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

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. .....................................................................................................2

I................................................................................................................................................................2

II .............................................................................................................................................................15

Aigle pamphanoosa di' aitheros ouranon ike! .......................................................................................20

III ............................................................................................................................................................26

IV...........................................................................................................................................................38

V .............................................................................................................................................................49

VI...........................................................................................................................................................60

VII ..........................................................................................................................................................72

VIII .........................................................................................................................................................84

IX...........................................................................................................................................................98

X ...........................................................................................................................................................110

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XII ........................................................................................................................................................133

In this, the third series of BreakfastTable conversations, a slight dramatic background shows off a few

talkers and writers, aided by certain silent supernumeraries. The machinery is much like that of the two

preceding series. Some of the characters must seem like old acquaintances to those who have read the former

papers. As I read these over for the first time for a number of years, I notice one character; presenting a class

of beings who have greatly multiplied during the interval which separates the earlier and later

BreakfastTable papers,I mean the scientific specialists. The entomologist, who confines himself rigidly to

the study of the coleoptera, is intended to typify this class. The subdivision of labor, which, as we used to be

told, required fourteen different workmen to make a single pin, has reached all branches of knowledge. We

find new terms in all the Professions, implying that special provinces have been marked off, each having its

own school of students. In theology we have many curious subdivisions; among the rest eschatology, that is

to say, the geography, geology, etc., of the "undiscovered country;" in medicine, if the surgeon who deals

with dislocations of the right shoulder declines to meddle with a displacement on the other side, we are not

surprised, but ring the bell of the practitioner who devotes himself to injuries of the left shoulder.

On the other hand, we have had or have the encyclopaedic intelligences like Cuvier, Buckle, and more

emphatically Herbert Spencer, who take all knowledge, or large fields of it, to be their province. The author

of "Thoughts on the Universe" has something in common with these, but he appears also to have a good deal

about him of what we call the humorist; that is, an individual with a somewhat heterogeneous personality, in

which various distinctly human elements are mixed together, so as to form a kind of coherent and sometimes

pleasing whole, which is to a symmetrical character as a breccia is to a mosaic.

As for the Young Astronomer, his rhythmical discourse may be taken as expressing the reaction of what

some would call "the natural man" against the unnatural beliefs which he found in that lower world to which

I have endeavored to give fair play to the protest of gentle and reverential conservatism in the letter of the

Lady, which was not copied from, but suggested by, one which I received long ago from a lady bearing an

It is now nearly twenty years since this book was published. Being the third of the BreakfastTable series, it

could hardly be expected to attract so much attention as the earlier volumes. Still, I had no reason to be

disappointed with its reception. It took its place with the others, and was in some points a clearer exposition

of my views and feelings than either of the other books, its predecessors. The poems "Homesick in Heaven "

and the longer group of passages coming from the midnight reveries of the Young Astronomer have thoughts

The first of these two poems is at war with our common modes of thought. In looking forward to rejoining in

a future state those whom we have loved on earth,as most of us hope and many of us believe we

shall,we are apt to forget that the same individuality is remembered by one relative as a babe, by another

as an adult in the strength of maturity, and by a third as a wreck with little left except its infirmities and its

affections. The main thought of this poem is a painful one to some persons. They have so closely associated

life with its accidents that they expect to see their departed friends in the costume of the time in which they

best remember them, and feel as if they should meet the spirit of their grandfather with his wig and cane, as

The process of scientific specialization referred to and illustrated in this record has been going on more

actively than ever during these last twenty years. We have only to look over the lists of the Faculties and

teachers of our Universities to see the subdivision of labor carried out as never before. The movement is

irresistible; it brings with it exactness, exhaustive knowledge, a narrow but complete selfsatisfaction, with

such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, and the kind of partial blindness which belong to intellectual

myopia. The specialist is idealized almost into sublimity in Browning's "Burial of the Grammarian." We

never need fear that he will undervalue himself. To be the supreme authority on anything is a satisfaction to

selflove next door to the precious delusions of dementia. I have never pictured a character more contented

The idea of a man's "interviewing" himself is rather odd, to be sure. But then that is what we are all of us

doing every day. I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a schoolboy turns his pockets inside

out to see what is in them. One brings to light all sorts of personal property he had forgotten in his inventory.

You don't know what your thoughts are going to be beforehand? said the "Member of the Haouse," as he

Why, of course I don't. Bless your honest legislative soul, I suppose I have as many bound volumes of

notions of one kind and another in my head as you have in your Representatives' library up there at the State

House. I have to tumble them over and over, and open them in a hundred places, and sometimes cut the

leaves here and there, to find what I think about this and that. And a good many people who flatter

themselves they are talking wisdom to me, are only helping me to get at the shelf and the book and the page

It 's a very queer place, that receptacle a man fetches his talk out of. The library comparison does n't

exactly hit it. You stow away some idea and don't want it, say for ten years. When it turns up at last it has got

so jammed and crushed out of shape by the other ideas packed with it, that it is no more like what it was than

a raisin is like a grape on the vine, or a fig from a drum like one hanging on the tree. Then, again, some kinds

of thoughts breed in the dark of one's mind like the blind fishes in the Mammoth Cave. We can't see them and

they can't see us; but sooner or later the daylight gets in and we find that some cold, fishy little negative has

been spawning all over our beliefs, and the brood of blind questions it has given birth to are burrowing round

and under and butting their blunt noses against the pillars of faith we thought the whole world might lean on.

And then, again, some of our old beliefs are dying out every year, and others feed on them and grow fat, or

get poisoned as the case may be. And so, you see, you can't tell what the thoughts are that you have got salted

down, as one may say, till you run a streak of talk through them, as the market people run a butterscoop

Don't talk, thinking you are going to find out your neighbor, for you won't do it, but talk to find out yourself.

The Member gave a slight but unequivocal start just here. It does seem as if perpetual somnolence was the

price of listening to other people's wisdom. This was one of those transient nightmares that one may have in a

doze of twenty seconds. He thought a certain imaginary Committee of Safety of a certain imaginary

Legislature was proceeding to burn down his haystack, in accordance with an Act, entitled an Act to make the

Poor Richer by making the Rich Poorer. And the chairman of the committee was instituting a forcible

exchange of hats with him, to his manifest disadvantage, for he had just bought him a new beaver. He told

There was nothing very surprising, therefore, in his asking a question not very closely related to what had

I beg your pardon, but it would be of material assistance to me in answering your question if I knew who

Why, those chaps that are setting folks on to burn us all up in our beds. Political firebugs we call 'em up

our way. Want to substitoot the matchbox for the ballotbox. Scare all our old women half to death.

Ohahyesto be sure. I don't believe they say what the papers put in their mouths any more than that

a friend of mine wrote the letter about Worcester's and Webster's Dictionaries, that he had to disown the other

day. These newspaper fellows are half asleep when they make up their reports at two or three o'clock in the

morning, and fill out the speeches to suit themselves. I do remember some things that sounded pretty

bad,about as bad as nitro glycerine, for that matter. But I don't believe they ever said 'em, when they

spoke their pieces, or if they said 'em I know they did n't mean 'em. Something like this, wasn't it? If the

majority didn't do something the minority wanted 'em to, then the people were to burn up our cities, and

knock us down and jump on our stomachs. That was about the kind of talk, as the papers had it; I don't

Dear me, no; only levelling everything smack, and trampling us under foot, as the reporters made it out.

That means FIRE, I take it, and knocking you down and stamping on you, whichever side of your person

happens to be uppermost. Sounded like a threat; meant, of course, for a warning. But I don't believe it was in

the piece as they spoke it,could n't have been. Then, again, Paris wasn't to blame,as much as to sayso

the old women thoughtthat New York or Boston would n't be to blame if it did the same thing. I've heard

of political gatherings where they barbecued an ox, but I can't think there 's a party in this country that wants

to barbecue a city. But it is n't quite fair to frighten the old women. I don't doubt there are a great many

people wiser than I am that would n't be hurt by a hint I am going to give them. It's no matter what you say

when you talk to yourself, but when you talk to other people, your business is to use words with reference to

the way in which those other people are like to understand them. These pretended inflammatory speeches, so

reported as to seem full of combustibles, even if they were as threatening as they have been represented,

would do no harm if read or declaimed in a man's study to his books, or by the seashore to the waves. But

they are not so wholesome moral entertainment for the dangerous classes. Boys must not touch off their

squibs and crackers too near the powdermagazine. This kind of speech does n't help on the millennium

No, the wheel of progress will soon stick fast if you do. You can't keep a dead level long, if you burn

everything down flat to make it. Why, bless your soul, if all the cities of the world were reduced ashes, you'd

have a new set of millionnaires in a couple of years or so, out of the trade in potash. In the mean time, what is

the use of setting the man with the silver watch against the man with the gold watch, and the man without any

You speak truly. Here we are travelling through desert together like the children of Israel. Some pick up

more manna and catch more quails than others and ought to help their hungry neighbors more than they do;

that will always be so until we come back to primitive Christianity, the road to which does not seem to be via

Paris, just now; but we don't want the incendiary's pillar of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night to lead

us in the march to civilization, and we don't want a Moses who will smite rock, not to bring out water for our

It is n't quite fair to run an opposition to the other funny speaker, Rev. Petroleum V. What

You may have been thinking, perhaps, that it was I,I, the Poet, who was the chief talker in the

onesided dialogue to which you have been listening. If so, you were mistaken. It was the old man in the

spectacles with large round glasses and the irongray hair. He does a good deal of the talking at our table,

and, to tell the truth, I rather like to hear him. He stirs me up, and finds me occupation in various ways, and

especially, because he has good solid prejudices, that one can rub against, and so get up and let off a

superficial intellectual irritation, just as the cattle rub their backs against a rail (you remember Sydney Smith's

contrivance in his pasture) or their sides against an appletree (I don't know why they take to these so

particularly, but you will often find the trunk of an apple tree as brown and smooth as an old saddle at the

height of a cow's ribs). I think they begin rubbing in cold blood, and then, you know, l'appetit vient en

mangeant, the more they rub the more they want to. That is the way to use your friend's prejudices. This is a

sturdy looking personage of a good deal more than middle age, his face marked with strong manly furrows,

records of hard thinking and square standup fights with life and all its devils. There is a slight touch of satire

in his discourse now and then, and an odd way of answering one that makes it hard to guess how much more

or less he means than he seems to say. But he is honest, and always has a twinkle in his eye to put you on

your guard when he does not mean to be taken quite literally. I think old Ben Franklin had just that look. I

know his greatgrandson (in pace!) had it, and I don't doubt he took it in the straight line of descent, as he did

The Member of the Haouse evidently comes from one of the lesser inland centres of civilization, where the

flora is rich in checkerberries and similar bounties of nature, and the fauna lively with squirrels,

woodchucks, and the like; where the leading sportsmen snare patridges, as they are called, and "hunt" foxes

with guns; where rabbits are entrapped in "figgery fours," and trout captured with the unpretentious

earthworm, instead of the gorgeous fly; where they bet prizes for butter and cheese, and ragcarpets

executed by ladies more than seventy years of age; where whey wear dresscoats before dinner, and cock

their hats on one side when they feel conspicuous and distinshed; where they saySir to you in their

common talk and have other Arcadian and bucolic ways which are highly unobjectionable, but are not so

There is with us a boy of modest dimensions, not otherwise especially entitled to the epithet, who ought be

six or seven years old, to judge by the gap left by his front milk teeth, these having resigned in favor of their

successors, who have not yet presented their credentials. He is rather old for an enfant terrible, and quite too

young to have grown into the bashfulness of adolescence; but he has some of the qualities of both these

engaging periods of development, The member of the Haouse calls him "Bub," invariably, such term I take to

be an abbreviation of "Beelzeb," as "bus" is the short form of "omnibus." Many eminently genteel persons,

whose manners make them at home anywhere, being evidently unaware of true derivation of this word, are in

the habit of addressing all unknown children by one of the two terms, "bub " and "sis," which they consider

endears them greatly to the young people, and recommends them to the acquaintance of their honored

parents, if these happen to accompany them. The other boarders commonly call our diminutive companion

That Boy. He is a sort of expletive at the table, serving to stop gaps, taking the same place a washer does that

makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a

crevice. I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable referred to, because, though he has many impish traits at

present, he may become civilized and humanized by being in good company. Besides, it is a term which I

understand is considered vulgar by the nobility and gentry of the Mother Country, and it is not to be found in

Mr. Worcester's Dictionary, on which, as is well known, the literary men of this metropolis are by special

statute allowed to be sworn in place of the Bible. I know one, certainly, who never takes his oath on any other

I wanted to write out my account of some of the other boarders, but a domestic occurrencea somewhat

prolonged visit from the landlady, who is rather too anxious that I should be comfortable broke in upon the

continuity of my thoughts, and occasionedin short, I gave up writing for that day.

"Flapjacks, an' it please thee, Anne, or a pudding, for that matter; or what thou wilt, good woman, so thou

Exit Mistress Anne, with strongly accented closing of the door and murmurs to the effect: "Ay, marry, 't is

well for thee to talk as if thou hadst no stomach to fill. We poor wives must swink for our masters, while they

sit in their armchairs growing as great in the girth through laziness as that illmannered fat man William

hath writ of in his books of players' stuff. One had as well meddle with a porkpen, which hath thorns all over

Williamwriting once moreafter an exclamation in strong English of the older pattern,

Oh! Oh! these women! I will e'en step over to the parson's and have a cup of sack with His Reverence for

methinks Master Hamlet hath forgot that which was just now on his lips to speak."

So I shall have to put off making my friends acquainted with the other boarders, some of whom seem to me

worth studying and describing. I have something else of a graver character for my readers. I am talking, you

know, as a poet; I do not say I deserve the name, but I have taken it, and if you consider me at all it must be

in that aspect. You will, therefore, be willing to run your eyes over a few pages read, of course by request, to

My birthplace, the home of my childhood and earlier and later boyhood, has within a few months passed out

of the ownership of my family into the hands of that venerable Alma Mater who seems to have renewed her

youth, and has certainly repainted her dormitories. In truth, when I last revisited that familiar scene and

looked upon the flammantia mania of the old halls, "Massachusetts" with the dummy clockdial, "Harvard"

with the garrulous belfry, little "Holden" with the sculptured unpunishable cherub over its portal, and the rest

of my early brickandmortar acquaintances, I could not help saying to myself that I had lived to see the

Many of the things I shall put down I have no doubt told before in a fragmentary way, how many I cannot be

quite sure, as I do not very often read my own prose works. But when a man dies a great deal is said of him

which has often been said in other forms, and now this dear old house is dead to me in one sense, and I want

to gather up my recollections and wind a string of narrative round them, tying them up like a nosegay for the

last tribute: the same blossoms in it I have often laid on its threshold while it was still living for me.

We Americans are all cuckoos,we make our homes in the nests of other birds. I have read somewhere that

the lineal descendants of the man who carted off the body of William Rufus, with Walter Tyrrel's arrow

sticking in it, have driven a cart (not absolutely the same one, I suppose) in the New Forest, from that day to

this. I don't quite understand Mr. Ruskin's saying (if he said it) that he couldn't get along in a country where

there were no castles, but I do think we lose a great deal in living where there are so few permanent homes.

You will see how much I parted with which was not reckoned in the price paid for the old homestead.

I shall say many things which an uncharitable reader might find fault with as personal. I should not dare to

call myself a poet if I did not; for if there is anything that gives one a title to that name, it is that his inner

nature is naked and is not ashamed. But there are many such things I shall put in words, not because they are

personal, but because they are human, and are born of just such experiences as those who hear or read what I

say are like to have had in greater or less measure. I find myself so much like other people that I often wonder

at the coincidence. It was only the other day that I sent out a copy of verses about my greatgrandmother's

picture, and I was surprised to find how many other people had portraits of their great grandmothers or other

progenitors, about which they felt as I did about mine, and for whom I had spoken, thinking I was speaking

for myself only. And so I am not afraid to talk very freely with you, my precious reader or listener. You too,

Beloved, were born somewhere and remember your birthplace or your early home; for you some house is

haunted by recollections; to some roof you have bid farewell. Your hand is upon mine, then, as I guide my

pen. Your heart frames the responses to the litany of my remembrance. For myself it is a tribute of affection I

am rendering, and I should put it on record for my own satisfaction, were there none to read or to listen.

I hope you will not say that I have built a pillared portico of introduction to a humble structure of narrative.

For when you look at the old gambrelroofed house, you will see an unpretending mansion, such as very

possibly you were born in yourself, or at any rate such a place of residence as your minister or some of your

well todo country cousins find good enough, but not at all too grand for them. We have stately old

Colonial palaces in our ancient village, now a city, and a thriving one,squarefronted edifices that stand

back from the vulgar highway, with folded arms, as it were; social fortresses of the time when the twilight

lustre of the throne reached as far as our halfcleared settlement, with a glacis before them in the shape of a

long broad gravelwalk, so that in King George's time they looked as formidably to any but the silkstocking

gentry as Gibraltar or Ehrenbreitstein to a visitor without the password. We forget all this in the kindly

welcome they give us today; for some of them are still standing and doubly famous, as we all know. But the

gambrelroofed house, though stately enough for college dignitaries and scholarly clergymen, was not one of

those old Tory, Episcopalchurchgoer's strongholds. One of its doors opens directly upon the green, always

called the Common; the other, facing the south, a few steps from it, over a paved footwalk, on the other side

of which is the miniature front yard, bordered with lilacs and syringas. The honest mansion makes no

pretensions. Accessible, companionable, holding its hand out to all, comfortable, respectable, and even in its

way dignified, but not imposing, not a house for his Majesty's Counsellor, or the Right Reverend successor of

Him who had not where to lay his head, for something like a hundred and fifty years it has stood in its lot,

and seen the generations of men come and go like the leaves of the forest. I passed some pleasant hours, a

few years since, in the Registry of Deeds and the Town Records, looking up the history of the old house.

How those dear friends of mine, the antiquarians, for whose grave councils I compose my features on the too

rare Thursdays when I am at liberty to meet them, in whose human herbarium the leaves and blossoms of past

generations are so carefully spread out and pressed and laid away, would listen to an expansion of the

The estate was the third lot of the eighth "Squadron" (whatever that might be), and in the year 1707 was

allotted in the distribution of undivided lands to "Mr. ffox," the Reverend Jabez Fox of Woburn, it may be

supposed, as it passed from his heirs to the first Jonathan Hastings; from him to his son, the long remembered

College Steward; from him in the year 1792 to the Reverend Eliphalet Pearson, Professor of Hebrew and

other Oriental languages in Harvard College, whose large personality swam into my ken when I was looking

I wonder if there are any such beings nowadays as the great Eliphalet, with his large features and

conversational basso profundo, seemed to me. His very name had something elephantine about it, and it

seemed to me that the house shook from cellar to garret at his footfall. Some have pretended that he had

Olympian aspirations, and wanted to sit in the seat of Jove and bear the academic thunderbolt and the aegis

inscribed Christo et Ecclesiae. It is a common weakness enough to wish to find one's self in an empty saddle;

Cotton Mather was miserable all his days, I am afraid, after that entry in his Diary: "This Day Dr. Sewall was

There is no doubt that the men of the older generation look bigger and more formidable to the boys whose

eyes are turned up at their venerable countenances than the race which succeeds them, to the same boys

grown older. Everything is twice as large, measured on a three yearolds threefoot scale as on a

thirtyyearolds sixfoot scale; but age magnifies and aggravates persons out of due proportion. Old people

are a kind of monsters to little folks; mild manifestations of the terrible, it may be, but still, with their white

locks and ridged and grooved features, which those horrid little eyes exhaust of their details, like so many

microscopes not exactly what human beings ought to be. The middleaged and young men have left

comparatively faint impressions in my memory, but how grandly the procession of the old clergymen who

filled our pulpit from time to time, and passed the day under our roof, marches before my closed eyes! At

their head the most venerable David Osgood, the majestic minister of Medford, with massive front and

shaggy overshadowing eyebrows; following in the train, mildeyed John Foster of Brighton, with the

lambent aurora of a smile about his pleasant mouth, which not even the "Sabbath" could subdue to the true

Levitical aspect; and bulky Charles Steams of Lincoln, author of "The Ladies' Philosophy of Love. A Poem.

1797" (how I stared at him! he was the first living person ever pointed out to me as a poet); and Thaddeus

Mason Harris of Dorchester (the same who, a poor youth, trudging along, staff in hand, being then in a stress

of sore need, found all at once that somewhat was adhering to the end of his stick, which somewhat proved to

be a gold ring of price, bearing the words, "God speed thee, Friend!"), already in decadence as I remember

him, with head slanting forward and downward as if looking for a place to rest in after his learned labors; and

that other Thaddeus, the old man of West Cambridge, who outwatched the rest so long after they had gone to

sleep in their own churchyards, that it almost seemed as if he meant to sit up until the morning of the

resurrection; and bringing up the rear, attenuated but vivacious little Jonathan Homer of Newton, who was, to

look upon, a kind of expurgated, reduced and Americanized copy of Voltaire, but very unlike him in

wickedness or wit. The goodhumored junior member of our family always loved to make him happy by

setting him chirruping about Miles Coverdale's Version, and the Bishop's Bible, and how he wrote to his

friend Sir Isaac (Coffin) about something or other, and how Sir Isaac wrote back that he was very much

pleased with the contents of his letter, and so on about Sir Isaac, ad libitum,for the admiral was his old

friend, and he was proud of him. The kindly little old gentleman was a collector of Bibles, and made himself

believe he thought he should publish a learned Commentary some day or other; but his friends looked for it

only in the Greek Calends,say on the 31st of April, when that should come round, if you would modernize

the phrase. I recall also one or two exceptional and infrequent visitors with perfect distinctness: cheerful

Elijah Kellogg, a lively missionary from the region of the Quoddy Indians, with much hopeful talk about

Sock Bason and his tribe; also poor old PoorhouseParson Isaac Smith, his head going like a China

mandarin, as he discussed the possibilities of the escape of that distinguished captive whom he spoke of

under the name, if I can reproduce phonetically its vibrating nasalities of "General Mmbongaparty,"a name

suggestive to my young imagination of a dangerous, loosejointed skeleton, threatening us all like the armed

I have mentioned only the names of those whose images come up pleasantly before me, and I do not mean to

say anything which any descendant might not read smilingly. But there were some of the blackcoated gentry

whose aspect was not so agreeable to me. It is very curious to me to look back on my early likes and dislikes,

and see how as a child I was attracted or repelled by such and such ministers, a good deal, as I found out long

afterwards, according to their theological beliefs. On the whole, I think the oldfashioned New England

divine softening down into Arminianism was about as agreeable as any of them. And here I may remark, that

a mellowing rigorist is always a much pleasanter object to contemplate than a tightening liberal, as a cold day

warming up to 32 Fahrenheit is much more agreeable than a warm one chilling down to the same

temperature. The least pleasing change is that kind of mental hemiplegia which now and then attacks the

rational side of a man at about the same period of life when one side of the body is liable to be palsied, and in

fact is, very probably, the same thing as palsy, in another form. The worst of it is that the subjects of it never

seem to suspect that they are intellectual invalids, stammerers and cripples at best, but are all the time hitting

out at their old friends with the well arm, and calling them hard names out of their twisted mouths.

It was a real delight to have one of those good, hearty, happy, benignant old clergymen pass the Sunday, with

us, and I can remember. some whose advent made the day feel almost like "Thanksgiving." But now and then

would come along a clerical visitor with a sad face and a wailing voice, which sounded exactly as if

somebody must be lying dead up stairs, who took no interest in us children, except a painful one, as being in

a bad way with our cheery looks, and did more to unchristianize us with his woebegone ways than all his

sermons were like to accomplish in the other direction. I remember one in particular, who twitted me so with

my blessings as a Christian child, and whined so to me about the naked black children who, like the "Little

Vulgar Boy," "had n't got no supper and hadn't got no ma," and hadn't got no Catechism, (how I wished for

the moment I was a little black boy!) that he did more in that one day to make me a heathen than he had ever

done in a month to make a Christian out of an infant Hottentot. What a debt we owe to our friends of the left

centre, the Brooklyn and the Park Street and the Summer street ministers; good, wholesome, soundbodied,

oneminded, cheerful spirited men, who have taken the place of those wailing poitrinaires with the

bandanna handkerchiefs round their meagre throats and a funeral service in their forlorn physiognomies! I

might have been a minister myself, for aught I know, if this clergyman had not looked and talked so like an

All this belongs to one of the sideshows, to which I promised those who would take tickets to the main

exhibition should have entrance gratis. If I were writing a poem you would expect, as a matter of course, that

To come back to the old house and its former tenant, the Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental languages.

Fifteen years he lived with his family under its roof. I never found the slightest trace of him until a few years

ago, when I cleaned and brightened with pious hands the brass lock of "the study," which had for many years

been covered with a thick coat of paint. On that I found scratched; as with a nail or fork, the following

Only that and nothing more, but the story told itself. Master Edward Pearson, then about as high as the lock,

was disposed to immortalize himself in monumental brass, and had got so far towards it, when a sudden

interruption, probably a smart box on the ear, cheated him of his fame, except so far as this poor record may

rescue it. Dead long ago. I remember him well, a grown man, as a visitor at a later period; and, for some

reason, I recall him in the attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, standing full before a generous woodfire, not

facing it, but quite the contrary, a perfect picture of the content afforded by a blazing hearth contemplated

from that point of view, and, as the heat stole through his person and kindled his emphatic features, seeming

to me a pattern of manly beauty. What a statue gallery of posturing friends we all have in our memory! The

old Professor himself sometimes visited the house after it had changed hands. Of course, my recollections are

not to be wholly trusted, but I always think I see his likeness in a profile face to be found among the

illustrations of Rees's Cyclopaedia. (See Plates, Vol. IV., Plate 2, Painting, Diversities of the Human Face,

And now let us return to our chief picture. In the days of my earliest remembrance, a row of tall Lombardy

poplars mounted guard on the western side of the old mansion. Whether, like the cypress, these trees suggest

the idea of the funeral torch or the monumental spire, whether their tremulous leaves make wits afraid by

sympathy with their nervous thrills, whether the faint balsamic smell of their foliage and their closely

swathed limbs have in them vague hints of dead Pharaohs stiffened in their cerements, I will guess; but they

always seemed to me to give an of sepulchral sadness to the house before which stood sentries. Not so with

the row of elms which you may see leading up towards the western entrance. I think the patriarch of them all

went over in the great gale of 1815; I know I used to shake the youngest of them with my hands, stout as it is

now, with a trunk that would defy the bully of Crotona, or the strong man whose liaison with the Lady

The College plain would be nothing without its elms. As the long hair of a woman is a glory to her, are these

green tresses that bank themselves against sky in thick clustered masses the ornament and the pride of the

classic green. You know the "Washington elm," or if you do not, you had better rekindle our patriotism by

reading the inscription, which tells you that under its shadow the great leader first drew his sword at the head

of an American army. In a line with that you may see two others: the coral fan, as I always called it from its

resemblance in form to that beautiful marine growth, and a third a little farther along. I have heard it said that

all three were planted at the same time, and that the difference of their growth is due to the slope of the

ground,the Washington elm being lower than either of the others. There is a row of elms just in front of the

old house on the south. When I was a child the one at the southwest corner was struck by lightning, and one

of its limbs and a long ribbon of bark torn away. The tree never fully recovered its symmetry and vigor, and

forty years and more afterwards a second thunderbolt crashed upon it and set its heart on fire, like those of the

lost souls in the Hall of Eblis. Heaven had twice blasted it, and the axe finished what the lightning had begun.

The soil of the University town is divided into patches of sandy and of clayey ground. The Common and the

College green, near which the old house stands, are on one of the sandy patches. Four curses are the local

inheritance: droughts, dust, mud, and cankerworms. I cannot but think that all the characters of a region help

to modify the children born in it. I am fond of making apologies for human nature, and I think I could find an

excuse for myself if I, too, were dry and barren and muddywitted and "cantankerous,"disposed to get my

I know this, that the way Mother Earth treats a boy shapes out a kind of natural theology for him. I fell into

Manichean ways of thinking from the teaching of my garden experiences. Like other boys in the country, I

had my patch of ground, to which, in the springtime, I entrusted the seeds furnished me, with a confident

trust in their resurrection and glorification in the better world of summer. But I soon found that my lines had

fallen in a place where a vegetable growth had to run the gauntlet of as many foes and dials as a Christian

pilgrim. Flowers would not Blow; daffodils perished like criminals in their cone demned caps, without their

petals ever seeing daylight; roses were disfigured with monstrous protrusions "through their very

centres,something that looked like a second bud pushing through the middle of the corolla; lettuces and

cabbages would not head; radishes knotted themselves until they looked like centenerians' fingers; and on

every stem, on every leaf, and both sides of it, and at the root of everything that dew, was a professional

specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to devour that

particular part, and help order the whole attempt at vegetation. Such experiences must influence a child born

to them. A sandy soil, where nothing flourishes but weeds and evil beasts of small dimensions, must breed

different qualities in its human offspring from one of those fat and fertile spots which the wit whom I have

once before noted described so happily that, if I quoted the passage, its brilliancy would spoil one of my

pages, as a diamond breastpin sometimes kills the social effect of the wearer, who might have passed for a

gentleman without it. Your arid patch of earth should seem to the natural birthplace of the leaner virtues and

the abler vices,of temperance and the domestic proprieties on the one hand, with a tendency to light

weights in groceries and provisions, and to clandestine abstraction from the person on the other, as opposed

to the free hospitality, the broadly planned burglaries, and the largely conceived homicides of our rich

Western alluvial regions. Yet Nature is never wholly unkind. Economical as she was in my unparadised

Eden, hard as it was to make some of my floral houris unveil, still the damask roses sweetened the June

breezes, the bladed and plumed flowerdeluces unfolded their closewrapped cones, and larkspurs and

lupins, lady's delights,plebeian manifestations of the pansy, selfsowing marigolds, hollyhocks, the

forest flowers of two seasons, and the perennial lilacs and syringas, all whispered to' the winds blowing

Beyond the garden was "the field," a vast domain of four acres or thereabout, by the measurement of after

years, bordered to the north by a fathomless chasm, the ditch the baseball players of the present era jump

over; on the east by unexplored territory; on the south by a barren enclosure, where the red sorrel proclaimed

liberty and equality under its drapeau rouge, and succeeded in establishing a vegetable commune where all

were alike, poor, mean, sour, and uninteresting; and on the west by the Common, not then disgraced by

jealous enclosures, which make it look like a cattlemarket. Beyond, as I looked round, were the Colleges,

the meetinghouse, the little square markethouse, long vanished; the burialground where the dead

Presidents stretched their weary bones under epitaphs stretched out at as full length as their subjects; the

pretty church where the gouty Tories used to kneel on their hassocks; the district schoolhouse, and hard by it

Ma'am Hancock's cottage, never so called in those days, but rather "tenfooter"; then houses scattered near and

far, open spaces, the shadowy elms, round hilltops in the distance, and over all the great bowl of the sky.

Mind you, this was the WORLD, as I first knew it; terra veteribus cognita, as Mr. Arrowsmith would have

But I am forgetting the old house again in the landscape. The worst of a modern stylish mansion is, that it has

no place for ghosts. I watched one building not long since. It had no proper garret, to begin with, only a

sealed interval between the roof and attics, where a spirit could not be accommodated, unless it were flattened

out like Ravel, Brother, after the millstone had fallen on him. There was not a nook or a corner in the whole

horse fit to lodge any respectable ghost, for every part was as open to observation as a literary man's character

and condition, his figure and estate, his coat and his countenance, are to his (or her) Bohemian Majesty on a

Now the old house had wainscots, behind which the mice were always scampering and squeaking and rattling

down the plaster, and enacting family scenes and parlor theatricals. It had a cellar where the cold slug clung

to the walls, and the misanthropic spider withdrew from the garish day; where the green mould loved to

grow, and the long white potatoshoots went feeling along the floor, if haply they might find the daylight; it

had great brick pillars, always in a cold sweat with holding up the burden they had been aching under day and

night far a century and more; it had sepulchral arches closed by rough doors that hung on hinges rotten with

rust, behind which doors, if there was not a heap of bones connected with a mysterious disappearance of long

ago, there well might have been, for it was just the place to look for them. It had a garret; very nearly such a

one as it seems to me one of us has described in one of his books; but let us look at this one as I can

reproduce it from memory. It has a flooring of laths with ridges of mortar squeezed up between them, which

if you tread on you will go tothe Lord have mercy on you! where will you go to?the same being crossed

by narrow bridges of boards, on which you may put your feet, but with fear and trembling. Above you and

around you are beams and joists, on some of which you may see, when the light is let in, the marks of the

conchoidal clippings of the broadaxe, showing the rude way in which the timber was shaped as it came, full

of sap, from the neighboring forest. It is a realm of darkness and thick dust, and shroudlike cobwebs and

dead things they wrap in their gray folds. For a garret is like a seashore, where wrecks are thrown up and

slowly go to pieces. There is the cradle which the old man you just remember was rocked in; there is the ruin

of the bedstead he died on; that ugly slanting contrivance used to be put under his pillow in the days when his

breath came hard; there is his old chair with both arms gone, symbol of the desolate time when he had

nothing earthly left to lean on; there is the large wooden reel which the bleareyed old deacon sent the

minister's lady, who thanked him graciously, and twirled it smilingly, and in fitting season bowed it out

decently to the limbo of troublesome conveniences. And there are old leather portmanteaus, like stranded

porpoises, their mouths gaping in gaunt hunger for the food with which they used to be gorged to bulging

repletion; and old brass andirons, waiting until time shall revenge them on their paltry substitutes, and they

shall have their own again, and bring with them the forestick and the backlog of ancient days; and the

empty churn, with its idle dasher, which the Nancys and Phoebes, who have left their comfortable places to

the Bridgets and Norahs, used to handle to good purpose; and the brown, shaky old spinningwheel, which

Under the dark and haunted garret were attic chambers which themselves had histories. On a pane in the

"John Tracy," "Robert Roberts," "Thomas Prince "; "Stultus" another hand had added. When I found these

names a few years ago (wrong side up, for the window had been reversed), I looked at once in the Triennial

to find them, for the epithet showed that they were probably students. I found them all under the years 1771

and 1773. Does it please their thin ghosts thus to be dragged to the light of day? Has "Stultus " forgiven the

The southeast chamber was the Library Hospital. Every scholar should have a book infirmary attached his

library. There should find a peaceable refuge the many books, invalids from their birth, which are sent "with

the best regards of the Author"; the respected, but unpresentable cripples which have lost cover; the odd

volumes of honored sets which go mourning all their days for their lost brother; the schoolbooks which have

been so often the subjects of assault and battery, that they look as if the police must know them by heart;

these and still more the pictured storybooks, beginning with Mother Goose (which a dear old friend of mine

has just been amusing his philosophic leisure with turning most ingeniously and happily into the tongues of

Virgil and Homer), will be precious mementos by and by, when children and grandchildren come along.

What would I not give for that dear little paperbound quarto, in large and most legible type, on certain pages

of which the tender hand that was the shield of my infancy had crossed out with deep black marks something

awful, probably about BEARS, such as once tare twoandforty of us little folks for making faces, and the

I made strange acquaintances in that book infirmary up in the southeast attic. The "Negro Plot" at New York

helped to implant a feeling in me which it took Mr. Garrison a good many years to root out. "Thinks I to

Myself," an old novel, which has been attributed to a famous statesman, introduced me to a world of fiction

which was not represented on the shelves of the library proper, unless perhaps by Coelebs in Search of a

Wife, or allegories of the bitter tonic class, as the young doctor that sits on the other side of the table would

probably call them. I always, from an early age, had a keen eye for a story with a moral sticking out of it, and

gave it a wide berth, though in my later years I have myself written a couple of "medicated novels," as one of

my dearest and pleasantest old friends wickedly called them, when somebody asked her if she had read the

last of my printed performances. I forgave the satire for the charming esprit of the epithet. Besides the works

I have mentioned, there was an old, old Latin alchemy book, with the manuscript annotations of some ancient

Rosicrucian, in the pages of which I had a vague notion that I might find the mighty secret of the Lapis

Philosophorum, otherwise called Chaos, the Dragon, the Green Lion, the Quinta Essentia, the Soap of Sages,

the Vinegar of Philosophers, the Dew of Heavenly Grace, the Egg, the Old Man, the Sun, the Moon, and by

all manner of odd aliases, as I am assured by the plethoric little book before me, in parchment covers

browned like a meerschaum with the smoke of furnaces and the thumbing of dead gold seekers, and the

fingering of bonyhanded bookmisers, and the long intervals of dusty slumber on the shelves of the

bouquiniste; for next year it will be three centuries old, and it had already seen nine generations of men when

I caught its eye (Alchemiae Doctrina) and recognized it at pistolshot distance as a prize, among the

breviaries and Heures and trumpery volumes of the old openair dealer who exposed his treasures under the

shadow of St. Sulpice. I have never lost my taste for alchemy since I first got hold of the Palladium

Spagyricum of Peter John Faber, and soughtin vain, it is truethrough its pages for a clear, intelligible,

and practical statement of how I could turn my lead sinkers and the weights of tall kitchen clock into good

yellow gold, specific gravity 19.2, and exchangeable for whatever I then wanted, and for many more things

than I was then aware of. One of the greatest pleasures of childhood found in the mysteries which it hides

from the skepticism of the elders, and works up into small mythologies of its own. I have seen all this played

over again in adult life,the same delightful bewilderment semi emotional belief in listening to the gaseous

praises of this or that fantastic system, that I found in the pleasing mirages conjured up for me by the ragged

The rooms of the second story, the chambers of birth and death, are sacred to silent memories.

Let us go down to the groundfloor. I should have begun with this, but that the historical reminiscences of

the old house have been recently told in a most interesting memoir by a distinguished student of our local

history. I retain my doubts about those "dents" on the floor of the righthand room, "the study" of successive

occupants, said to have been made by the butts of the Continental militia's firelocks, but this was the cause to

which the story told me in childhood laid them. That military consultations were held in that room when the

house was General Ward's headquarters, that the Provincial generals and colonels and other men of war there

planned the movement which ended in the fortifying of Bunker's Hill, that Warren slept in the house the night

before the battle, that President Langdon went forth from the western door and prayed for God's blessing on

the men just setting forth on their bloody expedition, all these things have been told, and perhaps none of

But now for fifty years and more that room has been a meetingground for the platoons and companies which

range themselves at the scholar's word of command. Pleasant it is to think that the retreating host of books is

to give place to a still larger army of volumes, which have seen service under the eye of a great commander.

For here the noble collection of him so freshly remembered as our silvertongued orator, our erudite scholar,

our honored College President, our accomplished statesman, our courtly ambassador, are to be reverently

gathered by the heir of his name, himself not unworthy to be surrounded by that august assembly of the wise

Could such a manychambered edifice have stood a century and a half and not have had its passages of

romance to bequeath their lingering legends to the aftertime? There are other names on some of the small

windowpanes, which must have had young fleshandblood owners, and there is one of early date which

elderly persons have whispered was borne by a fair woman, whose graces made the house beautiful in the

eyes of the youth of that time. One especiallyyou will find the name of Fortescue Vernon, of the class of

1780, in the Triennial Cataloguewas a favored visitor to the old mansion; but he went over seas, I think

they told me, and died still young, and the name of the maiden which is scratched on the windowpane was

never changed. I am telling the story honestly, as I remember it, but I may have colored it unconsciously, and

the legendary pane may be broken before this for aught I know. At least, I have named no names except the

It was a great happiness to have been born in an old house haunted by such recollections, with harmless

ghosts walking its corridors, with fields of waving grass and trees and singing birds, and that vast territory of

four or five acres around it to give a child the sense that he was born to a noble principality. It has been a

great pleasure to retain a certain hold upon it for so many years; and since in the natural course of things it

must at length pass into other hands, it is a gratification to see the old place making itself tidy for a new

tenant, like some venerable dame who is getting ready to entertain a neighbor of condition. Not long since a

new cap of shingles adorned this ancient mother among the villagenow city mansions. She has dressed

herself in brighter colors than she has hitherto worn, so they tell me, within the last few days. She has

modernized her aspects in several ways; she has rubbed bright the glasses through which she looks at the

Common and the Colleges; and as the sunsets shine upon her through the flickering leaves or the wiry spray

of the elms I remember from my childhood, they will glorify her into the aspect she wore when President

Holyoke, father of our long since dead centenarian, looked upon her in her youthful comeliness.

The quiet corner formed by this and the neighboring residences has changed less than any place I can

remember. Our kindly, polite, shrewd, and humorous old neighbor, who in former days has served the town

as constable and auctioneer, and who bids fair to become the oldest inhabitant of the city, was there when I

was born, and is living there today. By and by the stony foot of the great University will plant itself on this

whole territory, and the private recollections which clung so tenaciously and fondly to the place and its

Shall they ever live again in the memory of those who loved them here below? What is this life without the

poor accidents which made it our own, and by which we identify ourselves? Ah me! I might like to be a

winged chorister, but still it seems to me I should hardly be quite happy if I could not recall at will the Old

House with the Long Entry, and the White Chamber (where I wrote the first verses that made me known, with

a pencil, stans pede in uno, pretty, nearly), and the Little Parlor, and the Study, and the old books in uniforms

as varied as those of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company used to be, if my memory serves me

right, and the front yard with the StarofBethlehems growing, flowerless, among the grass, and the dear

I have told my story. I do not know what special gifts have been granted or denied me; but this I know, that I

am like so many others of my fellowcreatures, that when I smile, I feel as if they must; when I cry, I think

their eyes fill; and it always seems to me that when I am most truly myself I come nearest to them and am

surest of being listened to by the brothers and sisters of the larger family into which I was born so long ago. I

have often feared they might be tired of me and what I tell them. But then, perhaps, would come a letter from

some quiet body in some outoftheway place, which showed me that I had said something which another

had often felt but never said, or told the secret of another's heart in unburdening my own. Such evidences that

one is in the highway of human experience and feeling lighten the footsteps wonderfully. So it is that one is

encouraged to go on writing as long as the world has anything that interests him, for he never knows how

many of his fellowbeings he may please or profit, and in how many places his name will be spoken as that

In the mood suggested by my story I have ventured on the poem that follows. Most people love this world

more than they are willing to confess, and it is hard to conceive ourselves weaned from it so as to feel no

emotion at the thought of its most sacred recollections, even after a sojourn of years, as we should count the

lapse of earthly time,in the realm where, sooner or later, all tears shall be wiped away. I hope, therefore,

the title of my lines will not frighten those who are little accustomed to think of men and women as human

THE DIVINE VOICE. Go seek thine earthborn sisters,thus the Voice That all obey,the sad and silent

three; These only, while the hosts of heaven rejoice, Smile never: ask them what their sorrows be: And when

the secret of their griefs they tell, Look on them with thy mild, halfhuman eyes; Say what thou wast on

THE ANGEL. Why thus, apart,the swiftwinged herald spake, Sit ye with silent lips and unstrung

lyres While the trisagion's blending chords awake In shouts of joy from all the heavenly choirs?

THE FIRST SPIRIT. Chide not thy sisters,thus the answer came; Children of earth, our halfweaned

nature clings To earth's fond memories, and her whispered name Untunes our quivering lips, our saddened

strings; For there we loved, and where we love is home, Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts,

Though o'er us shine the jasperlighted dome: The chain may lengthen, but it never parts! Sometimes a

sunlit sphere comes rolling by, And then we softly whisper,can it be? And leaning toward the silvery orb,

we try To hear the music of its murmuring sea; To catch, perchance, some flashing glimpse of green, Or

breathe some wildwood fragrance, wafted through The opening gates of pearl, that fold between The

blinding splendors and the changeless blue. THE ANGEL. Nay, sister, nay! a single healing leaf Plucked

from the bough of yon twelvefruited tree, Would soothe such anguish,deeper stabbing grief Has pierced

Ah, woe is me! I from my clinging babe was rudely torn; His tender lips a loveless bosom pressed Can I

THE SECOND SPIRIT. I was a fair and youthful bride, The kiss of love still burns upon my cheek, He

whom I worshipped, ever at my side, Him through the spirit realm in vain I seek. Sweet faces turn their

beaming eyes on mine; Ah! not in these the wishedfor look I read; Still for that one dear human smile I

pine; Thou and none other!is the lover's creed. THE ANGEL. And whence thy sadness in a world of

bliss Where never parting comes, nor mourner's tear? Art thou, too, dreaming of a mortal's kiss Amid the

seraphs of the heavenly sphere? THE THIRD SPIRIT. Nay, tax not me with passion's wasting fire; When

the swift message set my spirit free, Blind, helpless, lone, I left my grayhaired sire; My friends were many,

he had none save me. I left him, orphaned, in the starless night; Alas, for him no cheerful morning's dawn! I

wear the ransomed spirit's robe of white, Yet still I hear him moaning, She is gone! THE ANGEL. Ye

know me not, sweet sisters?All in vain Ye seek your lost ones in the shapes they wore; The flower once

opened may not bud again, The fruit once fallen finds the stem no more. Child, lover, sire,yea, all things

loved below, Fair pictures damasked on a vapor's fold, Fade like the roseate flush, the golden glow, When the

bright curtain of the day is rolled. I was the babe that slumbered on thy breast. And, sister, mine the lips

that called thee bride. Mine were the silvered locks thy hand caressed, That faithful hand, my faltering

footstep's guide! Each changing form, frail vesture of decay, The soul unclad forgets it once hath worn,

Stained with the travel of the weary day, And shamed with rents from every wayside thorn. To lie, an infant,

in thy fond embrace, To come with love's warm kisses back to thee, To show thine eyes thy grayhaired

father's face, Not Heaven itself could grant; this may not be! Then spread your folded wings, and leave to

earth The dust once breathing ye have mourned so long, Till Love, new risen, owns his heavenly birth, And

I am going to take it for granted now and henceforth, in my report of what was said and what was to be seen

at our table, that I have secured one good, faithful, loving reader, who never finds fault, who never gets

sleepy over my pages, whom no critic can bully out of a liking for me, and to whom I am always safe in

addressing myself. My one elect may be man or woman, old or young, gentle or simple, living in the next

block or on a slope of Nevada, my fellowcountryman or an alien; but one such reader I shall assume to exist

A writer is so like a lover! And a talk with the right listener is so like an arminarm walk in the moonlight

with the soft heartbeat just felt through the folds of muslin and broadcloth! But it takes very little to spoil

everything for writer, talker, lover. There are a great many cruel things besides poverty that freeze the genial

current of the soul, as the poet of the Elegy calls it. Fire can stand any wind, but is easily blown out, and then

come smouldering and smoke, and profitless, slow combustion without the cheerful blaze which sheds light

all round it. The one Reader's hand may shelter the flame; the one blessed ministering spirit with the vessel of

oil may keep it bright in spite of the stream of cold water on the other side doing its best to put it out.

I suppose, if any writer, of any distinguishable individuality, could look into the hearts of all his readers, he

might very probably find one in his parish of a thousand or a million who honestly preferred him to any other

of his kind. I have no doubt we have each one of us, somewhere, our exact facsimile, so like us in all things

except the accidents of condition, that we should love each other like a pair of twins, if our natures could

once fairly meet. I know I have my counterpart in some State of this Union. I feel sure that there is an

Englishman somewhere precisely like myself. (I hope he does not drop his h's, for it does not seem to me

possible that the Royal Dane could have remained faithful to his love for Ophelia, if she had addressed him as

'Amlet.) There is also a certain Monsieur, to me at this moment unknown, and likewise a Herr Von

Something, each of whom is essentially my double. An Arab is at this moment eating dates, a mandarin is

just sipping his tea, and a SouthSeaIslander (with undeveloped possibilities) drinking the milk of a

cocoanut, each one of whom, if he had been born in the gambrelroofed house, and cultivated my little

sandpatch, and grown up in "the study " from the height of Walton's Polyglot Bible to that of the shelf

which held the Elzevir Tacitus and Casaubon's Polybius, with all the complex influences about him that

surrounded me, would have been so nearly what I am that I should have loved him like a brother,always

provided that I did not hate him for his resemblance to me, on the same principle as that which makes bodies

For, perhaps after all, my One Reader is quite as likely to be not the person most resembling myself, but the

one to whom my nature is complementary. Just as a particular soil wants some one element to fertilize it, just

as the body in some conditions has a kind of faminefor one special food, so the mind has its wants, which

do not always call for what is best, but which know themselves and are as peremptory as the saltsick sailor's

call for a lemon or a raw potato, or, if you will, as those capricious "longings," which have a certain meaning,

we may suppose, and which at any rate we think it reasonable to satisfy if we can.

I was going to say something about our boarders the other day when I got run away with by my local

reminiscences. I wish you to understand that we have a rather select company at the table of our

Our Landlady is a most respectable person, who has seen better days, of course,all landladies have,but

has also, I feel sure, seen a good deal worse ones. For she wears a very handsome silk dress on state

occasions, with a breastpin set, as I honestly believe, with genuine pearls, and appears habitually with a very

smart cap, from under which her gray curls come out with an unmistakable expression, conveyed in the

hieratic language of the feminine priesthood, to the effect that while there is life there is hope. And when I

come to reflect on the many circumstances which go to the making of matrimonial happiness, I cannot help

thinking that a personage of her present able exterior, thoroughly experienced in all the domestic arts which

render life comfortable, might make the later years of some hitherto companionless bachelor very endurable,

The condition of the Landlady's family is, from what I learn, such as to make the connection I have alluded

to, I hope with delicacy, desirable for incidental as well as direct reasons, provided a fitting match could be

found. I was startled at hearing her address by the familiar name of Benjamin the young physician I have

referred to, until I found on inquiry, what I might have guessed by the size of his slices of pie and other little

marks of favoritism, that he was her son. He has recently come back from Europe, where he has topped off

his home training with a firstclass foreign finish. As the Landlady could never have educated him in this

way out of the profits of keeping boarders, I was not surprised when I was told that she had received a pretty

little property in the form of a bequest from a former boarder, a very kindhearted, worthy old gentleman

who had been long with her and seen how hard she worked for food and clothes for herself and this son of

hers, Benjamin Franklin by his baptismal name. Her daughter had also married well, to a member of what we

may call the postmedical profession, that, namely, which deals with the mortal frame after the practitioners

of the healing art have done with it and taken their leave. So thriving had this soninlaw of hers been in his

business, that his wife drove about in her own carriage, drawn by a pair of jetblack horses of most dignified

demeanor, whose only fault was a tendency to relapse at once into a walk after every application of a

stimulus that quickened their pace to a trot; which application always caused them to look round upon the

driver with a surprised and offended air, as if he had been guilty of a grave indecorum.

The Landlady's daughter had been blessed with a number of children, of great sobriety of outward aspect, but

remarkably cheerful in their inward habit of mind, more especially on the occasion of the death of a doll,

which was an almost daily occurrence, and gave them immense delight in getting up a funeral, for which they

had a complete miniature outfit. How happy they were under their solemn aspect! For the head mourner, a

child of remarkable gifts, could actually make the tears run down her cheeks,as real ones as if she had been

a grown person following a rich relative, who had not forgotten his connections, to his last unfurnished

So this was a most desirable family connection for the right man to step into,a thriving, thrifty

motherinlaw, who knew what was good for the sustenance of the body, and had no doubt taught it to her

daughter; a medical artist at hand in case the luxuries of the table should happen to disturb the physiological

harmonies; and in the worst event, a sweet consciousness that the last sad offices would be attended to with

It seems as if I could hardly be at this table for a :year, if I should stay so long, without seeing some romance

or other work itself out under my eyes; and I cannot help thinking that the Landlady is to be the heroine of the

lovehistory like to unfold itself. I think I see the little cloud in the horizon, with a silvery lining to it, which

may end in a rain of cards tied round with white ribbons. Extremes meet, and who so like to be the other

party as the elderly gentleman at the other end of the table, as far from her now as the length of the board

permits? I may be mistaken, but I think this is to be the romantic episode of the year before me. Only it seems

so natural it is improbable, for you never find your dropped money just where you look for it, and so it is with

This gentleman is a tight, tidy, wiry little man, with a small, brisk head, closecropped white hair, a good

wholesome complexion, a quiet, rather kindly face, quick in his movements, neat in his dress, but fond of

wearing a short jacket over his coat, which gives him the look of a pickled or preserved schoolboy. He has

retired, they say, from a thriving business, with a snug property, suspected by some to be rather more than

snug, and entitling him to be called a capitalist, except that this word seems to be equivalent to highway

robber in the new gospel of Saint Petroleum. That he is economical in his habits cannot be denied, for he

saws and splits his own wood, for exercise, he says,and makes his own fires, brushes his own shoes, and, it

is whispered, darns a hole in a stocking now and then,all for exercise, I suppose. Every summer he goes

out of town for a few weeks. On a given day of the month a wagon stops at the door and takes up, not his

trunks, for he does not indulge in any such extravagance, but the stout brown linen bags in which he packs

I do not think this worthy and economical personage will have much to do or to say, unless he marries the

Landlady. If he does that, he will play a part of some importance,but I don't feel sure at all. His talk is little

in amount, and generally ends in some compact formula condensing much wisdom in few words, as that a

man, should not put all his eggs in one basket; that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it; and

one in particular, which he surprised me by saying in pretty good French one day, to the effect that the

inheritance of the world belongs to the phlegmatic people, which seems to me to have a good deal of truth in

The other elderly personage, the old man with irongray hair and large round spectacles, sits at my right at

table. He is a retired college officer, a man of books and observation, and himself an author. Magister Artium

is one of his titles on the College Catalogue, and I like best to speak of him as the Master, because he has a

certain air of authority which none of us feel inclined to dispute. He has given me a copy of a work of his

which seems to me not wanting in suggestiveness, and which I hope I shall be able to make some use of in

my records by and by. I said the other day that he had good solid prejudices, which is true, and I like him

none the worse for it; but he has also opinions more or less original, valuable, probable, fanciful; fantastic, or

whimsical, perhaps, now and then; which he promulgates at table somewhat in the tone of imperial edicts.

Another thing I like about him is, that he takes a certain intelligent interest in pretty much everything that

interests other people. I asked him the other day what he thought most about in his wide range of studies.

Sir,said he,I take stock in everything that concerns anybody. Humani nihil,you know the rest. But

if you ask me what is my specialty, I should say, I applied myself more particularly to the contemplation of

Not wide enough, sir,not wide enough to satisfy the desire of a mind which wants to get at absolute

truth, without reference to the empirical arrangements of our particular planet and its environments. I want to

subject the formal conditions of space and time to a new analysis, and project a possible universe outside of

the Order of Things. But I have narrowed myself by studying the actual facts of being. By and byby and

byperhapsperhaps. I hope to do some sound thinking in heavenif I ever get there,he said seriously,

I rather like that,I said. I think your telescopic people are, on the whole, more satisfactory than your

My lefthand neighbor fidgeted about a little in his chair as I said this. But the young man sitting not far

from the Landlady, to whom my attention had been attracted by the expression of his eyes, which seemed as

if they saw nothing before him, but looked beyond everything, smiled a sort of faint starlight smile, that

touched me strangely; for until that moment he had appeared as if his thoughts were far away, and I had been

questioning whether he had lost friends lately, or perhaps had never had them, he seemed so remote from our

boardinghouse life. I will inquire about him, for he interests me, and I thought he seemed interested as I

No,I continued,I don't want to have the territory of a man's mind fenced in. I don't want to shut out

the mystery of the stars and the awful hollow that holds them. We have done with those hypaethral temples,

that were open above to the heavens, but we can have attics and skylights to them. Minds with

Onestory intellects, twostory intellects, three story intellects with skylights. All factcollectors, who

have no aim beyond their facts, are onestory men. Twostory men compare, reason, generalize, using the

labors of the factcollectors as well as their own. Three story men idealize, imagine, predict; their best

illumination comes from above, through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can store

an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who know enough of books to help other

people, without being able to make much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your

great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because his mental floors are large, and he

has room to arrange his thoughts so that he can get at them,facts below, principles above, and all in

ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear statement, and with small power of

consecutive reasoning, but full of light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture, in the attics.

The old Master smiled. I think he suspects himself of a three story intellect, and I don't feel sure that he is

Is it dark meat or white meat you will be helped to?said the Landlady, addressing the Master.

Dark meat for me, always,he answered. Then turning to me, he began one of those monologues of his,

It 's pretty much the same in men and women and in books and everything, that it is in turkeys and

chickens. Why, take your poets, now, say Browning and Tennyson. Don't you think you can say which is the

darkmeat and which is the whitemeat poet? And so of the people you know; can't you pick out the

fullflavored, coarse fibred characters from the delicate, finefibred ones? And in the same person, don't

you know the same two shades in different parts of the character that you find in the wing and thigh of a

partridge? I suppose you poets may like white meat best, very probably; you had rather have a wing than a

Why, yes,said I,I suppose some of us do. Perhaps it is because a bird flies with his whitefleshed

limbs and walks with the dark fleshed ones. Besides, the wingmuscles are nearer the heart than the

I thought that sounded mighty pretty, and paused a moment to pat myself on the back, as is my wont when I

say something that I think of superior quality. So I lost my innings; for the Master is apt to strike in at the end

of a bar, instead of waiting for a rest, if I may borrow a musical phrase. No matter, just at this moment, what

They have a new term nowadays (I am speaking to you, the Reader) for people that do a good deal of talking;

they call them "conversationists," or "conversationalists "; talkists, I suppose, would do just as well. It is

rather dangerous to get the name of being one of these phenomenal manifestations, as one is expected to say

something remarkable every time one opens one's mouth in company. It seems hard not to be able to ask for a

piece of bread or a tumbler of water, without a sensation running round the table, as if one were an electric

eel or a torpedo, and couldn't be touched without giving a shock. A fellow is n't all battery, is he? The idea

that a Gymnotus can't swallow his worm without a coruscation of animal lightning is hard on that brilliant but

sensational being. Good talk is not a matter of will at all; it dependsyou know we are all half materialists

nowadayson a certain amount of active congestion of the brain, and that comes when it is ready, and not

before. I saw a man get up the other day in a pleasant company, and talk away for about five minutes,

evidently by a pure effort of will. His person was good, his voice was pleasant, but anybody could see that it

was all mechanical labor; he was sparring for wind, as the Hon. John Morrissey, M. C., would express

Do you,Beloved, I am afraid you are not old enough,but do you remember the days of the tin

tinderbox, the flint, and steel? Click! click! click!Alhh! knuckles that time! click! click! CLICK! a

spark has taken, and is eating into the black tinder, as a sixyearold eats into a sheet of gingerbread.

Presently, after hammering away for his five minutes with mere words, the spark of a happy expression took

somewhere among the mental combustibles, and then for ten minutes we had a pretty, wandering,

scintillating play of eloquent thought, that enlivened, if it did not kindle, all around it. If you want the real

philosophy of it, I will give it to you. The chance thought or expression struck the nervous centre of

consciousness, as the rowel of a spur stings the flank of a racer. Away through all the telegraphic radiations

of the nervous cords flashed the intelligence that the brain was kindling, and must be fed with something or

And all the great hydraulic engines poured in their scarlet blood, and the fire kindled, and the flame rose; for

the blood is a stream that, like burning rockoil, at once kindles, and is itself the fuel. You can't order these

organic processes, any more than a milliner can make a rose. She can make something that looks like a rose,

more or less, but it takes all the forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that blossom in your buttonhole;

and you may be sure that when the orator's brain is in a flame, when the poet's heart is in a tumult, it is

something mightier than he and his will that is dealing with him! As I have looked from one of the northern

windows of the street which commands our noble estuary,the view through which is a picture on an

illimitable canvas and a poem in innumerable cantos,I have sometimes seen a pleasureboat drifting along,

her sail flapping, and she seeming as if she had neither will nor aim. At her stern a man was laboring to bring

her head round with an oar, to little purpose, as it seemed to those who watched him pulling and tugging. But

all at once the wind of heaven, which had wandered all the way from Florida or from Labrador, it may be,

struck full upon the sail, and it swelled and rounded itself, like a white bosom that had burst its bodice, and

You are right; it is too true! but how I love these pretty phrases! I am afraid I am becoming an epicure in

words, which is a bad thing to be, unless it is dominated by something infinitely better than itself. But there is

a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of

honor, or half or wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each after its kind; the

peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r, the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the

bellvoiced m, the tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and the beautiful

combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were, that they give to the rippling flow of speech,there is

a fascination in the skilful handling of these, which the great poets and even prose writers have not

disdained to acknowledge and use to recommend their thought. What do you say to this line of Homer as a

piece of poetical fullband music? I know you read the Greek characters with perfect ease, but permit me,

That Greek line, which I do not remember having heard mention of as remarkable, has nearly every

consonantal and vowel sound in the language. Try it by the Greek and by the English alphabet; it is a

curiosity. Tell me that old Homer did not roll his sightless eyeballs about with delight, as he thundered out

these ringing syllables! It seems hard to think of his going round like a hand organ man, with such music

and such thought as his to earn his bread with. One can't help wishing that Mr. Pugh could have got at him for

a single lecture, at least, of the "Star Course," or that he could have appeared in the Music Hall, "for this night

I know I have rambled, but I hope you see that this is a delicate way of letting you into the nature of the

individual who is, officially, the principal personage at our table. It would hardly do to describe him directly,

you know. But you must not think, because the lightning zigzags, it does not know where to strike.

I shall try to go through the rest of my description of our boarders with as little of digression as is consistent

with my nature. I think we have a somewhat exceptional company. Since our Landlady has got up in the

world, her board has been decidedly a favorite with persons a little above the average in point of intelligence

and education. In fact, ever since a boarder of hers, not wholly unknown to the reading public, brought her

establishment into notice, it has attracted a considerable number of literary and scientific people, and now and

then a politician, like the Member of the House of Representatives, otherwise called the Great and General

Court of the State of Massachusetts. The consequence is, that there is more individuality of character than in

a good many similar boardinghouses, where all are businessmen, engrossed in the same pursuit of

moneymaking, or all are engaged in politics, and so deeply occupied with the welfare of the community that

At my left hand sits as singularlooking a human being as I remember seeing outside of a regular museum or

tentshow. His black coat shines as if it had been polished; and it has been polished on the wearer's back, no

doubt, for the arms and other points of maximum attrition are particularly smooth and bright. Round

shoulders, stooping over some minute labor, I suppose. Very slender limbs, with bends like a

grasshopper's; sits a great deal, I presume; looks as if he might straighten them out all of a sudden, and jump

instead of walking. Wears goggles very commonly; says it rests his eyes, which he strains in looking at very

small objects. Voice has a dry creak, as if made by some small piece of mechanism that wanted oiling. I don't

think he is a botanist, for he does not smell of dried herbs, but carries a camphorated atmosphere about with

him, as if to keep the moths from attacking him. I must find out what is his particular interest. One ought to

know something about his immediate neighbors at the table. This is what I said to myself, before opening a

conversation with him. Everybody in our ward of the city was in a great stir about a certain election, and I

I mean the election to the Presidency of the Entomological Society, sir,he creaked, with an air of

surprise, as if nobody could by any possibility have been thinking of any other. Great competition, sir,

between the dipterists and the lepidopterists as to which shall get in their candidate. Several close ballotings

already; adjourned for a fortnight. Poor concerns, both of 'em. Wait till our turn comes.

Not quite so ambitious as that, sir. I should like to put my eyes on the individual entitled to that name! A

society may call itself an Entomological Society, but the man who arrogates such a broad title as that to

himself, in the present state of science, is a pretender, sir, a dilettante, an impostor! No man can be truly

called an entomologist, sir; the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp.

May I venture to ask,I said, a little awed by his statement and manner,what is your special province

I am often spoken of as a Coleopterist,he said,but I have no right to so comprehensive a name. The

genus Scarabaeus is what I have chiefly confined myself to, and ought to have studied exclusively. The

beetles proper ,are quite enough for the labor of one man's life. Call me a Scarabaeist if you will; if I can

prove myself worthy of that name, my highest ambition will be more than satisfied.

I think, by way of compromise and convenience, I shall call him the Scarabee. He has come to look

wonderfully like those creatures,the beetles, I mean,by being so much among them. His room is hung

round with cases of them, each impaled on a pin driven through him, something as they used to bury suicides.

These cases take the place for him of pictures and all other ornaments. That Boy steals into his room

sometimes, and stares at them with great admiration, and has himself undertaken to form a rival cabinet,

chiefly consisting of flies, so far, arranged in ranks superintended by an occasional spider.

The old Master, who is a bachelor, has a kindly feeling for this little monkey, and those of his kind.

I like children,he said to me one day at table,I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest

truthtelling there is in the world is done by them. Do you know they play the part in the household which

the king's jester, who very often had a mighty long head under his cap and bells, used to play for a monarch?

There 's no radical club like a nest of little folks in a nursery. Did you ever watch a baby's fingers? I have,

often enough, though I never knew what it was to own one.The Master paused half a minute or

so,sighed,perhaps at thinking what he had missed in life,looked up at me a little vacantly. I saw what

Yes, yes; did you ever see how they will poke those wonderful little fingers of theirs into every fold and

crack and crevice they can get at? That is their first education, feeling their way into the solid facts of the

material world. When they begin to talk it is the same thing over again in another shape. If there is a crack or

a flaw in your answer to their confounded shoulderhitting questions, they will poke and poke until they have

got it gaping just as the baby's fingers have made a rent out of that atom of a hole in his pinafore that your old

eyes never took notice of. Then they make such fools of us by copying on a small scale what we do in the

grand manner. I wonder if it ever occurs to our driedup neighbor there to ask himself whether That Boy's

collection of flies is n't about as significant in the Order of Things as his own Museum of Beetles?

I couldn't help thinking that perhaps That Boy's questions about the simpler mysteries of life might have a

good deal of the same kind of significance as the Master's inquiries into the Order of Things.

On my left, beyond my next neighbor the Scarabee, at the end of the table, sits a person of whom we know

little, except that he carries about him more palpable reminiscences of tobacco and the allied sources of

comfort than a very sensitive organization might find acceptable. The Master does not seem to like him

much, for some reason or other,perhaps he has a special aversion to the odor of tobacco. As his forefinger

shows a little too distinctly that he uses a pen, I shall compliment him by calling him the Man of Letters, until

The Young Girl who sits on my right, next beyond the Master, can hardly be more than nineteen or twenty

years old. I wish I could paint her so as to interest others as much as she does me. But she has not a profusion

of sunny tresses wreathing a neck of alabaster, and a cheek where the rose and the lily are trying to settle their

old quarrel with alternating victory. Her hair is brown, her cheek is delicately pallid, her forehead is too

ample for a ballroom beauty's. A single faint line between the eyebrows is the record of longcontinued

anxious efforts to please in the task she has chosen, or rather which has been forced upon her. It is the same

line of anxious and conscientious effort which I saw not long since on the forehead of one of the sweetest and

truest singers who has visited us; the same which is so striking on the masks of singing women painted upon

the facade of our Great Organ,that Himalayan home of harmony which you are to see and then die, if you

don't live where you can see and hear it often. Many deaths have happened in a neighboring large city from

that wellknown complaint, Icterus Invidiosorum, after returning from a visit to the Music Hall. The

invariable symptom of a fatal attack is the Risus Sardonicus.But the Young Girl. She gets her living by

writing stories for a newspaper. Every week she furnishes a new story. If her head aches or her heart is heavy,

so that she does not come to time with her story, she falls behindhand and has to live on credit. It sounds well

enough to say that "she supports herself by her pen," but her lot is a trying one; it repeats the doom of the

Danaides. The "Weekly Bucket" has no bottom, and it is her business to help fill it. Imagine for one moment

what it is to tell a tale that must flow on, flow ever, without pausing; the lover miserable and happy this week,

to begin miserable again next week and end as before; the villain scowling, plotting, punished; to scowl, plot,

and get punished again in our next; an endless series of woes and busses, into each paragraph of which the

forlorn artist has to throw all the liveliness, all the emotion, all the graces of style she is mistress of, for the

wages of a maid of all work, and no more recognition or thanks from anybody than the apprentice who sets

the types for the paper that prints her everending and everbeginning stories. And yet she has a pretty talent,

sensibility, a natural way of writing, an ear for the music of verse, in which she sometimes indulges to vary

the dead monotony of everlasting narrative, and a sufficient amount of invention to make her stories readable.

I have found my eyes dimmed over them oftener than once, more with thinking about her, perhaps, than

about her heroes and heroines. Poor little body! Poor little mind! Poor little soul! She is one of that great

company of delicate, intelligent, emotional young creatures, who are waiting, like that sail I spoke of, for

some breath of heaven to fill their white bosoms,love, the right of every woman; religious emotion, sister

of love, with the same passionate eyes, but cold, thin, bloodless hands,some enthusiasm of humanity or

divinity; and find that life offers them, instead, a seat on a wooden bench, a chain to fasten them to it, and a

heavy oar to pull day and night. We read the Arabian tales and pity the doomed lady who must amuse her

lord and master from day to day or have her head cut off; how much better is a mouth without bread to fill it

than no mouth at all to fill, because no head? We have all round us a wearyeyed company of Scheherezades!

This is one of them, and I may call her by that name when it pleases me to do so.

The next boarder I have to mention is the one who sits between the Young Girl and the Landlady. In a little

chamber into which a small thread of sunshine finds its way for half an hour or so every day during a month

or six weeks of the spring or autumn, at all other times obliged to content itself with ungilded daylight, lives

this boarder, whom, without wronging any others of our company, I may call, as she is very generally called

in the household, The Lady. In giving her this name it is not meant that there are no other ladies at our table,

or that the handmaids who serve us are not ladies, or to deny the general proposition that everybody who

wears the unbifurcated garment is entitled to that appellation. Only this lady has a look and manner which

there is no mistaking as belonging to a person always accustomed to refined and elegant society. Her style is

perhaps a little more courtly and gracious than some would like. The language and manner which betray the

habitual desire of pleasing, and which add a charm to intercourse in the higher social circles, are liable to be

construed by sensitive beings unused to such amenities as an odious condescension when addressed to

persons of less consideration than the accused, and as a still more odiousyou know the wordwhen

directed to those who are esteemed by the world as considerable person ages. But of all this the accused are

fortunately wholly unconscious, for there is nothing so entirely natural and unaffected as the highest

>From an aspect of dignified but undisguised economy which showed itself in her dress as well as in her

limited quarters, I suspected a story of shipwrecked fortune, and determined to question our Landlady. That

worthy woman was delighted to tell the history of her most distinguished boarder. She was, as I had

supposed, a gentlewoman whom a change of circumstances had brought down from her high estate.

Did I know the Goldenrod family?Of course I did.Well, the Lady, was first cousin to Mrs. Midas

Goldenrod. She had been here in her carriage to call upon her,not very often.Were her rich relations

kind and helpful to her?Well, yes; at least they made her presents now and then. Three or four years ago

they sent her a silver waiter, and every Christmas they sent her a boquet,it must cost as much as five

Every Christmas she got out the silver waiter and borrowed a glass tumbler and filled it with water, and

put the boquet in it and set it on the waiter. It smelt sweet enough and looked pretty for a day or two, but the

Landlady thought it wouldn't have hurt 'em if they'd sent a piece of goods for a dress, or at least a

pockethandkercher or two, or something or other that she could 'a' made some kind of use of; but beggars

must n't be choosers; not that she was a beggar, for she'd sooner die than do that if she was in want of a meal

of victuals. There was a lady I remember, and she had a little boy and she was a widow, and after she'd buried

her husband she was dreadful poor, and she was ashamed to let her little boy go out in his old shoes, and

coppertoed shoes they was too, because his poor little tentoeswas a coming out of 'em; and what do

you think my husband's rich uncle,well, there now, it was me and my little Benjamin, as he was then,

there's no use in hiding of it,and what do you think my husband's uncle sent me but a plaster of Paris

image of a young woman, that was,well, her appearance wasn't respectable, and I had to take and wrap her

up in a towel and poke her right into my closet, and there she stayed till she got her head broke and served her

right, for she was n't fit to show folks. You need n't say anything about what I told you, but the fact is I was

desperate poor before I began to support myself taking boarders, and a lone woman without herher

The sentence plunged into the gulf of her great remembered sorrow, and was lost to the records of humanity.

Presently she continued in answer to my questions: The Lady was not very sociable; kept mostly to

herself. The Young Girl (our Scheherezade) used to visit her sometimes, and they seemed to like each other,

but the Young Girl had not many spare hours for visiting. The Lady never found fault, but she was very nice

in her tastes, and kept everything about her looking as neat and pleasant as she could.

What did she do?Why, she read, and she drew pictures, and she did needlework patterns, and played

on an old harp she had; the gilt was mostly off, but it sounded very sweet, and she sung to it sometimes, those

old songs that used to be in fashion twenty or thirty years ago, with words to 'em that folks could understand.

Did she do anything to help support herself ?The Landlady couldn't say she did, but she thought there was

rich people enough that ought to buy the flowers and things she worked and painted.

All this points to the fact that she was bred to be an ornamental rather than what is called a useful member of

society. This is all very well so long as fortune favors those who are chosen to be the ornamental personages;

but if the golden tide recedes and leaves them stranded, they are more to be pitied than almost any other class.

I think it is unpopular in this country to talk much about gentlemen and gentlewomen. People are touchy

about social distinctions, which no doubt are often invidious and quite arbitrary and accidental, but which it is

impossible to avoid recognizing as facts of natural history. Society stratifies itself everywhere, and the

stratum which is generally recognized as the uppermost will be apt to have the advantage in easy grace of

manner and in unassuming confidence, and consequently be more agreeable in the superficial relations of life.

To compare these advantages with the virtues and utilities would be foolish. Much of the noblest work in life

is done by illdressed, awkward, ungainly persons; but that is no more reason for undervaluing good manners

and what we call highbreeding, than the fact that the best part of the sturdy labor of the world is done by

men with exceptionable hands is to be urged against the use of Brown Windsor as a preliminary to

I mean to stand up for this poor lady, whose usefulness in the world is apparently problematical. She seems to

me like a picture which has fallen from its gilded frame and lies, face downward, on the dusty floor. The

picture never was as needful as a window or a door, but it was pleasant to see it in its place, and it would be

pleasant to see it there again, and I, for one, should be thankful to have the Lady restored by some turn of

I have asked the Landlady about the young man sitting near her, the same who attracted my attention the

other day while I was talking, as I mentioned. He passes most of his time in a private observatory, it appears;

a watcher of the stars. That I suppose gives the peculiar look to his lustrous eyes. The Master knows him and

You call yourself a Poet,he said,and we call you so, too, and so you are; I read your verses and like 'em.

But that young man lives in a world beyond the imagination of poets, let me tell you. The daily home of his

thought is in illimitable space, hovering between the two eternities. In his contemplations the divisions of

time run together, as in the thought of his Maker. With him also,I say it not profanely,one day is as a

This account of his occupation increased the interest his look had excited in me, and I have observed him

more particularly and found out more about him. Sometimes, after a long night's watching, he looks so pale

and worn, that one would think the cold moonlight had stricken him with some malign effluence such as it is

fabled to send upon those who sleep in it. At such times he seems more like one who has come from a planet

farther away from the sun than our earth, than like one of us terrestrial creatures. His home is truly in the

heavens, and he practises an asceticism in the cause of science almost comparable to that of Saint Simeon

Stylites. Yet they tell me he might live in luxury if he spent on himself what he spends on science. His

knowledge is of that strange, remote character, that it seems sometimes almost superhuman. He knows the

ridges and chasms of the moon as a surveyor knows a gardenplot he has measured. He watches the snows

that gather around the poles of Mars; he is on the lookout for the expected comet at the moment when its faint

stain of diffused light first shows itself; he analyzes the ray that comes from the sun's photosphere; he

measures the rings of Saturn; he counts his asteroids to see that none are missing, as the shepherd counts the

sheep in his flock. A strange unearthly being; lonely, dwelling far apart from the thoughts and cares of the

planet on which he lives,an enthusiast who gives his life to knowledge; a student of antiquity, to whom the

records of the geologist are modern pages in the great volume of being, and the pyramids a memorandum of

yesterday, as the eclipse or occultation that is to take place thousands of years hence is an event of

tomorrow in the diary without beginning and without end where he enters the aspect of the passing moment

In very marked contrast with this young man is the something more than middleaged Register of Deeds, a

rusty, sallow, smokedried looking personage, who belongs to this earth as exclusively as the other belongs

to the firmament. His movements are as mechanical as those of a pendulum,to the office, where he

changes his coat and plunges into messuages and buildinglots; then, after changing his coat again, back to

our table, and so, day by day, the dust of years gradually gathering around him as it does on the old folios that

fill the shelves all round the great cemetery of past transactions of which he is the sexton.

Of the Salesman who sits next him, nothing need be said except that he is goodlooking, rosy, welldressed,

and of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, as one in the

You would like to see, I don't doubt, how we sit at the table, and I will help you by means of a diagram which

1. The Poet. 2. The Master Of Arts. 3. The Young Girl (Scheherezade). 4. The Lady. 5. The Landlady. 6. Dr.

B. Franklin. 7. That Boy. 8. The Astronomer. 9. The Member of the Haouse. 10. The Register of Deeds. 11.

Our young Scheherezade varies her prose stories now and then, as I told you, with compositions in verse, one

or two of which she has let me look over. Here is one of them, which she allowed me to copy. It is from a

story of hers, "The SunWorshipper's Daughter," which you may find in the periodical before mentioned, to

which she is a contributor, if your can lay your hand upon a file of it. I think our Scheherezade has never had

a lover in human shape, or she would not play so lightly with the firebrands of the great passion.

The old Master was talking about a concert he had been to hear. I don't like your chopped music anyway.

That womanshe had more sense in her little finger than forty medical societiesFlorence

Nightingalesays that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and the music you pound out isn't. Not

that exactly, but something like it. I have been to hear some musicpounding. It was a young woman, with as

many white muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it. Shegave the musicstool a

twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a whirl of soapsuds in a hand basin. Then she pushed up her

cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion's belt. Then she worked her wrists and her hands, to limber

'em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the

keyboard, from the growling end to the little squeaky one. Then those two hands of hers made a jump at the

keys as if they were a couple of tigers coming down on a flock of black and white sheep, and the piano gave a

great howl as if its tail had been trod on. Dead stop,so still you could hear your hair growing. Then another

jump, and another howl, as if the piano had two tails and you had trod on both of 'em at once, and, then a

grand clatter and scramble and string of jumps, up and down, back and forward, one hand over the other, like

a stampede of rats and mice more than like anything I call music. I like to hear a woman sing, and I like to

hear a fiddle sing, but these noises they hammer out of their wood and ivory anvilsdon't talk to me, I know

Pop! went a small piece of artillery such as is made of a stick of elder and carries a pellet of very moderate

consistency. That Boy was in his seat and looking demure enough, but there could be no question that he was

the artilleryman who had discharged the missile. The aim was not a bad one, for it took the Master full in

the forehead, and had the effect of checking the flow of his eloquence. How the little monkey had learned to

time his interruptions I do not know, but I have observed more than once before this, that the popgun would

go off just at the moment when some one of the company was getting too energetic or prolix. The Boy isn't

old enough to judge for himself when to intervene to change the order of conversation; no, of course he isn't.

Somebody must give him a hint. Somebody. Who is it? I suspect Dr. B. Franklin. He looks too knowing.

There is certainly a trick somewhere. Why, a day or two ago I was myself discoursing, with considerable

effect, as I thought, on some of the new aspects of humanity, when I was struck full on the cheek by one of

these little pellets, and there was such a confounded laugh that I had to wind up and leave off with a

preposition instead of a good mouthful of polysyllables. I have watched our young Doctor, however, and

have been entirely unable to detect any signs of communication between him and this audacious child, who is

like to become a power among us, for that popgun is fatal to any talker who is hit by its pellet. I have

suspected a foot under the table as the prompter, but I have been unable to detect the slightest movement or

look as if he were making one, on the part of Dr. Benjamin Franklin. I cannot help thinking of the flappers in

Swift's Laputa, only they gave one a hint when to speak and another a hint to listen, whereas the popgun says

I should be sorry to lose my confidence in Dr. B. Franklin, who seems very much devoted to his business,

and whom I mean to consult about some small symptoms I have had lately. Perhaps it is coming to a new

boardinghouse. The young people who come into Paris from the provinces are very aptso I have been

told by one that knowsto have an attack of typhoid fever a few weeks or months after their arrival. I have

not been long enough at this table to get well acclimated; perhaps that is it. BoardingHouse Fever.

Something like horseail, very likely,horses get it, you know, when they are brought to city stables. A

little "off my feed," as Hiram Woodruff would say. A queer discoloration about my forehead. Query, a

bump? Cannot remember any. Might have got it against bedpost or something while asleep. Very unpleasant

to look so. I wonder how my portrait would look, if anybody should take it now! I hope not quite so badly as

one I saw the other day, which I took for the end man of the Ethiopian Serenaders, or some traveller who had

been exploring the sources of the Niger, until I read the name at the bottom and found it was a face I knew as

I must consult somebody, and it is nothing more than fair to give our young Doctor a chance. Here goes for

The young Doctor has a very small office and a very large sign, with a transparency at night big enough for

an oystershop. These young doctors are particularly strong, as I understand, on what they call

diagnosis,an excellent branch of the healing art, full of satisfaction to the curious practitioner, who likes to

give the right Latin name to one's complaint; not quite so satisfactory to the patient, as it is not so very much

pleasanter to be bitten by a dog with a collar round his neck telling you that he is called Snap or Teaser, than

by a dog without a collar. Sometimes, in fact, one would a little rather not know the exact name of his

complaint, as if he does he is pretty sure to look it out in a medical dictionary, and then if he reads, This

terrible disease is attended with vast suffering and is inevitably mortal, or any such statement, it is apt to

I confess to a little shakiness when I knocked at Dr. Benjamin's office door. "Come in!" exclaimed Dr. B. F.

I don't believe the chambers of the Inquisition ever presented a more alarming array of implements for

extracting a confession, than our young Doctor's office did of instruments to make nature tell what was the

There were Ophthalmoscopes and Rhinoscopes and Otoscopes and Laryngoscopes and Stethoscopes; and

Thermometers and Spirometers and Dynamometers and Sphygmometers and Pleximeters; and Probes and

Probangs and all sorts of frightful inquisitive exploring contrivances; and scales to weigh you in, and tests

and balances and pumps and electromagnets and magnetoelectric machines; in short, apparatus for doing

Dr. Benjamin set me down before his one window and began looking at me with such a superhuman air of

sagacity, that I felt like one of those openbreasted clocks which make no secret of their inside arrangements,

and almost thought he could see through me as one sees through a shrimp or a jellyfish. First he looked at

the place inculpated, which had a sort of greenishbrown color, with his naked eyes, with much corrugation

of forehead and fearful concentration of attention; then through a pocketglass which he carried. Then he

drew back a space, for a perspective view. Then he made me put out my tongue and laid a slip of blue paper

on it, which turned red and scared me a little. Next he took my wrist; but instead of counting my pulse in the

oldfashioned way, he fastened a machine to it that marked all the beats on a sheet of paper,for all the

world like a scale of the heights of mountains, say from Mount Tom up to Chimborazo and then down again,

and up again, and so on. In the mean time he asked me all sorts of questions about myself and all my

relatives, whether we had been subject to this and that malady, until I felt as if we must some of us have had

more or less of them, and could not feel quite sure whether Elephantiasis and Beriberi and Progressive

After all this overhauling of myself and my history, he paused and looked puzzled. Something was suggested

about what he called an "exploratory puncture." This I at once declined, with thanks. Suddenly a thought

Looks likeI declare it reminds me ofvery rare! very curious! It would be strange if my first caseof

What kind of a case do you call it?I said, with a sort of feeling that he could inflict a severe or a light

The color reminds me,said Dr. B. Franklin,of what I have seen in a case of Addison's Disease,

But my habits are quite regular,I said; for I remembered that the distinguished essayist was too fond of

his brandy and water, and I confess that the thought was not pleasant to me of following Dr. Johnson's advice,

with the slight variation of giving my days and my nights to trying on the favorite maladies of Addison.

Temperance people are subject to it!exclaimed Dr. Benjamin, almost exultingly, I thought.

But I had the impression that the author of the Spectator was afflicted with a dropsy, or some such inflated

malady, to which persons of sedentary and bibacious habits are liable. [A literary swell,I thought to

The author of the Spectator!cried out Dr. Benjamin,I mean the celebrated Dr. Addison, inventor, I

And what may this valuable invention or discovery consist in?I asked, for I was curious to know the

A most interesting affection, and rare, too. Allow me to look closely at that discoloration once more for a

moment. Cutis cenea, bronze skin, they call it sometimesextraordinary pigmentationa little more to the

light, if you pleaseah! now I get the bronze coloring admirably, beautifully! Would you have any objection

to showing your case to the Societies of Medical Improvement and Medical Observation?

[My case! O dear!] May I ask if any vital organ is commonly involved in this interesting complaint?I

Well, sir,the young Doctor replied,there is an organ which is sometimesa little touched, I may

say; a very curious and ingenious little organ or pair of organs. Did you ever hear of the Capsulae,

No,said I,is it a mortal complaint?I ought to have known better than to ask such a question, but I

was getting nervous and thinking about all sorts of horrid maladies people are liable to, with horrid names to

It is n't a complaint,I mean they are not a complaint,they are two small organs, as I said, inside of

you, and nobody knows what is the use of them. The most curious thing is that when anything is the matter

with them you turn of the color of bronze. After all, I didn't mean to say I believed it was Morbus Addisonii; I

So he gave me a recipe, which I took care to put where it could do no hurt to anybody, and I paid him his fee

(which he took with the air of a man in the receipt of a great income) and said Goodmorning.

What in the name of a thousand diablos is the reason these confounded doctors will mention their guesses

about "a case," as they call it, and all its conceivable possibilities, out loud before their patients? I don't

suppose there is anything in all this nonsense about "Addison's Disease," but I wish he hadn't spoken of that

very interesting ailment, and I should feel a little easier if that discoloration would leave my forehead. I will

ask the Landlady about it,these old women often know more than the young doctors just come home with

long names for everything they don't know how to cure. But the name of this complaint sets me thinking.

Bronzed skin! What an odd idea! Wonder if it spreads all over one. That would be picturesque and pleasant,

now, wouldn't it? To be made a living statue of,nothing to do but strike an attitude. Arm upsolike the

one in the Garden. John of Bologna's Mercurythus on one foot. Needy knifegrinder in the Tribune at

Florence. No, not "needy," come to think of it. Marcus Aurelius on horseback. Query. Are horses subject to

the Morbus Addisonii? Advertise for a bronzed living horseLyceum invitations and engagementsbronze

versus brass.What 's the use in being frightened? Bet it was a bump. Pretty certain I bumped my forehead

against something. Never heard of a bronzed man before. Have seen white men, black men, red men, yellow

men, two or three blue men, stained with doctor's stuff; some green ones, from the country; but never a

Landlady did look at it. Said it was a bump, and no mistake. Recommended a piece of brown paper dipped

in vinegar. Made the house smell as if it were in quarantine for the plague from Smyrna, but discoloration

soon disappeared,so I did not become a bronzed man after all,hope I never shall while I am alive.

Should n't mind being done in bronze after I was dead. On second thoughts not so clear about it,

remembering how some of them look that we have got stuck up in public; think I had rather go down to

You were kind enough to say, I remarked to the Master, that you read my poems and liked them. Perhaps

The Master harpooned a breakfastroll and held it up before me.Will you tell me,he said,why you

like that breakfastroll?I suppose he thought that would stop my mouth in two senses. But he was

To be sure I will,said I.First, I like its mechanical consistency; brittle externally,that is for the

teeth, which want resistance to be overcome; soft, spongy, well tempered and flavored internally, that is for

the organ of taste; wholesome, nutritious, that is for the internal surfaces and the system generally.

I hope he will carry that faculty of an honest laugh with him wherever he goes,why shouldn't he? The

"order of things," as he calls it, from which hilarity was excluded, would be crippled and onesided enough. I

don't believe the human gamut will be cheated of a single note after men have done breathing this fatal

I did n't say all that; if I had said it, it would have brought a pellet from the popgun, I feel quite certain.

The Master went on after he had had out his laugh. There is one thing I am His Imperial Majesty about,

and that is my likes and dislikes. What if I do like your verses,you can't help yourself. I don't doubt

somebody or other hates 'em and hates you and everything you do, or ever did, or ever can do. He is all right;

there is nothing you or I like that somebody does n't hate. Was there ever anything wholesome that was not

poison to somebody? If you hate honey or cheese, or the products of the dairy,I know a family a good

many of whose members can't touch milk, butter, cheese, and the like, why, say so, but don't find fault with

the bees and the cows. Some are afraid of roses, and I have known those who thought a pondlily a

disagreeable neighbor. That Boy will give you the metaphysics of likes and dislikes. Look here,you young

There, now, that is the whole matter in a nutshell. Why do your teeth like crackling crust, and your organs

of taste like spongy crumb, and your digestive contrivances take kindly to bread rather than toadstools

Whereupon the Landlady said, Sh! and the Young Girl laughed, and the Lady smiled; and Dr. Ben Franklin

kicked him, moderately, under the table, and the Astronomer looked up at the ceiling to see what had

happened, and the Member of the Haouse cried, Order! Order! and the Salesman said, Shut up, cashboy!

and the rest of the boarders kept on feeding; except the Master, who looked very hard but half approvingly at

the small intruder, who had come about as nearly right as most professors would have done.

You poets,the Master said after this excitement had calmed down, you poets have one thing about

you that is odd. You talk about everything as if you knew more about it than the people whose business it is

to know all about it. I suppose you do a little of what we teachers used to call "cramming" now and then?

If you like your breakfast you must n't ask the cook too many questions,I answered.

Oh, come now, don't be afraid of letting out your secrets. I have a notion I can tell a poet that gets himself

up just as I can tell a makebelieve old man on the stage by the line where the gray skullcap joins the smooth

forehead of the young fellow of seventy. You'll confess to a rhyming dictionary anyhow, won't you?

I would as lief use that as any other dictionary, but I don't want it. When a word comes up fit to end a line

with I can feel all the rhymes in the language that are fit to go with it without naming them. I have tried them

all so many times, I know all the polygamous words and all the monogamous ones, and all the unmarrying

ones,the whole lot that have no mates,as soon as I hear their names called. Sometimes I run over a

string of rhymes, but generally speaking it is strange what a short list it is of those that are good for anything.

That is the pitiful side of all rhymed verse. Take two such words as home and world. What can you do with

chrome or loam or gnome or tome? You have dome, foam, and roam, and not much more to use in your

pome, as some of our fellowcountrymen call it. As for world, you know that in all human probability

somebody or something will be hurled into it or out of it; its clouds may be furled or its grass impearled;

possibly something may be whirled, or curled, or have swirled, one of Leigh Hunt's words, which with lush,

one of Keats's, is an important part of the stock in trade of some dealers in rhyme.

And how much do you versifiers know of all those arts and sciences you refer to as if you were as familiar

Enough not to make too many mistakes. The best way is to ask some expert before one risks himself very

far in illustrations from a branch he does not know much about. Suppose, for instance, I wanted to use the

double star to illustrate anything, say the relation of two human souls to each other, what would Ido? Why,

I would ask our young friend there to let me look at one of those loving celestial pairs through his telescope,

and I don't doubt he'd let me do so, and tell me their names and all I wanted to know about them.

I should be most happy to show any of the double stars or whatever else there might be to see in the

heavens to any of our friends at this table,the young man said, so cordially and kindly that it was a real

Show us the man in the moon,said That Boy.I should so like to see a double star!said

A cold in the head lasts me from three to five days,answered the Master. I am not so very fond of

I suppose I must be one of the young folks, not so young as our Scheherezade, nor so old as the

Capitalist,young enough at any rate to want to be of the party. So we agreed that on some fair night when

the Astronomer should tell us that there was to be a fine show in the skies, we would make up a party and go

to the Observatory. I asked the Scarabee whether he would not like to make one of us.

Out of the question, sir, out of the question. I am altogether too much occupied with an important scientific

Oh, indeed,said I,and may I venture to ask on what particular point you are engaged just at present?

Certainly, sir, you may. It is, I suppose, as difficult and important a matter to be investigated as often comes

before a student of natural history. I wish to settle the point once for all whether the Pediculus Mellitae is or

[Now is n't this the drollest world to live in that one could imagine, short of being in a fit of delirium

tremens? Here is a fellowcreature of mine and yours who is asked to see all the glories of the firmament

brought close to him, and he is too busy with a little unmentionable parasite that infests the bristly surface of

a bee to spare an hour or two of a single evening for the splendors of the universe! I must get a peep through

that microscope of his and see the pediculus which occupies a larger space in his mental vision than the

midnight march of the solar systems.The creature, the human one, I mean, interests me.]

I am very curious,I said,about that pediculus melittae,(just as if I knew a good deal about the little

wretch and wanted to know more, whereas I had never heard him spoken of before, to my

You ought to have seen the way in which the poor driedup little Scarabee turned towards me. His eyes

took on a really human look, and I almost thought those antennaelike arms of his would have stretched

themselves out and embraced me. I don't believe any of the boarders had ever shown any interest inhim,

except the little monkey of a Boy, since he had been in the house. It is not strange; he had not seemed to me

much like a human being, until all at once I touched the one point where his vitality had concentrated itself,

Come in,said he,come in, right after breakfast, and you shall see the animal that has convulsed the

So I went into the Scarabee's parlor, lodgingroom, study, laboratory, and museum,asingle apartment

I wish I had time to have you show me all your treasures,I said, but I am afraid I shall hardly be able

to do more than look at the beeparasite. But what a superb butterfly you have in that case!

Oh, yes, yes, well enough,came from South America with the beetle there; look at him! These

Lepidoptera are for children to play with, pretty to look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera, and the

kings of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little folks; Coleopteras for men, sir!

The particular beetle he showed me in the case with the magnificent butterfly was an odious black wretch

that one would say, Ugh! at, and kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he looked at

it as a coincollector would look at a Pescennius Niger, if the coins of that Emperor are as scarce as they used

to be when I was collecting halfpenny tokens and pinetree shillings and battered bits of Roman brass with

A beauty!he exclaimed,and the only specimen of the kind in this country, to the best of my belief. A

unique, sir, and there is a pleasure in exclusive possession. Not another beetle like that short of South

I was glad to hear that there were no more like it in this neighborhood, the present supply of cockroaches

answering every purpose, so far as I am concerned, that such an animal as this would be likely to serve.

Here are my beeparasites,said the Scarabee, showing me a box full of glass slides, each with a

specimen ready mounted for the microscope. I was most struck with one little beast flattened out like a turtle,

semitransparent, sixlegged, as I remember him, and every leg terminated by a single claw hooked like a

lion's and as formidable for the size of the creature as that of the royal beast.

Lives on a bumblebee, does he?I said. That's the way I call it. Bumblebee or bumblybee and

huckleberry. Humblebee and whortleberry for people that say Woossester and Norwich.

Lives on a bumblebee. When you come to think of it, he must lead a pleasant kind of life. Sails through the

air without the trouble of flying. Free pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being dislodged; look at

those six grapplinghooks. Helps himself to such juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the

choicest vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or in the perfumed pavilion of the

fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies spread for him! And

wherever he travels a band of music goes with him, for this hum which wanders by us is doubtless to him a

vast and inspiring strain of melody. I thought all this, while the Scarabee supposed I was studying the

Oh, I don't know much about that, but I think he is the best cared for, on the whole, of any animal that I

know of; and if I wasn't a man I believe I had rather be that little sybarite than anything that feasts at the

The question is, whether he is the larva of meloe,the Scarabee said, as if he had not heard a word of

what I had just been saying. If I live a few years longer it shall be settled, sir; and if my epitaph can say

honestly that I settled it, I shall be willing to trust my posthumous fame to that achievement.

I said good morning to the specialist, and went off feeling not only kindly, but respectfully towards him. He

is an enthusiast, at any rate, as "earnest" a man as any philanthropic reformer who, having passed his life in

worrying people out of their misdoings into good behavior, comes at last to a state in which he is never

contented except when he is making somebody uncomfortable. He does certainly know one thing well, very

I find myself somewhat singularly placed at our table between a minute philosopher who has concentrated all

his faculties on a single subject, and my friend who finds the present universe too restricted for his

intelligence. I would not give much to hear what the Scarabee says about the old Master, for he does not

pretend to form a judgment of anything but beetles, but I should like to hear what the Master has to say about

the Scarabee. I waited after breakfast until he had gone, and then asked the Master what he could make of our

Well,he said,I am hospitable enough in my feelings to him and all his tribe. These specialists are the

coralinsects that build up a reef. By and by it will be an island, and for aught we know may grow into a

continent. But I don't want to be a coralinsect myself. I had rather be a voyager that visits all the reefs and

islands the creatures build, and sails over the seas where they have as yet built up nothing. I am a little afraid

that science is breeding us down too fast into coralinsects. A man like Newton or Leibnitz or Haller used to

paint a picture of outward or inward nature with a free hand, and stand back and look at it as a whole and feel

like an archangel; but nowadays you have a Society, and they come together and make a great mosaic, each

man bringing his little bit and sticking it in its place, but so taken up with his petty fragment that he never

thinks of looking at the picture the little bits make when they are put together. You can't get any talk out of

these specialists away from their own subjects, any more than you can get help from a policeman outside of

Yes,said I,but why should n't we always set a man talking about the thing he knows best?

No doubt, no doubt, if you meet him once; but what are you going to do with him if you meet him every

day? I travel with a man and we want to make change very often in paying bills. But every time I ask him to

change a pistareen, or give me two fo'pencehappennies for a ninepence, or help me to make out two and

thrippence (mark the old Master's archaisms about the currency), what does the fellow do but put his hand in

his pocket and pull out an old Roman coin; I have no change, says he, but this assarion of Diocletian. Mighty

It isn't quite so handy as a few specimens of the modern currency would be, but you can pump him on

To be sure, to be sure. I've pumped a thousand men of all they could teach me, or at least all I could learn

from 'em; and if it comes to that, I never saw the man that couldn't teach me something. I can get along with

everybody in his place, though I think the place of some of my friends is over there among the feebleminded

pupils, and I don't believe there's one of them, I couldn't go to school to for half an hour and be the wiser for

it. But people you talk with every day have got to have feeders for their minds, as much as the stream that

turns a millwheel has. It isn't one little rill that's going to keep the floatboards turning round. Take a dozen

of the brightest men you can find in the brightest city, wherever that may be,perhaps you and I think we

know,and let 'em come together once a month, and you'll find out in the course of a year or two the ones

that have feeders from all the hillsides. Your common talkers, that exchange the gossip of the day, have no

wheel in particular to turn, and the wash of the rain as it runs down the street is enough for them.

Do you mean you can always see the sources from which a man fills his mind,his feeders, as you call

I don't go quite so far as that,the Master said.I've seen men whose minds were always overflowing,

and yet they did n't read much nor go much into the world. Sometimes you'll find a bit of a pond hole in a

pasture, and you'll plunge your walkingstick into it and think you are going to touch bottom. But you find

you are mistaken. Some of these little stagnant pondholes are a good deal deeper than you think; you may

tie a stone to a bedcord and not get soundings in some of 'em. The country boys will tell you they have no

bottom, but that only means that they are mighty deep; and so a good many stagnant, stupidseeming people

are a great deal deeper than the length of your intellectual walkingstick, I can tell you. There are hidden

springs that keep the little pondholes full when the mountain brooks are all dried up. You poets ought to

I can't help thinking you are more tolerant towards the specialists than I thought at first, by the way you

I don't like the word tolerant,the Master said.As long as the Lord can tolerate me I think I can stand

my fellowcreatures. Philosophically, I love 'em all; empirically, I don't think I am very fond of all of 'em. It

depends on how you look at a man or a woman. Come here, Youngster, will you? he said to That Boy.

The Boy was trying to catch a bluebottle to add to his collection, and was indisposed to give up the chase;

but he presently saw that the Master had taken out a small coin and laid it on the table, and felt himself drawn

There ain't any other one,said the Boy, there ain't but one, but it's got two sides to it with different

That 's it, that 's it,said the Master,two sides to everybody, as there are to that piece of money. I've

seen an old woman that wouldn't fetch five cents if you should put her up for sale at public auction; and yet

come to read the other side of her, she had a trust in God Almighty that was like the bow anchor of a

threedecker. It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at. I don't

think your anteating specialist, with his sharp nose and pinhead eyes, is the best everyday companion; but

any man who knows one thing well is worth listening to for once; and if you are of the largebrained variety

of the race, and want to fill out your programme of the Order of Things in a systematic and exhaustive way,

and get all the halfnotes and flats and sharps of humanity into your scale, you'd a great deal better shut your

front door and open your two side ones when you come across a fellow that has made a real business of doing

A child naturally snaps at a thing as a dog does at his meat,said the Master.If you think of it, we've

all been quadrupeds. A child that can only crawl has all the instincts of a fourfooted beast. It carries things

in its mouth just as cats and dogs do. I've seen the little brutes do it over and over again. I suppose a good

many children would stay quadrupeds all their lives, if they didn't learn the trick of walking on their hind legs

The Master looked at me with that twinkle in his eye which means that he is going to parry a question.

Better stick to Blair's Chronology; that settles it. Adam and Eve, created Friday, October 28th, B. C. 4004.

You've been in a ship for a good while, and here comes Mr. Darwin on deck with an armful of sticks and

He looked me straight in the eyes for about half a minute.If I heard the pumps going, I'd look and see

whether they were gaining on the leak or not. If they were gaining I'd stay where I was.Go and find out

I had noticed that the Young Girlthe storywriter, our Scheherezade, as I called herlooked as if she had

been crying or lying awake half the night. I found on asking her,for she is an honest little body and is

disposed to be confidential with me for some reason or other, that she had been doing both.

And what was the matter now, I questioned her in a semipaternal kind of way, as soon as I got a chance

She was engaged to write a serial story, it seems, and had only got as far as the second number, and some

critic had been jumping upon it, she said, and grinding his heel into it, till she couldn't bear to look at it. He

said she did not write half so well as half a dozen other young women. She did n't write half so well as she

used to write herself. She hadn't any characters and she had n't any incidents. Then he went to work to show

how her story was coming out, trying to anticipate everything she could make of it, so that her readers should

have nothing to look forward to, and he should have credit for his sagacity in guessing, which was nothing so

very wonderful, she seemed to think. Things she had merely hinted and left the reader to infer, he told right

out in the bluntest and coarsest way. It had taken all the life out of her, she said. It was just as if at a

dinnerparty one of the guests should take a spoonful of soup and get up and say to the company, "Poor stuff,

poor stuff; you won't get anything better; let's go somewhere else where things are fit to eat."

The film glistened in her eyes at the strange sound of those two soft words; she had not heard such very often,

I know I am a foolish creature to read them, she answered,but I can't help it; somebody always sends me

everything that will make me wretched to read, and so I sit down and read it, and ache all over for my pains,

She smiled faintly as she said this, for she saw the subridiculous side of it, but the film glittered still in

her eyes. There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles

that make wrinkles and not dimples. "Somebody always sends her everything that will make her wretched."

Who can those creatures be who cut out the offensive paragraph and send it anonymously to us, who mail the

newspaper which has the article we had much better not have seen, who take care that we shall know

everything which can, by any possibility, help to make us discontented with ourselves and a little less

lighthearted than we were before we had been fools enough to open their incendiary packages? I don't like

to say it to myself, but I cannot help suspecting, in this instance, the doubtfullooking personage who sits on

my left, beyond the Scarabee. I have some reason to think that he has made advances to the Young Girl

which were not favorably received, to state the case in moderate terms, and it may be that he is taking his

revenge in cutting up the poor girl's story. I know this very well, that some personal pique or favoritism is at

the bottom of half the praise and dispraise which pretend to be so very ingenuous and discriminating. (Of

What you want is encouragement, my dear, said I,I know that as well, as you. I don't think the fellows

that write such criticisms as you tell me of want to correct your faults. I don't mean to say that you can learn

nothing from them, because they are not all fools by any means, and they will often pick out your weak

points with a malignant sagacity, as a pettifogging lawyer will frequently find a real flaw in trying to get at

everything he can quibble about. But is there nobody who will praise you generously when you do well,

nobody that will lend you a hand now while you want it,or must they all wait until you have made yourself

a name among strangers, and then all at once find out that you have something in you? Oh,said the girl,

and the bright film gathered too fast for her young eyes to hold much longer,I ought not to be ungrateful! I

have found the kindest friend in the world. Have you ever heard the Ladythe one that I sit next to at the

I have not really made her acquaintance, I said. She seems to me a little distant in her manners and I have

Oh, but when you once do know her! I don't believe I could write stories all the time as I do, if she didn't

ask me up to her chamber, and let me read them to her. Do you know, I can make her laugh and cry, reading

my poor stories? And sometimes, when I feel as if I had written out all there is in me, and want to lie down

and go to sleep and never wake up except in a world where there are no weekly papers,when everything

goes wrong, like a car off the track,she takes hold and sets me on the rails again all right.

Why, she listens to my stories, to begin with, as if she really liked to hear them. And then you know I am

dreadfully troubled now and then with some of my characters, and can't think how to get rid of them. And

she'll say, perhaps, Don't shoot your villain this time, you've shot three or four already in the last six weeks;

let his mare stumble and throw him and break his neck. Or she'll give me a hint about some new way for my

lover to make a declaration. She must have had a good many offers, it's my belief, for she has told me a

dozen different ways for me to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always laughs and

cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for there are some people that think everything pitiable is

so funny, and will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkleyou've seen Mr. Jefferson, haven't

you?is breaking your heart for you if you have one. Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads

it to me so beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and sometimes she sets my verses to music and sings them to

Indeed we do. I write for what they call the "Comic Department" of the paper now and then. If I did not

get so tired of storytelling, I suppose I should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a little fun out of

my comic pieces. I begin them halfcrying sometimes, but after they are done they amuse me. I don't suppose

my comic pieces are very laughable; at any rate the man who makes a business of writing me down says the

last one I wrote is very melancholy reading, and that if it was only a little better perhaps some bereaved

Well, that is hard, I must confess. Do let me see those lines which excite such sad emotions.

Will you read them very goodnaturedly? If you will, I will get the paper that has "Aunt Tabitha." That is

the one the faultfinder said produced such deep depression of feeling. It was written for the "Comic

I will finish my report this time with our Scheherezade's poem, hoping thatany critic who deals with it

The old Master has developed one quality of late for which I am afraid I hardly gave him credit. He has

I love to talk,he said,as a goose loves to swim. Sometimes I think it is because I am a goose. For I

never talked much at any one time in my life without saying something or other I was sorry for.

You too!said INow that is very odd, for it is an experience I have habitually. I thought you were

rather too much of a philosopher to trouble yourself about such small matters as to whether you had said just

what you meant to or not; especially as you know that the person you talk to does not remember a word of

what you said the next morning, but is thinking, it is much more likely, of what she said, or how her new

dress looked, or some other body's new dress which madehers look as if it had been patched together from

She!said the Master, with a look which it would take at least half a page to explain to the entire

I paid the respect due to that most significant monosyllable, which, as the old Rabbi spoke it, with its

targum of tone and expression, was not to be answered flippantly, but soberly, advisedly, and after a pause

long enough for it to unfold its meaning in the listener's mind. For there are short single words (all the world

remembers Rachel's Helas!) which are like those Japanese toys that look like nothing of any significance as

you throw them on the water, but which after a little time open out into various strange and unexpected

figures, and then you find that each little shred had a complicated story to tell of itself.

Yes,said I, at the close of this silent interval, during which the monosyllable had been opening out its

meanings,She. When I think of talking, it is of course with a woman. For talking at its best being an

inspiration, it wants a corresponding divine quality of receptiveness; and where will you find this but in

The Master laughed a pleasant little laugh,not a harsh, sarcastic one, but playful, and tempered by so kind

a look that it seemed as if every wrinkled line about his old eyes repeated, "God bless you," as the tracings on

Why, I laughed because I couldn't help saying to myself that a woman whose mind was taken up with

thinking how she looked, and how her pretty neighbor looked, wouldn't have a great deal of thought to spare

Come, now,said I,a man who contradicts himself in the course of two minutes must have a screw

loose in his mental machinery. I never feel afraid that such a thing can happen to me, though it happens often

enough when I turn a thought over suddenly, as you did that fivecent piece the other day, that it reads

differently on its two sides. What I meant to say is something like this. A woman, notwithstanding she is the

best of listeners, knows her business, and it is a woman's business to please. I don't say that it is not her

business to vote, but I do say that a woman who does not please is a false note in the harmonies of nature. She

may not have youth, or beauty, or even manner; but she must have something in her voice or expression, or

both, which it makes you feel better disposed towards your race to look at or listen to. She knows that as well

as we do; and her first question after you have been talking your soul into her consciousness is, Did I please?

A woman never forgets her sex. She would rather talk with a man than an angel, any day.

This frightful speech of mine reached the ear of our Scheherezade, who said that it was perfectly shocking

Hush, my dear,said the Lady,you will have to bring John Milton into your story with our friend there, if

you punish everybody who says naughty things like that. Send the little boy up to my chamber for Paradise

Lost, if you please. He will find it lying on my table. The little old volume,he can't mistake it.

So the girl called That Boy round and gave him the message; I don't know why she should give it, but she

The little volumeits cover protected with soft white leather from a long kid glove, evidently suggesting the

brilliant assemblies of the days when friends and fortune smiledcame presently and the Lady opened

it.You may read that, if you like, she said,it may show you that our friend is to be pilloried in good

The Young Girl ran her eye along the passage the Lady pointed out, blushed, laughed, and slapped the book

down as though she would have liked to box the ears of Mr. John Milton, if he had been a contemporary and

fellowcontributor to the "Weekly Bucket."I won't touch the thing,she said.He was a horrid man to

Fair play,said the Master.Bring me the book, my little fractional superfluity,I mean you, my

The old Master, not unfamiliar with the great epic opened pretty nearly to the place, and very soon found the

passage: He read, aloud with grand scholastic intonation and in a deep voice that silenced the table as if a

went to water her geraniums, to make a short story of it, and left the two "conversationists," to wit, the angel

Raphael and the gentleman,there was but one gentleman in society then, you know, to talk it out.

Everybody laughed, except the Capitalist, who was a little hard of hearing, and the Scarabee, whose life was

too earnest for demonstrations of that kind. He had his eyes fixed on the volume, however, with eager

Will you let me look at that book a single minute?said the Scarabee. I passed it to him, wondering what in

Dermestes lardarius,he said, pointing to a place where the edge of one side of the outer cover had been

slightly tasted by some insect. Very fond of leather while they 're in the larva state.

Eat half the binding off Folio 67,said the Register of Deeds. Something did, anyhow, and it was n't

mice. Found the shelf covered with little hairy cases belonging to something or other that had no business

Skins of the Dermestes lardaraus,said the Scarabee,you can always tell them by those brown hairy

What good does it do to give 'em a name after they 've eat the binding off my folios? asked the Register

The Scarabee had too much respect for science to answer such a question as that; and the book, having served

I return to the previous question,said I,if our friend the Member of the House of Representatives will

allow me to borrow the phrase. Womanly women are very kindly critics, except to themselves and now and

then to their own sex. The less there is of sex about a woman, the more she is to be dreaded. But take a real

woman at her best moment,well dressed enough to be pleased with herself, not so resplendent as to be a

show and a sensation, with those varied outside influences which set vibrating the harmonic notes of her

nature stirring in the air about her, and what has social life to compare with one of those vital interchanges of

thought and feeling with her that make an hour memorable? What can equal her tact, her delicacy, her

subtlety of apprehension, her quickness to feel the changes of temperature as the warm and cool currents of

talk blow by turns? At one moment she is microscopically intellectual, critical, scrupulous in judgment as an

analyst's balance, and the next as sympathetic as the open rose that sweetens the wind from whatever quarter

it finds its way to her bosom. It is in the hospitable soul of a woman that a man forgets he is a stranger, and so

becomes natural and truthful, at the same time that he is mesmerized by all those divine differences which

If you fire your popgun at me, you little chimpanzee, I will stick a pin right through the middle of you and put

I caught the imp that time, but what started him was more than I could guess. It is rather hard that this spoiled

child should spoil such a sentence as that was going to be; but the wind shifted all at once, and the talk had to

come round on another tack, or at least fall off a point or two from its course.

I'll tell you who I think are the best talkers in all probability, said I to the Master, who, as I mentioned,

was developing interesting talent as a listener,poets who never write verses. And there are a good many

more of these than it would seem at first sight. I think you may say every young lover is a poet, to begin with.

I don't mean either that all young lovers are good talkers, they have an eloquence all their own when they

are with the beloved object, no doubt, emphasized after the fashion the solemn bard of Paradise refers to with

such delicious humor in the passage we just heard,but a little talk goes a good way in most of these cooing

matches, and it wouldn't do to report them too literally. What I mean is, that a man with the gift of musical

and impassioned phrase (and love often deeds that to a young person for a while), who "wreaks" it, to borrow

Byron's word, on conversation as the natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely to talk

better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse. A great pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer.

To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to

expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes

Do you mean that it is hard work to write a poem?said the old Master.I had an idea that a poem wrote

itself, as it were, very often; that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken of it as

I have seen Taglioni,he answered.She used to take her steps rather prettily. I have seen the woman

that danced the capstone on to Bunker Hill Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, the Elssler

woman,Fanny Elssler. She would dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon's wing for you very respectably.

Why no, I should say they danced as if they liked it and couldn't help dancing; they looked as if they felt

And yet they had been through such work to get their limbs strong and flexible and obedient, that a

When I was a boy,he said,some of the mothers in our small town, who meant that their children

should know what was what as well as other people's children, laid their heads together and got a dancing

master to come out from the city and give instruction at a few dollars a quarter to the young folks of condition

in the village. Some of their husbands were ministers and some were deacons, but the mothers knew what

they were about, and they did n't see any reason why ministers' and deacons' wives' children shouldn't have as

easy manners as the sons and daughters of Belial. So, as I tell you, they got a dancingmaster to come out to

our place,a man of good repute, a most respectable man,madam (to the Landlady), you must remember

the worthy old citizen, in his advanced age, going about the streets, a most gentlemanly bundle of

infirmities,only he always cocked his hat a little too much on one side, as they do here and there along the

Connecticut River, and sometimes on our city sidewalks, when they've got a new beaver; they got him, I say,

to give us boys and girls lessons in dancing and deportment. He was as gray and as lively as a squirrel, as I

remember him, and used to spring up in the air and "cross his feet," as we called it, three times before he

came down. Well, at the end of each term there was what they called an "exhibition ball," in which the

scholars danced cotillons and countrydances; also something called a "gavotte," and I think one or more

walked a minuet. But all this is not whatI wanted to say. At this exhibition ball he used to bring out a

number of hoops wreathed with roses, of the perennial kind, by the aid of which a number of amazingly

complicated and startling evolutions were exhibited; and also his two daughters, who figured largely in these

evolutions, and whose wonderful performances to us, who had not seen Miss Taglioni or Miss Elssler, were

something quite bewildering, in fact, surpassing the natural possibilities of human beings. Their extraordinary

powers were, however, accounted for by the following explanation, which was accepted in the school as

entirely satisfactory. A certain little bone in the ankles of each of these young girls had been broken

intentionally, secundum artem, at a very early age, and thus they had been fitted to accomplish these

surprising feats which threw the achievements of the children who were left in the condition of the natural

Thank you,said I,you have helped out my illustration so as to make it better than I expected. Let me

begin again. Every poem that is worthy of the name, no matter how easily it seems to be written, represents a

great amount of vital force expended at some time or other. When you find a beach strewed with the shells

and other spoils that belonged once to the deep sea, you know the tide has been there, and that the winds and

waves have wrestled over its naked sands. And so, if I find a poem stranded in my soul and have nothing to

do but seize it as a wrecker carries off the treasure he finds cast ashore, I know I have paid at some time for

that poem with some inward commotion, were it only an excess of enjoyment, which has used up just so

much of my vital capital. But besides all the impressions that furnished the stuff of the poem, there has been

hard work to get the management of that wonderful instrument I spoke of,the great organ, language. An

artist who works in marble or colors has them all to himself and his tribe, but the man who moulds his

thought in verse has to employ the materials vulgarized by everybody's use, and glorify them by his handling.

I don't know that you must break any bones in a poet's mechanism before his thought can dance in rhythm,

but read your Milton and see what training, what patient labor, it took before he could shape our common

It is rather singular, but the same kind of thing has happened to me not very rarely before, as I suppose it has

to most persons, that just when I happened to be thinking about poets and their conditions, this very morning,

I saw a paragraph or two from a foreign paper which is apt to be sharp, if not cynical, relating to the same

matter. I can't help it; I want to have my talk about it, and if I say the same things that writer did, somebody

[I thought the person whom I have called hypothetically the Man of Letters changed color a little and

betrayed a certain awkward consciousness that some of us were looking at him or thinking of him; but I am a

That poets are treated as privileged persons by their admirers and the educated public can hardly be disputed.

That they consider themselves so there is no doubt whatever. On the whole, I do not know so easy a way of

shirking all the civic and social and domestic duties, as to settle it in one's mind that one is a poet. I have,

therefore, taken great pains to advise other persons laboring under the impression that they were gifted

beings, destined to soar in the atmosphere of song above the vulgar realities of earth, not to neglect any

homely duty under the influence of that impression. The number of these persons is so great that if they were

suffered to indulge their prejudice against everyday duties and labors, it would be a serious loss to the

productive industry of the country. My skirts are clear (so far as other people are concerned) of

countenancing that form of intellectual opiumeating in which rhyme takes the place of the narcotic. But

what are you going to do when you find John Keats an apprentice to a surgeon or apothecary? Is n't it rather

better to get another boy to sweep out the shop and shake out the powders and stir up the mixtures, and leave

him undisturbed to write his Ode on a Grecian Urn or to a Nightingale? Oh yes, the critic I have referred to

would say, if he is John Keats; but not if he is of a much lower grade, even though he be genuine, what there

is of him. But the trouble is, the sensitive persons who belong to the lower grades of the poetical hierarchy do

notknow their own poetical limitations, while they do feel a natural unfitness and disinclination for many

pursuits which young persons of the average balance of faculties take to pleasantly enough. What is forgotten

is this, that every real poet, even of the humblest grade, is an artist. Now I venture to say that any painter or

sculptor of real genius, though he may do nothing more than paint flowers and fruit, or carve cameos, is

considered a privileged person. It is recognized perfectly that to get his best work he must be insured the

freedom from disturbances which the creative power absolutely demands, more absolutely perhaps in these

slighter artists than in the great masters. His nerves must be steady for him to finish a roseleaf or the fold of

a nymph's drapery in his best manner; and they will be unsteadied if he has to perform the honest drudgery

which another can do for him quite as well. And it is just so with the poet, though he were only finishing an

epigram; you must no more meddle roughly with him than you would shake a bottle of Chambertin and

expect the "sunset glow" to redden your glass unclouded. On the other hand, it may be said that poetry is not

an article of prime necessity, and potatoes are. There is a disposition in many persons just now to deny the

poet his benefit of clergy, and to hold him no better than other people. Perhaps he is not, perhaps he is not so

good, half the time; but he is a luxury, and if you want him you must pay for him, by not trying to make a

drudge of him while he is all his lifetime struggling with the chills and heats of his artistic intermittent fever.

There may have been some lesser interruptions during the talk I have reported as if it was a set speech, but

this was the drift of what I said and should have said if the other man, in the Review I referred to, had not

seen fit to meddle with the subject, as some fellow always does, just about the time when I am going to say

something about it. The old Master listened beautifully, except for cutting in once, as I told you he did. But

now he had held in as long as it was in his nature to contain himself, and must have his say or go off in an

apoplexy, or explode in some way. I think you're right about the poets,he said. They are to common

folks what repeaters are to ordinary watches. They carry music in their inside arrangements, but they want to

be handled carefully or you put them out of order. And perhaps you must n't expect them to be quite as good

timekeepers as the professional chronometer watches that make a specialty of being exact within a few

seconds a month. They think too much of themselves. So does everybody that considers himself as having a

right to fall back on what he calls his idiosyncrasy. Yet a man has such a right, and it is no easy thing to

adjust the private claim to the fair public demand on him. Suppose you are subject to tic douloureux, for

instance. Every now and then a tiger that nobody can see catches one side of your face between his jaws and

holds on till he is tired and lets go. Some concession must be made to you on that score, as everybody can

see. It is fair to give you a seat that is not in the draught, and your friends ought not to find fault with you if

you do not care to join a party that is going on a sleighride. Now take a poet like Cowper. He had a mental

neuralgia, a great deal worse in many respects than tic douloureux confined to the face. It was well that he

was sheltered and relieved, by the cares of kind friends, especially those good women, from as many of the

burdens of life as they could lift off from him. I am fair to the poets,don't you agree that I am?

Why, yes,I said,you have stated the case fairly enough, a good deal as I should have put it myself.

Now, then,the Master continued,I 'll tell you what is necessary to all these artistic idiosyncrasies to

bring them into good square human relations outside of the special province where their ways differ from

those of other people. I am going to illustrate what I mean by a comparison. I don't know, by the way, but you

would be disposed to think and perhaps call me a winebibber on the strength of the freedom with which I

deal with that fluid for the purposes of illustration. But I make mighty little use of it, except as it furnishes me

an image now and then, as it did, for that matter, to the Disciples and their Master. In my younger days they

used to bring up the famous old wines, the Whitetop, the Juno, the Eclipse, the Essex Junior, and the rest, in

their old cobwebbed, dusty bottles. The resurrection of one of these old sepulchred dignitaries had something

of solemnity about it; it was like the disinterment of a king; the bringing to light of the Royal Martyr King

Charles I., for instance, that Sir Henry Halford gave such an interesting account of. And the bottle seemed to

inspire a personal respect; it was wrapped in a napkin and borne tenderly and reverently round to the guests,

But nowadays the precious juice of a longdead vintage is transferred carefully into a cutglass decanter, and

stands side by side with the sherry from a corner grocery, which looks just as bright and apparently thinks

just as well of itself. The old historic Madeiras, which have warmed the periods of our famous rhetoricians of

the past and burned in the impassioned eloquence of our earlier political demigods, have nothing to mark

them externally but a bit of thread, it may be, round the neck of the decanter, or a slip of ribbon, pink on one

Go to a London club,perhaps I might find something nearer home that would serve my turn,but go to a

London club, and there you will see the celebrities all looking alike modern, all decanted off from their

historic antecedents and their costume of circumstance into the everyday aspect of the gentleman of

common cultivated society. That is Sir Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the muttonchop whiskers and the plain

gray suit; there is the Laureate in a frockcoat like your own, and the leader of the House of Commons in a

necktie you do not envy. That is the kind of thing you want to take the nonsense out of you. If you are not

decanted off from yourself every few days or weeks, you will think it sacrilege to brush a cobweb from your

cork by and by. O little fool, that has published a little book full of little poems or other sputtering tokens of

an uneasy condition, how I love you for the one soft nerve of special sensibility that runs through your

exiguous organism, and the one phosphorescent particle in your unilluminated intelligence! But if you don't

leave your spunsugar confectionery business once in a while, and come out among lusty men,the bristly,

pachydermatous fellows that hew out the highways for the material progress of society, and the

broadshouldered, out ofdoor men that fight for the great prizes of life,you will come to think that the

spunsugar business is the chief end of man, and begin to feel and look as if you believed yourself as much

above common people as that personage of whom Tourgueneff says that "he had the air of his own statue

The Master paused and fell into a deep thinking fit, as he does sometimes. He had had his own say, it is

true, but he had established his character as a listener to my own perfect satisfaction, for I, too, was conscious

I am always troubled when I think of my very limited mathematical capacities. It seems as if every

wellorganized mind should be able to handle numbers and quantities through their symbols to an indefinite

extent; and yet, I am puzzled by what seems to a clever boy with a turn for calculation as plain as counting

his fingers. I don't think any man feels well grounded in knowledge unless he has a good basis of

mathematical certainties, and knows how to deal with them and apply them to every branch of knowledge

Our Young Astronomer is known for his mathematical ability, and I asked him what he thought was the

difficulty in the minds that are weak in that particular direction, while they may be of remarkable force in

other provinces of thought, as is notoriously the case with some men of great distinction in science.

The young man smiled and wrote a few letters and symbols on a piece of paper.Can you see through that

He said, as I returned it to him, You have heard military men say that such a person had an eye for

country, have n't you? One man will note all the landmarks, keep the points of compass in his head, observe

how the streams run, in short, carry a map in his brain of any region that he has marched or galloped through.

Another man takes no note of any of these things; always follows somebody else's lead when he can, and gets

lost if he is left to himself; a mere owl in daylight. Just so some men have an eye for an equation, and would

read at sight the one that you puzzled over. It is told of Sir Isaac Newton that he required no demonstration of

the propositions in Euclid's Geometry, but as soon as he had read the enuciation the solution or answer was

plain at once. The power may be cultivated, but I think it is to a great degree a natural gift, as is the eye for

I think I could read equations readily enough,I said,if I could only keep my attention fixed on them;

and I think I could keep my attention on them if I were imprisoned in a thinkingcell, such as the Creative

The young man's lustrous eyes opened very widely as he asked me to explain what I meant.

Is there anything more divine than the sun; than a sun with its planets revolving about it, warming them,

You agree, then, that conscious life is the grand aim and end of all this vast mechanism. Without life that

could feel and enjoy, the splendors and creative energy would all be thrown away. You know Harvey's

saying, omnia animalia ex ovo,all animals come from an egg. You ought to know it, for the great

controversy going on about spontaneous generation has brought it into special prominence lately. Well, then,

the ovum, the egg, is, to speak in human phrase, the Creator's more private and sacred studio, for his magnum

opus. Now, look at a hen's egg, which is a convenient one to study, because it is large enough and built

solidly enough to look at and handle easily. That would be the form I would choose for my thinkingcell.

Build me an oval with smooth, translucent walls, and put me in the centre of it with Newton's "Principia" or

Kant's "Kritik," and I think I shall develop "an eye for an equation," as you call it, and a capacity for an

But do tell me,said the Astronomer, a little incredulously,what there is in that particular form which is

It is n't help I want, it is removing hindrances. I don't want to see anything to draw off my attention. I don't

want a cornice, or an angle, or anything but a containing curve. I want diffused light and no single luminous

centre to fix my eye, and so distract my mind from its one object of contemplation. The metaphysics of

attention have hardly been sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object for a long

time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's wellknown story of the monks of Mount Athos and their

contemplative practice is often laughed over, but it has a meaning. They were to shut the door of the cell,

"At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you persevere day and night, you will feel an ineffable joy;

and no sooner has the soul discovered the place of the heart, than it is involved in a mystic and ethereal light."

And Mr. Braid produces absolute anaesthesia, so that surgical operations can be performed without suffering

to the patient, only by making him fix his eyes and his mind on a single object; and Newton is said to have

said, as you remember, "I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait till the first dawnings open slowly

by little and little into a full and clear light." These are different, but certainly very wonderful, instances of

what can be done by attention. But now suppose that your mind is in its nature discursive, erratic, subject to

electric attractions and repulsions, volage; it may be impossible for you to compel your attention except by

taking away all external disturbances. I think the poets have an advantage and a disadvantage as compared

with the steadiergoing people. Life is so vivid to the poet, that he is too eager to seize and exhaust its

multitudinous impressions. Like Sindbad in the valley of precious stones, he wants to fill his pockets with

diamonds, but, lo! there is a great ruby like a setting sun in its glory, and a sapphire that, like Bryant's blue

gentian, seems to have dropped from the cerulean walls of heaven, and a nest of pearls that look as if they

might be unhatched angel's eggs, and so he hardly knows what to seize, and tries for too many, and comes out

of the enchanted valley with more gems than he can carry, and those that he lets fall by the wayside we call

his poems. You may change the image a thousand ways to show you how hard it is to make a mathematician

or a logician out of a poet. He carries the tropics with him wherever he goes; he is in the true sense felius

naturae, and Nature tempts him, as she tempts a child walking through a garden where all the finest fruits are

and he takes a bite out of the sunny side of this and the other, and, ever stimulated and never satisfied, is

hurried through the garden, and, before he knows it, finds himself at an iron gate which opens outward, and

For one he will perhaps soon learn to love and know better,said the Master.But I can help you out

with another comparison, not quite so poetical as yours. Why did not you think of a railway station, where

the cars stop five minutes for refreshments? Is n't that a picture of the poet's hungry and hurried feast at the

banquet of life? The traveller flings himself on the bewildering miscellany of delicacies spread before him,

the various tempting forms of ambrosia and seducing draughts of nectar, with the same eager hurry and

restless ardor that you describe in the poet. Dear me! If it wasn't for All aboard! that summons of the deaf

conductor which tears one away from his halffinished spongecake and coffee, how I, who do not call

myself a poet, but only a questioner, should have enjoyed a good long stopsay a couple of thousand

You say you are not a poet,I said, after a little pause, in which I suppose both of us were thinking where

the great railroad would land us after carrying us into the dark tunnel, the farther end of which no man has

seen and taken a return train to bring us news about it,you say you are not a poet, and yet it seems to me

I don't think you mean to flatter me,the Master answered,and, what is more, for I am not afraid to be

honest with you, I don't think you do flatter me. I have taken the inventory of my faculties as calmly as if I

were an appraiser. I have some of the qualities, perhaps I may say many of the qualities, that make a man a

poet, and yet I am not one. And in the course of a pretty wide experience of menand women(the Master

sighed, I thought, but perhaps I was mistaken)I have met a good many poets who were not rhymesters and

a good many rhymesters who were not poets. So I am only one of the Voiceless, that I remember one of you

singers had some verses about. I think there is a little music in me, but it has not found a voice, and it never

will. If I should confess the truth, there is no mere earthly immortality that I envy so much as the poet's. If

your name is to live at all, it is so much more to have it live in people's hearts than only in their brains! I don't

know that one's eyes fill with tears when he thinks of the famous inventor of logarithms, but song of Burns's

or a hymn of Charles Wesley's goes straight to your heart, and you can't help loving both of them, the sinner

as well as the saint. The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their labors; the poet, who

reproduces himself in his creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his

personality blended with whatever is imperishable in his song. We see nothing of the bees that built the

honeycomb and stored it with its sweets, but we can trace the veining in the wings of insects that flitted

through the forests which are now coalbeds, kept unchanging in the amber that holds them; and so the

passion of Sappho, the tenderness of Simonides, the purity of holy George Herbert, the lofty

contemplativeness of James Shirley, are before us today as if they were living, in a few tears of amber verse.

as if it were not a very difficult matter to gain immortality,such an immortality at least as a perishable

language can give. A single lyric is enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one of

those jewels fit to sparkle "on the stretched forefinger of all time." A coin, a ring, a string of verses. These

last, and hardly anything else does. Every century is an overloaded ship that must sink at last with most of its

cargo. The small portion of its crew that get on board the new vessel which takes them off don't pretend to

save a great many of the bulky articles. But they must not and will not leave behind the hereditary jewels of

the race; and if you have found and cut a diamond, were it only a spark with a single polished facet, it will

stand a better chance of being saved from the wreck than anything, no matter what, that wants much room for

The pyramids last, it is true, but most of them have forgotten their builders' names. But the ring of Thothmes

III., who reigned some fourteen hundred years before our era, before Homer sang, before the Argonauts

sailed, before Troy was built, is in the possession of Lord Ashburnham, and proclaims the name of the

monarch who wore it more than three thousand years ago. The gold coins with the head of Alexander the

Great are some of them so fresh one might think they were newer than much of the silver currency we were

lately handling. As we have been quoting from the poets this morning, I will follow the precedent, and give

some lines from an epistle of Pope to Addison after the latter had written, but not yet published, his Dialogue

on Medals. Some of these lines have been lingering in my memory for a great many years, but I looked at the

original the other day and was so pleased with them that I got them by heart. I think you will say they are

It is the same thing in literature. Write half a dozen folios full of other people's ideas (as all folios are pretty

sure to be), and you serve as ballast to the lower shelves of a library, about as like to be disturbed as the

kentledge in the hold of a ship. Write a story, or a dozen stories, and your book will be in demand like an

oyster while it is freshly opened, and after tha The highways of literature are spread over with the shells of

dead novels, each of which has been swallowed at a mouthful by the public, and is done with. But write a

volume of poems. No matter if they are all bad but one, if that one is very good. It will carry your name down

to posterity like the ring of Thothmes, like the coin of Alexander. I don't suppose one would care a great deal

about it a hundred or a thousand years after he is dead, but I don't feel quite sure. It seems as if, even in

heaven, King David might remember "The Lord is my Shepherd" with a certain twinge of earthly pleasure.

What in the world can have become of That Boy and his popgun while all this somewhat extended

sermonizing was going on? I don't wonder you ask, beloved Reader, and I suppose I must tell you how we

got on so long without interruption. Well, the plain truth is, the youngster was contemplating his gastric

centre, like the monks of Mount Athos, but in a less happy state of mind than those tranquil recluses, in

consequence of indulgence in the heterogeneous assortment of luxuries procured with the fivecent piece

given him by the kindhearted old Master. But yon need not think I am going to tell you every time his

popgun goes off, making a Selah of him whenever I want to change the subject. Occasionally he was

illtimed in his artillery practice and ignominiously rebuked, sometimes he was harmlessly playful and

nobody minded him, but every now and then he came in so apropos that I am morally certain he gets a hint

from somebody who watches the course of the conversation, and means through him to have a hand in it and

stop any of us when we are getting prosy. But in consequence of That Boy's indiscretion, we were without a

check upon our expansiveness, and ran on in the way you have observed and may be disposed to find fault

One other thing the Master said before we left the table, after our long talk of that day.

I have been tempted sometimes,said he, to envy the immediate triumphs of the singer. He enjoys all that

praise can do for him and at the very moment of exerting his talent. And the singing women! Once in a while,

in the course of my life, I have found myself in the midst of a tulipbed of fulldressed, handsome women in

all their glory, and when some one among them has shaken her gauzy wings, and sat down before the piano,

and then, only giving the keys a soft touch now and then to support her voice, has warbled some sweet, sad

melody intertwined with the longings or regrets of some tender hearted poet, it has seemed to me that so to

hush the rustling of the silks and silence the babble of the buds, as they call the chicks of a new season, and

light up the flame of romance in cold hearts, in desolate ones, in old burntout ones,like mine, I was going

to say, but I won't, for it isn't so, and you may laugh to hear me say it isn't so, if you like,was perhaps

better than to be remembered a few hundred years by a few perfect stanzas, when your gravestone is standing

aslant, and your name is covered over with a lichen as big as a militia colonel's cockade, and nobody knows

or cares enough about you to scrape it off and set the tipsy old slatestone upright again.

I said nothing in reply to this, for I was thinking of a sweet singer to whose voice I had listened in its first

freshness, and which is now only an echo in my memory. If any reader of the periodical in which these

conversations are recorded can remember so far back as the first year of its publication, he will find among

the papers contributed by a friend not yet wholly forgotten a few verses, lively enough in their way, headed

"The Boys." The sweet singer was one of this company of college classmates, the constancy of whose

friendship deserves a better tribute than the annual offerings, kindly meant, as they are, which for many years

have not been wanting at their social gatherings. The small company counts many noted personages on its

list, as is well known to those who are interested in such local matters, but it is not known that every fifth

man of the whole number now living is more or less of a poet,using that word with a generous breadth of

significance. But it should seem that the divine gift it implies is more freely dispensed than some others, for

while there are (or were, for one has taken his Last Degree) eight musical quills, there was but one pair of lips

which could claim any special consecration to vocal melody. Not that one that should undervalue the

halfrecitative of doubtful barytones, or the brilliant escapades of slightly unmanageable falsettos, or the

concentrated efforts of the proprietors of two or three effective notes, who may be observed lying in wait for

them, and coming down on them with all their might, and the look on their countenances of "I too am a

singer." But the voice that led all, and that all loved to listen to, the voice that was at once full, rich, sweet,

penetrating, expressive, whose ample overflow drowned all the imperfections and made up for all the

shortcomings of the others, is silent henceforth forevermore for all earthly listeners.

And these were the lines that one of "The Boys," as they have always called themselves for ever so many

years, read at the first meeting after the voice which had never failed them was hushed in the stillness of

I fear that I have done injustice in my conversation and my report of it to a most worthy and promising young

man whom I should be very sorry to injure in any way. Dr. Benjamin Franklin got hold of my account of my

visit to him, and complained that I had made too much of the expression he used. He did not mean to say that

he thought I was suffering from the rare disease he mentioned, but only that the color reminded him of it. It

was true that he had shown me various instruments, among them one for exploring the state of a part by

means of a puncture, but he did not propose to make use of it upon my person. In short, I had colored the

I am afraid I did,I said,but was n't I colored myself so as to look ridiculous? I've heard it said that

people with the jaundice see everything yellow; perhaps I saw things looking a little queerly, with that black

and blue spot I could n't account for threatening to make a colored man and brother of me. But I am sorry if I

have done you any wrong. I hope you won't lose any patients by my making a little fun of your meters and

scopes and contrivances. They seem so odd to us outside people. Then the idea of being bronzed all over was

such an alarming suggestion. But I did not mean to damage your business, which I trust is now considerable,

and I shall certainly come to you again if I have need of the services of a physician. Only don't mention the

names of any diseases in English or Latin before me next time. I dreamed about cutis oenea half the night

Dr. Benjamin took my apology very pleasantly. He did not want to be touchy about it, he said, but he had his

way to make in the world, and found it a little hard at first, as most young men did. People were afraid to trust

them, no matter how much they knew. One of the old doctors asked him to come in and examine a patient's

heart for him the other day. He went with him accordingly, and when they stood by the bedside, he offered

his stethoscope to the old doctor. The old doctor took it and put the wrong end to his ear and the other to the

patient's chest, and kept it there about two minutes, looking all the time as wise as an old owl. Then he, Dr.

Benjamin, took it and applied it properly, and made out where the trouble was in no time at all. But what was

the use of a young man's pretending to know anything in the presence of an old owl? I saw by their looks, he

said, that they all thought I used the, stethoscope wrong end up, and was nothing but a 'prentice hand to the

I am much pleased to say that since Dr. Benjamin has had charge of a dispensary district, and been visiting

forty or fifty patients a day, I have reason to think he has grown a great deal more practical than when I made

my visit to his office. I think I was probably one of his first patients, and that he naturally made the most of

me. But my second trial was much more satisfactory. I got an ugly cut from the carvingknife in an affair

with a goose of iron constitution in which I came off second best. I at once adjourned with Dr. Benjamin to

his small office, and put myself in his hands. It was astonishing to see what a little experience of

miscellaneous practice had done for him. He did not ask me anymore questions about my hereditary

predispositions on the paternal and maternal sides. He did not examine me with the stethoscope or the

laryngoscope. He only strapped up my cut, and informed me that it would speedily get well by the "first

intention,"an odd phrase enough, but sounding much less formidable than cutis oenea.

I am afraid I have had something of the French prejudice which embodies itself in the maxim "young

surgeon, old physician." But a young physician who has been taught by great masters of the profession, in

ample hospitals, starts in his profession knowing more than some old doctors have learned in a lifetime. Give

him a little time to get the use of his wits in emergencies, and to know the little arts that do so much for a

patient's comfort,just as you give a young sailor time to get his sealegs on and teach his stomach to

The old Master knows ten times more about this matter and about all the professions, as he does about

everything else, than I do. My opinion is that he has studied two, if not three, of these professions in a regular

course. I don't know that he has ever preached, except as Charles Lamb said Coleridge always did, for when

he gets the bit in his teeth he runs away with the conversation, and if he only took a text his talk would be a

sermon; but if he has not preached, he has made a study of theology, as many laymen do. I know he has some

shelves of medical books in his library, and has ideas on the subject of the healing art. He confesses to having

attended law lectures and having had much intercourse with lawyers. So he has something to say on almost

any subject that happens to come up. I told him my story about my visit to the young doctor, and asked him

what he thought of youthful practitioners in general and of Dr. Benjamin in particular.

I 'll tell you what,the Master said,I know something about these young fellows that come home with

their heads full of "science," as they call it, and stick up their signs to tell people they know how to cure their

headaches and stomachaches. Science is a firstrate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has

common sense on the groundfloor. But if a man has n't got plenty of good common sense, the more science

Well, I'll tell you, and you'll find it's a mighty simple matter. When a person is sick, there is always

something to be done for him, and done at once. If it is only to open or shut a window, if it is only to tell him

to keep on doing just what he is doing already, it wants a man to bring his mind right down to the fact of the

present case and its immediate needs. Now the present case, as the doctor sees it, is just exactly such a

collection of paltry individual facts as never was before,a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is

his business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as when a painter goes to take the

portrait of any sitter who happens to send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just

such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his business is with that and no other

person's,with the features of the worthy father of a family before him, and not with the portraits he has

seen in galleries or books, or Mr. Copley's grand pictures of the fine old Tories, or the Apollos and Jupiters of

Greek sculpture. It is the same thing with the patient. His disease has features of its own; there never was and

never will be another case in all respects exactly like it. If a doctor has science without common sense, he

treats a fever, but not this man's fever. If he has common sense without science, he treats this man's fever

without knowing the general laws that govern all fevers and all vital movements. I 'll tell you what saves

these last fellows. They go for weakness whenever they see it, with stimulants and strengtheners, and they go

for overaction, heat, and high pulse, and the rest, with cooling and reducing remedies. That is three quarters

of medical practice. The other quarter wants science and common sense too. But the men that have science

only, begin too far back, and, before they get as far as the case in hand, the patient has very likely gone to

visit his deceased relatives. You remember Thomas Prince's "Chronological History of New England," I

suppose? He begins, you recollect, with Adam, and has to work down five thousand six hundred and

twentyfour years before he gets to the Pilgrim fathers and the Mayflower. It was all very well, only it did n't

belong there, but got in the way of something else. So it is with "science" out of place. By far the larger part

of the facts of structure and function you find in the books of anatomy and physiology have no immediate

application to the daily duties of the practitioner. You must learn systematically, for all that; it is the easiest

way and the only way that takes hold of the memory, except mere empirical repetition, like that of the

handicraftsman. Did you ever see one of those Japanese figures with the points for acupuncture marked upon

Well, I 'll tell you about it. You see they have a way of pushing long, slender needles into you for the cure of

rheumatism and other complaints, and it seems there is a choice of spots for the operation, though it is very

strange how little mischief it does in a good many places one would think unsafe to meddle with. So they had

a doll made, and marked the spots where they had put in needles without doing any harm. They must have

had accidents from sticking the needles into the wrong places now and then, but I suppose they did n't say a

great deal about those. After a time, say a few centuries of experience, they had their doll all spotted over

with safe places for sticking in the needles. That is their way of registering practical knowledge: We, on the

other hand, study the structure of the body as a whole, systematically, and have no difficulty at all in

remembering the track of the great vessels and nerves, and knowing just what tracks will be safe and what

unsafe. It is just the same thing with the geologists. Here is a man close by us boring for water through one of

our ledges, because somebody else got water somewhere else in that way; and a person who knows geology

or ought to know it, because he has given his life to it, tells me he might as well bore there for lagerbeer as

I thought we had had enough of this particular matter, and that I should like to hear what the Master had to

say about the three professions he knew something about, each compared with the others.

Wait a minute, till I have got through with your first question, said the Master.One thing at a time.

You asked me about the young doctors, and about our young doctor. They come home tres biens chausses, as

a Frenchman would say, mighty well shod with professional knowledge. But when they begin walking round

among their poor patients, they don't commonly start with millionnaires, they find that their new shoes of

scientific acquirements have got to be broken in just like a pair of boots or brogans. I don't know that I have

put it quite strong enough. Let me try again. You've seen those fellows at the circus that get up on horseback

so big that you wonder how they could climb into the saddle. But pretty soon they throw off their outside

coat, and the next minute another one, and then the one under that, and so they keep peeling off one garment

after another till people begin to look queer and think they are going too far for strict propriety. Well, that is

the way a fellow with a real practical turn serves a good many of his scientific wrappers, flings 'em off for

other people to pick up, and goes right at the work of curing stomachaches and all the other little mean

unscientific complaints that make up the larger part of every doctor's business. I think our Dr. Benjamin is a

worthy young man, and if you are in need of a doctor at any time I hope you will go to him; and if you come

I thought he was going to say he would try him in his own person, but the Master is not fond of

Now, I will answer your other question, he said. The lawyers are the cleverest men, the ministers are the most

The lawyers are a picked lot, "first scholars" and the like, but their business is as unsympathetic as Jack

Ketch's. There is nothing humanizing in their relations with their fellowcreatures. They go for the side that

retains them. They defend the man they know to be a rogue, and not very rarely throw suspicion on the man

they know to be innocent. Mind you, I am not finding fault with them; every side of a case has a right to the

best statement it admits of; but I say it does not tend to make them sympathetic. Suppose in a case of Fever

vs. Patient, the doctor should side with either party according to whether the old miser or his expectant heir

was his employer. Suppose the minister should side with the Lord or the Devil, according to the salary

offered and other incidental advantages, where the soul of a sinner was in question. You can see what a piece

of work it would make of their sympathies. But the lawyers are quicker witted than either of the other

professions, and abler men generally. They are goodnatured, or, if they quarrel, their quarrels are

aboveboard. I don't think they are as accomplished as the ministers, but they have a way of cramming with

special knowledge for a case which leaves a certain shallow sediment of intelligence in their memories about

a good many things. They are apt to talk law in mixed company, and they have a way of looking round when

they make a point, as if they were addressing a jury, that is mighty aggravating, as I once had occasion to see

when one of 'em, and a pretty famous one, put me on the witnessstand at a dinnerparty once.

The ministers come next in point of talent. They are far more curious and widely interested outside of their

own calling than either of the other professions. I like to talk with 'em. They are interesting men, full of good

feelings, hard workers, always foremost in good deeds, and on the whole the most efficient civilizing class,

working downwards from knowledge to ignorance, that is,not so much upwards, perhaps,that we have.

The trouble is, that so many of 'em work in harness, and it is pretty sure to chafe somewhere. They feed us on

canned meats mostly. They cripple our instincts and reason, and give us a crutch of doctrine. I have talked

with a great many of 'em of all sorts of belief, and I don't think they are quite so easy in their minds, the

greater number of them; nor so clear in their convictions, as one would think to hear 'em lay down the law in

the pulpit. They used to lead the intelligence of their parishes; now they do pretty well if they keep up with it,

and they are very apt to lag behind it. Then they must have a colleague. The old minister thinks he can hold to

his old course, sailing right into the wind's eye of human nature, as straight as that famous old skipper John

Bunyan; the young minister falls off three or four points and catches the breeze that left the old man's sails all

shivering. By and by the congregation will get ahead of him, and then it must, have another new skipper. The

priest holds his own pretty well; the minister is coming down every generation nearer and nearer to the

common level of the useful citizen,no oracle at all, but a man of more than average moral instincts, who, if

he knows anything, knows how little he knows. The ministers are good talkers, only the struggle between

nature and grace makes some of 'em a little awkward occasionally. The women do their best to spoil 'em, as

they do the poets; you find it very pleasant to be spoiled, no doubt; so do they. Now and then one of 'em goes

By this time our three ladies had their faces all turned toward the speaker, like the weathercocks in a

Theirs is the least learned of the professions, in this country at least. They have not half the general culture

of the lawyers, nor a quarter of that of the ministers. I rather think, though, they are more agreeable to the

common run of people than the men with black coats or the men with green bags. People can swear before

'em if they want to, and they can't very well before ministers. I don't care whether they want to swear or not,

they don't want to be on their good behavior. Besides, the minister has a little smack of the sexton about him;

he comes when people are in extremis, but they don't send for him every time they make a slight moral slip,

tell a lie for instance, or smuggle a silk dress through the customhouse; but they call in the doctor when a

child is cutting a tooth or gets a splinter in its finger. So it does n't mean much to send for him, only a

pleasant chat about the news of the day; for putting the baby to rights does n't take long. Besides, everybody

does n't like to talk about the next world; people are modest in their desires, and find this world as good as

they deserve; but everybody loves to talk physic. Everybody loves to hear of strange cases; people are eager

to tell the doctor of the wonderful cures they have heard of; they want to know what is the matter with

somebody or other who is said to be suffering from "a complication of diseases," and above all to get a hard

name, Greek or Latin, for some complaint which sounds altogether too commonplace in plain English. If you

will only call a headache a Cephalgia, it acquires dignity at once, and a patient becomes rather proud of it. So

In old times, when people were more afraid of the Devil and of witches than they are now, they liked to have

a priest or a minister somewhere near to scare 'em off; but nowadays, if you could find an old woman that

would ride round the room on a broomstick, Barnum would build an amphitheatre to exhibit her in; and if he

could come across a young imp, with hoofs, tail, and budding horns, a lineal descendant of one of those

"daemons" which the good people of Gloucester fired at, and were fired at by "for the best part of a month

together" in the year 1692, the, great showman would have him at any cost for his museum or menagerie.

Men are cowards, sir, and are driven by fear as the sovereign motive. Men are idolaters, and want something

to look at and kiss and hug, or throw themselves down before; they always did, they always will; and if you

don't make it of wood, you must make it of words, which are just as much used for idols as promissory notes

are used for values. The ministers have a hard time of it without bell and book and holy water; they are

dismounted men in armor since Luther cut their saddlegirths, and you can see they are quietly taking off one

piece of iron after another until some of the best of 'em are fighting the devil (not the zoological Devil with

the big D) with the sword of the Spirit, and precious little else in the way of weapons of offence or defence.

But we couldn't get on without the spiritual brotherhood, whatever became of our special creeds. There is a

genius for religion, just as there is for painting or sculpture. It is halfsister to the genius for music, and has

some of the features which remind us of earthly love. But it lifts us all by its mere presence. To see a good

man and hear his voice once a week would be reason enough for building churches and pulpits. The Master

I was thinking of the great coach and team that is carrying us fast enough, I don't know but too fast,

somewhere or other. The D. D.'s used to be the leaders, but now they are the wheelhorses. It's pretty hard to

When we're going down hill,I said, as neatly as if I had been a HighChurch curate trained to snap at

the last word of the response, so that you couldn't wedge in the tail of a comma between the end of the

congregation's closing syllable and the beginning of the next petition. They do it well, but it always spoils my

devotion. To save my life, I can't help watching them, as I watch to see a duck dive at the flash of a gun, and

that is not what I go to church for. It is a juggler's trick, and there is no more religion in it than in catching a

I was looking at our Scheherezade the other day, and thinking what a pity it was that she had never had fair

play in the world. I wish I knew more of her history. There is one way of learning it,making love to her. I

wonder whether she would let me and like it. It is an absurd thing, and I ought not to confess, but I tell you

and you only, Beloved, my heart gave a perceptible jump when it heard the whisper of that possibility

overhead! Every day has its ebb and flow, but such a thought as that is like one of those tidal waves they talk

about, that rolls in like a great wall and overtops and drowns out all your landmarks, and you, too, if you

don't mind what you are about and stand ready to run or climb or swim. Not quite so bad as that, though, this

time. I take an interest in our Scheherezade. I am glad she did n't smile on the pipe and the

Bohemianlooking fellow that finds the best part of his life in sucking at it. A fine thing, isn't it; for a young

but not quite so good as his meerschaum? It is n't for me to throw stones, though, who have been a Nicotian a

good deal more than half my days. Cigarstump out now, and consequently have become very bitter on more

persevering sinners. I say I take an interest in our Scheherezade, but I rather think it is more paternal than

anything else, though my heart did give that jump. It has jumped a good many times without anything very

This visit to the Observatory is going to bring us all, or most of us, together in a new way, and it wouldn't be

very odd if some of us should become better acquainted than we ever have been. There is a chance for the

elective affinities. What tremendous forces they are, if two subjects of them come within range! There lies a

bit of iron. All the dynamic agencies of the universe are pledged to hold it just in that position, and there it

will lie until it becomes a heap of redbrown rust. But see, I hold a magnet to it,it looks to you like just

such a bit of iron as the other,and lo! it leaves them all,the tugging of the mighty earth; of the ghostly

moon that walks in white, trailing the snaky waves of the ocean after her; of the awful sun, twice as large as a

sphere that the whole orbit of the moon would but just girdle,it leaves the wrestling of all their forces,

which are at a dead lock with each other, all fighting for it, and springs straight to the magnet. What a lucky

thing it is for wellconducted persons that the maddening elective affinities don't come into play in full force

I suppose I am making a good deal more of our prospective visit than it deserves. It must be because I have

got it into my head that we are bound to have some kind of sentimental outbreak amongst us, and that this

will give a chance for advances on the part of anybody disposed in that direction. A little change of

circumstance often hastens on a movement that has been long in preparation. A chemist will show you a flask

containing a clear liquid; he will give it a shake or two, and the whole contents of the flask will become solid

in an instant. Or you may lay a little heap of ironfilings on a sheet of paper with a magnet beneath it, and

they will be quiet enough as they are, but give the paper a slight jar and the specks of metal will suddenly find

their way to the north or the south pole of the magnet and take a definite shape not unpleasing to contemplate,

and curiously illustrating the laws of attraction, antagonism, and average, by which the worlds, conscious and

unconscious, are alike governed. So with our little party, with any little party of persons who have got used to

each other; leave them undisturbed and they might remain in a state of equilibrium forever; but let anything

give them a shake or a jar, and the longstriving but hindered affinities come all at once into play and finish

We were all a good deal excited by the anticipation of this visit. The Capitalist, who for the most part keeps

entirely to himself, seemed to take an interest in it and joined the group in the parlor who were making

arrangements as to the details of the eventful expedition, which was very soon to take place. The Young Girl

was full of enthusiasm; she is one of those young persons, I think, who are impressible, and of necessity

depressible when their nervous systems are overtasked, but elastic, recovering easily from mental worries and

fatigues, and only wanting a little change of their conditions to get back their bloom and cheerfulness. I could

not help being pleased to see how much of the child was left in her, after all the drudgery she had been

through. What is there that youth will not endure and triumph over? Here she was; her story for the week was

done in good season; she had got rid of her villain by a new and original catastrophe; she had received a sum

of money for an extra string of verses,painfully small, it is true, but it would buy her a certain ribbon she

wanted for the great excursion; and now her eyes sparkled so that I forgot how tired and hollow they

sometimes looked when she had been sitting up half the night over her endless manuscript.

The morning of the day we had looked forward topromised as good an evening as we could wish. The

Capitalist, whose courteous and bland demeanor would never have suggested the thought that he was a robber

and an enemy of his race, who was to be trampled underfoot by the beneficent regenerators of the social order

as preliminary to the universal reign of peace on earth and goodwill to men, astonished us all with a

proposal to escort the three ladies and procure a carriage for their conveyance. The Lady thanked him in a

very cordial way, but said she thought nothing of the walk. The Landlady looked disappointed at this answer.

For her part she was on her legs all day and should be glad enough to ride, if so be he was going to have a

carriage at any rate. It would be a sight pleasanter than to trudge afoot, but she would n't have him go to the

expense on her account. Don't mention it, madam,rsaid the Capitalist, in a generous glow of enthusiasm.

As for the Young Girl, she did not often get a chance for a drive, and liked the idea of it for its own sake, as

children do, and she insisted that the Lady should go in the carriage with her. So it was settled that the

Capitalist should take the three ladies in a carriage, and the rest of us go on foot.

The evening behaved as it was bound to do on so momentous an occasion. The Capitalist was dressed with

almost suspicious nicety. We pedestrians could not help waiting to see them off, and I thought he handed the

I walked with Dr. Benjamin and That Boy, and we had to keep the little imp on the trot a good deal of the

way in order not to be too long behind the carriage party. The Member of the Haouse walked with our two

The Man of Letters, hypothetically so called, walked by himself, smoking a short pipe which was very far

I suppose everybody who reads this paper has visited one or more observatories, and of course knows all

about them. But as it may hereafter be translated into some foreign tongue and circulated among barbarous,

but rapidly improving people, people who have as yet no astronomers among them, it may be well to give a

To begin then: a deep and solid stone foundation is laid in the earth, and a massive pier of masonry is built up

on it. A heavy block of granite forms the summit of this pier, and on this block rests the equatorial telescope.

Around this structure a circular tower is built, with two or more floors which come close up to the pier, but do

not touch it at any point. It is crowned with a hemispherical dome, which, I may remark, half realizes the idea

of my eggshell studio. This dome is cleft from its base to its summit by a narrow, ribbonlike opening,

through which is seen the naked sky. It revolves on cannonballs, so easily that a single hand can move it,

and thus the opening may be turned towards any point of the compass. As the telescope can be raised or

depressed so as to be directed to any elevation from the horizon to the zenith, and turned around the entire

circle with the dome, it can be pointed to any part of the heavens. But as the star or other celestial object is

always apparently moving, in consequence of the real rotatory movement of the earth, the telescope is made

to follow it automatically by an ingenious clockwork arrangement. No place, short of the temple of the

living God, can be more solemn. The jars of the restless life around it do not disturb the serene intelligence of

the half reasoning apparatus. Nothing can stir the massive pier but the shocks that shake the solid earth

itself. When an earthquake thrills the planet, the massive turret shudders with the shuddering rocks on which

it rests, but it pays no heed to the wildest tempest, and while the heavens are convulsed and shut from the eye

of the farseeing instrument it waits without a tremor for the blue sky to come back. It is the type of the true

and steadfast man of the Roman poet, whose soul remains unmoved while the firmament cracks and tumbles

about him. It is the material image of the Christian; his heart resting on the Rock of Ages, his eye fixed on the

I did not say all this while we were looking round among these wonders, quite new to many of us. People

don't talk in straightoff sentences like that. They stumble and stop, or get interrupted, change a word, begin

again, miss connections of verbs and nouns, and so on, till they blunder out their meaning. But I did let fall a

word or two, showing the impression the celestial laboratory produced upon me. I rather think I must own to

the "Rock of Ages" comparison. Thereupon the "Man of Letters," so called, took his pipe from his mouth,

and said that he did n't go in "for sentiment and that sort of thing. Gush was played out."

The Member of the Haouse, who, as I think, is not wanting in that homely good sense which one often finds

in plain people from the huckleberry districts, but who evidently supposes the last speaker to be what he calls

"a tahlented mahn," looked a little puzzled. My remark seemed natural and harmless enough to him, I

suppose, but I had been distinctly snubbed, and the Member of the Haouse thought I must defend myself, as

is customary in the deliberative body to which he belongs, when one gentleman accuses another gentleman of

mental weakness or obliquity. I could not make up my mind to oblige him at that moment by showing fight. I

suppose that would have pleased my assailant, as I don't think he has a great deal to lose, and might have

made a little capital out of me if he could have got a laugh out of the Member or either of the dummies,I

beg their pardon again, I mean the two undemonstrative boarders. But I will tell you, Beloved, just what I

We poets, you know, are much given to indulging in sentiment, which is a mode of consciousness at a

discount just now with the new generation of analysts who are throwing everything into their crucibles. Now

we must not claim too much for sentiment. It does not go a great way in deciding questions of arithmetic, or

algebra, or geometry. Two and two will undoubtedly make four, irrespective of the emotions or other

idiosyncrasies of the calculator; and the three angles of a triangle insist on being equal to two right angles, in

the face of the most impassioned rhetoric or the most inspired verse. But inasmuch as religion and law and

the whole social order of civilized society, to say nothing of literature and art, are so founded on and

pervaded by sentiment that they would all go to pieces without it, it is a word not to be used too lightly in

passing judgment, as if it were an element to be thrown out or treated with small consideration. Reason may

be the lever, but sentiment gives you the fulcrum and the place to stand on if you want to move the world.

Even "sentimentality," which is sentiment overdone, is better than that affectation of superiority to human

weakness which is only tolerable as one of the stage properties of fullblown dandyism, and is, at best, but

halfblown cynicism; which participle and noun you can translate, if you happen to remember the derivation

of the last of them, by a single familiar word. There is a great deal of false sentiment in the world, as there is

of bad logic and erroneous doctrine; butit is very much less disagreeable to hear a young poet overdo his

emotions, or even deceive himself about them, than to hear a causticepithet flinger repeating such words as

"sentimentality" and "entusymusy,"one of the least admirable of Lord Byron's bequests to our

language,for the purpose of ridiculing him into silence. An overdressed woman is not so pleasing as she

might be, but at any rate she is better than the oil of vitriol squirter, whose profession it is to teach young

The Lady was the first of our party who was invited to look through the equatorial. Perhaps this world had

proved so hard to her that she was pained to think that other worlds existed, to be homes of suffering and

sorrow. Perhaps she was thinking it would be a happy change when she should leave this dark planet for one

of those brighter spheres. She sighed, at any rate, but thanked the Young Astronomer for the beautiful sights

he had shown her, and gave way to the next comer, who was That Boy, now in a state of irrepressible

enthusiasm to see the Man in the Moon. He was greatly disappointed at not making out a colossal human

figure moving round among the shining summits and shadowy ravines of the "spotty globe."

The Landlady came next and wished to see the moon also, in preference to any other object. She was

astonished at the revelations of the powerful telescope. Was there any live creatures to be seen on the moon?

she asked. The Young Astronomer shook his head, smiling a little at the question. Was there any

meet'n'houses? There was no evidence, he said, that the moon was inhabited. As there did not seem to be

either air or water on its surface, the inhabitants would have a rather hard time of it, and if they went to

meeting the sermons would be apt to be rather dry. If there were a building on it as big as York minster, as

big as the Boston Coliseum, the great telescopes like Lord Rosse's would make it out. But it seemed to be a

forlorn place; those who had studied it most agreed in considering it a "cold, crude, silent, and desolate" ruin

of nature, without the possibility, if life were on it, of articulate speech, of music, even of sound. Sometimes a

greenish tint was seen upon its surface, which might have been taken for vegetation, but it was thought not

improbably to be a reflection from the vast forests of South America. The ancients had a fancy, some of

them, that the face of the moon was a mirror in which the seas and shores of the earth were imaged. Now we

know the geography of the side toward us about as well as that of Asia, better than that of Africa. The

Astronomer showed them one of the common small photographs of the moon. He assured them that he had

received letters inquiring in all seriousness if these alleged lunar photographs were not really taken from a

peeled orange. People had got angry with him for laughing at them for asking such a question. Then he gave

them an account of the famous moonhoax which came out, he believed, in 1835. It was full of the most

barefaced absurdities, yet people swallowed it all, and even Arago is said to have treated it seriously as a

thing that could not well be true, for Mr. Herschel would have certainly notified him of these marvellous

discoveries. The writer of it had not troubled himself to invent probabilities, but had borrowed his scenery

After this lecture the Capitalist stepped forward and applied his eye to the lens. I suspect it to have been shut

most of the time, for I observe a good many elderly people adjust the organ of vision to any optical

instrument in that way. I suppose it is from the instinct of protection to the eye, the same instinct as that

which makes the raw militiaman close it when he pulls the, trigger of his musket the first time. He

expressed himself highly gratified, however, with what he saw, and retired from the instrument to make room

She threw her hair back and took her position at the instrument. Saint Simeon Stylites the Younger explained

the wonders of the moon to her,Tycho and the grooves radiating from it, Kepler and Copernicus with their

craters and ridges, and all the most brilliant shows of this wonderful little world. I thought he was more

diffuse and more enthusiastic in his descriptions than he had been with the older members of the party. I don't

doubt the old gentleman who lived so long on the top of his pillar would have kept a pretty sinner (if he could

have had an elevator to hoist her up to him) longer than he would have kept her grandmother. These young

people are so ignorant, you know. As for our Scheherezade, her delight was unbounded, and her curiosity

insatiable. If there were any living creatures there, what odd things they must be. They could n't have any

lungs, nor any hearts. What a pity! Did they ever die? How could they expire if they didn't breathe? Burn up?

No air to burn in. Tumble into some of those horrid pits, perhaps, and break all to bits. She wondered how the

young people there liked it, or whether there were any young people there; perhaps nobody was young and

nobody was old, but they were like mummies all of themwhat an idea two mummies making love to

each other! So she went on in a rattling, giddy kind of way, for she was excited by the strange scene in which

she found herself, and quite astonished the Young Astronomer with her vivacity. All at once she turned to

With the greatest pleasure,he said, and proceeded to wheel the ponderous dome, and then to adjust the

instrument, I think to the one in Andromeda, or that in Cygnus, but I should not know one of them from the

How beautiful!she said as she looked at the wonderful object.One is orange red and one is emerald

The young man made an explanation in which he said something about complementary colors.

Her wits must have been a good deal confused by the strange sights of the evening. She had seen tickets

marked complimentary, she remembered, but she could not for the life of her understand why our party

should be particularly favored at a celestial exhibition like this. On the whole, she questioned inwardly

whether it might not be some subtle pleasantry, and smiled, experimentally, with a note of interrogation in the

smile, but, finding no encouragement, allowed her features to subside gradually as if nothing had happened. I

saw all this as plainly as if it had all been printed in greatprimer type, instead of working itself out in her

features. I like to see other people muddled now and then, because my own occasional dulness is relieved by

Yes,he answered,two suns, a greater and a less, each shining, but with a different light, for the other.

How charming! It must be so much pleasanter than to be alone in such a great empty space! I should think

one would hardly care to shine if its light wasted itself in the monstrous solitude of the sky. Does not a single

I don't know what there was in those few words, but I noticed that for a minute or two after they, were

uttered I heard the ticking of the clockwork that moved the telescope as clearly as if we had all been holding

The Young Girl kept her eye closely applied to the eyepiece of the telescope a very long time, it seemed to

me. Those double stars interested her a good deal, no doubt. When she looked off from the glass I thought

both her eyes appeared very much as if they had been a little strained, for they were suffused and glistening.

I know nothing in the world tenderer than the pity that a kind hearted young girl has for a young man who

feels lonely. It is true that these dear creatures are all compassion for every form of human woe, and anxious

to alleviate all human misfortunes. They will go to Sundayschools through storms their brothers are afraid

of, to teach the most unpleasant and intractable classes of little children the age of Methuselah and the

dimensions of Og the King of Bashan's bedstead. They will stand behind a table at a fair all day until they are

ready to drop, dressed in their prettiest clothes and their sweetest smiles, and lay hands upon you, likeso

many Lady Potiphars,perfectly correct ones, of course,to make you buy what you do not want, at prices

which you cannot afford; all this as cheerfully as if it were not martyrdom to them as well as to you. Such is

their love for all good objects, such their eagerness to sympathize with all their suffering fellowcreatures!

I am sure, I sympathize with her in this instance. To see a pale student burning away, like his own midnight

lamp, with only dead men's hands to hold, stretched out to him from the sepulchres of books, and dead men's

souls imploring him from their tablets to warm them over again just for a little while in a human

consciousness, when all this time there are soft, warm, living hands that would ask nothing better than to

bring the blood back into those cold thin fingers, and gently caressing natures that would wind all their

tendrils about the unawakened heart which knows so little of itself, is pitiable enough and would be sadder

still if we did not have the feeling that sooner or later the pale student will be pretty sure to feel the breath of

a young girl against his cheek as she looks over his shoulder; and that he will come all at once to an

illuminated page in his book that never writer traced in characters, and never printer set up in type, and never

binder enclosed within his covers! But our young man seems farther away from life than any student whose

head is bent downwards over his books. His eyes are turned away from all human things. How cold the

moonlight is that falls upon his forehead, and how white he looks in it! Will not the rays strike through to his

brain at last, and send him to a narrower cell than this eggshell dome which is his workshop and his prison?

I cannot say that the Young Astronomer seemed particularly impressed with a sense of his miserable

condition. He said he was lonely, it is true, but he said it in a manly tone, and not as if he were repining at the

inevitable condition of his devoting himself to that particular branch of science. Of course, he is lonely, the

most lonely being that lives in the midst of our breathing world. If he would only stay a little longer with us

when we get talking; but he is busy almost always either in observation or with his calculations and studies,

and when the nights are fair loses so much sleep that he must make it up by day. He wants contact with

human beings. I wish he would change his seat and come round and sit by our Scheherezade!

The rest of the visit went off well enough, except that the "Man of Letters," so called, rather snubbed some of

the heavenly bodies as not quite up to his standard of brilliancy. I thought myself that the doublestar episode

I have an unexpected revelation to make to the reader. Not long after our visit to the Observatory, the Young

Astronomer put a package into my hands, a manuscript, evidently, which he said he would like to have me

glance over. I found something in it which interested me, and told him the next day that I should like to read

it with some care. He seemed rather pleased at this, and said that he wished I would criticise it as roughly as I

liked, and if I saw anything in it which might be dressed to better advantage to treat it freely, just as if it were

my own production. It had often happened to him, he went on to say, to be interrupted in his observations by

clouds covering the objects he was examining for a longer or shorter time. In these idle moments he had put

down many thoughts, unskilfully he feared, but just as they came into his mind. His blank verse he suspected

was often faulty. His thoughts he knew must be crude, many of them. It would please him to have me amuse

myself by putting them into shape. He was kind enough to say that I was an artist in words, but he held

I confess I was appalled when I cast my eye upon the title of the manuscript, "Cirri and Nebulae."

Oh! oh!I said,that will never do. People don't know what Cirri are, at least not one out of fifty

Anything you like,he answered,what difference does it make how you christen a foundling? These

are not my legitimate scientific offspring, and you may consider them left on your doorstep.

I will not attempt to say just how much of the diction of these lines belongs to him, and how much to me.

He said he would never claim them, after I read them to him in my version. I, on my part, do not wish to be

held responsible for some of his more daring thoughts, if I should see fit to reproduce them hereafter. At this

time I shall give only the first part of the series of poetical outbreaks for which the young devotee of science

must claim his share of the responsibility. I may put some more passages into shape by and by.

I Another clouded night; the stars are hid, The orb that waits my search is hid with them. Patience! Why

grudge an hour, a month, a year, To plant my ladder and to gain the round That leads my footsteps to the

heaven of fame, Where waits the wreath my sleepless midnights won? Not the stained laurel such as heroes

wear That withers when some stronger conqueror's heel Treads down their shrivelling trophies in the dust;

But the fair garland whose undying green Not time can change, nor wrath of gods or men! With quickened

heartbeats I shall hear the tongues That speak my praise; but better far the sense That in the unshaped ages,

buried deep In the dark mines of unaccomplished time Yet to be stamped with morning's royal die And

coined in golden days,in those dim years I shall be reckoned with the undying dead, My name emblazoned

on the fiery arch, Unfading till the stars themselves shall fade. Then, as they call the roll of shining worlds,

Sages of race unborn in accents new Shall count me with the Olympian ones of old, Whose glories kindle

through the midnight sky Here glows the God of Battles; this recalls The Lord of Ocean, and yon faroff

sphere The Sire of Him who gave his ancient name To the dim planet with the wondrous rings; Here flames

the Queen of Beauty's silver lamp, And there the moongirt orb of mighty Jove; But this, unseen through all

earth's aeons past, A youth who watched beneath the western star Sought in the darkness, found, and showed

to men; Linked with his name thenceforth and evermore! So shall that name be syllabled anew In all the

tongues of all the tribes of men: I that have been through immemorial years Dust in the dust of my forgotten

time Shall live in accents shaped of bloodwarm breath, Yea, rise in mortal semblance, newly born In shining

stone, in undecaying bronze, And stand on high, and look serenely down On the new race that calls the earth

its own. Is this a cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds

beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul

that looks for light from heaven? Must every coralinsect leave his sign On each poor grain he lent to build

the reef, As Babel's builders stamped their sunburnt clay, Or deem his patient service all in vain? What if

another sit beneath the shade Of the broad elm I planted by the way, What if another heed the beacon light

I set upon the rock that wrecked my keel, Have I not done my task and served my kind? Nay, rather act thy

part, unnamed, unknown, And let Fame blow her trumpet through the world With noisy wind to swell a fool's

renown, Joined with some truth be stumbled blindly o'er, Or coupled with some single shining deed That in

the great account of all his days Will stand alone upon the bankrupt sheet His pitying angel shows the clerk of

Heaven. The noblest service comes from nameless hands, And the best servant does his work unseen. Who

found the seeds of fire and made them shoot, Fed by his breath, in buds and flowers of flame? Who forged in

roaring flames the ponderous stone, And shaped the moulded metal to his need? Who gave the dragging car

its rolling wheel, And tamed the steed that whirls its circling round? All these have left their work and not

their names, Why should I murmur at a fate like theirs? This is the heavenly light; the pearly stain Was but a

I find I have so many things in common with the old Master of Arts, that I do not always know whether a

thought was originally his or mine. That is what always happens where two persons of a similar cast of mind

talk much together. And both of them often gain by the interchange. Many ideas grow better when

transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprang up. That which was a weed in one

intelligence becomes a flower in the other. A flower, on the other hand, may dwindle down to a mere weed

by the same change. Healthy growths may become poisonous by falling upon the wrong mental soil, and

I thank God,the Master said,that a great many people believe a great deal more than I do. I think,

when it comes to serious matters, I like those who believe more than I do better than those who believe less.

Why,said I,you have got hold of one of my own working axioms. I should like to hear you develop it.

The Member of the Haouse said he should be glad to listen to the debate. The gentleman had the floor. The

Scarabee rose from his chair and departed;I thought his joints creaked as he straightened himself.

The Young Girl made a slight movement; it was a purely accidental coincidence, no doubt, but I saw That

Boy put his hand in his pocket and pull out his popgun, and begin loading it. It cannot be that our

Scheherezade, who looks so quiet and proper at the table, can make use of That Boy and his catapult to

control the course of conversation and change it to suit herself! She certainly looks innocent enough; but what

does a blush prove, and what does its absence prove, on one of these innocent faces? There is nothing in all

this world that can lie and cheat like the face and the tongue of a young girl. Just give her a little touch of

hysteria,I don't mean enough of it to make her friends call the doctor in, but a slight hint of it in the

nervous system,and "Machiavel the waiting maid" might take lessons of her. But I cannot think our

Scheherezade is one of that kind, and I am ashamed of myself for noting such a trifling coincidence as that

I say,the Master continued,that I had rather be in the company of those who believe more than I do,

in spiritual matters at least, than of those who doubt what I accept as a part of my belief.

To tell the truth,said I,I find that difficulty sometimes in talking with you. You have not quite so

many hesitations as I have in following out your logical conclusions. I suppose you would bring some things

out into daylight questioning that I had rather leave in that twilight of halfbelief peopled with shadowsif

There is nothing I do not question,said the Master;I not only begin with the precept of Descartes, but I

I confess that I smiled internally to hear him say that. The old Master thinks he is open to conviction on all

subjects; but if you meddle with some of his notions and don't get tossed on his horns as if a bull had hold of

What do you think I question everything for, the Master replied, if I never get any answers? You've

seen a blind man with a stick, feeling his way along? Well, I am a blind man with a stick, and I find the world

pretty full of men just as blind as I am, but without any stick. I try the ground to find out whether it is firm or

not before I rest my weight on it; but after it has borne my weight, that question at least is answered. It very

certainly was strong enough once; the presumption is that it is strong enough now. Still the soil may have

been undermined, or I may have grown heavier. Make as much of that as you will. I say I question

everything; but if I find Bunker Hill Monument standing as straight as when I leaned against it a year or ten

years ago, I am not very much afraid that Bunker Hill will cave in if I trust myself again on the soil of it.

The Monument is an awful place to visit,I said.The waves of time are like the waves of the ocean; the

only thing they beat against without destroying it is a rock; and they destroy that at last. But it takes a good

while. There is a stone now standing in very good order that was as old as a monument of Louis XIV. and

Queen Anne's day is now when Joseph went down into Egypt. Think of the shaft on Bunker Hill standing in

It won't be standing,the Master said.We are poor bunglers compared to those old Egyptians. There are

no joints in one of their obelisks. They are our masters in more ways than we know of, and in more ways than

some of us are willing to know. That old Lawgiver wasn't learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians for

nothing. It scared people well a couple of hundred years ago when Sir John Marsham and Dr. John Spencer

ventured to tell their stories about the sacred ceremonies of the Egyptian priesthood. People are beginning to

find out now that you can't study any religion by itself to any good purpose. You must have comparative

theology as you have comparative anatomy. What would you make of a cat's foolish little goodfornothing

collarbone, if you did not know how the same bone means a good deal in other creatures,in yourself, for

instance, as you 'll find out if you break it? You can't know too much of your race and its beliefs, if you want

to know anything about your Maker. I never found but one sect large enough to hold the whole of me.

The Human sect,the Master answered. That has about room enough for me,at present, I mean to say.

Oh, as to that, the eating of one's kind is a matter of taste, but the roasting of them has been rather more a

specialty of our own particular belief than of any other I am acquainted with. If you broil a saint, I don't see

Pop! went the little piece of artillery. Don't tell me it was accident. I know better. You can't suppose for one

minute that a boy like that one would time his interruptions so cleverly. Now it so happened that at that

particular moment Dr. B. Franklin was not at the table. You may draw your own conclusions. I say nothing,

I came back to the Bunker Hill Monument.I often thinkI said of the dynasty which is to reign in

The "Man of Letters," so called, asked me, in a tone I did not exactly like, whether I expected to live long

No,said I,I was thinking of something very different. I was indulging a fancy of mine about the Man

who is to sit at the foot of the monument for one, or it may be two or three thousand years. As long as the

monument stands and there is a city near it, there will always be a man to take the names of visitors and

extract some small tribute from their pockets, I suppose. I sometimes get thinking of the long, unbroken

succession of these men, until they come to look like one Man; continuous in being, unchanging as the stone

he watches, looking upon the successive generations of human beings as they come and go, and outliving all

the dynasties of the world in all probability. It has come to such a pass that I never speak to the Man of the

Monument without wanting to take my hat off and feeling as if I were looking down a vista of twenty or

The "Man of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way, I thought, that he had n't got so far as

that. He was n't quite up to moral reflections on tollmen and tickettakers. Sentiment was n't his tap.

He looked round triumphantly for a response: but the Capitalist was a little hard of hearing just then; the

attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and whisked himself away with that peculiar alacrity which

belongs to the retail dealer's assistant; and the Member of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be

impressed with his "tahlented mahn's" air of superiority to the rest of us, looked as if he thought the speaker

was not exactly parliamentary. So he failed to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not in the best

humor, I thought, when he left the table. I hope he will not let off any of his irritation on our poor little

Scheherezade; but the truth is, the first person a man of this sort (if he is what I think him) meets, when he is

out of humor, has to be made a victim of, and I only hope our Young Girl will not have to play Jephthah's

And that leads me to say, I cannot help thinking that the kind of criticism to which this Young Girl has been

subjected from some person or other, who is willing to be smart at her expense, is hurtful and not wholesome.

The question is a delicate one. So many foolish persons are rushing into print, that it requires a kind of

literary police to hold them back and keep them in order. Where there are mice there must be cats, and where

there are rats we may think it worth our while to keep a terrier, who will give them a shake and let them drop,

with all the mischief taken out of them. But the process is a rude and cruel one at best, and it too often breeds

a love of destructiveness for its own sake in those who get their living by it. A poor poem or essay does not

do much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to be seriously hurt by it. But a sharp criticism with a

drop of witty venom in it stings a young author almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable to no

purpose. If it were my business to sit in judgment on my neighbors, I would try to be courteous, at least, to

those who had done any good service, but, above all, I would handle tenderly those young authors who are

coming before the public in the flutter of their first or early appearance, and are in the trembling delirium of

stagefright already. Before you write that brilliant notice of some alliterative Angelina's book of verses, I

Take half a sheet of paper and copy upon it any of Angelina's stanzas,the ones you were going to make fun

of, if you will. Now go to your window, if it is a still day, open it, and let the half sheet of paper drop on the

outside. How gently it falls through the soft air, always tending downwards, but sliding softly, from side to

side, wavering, hesitating, balancing, until it settles as noiselessly as a snowflake upon the allreceiving

bosom of the earth! Just such would have been the fate of poor Angelina's fluttering effort, if you had left it to

itself. It would have slanted downward into oblivion so sweetly and softly that she would have never known

Our epizoic literature is becoming so extensive that nobody is safe from its ad infinitum progeny. A man

writes a book of criticisms. A Quarterly Review criticises the critic. A Monthly Magazine takes up the critic's

critic. A Weekly Journal criticises the critic of the critic's critic, and a daily paper favors us with some critical

remarks on the performance of the writer in the Weekly, who has criticised the critical notice in the Monthly

of the critical essay in the Quarterly on the critical work we started with. And thus we see that as each flea

"has smaller fleas that on him prey," even the critic himself cannot escape the common lot of being bitten.

Whether all this is a blessing or a curse, like that one which made Pharaoh and all his household run to their

toilettables, is a question about which opinions might differ. The physiologists of the time of Moses if

there were vivisectors other than priests in those dayswould probably have considered that other plague, of

the frogs, as a fortunate opportunity for science, as this poor little beast has been the souffredouleur of

But there is a form of criticism to which none will object. It is impossible to come before a public so alive

with sensibilities as this we live in, with the smallest evidence of a sympathetic disposition, without making

friends in a very unexpected way. Everywhere there are minds tossing on the unquiet waves of doubt. If you

confess to the same perplexities and uncertainties that torture them, they are grateful for your companionship.

If you have groped your way out of the wilderness in which you were once wandering with them, they will

follow your footsteps, it may be, and bless you as their deliverer. So, all at once, a writer finds he has a parish

of devout listeners, scattered, it is true, beyond the reach of any summons but that of a trumpet like the

archangel's, to whom his slight discourse may be of more value than the exhortations they hear from the

pulpit, if these last do not happen to suit their special needs. Young men with more ambition and intelligence

than force of character, who have missed their first steps in life and are stumbling irresolute amidst vague

aims and changing purposes, hold out their hands, imploring to be led into, or at least pointed towards, some

path where they can find a firm foothold. Young women born into a chilling atmosphere of circumstance

which keeps all the buds of their nature unopened and always striving to get to a ray of sunshine, if one finds

its way to their neighborhood, tell their stories, sometimes simply and touchingly, sometimes in a more or

less affected and rhetorical way, but still stories of defeated and disappointed instincts which ought to make

In speaking privately to these young persons, many of whom have literary aspirations, one should be very

considerate of their human feelings. But addressing them collectively a few plain truths will not give any one

of them much pain. Indeed, almost every individual among them will feel sure that he or she is an exception

If I were a literary Pope sending out an Encyclical, I would tell these inexperienced persons that nothing is so

frequent as to mistake an ordinary human gift for a special and extraordinary endowment. The mechanism of

breathing and that of swallowing are very wonderful, and if one had seen and studied them in his own person

only, he might well think himself a prodigy. Everybody knows these and other bodily faculties are common

gifts; but nobody except editors and school teachers and here and there a literary than knows how common

is the capacity of rhyming and prattling in readable prose, especially among young women of a certain degree

of education. In my character of Pontiff, I should tell these young persons that most of them labored under a

delusion. It is very hard to believe it; one feels so full of intelligence and so decidedly superior to one's dull

relations and schoolmates; one writes so easily and the lines sound so prettily to one's self; there are such

felicities of expression, just like those we hear quoted from the great poets; and besides one has been told by

so many friends that all one had to do was to print and be famous! Delusion, my poor dear, delusion at least

But as private father confessor, I always allow as much as I can for the one chance in the hundred. I try not to

take away all hope, unless the case is clearly desperate, and then to direct the activities into some other

Using kind language, I can talk pretty freely. I have counselled more than one aspirant after literary fame to

go back to his tailor's board or his lapstone. I have advised the dilettanti, whose foolish friends praised their

verses or their stories, to give up all their deceptive dreams of making a name by their genius, and go to work

in the study of a profession which asked only for the diligent use of average; ordinary talents. It is a very

grave responsibility which these unknown correspondents throw upon their chosen counsellors. One whom

you have never seen, who lives in a community of which you know nothing, sends you specimens more or

less painfully voluminous of his writings, which he asks you to read over, think over, and pray over, and send

back an answer informing him whether fame and fortune are awaiting him as the possessor of the wonderful

gifts his writings manifest, and whether you advise him to leave all,the shop he sweeps out every morning,

the ledger he posts, the mortar in which he pounds, the bench at which he urges the reluctant plane,and

follow his genius whithersoever it may lead him. The next correspondent wants you to mark out a whole

course of life for him, and the means of judgment he gives you are about as adequate as the brick which the

simpleton of old carried round as an advertisement of the house he had to sell. My advice to all the young

men that write to me depends somewhat on the handwriting and spelling. If these are of a certain character,

and they have reached a mature age, I recommend some honest manual calling, such as they have very

probably been bred to, and which will, at least, give them a chance of becoming President of the United

States by and by, if that is any object to them. What would you have done with the young person who called

on me a good many years ago, so many that he has probably forgotten his literary effort,and read as

specimens of his literary workmanship lines like those which I will favor you with presently? He was an

ablebodied, grownup young person, whose ingenuousness interested me; and I am sure if I thought he

would ever be pained to see his maiden effort in print, I would deny myself the pleasure of submitting it to

the reader. The following is an exact transcript of the lines he showed me, and which I took down on the spot:

Do not judge too hastily this sincere effort of a maiden muse. Here was a sense of rhythm, and an effort in the

direction of rhyme; here was an honest transcript of an occurrence of daily life, told with a certain idealizing

expression, recognizing the existence of impulses, mysterious instincts, impelling us even in the selection of

our bodily sustenance. But I had to tell him that it wanted dignity of incident and grace of narrative, that there

was no atmosphere to it, nothing of the light that never was and so forth. I did not say this in these very

words, but I gave him to understand, without being too hard upon him, that he had better not desert his honest

toil in pursuit of the poet's bays. This, it must be confessed, was a rather discouraging case. A young person

like this may pierce, as the Frenchmen say, by and by, but the chances are all the other way.

I advise aimless young men to choose some profession without needless delay, and so get into a good strong

current of human affairs, and find themselves bound up in interests with a compact body of their fellowmen.

I advise young women who write to me for counsel,perhaps I do not advise them at all, only sympathize a

little with them, and listen to what they have to say (eight closely written pages on the average, which I

always read from beginning to end, thinking of the widow's cruse and myself in the character of Elijah)

andandcome now, I don't believe Methuselah would tell you what he said in his letters to young ladies,

But, dear me! how much work all this private criticism involves! An editor has only to say "respectfully

declined," and there is the end of it. But the confidential adviser is expected to give the reasons of his likes

and dislikes in detail, and sometimes to enter into an argument for their support. That is more than any martyr

can stand, but what trials he must go through, as it is! Great bundles of manuscripts, verse or prose, which the

recipient is expected to read, perhaps to recommend to a publisher, at any rate to express a well digested and

agreeably flavored opinion about; which opinion, nine times out of ten, disguise it as we may, has to be a

bitter draught; every form of egotism, conceit, false sentiment, hunger for notoriety, and eagerness for display

of anserine plumage before the admiring public;all these come in by mail or express, covered with

postagestamps of so much more cost than the value of the waste words they overlie, that one comes at last

to groan and change color at the very sight of a package, and to dread the postman's knock as if it were that of

Still there are experiences which go far towards repaying all these inflictions. My last young man's case

looked desperate enough; some of his sails had blown from the rigging, some were backing in the wind, and

some were flapping and shivering, but I told him which way to head, and to my surprise he promised to do

What if I should tell my last, my very recent experience with the other sex? I received a paper containing the

inner history of a young woman's life, the evolution of her consciousness from its earliest record of itself,

written so thoughtfully, so sincerely, with so much firmness and yet so much delicacy, with such truth of

detail and such grace in the manner of telling, that I finished the long manuscript almost at a sitting, with a

pleasure rarely, almost never experienced in voluminous communications which one has to spell out of

handwriting. This was from a correspondent who made my acquaintance by letter when she was little more

than a child, some years ago. How easy at that early period to have silenced her by indifference, to have

wounded her by a careless epithet, perhaps even to have crushed her as one puts his heel on a weed! A very

little encouragement kept her from despondency, and brought back one of those overflows of gratitude which

make one more ashamed of himself for being so overpaid than he would be for having committed any of the

lesser sins. But what pleased me most in the paper lately received was to see how far the writer had outgrown

the need of any encouragement of mine; that she had strengthened out of her tremulous questionings into a

selfreliance and selfpoise which I had hardly dared to anticipate for her. Some of my readers who are also

writers have very probably had more numerous experiences of this kind than I can lay claim to;

selfrevelations from unknown and sometimes nameless friends, who write from strange corners where the

winds have wafted some stray words of theirs which have lighted in the minds and reached the hearts of those

to whom they were as the angel that stirred the pool of Bethesda. Perhaps this is the best reward authorship

brings; it may not imply much talent or literary excellence, but it means that your way of thinking and feeling

I have been putting into shape, according to his request, some further passages from the Young

Astronomer's manuscript, some of which the reader will have a chance to read if he is so disposed. The

conflict in the young man's mind between the desire for fame and the sense of its emptiness as compared with

nobler aims has set me thinking about the subject from a somewhat humbler point of view. As I am in the

habit of telling you, Beloved, many of my thoughts, as well as of repeating what was said at our table, you

may read what follows as if it were addressed to you in the course of an ordinary conversation, where I

claimed rather more than my share, as I am afraid I am a little in the habit of doing.

I suppose we all, those of us who write in verse or prose, have the habitual feeling that we should like to be

remembered. It is to be awake when all of those who were round us have been long wrapped in slumber. It is

a pleasant thought enough that the name by which we have been called shall be familiar on the lips of those

who come after us, and the thoughts that wrought themselves out in our intelligence, the emotions that

trembled through our frames, shall live themselves over again in the minds and hearts of others.

But is there not something of rest, of calm, in the thought of gently and gradually fading away out of human

remembrance? What line have we written that was on a level with our conceptions? What page of ours that

does not betray some weakness we would fain have left unrecorded? To become a classic and share the life of

a language is to be ever open to criticisms, to comparisons, to the caprices of successive generations, to be

called into court and stand a trial before a new jury, once or more than once in every century. To be forgotten

is to sleep in peace with the undisturbed myriads, no longer subject to the chills and heats, the blasts, the

sleet, the dust, which assail in endless succession that shadow of a man which we call his reputation. The line

which dying we could wish to blot has been blotted out for us by a hand so tender, so patient, so used to its

kindly task, that the page looks as fair as if it had never borne the record of our infirmity or our transgression.

And then so few would be wholly content with their legacy of fame. You remember poor Monsieur Jacques's

complaint of the favoritism shown to Monsieur Berthier,it is in that exquisite "Week in a French

CountryHouse." "Have you seen his room? Have you seen how large it is? Twice as large as mine! He has

two jugs, a large one and a little one. I have only one small one. And a teaservice and a gilt Cupid on the top

of his lookingglass." The famous survivor of himself has had his features preserved in a medallion, and the

slice of his countenance seems clouded with the thought that it does not belong to a bust; the bust ought to

look happy in its niche, but the statue opposite makes it feel as if it had been cheated out of half its

personality, and the statue looks uneasy because another stands on a loftier pedestal. But "Ignotus " and

"Miserrimus " are of the great majority in that vast assembly, that House of Commons whose members are all

peers, where to be forgotten is the standing rule. The dignity of a silent memory is not to be undervalued.

Fame is after all a kind of rude handling, and a name that is often on vulgar lips seems to borrow something

not to be desired, as the paper money that passes from hand to hand gains somewhat which is a loss thereby.

O sweet, tranquil refuge of oblivion, so far as earth is concerned, for us poor blundering, stammering,

misbehaving creatures who cannot turn over a leaf of our life's diary without feeling thankful that its failure

can no longer stare us in the face! Not unwelcome shall be the baptism of dust which hides forever the name

that was given in the baptism of water! We shall have good company whose names are left unspoken by

posterity. "Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons

forgot than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The greater part must be content to be

as though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twentyseven

names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living

I have my moods about such things as the Young Astronomer has, as we all have. There are times when the

thought of becoming utterly nothing to the world we knew so well and loved so much is painful and

oppressive; we gasp as if in a vacuum, missing the atmosphere of life we have so long been in the habit of

breathing. Not the less are there moments when the aching need of repose comes over us and the requiescat in

pace, heathen benediction as it is, sounds more sweetly in our ears than all the promises that Fame can hold

I wonder whether it ever occurred to you to reflect upon another horror there must be in leaving a name

behind you. Think what a horrid piece of work the biographers make of a man's private history! Just imagine

the subject of one of those extraordinary fictions called biographies coming back and reading the life of

himself, written very probably by somebody or other who thought he could turn a penny by doing it, and

The ghost of the person condemned to walk the earth in a biography glides into a public library, and goes to

the shelf where his mummied life lies in its paper cerements. I can see the pale shadow glancing through the

pages and hear the comments that shape themselves in the bodiless intelligence as if they were made vocal by

"Born in July, 1776! " And my honored father killed at the battle of Bunker Hill! Atrocious libeller! to

"The death of his parents left him in charge of his Aunt Nancy, whose tender care took the place of those

parental attentions which should have guided and protected his infant years, and consoled him for the severity

Aunt Nancy! It was Aunt Betsey, you fool! Aunt Nancy used toshe has been dead these eighty years, so

there is no use in mincing mattersshe used to keep a bottle and a stick, and when she had been tasting a

drop out of the bottle the stick used to come off the shelf and I had to taste that. And here she is made a saint

of, and poor Aunt Betsey, that did everything for me, is slandered by implication as a horrid tyrant

"The subject of this commemorative history was remarkable for a precocious development of intelligence. An

old nurse who saw him at the very earliest period of his existence is said to have spoken of him as one of the

most promising infants she had seen in her long experience. At school he was equally remarkable, and at a

I don't doubt the nurse said that,there were several promising children born about that time. As for cuts,

I got more from the schoolmaster's rattan than in any other shape. Didn't one of my teachers split a Gunter's

scale into three pieces over the palm of my hand? And didn't I grin when I saw the pieces fly? No humbug,

"His personal appearance was not singularly prepossessing. Inconspicuous in stature and unattractive in

You misbegotten son of an ourang and grandson of an ascidian (ghosts keep up with science, you

observe), what business have you to be holding up my person to the contempt of my posterity? Haven't I been

sleeping for this many a year in quiet, and don't the dandelions and buttercups look as yellow over me as over

the bestlooking neighbor I have in the dormitory? Why do you want to people the minds of everybody that

reads your goodfornothing libel which you call a "biography" with your impudent caricatures of a man

who was a betterlooking fellow than yourself, I 'll bet you ten to one, a man whom his Latin tutor called

fommosus puer when he was only a freshman? If that's what it means to make a reputation,to leave your

character and your person, and the good name of your sainted relatives, and all you were, and all you had and

thought and felt, so far as can be gathered by digging you out of your most private records, to be manipulated

and bandied about and cheapened in the literary market as a chicken or a turkey or a goose is handled and

bargained over at a provision stall, is n't it better to be content with the honest blue slatestone and its

inscription informing posterity that you were a worthy citizen and a respected father of a family?

I should like to see any man's biography with corrections and emendations by his ghost. We don't know

each other's secrets quite so well as we flatter ourselves we do. We don't always know our own secrets as

well as we might. You have seen a tree with different grafts upon it, an apple or a pear tree we will say. In the

late summer months the fruit on one bough will ripen; I remember just such a tree, and the early ripening fruit

was the Jargonelle. By and by the fruit of another bough will begin to come into condition; the lovely Saint

Michael, as I remember, grew on the same stock as the Jargonelle in the tree I am thinking of; and then, when

these have all fallen or been gathered, another, we will say the Winter Nelis, has its turn, and so out of the

same juices have come in succession fruits of the most varied aspects and flavors. It is the same thing with

ourselves, but it takes us a long while to find it out. The various inherited instincts ripen in succession. You

may be nine tenths paternal at one period of your life, and nine tenths maternal at another. All at once the

traits of some immediate ancestor may come to maturity unexpectedly on one of the branches of your

character, just as your features at different periods of your life betray different resemblances to your nearer or

But I want you to let me go back to the Bunker Hill Monument and the dynasty of twenty or thirty centuries

whose successive representatives are to sit in the gate, like the Jewish monarchs, while the people shall come

by hundreds and by thousands to visit the memorial shaft until the story of Bunker's Hill is as old as that of

Would not one like to attend twenty consecutive soirees, at each one of which the lion of the party should be

the Man of the Monument, at the beginning of each century, all the way, we will say, from Anno Domini

2000 to Ann. Dom. 4000,or, if you think the style of dating will be changed, say to Ann. Darwinii (we can

keep A. D. you see) 1872? Will the Man be of the Indian type, as President Samuel Stanhope Smith and

others have supposed the transplanted European will become by and by? Will he have shortened down to four

feet and a little more, like the Esquimaux, or will he have been bred up to seven feet by the use of new

chemical diets, ozonized and otherwise improved atmospheres, and animal fertilizers? Let us summon him in

Is n't it like splitting a toad out of a rock to think of this man of nineteen or twenty centuries hence coming

out from his stony dwellingplace and speaking with us? What are the questions we should ask him? He has

but a few minutes to stay. Make out your own list; I will set down a few that come up to me as I write.

Is there much inquiry for the works of a writer of the nineteenth century (Old Style) bythe name

My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth. I cannot imagine the putting of that question without feeling the

tremors which shake a wooer as he falters out the words the answer to which will make him happy or

Whose works was I going to question him about, do you ask me? Oh, the writings of a friend of mine, much

esteemed by his relatives and others. But it's of no consequence, after all; I think he says he does not care

I find something of the same interest in thinking about one of the boarders at our table that I find in my

waking dreams concerning the Man of the Monument. This personage is the Register of Deeds. He is an

unemotional character, living in his business almost as exclusively as the Scarabee, but without any of that

eagerness and enthusiasm which belong to our scientific specialist. His work is largely, principally, I may

say, mechanical. He has developed, however, a certain amount of taste for the antiquities of his department,

and once in a while brings out some curious result of his investigations into ancient documents. He too

belongs to a dynasty which will last as long as there is such a thing as property in land and dwellings. When

that is done away with, and we return to the state of villanage, holding our tenementhouses, all to be of the

same pattern, of the State, that is to say, of the Tammany Ring which is to take the place of the feudal

lord,the office of Register of Deeds will, I presume, become useless, and the dynasty will be deposed.

As we grow older we think more and more of old persons and of old things and places. As to old persons, it

seems as if we never know how much they have to tell until we are old ourselves and they have been gone

twenty or thirty years. Once in a while we come upon some survivor of his or her generation that we have

overlooked, and feel as if we had recovered one of the lost books of Livy or fished up the golden candlestick

from the ooze of the Tiber. So it was the other day after my reminiscences of the old gambrelroofed house

and its visitors. They found an echo in the recollections of one of the brightest and liveliest of my suburban

friends, whose memory is exact about everything except her own age, which, there can be no doubt, she

makes out a score or two of years more than it really is. Still she was old enough to touch some lightsand a

shadow or twointo the portraits I had drawn, which made me wish that she and not I had been the artist

who sketched the pictures. Among the lesser regrets that mingle with graver sorrows for the friends of an

earlier generation we have lost, are our omissions to ask them so many questions they could have answered

easily enough, and would have been pleased to be asked. There! I say to myself sometimes, in an absent

mood, I must ask her about that. But she of whom I am now thinking has long been beyond the reach of any

earthly questioning, and I sigh to think how easily I could have learned some fact which I should have been

happy to have transmitted with pious care to those who are to come after me. How many times I have heard

her quote the line about blessings brightening as they take their flight, and how true it proves in many little

The Register of Deeds is not himself advanced in years. But he borrows an air of antiquity from the ancient

records which are stored in his sepulchral archives. I love to go to his ossuary of dead transactions, as I would

visit the catacombs of Rome or Paris. It is like wandering up the Nile to stray among the shelves of his

monumental folios. Here stands a series of volumes, extending over a considerable number of years, all of

which volumes are in his handwriting. But as you go backward there is a break, and you come upon the

writing of another person, who was getting old apparently, for it is beginning to be a little shaky, and then

you know that you have gone back as far as the last days of his predecessor. Thirty or forty years more carry

you to the time when this incumbent began the duties of his office; his hand was steady then; and the next

volume beyond it in date betrays the work of a still different writer. All this interests me, but I do not see how

it is going to interest my reader. I do not feel very happy about the Register of Deeds. What can I do with

him? Of what use is he going to be in my record of what I have seen and heard at the breakfasttable? The

fact of his being one of the boarders was not so important that I was obliged to speak of him, and I might just

as well have drawn on my imagination and not allowed this dummy to take up the room which another guest

I suppose he will prove a superfluity, but I have got him on my hands, and I mean that he shall be as little in

the way as possible. One always comes across people in actual life who have no particular business to be

I am not going to get rid of the Register of Deeds by putting him out of the way; but I confess I do not see of

what service he is going to be to me in my record. I have often found, however, that the Disposer of men and

things understands much better than we do how to place his pawns and other pieces on the chessboard of

life. A fish more or less in the ocean does not seem to amount to much. It is not extravagant to say that any

one fish may be considered a supernumerary. But when Captain Coram's ship sprung a leak and the carpenter

could not stop it, and the passengers had made up their minds that it was all over with them, all at once,

without any apparent reason, the pumps began gaining on the leak, and the sinking ship to lift herself out of

the abyss which was swallowing her up. And what do you think it was that saved the ship, and Captain

Coram, and so in due time gave to London that Foundling Hospital which he endowed, and under the floor of

which he lies buried? Why, it was that very supernumerary fish, which we held of so little account, but which

had wedged itself into the rent of the yawning planks, and served to keep out the water until the leak was

I am very sure it was Captain Coram, but I almost hope it was somebody else, in order to give some poor

fellow who is lying in wait for the periodicals a chance to correct me. That will make him happy for a month,

and besides, he will not want to pick a quarrel about anything else if he has that splendid triumph. You

Here you have the extracts I spoke of from the manuscript placed in my hands for revision and emendation. I

can understand these alternations of feeling in a young person who has been long absorbed in a single pursuit,

and in whom the human instincts which have been long silent are now beginning to find expression. I know

I was very sure that the old Master was hard at work about something,he is always very busy with

Whether it was a question of history or of cosmogony, or whether he was handling a testtube or a

blowpipe; what he was about I did not feel sure; but I took it for granted that it was some crucial question or

other he was at work on, some point bearing on the thought of the time. For the Master, I have observed, is

pretty sagacious in striking for the points where his work will be like to tell. We all know that class of

scientific laborers to whom all facts are alike nourishing mental food, and who seem to exercise no choice

whatever, provided only they can get hold of these same indiscriminate facts in quantity sufficient. They

browse on them, as the animal to which they would not like to be compared browses on his thistles. But the

Master knows the movement of the age he belongs to; and if he seems to be busy with what looks like a small

piece of trivial experimenting, one may feel pretty sure that he knows what he is about, and that his minute

operations are looking to a result that will help him towards attaining his great end in life,an insight, so far

as his faculties and opportunities will allow, into that order of things which he believes he can study with

I became so anxious to know what particular matter he was busy with, that I had to call upon him to satisfy

my curiosity. It was with a little trepidation that I knocked at his door. I felt a good deal as one might have

felt on disturbing an alchemist at his work, at the very moment, it might be, when he was about to make

I passed through the library with him into a little room evidently devoted to his experiments.

You have come just at the right moment,he said. Your eyes are better than mine. I have been looking

It was a small matrass, as one of the elder chemists would have called it, containing a fluid, and hermetically

sealed. He held it up at the window; perhaps you remember the physician holding a flask to the light in

Gerard Douw's "Femme hydropique"; I thought of that fine figure as I looked at him. Look! said he,is it

You need not ask me that,I answered. It is very plainly turbid. I should think that some sediment had

Something that means more than alchemy ever did! Boiled just three hours, and as clear as a bell until

I began to form a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of all this, and to think I knew very nearly what was

coming next. I was right in my conjecture. The Master broke off the sealed end of his little flask, took out a

small portion of the fluid on a glass rod, and placed it on a slip of glass in the usual way for a microscopic

One thousand diameters,he said, as he placed it on the stage of the microscope.We shall find signs

The straight linear bodies were darting backward and forward in every direction. The wavy ones were

wriggling about like eels or water snakes. The round ones were spinning on their axes and rolling in every

direction. All of them were in a state of incessant activity, as if perpetually seeking something and never

They are tough, the germs of these little bodies, said the Master. Three hours' boiling has n't killed 'em.

He took up another flask just like the first, containing fluid and hermetically sealed in the same way.

Boiled just three hours longer than the other, he said,six hours in all. This is the experimentum crucis.

Not a sign of it; it is as clear as crystal, except that there may be a little sediment at the bottom.

That is nothing. The liquid is clear. We shall find no signs of life.He put a minute drop of the liquid

under the microscope as before. Nothing stirred. Nothing to be seen but a clear circle of light. We looked at it

Six hours kill 'em all, according to this experiment,said the Master.Good as far as it goes. One more

negative result. Do you know what would have happened if that liquid had been clouded, and we had found

life in the sealed flask? Sir, if that liquid had held life in it the Vatican would have trembled to hear it, and

there would have been anxious questionings and ominous whisperings in the halls of Lambeth palace! The

Traditions, sanctities, creeds, ecclesiastical establishments, all shaking to know whether my little sixpenny

flask of fluid looks muddy or not! I don't know whether to laugh or shudder. The thought of an oecumenical

council having its leading feature dislocated by my trifling experiment! The thought, again, of the mighty

revolution in human beliefs and affairs that might grow out of the same insignificant little phenomenon. A

wineglassful of clear liquid growing muddy. If we had found a wriggle, or a zigzag, or a shoot from one

side to the other, in this last flask, what a scare there would have been, to be sure, in the schools of the

prophets! Talk about your megatherium and your megalosaurus,what are these to the bacterium and the

vibrio? These are the dreadful monsters of today. If they show themselves where they have no business, the

little rascals frighten honest folks worse than ever people were frightened by the Dragon of Rhodes!

The Master gets going sometimes, there is no denying it, until his imagination runs away with him. He had

been trying, as the reader sees, one of those curious experiments in spontaneous generation, as it is called,

which have been so often instituted of late years, and by none more thoroughly than by that eminent

American student of nature (Professor Jeffries Wyman) whose process he had imitated with a result like his.

We got talking over these matters among us the next morning at the breakfasttable.

The Landlady drew back with a certain expression of dismay in her countenance. She hoped he did n't

want the Pope to make any more converts in this country. She had heard a sermon only last Sabbath, and the

minister had made it out, she thought, as plain as could be, that the Pope was the Man of Sin and that the

Church of Rome was Well, there was very strong names applied to her in Scripture.

What was good for the Pope was good for your minister, too, my dear madam,said the Master. Good for

everybody that is afraid of what people call "science." If it should prove that dead things come to life of

themselves, it would be awkward, you know, because then somebody will get up and say if one dead thing

made itself alive another might, and so perhaps the earth peopled itself without any help. Possibly the

difficulty wouldn't be so great as many people suppose. We might perhaps find room for a Creator after all,

as we do now, though we see a little brown seed grow till it sucks up the juices of half an acre of ground,

apparently all by its own inherent power. That does not stagger us; I am not sure that it would if Mr. Crosses

or Mr. Weekes's acarus should show himself all of a sudden, as they said he did, in certain mineral mixtures

The Master turned to me.Don't think too much of the result of our one experiment. It means something,

because it confirms those other experiments of which it was a copy; but we must remember that a hundred

negatives don't settle such a question. Life does get into the world somehow. You don't suppose Adam had

Hardly,I answered.He must have been a walking hospital if he carried all the maladies about him

Well, then, how did the little beast which is peculiar to that special complaint intrude himself into the

Order of Things? You don't suppose there was a special act of creation for the express purpose of bestowing

You and I are at work on the same problem, said the Young Astronomer to the Master.I have looked

into a microscope now and then, and I have seen that perpetual dancing about of minute atoms in a fluid,

which you call molecular motion. Just so, when I look through my telescope I see the stardust whirling

about in the infinite expanse of ether; or if I do not see its motion, I know that it is only on account of its

immeasurable distance. Matter and motion everywhere; void and rest nowhere. You ask why your restless

microscopic atoms may not come together and become selfconscious and selfmoving organisms. I ask why

my telescopic stardust may not come together and grow and organize into habitable worlds,the ripened

fruit on the branches of the tree Yggdrasil, if I may borrow from our friend the Poet's province. It frightens

people, though, to hear the suggestion that worlds shape themselves from starmist. It does not trouble them

at all to see the watery spheres that round themselves into being out of the vapors floating over us; they are

nothing but raindrops. But if a planet can grow as a raindrop grows, why then It was a great comfort to

these timid folk when Lord Rosse's telescope resolved certain nebula into starclusters. Sir John Herschel

would have told them that this made little difference in accounting for the formation of worlds by

These people have always been afraid of the astronomers,said the Master. They were shy, you know,

of the Copernican system, for a long while; well they might be with an oubliette waiting for them if they

ventured to think that the earth moved round the sun. Science settled that point finally for them, at length, and

then it was all right,when there was no use in disputing the fact any longer. By and by geology began

turning up fossils that told extraordinary stories about the duration of life upon our planet. What subterfuges

were not used to get rid of their evidence! Think of a man seeing the fossilized skeleton of an animal split out

of a quarry, his teeth worn down by mastication, and the remains of food still visible in his interior, and, in

order to get rid of a piece of evidence contrary to the traditions he holds to, seriously maintaining that this

skeleton never belonged to a living creature, but was created with just these appearances; a makebelieve, a

sham, a Barnum's mermaid contrivance to amuse its Creator and impose upon his intelligent children! And

now people talk about geological epochs and hundreds of millions of years in the planet's history as calmly as

if they were discussing the age of their deceased great grandmothers. Ten or a dozen years ago people said

Sh! Sh! if you ventured to meddle with any question supposed to involve a doubt of the generally accepted

Hebrew traditions. Today such questions are recognized as perfectly fair subjects for general conversation;

not in the basement story, perhaps, or among the rank and file of the curbstone congregations, but among

intelligent and educated persons. You may preach about them in your pulpit, you may lecture about them,

you may talk about them with the first sensiblelooking person you happen to meet, you may write magazine

articles about them, and the editor need not expect to receive remonstrances from angry subscribers and

withdrawals of subscriptions, as he would have been sure to not a great many years ago. Why, you may go to

a teaparty where the clergyman's wife shows her best cap and his daughters display their shining ringlets,

and you will hear the company discussing the Darwinian theory of the origin of the human race as if it were

as harmless a question as that of the lineage of a spinster's lapdog. You may see a fine lady who is as

particular in her genuflections as any Buddhist or Mahometan saint in his manifestations of reverence, who

will talk over the anthropoid ape, the supposed founder of the family to which we belong, and even go back

with you to the acephalous mollusk, first cousin to the clams and mussels, whose rudimental spine was the

hinted prophecy of humanity; all this time never dreaming, apparently, that what she takes for a matter of

I can't help thinking that if we had talked as freely as we can and do now in the days of the first boarder at

this table,I mean the one who introduced it to the public,it would have sounded a good deal more

aggressively than it does now. The old Master got rather warm in talking; perhaps the consciousness of

This whole business is an open question,he said,and there is no use in saying, "Hush! don't talk about

such things! "People do talk about 'em everywhere; and if they don't talk about 'em they think about 'em, and

that is worse,if there is anything bad about such questions, that is. If for the Fall of man, science comes to

substitute the RISE of man, sir, it means the utter disintegration of all the spiritual pessimisms which have

been like a spasm in the heart and a cramp in the intellect of men for so many centuries. And yet who dares to

say that it is not a perfectly legitimate and proper question to be discussed, without the slightest regard to the

Sir, I believe,the Master rose from his chair as he spoke, and said in a deep and solemn tone, but without

any declamatory vehemence, sir, I believe that we are at this moment in what will be recognized not many

centuries hence as one of the late watches in the night of the dark ages. There is a twilight ray, beyond

question. We know something of the universe, a very little, and, strangely enough, we know most of what is

farthest from us. We have weighed the planets and analyzed the flames of thesun and stars. We predict

their movements as if they were machines we ourselves had made and regulated. We know a good deal about

the earth on which we live. But the study of man has been so completely subjected to our preconceived

opinions, that we have got to begin all over again. We have studied anthropology through theology; we have

now to begin the study of theology through anthropology. Until we have exhausted the human element in

every form of belief, and that can only be done by what we may call comparative spiritual anatomy, we

cannot begin to deal with the alleged extrahuman elements without blundering into all imaginable

puerilities. If you think for one moment that there is not a single religion in the world which does not come to

us through the medium of a preexisting language; and if you remember that this language embodies

absolutely nothing but human conceptions and human passions, you will see at once that every religion

presupposes its own elements as already existing in those to whom it is addressed. I once went to a church in

London and heard the famous Edward Irving preach, and heard some of his congregation speak in the strange

words characteristic of their miraculous gift of tongues. I had a respect for the logical basis of this singular

phenomenon. I have always thought it was natural that any celestial message should demand a language of its

own, only to be understood by divine illumination. All human words tend, of course, to stop short in human

meaning. And the more I hear the most sacred terms employed, the more I am satisfied that they have entirely

and radically different meanings in the minds of those who use them. Yet they deal with them as if they were

as definite as mathematical quantities or geometrical figures. What would become of arithmetic if the figure 2

meant three for one man and five for another and twenty for a third, and all the other numerals were in the

same way variable quantities? Mighty intelligent correspondence business men would have with each other!

But how is this any worse than the difference of opinion which led a famous clergyman to say to a brother

Man has been studied proudly, contemptuously, rather, from the point of view supposed to be authoritatively

settled. The selfsufficiency of egotistic natures was never more fully shown than in the expositions of the

worthlessness and wretchedness of their fellow creatures given by the dogmatists who have "gone back," as

the vulgar phrase is, on their race, their own flesh and blood. Did you ever read what Mr. Bancroft says about

Calvin in his article on Jonathan Edwards? and mighty well said it is too, in my judgment. Let me remind

you of it, whether you have read it or not. "Setting himself up over against the privileged classes, he, with a

loftier pride than theirs, revealed the power of a yet higher order of nobility, not of a registered ancestry of

fifteen generations, but one absolutely spotless in its escutcheon, preordained in the council chamber of

eternity." I think you'll find I have got that sentence right, word for word, and there 's a great deal more in it

than many good folks who call themselves after the reformer seem to be aware of. The Pope put his foot on

the neck of kings, but Calvin and his cohort crushed the whole human race under their heels in the name of

the Lord of Hosts. Now, you see, the point that people don't understand is the absolute and utter humility of

science, in opposition to this doctrinal selfsufficiency. I don't doubt this may sound a little paradoxical at

first, but I think you will find it is all right. You remember the courtier and the monarch,Louis the

Fourteenth, wasn't it? never mind, give the poor fellows that live by setting you right a chance. "What

o'clock is it?" says the king. "Just whatever o'clock your Majesty pleases," says the courtier. I venture to say

the monarch was a great deal more humble than the follower, who pretended that his master was superior to

such trifling facts as the revolution of the planet. It was the same thing, you remember, with King Canute and

the tide on the seashore. The king accepted the scientific fact of the tide's rising. The loyal hangerson, who

believed in divine right, were too proud of the company they found themselves in to make any such

humiliating admission. But there are people, and plenty of them, today, who will dispute facts just as clear

to those who have taken the pains to learn what is known about them, as that of the tide's rising. They don't

like to admit these facts, because they throw doubt upon some of their cherished opinions. We are getting on

towards the last part of this nineteenth century. What we have gained is not so much in positive knowledge,

though that is a good deal, as it is in the freedom of discussion of every subject that comes within the range of

observation and inference. How long is it since Mrs. Piozzi wrote,"Let me hope that you will not pursue

geology till it leads you into doubts destructive of all comfort in this world and all happiness in the next"?

The Master paused and I remained silent, for I was thinking things I could not say.

It is well always to have a woman near by when one is talking on this class of subjects. Whether there will

be three or four women to one man in heaven is a question which I must leave to those who talk as if they

knew all about the future condition of the race to answer. But very certainly there is much more of hearty

faith, much more of spiritual life, among women than among men, in this world. They need faith to support

them more than men do, for they have a great deal less to call them out of themselves, and it comes easier to

them, for their habitual state of dependence teaches them to trust in others. When they become voters, if they

ever do, it may be feared that the pews will lose what the wardrooms gain. Relax a woman's hold on man,

and her kneejoints will soon begin to stiffen. Selfassertion brings out many fine qualities, but it does not

I remember some such thoughts as this were passing through my mind while the Master was talking. I

noticed that the Lady was listening to the conversation with a look of more than usual interest. We men have

the talk mostly to ourselves at this table; the Master, as you have found out, is fond of monologues, and I

myselfwell, I suppose I must own to a certain love for the reverberated music of my own accents; at any

rate, the Master and I do most of the talking. But others help us do the listening. I think I can show that they

listen to some purpose. I am going to surprise my reader with a letter which I received very shortly after the

conversation took place which I have just reported. It is of course by a special license, such as belongs to the

supreme prerogative of an author, that I am enabled to present it to him. He need ask no questions: it is not

his affair how I obtained the right to give publicity to a private communication. I have become somewhat

more intimately acquainted with the writer of it than in the earlier period of my connection with this

establishment, and I think I may say have gained her confidence to a very considerable degree.

MY DEAR SIR: The conversations I have had with you, limited as they have been, have convinced me that I

am quite safe in addressing you with freedom on a subject which interests me, and others more than myself.

We at our end of the table have been listening, more or less intelligently, to the discussions going on between

two or three of you gentlemen on matters of solemn import to us all. This is nothing very new to me. I have

been used, from an early period of my life, to hear the discussion of grave questions, both in politics and

religion. I have seen gentlemen at my father's table get as warm over a theological point of dispute as in

talking over their political differences. I rather think it has always been very much so, in bad as well as in

good company; for you remember how Milton's fallen angels amused themselves with disputing on

"providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate," and it was the same thing in that club Goldsmith writes so

pleasantly about. Indeed, why should not people very often come, in the course of conversation, to the one

subject which lies beneath all else about which our thoughts are occupied? And what more natural than that

one should be inquiring about what another has accepted and ceased to have any doubts concerning? It seems

to me all right that at the proper time, in the proper place, those who are less easily convinced than their

neighbors should have the fullest liberty of calling to account all the opinions which others receive without

question. Somebody must stand sentry at the outposts of belief, and it is a sentry's business, I believe, to

I want you to understand fully that I am not one of those poor nervous creatures who are frightened out of

their wits when any question is started that implies the disturbance of their old beliefs. I manage to see some

of the periodicals, and now and then dip a little way into a new book which deals with these curious questions

you were talking about, and others like them. You know they find their way almost everywhere. They do not

worry me in the least. When I was a little girl, they used to say that if you put a horsehair into a tub of water it

would turn into a snake in the course of a few days. That did not seem to me so very much stranger than it

was that an egg should turn into a chicken. What can I say to that? Only that it is the Lord's doings, and

marvellous in my eyes; and if our philosophical friend should find some little live creatures, or what seem to

be live creatures, in any of his messes, I should say as much, and no more. You do not think I would shut up

my Bible and PrayerBook because there is one more thing I do not understand in a world where I

It may be very wrong to pay any attention to those speculations about the origin of mankind which seem to

conflict with the Sacred Record. But perhaps there is some way of reconciling them, as there is of making the

seven days of creation harmonize with modern geology. At least, these speculations are curious enough in

themselves; and I have seen so many good and handsome children come of parents who were anything but

virtuous and comely, that I can believe in almost any amount of improvement taking place in a tribe of living

beings, if time and opportunity favor it. I have read in books of natural history that dogs came originally from

wolves. When I remember my little Flora, who, as I used to think, could do everything but talk, it does not

seem to me that she was much nearer her savage ancestors than some of the horrid cannibal wretches are to

You see that I am tolerably liberal in my habit of looking at all these questions. We women drift along with

the current of the times, listening, in our quiet way, to the discussions going on round us in books and in

conversation, and shift the phrases in which we think and talk with something of the same ease as that with

which we change our style of dress from year to year. I doubt if you of the other sex know what an effect this

habit of accommodating our tastes to changing standards has upon us. Nothing is fixed in them, as you know;

the very law of fashion is change. I suspect we learn from our dressmakers to shift the costume of our minds,

and slip on the new fashions of thinking all the more easily because we have been. accustomed to new styles

It frightens me to see how much I have written without having yet said a word of what I began this letter on

purpose to say. I have taken so much space in "defining my position," to borrow the politicians' phrase, that I

begin to fear you will be out of patience before you come to the part of my letter I care most about your

What I want to say is this. When these matters are talked about before persons of different ages and various

shades of intelligence, I think one ought to be very careful that his use of language does not injure the

sensibilities, perhaps blunt the reverential feelings, of those who are listening to him. You of the sterner sex

say that we women have intuitions, but not logic, as our birthright. I shall not commit my sex by conceding

this to be true as a whole, but I will accept the first half of it, and I will go so far as to say that we do not

always care to follow out a train of thought until it ends in a blind cul de sac, as some of what are called the

Now I want to remind you that religion is not a matter of intellectual luxury to those of us who are interested

in it, but something very different. It is our life, and more than our life; for that is measured by pulsebeats,

but our religious consciousness partakes of the Infinite, towards which it is constantly yearning. It is very

possible that a hundred or five hundred years from now the forms of religious belief may be so altered that

we should hardly know them. But the sense of dependence on Divine influence and the need of communion

with the unseen and eternal will be then just what they are now. It is not the geologist's hammer, or the

astronomer's telescope, or the naturalist's microscope, that is going to take away the need of the human soul

for that Rock to rest upon which is higher than itself, that Star which never sets, that allpervading Presence

I have no fears for myself, and listen very quietly to all your debates. I go from your philosophical

discussions to the reading of Jeremy Taylor's "Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying " without feeling that I have

unfitted myself in the least degree for its solemn reflections. And, as I have mentioned his name, I cannot

help saying that I do not believe that good man himself would have ever shown the bitterness to those who

seem to be at variance with the received doctrines which one may see in some of the newspapers that call

themselves "religious." I have kept a few old books from my honored father's library, and among them is

another of his which I always thought had more true Christianity in its title than there is in a good many

whole volumes. I am going to take the book down, or up, for it is not a little one,and write out the title,

which, I dare say, you remember, and very likely you have the book. "Discourse of the Liberty of

Prophesying, showing the Unreasonableness of prescribing to other Men's Faith, and the Iniquity of

Now, my dear sir, I am sure you believe that I want to be liberal and reasonable, and not to act like those

weak alarmists who, whenever the silly sheep begin to skip as if something was after them, and huddle

together in their fright, are sure there must be a bear or a lion coming to eat them up. But for all that, I want to

beg you to handle some of these points, which are so involved in the creed of a good many wellintentioned

persons that you cannot separate them from it without picking their whole belief to pieces, with more thought

for them than you might think at first they were entitled to. I have no doubt you gentlemen are as wise as

The Young Girl who sits by me has, I know, strong religious instincts. Instead of setting her out to ask all

sorts of questions, I would rather, if I had my way, encourage her to form a habit of attending to religious

duties, and make the most of the simple faith in which she was bred. I think there are a good many questions

young persons may safely postpone to a more convenient season; and as this young creature is overworked, I

hate to have her excited by the fever of doubt which it cannot be denied is largely prevailing in our time.

I know you must have looked on our other young friend, who has devoted himself to the sublimest of the

sciences, with as much interest as I do. When I was a little girl I used to write out a line of Young's as a copy

but I do not now feel quite so sure that the contemplation of all the multitude of remote worlds does not tend

to weaken the idea of a personal Deity. It is not so much that nebular theory which worries me, when I think

about this subject, as a kind of bewilderment when I try to conceive of a consciousness filling all those

frightful blanks of space they talk about. I sometimes doubt whether that young man worships anything but

the stars. They tell me that many young students of science like him never see the inside of a church. I cannot

help wishing they did. It humanizes people, quite apart from any higher influence it exerts upon them. One

reason, perhaps, why they do not care to go to places of worship is that they are liable to hear the questions

they know something about handled in sermons by those who know very much less about them. And so they

lose a great deal. Almost every human being, however vague his notions of the Power addressed, is capable

of being lifted and solemnized by the exercise of public prayer. When I was a young girl we travelled in

Europe, and I visited Ferney with my parents; and I remember we all stopped before a chapel, and I read

upon its front, I knew Latin enough to understand it, I am pleased to say,Deo erexit Voltaire. I never forgot

it; and knowing what a sad scoffer he was at most sacred things, I could not but be impressed with the fact

that even he was not satisfied with himself, until he had shown his devotion in a public and lasting form.

We all want religion sooner or later. I am afraid there are some who have no natural turn for it, as there are

persons without an ear for music, to which, if I remember right, I heard one of you comparing what you

called religious genius. But sorrow and misery bring even these to know what it means, in a great many

instances. May I not say to you, my friend, that I am one who has learned the secret of the inner life by the

discipline of trials in the life of outward circumstance? I can remember the time when I thought more about

the shade of color in a ribbon, whether it matched my complexion or not, than I did about my spiritual

interests in this world or the next. It was needful that I should learn the meaning of that text, "Whom the Lord

Since I have been taught in the school of trial I have felt, as I never could before, how precious an inheritance

is the smallest patrimony of faith. When everything seemed gone from me, I found I had still one possession.

The bruised reed that I had never leaned on became my staff. The smoking flax which had been a worry to

my eyes burst into flame, and I lighted the taper at it which has since guided all my footsteps. And I am but

one of the thousands who have had the same experience. They have been through the depths of affliction, and

know the needs of the human soul. It will find its God in the unseen,Father, Saviour, Divine Spirit, Virgin

Mother, it must and will breathe its longings and its griefs into the heart of a Being capable of understanding

I am jealous, yes, I own I am jealous of any word, spoken or written, that would tend to impair that birthright

of reverence which becomes for so many in after years the basis of a deeper religious sentiment. And yet, as I

have said, I cannot and will not shut my eyes to the problems which may seriously affect our modes of

conceiving the eternal truths on which, and by which, our souls must live. What a fearful time is this into

which we poor sensitive and timid creatures are born! I suppose the life of every century has more or less

special resemblance to that of some particular Apostle. I cannot help thinking this century has Thomas for its

model. How do you suppose the other Apostles felt when that experimental philosopher explored the wounds

of the Being who to them was divine with his inquisitive forefinger? In our time that finger has multiplied

itself into ten thousand thousand implements of research, challenging all mysteries, weighing the world as in

a balance, and sifting through its prisms and spectroscopes the light that comes from the throne of the Eternal.

Pity us, dear Lord, pity us! The peace in believing which belonged to other ages is not for us. Again Thy

wounds are opened that we may know whether it is the blood of one like ourselves which flows from them, or

whether it is a Divinity that is bleeding for His creatures. Wilt Thou not take the doubt of Thy children whom

the time commands to try all things in the place of the unquestioning faith of earlier and simplerhearted

generations? We too have need of Thee. Thy martyrs in other ages were cast into the flames, but no fire could

touch their immortal and indestructible faith. We sit in safety and in peace, so far as these poor bodies are

concerned; but our cherished beliefs, the hopes, the trust that stayed the hearts of those we loved who have

gone before us, are cast into the fiery furnace of an age which is fast turning to dross the certainties and the

sanctities once prized as our most precious inheritance. You will understand me, my dear sir, and all my

solicitudes and apprehensions. Had I never been assailed by the questions that meet all thinking persons in

our time, I might not have thought so anxiously about the risk of perplexing others. I know as well as you

must that there are many articles of belief clinging to the skirts of our time which are the bequests of the ages

of ignorance that God winked at. But for all that I would train a child in the nurture and admonition of the

Lord, according to the simplest and best creed I could disentangle from those barbarisms, and I would in

every way try to keep up in young persons that standard of reverence for all sacred subjects which may,

without any violent transition, grow and ripen into the devotion of later years. Believe me,

I have thought a good deal about this letter and the writer of it lately. She seemed at first removed to a

distance from all of us, but here I find myself in somewhat near relations with her. What has surprised me

more than that, however, is to find that she is becoming so much acquainted with the Register of Deeds. Of

all persons in the world, I should least have thought of him as like to be interested in her, and still less, if

possible, of her fancying him. I can only say they have been in pretty close conversation several times of late,

and, if I dared to think it of so very calm and dignified a personage, I should say that her color was a little

heightened after one or more of these interviews. No! that would be too absurd! But I begin to think nothing

is absurd in the matter of the relations of the two sexes; and if this highbred woman fancies the attentions of

a piece of human machinery like this elderly individual, it is none of my business.

I have been at work on some more of the Young Astronomer's lines. I find less occasion for meddling with

them as he grows more used to versification. I think I could analyze the processes going on in his mind, and

the conflict of instincts which he cannot in the nature of things understand. But it is as well to give the reader

a chance to find out for himself what is going on in the young man's heart and intellect.

I may just as well stop here as anywhere, for there is more of the manuscript to come, and I can only give it in

The Young Astronomer had told me I might read any portions of his manuscript I saw fit to certain friends. I

It's the same story we all have to tell,said he, when I had done reading.We are all asking questions

nowadays. I should like to hear him read some of his verses himself, and I think some of the other boarders

would like to. I wonder if he wouldn't do it, if we asked him! Poets read their own compositions in a singsong

sort of way; but they do seem to love 'em so, that I always enjoy it. It makes me laugh a little inwardly to see

how they dandle their poetical babies, but I don't let them know it. We must get up a select party of the

boarders to hear him read. We'll send him a regular invitation. I will put my name at the head of it, and you

That was neatly done. How I hate writing such things! But I suppose I must do it.

The Master and I had been thinking for some time of trying to get the Young Astronomer round to our side of

the table. There are many subjects on which both of us like to talk with him, and it would be convenient to

have him nearer to us. How to manage it was not quite so clear as it might have been. The Scarabee wanted to

sit with his back to the light, as it was in his present position. He used his eyes so much in studying minute

objects, that he wished to spare them all fatigue, and did not like facing a window. Neither of us cared to ask

the Man of Letters, so called, to change his place, and of course we could not think of making such a request

of the Young Girl or the Lady. So we were at a stand with reference to this project of ours.

But while we were proposing, Fate or Providence disposed everything for us. The Man of Letters, so called,

was missing one morning, having folded his tentthat is, packed his carpetbagwith the silence of the

Arabs, and encampedthat is, taken lodgingsin some locality which he had forgotten to indicate.

The Landlady bore this sudden bereavement remarkably well. Her remarks and reflections; though borrowing

the aid of homely imagery and doing occasional violence to the nicer usages of speech, were not without

I like a gentleman that is a gentleman. But there's a difference in what folks call gentlemen as there is in

what you put on table. There is cabbages and there is cauliflowers. There is clams and there is oysters. There

is mackerel and there is salmon. And there is some that knows the difference and some that doos n't. I had a

little account with that boarder that he forgot to settle before he went off, so all of a suddin. I sha'n't say

anything about it. I've seen the time when I should have felt bad about losing what he owed me, but it was no

great matter; and if he 'll only stay away now he 's gone, I can stand losing it, and not cry my eyes out nor lay

awake all night neither. I never had ought to have took him. Where he come from and where he's gone to is

unbeknown to me. If he'd only smoked good tobacco, I wouldn't have said a word; but it was such dreadful

stuff, it 'll take a week to get his chamber sweet enough to show them that asks for rooms. It doos smell like

The Landlady answered with a faded smile, which implied that there was no hope in that direction. Dr.

Benjamin, with a sudden recurrence of youthful feeling, made a fan with the fingers of his right hand, the

second phalanx of the thumb resting on the tip of the nose, and the remaining digits diverging from each

other, in the plane of the median line of the face,I suppose this is the way he would have described the

gesture, which is almost a specialty of the Parisian gamin. That Boy immediately copied it, and added greatly

to its effect by extending the fingers of the other hand in a line with those of the first, and vigorously agitating

those of the two hands, a gesture which acts like a puncture on the distended selfesteem of one to whom

I wish the reader to observe that I treasure up with interest all the words uttered by the Salesman. It must have

been noticed that he very rarely speaks. Perhaps he has an inner life, with its own deep emotional, and lofty

contemplative elements, but as we see him, he is the boarder reduced to the simplest expression of that term.

Yet, like most human creatures, he has generic and specific characters not unworthy of being studied. I notice

particularly a certain electrical briskness of movement, such as one may see in a squirrel, which clearly

belongs to his calling. The drygoodsman's life behind his counter is a succession of sudden, snappy

Up goes the arm; bang! tumbles out the flat roll and turns half a dozen somersets, as if for the fun of the

thing; the six yards of calico hurry over the measuring nails, hunching their backs up, like six cankerworms;

out jump the scissors; snip, clip, rip; the stuff is wisped up, brownpapered, tied, labelled, delivered, and the

man is himself again, like a child just come out of a convulsionfit. Think of a man's having some hundreds

of these semiepileptic seizures every day, and you need not wonder that he does not say much; these fits

But because he, or any other man, does not say much, it does not follow that he may not have, as I have said,

an exalted and intense inner life. I have known a number of cases where a man who seemed thoroughly

commonplace and unemotional has all at once surprised everybody by telling the story of his hidden life far

more pointedly and dramatically than any playwright or novelist or poet could have told it for him. I will not

I suppose one man in a dozensaid the Masterought to be born a skeptic. That was the proportion

Well,said the Master,they 've been whitewashing Judas of late. But never mind him. I did not say

there was not one rogue on the average among a dozen men. I don't see how that would interfere with my

proposition. If I say that among a dozen men you ought to find one that weighs over a hundred and fifty

pounds, and you tell me that there were twelve men in your club, and one of 'em had red hair, I don't see that

I thought it best to let the old Master have his easy victory, which was more apparent than real, very

When the Lord sends out a batch of human beings, say a hundredDid you ever read my book, the new

It is rather awkward to answer such a question in the negative, but I said, with the best grace I could, "No, not

Well, I must give you a copy of it. My book and I are pretty much the same thing. Sometimes I steal from

my book in my talk without mentioning it, and then I say to myself, "Oh, that won't do; everybody has read

my book and knows it by heart." And then the other I says,you know there are two of us, right and left,

like a pair of shoes,the other I says, "You're asomething or other fool. They have n't read your

confounded old book; besides, if they have, they have forgotten all about it." Another time, I say, thinking I

will be very honest, "I have said something about that in my book"; and then the other I says, "What a

Balaam's quadruped you are to tell 'em it's in your book; they don't care whether it is or not, if it's anything

worth saying; and if it isn't worth saying, what are you braying for? "That is a rather sensible fellow, that

other chap we talk with, but an impudent whelp. I never got such abuse from any blackguard in my life as I

have from that No. 2 of me, the one that answers the other's questions and makes the comments, and does

I laughed at that. I have just such a fellow always with me, as wise as Solomon, if I would only heed him;

but as insolent as Shimei, cursing, and throwing stones and dirt, and behaving as if he had the traditions of

the "apelike human being" born with him rather than civilized instincts. One does not have to be a king to

I mentioned my book,the Master said, because I have something in it on the subject we were talking

about. I should like to read you a passage here and there out of it, where I have expressed myself a little more

freely on some of those matters we handle in conversation. If you don't quarrel with it, I must give you a copy

of the book. It's a rather serious thing to get a copy of a book from the writer of it. It has made my adjectives

sweat pretty hard, I know, to put together an answer returning thanks and not lying beyond the twilight of

veracity, if one may use a figure. Let me try a little of my book on you, in divided doses, as my friends the

Fiat experimentum in corpore vili,I said, laughing at my own expense. I don't doubt the medicament is

quite as good as the patient deserves, and probably a great deal better,I added, reinforcing my feeble

[When you pay a compliment to an author, don't qualify it in the next sentence so as to take all the goodness

out of it. Now I am thinking of it, I will give you one or two pieces of advice. Be careful to assure yourself

that the person you are talking with wrote the article or book you praise. It is not very pleasant to be told,

"Well, there, now! I always liked your writings, but you never did anything half so good as this last piece,"

and then to have to tell the blunderer that this last piece is n't yours, but t' other man's. Take care that the

phrase or sentence you commend is not one that is in quotationmarks. "The best thing in your piece, I think,

is a , line I do not remember meeting before; it struck me as very true and well expressed:

"But, my dear lady, that line is one which is to be found in a writer of the last century, and not original with

me." One ought not to have undeceived her, perhaps, but one is naturally honest, and cannot bear to be

credited with what is not his own. The lady blushes, of course, and says she has not read much ancient

literature, or some such thing. The pearl upon the Ethiop's arm is very pretty in verse, but one does not care to

I adjourned from the table in company with the old Master to his apartments. He was evidently in easy

circumstances, for he had the best accommodations the house afforded. We passed through a reception room

to his library, where everything showed that he had ample means for indulging the modest tastes of a scholar.

The first thing, naturally, when one enters a scholar's study or library, is to look at his books. One gets a

notion very speedily of his tastes and the range of his pursuits by a glance round his bookshelves.

Of course, you know there are many fine houses where the library is a part of the upholstery, so to speak.

Books in handsome binding kept locked under plateglass in showy dwarf bookcases are as important to

stylish establishments as servants in livery; who sit with folded arms, are to stylish equipages. I suppose those

wonderful statues with the folded arms do sometimes change their attitude, and I suppose those books with

the gilded backs do sometimes get opened, but it is nobody's business whether they do or not, and it is not

This sort of thing is common enough, but there is another case that may prove deceptive if you undertake to

judge from appearances. Once in a while you will come on a house where you will find a family of readers

and almost no library. Some of the most indefatigable devourers of literature have very few books. They

belong to book clubs, they haunt the public libraries, they borrow of friends, and somehow or other get hold

of everything they want, scoop out all it holds for them, and have done with it. When I want a book, it is as a

tiger wants a sheep. I must have it with one spring, and, if I miss it, go away defeated and hungry. And my

experience with public libraries is that the first volume of the book I inquire for is out, unless I happen to

I was pretty well prepared to understand the Master's library and his account of it. We seated ourselves in

I see you have a large and rather miscellaneous collection of books. Did you get them together by accident

Both, sir, both,the Master answered. When Providence throws a good book in my way, I bow to its

decree and purchase it as an act of piety, if it is reasonably or unreasonably cheap. I adopt a certain number of

books every year, out of a love for the foundlings and stray children of other people's brains that nobody

Do you see that Hedericus ? I had Greek dictionaries enough and to spare, but I saw that noble quarto lying in

the midst of an ignoble crowd of cheap books, and marked with a price which I felt to be an insult to

scholarship, to the memory of Homer, sir, and the awful shade of AEschylus. I paid the mean price asked for

it, and I wanted to double it, but I suppose it would have been a foolish sacrifice of coin to sentiment: I love

that book for its looks and behavior. None of your "halfcalf " economies in that volume, sir! And see how it

lies open anywhere! There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way of laying its treasures

before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on.

No lifting of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place and can never be taught

manners, but tranquil, wellbred repose. A book may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and

this book would be good company for personages like Roger Ascham and his pupils the Lady Elizabeth and

The Master was evidently riding a hobby, and what I wanted to know was the plan on which he had formed

his library. So I brought him back to the point by asking him the question in so many words.

Yes,he said,I have a kind of notion of the way in which a library ought to be put togetherno, I don't

mean that, I mean ought to grow. I don't pretend to say that mine is a model, but it serves my turn well

enough, and it represents me pretty accurately. A scholar must shape his own shell, secrete it one might

almost say, for secretion is only separation, you know, of certain elements derived from the materials of the

world about us. And a scholar's study, with the books lining its walls, is his shell. It is n't a mollusk's shell,

Well, sir, the caddiceworm is the larva of a fly, and he makes a case for himself out of all sorts of bits of

everything that happen to suit his particular fancy, dead or alive, sticks and stones and small shells with their

owners in 'em, living as comfortable as ever. Every one of these caddiceworms has his special fancy as to

what he will pick up and glue together, with a kind of natural cement he provides himself, to make his case

out of. In it he lives, sticking his head and shoulders out once in a while, that is all. Don't you see that a

student in his library is a caddiceworm in his case? I've told you that I take an interest in pretty much

everything, and don't mean to fence out any human interests from the private grounds of my intelligence.

Then, again, there is a subject, perhaps I may say there is more than one, that I want to exhaust, to know to

the very bottom. And besides, of course I must have my literary harem, my pare aux cerfs, where my

favorites await my moments of leisure and pleasure,my scarce and precious editions, my luxurious

typographical masterpieces; my Delilahs, that take my head in their lap: the pleasant storytellers and the

like; the books I love because they are fair to look upon, prized by collectors, endeared by old associations,

secret treasures that nobody else knows anything about; books, in short, that I like for insufficient reasons it

may be, but peremptorily, and mean to like and to love and to cherish till death us do part.

Don't you see I have given you a key to the way my library is made up, so that you can apriorize the plan

according to which I have filled my bookcases? I will tell you how it is carried out.

In the first place, you see, I have four extensive cyclopaedias. Out of these I can get information enough to

serve my immediate purpose on almost any subject. These, of course, are supplemented by geographical,

biographical, bibliographical, and other dictionaries, including of course lexicons to all the languages I ever

meddle with. Next to these come the works relating to my one or two specialties, and these collections I make

as perfect as I can. Every library should try to be complete on something, if it were only on the history of

pinheads. I don't mean that I buy all the trashy compilations on my special subjects, but I try to have all the

works of any real importance relating to them, old as well as new. In the following compartment you will find

the great authors in all the languages I have mastered, from Homer and Hesiod downward to the last great

This division, you see, you can make almost as extensive or as limited as you choose. You can crowd the

great representative writers into a small compass; or you can make a library consisting only of the different

editions of Horace, if you have space and money enough. Then comes the Harem, the shelf or the bookcase

of Delilahs, that you have paid wicked prices for, that you love without pretending to be reasonable about it,

and would bag in case of fire before all the rest, just as Mr. Townley took the Clytie to his carriage when the

antiCatholic mob threatened his house in 1780. As for the foundlings like my Hedericus, they go among

their peers; it is a pleasure to take them, from the dusty stall where they were elbowed by plebeian

schoolbooks and battered odd volumes, and give them Alduses and Elzevirs for companions.

Nothing remains but the Infirmary. The most painful subjects are the unfortunates that have lost a cover.

Bound a hundred years ago, perhaps, and one of the rich old browned covers gonewhat a pity! Do you

know what to do about it? I 'll tell you,no, I 'll show you. Look at this volume. M. T. Ciceronis Opera,a

dozen of 'em, one of 'em minus half his cover, a poor onelegged cripple, six months ago,now see him.

He looked very respectably indeed, both covers dark, ancient, very decently matched; one would hardly

I 'll tell you what I did. You poor devil, said I, you are a disgrace to your family. We must send you to a

surgeon and have some kind of a Taliacotian operation performed on you. (You remember the operation as

described in Hudibras, of course.) The first thing was to find a subject of similar age and aspect ready to part

with one of his members. So I went to Quidlibet's,you know Quidlibet and that hieroglyphic sign of his

with the omniscientlooking eye as its most prominent feature,and laid my case before him. I want you,

said I, to look up an old book of mighty little value,one of your tencent vagabonds would be the sort of

And Quidlibet, who is a pleasant body to deal with,only he has insulted one or two gentlemanly books by

selling them to me at very lowbred and shamefully insufficient prices,Quidlibet, I say, laid by three old

books for me to help myself from, and did n't take the trouble even to make me pay the thirty cents for 'em.

Well, said I to myself, let us look at our three books that have undergone the last insult short of the

trunkmaker's or the papermills, and see what they are. There may be something worth looking at in one or

Now do you know it was with a kind of a tremor that I untied the package and looked at these three

unfortunates, too humble for the companionable dime to recognize as its equal in value. The same sort of

feeling you know if you ever tried the Bibleandkey, or the Sortes Virgiliance. I think you will like to know

what the three books were which had been bestowed upon me gratis, that I might tear away one of the covers

of the one that best matched my Cicero, and give it to the binder to cobble my crippled volume with.

No. I. An odd volume of The Adventurer. It has many interesting things enough, but is made precious by

containing Simon Browne's famous Dedication to the Queen of his Answer to Tindal's "Christianity as old as

the Creation." Simon Browne was the Man without a Soul. An excellent person, a most worthy dissenting

"He was once a man; and of some little name; but of no worth, as his present unparalleled case makes but too

manifest; for by the immediate hand of an avenging GOD, his very thinking substance has, for more than

seven years, been continually wasting away, till it is wholly perished out of him, if it be not utterly come to

nothing. None, no, not the least remembrance of its very ruins, remains, not the shadow of an idea is left, nor

any sense that so much as one single one, perfect or imperfect, whole or diminished, ever did appear to a

Think of this as the Dedication of a book "universally allowed to be the best which that controversy

produced," and what a flood of light it pours on the insanities of those selfanalyzing diarists whose morbid

reveries have been so often mistaken for piety! No. I. had something for me, then, besides the cover, which

No. II. was "A View of Society and Manners in Italy." Vol. III. By John Moore, M. D. (Zeluco Moore.) You

know his pleasant book. In this particular volume what interested me most, perhaps, was the very spirited and

intelligent account of the miracle of the liquefaction of the blood of Saint Januarius, but it gave me an hour's

No. III. was "An ESSAY On the Great EFFECTS of Even Languid and Unheeded LOCAL MOTION." By

the Hon. Robert Boyle. Published in 1685, and, as appears from other sources, "received with great and

general applause." I confess I was a little startled to find how near this earlier philosopher had come to the

modern doctrines, such as are illustrated in Tyndall's "Heat considered as a Mode of Motion." He speaks of

"Us, who endeavor to resolve the Phenomena of Nature into Matter and Local motion." That sounds like the

nineteenth century, but what shall we say to this? "As when a bar of iron or silver, having been well

hammered, is newly taken off of the anvil; though the eye can discern no motion in it, yet the touch will

readily perceive it to be very hot, and if you spit upon it, the brisk agitation of the insensible parts will

become visible in that which they will produce in the liquor." He takes a bar of tin, and tries whether by

bending it to and fro two or three times he cannot "procure a considerable internal commotion among the

parts "; and having by this means broken or cracked it in the middle, finds, as he expected, that the middle

parts had considerably heated each other. There are many other curious and interesting observations in the

Did he kill the owl ?said the Master, laughing. [I suppose you, the reader, know the owl story.]It was

Number Two that lent me one of his covers. Poor wretch! He was one of three, and had lost his two brothers.

From him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath. The Scripture had to be fulfilled in his case.

But I couldn't help saying to myself, What do you keep writing books for, when the stalls are covered all over

with 'em, good books, too, that nobody will give ten cents apiece for, lying there like so many dead beasts of

burden, of no account except to strip off their hides? What is the use, I say? I have made a book or two in my

time, and I am making another that perhaps will see the light one of these days. But if I had my life to live

over again, I think I should go in for silence, and get as near to Nirvana as I could. This language is such a

paltry tool! The handle of it cuts and the blade doesn't. You muddle yourself by not knowing what you mean

by a word, and send out your unanswered riddles and rebuses to clear up other people's difficulties. It always

seems to me that talk is a ripple and thought is a ground swell. A string of words, that mean pretty much

anything, helps you in a certain sense to get hold of a thought, just as a string of syllables that mean nothing

helps you to a word; but it's a poor business, it's a poor business, and the more you study definition the more

you find out how poor it is. Do you know I sometimes think our little entomological neighbor is doing a

sounder business than we people that make books about ourselves and our slippery abstractions? A man can

see the spots on a bug and count 'em, and tell what their color is, and put another bug alongside of him and

see whether the two are alike or different. And when he uses a word he knows just what he means. There is

What if we should look in, some day, on the Scarabeeist, as he calls himself?said I.The fact is the

Master had got agoing at such a rate that I was willing to give a little turn to the conversation.

Oh, very well,said the Master,I had some more things to say, but I don't doubt they'll keep. And

besides, I take an interest in entomology, and have my own opinion on the meloe question.

You don't mean to say you have studied insects as well as solar systems and the order of things generally?

He looked pleased. All philosophers look pleased when people say to them virtually, "Ye are gods." The

Master says he is vain constitutionally, and thanks God that he is. I don't think he has enough vanity to make

a fool of himself with it, but the simple truth is he cannot help knowing that he has a wide and lively

intelligence, and it pleases him to know it, and to be reminded of it, especially in an oblique and tangential

Yes, yes, I have amused a summer or two with insects, among other things. I described a new

tabanus,horsefly, you know,which, I think, had escaped notice. I felt as grand when I showed up my

new discovery as if I had created the beast. I don't doubt Herschel felt as if he had made a planet when he first

showed the astronomers Georgium Sidus, as he called it. And that reminds me of something. I was riding on

the outside of a stagecoach from London to Windsor in the yearnever mind the year, but it must have been

in June, I suppose, for I bought some strawberries. England owes me a sixpence with interest from date, for I

gave the woman a shilling, and the coach contrived to start or the woman timed it so that I just missed getting

my change. What an odd thing memory is, to be sure, to have kept such a triviality, and have lost so much

that was invaluable! She is a crazy wench, that Mnemosyne; she throws her jewels out of the window and

[De profundis! said I to myself, the bottom of the bushel has dropped out! SanctaMaria, ora pro nobis!]

But as I was saying, I was riding on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Windsor, when all at

once a picture familiar to me from my New England village childhood came upon me like a reminiscence

rather than a revelation. It was a mighty bewilderment of slanted masts and spars and ladders and ropes, from

the midst of which a vast tube, looking as if it might be a piece of ordnance such as the revolted angels

battered the walls of Heaven with, according to Milton, lifted its muzzle defiantly towards the sky. Why, you

blessed old rattletrap, said I to myself, I know you as well as I know my father's spectacles and snuffbox!

And that same crazy witch of a Memory, so divinely wise and foolish, travels thirtyfive hundred miles or so

in a single pulsebeat, makes straight for an old house and an old library and an old corner of it, and whisks

out a volume of an old cyclopaedia, and there is the picture of which this is the original. Sir William

Herschel's great telescope! It was just about as big, as it stood there by the roadside, as it was in the picture,

not much different any way. Why should it be? The pupil of your eye is only a gimlethole, not so very much

bigger than the eye of a sailneedle, and a camel has to go through it before you can see him. You look into a

stereoscope and think you see a miniature of a building or a mountain; you don't, you 're made a fool of by

your lying intelligence, as you call it; you see the building and the mountain just as large as with your naked

eye looking straight at the real objects. Doubt it, do you? Perhaps you'd like to doubt it to the music of a

couple of gold fivedollar pieces. If you would, say the word, and man and money, as Messrs. Heenan and

Morrissey have it, shall be forthcoming; for I will make you look at a real landscape with your right eye, and

a stereoscopic view of it with your left eye, both at once, and you can slide one over the other by a little

management and see how exactly the picture overlies the true landscape. We won't try it now, because I want

I have noticed that the Master very rarely fails to come back to his original proposition, though he, like

myself, is fond of zigzagging in order to reach it. Men's minds are like the pieces on a chessboard in their

way of moving. One mind creeps from the square it is on to the next, straight forward, like the pawns.

Another sticks close to its own line of thought and follows it as far as it goes, with no heed for others'

opinions, as the bishop sweeps the board in the line of his own color. And another class of minds break

through everything that lies before them, ride over argument and opposition, and go to the end of the board,

like the castle. But there is still another sort of intellect which is very apt to jump over the thought that stands

next and come down in the unexpected way of the knight. But that same knight, as the chess manuals will

show you, will contrive to get on to every square of the board in a pretty series of moves that looks like a

pattern of embroidery, and so these zigzagging minds like the Master's, and I suppose my own is something

like it, will sooner or later get back to the square next the one they started from.

The Master took down a volume from one of the shelves. I could not help noticing that it was a shelf near his

hand as he sat, and that the volume looked as if he had made frequent use of it. I saw, too, that he handled it

in a loving sort of way; the tenderness he would have bestowed on a wife and children had to find a channel

somewhere, and what more natural than that he should look fondly on the volume which held the thoughts

that had rolled themselves smooth and round in his mind like pebbles on a beach, the dreams which, under

cover of the simple artifices such as all writers use, told the little world of readers his secret hopes and

aspirations, the fancies which had pleased him and which he could not bear to let die without trying to please

others with them? I have a great sympathy with authors, most of all with unsuccessful ones. If one had a

dozen lives or so, it would all be very well, but to have only a single ticket in the great lottery, and have that

drawn a blank, is a rather sad sort of thing. So I was pleased to see the affectionate kind of pride with which

the Master handled his book; it was a success, in its way, and he looked on it with a cheerful sense that he had

a right to be proud of it. The Master opened the volume, and, putting on his large round glasses, began

The only good reason for believing in the stability of the moral order of things is to be found in the

tolerable steadiness of human averages. Out of a hundred human beings fiftyone will be found in the long

run on the side of the right, so far as they know it, and against the wrong. They will be organizers rather than

disorganizers, helpers and not hinderers in the upward movement of the race. This is the main fact we have to

depend on. The right hand of the great organism is a little stronger than the left, that is all.

Now and then we come across a lefthanded man. So now and then we find a tribe or a generation, the

subject of what we may call moral lefthandedness, but that need not trouble us about our formula. All we

have to do is to spread the average over a wider territory or a longer period of time. Any race or period that

insists on being lefthanded must go under if it comes in contact with a righthanded one. If there were, as a

general rule, fiftyone rogues in the hundred instead of fortynine, all other qualities of mind and body being

equally distributed between the two sections, the order of things would sooner or later end in universal

It does not seem very likely that the Creator of all things is taken by surprise at witnessing anything any of

his creatures do or think. Men have sought out many inventions, but they can have contrived nothing which

did not exist as an idea in the omniscient consciousness to which past, present, and future are alike Now.

We read what travellers tell us about the King of Dahomey, or the Fejee Island people, or the short and

simple annals of the celebrities recorded in the Newgate Calendar, and do not know just what to make of

these brothers and sisters of the race; but I do not suppose an intelligence even as high as the angelic beings,

to stop short there, would see anything very peculiar or wonderful about them, except as everything is

It is very curious to see how science, that is, looking at and arranging the facts of a case with our own eyes

and our own intelligence, without minding what somebody else has said, or how some old majority vote went

in a pack of intriguing ecclesiastics, I say it is very curious to see how science is catching up with one

There is a recognized branch of science familiar to all those who know anything of the studies relating to life,

under the name of Teratology. It deals with all sorts of monstrosities which are to be met with in living

beings, and more especially in animals. It is found that what used to be called lusus naturae, or freaks of

nature, are just as much subject to laws as the naturally developed forms of living creatures.

The rustic looks at the Siamese twins, and thinks he is contemplating an unheardof anomaly; but there are

plenty of cases like theirs in the books of scholars, and though they are not quite so common as double

cherries, the mechanism of their formation is not a whit more mysterious than that of the twinned fruits. Such

cases do not disturb the average arrangement; we have Changs and Engs at one pole, and Cains and Abels at

the other. One child is born with six fingers on each hand, and another falls short by one or more fingers of

his due allowance; but the glover puts his faith in the great law of averages, and makes his gloves with five

Thinking people are not going to be scared out of explaining or at least trying to explain things by the shrieks

of persons whose beliefs are disturbed thereby. Comets were portents to Increase Mather, President of

Harvard College; "preachers of Divine wrath, heralds and messengers of evil tidings to the world." It is not so

very long since Professor Winthrop was teaching at the same institution. I can remember two of his boys very

well, old boys, it is true, they were, and one of them wore a threecornered cocked hat; but the father of these

boys, whom, as I say, I can remember, had to defend himself against the minister of the Old South Church for

the impiety of trying to account for earthquakes on natural principles. And his ancestor, Governor Winthrop,

would probably have shaken his head over his descendant's dangerous audacity, if one may judge by the

solemn way in which he mentions poor Mrs. Hutchinson's unpleasant experience, which so grievously

disappointed her maternal expectations. But people used always to be terribly frightened by those irregular

vital products which we now call "interesting specimens" and carefully preserve in jars of alcohol. It took

next to nothing to make a panic; a child was born a few centuries ago with six teeth in its head, and about that

time the Turks began gaining great advantages over the Christians. Of course there was an intimate

connection between the prodigy and the calamity. So said the wise men of that day.

All these outoftheway cases are studied connectedly now, and are found to obey very exact rules. With

a little management one can even manufacture living monstrosities. Malformed salmon and other fish can be

supplied in quantity, if anybody happens to want them. Now, what all I have said is tending to is exactly this,

namely, that just as the celestial movements are regulated by fixed laws, just as bodily monstrosities are

produced according to rule, and with as good reason as normal shapes, so obliquities of character are to be

accounted for on perfectly natural principles; they are just as capable of classification as the bodily ones, and

they all diverge from a certain average or middle term which is the type of its kind. If life had been a little

longer I would have written a number of essays for which, as it is, I cannot expect to have time. I have set

down the titles of a hundred or more, and I have often been tempted to publish these, for according to my

idea, the title of a book very often renders the rest of it unnecessary. "Moral Teratology," for instance, which

is marked No. 67 on my list of "Essays Potential, not Actual," suggests sufficiently well what I should be like

to say in the pages it would preface. People hold up their hands at a moral monster as if there was no reason

for his existence but his own choice. That was a fine specimen we read of in the papers a few years ago, the

Frenchman, it may be remembered, who used to waylay and murder young women, and after appropriating

their effects, bury their bodies in a private cemetery he kept for that purpose. It is very natural, and I do not

say it is not very proper, to hang such eccentric persons as this; but it is not clear whether his vagaries

produce any more sensation at Headquarters than the meek enterprises of the mildest of city missionaries. For

the study of Moral Teratology will teach you that you do not get such a malformed character as that without a

long chain of causes to account for it; and if you only knew those causes, you would know perfectly well

You may feel pretty sure that our friend of the private cemetery was not the child of pious and intelligent

parents; that he was not nurtured by the best of mothers, and educated by the most judicious teachers; and

that he did not come of a lineage long known and honored for its intellectual and moral qualities. Suppose

that one should go to the worst quarter of the city and pick out the worst looking child of the worst couple

he could find, and then train him up successively at the School for Infant Rogues, the Academy for Young

Scamps, and the College for Complete Criminal Education, would it be reasonable to expect a Francois

Xavier or a Henry Martyn to be the result of such a training? The traditionists, in whose presumptuous hands

the science of anthropology has been trusted from time immemorial, have insisted on eliminating cause and

effect from the domain of morals. When they have come across a moral monster they have seemed to think

that he put himself together, having a free choice of all the constituents which make up manhood, and that

I say, hang him and welcome, if that is the best thing for society; hate him, in a certain sense, as you hate a

rattlesnake, but, if you pretend to be a philosopher, recognize the fact that what you hate in him is chiefly

misfortune, and that if you had been born with his villanous low forehead and poisoned instincts, and bred

among creatures of the Races Maudites whose natural history has to be studied like that of beasts of prey and

vermin, you would not have been sitting there in your goldbowed spectacles and passing judgment on the

I have seen men and women so disinterested and noble, and devoted to the best works, that it appeared to me

if any good and faithful servant was entitled to enter into the joys of his Lord, such as these might be. But I

do not know that I ever met with a human being who seemed to me to have a stronger claim on the pitying

consideration and kindness of his Maker than a wretched, puny, crippled, stunted child that I saw in Newgate,

who was pointed out as one of the most notorious and inveterate little thieves in London. I have no doubt that

some of those who were looking at this pitiable morbid secretion of the diseased social organism thought they

It is natural, and in one sense is all right enough. I want to catch a thief and put the extinguisher on an

incendiary as much as my neighbors do; but I have two sides to my consciousness as I have two sides to my

heart, one carrying dark, impure blood, and the other the bright stream which has been purified and vivified

by the great source of life and death,the oxygen of the air which gives all things their vital heat, and burns

One side of me loves and hates; the other side of me judges, say rather pleads and suspends judgment. I think,

if I were left to myself, I should hang a rogue and then write his apology and subscribe to a neat monument,

commemorating, not his virtues, but his misfortunes. I should, perhaps, adorn the marble with emblems, as is

the custom with regard to the more regular and normally constituted members of society. It would not be

proper to put the image of a lamb upon the stone which marked the restingplace of him of the private

cemetery. But I would not hesitate to place the effigy of a wolf or a hyena upon the monument. I do not judge

these animals, I only kill them or shut them up. I presume they stand just as well with their Maker as lambs

and kids, and the existence of such beings is a perpetual plea for God Almighty's poor, yelling, scalping

Indians, his weasandstopping Thugs, his despised felons, his murdering miscreants, and all the unfortunates

whom we, picked individuals of a picked class of a picked race, scrubbed, combed, and catechized from our

cradles upward, undertake to find accommodations for in another state of being where it is to be hoped they

The Master paused, and took off his great round spectacles. I could not help thinking that he looked

benevolent enough to pardon Judas Iscariot just at that moment, though his features can knot themselves up

You are somewhat of a phrenologist, I judge, by the way you talk of instinctive and inherited

They tell me I ought to be,he answered, parrying my question, as I thought.I have had a famous

chart made out of my cerebral organs, according to which I ought to have beensomething more than a poor

I thought a shade of regret deepened the lines on his broad, antiquelooking forehead, and I began talking

about all the sights I had seen in the way of monstrosities, of which I had a considerable list, as you will see

when I tell you my weakness in that direction. This, you understand, Beloved, is private and confidential.

I pay my quarter of a dollar and go into all the sideshows that follow the caravans and circuses round the

country. I have made friends of all the giants and all the dwarfs. I became acquainted with Monsieur Bihin, le

plus bel homme du monde, and one of the biggest, a great many years ago, and have kept up my agreeable

relations with him ever since. He is a most interesting giant, with a softness of voice and tenderness of feeling

which I find very engaging. I was on friendly terms with Mr. Charles Freeman, a very superior giant of

American birth, seven feet four, I think, in height, "doublejointed," of mylodon muscularity, the same who

in a British prizering tossed the Tipton Slasher from one side of the rope to the other, and now lies stretched,

poor fellow! in a mighty grave in the same soil which holds the sacred ashes of Cribb, and the honored dust

of Burke,not the one "commonly called the sublime," but that other Burke to whom Nature had denied the

sense of hearing lest he should be spoiled by listening to the praises of the admiring circles which looked on

his dearbought triumphs. Nor have I despised those little ones whom that devout worshipper of Nature in

her exceptional forms, the distinguished Barnum, has introduced to the notice of mankind. The General

touches his chapeau to me, and the Commodore gives me a sailor's greeting. I have had confidential

interviews with the doubleheaded daughter of Africa,so far, at least, as her twofold personality admitted

of private confidences. I have listened to the touching experiences of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks

belie her susceptible heart. Miss Jane Campbell has allowed me to question her on the delicate subject of

avoirdupois equivalents; and the armless fair one, whose embrace no monarch could hope to win, has

wrought me a watchpaper with those despised digits which have been degraded from gloves to boots in our

I hope you have read my experiences as goodnaturedly as the old Master listened to them. He seemed to be

pleased with my whim, and promised to go with me to see all the sideshows of the next caravan. Before I

left him he wrote my name in a copy of the new edition of his book, telling me that it would not all be new to

me by a great deal, for he often talked what he had printed to make up for having printed a good deal of what

Four of us listened to these lines as the young man read them,the Master and myself and our two ladies.

This was the little party we got up to hear him read. I do not think much of it was very new to the Master or

myself. At any rate, he said to me when we were alone, That is the kind of talk the "natural man," as the

I thought it was the Apostle Paul, and not the theologians, that used the term "natural man, I ventured to

I should like to know where the Apostle Paul learned English?said the Master, with the look of one who

does not mean to be tripped up if he can help himself.But at any rate,he continued,the "natural

man," so called, is worth listening to now and then, for he didn't make his nature, and the Devil did n't make

it; and if the Almighty made it, I never saw or heard of anything he made that wasn't worth attending to.

The young man begged the Lady to pardon anything that might sound harshly in these crude thoughts of his.

He had been taught strange things, he said, from old theologies, when he was a child, and had thought his

way out of many of his early superstitions. As for the Young Girl, our Scheherezade, he said to her that she

must have got dreadfully tired (at which she colored up and said it was no such thing), and he promised that,

to pay for her goodness in listening, he would give her a lesson in astronomy the next fair evening, if she

would be his scholar, at which she blushed deeper than before, and said something which certainly was not

There was no sooner a vacancy on our side of the table, than the Master proposed a change of seats which

would bring the Young Astronomer into our immediate neighborhood. The Scarabee was to move into the

place of our late unlamented associate, the Man of Letters, so called. I was to take his place, the Master to

take mine, and the young man that which had been occupied by the Master. The advantages of this change

were obvious. The old Master likes an audience, plainly enough; and with myself on one side of him, and the

young student of science, whose speculative turn is sufficiently shown in the passages from his poem, on the

other side, he may feel quite sure of being listened to. There is only one trouble in the arrangement, and that

is that it brings this young man not only close to us, but also next to our Scheherezade.

I am obliged to confess that he has shown occasional marks of inattention even while the Master was

discoursing in a way that I found agreeable enough. I am quite sure it is no intentional disrespect to the old

Master. It seems to me rather that he has become interested in the astronomical lessons he has been giving the

Young Girl. He has studied so much alone, that it is naturally a pleasure to him to impart some of his

knowledge. As for his young pupil, she has often thought of being a teacher herself, so that she is of course

very glad to acquire any accomplishment that may be useful to her in that capacity. I do not see any reason

why some of the boarders should have made such remarks as they have done. One cannot teach astronomy to

advantage, without going out of doors, though I confess that when two young people go out by daylight to

study the stars, as these young folks have done once or twice, I do not so much wonder at a remark or

I ought to have told the reader before this that I found, as I suspected, that our innocentlooking

Scheherezade was at the bottom of the popgun business. I watched her very closely, and one day, when the

little monkey made us all laugh by stopping the Member of the Haouse in the middle of a speech he was

repeating to us,it was his great effort of the season on a bill for the protection of horn pout in Little

Muddy River,I caught her making the signs that set him going. At a slight tap of her knife against her

plate, he got all ready, and presently I saw her cross her knife and fork upon her plate, and as she did so, pop!

went the small piece of artillery. The Member of the Haouse was just saying that this bill hit his constitooents

in their most vitalwhen a pellet hit him in the feature of his countenance most exposed to aggressions and

least tolerant of liberties. The Member resented this unparliamentary treatment by jumping up from his chair

and giving the small aggressor a good shaking, at the same time seizing the implement which had caused his

wrath and breaking it into splinters. The Boy blubbered, the Young Girl changed color, and looked as if she

I must own that I have sometimes wished we had the popgun back, for it answered all the purpose of "the

previous question" in a deliberative assembly. No doubt the Young Girl was capricious in setting the little

engine at work, but she cut short a good many disquisitions that threatened to be tedious. I find myself often

wishing for her and her small fellowconspirator's intervention, in company where I am supposed to be

enjoying myself. When my friend the politician gets too far into the personal details of the quorum pars

magna fui, I find myself all at once exclaiming in mental articulation, Popgun! When my friend the

storyteller begins that protracted narrative which has often emptied me of all my voluntary laughter for the

evening, he has got but a very little way when I say to myself, What wouldn't I give for a pellet from that

popgun! In short, so useful has that trivial implement proved as a jawstopper and a boricide, that I never go

to a club or a dinnerparty, without wishing the company included our Scheherezade and That Boy with his

How clearly I see now into the mechanism of the Young Girl's audacious contrivance for regulating our

tabletalk! Her brain is tired half the time, and she is too nervous to listen patiently to what a quieter person

would like well enough, or at least would not be annoyed by. It amused her to invent a scheme for managing

the headstrong talkers, and also let off a certain spirit of mischief which in some of these nervous girls shows

itself in much more questionable forms. How cunning these halfhysteric young persons are, to be sure! I had

to watch a long time before I detected the telegraphic communication between the two conspirators. I have no

doubt she had sedulously schooled the little monkey to his business, and found great delight in the task of

But now that our Scheherezade has become a scholar instead of a teacher, she seems to be undergoing a

remarkable transformation. Astronomy is indeed a noble science. It may well kindle the enthusiasm of a

youthful nature. I fancy at times that I see something of that starry light which I noticed in the young man's

eyes gradually kindling in hers. But can it be astronomy alone that does it? Her color comes and goes more

readily than when the old Master sat next her on the left. It is having this young man at her side, I suppose. Of

course it is. I watch her with great, I may say tender interest. If he would only fall in love with her, seize upon

her wandering affections and fancies as the Romans seized the Sabine virgins, lift her out of herself and her

listless and weary drudgeries, stop the outflow of this young life which is draining itself away in forced

I am afraid all this may never be. I fear that he is too much given to lonely study, to selfcompanionship, to

all sorts of questionings, to looking at life as at a solemn show where he is only a spectator. I dare not build

up a romance on what I have yet seen. My reader may, but I will answer for nothing. I shall wait and see.

The old Master and I have at last made that visit to the Scarabee which we had so long promised ourselves.

When we knocked at his door he came and opened it, instead of saying, Come in. He was surprised, I have no

doubt, at the sound of our footsteps; for he rarely has a visitor, except the little monkey of a boy, and he may

have thought a troop of marauders were coming to rob him of his treasures. Collectors feel so rich in the

possession of their rarer specimens, that they forget how cheap their precious things seem to common eyes,

and are as afraid of being robbed as if they were dealers in diamonds. They have the name of stealing from

each other now and then, it is true, but many of their priceless possessions would hardly tempt a beggar.

Values are artificial: you will not be able to get ten cents of the year 1799 for a dime.

The Scarabee was reassured as soon as he saw our faces, and he welcomed us not ungraciously into his small

apartment. It was hard to find a place to sit down, for all the chairs were already occupied by cases and boxes

full of his favorites. I began, therefore, looking round the room. Bugs of every size and aspect met my eyes

wherever they turned. I felt for the moment as I suppose a man may feel in a fit of delirium tremens.

Presently my attention was drawn towards a very oddlooking insect on the mantelpiece. This animal was

incessantly raising its arms as if towards heaven and clasping them together, as though it were wrestling in

Do look at this creature,I said to the Master, he seems to be very hard at work at his devotions.

Mantas religiosa,said the Master,I know the praying rogue. Mighty devout and mighty cruel; crushes

everything he can master, or impales it on his spiny shanks and feeds upon it, like a gluttonous wretch as he

is. I have seen the Mantis religiosa on a larger scale than this, now and then. A sacred insect, sir,sacred to

many tribes of men; to the Hottentots, to the Turks, yes, sir, and to the Frenchmen, who call the rascal prie

dieu, and believe him to have special charge of children that have lost their way.

Doesn't it seem as if there was a vein of satire as well as of fun that ran through the solemn manifestations of

creative wisdom? And of deception toodo you see how nearly those dried leaves resemble an insect?

They do, indeed,I answered,but not so closely as to deceive me. They remind me of an insect, but I

Oh, you couldn't mistake those dried leaves for an insect, hey? Well, how can you mistake that insect for

dried leaves? That is the question; for insect it is,phyllum siccifolium, the "walking leaf," as some have

The Scarabee did not seem to be amused at the Master's remarks or at my blunder. Science is always

perfectly serious to him; and he would no more laugh over anything connected with his study, than a

They send me all sorts of trumpery,he said, Orthoptera and Lepidoptera; as if a coleopterista

scarabeeistcared for such things. This business is no boy's play to me. The insect population of the world is

not even catalogued yet, and a lifetime given to the scarabees is a small contribution enough to their study. I

like your men of general intelligence well enough,your Linnwuses and your Buffons and your Cuviers; but

Cuvier had to go to Latreille for his insects, and if Latreille had been able to consult me,yes, me,

gentlemen!he would n't have made the blunders he did about some of the coleoptera.

The old Master, as I think you must have found out by this time, you, Beloved, I mean, who read every

word,has a reasonably good opinion, as perhaps he has a right to have, of his own intelligence and

acquirements. The Scarabee's exultation and glow as he spoke of the errors of the great entomologist which

he himself could have corrected, had the effect on the old Master which a lusty crow has upon the feathered

champion of the neighboring barnyard. He too knew something about insects. Had he not discovered a, new

tabanus? Had he not made preparations of the very coleoptera the Scarabee studied so

exclusively,preparations which the illustrious Swammerdam would not have been ashamed of, and

dissected a melolontha as exquisitely as Strauss Durckheim himself ever did it? So the Master, recalling these

studies of his and certain difficult and disputed points at which he had labored in one of his entomological

paroxysms, put a question which there can be little doubt was intended to puzzle the Scarabee, and

perhaps,for the best of us is human (I am beginning to love the old Master, but he has his little weaknesses,

thank Heaven, like the rest of us),I say perhaps, was meant to show that some folks knew as much about

The little driedup specialist did not dilate into fighting dimensions asperhaps, againthe Master may

have thought he would. He looked a mild surprise, but remained as quiet as one of his own beetles when you

touch him and he makes believe he is dead. The blank silence became oppressive. Was the Scarabee crushed,

as so many of his namesakes are crushed, under the heel of this trampling omniscient?

At last the Scarabee creaked out very slowly, "Did I understand you to ask the following question, to wit?"

and so forth; for I was quite out of my depth, and only know that he repeated the Master's somewhat complex

That was exactly my question,said the Master,and I hope it is not uncivil to ask one which seems to

Not uncivil in the least,said the Scarabee, with something as much like a look of triumph as his dry face

permitted,not uncivil at all, but a rather extraordinary question to ask at this date of entomological history.

I settled that question some years ago, by a series of dissections, sixandthirty in number, reported in an

essay I can show you and would give you a copy of, but that I am a little restricted in my revenue, and our

Society has to be economical, so I have but this one. You see, sir,and he went on with elytra and antennae

and tarsi and metatarsi and tracheae and stomata and wing muscles and legmuscles and ganglions,all

plain enough, I do not doubt, to those accustomed to handling dorbugs and squashbugs and such

He paused when he got through, not for an answer, for there evidently was none, but to see how the Master

The Master was loyal to his own generous nature. He felt as a peaceful citizen might feel who had squared off

at a stranger for some supposed wrong, and suddenly discovered that he was undertaking to chastise Mr. Dick

He felt the absurdity of his discomfiture, for he turned to me good naturedly, and said,

To tell the truth, I rather think the Master enjoyed his own defeat. The Scarabee had a right to his victory; a

man does not give his life to the study of a single limited subject for nothing, and the moment we come

across a firstclass expert we begin to take a pride in his superiority. It cannot offend us, who have no right at

all to be his match on his own ground. Besides, there is a very curious sense of satisfaction in getting a fair

chance to sneer at ourselves and scoff at our own pretensions. The first person of our dual consciousness has

been smirking and rubbing his hands and felicitating himself on his innumerable superiorities, until we have

grown a little tired of him. Then, when the other fellow, the critic, the cynic, the Shimei, who has been quiet,

letting selflove and selfglorification have their perfect work, opens fire upon the first half of our

personality and overwhelms it with that wonderful vocabulary of abuse of which he is the unrivalled master,

there is no denying that he enjoys it immensely; and as he is ourself for the moment, or at least the chief

portion of ourself (the other halfself retiring into a dim corner of semiconsciousness and cowering under the

storm of sneers and contumely,you follow me perfectly, Beloved,the way is as plain as the path of the

babe to the maternal fount), as, I say, the abusive fellow is the chief part of us for the time, and he likes to

exercise his slanderous vocabulary, we on the whole enjoy a brief season of selfdepreciation and

It is quite certain that both of us, the Master and myself, conceived on the instant a respect for the Scarabee

which we had not before felt. He had grappled with one difficulty at any rate and mastered it. He had settled

one thing, at least, so it appeared, in such a way that it was not to be brought up again. And now he was

determined, if it cost him the effort of all his remaining days, to close another discussion and put forever to

Your thirtysix dissections must have cost you a deal of time and labor,the Master said.

What have I to do with time, but to fill it up with labor? answered the Scarabee.It is my meat and

drink to work over my beetles. My holidays are when I get a rare specimen. My rest is to watch the habits of

insects, those that I do not pretend to study. Here is my muscarium, my home for houseflies; very

interesting creatures; here they breed and buzz and feed and enjoy themselves, and die in a good old age of a

few months. My favorite insect lives in this other case; she is at home, but in her privatechamber; you shall

He tapped on the glass lightly, and a large, gray, hairy spider came forth from the hollow of a funnellike

And this is all the friend you have to love? said the Master, with a tenderness in his voice which made the

To think of it! Not even a dog to lick his hand, or a cat to purr and rub her fur against him! Oh, these

boardinghouses, these boardinghouses! What forlorn people one sees stranded on their desolate shores!

Decayed gentlewomen with the poor wrecks of what once made their households beautiful, disposed around

them in narrow chambers as they best may be, coming down day after day, poor souls! to sit at the board with

strangers; their hearts full of sad memories which have no language but a sigh, no record but the lines of

sorrow on their features; orphans, creatures with growing tendrils and nothing to cling to; lonely rich men,

casting about them what to do with the wealth they never knew how to enjoy, when they shall no longer

worry over keeping and increasing it; young men and young women, left to their instincts, unguarded,

unwatched, save by malicious eyes, which are sure to be found and to find occupation in these miscellaneous

collections of human beings; and now and then a shred of humanity like this little adust specialist, with just

the resources needed to keep the "radical moisture" from entirely exhaling from his attenuated organism, and

busying himself over a point of science, or compiling a hymnbook, or editing a grammar or a

dictionary;such are the tenants of boardinghouses whom we cannot think of without feeling how sad it is

when the wind is not tempered to the shorn lamb; when the solitary, whose hearts are shrivelling, are not set

I don't remember,he said,that I have heard of such a thing as that before. Mighty curious creatures,

these same houseflies! Talk about miracles! Was there ever anything more miraculous, so far as our

common observation goes, than the coming and the going of these creatures? Why didn't Job ask where the

flies come from and where they go to? I did not say that you and I don't know, but how many people do know

anything about it? Where are the cradles of the young flies? Where are the cemeteries of the dead ones, or do

they die at all except when we kill them? You think all the flies of the year are dead and gone, and there

comes a warm day and all at once there is a general resurrection of 'em; they had been taking a nap, that is all.

I suppose you do not trust your spider in the Muscarium ?said I, addressing the Scarabee.

Not exactly,he answered,she is a terrible creature. She loves me, I think, but she is a killer and a

cannibal among other insects. I wanted to pair her with a male spider, but it wouldn't do.

Wouldn't do?said I,why not? Don't spiders have their mates as well as other folks?

Oh yes, sometimes; but the females are apt to be particular, and if they don't like the mate you offer them

they fall upon him and kill him and eat him up. You see they are a great deal bigger and stronger than the

males, and they are always hungry and not always particularly anxious to have one of the other sex bothering

Woman's rights!said I,there you have it! Why don't those talking ladies take a spider as their

emblem? Let them form arachnoid associations, spinsters and spiders would be a good motto.

The Master smiled. I think it was an eleemosynary smile, for my pleasantry seems to me a particularly

basso rilievo, as I look upon it in cold blood. But conversation at the best is only a thin sprinkling of

occasional felicities set in platitudes and commonplaces. I never heard people talk like the characters in the

"School for Scandal,"I should very much like to.I say the Master smiled. But the Scarabee did not

There are persons whom the very mildest of faecetiae sets off into such convulsions of laughter, that one is

afraid lest they should injure themselves. Even when a jest misses fire completely, so that it is no jest at all,

but only a jocular intention, they laugh just as heartily. Leave out the point of your story, get the word wrong

on the duplicity of which the pun that was to excite hilarity depended, and they still honor your abortive

There is a very opposite class of persons whom anything in the nature of a joke perplexes, troubles, and even

sometimes irritates, seeming to make them think they are trifled with, if not insulted. If you are fortunate

enough to set the whole table laughing, one of this class of persons will look inquiringly round, as if

something had happened, and, seeing everybody apparently amused but himself, feel as if he was being

laughed at, or at any rate as if something had been said which he was not to hear. Often, however, it does not

go so far as this, and there is nothing more than mere insensibility to the cause of other people's laughter, a

sort of jokeblindness, comparable to the wellknown colorblindness with which many persons are afflicted

I have never seen the Scarabee smile. I have seen him take off his goggles,he breakfasts in these

occasionally,I suppose when he has been tiring his poor old eyes out over night gazing through his

microscope,I have seen him take his goggles off, I say, and stare about him, when the rest of us were

laughing at something which amused us, but his features betrayed nothing more than a certain bewilderment,

as if we had been foreigners talking in an unknown tongue. I do not think it was a mere fancy of mine that he

bears a kind of resemblance to the tribe of insects he gives his life to studying. His shiny black coat; his

rounded back, convex with years of stooping over his minute work; his angular movements, made natural to

him by his habitual style of manipulation; the aridity of his organism, with which his voice is in perfect

keeping;all these marks of his special sedentary occupation are so nearly what might be expected, and

indeed so much, in accordance with the more general fact that a man's aspect is subdued to the look of what

he works in, that I do not feel disposed to accuse myself of exaggeration in my account of the Scarabee's

appearance. But I think he has learned something else of his coleopterous friends. The beetles never smile.

Their physiognomy is not adapted to the display of the emotions; the lateral movement of their jaws being

effective for alimentary purposes, but very limited in its gamut of expression. It is with these unemotional

beings that the Scarabee passes his life. He has but one object, and that is perfectly serious, to his mind, in

fact, of absorbing interest and importance. In one aspect of the matter he is quite right, for if the Creator has

taken the trouble to make one of His creatures in just such a way and not otherwise, from the beginning of its

existence on our planet in ages of unknown remoteness to the present time, the man who first explains His

idea to us is charged with a revelation. It is by no means impossible that there may be angels in the celestial

hierarchy to whom it would be new and interesting. I have often thought that spirits of a higher order than

man might be willing to learn something from a human mind like that of Newton, and I see no reason why an

angelic being might not be glad to hear a lecture from Mr. Huxley, or Mr. Tyndall, or one of our friends at

I have been sinuous as the Links of Forth seen from Stirling Castle, or as that other river which threads the

Berkshire valley and runs, a perennial stream, through my memory,from which I please myself with

thinking that I have learned to wind without fretting against the shore, or forgetting cohere I am

flowing,sinuous, I say, but not jerky,no, not jerky nor hard to follow for a reader of the right sort, in the

All this last page or so, you readily understand, has been my private talk with you, the Reader. The cue of

the conversation which I interrupted by this digression is to be found in the words "a good motto;" from

Do you receive many visitors,I mean vertebrates, not articulates? said the Master.

I thought this question might perhaps bring il disiato riso, the longwishedfor smile, but the Scarabee

interpreted it in the simplest zoological sense, and neglected its hint of playfulness with the most absolute

You mean friends, I suppose,he answered. I have correspondents, but I have no friends except this

spider. I live alone, except when I go to my subsection meetings; I get a box of insects now and then, and

send a few beetles to coleopterists in other entomological districts; but science is exacting, and a man that

wants to leave his record has not much time for friendship. There is no great chance either for making friends

among naturalists. People that are at work on different things do not care a great deal for each other's

specialties, and people that work on the same thing are always afraid lest one should get ahead of the other, or

steal some of his ideas before he has made them public. There are none too many people you can trust in your

laboratory. I thought I had a friend once, but he watched me at work and stole the discovery of a new species

from me, and, what is more, had it named after himself. Since that time I have liked spiders better than men.

They are hungry and savage, but at any rate they spin their own webs out of their own insides. I like very well

to talk with gentlemen that play with my branch of entomology; I do not doubt it amused you, and if you

want to see anything I can show you, I shall have no scruple in letting you see it. I have never had any

Upon my honor,I would hold my right hand up and take my Bible oath, if it was not busy with the pen

at this moment,I do not believe the Scarabee had the least idea in the world of the satire on the student of

the Order of Things implied in his invitation to the "amatoor." As for the Master, he stood fire perfectly, as he

always does; but the idea that he, who had worked a considerable part of several seasons at examining and

preparing insects, who believed himself to have given a new tabanus to the catalogue of native diptera, the

idea that he was playing with science, and might be trusted anywhere as a harmless amateur, from whom no

expert could possibly fear any anticipation of his unpublished discoveries, went beyond anything set down in

The poor little Scarabee began fidgeting round about this time, and uttering some halfaudible words,

apologetical, partly, and involving an allusion to refreshments. As he spoke, he opened a small cupboard, and

as he did so out bolted an uninvited tenant of the same, long in person, sable in hue, and swift of movement,

on seeing which the Scarabee simply said, without emotion, blatta, but I, forgetting what was due to good

We could not make up our minds to tax the Scarabee's hospitality, already levied upon by the voracious

articulate. So we both alleged a state of utter repletion, and did not solve the mystery of the contents of the

cupboard,not too luxurious, it may be conjectured, and yet kindly offered, so that we felt there was a moist

filament of the social instinct running like a nerve through that exsiccated and almost anhydrous organism.

We left him with professions of esteem and respect which were real. We had gone, not to scoff, but very

probably to smile, and I will not say we did not. But the Master was more thoughtful than usual.

If I had not solemnly dedicated myself to the study of the Order of Things,he said,I do verily believe

I would give what remains to me of life to the investigation of some single point I could utterly eviscerate and

leave finally settled for the instruction and, it may be, the admiration of all coming time. The keel ploughs ten

thousand leagues of ocean and leaves no trace of its deepgraven furrows. The chisel scars only a few inches

on the face of a rock, but the story it has traced is read by a hundred generations. The eagle leaves no track of

his path, no memory of the place where he built his nest; but a patient mollusk has bored a little hole in a

marble column of the temple of Serapis, and the monument of his labor outlasts the altar and the statue of the

Whew!said I to myself,that sounds a little like what we college boys used to call a "squirt." The

That is from one of my old lectures. A man's tongue wags along quietly enough, but his pen begins

prancing as soon as it touches paper. I know what you are thinkingyou're thinking this is a squirt. That

word has taken the nonsense out of a good many high stepping fellows. But it did a good deal of harm too,

I am at last perfectly satisfied that our Landlady has no designs on the Capitalist, and as well convinced that

any fancy of mine that he was like to make love to her was a mistake. The good woman is too much absorbed

in her children, and more especially in "the Doctor," as she delights to call her son, to be the prey of any

foolish desire of changing her condition. She is doing very well as it is, and if the young man succeeds, as I

have little question that he will, I think it probable enough that she will retire from her position as the head of

a boardinghouse. We have all liked the good woman who have lived with her,I mean we three friends

who have put ourselves on record. Her talk, I must confess, is a little diffuse and not always absolutely

correct, according to the standard of the great Worcester; she is subject to lachrymose cataclysms and

semiconvulsive upheavals when she reverts in memory to her past trials, and especially when she recalls the

virtues of her deceased spouse, who was, I suspect, an adjunct such as one finds not rarely annexed to a

capable matron in charge of an establishment like hers; that is to say, an easygoing, harmless,

fetchandcarry, carveandhelp, get outoftheway kind of neuter, who comes up three times (as they

say drowning people do) every day, namely, at breakfast, dinner, and tea, and disappears, submerged beneath

It is a source of genuine delight to me, who am of a kindly nature enough, according to my own reckoning, to

watch the good woman, and see what looks of pride and affection she bestows upon her Benjamin, and how,

in spite of herself, the maternal feeling betrays its influence in her dispensations of those delicacies which are

the exceptional element in our entertainments. I will not say that Benjamin's mess, like his Scripture

namesake's, is five times as large as that of any of the others, for this would imply either an economical

distribution to the guests in general or heaping the poor young man's plate in a way that would spoil the

appetite of an Esquimau, but you may be sure he fares well if anybody does; and I would have you

I begin really to entertain very sanguine expectations of young Doctor Benjamin Franklin. He has lately been

treating a patient of whose goodwill may prove of great importance to him. The Capitalist hurt one of his

fingers somehow or other, and requested our young doctor to take a look at it. The young doctor asked

nothing better than to take charge of the case, which proved more serious than might have been at first

expected, and kept him in attendance more than a week. There was one very odd thing about it. The Capitalist

seemed to have an idea that he was like to be ruined in the matter of bandages,small strips of worn linen

which any old woman could have spared him from her ragbag, but which, with that strange perversity which

long habits of economy give to a good many elderly people, he seemed to think were as precious as if they

had been turned into paper and stamped with promises to pay in thousands, from the national treasury. It was

impossible to get this whim out of him, and the young doctor had tact enough to humor him in it. All this did

not look very promising for the state of mind in which the patient was like to receive his bill for attendance

when that should be presented. Doctor Benjamin was man enough, however, to come up to the mark, and sent

him in such an account as it was becoming to send a man of ample means who had been diligently and

skilfully cared for. He looked forward with some uncertainty as to how it would be received. Perhaps his

patient would try to beat him down, and Doctor Benjamin made up his mind to have the whole or nothing.

Perhaps he would pay the whole amount, but with a look, and possibly a word, that would make every dollar

Doctor Benjamin's conjectures were not unnatural, but quite remote from the actual fact. As soon as his

patient had got entirely well, the young physician sent in his bill. The Capitalist requested him to step into his

room with him, and paid the full charge in the handsomest and most gratifying way, thanking him for his skill

and attention, and assuring him that he had had great satisfaction in submitting himself to such competent

hands, and should certainly apply to him again in case he should have any occasion for a medical adviser. We

must not be too sagacious in judging people by the little excrescences of their character. Ex pede Herculem

may often prove safe enough, but ex verruca Tullium is liable to mislead a hasty judge of his fellowmen.

I have studied the people called misers and thought a good deal about them. In former years I used to keep a

little gold by me in order to ascertain for myself exactly the amount of pleasure to be got out of handling it;

this being the traditional delight of the oldfashioned miser. It is by no means to be despised. Three or four

hundred dollars in doubleeagles will do very well to experiment on. There is something very agreeable in

the yellow gleam, very musical in the metallic clink, very satisfying in the singular weight, and very

stimulating in the feeling that all the world over these same yellow disks are the masterkeys that let one in

wherever he wants to go, the servants that bring him pretty nearly everything he wants, except virtue,and a

good deal of what passes for that. I confess, then, to an honest liking for the splendors and the specific gravity

and the manifold potentiality of the royal metal, and I understand, after a certain imperfect fashion, the

delight that an old ragged wretch, starving himself in a crazy hovel, takes in stuffing guineas into old

stockings and filling earthen pots with sovereigns, and every now and then visiting his hoards and fingering

the fat pieces, and thinking ever all that they represent of earthly and angelic and diabolic energy. A miser

pouring out his guineas into his palm and bathing his shrivelled and trembling hands in the yellow heaps

before him, is not the prosaic being we are in the habit of thinking him. He is a dreamer, almost a poet. You

and I read a novel or a poem to help our imaginations to build up palaces, and transport us into the emotional

states and the felicitous conditions of the ideal characters pictured in the book we are reading. But think of

him and the significance of the symbols he is handling as compared with the empty syllables and words we

are using to build our aerial edifices with! In this hand he holds the smile of beauty and in that the dagger of

revenge. The contents of that old glove will buy him the willing service of many an adroit sinner, and with

what that coarse sack contains he can purchase the prayers of holy men for all succeeding time. In this chest

is a castle in Spain, a real one, and not only in Spain, but anywhere he will choose to have it. If he would

know what is the liberality of judgment of any of the straiter sects, he has only to hand over that box of

rouleaux to the trustees of one of its educational institutions for the endowment of two or three

professorships. If he would dream of being remembered by coming generations, what monument so enduring

as a college building that shall bear his name, and even when its solid masonry shall crumble give place to

another still charged with the same sacred duty of perpetuating his remembrance. Who was Sir Matthew

Holworthy, that his name is a household word on the lips of thousands of scholars, and will be centuries

hence, as that of Walter de Merton, dead six hundred years ago, is today at Oxford? Who was Mistress

Holden, that she should be blessed among women by having her name spoken gratefully and the little edifice

she caused to be erected preserved as her monument from generation to generation? All these possibilities,

the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life; the tears of grateful orphans by the gallon; the

prayers of Westminster Assembly's Catechism divines by the thousand; the masses of priests by the

century;all these things, and more if more there be that the imagination of a lover of gold is likely to range

over, the miser hears and sees and feels and hugs and enjoys as he paddles with his lean hands among the

sliding, shining, ringing, innocent looking bits of yellow metal, toying with them as the liontamer handles

the great carnivorous monster, whose might and whose terrors are child's play to the latent forces and power

of harmdoing of the glittering counters played with in the great game between angels and devils.

I have seen a good deal of misers, and I think I understand them as well as most persons do. But the

Capitalist's economy in rags and his liberality to the young doctor are very oddly contrasted with each other. I

should not be surprised at any time to hear that he had endowed a scholarship or professorship or built a

I do not know where our Young Astronomer got the notions that he expresses so freely in the lines that

follow. I think the statement is true, however, which I see in one of the most popular Cyclopaedias, that "the

nonclerical mind in all ages is disposed to look favorably upon the doctrine of the universal restoration to

holiness and happiness of all fallen intelligences, whether human or angelic." Certainly, most of the poets

who have reached the heart of men, since Burns dropped the tear for poor "auld Nickieben" that softened the

stonyhearted theology of Scotland, have had "non clerical" minds, and I suppose our young friend is in his

humble way an optimist like them. What he says in verse is very much the same thing as what is said in prose

in all companies, and thought by a great many who are thankful to anybody that will say it for them, not a

We listened to these lines in silence. They were evidently written honestly, and with feeling, and no doubt

meant to be reverential. I thought, however, the Lady looked rather serious as he finished reading. The Young

As we came away the Master said to meThe stubblefields are mighty slow to take fire. These young

fellows catch up with the world's ideas one after another,they have been tamed a long while, but they find

them running loose in their minds, and think they are ferae naturae. They remind me of young sportsmen who

fire at the first feathers they see, and bring down a barnyard fowl. But the chicken may be worth bagging for

Caveat Lector. Let the reader look out for himself. The old Master, whose words I have so frequently quoted

and shall quote more of, is a dogmatist who lays down the law, ex cathedra, from the chair of his own

personality. I do not deny that he has the ambition of knowing something about a greater number of subjects

than any one man ought to meddle with, except in a very humble and modest way. And that is not his way.

There was no doubt something of, humorous bravado in his saying that the actual "order of things" did not

offer a field sufficiently ample for his intelligence. But if I found fault with him, which would be easy

enough, I should say that he holds and expresses definite opinions about matters that he could afford to leave

open questions, or ask the judgment of others about. But I do not want to find fault with him. If he does not

settle all the points he speaks of so authoritatively, he sets me thinking about them, and I like a man as a

companion who is not afraid of a half truth. I know he says some things peremptorily that he may inwardly

debate with himself. There are two ways of dealing with assertions of this kind. One may attack them on the

false side and perhaps gain a conversational victory. But I like better to take them up on the true side and see

how much can be made of that aspect of the dogmatic assertion. It is the only comfortable way of dealing

There have been three famous talkers in Great Britain, either of whom would illustrate what I say about

dogmatists well enough for my purpose. You cannot doubt to what three I refer: Samuel the First, Samuel the

Second, and Thomas, last of the Dynasty. (I mean the living Thomas and not Thomas B.)

I say the last of the Dynasty, for the conversational dogmatist on the imperial scale becomes every year more

and more an impossibility. If he is in intelligent company he will be almost sure to find some one who knows

more about some of the subjects he generalizes upon than any wholesale thinker who handles knowledge by

the cargo is like to know. I find myself, at certain intervals, in the society of a number of experts in science,

literature, and art, who cover a pretty wide range, taking them all together, of human knowledge. I have not

the least doubt that if the great Dr. Samuel Johnson should come in and sit with this company at one of their

Saturday dinners, he would be listened to, as he always was, with respect and attention. But there are subjects

upon which the great talker could speak magisterially in his time and at his club, upon which so wise a man

would express himself guardedly at the meeting where I have supposed him a guest. We have a scientific man

or two among us, for instance, who would be entitled to smile at the good Doctor's estimate of their labors, as

"Of those that spin out life in trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinion of

their own importance and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human

life.""Some turn the wheel of electricity, some suspend rings to a loadstone, and find that what they did

yesterday they can do again today. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully convinced that the

"There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colorless liquors may produce a color by union,

and that two cold bodies will grow hot if they are mingled; they mingle them, and produce the effect

I cannot transcribe this extract without an intense inward delight in its wit and a full recognition of its

thorough halftruthfulness. Yet if while the great moralist is indulging in these vivacities, he can be imagined

as receiving a message from Mr. Boswell or Mrs. Thrale flashed through the depths of the ocean, we can

suppose he might be tempted to indulge in another oracular utterance, something like this: A wise man

recognizes the convenience of a general statement, but he bows to the authority of a particular fact. He who

would bound the possibilities of human knowledge by the limitations of present acquirements would take the

dimensions of the infant in ordering the habiliments of the adult. It is the province of knowledge to speak and

it is the privilege of wisdom to listen. Will the Professor have the kindness to inform me by what steps of

gradual development the ring and the loadstone, which were but yesterday the toys of children and idlers,

have become the means of approximating the intelligences of remote continents, and wafting emotions

This, you understand, Beloved, is only a conventional imitation of the Doctor's style of talking. He wrote

in grand balanced phrases, but his conversation was good, lusty, offhand familiar talk. He used very often to

have it all his own way. If he came back to us we must remember that to treat him fairly we must suppose

him on a level with the knowledge of our own time. But that knowledge is more specialized, a great deal,

than knowledge was in his day. Men cannot talk about things they have seen from the outside with the same

magisterial authority the talking dynasty pretended to. The sturdy old moralist felt grand enough, no doubt,

when he said, "He that is growing great and happy by electrifying a bottle wonders how the world can be

engaged by trifling prattle about war or peace." Benjamin Franklin was one of these idlers who were

electrifying bottles, but he also found time to engage in the trifling prattle about war and peace going on in

those times. The talking Doctor hits him very hard in "Taxation no Tyranny": "Those who wrote the Address

(of the American Congress in 1775), though they have shown no great extent or profundity of mind, are yet

probably wiser than to believe it: but they have been taught by some master of mischief how to put in motion

the engine of political electricity; to attract by the sounds of Liberty and Property, to repel by those of Popery

and Slavery; and to give the great stroke by the name of Boston." The talking dynasty has always been hard

upon us Americans. King Samuel II. says: "It is, I believe, a fact verified beyond doubt, that some years ago

it was impossible to obtain a copy of the Newgate Calendar, as they had all been bought up by the

Americans, whether to suppress the blazon of their forefathers or to assist in their genealogical researches I

could never learn satisfactorily." As for King Thomas, the last of the monological succession, he made such a

piece of work with his prophecies and his sarcasms about our little trouble with some of the Southern States,

that we came rather to pity him for his whims and crotchets than to get angry with him for calling us bores

I do not think we believe things because considerable people say them, on personal authority, that is, as

intelligent listeners very commonly did a century ago. The newspapers have lied that belief out of us. Any

man who has a pretty gift of talk may hold his company a little while when there is nothing better stirring.

Every now and then a man who may be dull enough prevailingly has a passion of talk come over him which

makes him eloquent and silences the rest. I have a great respect for these divine paroxysms, these

halfinspired moments of influx when they seize one whom we had not counted among the luminaries of the

social sphere. But the man who cangive us a fresh experience on anything that interests us overrides

everybody else. A great peril escaped makes a great storyteller of a common person enough. I remember

when a certain vessel was wrecked long ago, that one of the survivors told the story as well as Defoe could

have told it. Never a word from him before; never a word from him since. But when it comes to talking one's

common thoughts,those that come and go as the breath does; those that tread the mental areas and

corridors with steady, even footfall, an interminable procession of every hue and garb,there are few,

indeed, that can dare to lift the curtain which hangs before the window in the breast and throw open the

window, and let us look and listen. We are all loyal enough to our sovereign when he shows himself, but

sovereigns are scarce. I never saw the absolute homage of listeners but once, that I remember, to a man's

common talk, and that was to the conversation of an old man, illustrious by his lineage and the exalted honors

he had won, whose experience had lessons for the wisest, and whose eloquence had made the boldest

All this because I told you to look out for yourselves and not take for absolute truth everything the old Master

of our table, or anybody else at it sees fit to utter. At the same time I do not think that he, or any of us whose

conversation I think worth reporting, says anything for the mere sake of saying it and without thinking that it

I suppose a certain number of my readers wish very heartily that the Young Astronomer whose poetical

speculations I am recording would stop trying by searching to find out the Almighty, and sign the thirtynine

articles, or the Westminster Confession of Faith, at any rate slip his neck into some collar or other, and pull

quietly in the harness, whether it galled him or not. I say, rather, let him have his talk out; if nobody else asks

the questions he asks, some will be glad to hear them, but if you, the reader, find the same questions in your

own mind, you need not be afraid to see how they shape themselves in another's intelligence. Do you

recognize the fact that we are living in a new time? Knowledgeit excites prejudices to call it scienceis

advancing as irresistibly, as majestically, as remorselessly as the ocean moves in upon the shore. The

courtiers of King Canute (I am not afraid of the old comparison), represented by the adherents of the

traditional beliefs of the period, move his chair back an inch at a time, but not until his feet are pretty damp,

not to say wet. The rock on which he sat securely awhile ago is completely under water. And now people are

walking up and down the beach and judging for themselves how far inland the chair of King Canute is like to

be moved while they and their children are looking on, at the rate in which it is edging backward. And it is

The shore, solid, substantial, a great deal more than eighteen hundred years old, is natural humanity. The

beach which the ocean of knowledgeyou may call it science if you likeis flowing over, is theological

humanity. Somewhere between the Sermon on the Mount and the teachings of Saint Augustine sin was made

The doctrine of heritable guilt, with its mechanical consequences, has done for our moral nature what the

doctrine of demoniac possession has done in barbarous times and still does among barbarous tribes for

disease. Out of that black cloud came the lightning which struck the compass of humanity. Conscience, which

from the dawn of moral being had pointed to the poles of right and wrong only as the great current of will

flowed through the soul, was demagnetized, paralyzed, and knew henceforth no fixed meridian, but stayed

where the priest or the council placed it. There is nothing to be done but to polarize the needle over again.

And for this purpose we must study the lines of direction of all the forces which traverse our human nature.

We must study man as we have studied stars and rocks. We need not go, we are told, to our sacred books for

astronomy or geology or other scientific knowledge. Do not stop there! Pull Canute's chair back fifty rods at

once, and do not wait until he is wet to the knees! Say now, bravely, as you will sooner or later have to say,

that we need not go to any ancient records for our anthropology. Do we not all hold, at least, that the doctrine

of man's being a blighted abortion, a miserable disappointment to his Creator, and hostile and hateful to him

from his birth, may give way to the belief that he is the latest terrestrial manifestation of an ever upward

striving movement of divine power? If there lives a man who does not want to disbelieve the popular notions

about the condition and destiny of the bulk of his race, I should like to have him look me in the face and tell

I am not writing for the basement story or the nursery, and I do not pretend to be, but I say nothing in these

pages which would not be said without fear of offence in any intelligent circle, such as clergymen of the

higher castes are in the habit of frequenting. There are teachers in type for our grandmothers and our

grandchildren who vaccinate the two childhoods with wholesome doctrine, transmitted harmlessly from one

infant to another. But we three men at our table have taken the disease of thinking in the natural way. It is an

epidemic in these times, and those who are afraid of it must shut themselves up close or they will catch it.

I hope none of us are wanting in reverence. One at least of us is a regular churchgoer, and believes a man

may be devout and yet very free in the expression of his opinions on the gravest subjects. There may be some

good people who think that our young friend who puts his thoughts in verse is going sounding over perilous

depths, and are frightened every time he throws the lead. There is nothing to be frightened at. This is a manly

world we live in. Our reverence is good for nothing if it does not begin with selfrespect. Occidental

manhood springs from that as its basis; Oriental manhood finds the greatest satisfaction in selfabasement.

There is no use in trying to graft the tropical palm upon the Northern pine. The same divine forces underlie

the growth of both, but leaf and flower and fruit must follow the law of race, of soil, of climate. Whether the

questions which assail my young friend have risen in my reader's mind or not, he knows perfectly well that

nobody can keep such questions from springing up in every young mind of any force or honesty. As for the

excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, Protestant or

Catholic, Jew or Mormon, Mahometan or Buddhist, they signify nothing in the intellectual life of the race. If

the world had been wholly peopled with such halfvitalized mental negatives, there never would have been a

I entirely agree with the spirit of the verses I have looked over, in this point at least, that a true man's

allegiance is given to that which is highest in his own nature. He reverences truth, he loves kindness, he

respects justice. The two first qualities he understands well enough. But the last, justice, at least as between

the Infinite and the finite, has been so utterly dehumanized, disintegrated, decomposed, and diabolized in

passing through the minds of the halfcivilized banditti who have peopled and unpeopled the world for some

scores of generations, that it has become a mere algebraic x, and has no fixed value whatever as a human

As for power, we are outgrowing all superstition about that. We have not the slightest respect for it as such,

and it is just as well to remember this in all our spiritual adjustments. We fear power when we cannot master

it; but just as far as we can master it, we make a slave and a beast of burden of it without hesitation. We

cannot change the ebb and flow of the tides, or the course of the seasons, but we come as near it as we can.

We dam out the ocean, we make roses bloom in winter and water freeze in summer. We have no more

reverence for the sun than we have for a fishtail gasburner; we stare into his face with telescopes as at a

balletdancer with opera glasses; we pick his rays to pieces with prisms as if they were so many skeins of

colored yarn; we tell him we do not want his company and shut him out like a troublesome vagrant. The gods

of the old heathen are the servants of today. Neptune, Vulcan, Aolus, and the bearer of the thunderbolt

himself have stepped down from their pedestals and put on our livery. We cannot always master them, neither

can we always master our servant, the horse, but we have put a bridle on the wildest natural agencies. The

mob of elemental forces is as noisy and turbulent as ever, but the standing army of civilization keeps it well

When I read the Lady's letter printed some time since, I could not help honoring the feeling which prompted

her in writing it. But while I respect the innocent incapacity of tender age and the limitations of the

comparatively uninstructed classes, it is quite out of the question to act as if matters of common intelligence

and universal interest were the private property of a secret society, only to be meddled with by those who

We must get over the habit of transferring the limitations of the nervous temperament and of hectic

constitutions to the great Source of all the mighty forces of nature, animate and inanimate. We may

confidently trust that we have over us a Being thoroughly robust and grandly magnanimous, in distinction

from the Infinite Invalid bred in the studies of sickly monomaniacs, who corresponds to a very common

human type, but makes us blush for him when we contrast him with a truly noble man, such as most of us

I was not a little pleased to find that the Lady, in spite of her letter, sat through the young man's reading of

portions of his poem with a good deal of complacency. I think I can guess what is in her mind. She believes,

as so many women do, in that great remedy for discontent, and doubts about humanity, and questionings of

Providence, and all sorts of youthful vagaries,I mean the love cure. And she thinks, not without some

reason, that these astronomical lessons, and these readings of poetry and daily proximity at the table, and the

need of two young hearts that have been long feeling lonely, and youth and nature and "all impulses of soul

and sense," as Coleridge has it, will bring these two young people into closer relations than they perhaps have

yet thought of; and so that sweet lesson of loving the neighbor whom he has seen may lead him into deeper

The Young Girl evidently did not intend that her accomplice should be a loser by the summary act of the

Member of the Haouse: I took occasion to ask That Boy what had become of all the popguns. He gave me to

understand that popguns were played out, but that he had got a squirt and a whip, and considered himself

This great world is full of mysteries. I can comprehend the pleasure to be got out of the hydraulic engine; but

what can be the fascination of a whip, when one has nothing to flagellate but the calves of his own legs, I

could never understand. Yet a small ridingwhip is the most popular article with the miscellaneous New

Englander at all great gatherings,cattleshows and FourthofJuly celebrations. If Democritus and

Heraclitus could walk arm in arm through one of these crowds, the first would be in a broad laugh to see the

multitude of young persons who were rejoicing in the possession of one of these useless and worthless little

commodities; happy himself to see how easily others could purchase happiness. But the second would weep

bitter tears to think what a rayless and barren life that must be which could extract enjoyment from the

miserable flimsy wand that has such magic attraction for sauntering youths and simpering maidens. What a

dynamometer of happiness are these paltry toys, and what a rudimentary vertebrate must be the freckled

adolescent whose yearning for the infinite can be stayed even for a single hour by so trifling a boon from the

Pardon these polysyllabic reflections, Beloved, but I never contemplate these dear fellowcreatures of ours

without a delicious sense of superiority to them and to all arrested embryos of intelligence, in which I have no

doubt you heartily sympathize with me. It is not merely when I look at the vacuous countenances of the

mastigophori, the whipholders, that I enjoy this luxury (though I would not miss that holiday spectacle for a

pretty sum of money, and advise you by all means to make sure of it next Fourth of July, if you missed it

I delight in Regalia, so called, of the kind not worn by kings, nor obtaining their diamonds from the mines of

Golconda. I have a passion for those resplendent titles which are not conferred by a sovereign and would not

be the open sesame to the courts of royalty, yet which are as opulent in impressive adjectives as any Knight

of the Garter's list of dignities. When I have recognized in the every day name of His Very Worthy High

Eminence of some cabalistic association, the inconspicuous individual whose trifling indebtedness to me for

value received remains in a quiescent state and is likely long to continue so, I confess to having experienced a

thrill of pleasure. I have smiled to think how grand his magnificent titular appendages sounded in his own

ears and what a feeble tintinnabulation they made in mine. The crimson sash, the broad diagonal belt of the

mounted marshal of a great procession, so cheap in themselves, yet so entirely satisfactory to the wearer,

Perhaps I should have enjoyed all these weaknesses of my infantile fellowcreatures without an afterthought,

except that on a certain literary anniversary when I tie the narrow blue and pink ribbons in my buttonhole

and show my decorated bosom to the admiring public, I am conscious of a certain sense of distinction and

superiority in virtue of that trifling addition to my personal adornments which reminds me that I too have

I hope I have not hurt your feelings, if you happen to be a High and Mighty Grand Functionary in any

illustrious Fraternity. When I tell you that a bit of ribbon in my buttonhole sets my vanity prancing, I think

you cannot be grievously offended that I smile at the resonant titles which make you something more than

human in your own eyes. I would not for the world be mistaken for one of those literary roughs whose brass

There is a human subspecies characterized by the coarseness of its fibre and the acrid nature of its

intellectual secretions. It is to a certain extent penetrative, as all creatures are which are provided with stings.

It has an instinct which guides it to the vulnerable parts of the victim on which it fastens. These two qualities

give it a certain degree of power which is not to be despised. It might perhaps be less mischievous, but for the

fact that the wound where it leaves its poison opens the fountain from which it draws its nourishment.

Beings of this kind can be useful if they will only find their appropriate sphere, which is not literature, but

that circle of roughandtumble political life where the finefibred men are at a discount, where epithets find

their subjects poisonproof, and the sting which would be fatal to a literary debutant only wakes the

eloquence of the pachydermatous wardroom politician to a fiercer shriek of declamation.

The Master got talking the other day about the difference between races and families. I am reminded of what

he said by what I have just been saying myself about coarsefibred and finefibred people.

We talk about a Yankee, a NewEnglander,he said,as if all of 'em were just the same kind of animal.

"There is knowledge and knowledge," said John Bunyan. There are Yankees and Yankees. Do you know two

native trees called pitch pine and white pine respectively? Of course you know 'em. Well, there are

pitchpine Yankees and whitepine Yankees. We don't talk about the inherited differences of men quite as

freely, perhaps, as they do in the Old World, but republicanism doesn't alter the laws of physiology. We have

a native aristocracy, a superior race, just as plainly marked by nature as of a higher and finer grade than the

common run of people as the white pine is marked in its form, its stature, its bark, its delicate foliage, as

belonging to the nobility of the forest; and the pitch pine, stubbed, rough, coarsehaired, as of the plebeian

order. Only the strange thing is to see in what a capricious way our natural nobility is distributed. The last

born nobleman I have seen, I saw this morning; he was pulling a rope that was fastened to a Maine schooner

loaded with lumber. I should say he was about twenty years old, as fine a figure of a young man as you would

ask to see, and with a regular Greek outline of countenance, waving hair, that fell as if a sculptor had massed

it to copy, and a complexion as rich as a red sunset. I have a notion that the State of Maine breeds the natural

nobility in a larger proportion than some other States, but they spring up in all sorts of outoftheway

places. The young fellow I saw this morning had on an old flannel shirt, a pair of trowsers that meant hard

work, and a cheap cloth cap pushed back on his head so as to let the large waves of hair straggle out over his

forehead; he was tugging at his rope with the other sailors, but upon my word I don't think I have seen a

young English nobleman of all those whom I have looked upon that answered to the notion of "blood " so

well as this young fellow did. I suppose if I made such a levelling confession as this in public, people would

think I was looking towards being the laborreform candidate for President. But I should go on and spoil my

prospects by saying that I don't think the whitepine Yankee is the more generally prevailing growth, but

The Member of the Haouse seemed to have been getting a dim idea that all this was not exactly flattering

to the huckleberry districts. His features betrayed the growth of this suspicion so clearly that the Master

replied to his look as if it had been a remark. [I need hardly say that this particular member of the General

Court was a pitchpine Yankee of the most thoroughly characterized aspect and flavor.]

Yes, Sir,the Master continued,Sir being anybody that listened, there is neither flattery nor offence

in the views which a physiological observer takes of the forms of life around him. It won't do to draw

individual portraits, but the differences of natural groups of human beings are as proper subjects of remark as

those of different breeds of horses, and if horses were Houyhnhnms I don't think they would quarrel with us

because we made a distinction between a "Morgan" and a "Messenger." The truth is, Sir, the lean sandy soil

and the droughts and the long winters and the eastwinds and the cold storms, and all sorts of unknown local

influences that we can't make out quite so plainly as these, have a tendency to roughen the human

organization and make it coarse, something as it is with the tree I mentioned. Some spots and some strains of

blood fight against these influences, but if I should say right out what I think, it would be that the finest

human fruit, on the whole; and especially the finest women that we get in New England are raised under

Give me cowcumbers raised in the open air, said the Capitalist, who was a little hard of hearing.

Perhaps,I remarked,it might be as well if you would explain this last expression of yours. Raising

human beings under glass I take to be a metaphorical rather than a literal statement of your meaning.

No, Sir!replied the Master, with energy,I mean just what I say, Sir. Under glass, and with a south

exposure. During the hard season, of course,for in the heats of summer the tenderest hot house plants are

not afraid of the open air. Protection is what the transplanted Aryan requires in this New England climate.

Keep him, and especially keep her, in a wide street of a wellbuilt city eight months of the year; good solid

brick walls behind her, good sheets of plateglass, with the sun shining warm through them, in front of her,

and you have put her in the condition of the pineapple, from the land of which, and not from that of the

other kind of pine, her race started on its travels. People don't know what a gain there is to health by living in

cities, the best parts of them of course, for we know too well what the worst parts are. In the first place you

get rid of the noxious emanations which poison so many country localities with typhoid fever and dysentery,

not wholly rid of them, of course, but to a surprising degree. Let me tell you a doctor's story. I was visiting a

Western city a good many years ago; it was in the autumn, the time when all sorts of malarious diseases are

about. The doctor I was speaking of took me to see the cemetery just outside the town, I don't know how

much he had done to fill it, for he didn't tell me, but I'll tell you what he did say.

"Look round," said the doctor. "There isn't a house in all the ten mile circuit of country you can see over,

where there isn't one person, at least, shaking with fever and ague. And yet you need n't be afraid of carrying

I think it likelythe Master went on to saythat my friend the doctor put it pretty strongly, but there is

no doubt at all that while all the country round was suffering from intermittent fever, the paved part of the

city was comparatively exempted. What do you do when you build a house on a damp soil, and there are

damp soils pretty much everywhere? Why you floor the cellar with cement, don't you? Well, the soil of a city

is cemented all over, one may say, with certain qualifications of course. A firstrate city house is a regular

sanatorium. The only trouble is, that the little goodfor nothings that come of utterly usedup and wornout

stock, and ought to die, can't die, to save their lives. So they grow up to dilute the vigor of the race with

skimmilk vitality. They would have died, like good children, in most average country places; but eight

months of shelter in a regulated temperature, in a wellsunned house, in a duly moistened air, with good

sidewalks to go about on in all weather, and four months of the cream of summer and the fresh milk of Jersey

cows, make the little sham organizationsthe wormeaten wind falls, for that 's what they look likehang

on to the boughs of life like "frozenthaws"; regular struldbrugs they come to be, a good many of 'em.

The Scarabee's ear was caught by that queer word of Swift's, and he asked very innocently what kind of

bugs he was speaking of, whereupon That Boy shouted out, Straddlebugs! to his own immense amusement

and the great bewilderment of the Scarabee, who only saw that there was one of those unintelligible breaks in

the conversation which made other people laugh, and drew back his antennae as usual, perplexed, but not

I do not believe the Master had said all he was going to say on this subject, and of course all these statements

of his are more or less onesided. But that some invalids do much better in cities than in the country is

indisputable, and that the frightful dysenteries and fevers which have raged like pestilences in many of our

country towns are almost unknown in the better built sections of some of our large cities is getting to be more

generally understood since our wellto do people have annually emigrated in such numbers from the

cemented surface of the city to the steaming soil of some of the dangerous rural districts. If one should

contrast the healthiest country residences with the worst city ones the result would be all the other way, of

course, so that there are two sides to the question, which we must let the doctors pound in their great mortar,

infuse and strain, hoping that they will present us with the clear solution when they have got through these

processes. One of our chief wants is a complete sanitary map of every State in the Union.

The balance of our table, as the reader has no doubt observed, has been deranged by the withdrawal of the

Man of Letters, so called, and only the side of the deficiency changed by the removal of the Young

Astronomer into our neighborhood. The fact that there was a vacant chair on the side opposite us had by no

means escaped the notice of That Boy. He had taken advantage of his opportunity and invited in a schoolmate

whom he evidently looked upon as a great personage. This boy or youth was a good deal older than himself

and stood to him apparently in the light of a patron and instructor in the ways of life. A very jaunty, knowing

young gentleman he was, goodlooking, smartly dressed, smoothchecked as yet, curlyhaired, with a

roguish eye, a sagacious wink, a ready tongue, as I soon found out; and as I learned could catch a ball on the

fly with any boy of his age; not quarrelsome, but, if he had to strike, hit from the shoulder; the pride of his

father (who was a man of property and a civic dignitary), and answering to the name of Johnny.

I was a little surprised at the liberty That Boy had taken in introducing an extra peptic element at our table,

reflecting as I did that a certain number of avoirdupois ounces of nutriment which the visitor would dispose

of corresponded to a very appreciable pecuniary amount, so that he was levying a contribution upon our

Landlady which she might be inclined to complain of. For the Caput mortuum (or deadhead, in vulgar phrase)

is apt to be furnished with a Venter vivus, or, as we may say, a lively appetite. But the Landlady welcomed

Why! howdoyoudo Johnny?! with the notes of interrogation and of admiration both together, as

Johnny signified that he was doing about as well as could be expected under the circumstances, having just

had a little difference with a young person whom he spoke of as "Pewterjaw" (I suppose he had worn a

dentist's toothstraightening contrivance during his second dentition), which youth he had finished off, as he

said, in good shape, but at the expense of a slight epistaxis, we will translate his vernacular expression.

The three ladies all looked sympathetic, but there did not seem to be any great occasion for it, as the boy

Oh, the Governor and the Head Centre? A 1, both of 'em. Prime order for shipping,warranted to stand

any climate. The Governor says he weighs a hunderd and seventyfive pounds. Got a chintuft just like Ed'in

Forrest. D'd y' ever see Ed'in Forrest play Metamora? Bully, I tell you! My old gentleman means to be Mayor

or Governor or President or something or other before he goes off the handle, you'd better b'lieve. He's

Somehow or other I felt as if I had seen this boy before, or known something about him. Where did he get

those expressions "A 1" and "prime" and so on? They must have come from somebody who has been in the

retail drygoods business, or something of that nature. I have certain vague reminiscences that carry me back

Boarded with her, no doubt.There was somebody by the name of John, I remember perfectly well,

lived with her. I remember both my friends mentioned him, one of them very often. I wonder if this boy isn't

a son of his! I asked the Landlady after breakfast whether this was not, as I had suspected, the son of that

To be sure he is,she answered,and jest such a goodnatur'd sort of creatur' as his father was. I always

liked John, as we used to call his father. He did love fun, but he was a good soul, and stood by me when I was

in trouble, always. He went into business on his own account after a while, and got merried, and settled down

into a family man. They tell me he is an amazing smart business man,grown wealthy, and his wife's father

left her money. But I can't help calling him John,law, we never thought of calling him anything else, and

he always laughs and says, "That's right." This is his oldest son, and everybody calls him Johnny. That Boy of

ours goes to the same school with his boy, and thinks there never was anybody like him,you see there was

a boy undertook to impose on our boy, and Johnny gave the other boy a good licking, and ever since that he

is always wanting to have Johnny round with him and bring him here with him,and when those two boys

get together, there never was boys that was so chock full of fun and sometimes mischief, but not very bad

mischief, as those two boys be. But I like to have him come once in a while when there is room at the table,

as there is now, for it puts me in mind of the old times, when my old boarders was all round me, that I used to

think so much of,not that my boarders that I have now a'nt very nice people, but I did think a dreadful sight

of the gentleman that made that first book; it helped me on in the world more than ever he knew of,for it

was as good as one of them Brandreth's pills advertisements, and did n't cost me a cent, and that young lady

he merried too, she was nothing but a poor young schoolma'am when she come to my house, and nowand

she deserved it all too; for she was always just the same, rich or poor, and she is n't a bit prouder now she

wears a camel'shair shawl, than she was when I used to lend her a woollen one to keep her poor dear little

shoulders warm when she had to go out and it was storming,and then there was that old gentleman,I

can't speak about him, for I never knew how good he was till his will was opened, and then it was too late to

I respected the feeling which caused the interval of silence, and found my own eyes moistened as I

remembered how long it was since that friend of ours was sitting in the chair where I now sit, and what a tidal

wave of change has swept over the world and more especially over this great land of ours, since he opened

The Young Astronomer has read us another extract from his manuscript. I ran my eye over it, and so far as I

have noticed it is correct enough in its versification. I suppose we are getting gradually over our

hemispherical provincialism, which allowed a set of monks to pull their hoods over our eyes and tell us there

was no meaning in any religious symbolism but our own. If I am mistaken about this advance I am very glad

I suppose there would have been even more remarks upon the growing intimacy of the Young Astronomer

and his pupil, if the curiosity of the boarders had not in the mean time been so much excited at the apparently

close relation which had sprung up between the Register of Deeds and the Lady. It was really hard to tell

what to make of it. The Register appeared at the table in a new coat. Suspicious. The Lady was evidently

deeply interested in him, if we could judge by the frequency and the length of their interviews. On at least

one occasion he has brought a lawyer with him, which naturally suggested the idea that there were some

property arrangements to be attended to, in case, as seems probable against all reasons to the contrary, these

two estimable persons, so utterly unfitted, as one would say, to each other, contemplated an alliance. It is no

pleasure to me to record an arrangement of this kind. I frankly confess I do not know what to make of it. With

her tastes and breeding, it is the last thing that I should have thought of,her uniting herself with this most

commonplace and mechanical person, who cannot even offer her the elegances and luxuries to which she

While I was thus interested and puzzled I received an unexpected visit from our Landlady. She was evidently

excited, and by some event which was of a happy nature, for her countenance was beaming and she seemed

impatient to communicate what she had to tell. Impatient or not, she must wait a moment, while I say a word

about her. Our Landlady is as good a creature as ever lived. She is a little negligent of grammar at times, and

will get a wrong word now and then; she is garrulous, circumstantial, associates facts by their accidental

cohesion rather than by their vital affinities, is given to choking and tears on slight occasions, but she has a

warm heart, and feels to her boarders as if they were her bloodrelations. She began her conversation

You don't seem very unhappy about it, madam,I answered.We all took it easily when the person

who sat on our side of the table quitted us in such a hurry, but I do not think there is anybody left that either

You! said the Landladyyou! No indeed. When I have a quiet boarder that 's a small eater, I don't want to

lose him. You don't make trouble, you don't find fault with your vit[Dr. Benjamin had schooled his parent

on this point and she altered the word] with your food, and you know when you 've had enough.

I really felt proud of this eulogy, which embraces the most desirable excellences of a human being in the

The Landlady began again. I'm going to loseat least, I suppose I shallone of the best boarders I ever

Something! I should think there was! About three months ago he began making her acquaintance. I

thought there was something particular. I did n't quite like to watch 'em very close; but I could n't help

overbearing some of the things he said to her, for, you see, he used to follow her up into the parlor, they

talked pretty low, but I could catch a word now and then. I heard him say something to her one day about

"bettering her condition," and she seemed to be thinking very hard about it, and turning of it over in her mind,

and I said to myself, She does n't want to take up with him, but she feels dreadful poor, and perhaps he has

been saving and has got money in the bank, and she does n't want to throw away a chance of bettering herself

without thinking it over. But dear me, says I to myself,to think of her walking up the broad aisle into

meeting alongside of such a homely, rustylooking creatur' as that! But there 's no telling what folks will do

Well, so I thought she was waiting to make up her mind, and he was hanging on in hopes she'd come

round at last, as women do half the time, for they don't know their own minds and the wind blows both ways

at once with 'em as the smoke blows out of the tall chimlies, east out of this one and west out of that,so

But yesterday she comes up to me after breakfast, and asks me to go up with her into her little room. Now,

says I to myself, I shall hear all about it. I saw she looked as if she'd got some of her trouble off her mind, and

I guessed that it was settled, and so, says I to myself, I must wish her joy and hope it's all for the best,

Well, she asked me to set down, and then she begun. She said that she was expecting to have a change in

her condition of life, and had asked me up so that I might' have the first news of it. I am sure says II

wish you both joy. Merriage is a blessed thing when folks is well sorted, and it is an honorable thing, and the

first meracle was at the merriage in Canaan. It brings a great sight of happiness with it, as I've had a chance of

The Landlady showed her usual tendency to "break" from the conversational pace just at this point, but

Merriage!says she,pray who has said anything about merriage ? I beg your pardon, ma'am,says

I,I thought you had spoke of changing your condition and IShe looked so I stopped right short.

Don't say another word, says she, but jest listen to what I am going to tell you.

My friend, says she, that you have seen with me so often lately, was hunting among his old Record books,

when all at once he come across an old deed that was made by somebody that had my family name. He took

it into his head to read it over, and he found there was some kind of a condition that if it was n't kept, the

property would all go back to them that was the heirs of the one that gave the deed, and that he found out was

me. Something or other put it into his head, says she, that the company that owned the propertyit was ever

so rich a company and owned land all round everywherehadn't kept to the conditions. So he went to work,

says she, and hunted through his books and he inquired all round, and he found out pretty much all about it,

and at last he come to meit 's my boarder, you know, that says all thisand says he, Ma'am, says he, if

you have any kind of fancy for being a rich woman you've only got to say so. I didn't know what he meant,

and I began to think, says she, he must be crazy. But he explained it all to me, how I'd nothing to do but go to

court and I could get a sight of property back. Well, so she went on telling methere was ever so much more

that I suppose was all plain enough, but I don't remember it allonly I know my boarder was a good deal

worried at first at the thought of taking money that other people thought was theirs, and the Register he had to

talk to her, and he brought a lawyer and he talked to her, and her friends they talked to her, and the upshot of

it all was that the company agreed to settle the business by paying her, well, I don't know just how much, but

I may as well add here that, as I have since learned, this is one of the most important cases of releasing right

of reentry for condition broken which has been settled by arbitration for a considerable period. If I am not

mistaken the Register of Deeds will get something more than a new coat out of this business, for the Lady

very justly attributes her change of fortunes to his sagacity and his activity in following up the hint he had

So my supernumerary fellowboarder, whom I would have dispensed with as a cumberer of the table, has

One would have thought that the most scrupulous person need not have hesitated in asserting an unquestioned

legal and equitable claim simply because it had lain a certain number of years in abeyance. But before the

Lady could make up her mind to accept her good fortune she had been kept awake many nights in doubt and

inward debate whether she should avail herself of her rights. If it had been private property, so that another

person must be made poor that she should become rich, she would have lived and died in want rather than

claim her own. I do not think any of us would like to turn out the possessor of a fine estate enjoyed for two or

three generations on the faith of unquestioned ownership by making use of some old forgotten instrument,

But it was all nonsense to indulge in any sentiment in a case like this, where it was not only a right, but a duty

which she owed herself and others in relation with her, to accept what Providence, as it appeared, had thrust

upon her, and when no suffering would be occasioned to anybody. Common sense told her not to refuse it. So

did several of her rich friends, who remembered about this time that they had not called upon her for a good

Never had that lady's carriage stood before the door of our boarding house so long, never had it stopped so

often, as since the revelation which had come from the Registry of Deeds. Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not a

bad woman, but she loved and hated in too exclusive and fastidious a way to allow us to consider her as

representing the highest ideal of womanhood. She hated narrow illventilated courts, where there was

nothing to see if one looked out of the window but old men in dressinggowns and old women in caps; she

hated little dark rooms with airtight stoves in them; she hated rusty bombazine gowns and last year's

bonnets; she hated gloves that were not as fresh as newlaid eggs, and shoes that had grown bulgy and

wrinkled in service; she hated common crockeryware and teaspoons of slight constitution; she hated second

appearances on the dinnertable; she ~ hated coarse napkins and tablecloths; she hated to ride in the

horsecars; she hated to walk except for short distances, when she was tired of sitting in her carriage. She

loved with sincere and undisguised affection a spacious city mansion and a charming country villa, with a

seaside cottage for a couple of months or so; she loved a perfectly appointed household, a cook who was up

to all kinds of salmis and volauvents, a French maid, and a stylishlooking coachman, and the rest of the

people necessary to help one live in a decent manner; she loved pictures that other people said were first

rate, and which had at least cost firstrate prices; she loved books with handsome backs, in showy cases; she

loved heavy and richly wought plate; fine linen and plenty of it; dresses from Paris frequently, and as many

as could be got in without troubling the customhouse; Russia sables and Venetian pointlace; diamonds, and

good big ones; and, speaking generally, she loved dear things in distinction from cheap ones, the real article

For the life of me I cannot see anything Satanic in all this. Tell me, Beloved, only between ourselves, if some

of these things are not desirable enough in their way, and if you and I could not make up our minds to put up

with some of the least objectionable of them without any great inward struggle? Even in the matter of

ornaments there is something to be said. Why should we be told that the New Jerusalem is paved with gold,

and that its twelve gates are each of them a pearl, and that its foundations are garnished with sapphires and

emeralds and all manner of precious stones, if these are not among the most desirable of objects? And is there

anything very strange in the fact that many a daughter of earth finds it a sweet foretaste of heaven to wear

about her frail earthly tabernacle these glittering reminders of the celestial city?

Mrs. Midas Goldenrod was not so entirely peculiar and anomalous in her likes and dislikes; the only trouble

was that she mixed up these accidents of life too much with life itself, which is so often serenely or actively

noble and happy without reference to them. She valued persons chiefly according to their external conditions,

and of course the very moment her relative, the Lady of our breakfasttable, began to find herself in a streak

of sunshine she came forward with a lighted candle to show her which way her path lay before her.

The Lady saw all this, how plainly, how painfully! yet she exercised a true charity for the weakness of her

relative. Sensible people have as much consideration for the frailties of the rich as for those of the poor. There

is a good deal of excuse for them. Even you and I, philosophers and philanthropists as we may think

ourselves, have a dislike for the enforced economies, proper and honorable though they certainly are, of those

These are very worthy persons you have been living with, my dear, said Mrs. Midas[the "My dear "

was an expression which had flowered out more luxuriantly than ever before in the new streak of sunshine]

eminently respectable parties, I have no question, but then we shall want you to move as soon as possible

to our quarter of the town, where we can see more of you than we have been able to in this queer place.

It was not very pleasant to listen to this kind of talk, but the Lady remembered her annual bouquet, and her

occasional visits from the rich lady, and restrained the inclination to remind her of the humble sphere from

which she herself, the rich and patronizing personage, had worked her way up (if it was up) into that world

which she seemed to think was the only one where a human being could find life worth having. Her cheek

flushed a little, however, as she said to Mrs. Midas that she felt attached to the place where she had been

living so long. She doubted, she was pleased to say, whether she should find better company in any circle she

was like to move in than she left behind her at our boardinghouse. I give the old Master the credit of this

compliment. If one does not agree with half of what he says, at any rate he always has something to say, and

entertains and lets out opinions and whims and notions of one kind and another that one can quarrel with if he

is out of humor, or carry away to think about if he happens to be in the receptive mood.

But the Lady expressed still more strongly the regret she should feel at leaving her young friend, our

Scheherezade. I cannot wonder at this. The Young Girl has lost what little playfulness she had in the earlier

months of my acquaintance with her. I often read her stories partly from my interest in her, and partly

because I find merit enough in them to deserve something, better than the rough handling they got from her

coarsefibred critic, whoever he was. I see evidence that her thoughts are wandering from her task, that she

has fits of melancholy, and bursts of tremulous excitement, and that she has as much as she can do to keep

herself at all to her stated, inevitable, and sometimes almost despairing literary labor. I have had some

acquaintance with vital phenomena of this kind, and know something of the nervous nature of young women

and its "magnetic storms," if I may borrow an expression from the physicists, to indicate the perturbations to

which they are liable. She is more in need of friendship and counsel now than ever before, it seems to me,

and I cannot bear to think that the Lady, who has become like a mother to her, is to leave her to her own

It is plain enough what is at the bottom of this disturbance. The astronomical lessons she has been taking

have become interesting enough to absorb too much of her thoughts, and she finds them wandering to the

stars or elsewhere, when they should be working quietly in the editor's harness.

The Landlady has her own views on this matter which she communicated to me something as follows:

I don't quite like to tell folks what a lucky place my boarding house is, for fear I should have all sorts of

people crowding in to be my boarders for the sake of their chances. Folks come here poor and they go away

rich. Young women come here without a friend in the world, and the next thing that happens is a gentleman

steps up to 'em and says, "If you'll take me for your pardner for life, I'll give you a good home and love you

ever so much besides"; and off goes my young ladyboarder into a fine threestory house, as grand as the

governor's wife, with everything to make her comfortable, and a husband to care for her into the bargain.

That's the way it is with the young ladies that comes to board with me, ever since the gentleman that wrote

the first book that advertised my establishment (and never charged me a cent for it neither) merried the

Schoolma'am. And I think but that's between you and methat it 's going to be the same thing right over

again between that young gentleman and this young girl hereif she doos n't kill herself with writing for

them news papers,it 's too bad they don't pay her more for writing her stories, for I read one of 'em that

made me cry so the Doctormy Doctor Benjaminsaid, "Ma, what makes your eyes look so?" and wanted

to rig a machine up and look at 'em, but I told him what the matter was, and that he needn't fix up his peeking

contrivances on my account,anyhow she's a nice young woman as ever lived, and as industrious with that

pen of hers as if she was at work with a sewingmachine,and there ain't much difference, for that matter,

between sewing on shirts and writing on stories,one way you work with your foot, and the other way you

work with your fingers, but I rather guess there's more headache in the stories than there is in the stitches,

because you don't have to think quite so hard while your foot's going as you do when your fingers is at work,

It occurred to me that this last suggestion of the Landlady was worth considering by the softhanded,

broadclothclad spouters to the laboring classes,so called in distinction from the idle people who only

contrive the machinery and discover the processes and lay out the work and draw the charts and organize the

various movements which keep the world going and make it tolerable. The organblower works harder with

his muscles, for that matter, than the organ player, and may perhaps be exasperated into thinking himself a

I will not pretend that it needed the Landlady's sagacious guess about the Young Astronomer and his pupil to

open my eyes to certain possibilities, if not probabilities, in that direction. Our Scheherezade kept on writing

her stories according to agreement, so many pages for so many dollars, but some of her readers began to

complain that they could not always follow her quite so well as in her earlier efforts. It seemed as if she must

have fits of absence. In one instance her heroine began as a blonde and finished as a brunette; not in

consequence of the use of any cosmetic, but through simple inadvertence. At last it happened in one of her

stories that a prominent character who had been killed in an early page, not equivocally, but mortally,

definitively killed, done for, and disposed of, reappeared as if nothing had happened towards the close of her

narrative. Her mind was on something else, and she had got two stories mixed up and sent her manuscript

without having looked it over. She told this mishap to the Lady, as something she was dreadfully ashamed of

and could not possibly account for. It had cost her a sharp note from the publisher, and would be as good as a

The Lady listened to all this very thoughtfully, looking at her with great tenderness, and said, "My poor

When a man holds his tongue it does not signify much. But when a woman dispenses with the office of that

mighty member, when she sheathes her natural weapon at a trying moment, it means that she trusts to still

more formidable enginery; to tears it may be, a solvent more powerful than that with which Hannibal

softened the Alpine rocks, or to the heaving bosom, the sight of which has subdued so many stout natures, or,

it may be, to a sympathizing, quieting look which says "Peace, be still!" to the winds and waves of the little

While these matters were going on the Master and I had many talks on many subjects. He had found me a

pretty good listener, for I had learned that the best way of getting at what was worth having from him was to

wind him up with a question and let him run down all of himself. It is easy to turn a good talker into an

insufferable bore by contradicting him, and putting questions for him to stumble over, that is, if he is not a

Come into my library with me. I want to read you some new passages from an interleaved copy of my

book. You haven't read the printed part yet. I gave you a copy of it, but nobody reads a book that is given to

him. Of course not. Nobody but a fool expects him to. He reads a little in it here and there, perhaps, and he

cuts all the leaves if he cares enough about the writer, who will be sure to call on him some day, and if he is

left alone in his library for five minutes will have hunted every corner of it until he has found the book he

sent,if it is to be found at all, which does n't always happen, if there's a penal colony anywhere in a garret

Give him a goodnatured adjective or two if I can, and thank him, and tell him I am lying under a sense of

Yes, but look out for the fellows that send you a copy of their book to trap you into writing a bookseller's

advertisement for it. I got caught so once, and never heard the end of it and never shall hear it.He took

down an elegantly bound volume, on opening which appeared a flourishing and eminently flattering

dedication to himself.There,said he, what could I do less than acknowledge such a compliment in

polite terms, and hope and expect the book would prove successful, and so forth and so forth? Well, I get a

letter every few months from some new locality where the man that made that book is covering the fences

with his placards, asking me whether I wrote that letter which he keeps in stereotype and has kept so any time

these dozen or fifteen years. Animus tuus oculus, as the freshmen used to say. If her Majesty, the Queen of

England, sends you a copy of her "Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands," be sure you mark

We had got comfortably seated in his library in the mean time, and the Master had taken up his book. I

noticed that every other page was left blank, and that he had written in a good deal of new matter.

I tell you what,he said,there 's so much intelligence about nowadays in books and newspapers and

talk that it's mighty hard to write without getting something or other worth listening to into your essay or your

volume. The foolishest book is a kind of leaky boat on a sea of wisdom; some of the wisdom will get in

anyhow. Every now and then I find something in my book that seems so good to me, I can't help thinking it

must have leaked in. I suppose other people discover that it came through a leak, full as soon as I do. You

must write a book or two to find out how much and how little you know and have to say. Then you must read

some notices of it by somebody that loves you and one or two by somebody that hates you. You 'll find

yourself a very odd piece of property after you 've been through these experiences. They 're trying to the

constitution; I'm always glad to hear that a friend is as well as can be expected after he 's had a book.

You must n't think there are no better things in these pages of mine than the ones I'm going to read you, but

you may come across something here that I forgot to say when we were talking over these matters.

We find it hard to get and to keep any private property in thought. Other people are all the time saying the

same things we are hoarding to say when we get ready. [He looked up from his book just here and said,

"Don't be afraid, I am not going to quote Pereant."] One of our old boardersthe one that called himself

"The Professor" I think it wassaid some pretty audacious things about what he called "pathological piety,"

as I remember, in one of his papers. And here comes along Mr. Galton, and shows in detail from religious

biographies that "there is a frequent correlation between an unusually devout disposition and a weak

constitution." Neither of them appeared to know that John Bunyan had got at the same fact long before them.

He tells us, "The more healthy the lusty man is, the more prone he is unto evil." If the converse is true, no

wonder that good people, according to Bunyan, are always in trouble and terror, for he says,

If invalidism and the nervous timidity which is apt to go with it are elements of spiritual superiority, it

follows that pathology and toxicology should form a most important part of a theological education, so that a

divine might know how to keep a parish in a state of chronic bad health in order that it might be virtuous.

It is a great mistake to think that a man's religion is going to rid him of his natural qualities. "Bishop Hall" (as

you may remember to have seen quoted elsewhere) "prefers Nature before Grace in the Election of a wife,

because, saith he, it will be a hard Task, where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire

"Nature" and "Grace" have been contrasted with each other in a way not very respectful to the Divine

omnipotence. Kings and queens reign "by the Grace of God," but a sweet, docile, pious disposition, such as is

born in some children and grows up with them,that congenital gift which good Bishop Hall would look for

in a wife,is attributed to "Nature." In fact "Nature" and "Grace," as handled by the scholastics, are nothing

more nor less than two hostile Divinities in the Pantheon of postclassical polytheism.

What is the secret of the profound interest which "Darwinism " has excited in the minds and hearts of more

persons than dare to confess their doubts and hopes? It is because it restores "Nature" to its place as a true

divine manifestation. It is that it removes the traditional curse from that helpless infant lying in its mother's

arms. It is that it lifts from the shoulders of man the responsibility for the fact of death. It is that, if it is true,

woman can no longer be taunted with having brought down on herself the pangs which make her sex a

martyrdom. If development upward is the general law of the race; if we have grown by natural evolution out

of the caveman, and even less human forms of life, we have everything to hope from the future. That the

question can be discussed without offence shows that we are entering on a new era, a Revival greater than

The prevalent view of "Nature" has been akin to that which long reigned with reference to disease. This used

to be considered as a distinct entity apart from the processes of life, of which it is one of the manifestations. It

was a kind of demon to be attacked with things of odious taste and smell; to be fumigated out of the system

as the evil spirit was driven from the bridalchamber in the story of Tobit. The Doctor of earlier days, even as

I can remember him, used to exorcise the demon of disease with recipes of odor as potent as that of the

angel's diabolifuge,the smoke from a fish's heart and liver, duly burned,"the which smell when the evil

spirit had smelled he fled into the uttermost parts of Egypt." The very moment that disease passes into the

category of vital processes, and is recognized as an occurrence absolutely necessary, inevitable, and as one

may say, normal under certain given conditions of constitution and circumstance, the medicineman loses his

halfmiraculous endowments. The mythical serpent is untwined from the staff of Esculapius, which

thenceforth becomes a useful walkingstick, and does not pretend to be anything more.

Sin, like disease, is a vital process. It is a function, and not an entity. It must be studied as a section of

anthropology. No preconceived idea must be allowed to interfere with our investigation of the deranged

spiritual function, any more than the old ideas of demoniacal possession must be allowed to interfere with our

study of epilepsy. Spiritual pathology is a proper subject for direct observation and analysis, like any other

In these living actions everything is progressive. There are sudden changes of character in what is called

"conversion" which, at first, hardly seem to come into line with the common laws of evolution. But these

changes have been long preparing, and it is just as much in the order of nature that certain characters should

burst all at once from the rule of evil propensities, as it is that the evening primrose should explode, as it

were, into bloom with audible sound, as you may read in Keats's Endymion, or observe in your own garden.

There is a continual tendency in men to fence in themselves and a few of their neighbors who agree with

them in their ideas, as if they were an exception to their race. We must not allow any creed or religion

whatsoever to confiscate to its own private use and benefit the virtues which belong to our common

humanity. The Good Samaritan helped his wounded neighbor simply because he was a suffering fellow

creature. Do you think your charitable act is more acceptable than the Good Samaritan's, because you do it in

the name of Him who made the memory of that kind man immortal? Do you mean that you would not give

the cup of cold water for the sake simply and solely of the poor, suffering fellowmortal, as willingly as you

now do, professing to give it for the sake of Him who is not thirsty or in need of any help of yours? We must

ask questions like this, if we are to claim for our common nature what belongs to it.

The scientific study of man is the most difficult of all branches of knowledge. It requires, in the first place, an

entire new terminology to get rid of that enormous load of prejudices with which every term applied to the

malformations, the functional disturbances, and the organic diseases of the moral nature is at present

burdened. Take that one word Sin, for instance: all those who have studied the subject from nature and not

from books know perfectly well that a certain fraction of what is so called is nothing more or less than a

symptom of hysteria; that another fraction is the index of a limited degree of insanity; that still another is the

result of a congenital tendency which removes the act we sit in judgment upon from the sphere of

selfdetermination, if not entirely, at least to such an extent that the subject of the tendency cannot be judged

To study nature without fear is possible, but without reproach, impossible. The man who worships in the

temple of knowledge must carry his arms with him as our Puritan fathers had to do when they gathered in

their first rude meetinghouses. It is a fearful thing to meddle with the ark which holds the mysteries of

creation. I remember that when I was a child the tradition was whispered round among us little folks that if

we tried to count the stars we should drop down dead. Nevertheless, the stars have been counted and the

astronomer has survived. This nursery legend is the child's version of those superstitions which would have

strangled in their cradles the young sciences now adolescent and able to take care of themselves, and which,

no longer daring to attack these, are watching with hostile aspect the rapid growth of the comparatively new

The real difficulty of the student of nature at this time is to reconcile absolute freedom and perfect

fearlessness with that respect for the past, that reverence, for the spirit of reverence wherever we find it, that

tenderness for the weakest fibres by which the hearts of our fellowcreatures hold to their religious

convictions, which will make the transition from old belief to a larger light and liberty an interstitial change

I remember once going into a little church in a small village some miles from a great European capital. The

special object of adoration in this humblest of places of worship was a bambino, a holy infant, done in wax,

and covered with cheap ornaments such as a little girl would like to beautify her doll with. Many a good

Protestant of the old Puritan type would have felt a strong impulse to seize this "idolatrous" figure and dash it

to pieces on the stone floor of the little church. But one must have lived awhile among simpleminded pious

Catholics to know what this poor waxen image and the whole babyhouse of bambinos mean for a humble,

unlettered, unimaginative peasantry. He will find that the true office of this eidolon is to fix the mind of the

worshipper, and that in virtue of the devotional thoughts it has called forth so often for so many years in the

mind of that poor old woman who is kneeling before it, it is no longer a wax doll for her, but has undergone a

transubstantiation quite as real as that of the Eucharist. The moral is that we must not roughly smash other

people's idols because we know, or think we know, that they are of cheap human manufacture.

The Master stared. Well he might, for I had been getting a little drowsy, and wishing to show that I had been

awake and attentive, asked a question suggested by some words I had caught, but which showed that I had

not been taking the slightest idea from what he was reading me. He stared, shook his head slowly, smiled

Sat prates biberunt,he said. A sick man that gets talking about himself, a woman that gets talking about

her baby, and an author that begins reading out of his own book, never know when to stop. You'll think of

some of these things you've been getting half asleep over by and by. I don't want you to believe anything I

My young friend, the Astronomer, has, I suspect, been making some addition to his manuscript. At any rate

some of the lines he read us in the afternoon of this same day had never enjoyed the benefit of my revision,

and I think they had but just been written. I noticed that his manner was somewhat more excited than usual,

and his voice just towards the close a little tremulous. Perhaps I may attribute his improvement to the effect

of my criticisms, but whatever the reason, I think these lines are very nearly as correct as they would have

There are certain nervous conditions peculiar to women in which the common effects of poetry and of music

upon their sensibilities are strangely exaggerated. It was not perhaps to be wondered at that Octavia fainted

when Virgil in reading from his great poem came to the line beginning Tu Marcellus eris: It is not hard to

believe the story told of one of the two Davidson sisters, that the singing of some of Moore's plaintive

melodies would so impress her as almost to take away the faculties of sense and motion. But there must have

been some special cause for the singular nervous state into which this reading threw the young girl, our

Scheherezade. She was doubtless tired with overwork and troubled with the thought that she was not doing

herself justice, and that she was doomed to be the helpless prey of some of those corbies who not only pick

Whatever the cause may have been, her heart heaved tumultuously, her color came and went, and though she

managed to avoid a scene by the exercise of all her selfcontrol, I watched her very anxiously, for I was

afraid she would have had a hysteric turn, or in one of her pallid moments that she would have fainted and

I was very glad, therefore, when evening came, to find that she was going out for a lesson on the stars. I knew

the open air was what she needed, and I thought the walk would do her good, whether she made any new

It was now late in the autumn, and the trees were pretty nearly stripped of their leaves.There was no place

so favorable as the Common for the study of the heavens. The skies were brilliant with stars, and the air was

just keen enough to remind our young friends that the cold season was at hand. They wandered round for a

while, and at last found themselves under the Great Elm, drawn thither, no doubt, by the magnetism it is so

well known to exert over the natives of its own soil and those who have often been under the shadow of its

outstretched arms. The venerable survivor of its contemporaries that flourished in the days when Blackstone

rode beneath it on his bull was now a good deal broken by age, yet not without marks of lusty vitality. It had

been wrenched and twisted and battered by so many scores of winters that some of its limbs were crippled

and many of its joints were shaky, and but for the support of the iron braces that lent their strong sinews to its

more infirm members it would have gone to pieces in the first strenuous northeaster or the first sudden and

violent gale from the southwest. But there it stood, and there it stands as yet,though its obituary was long

ago written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,leafing out hopefully in April as if it were

trying in its dumb language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as

Not far from the ancient and monumental tree lay a small sheet of water, once agile with life and vocal with

evening melodies, but now stirred only by the swallow as he dips his wing, or by the morning bath of the

English sparrows, those highheaded, thickbodied, full feeding, hottempered little John Bulls that keep

up such a swashing and swabbing and spattering round all the water basins, one might think from the fuss

they make about it that a bird never took a bath here before, and that they were the missionaries of ablution to

There are those who speak lightly of this small aqueous expanse, the eye of the sacred enclosure, which has

looked unwinking on the happy faces of so many natives and the curious features of so many strangers. The

music of its twilight minstrels has long ceased, but their memory lingers like an echo in the name it bears.

Cherish it, inhabitants of the twohilled city, once threehilled; ye who have said to the mountain, "Remove

hence," and turned the sea into dry land! May no contractor fill his pockets by undertaking to fill thee, thou

granite girdled lakelet, or drain the civic purse by drawing off thy waters! For art thou not the Palladium of

our Troy? Didst thou not, like the Divine image which was the safeguard of Ilium, fall from the skies, and if

the Trojan could look with pride upon the heavendescended form of the Goddess of Wisdom, cannot he who

dwells by thy shining oval look in that mirror and contemplate Himself,the Native of Boston.

There must be some fatality which carries our young men and maidens in the direction of the Common when

they have anything very particular to exchange their views about. At any rate I remember two of our young

friends brought up here a good many years ago, and I understand that there is one path across the enclosure

which a young man must not ask a young woman to take with him unless he means business, for an action

will holdfor breach of promise, if she consents to accompany him, and he chooses to forget his obligations:

Our two young people stood at the western edge of the little pool, studying astronomy in the reflected

firmament. The Pleiades were trembling in the wave before them, and the three great stars of Orion,for

"And their splendor makes even this little pool beautiful and noble," he answered. "Where is the light to come

A simple question enough, but the young girl felt her color change as she answered, "From friendship, I

Grazing only as yet,not striking full, hardly hitting at all, but there are questions and answers that

There was an interval of silence. Two young persons can stand looking at water for a long time without

feeling the necessity of speaking. Especially when the water is alive with stars and the young persons are

thoughtful and impressible. The water seems to do half the thinking while one is looking at it; its movements

are felt in the brain very much like thought. When I was in full training as a flaneur, I could stand on the Pont

Neuf with the other experts in the great science of passive cerebration and look at the river for half an hour

with so little mental articulation that when I moved on it seemed as if my thinkingmarrow had been asleep

So the reader can easily account for the interval of silence. It is hard to tell how long it would have lasted, but

just then a lubberly intrusive boy threw a great stone, which convulsed the firmament, the one at their feet, I

mean. The six Pleiads disappeared as if in search of their lost sister; the belt of Orion was broken asunder,

and a hundred worlds dissolved back into chaos. They turned away and strayed off into one of the more open

paths, where the view of the sky over them was unobstructed. For some reason or other the astronomical

No, it is Andromeda. You ought not to have forgotten her, for I remember showing you a double star, the

one in her right foot, through the equatorial telescope. You have not forgotten the double star,the two that

No, indeed,she answered, and blushed, and felt ashamed because she had said indeed, as if it had been

The doublestar allusion struck another dead silence. She would have given a week's pay to any invisible

He told her the story of the unfortunate maiden chained to a rock and waiting for a seabeast that was coming

to devour her, and how Perseus came and set her free, and won her love with her life. And then he began

something about a young man chained to his rock, which was a stargazer's tower, a prey by turns to

ambition, and lonely selfcontempt and unwholesome scorn of the life he looked down upon after the

serenity of the firmament, and endless questionings that led him nowhere,and now he had only one more

question to ask. He loved her. Would she break his chain?He held both his hands out towards her, the

palms together, as if they were fettered at the wrists. She took hold of them very gently; parted them a little;

then widerwiderand found herself all at once folded, unresisting, in her lover's arms.

So there was a new doublestar in the living firmament. The constellations seemed to kindle with new

splendors as the student and the storyteller walked homeward in their light; Alioth and Algol looked down

on them as on the first pair of lovers they shone over, and the autumn air seemed full of harmonies as when

The old Master had asked us, the Young Astronomer and myself, into his library, to hear him read some

passages from his interleaved book. We three had formed a kind of little club without knowing it from the

time when the young man began reading those extracts from his poetical reveries which I have reproduced in

these pages. Perhaps we agreed in too many things,I suppose if we could have had a good hardheaded,

oldfashioned New England divine to meet with us it might have acted as a wholesome corrective. For we

had it all our own way; the Lady's kindly remonstrance was taken in good part, but did not keep us from

talking pretty freely, and as for the Young Girl, she listened with the tranquillity and fearlessness which a

very simple trusting creed naturally gives those who hold it. The fewer outworks to the citadel of belief, the

The reader must not suppose that I even attempt to reproduce everything exactly as it took place in our

conversations, or when we met to listen to the Master's prose or to the Young Astronomer's verse. I do not

pretend to give all the pauses and interruptions by question or otherwise. I could not always do it if I tried,

but I do not want to, for oftentimes it is better to let the speaker or reader go on continuously, although there

may have been many breaks in the course of the conversation or reading. When, for instance, I by and by

reproduce what the Landlady said to us, I shall give it almost without any hint that it was arrested in its flow

I can hardly say what the reason of it was, but it is very certain that I had a vague sense of some impending

event as we took our seats in the Master's library. He seemed particularly anxious that we should be

comfortably seated, and shook up the cushions of the arm chairs himself, and got them into the right places.

Now go to sleephe saidor listen,just which you like best. But I am going to begin by telling you both

Liberavi animam meam. That is the meaning of my book and of my literary life, if I may give such a name to

that partycolored shred of human existence. I have unburdened myself in this book, and in some other

pages, of what I was born to say. Many things that I have said in my ripe days have been aching in my soul

since I was a mere child. I say aching, because they conflicted with many of my inherited beliefs, or rather

traditions. I did not know then that two strains of blood were striving in me for the mastery,two! twenty,

perhaps,twenty thousand, for aught I know,but represented to me by two,paternal and maternal.

Blind forces in themselves; shaping thoughts as they shaped features and battled for the moulding of

Not verses so much as the stuff that verses are made of. I don't suppose that the thoughts which came up of

themselves in my mind were so mighty different from what come up in the minds of other young folks. And

that 's the best reason I could give for telling 'em. I don't believe anything I've written is as good as it seemed

to me when I wrote it,he stopped, for he was afraid he was lying,not much that I 've written, at any

rate,he saidwith a smile at the honesty which made him qualify his statement. But I do know this: I have

struck a good many chords, first and last, in the consciousness of other people. I confess to a tender feeling

for my little brood of thoughts. When they have been welcomed and praised it has pleased me, and if at any

time they have been rudely handled and despitefully entreated it has cost me a little worry. I don't despise

reputation, and I should like to be remembered as having said something worth lasting well enough to last.

But all that is nothing to the main comfort I feel as a writer. I have got rid of something my mind could not

keep to itself and rise as it was meant to into higher regions. I saw the aeronauts the other day emptying from

the bags some of the sand that served as ballast. It glistened a moment in the sunlight as a slender shower, and

then was lost and seen no more as it scattered itself unnoticed. But the airship rose higher as the sand was

poured out, and so it seems to me I have felt myself getting above the mists and clouds whenever I have

lightened myself of some portion of the mental ballast I have carried with me. Why should I hope or fear

when I send out my book? I have had my reward, for I have wrought out my thought, I have said my say, I

Look here!he said. I keep oblivion always before me.He pointed to a singularly perfect and beautiful

trilobite which was lying on a pile of manuscripts.Each time I fill a sheet of paper with what I am writing,

I lay it beneath this relic of a dead world, and project my thought forward into eternity as far as this extinct

crustacean carries it backward. When my heart beats too lustily with vain hopes of being remembered, I press

the cold fossil against it and it grows calm. I touch my forehead with it, and its anxious furrows grow smooth.

Our world, too, with all its breathing life, is but a leaf to be folded with the other strata, and if I am only

patient, by and by I shall be just as famous as imperious Caesar himself, embedded with me in a

He began reading:"There is no new thing under the sun," said the Preacher. He would not say so now, if he

should come to life for a little while, and have his photograph taken, and go up in a balloon, and take a trip by

railroad and a voyage by steamship, and get a message from General Grant by the cable, and see a man's leg

cut off without its hurting him. If it did not take his breath away and lay him out as flat as the Queen of Sheba

was knocked over by the splendors of his court, he must have rivalled our Indians in the nil admarari line.

For all that, it is a strange thing to see what numbers of new things are really old. There are many modern

contrivances that are of as early date as the first man, if not thousands of centuries older. Everybody knows

how all the arrangements of our telescopes and microscopes are anticipated in the eye, and how our best

musical instruments are surpassed by the larynx. But there are some very odd things any anatomist can tell,

showing how our recent contrivances are anticipated in the human body. In the alimentary canal are certain

pointed eminences called villi, and certain ridges called valvuloe conniventes. The makers of heating

apparatus have exactly reproduced the first in the "pot" of their furnaces, and the second in many of the

radiators to be seen in our public buildings. The object in the body and the heating apparatus is the same; to

increase the extent of surface. We mix hair with plaster (as the Egyptians mixed straw with clay to make

bricks) so that it shall hold more firmly. But before man had any artificial dwelling the same contrivance of

mixing fibrous threads with a cohesive substance had been employed in the jointed fabric of his own spinal

column. India rubber is modern, but the yellow animal substance which is elastic like that, and serves the

same purpose in the animal economy which that serves in our mechanical contrivances, is as old as the

mammalia. The dome, the round and the Gothic arch, the groined roof, the flying buttress, are all familiar to

those who have studied the bony frame of man. All forms of the lever and all the principal kinds of hinges are

to be met with in our own frames. The valvular arrangements of the bloodvessels are unapproached by any

artificial apparatus, and the arrangements for preventing friction are so perfect that two surfaces will play on

each other for fourscore years or more and never once trouble their owner by catching or rubbing so as to be

But stranger than these repetitions are the coincidences one finds in the manners and speech of antiquity and

our own time. In the days when Flood Ireson was drawn in the cart by the Maenads of Marblehead, that

fishing town had the name of nurturing a young population not over fond of strangers. It used to be said that

if an unknown landsman showed himself in the streets, the boys would follow after him, crying, "Rock him!

Now if one opens the Odyssey, he will find that the Phaeacians, three thousand years ago, were wonderfully

like these youthful Marbleheaders. The blueeyed Goddess who convoys Ulysses, under the disguise of a

young maiden of the place, gives him some excellent advice. "Hold your tongue," she says, "and don't look at

anybody or ask any questions, for these are seafaring people, and don't like to have strangers round or

Who would have thought that the saucy question, "Does your mother know you're out?" was the very same

And think of the London cockney's prefix of the letter h to innocent words beginning with a vowel having its

prototype in the speech of the vulgar Roman, as may be seen in the verses of Catullus:

Our neighbors of Manhattan have an excellent jest about our crooked streets which, if they were a little

more familiar with a native author of unquestionable veracity, they would strike out from the letter of "Our

Boston Correspondent," where it is a source of perennial hilarity. It is worth while to reprint, for the benefit

of whom it may concern, a paragraph from the authentic history of the venerable Diedrich Knickerbocker:

"The sage council, as has been mentioned in a preceding chapter, not being able to determine upon any plan

for the building of their city,the cows, in a laudable fit of patriotism, took it under their peculiar charge,

and as they went to and from pasture, established paths through the bushes, on each side of which the good

folks built their houses; which is one cause of the rambling and picturesque turns and labyrinths, which

When I was a little boy there came to stay with us for a while a young lady with a singularly white

complexion. Now I had often seen the masons slacking lime, and I thought it was the whitest thing I had ever

looked upon. So I always called this fair visitor of ours Slacked Lime. I think she is still living in a

neighboring State, and I am sure she has never forgotten the fanciful name I gave her. But within ten or a

dozen years I have seen this very same comparison going the round of the papers, and credited to a Welsh

I turned a pretty sentence enough in one of my lectures about finding poppies springing up amidst the

corn; as if it had been foreseen by nature that wherever there should be hunger that asked for food, there

would be pain that needed relief,and many years afterwards. I had the pleasure of finding that Mistress

I should like to carry some of my friends to see a giant beehive I have discovered. Its hum can be heard

half a mile, and the great white swarm counts its tens of thousands. They pretend to call it a planingmill, but

if it is not a beehive it is so like one that if a hundred people have not said so before me, it is very singular

that they have not. If I wrote verses I would try to bring it in, and I suppose people would start up in a dozen

places, and say, "Oh, that beehive simile is mine,and besides, did not Mr. Bayard Taylor call the

I think the old Master had chosen these trivialities on purpose to amuse the Young Astronomer and myself, if

possible, and so make sure of our keeping awake while he went on reading, as follows:

How the sweet souls of all time strike the same note, the same because it is in unison with the divine voice

that sings to them! I read in the Zend Avesta, "No earthly man with a hundredfold strength speaks so much

evil as Mithra with heavenly strength speaks good. No earthly man with a hundredfold strength does so

And now leave Persia and Zoroaster, and come down with me to our own New England and one of our old

Puritan preachers. It was in the dreadful days of the Salem Witchcraft delusion that one Jonathan Singletary,

being then in the prison at Ipswich, gave his testimony as to certain fearful occurrences,a great noise, as of

many cats climbing, skipping, and jumping, of throwing about of furniture, and of men walking in the

"I was at present," he says, "something affrighted; yet considering what I had lately heard made out by Mr.

Mitchel at Cambridge, that there is more good in God than there is evil in sin, and that although God is the

greatest good and sin the greatest evil, yet the first Being of evil cannot weave the scales or overpower the

first Being of good: so considering that the authour of good was of greater power than the authour of evil,

I shall always bless the memory of this poor, timid creature for saving that dear remembrance of "Matchless

Mitchel." How many, like him, have thought they were preaching a new gospel, when they were only

reaffirming the principles which underlie the Magna Charta of humanity, and are common to the noblest

utterances of all the nobler creeds! But spoken by those solemn lips to those stern, simpleminded hearers, the

words I have cited seem to me to have a fragrance like the precious ointment of spikenard with which Mary

anointed her Master's feet. I can see the little bare meetinghouse, with the godly deacons, and the grave

matrons, and the comely maidens, and the sober manhood of the village, with the small group of college

students sitting by themselves under the shadow of the awful Presidential Presence, all listening to that

preaching, which was, as Cotton Mather says, "as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice"; and

as the holy pastor utters those blessed words, which are not of any one church or age, but of all time, the

humble place of worship is filled with their perfume, as the house where Mary knelt was filled with the odor

The Master rose, as he finished reading this sentence, and, walking to the window, adjusted a curtain

which he seemed to find a good deal of trouble in getting to hang just as he wanted it.

If men would only open their eyes to the fact which stares them in the face from history, and is made clear

enough by the slightest glance at the condition of mankind, that humanity is of immeasurably greater

importance than their own or any other particular belief, they would no more attempt to make private

property of the grace of God than to fence in the sunshine for their own special use and enjoyment.

We are all tattoed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is

indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were early implanted in his

imagination; no matter how utterly his reason may reject them, he will still feel as the famous woman did

about ghosts, Je n'y crois pas, mais je les crains,"I don't believe in them, but I am afraid of them,

As people grow older they come at length to live so much in memory that they often think with a kind of

pleasure of losing their dearest blessings. Nothing can be so perfect while we possess it as it will seem when

remembered. The friend we love best may sometimes weary us by his presence or vex us by his infirmities.

How sweet to think of him as he will be to us after we have outlived him ten or a dozen years! Then we can

recall him in his best moments, bid him stay with us as long as we want his company, and send him away

when we wish to be alone again. One might alter Shenstone's wellknown epitaph to suit such a case:

I want to stop hereI the Poetand put in a few reflections of my own, suggested by what I have been

How few things there are that do not change their whole aspect in the course of a single generation! The

landscape around us is wholly different. Even the outlines of the hills that surround us are changed by the

creeping of the villages with their spires and school houses up their sides. The sky remains the same, and

the ocean. A few old churchyards look very much as they used to, except, of course, in Boston, where the

gravestones have been rooted up and planted in rows with walks between them, to the utter disgrace and ruin

of our most venerated cemeteries. The Registry df Deeds and the Probate Office show us the same old folios,

where we can read our grandfather's title to his estate (if we had a grandfather and he happened to own

anything) and see how many pots and kettles there were in his kitchen by the inventory of his personal

Among living people none remain so long unchanged as the actors. I can see the same Othello today, if I

choose, that when I was a boy I saw smothering Mrs. DuffDesdemona with the pillow, under the

instigations of Mr. CooperIago. A few stone heavier than he was then, no doubt, but the same truculent

blackamoor that took by the thrrroat the circumcised dog in Aleppo, and told us about it in the old Boston

Theatre. In the course of a fortnight, if I care to cross the water, I can see Mademoiselle Dejazet in the same

parts I saw her in under Louis Philippe, and be charmed by the same grace and vivacity which delighted my

grandmother (if she was in Paris, and went to see her in the part of Fanchon toute seule at the Theatre des

The graveyard and the stage are pretty much the only places where you can expect to find your friendsas

you left them, five and twenty or fifty years ago. I have noticed, I may add, that old theatregoers bring back

the past with their stories more vividly than men with any other experiences. There were two old

NewYorkers that I used to love to sit talking with about the stage. One was a scholar and a writer of note; a

pleasant old gentleman, with the fresh cheek of an octogenarian Cupid. The other not less noted in his way,

deep in local lore, largebrained, fullblooded, of somewhat perturbing and tumultuous presence. It was

good to hear them talk of George Frederic Cooke, of Kean, and the lesser stars of those earlier constellations.

Better still to breakfast with old Samuel Rogers, as some of my readers have done more than once, and hear

him answer to the question who was the best actor he remembered, "I think, on the whole, Garrick."

If we did but know how to question these charming old people before it is too late! About ten years, more or

less, after the generation in advance of our own has all died off, it occurs to us all at once, "There! I can ask

my old friend what he knows of that picture, which must be a Copley; of that house and its legends about

which there is such a mystery. He (or she) must know all about that." Too late! Too late!

Still, now and then one saves a reminiscence that means a good deal by means of a casual question. I asked

the first of those two old NewYorkers the following question: "Who, on the whole, seemed to you the most

Now it must be remembered that this was a man who had lived in a city that calls itself the metropolis, one

who had been a member of the State and the National Legislature, who had come in contact with men. of

letters and men of business, with politicians and members of all the professions, during a long and

distinguished public career. I paused for his answer with no little curiosity. Would it be one of the great

ExPresidents whose names were known to, all the world? Would it be the silvertongued orator of

Kentucky or the "Godlike" champion of the Constitution, our NewEngland Jupiter Capitolinus? Who

"Take it altogether," he answered, very deliberately, "I should say Colonel Elisha Williams was the most

Colonel Elisha Williams! And who might he be, forsooth? A gentleman of singular distinction, you may

be well assured, even though you are not familiar with his name; but as I am not writing a biographical

One would like to live long enough to witness certain things which will no doubt come to pass by and by. I

remember that when one of our good kindhearted old millionnaires was growing very infirm, his limbs

failing him, and his trunk getting packed with the infirmities which mean that one is bound on a long journey,

he said very simply and sweetly, "I don't care about living a great deal longer, but I should like to live long

enough to find out how much old (a many millioned fellowcitizen) is worth." And without committing

myself on the longevityquestion, I confess I should like to live long enough to see a few things happen that

I want to hold the skull of Abraham in my hand. They will go through the cave of Machpelah at Hebron, I

feel sure, in the course of a few generations at the furthest, and as Dr. Robinson knows of nothing which

should lead us to question the correctness of the tradition which regards this as the place of sepulture of

Abraham and the other patriarchs, there is no reason why we may not find his mummied body in perfect

preservation, if he was embalmed after the Egyptian fashion. I suppose the tomb of David will be explored by

a commission in due time, and I should like to see the phrenological developments of that great king and

divine singer and warmblooded man. If, as seems probable, the anthropological section of society manages

to get round the curse that protects the bones of Shakespeare, I should like to see the dome which rounded

itself over his imperial brain. Not that I am what is called a phrenologist, but I am curious as to the physical

developments of these fellowmortals of mine, and a little in want of a sensation.

I should like to live long enough to see the course of the Tiber turned, and the bottom of the river thoroughly

dredged. I wonder if they would find the sevenbranched golden candlestick brought from Jerusalem by

Titus, and said to have been dropped from the Milvian bridge. I have often thought of going fishing for it

some year when I wanted a vacation, as some of my friends used to go to Ireland to fish for salmon. There

We all know how it looks well enough, from the figure of it on the Arch of Titus, but I should like to "heft " it

in my own hand, and carry it home and shine it up (excuse my colloquialisms), and sit down and look at it,

and think and think and think until the Temple of Solomon built up its walls of hewn stone and its roofs of

cedar around me as noiselessly as when it rose, and "there was neither hammer nor axe nor any tool of iron

All this, you will remember, Beloved, is a digression on my own account, and I return to the old Master

whom I left smiling at his own alteration of Shenstone's celebrated inscription. He now begin reading again:

I want it to be understood that I consider that a certain number of persons are at liberty to dislike me

peremptorily, without showing cause, and that they give no offence whatever in so doing.

If I did not cheerfully acquiesce in this sentiment towards myself on the part of others, I should not feel at

liberty to indulge my own aversions. I try to cultivate a Christian feeling to all my fellow creatures, but

inasmuch as I must also respect truth and honesty, I confess to myself a certain number of inalienable dislikes

and prejudices, some of which may possibly be shared by others. Some of these are purely instinctive, for

others I can assign a reason. Our likes and dislikes play so important a part in the Order of Things that it is

There are persons I meet occasionally who are too intelligent by half for my liking. They know my thoughts

beforehand, and tell me what I was going to say. Of course they are masters of all my knowledge, and a good

deal besides; have read all the books I have read, and in later editions; have had all the experiences I have

been through, and moretoo. In my private opinion every mother's son of them will lie at any time rather than

I have a kind of dread, rather than hatred, of persons with a large excess of vitality; great feeders, great

laughers, great story tellers, who come sweeping over their company with a huge tidal wave of animal

spirits and boisterous merriment. I have pretty good spirits myself, and enjoy a little mild pleasantry, but I am

oppressed and extinguished by these great lusty, noisy creatures, and feel as if I were a mute at a funeral

I cannot get along much better with those drooping, languid people, whose vitality falls short as much as

that of the others is in excess. I have not life enough for two; I wish I had. It is not very enlivening to meet a

fellowcreature whose expression and accents say, "You are the hair that breaks the camel's back of my

endurance, you are the last drop that makes my cup of woe run over"; persons whose heads drop on one side

like those of toothless infants, whose voices recall the tones in which our old snuffling choir used to wail out

There is another style which does not captivate me. I recognize an attempt at the grand manner now and

then, in persons who are well enough in their way, but of no particular importance, socially or otherwise.

Some family tradition of wealth or distinction is apt to be at the bottom of it, and it survives all the

advantages that used to set it off. I like family pride as well as my neighbors, and respect the highborn

fellowcitizen whose progenitors have not worked in their shirtsleeves for the last two generations full as

much as I ought to. But grand pere oblige; a person with a known grandfather is too distinguished to find it

necessary to put on airs. The few Royal Princes I have happened to know were very easy people to get along

with, and had not half the social kneeaction I have often seen in the collapsed dowagers who lifted their

My heart does not warm as it should do towards the persons, not intimates, who are always too glad to see

me when we meet by accident, and discover all at once that they have a vast deal to unbosom themselves of

There is one blameless person whom I cannot love and have no excuse for hating. It is the innocent

fellowcreature, otherwise inoffensive to me, whom I find I have involuntarily joined on turning a corner. I

suppose the Mississippi, which was flowing quietly along, minding its own business, hates the Missouri for

coming into it all at once with its muddy stream. I suppose the Missouri in like manner hates the Mississippi

for diluting with its limpid, but insipid current the rich reminiscences of the varied soils through which its

own stream has wandered. I will not compare myself, to the clear or the turbid current, but I will own that my

heart sinks when I find all of a sudden I am in for a corner confluence, and I cease loving my neighbor as

These antipathies are at least weaknesses; they may be sins in the eye of the Recording Angel. I often

reproach myself with my wrong doings. I should like sometimes to thank Heaven for saving me from some

kinds of transgression, and even for granting me some qualities that if I dared I should be disposed to call

virtues. I should do so, I suppose, if I did not remember the story of the Pharisee. That ought not to hinder

me. The parable was told to illustrate a single virtue, humility, and the most unwarranted inferences have

been drawn from it as to the whole character of the two parties. It seems not at all unlikely, but rather

probable, that the Pharisee was a fairer dealer, a better husband, and a more charitable person than the

Publican, whose name has come down to us "linked with one virtue," but who may have been guilty, for

aught that appears to the contrary, of "a thousand crimes." Remember how we limit the application of other

parables. The lord, it will be recollected, commended the unjust steward because he had done wisely. His

shrewdness was held up as an example, but after all he was a miserable swindler, and deserved the

stateprison as much as many of our financial operators. The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is a

perpetual warning against spiritual pride. But it must not frighten any one of us out of being thankful that he

is not, like this or that neighbor, under bondage to strong drink or opium, that he is not an ErieRailroad

Manager, and that his head rests in virtuous calm on his own pillow. If he prays in the morning to be kept out

of temptation as well as for his daily bread, shall he not return thanks at night that he has not fallen into sin as

well as that his stomach has been filled? I do not think the poor Pharisee has ever had fair play, and I am

afraid a good many people sin with the comforting, halflatent intention of smiting their breasts afterwards

This little movement which I have thus indicated seemed to give the Master new confidence in his audience.

He turned over several pages until he came to a part of the interleaved volume where we could all see he had

I told you, he said, in Latin, and I repeat it in English, that I have freed my soul in these pages,I have

spoken my mind. I have read you a few extracts, most of them of rather slight texture, and some of them, you

perhaps thought, whimsical. But I meant, if I thought you were in the right mood for listening to it, to read

you some paragraphs which give in small compass the pith, the marrow, of all that my experience has taught

me. Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one. I took it early, as we all do, and have treated it

all along with the best palliatives I could get hold of, inasmuch as I could find no radical cure for its evils,

It is a great thing for a man to put the whole meaning of his life into a few paragraphs, if he does it so that

others can make anything out of it. If he conveys his wisdom after the fashion of the old alchemists, he may

as well let it alone. He must talk in very plain words, and that is what I have done. You want to know what a

certain number of scores of years have taught me that I think best worth telling. If I had half a dozen square

inches of paper, and one penful of ink, and five minutes to use them in for the instruction of those who come

Perhaps I should be wiser if I refused to attempt any such brief statement of the most valuable lesson that life

has taught me. I am by no means sure that I had not better draw my pen through the page that holds the

quintessence of my vital experiences, and leave those who wish to know what it is to distil to themselves

from my many printed pages. But I have excited your curiosity, and I see that you are impatient to hear what

the wisdom, or the folly, it may be, of a life shows for, when it is crowded into a few lines as the fragrance of

By this time I confess I was myself a little excited. What was he going to tell us? The Young Astronomer

looked upon him with an eye as clear and steady and brilliant as the evening star, but I could see that he too

It has cost me fifty years to find my place in the Order of Things. I had explored all the sciences; I had

studied the literature of all ages; I had travelled in many lands; I had learned how to follow the working of

thought in men and of sentiment and instinct in women. I had examined for myself all the religions that could

make out any claim for themselves. I had fasted and prayed with the monks of a lonely convent; I had

mingled with the crowds that shouted glory at campmeetings; I had listened to the threats of Calvinists and

the promises of Universalists; I had been a devout attendant on a Jewish Synagogue; I was in correspondence

with an intelligent Buddhist; and I met frequently with the inner circle of Rationalists, who believed in the

persistence of Force, and the identity of alimentary substances with virtue, and were reconstructing the

universe on this basis, with absolute exclusion of all Supernumeraries. In these pursuits I had passed the

larger part of my halfcentury of existence, as yet with little satisfaction. It was on the morning of my fiftieth

birthday that the solution of the great problem I had sought so long came to me as a simple formula, with a

few grand but obvious inferences. I will repeat the substance of this final intuition:

At this moment we were interrupted by a knock at the Master's door. It was most inopportune, for he was on

the point of the great disclosure, but common politeness compelled him to answer it, and as the step which

we had heard was that of one of the softerfooted sex, he chose to rise from his chair and admit his visitor.

This visitor was our Landlady. She was dressed with more than usual nicety, and her countenance showed

I did n't low there was company with you, said the Landlady,but it's jest as well. I've got something to

tell my boarders that I don't want to tell them, and if I must do it, I may as well tell you all at once as one to a

time. I 'm agoing to give up keeping boarders at the end of this year,I mean come the end of December.

She took out a white handkerchief, at hand in expectation of what was to happen, and pressed it to her eyes.

There was an interval of silence. The Master closed his book and laid it on the table. The Young Astronomer

did not look as much surprised as I should have expected. I was completely taken aback,I had not thought

The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own, one she has bought back again, for it

used to belong to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all day long.

She's going to be wealthy again, but it doos n't make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain

when I was doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from her that wasn't as pleasant

as if she'd been talking to the Governor's lady. I've knowed what it was to have womenboarders that find

fault,there's some of 'em would quarrel with me and everybody at my table; they would quarrel with the

Angel Gabriel if he lived in the house with 'em, and scold at him and tell him he was always dropping his

Two other boarders of mine has given me notice that they was expecting to leave come the first of January. I

could fill up their places easy enough, for ever since that first book was wrote that called people's attention to

But I'm getting along in life, and I ain't quite so rugged as I used to be. My daughter is well settled and my

son is making his own living. I've done a good deal of hard work in my time, and I feel as if I had a right to a

little rest. There's nobody knows what a woman that has the charge of a family goes through, but God

Almighty that made her. I've done my best for them that I loved, and for them that was under my roof. My

husband and my children was well cared for when they lived, and he and them little ones that I buried has

white marble headstones and footstones, and an iron fence round the lot, and a place left for me betwixt

Some has always been good to me,some has made it a little of a strain to me to get along. When a woman's

back aches with overworking herself to keep her house in shape, and a dozen mouths are opening at her three

times a day, like them little young birds that split their heads open so you can a'most see into their empty

stomachs, and one wants this and another wants that, and provisions is dear and rent is high, and nobody to

look to,then a sharp word cuts, I tell you, and a hard look goes right to your heart. I've seen a boarder make

a face at what I set before him, when I had tried to suit him jest as well as I knew how, and I haven't cared to

eat a thing myself all the rest of that day, and I've laid awake without a wink of sleep all night. And then

when you come down the next morning all the boarders stare at you and wonder what makes you so

lowspirited, and why you don't look as happy and talk as cheerful as one of them rich ladies that has

dinnerparties, where they've nothing to do but give a few orders, and somebody comes and cooks their

dinner, and somebody else comes and puts flowers on the table, and a lot of men dressed up like ministers

And that reminds me to tell you that I'm agoing to live with my daughter. Her husband's a very nice man, and

when he isn't following a corpse, he's as good company as if he was a member of the city council. My son,

he's agoing into business with the old Doctor he studied with, and he's agoing to board with me at my

daughter's for a while,I suppose he'll be getting a wife before long. [This with a pointed look at our young

It is n't but a little while longer that we are going to be together, and I want to say to you gentlemen, as I

mean to say to the others and as I have said to our two ladies, that I feel more obligated to, you for the way

you 've treated me than I know very well how to put into words. Boarders sometimes expect too much of the

ladies that provides for them. Some days the meals are better than other days; it can't help being so.

Sometimes the provisionmarket is n't well supplied, sometimes the fire in the cookingstove does n't burn

so well as it does other days; sometimes the cook is n't so lucky as she might be. And there is boarders who is

always laying in wait for the days when the meals is not quite so good as they commonly be, to pick a quarrel

with the one that is trying to serve them so as that they shall be satisfied. But you've all been good and kind to

me. I suppose I'm not quite so spry and quicksighted as I was a dozen years ago, when my boarder wrote

that first book so many have asked me about. Butnow I'm going to stop taking boarders. I don't believe

you'll think much about what I did n't do,because I couldn't,but remember that at any rate I tried

honestly to serve you. I hope God will bless all that set at my table, old and young, rich and poor, merried and

single, and single that hopes soon to be merried. My husband that's dead and gone always believed that we all

get to heaven sooner or later,and sence I've grown older and buried so many that I've loved I've come to

feel that perhaps I should meet all of them that I've known hereor at least as many of 'em as I wanted

toin a better world. And though I don't calculate there is any boardinghouses in heaven, I hope I shall

some time or other meet them that has set round my table one year after another, all together, where there is

no faultfinding with the food and no occasion for it,and if I do meet them and you thereor

....Poor dear soul! Her ideas had got a little mixed, and her heart was overflowing, and the white handkerchief

What a pity, I have often thought, that she came in just at that precise moment! For the old Master was on

the point of telling us, and through one of us the reading world,I mean that fraction of it which has reached

this point of the record,at any rate, of telling you, Beloved, through my pen, his solution of a great problem

we all have to deal with. We were some weeks longer together, but he never offered to continue his reading.

At length I ventured to give him a hint that our young friend and myself would both of us be greatly gratified

No, sir,he said,better not, better not. That which means so much to me, the writer, might be a

disappointment, or at least a puzzle, to you, the listener. Besides, if you'll take my printed book and be at the

trouble of thinking over what it says, and put that with what you've heard me say, and then make those

comments and reflections which will be suggested to a mind in so many respects like mine as is your

(It is a high compliment to me, I replied) you will perhaps find you have the elements of the formula and its

consequences which I was about to read you. It's quite as well to crack your own filberts as to borrow the use

of other people's teeth. I think we will wait awhile before we pour out the Elixir Vitae.

To tell the honest truth, I suspect the Master has found out that his formula does not hold water quite so

perfectly as he was thinking, so long as he kept it to himself, and never thought of imparting it to anybody

else. The very minute a thought is threatened with publicity it seems to shrink towards mediocrity, as. I have

noticed that a great pumpkin, the wonder of a village, seemed to lose at least a third of its dimensions

between the field where it grew and the cattleshow fairtable, where it took its place with other enormous

pumpkins from other wondering villages. But however that maybe, I shall always regret that I had not the

opportunity of judging for myself how completely the Master's formula, which, for him, at least, seemed to

have solved the great problem, would have accomplished that desirable end for me.

The Landlady's announcement of her intention to give up keeping boarders was heard with regret by all who

met around her table. The Member of the Haouse inquired of me whether I could tell him if the Lamb

Tahvern was kept well abaout these times. He knew that members from his place used to stop there, but he

hadn't heerd much abaout it of late years. I had to inform him that that fold of rural innocence had long

ceased offering its hospitalities to the legislative, flock. He found refuge at last, I have learned, in a great

public house in the northern section of the city, where, as he said, the folks all went up stairs in a rattrap,

and the last I heard of him was looking out of his somewhat elevated atticwindow in a northwesterly

direction in hopes that he might perhaps get a sight of the Grand Monadnock, a mountain in New Hampshire

The Member of the Haouse seems to have been more in a hurry to find a new restingplace than the other

boarders. By the first of January, however, our whole company was scattered, never to meet again around the

The Lady moved to the house where she had passed many of her prosperous years. It had been occupied by a

rich family who had taken it nearly as it stood, and as the pictures had been dusted regularly, and the books

had never been handled, she found everything in many respects as she had left it, and in some points

improved, for the rich people did not know what else to do, and so they spent money without stint on their

house and its adornments, by all of which she could not help profiting. I do not choose to give the street and

number of the house where she lives, but agreat many poor people know very well where it is, and as a

matter of course the rich ones roll up to her door in their carriages by the dozen every fine Monday while

It is whispered that our two young folks are to be married before another season, and that the Lady has asked

them to come and stay with her for a while. Our Scheherezade is to write no more stories. It is astonishing to

see what a change for the better in her aspect a few weeks of brainrest and heart's ease have wrought in her.

I doubt very much whether she ever returns to literary labor. The work itself was almost heartbreaking, but

the effect upon her of the sneers and cynical insolences of the literary rough who came at her in mask and

brass knuckles was to give her what I fear will be a lifelong disgust against any writing for the public,

especially in any of the periodicals. I am not sorry that she should stop writing, but I am sorry that she should

have been silenced in such a rude way. I doubt, too, whether the Young Astronomer will pass the rest of his

life in hunting for comets and planets. I think he has found an attraction that will call him down from the

celestial luminaries to a light not less pure and far less remote. And I am inclined to believe that the best

answer to many of those questions which have haunted him and found expression in his verse will be reached

by a very different channel from that of lonely contemplation, the duties, the cares, the responsible realities of

a life drawn out of itself by the power of newly awakened instincts and affections. The double star was

The Register of Deeds is understood to have been very handsomely treated by the boarder who owes her

good fortune to his sagacity and activity. He has engaged apartments at a very genteel boardinghouse not far

from the one where we have all been living. The Salesman found it a simple matter to transfer himself to an

establishment over the way; he had very little to move, and required very small accommodations.

The Capitalist, however, seems to have felt it impossible to move without ridding himself of a part atleast

of his encumbrances. The community was startled by the announcement that a citizen who did not wish his

name to be known had made a free gift of a large sum of moneyit was in tens of thousandsto an

institution of long standing and high character in the city of which he was a quiet resident. The source of such

a gift could not long be kept secret. It, was our economical, not to say parsimonious Capitalist who had done

this noble act, and the poor man had to skulk through back streets and keep out of sight, as if he were a show

character in a travelling caravan, to avoid the acknowledgments of his liberality, which met him on every

That Boy has gone, in virtue of a special invitation, to make a visit of indefinite length at the house of the

father of the older boy, whom we know by the name of Johnny. Of course he is having a good time, for

Johnny's father is full of fun, and tells firstrate stories, and if neither of the boys gets his brains kicked out

by the pony, or blows himself up with gunpowder, or breaks through the ice and gets drowned, they will have

The Scarabee could not bear to remove his collections, and the old Master was equally unwilling to disturb

his books. It was arranged, therefore, that they should keep their apartments until the new tenant should come

into the house, when, if they were satisfied with her management, they would continue as her boarders.

The last time I saw the Scarabee he was still at work on the meloe question. He expressed himself very

pleasantly towards all of us, his fellowboarders, and spoke of the kindness and consideration with which the

Landlady had treated him when he had been straitened at times for want of means. Especially he seemed to

be interested in our young couple who were soon to be united. His tired old eyes glistened as he asked about

them,could it be that their little romance recalled some early vision of his own? However that may be, he

got up presently and went to a little box in which, as he said, he kept some choice specimens. He brought to

If you could get that to her,he said,they tell me that ladies sometimes wear them in their hair. If they

are out of fashion, she can keep it till after they're married, and then perhaps after a while there may beyou

knowyou know what I meanthere may be larvae, that 's what I 'm thinking there may be, and they 'll like

As he got out the word larvae, a faint sense of the ridiculous seemed to take hold of the Scarabee, and for

the first and only time during my acquaintance with him a slight attempt at a smile showed itself on his

features. It was barely perceptible and gone almost as soon as seen, yet I am pleased to put it on record that

The old Master keeps adding notes and reflections and new suggestions to his interleaved volume, but I doubt

if he ever gives them to the public. The study he has proposed to himself does not grow easier the longer it is

pursued. The whole Order of Things can hardly be completely unravelled in any single person's lifetime, and

I suspect he will have to adjourn the final stage of his investigations to that more luminous realm where the

Landlady hopes to rejoin the company of boarders who are nevermore to meet around her cheerful and well

The curtain has now fallen, and I show myself a moment before it to thank my audience and say farewell.

The second comer is commonly less welcome than the first, and the third makes but a rash venture. I hope I

To you, Beloved, who have never failed to cut the leaves which hold my record, who have never nodded over

its pages, who have never hesitated in your allegiance, who have greeted me with unfailing smiles and part

from me with unfeigned regrets, to you I look my last adieu as I bow myself out of sight, trusting my poor