peculiar birthright gives him a certain confidence

in his whims and fancies which but for that he would hardly feel. After this explanation, when I speak of

The company are very frank in their criticisms of each other. "I did not like that expression of yours,

planetary foundlings," said the Mistress. "It seems to me that it is too like atheism for a good Christian like

Ah, my dear madam, I answered, I was thinking of the elements and the natural forces to which man was

born an almost helpless subject in the rudimentary stages of his existence, and from which he has only

partially got free after ages upon ages of warfare with their tyranny. Think what hunger forced the caveman

to do! Think of the surly indifference of the storms that swept the forest and the waters, the earthquake

chasms that engulfed him, the inundations that drowned him out of his miserable hidingplaces, the

pestilences that lay in wait for him, the unequal strife with ferocious animals! I need not sum up all the

wretchedness that goes to constitute the "martyrdom of man." When our forefathers came to this wilderness

as it then was, and found everywhere the bones of the poor natives who had perished in the great plague

(which our Doctor there thinks was probably the smallpox), they considered this destructive malady as a

special mark of providential favor for them. How about the miserable Indians? Were they anything but

planetary foundlings? No! Civilization is a great foundling hospital, and fortunate are all those who get safely

into the creche before the frost or the malaria has killed them, the wild beasts or the venomous reptiles

worked out their deadly appetites and instincts upon them. The very idea of humanity seems to be that it shall

take care of itself and develop its powers in the "struggle for life." Whether we approve it or not, if we can

judge by the material record, man was born a foundling, and fought his way as he best might to that kind of

existence which we call civilized,one which a considerable part of the inhabitants of our planet have

If you do not like the expression planetary foundlings, I have no objection to your considering the race as put

out to nurse. And what a nurse Nature is! She gives her charge a hole in the rocks to live in, ice for his pillow

and snow for his blanket, in one part of the world; the jungle for his bedroom in another, with the tiger for his

Well, I said, there may be other parts of the universe where there are no tigers and no cobras. It is not quite

certain that such realms of creation are better off, on the whole, than this earthly residence of ours, which has

fought its way up to the development of such centres of civilization as Athens and Rome, to such

"One of our company has been on an excursion among the celestial bodies of our system, I understand," said

Number Five colored. "Nothing but a dream," she said. "The truth is, I had taken ether in the evening for a

touch of neuralgia, and it set my imagination at work in a way quite unusual with me. I had been reading a

number of books about an ideal condition of society, Sir Thomas Mores 'Utopia,' Lord Bacon's 'New

Atlantis,' and another of more recent date. I went to bed with my brain a good deal excited, and fell into a

deep slumber, in which I passed through some experiences so singular that, on awaking, I put them down on

paper. I don't know that there is anything very original about the experiences I have recorded, but I thought

"If Number Five will give us a chance to form our own judgment about her dream or vision, I think we shall

enjoy it," said the Mistress. "She knows what will please The Teacups in the way of reading as well as I do

how many lumps of sugar the Professor wants in his tea and how many I want in mine."

It cost me a great effort to set down the words of the manuscript from which I am reading. My dreams for the

most part fade away so soon after their occurrence that I cannot recall them at all. But in this case my ideas

held together with remarkable tenacity. By keeping my mind steadily upon the work, I gradually unfolded the

narrative which follows, as the famous Italian antiquary opened one of those fragile carbonized manuscripts

The first thing I remember about it is that I was floating upward, without any sense of effort on my part. The

feeling was that of flying, which I have often had in dreams, as have many other persons. It was the most

natural thing in the world,a semimaterialized volition, if I may use such an expression.

At the first moment of my new consciousness,for I seemed to have just emerged from a deep slumber, I

was aware that there was a companion at my side. Nothing could be more gracious than the way in which this

being accosted me. I will speak of it as she, because there was a delicacy, a sweetness, a divine purity, about

"I am your companion and your guide," this being made me understand, as she looked at me. Some faculty of

which I had never before been conscious had awakened in me, and I needed no interpreter to explain the

"You are not yet outside of space and time," she said, "and I am going with you through some parts of the

phenomenal or apparent universe,what you call the material world. We have plenty of what you call time

before us, and we will take our voyage leisurely, looking at such objects of interest as may attract our

attention as we pass. The first thing you will naturally wish to look at will be the earth you have just left. This

The great globe we had left was rolling beneath us. No eye of one in the flesh could see it as I saw or seemed

to see it. No ear of any mortal being could bear the sounds that came from it as I heard or seemed to hear

them. The broad oceans unrolled themselves before me. I could recognize the calm Pacific and the stormy

Atlantic,the ships that dotted them, the white lines where the waves broke on the shore, frills on the

robes of the continents, so they looked to my woman's perception; thevast South American forests; the

glittering icebergs about the poles; the snowy mountain ranges, here and there a summit sending up fire and

smoke; mighty rivers, dividing provinces within sight of each other, and making neighbors of realms

thousands of miles apart; cities; lighthouses to insure the safety of seagoing vessels, and warships to

knock them to pieces and sink them. All this, and infinitely more, showed itself to me during a single

revolution of the sphere: twentyfour hours it would have been, if reckoned by earthly measurements of time.

I have not spoken of the sounds I heard while the earth was revolving under us. The howl of storms, the roar

and clash of waves, the crack and crash of the falling thunderbolt,these of course made themselves heard

as they do to mortal ears. But there were other sounds which enchained my attention more than these voices

of nature. As the skilled leader of an orchestra hears every single sound from each member of the mob of

stringed and wind instruments, and above all the screech of the straining soprano, so my sharpened

perceptions made what would have been for common mortals a confused murmur audible to me as

compounded of innumerable easily distinguished sounds. Above them all arose one continued, unbroken,

agonizing cry. It was the voice of suffering womanhood, a sound that goes up day and night, one long chorus

"Let us get out of reach of this," I said; and we left our planet, with its blank, desolate moon staring at it, as if

Presently the gilded dome of the State House, which marked our startingpoint, came into view for the

second time, and I knew that this sideshow was over. I bade farewell to the Common with its Cogswell

"There is nothing to hinder that I know of," said my companion. "Memory and imagination as you know

them in the flesh are two winged creatures with strings tied to their legs, and anchored to a bodily weight of a

hundred and fifty pounds, more or less. When the string is cut you can be where you wish to be,not merely

a part of you, leaving the rest behind, but the whole of you. Why shouldn't you want to revisit your old home

I was astonished at the human way in which my guide conversed with me. It was always on the basis of my

earthly habits, experiences, and limitations. "Your solar system," she said, "is a very small part of the

universe, but you naturally feel a curiosity about the bodies which constitute it and about their inhabitants.

There is your moon: a bare and desolatelooking place it is, and well it may be, for it has no respirable

atmosphere, and no occasion for one. The Lunites do not breathe; they live without waste and without supply.

You look as if you do not understand this. Yet your people have, as you well know, what they call

incandescent lights everywhere. You would have said there can be no lamp without oil or gas, or other

combustible substance, to feed it; and yet you see a filament which sheds a light like that of noon all around

it, and does not waste at all. So the Lunites live by influx of divine energy, just as the incandescent lamp

glows,glows, and is not consumed; receiving its life, if we may call it so, from the central power, which

The Lunites appeared to me as pale phosphorescent figures of ill defined outline, lost in their own halos, as

But as the Lunites were after all but provincials, as are the tenants of all the satellites, I did not care to

I do not remember much about the two planets that came next to our own, except the beautiful rosy

atmosphere of one and the huge bulk of the other. Presently, we found ourselves within hailing distance of

another celestial body, which I recognized at once, by the rings which girdled it, as the planet Saturn. A

dingy, dulllooking sphere it was in its appearance. "We will tie up here for a while," said my attendant. The

Why, said I,The Dictator,what is there to prevent beings of another order from being as cheerful, as

social, as good companions, as the very liveliest of God's creatures whom we have known in the flesh? Is it

impossible for an archangel to smile? Is such a phenomenon as a laugh never heard except in our little sinful

corner of the universe? Do you suppose, that when the disciples heard from the lips of their Master the play

of words on the name of Peter, there was no smile of appreciation on the bearded faces of those holy men?

Number Five shook her head very slightly, and gave me a look that seemed to say, "Don't frighten the other

Teacups. We don't call things by the names that belong to them when we deal with celestial subjects."

We tied up, as my attendant playfully called our resting, so near the planet that I could knowI will not say

see and hear, but apprehend all that was going on in that remote sphere; remote, as we who live in what we

have been used to consider the centre of the rational universe regard it. What struck me at once was the

deadness of everything I looked upon. Dead, uniform color of surface and surrounding atmosphere. Dead

complexion of all the inhabitants. Deadlooking trees, deadlooking grass, no flowers to be seen anywhere.

She smiled goodnaturedly, and replied, "It is a forlorn home for anything above a lichen or a toadstool; but

that is no wonder, when you know what the air is which they breathe. It is pure nitrogen."

The Professor spoke up. "That can't be, madam," he said. "The spectroscope shows the atmosphere of Saturn

to beno matter, I have forgotten what; but it was not pure nitrogen, at any rate."

Number Five is never disconcerted. "Will you tell me," she said, "where you have found any account of the

bands and lines in the spectrum of dreamnitrogen? I should be so pleased to become acquainted with them."

The Professor winced a little, and asked Delilah, the handmaiden, to pass a plate of muffins to him. The

dream had carried him away, and he thought for the moment that he was listening to a scientific paper.

Of course, my companion went on to say, the bodily constitution of the Saturnians is wholly different from

that of airbreathing, that is oxygenbreathing, human beings. They are the dullest, slowest, most torpid of

All this is not to be wondered at when you remember the inert characteristics of nitrogen. There are in some

localities natural springs which give out slender streams of oxygen. You will learn by and by what use the

Saturnians make of this dangerous gas, which, as you recollect, constitutes about one fifth of your own

atmosphere. Saturn has large lead mines, but no other metal is found on this planet. The inhabitants have

nothing else to make tools of, except stones and shells. The mechanical arts have therefore made no great

progress among them. Chopping down a tree with a leaden axe is necessarily a slow process.

So far as the Saturnians can be said to have any pride in anything, it is in the absolute level which

characterizes their political and social order. They profess to be the only true republicans in the solar system.

All Saturnians are born free, free, that is, to obey the rules laid down for the regulation of their conduct,

pursuits, and opinions, free to be married to the person selected for them by the physiological section of the

government, and free to die at such proper period of life as may best suit the convenience and general welfare

The one great industrial product of Saturn is the breadroot. The Saturnians find this wholesome and

palatable enough; and it is well they do, as they have no other vegetable. It is what I should call a most

uninteresting kind of eatable, but it serves as food and drink, having juice enough, so that they get along

without water. They have a tough, dry grass, which, matted together, furnishes them with clothes sufficiently

A piece of ground large enough to furnish breadroot for ten persons is allotted to each head of a household,

allowance being made for the possible increase of families. This, however, is not a very important

consideration, as the Saturnians are not a prolific race. The great object of life being the product of the largest

possible quantity of breadroots, and women not being so capable in the fields as the stronger sex, females

are considered an undesirable addition to society. The one thing the Saturnians dread and abhor is inequality.

The whole object of their laws and customs is to maintain the strictest equality in everything,social

relations, property, so far as they can be said to have anything which can be so called, mode of living, dress,

and all other matters. It is their boast that nobody ever starved under their government. Nobody goes in rags,

for the coarsefibred grass from which they fabricate their clothes is very durable. (I confess I wondered how

a woman could live in Saturn. They have no lookingglasses. There is no such article as a ribbon known

among them. All their clothes are of one pattern. I noticed that there were no pockets in any of their garments,

and learned that a pocket would be considered prima facie evidence of theft, as no honest person would have

use for such a secret receptacle.) Before the revolution which established the great law of absolute and

lifelong equality, the inhabitants used to feed at their own private tables. Since the regeneration of society all

meals are taken in common. The last relic of barbarism was the use of plates,one or even more to each

individual. This "odious relic of an effete civilization," as they called it, has long been superseded by oblong

hollow receptacles, one of which is allotted to each twelve persons. A great riot took place when an attempt

was made by some fastidious and exclusive egotists to introduce partitions which should partially divide one

portion of these receptacles into individual compartments. The Saturnians boast that they have no paupers, no

thieves, none of those fictitious values called money,all which things, they hear, are known in that small

"I suppose that now they have levelled everything they are quiet and contented. Have they any of those

"Indeed they have," said my attendant. "There are the Orthobrachians, who declaim against the shameful

abuse of the left arm and hand, and insist on restoring their perfect equality with the right. Then there are

Isopodic societies, which insist on bringing back the original equality of the upper and lower limbs. If you

can believe it, they actually practise going on all fours,generally in a private way, a few of them together,

"It is liable to that accusation," she answered. "Do you notice how many people you meet with their mouths

"Yes," I said, "and I do not know what to make of it. I should think every fourth or fifth person had his mouth

"They are suffering from the endemic disease of their planet, prolonged and inveterate gaping or yawning,

which has ended in dislocation of the lower jaw. After a time this becomes fixed, and requires a difficult

It struck me that, in spite of their boast that they have no paupers, no thieves, no money, they were a

Intoxication and suicide are their chief recreations. They have a way of mixing the oxygen which issues in

small jets from certain natural springs with their atmospheric nitrogen in the proportion of about twenty per

cent, which makes very nearly the same thing as the air of your planet. But to the Saturnians the mixture is

highly intoxicating, and is therefore a relief to the monotony of their everyday life. This mixture is greatly

sought after, but hard to obtain, as the sources of oxygen are few and scanty. It shortens the lives of those

who have recourse to it; but if it takes too long, they have other ways of escaping from a life which cuts and

dries everything for its miserable subjects, defeats all the natural instincts, confounds all individual

characteristics, and makes existence such a colossal bore, as your worldly people say, that selfdestruction

Your imaginary wholesale Shakerdom is all very fine, said I. Your Utopia, your New Atlantis, and the rest

are pretty to look at. But your philosophers are treating the world of living souls as if they were, each of

them, playing a game of solitaire, all the pegs and all the holes alike. Life is a very different sort of game.

It is a game of chess, and not of solitaire, nor even of checkers. The men are not all pawns, but you have your

knights, bishops, rooks,yes, your king and queen,to be provided for. Not with these names, of course,

but all looking for their proper places, and having their own laws and modes of action. You can play solitaire

with the members of your own family for pegs, if you like, and if none of them rebel. You can play checkers

with a little community of meek, likeminded people. But when it comes to the handling of a great state, you

will find that nature has emptied a box of chessmen before you, and you must play with them so as to give

each its proper move, or sweep them off the board, and come back to the homely game such as I used to see

played with beans and kernels of corn on squares marked upon the back of the kitchen bellows.

It was curious to see how differently Number Five's narrative was received by the different listeners in our

circle. Number Five herself said she supposed she ought to be ashamed of its absurdities, but she did not

know that it was much sillier than dreams often are, and she thought it might amuse the company. She was

herself always interested by these ideal pictures of society. But it seemed to her that life must be dull in any

of them, and with that idea in her head her dreaming fancy had drawn these pictures.

The Professor was interested in her conception of the existence of the Lunites without waste, and the death in

life of the nitrogen breathing Saturnians. Dreamchemistry was a new subject to him. Perhaps Number Five

At this she smiled, and said she was afraid she could not teach him anything, but if he would answer a few

questions in matteroffact chemistry which had puzzled her she would be vastly obliged to him.

Oh, yes! Much laboratory work they will do! Play of mutual affinities. Amalgamates. No freezing mixtures,

But Number Five looks as innocent as a lamb, and as brave as a lion. She does not care a copper for the looks

Our Doctor was curious about those cases of anchylosis, as he called it, of the lower jaw. He thought it a

quite possible occurrence. Both the young girls thought the dream gave a very hard view of the optimists,

who look forward to a reorganization of society which shall rid mankind of the terrible evils of

Number Seven was quite excited about the matter. He had himself drawn up a plan for a new social

arrangement. He had shown it to the legal gentleman who has lately joined us. This gentleman thought it

wellintended, but that it would take one constable to every three inhabitants to enforce its provisions.

I said the dream could do no harm; it was too outrageously improbable to come home to anybody's feelings.

Dreams were like broken mosaics,the separated stones might here and there make parts of pictures. If one

found a caricature of himself made out of the pieces which had accidentally come together, he would smile at

it, knowing that it was an accidental effect with no malice in it. If any of you really believe in a working

Utopia, why not join the Shakers, and convert the world to this mode of life? Celibacy alone would cure a

I thought this suggestion seemed to act rather unfavorably upon the ladies of our circle. The two Annexes

looked inquiringly at each other. Number Five looked smilingly at them. She evidently thought it was time to

change the subject of conversation, for she turned to me and said, "You promised to read us the poem you

I will fulfill my promise, I said. We felt that this might probably be our last meeting as a Class. The personal

reference is to our greatly beloved and honored classmate, James Freeman Clarke.

We gathered once, a joyous throng: The jovial toasts went gayly round; With jest, and laugh, and shout, and

We come with feeble steps and slow, A little band of four or five, Left from the wrecks of long ago, Still

Alive! How living, too, are they whose memories it is ours to share! Spread the long table's full array, There

One breathing form no more, alas! Amid our slender group we see; With him we still remained "The Class,"

The hand we ever loved to clasp, That tireless hand which knew no rest, Loosed from affection's clinging

The beaming eye, the cheering voice, That lent to life a generous glow, whose every meaning said "Rejoice,"

The air seems darkened by his loss, Earth's shadowed features look less fair, And heavier weighs the daily

Whom grasping Time so long has spared Life's sweet illusions to pursue, The common lot of age have

In every pulse of Friendship's heart There breeds unfelt a throb of pain, One hour must rend its links apart,

So ends "The Boys,"a lifelong play. We too must hear the Prompter's call To fairer scenes and brighter day

If the reader thinks that all these talking Teacups came together by mere accident, as people meet at a

boardinghouse, I may as well tell him at once that he is mistaken. If he thinks I am going to explain how it

is that he finds them thus brought together, whether they form a secret association, whether they are the

editors of this or that periodical, whether they are connected with some institution, and so on,I must

disappoint him. It is enough that he finds them in each other's company, a very mixed assembly, of different

sexes, ages, and pursuits; and if there is a certain mystery surrounds their meetings, he must not be surprised.

Does he suppose we want to be known and talked about in public as "Teacups"? No; so far as we give to the

community some records of the talks at our table our thoughts become public property, but the sacred

personality of every Teacup must be properly respected. If any wonder at the presence of one of our number,

whose eccentricities might seem to render him an undesirable associate of the company, he should remember

that some people may have relatives whom they feel bound to keep their eye on; besides the cracked Teacup

brings out the ring of the sound ones as nothing else does. Remember also that soundest teacup does not

This is a hint to the reader, who is not expected to be too curious about the individual Teacups constituting

I have been reading Balzac's Peau de Chagrin. You have all read the story, I hope, for it is the first of his

wonderful romances which fixed the eyes of the reading world upon him, and is a most fascinating if

somewhat fantastic tale. A young man becomes the possessor of a certain magic skin, the peculiarity of which

is that, while it gratifies every wish formed by its possessor, it shrinks in all its dimensions each time that a

wish is gratified. The young man makes every effort to ascertain the cause of its shrinking; invokes the aid of

the physicist, the chemist, the student of natural history, but all in vain. He draws a red line around it. That

same day he indulges a longing for a certain object. The next morning there is a little interval between the red

line and the skin, close to which it was traced. So always, so inevitably. As he lives on, satisfying one desire,

one passion, after another, the process of shrinking continues. A mortal disease sets in, which keeps pace with

One would say that such a piece of integument was hardly a desirable possession. And yet, how many of us

have at this very moment a peau de chagrin of our own, diminishing with every costly wish indulged, and

Need I say that I refer to those coupon bonds, issued in the days of eight and ten per cent interest, and

gradually narrowing as they drop their semiannual slips of paper, which represent wishes to be realized, as

the roses let fall their leaves in July, as the icicles melt away in the thaw of January?

How beautiful was the coupon bond, arrayed in its golden raiment of promises to pay at certain stated

intervals, for a goodly number of coming years! What annual the horticulturist can show will bear

comparison with this product of auricultural industry, which has flowered in midsummer and midwinter for

twenty successive seasons? And now the last of its blossoms is to be plucked, and the bare stem, stripped of

its ever maturing and always welcome appendages, is reduced to the narrowest conditions of reproductive

existence. Such is the fate of the financial peau de chagrin. Pity the poor fractional capitalist, who has just

managed to live on the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to

human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it

served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical form, in the

contemplation of these changes and their melancholy consequences? If the entire poem, of several hundred

lines, was "declined with thanks" by an unfeeling editor, that is no reason why you should not hear a verse or

How beauteous is the bond In the manifold array Of its promises to pay, While the eight per cent it gives And

But at last the bough is bare Where the coupons one by one Through their ripening days have run, And the

The Mistress commonly contents herself with the general supervision of the company, only now and then

taking an active part in the conversation. She started a question the other evening which set some of us

"Why is it," she said, "that there is so common and so intense a desire for poetical reputation? It seems to me

that, if I were a man, I had rather have done something worth telling of than make verses about what other

"You agree with Alexander the Great," said the Professor. "You would prefer the fame of Achilles to that of

Homer, who told the story of his wrath and its direful consequences. I am afraid that I should hardly agree

with you. Achilles was little better than a Choctaw brave. I won't quote Horace's line which characterizes him

so admirably, for I will take it for granted that you all know it. He was a gentleman,so is a firstclass

Indian,a very noble gentleman in point of courage, lofty bearing, courtesy, but an unsoaped, ill clad,

turbulent, hightempered young fellow, looked up to by his crowd very much as the champion of the heavy

weights is looked up to by his gang of blackguards. Alexander himself was not much better, a foolish,

fiery young madcap. How often is he mentioned except as a warning? His best record is that he served to

point a moral as 'Macedonian's madman.' He made a figure, it is true, in Dryden's great Ode, but what kind of

a figure? He got drunk,in very bad company, too,and then turned firebug. He had one redeeming

point,he did value his Homer, and slept with the Iliad under his pillow. A poet like Homer seems to me

"Homer is all very well far those that can read him," said Number Seven, "but the fellows that tag verses

together nowadays are mostly fools. That's my opinion. I wrote some verses once myself, but I had been sick

This aggressive remark caused a little stir at our teatable. For you must know, if I have not told you already,

there are suspicions that we have more than one "poet" at our table. I have already confessed that I do myself

indulge in verse now and then, and have given my readers a specimen of my work in that line. But there is so

much difference of character in the verses which are produced at our table, without any signature, that I feel

quite sure there are at least two or three other contributors besides myself. There is a tall, oldfashioned silver

urn, a sugarbowl of the period of the Empire, in which the poems sent to be read are placed by unseen

hands. When the proper moment arrives, I lift the cover of the urn and take out any manuscript it may

contain. If conversation is going on and the company are in a talking mood, I replace the manuscript or

manuscripts, clap on the cover, and wait until there is a moment's quiet before taking it off again. I might

guess the writers sometimes by the handwriting, but there is more trouble taken to disguise the chirography

than I choose to take to identify it as that of any particular member of our company.

The turn the conversation took, especially the slashing onslaught of Number Seven on the writers of verse, set

me thinking and talking about the matter. Number Five turned on the stream of my discourse by a question.

"You receive a good many volumes of verse, do you not?" she said, with a look which implied that she knew

I certainly do, I answered. My table aches with them. My shelves groan with them. Think of what a fuss Pope

to that great multitude of contributors to our magazines, and authors of little volumessometimes, alas! big

onesof verse, which pour out of the press, not weekly, but daily, and at such a rate of increase that it seems

as if before long every hour would bring a book, or at least an article which is to grow into a book by and by?

I thanked Heaven, the other day, that I was not a critic. These attenuated volumes of poetry in fancy bindings

open their covers at one like so many little unfledged birds, and one does so long to drop a worm in,a

worm in the shape of a kind word for the poor fledgling! But what a desperate business it is to deal with this

army of candidates for immortality! I have often had something to say about them, and I may be saying over

the same things; but if I do not remember what I have said, it is not very likely that my reader will; if he does,

What astonishes me is that this enormous mass of commonplace verse, which burdens the postman who

brings it, which it is a serious task only to get out of its wrappers and open in two or three places, is on the

whole of so good an average quality. The dead level of mediocrity is in these days a tableland, a good deal

above the old sealevel of laboring incapacity. Sixty years ago verses made a local reputation, which verses,

if offered today to any of our first class magazines, would go straight into the wastebasket. To write

"poetry" was an art and mystery in which only a few noted men and a woman or two were experts.

When "Potter the ventriloquist," the predecessor of the well remembered Signor Blitz, went round giving his

entertainments, there was something unexplained, uncanny, almost awful, and beyond dispute marvellous, in

his performances. Those watches that disappeared and came back to their owners, those endless supplies of

treasures from empty hats, and especially those crawling eggs that travelled all over the magician's person,

sent many a child home thinking that Mr. Potter must have ghostly assistants, and raised grave doubts in the

minds of "professors," that is members of the church, whether they had not compromised their characters by

being seen at such an unhallowed exhibition. Nowadays, a clever boy who has made a study of parlor magic

can do many of those tricks almost as well as the great sorcerer himself. How simple it all seems when we

It is just so with writing in verse. It was not understood that everybody can learn to make poetry, just as they

can learn the more difficult tricks of juggling. M. Jourdain's discovery that he had been speaking and writing

prose all his life is nothing to that of the man who finds out in middle life, or even later, that he might have

been writing poetry all his days, if he had only known how perfectly easy and simple it is. Not everybody, it

is true, has a sufficiently good ear, a sufficient knowledge of rhymes and capacity for handling them, to be

what is called a poet. I doubt whether more than nine out of ten, in the average, have that combination of gifts

This last expression of opinion created a sensation among The Teacups. They looked puzzled for a minute.

One whispered to the next Teacup, "More than nine out of ten! I should think that was a pretty liberal

Yes, I continued; perhaps ninetynine in a hundred would come nearer to the mark. I have sometimes

thought I might consider it worth while to set up a school for instruction in the art. "Poetry taught in twelve

lessons." Congenital idiocy is no disqualification. Anybody can write "poetry." It is a most unenviable

distinction to leave published a thin volume of verse, which nobody wanted, nobody buys, nobody reads,

nobody cares for except the author, who cries over its pathos, poor fellow, and revels in its beauties, which he

has all to himself. Come! who will be my pupils in a Course,Poetry taught in twelve lessons? That made a

laugh, in which most of The Teacups, myself included, joined heartily. Through it all I heard the sweet tones

of Number Five's caressing voice; not because it was more penetrating or louder than the others, for it was

low and soft, but it was so different from the others, there was so much more life,the life of sweet

(Of course he will fall in love with her. "He? Who?" Why, the newcomer, the Counsellor. Did I not see his

eyes turn toward her as the silvery notes rippled from her throat? Did they not follow her in her movements,

What nonsense for me to be arranging matters between two people strangers to each other before today!)

"A fellow writes in verse when he has nothing to say, and feels too dull and silly to say it in prose," said

This made us laugh again, goodnaturedly. I was pleased with a kind of truth which it seemed to me to wrap

up in its rather startling affirmation. I gave a piece of advice the other day which I said I thought deserved a

paragraph to itself. It was from a letter I wrote not long ago to an unknown young correspondent, who had a

longing for seeing himself in verse but was not hopelessly infatuated with the idea that he was born a "poet."

"When you write in prose," I said, "you say what you mean. When you write in verse you say what you

must." I was thinking more especially of rhymed verse. Rhythm alone is a tether, and not a very long one. But

rhymes are iron fetters; it is dragging a chain and ball to march under their incumbrance; it is a clogdance

you are figuring in, when you execute your metrical pas seul. Consider under what a disadvantage your

thinking powers are laboring when you are handicapped by the inexorable demands of our scanty English

rhyming vocabulary! You want to say something about the heavenly bodies, and you have a beautiful line

ending with the word stars. Were you writing in prose, your imagination, your fancy, your rhetoric, your

musical ear for the harmonies of language, would all have full play. But there is your rhyme fastening you by

the leg, and you must either reject the line which pleases you, or you must whip your hobbling fancy and all

your limping thoughts into the traces which are hitched to one of three or four or half a dozen serviceable

words. You cannot make any use of cars, I will suppose; you have no occasion to talk about scars; "the red

planet Mars" has been used already; Dibdin has said enough about the gallant tars; what is there left for you

but bars? So you give up your trains of thought, capitulate to necessity, and manage to lug in some kind of

allusion, in place or out of place, which will allow you to make use of bars. Can there be imagined a more

certain process for breaking up all continuity of thought, for taking out all the vigor, all the virility, which

belongs to natural prose as the vehicle of strong, graceful, spontaneous thought, than this miserable

subjugation of intellect to theclink of well or ill matched syllables? I think you will smile if I tell you of an

idea I have had about teaching the art of writing "poems" to the halfwitted children at the Idiot Asylum. The

trick of rhyming cannot be more usefully employed than in furnishing a pleasant amusement to the poor

feebleminded children. I should feel that I was well employed in getting up a Primer for the pupils of the

Asylum, and other young persons who are incapable of serious thought and connected expression. I would

The pupil begins by supplying the missing words, which most children who are able to keep out of fire and

water can accomplish after a certain number of trials. When the poet that is to be has got so as to perform this

task easily, a skeleton verse, in which two or three words of each line are omitted, is given the child to fill up.

By and by the more difficult forms of metre are outlined, until at length a feebleminded child can make out a

sonnet, completely equipped with its four pairs of rhymes in the first section and its three pairs in the second

Number Seven interrupted my discourse somewhat abruptly, as is his wont; for we grant him a license, in

virtue of his eccentricity, which we should hardly expect to be claimed by a perfectly sound Teacup.

"That's the way,that 's the way!" exclaimed he. "It's just the same thing as my plan for teaching drawing."

Some curiosity was shown among The Teacups to know what the queer creature had got into his mind, and

Number Five asked him, in her irresistible tones, if he wouldn't oblige us by telling us all about it.

He looked at her a moment without speaking. I suppose he has often been made fun of,slighted in

conversation, taken as a butt for people who thought themselves witty, made to feel as we may suppose a

cracked piece of chinaware feels when it is clinked in the company of sound bits of porcelain. I never saw

him when he was carelessly dealt with in conversation, for it would sometimes happen, even at our table,

without recalling some lines of Emerson which always struck me as of wonderful force and almost terrible

Poor fellow! Number Seven has to bear a good deal in the way of neglect and ridicule, I do not doubt.

Happily, he is protected by an amount of belief in himself which shields him from many assailants who

would torture a more sensitive nature. But the sweet voice of Number Five and her sincere way of addressing

him seemed to touch his feelings. That was the meaning of his momentary silence, in which I saw that his

eyes glistened and a faint flush rose on his cheeks. In a moment, however, as soon as he was on his hobby, he

"A man at a certain distance appears as a dark spot,nothing more. Good. Anybody, man, woman, or child,

can make a dot, say a period, such as we use in writing. Lesson No. 1. Make a dot; that is, draw your man, a

mile off, if that is far enough. Now make him come a little nearer, a few rods, say. The dot is an oblong figure

now. Good. Let your scholar draw the oblong figure. It is as easy as it is to make a note of admiration. Your

man comes nearer, and now some hint of a bulbous enlargement at one end, and perhaps of lateral

appendages and a bifurcation, begins to show itself. The pupil sets down with his pencil just what he

sees,no more. So by degrees the man who serves as model approaches. A bright pupil will learn to get the

outline of a human figure in ten lessons, the model coming five hundred feet nearer each time. A dull one

may require fifty, the model beginning a mile off, or more, and coming a hundred feet nearer at each move."

The company were amused by all this, but could not help seeing that there was a certain practical possibility

about the scheme. Our two Annexes, as we call then, appeared to be interested in the project, or fancy, or

whim, or whatever the older heads might consider it. "I guess I'll try it," said the American Annex. "Quite

so," answered the English Annex. Why the first girl "guessed" about her own intentions it is hard to say.

What "quite so" referred to it would not be easy to determine. But these two expressions would decide the

nationality of our two young ladies if we met them on the top of the great Pyramid.

I was very glad that Number Seven had interrupted me. In fact, it is a good thing once in a while to break in

upon the monotony of a steady talker at a dinnertable, teatable, or any other place of social converse. The

best talker is liable to become the most formidable of bores. It is a peculiarity of the bore that he is the last

person to find himself out. Many a terebrant I have known who, in that capacity, to borrow a line from

A line, by the way, which, as I have remarked, has in it a germ like that famous "He builded better than he

There was a slight lull in the conversation. The Mistress, who keeps an eye on the course of things, and

feared that one of those panic silences was impending, in which everybody wants to say something and does

not know just what to say, begged me to go on with my remarks about the "manufacture" of "poetry."

You use the right term, madam, I said. The manufacture of that article has become an extensive and therefore

an important branch of industry. One must be an editor, which I am not, or a literary confidant of a wide

circle of correspondents, which I am, to have any idea of the enormous output of verse which is characteristic

of our time. There are many curious facts connected with this phenomenon. Educated peopleyes, and many

who are not educatedhave discovered that rhymes are not the private property of a few noted writers who,

having squatted on that part of the literary domain some twenty or forty or sixty years ago, have, as it were,

fenced it in with their touchy, barbedwire reputations, and have come to regard it and cause it to be regarded

as their private property. The discovery having been made that rhyme is not a paddock for this or that

racehorse, but a common, where every colt, pony, and donkey can range at will; a vast irruption into that

onceprivileged inclosure has taken place. The study of the great invasion is interesting.

Poetry is commonly thought to he the language of emotion. On the contrary, most of what is so called proves

the absence of all passionate excitement. It is a coldblooded, haggard, anxious, worrying hunt after rhymes

which can be made serviceable, after images which will be effective, after phrases which are sonorous; all

this under limitations which restrict the natural movements of fancy and imagination. There is a secondary

excitement in overcoming the difficulties of rhythm and rhyme, no doubt, but this is not the emotional heat

excited by the subject of the "poet's" treatment. True poetry, the best of it, is but the ashes of a burntout

passion. The flame was in the eye and in the cheek, the coals may be still burning in the heart, but when we

come to the words it leaves behind it, a little warmth, a cinder or two just glimmering under the dead gray

ashes,that is all we can look for. When it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how

well the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing. They catch all the phrases of the true poet.

They imitate his metrical forms as a mimic copies the gait of the person he is representing.

Now I am not going to abuse "these same metre balladmongers," for the obvious reason that, as all The

Teacups know, I myself belong to the fraternity. I don't think that this reason should hinder my having my

say about the balladmongering business. For the last thirty years I have been in the habit of receiving a

volume of poems or a poem, printed or manuscriptI will not say daily, though I sometimes receive more

than one in a day, but at very short intervals. I have been consulted by hundreds of writers of verse as to the

merit of their performances, and have often advised the writers to the best of my ability. Of late I have found

it impossible to attempt to read critically all the literary productions, in verse and in prose, which have heaped

themselves on every exposed surface of my library, like snowdrifts along the railroad tracks,blocking my

What is the meaning of this rush into rhyming of such a multitude of people, of all ages, from the infant

Many of my young correspondents have told me in so many words, "I want to be famous." Now it is true that

of all the short cuts to fame, in time of peace, there is none shorter than the road paved with rhymes. Byron

woke up one morning and found himself famous. Still more notably did Rouget de l'Isle fill the air of France,

nay, the whole atmosphere of freedom all the world over, with his name wafted on the wings of the

Marseillaise, the work of a single night. But if by fame the aspirant means having his name brought before

and kept before the public, there is a much cheaper way of acquiring that kind of notoriety. Have your portrait

taken as a "Wonderful Cure of a Desperate Disease given up by all the Doctors." You will get a fair likeness

of yourself and a partial biographical notice, and have the satisfaction, if not of promoting the welfare of the

community, at least that of advancing the financial interests of the benefactor whose enterprise has given you

your coveted notoriety. If a man wants to be famous, he had much better try the advertising doctor than the

terrible editor, whose wastebasket is a maw which is as insatiable as the temporary stomach of Jack the

"You must not talk so," said Number Five. "I know you don't mean any wrong to the true poets, but you

might be thought to hold them cheap, whereas you value the gift in others,in yourself too, I rather think.

There are a great many women,and some men,who write in verse from a natural instinct which leads

them to that form of expression. If you could peep into the portfolio of all the cultivated women among your

acquaintances, you would be surprised, I believe, to see how many of them trust their thoughts and feelings to

verse which they never think of publishing, and much of which never meets any eyes but their own. Don't be

cruel to the sensitive natures who find a music in the harmonies of rhythm and rhyme which soothes their

I was glad that Number Five spoke up as she did. Her generous instinct came to the rescue of the poor poets

just at the right moment. Not that I meant to deal roughly with them, but the "poets" I have been forced into

relation with have impressed me with certain convictions which are not flattering to the fraternity, and if my

judgments are not accompanied by my own qualifications, distinctions, and exceptions, they may seem harsh

Let me draw a picture which many a young man and woman, and some no longer young, will recognize as

He is sitting alone with his own thoughts and memories. What is that book he is holding? Something

precious, evidently, for it is bound in "tree calf," and there is gilding enough about it for a birthday present.

The reader seems to be deeply absorbed in its contents, and at times greatly excited by what he reads; for his

face is flushed, his eyes glitter, andthere rolls a large tear down his cheek. Listen to him; he is reading

His voice is choked by his emotion. "How is it possible," he says to himself, "that any one can read my

'Gaspings for Immortality' without being impressed by their freshness, their passion, their beauty, their

originality?" Tears come to his relief freely,so freely that be has to push the precious volume out of the

range of their blistering shower. Six years ago "Gaspings for Immortality " was published, advertised, praised

by the professionals whose business it is to boost their publishers' authors. A week and more it was seen on

the counters of the booksellers and at the stalls in the railroad stations. Then it disappeared from public view.

A few copies still kept their place on the shelves of friends, presentation copies, of course, as there is no

evidence that any were disposed of by sale; and now, one might as well ask for the lost books of Livy as

The authors of these poems are all round us, men and women, and no one with a fair amount of human

sympathy in his disposition would treat them otherwise than tenderly. Perhaps they do not need tender

treatment. How do you know that posterity may not resuscitate these seemingly dead poems, and give their

author the immortality for which he longed and labored? It is not every poet who is at once appreciated.

Some will tell you that the best poets never are. Who can say that you, dear unappreciated brother or sister,

are not one of those whom it is left for after times to discover among the wrecks of the past, and hold up to

I have not thought it necessary to put in all the interpellations, as the French call them, which broke the

course of this somewhat extended series of remarks; but the comments of some of The Teacups helped me to

shape certain additional observations, and may seem to the reader as of more significance than what I had

Number Seven saw nothing but the folly and weakness of the "rhyming cranks," as he called them. He

thought the fellow that I had described as blubbering over his stillborn poems would have been better

occupied in earning his living in some honest way or other. He knew one chap that published a volume of

verses, and let his wife bring up the wood for the fire by which he was writing. A fellow says, "I am a poet!"

and he thinks himself different from common folks. He ought to be excused from military service. He might

be killed, and the world would lose the inestimable products of his genius. "I believe some of 'em think," said

Number Seven, "that they ought not to be called upon to pay their taxes and their bills for household

"If they would only study and take to heart Horace's 'Ars Poetica,'" said the Professor, "it would be a great

benefit to them and to the world at large. I would not advise you to follow him too literally, of course, for, as

you will see, the changes that have taken place since his time would make some of his precepts useless and

some dangerous, but the spirit of them is always instructive. This is the way, somewhat modernized and

"'Don't try to write poetry, my boy, when you are not in the mood for doing it,when it goes against the

"'If you have written anything which you think well of, show it to Mr.______ , the wellknown critic; to "the

"To the critic is well enough, if you like to be overhauled and put out of conceit with yourself,it may do

you good; but I wouldn't go to 'the governor' with my verses, if I were you. For either he will think what you

have written is something wonderful, almost as good as he could have written himself,in fact, he always

did believe in hereditary genius,or he will poohpooh the whole rhyming nonsense, and tell you that you

had a great deal better stick to your business, and leave all the wordjingling to Mother Goose and her

"'Show me your verses,' says Horace. Very good it was in him, and mighty encouraging the first counsel he

gives! 'Keep your poem to yourself for some eight or ten years; you will have time to look it over, to correct

"'Much obliged for your advice,' says the poor poet, thirsting for a draught of fame, and offered a handful of

dust. And off he hurries to the printer, to be sure that his poem comes out in the next number of the magazine

It was the Tutor who asked this question, and I thought he looked in the direction of Number Five, as if she

might answer his question. But Number Five stirred her tea devotedly; there was a lump of sugar, I suppose,

that acted like a piece of marble. So there was a silence while the lump was slowly dissolving, and it was

The voice that broke the silence was not the sweet, winsome one we were listening for, but it instantly

arrested the attention of the company. It was the grave, manly voice of one used to speaking, and accustomed

to be listened to with deference. This was the first time that the company as a whole had heard it, for the

speaker was the newcomer who has been repeatedly alluded to,the one of whom I spoke as "the

"I think I can tell you something about that," said the Counsellor. "I suppose you will wonder how a man of

my profession can know or interest himself about a question so remote from his arid pursuits. And yet there is

hardly one man in a thousand who knows from actual experience a fraction of what I have learned of the

lovers' vocabulary in my professional experience. I have, I am sorry to say, had to take an important part in a

great number of divorce cases. These have brought before me scores and hundreds of letters, in which every

shade of the great passion has been represented. What has most struck me in these amatory correspondences

has been their remarkable sameness. It seems as if writing loveletters reduced all sorts of people to the same

level. I don't remember whether Lord Bacon has left us anything in that line,unless, indeed, he wrote

Romeo and Juliet' and the 'Sonnets;' but if he has, I don't believe they differ so very much from those of his

valet or his groom to their respective ladyloves. It is always, My darling! my darling! The words of

endearment are the only ones the lover wants to employ, and he finds the vocabulary too limited for his vast

desires. So his letters are apt to be rather tedious except to the personage to whom they are addressed. As to

poetry, it is very common to find it in love letters, especially in those that have no love in them. The letters

of bigamists and polygamists are rich in poetical extracts. Occasionally, an original spurt in rhyme adds

variety to an otherwise monotonous performance. I don't think there is much passion in men's poetry

addressed to women. I agree with The Dictator that poetry is little more than the ashes of passion; still it may

show that the flame has had its sweep where you find it, unless, indeed, it is shoveled in from another man's

"What do you say to the love poetry of women?" asked the Professor. "Did ever passion heat words to

The Counsellor turned,not to Number Five, as he ought to have done, according to my programme, but to

"Madam," he said, "your sex is adorable in many ways, but in the abandon of a genuine loveletter it is

incomparable. I have seen a string of women's loveletters, in which the creature enlaced herself about the

object of her worship as that South American parasite which clasps the tree to which it has attached itself,

begins with a slender succulent network, feeds on the trunk, spreads its fingers out to hold firmly to one

branch after another, thickens, hardens, stretches in every direction, following the boughs,and at length

gets strong enough to hold in its murderous arms, high up in air, the stump and shaft of the once sturdy

The Counsellor did not say all this quite so formally as I have set it down here, but in a much easier way. In

fact, it is impossible to smooth out a conversation from memory without stiffening it; you can't have a dress

Some of us would have liked to hear more about those letters in the divorce cases, but the Counsellor had to

leave the table. He promised to show us some pictures he has of the South American parasite. I have seen

If all the trees in all the woods were men, And each and every blade of grass a pen; If every leaf on every

shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes Had

nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for ten thousand ages, day and night, The human race should write,

and write, and write, Till all the pens and paper were used up, And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, Still

would the scribblers clustered round its brim Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.

"Dolce, ma non troppo dolce," said the Professor to the Mistress, who was sweetening his tea. She always

sweetens his and mine for us. He has been attending a series of concerts, and borrowed the form of the

directions to the orchestra. "Sweet, but not too sweet," he said, translating the Italian for the benefit of any of

"Do you go to those musical hullabaloos?" called out Number Seven. There was something very much like

rudeness in this question and the tone in which it was asked. But we are used to the outbursts, and

extravagances, and oddities of Number Seven, and do not take offence at his rough speeches as we should if

"If you mean the concerts that have been going on this season, yes, I do," said the Professor, in a bland,

"And do you take real pleasure in the din of all those screeching and banging and growling instruments?"

"Yes," he answered, modestly, "I enjoy she brouhaha, if you choose to consider it such, of all this

quarrelsome menagerie of noisemaking machines, brought into order and harmony by the presiding genius,

the leader, who has made a happy family of these snarling stringed instruments and whining wind

notwithstanding there are a hundred vibrating tongues and a hundred bellowing mouths, their one grand

blended and harmonized uproar sets all my fibres tingling with a not unpleasing tremor."

"Do you understand it? Do you take any idea from it? Do you know what it all means?" said Number Seven.

The Professor was longsuffering under this series of somewhat peremptory questions. He replied very

placidly, "I am afraid I have but a superficial outside acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable

mysteries, of music. I can no more conceive of the working conditions of the great composer,

than a child of three years can follow the reasonings of Newton's 'Principia.' I do not even pretend that I can

appreciate the work of a great master as a born and trained musician does. Still, I do love a great crash of

harmonies, and the oftener I listen to these musical tempests the higher my soul seems to ride upon them, as

the wild fowl I see through my window soar more freely and fearlessly the fiercer the storm with which they

"That's all very well," said Number Seven, "but I wish we could get the oldtime music back again. You

ought to have heard,no, I won't mention her, dead, poor girl,dead and singing with the saints in

heaven,but the S_____ girls. If you could have heard them as I did when I was a boy, you would have

cried, as we all used to. Do you cry at those great musical smashes? How can you cry when you don't know

what it is all about? We used to think the words meant something,we fancied that Burns and Moore said

No one can handle Number Seven in one of his tantrums half so well as Number Five can do it. She can pick

out what threads of sense may be wound off from the tangle of his ideas when they are crowded and

confused, as they are apt to be at times. She can soften the occasional expression of halfconcealed ridicule

with which the poor old fellow's sallies are liable to be welcomedor unwelcomed. She knows that the edge

of a broken teacup may be sharper, very possibly, than that of a philosopher's jackknife. A mind a little off its

balance, one which has a slightly squinting brain as its organ; will often prove fertile in suggestions. Vulgar,

cynical, contemptuous listeners fly at all its weaknesses, and please themselves with making light of its often

futile ingenuities, when a wiser audience would gladly accept a hint which perhaps could be developed in

some profitable direction, or so interpret an erratic thought that it should prove good sense in disguise. That is

the way Number Five was in the habit of dealing with the explosions of Number Seven. Do you think she did

not see the ridiculous element in a silly speech, or the absurdity of an outrageously extravagant assertion?

Then you never heard her laugh when she could give way to her sense of the ludicrous without wounding the

feelings of any other person. But her kind heart never would forget itself, and so Number Seven had a

champion who was always ready to see that his flashes of intelligence, fitful as they were, and liable to be

streaked with halfcrazy fancies, always found one willing recipient of what light there was in them.

Number Five, I have found, is a true lover of music, and has a right to claim a real knowledge of its higher

and deeper mysteries. But she accepted very cordially what our lightheaded companion said about the songs

"There is no doubt," she remarked," that the tears which used to be shed over 'Oft in the sully night,' or 'Auld

Robin Gray,' or 'A place in thy memory, dearest,' were honest tears, coming from the true sources of emotion.

There was no affectation about them; those songs came home to the sensibilities of young people,of all

who had any sensibilities to be acted upon. And on the other hand, there is a great amount of affectation in

the apparent enthusiasm of many persons in admiring and applauding music of which they have not the least

real appreciation. They do not know whether it is good or bad, the work of a firstrate or a fifthrate

composer; whether there are coherent elements in it, or whether it is nothing more than 'a concourse of sweet

sounds' with no organic connections. One must be educated, no doubt, to understand the more complex and

difficult kinds of musical composition. Go to the great concerts where you know that the music is good, and

that you ought to like it whether you do or not. Take a musicbath once or twice a week for a few seasons,

and you will find that it is to the soul what the waterbath is to the body. I wouldn't trouble myself about the

affectations of people who go to this or that series of concerts chiefly because it is fashionable. Some of these

people whom we think so silly and hold so cheap will perhaps find, sooner or later, that they have a dormant

faculty which is at last waking up,and that they who came because others came, and began by staring at

the audience, are listening with a newly found delight. Every one of us has a harp under bodice or waistcoat,

and if it can only once get properly strung and tuned it will respond to all outside harmonies."

The Professor has some ideas about music, which I believe he has given to the world in one form or another;

but the world is growing old and forgetful, and needs to be reminded now and then of what one has formerly

"I have had glimpses," the Professor said, "of the conditions into which music is capable of bringing a

sensitive nature. Glimpses, I say, because I cannot pretend that I am capable of sounding all the depths or

reaching all the heights to which music may transport our mortal consciousness. Let me remind you of a

curious fact with reference to the seat of the musical sense. Far down below the great masses of thinking

marrow and its secondary agents, just as the brain is about to merge in the spinal cord, the roots of the nerve

of hearing spread their white filaments out into the sentient matter, where they report what the external

organs of hearing tell them. This sentient matter is in remote connection only with the mental organs, far

more remote than the centres of the sense of vision and that of smell. In a word, the musical faculty might be

said to have a little brain of its own. It has a special world and a private language all to itself. How can one

explain its significance to those whose musical faculties are in a rudimentary state of development, or who

have never had them trained? Can you describe in intelligible language the smell of a rose as compared with

that of a violet? No, music can be translated only by music. Just so far as it suggests worded thought, it

falls short of its highest office. Pure emotional movements of the spiritual nature,that is what I ask of

"Angels sit down with their harps and play at each other, I suppose," said Number Seven. "Must have an

atmosphere up there if they have harps, or they wouldn't get any music. Wonder if angels breathe like

mortals? If they do, they must have lungs and air passages, of course. Think of an angel with the influenza,

This is a good instance of the way in which Number Seven's squinting brain works. You will now and then

meet just such brains in heads you know very well. Their owners are much given to asking unanswerable

questions. A physicist may settle it for us whether there is an atmosphere about a planet or not, but it takes a

brain with an extra fissure in it to ask these unexpected questions, questions which the natural philosopher

The company at our table do not keep always in the same places. The first thing I noticed, the other evening,

was that the Tutor was sitting between the two Annexes, and the Counsellor was next to Number Five.

Something ought to come of this arrangement. One of those two young ladies must certainly captivate and

perhaps capture the Tutor. They are just the age to be falling in love and to be fallen in love with. The Tutor

is good looking, intellectual, suspected of writing poetry, but a little shy, it appears to me. I am glad to see

him between the two girls. If there were only one, she might be shy too, and then there would be less chance

for a romance such as I am on the lookout for; but these young persons lend courage to each other, and

between them, if he does not wake up like Cymon at the sight of Iphigenia, I shall be disappointed. As for the

Counsellor and Number Five, they will soon find each other out. Yes, it is all pretty clear in my

mind,except that there is always an x in a problem where sentiments are involved. No, not so clear about

the Tutor. Predestined, I venture my guess, to one or the other, but to which? I will suspend my opinion for

I have found out that the Counsellor is a childless widower. I am told that the Tutor is unmarried, and so far

as known not engaged. There is no use in denying it,a company without the possibility of a lovematch

between two of its circle is like a champagne bottle with the cork out for some hours as compared to one with

its pop yet in reserve. However, if there should be any lovemaking, it need not break up our conversations.

Some of us have been attending certain lectures on Egypt and its antiquities. I have never been on the Nile. If

in any future state there shall be vacations in which we may have liberty to revisit our old home, equipped

with a complete brandnew set of mortal senses as our travelling outfit, I think one of the first places I should

go to, after my birthplace, the old gambrelroofed house,the place where it stood, rather, would be that

mighty, aweinspiring river. I do not suppose we shall ever know half of what we owe to the wise and

wonderful people who confront us with the overpowering monuments of a past which flows out of the

unfathomable darkness as the great river streams from sources even as yet but imperfectly explored.

I have thought a good deal about Egypt, lately, with reference to our historical monuments. How did the great

unknown mastery who fixed the two leading forms of their monumental records arrive at those admirable and

eternal types, the pyramid and the obelisk? How did they get their model of the pyramid?

Here is an hourglass, not inappropriately filled with sand from the great Egyptian desert. I turn it, and watch

the sand as it accumulates in the lower half of the glass. How symmetrically, how beautifully, how inevitably,

the little particles pile up the cone, which is ever building and unbuilding itself, always aiming at the stability

which is found only at a certain fixed angle! The Egyptian children playing in the sand must have noticed this

as they let the grains fall from their hands, and the sloping sides of the miniature pyramid must have been

among the familiar sights to the little boys and girls for whom the sand furnished their earliest playthings.

Nature taught her children through the working of the laws of gravitation how to build so that her forces

should act in harmony with art, to preserve the integrity of a structure meant to reach a faroff posterity. The

pyramid is only the cone in which Nature arranges her heaped and sliding fragments; the cone with flattened

Surfaces, as it is prefigured in certain wellknown crystalline forms. The obelisk is from another of Nature's

The Egyptians knew what a monument should be, simple, noble, durable. It seems to me that we Americans

might take a lesson from those early architects. Our cemeteries are crowded with monuments which are very

far from simple, anything but noble, and stand a small chance of being permanent. The pyramid is rarely

seen, perhaps because it takes up so much room; and when built on a small scale seems insignificant as we

think of it, dwarfed by the vast structures of antiquity. The obelisk is very common, and when in just

But the gigantic obelisks like that on Bunker Hill, and especially the Washington monument at the national

capital, are open to critical animadversion. Let us contrast the last mentioned of these great piles with the

obelisk as the Egyptian conceived and executed it. The new Pharaoh ordered a memorial of some important

personage or event. In the first place, a mighty stone was dislodged from its connections, and lifted,

unbroken, from the quarry. This was a feat from which our modern stoneworkers shrink dismayed. The

Egyptians appear to have handled these huge monoliths as our artisans handle hearthstones and doorsteps, for

the land actually bristled with such giant columns. They were shaped and finished as nicely as if they were

breastpins for the Titans to wear, and on their polished surfaces were engraved in imperishable characters the

Europe and America borrow these noble productions of African art and power, and find them hard enough to

handle after they have succeeded in transporting them to Rome, or London, or New York. Their simplicity,

grandeur, imperishability, speaking symbolism, shame all the pretentious and fragile works of human art

around them. The obelisk has no joints for the destructive agencies of nature to attack; the pyramid has no

masses hanging in unstable equilibrium, and threatening to fall by their own weight in the course of a

America says the Father of his Country must have a monument worthy of his exalted place in history. What

shall it be? A temple such as Athens might have been proud to rear upon her Acropolis? An obelisk such as

Thebes might have pointed out with pride to the strangers who found admission through her hundred gates?

After long meditation and the rejection of the hybrid monstrosities with which the nation was menaced, an

obelisk is at last decided upon. How can it be made grand and dignified enough to be equal to the office

assigned it? We dare not attempt to carve a single stone from the living rock,all our modern appliances fail

to make the task as easy to us as it seems to have been to the early Egyptians. No artistic skill is required in

giving a foursquare tapering figure to a stone column. If we cannot shape a solid obelisk of the proper

dimensions, we can build one of separate blocks. How can we give it the distinction we demand for it? The

nation which can brag that it has "the biggest show on earth" cannot boast a great deal in the way of

architecture, but it can do one thing,it can build an obelisk that shall be taller than any structure now

standing which the hand of man has raised. Build an obelisk! How different the idea of such a structure from

that of the unbroken, unjointed prismatic shaft, one perfect whole, as complete in itself, as fitly shaped and

consolidated to defy the elements, as the towering palm or the tapering pine! Well, we had the satisfaction for

a time of claiming the tallest structure in the world; and now that the new Tower of Babel which has sprung

up in Paris has killed that pretention, I think we shall feel and speak more modestly about our stone

hyperbole, our materialization of the American love of the superlative. We have the higher civilization among

us, and we must try to keep down the forthputting instincts of the lower. We do not want to see our national

monument placarded as "the greatest show on earth," perhaps it is well that it is taken down from that bad

I do not think that this speech of mine was very well received. It appeared to jar somewhat on the nerves of

the American Annex. There was a smile on the lips of the other Annex,the English girl,which she tried

It must be remembered that I and the other Teacups, in common with the rest of our fellowcitizens, have

had our sensibilities greatly worked upon, our patriotism chilled, our local pride outraged, by the

monstrosities which have been allowed to deform our beautiful public grounds. We have to be very careful in

conducting a visitor, say from his marblefronted hotel to the City Hall. Keep pretty straight along after

entering the Garden,you will not care to inspect the little figure of the military gentleman to your right.

Yes, the Cochituate water is drinkable, but I think I would not turn aside to visit that small fabric which

makes believe it is a temple, and is a weakeyed fountain feebly weeping over its own insignificance. About

that other stone misfortune, cruelly reminding us of the "Boston Massacre," we will not discourse; it is not

What a mortification to the inhabitants of a city with some hereditary and contemporary claims to cultivation;

which has noble edifices, grand libraries, educational institutions of the highest grade, an artgallery filled

with the finest models and rich in paintings and statuary,a stately city that stretches both arms across the

Charles to clasp the hands of Harvard, her twinsister, each lending lustre to the other like double

stars,what a pity that she should be so disfigured by crude attempts to adorn her and commemorate her

past that her most loving children blush for her artificial deformities amidst the wealth of her natural beauties!

One hardly knows which to groan over most sadly,the tearing down of old monuments, the shelling of the

Parthenon, the overthrow of the pillared temples of Rome, and in a humbler way the destruction of the old

Hancock house, or the erection of monuments which are to be a perpetual eyesore to ourselves and our

We got talking on the subject of realism, of which so much has been said of late.

It seems to me, I said, that the great additions which have been made by realism to the territory of literature

consist largely in swampy, malarious, illsmelling patches of soil which had previously been left to reptiles

and vermin. It is perfectly easy to be original by violating the laws of decency and the canons of good taste.

The general consent of civilized people was supposed to have banished certain subjects from the conversation

of wellbred people and the pages of respectable literature. There is no subject, or hardly any, which may not

be treated of at the proper time, in the proper place, by the fitting person, for the right kind of listener or

reader. But when the poet or the storyteller invades the province of the man of science, he is on dangerous

ground. I need say nothing of the blunders he is pretty sure to make. The imaginative writer is after effects.

The scientific man is after truth. Science is decent, modest; does not try to startle, but to instruct. The same

scenes and objects which outrage every sense of delicacy in the story teller's highly colored paragraphs can

be read without giving offence in the chaste language of the physiologist or the physician.

There is a very celebrated novel, "Madame Bovary," the work of M. Flaubert, which is noted for having been

the subject of prosecution as an immoral work. That it has a serious lesson there is no doubt, if one will drink

down to the bottom of the cup. But the honey of sensuous description is spread so deeply over the surface of

the goblet that a large proportion of its readers never think of its holding anything else. All the phases of

unhallowed passion are described in full detail. That is what the book is bought and read for, by the great

majority of its purchasers, as all but simpletons very well know. That is what makes it sell and brought it into

the courts of justice. This book is famous for its realism; in fact, it is recognized as one of the earliest and

most brilliant examples of that modern style of novel which, beginning where Balzac left off, attempted to do

for literature what the photograph has done for art. For those who take the trouble to drink out of the cup

below the rim of honey, there is a scene where realism is carried to its extreme, surpassed in horror by no

writer, unless it be the one whose name must be looked for at the bottom of the alphabet, as if its natural

place were as low down in the dregs of realism as it could find itself. This is the deathbed scene, where

Madame Bovary expires in convulsions. The author must have visited the hospitals for the purpose of

watching the terrible agonies he was to depict, tramping from one bed to another until he reached the one

where the cries and contortions were the most frightful. Such a scene he has reproduced. No hospital

physician would have pictured the straggle in such colors. In the same way, that other realist, M. Zola, has

painted a patient suffering from delirium tremens, the disease known to common speech as "the horrors." In

describing this case he does all that language can do to make it more horrible than the reality. He gives us, not

In this matter of the literal reproduction of sights and scenes which our natural instinct and our better

informed taste and judgment teach us to avoid, art has been far in advance of literature. It is three hundred

years since Joseph Ribera, more commonly known as Spagnoletto, was born in the province Valencia, in

Spain. We had the misfortune of seeing a painting of his in a collection belonging to one of the French

princes, and exhibited at the Art Museum. It was that of a man performing upon himself the operation known

to the Japanese as hararkiri. Many persons who looked upon this revolting picture will never get rid of its

remembrance, and will regret the day when their eyes fell upon it. I should share the offence of the painter if I

ventured to describe it. Ribera was fond of depicting just such odious and frightful subjects. "Saint Lawrence

writhing on his gridiron, Saint Sebastian full of arrows, were equally a source of delight to him. Even in

subjects which had no such elements of horror he finds the materials for the delectation of his ferocious

pencil; he makes up for the defect by rendering with a brutal realism deformity and ugliness."

The first great mistake made by the ultrarealists; like Flaubert and Zola, is, as I have said, their ignoring the

line of distinction between imaginative art and science. We can find realism enough in books of anatomy,

surgery, and medicine. In studying the human figure, we want to see it clothed with its natural integuments. It

is well for the artist to study the ecorche in the dissectingroom, but we do not want the Apollo or the Venus

to leave their skins behind them when they go into the gallery for exhibition. Lancisi's figures show us how

the great statues look when divested of their natural covering. It is instructive, but useful chiefly as a means to

aid in the true artistic reproduction of nature. When the, hospitals are invaded by the novelist, he should learn

something from the physician as well as from the patients. Science delineates in monochrome. She never uses

high tints and strontian lights to astonish lookerson. Such scenes as Flaubert and Zola describe would be

reproduced in their essential characters, but not dressed up in picturesque phrases. That is the first

stumblingblock in the way of the reader of such realistic stories as those to which I have referred. There are

subjects which must be investigated by scientific men which most educated persons would be glad to know

nothing about. When a realistic writer like Zola surprises his reader into a kind of knowledge he never

thought of wishing for, he sometimes harms him more than he has any idea of doing. He wants to produce a

sensation, and he leaves a permanent disgust not to he got rid of. Who does not remember odious images that

can never be washed out from the consciousness which they have stained? A man's vocabulary is terribly

retentive of evil words, and the images they present cling to his memory and will not loose their hold. One

who has had the mischance to soil his mind by reading certain poems of Swift will never cleanse it to its

original whiteness. Expressions and thoughts of a certain character stain the fibre of the thinking organ, and

in some degree affect the hue of every idea that passes through the discolored tissues.

This is the gravest accusation to bring against realism, old or recent, whether in the brutal paintings of

Spagnoletto or in the unclean revelations of Zola. Leave the description of the drains and cesspools to the

hygienic specialist, the painful facts of disease to the physician, the details of the laundry to the

washerwoman. If we are to have realism in its tedious descriptions of unimportant particulars, let it be of

particulars which do not excite disgust. Such is the description of the vegetables in Zola's "Ventre de Paris,"

where, if one wishes to see the apotheosis of turnips, beets, and cabbages, he can find them glorified as

supremely as if they had been symbols of so many deities; their forms, their colors, their expression, worked

upon until they seem as if they were made to be looked at and worshipped rather than to be boiled and eaten.

I am pleased to find a French critic of M. Flaubert expressing ideas with which many of my own entirely

coincide. "The great mistake of the realists, " he says, "is that they profess to tell the truth because they tell

everything. This puerile hunting after details, this cold and cynical inventory of all the wretched conditions in

the midst of which poor humanity vegetates, not only do not help us to understand it better, but, on the

contrary, the effect on the spectators is a kind of dazzled confusion mingled with fatigue and disgust. The

material truthfulness to which the school of M. Flaubert more especially pretends misses its aim in going

I return to my thoughts on the relations of imaginative art in all its forms with science. The subject which in

the hands of the scientific student is handled decorously,reverently, we might almost say,becomes

repulsive, shameful, and debasing in the unscrupulous manipulations of the lowbred man of letters.

I confess that I am a little jealous of certain tendencies in our own American literature, which led one of the

severest and most outspoken of our satirical fellowcountrymen, no longer living to be called to account for

it, to say; in a moment of bitterness, that the mission of America was to vulgarize mankind. I myself have

sometimes wondered at the pleasure some Old World critics have professed to find in the most lawless freaks

of New World literature. I have questioned whether their delight was not like that of the Spartans in the

drunken antics of their Helots. But I suppose I belong to another age, and must not attempt to judge the

The company listened very civilly to these remarks, whether they agreed with them or not. I am not sure that

I want all the young people to think just as I do in matters of critical judgment. New wine does not go well

into old bottles, but if an old cask has held good wine, it may improve a crude juice to stand awhile upon the

I thought the company had had about enough of this disquisition. They listened very decorously, and the

Professor, who agrees very well with me, as I happen to know, in my views on this business of realism,

This expression was an outbreak suggested by some train of thought which Number Seven had been

following while I was discoursing. I do not think one of the company looked as if he or she were shocked by

it as an irreligious or even profane speech. It is a better way always, in dealing with one of those squinting

brains, to let it follow out its own thought. It will keep to it for a while; then it will quit the rail, so to speak,

"What is the first thing you would do?" asked Number Five in a pleasant, easy way.

"The first thing? Pick out a few thousand of the best specimens of the best races, and drown the rest like so

"Why," said she, "that was tried once, and does not seem to have worked very well."

"Very likely. You mean Noah's flood, I suppose. More people nowadays, and a better lot to pick from than

"You, if you would go," he answered, and I thought I saw a slight flush on his cheek. "But I didn't say that I

should go aboard the new ark myself. I am not sure that I should. No, I am pretty sure that I shouldn't. I don't

believe, on the whole, it would pay me to save myself. I ain't of much account. But I could pick out some that

And just now he was saying that he should like to boss the universe! All this has nothing very wonderful

about it. Every one of us is subject to alternations of overvaluation and undervaluation of ourselves. Do you

not remember soliloquies something like this? "Was there ever such a senseless, stupid creature as I am? How

have I managed to keep so long out of the idiot asylum? Undertook to write a poem, and stuck fast at the first

verse. Had a call from a friend who had just been round the world. Did n't ask him one word about what he

had seen or heard, but gave him full details of my private history, I having never been off my own hearthrug

for more than an hour or two at a time, while he was circumnavigating and circumrailroading the globe. Yes,

if anybody can claim the title, I am certainly the prize idiot." I am afraid that we all say such things as this to

ourselves at times. Do we not use more emphatic words than these in our selfdepreciation? I cannot say how

it is with others, but my vocabulary of selfreproach and humiliation is so rich in energetic expressions that I

should be sorry to have an interviewer present at an outburst of one of its raging geysers, its savage

soliloquies. A man is a kind of inverted thermometer, the bulb uppermost, and the column of selfvaluation is

all the time going up and down. Number Seven is very much like other people in this respect,very much

"If I can't get a chance to boss this planet for a week or so," he began again, "I think 1 could write its

history,yes, the history of the world, in less compass than any one who has tried it so far."

"You know Sir Walter Raleigh's 'History of the World,' of course?" said the Professor.

"More or less,more or less," said Number Seven prudently. "But I don't care who has written it before me.

I will agree to write the story of two worlds, this and the next, in such a compact way that you can commit

them both ,to memory in less time than you can learn the answer to the first question in the Catechism."

What he had got into his head we could not guess, but there was no little curiosity to discover the particular

bee which was buzzing in his bonnet. He evidently enjoyed our curiosity, and meant to keep us waiting

"Twenty," said the Professor. "That was more than the wise men of Greece wanted for their grand

The two Annexes whispered together, and the American Annex gave their joint result. One thousand was the

number they had fixed on. They were used to hearing lectures, and could hardly conceive that any subject

"Less than ten," said Number Five. "If there are to be more than ten, I don't believe that Number Seven would

"The answer will keep. I don't mean to say what it is until we are ready to leave the table." He took a blank

card from his pocketbook, wrote something on it, or appeared, at any rate, to write, and handed it, face

down, to the Mistress. What was on the card will be found near the end of this paper. I wonder if anybody

will be curious enough to look further along to find out what it was before she reads the next paragraph?

In the mean time there is a train of thought suggested by Number Seven and his whims. If you want to know

how to account for yourself, study the characters of your relations. All of our brains squint more or less.

There is not one in a hundred, certainly, that does not sometimes see things distorted by double refraction, out

of plumb or out of focus, or with colors which do not belong to it, or in some way betraying that the two

halves of the brain are not acting in harmony with each other. You wonder at the eccentricities of this or that

connection of your own. Watch yourself, and you will find impulses which, but for the restraints you put

upon them, would make you do the same foolish things which you laugh at in that cousin of yours. I once

lived in the same house with the near relative of a very distinguished person, whose name is still honored and

revered among us. His brain was an active one, like that of his famous relative, but it was full of random

ideas, unconnected trains of thought, whims, crotchets, erratic suggestions. Knowing him, I could interpret

the mental characteristics of the whole family connection in the light of its exaggerated peculiarities as

exhibited in my odd fellowboarder. Squinting brains are a great deal more common than we should at first

sight believe. Here is a great book, a solid octavo of five hundred pages, full of the vagaries of this class of

organizations. I hope to refer to this work hereafter, but just now I will only say that, after reading till one is

tired the strange fancies of the squarers of the circle, the inventors of perpetual motion, and the rest of the

moonstruck dreamers, most persons will confess to themselves that they have had notions as wild,

conceptions as extravagant, theories as baseless, as the least rational of those which are here recorded.

Some day I want to talk about my library. It is such a curious collection of old and new books, such a mosaic

of learning and fancies and follies, that a glance over it would interest the company. Perhaps I may hereafter

give you a talk abut books, but while I am saying a few passing words upon the subject the greatest

bibliographical event that ever happened in the bookmarket of the New World is taking place under our

eyes. Here is Mr. Bernard Quaritch just come from his wellknown habitat, No. 15 Piccadilly, with such a

collection of rare, beautiful, and somewhat expensive volumes as the Western Continent never saw before on

We bookworms are all of us now and then betrayed into an extravagance. The keen tradesmen who tempt us

are like the fishermen who dangle a minnow, a frog, or a worm before the perch or pickerel who may be on

the lookout for his breakfast. But Mr. Quaritch comes among us like that formidable angler of whom it is

The two catalogues which herald his coming are themselves interesting literary documents. One can go out

with a few shillings in his pocket, and venture among the books of the first of these catalogues without being

ashamed to show himself with no larger furnishing of the means for indulging his tastes,he will find books

enough at comparatively modest prices. But if one feels very rich, so rich that it requires a good deal to

frighten him, let him take the other catalogue and see how many books he proposes to add to his library at the

prices affixed. Here is a Latin Psalter with the Canticles, from the press of Fust and Schoeffer, the second

book issued from their press, the second book printed with a date, that date being 1459. There are only eight

copies of this work known to exist; you can have one of them, if so disposed, and if you have change enough

in your pocket. Twentysix thousand two hundred and fifty dollars will make you the happy owner of this

precious volume. If this is more than you want to pay, you can have the Gold Gospels of Henry VIII., on

purple vellum, for about half the money. There are pages on pages of titles of works any one of which would

Why will not our multimillionaires look over this catalogue of Mr. Quaritch, and detain some of its treasures

on this side of the Atlantic for some of our public libraries? We decant the choicest wines of Europe into our

cellars; we ought to be always decanting the precious treasures of her libraries and galleries into our own, as

we have opportunity and means. As to the means, there are so many rich people who hardly know what to do

with their money that it is well to suggest to them any new useful end to which their superfluity may

contribute. I am not in alliance with Mr. Quaritch; in fact, I am afraid of him, for if I stayed a single hour in

his library, where I never was but once, and then for fifteen minutes only, I should leave it so much poorer

than I entered it that I should be reminded of the picture in the titlepage of Fuller's "Historie of the Holy

After the teacups were all emptied, the card containing Number Seven's abridged history of two worlds,

After all had looked at it, it was passed back to me. "Let The Dictator interpret it," they all said.

Two worlds, the higher and the lower, separated by the thinnest of partitions. The lower world is that of

questions; the upper world is that of answers. Endless doubt and unrest here below; wondering, admiring,

I read it to the company. There was much whispering and there were many conjectures as to its authorship,

but every Teacup looked innocent, and we separated each with his or her private conviction. I had mine, but I

Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower: High

overhead the trellised roses burn; Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern, A leaf without a flower. What

though the rose leaves fall? They still are sweet, And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, While the

bare frond seems ever to repeat, "For us no bud, no blossom, wakes to greet The joyous flowering time!"

Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread And flowers to cherish; summer round thee glows; Wait not till

autumn's fading robes are shed, But while its petals still are burning red Gather life's fullblown rose!

Of course the reading of the poem at the end of the last paper has left a deep impression. I strongly suspect

that something very much like lovemaking is going on at our table. A peep under the lid of the sugarbowl

has shown me that there is another poem ready for the company. That receptacle is looked upon with an

almost tremulous excitement by more than one of The Teacups. The two Annexes turn towards the mystic

urn as if the lots which were to determine their destiny were shut up in it. Number Five, quieter, and not

betraying more curiosity than belongs to the sex at all ages, glances at the sugarbowl now and then; looking

so like a clairvoyant, that sometimes I cannot help thinking she must be one. There is a sly look about that

young Doctor's eyes, which might imply that he knows something about what the silver vessel holds, or is

going to hold. The Tutor naturally falls under suspicion, as he is known to have written and published poems.

I suppose the Professor and myself have hardly been suspected of writing lovepoems; but there is no

telling,there is no telling. Why may not some one of the lady Teacups have played the part of a masculine

lover? George Sand, George Eliot, Charles Egbert Craddock, made pretty good men in print. The authoress of

"Jane Eyre" was taken for a man by many persons. Can Number Five be masquerading in verse? Or is one of

the two Annexes the make. believe lover? Or did these girls lay their heads together, and send the poem we

had at our last sitting to puzzle the company? It is certain that the Mistress did not write the poem. It is

evident that Number Seven, who is so severe in his talk about rhymesters, would not, if he could, make such

a fool of himself as to set up for a "poet." Why should not the Counsellor fall in love and write verses? A

Perhaps the next poem, which may be looked for in its proper place, may help us to form a judgment. We

may have several versewriters among us, and if so there will be a good opportunity for the exercise of

judgment in distributing their productions among the legitimate claimants. In the mean time, we must not let

the lovemaking and the songwriting interfere with the more serious matters which these papers are

Number Seven's compendious and comprehensive symbolism proved suggestive, as his whimsical notions

often do. It always pleases me to take some hint from anything he says when I can, and carry it out in a

direction not unlike that of his own remark. I reminded the company of his enigmatical symbol.

You can divide mankind in the same way, I said. Two words, each of two letters, will serve to distinguish two

classes of human beings who constitute the principal divisions of mankind. Can any of you tell what those

"Give me five letters," cried Number Seven, "and I can solve your problem! Foo1s,those five letters

Oh, but, said I, I restrict you absolutely to two letters. If you are going to take five, you may as well take

After a few attempts, the company gave it up. The nearest approach to the correct answer was Number Five's

guess of Oh and Ah: Oh signifying eternal striving after an ideal, which belongs to one kind of nature; and

Ah the satisfaction of the other kind of nature, which rests at ease in what it has attained.

Good! I said to Number Five, but not the answer I am after. The great division between human beings is into

The company laughed feebly at this question. I answered it soberly. With one s. There are more foolish

This is the meaning of those two words as I interpret them: If it were,if it might be,if it could be,if it

had been. One portion of mankind go through life always regretting, always whining, always imagining.

These are the people whose backbones remain cartilaginous all their lives long, as do those of certain other

vertebrate animals,the sturgeons, for instance. A good many poets must be classed with this group of

As it is,this is the way in which the other class of people look at the conditions in which they find

themselves. They may be optimists or pessimists, they are very largely optimists,but, taking things just as

they find them, they adjust the facts to their wishes if they can; and if they cannot, then they adjust

themselves to the facts. I venture to say that if one should count the Ifs and the Ases in the conversation of his

acquaintances, he would find the more able and important persons among themstatesmen, generals, men of

business among the Ases, and the majority of the conspicuous failures among the Ifs. I don't know but this

would be as good a test as that of Gideon,lapping the water or taking it up in the hand. I have a poetical

friend whose conversation is starred as thick with ifs as a boiled ham is with cloves. But another friend of

mine, a business man, whom I trust in making my investments, would not let me meddle with a certain stock

which I fancied, because, as he said, "there are too many ifs in it. As it looks now, I would n't touch it."

I noticed, the other evening, that some private conversation was going on between the Counsellor and the two

Annexes. There was a mischievous look about the little group, and I thought they were hatching some plot

among them. I did not hear what the English Annex said, but the American girl's voice was sharper, and I

overheard what sounded to me like, "It is time to stir up that young Doctor." The Counsellor looked very

knowing, and said that he would find a chance before long. I was rather amused to see how readily he entered

into the project of the young people. The fact is, the Counsellor is young for his time of life; for he already

betrays some signs of the change referred to in that once familiar street song, which my friend, the great

American surgeon, inquired for at the musicshops under the title, as he got it from the Italian minstrel,

I saw, soon after this, that the Counsellor was watching his chance to "stir up the young Doctor."

It does not follow, because our young Doctor's bald spot is slower in coming than he could have wished, that

he has not had time to form many sound conclusions in the calling to which he has devoted himself Vesalius,

the father of modern descriptive anatomy, published his great work on that subject before he was thirty.

Bichat, the great anatomist and physiologist, who died near the beginning of this century, published his

treatise, which made a revolution in anatomy and pathology, at about the same age; dying soon after he had

reached the age of thirty. So, possibly the Counsellor may find that he has "stirred up" a young man who, can

"Well, Doctor," the Counsellor began, "how are stocks in the measles market about these times? Any corner

"I can't say how it is with other people's patients; most of my families are doing very well without my help, at

"Do tell me, Doctor, how many families you own. I have heard it said that some of our fellowcitizens have

"I have, but not so large a number as I should like. I could take care of fifteen or twenty more without: having

"Why, Doctor, you are as bad as a Mormon. What do you mean by calling certain families yours?"

"Don't you speak about my client? Don't your clients call you their lawyer? Does n't your baker, does n't your

To be sure, yes, of course they do; but I had a notion that a man had as many doctors as he had organs to be

"Well, there is some truth in that; but did you think the old fashioned family doctor was extinct, a fossil like

"Why, yes, after the recent experience of a friend of mine, I did begin to think that there would soon be no

such personage left as that same oldfashioned family doctor. Shall I tell you what that experience was?"

The young Doctor said be should be mightily pleased to hear it. He was going to be one of those oldfogy

"I don't know," the Counsellor said, "whether my friend got all the professional terms of his story correctly,

nor whether I have got them from him without making any mistakes; but if I do make blunders in some of the

"My family doctor,' he said, "was a very sensible man, educated at a school where they professed to teach all

the specialties, but not confining himself to any one branch of medical practice. Surgical practice he did not

profess to meddle with, and there were some classes of patients whom he was willing to leave to the female

physician. But throughout the range of diseases not requiring exceptionally skilled manual interference, his

education had authorized him to consider himself, and he did consider himself, qualified to undertake the

treatment of all ordinary cases It so happened that my young wife was one of those uneasy persons who are

never long contented with their habitual comforts and blessings, but always trying to find something a little

better, something newer, at any rate. I was getting to be near fifty years old, and it happened to me, as it not

rarely does to people at about that time of life, that my hair began to fall out. I spoke of it to my doctor, who

smiled, said it was a part of the process of reversed evolution, but might be retarded a little, and gave me a

prescription. I did not find any great effect from it, and my wife would have me go to a noted dermatologist.

The distinguished specialist examined my denuded scalp with great care. He looked at it through a strong

magnifier. He examined the bulb of a fallen hair in a powerful microscope. He deliberated for a while, and

then said, "This is a case of alopecia. It may perhaps be partially remedied. I will give you a prescription."

Which he did, and told me to call again in a fortnight. At the end of three months I had called six times, and

each time got a new recipe, and detected no difference in the course of my "alopecia." After I had got through

my treatment, I showed my recipes to my family physician; and we found that three of them were the same he

had used, familiar, oldfashioned remedies, and the others were taken from a list of new and littletried

prescriptions mentioned in one of the last medical journals, which was lying on the old doctor's table. I might

as well have got no better under his charge, and should have got off much cheaper.

"The next trouble I had was a little redness of the eyes, for which my doctor gave me a wash; but my wife

would have it that I must see an oculist. So I made four visits to an oculist, and at the last visit the redness

was nearly gone,as it ought to have been by that time. The specialist called my complaint conjunctivitis,

but that did not make it feel any better nor get well any quicker. If I had had a cataract or any grave disease of

the eye, requiring a nice operation on that delicate organ, of course I should have properly sought the aid of

an expert, whose eye, hand, and judgment were trained to that special business; but in this case I don't doubt

that my family doctor would have done just as well as the expert. However, I had to obey orders, and my wife

would have it that I should entrust my precious person only to the most skilful specialist in each department

"In the course of the year I experienced a variety of slight indispositions. For these I was auriscoped by an

aurist, laryngoscoped by a laryngologist, ausculted by a stethoscopist, and so on, until a complete inventory

of my organs was made out, and I found that if I believed all these searching inquirers professed to have

detected in my unfortunate person, I could repeat with too literal truth the words of the General Confession,

"And there is no health in us." I never heard so many hard names in all my life. I proved to be the subject of a

long catalogue of diseases, and what maladies I was not manifestly guilty of I was at least suspected of

harboring. I was handed along all the way from alopecia, which used to be called baldness, to zoster, which

used to be known as shingles. I was the patient of more than a dozen specialists. Very pleasant persons, many

of them, but what a fuss they made about my trifling incommodities! Please look at that photograph. See if

"'On which side?' I asked him, for I could not be sure there was anything different on one side from what I

"'Under the left eye. I called it a pimple; the specialist called it acne. Now look at this photograph. It was

taken after my acne had been three months under treatment. It shows a little more distinctly than in the first

"'I think it does,' I answered. 'It does n't seem to me that you gained a great deal by leaving your customary

"'Well,' my friend continued, 'following my wife's urgent counsel, I kept on, as I told you, for a whole year

with my specialists, going from head to foot, and tapering off with a chiropodist. I got a deal of amusement

out of their contrivances and experiments. Some of them lighted up my internal surfaces with electrical or

other illuminating apparatus. Thermometers, dynamometers, exploringtubes, little mirrors that went

halfway down to my stomach, tuningforks, ophthalmoscopes, percussionhammers, single and double

stethoscopes, speculums, sphygmometers,such a battery of detective instruments I had never imagined. All

useful, I don't doubt; but at the end of the year I began to question whether I should n't have done about as

well to stick to my long tried practitioner. When the bills for "professional services" came in, and the new

carpet had to be given up, and the old bonnet trimmed over again, and the sealskin sack remained a vision, we

both agreed, my wife and I, that we would try to get along without consulting specialists, except in such cases

The Counsellor's story of his friend's experiences seemed to please the young Doctor very much. It "stirred

him up," but in an agreeable way; for, as he said, he meant to devote himself to family practice, and not to

adopt any limited class of cases as a specialty. I liked his views so well that I should have been ready to adopt

"I am very glad," he said, "that we have a number of practitioners among us who confine themselves to the

care of single organs and their functions. I want to be able to consult an oculist who has done nothing but

attend to eyes long enough to know all that is known about their diseases and their treatment,skilful

enough to be trusted with the manipulation of that delicate and most precious organ. I want an aurist who

knows all about the ear and what can be done for its disorders. The maladies of the larynx are very ticklish

things to handle, and nobody should be trusted to go behind the epiglottis who has not the tactus eruditus.

And so of certain other particular classes of complaints. A great city must have a limited number of experts,

each a final authority, to be appealed to in cases where the family physician finds himself in doubt. There are

operations which no surgeon should be willing to undertake unless he has paid a particular, if not an

exclusive, attention to the cases demanding such operations. All this I willingly grant.

"But it must not be supposed that we can return to the methods of the old Egyptianswho, if my memory

serves me correctly, had a special physician for every part of the bodywithout falling into certain errors

"The specialist is much like other people engaged in lucrative business. He is apt to magnify his calling, to

make much of any symptom which will bring a patient within range of his battery of remedies. I found a case

in one of our medical journals, a couple of years ago, which illustrates what I mean. Dr. ___________ of

Philadelphia, had a female patient with a crooked nose,deviated septum, if our young scholars like that

better. She was suffering from what the doctor called reflex headache. She had been to an oculist, who found

that the trouble was in her eyes. She went from him to a gynecologist, who considered her headache as owing

to causes for which his specialty had the remedies. How many more specialists would have appropriated her,

if she had gone the rounds of them all, I dare not guess; but you remember the old story of the siege, in which

each artisan proposed means of defence which be himself was ready to furnish. Then a shoemaker said, 'Hang

"Human nature is the same with medical specialists as it was with ancient cordwainers, and it is too possible

that a hungry practitioner may be warped by his interest in fastening on a patient who, as he persuades

himself, comes under his medical jurisdiction. The specialist has but one fang with which to seize and bold

his prey, but that fang is a fearfully long and sharp canine. Being confined to a narrow field of observation

and practice, he is apt to give much of his time to curious study, which may be magnifique, but is not exactly

la guerre against the patient's malady. He divides and subdivides, and gets many varieties of diseases, in most

respects similar. These he equips with new names, and thus we have those terrific nomenclatures which are

enough to frighten the medical student, to say nothing of the sufferers staggering under this long catalogue of

local infirmities. The 'oldfogy' doctor, who knows the family tendencies of his patient, who 'understands his

constitution,' will often treat him better than the famous specialist, who sees him for the first time, and has to

guess at many things 'the old doctor' knows from his previous experience with the same patient and the

"It is a great luxury to practise as a specialist in almost any class of diseases. The special practitioner has his

own hours, hardly needs a nightbell, can have his residence out of the town in which he exercises his

calling, in short, lives like a gentleman; while the hardworked general practitioner submits to a servitude

more exacting than that of the man who is employed in his stable or in his kitchen. That is the kind of life I

The teaspoons tinkled all round the table. This was the usual sign of approbation, instead of the clapping of

The young Doctor paused, and looked round among The Teacups. "I beg your pardon," he said, "for taking

up so much of your time with medicine. It is a subject that a good many persons, especially ladies, take an

interest in and have a curiosity about, but I have no right to turn this teatable into a lecture platform."

"We should like to hear you talk longer about it," said the English Annex. "One of us has thought of devoting

herself to the practice of medicine. Would you lecture to us; if you were a professor in one of the great

"Lecture to students of your sex? Why not, I should like to know? I don't think it is the calling for which the

average woman is especially adapted, but my teacher got a part of his medical education from a lady,

Madame Lachapelle; and I don't see why, if one can learn from a woman, he may not teach a woman, if he

"We all like a little medical talk now and then," said Number Five, "and we are much obliged to you for your

discourse. You are specialist enough to take care of a sprained ankle, I suppose, are you not?"

"I hope I should be equal to that emergency," answered the young Doctor; "but I trust you are not suffering

"No," said Number Five, "but there is no telling what may happen. I might slip, and get a sprain or break a

sinew, or something, and I should like to know that there is a practitioner at hand to take care of my injury. I

think I would risk myself in your bands, although you are not a specialist. Would you venture to take charge

"Ah, my dear lady," he answered gallantly, "the risk would be in the other direction. I am afraid it would be

This is the first clearly, indisputably sentimental outbreak which has happened in conversation at our table. I

tremble to think what will come of it; for we have several inflammable elements in our circle, and a spark like

I was not sorry that this medical episode came in to vary the usual course of talk at our table. I like to have

oneof an intelligent company, who knows anything thoroughly, hold the floor for a time, and discourse

upon the subject which chiefly engages his daily thoughts and furnishes his habitual occupation. It is a

privilege to meet such a person now and then, and let him have his full swing. But because there are

"professionals" to whom we are willing to listen as oracles, I do not want to see everybody who is not a

"professional" silenced or snubbed, if he ventures into any field of knowledge which he has not made

especially his own. I like to read Montaigne's remarks about doctors, though he never took a medical degree.

I can even enjoy the truth in the sharp satire of Voltaire on the medical profession. I frequently prefer the

remarks I hear from the pew after the sermon to those I have just been hearing from the pulpit. There are a

great many things which I never expect to comprehend, but which I desire very much to apprehend. Suppose

that our circle of Teacups were made up of specialists,experts in various departments. I should be very

willing that each one should have his innings at the proper time, when the company were ready for him. But

the time is coming when everybody will know something about every thing. How can one have the illustrated

magazines, the "Popular Science Monthly," the Psychological journals, the theological periodicals, books on

all subjects, forced on his attention, in their own persons, so to speak, or in the reviews which analyze and

pass judgment upon them, without getting some ideas which belong to many provinces of human

intelligence? The air we breathe is made up of four elements, at least: oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid gas,

and knowledge. There is something quite delightful to witness in the absorption and devotion of a genuine

specialist. There is a certain sublimity in that picture of the dying scholar in Browning's "A Grammarian's

A genuine enthusiasm, which will never be satisfied until it has pumped the well dry at the bottom of which

One of the pleasantest of our American writers, whom we all remember as Ik Marvel, and greet in his more

recent appearance as Donald Grant Mitchell, speaks of the awkwardness which he feels in offering to the

public a "panoramic view of British writers in these days of specialists,when students devote half a

lifetime to the analysis of the works of a single author, and to the proper study of a single period."

He need not have feared that his connected sketches of "English Lands, Letters and Kings" would be any less

welcome because they do not pretend to fill up all the details or cover all the incidents they hint in vivid

outline. How many of us ever read or ever will read Drayton's "PolyOlbion?" Twenty thousand long

Alexandrines are filled with admirable descriptions of scenery, natural productions, and historical events, but

how many of us in these days have time to read and inwardly digest twenty thousand Alexandrine verses? I

fear that the specialist is apt to hold his intelligent reader or hearer too cheap. So far as I have observed in

medical specialties, what he knows in addition to the knowledge of the welltaught general practitioner is

very largely curious rather than important. Having exhausted all that is practical, the specialist is naturally

tempted to amuse himself with the natural history of the organ or function he deals with; to feel as a

writingmaster does when he sets a copy, not content to shape the letters properly, but he must add

I am beginning to be frightened. When I began these papers, my idea was a very simple and innocent one.

Here was a mixed company, of various conditions, as I have already told my readers, who came together

regularly, and before they were aware of it formed something like a club or association. As I was the

patriarch among them, they gave me the name some of you may need to be reminded of; for as these reports

are published at intervals, you may not remember the fact that I am what The Teacups have seen fit to call

Now, what did I expect when I began these papers, and what is it that has begun to frighten me?

I expected to report grave conversations and light colloquial passages of arms among the members of the

circle. I expected to hear, perhaps to read, a paper now and then. I expected to have, from time to time, a

poem from some one of The Teacups, for I felt sure there must be among them one or more poets,Teacups

Out of these conversations and written contributions I thought I might make up a readable series of papers; a

not wholly unwelcome string of recollections, anticipations, suggestions, too often perhaps repetitions, that

I hoped also that I should come into personal relations with my old constituency, if I may call my nearer

friends, and those more distant ones who belong to my reading parish, by that name. It is time that I should. I

received this blessed morningI am telling the literal trutha highly flattering obituary of myself in the

shape of an extract from "Le National" of the 10th of February last. This is a biweekly newspaper, published

in French, in the city of Plattsburg, Clinton County, New York. I am occasionally reminded by my unknown

friends that I must hurry up their autograph, or make haste to copy that poem they wish to have in the author's

own handwriting, or it will be too late; but I have never before been huddled out of the world in this way. I

take this rather premature obituary as a hint that, unless I come to some arrangement with my wellmeaning

but insatiable correspondents, it would be as well to leave it in type, for I cannot bear much longer the load

they lay upon me. I will explain myself on this point after I have told my readers what has frightened me.

I am beginning to think this room where we take our tea is more like a tinderbox than a quiet and safe place

for "a party in a parlor." It is true that there are at least two or three incombustibles at our table, but it looks to

me as if the company might pair off before the season is over, like the crew of Her Majesty's ship the

Mantelpiece, three or four weddings clear our whole table of all but one or two of the impregnables. The

poem we found in the sugarbowl last week first opened my eyes to the probable state of things. Now, the

idea of having to tell a lovestory, perhaps two or three lovestories, when I set out with the intention

of repeating instructive, useful, or entertaining discussions, naturally alarms me. It is quite true that many

things which look to me suspicious may be simply playful. Young people (and we have several such among

The Teacups) are fond of makebelieve courting when they cannot have the real thing, "flirting," as it used

to be practised in the days of Arcadian innocence, not the more modern and more questionable recreation

which has reached us from the home of the cicisbeo. Whatever comes of it, I shall tell what I see, and take the

But I am at this moment going to talk in my own proper person to my own particular public, which, as I find

by my correspondence, is a very considerable one, and with which I consider myself in exceptionally pleasant

I have read recently that Mr. Gladstone receives six hundred letters a day. Perhaps he does not receive six

hundred letters every day, but if he gets anything like half that number daily, what can he do with them?

There was a time when he was said to answer all his correspondents. It is understood, I think, that he has

I do not pretend that I receive six hundred or even sixty letters a day, but I do receive a good many, and have

told the public of the fact from time to time, under the pressure of their constantly increasing exertions. As it

is extremely onerous, and is soon going to be impossible, for me to keep up the wide range of correspondence

which has become a large part of my occupation, and tends to absorb all the vital force which is left me, I

wish to enter into a final explanation with the wellmeaning but merciless taskmasters who have now for

many years been levying their daily tax upon me. I have preserved thousands of their letters, and destroyed a

very large number, after answering most of them. A few interesting chapters might be made out of the letters

I have kept,not only such as are signed by the names of wellknown personages, but many from unknown

friends, of whom I had never heard before and have never heard since. A great deal of the best writing the

languages of the world have ever known has been committed to leaves that withered out of sight before a

second sunlight had fallen upon them. I have had many letters I should have liked to give the public, had their

nature admitted of their being offered to the world. What straggles of young ambition, finding no place for its

energies, or feeling its incapacity to reach the ideal towards which it was striving! What longings of

disappointed, defeated fellowmortals, trying to find a new home for themselves in the heart of one whom

they have amiably idealized! And oh, what hopeless efforts of mediocrities and inferiorities, believing in

themselves as superiorities, and stumbling on through limping disappointments to prostrate failure! Poverty

comes pleading, not for charity, for the most part, but imploring us to find a purchaser for its unmarketable

wares. The unreadable author particularly requests us to make a critical examination of his book, and report

to him whatever may be our verdict,as if he wanted anything but our praise, and that very often to be used

But what does not one have to submit to who has become the martyr the Saint Sebastianof a literary

correspondence! I will not dwell on the possible impression produced on a sensitive nature by reading one's

own premature obituary, as I have told you has been my recent experience. I will not stop to think whether

the urgent request for an autograph by return post, in view of the possible contingencies which might render it

the last one was ever to write, is pleasing or not. At threescore and twenty one must expect such hints of what

is like to happen before long. I suppose, if some near friend were to watch one who was looking over such a

pressing letter, he might possibly see a slight shadow flit over the reader's features, and some such dialogue

might follow as that between Othello and Iago, after "this honest creature" has been giving breath to his

Nothing more likely. But, for myself, I have grown callous to all such allusions. The repetition of the

Scriptural phrase for the natural term of life is so frequent that it wears out one's sensibilities.

But how many charming and refreshing letters I have received! How often I have felt their encouragement in

moments of doubt and depression, such as the happiest temperaments must sometimes experience!

If the time comes when to answer all my kind unknown friends, even by dictation, is impossible, or more

than I feel equal to, I wish to refer any of those who may feel disappointed at not receiving an answer to the

I. I am always grateful for any attention which shows me that I am kindly remembered. II. Your pleasant

message has been read to me, and has been thankfully listened to. III. Your book (your essay) (your poem)

has reached me safely, and has received all the respectful attention to which it seemed entitled. It would take

more than all the time I have at my disposal to read all the printed matter and all the manuscripts which are

sent to me, and you would not ask me to attempt the impossible. You will not, therefore, expect me to express

a critical opinion of your work. IV. I am deeply sensible to your expressions of personal attachment to me

as the author of certain writings which have brought me very near to you, in virtue of some affinity in our

ways of thought and moods of feeling. Although I cannot keep up correspondences with many of my readers

who seem to be thoroughly congenial with myself, let them be assured that their letters have been read or

I trust that after this notice no correspondent will be surprised to find his or her letter thus answered by

anticipation; and that if one of the above formulae is the only answer he receives, the unknown friend will

remember that he or she is one of a great many whose incessant demands have entirely outrun my power of

I could make a very interesting volume of the letters I have received from correspondents unknown to the

world of authorship, but writing from an instinctive impulse, which many of them say they have long felt and

resisted. One must not allow himself to be flattered into an overestimate of his powers because he gets many

letters expressing a peculiar attraction towards his books, and a preference of them to those with which he

would not have dared to compare his own. Still, if the homo unius librithe man of one bookchoose to

select one of our own writing as his favorite volume, it means something,not much, perhaps; but if one has

unlocked the door to the secret entrance of one heart, it is not unlikely that his key may fit the locks of others.

What if nature has lent him a master key? He has found the wards and slid back the bolt of one lock; perhaps

he may have learned the secret of others. One success is an encouragement to try again. Let the writer of a

truly loving letter, such as greets one from time to time, remember that, though he never hears a word from it,

it may prove one of the best rewards of an anxious and laborious past, and the stimulus of a still aspiring

Among the letters I have recently received, none is more interesting than the following. The story of Helen

Keller, who wrote it, is told in the wellknown illustrated magazine called "The Wide Awake," in the number

for July, 1888. For the account of this little girl, now between nine and ten years old, and other letters of her

writing, I must refer to the article I have mentioned. It is enough to say that she is deaf and dumb and totally

blind. She was seven years old when her teacher, Miss Sullivan, under the direction of Mr. Anagnos, at the

Blind Asylum at South Boston, began her education. A child fuller of life and happiness it would be hard to

find. It seems as if her soul was flooded with light and filled with music that had found entrance to it through

avenues closed to other mortals. It is hard to understand how she has learned to deal with abstract ideas, and

so far to supplement the blanks left by the senses of sight and hearing that one would hardly think of her as

wanting in any human faculty. Remember Milton's pathetic picture of himself, suffering from only one of

Anthropologist, metaphysician, most of all theologian, here is a lesson which can teach you much that you

will not find in your primers and catechisms. Why should I call her "poor little Helen"? Where can you find a

DEAR KIND POET,I have thought of you many times since that bright Sunday when I bade you goodbye,

and I am going to write you a letter because I love you. I am sorry that you have no little children to play with

sometimes, but I think you are very happy with your books, and your many, many friends. On Washington's

Birthday a great many people came here to see the little blind children, and I read for them from your poems,

and showed them some beautiful shells which came from a little island near Palos. I am reading a very sad

story called "Little Jakey." Jakey was the sweetest little fellow you can imagine, but he was poor and blind. I

used to think, when I was small and before I could read, that everybody was always happy, and at first it

made me very sad to know about pain and great sorrow; but now I know that we could never learn to be

brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world. I am studying about insects in Zoology, and I have

learned many things about butterflies. They do not make honey for us, like the bees, but many of them are as

beautiful as the flowers they light upon, and they always delight the hearts of little children. They live a gay

life, flitting from flower to flower, sipping the drops of honeydew, without a thought for the morrow. They

are just like little boys and girls when they forget books and studies, and run away to the woods and the fields

to gather wildflowers, or wade in the ponds for fragrant lilies, happy in the bright sunshine. If my little sister

comes to Boston next June, will you let me bring her to see you? She is a lovely baby and I am sure you will

love [her]. Now I must tell my gentle poet good bye, for I have a letter to write home before I go to bed.

The reading of this letter made many eyes glisten, and a dead silence hushed the whole circle. All at once

Delilah, our pretty tablemaid, forgot her place,what business had she to be listening to our conversation

and reading? and began sobbing, just as if she had been a lady. She could n't help it, she explained

afterwards,she had a little blind sister at the asylum, who had told her about Helen's reading to the

It was very awkward, this breakingdown of our pretty Delilah, for one girl crying will sometimes set off a

whole row of others,it is as hazardous as lighting one cracker in a bunch. The two Annexes hurried out

their pockethandkerchiefs, and I almost expected a semi hysteric cataclysm. At this critical moment

Number Five called Delilah to her, looked into her face with those calm eyes of hers, and spoke a few soft

words. Was Number Five forgetful, too? Did she not remember the difference of their position? I suppose so.

But she quieted the poor handmaiden as simply and easily as a nursing mother quiets her unweaned baby.

Why are we not all in love with Number Five? Perhaps we are. At any rate, I suspect the Professor. When we

all get quiet, I will touch him up about that visit she promised to make to his laboratory.

"No, nothing of that kind. It was a small stone, and had a flaw in it. Number Five said she did n't want a

diamond with a flaw in it, and that she did want to see how a diamond would burn."

"That was all. She brought the two Annexes with her, and I gave my three visitors a lecture on carbon, which

I looked steadily in the Professor's face during the reading of the following poem. I saw no questionable look

upon it,but he has a remarkable command of his features. Number Five read it with a certain archness of

expression, as if she saw all its meaning, which I think some of the company did not quite take in. They said

they must read it slowly and carefully. Somehow, "I like you" and "I love you" got a little mixed, as they

heard it. It was not Number Five's fault, for she read it beautifully, as we all agreed, and as I knew she would

I LIKE YOU met I LOVE YOU, face to face; The path was narrow, and they could not pass. I LIKE YOU

"Turn thou and go before," I LOVE YOU said, "Down the green pathway, bright with many a flower Deep in

Then while they lingered on the spanwide shelf That shaped a pathway round the rocky ledge, I LIKE YOU

There is no use in burdening my table with those letters of inquiry as to where our meetings are held, and

what are the names of the persons designated by numbers, or spoken of under the titles of the Professor, the

Tutor, and so forth. It is enough that you are aware who I am, and that I am known at the teatable as The

Dictator. Theatrical "asides" are apt to be whispered in a pretty loud voice, and the persons who ought not to

have any idea of what is said are expected to be reasonably hard of bearing. If I named all The Teacups, some

of them might be offended. If any of my readers happen to be able to identify any one Teacup by some

accidental circumstance,say, for instance, Number Five, by the incident of her burning the diamond,I

hope they will keep quiet about it. Number Five does n't want to be pointed out in the street as the

extravagant person who makes use of such expensive fuel, for the story would soon grow to a statement that

she always uses diamonds, instead of cheaper forms of carbon, to heat her coffee with. So with other

members of the circle. The "Cracked Teacup," Number Seven, would not, perhaps, be pleased to recognize

himself under that title. I repeat it, therefore, Do not try to identify the individual Teacups. You will not get

them right; or, if you do, you may too probably make trouble. How is it possible that I can keep up my

freedom of intercourse with you all if you insist on bellowing my "asides" through a speaking trumpet?

Besides, you cannot have failed to see that there are strong symptoms of the springing up of delicate relations

between some of our number. I told you how it would be. It did not require a prophet to foresee that the saucy

intruder who, as Mr. Willis wrote, and the dear dead girls used to sing, in our young days,

would pop his little curly head up between one or more pairs of Teacups. If you will stop these questions,

then, I will go on with my reports of what was said and done at our meetings over the teacups.

Of all things beautiful in this fair world, there is nothing so enchanting to look upon, to dream about, as the

first opening of the flower of young love. How closely the calyx has hidden the glowing leaves in its quiet

green mantle! Side by side, two buds have been tossing jauntily in the breeze, often brought very near to each

other, sometimes touching for a moment, with a secret thrill in their closefolded heartleaves, it may be, but

still the cool green sepals shutting tight over the burning secret within. All at once a morning ray touches one

of the two buds, and the point of a blushing petal betrays the imprisoned and swelling blossom.

Oh, no, I did not promise a lovestory. There may be a little sentiment now and then, but these papers are

devoted chiefly to the opinions, prejudices, fancies, whims, of myself, The Dictator, and others of The

Here are some of the remarks I made the other evening on the subject of Intellectual OverFeeding and its

consequence, Mental Dyspepsia. There is something positively appalling in the amount of printed matter

yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, secreted by that great gland of the civilized organism, the press. I need not

dilate upon this point, for it is brought home to every one of you who ever looks into a bookstore or a public

library. So large is the variety of literary products continually coming forward, forced upon the attention of

the reader by stimulating and suggestive titles, commended to his notice by famous names, recasting old

subjects and developing and illustrating new ones, that the mind is liable to be urged into a kind of unnatural

hunger, leading to a repletion which is often followed by disgust and disturbed nervous conditions as its

It has long been a favorite rule with me, a rule which I have never lost sight of, however imperfectly I have

carried it out: Try to know enough of a wide range of subjects to profit by the conversation of intelligent

persons of different callings and various intellectual gifts and acquisitions. The cynic will paraphrase this into

a shorter formula: Get a smattering in every sort of knowledge. I must therefore add a second piece of advice:

Learn to hold as of small account the comments of the cynic. He is often amusing, sometimes really witty,

occasionally, without meaning it, instructive; but his talk is to profitable conversation what the stone is to the

pulp of the peach, what the cob is to the kernels on an ear of Indian corn. Once more: Do not be bullied out of

your common sense by the specialist; two to one, he is a pedant, with all his knowledge and valuable

qualities, and will "cavil on the ninth part of a hair," if it will give him a chance to show off his idle erudition.

I saw attributed to me, the other day, the saying, "Know something about everything, and everything about

something." I am afraid it does not belong to me, but I will treat it as I used to treat a stray boat which came

through my meadow, floating down the Housatonic,get hold of it and draw it ashore, and hold on to it until

the owner turns up. If this precept is used discreetly, it is very serviceable; but it is as well to recognize the

fact that you cannot know something about everything in days like these of intellectual activity, of literary

and scientific production. We all feel this. It makes us nervous to see the shelves of new books, many of

which we feel as if we ought to read, and some among them to study. We must adopt some principle of

selection among the books outside of any particular branch which we may have selected for study. I have

often been asked what books I would recommend for a course of reading. I have always answered that I had a

great deal rather take advice than give it. Fortunately, a number of scholars have furnished lists of books to

which the inquirer may be directed. But the worst of it is that each student is in need of a little library

specially adapted to his wants. Here is a young man writing to me from a Western college, and wants me to

send him a list of the books which I think would be most useful to him. He does not send me his intellectual

measurements, and he might as well have sent to a Boston tailor for a coat, without any hint of his

But instead of laying down rules for reading, and furnishing lists of the books which should be read in order,

I will undertake the much humbler task of giving a little quasimedical advice to persons, young or old,

suffering from bookhunger, booksurfeit, book nervousness, bookindigestion, booknausea, and all other

maladies which, directly or indirectly, may be traced to books, and to which I could give Greek or Latin

I have a picture hanging in my library, a lithograph, of which many of my readers may have seen copies. It

represents a grayhaired old booklover at the top of a long flight of steps. He finds himself in clover, so to

speak, among rare old editions, books he has longed to look upon and never seen before, rarities, precious old

volumes, incunabula, cradlebooks, printed while the art was in its infancy, its glorious infancy, for it was

born a giant. The old bookworm is so intoxicated with the sight and handling of the priceless treasures that he

cannot bear to put one of the volumes back after he has taken it from the shelf. So there he stands,one book

open in his hands, a volume under each arm, and one or more between his legs,loaded with as many as he

Now, that is just the way in which the extreme form of bookhunger shows itself in the reader whose appetite

has become overdeveloped. He wants to read so many books that he overcrams himself with the crude

materials of knowledge, which become knowledge only when the mental digestion has time to assimilate

them. I never can go into that famous "Corner Bookstore" and look over the new books in the row before me,

as I enter the door, without seeing half a dozen which I want to read, or at least to know something about. I

cannot empty my purse of its contents, and crowd my bookshelves with all those volumes. The titles of many

of them interest me. I look into one or two, perhaps. I have sometimes picked up a line or a sentence, in these

momentary glances between the uncut leaves of a new book, which I have never forgotten. As a trivial but

bona fide example, one day I opened a book on duelling. I remember only these words: "Conservonsla, cette

noble institution." I had never before seen duelling called a noble institution, and I wish I had taken the name

of the book. Booktasting is not necessarily profitless, but it is very stimulating, and makes one hungry for

more than he needs for the nourishment of his thinkingmarrow. To feed this insatiable hunger, the abstracts,

the reviews, do their best. But these, again, have grown so numerous and so crowded with matter that it is

hard to find time to master their contents. We are accustomed, therefore, to look for analyses of these

periodicals, and at last we have placed before us a formidablelooking monthly, "The Review of Reviews."

After the analyses comes the newspaper notice; and there is still room for the epigram, which sometimes

It is just as well to recognize the fact that if one should read day and night, confining himself to his own

language, he could not pretend to keep up with the press. He might as well try to race with a locomotive. The

first discipline, therefore, is that of despair. If you could stick to your reading day and night for fifty years,

what a learned idiot you would become long before the halfcentury was over! Well, then, there is no use in

gorging one's self with knowledge, and no need of selfreproach because one is content to remain more or

less ignorant of many things which interest his fellowcreatures. We gain a good deal of knowledge through

the atmosphere; we learn a great deal by accidental hearsay, provided we have the mordant in our own

consciousness which makes the wise remark, the significant fact, the instructive incident, take hold upon it.

After the stage of despair comes the period of consolation. We soon find that we are not so much worse off

than most of our neighbors as we supposed. The fractional value of the wisest shows a small numerator

I made some explanations to The Teacups, the other evening, which they received very intelligently and

graciously, as I have no doubt the readers of these reports of mine will receive them. If the reader will turn

back to the end of the fourth number of these papers, he will find certain lines entitled, "Cacoethes

Scribendi." They were said to have been taken from the usual receptacle of the verses which are contributed

by The Teacups, and, though the fact was not mentioned, were of my own composition. I found them in

manuscript in my drawer, and as my subject had naturally suggested the train of thought they carried out into

extravagance, I printed them. At the same time they sounded very natural, as we say, and I felt as if I had

published them somewhere or other before; but I could find no evidence of it, and so I ventured to have them

And here I wish to take breath for a short, separate paragraph. I have often felt, after writing a line which

pleased me more than common, that it was not new, and perhaps was not my own. I have very rarely,

however, found such a coincidence in ideas or expression as would be enough to justify an accusation of

unconscious plagiarism, conscious plagiarism is not my particular failing. I therefore say my say, set down

my thought, print my line, and do not heed the suspicion that I may not be as original as I supposed, in the

passage I have been writing. My experience may be worth something to a modest young writer, and so I have

In this instance my telltale suspicion had not been at fault. I had printed those same lines, years ago, in "The

Contributors' Club," to which I have rarely sent any of my prose or verse. Nobody but the editor has noticed

the fact, so far as I know. This is consoling, or mortifying, I hardly know which. I suppose one has a right to

plagiarize from himself, but he does not want to present his work as fresh from the workshop when it has

But I have just received a letter from a brother of the late Henry Howard Brownell, the poet of the Bay Fight

and the River Fight, in which he quotes a passage from an old book, "A Heroine, Adventures of Cherubina,"

which might well have suggested my own lines, if I had ever seen it. I have not the slightest recollection of

the book or the passage. I think its liveliness and "local color" will make it please the reader, as it pleases me,

"If Black Sea, Red Sea, White Sea, ran One tide of ink to Ispahan, If all the geese in Lincoln fens Produced

spontaneous wellmade pens, If Holland old and Holland new One wondrous sheet of paper grew, And could

I sing but half the grace Of half a freckle in thy face, Each syllable I wrote would reach >From Inverness to

Bognor's beach, Each hairstroke be a river Rhine, Each verse an equinoctial line!"

I may as well say that our Delilah was not in the room when the last sentence was read.

Readers must be either very goodnatured or very careless. I have laid myself open to criticism by more than

one piece of negligence, which has been passed over without invidious comment by the readers of my papers.

How could I, for instance, have written in my original "copy" for the printer about the fisherman baiting his

hook with a giant's tail instead of a dragon's? It is the automatic fellow,Me NumberTwo of our dual

personality,who does these things, who forgets the message MeNumberOne sends down to him from

the cerebral convolutions, and substitutes a wrong word for the right one. I suppose MeNumberTwo

will "sass back," and swear that "giant's" was the message which came down from headquarters. He is always

doing the wrong thing and excusing himself. Who blows out the gas instead of shutting it off? Who puts the

key in the desk and fastens it tight with the spring lock? Do you mean to say that the upper Me, the Me of the

true thinkingmarrow, the convolutions of the brain, does not know better? Of course he does, and

MeNumberTwo is a careless servant, who remembers some old direction, and follows that instead of the

Number Seven demurred to this, and I am not sure that he is wrong in so doing. He maintains that the

automatic fellow always does just what he is told to do. Number Five is disposed to agree with him. We will

But come, now, why should not a giant have a tail as well as a dragon? Linnaeus admitted the homo caudatus

into his anthropological catalogue. The human embryo has a very well marked caudal appendage; that is, the

vertebral column appears prolonged, just as it is in a young quadruped. During the late session of the Medical

Congress at Washington, my friend Dr. Priestley, a distinguished London physician, of the highest character

and standing, showed me the photograph of a small boy, some three or four years old, who had a very

respectable little tail, which would have passed muster on a pig, and would have made a frog or a toad

ashamed of himself. I have never heard what became of the little boy, nor have I looked in the books or

journals to find out if there are similar cases on record, but I have no doubt that there are others. And if boys

may have this additional ornament to their vertebral columns, why not men? And if men, why not giants? So

I may not have made a very bad blunder, after all, and my reader has learned something about the homo

caudatus as spoken of by Linnxus, and as shown me in photograph by Dr. Priestley. This child is a candidate

In accounting for the blunders, and even gross blunders, which, sooner or later, one who writes much is pretty

sure to commit, I must not forget the part played by the blind spot or idiotic area in the brain, which I have

The most knowing persons we meet with are sometimes at fault. Nova onania possumus omnes is not a new

nor profound axiom, but it is well to remember it as a counterpoise to that other truly American saying of the

late Mr. Samuel Patch, "Some things can be done as well as others." Yes, some things, but not all things. We

all know men and women who hate to admit their ignorance of anything. Like Talkative in "Pilgrim's

Progress," they are ready to converse of "things heavenly or things earthly; things moral or things

evangelical; things sacred or things profane; things past or things to come; things foreign or things at home;

Talkative is apt to be a shallow fellow, and to say foolish things about matters he only half understands, and

yet he has his place in society. The specialists would grow to be intolerable, were they not counterpoised to

some degree by the people of general intelligence. The man who knows too much about one particular

subject is liable to become a terrible social infliction. Some of the worst bores (to use plain language) we ever

meet with are recognized as experts of high grade in their respective departments. Beware of making so much

as a pinhole in the dam that holds back their knowledge. They ride their hobbies without bit or bridle. A poet

on Pegasus, reciting his own verses, is hardly more to be dreaded than a mounted specialist.

One of the best offices which women perform for men is that of tasting books for them. They may or may not

be profound students, some of them are; but we do not expect to meet women like Mrs. Somerville, or

Caroline Herschel, or Maria Mitchell at every dinner table or afternoon tea. But give your elect lady a pile

of books to look over for you, and she will tell you what they have for her and for you in less time than you

One of the encouraging signs of the times is the condensed and abbreviated form in which knowledge is

presented to the general reader. The short biographies of historic personages, of which within the past few

years many have been published, have been a great relief to the large class of readers who want to know

What refuge is there for the victim who is oppressed with the feeling that there are a thousand new books he

ought to read, while life is only long enough for him to attempt to read a hundred? Many readers remember

"When I hear a new book talked about or have it pressed upon me, I read an old one."

Happy the man who finds his rest in the pages of some favorite classic! I know no reader more to be envied

than that friend of mine who for many years has given his days and nights to the loving study of Horace.

After a certain period in life, it is always with an effort that we admit a new author into the inner circle of our

intimates. The Parisian omnibuses, as I remember them half a century ago,they may still keep to the same

habit, for aught that I know, used to put up the sign "Complet" as soon as they were full. Our public

conveyances are never full until the natural atmospheric pressure of sixteen pounds to the square inch is

doubled, in the close packing of the human sardines that fill the allaccommodating vehicles. A newcomer,

however well mannered and well dressed, is not very welcome under these circumstances. In the same way,

our tables are full of books halfread and books we feel that we must read. And here come in two thick

volumes, with uncut leaves, in small type, with many pages, and many lines to a page,a book that must be

read and ought to be read at once. What a relief to hand it over to the lovely keeper of your literary

conscience, who will tell you all that you will most care to know about it, and leave you free to plunge into

your beloved volume, in which you are ever finding new beauties, and from which you rise refreshed, as if

you had just come from the cool waters of Hippocrene! The stream of modern literature represented by the

books and periodicals on the crowded counters is a turbulent and clamorous torrent, dashing along among the

rocks of criticism, over the pebbles of the world's daily events; trying to make itself seen and heard amidst the

hoarse cries of the politicians and the rumbling wheels of traffic. The classic is a still lakelet, a mountain tarn,

fed by springs that never fail, its surface never ruffled by storms,always the same, always smiling a

welcome to its visitor. Such is Horace to my friend. To his eye "Lydia, dic per omnes" is as familiar as "Pater

noster qui es in caelis" to that of a pious Catholic. "Integer vitae," which he has put into manly English, his

Horace opens to as Watt's hymnbook opens to "From all that dwell below the skies." The more he reads, the

more he studies his author, the richer are the treasures he finds. And what Horace is to him, Homer, or Virgil,

or Dante is to many a quiet reader, sick to death of the unending train of bookmakers.

I have some curious books in my library, a few of which I should like to say something about to The Teacups,

when they have no more immediately pressing subjects before them. A library of a few thousand volumes

ought always to have some books in it which the owner almost never opens, yet with whose backs he is so

well acquainted that he feels as if he knew something of their contents. They are like those persons whom we

meet in our daily walks, with whose faces and figures, whose summer and winter garments, whose

walkingsticks and umbrellas even, we feel acquainted, and yet whose names, whose business, whose

residences, we know nothing about. Some of these books are so formidable in their dimensions, so rusty and

crabbed in their aspect, that it takes a considerable amount of courage to attack them.

I will ask Delilah to bring down from my library a very thick, stout volume, bound in parchment, and

standing on the lower shelf, next the fireplace. The pretty handmaid knows my books almost as if she were

my librarian, and I don't doubt she would have found it if I had given only the name on the back.

Delilah returned presently, with the heavy quarto in her arms. It was a pleasing sight,the old book in the

embrace of the fresh young damsel. I felt, on looking at them, as I did when I followed the slip of a girl who

conducted us in the Temple, that ancient building in the heart of London. The longenduring monuments of

Is n't this book enough to scare any of you? I said, as Delilah dumped it down upon the table. The teacups

jumped from their saucers as it thumped on the board. Danielis Georgii Morhofii Polyhistor, Literarius,

Philosophicus et Poeticus. Lubecae MDCCXXXIII. Perhaps I should not have ventured to ask you to look at

this old volume, if it had not been for the fact that Dr. Johnson mentions Morohof as the author to whom he

was specially indebted. more, I think, than to any other. It is a grand old encyclopaedic summary of all the

author knew about pretty nearly everything, full of curious interest, but so strangely mediaeval, so utterly

antiquated in most departments of knowledge, that it is hard to believe the volume came from the press at a

time when persons whom I well remember were living. Is it possible that the books which have been for me

what Morhof was for Dr. Johnson can look like that to the student of the year 1990?

Morhof was a believer in magic and the transmutation of metals. There was always something fascinating to

me in the old books of alchemy. I have felt that the poetry of science lost its wings when the last powder of

projection had been cast into the crucible, and the fire of the last transmutation furnace went out. Perhaps I

am wrong in implying that alchemy is an extinct folly. It existed in New England's early days, as we learn

from the Winthrop papers, and I see no reason why goldmaking should not have its votaries as well as other

Among the essays of Morhof is one on the "Paradoxes of the Senses." That title brought to mind the

recollection of another work I have been meaning to say something about, at some time when you were in the

listening mood. The book I refer to is "A Budget of Paradoxes," by Augustus De Morgan. De Morgan is well

remembered as a very distinguished mathematician, whose works have kept his name in high honor to the

present time. The book I am speaking of was published by his widow, and is largely made up of letters

received by him and his comments upon them. Few persons ever read it through. Few intelligent readers ever

took it up and laid it down without taking a long draught of its singular and interesting contents. The letters

are mostly from that class of persons whom we call "cranks," in our familiar language.

At this point Number Seven interrupted me by calling out, "Give us some of those cranks' letters. A crank is a

man who does his own thinking. I had a relation who was called a crank. I believe I have been spoken of as

one myself. That is what you have to expect if you invent anything that puts an old machine out of fashion, or

solve a problem that has puzzled all the world up to your time. There never was a religion founded but its

Messiah was called a crank. There never was an idea started that woke up men out of their stupid indifference

but its originator was spoken of as a crank. Do you want to know why that name is given to the men who do

most for the world's progress? I will tell you. It is because cranks make all the wheels in all the machinery of

the world go round. What would a steamengine be without a crank? I suppose the first fool that looked on

the first crank that was ever made asked what that crooked, queerlooking thing was good for. When the

wheels got moving he found out. Tell us something about that book which has so much to say concerning

Hereupon I requested Delilah to carry back Morhof, and replace him in the wide gap he had left in the

bookshelf. She was then to find and bring down the volume I had been speaking of.

Delilah took the wisdom of the seventeenth century in her arms, and departed on her errand. The book she

brought down was given me some years ago by a gentleman who had sagaciously foreseen that it was just

one of those works which I might hesitate about buying, but should be well pleased to own. He guessed well;

the book has been a great source of instruction and entertainment to me. I wonder that so much time and cost

should have been expended upon a work which might have borne a title like the Encomium Moriae of

Erasmus; and yet it is such a wonderful museum of the productions of the squinting brains belonging to the

class of persons commonly known as cranks that we could hardly spare one of its five hundred octavo pages.

Those of us who are in the habit of receiving letters from all sorts of wouldbeliterary peopleletters of

inquiry, many of them with reference to matters we are supposed to understandcan readily see how it was

that Mr. De Morgan, never too busy to be goodnatured with the people who pesteredor amusedhim with

their queer fancies, received such a number of letters from persons who thought they had made great

discoveries, from those who felt that they and their inventions and contrivances had been overlooked, and

who sought in his large charity of disposition and great receptiveness a balm for their wounded feelings and a

The book before us is made up from papers published in "The Athenaeum," with additions by the author.

Soon after opening it we come to names with which we are familiar, the first of these, that of Cornelius

Agrippa, being connected with the occult and mystic doctrines dealt with by many of De Morgan's

correspondents. But the name most likely to arrest us is that of Giordano Bruno, the same philosopher,

heretic, and martyr whose statue has recently been erected in Rome, to the great horror of the Pope and his

prelates in the Old World and in the New. De Morgan's pithy account of him will interest the company :

"Giordano Bruno was all paradox. He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes, an optimist before

Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred strange opinions of his. He was

born about 1550, and was roasted alive at Rome, February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and defence of the

Number Seven could not contain himself when the reading had reached this point. He rose from his chair, and

tinkled his spoon against the side of his teacup. It may have been a fancy, but I thought it returned a sound

which Mr. Richard Briggs would have recognized as implying an organic defect. But Number Seven did not

"Why did n't we all have a chance to help erect that statue?" he cried. "A murdered heretic at the beginning of

the seventeenth century, a hero of knowledge in the nineteenth,I drink to the memory of the roasted crank,

Number Seven lifted his teacup to his lips, and most of us followed his example.

After this outburst of emotion and eloquence had subsided, and the teaspoons lay quietly in their saucers, I

I think, I said, that the passage which follows will be new and instructive to most of the company. De

Morgan's interpretation of the cabalistic sentence, made up as you will find it, is about as ingenious a piece of

fanciful exposition as you will be likely to meet with anywhere in any book, new or old. I am the more

willing to mention it as it suggests a puzzle which some of the company may like to work upon. Observe the

character and position of the two distinguished philosophers who did not think their time thrown away in

"There is a kind of Cabbala Alphabetica which the investigators of the numerals in words would do well to

take up; it is the formation of sentences which contain all the letters of the alphabet, and each only once. No

one has done it with v and j treated as consonants; but you and I can do it. Dr. Whewell and I amused

ourselves some years ago with attempts. He could not make sense, though he joined words he gave me Phiz,

"I gave him the following, which he agreed was 'admirable sense,' I certainly think the words would never

have come together except in this way: I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought that no human being

could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer,as he thought

himself, who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday came into my head; this

fellow flings muck beds; he must be a quartz pyx. And then I remembered that a pyx is a sacred vessel, and

quartz is a hard stone, as hard as the heart of a religious foecurser. So that the line is the motto of the

ferocious sectarian who turns his religious vessels into mudholders, for the benefit of those who will not see

There are several other sentences given, in which all the letters (except v and j as consonants) are employed,

of which the following is the best: Get nymph; quiz sad brow; fix luck,which in more sober English would

be, Marry; be cheerful; watch your business. There is more edification, mare religion, in this than in all the

There is something very pleasant in the thought of these two sages playing at jackstraws with the letters of the

alphabet. The task which De Morgan and Dr. Whewell, "the omniscient," set themselves would not be

unworthy of our own ingenious scholars, and it might be worth while for some one of our popular periodicals

to offer a prize for the best sentence using up the whole alphabet, under the same conditions as those

This whole book of De Morgan's seems to me full of instruction. There is too much of it, no doubt; yet one

can put up with the redundancy for the sake of the multiplicity of shades of credulity and selfdeception it

displays in broad daylight. I suspect many of us are conscious of a second personality in our complex nature,

which has many traits resembling those found in the writers of the letters addressed to Mr. De Horgan.

I have not ventured very often nor very deeply into the field of metaphysics, but if I were disposed to make

any claim in that direction, it would be the recognition of the squinting brain, the introduction of the term

"cerebricity" corresponding to electricity, the idiotic area in the brain or thinkingmarrow, and my studies of

the second member in the partnership of IMySelf Co. I add the Co. with especial reference to a very

interesting article in a late Scribner, by my friend Mr. William James. In this article the reader will find a full

exposition of the doctrine of plural personality illustrated by striking cases. I have long ago noticed and

referred to the fact of the stratification of the currents of thought in three layers, one over the other. I have

recognized that where there are two individuals talking together there are really six personalities engaged in

the conversation. But the distinct, separable, independent individualities, taking up conscious life one after

the other, are brought out by Mr. James and the authorities to which he refers as I have not elsewhere seen

Whether we shall ever find the exact position of the idiotic centre or area in the brain (if such a spot exists) is

uncertain. We know exactly where the blind spot of the eye is situated, and can demonstrate it anatomically

and physiologically. But we have only analogy to lead us to infer the possible or even probable existence of

an insensible spot in the thinkingcentre. If there is a focal point where consciousness is at its highest

development, it would not be strange if near by there should prove to be an anaesthetic district or limited

space where no report from the senses was intelligently interpreted. But all this is mere hypothesis.

Notwithstanding the fact that I am nominally the head personage of the circle of Teacups, I do not pretend or

wish to deny that we all look to Number Five as our chief adviser in all the literary questions that come

before us. She reads more and better than any of us. She is always ready to welcome the first sign of genius,

or of talent which approaches genius. She makes short work with all the pretenders whose only excuse for

appealing to the public is that they "want to be famous." She is one of the very few persons to whom I am

willing to read any one of my own productions while it is yet in manuscript, unpublished. I know she is

disposed to make more of it than it deserves; but, on the other hand, there are degrees in her scale of

judgment, and I can distinguish very easily what delights her from what pleases only, or is, except for her

kindly feeling to the writer, indifferent, or open to severe comment. What is curious is that she seems to have

no literary aspirations, no desire to be known as a writer. Yet Number Five has more esprit, more sparkle,

more sense in her talk, than many a famous authoress from whom we should expect brilliant conversation.

There are mysteries about Number Five. I am not going to describe her personally. Whether she belongs

naturally among the bright young people, or in the company of the maturer persons, who have had a good

deal of experience of the world, and have reached the wisdom of the riper decades without losing the graces

of the earlier ones, it would be hard to say. The men and women, young and old, who throng about her forget

their own ages. "There is no such thing as time in her presence," said the Professor, the other day, in speaking

of her. Whether the Professor is in love with her or not is more than I can say, but I am sure that he goes to

her for literary sympathy and counsel, just as I do. The reader may remember what Number Five said about

the possibility of her getting a sprained ankle, and her asking the young Doctor whether he felt equal to

taking charge of her if she did. I would not for the world insinuate that he wishes she would slip and twist her

foot a little,just a little, you know, but so that it would have to be laid on a pillow in a chair, and inspected,

and bandaged, and delicately manipulated. There was a bananaskin which she might naturally have trodden

on, in her way to the tea table. Nobody can suppose that it was there except by the most innocent of

accidents. There are people who will suspect everybody. The idea of the Doctor's putting that bananaskin

Number Five had promised to read us a narrative which she thought would interest some of the company.

Who wrote it she did not tell us, but I inferred from various circumstances that she had known the writer. She

read the story most effectively in her rich, musical voice. I noticed that when it came to the sounds of the

striking clock, the ringing of the notes was so like that which reaches us from some faroff cathedral tower

that we wanted to bow our heads, as if we had just heard a summons to the Angelus. This was the short story

I have somewhere read this anecdote. Louis the Fourteenth was looking out, one day, from, a window of his

palace of SaintGermain. It was a beautiful landscape which spread out before him, and the monarch,

exulting in health, strength, and the splendors of his exalted position, felt his bosom swell with emotions of

pride and happiness: Presently he noticed the towers of a church in the distance, above the treetops. "What

building is that?" he asked. "May it please your Majesty, that is the Church of St. Denis, where your royal

ancestors have been buried for many generations." The answer did not "please his Royal Majesty." There,

then, was the place where he too was to lie and moulder in the dust. He turned, sick at heart, from the

window, and was uneasy until he had built him another palace, from which he could never be appalled by that

I give the story as transcribed from the original manuscript: The clock was bequeathed to me by an old

friend who had recently died. His mind had been a good deal disordered in the later period of his life. This

clock, I am told; seemed to have a strange fascination for him. His eyes were fastened on it during the last

hours of his life. He died just at midnight. The clock struck twelve, the nurse told me, as he drew his last

breath, and then, without any known cause, stopped, with both hands upon the hour. It is a complex and

costly piece of mechanism. The escapement is in front, so that every tooth is seen as it frees itself. It shows

the phases of the moon, the month of the year, the day of the month, and the day of the week, as well as the

hour and minute of the day. I had not owned it a week before I began to perceive the same kind of fascination

as that which its former owner had experienced. This gradually grew upon me, and presently led to trains of

thought which became at first unwelcome, then worrying, and at last unendurable. I began by taking offence

at the moon. I did not like to see that "something large and smooth and round," so like the skull which little

Peterkin picked up on the field of Blenheim. "How many times," I kept saying to myself, "is that wicked old

moon coming up to stare at me?" I could not stand it. I stopped a part of the machinery, and the moon went

into permanent eclipse. By and by the sounds of the infernal machine began to trouble and pursue me. They

talked to me; more and more their language became that of articulately speaking men. They twitted me with

the rapid flight of time. They hurried me, as if I had not a moment to lose. Quick! Quick! Quick! as each

tooth released itself from the escapement. And as I looked and listened there could not be any mistake about

it. I heard Quick! Quick! Quick! as plainly, at least, as I ever heard a word from the phonograph. I stood

watching the dial one day,it was near one o'clock,and a strange attraction held me fastened to the spot.

Presently something appeared to trip or stumble inside of the infernal mechanism. I waited for the sound I

knew was to follow. How nervous I got! It seemed to me that it would never strike. At last the minutehand

reached the highest point of the dial. Then there was a little stir among the works, as there is in a

congregation as it rises to receive the benediction. It was no form of blessing which rung out those deep,

almost sepulchral tones. But the word they uttered could not be mistaken. I can hear its prolonged, solemn

vibrations as if I were standing before the clock at this moment. Gone! Yes, I said to myself, gone,its

record made up to be opened in eternity. I stood still, staring vaguely at the dial as in a trance. And as the next

hour creeps stealthily up, it starts all at once, and cries aloud, Gone! Gone! The sun sinks lower, the

hourhand creeps downward with it, until I hear the thricerepeated monosyllable, Gone! Gone! Gone!

Soon through the darkening hours, until at the dead of night the long roll is called, and with the last Gone! the

latest of the long procession that filled the day follows its ghostly companions into the stillness and darkness

of the past. I silenced the striking part of the works. Still, the escapement kept repeating, Quick! Quick!

Quick! Still the long minutehand, like the dart in the grasp of Death, as we see it in Roubiliac's monument to

Mrs. Nightingale, among the tombs of Westminster Abbey, stretched itself out, ready to transfix each hour as

it passed, and make it my last. I sat by the clock to watch the leap from one day of the week to the next. Then

would come, in natural order, the long stride from one month to the following one. I could endure it no

longer. "Take that clock away!" I said. They took it away. They took me away, too,they thought I needed

country air. The sounds and motions still pursued me in imagination. I was very nervous when I came here.

The walks are pleasant, but the walls seem to me unnecessarily high. The boarders are numerous; a little

miscellaneous, I think. But we have the Queen, and the President of the United States, and several other

distinguished persons, if we may trust what they tell about themselves. After we had listened to Number

Five's story, I was requested to read a couple of verses written by me when the guest of my friends, whose

From this fair home behold on either side The restful mountains or the restless sea: So the warm sheltering

walls of life divide Time and its tides from still eternity. Look on the waves: their stormy voices teach That

not on earth may toil and struggle cease. Look on the mountains: better far than speech Their silent promise

I had intended to devote this particular report to an account of my replies to certain questions which have

been addressed to me, questions which I have a right to suppose interest the public, and which, therefore, I

was justified in bringing before The Teacups, and presenting to the readers of these articles.

Some may care for one of these questions, and some for another. A good many young people think nothing

about life as it presents itself in the far horizon, bounded by the snowy ridges of threescore and the dim peaks

beyond that remote barrier. Again, there are numbers of persons who know nothing at all about the Jews;

while, on the other hand, there are those who can, or think they can, detect the Israelitish blood in many of

their acquaintances who believe themselves of the purest Japhetic origin, and are full of prejudices about the

I do not mean to be cheated out of my intentions. I propose to answer my questioners on the two points just

referred to, but I find myself so much interested in the personal affairs of The Teacups that I must deal with

them before attacking those less exciting subjects. There is no use, let me say here, in addressing to me letters

marked "personal," "private," "confidential," and so forth, asking me how I came to know what happened in

certain conversations of which I shall give a partial account. If there is a very sensitive phonograph lying

about here and there in unsuspected corners, that might account for some part of my revelations. If Delilah,

whose hearing is of almost supernatural delicacy, reports to me what she overhears, it might explain a part of

the mystery. I do not want to accuse Delilah, but a young person who assures me she can hear my watch

ticking in my pocket, when I am in the next room, might undoubtedly tell many secrets, if so disposed.

Number Five is pretty nearly omniscient, and she and I are on the best terms with each other. These are all the

The Teacups of whom the least has been heard at our table are the Tutor and the Musician. The Tutor is a

modest young man, kept down a little, I think, by the presence of older persons, like the Professor and

myself. I have met him several times, of late, walking with different lady Teacups: once with the American

Annex; twice with the English Annex; once with the two Annexes together; once with Number Five.

I have mentioned the fact that the Tutor is a poet as among his claims to our attention. I must add that I do not

think any the worse of him for expressing his emotions and experiences in verse. For though rhyming is often

a bad sign in a young man, especially if he is already out of his teens, there are those to whom it is as natural,

one might almost say as necessary, as it is to a young bird to fly. One does not care to see barnyard fowls

tumbling about in trying to use their wings. They have a pair of good, stout drumsticks, and had better keep

to them, for the most part. But that feeling does not apply to young eagles, or even to young swallows and

sparrows. The Tutor is by no means one of those ignorant, silly, conceited phrasetinklers, who live on the

music of their own jingling syllables and the flattery of their foolish friends. I think Number Five must

appreciate him. He is sincere, warmhearted, his poetry shows that,not in haste to be famous, and he

looks to me as if he only wanted love to steady him. With one of those two young girls he ought certainly to

be captivated, if he is not already. Twice walking with the English Annex, I met him, and they were so deeply

absorbed in conversation they hardly noticed me. He has been talking over the matter with Number Five, who

"I know I feel very lonely," he was saying, "and I only wish I felt sure that I could make another person

happy. My life would be transfigured if I could find such a one, whom I could love well enough to give my

life to her,for her, if that were needful, and who felt an affinity for me, if any one could."

"What makes you think I care more for her than for her American friend?" said the Tutor.

"Why, have n't I met you walking with her, and did n't you both seem greatly interested in the subject you

were discussing? I thought, of course, it was something more or less sentimental that you were talking about."

"I was explaining that 'enclitic de' in Browning's Grammarian's Funeral. I don't think there was anything very

sentimental about that. She is an inquisitive creature, that English girl. She is very fond of asking me

questions,in fact, both of them are. There is one curious difference between them: the English girl settles

down into her answers and is quiet; the American girl is never satisfied with yesterday's conclusions; she is

always reopening old questions in the light of some new fact or some novel idea. I suppose that people bred

from childhood to lean their backs against the wall of the Creed and the church catechism find it hard to sit up

straight on the republican stool, which obliges them to stiffen their own backs. Which of these two girls

would be the safest choice for a young man? I should really like to hear what answer yon would make if I

consulted you seriously, with a view to my own choice,on the supposition that there was a fair chance that

"But what if it were a case of 'How happy could I be with either'? Which offers the best chance of

happiness,a marriage between two persons of the same country, or a marriage where one of the parties is

of foreign birth? Everything else being equal, which is best for an American to marry, an American or an

English girl? We need not confine the question to those two young persons, but put it more generally."

"There are reasons on both sides," answered Number Five. "I have often talked this matter over with The

Dictator. This is the way he speaks about it. English blood is apt to tell well on the stock upon which it is

engrafted. Over and over again he has noticed finely grown specimens of human beings, and on inquiry has

found that one or both of the parents or grandparents were of British origin. The chances are that the

descendants of the imported stock will be of a richer organization, more florid, more muscular, with mellower

voices, than the native whose blood has been unmingled with that of new emigrants since the earlier colonial

times. So talks The Dictator. I myself think the American will find his English wife concentrates herself

more readily and more exclusively on her husband,for the obvious reason that she is obliged to live mainly

in him. I remember hearing an old friend of my early days say, 'A woman does not bear transplanting.' It does

not do to trust these old sayings, and yet they almost always have some foundation in the experience of

mankind, which has repeated them from generation to generation. Happy is the married woman of foreign

birth who can say to her husband, as Andromache said to Hector, after enumerating all the dear relatives she

How many a sorrowing wife, exiled from her native country, dreams of the mother she shall see no more!

How many a widow, in a strange land, wishes that her poor, wornout body could be laid among her

kinsfolk, in the little churchyard where she used to gather daisies in her childhood! It takes a great deal of

love to keep down the � climbing sorrow' that swells up in a woman's throat when such memories seize upon

her, in her moments of desolation. But if a foreignborn woman does willingly give up all for a man, and

never looks backward, like Lot's wife, she is a prize that it is worth running a risk to gain,that is, if she has

the making of a good woman in her; and a few years will go far towards naturalizing her."

The Tutor listened to Number Five with much apparent interest. "And now," he said, "what do you think of

"A charming girl for a man of a quiet, easy temperament. The great trouble is with her voice. It is pitched a

full note too high. It is aggressive, disturbing, and would wear out a nervous man without his ever knowing

what was the matter with him. A good many crazy Northern people would recover their reason if they could

live for a year or two among the blacks of the Southern States. But the penetrating, perturbing quality of the

voices of many of our Northern women has a great deal to answer for in the way of determining love and

friendship. You remember that dear friend of ours who left us not long since? If there were more voices like

hers, the world would be a different place to live in. I do not believe any man or woman ever came within the

range of those sweet, tranquil tones without being hushed, captivated, entranced I might almost say, by their

calming, soothing influence. Can you not imagine the tones in which those words, 'Peace, be still,' were

spoken? Such was the effect of the voice to which but a few weeks ago we were listening. It is hard to believe

that it has died out of human consciousness. Can such a voice be spared from that world of happiness to

which we fondly look forward, where we love to dream, if we do not believe with assured conviction, that

whatever is loveliest in this our mortal condition shall be with us again as an undying possession? Your

English friend has a very agreeable voice, round, mellow, cheery, and her articulation is charming. Other

things being equal, I think you, who are, perhaps, oversensitive, would live from two to three years longer

with her than with the other. I suppose a man who lived within hearing of a murmuring brook would find his

"And so you advise me to make love to the English girl, do you?" asked the Tutor.

Number Five laughed. It was not a loud laugh, she never laughed noisily; it was not a very hearty laugh; the

"No," she said, "I won't take the responsibility. Perhaps this is a case in which the true reading of Gay's line

I question whether the Tutor had asked those questions very seriously, and I doubt if Number Five thought he

One of The Teacups reminded me that I had promised to say something of my answers to certain questions.

I have given the name of braintappers to the literary operatives who address persons whose names are well

known to the public, asking their opinions or their experiences on subjects which are at the time of general

interest. They expect a literary man or a scientific expert to furnish them materials for symposia and similar

articles, to be used by them for their own special purposes. Sometimes they expect to pay for the information

furnished them; at other times, the honor of being included in a list of noted personages who have received

similar requests is thought sufficient compensation. The object with which the braintapper puts his

questions may be a purely benevolent and entirely disinterested one. Such was the object of some of those

questions which I have received and answered. There are other cases, in which the braintapper is acting

much as those persons do who stop a physician in the street to talk with him about their livers or stomachs, or

other internal arrangements, instead of going to his office and consulting him, expecting to pay for his advice.

Others are more like those busy women who, having the generous intention of making a handsome present to

their pastor, at as little expense as may be, send to all their neighbors and acquaintances for scraps of various

materials, out of which the imposing "bedspread" or counterpane is to be elaborated.

That is all very well so long as old pieces of stuff are all they call for, but it is a different matter to ask for

clippings out of new and uncut rolls of cloth. So it is one thing to ask an author for liberty to use extracts

from his published writings, and it is a very different thing to expect him to write expressly for the editor's or

I have received many questions within the last year or two, some of which I am willing to answer, but prefer

to answer at my own time, in my own way, through my customary channel of communication with the

public. I hope I shall not be misunderstood as implying any reproach against the inquirers who, in order to get

at facts which ought to be known, apply to all whom they can reach for information. Their inquisitiveness is

not always agreeable or welcome, but we ought to be glad that there are mousing facthunters to worry us

with queries to which, for the sake of the public, we are bound to give our attention. Let me begin with my

And first, as the papers have given publicity to the fact that I, The Dictator of this teatable, have reached the

age of threescore years and twenty, I am requested to give information as to how I managed to do it, and to

explain just how they can go and do likewise. I think I can lay down a few rules that will help them to the

desired result. There is no certainty in these biological problems, but there are reasonable probabilities upon

The first thing to be done is, some years before birth, to advertise for a couple of parents both belonging to

longlived families. Especially let the mother come of a race in which octogenarians and nonagenarians are

very common phenomena. There are practical difficulties in following out this suggestion, but possibly the

forethought of your progenitors, or that concurrence of circumstances which we call accident, may have

Do not think that a robust organization is any warrant of long life, nor that a frail and slight bodily

constitution necessarily means scanty length of days. Many a stronglimbed young man and many a

blooming young woman have I seen failing and dropping away in or before middle life, and many a delicate

and slightly constituted person outliving the athletes and the beauties of their generation. Whether the

excessive development of the muscular system is compatible with the best condition of general health is, I

think, more than doubtful. The muscles are great sponges that suck up and make use of large quantities of

One of the Seven Wise Men of Greece boiled his wisdom down into two words, NOTHING TOO MUCH.

It is a rule which will apply to food, exercise, labor, sleep, and, in short, to every part of life. This is not so

very difficult a matter if one begins in good season and forms regular habits. But what if I should lay down

the rule, Be cheerful; take all the troubles and trials of life with perfect equanimity and a smiling

countenance? Admirable directions! Your friend, the curlyhaired blonde, with florid complexion, round

cheeks, the best possible digestion and respiration, the stomach of an ostrich and the lungs of a pearldiver,

finds it perfectly easy to carry them into practice. You, of leaden complexion, with black and lank hair, lean,

holloweyed, dyspeptic, nervous, find it not so easy to be always hilarious and happy. The truth is that the

persons of that buoyant disposition which comes always heralded by a smile, as a yacht driven by a favoring

breeze carries a wreath of sparkling foam before her, are born with their happiness ready made. They cannot

help being cheerful any more than their saturnine fellowmortal can help seeing everything through the cloud

he carries with him. I give you the precept, then, Be cheerful, for just what it is worth, as I would recommend

to you to be six feet, or at least five feet ten, in stature. You cannot settle that matter for yourself, but you can

stand up straight, and give your five feet five its full value. You can help along a little by wearing

highheeled shoes. So you can do something to encourage yourself in serenity of aspect and demeanor,

keeping your infirmities and troubles in the background instead of making them the staple of your

conversation. This piece of advice, if followed, may be worth from three to five years of the fourscore which

If, on the other hand, instead of going about cheerily in society, making the best of everything and as far as

possible forgetting your troubles, you can make up your mind to economize all your stores of vital energy, to

hoard your life as a miser hoards his money, you will stand a fair chance of living until you are tired of

One of my prescriptions for longevity may startle you somewhat. It is this: Become the subject of a mortal

disease. Let half a dozen doctors thump you, and knead you, and test you in every possible way, and render

their verdict that you have an internal complaint; they don't know exactly what it is, but it will certainly kill

you by and by. Then bid farewell to the world and shut yourself up for an invalid. If you are threescore years

old when you begin this mode of life, you may very probably last twenty years, and there you are,an

octogenarian. In the mean time, your friends outside have been dropping off, one after another, until you find

yourself almost alone, nursing your mortal complaint as if it were your baby, hugging it and kept alive by

it,if to exist is to live. Who has not seen cases like this,a man or a woman shutting himself or herself up,

visited by a doctor or a succession of doctors (I remember that once, in my earlier experience, I was the

twentyseventh physician who had been consulted), always taking medicine, until everybody was reminded

of that impatient speech of a relative of one of these invalid vampires who live on the blood of tiredout

attendants, "I do wish she would get wellor something"? Persons who are shut up in that way, confined to

their chambers, sometimes to their beds, have a very small amount of vital expenditure, and wear out very

little of their living substance. They are like lamps with half their wicks picked down, and will continue to

burn when other lamps have used up all their oil. An insurance office might make money by taking no risks

except on lives of persons suffering from mortal disease. It is on this principle of economizing the powers of

life that a very eminent American physician, Dr. Weir Mitchell, a man of genius,has founded his

What have I got to say about temperance, the use of animal food, and so forth? These are questions asked me.

Nature has proved a wise teacher, as I think, in my own case. The older I grow, the less use I make of

alcoholic stimulants. In fact, I hardly meddle with them at all, except a glass or two of champagne

occasionally. I find that by far the best borne of all drinks containing alcohol. I do not suppose my experience

can be the foundation of a universal rule. Dr. Holyoke, who lived to be a hundred, used habitually, in

moderate quantities, a mixture of cider, water, and rum. I think, as one grows older, less food, especially less

animal food, is required. But old people have a right to be epicures, if they can afford it. The pleasures of the

palate are among the last gratifications of the senses allowed them. We begin life as little cannibals,feeding

on the flesh and blood of our mothers. We range through all the vegetable and animal products, of nature, and

I suppose, if the second childhood could return to the food of the first, it might prove a wholesome diet.

What do I say to smoking? I cannot grudge an old man his pipe, but I think tobacco often does a good deal of

harm to the health,to the eyes especially, to the nervous system generally, producing headache, palpitation,

and trembling. I myself gave it up many years ago. Philosophically speaking, I think selfnarcotization and

self alcoholization are rather ignoble substitutes for undisturbed self consciousness and unfettered

Here is another of those braintapping letters, of similar character, which I have no objection to answering at

my own time and in the place which best suits me. As the questions must be supposed to be asked with a

purely scientific and philanthropic purpose, it can make little difference when and where they are answered.

For myself, I prefer our own teatable to the symposia to which I am often invited. I do not quarrel with

those who invite their friends to a banquet to which many strangers are expected to contribute. It is a very

easy and pleasant way of giving an entertainment at little cost and with no responsibility. Somebody has been

writing to me about "Oatmeal and Literature," and somebody else wants to know whether I have found

character influenced by diet; also whether, in my opinion, oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American

In answer to these questions, I should say that I have my beliefs and prejudices; but if I were pressed hard for

my proofs of their correctness, I should make but a poor show in the witnessbox. Most assuredly I do

believe that body and mind are much influenced by the kind of food habitually depended upon. I am

persuaded that a too exclusively porcine diet gives a bristly character to the beard and hair, which is borrowed

from the animal whose tissues these stiff bearded compatriots of ours have too largely assimilated. I can

never stray among the village people of our windy capes without now and then coming upon a human being

who looks as if he had been split, salted, and dried, like the saltfish which has built up his arid organism. If

the body is modified by the food which nourishes it, the mind and character very certainly will be modified

by it also. We know enough of their close connection with each other to be sure of that, without any statistical

Do you really want to know "whether oatmeal is preferable to pie as an American national food"? I suppose

the best answer I can give to your question is to tell you what is my own practice. Oatmeal in the morning, as

an architect lays a bed of concrete to form a base for his superstructure. Pie when I can get it; that is, of the

genuine sort, for I am not patriotic enough to think very highly of the article named after the Father of his

Country, who was first in war, first in peace,not first in pies, according to my standard.

There is a very odd prejudice against pie as an article of diet. It is common to hear every form of bodily

degeneracy and infirmity attributed to this particular favorite food. I see no reason or sense in it. Mr. Emerson

believed in pie, and was almost indignant when a fellowtraveller refused the slice he offered him. "Why,

Mr.________ ," said be, "what is pie made for!" If every Green Mountain boy has not eaten a thousand times

his weight in apple, pumpkin, squash, and mince pie, call me a dumpling. And Colonel Ethan Allen was one

of them,Ethan Allen, who, as they used to say, could wrench off the head of a wrought nail with his teeth.

If you mean to keep as well as possible, the less you think about your health the better. You know enough not

to eat or drink what you have found does not agree with you. You ought to know enough not to expose

yourself needlessly to draughts. If you take a "constitutional," walk with the wind when you can, and take a

closed car against it if you can get one. Walking against the wind is one of the most dangerous kinds of

exposure, if you are sensitive to cold. But except a few simple rules such as I have just given, let your health

take care of itself so long as it behaves decently. If you want to be sure not to reach threescore and twenty,

get a little box of homoeopathic pellets and a little book of homeopathic prescriptions. I had a poor friend

who fell into that way, and became at last a regular Hahnemaniac. He left a box of his little jokers, which at

last came into my hands. The poor fellow had cultivated symptoms as other people cultivate roses or

chrysanthemums. What a luxury of choice his imagination presented to him! When one watches for

symptoms, every organ in the body is ready to put in its claim. By and by a real illness attacked him, and the

Let me tell you one thing. I think if patients and physicians were in the habit of recognizing the fact I am

going to mention, both would be gainers. The law I refer to must be familiar to all observing physicians, and

to all intelligent persons who have observed their own bodily and mental conditions. This is the curve of

health. It is a mistake to suppose that the normal state of health is represented by a straight horizontal line.

Independently of the wellknown causes which raise or depress the standard of vitality, there seems to be,I

think I may venture to say there is, a rhythmic undulation in the flow of the vital force. The "dynamo"

which furnishes the working powers of consciousness and action has its annual, its monthly, its diurnal

waves, even its momentary ripples, in the current it furnishes. There are greater and lesser curves in the

movement of every day's life,a series of ascending and descending movements, a periodicity depending on

the very nature of the force at work in the living organism. Thus we have our good seasons and our bad

seasons, our good days and our bad days, life climbing and descending in long or short undulations, which I

>From this fact spring a great proportion of the errors of medical practice. On it are based the delusions of the

various shadowy systems which impose themselves on the ignorant and halflearned public as branches or

"schools" of science. A remedy taken at the time of the ascent in the curve of health is found successful. The

So long as this biological law exists, so long the charlatan will keep his hold on the ignorant public. So long

as it exists, the wisest practitioner will be liable to deceive himself about the effect of what he calls and loves

to think are his remedies. Long continued and sagacious observation will to some extent undeceive him; but

were it not for the happy illusion that his useless or even deleterious drugs were doing good service, many a

practitioner would give up his calling for one in which he could be more certain that he was really being

useful to the subjects of his professional dealings. For myself, I should prefer a physician of a sanguine

temperament, who had a firm belief in himself and his methods. I do not wonder at all that the public support

a whole community of pretenders who show the portraits of the patients they have "cured." The best

physicians will tell you that, though many patients get well under their treatment, they rarely cure anybody. If

you are told also that the best physician has many more patients die on his hands than the worst of his

fellowpractitioners, you may add these two statements to your bundle of paradoxes, and if they puzzle you I

[I take this opportunity of correcting a statement now going the rounds of the medical and probably other

periodicals. In "The Journal of the American Medical Association," dated April 26,1890, published at

Chicago, I am reported, in quotation marks, as saying, "Give me opium, wine, and milk, and I will cure all

In the first place, I never said I will cure, or can cure, or would or could cure, or had cured any disease. My

venerated instructor, Dr. James Jackson, taught me never to use that expression. Curo means, I take care of,

he used to say, and in that sense, if you mean nothing more, it is properly employed. So, in the amphitheatre

of the Ecole de Medecine, I used to read the words of Ambroise Pare, Je le pansay, Dieu le guarist." (I

dressed his wound, and God cured him.) Next, I am not in the habit of talking about "the diseases to which

flesh is heir." The expression has become rather too familiar for repetition, and belongs to the rhetoric of

other latitudes. And, lastly, I have said some plain things, perhaps some sharp ones, about the abuse of drugs

and the limited number of vitally important remedies, but I am not so ignorantly presumptuous as to make the

I paused a minute or two, and as no one spoke out; I put a question to the Counsellor.

"Most certainly I do. Don't they say that Theophrastus lived to his hundred and seventh year, and did n't he

complain of the shortness of life? At eighty a man has had just about time to get warmly settled in his nest.

Do you suppose he doesn't enjoy the quiet of that restingplace? No more haggard responsibility to keep him

awake nights,unless he prefers to retain his hold on offices and duties from which he can be excused if be

chooses. No more goading ambitions,he knows he has done his best. No more jealousies, if he were weak

enough to feel such ignoble stirrings in his more active season. An octogenarian with a good record, and free

from annoying or distressing infirmities, ought to be the happiest of men. Everybody treats him with

deference. Everybody wants to help him. He is the ward of the generations that have grown up since he was

in the vigor of maturity. Yes, let me live to be fourscore years, and then I will tell you whether I should like a

You carry the feelings of middle age, I said, in imagination, over into the period of senility, and then reason

and dream about it as if its whole mode of being were like that of the earlier period of life. But how many

things there are in old age which you must live into if you would expect to have any "realizing sense" of their

significance! In the first place, you have no coevals, or next to none. At fifty, your vessel is stanch, and you

are on deck with the rest, in all weathers. At sixty, the vessel still floats, and you are in the cabin. At seventy,

you, with a few fellowpassengers, are on a raft. At eighty, you are on a spars to which, possibly, one, or

two, or three friends of about your own age are still clinging. After that, you must expect soon to find

yourself alone, if you are still floating, with only a lifepreserver to keep your old whitebearded chin above

Kindness? Yes, pitying kindness, which is a bitter sweet in which the amiable ingredient can hardly be said to

predominate. How pleasant do you think it is to have an arm offered to you when you are walking on a level

surface, where there is no chance to trip? How agreeable do you suppose it is to have your wellmeaning

friends shout and screech at you, as if you were deaf as an adder, instead of only being, as you insist,

somewhat hard of hearing? I was a little over twenty years old when I wrote the lines which some of you may

"I thought you were one of those who looked upon old age cheerfully, and welcomed it as a season of peace

I am one of those who so regard it. Those are not bitter or scalding tears that fall from my eyes upon "the

mossy marbles." The young who left my side early in my life's journey are still with me in the unchanged

freshness and beauty of youth. Those who have long kept company with me live on after their seeming

departure, were it only by the mere force of habit; their images are all around me, as if every surface had been

a sensitive film that photographed them; their voices echo about me, as if they had been recorded on those

unforgetting cylinders which bring back to us the tones and accents that have imprinted them, as the hardened

sands show us the tracks of extinct animals. The melancholy of old age has a divine tenderness in it, which

only the sad experiences of life can lend a human soul. But there is a lower level,that of tranquil

contentment and easy acquiescence in the conditions in which we find ourselves; a lower level, in which old

age trudges patiently when it is not using its wings. I say its wings, for no period of life is so imaginative as

that which looks to younger people the most prosaic. The atmosphere of memory is one in which imagination

flies more easily and feels itself more at home than in the thinner ether of youthful anticipation. I have told

you some of the drawbacks of age; I would not have you forget its privileges. When it comes down from its

aerial excursions, it has much left to enjoy on the humble plane of being. And so you think you would like to

become an octogenarian? "I should," said the Counsellor, now a man in the high noon of bodily and mental

vigor. "Four moreyes, five moredecades would not be too much, I think. And how much I should live to

see in that time! I am glad you have laid down some rules by which a man may reasonably expect to leap the

Among the questions addressed to me, as to a large number of other persons, are the following. I take them

from "The American Hebrew" of April 4, 1890. I cannot pretend to answer them all, but I can say something

"I. Can you, of your own personal experience, find any justification whatever for the entertainment of

"II. Is this prejudice not due largely to the religious instruction that is given by the church acid

Sundayschool? For instance, the teachings that the Jews crucified Jesus; that they rejected him, and can only

secure salvation by belief in him, and similar matters that are calculated to excite in the impressionable mind

of the child an aversion, if not a loathing, for members of 'the despised race.'

"III. Have you observed in the social or business life of the Jew, so far as your personal experience has gone,

any different standard of conduct than prevails among Christians of the same social status?

As to the first question, I have had very slight acquaintance with the children of Israel. I shared more or less

the prevailing prejudices against the persecuted race. I used to read in my hymn book,I hope I quote

I grew up inheriting the traditional idea that they were a race lying under a curse for their obstinacy in

refusing the gospel. Like other children of New England birth, I walked in the narrow path of Puritan

exclusiveness. The great historical church of Christendom was presented to me as Bunyan depicted it: one of

the two giants sitting at the door of their caves, with the bones, of pilgrims scattered about them, and grinning

at the travellers whom they could no longer devour. In the nurseries of oldfashioned Orthodoxy there was

one religion in the world,one religion, and a multitude of detestable, literally damnable impositions,

believed in by uncounted millions, who were doomed to perdition for so believing. The Jews were the

believers in one of these false religions. It had been true once, but was now a pernicious and abominable lie.

The principal use of the Jews seemed to be to lend money, and to fulfil the predictions of the old prophets of

No doubt the individual sons of Abraham whom we found in our ill favored and illflavored streets were

apt to be unpleasing specimens of the race. It was against the most adverse influences of legislation, of

religious feeling, of social repugnance, that the great names of Jewish origin made themselves illustrious; that

the philosophers, the musicians, the financiers, the statesmen, of the last centuries forced the world to

recognize and accept them. Benjamin, the son of Isaac, a son of Israel, as his family name makes obvious, has

shown how largely Jewish blood has been represented in the great men and women of modern days.

There are two virtues which Christians have found it very hard to exemplify in practice. These are modesty

and civility. The Founder of the Christian religion appeared among a people accustomed to look for a

Messiah, a special ambassador from heaven, with an authoritative message. They were intimately acquainted

with every expression having reference to this divine messenger. They had a religion of their own, about

which Christianity agrees with Judaism in asserting that it was of divine origin. It is a serious fact, to which

we do not give all the attention it deserves, that this divinely instructed people were not satisfied with the

evidence that the young Rabbi who came to overthrow their ancient church and found a new one was a

supernatural being. "We think he was a great Doctor," said a Jewish companion with whom I was conversing.

He meant a great Teacher, I presume, though healing the sick was one of his special offices. Instead of

remembering that they were entitled to form their own judgment of the new Teacher, as they had judged of

Hillel and other great instructors, Christians, as they called themselves, have insulted, calumniated,

oppressed, abased, outraged, "the chosen race" during the long succession of centuries since the Jewish

contemporaries of the Founder of Christianity made up their minds that he did not meet the conditions

required by the subject of the predictions of their Scriptures. The course of the argument against them is very

"This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill you if you say he was a man."

It seems as if there should be certain laws of etiquette regulating the relation of different religions to each

other. It is not civil for a follower of Mahomet to call his neighbor of another creed a "Christian dog." Still

more, there should be something like politeness in the bearing of Christian sects toward each other, and of

believers in the new dispensation toward those who still adhere to the old. We are in the habit of allowing a

certain arrogant assumption to our Roman Catholic brethren. We have got used to their pretensions. They

may call us "heretics," if they like. They may speak of us as "infidels," if they choose, especially if they say it

in Latin. So long as there is no inquisition, so long as there is no auto da fe, we do not mind the hard words

much; and we have as good phrases to give them back: the Man of Sin and the Scarlet Woman will serve for

examples. But it is better to be civil to each other all round. I doubt if a convert to the religion of Mahomet

was ever made by calling a man a Christian dog. I doubt if a Hebrew ever became a good Christian if the

baptismal rite was performed by spitting on his Jewish gabardine. I have often thought of the advance in

comity and true charity shown in the title of my late honored friend James Freeman Clarke's book, "The Ten

Great Religions." If the creeds of mankind try to understand each other before attempting mutual

extermination, they will be sure to find a meaning in beliefs which are different from their own. The old

Calvinistic spirit was almost savagely exclusive. While the author of the "Ten Great Religions" was growing

up in Boston under the benignant, largeminded teachings of the Rev. James Freeman, the famous Dr. John

M. Mason, at New York, was fiercely attacking the noble humanity of "The Universal Prayer." "In

preaching," says his biographer, "he once quoted Pope's lines as to God's being adored alike 'by saint, by

savage, and by sage,' and pronounced it (in his deepest guttural) 'the most damnable lie.'"

What could the Hebrew expect when a Christian preacher could use such language about a petition breathing

the very soul of humanity? Happily, the true human spirit is encroaching on that arrogant and narrowminded

The golden rule should govern us in dealing with those whom we call unbelievers, with heathen, and with all

who do not accept our religious views. The Jews are with us as a perpetual lesson to teach us modesty and

civility. The religion we profess is not self evident. It did not convince the people to whom it was sent. We

have no claim to take it for granted that we are all right, and they are all wrong. And, therefore, in the midst

of all the triumphs of Christianity, it is well that the stately synagogue should lift its walls by the side of the

aspiring cathedral, a perpetual reminder that there are many mansions in the Father's earthly house as well as

in the heavenly one; that civilized humanity, longer in time and broader in space than any historical form of

Many years ago I argued with myself the proposition which my Hebrew correspondent has suggested.

Recognizing the fact that I was born to a birthright of national and social prejudices against "the chosen

people,"chosen as the object of contumely and abuse by the rest of the world,I pictured my own

inherited feelings of aversion in all their intensity, and the strain of thought under the influence of which

those prejudices gave way to a more human, a more truly Christian feeling of brotherhood. I must ask your

indulgence while I quote a few verses from a poem of my own, printed long ago under the title "At the

I was crowded between two children of Israel, and gave free inward expression to my feelings. All at once I

happened to look more closely at one of my neighbors, and saw that the youth was the very ideal of the Son

It is not to be expected that intimate relations will be established between Jewish and Christian communities

until both become so far rationalized and humanized that their differences are comparatively unimportant.

But already there is an evident approximation in the extreme left of what is called liberal Christianity and the

representatives of modern Judaism. The life of a man like the late Sir Moses Montefiore reads a lesson from

the Old Testament which might well have been inspired by the noblest teachings of the Christian Gospels.

Estelle bien gentille, cette petite? I said one day to Number Five, as our pretty Delilah put her arm between

us with a bunch of those tender early radishes that so recall the rosyfingered morning of Homer. The little

hand which held the radishes would not have shamed Aurora. That hand has never known drudgery, I feel

When I spoke those French words our little Delilah gave a slight, seemingly involuntary start, and her cheeks

grew of as bright a red as her radishes. Ah, said I to myself; does that young girl understand French? It may

There is a mystery about this girl. She seems to know her place perfectly,except, perhaps, when she burst

out crying, the other day, which was against all the rules of tablemaiden's etiquette, and yet she looks as

if she had been born to be waited on, and not to perform that humble service for others. We know that once in

a while girls with education and well connected take it into their heads to go into service for a few weeks or

months. Sometimes it is from economic motives,to procure means for their education, or to help members

of their families who need assistance. At any rate, they undertake the lighter menial duties of some household

where they are not known, and, having stoopedif stooping it is to be considered to lowly offices, no

born and bred servants are more faithful to all their obligations. You must not suppose she was christened

Delilah. Any of our ministers would hesitate to give such a heathen name to a Christian child.

The way she came to get it was this: The Professor was going to give a lecture before an occasional audience,

one evening. When he took his seat with the other Teacups, the American Annex whispered to the other

Annex, "His hair wants cutting,it looks like fury." "Quite so," said the English Annex. "I wish you would

tell him so, I do, awfully." "I'll fix it," said the American girl. So, after the teacups were emptied and the

company had left the table, she went up to the Professor. "You read this lecture, don't you, Professor?" she

said. "I do," he answered. "I should think that lock of hair which falls down over your forehead would trouble

you," she said. "It does sometimes," replied the Professor. "Let our little maid trim it for you. You're equal to

that, aren't you?" turning to the handmaiden. "I always used to cut my father's hair," she answered. She

brought a pair of glittering shears, and before she would let the Professor go she had trimmed his hair and

beard as they had not been dealt with for many a day. Everybody said the Professor looked ten years younger.

After that our little handmaiden was always called Delilah, among the talking Teacups.

The Mistress keeps a watchful eye on this young girl. I should not be surprised to find that she was carrying

out some ideal, some fancy or whim,possibly nothing more, but springing from some generous, youthful

impulse. Perhaps she is working for that little sister at the Blind Asylum. Where did she learn French? She

did certainly blush, and betrayed every sign of understanding the words spoken about her in that language.

Sometimes she sings while at her work, and we have all been struck with the pure, musical character of her

voice. It is just such a voice as ought to come from that round white throat. We made a discovery about it the

The Mistress keeps a piano in her room, and we have sometimes had music in the evening. One of The

Teacups, to whom I have slightly referred, is an accomplished pianist, and the two Annexes sing very sweetly

together,the American girl having a clear soprano voice, the English girl a mellow contralto. They had

sung several tunes, when the Mistress rang for Avis,for that is our Delilah's real name. She whispered to

the young girl, who blushed and trembled. "Don't be frightened," said the Mistress encouragingly. "I have

heard you singing 'Too Young for Love,' and I will get our pianist to play it. The young ladies both know it,

The two voices, with the accompaniment, had hardly finished the first line when a pure, ringing, almost

childlike voice joined the vocal duet. The sound of her own voice seemed to make her forget her fears, and

she warbled as naturally and freely as any young bird of a May morning. Number Five came in while she was

singing, and when she got through caught her in her arms and kissed her, as if she were her sister, and not

Delilah, our tablemaid. Number Five is apt to forget herself and those social differences to which some of us

I often wish that our Number Seven could have known and corresponded with the author of "The Budget of

Paradoxes." I think Mr. De Morgan would have found some of his vagaries and fancies not undeserving of a

place in his wonderful collection of eccentricities, absurdities, ingenuities,mental freaks of all sorts. But I

think he would have now and then recognized a sound idea, a just comparison, a suggestive hint, a practical

notion, which redeemed a page of extravagances and crotchety whims. I confess that I am often pleased with

fancies of his, and should be willing to adopt them as my own. I think he has, in the midst of his erratic and

So when Number Seven spoke of sending us a paper, I welcomed the suggestion. I asked him whether he had

any objection to my looking it over before he read it. My proposal rather pleased him, I thought, for, as was

observed on a former occasion, he has in connection with a belief in himself another side,a curious self

distrust. I have no question that he has an obscure sense of some mental deficiency. Thus you may expect

from him first a dogma, and presently a doubt. If you fight his dogma, he will do battle for it stoutly; if you

let him alone, he will very probably explain its extravagances, if it has any, and tame it into reasonable limits.

The first portion of what we listened to shows him at his best; in the latter part I am afraid you will think he

I proceed to lay before you the paper which Number Seven read to The Teacups. There was something very

pleasing in the deference which was shown him. We all feel that there is a crack in the teacup, and are

disposed to handle it carefully. I have left out a few things which he said, feeling that they might give offence

to some of the company. There were sentences so involved and obscure that I was sure they would not be

understood, if indeed he understood them himself. But there are other passages so entirely sane, and as it

seems to me so just, that if any reader attributes them to me I shall not think myself wronged by the

supposition. You must remember that Number Seven has had a fair education, that he has been a wide reader

in many directions, and that he belongs to a family of remarkable intellectual gifts. So it was not surprising

that he said some things which pleased the company, as in fact they did. The reader will not be startled to see

a certain abruptness in the transition from one subject to another,it is a characteristic of the squinting brain

wherever you find it. Another curious mark rarely wanting in the subjects of mental strabismus is an irregular

and often sprawling and deformed handwriting. Many and many a time I have said, after glancing at the back

of a letter, "This comes from an insane asylum, or from an eccentric who might well be a candidate for such

an institution." Number Seven's manuscript, which showed marks of my corrections here and there, furnished

good examples of the chirography of persons with illmated cerebral hemispheres. But the earlier portions of

Conticuere omnes, as Virgil says. We were all silent as Number Seven began the reading of his paper.

I am the seventh son of a seventh son, as I suppose you all know. It is commonly believed that some

extraordinary gifts belong to the fortunate individuals born under these exceptional conditions. However this

may be, a peculiar virtue was supposed to dwell in me from my earliest years. My touch was believed to have

the influence formerly attributed to that of the kings and queens of England. You may remember that the

great Dr. Samuel Johnson, when a child, was carried to be touched by her Majesty Queen Anne for the

"king's evil," as scrofula used to be called. Our honored friend The Dictator will tell you that the brother of

one of his Andover schoolmates was taken to one of these gifted persons, who touched him, and hung a small

bright silver coin, either a "fourpence ha'penny" or a "ninepence," about his neck, which, strange to say, after

being worn a certain time, became tarnished, and finally black,a proof of the poisonous matters which had

become eliminated from the system and gathered upon the coin. I remember that at one time I used to carry

fourpence ha'pennies with holes bored through them, which I furnished to children or to their mothers, under

pledges of secrecy,receiving a piece of silver of larger dimensions in exchange. I never felt quite sure

about any extraordinary endowment being a part of my inheritance in virtue of my special conditions of birth.

A phrenologist, who examined my head when I was a boy, said the two sides were unlike. My hatter's

measurement told me the same thing; but in looking over more than a bushel of the small cardboard

hatpatterns which give the exact shape of the head, I have found this is not uncommon. The phrenologist

made all sorts of predictions of what I should be and do, which proved about as near the truth as those

recorded in Miss Edith Thomas's charming little poem, "Augury," which some of us were reading the other

day. I have never been through college, but I had a relative who was famous as a teacher of rhetoric in one of

our universities, and especially for taking the nonsense out of sophomorical young fellows who could not say

anything without rigging it up in showy and sounding phrases. I think I learned from him to express myself in

good oldfashioned English, and without making as much fuss about it as our Fourth of July orators and

political haranguers were in the habit of making. I read a good many stories during my boyhood, one of

which left a lasting impression upon me, and which I have always commended to young people. It is too late,

generally, to try to teach old people, yet one may profit by it at any period of life before the sight has become

too dim to be of any use. The story I refer to is in "Evenings at Home," and is called "Eyes and No Eyes." I

ought to have it by me, but it is constantly happening that the best old things get overlaid by the newest trash;

and though I have never seen anything of the kind half so good, my table and shelves are cracking with the

weight of involuntary accessions to my library. This is the story as I remember it: Two children walk out, and

are questioned when they come home. One has found nothing to observe, nothing to admire, nothing to

describe, nothing to ask questions about. The other has found everywhere objects of curiosity and interest. I

advise you, if you are a child anywhere under forty five, and do not yet wear glasses, to send at once for

"Evenings at Home" and read that story. For myself, I am always grateful to the writer of it for calling my

attention to common things. How many people have been waked to a quicker consciousness of life by

Wordsworth's simple lines about the daffodils, and what he says of the thoughts suggested to him by "the

meanest flower that blows"! I was driving with a friend, the other day, through a somewhat dreary stretch of

country, where there seemed to be very little to attract notice or deserve remark. Still, the old spirit infused by

"Eyes and No Eyes" was upon me, and I looked for something to fasten my thought upon, and treat as an

artist treats a study for a picture. The first object to which my eyes were drawn was an oldfashioned

wellsweep. It did not take much imaginative sensibility to be stirred by the sight of this most useful, most

ancient, most picturesque, of domestic conveniences. I know something of the shadoof of Egypt, the same

arrangement by which the sacred waters of the Nile have been lifted, from the days of the Pharaohs to those

of the Khedives. That long forefinger pointing to heaven was a symbol which spoke to the Puritan exile as it

spoke of old to the enslaved Israelite. Was there ever any such water as that which we used to draw from the

deep, cold well, in "the old oaken bucket"? What memories gather about the well in all ages! What

lovematches have been made at its margin, from the times of Jacob and, Rachel downward! What fairy

legends hover over it, what fearful mysteries has it hidden! The beautiful wellsweep! It is too rarely that we

see it, and as it dies out and gives place to the odiously convenient pump, with the last patent on its castiron

uninterestingness, does it not seem as if the farmyard aspect had lost half its attraction? So long as the dairy

farm exists, doubtless there must be every facility for getting water in abundance; but the loss of the

wellsweep cannot be made up to us even if our milk were diluted to twice its present attenuation. The

wellsweep had served its turn, and my companion and I relapsed into silence. After a while we passed

another farmyard, with nothing which seemed deserving of remark except the wreck of an old wagon.

"Look," I said, "if you want to see one of the greatest of all the triumphs of human ingenuity, one of the most

beautiful, as it is one of the most useful, of all the mechanisms which the intelligence of successive ages has

called into being." "I see nothing," my companion answered, "but an old brokendown wagon. Why they

leave such a piece of lumbering trash about their place, where people can see it as they pass, is more than I

can account for." "And yet," said I, "there is one of the most extraordinary products of human genius and

skill,an object which combines the useful and the beautiful to an extent which hardly any simple form of

mechanism can pretend to rival. Do you notice how, while everything else has gone to smash, that wheel

remains sound and fit for service? Look at it merely for its beauty. See the perfect circles, the outer and the

inner. A circle is in itself a consummate wonder of geometrical symmetry. It is the line in which the

omnipotent energy delights to move. There is no fault in it to be amended. The first drawn circle and the last

both embody the same complete fulfillment of a perfect design. Then look at the rays which pass from the

inner to the outer circle. How beautifully they bring the greater and lesser circles into connection with each

other! The flowers know that secret,the marguerite in the meadow displays it as clearly as the great sun in

heaven. How beautiful is this flower of wood and iron, which we were ready to pass by without wasting a

look upon it! But its beauty is only the beginning of its wonderful claim upon us for our admiration. Look at

that field of flowering grass, the triticum vulgare,see how its waves follow the breeze in satiny alternations

of light and shadow. You admire it for its lovely aspect; but when you remember that this flowering grass is

wheat, the finest food of the highest human races, it gains a dignity, a glory, that its beauty alone could not

give it. "Now look at that exquisite structure lying neglected and disgraced, but essentially unchanged in its

perfection, before you. That slight and delicatelooking fabric has stood such a trial as hardly any slender

contrivance, excepting always the valves of the heart, was ever subjected to. It has rattled for years over the

cobblestones of a rough city pavement. It has climbed over all the accidental obstructions it met in the

highway, and dropped into all the holes and deep ruts that made the heavy farmer sitting over it use his

Sunday vocabulary in a weekday form of speech. At one time or another, almost every part of that old

wagon has given way. It has had two new pairs of shafts. Twice the axle has broken off close to the hub, or

nave. The seat broke when Zekle and Huldy were having what they called 'a ride' together. The front was

kicked in by a vicious mare. The springs gave way and the floor bumped on the axle. Every portion of the

wagon became a prey of its special accident, except that most fragile looking of all its parts, the wheel. Who

can help admiring the exact distribution of the power of resistance at the least possible expenditure of

material which is manifested in this wondrous triumph of human genius and skill? The spokes are planted in

the solid hub as strongly as the jawteeth of a lion in their deepsunken sockets. Each spoke has its own

territory in the circumference, for which it is responsible. According to the load the vehicle is expected to

carry, they are few or many, stout or slender, but they share their joint labor with absolute justice,not one

does more, not one does less, than its just proportion. The outer end of the spokes is received into the deep

mortise of the wooden fellies, and the structure appears to be complete. But how long would it take to turn

that circle into a polygon, unless some mighty counteracting force should prevent it? See the iron tire brought

hot from the furnace and laid around the smoking circumference. Once in place, the workman cools the hot

iron; and as it shrinks with a force that seems like a handgrasp of the Omnipotent, it clasps the fitted

fragments of the structure, and compresses them into a single inseparable whole. "Was it not worth our while

to stop a moment before passing that old broken wagon, and see whether we could not find as much in it as

Swift found in his 'Meditations on a Broomstick'? I have been laughed at for making so much of such a

common thing as a wheel. Idiots! Solomon's court fool would have scoffed at the thought of the young

Galilean who dared compare the lilies of the field to his august master. Nil admirari is very well for a North

American Indian and his degenerate successor, who has grown too grand to admire anything but himself, and

takes a cynical pride in his stolid indifference to everything worth reverencing or honoring." After calling my

companion's attention to the wheel, and discoursing upon it until I thought he was getting sleepy, we jogged

along until we came to a running stream. It was crossed by a stone bridge of a single arch. There are very few

stone arches over the streams in New England country towns, and I always delighted in this one. It was built

in the last century, amidst the doubting predictions of staring rustics, and stands today as strong as ever, and

seemingly good for centuries to come. "See there!" said I,"there is another of my 'Eyes and No Eyes'

subjects to meditate upon. Next to the wheel, the arch is the noblest of those elementary mechanical

composites, corresponding to the proximate principles of chemistry. The beauty of the arch consists first in its

curve, commonly a part of the circle, of the perfection of which I have spoken. But the mind derives another

distinct pleasure from the admirable manner in which the several parts, each different from all the others,

contribute to a single harmonious effect. It is a typical example of the piu nel uno. An arch cut out or a single

stone would not be so beautiful as one of which each individual stone was shaped for its exact position. Its

completion by the locking of the keystone is a delight to witness and to contemplate. And how the arch

endures, when its lateral thrust is met by solid masses of resistance! In one of the great temples of Baalbec a

keystone has slipped, but how rare is that occurrence! One will hardly find another such example among all

the ruins of antiquity. Yes, I never get tired of arches. They are noble when shaped of solid marble blocks,

each carefully beveled for its position. They are beautiful when constructed with the large thin tiles the

Romans were so fond of using. I noticed some arches built in this way in the wall of one of the grand houses

just going up on the bank of the river. They were over the capstones of the windows, to take off the

pressure from them, no doubt, for now and then a capstone will crack under the weight of the superincumbent

mass. How close they fit, and how striking the effect of their long radiations!" The company listened very

well up to this point. When he began the strain of thoughts which follows, a curious look went round The

Teacups. What a strange underground life is that which is led by the organisms we call trees! These great

fluttering masses of leaves, stems, boughs, trunks, are not the real trees. They live underground, and what we

see are nothing more nor less than their tails. The Mistress dropped her teaspoon. Number Five looked at the

Doctor, whose face was very still and sober. The two Annexes giggled, or came very near it. Yes, a tree is an

underground creature, with its tail in the air. All its intelligence is in its roots. All the senses it has are in its

roots. Think what sagacity it shows in its search after food and drink! Somehow or other, the rootlets, which

are its tentacles, find out that there is a brook at a moderate distance from the trunk of the tree, and they make

for it with all their might. They find every crack in the rocks where there are a few grains of the nourishing

substance they care for, and insinuate themselves into its deepest recesses. When spring and summer come,

they let their tails grow, and delight in whisking them about in the wind, or letting them be whisked about by

it; for these tails are poor passive things, with very little will of their own, and bend in whatever direction the

wind chooses to make them. The leaves make a deal of noise whispering. I have sometimes thought I could

understand them, as they talk with each other, and that they seemed to think they made the wind as they

wagged forward and back. Remember what I say. The next time you see a tree waving in the wind, recollect

that it is the tail of a great underground, manyarmed, polypuslike creature, which is as proud of its caudal

appendage, especially in summertime, as a peacock of his gorgeous expanse of plumage. Do you think there

is anything so very odd about this idea? Once get it well into your heads, and you will find it renders the

landscape wonderfully interesting. There are as many kinds of treetails as there are of tails to dogs and other

quadrupeds. Study them as Daddy Gilpin studied them in his "Forest Scenery," but don't forget that they are

only the appendage of the underground vegetable polypus, the true organism to which they belong. He

paused at this point, and we all drew long breaths, wondering what was coming next. There was no denying

it, the "cracked Teacup" was clinking a little false,so it seemed to the company. Yet, after all, the fancy

was not delirious,the mind could follow it well enough; let him go on. What do you say to this? You have

heard all sorts of things said in prose and verse about Niagara. Ask our young Doctor there what it reminds

him of. Is n't it a giant putting his tongue out? How can you fail to see the resemblance? The continent is a

great giant, and the northern half holds the head and shoulders. You can count the pulse of the giant wherever

the tide runs up a creek; but if you want to look at the giant's tongue, you must go to Niagara. If there were

such a thing as a cosmic physician, I believe he could tell the state of the country's health, and the prospects

of the mortality for the coming season, by careful inspection of the great tongue, which Niagara is putting out

for him, and has been showing to mankind ever since the first flintshapers chipped their arrowheads. You

don't think the idea adds to the sublimity and associations of the cataract? I am sorry for that, but I can't help

the suggestion. It is just as manifestly a tongue put out for inspection as if it had Nature's own label to that

effect hung over it. I don't know whether you can see these things as clearly as I do. There are some people

that never see anything, if it is as plain as a hole in a grindstone, until it is pointed out to them; and some that

can't see it then, and won't believe there is any hole till they've poked their finger through it. I've got a great

many things to thank God for, but perhaps most of all that I can find something to admire, to wonder at, to set

Look here! There are crowds of people whirled through our streets on these newfashioned cars, with their

witchbroomsticks overhead,if they don't come from Salem, they ought to,and not more than one in a

dozen of these fisheyed bipeds thinks or cares a nickel's worth about the miracle which is wrought for their

convenience. They know that without hands or feet, without horses, without steam, so far as they can see,

they are transported from place to place, and that there is nothing to account for it except the

witchbroomstick and the iron or copper cobweb which they see stretched above them. What do they know

or care about this last revelation of the omnipresent spirit of the material universe? We ought to go down on

our knees when one of these mighty caravans, car after car, spins by us, under the mystic impulse which

seems to know not whether its train is loaded or empty. We are used to force in the muscles of horses, in the

expansive potency of steam, but here we have force stripped stark naked,nothing but a filament to cover its

nudity,and yet showing its might in efforts that would task the workingbeam of a ponderous

steamengine. I am thankful that in an age of cynicism I have not lost my reverence. Perhaps you would

wonder to see how some very common sights impress me. I always take off my hat if I stop to speak to a

stonecutter at his work. "Why?" do you ask me? Because I know that his is the only labor that is likely to

endure. A score of centuries has not effaced the marks of the Greek's or the Roman's chisel on his block of

marble. And now, before this new manifestation of that form of cosmic vitality which we call electricity, I

feel like taking the posture of the peasants listening to the Angelus. How near the mystic effluence of

mechanical energy brings us to the divine source of all power and motion! In the old mythology, the right

hand of Jove held and sent forth the lightning. So, in the record of the Hebrew prophets, did the right hand of

Jehovah cast forth and direct it. Was Nahum thinking of our faroff time when he wrote, "The chariots shall

rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they

Number Seven had finished reading his paper. Two bright spots in his cheeks showed that he had felt a good

deal in writing it, and the flush returned as he listened to his own thoughts. Poor old fellow! The "cracked

Teacup" of our younger wits,not yet come to their full human sensibilities,the "crank" of vulgar

tongues, the eccentric, the seventh son of a seventh son, too often made the butt of thoughtless pleasantry,

was, after all, a fellowcreature, with flesh and blood like the rest of us. The wild freaks of his fancy did not

hurt us, nor did they prevent him from seeing many things justly, and perhaps sometimes more vividly and

The teaspoons tinkled loudly all round the table, as he finished reading. The Mistress caught her breath. I was

afraid she was going to sob, but she took it out in vigorous stirring of her tea. Will you believe that I saw

Number Five, with a sweet, approving smile on her face all the time, brush her cheek with her

handkerchief? There must have been a tear stealing from beneath its eyelid. I hope Number Seven saw it.

He is one of the two men at our table who most need the tender looks and tones of a woman. The Professor

and I are hors de combat; the Counsellor is busy with his cases and his ambitions; the Doctor is probably in

love with a microscope, and flirting with pathological specimens; but Number Seven and the Tutor are, I fear,

Do you remember that Number Seven said he never wrote a line of "poetry" in his life, except once when he

was suffering from temporary weakness of body and mind? That is because he is a poet. If he had not been

one, he would very certainly have taken to tinkling rhymes. What should you think of the probable musical

genius of a young man who was particularly fond of jingling a set of sleighbells? Should you expect him to

turn out a Mozart or a Beethoven? Now, I think I recognize the poetical instinct in Number Seven, however

imperfect may be its expression, and however he may be run away with at times by fantastic notions that

come into his head. If fate had allotted him a helpful companion in the shape of a loving and intelligent wife,

he might have been half cured of his eccentricities, and we should not have had to say, in speaking of him,

"Poor fellow!" But since this cannot be, I am pleased that he should have been so kindly treated on the

occasion of the reading of his paper. If he saw Number Five's tear, he will certainly fall in love with her. No

matter if he does Number Five is a kind of Circe who does not turn the victims of her enchantment into

swine, but into lambs. I want to see Number Seven one of her little flock. I say "little." I suspect it is larger

than most of us know. Anyhow, she can spare him sympathy and kindness and encouragement enough to

keep him contented with himself and with her, and never miss the pulses of her loving life she lends him. It

seems to be the errand of some women to give many people as much happiness as they have any right to in

this world. If they concentrated their affection on one, they would give him more than any mortal could claim

as his share. I saw Number Five watering her flowers, the other day. The wateringpot had one of those

perforated heads, through which the water runs in many small streams. Every plant got its share: the proudest

lily bent beneath the gentle shower; the lowliest daisy held its little face up for baptism. All were refreshed,

none was flooded. Presently she took the perforated head, or "rose," from the neck of the wateringpot, and

the full stream poured out in a round, solid column. It was almost too much for the poor geranium on which it

fell, and it looked at one minute as if the roots would be laid bare, and perhaps the whole plant be washed out

of the soil in which it was planted. What if Number Five should take off the "rose" that sprinkles her

affections on so many, and pour them all on one? Can that ever be? If it can, life is worth living for him on

One of my neighbors, a thorough American, is much concerned about the growth of what he calls the

"I was putting up a fence about my yard, and employed a man of whom I knew something,that he was

industrious, temperate, and that he had a wife and children to support,a worthy man, a native New

Englander. I engaged him, I say, to dig some postholes. My employee bought a new spade and scoop on

purpose, and came to my place at the appointed time, and began digging. While he was at work, two men

came over from a drinkingsaloon, to which my residence is nearer than I could desire. One of them I had

known as Mike Fagan, the other as Hans Schleimer. They looked at Hiram, my New Hampshire man, in a

"'Faith, we'll make it our business,' said Mike Fagan. 'We're Knoights of Labor, we'd have yez to know, and

ye can't make yer bargains fist as ye loikes. We manes to know how mony hours ye worrks, and how much

"'Knights of Labor!' said I. 'Why, that is a kind of title of nobility, is n't it? I thought the laws of our country

did n't allow titles of that kind. But if you have a right to be called knights, I suppose I ought to address you

as such. Sir Michael, I congratulate you on the dignity you have attained. I hope Lady Fagan is getting on

well with my shirts. Sir Hans, I pay my respects to your title. I trust that Lady Schleixner has got through that

little difficulty between her ladyship and yourself in which the police court thought it necessary to intervene.'

"The two men looked at me. I weigh about a hundred and eighty pounds, and am well put together. Hiram

was noted in his village as a 'rahstler.' But my face is rather pallid and peaked, and Hiram had something of

the greenhorn look. The two men, who had been drinking, hardly knew what ground to take. They rather

liked the sound of ,Sir Michael and, Sir Hans. They did not know very well what to make of their wives as

'ladies.' They looked doubtful whether to take what had been said as a casus belli or not, but they wanted a

pretext of some kind or other. Presently one of them saw a label on the scoop, or longhandled, spoonlike

"'Arrah, be jabers!' exclaimed Mike Fagan, 'but has n't he been atradin' wid Brown, the hardware fellah, that

we boycotted! Grab it, Hans, and we'll carry it off and show it to the brotherhood.'

"I stepped to his side. The Knights were combative, as their noble predecessors with the same title always

were, and it was necessary to come to a voie de fait. My straight blow from the shoulder did for Sir Michael.

"'Naow, Dutchman,' said Hiram, 'if you don't want to be planted in that are posthole, y'd better take y'rself

out o' this here piece of private property. "Dangerous passin'," as the signposts say, abaout these times.'

"Sir Michael went down half stunned by my expressive gesture; Sir Hans did not know whether his hip was

out of joint or he had got a bad sprain; but they were both out of condition for further hostilities. Perhaps it

was hardly fair to take advantage of their misfortunes to inflict a discourse upon them, but they had brought it

"'I tell you what it is,' said Hiram, 'I'm a free and independent American citizen, and I an't agon' to hev no

man tyrannize over me, if he doos call himself by one o' them noblemen's titles. Ef I can't work jes' as I

choose, fur folks that wants me to work fur 'em and that I want to work fur, I might jes' as well go to Sibery

and done with it. My gran'f'ther fit in Bunker Hill battle. I guess if our folks in them days did n't care no great

abaout Lord Percy and Sir William Haowe, we an't agon' to be scart by Sir Michael Fagan and Sir Hans

What 'shisname, nor no other fellahs that undertakes to be noblemen, and tells us common folks what we

"I took the opportunity to explain to Sir Michael and Sir Hans what it was our fathers fought for, and what is

the meaning of liberty. If these noblemen did not like the country, they could go elsewhere. If they did n't like

the laws, they had the ballotbox, and could choose new legislators. But as long as the laws existed they must

obey them. I could not admit that, because they called themselves by the titles the Old World nobility thought

so much of, they had a right to interfere in the agreements I entered into with my neighbor. I told Sir Michael

that if he would go home and help Lady Fagan to saw and split the wood for her fire, he would be better

employed than in meddling with my domestic arrangements. I advised Sir Hans to ask Lady Schleimer for

her bottle of spirits to use as an embrocation for his lame hip. And so my two visitors with the aristocratic

titles staggered off, and left us plain, untitled citizens, Hiram and myself, to set our posts, and consider the

question whether we lived in a free country or under the authority of a selfconstituted order of

It is a very curious fact that, with all our boasted "free and equal" superiority over the communities of the Old

World, our people have the most enormous appetite for Old World titles of distinction. Sir Michael and Sir

Hans belong to one of the most extended of the aristocratic orders. But we have also "Knights and Ladies of

Honor," and, what is still grander, "Royal Conclave of Knights and Ladies," "Royal Arcanum," and "Royal

Society of Good Fellows," " Supreme Council," "Imperial Court," "Grand Protector," and "Grand Dictator,"

and so on. Nothing less than "Grand" and 11 Supreme" is good enough for the dignitaries of our associations

of citizens. Where does all this ambition for names without realities come from? Because a Knight of the

Garter wears a golden star, why does the worthy cordwainer, who mends the shoes of his fellowcitizens,

want to wear a tin star, and take a name that had a meaning as used by the representatives of ancient families,

It appears to be a peculiarly American weakness. The French republicans of the earlier period thought the

term citizen was good enough for anybody. At a later period, "Roi Citoyen"the citizen king was a common

title given to Louis Philippe. But nothing is too grand for the American, in the way of titles. The proudest of

them all signify absolutely nothing. They do not stand for ability, for public service, for social importance,

for large possessions; but, on the contrary, are oftenest found in connection with personalities to which they

are supremely inapplicable. We can hardly afford to quarrel with a national habit which, if lightly handled,

may involve us in serious domestic difficulties. The "Right Worshipful" functionary whose equipage stops at

my back gate, and whose services are indispensable to the health and comfort of my household, is a dignitary

whom I must not offend. I must speak with proper deference to the lady who is scrubbing my floors, when I

remember that her husband, who saws my wood, carries a string of highsounding titles which would satisfy

After all, every people must have its own forms of ostentation, pretence, and vulgarity. The ancient Romans

had theirs, the English and the French have theirs as well,why should not we Americans have ours?

Educated and refined persons must recognize frequent internal conflicts between the "Homo sum" of Terence

and the "Odi profanum vulgus" of Horace. The nobler sentiment should be that of every true American, and it

We were waited on by a new girl, the other evening. Our pretty maiden had left us for a visit to some

relative,so the Mistress said. I do sincerely hope she will soon come back, for we all like to see her flitting

I don't know what to make of it. I had it all laid out in my mind. With such a company there must be a

lovestory. Perhaps there will be, but there may be new combinations of the elements which are to make it

up, and here is a bud among the fullblown flowers to which I must devote a little space.

I must call her by the name we gave her after she had trimmed the Samson locks of our Professor. Delilah is a

puzzle to most of us. A pretty creature, dangerously pretty to be in a station not guarded by all the protective

arrangements which surround the maidens of a higher social order. It takes a strong cage to keep in a tiger or

a grizzly bear, but what iron bars, what barbed wires, can keep out the smooth and subtle enemy that finds out

the cage where beauty is imprisoned? Our young Doctor is evidently attracted by the charming maiden who

serves him and us so modestly and so gracefully. Fortunately, the Mistress never loses sight of her. If she

were her own daughter, she could not be more watchful of all her movements. And yet I do not believe that

Delilah needs all this overlooking. If I am not mistaken, she knows how to take care of herself, and could be

trusted anywhere, in any company, without a duenna. She has a history,I feel sure of it. She has been

trained and taught as young persons of higher position in life are brought up, and does not belong in the

humble station in which we find her. But inasmuch as the Mistress says nothing about her antecedents, we do

not like to be too inquisitive. The two Annexes are, it is plain, very curious about her. I cannot wonder. They

are both goodlooking girls, but Delilah is prettier than either of them. My sight is not so good as it was, but I

can see the way in which the eyes of the young people follow each other about plainly enough to set me

thinking as to what is going on in the thinking marrow behind them. The young Doctor's follow Delilah as

she glides round the table,they look into hers whenever they get a chance; but the girl's never betray any

consciousness of it, so far as I can see. There is no mistaking the interest with which the two, Annexes watch

all this. Why shouldn't they, I should like to know? The Doctor is a bright young fellow, and wants nothing

but a bald spot and a wife to find himself in a comfortable family practice. One of the Annexes, as I have

said,. has had thoughts of becoming a doctress. I don't think the Doctor would want his wife to practise

medicine, for reasons which I will not stop to mention. Such a partnership sometimes works wonderfully

well, as in one wellknown instance where husband and wife are both eminent in the profession; but our

young Doctor has said to me that he had rather see his wife,if he ever should have one,at the piano than

at the dissectingtable. Of course the Annexes know nothing about this, and they may think, as he professed

himself willing to lecture on medicine to women, he might like to take one of his pupils as a helpmeet.

If it were not for our Delilah's humble position, I don't see why she would not be a good match for any young

man. But then it is so hard to take a young woman from so very lowly a condition as that of a "waitress" that

it would require a deal of courage to venture on such a step. If we could only find out that she is a princess in

disguise, so to speak,that is, a young person of presentable connections as well as pleasing looks and

manners; that she has had an education of some kind, as we suspected when she blushed on hearing herself

spoken of as a "gentille petite," why, then everything would be all right, the young Doctor would have plain

sailing,that is, if be is in love with her, and if she fancies him,and I should find my lovestory,the

one I expected, but not between the parties I had thought would be mating with each other.

Dear little Delilah! Lily of the valley, growing in the shade now, perhaps better there until her petals drop;

and yet if she is all I often fancy she is, how her youthful presence would illuminate and sweeten a

household! There is not one of us who does not feel interested in her,not one of us who would not be

delighted at some Cinderella transformation which would show her in the setting Nature meant for her

The fancy of Number Seven about the witches' broomsticks suggested to one of us the following poem:

In my last report of our talks over the teacups I had something to say of the fondness of our people for titles.

Where did the anti republican, antidemocratic passion for swelling names come from, and how long has it

A striking instance of it occurred at about the end of the last century. It was at that time there appeared among

us one of the most original and singular personages to whom America has given birth. Many of our

company,many of my readers,all well acquainted with his name, and not wholly ignorant of his history.

They will not object to my giving some particulars relating to him, which, if not new to them, will be new to

Timothy Dexter, the first claimant of a title of nobility among the people of the United States of America,

was born in the town of Malden, near Boston. He served an apprenticeship as a leather dresser, saved some

money, got some more with his wife, began trading and speculating, and became at last rich, for those days.

His most famous business enterprise was that of sending an invoice of warming pans to the West Indies. A

few tons of ice would have seemed to promise a better return; but in point of fact, he tells us, the

warmingpans were found useful in the manufacture of sugar, and brought him in a handsome profit. His

ambition rose with his fortune. He purchased a large and stately house in Newburyport, and proceeded to

embellish and furnish it according to the dictates of his taste and fancy. In the grounds about his house, he

caused to be erected between forty and fifty wooden statues of great men and allegorical figures, together

with four lions and one lamb. Among these images were two statues of Dexter himself, one of which held a

label with a characteristic inscription. His house was ornamented with minarets, adorned with golden balls,

and surmounted by a large gilt eagle. He equipped it with costly furniture, with paintings, and a library. He

went so far as to procure the services of a poet laureate, whose business it seems to have been to sing his

praises. Surrounded with splendors like these, the plain title of "Mr." Dexter would have been infinitely too

mean and common. He therefore boldly took the step of selfennobling, and gave himself forthas he said,

obeying "the voice of the people at large"as "Lord Timothy Dexter," by which appellation he has ever

If to be the pioneer in the introduction of Old World titles into republican America can confer a claim to be

remembered by posterity, Lord Timothy Dexter has a right to historic immortality. If the true American spirit

shows itself most clearly in boundless self assertion, Timothy Dexter is the great original American egotist.

If to throw off the shackles of Old World pedantry, and defy the paltry rules and examples of grammarians

and rhetoricians, is the special province and the chartered privilege of the American writer, Timothy Dexter is

the founder of a new school, which tramples under foot the conventionalities that hampered and subjugated

the faculties of the poets, the dramatists, the historians, essayists, storytellers, orators, of the wornout races

The material traces of the first American nobleman's existence have nearly disappeared. The house is still

standing, but the statues, the minarets, the arches, and the memory of the great Lord Timothy Dexter live

chiefly in tradition, and in the work which be bequeathed to posterity, and of which I shall say a few words. It

is unquestionably a thoroughly original production, and I fear that some readers may think I am trifling with

them when I am quoting it literally. I am going to make a strong claim for Lord Timothy as against other

Thomas Jefferson is commonly recognized as the first to proclaim before the world the political

independence of America. It is not so generally agreed upon as to who was the first to announce the literary

One of Mr. Emerson's biographers has claimed that his Phi Beta Kappa Oration was our Declaration of

Literary Independence. But Mr. Emerson did not cut himself loose from all the traditions of Old World

scholarship. He spelled his words correctly, he constructed his sentences grammatically. He adhered to the

slavish rules of propriety, and observed the reticences which a traditional delicacy has considered inviolable

in decent society, European and Oriental alike. When he wrote poetry, he commonly selected subjects which

seemed adapted to poetical treatment,apparently thinking that all things were not equally calculated to

inspire the true poet's genius. Once, indeed, he ventured to refer to "the meal in the firkin, the milk in the

pan," but he chiefly restricted himself to subjects such as a fastidious conventionalism would approve as

having a certain fitness for poetical treatment. He was not always so careful as he might have been in the

rhythm and rhyme of his verse, but in the main he recognized the old established laws which have been

accepted as regulating both. In short, with all his originality, he worked in Old World harness, and cannot be

considered as the creator of a truly American, selfgoverned, selfcentred, absolutely independent style of

A stronger claim might be urged for Mr. Whitman. He takes into his hospitable vocabulary words which no

English dictionary recognizes as belonging to the language,words which will be looked for in vain outside

of his own pages. He accepts as poetical subjects all things alike, common and unclean, without

discrimination, miscellaneous as the contents of the great sheet which Peter saw let down from heaven. He

carries the principle of republicanism through the whole world of created objects. He will "thread a thread

through [his] poems," he tells us, "that no one thing in the universe is inferior to another thing." No man has

ever asserted the surpassing dignity and importance of the American citizen so boldly and freely as Mr.

Whitman. He calls himself "teacher of the unquenchable creed, namely, egotism." He begins one of his

chants, "I celebrate myself," but he takes us all in as partners in his selfglorification. He believes in America

"A world primal again,vistas of glory incessant and branching, A new race dominating previous ones and

Of the new literature be himself has furnished specimens which certainly have all the originality he can claim

for them. So far as egotism is concerned, he was clearly anticipated by the titled personage to whom I have

referred, who says of himself, "I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in

the Western world." But while Mr. Whitman divests himself of a part of his baptismal name, the

distinguished New Englander thus announces his proud position: "Ime the first Lord in the younited States of

A mercary Now of Newburyport. it is the voice of the peopel and I cant Help it." This extract is from his

famous little book called "A Pickle for the Knowing Ones." As an inventor of a new American style he goes

far beyond Mr. Whitman, who, to be sure, cares little for the dictionary, and makes his own rules of rhythm,

so far as there is any rhythm in his sentences. But Lord Timothy spells to suit himself, and in place of

employing punctuation as it is commonly used, prints a separate page of periods, colons, semicolons,

commas, notes of interrogation and of admiration, with which the reader is requested to "peper and soolt" the

I am afraid that Mr. Emerson and Mr. Whitman must yield the claim of declaring American literary

independence to Lord Timothy Dexter, who not only taught his countrymen that they need not go to the

Heralds' College to authenticate their titles of nobility, but also that they were at perfect liberty to spell just as

they liked, and to write without troubling themselves about stops of any kind. In writing what I suppose he

intended for poetry, he did not even take the pains to break up his lines into lengths to make them look like

How great the soul is! Do not you all wonder and admire to see and behold and hear? Can you all believe half

the truth, and admire to hear the wonders how great the soul isonly beholdpast finding out! Only see

how large the soul is! that if a man is drowned in the sea what a great bubble comes up out of the top of the

I confess that I am not in sympathy with some of the movements that accompany the manifestations of

American social and literary independence. I do not like the assumption of titles of Lords and Knights by

plain citizens of a country which prides itself on recognizing simple manhood and womanhood as sufficiently

entitled to respect without these unnecessary additions. I do not like any better the familiar, and as it seems to

me rude, way of speaking of our fellowcitizens who are entitled to the common courtesies of civilized

society. I never thought it dignified or even proper for a President of the United States to call himself, or to be

called by others, "Frank" Pierce. In the first place I had to look in a biographical dictionary to find out

whether his baptismal name was Franklin, or Francis, or simply Frank, for I think children are sometimes

christened with this abbreviated name. But it is too much in the style of Cowper's unpleasant acquaintance :

I should not like to hear our past chief magistrates spoken of as Jack Adams or Jim Madison, and it would

have been only as a political partisan that I should have reconciled myself to "Tom" Jefferson. So, in spite of

"Ben" Jonson, "Tom" Moore, and "Jack" Sheppard, I prefer to speak of a fellowcitizen already venerable by

his years, entitled to respect by useful services to his country, and recognized by many as the prophet of a

new poetical dispensation, with the customary title of adults rather than by the free and easy schoolboy

abbreviation with which he introduced himself many years ago to the public. As for his rhapsodies, Number

Seven, our "cracked Teacup," says they sound to him like "fugues played on a big organ which has been

struck by lightning." So far as concerns literary independence, if we understand by that term the getting rid of

our subjection to British criticism, such as it was in the days when the question was asked, "Who reads an

American book?" we may consider it pretty well established. If it means dispensing with punctuation, coining

words at will, selfrevelation unrestrained by a sense of what is decorous, declamations in which everything

is glorified without being idealized, "poetry" in which the reader must make the rhythms which the poet has

not made for him, then I think we had better continue literary colonists. I shrink from a lawless independence

to which all the virile energy and trampling audacity of Mr. Whitman fail to reconcile me. But there is room

for everybody and everything in our huge hemisphere. Young America is like a threeyearold colt with his

saddle and bridle just taken off. The first thing he wants to do is to roll. He is a droll object, sprawling in the

grass with his four hoofs in the air; but he likes it, and it won't harm us. So let him roll,let him roll

Of all The Teacups around our table, Number Five is the one who is the object of the greatest interest.

Everybody wants to be her friend, and she has room enough in her hospitable nature to find a place for every

one who is worthy of the privilege. The difficulty is that it is so hard to be her friend without becoming her

lover. I have said before that she turns the subjects of her Circelike enchantment, not into swine, but into

lambs. The Professor and I move round among her lambs, the docile and amiable flock that come and go at

her bidding, that follow her footsteps, and are content to live in the sunshine of her smile and within reach of

the music of her voice. I like to get her away from their amiable bleatings; I love to talk with her about life, of

which she has seen a great deal, for she knows what it is to be an idol in society and the centre of her social

circle. It might be a question whether women or men most admire and love her. With her own sex she is

always helpful, sympathizing, tender, charitable, sharing their griefs as well as taking part in their pleasures.

With men it has seemed to make little difference whether they were young or old: all have found her the same

sweet, generous, unaffected companion; fresh enough in feeling for the youngest, deep enough in the wisdom

of the heart for the oldest. She does not pretend to be youthful, nor does she trouble herself that she has seen

the roses of more Junes than many ofthe younger women who gather round her. She has not had to say,

for her arm has never lost its roundness, and her face is one of those that cannot be cheated of their charm

even if they live long enough to look upon the grown up grandchildren of their coevals.

It is a wonder how Number Five can find the time to be so much to so many friends of both sexes, in spite of

the fact that she is one of the most insatiable of readers. She not only reads, but she remembers; she not only

remembers, but she records, for her own use and pleasure, and for the delight and profit of those who are

privileged to look over her notebooks. Number Five, as I think I have said before, has not the ambition to

figure as an authoress. That she could write most agreeably is certain. I have seen letters of hers to friends

which prove that clearly enough. Whether she would find prose or verse the most natural mode of expression

I cannot say, but I know she is passionately fond of poetry, and I should not be surprised if, laid away among

the pressed pansies and roses of past summers, there were poems, songs, perhaps, of her own, which she

sings to herself with her fingers touching the piano; for to that she tells her secrets in tones sweet as the

I am afraid it may be suggested that I am drawing Number Five's portrait too nearly after some model who is

unconsciously sitting for it; but have n't I told you that you must not look for flesh and blood personalities

behind or beneath my Teacups? I am not going to make these so lifelike that you will be saying, This is Mr.

or Miss, or Mrs. SoandSo. My readers must remember that there are very many pretty, sweet, amiable girls

and women sitting at their pianos, and finding chords to the music of their heartstrings. If I have pictured

Number Five as one of her lambs might do it, I have succeeded in what I wanted to accomplish. Why don't I

describe her person? If I do, some gossip or other will be sure to say, "Oh, he means her, of course," and find

It is strange to see how we are all coming to depend upon the friendly aid of Number Five in our various

perplexities. The Counsellor asked her opinion in one of those cases where a divorce was too probable, but a

reconciliation was possible. It takes a woman to sound a woman's heart, and she found there was still love

enough under the ruffled waters to warrant the hope of peace and tranquillity. The young Doctor went to her

for counsel in the case of a hysteric girl possessed with the idea that she was a born poetess, and covering

whole pages of foolscap with senseless outbursts, which she wrote in paroxysms of wild excitement, and read

with a rapture of selfadmiration which there was nothing in her verses to justify or account for. How

sweetly Number Five dealt with that poor deluded sister in her talk with the Doctor! "Yes," she said to him,

"nothing can be fuller of vanity, selfworship, and selfdeception. But we must be very gentle with her. I

knew a young girl tormented with aspirations, and possessed by a belief that she was meant for a higher place

than that which fate had assigned her, who needed wholesome advice, just as this poor young thing does. She

did not ask for it, and it was not offered. Alas, alas! 'no man cared for her soul,'no man nor woman either.

She was in her early teens, and the thought of her earthly future, as it stretched out before her, was more than

she could bear, and she sought the presence of her Maker to ask the meaning of her abortive existence. We

The Doctor was thankful to have her assistance in a case with which he would have found it difficult to deal

if he had been left to, his unaided judgment, and between them the young girl was safely piloted through the

I know that it is commonly said of her that every male friend of hers must become her lover unless he is

already lassoed by another. Il fait passer par l'a. The young Doctor is, I think, safe, for I am convinced that he

is bewitched with Delilah. Since she has left us, he has seemed rather dejected; I feel sure that he misses her.

We all do, but he more seriously than the rest of us. I have said that I cannot tell whether the Counsellor is to

be counted as one of Number Five's lambs or not, but he evidently admires her, and if he is not fascinated,

It was a more delicate matter about which the Tutor talked with her. Something which she had pleasantly said

to him about the two Annexes led him to ask her, more or less seriously, it may be remembered, about the

fitness of either of them to be the wife of a young man in his position. She talked so sensibly, as it seemed to

him, about it that he continued the conversation, and, shy as he was, became quite easy and confidential in

her company. The Tutor is not only a poet, but is a great reader of the poetry of many languages. It so

happened that Number Five was puzzled, one day, in reading a sonnet of Petrarch, and had recourse to the

Tutor to explain the difficult passage. She found him so thoroughly instructed, so clear, so much interested,

so ready to impart knowledge, and so happy in his way of doing it, that she asked him if he would not allow

her the privilege of reading an Italian author under his guidance, now and then.

The Tutor found Number Five an apt scholar, and something more than that; for while, as a linguist, he was,

of course, her master, her intelligent comments brought out the beauties of an author in a way to make the

text seem like a different version. They did not always confine themselves to the book they were reading.

Number Five showed some curiosity about the Tutor's relations with the two Annexes. She suggested

whether it would not be well to ask one or both of them in to take part in their readings. The Tutor blushed

and hesitated. "Perhaps you would like to ask one of them," said Number Five. "Which one shall it be?" "It

makes no difference to me which," he answered," but I do not see that we need either." Number Five did not

press the matter further. So the young Tutor and Number Five read together pretty regularly, and came to

depend upon their meeting over a book as one of their stated seasons of enjoyment. He is so many years

younger than she is that I do not suppose he will have to pass par la, as most of her male friends have done. I

tell her sometimes that she reminds me of my Alma Mater, always young, always fresh in her attractions,

with her scholars all round her, many of them graduates, or to graduate sooner or later.

What do I mean by graduates? Why, that they have made love to her, and would be entitled to her diploma, if

she gave a parchment to each one of them who had had the courage to face the inevitable. About the

Counsellor I am, as I have said, in doubt. Who wrote that "I Like You and I Love You," which we found in

the sugarbowl the other day? Was it a graduate who had felt the "icy dagger," or only a candidate for

graduation who was afraid of it? So completely does she subjugate those who come under her influence that I

believe she looks upon it as a matter of course that the fateful question will certainly come, often after a brief

acquaintance. She confessed as much to me, who am in her confidence, and not a candidate for graduation

from her academy. Her graduatesher lambs I called them are commonly faithful to her, and though now

and then one may have gone off and sulked in solitude, most of them feel kindly to her, and to those who

have shared the common fate of her suitors. I do really believe that some of them would be glad to see her

captured by any one, if such there can be, who is worthy of her. She is the best of friends, they say, but can

she love anybody, as so many other women do, or seem to? Why shouldn't our Musician, who is evidently

fond of her company, and sings and plays duets with her, steal her heart as Piozzi stole that of the pretty and

bright Mrs. Thrale, as so many musicteachers have run away with their pupils' hearts? At present she seems

to be getting along very placidly and contentedly with her young friend the Tutor. There is something quite

charming in their relations with each other. He knows many things she does not, for he is reckoned one of the

most learned in his literary specialty of all the young men of his time; and it can be a question of only a few

years when some firstclass professorship will be offered him. She, on the other hand, has so much more

experience, so much more practical wisdom, than he has that he consults her on many everyday questions,

as he did, or made believe do, about that of making love to one of the two Annexes. I had thought, when we

first sat round the teatable, that she was good for the bit of romance I wanted; but since she has undertaken

to be a kind of halfmaternal friend to the young Tutor, I am afraid I shall have to give her up as the heroine

of a romantic episode. It would be a pity if there were nothing to commend these papers to those who take up

this periodical but essays, more or less significant, on subjects more or less interesting to the jaded and

impatient readers of the numberless stories and entertaining articles which crowd the magazines of this

prolific period. A whole year of a teatable as large as ours without a single love passage in it would be

discreditable to the company. We must find one, or make one, before the teathings are taken away and the

We have so many light and playful talks over the teacups that some readers may be surprised to find us taking

up the most serious and solemn subject which can occupy a human intelligence. The sudden appearance

among our New England Protestants of the doctrine of purgatory as a possibility, or even probability, has

startled the descendants of the Puritans. It has naturally led to a reconsideration of the doctrine of eternal

punishment. It is on that subject that Number Five and I have talked together. I love to listen to her, for she

talks from the promptings of a true woman's heart. I love to talk to her, for I learn my own thoughts better in

that way than in any other "L'appetit vient en mangeant," the French saying has it. "L'esprit vient en causant;"

The subject which has specially interested Number Five and myself, of late, was suggested to me in the

Some two years ago I received a letter from a clergyman who bears by inheritance one of the most

distinguished names which has done honor to the American "Orthodox" pulpit. This letter requested of me "a

contribution to a proposed work which was to present in their own language the views of 'many men of many

minds' on the subject of future punishment. It was in my mind to let the public hear not only from

professional theologians, but from other professions, as from jurists on the alleged but disputed value of the

hangman's whip overhanging the witnessbox, and from physicians on the working of beliefs about the future

life in the minds of the dangerously sick. And I could not help thinking what a good thing it would be to draw

out the present writer upon his favorite borderland between the spiritual and the material." The

communication came to me, as the writer reminds me in a recent letter, at a "painfully inopportune time," and

though it was courteously answered, was not made the subject of a special reply.

This request confers upon me a certain right to express my opinion on this weighty subject without fear and

without reproach even from those who might be ready to take offence at one of the laity for meddling with

pulpit questions. It shows also that this is not a dead issue in our community, as some of the younger

generation seem to think. There are some, there may be many, who would like to hear what impressions one

has received on the subject referred to, after a long life in which he has heard and read a great deal about the

matter. There is a certain gravity in the position of one who is, in the order of nature very near the

undiscovered country. A man who has passed his eighth decade feels as if be were already in the antechamber

of the apartments which he may be called to occupy in the house of many mansions. His convictions

regarding the future of our race are likely to be serious, and his expressions not lightly uttered. The question

my correspondent suggests is a tremendous one. No other interest compares for one moment with that

belonging to it. It is not only ourselves that it concerns, but all whom we love or ever have loved, all our

human brotherhood, as well as our whole idea of the Being who made us and the relation in which He stands

to his creatures. In attempting to answer my correspondent's question, I shall no doubt repeat many things I

have said before in different forms, on different occasions. This is no more than every clergyman does

habitually, and it would be hard if I could not have the same license which the professional preacher enjoys

Number Five and I have occasionally talked on religious questions, and discovered many points of agreement

in our views. Both of us grew up under the old "Orthodox " or Calvinistic system of belief. Both of us

accepted it in our early years as a part of our education. Our experience is a common one. William Cullen

Bryant says of himself, "The Calvinistic system of divinity I adopted of course, as I heard nothing else taught

from the pulpit, and supposed it to be the accepted belief of the religious world." But it was not the "five

points" which remained in the young poet's memory and shaped his higher life. It was the influence of his

mother that left its permanent impression after the questions and answers of the Assembly's Catechism had

faded out, or remained in memory only as fossil survivors of an extinct or fastdisappearing theological

formation. The important point for him, as for so many other children of Puritan descent, was not his father's

creed, but his mother's character, precepts, and example. "She was a person," he says, "of excellent practical

sense, of a quick and sensitive moral judgment, and had no patience with any form of deceit or duplicity. Her

prompt condemnation of injustice, even in those instances in which it is tolerated by the world, made a strong

impression upon me in early life; and if, in the discussion of public questions, I have in my riper age

endeavored to keep in view the great rule of right without much regard to persons, it has been owing in a

great degree to the force of her example, which taught me never to countenance a wrong because others did."

I have quoted this passage because it was an experience not wholly unlike my own, and in certain respects

like that of Number Five. To grow up in a narrow creed and to grow out of it is a tremendous trial of one's

nature. There is always a bond of fellowship between those who have been through such an ordeal.

The experiences we have had in common naturally lead us to talk over the theological questions which at this

time are constantly presenting themselves to the public, not only in the books and papers expressly devoted to

that class of subjects, but in many of the newspapers and popular periodicals, from the weeklies to the

quarterlies. The pulpit used to lay down the law to the pews; at the present time, it is of more consequence

what the pews think than what the minister does, for the obvious reason that the pews can change their

minister, and often do, whereas the minister cannot change the pews, or can do so only to a very limited

extent. The preacher's garment is cut according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the most part. Thirty

years ago, when I was writing on theological subjects, I came in for a very pretty share of abuse, such as it

was the fashion of that day, at least in certain quarters, to bestow upon those who were outside of the

highwalled enclosures in which many persons; not naturally unamiable or exclusive, found themselves

imprisoned. Since that time what changes have taken place! Who will believe that a wellbehaved and

reputable citizen could have been denounced as a "moral parricide," because he attacked some of the

doctrines in which he was supposed to have been brought up? A single thought should have prevented the

Much, and in many families most, of the religious teaching of children is committed to the mother. The

experience of William Cullen Bryant, which I have related in his own words, is that of many New England

children. Now, the sternest dogmas that ever came from a soul cramped or palsied by an obsolete creed

become wonderfully softened in passing between the lips of a mother. The cruel doctrine at which all but

casehardened "professionals" shudder cones out, as she teaches and illustrates it, as unlike its original as the

milk which a peasant mother gives her babe is unlike the coarse food which furnishes her nourishment. The

virus of a cursing creed is rendered comparatively harmless by the time it reaches the young sinner in the

nursery. Its effects fall as far short of what might have been expected from its virulence as the pearly vaccine

vesicle falls short of the terrors of the confluent smallpox. Controversialists should therefore be careful (for

their own sakes, for they hurt nobody so much as themselves) how they use such terms as "parricide" as

characterizing those who do not agree in all points with the fathers whom or whose memory they honor and

venerate. They might with as much propriety call them matricides, if they did not agree with the milder

teachings of their mothers. I can imagine Jonathan Edwards in the nursery with his threeyearold child upon

his knee. The child looks up to his face and says to him,"Papa, nurse tells me that you say God hates me

worse than He hates one of those horrid ugly snakes that crawl all round. Does God hate me so?"

"Alas! my child, it is but too true. So long as you are out of Christ you are as a viper, and worse than a viper,

By and by, Mrs. Edwards, one of the loveliest of women and sweetest of mothers, comes into the nursery.

Poor, gentle, poetical, sensitive, spiritual, almost celestial Mrs. Jonathan Edwards! On the one hand the

terrible sentence conceived, written down, given to the press, by the child's father; on the other side the

trusting child looking up at her, and all the mother pleading in her heart against the frightful dogma of her

revered husband. Do you suppose she left that poison to rankle in the tender soul of her darling? Would it

have been moral parricide for a son of the great divine to have repudiated the doctrine which degraded his

blameless infancy to the condition and below the condition of the reptile? Was it parricide in the second or

third degree when his descendant struck out that venomous sentence from the page in which it stood as a

monument to what depth Christian heathenism could sink under the teaching of the great master of logic and

spiritual inhumanity? It is too late to be angry about the abuse a well meaning writer received thirty years

ago. The whole atmosphere has changed since then. It is mere childishness to expect men to believe as their

fathers did; that is, if they have any minds of their own. The world is a whole generation older and wiser than

So far as I have observed persons nearing the end of life, the Roman Catholics understand the business of

dying better than Protestants. They have an expert by them, armed with spiritual specifics, in which they

both, patient and priestly ministrant, place implicit trust. Confession, the Eucharist, Extreme Unction,these

all inspire a confidence which without this symbolism is too apt to be wanting in oversensitive natures.

They have been peopled in earlier years with ghastly spectres of avenging fiends, moving in a sleepless world

of devouring flames and smothering exhalations; where nothing lives but the sinner, the fiends, and the

reptiles who help to make life an unending torture. It is no wonder that these images sometimes return to the

enfeebled intelligence. To exorcise them, the old Church of Christendom has her mystic formulae, of which

no rationalistic prescription can take the place. If Cowper had been a good Roman Catholic, instead of having

his conscience handled by a Protestant like John Newton, he would not have died despairing, looking upon

himself as a castaway. I have seen a good many Roman Catholics on their dying beds, and it always appeared

to me that they accepted the inevitable with a composure which showed that their belief, whether or not the

best to live by, was a better one to die by than most of the harder creeds which have replaced it.

In the more intelligent circles of American society one may question anything and everything, if he will only

do it civilly. We may talk about eschatology, the science of last things,or, if you will, the natural history of

the undiscovered country, without offence before anybody except young children and very old women of

both sexes. In our New England the great Andover discussion and the heretical missionary question have

benumbed all sensibility on this subject as entirely, as completely, as the new local anaesthetic, cocaine,

deadens the sensibility of the part to which it is applied, so that the eye may have its mote or beam plucked

out without feeling it,as the novels of Zola and Maupassant have hardened the delicate nerve centres of

The generally professed belief of the Protestant world as embodied in their published creeds is that the great

mass of mankind are destined to an eternity of suffering. That this eternity is to be one of bodily painof

"torment "is the literal teaching of Scripture, which has been literally interpreted by the theologians, the

poets, and the artists of many long ages which followed the acceptance of the recorded legends of the church

as infallible. The doctrine has always been recognized, as it is now, as a very terrible one. It has found a

support in the story of the fall of man, and the view taken of the relation of man to his Maker since that event.

The hatred of God to mankind in virtue of their "first disobedience" and inherited depravity is at the bottom

of it. The extent to which that idea was carried is well shown in the expressions I have borrowed from

Jonathan Edwards. According to his teaching,and he was a reasoner who knew what he was talking about,

what was involved in the premises of the faith he accepted,man inherits the curse of God as his principal

What shall we say to the doctrine of the fall of man as the ground of inflicting endless misery on the human

race? A man to be punished for what he could not help! He was expected to be called to account for Adam's

sin. It is singular to notice that the reasoning of the wolf with the lamb should be transferred to the dealings of

the Creator with his creatures. "You stirred the brook up and made my drinkingplace muddy." "But, please

your wolfship, I couldn't do that, for I stirred the water far down the stream,below your drinkingplace."

"Well, anyhow, your father troubled it a year or two ago, and that is the same thing." So the wolf falls upon

How shall we characterize the doctrine of endless torture as the destiny of most of those who have lived, and

are living, on this planet? I prefer to let another writer speak of it. Mr. John Morley uses the following words:

"The horrors of what is perhaps the most frightful idea that has ever corroded human character,the idea of

eternal punishment." Sismondi, the great historian, heard a sermon on eternal punishment, and vowed never

again to enter another church holding the same creed. Romanism he considered a religion of mercy and peace

by the side of what the English call the Reformation. I mention these protests because I happen to find

them among my notes, but it would be easy to accumulate examples of the same kind. When Cowper, at

about the end of the last century, said satirically of the minister he was attacking,

he was giving unconscious evidence that the sense of the barbarism of the idea was finding its way into the

pulpit. When Burns, in the midst of the sulphurous orthodoxy of Scotland, dared to say,

he was oily appealing to the common sense and common humanity of his fellowcountrymen.

All the reasoning in the world, all the prooftexts in old manuscripts, cannot reconcile this supposition of a

Where did this "frightful idea" come from? We are surprised, as we grow older, to find that the legendary hell

of the church is nothing more nor less than the Tartarus of the old heathen world. It has every mark of coming

from the cruel heart of a barbarous despot. Some malignant and vindictive Sheik, some brutal Mezentius,

must have sat for many pictures of the Divinity. It was not enough to kill his captive enemy, after torturing

him as much as ingenuity could contrive to do it. He escaped at last by death, but his conqueror could not

give him up so easily, and so his vengeance followed him into the unseen and unknown world. How the

doctrine got in among, the legends of the church we are no more bound to show than we are to account for

the intercalation of the "three witnesses" text, or the false insertion, or false omission, whichever it may be, of

the last twelve verses of the Gospel of St Mark. We do not hang our grandmothers now, as our ancestors did

theirs, on the strength of the positive command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live."

The simple truth is that civilization has outgrown witchcraft, and is outgrowing the Christian Tartarus. The

pulpit no longer troubles itself about witches and their evil doings. All the legends in the world could not

arrest the decay of that superstition and all the edicts that grew out of it. All the stories that can be found in

old manuscripts will never prevent the going out of the fires of the legendary Inferno. It is not much talked

about nowadays to ears polite or impolite. Humanity is shocked and repelled by it. The heart of woman is in

unconquerable rebellion against it. The more humane sects tear it from their "Bodies of Divinity" as if it were

the flaming shirt of Nessus. A few doctrines with which it was bound up have dropped or are dropping away

from it: the primal curse; consequential damages to give infinite extension to every transgression of the law

of God; inverting the natural order of relative obligations; stretching the smallest of finite offenses to the

proportions of the infinite; making the babe in arms the responsible being, and not the parent who gave it

After a doctrine like "the hangman's whip" has served its purpose, if it ever had any useful purpose,after

a doctrine like that of witchcraft has hanged old women enough, civilization contrives to get rid of it. When

we say that civilization crowds out the old superstitious legends, we recognize two chief causes. The first is

the naked individual protest; the voice of the inspiration which giveth man understanding. This shows itself

conspicuously in the modern poets. Burns in Scotland, Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, in America, preached a

new gospel to the successors of men like Thomas Boston and Jonathan Edwards. In due season, the growth of

knowledge, chiefly under the form of that part of knowledge called science, so changes the views of the

universe that many of its longunchallenged legends become no more than nursery tales. The textbooks of

astronomy and geology work their way in between the questions and answers of the timehonored

catechisms. The doctrine of evolution, so far as it is accepted, changes the whole relations of man to the

creative power. It substitutes infinite hope in the place of infinite despair for the vast majority of mankind.

Instead of a shipwreck, from which a few cabin passengers and others are to be saved in the longboat, it

gives mankind a vessel built to endure the tempests, and at last to reach a port where at the worst the

passengers can find rest, and where they may hope for a home better than any which they ever had in their

old country. It is all very well to say that men and women had their choice whether they would reach the safe

We know what the child will take. So which course we shall take depends very much on the way the choice is

presented to us, and on what the chooser is by nature. What he is by nature is not determined by himself, but

by his parentage. "They know not what they do." In one sense this is true of every human being. The agent

does not know, never can know, what makes him that which he is. What we most want to ask of our Maker is

an unfolding of the divine purpose in putting human beings into conditions in which such numbers of them

would be sure to go wrong. We want an advocate of helpless humanity whose task it shall be, in the words of

We have heard Milton's argument, but for the realization of his vision of the time

The greater part of the discourse the reader has had before him was delivered over the teacups one Sunday

afternoon. The Mistress looked rather grave, as if doubtful whether she ought not to signify her

However, as she knew that I was a good churchgoer and was on the best terms with her minister, she said

nothing to show that she had taken the alarm. Number Five listened approvingly. We had talked the question

over well, and were perfectly agreed on the main point. How could it be otherwise? Do you suppose that any

intellectual, spiritual woman, with a heart under her bodice, can for a moment seriously believe that the

greater number of the highminded men, the noble and lovely women, the ingenuous and affectionate

children, whom she knows and honors or loves, are to be handed over to the experts in a great

torturechamber, in company with the vilest creatures that have once worn human shape?

"If there is such a world as used to be talked about from the pulpit, you may depend upon it," she said to me

once, "there will soon be organized a Humane Society in heaven, and a mission established among 'the spirits

Number Five is a regular churchgoer, as I am. I do not believe either of us would darken the doors of a

church if we were likely to hear any of the "oldfashioned" sermons, such as I used to listen to in former

years from a noted clergyman, whose specialty was the doctrine of eternal punishment. But you may go to the

churches of almost any of our Protestant denominations, and hear sermons by which you can profit, because

the ministers are generally good men, whose moral and spiritual natures are above the average, and who

know that the harsh preaching of two or three generations ago would offend and alienate a large part of their

audience. So neither Number Five nor I are hypocrites in attending church or "going to meeting." I am afraid

it does not make a great deal of difference to either of us what may be the established creed of the

worshipping assembly. That is a matter of great interest, perhaps of great importance, to them, but of much

less, comparatively, to us. Companionship in worship, and sitting quiet for an hour while a trained speaker,

presumably somewhat better than we are, stirs up our spiritual nature,these are reasons enough to Number

Number Seven is of a different way of thinking and feeling. He insists upon it that the churches keep in their

confessions of faith statements which they do not believe, and that it is notorious that they are afraid to

meddle with them. The AngloAmerican church has dropped the Athanasian Creed from its service; the

English mother church is afraid to. There are plenty of Universalists, Number Seven says, in the Episcopalian

and other Protestant churches, but they do not avow their belief in any frank and candid fashion. The

churches know very well, he maintains, that the fear of everlasting punishment more than any or all other

motives is the source of their power and the support of their organizations. Not only are the fears of mankind

the whip to scourge and the bridle to restrain them, but they are the basis of an almost incalculable material

interest. "Talk about giving up the doctrine of endless punishment by fire!" exclaimed Number Seven; "there

is more capital embarked in the subterranean firechambers than in all the ironfurnaces on the face of the

earth. To think what an army of clerical beggars would be turned loose on the world, if once those raging

flames were allowed to go out or to calm down! Who can wonder that the old conservatives draw back

startled and almost frightened at the thought that there may be a possible escape for some victims whom the

Devil was thought to have secured? How many more generations will pass before Milton's alarming prophecy

Remember that Number Seven is called a "crank" by many persons, and take his remarks for just what they

Out of the preceding conversation must have originated the following poem, which was found in the common

We have been going on very pleasantly of late, each of us pretty well occupied with his or her special

business. The Counsellor has been pleading in a great case, and several of The Teacups were in the

courtroom. I thought, but I will not be certain, that some of his arguments were addressed to Number Five

Our young Doctor seems to me to be gradually getting known in the neighborhood and beyond it. A member

of one of the more influential families, whose regular physician has gone to Europe, has sent for him to come

and see her, and as the patient is a nervous lady, who has nothing in particular the matter with her, he is

probably in for a good many visits and a long bill by and by. He has even had a call at a distance of some

miles from home,at least be has had to hire a conveyance frequently of late, for he has not yet set up his

own horse and chaise. We do not like to ask him about who his patient may be, but he or she is probably a

person of some consequence, as he is absent several hours on these outoftown visits. He may get a good

practice before his bald spot makes its appearance, for I have looked for it many times without as yet seeing a

sign of it. I am sure he must feel encouraged, for he has been very bright and cheerful of late; and if he

sometimes looks at our new handmaid as if he wished she were Delilah, I do not think he is breaking his heart

about her absence. Perhaps he finds consolation in the company of the two Annexes, or one of them,but

which, I cannot make out. He is in consultations occasionally with Number Five, too, but whether

professionally or not I have no means of knowing. I cannot for the life of me see what Number Five wants of

a doctor for herself, so perhaps it is another difficult case in which her womanly sagacity is called upon to

In the mean time she and the Tutor continue their readings. In fact, it seems as if these readings were growing

more frequent, and lasted longer than they did at first. There is a little arbor in the grounds connected with

our place of meeting, and sometimes they have gone there for their readings. Some of The Teacups have

listened outside once in a while, for the Tutor reads well, and his clear voice must be heard in the more

emphatic passages, whether one is expressly listening or not. But besides the reading there is now and then

some talking, and persons talking in an arbor do not always remember that latticework, no matter how closely

the vines cover it, is not impenetrable to the sound of the human voice. There was a listener one day,it was

not one of The Teacups, I am happy to say, who heard and reported some fragments of a conversation

which reached his ear. Nothing but the profound intimacy which exists between myself and the individual

reader whose eyes are on this page would induce me to reveal what I was told of this conversation. The first

"Why, my dear friend, how can you think of such a thing? Do you knowI amold enough to be your[I

think she must have been on the point of saying mother, but that was more than any woman could be

"To be sure you are," answered the Tutor, "and what of it? I have two aunts, both younger than I am. Your

years may be more than mine, but your life is fuller of youthful vitality than mine is. I never feel so young as

when I have been with you. I don't believe in settling affinities by the almanac. You know what I have told

you more than once; you have n't 'bared the icecold dagger's edge' upon me yet; may I not cherish the"....

What a pity that the listener did not hear the rest of the sentence and the reply to it, if there was one! The

readings went on the same as before, but I thought that Number Five was rather more silent and more pensive

I was much pleased when the American Annex came to me one day and told me that she and the English

Annex were meditating an expedition, in which they wanted the other Teacups to join. About a dozen miles

from us is an educational institution of the higher grade, where a large number of young ladies are trained in

literature, art, and science, very much as their brothers are trained in the colleges. Our two young ladies have

already been through courses of this kind in different schools, and are now busy with those more advanced

studies which are ventured upon by only a limited number of "graduates." They have heard a good deal about

Every year, as the successive classes finish their course, there is a grand reunion of the former students, with

an "exhibition," as it is called, in which the graduates of the year have an opportunity of showing their

proficiency in the various branches taught. On that occasion prizes are awarded for excellence in different

departments. It would be hard to find a more interesting ceremony. These girls, now recognized as young

ladies, are going forth as missionaries of civilization among our busy people. They are many of them to be

teachers, and those who have seen what opportunities they have to learn will understand their fitness for that

exalted office. Many are to be the wives and mothers of the generation next coming upon the stage. Young

and beautiful, "youth is always beautiful," said old Samuel Rogers,their countenances radiant with

developed intelligence, their complexions, their figures, their movements, all showing that they have had

plenty of outdoor as well as indoor exercise, and have lived well in all respects, one would like to read on the

This proposed expedition was a great event in our comparatively quiet circle. The Mistress, who was

interested in the school, undertook to be the matron of the party. The young Doctor, who knew the roads

better than any of us, was to be our pilot. He arranged it so that he should have the two Annexes under his

more immediate charge. We were all on the lookout to see which of the two was to be the favored one, for it

was pretty well settled among The Teacups that a wife he must have, whether the bald spot came or not; he

was getting into business, and he could not achieve a complete success as a bachelor.

Number Five and the Tutor seemed to come together as a matter of course. I confess that I could not help

regretting that our pretty Delilah was not to be one of the party. She always looked so young, so fresh,she

would have enjoyed the excursion so much, that if she had been still with us I would have told the Mistress

that she must put on her best dress; and if she had n't one nice enough, I would give her one myself. I thought,

too, that our young Doctor would have liked to have her with us; but he appeared to be getting along very

well with the Annexes, one of whom it seems likely that he will annex to himself and his fortunes, if she

The organizing of this expedition was naturally a cause of great excitement among The Teacups. The party

had to be arranged in such a way as to suit all concerned, which was a delicate matter. It was finally managed

in this way: The Mistress was to go with a bodyguard, consisting of myself, the Professor, and Number

Seven, who was good company, with all his oddities. The young Doctor was to take the two Annexes in a

wagon, and the Tutor was to drive Number Five in a good oldfashioned chaise drawn by a wellconducted

family horse. As for the Musician, he had gone over early, by special invitation, to take a part in certain

musical exercises which were to have a place in the exhibition. This arrangement appeared to be in every

respect satisfactory. The Doctor was in high spirits, apparently delighted, and devoting himself with great

gallantry to his two fair companions. The only question which intruded itself was, whether he might not have

preferred the company of one to that of two. But both looked very attractive in their best dresses: the English

Annex, the rosier and heartier of the two; the American girl, more delicate in features, more mobile and

excitable, but suggesting the thought that she would tire out before the other. Which of these did he most

favor? It was hard to say. He seemed to look most at the English girl, and yet he talked more with the

American girl. In short, he behaved particularly well, and neither of the young ladies could complain that she

was not attended to. As to the Tutor and Number Five, their going together caused no special comment. Their

intimacy was accepted as an established fact, and nothing but the difference in their ages prevented the

conclusion that it was love, and not mere friendship, which brought them together. There was, no doubt, a

strong feeling among many people that Number Five's affections were a kind of Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein,

say rather a high tableland in the region of perpetual, unmelting snow. It was hard for these people to

believe that any man of mortal mould could find a foothold in that impregnable fortress,could climb to that

height and find the flower of love among its glaciers. The Tutor and Number Five were both quiet,

thoughtful: he, evidently captivated; she, what was the meaning of her manner to him? Say that she seemed

fond of him, as she might be were he her nephew,one for whom she had a special liking. If she had a

warmer feeling than this, she could hardly know how to manage it; for she was so used to having love made

to her without returning it that she would naturally be awkward in dealing with the new experience.

The Doctor drove a lively fiveyearold horse, and took the lead. The Tutor followed with a quiet,

steadygoing nag; if he had driven the fiveyearold, I would not have answered for the necks of the pair in

the chaise, for he was too much taken up with the subject they were talking of, to be very careful about his

driving. The Mistress and her escort brought up the rear,I holding the reins, the Professor at my side, and

We arrived at the institution a little later than we had expected to, and the students were flocking into the hall,

where the Commencement exercises were to take place, and the medalscholars were to receive the tokens of

their excellence in the various departments. From our seats we could see the greater part of the

assembly,not quite all, however of the pupils. A pleasing sight it was to look upon, this array of young

ladies dressed in white, with their class badges, and with the ribbon of the shade of blue affected by the

scholars of the institution. If Solomon in all his glory was not to be compared to a lily, a whole bed of lilies

The performances were very much the same as most of us have seen at the academies and collegiate schools.

Some of the graduating class read their "compositions," one of which was a poem,an echo of the prevailing

American echoes, of course, but prettily worded and intelligently read. Then there was a song sung by a choir

of the pupils, led by their instructor, who was assisted by the Musician whom we count among The Teacups.

There was something in one of the voices that reminded me of one I had heard before. Where could it have

been? I am sure I cannot remember. There are some good voices in our village choir, but none so pure and

birdlike as this. A sudden thought came into my head, but I kept it to myself. I heard a tremulous catching of

the breath, something like a sob, close by me. It was the Mistress,she was crying. What was she crying

for? It was impressive, certainly, to listen to these young voices, many of them blending for the last

time,for the scholars were soon to be scattered all over the country, and some of them beyond its

boundaries,but why the Mistress was so carried away, I did not know. She must be more impressible than

most of us; yet I thought Number Five also looked as if she were having a struggle with herself to keep down

The exercises went on very pleasingly until they came to the awarding of the gold medal of the year and the

valedictory, which was to be delivered by the young lady to whom it was to be presented. The name was

called; it was one not unfamiliar to our ears, and the bearer of itthe Delilah of our teatable, Avis as she

was known in the school and elsewhererose in her place and came forward, so that for the first time on that

day, we looked upon her. It was a sensation for The Teacups. Our modest, quiet waitinggirl was the best

scholar of her year. We had talked French before her, and we learned that she was the best French scholar the

teacher had ever had in the school. We had never thought of her except as a pleasing and welltrained

Avis went through her part very naturally and gracefully, and when it was finished, and she stood before us

with the medal glittering on her breast, we did not know whether to smile or to cry,some of us did one, and

some the other. We all had an opportunity to see her and congratulate her before we left the institution.

The mystery of her six weeks' serving at our table was easily solved. She had been studying too hard and too

long, and required some change of scene and occupation. She had a fancy for trying to see if she could

support herself as so many young women are obliged to, and found a place with us, the Mistress only

"She is to be our young Doctor's wife!" the Mistress whispered to me, and did some more crying, not for

Whether our young Doctor's long visits to a neighboring town had anything to do with the fact that Avis was

at that institution, whether she was the patient he visited or not, may be left in doubt. At all events, he had

always driven off in the direction which would carry him to the place where she was at school.

I have attended a large number of celebrations, commencements, banquets, soirees, and so forth, and done my

best to help on a good many of them. In fact, I have become rather too well known in connection with

"occasions," and it has cost me no little trouble. I believe there is no kind of occurrence for which I have not

been requested to contribute something in prose or verse. It is sometimes very hard to say no to the requests.

If one is in the right mood when he or she writes an occasional poem, it seems as if nothing could have been

easier. "Why, that piece run off jest like ile. I don't bullieve," the unlettered applicant says to himself, "I don't

bullieve it took him ten minutes to write them verses." The good people have no suspicion of how much a

single line, a single expression, may cost its author. The wits used to say that Ropers, the poet once before

referred to, old Samuel Ropers, author of the Pleasures of Memory and giver of famous breakfasts,was

accustomed to have straw laid before the house whenever he had just given birth to a couplet. It is not quite

so bad as that with most of us who are called upon to furnish a poem, a song, a hymn, an ode for some grand

meeting, but it is safe to say that many a trifling performance has had more good honest work put into it than

the minister's sermon of that week had cost him. If a vessel glides off the ways smoothly and easily at her

launching, it does not mean that no great pains have been taken to secure the result. Because a poem is an

"occasional" one, it does not follow that it has not taken as much time and skill as if it had been written

without immediate, accidental, temporary motive. Pindar's great odes were occasional poems, just as much as

our Commencement and Phi Beta Kappa poems are, and yet they have come down among the most precious

The mystery of the young Doctor's long visits to the neighboring town was satisfactorily explained by what

we saw and heard of his relations with our charming "Delilah,"for Delilah we could hardly help calling

her. Our little handmaid, the Cinderella of the teacups, now the princess, or, what was better, the pride of the

school to which she had belonged, fit for any position to which she might be called, was to be the wife of our

young Doctor. It would not have been the right thing to proclaim the fact while she was a pupil, but now that

she had finished her course of instruction there was no need of making a secret of the engagement.

So we have got our romance, our lovestory out of our Teacups, as I hoped and expected that we should, but

What did our two Annexes say to this unexpected turn of events? They were goodhearted girls as ever lived,

but they were human, like the rest of us, and women, like some of the rest of us. They behaved perfectly.

They congratulated the Doctor, and hoped he would bring the young lady to the teatable where she had

played her part so becomingly. It is safe to say that each of the Annexes world have liked to be asked the

lover's last question by the very nice young man who had been a pleasant companion at the table and

elsewhere to each of them. That same question is the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and a

woman does not mind having a dozen or more such compliments to string on the rosary of her remembrances.

Whether either of them was glad, on the whole, that he had not offered himself to the other in preference to

herself would be a mean, shabby question, and I think altogether too well of you who are reading this paper

It was a very pleasant occasion when the Doctor brought Avis over to sit with us at the table where she used

to stand and wait upon us. We wondered how we could for a moment have questioned that she was one to be

waited upon, and not made for the humble office which nevertheless she performed so cheerfully and so well.

The social habits of our people have undergone an immense change within the past half century, largely in

consequence of the vast development of the means of intercourse between different neighborhoods.

Commencements, college gatherings of all kinds, church assemblages, school anniversaries, town

centennials,all possible occasions for getting crowds together are made the most of. "'T is sixty years

since,"and a good many years over,the time to which my memory extends. The great days of the year

were, Election,General Election on Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, at which

time lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July, when strawberries were just going

out; and Commencement, a grand time of feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness and

fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of melons and peaches. That is the way our

boyhood chronicles events. It was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook fair, but

so it was when I was a boy, and the tents and the shows and the crowds on the Common were to the

promiscuous many the essential parts of the great occasion. They had been so for generations, and it was only

gradually that the Cambridge Saturnalia were replaced by the decencies and solemnities of the present sober

Nowadays our celebrations smack of the Sundayschool more than of the dancinghall. The aroma of the

punchbowl has given way to the milder flavor of lemonade and the cooling virtues of icecream. A

strawberry festival is about as far as the dissipation of our social gatherings ventures. There was much that

was objectionable in those swearing, drinking, fighting times, but they had a certain excitement for us boys of

the years when the century was in its teens, which comes back to us not without its fascinations. The days of

total abstinence are a great improvement over those of unlicensed license, but there was a picturesque

element about the rowdyism of our old Commencement days, which had a charm for the eye of boyhood. My

dear old friend,bookfriend, I mean,whom I always called Daddy Gilpin (as I find Fitzgerald called

Wordsworth, Daddy Wordsworth), my old friend Gilpin, I say, considered the donkey more picturesque in

a landscape than the horse. So a village fete as depicted by Teniers is more picturesque than a teetotal picnic

or a Sabbath school strawberry festival. Let us be thankful that the vicious picturesque is only a

What put all this into my head is something which the English Annex has been showing me. Most of my

readers are somewhat acquainted with our own church and village celebrations. They know how they are

organized; the women always being the chief motors, and the machinery very much the same in one case as

in another. Perhaps they would like to hear how such things are managed in England; and that is just what

they may learn from the pamphlet which was shown me by the English Annex, and of which I will give them

Some of us remember the Rev. Mr. Haweis, his lectures and his violin, which interested and amused us here

in Boston a few years ago. Now Mr. Haweis, assisted by his intelligent and spirited wife, has charge of the

parish of St. James, Westmoreland Street, Marylebone, London. On entering upon the twentyfifth year of

his incumbency in Marylebone, and the twentyeighth of his ministry in the diocese of London, it was

thought a good idea to have an "Evening Conversazione and Fete." We can imagine just how such a meeting

would be organized in one of our towns. Ministers, deacons, perhaps a member of Congress, possibly a

Senator, and even, conceivably, his Excellency the Governor, and a long list of ladies lend their names to

give lustre to the occasion. It is all very pleasant, unpretending, unceremonious, cheerful, well ordered,

Now look at our Marylebone parish celebration, and hold your breath while the procession of great names

passes before you. You learn at the outset that it is held UNDER ROYAL PATRONAGE, and read the names

of two royal highnesses, one highness, a prince, and a princess. Then comes a list before which if you do not

turn pale, you must certainly be in the habit of rouging: three earls, seven lords, three bishops, two generals

(one of them Lord Wolseley), one admiral, four baronets, nine knights, a crowd of right honorable and

honorable ladies (many of them peeresses), and a mob of other personages, among whom I find Mr. Howells,

Perhaps we are disposed to smile at seeing so much made of titles; but after what we have learned of Lord

Timothy Dexter and the high sounding names appropriated by many of our own compatriots, who have no

more claim to them than we plain Misters and Misseses, we may feel to them something as our late friend

Mr. Appleton felt to the real green turtle soup set before him, when he said that it was almost as good as

The entertainment on this occasion was of the most varied character. The programme makes the following

Refreshments will be called for, and they will come,Tea, Coffee, and Cooling Drinks. Spirits will not be

called for, from the Vasty Deep or anywhere else,nor would they come if they were.

I am particularly delighted with this last feature in the preliminary announcement. It is a proof of the high

regard in which the estimable and gifted lady who shares her husband's labors is held by the people of their

congregation, and the friends who share in their feelings. It is such a master stroke of policy, too, to keep

back the principal attraction until the guests must have grown eager for her appearance: I can well imagine

how great a saving it must have been to the good lady's nerves, which were probably pretty well tried already

by the fatigues and responsibilities of the busy evening. I have a right to say this, for I myself had the honor

of attending a meeting at Mr. Haweis's house, where I was a principal guest, as I suppose, from the fact of the

great number of persons who were presented to me. The minister must be very popular, for the meeting was a

regular jam,not quite so tremendous as that greater one, where but for the aid of Mr. Smalley, who kept

open a breathingspace round us, my companion and myself thought we should have been asphyxiated.

The company was interested, as some of my readers maybe, to know what were the attractions offered to the

visitors besides that of meeting the courteous entertainers and their distinguished guests. I cannot give these

at length, for each part of the show is introduced in the programme with apt quotations and pleasantries,

which enlivened the catalogue. There were eleven stalls, "conducted on the cooperative principle of division

of profits and interest; they retain the profits, and you take a good deal of interest, we hope, in their success."

Stall No. 1. Edisoniana, or the Phonograph. Alluded to by the Roman Poet as Vox, et praeterea nihil.

A rose by any other name, etc. Get one. You can't expect to smell one without buying it, but you may buy one

Stall No. 5. Lasenby Liberty Stall. (I cannot explain this. Probably articles from Liberty's famous

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

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

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

LORD TENNYSON. G. F. Watts, R. A. JOHN STUART MILL G. F. Watts, R. A. J0SEPH GARIBALDI

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

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

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 freshwater 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

SketchBook,the one with the title "Little Britain." London is a nation of itself, and contains provinces,

districts, foreign communities, villages, parishes,innumerable lesser centres, with their own distinguishing

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 class,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 icecream 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 middleclass communities are living as comfortable, unpretending lives as if they were

in one of our thriving townships in the huckleberrydistricts. Human beings are wonderfully alike when they

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

"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 neckcloth

neatly or to put a flower in your buttonhole. Do you think a poet turning out in his nightdress, and looking

on while the flames were swallowing his home and all its contents, would express himself in this style?

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?

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

You are right, said I,there's nothing in the world like rhymes to cool off a man's passion. 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 seacoal, the great bellows blowing away, and the rod or the horseshoe 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 passionate 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 rhymetrough it cools down, and becomes as dead and dull as the cold horseshoe. 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 passion. That found expression in a few oh, oh's,

eheu's, helas, helas's, and when the passion had burned itself out you got the rhymed verses, which, as I have

I thanked Number Seven for his poetical illustration 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 class 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

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 glass, 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

Perhaps you will not at first sight agree with me in thinking that slight mental obliquity is as common as I

suppose. An analogy 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 be will tell you that the

majority of his customers show a distinct difference of height on the two sides. Will you ask a

portraitpainter 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

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 circumstances 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 eyeglass 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

All our thoughts are now concentrated on the relation existing betwen 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 circumstances. 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 sixfoot walls, and when we get nearer prove to be only fivefoot hurdles, to be leaped

over or knocked down. Twenty years from now she may be a vigorous and active old woman, and he a

middleaged, halfwornout 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 mischiefmaker; 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 passion 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

No one of the poems which have been placed in the urn, that is, in the silver sugarbowl,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 passionate by a dream; many a passionate

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

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 passage 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 passed, 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 wellequipped 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 firstclass academies or collegiate schools. I shall never forget my first visit to one of these

institutions. 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 analysis 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 manuscript 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

There was a great tinkling of teaspoons the other evening, when I took my seat at the table, where ail The

Teacups were gathered before my entrance. The whole company arose, and the Mistress, speaking for them,

expressed the usual sentiment appropriate to such occasions. "Many happy returns" is the customary formula.

No matter if the object of this kind wish is a centenarian, it is quite safe to assume that he is ready and very

willing to accept as many more years as the disposing powers may see fit to allow him.

The meaning of it all was that this was my birthday. My friends, near and distant, had seen fit to remember it,

and to let me know in various pleasant ways that they had not forgotten it. The tables were adorned with

flowers. Gifts of pretty and pleasing objects were displayed on a side table. A great green wreath, which must

have cost the parent oak a large fraction of its foliage, was an object of special admiration. Baskets of flowers

which had half unpeopled greenhouses, large bouquets of roses, fragrant bunches of pinks, and many

beautiful blossoms I am not botanist enough to name had been coming in upon me all day long. Many of

these offerings were brought by the givers in person; many came with notes as fragrant with good wishes as

How old was I, The Dictator, once known by another equally audacious title,I, the recipient of all these

favors and honors? I had cleared the eightbarred gate, which few come in sight of, and fewer, far fewer, go

over, a year before. I was a trespasser on the domain belonging to another generation. The children of my

coevals were fast getting gray and bald, and their children beginning to look upon the world as belonging to

them, and not to their sires and grandsires. After that leap over the tall barrier, it looks like a kind of

impropriety to keep on as if one were still of a reasonable age. Sometimes it seems to me almost of the nature

of a misdemeanor to be wandering about in the preserve which the fleshless gamekeeper guards so jealously.

But, on the other hand, I remember that men of science have maintained that the natural life of man is nearer

fivescore than threescore years and ten. I always think of a familiar experience which I bring from the French

cafes, well known to me in my early manhood. One of the illustrated papers of my Parisian days tells it

A guest of the establishment is sitting at his little table. He has just had his coffee, and the waiter is serving

him with his petit verre. Most of my readers know very well what a petit verre is, but there may be here and

there a virtuous abstainer from alcoholic fluids, living among the bayberries and the sweet ferns, who is not

aware that the words, as commonly used, signify a small glassa very small glassof spirit, commonly

brandy, taken as a chassecaf�, or coffeechaser. This drinking of brandy, "neat," I may remark by the way,

is not quite so bad as it looks. Whiskey or rum taken unmixed from a tumbler is a knockdown blow to

temperance, but the little thimbleful of brandy, or Chartreuse, or Maraschino, is only, as it were, tweaking the

Well,to go back behind our brackets,the guest is calling to the waiter, "Garcon! et le bain de pieds!

"Waiter! and the footbath! The little glass stands in a small tin saucer or shallow dish, and the custom is

to more than fill the glass, so that some extra brandy rung over into this tin saucer or cupplate, to the

Life is a petit verre of a very peculiar kind of spirit. At seventy years it used to be said that the little glass was

full. We should be more apt to put it at eighty in our day, while Gladstone and Tennyson and our own

Whittier are breathing, moving, thinking, writing, speaking, in the green preserve belonging to their children

and grandchildren, and Bancroft is keeping watch of the gamekeeper in the distance. But, returning resolutely

to the petit verre, I am willing to concede that all after fourscore is the bain de pieds, the slopping over, so

to speak, of the full measure of life. I remember that one who was very near and dear to me, and who lived to

a great age, so that the tenbarred gate of the century did not look very far off, would sometimes apologize in

a very sweet, natural way for lingering so long to be a care and perhaps a burden to her children, themselves

getting well into years. It is not hard to understand the feeling, never less called for than it was in the case of

that beloved nonagenarian. I have known few persons, young or old, more sincerely and justly regretted than

Oh, if we could all go out of flower as gracefully, as pleasingly, as we come into blossom! I always think of

the morningglory as the loveliest example of a graceful yielding to the inevitable. It is beautiful before its

twisted corolla opens; it is comely as it folds its petals inward, when its brief hours of perfection are over.

Women find it easier than men to grow old in a becoming way. A very old lady who has kept something, it

may be a great deal, of her youthful feelings, who is daintily cared for, who is grateful for the attentions

bestowed upon her, and enters into the spirit of the young lives that surround her, is as precious to those who

love her as a gem in an antique setting, the fashion of which has long gone by, but which leaves the jewel the

color and brightness which are its inalienable qualities. With old men it is too often different. They do not

belong so much indoors as women do. They have no pretty little manual occupations. The old lady knits or

stitches so long as her eyes and fingers will let her. The old man smokes his pipe, but does not know what to

do with his fingers, unless he plays upon some instrument, or has a mechanical turn which finds business for

But the old writer, I said to The Teacups, as I say to you, my readers, labors under one special difficulty,

which I am thinking of and exemplifying at this moment. He is constantly tending to reflect upon and

discourse about his own particular stage of life. He feels that he must apologize for his intrusion upon the

time and thoughts of a generation which he naturally supposes must be tired of him, if they ever had any

considerable regard for him. Now, if the world of readers hates anything it sees in print, it is apology. If what

one has to say is worth saying, he need not beg pardon fur saying it. If it is not worth saying I will not finish

the sentence. But it is so hard to resist the temptation, notwithstanding that the terrible line beginning

What kind of audience or reading parish is a man who secured his constituency in middle life, or before that

period, to expect when he has reached the age of threescore and twenty? His coevals have dropped away by

scores and tens, and he sees only a few units scattered about here and there, like the few beads above the

water after a ship has gone to pieces. Does he write and publish for those of his own time of life? He need not

print a large edition. Does he hope to secure a hearing from those who have come into the reading world

since his coevals? They have found fresher fields and greener pastures. Their interests are in the outdoor,

active world. Some of them are circumnavigating the planet while he is hitching his rocking chair about his

hearthrug. Some are gazing upon the pyramids while he is staring at his andirons. Some are settling the

tariff and fixing the laws of suffrage and taxation while he is dozing over the weather bulletin, and going to

Nature is wiser than we give her credit for being; never wiser than in her dealings with the old. She has no

idea of mortifying them by sudden and wholly unexpected failure of the chief servants of consciousness. The

sight, for instance, begins to lose something of its perfection long before its deficiency calls the owner's

special attention to it. Very probably, the first hint we have of the change is that a friend makes the pleasing

remark that we are "playing the trombone," as he calls it; that is, moving a book we are holding backward and

forward, to get the right focal distance. Or it may be we find fault with the lamp or the gasburner for not

giving so much light as it used to. At last, somewhere between forty and fifty, we begin to dangle a jaunty

pair of eyeglasses, half plaything and half necessity. In due time a pair of sober, businesslike spectacles

bestrides the nose. Old age leaps upon it as his saddle, and rides triumphant, unchallenged, until the darkness

comes which no glasses can penetrate. Nature is pitiless in carrying out the universal sentence, but very

pitiful in her mode of dealing with the condemned on his way to the final scene. The man who is to be hanged

Do not think that the old look upon themselves as the helpless, hopeless, forlorn creatures which they seem to

young people. Do these young folks suppose that all vanity dies out of the natures of old men and old

women? A dentist of olden time told me that a good looking young man once said to him, "Keep that incisor

presentable, if you can, till I am fifty, and then I sha'n't care how I look." I venture to say that that gentleman

was as particular about his personal appearance and as proud of his good looks at fifty, and many years after

My dear friends around the teacups, and at that wider board where I am now entertaining, or trying to

entertain, my company, is it not as plain to you as it is to me that I had better leave such tasks as that which I

am just finishing to those who live in a more interesting period of life than one which, in the order of nature,

is next door to decrepitude? Ought I not to regret having undertaken to report the doings and sayings of the

Dear, faithful reader, whose patient eyes have followed my reports through these long months, you and I are

about parting company. Perhaps you are one of those who have known me under another name, in those

faroff days separated from these by the red sea of the great national conflict. When you first heard the tinkle

of the teaspoons, as the table was being made ready for its guests, you trembled for me, in the kindness of

your hearts. I do not wonder that you did,I trembled for myself. But I remembered the story of Sir

Cloudesley Shovel, who was seen all of a tremor just as he was going into action. "How is this?" said a

brother officer to him. "Surely you are not afraid?" " No," he answered, "but my flesh trembles at the thought

of the dangers into which my intrepid spirit will carry me." I knew the risk of undertaking to carry through a

series of connected papers. And yet I thought it was better to run that risk, more manly, more sensible, than to

give way to the fears which made my flesh tremble as did Sir Cloudesley Shovel's. For myself the labor has

been a distraction, and one which came at a time when it was needed. Sometimes, as in one of those poems

recently published,the reader will easily guess which,the youthful spirit has come over me with such a

rush that it made me feel just as I did when I wrote the history of the "Onehoss Shay" thirty years ago. To

repeat one of my comparisons, it was as if an early fruit had ripened on a graft upon an old, steadygoing

tree, to the astonishment of all its later maturing products. I should hardly dare to say so much as this if I

Once committed to my undertaking, there was no turning back. It is true that I had said I might stop at any

moment, but after one or two numbers it seemed as if there were an informal pledge to carry the series on, as

Writers and speakers have their idiosyncrasies, their habits, their tricks, if you had rather call them so, as to

their ways of writing and speaking. There is a very old and familiar story, accompanied by a feeble jest,

which most of my readers may probably enough have met with in Joe Miller or elsewhere. It is that of a

lawyer who could never make an argument without having a piece of thread to work upon with his fingers

while he was pleading. Some one stole it from him one day, and he could not get on at all with his

speech,he had lost the thread of his discourse, as the story had it. Now this is what I myself once saw. It

was at a meeting where certain grave matters were debated in an assembly of professional men. A speaker,

whom I never heard before or since, got up and made a long and forcible argument. I do not think he was a

lawyer, but he spoke as if he had been trained to talk to juries. He held a long string in one hand, which he

drew through the other band incessantly, as he spoke, just as a shoe maker performs the motion of waxing his

thread. He appeared to be dependent on this motion. The physiological significance of the fact I suppose to be

that the flow of what we call the nervous current from the thinking centre to the organs of speech was

rendered freer and easier by the establishment of a simultaneous collateral nervous current to the set of

I do not use a string to help me write or speak, but I must have its equivalent. I must have my paper and pen

or pencil before me to set my thoughts flowing in such form that they can be written continuously. There

have been lawyers who could think out their whole argument in connected order without a single note. There

are authors,and I think there are many,who can compose and finish off a poem or a story without

writing a word of it until, when the proper time comes, they copy what they carry in their heads. I have been

told that Sir Edwin Arnold thought out his beautiful "Light of Asia" in this way.

I find the great charm of writing consists in its surprises. When one is in the receptive attitude of mind, the

thoughts which are sprung upon him, the images which flash through hisconsciousness, are a delight and

an excitement. I am impatient of every hindrance in setting down my thoughts,of a pen that will not write,

of ink that will not flow, of paper that will not receive the ink. And here let me pay the tribute which I owe to

one of the humblest but most serviceable of my assistants, especially in poetical composition. Nothing seems

more prosaic than the stylographic pen. It deprives the handwriting of its beauty, and to some extent of its

individual character. The brutal communism of the letters it forms covers the page it fills with the most

uniformly uninteresting characters. But, abuse it as much as you choose, there is nothing like it for the poet,

for the imaginative writer. Many a fine flow of thought has been checked, perhaps arrested, by the ill

behavior of a goosequill. Many an idea has escaped while the author was dipping his pen in the inkstand.

But with the stylographic pen, in the hands of one who knows how to care for it and how to use it, unbroken

rhythms and harmonious cadences are the natural products of the unimpeded flow of the fluid which is the

vehicle of the author's thoughts and fancies. So much for my debt of gratitude to the humble stylographic pen.

It does not furnish the proper medium for the correspondence of intimates, who wish to see as much of their

friends' personality as their handwriting can hold,still less for the impassioned interchange of sentiments

between lovers; but in writing for the press its use is open to no objection. Its movement over the paper is like

the flight of a swallow, while the quill pen and the steel pen and the gold pen are all taking short, laborious

A chief pleasure which the author of novels and stories experiences is that of becoming acquainted with the

characters be draws. It is perfectly true that his characters must, in the nature of things, have more or less of

himself in their composition. If I should seek an exemplification of this in the person of any of my Teacups, I

should find it most readily in the one whom I have called Number Seven, the one with the squinting brain. I

think that not only I, the writer, but many of my readers, recognize in our own mental constitution an

occasional obliquity of perception, not always detected at the time, but plain enough when looked back upon.

What extravagant fancies you and I have seriously entertained at one time or another! What superstitious

notions have got into our heads and taken possession of its empty chambers,or, in the language of science,

The writer, I say, becomes acquainted with his characters as be goes on. They are at first mere embryos,

outlines of distinct personalities. By and by, if they have any organic cohesion, they begin to assert

themselves. They can say and do such and such things; such and such other things they cannot and must not

say or do. The storywriter's and playwriter's danger is that they will get their characters mixed, and make

A say what B ought to have said. The stronger his imaginative faculty, the less liable will the writer be to this

fault; but not even Shakespeare's power of throwing himself into his characters prevents many of his different

personages from talking philosophy in the same strain and in a style common to them all.

You will often observe that authors fall in love with the imaginary persons they describe, and that they

bestow affectionate epithets upon them which it may happen the reader does not consider in any way called

for. This is a pleasure to which they have a right. Every author of a story is surrounded by a little family of

ideal children, as dear to him, it may be, as are fleshandblood children to their parents. You may forget all

about the circle of Teacups to which I have introduced you,on the supposition that you have followed me

with some degree of interest; but do you suppose that Number Five does not continue as a presence with me,

and that my pretty Delilah has left me forever because she is going to be married?

No, my dear friend, our circle will break apart, and its different members will soon be to you as if they had

never been. But do you think that I can forget them? Do you suppose that I shall cease to follow the love (or

the loves; which do you think is the true word, the singular or the plural?) of Number Five and the young

Tutor who is so constantly found in her company? Do you suppose that I do not continue my relations with

the "Cracked Teacup,"the poor old fellow with whom I have so much in common, whose counterpart,

I take from the top shelf of the hospital department of my library the section devoted to literary cripples,

imbeciles, failures, foolish rhymesters, and silly eccentricsone of the least conspicuous and most

hopelessly feeble of the weakminded population of that intellectual almshouse. I open it and look through

its pages. It is a story. I have looked into it once before,on its first reception as a gift from the author. I try

to recall some of the names I see there: they mean nothing to me, but I venture to say the author cherishes

them all, and cries over them as he did when he was writing their history. I put the book back among its dusty

companions, and, sitting down in my reflective rockingchair, think how others must forget, and how I shall

Shall I ever meet any one of them again, in these pages or in any other? Will the cracked Teacup hold

together, or will he go to pieces, and find himself in that retreat where the owner of the terrible clock which

drove him crazy is walking under the shelter of the high walls? Has the young Doctor's crown yet received

the seal which is Nature's warrant of wisdom and proof of professional competency? And Number Five and

her young friend the Tutor,have they kept on in their dangerous intimacy? Did they get through the tutto

tremante passage, reading from the same old large edition of Dante which the Tutor recommended as the

best, and in reading from which their heads were necessarily brought perilously near to each other?

It would be very pleasant if I could, consistently with the present state of affairs, bring these two young

people together. I say two young people, for the one who counts most years seems to me to be really the

younger of the pair. That Number Five foresaw from the first that any tenderer feeling than that of friendship

would intrude itself between them I do not believe. As for the Tutor, he soon found where he was drifting. It

was his first experience in matters concerning the heart, and absorbed his whole nature as a thing of course.

Did he tell her he loved her? Perhaps he did, fifty times; perhaps he never had the courage to say so outright.

But sometimes they looked each other straight in the eyes, and strange messages seemed to pass from one

consciousness to the other. Will the Tutor ask Number Five to be his wife; and if he does, will she yield to the

dictates of nature, and lower the flag of that fortress so long thought impregnable? Will be go on writing such

poems to her as "The Rose and the Fern " or "I Like You and I Love You," and be content with the pursuit of

that which he never can attain? That is all very well, on the "Grecian Urn" of Keats,beautiful, but not love

such as mortals demand. Still, that may be all, for aught that we have yet seen.

"Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover,

never, never, canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal,yet do not grieve; She cannot fade, though

And so, goodbye, young people, whom we part with here. Shadows you have been and are to my readers;

very real you have been and are to me,as real as the memories of many friends whom I shall see no more.

As I am not in the habit of indulging in late suppers, the reader need not think that I shall spread another

board and invite him to listen to the conversations which take place around it. If, from time to time, he finds a

slight refection awaiting him on the sideboard, I hope he may welcome it as pleasantly as he has accepted

It is a good rule for the actor who manages the popular street drama of Punch not to let the audience or

spectators see his legs. It is very hard for the writer of papers like these, which are now coming to their

conclusion, to keep his personality from showing itself too conspicuously through the thin disguises of his

various characters. As the show is now over, as the curtain has fallen, I appear before it in my proper person,

to address a few words to the friends who have assisted, as the French say, by their presence, and as we use

the word, by the kind way in which they have received my attempts at their entertainment.

This series of papers is the fourth of its kind which I have offered to my readers. I may be allowed to look

back upon the succession of serial articles which was commenced more than thirty years ago, in 1857. "The

Autocrat of the BreakfastTable" was the first of the series. It was begun without the least idea what was to

be its course and its outcome. Its characters shaped themselves gradually as the manuscript grew under my

hand. I jotted down on the sheet of blotting paper before me the thoughts and fancies which came into my

head. A very oddlooking object was this page of memoranda. Many of the hints were worked up into formal

shape, many were rejected. Sometimes I recorded a story, a jest, or a pun for consideration, and made use of

it or let it alone as my second thought decided. I remember a curious coincidence, which, if I have ever told

in print, I am not sure whether I have or not,I will tell over again. I mention it, not for the pun, which I

rejected as not very edifying and perhaps not new, though I did not recollect having seen it.

Mulier, Latin for woman; why apply that name to one of the gentle but occasionally obstinate sex? The

answer was that a woman is (sometimes) more mulish than a mule. Please observe that I did not like the poor

pun very well, and thought it rather rude and inelegant. So I left it on the blotter, where it was standing when

one of the next numbers of "Punch" came out and contained that very same pun, which must have been hit

upon by some English contributor at just about the same time I fell upon it on this side of the Atlantic. This

fact may be added to the chapter of coincidences which belongs to the first number of this series of papers.

The "Autocrat" had the attraction of novelty, which of course was wanting in the succeeding papers of similar

character. The criticisms upon the successive numbers as they came out were various, but generally

encouraging. Some were more than encouraging; very highcolored in their phrases of commendation. When

the papers were brought together in a volume their success was beyond my expectations. Up to the present

time the "Autocrat" has maintained its position. An immortality of a whole generation is more than most

writers are entitled to expect. I venture to think, from the letters I receive from the children and grandchildren

of my first set of readers, that for some little time longer, at least, it will continue to be read, and even to be a

favorite with some of its readers. Non omnis moriar is a pleasant thought to one who has loved his poor little

planet, and will, I trust, retain kindly recollections of it through whatever wilderness of worlds he may be

called to wander in his future pilgrimages. I say "poor little planet." Ever since I had a ten cent look at the

transit of Venus, a few years ago, through the telescope in the Mall, the earth has been wholly different to me

from what it used to be. I knew from books what a speck it is in the universe, but nothing ever brought the

fact home like the sight of the sister planet sailing across the sun's disk, about large enough for a buckshot,

not large enough for a fullsized bullet. Yes, I love the little globule where I have spent more than fourscore

years, and I like to think that some of my thoughts and some of my emotions may live themselves over again

when I am sleeping. I cannot thank all the kind readers of the "Autocrat" who are constantly sending me their

acknowledgments. If they see this printed page, let them be assured that a writer is always rendered happier

by being told that he has made a fellowbeing wiser or better, or even contributed to his harmless

entertainment. This a correspondent may take for granted, even if his letter of grateful recognition receives no

reply. It becomes more and more difficult for me to keep up with my correspondents, and I must soon give it

"The Professor at the Breakfast Table" followed immediately on the heels of the "Autocrat." The Professor

was the alter ego of the first personage. In the earlier series he had played a secondary part, and in this second

series no great effort was made to create a character wholly unlike the first. The Professor was more

outspoken, however, on religious subjects, and brought down a good deal of hard language on himself and

the author to whom he owed his existence. I suppose he may have used some irritating expressions,

unconsciously, but not unconscientiously, I am sure. There is nothing harder to forgive than the sting of an

epigram. Some of the old doctors, I fear, never pardoned me for saying that if a ship, loaded with an assorted

cargo of the drugs which used to be considered the natural food of sick people, went to the bottom of the sea,

it would be "all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes." If I had not put that snapper on the

end of my whiplash, I might have got off without the ill temper which my antithesis provoked. Thirty years

set that all right, and the same thirty years have so changed the theological atmosphere that such abusive

words as "heretic" and "infidel," applied to persons who differ from the old standards of faith, are chiefly

interesting as a test of breeding, being seldom used by any people above the social halfcaste line. I am

speaking of Protestants; how it may be among Roman Catholics I do not know, but I suspect that with them

also it is a good deal a matter of breeding. There were not wanting some who liked the Professor better than

the Autocrat. I confess that I prefer my champagne in its first burst of gaseous enthusiasm; but if my guest

likes it better after it has stood awhile, I am pleased to accommodate him. The first of my series came from

my mind almost with an explosion, like the champagne cork; it startled me a little to see what I had written,

and to hear what people said about it. After that first explosion the flow was more sober, and I looked upon

the product of my winepress more coolly. Continuations almost always sag a little. I will not say that of my

own second effort, but if others said it, I should not be disposed to wonder at or to dispute them.

"The Poet at the Breakfast Table" came some years later. This series of papers was not so much a

continuation as a resurrection. It was a doubly hazardous attempt, made without any extravagant

expectations, and was received as well as I had any right to anticipate. It differed from the other two series in

containing a poem of considerable length, published in successive portions. This poem holds a good deal of

selfcommuning, and gave me the opportunity of expressing some thoughts and feelings not to be found

elsewhere in my writings. I had occasion to read the whole volume, not long since, in preparation for a new

edition, and was rather more pleased with it than I had expected to be. An old author is constantly rediscoving

himself in the more or less fossilized productions of his earlier years. It is a long time since I have read the

"Autocrat," but I take it up now and then and read in it for a few minutes, not always without some degree of

These three series of papers, "Autocrat," "Professor," "Poet," are all studies of life from somewhat different

points of view. They are largely made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively

human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness. What could be more natural than that love

should find its way among the young people who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table?

Nothing is older than the story of young love. Nothing is newer than that same old story. A bit of gilding here

and there has a wonderful effect in enlivening a landscape or an apartment. Napoleon consoled the Parisians

in their year of defeat by gilding the dome of the Invalides. Boston has glorified her State House and herself

at the expense of a few sheets of gold leaf laid on the dome, which shines like a sun in the eyes of her

citizens, and like a star in those of the approaching traveller. I think the gilding of a lovestory helped all

three of these earlier papers. The same need I felt in the series of papers just closed. The slight incident of

Delilah's appearance and disappearance served my purpose to some extent. But what should I do with

Number Five? The reader must follow out her career for himself. For myself, I think that she and the Tutor

have both utterly forgotten the difference of their years in the fascination of intimate intercourse. I do not

believe that a nature so large, so rich in affection, as Number Five's is going to fall defeated of its best

inheritance of life, like a vine which finds no support for its tendrils to twine around, and so creeps along the

ground from which nature meant that love should lift it. I feel as if I ought to follow these two personages of

my sermonizing story until they come together or separate, to fade, to wither,perhaps to die, at last, of

something like what the doctors call heartfailure, but which might more truly be called heart starvation.

When I say die, I do not mean necessarily the death that goes into the obituary column. It may come to that,

in one or both; but I think that, if they are never united, Number Five will outlive the Tutor, who will fall into

melancholy ways, and pine and waste, while she lives along, feeling all the time that she has cheated herself

of happiness. I hope that is not going to be their fortune, or misfortune. Vieille fille fait jeune mariee. What a

youthful bride Number Five would be, if she could only make up her mind to matrimony! In the mean time

she must be left with her lambs all around her. May heaven temper the winds to them, for they have been

shorn very close, every one of them, of their golden fleece of aspirations and anticipations.

I must avail myself of this opportunity to say a few words to my distant friends who take interest enough in

my writings, early or recent, to wish to enter into communication with me by letter, or to keep up a

communication already begun. I have given notice in print that the letters, books, and manuscripts which I

receive by mail are so numerous that if I undertook to read and answer them all I should have little time for

anything else. I have for some years depended on the assistance of a secretary, but our joint efforts have

proved unable, of late, to keep down the accumulations which come in with every mail. So many of the

letters I receive are of a pleasant character that it is hard to let them go unacknowledged. The extreme

friendliness which pervades many of them gives them a value which I rate very highly. When large numbers

of strangers insist on claiming one as a friend, on the strength of what he has written, it tends to make him

think of himself somewhat indulgently. It is the most natural thing in the world to want to give expression to

the feeling the loving messages from faroff unknown friends must excite. Many a day has had its best

working hours broken into, spoiled for all literary work, by the labor of answering correspondents whose

good opinion it is gratifying to have called forth, but who were unconsciously laying a new burden on

shoulders already aching. I know too well that what I say will not reach the eyes of many who might possibly

take a hint from it. Still I must keep repeating it before breaking off suddenly and leaving whole piles of

letters unanswered. I have been very heavily handicapped for many years. It is partly my own fault. From

what my correspondents tell me, I must infer that I have established a dangerous reputation for willingness to

answer all sorts of letters. They come with such insinuating humility, they cannot bear to intrude upon my

time, they know that I have a great many calls upon it,and incontinently proceed to lay their additional

The hypocrisy of kindhearted people is one of the most painful exhibitions of human weakness. It has

occurred to me that it might be profitable to reproduce some of my unwritten answers to correspondents. If

those which were actually written and sent were to be printed in parallel columns with those mentally formed

but not written out responses and comments, the reader would get some idea of the internal conflicts an

honest and not unamiable person has to go through, when he finds himself driven to the wall by a

correspondence which is draining his vocabulary to find expressions that sound as agreeably, and signify as

little, as the phrases used by a diplomatist in closing an official communication.

No. 1. Want my autograph, do you? And don't know how to spell my name. An a for an e in my middle

name. Leave out the l in my last name. Do you know how people hate to have their names misspelled? What

do you suppose are the sentiments entertained by the Thompsons with a p towards those who address them in

No. 2. Think the lines you mention are by far the best I ever wrote, hey? Well, I didn't write those lines. What

is more, I think they are as detestable a string of rhymes as I could wish my worst enemy had written. A very

No. 3. I am glad to hear that my namesake, whom I never saw and never expect to see, has cut another tooth;

No. 4. You wish to correct an error in my Broomstick poem, do you? You give me to understand that

Wilmington is not in Essex County, but in Middlesex. Very well; but are they separated by running water?

Because if they are not, what could hinder a witch from crossing the line that separates Wilmington from

Andover, I should like to know? I never meant to imply that the witches made no excursions beyond the

As I come towards the end of this task which I had set myself, I wish, of course, that I could have performed

it more to my own satisfaction and that of my readers. This is a feeling which almost every one must have at

the conclusion of any work he has undertaken. A common and very simple reason for this disappointment is

that most of us overrate our capacity. We expect more of ourselves than we have any right to, in virtue of our

endowments. The figurative descriptions of the last Grand Assize must no more be taken literally than the

golden crowns, which we do not expect or want to wear on our heads, or the golden harps, which we do not

want or expect to hold in our hands. Is it not too true that many religious sectaries think of the last tribunal

complacently, as the scene in which they are to have the satisfaction of saying to the believers of a creed

different from their own, "I told you so"? Are not others oppressed with the thought of the great returns

which will be expected of them as the product of their great gifts, the very limited amount of which they do

not suspect, and will be very glad to learn, even at the expense of their selflove, when they are called to their

account? If the ways of the Supreme Being are ever really to be "justified to men," to use Milton's expression,

every human being may expect an exhaustive explanation of himself. No man is capable of being his own

counsel, and I cannot help hoping that the ablest of the, archangels will be retained for the defence of the

worst of sinners. He himself is unconscious of the agencies which made him what he is. Selfdetermining he

may be, if you will, but who determines the self which is the proximate source of the determination? Why

was the A self like his good uncle in bodily aspect and mental and moral qualities, and the B self like the bad

uncle in look and character? Has not a man a right to ask this question in the here or in the hereafter,in this

world or in any world in which he may find himself? If the Allwise wishes to satisfy his reasonable and

reasoning creatures, it will not be by a display of elemental convulsions, but by the still small voice, which

treats with him as a dependent entitled to know the meaning of his existence, and if there was anything wrong

in his adjustment to the moral and spiritual conditions of the world around him to have full allowance made

for it. No melodramatic display of warring elements, such as the white robed Second Adventist imagines,

can meet the need of the human heart. The thunders and lightnings of Sinai terrified and impressed the more

timid souls of the idolatrous and rebellious caravan which the great leader was conducting, but a far nobler

manifestation of divinity was that when "the Lord spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his

I find the burden and restrictions of rhyme more and more troublesome as I grow older. There are times when

it seems natural enough to employ that form of expression, but it is only occasionally; and the use of it as the

vehicle of the commonplace is so prevalent that one is not much tempted to select it as the medium for his

thoughts and emotions. The art of rhyming has almost become a part of a high school education, and its

practice is far from being an evidence of intellectual distinction. Mediocrity is as much forbidden to the poet

in our days as it was in those of Horace, and the immense majority of the verses written are stamped with

When one of the ancient poets found he was trying to grind out verses which came unwillingly, he said he

Vex not the Muse with idle prayers, She will not hear thy call; She steals upon thee unawares, Or seeks

thee not at all. Soft as the moonbeams when they sought Endymion's fragrant bower, She parts the

whispering leaves of thought To show her fullblown flower. For thee her wooing hour has passed, The

singing birds have flown, And winter comes with icy blast To chill thy buds unblown. Yet, though the woods

no longer thrill As once their arches rung, Sweet echoes hover round thee still Of songs thy summer sung.

Live in thy past; await no more The rush of heavensent wings; Earth still has music left in store While

I hope my special Minerva may not always be unwilling, but she must not be called upon as she has been in

times past. Now that the teacups have left the table, an occasional evening call is all that my readers must

look for. Thanking them for their kind companionship, and hoping that I may yet meet them in the now and