VOLUME V.

Contents

PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE

A TALE OF JERUSALEM

THE SPHINX

HOP-FROG

THE MAN OF THE CROWD

NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD

THOU ART THE MAN

WHY THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN WEARS HIS HAND IN A SLING

BON-BON

SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE

OLD ENGLISH POETRY

=POEMS=

PREFACE

POEMS OF LATER LIFE

THE RAVEN

THE BELLS

ULALUME

TO HELEN

ANNABEL LEE

A VALENTINE

AN ENIGMA

FOR ANNIE

TO F——

TO FRANCES S. OSGOOD

ELDORADO

TO MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)

O MARIE LOUISE (SHEW)

THE CITY IN THE SEA

THE SLEEPER

NOTES

=POEMS OF MANHOOD=

LENORE

TO ONE IN PARADISE

THE COLISEUM

THE HAUNTED PALACE

THE CONQUEROR WORM

SILENCE

DREAM-LAND

HYMN

TO ZANTE

SCENES FROM “POLITIAN”

POEMS OF YOUTH

INTRODUCTION TO POEMS—1831

_LETTER TO MR. B—._

SONNET—TO SCIENCE

AL AARAAF

TAMERLANE

TO HELEN

THE VALLEY OF UNREST

ISRAFEL

TO ——

TO ——

TO THE RIVER——

SONG

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

A DREAM

ROMANCE

FAIRY-LAND

THE LAKE —— TO——

EVENING STAR

“THE HAPPIEST DAY.”

IMITATION

HYMN TO ARISTOGEITON AND HARMODIUS

DREAMS

“IN YOUTH I HAVE KNOWN ONE”

NOTES

=DOUBTFUL POEMS=

ALONE

TO ISADORE

THE VILLAGE STREET

THE FOREST REVERIE

NOTES

PHILOSOPHY OF FURNITURE.

In the internal decoration, if not in the external architecture of their

residences, the English are supreme. The Italians have but little

sentiment beyond marbles and colours. In France, _meliora probant,

deteriora _sequuntur—the people are too much a race of gadabouts

to maintain those household proprieties of which, indeed, they have a

delicate appreciation, or at least the elements of a proper sense. The

Chinese and most of the eastern races have a warm but inappropriate fancy.

The Scotch are _poor _decorists. The Dutch have, perhaps, an

indeterminate idea that a curtain is not a cabbage. In Spain they are _all

_curtains—a nation of hangmen. The Russians do not furnish. The

Hottentots and Kickapoos are very well in their way. The Yankees alone are

preposterous.

How this happens, it is not difficult to see. We have no aristocracy of

blood, and having therefore as a natural, and indeed as an inevitable

thing, fashioned for ourselves an aristocracy of dollars, the _display

of wealth _has here to take the place and perform the office of the

heraldic display in monarchical countries. By a transition readily

understood, and which might have been as readily foreseen, we have been

brought to merge in simple _show_ our notions of taste itself.

To speak less abstractly. In England, for example, no mere parade of

costly appurtenances would be so likely as with us, to create an

impression of the beautiful in respect to the appurtenances themselves—or

of taste as regards the proprietor:—this for the reason, first, that

wealth is not, in England, the loftiest object of ambition as constituting

a nobility; and secondly, that there, the true nobility of blood,

confining itself within the strict limits of legitimate taste, rather

avoids than affects that mere costliness in which a _parvenu _rivalry

may at any time be successfully attempted.

The people _will _imitate the nobles, and the result is a thorough

diffusion of the proper feeling. But in America, the coins current being

the sole arms of the aristocracy, their display may be said, in general,

to be the sole means of the aristocratic distinction; and the populace,

looking always upward for models, are insensibly led to confound the two

entirely separate ideas of magnificence and beauty. In short, the cost of

an article of furniture has at length come to be, with us, nearly the sole

test of its merit in a decorative point of view—and this test, once

established, has led the way to many analogous errors, readily traceable

to the one primitive folly.

There could be nothing more directly offensive to the eye of an artist

than the interior of what is termed in the United States—that is to

say, in Appallachia—a well-furnished apartment. Its most usual

defect is a want of keeping. We speak of the keeping of a room as we would

of the keeping of a picture—for both the picture and the room are

amenable to those undeviating principles which regulate all varieties of

art; and very nearly the same laws by which we decide on the higher merits

of a painting, suffice for decision on the adjustment of a chamber.

A want of keeping is observable sometimes in the character of the several

pieces of furniture, but generally in their colours or modes of adaptation

to use _Very _often the eye is offended by their inartistic

arrangement. Straight lines are too prevalent—too uninterruptedly

continued—or clumsily interrupted at right angles. If curved lines

occur, they are repeated into unpleasant uniformity. By undue precision,

the appearance of many a fine apartment is utterly spoiled.

Curtains are rarely well disposed, or well chosen in respect to other

decorations. With formal furniture, curtains are out of place; and an

extensive volume of drapery of any kind is, under any circumstance,

irreconcilable with good taste—the proper quantum, as well as the

proper adjustment, depending upon the character of the general effect.

Carpets are better understood of late than of ancient days, but we still

very frequently err in their patterns and colours. The soul of the

apartment is the carpet. From it are deduced not only the hues but the

forms of all objects incumbent. A judge at common law may be an ordinary

man; a good judge of a carpet _must be _a genius. Yet we have heard

discoursing of carpets, with the air “_d’un mouton qui reve,” _fellows

who should not and who could not be entrusted with the management of their

own _moustaches. _Every one knows that a large floor _may _have

a covering of large figures, and that a small one must have a covering of

small—yet this is not all the knowledge in the world. As regards

texture, the Saxony is alone admissible. Brussels is the preterpluperfect

tense of fashion, and Turkey is taste in its dying agonies. Touching

pattern—a carpet should _not _be bedizzened out like a Riccaree

Indian—all red chalk, yellow ochre, and cock’s feathers. In brief—distinct

grounds, and vivid circular or cycloid figures, _of no meaning, _are

here Median laws. The abomination of flowers, or representations of

well-known objects of any kind, should not be endured within the limits of

Christendom. Indeed, whether on carpets, or curtains, or tapestry, or

ottoman coverings, all upholstery of this nature should be rigidly

Arabesque. As for those antique floor-cloth & still occasionally seen

in the dwellings of the rabble—cloths of huge, sprawling, and

radiating devises, stripe-interspersed, and glorious with all hues, among

which no ground is intelligible—these are but the wicked invention

of a race of time-servers and money-lovers—children of Baal and

worshippers of Mammon—Benthams, who, to spare thought and economize

fancy, first cruelly invented the Kaleidoscope, and then established

joint-stock companies to twirl it by steam.

_Glare_ is a leading error in the philosophy of American household

decoration—an error easily recognised as deduced from the perversion

of taste just specified. We are violently enamoured of gas and of glass.

The former is totally inadmissible within doors. Its harsh and unsteady

light offends. No one having both brains and eyes will use it. A mild, or

what artists term a cool light, with its consequent warm shadows, will do

wonders for even an ill-furnished apartment. Never was a more lovely

thought than that of the astral lamp. We mean, of course, the astral lamp

proper—the lamp of Argand, with its original plain ground-glass

shade, and its tempered and uniform moonlight rays. The cut-glass shade is

a weak invention of the enemy. The eagerness with which we have adopted

it, partly on account of its _flashiness_, but principally on account

of its _greater rest_, is a good commentary on the proposition with

which we began. It is not too much to say, that the deliberate employer of

a cut-glass shade, is either radically deficient in taste, or blindly

subservient to the caprices of fashion. The light proceeding from one of

these gaudy abominations is unequal broken, and painful. It alone is

sufficient to mar a world of good effect in the furniture subjected to its

influence. Female loveliness, in especial, is more than one-half

disenchanted beneath its evil eye.

In the matter of glass, generally, we proceed upon false principles. Its

leading feature is _glitter—_and in that one word how much of

all that is detestable do we express! Flickering, unquiet lights, are _sometimes

_pleasing—to children and idiots always so—but in the

embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided. In truth,

even strong _steady _lights are inadmissible. The huge and unmeaning

glass chandeliers, prism-cut, gas-lighted, and without shade, which dangle

in our most fashionable drawing-rooms, may be cited as the quintessence of

all that is false in taste or preposterous in folly.

The rage for _glitter-_because its idea has become as we before

observed, confounded with that of magnificence in the abstract—has

led us, also, to the exaggerated employment of mirrors. We line our

dwellings with great British plates, and then imagine we have done a fine

thing. Now the slightest thought will be sufficient to convince any one

who has an eye at all, of the ill effect of numerous looking-glasses, and

especially of large ones. Regarded apart from its reflection, the mirror

presents a continuous, flat, colourless, unrelieved surface,—a thing

always and obviously unpleasant. Considered as a reflector, it is potent

in producing a monstrous and odious uniformity: and the evil is here

aggravated, not in merely direct proportion with the augmentation of its

sources, but in a ratio constantly increasing. In fact, a room with four

or five mirrors arranged at random, is, for all purposes of artistic show,

a room of no shape at all. If we add to this evil, the attendant glitter

upon glitter, we have a perfect farrago of discordant and displeasing

effects. The veriest bumpkin, on entering an apartment so bedizzened,

would be instantly aware of something wrong, although he might be

altogether unable to assign a cause for his dissatisfaction. But let the

same person be led into a room tastefully furnished, and he would be

startled into an exclamation of pleasure and surprise.

It is an evil growing out of our republican institutions, that here a man

of large purse has usually a very little soul which he keeps in it. The

corruption of taste is a portion or a pendant of the dollar-manufacture.

As we grow rich, our ideas grow rusty. It is, therefore, not among _our

_aristocracy that we must look (if at all, in Appallachia), for the

spirituality of a British _boudoir. _But we have seen apartments in

the tenure of Americans of moderns [possibly “modest” or “moderate”]

means, which, in negative merit at least, might vie with any of the _or-molu’d

_cabinets of our friends across the water. Even _now_, there is

present to our mind’s eye a small and not, ostentatious chamber with whose

decorations no fault can be found. The proprietor lies asleep on a sofa—the

weather is cool—the time is near midnight: we will make a sketch of

the room during his slumber.

It is oblong—some thirty feet in length and twenty-five in breadth—a

shape affording the best(ordinary) opportunities for the adjustment of

furniture. It has but one door—by no means a wide one—which is

at one end of the parallelogram, and but two windows, which are at the

other. These latter are large, reaching down to the floor—have deep

recesses—and open on an Italian _veranda. _Their panes are of a

crimson-tinted glass, set in rose-wood framings, more massive than usual.

They are curtained within the recess, by a thick silver tissue adapted to

the shape of the window, and hanging loosely in small volumes. Without the

recess are curtains of an exceedingly rich crimson silk, fringed with a

deep network of gold, and lined with silver tissue, which is the material

of the exterior blind. There are no cornices; but the folds of the whole

fabric (which are sharp rather than massive, and have an airy appearance),

issue from beneath a broad entablature of rich giltwork, which encircles

the room at the junction of the ceiling and walls. The drapery is thrown

open also, or closed, by means of a thick rope of gold loosely enveloping

it, and resolving itself readily into a knot; no pins or other such

devices are apparent. The colours of the curtains and their fringe—the

tints of crimson and gold—appear everywhere in profusion, and

determine the _character _of the room. The carpet—of Saxony

material—is quite half an inch thick, and is of the same crimson

ground, relieved simply by the appearance of a gold cord (like that

festooning the curtains) slightly relieved above the surface of the _ground,

_and thrown upon it in such a manner as to form a succession of short

irregular curves—one occasionally overlaying the other. The walls

are prepared with a glossy paper of a silver gray tint, spotted with small

Arabesque devices of a fainter hue of the prevalent crimson. Many

paintings relieve the expanse of paper. These are chiefly landscapes of an

imaginative cast—such as the fairy grottoes of Stanfield, or the

lake of the Dismal Swamp of Chapman. There are, nevertheless, three or

four female heads, of an ethereal beauty-portraits in the manner of Sully.

The tone of each picture is warm, but dark. There are no “brilliant

effects.” _Repose _speaks in all. Not one is of small size.

Diminutive paintings give that _spotty _look to a room, which is the

blemish of so many a fine work of Art overtouched. The frames are broad

but not deep, and richly carved, without being _dulled _or filagreed.

They have the whole lustre of burnished gold. They lie flat on the walls,

and do not hang off with cords. The designs themselves are often seen to

better advantage in this latter position, but the general appearance of

the chamber is injured. But one mirror—and this not a very large one—is

visible. In shape it is nearly circular—and it is hung so that a

reflection of the person can be obtained from it in none of the ordinary

sitting-places of the room. Two large low sofas of rosewood and crimson

silk, gold-flowered, form the only seats, with the exception of two light

conversation chairs, also of rose-wood. There is a pianoforte (rose-wood,

also), without cover, and thrown open. An octagonal table, formed

altogether of the richest gold-threaded marble, is placed near one of the

sofas. This is also without cover—the drapery of the curtains has

been thought sufficient. Four large and gorgeous Sevres vases, in which

bloom a profusion of sweet and vivid flowers, occupy the slightly rounded

angles of the room. A tall candelabrum, bearing a small antique lamp with

highly perfumed oil, is standing near the head of my sleeping friend. Some

light and graceful hanging shelves, with golden edges and crimson silk

cords with gold tassels, sustain two or three hundred magnificently bound

books. Beyond these things, there is no furniture, if we except an Argand

lamp, with a plain crimson-tinted ground glass shade, which depends from

He lofty vaulted ceiling by a single slender gold chain, and throws a

tranquil but magical radiance over all.

A TALE OF JERUSALEM

Intensos rigidam in frontem ascendere canos

Passus erat——

—Lucan—_De Catone_

——a bristly _bore_.

_Translation._

“Let us hurry to the walls,” said Abel-Phittim to Buzi-Ben-Levi and Simeon

the Pharisee, on the tenth day of the month Thammuz, in the year of the

world three thousand nine hundred and forty-one—“let us hasten to the

ramparts adjoining the gate of Benjamin, which is in the city of David,

and overlooking the camp of the uncircumcised; for it is the last hour of

the fourth watch, being sunrise; and the idolaters, in fulfilment of the

promise of Pompey, should be awaiting us with the lambs for the

sacrifices.”

Simeon, Abel-Phittim, and Duzi-Ben-Levi were the Gizbarim, or

sub-collectors of the offering, in the holy city of Jerusalem.

“Verily,” replied the Pharisee; “let us hasten: for this generosity in the

heathen is unwonted; and fickle-mindedness has ever been an attribute of

the worshippers of Baal.”

“That they are fickle-minded and treacherous is as true as the

Pentateuch,” said Buzi-Ben-Levi, “but that is only toward the people of

Adonai. When was it ever known that the Ammonites proved wanting to their

own interests? Methinks it is no great stretch of generosity to allow us

lambs for the altar of the Lord, receiving in lieu thereof thirty silver

shekels per head!”

“Thou forgettest, however, Ben-Levi,” replied Abel-Phittim, “that the

Roman Pompey, who is now impiously besieging the city of the Most High,

has no assurity that we apply not the lambs thus purchased for the altar,

to the sustenance of the body, rather than of the spirit.”

“Now, by the five corners of my beard!” shouted the Pharisee, who belonged

to the sect called The Dashers (that little knot of saints whose manner of

_dashing _and lacerating the feet against the pavement was long a

thorn and a reproach to less zealous devotees—a stumbling-block to less

gifted perambulators)—“by the five corners of that beard which, as a

priest, I am forbidden to shave!—have we lived to see the day when a

blaspheming and idolatrous upstart of Rome shall accuse us of

appropriating to the appetites of the flesh the most holy and consecrated

elements? Have we lived to see the day when—”

“Let us not question the motives of the Philistine,” interrupted

Abel-Phittim, “for to-day we profit for the first time by his avarice or

by his generosity; but rather let us hurry to the ramparts, lest offerings

should be wanting for that altar whose fire the rains of heaven can not

extinguish, and whose pillars of smoke no tempest can turn aside.”

That part of the city to which our worthy Gizbarim now hastened, and which

bore the name of its architect, King David, was esteemed the most strongly

fortified district of Jerusalem; being situated upon the steep and lofty

hill of Zion. Here, a broad, deep, circumvallatory trench, hewn from the

solid rock, was defended by a wall of great strength erected upon its

inner edge. This wall was adorned, at regular interspaces, by square

towers of white marble; the lowest sixty, and the highest one hundred and

twenty cubits in height. But, in the vicinity of the gate of Benjamin, the

wall arose by no means from the margin of the fosse. On the contrary,

between the level of the ditch and the basement of the rampart sprang up a

perpendicular cliff of two hundred and fifty cubits, forming part of the

precipitous Mount Moriah. So that when Simeon and his associates arrived

on the summit of the tower called Adoni-Bezek—the loftiest of all the

turrets around about Jerusalem, and the usual place of conference with the

besieging army—they looked down upon the camp of the enemy from an

eminence excelling by many feet that of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, by

several, that of the temple of Belus.

“Verily,” sighed the Pharisee, as he peered dizzily over the precipice,

“the uncircumcised are as the sands by the seashore—as the locusts in the

wilderness! The valley of the King hath become the valley of Adommin.”

“And yet,” added Ben-Levi, “thou canst not point me out a Philistine—no,

not one—from Aleph to Tau—from the wilderness to the battlements—who

seemeth any bigger than the letter Jod!”

“Lower away the basket with the shekels of silver!” here shouted a Roman

soldier in a hoarse, rough voice, which appeared to issue from the regions

of Pluto—“lower away the basket with the accursed coin which it has

broken the jaw of a noble Roman to pronounce! Is it thus you evince your

gratitude to our master Pompeius, who, in his condescension, has thought

fit to listen to your idolatrous importunities? The god Phœbus, who is a

true god, has been charioted for an hour—and were you not to be on the

ramparts by sunrise? Ædepol! do you think that we, the conquerors of the

world, have nothing better to do than stand waiting by the walls of every

kennel, to traffic with the dogs of the earth? Lower away! I say—and

see that your trumpery be bright in color and just in weight!”

“El Elohim!” ejaculated the Pharisee, as the discordant tones of the

centurion rattled up the crags of the precipice, and fainted away against

the temple—“El Elohim!—who is the god Phœbus?—whom doth

the blasphemer invoke? Thou, Buzi-Ben-Levi! who art read in the laws of

the Gentiles, and hast sojourned among them who dabble with the Teraphim!—is

it Nergal of whom the idolater speaketh?—or Ashimah?—or

Nibhaz,—or Tartak?—or Adramalech?—or Anamalech?—or

Succoth-Benith?—or Dagon?—or Belial?—or Baal-Perith?—or

Baal-Peor?—or Baal-Zebub?”

“Verily it is neither—but beware how thou lettest the rope slip too

rapidly through thy fingers; for should the wicker-work chance to hang on

the projection of yonder crag, there will be a woful outpouring of the

holy things of the sanctuary.”

By the assistance of some rudely constructed machinery, the heavily laden

basket was now carefully lowered down among the multitude; and, from the

giddy pinnacle, the Romans were seen gathering confusedly round it; but

owing to the vast height and the prevalence of a fog, no distinct view of

their operations could be obtained.

Half an hour had already elapsed.

“We shall be too late!” sighed the Pharisee, as at the expiration of this

period he looked over into the abyss—“we shall be too late! we shall be

turned out of office by the Katholim.”

“No more,” responded Abel-Phittim—“no more shall we feast upon the

fat of the land—no longer shall our beards be odorous with frankincense—our

loins girded up with fine linen from the Temple.”

“Raca!” swore Ben-Levi, “Raca! do they mean to defraud us of the purchase

money? or, Holy Moses! are they weighing the shekels of the tabernacle?”

“They have given the signal at last!” cried the Pharisee—“they

have given the signal at last! pull away, Abel-Phittim!—and thou,

Buzi-Ben-Levi, pull away!—for verily the Philistines have either

still hold upon the basket, or the Lord hath softened their hearts to

place therein a beast of good weight!” And the Gizbarim pulled away, while

their burden swung heavily upward through the still increasing mist.

* * * * *

“Booshoh he!”—as, at the conclusion of an hour, some object at the

extremity of the rope became indistinctly visible—“Booshoh he!” was

the exclamation which burst from the lips of Ben-Levi.

“Booshoh he!—for shame!—it is a ram from the thickets of

Engedi, and as rugged as the valley of Jehosaphat!”

“It is a firstling of the flock,” said Abel-Phittim, “I know him by the

bleating of his lips, and the innocent folding of his limbs. His eyes are

more beautiful than the jewels of the Pectoral, and his flesh is like the

honey of Hebron.”

“It is a fatted calf from the pastures of Bashan,” said the Pharisee, “the

heathen have dealt wonderfully with us——let us raise up our

voices in a psalm—let us give thanks on the shawm and on the

psaltery—on the harp and on the huggab—on the cythern and on the sackbut!”

It was not until the basket had arrived within a few feet of the Gizbarim

that a low grunt betrayed to their perception a _hog_ of no common size.

“Now El Emanu!” slowly and with upturned eyes ejaculated the trio, as,

letting go their hold, the emancipated porker tumbled headlong among the

Philistines, “El Emanu!—God be with us—it is _the unutterable

flesh!”_

THE SPHINX

During the dread reign of the cholera in New York, I had accepted the

invitation of a relative to spend a fortnight with him in the retirement

of his _cottage ornée_ on the banks of the Hudson. We had here around

us all the ordinary means of summer amusement; and what with rambling in

the woods, sketching, boating, fishing, bathing, music, and books, we

should have passed the time pleasantly enough, but for the fearful

intelligence which reached us every morning from the populous city. Not a

day elapsed which did not bring us news of the decease of some

acquaintance. Then as the fatality increased, we learned to expect daily

the loss of some friend. At length we trembled at the approach of every

messenger. The very air from the South seemed to us redolent with death.

That palsying thought, indeed, took entire possession of my soul. I could

neither speak, think, nor dream of any thing else. My host was of a less

excitable temperament, and, although greatly depressed in spirits, exerted

himself to sustain my own. His richly philosophical intellect was not at

any time affected by unrealities. To the substances of terror he was

sufficiently alive, but of its shadows he had no apprehension.

His endeavors to arouse me from the condition of abnormal gloom into which

I had fallen, were frustrated, in great measure, by certain volumes which

I had found in his library. These were of a character to force into

germination whatever seeds of hereditary superstition lay latent in my

bosom. I had been reading these books without his knowledge, and thus he

was often at a loss to account for the forcible impressions which had been

made upon my fancy.

A favorite topic with me was the popular belief in omens—a belief

which, at this one epoch of my life, I was almost seriously disposed to

defend. On this subject we had long and animated discussions—he

maintaining the utter groundlessness of faith in such matters,—I

contending that a popular sentiment arising with absolute

spontaneity—that is to say, without apparent traces of

suggestion—had in itself the unmistakable elements of truth, and

was entitled to as much respect as that intuition which is the

idiosyncrasy of the individual man of genius.

The fact is, that soon after my arrival at the cottage there had occurred

to myself an incident so entirely inexplicable, and which had in it so

much of the portentous character, that I might well have been excused for

regarding it as an omen. It appalled, and at the same time so confounded

and bewildered me, that many days elapsed before I could make up my mind

to communicate the circumstances to my friend.

Near the close of exceedingly warm day, I was sitting, book in hand, at an

open window, commanding, through a long vista of the river banks, a view

of a distant hill, the face of which nearest my position had been denuded

by what is termed a land-slide, of the principal portion of its trees. My

thoughts had been long wandering from the volume before me to the gloom

and desolation of the neighboring city. Uplifting my eyes from the page,

they fell upon the naked face of the bill, and upon an object—upon

some living monster of hideous conformation, which very rapidly made its

way from the summit to the bottom, disappearing finally in the dense

forest below. As this creature first came in sight, I doubted my own

sanity—or at least the evidence of my own eyes; and many minutes

passed before I succeeded in convincing myself that I was neither mad nor

in a dream. Yet when I described the monster (which I distinctly saw, and

calmly surveyed through the whole period of its progress), my readers, I

fear, will feel more difficulty in being convinced of these points than

even I did myself.

Estimating the size of the creature by comparison with the diameter of the

large trees near which it passed—the few giants of the forest which

had escaped the fury of the land-slide—I concluded it to be far

larger than any ship of the line in existence. I say ship of the line,

because the shape of the monster suggested the idea—the hull of one

of our seventy-four might convey a very tolerable conception of the

general outline. The mouth of the animal was situated at the extremity of

a proboscis some sixty or seventy feet in length, and about as thick as

the body of an ordinary elephant. Near the root of this trunk was an

immense quantity of black shaggy hair—more than could have been

supplied by the coats of a score of buffaloes; and projecting from this

hair downwardly and laterally, sprang two gleaming tusks not unlike those

of the wild boar, but of infinitely greater dimensions. Extending forward,

parallel with the proboscis, and on each side of it, was a gigantic staff,

thirty or forty feet in length, formed seemingly of pure crystal and in

shape a perfect prism,—it reflected in the most gorgeous manner the

rays of the declining sun. The trunk was fashioned like a wedge with the

apex to the earth. From it there were outspread two pairs of wings—each

wing nearly one hundred yards in length—one pair being placed above

the other, and all thickly covered with metal scales; each scale

apparently some ten or twelve feet in diameter. I observed that the upper

and lower tiers of wings were connected by a strong chain. But the chief

peculiarity of this horrible thing was the representation of a Death’s

Head, which covered nearly the whole surface of its breast, and which was

as accurately traced in glaring white, upon the dark ground of the body,

as if it had been there carefully designed by an artist. While I regarded

the terrific animal, and more especially the appearance on its breast,

with a feeling or horror and awe—with a sentiment of forthcoming

evil, which I found it impossible to quell by any effort of the reason, I

perceived the huge jaws at the extremity of the proboscis suddenly expand

themselves, and from them there proceeded a sound so loud and so

expressive of woe, that it struck upon my nerves like a knell and as the

monster disappeared at the foot of the hill, I fell at once, fainting, to

the floor.

Upon recovering, my first impulse, of course, was to inform my friend of

what I had seen and heard—and I can scarcely explain what feeling of

repugnance it was which, in the end, operated to prevent me.

At length, one evening, some three or four days after the occurrence, we

were sitting together in the room in which I had seen the apparition—I

occupying the same seat at the same window, and he lounging on a sofa near

at hand. The association of the place and time impelled me to give him an

account of the phenomenon. He heard me to the end—at first laughed

heartily—and then lapsed into an excessively grave demeanor, as if

my insanity was a thing beyond suspicion. At this instant I again had a

distinct view of the monster—to which, with a shout of absolute

terror, I now directed his attention. He looked eagerly—but

maintained that he saw nothing—although I designated minutely the

course of the creature, as it made its way down the naked face of the

hill.

I was now immeasurably alarmed, for I considered the vision either as an

omen of my death, or, worse, as the fore-runner of an attack of mania. I

threw myself passionately back in my chair, and for some moments buried my

face in my hands. When I uncovered my eyes, the apparition was no longer

apparent.

My host, however, had in some degree resumed the calmness of his demeanor,

and questioned me very rigorously in respect to the conformation of the

visionary creature. When I had fully satisfied him on this head, he sighed

deeply, as if relieved of some intolerable burden, and went on to talk,

with what I thought a cruel calmness, of various points of speculative

philosophy, which had heretofore formed subject of discussion between us.

I remember his insisting very especially (among other things) upon the

idea that the principle source of error in all human investigations lay in

the liability of the understanding to under-rate or to over-value the

importance of an object, through mere misadmeasurement of its

propinquity. “To estimate properly, for example,” he said, “the influence

to be exercised on mankind at large by the thorough diffusion of

Democracy, the distance of the epoch at which such diffusion may possibly

be accomplished should not fail to form an item in the estimate. Yet can

you tell me one writer on the subject of government who has ever thought

this particular branch of the subject worthy of discussion at all?”

He here paused for a moment, stepped to a book-case, and brought forth one

of the ordinary synopses of Natural History. Requesting me then to

exchange seats with him, that he might the better distinguish the fine

print of the volume, he took my armchair at the window, and, opening the

book, resumed his discourse very much in the same tone as before.

“But for your exceeding minuteness,” he said, “in describing the monster,

I might never have had it in my power to demonstrate to you what it was.

In the first place, let me read to you a schoolboy account of the genus

Sphinx, of the family Crepuscularia of the order Lepidoptera, of the class

of Insecta—or insects. The account runs thus:

“‘Four membranous wings covered with little colored scales of metallic

appearance; mouth forming a rolled proboscis, produced by an elongation of

the jaws, upon the sides of which are found the rudiments of mandibles and

downy palpi; the inferior wings retained to the superior by a stiff hair;

antennæ in the form of an elongated club, prismatic; abdomen pointed. The

Death’s-headed Sphinx has occasioned much terror among the vulgar,

at times, by the melancholy kind of cry which it utters, and the insignia

of death which it wears upon its corslet.’”

He here closed the book and leaned forward in the chair, placing himself

accurately in the position which I had occupied at the moment of beholding

“the monster.”

“Ah, here it is,” he presently exclaimed—“it is reascending the face

of the hill, and a very remarkable looking creature I admit it to be.

Still, it is by no means so large or so distant as you imagined it,—for

the fact is that, as it wriggles its way up this thread, which some spider

has wrought along the window-sash, I find it to be about the sixteenth of

an inch in its extreme length, and also about the sixteenth of an inch

distant from the pupil of my eye.”

HOP-FROG

I never knew anyone so keenly alive to a joke as the king was. He seemed

to live only for joking. To tell a good story of the joke kind, and to

tell it well, was the surest road to his favor. Thus it happened that his

seven ministers were all noted for their accomplishments as jokers. They

all took after the king, too, in being large, corpulent, oily men, as well

as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there

is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been

quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is a rara

avis in terris.

About the refinements, or, as he called them, the “ghost” of wit, the king

troubled himself very little. He had an especial admiration for breadth in

a jest, and would often put up with length, for the sake of it.

Over-niceties wearied him. He would have preferred Rabelais’ “Gargantua”

to the “Zadig” of Voltaire: and, upon the whole, practical jokes suited

his taste far better than verbal ones.

At the date of my narrative, professing jesters had not altogether gone

out of fashion at court. Several of the great continental “powers” still

retain their “fools,” who wore motley, with caps and bells, and who were

expected to be always ready with sharp witticisms, at a moment’s notice,

in consideration of the crumbs that fell from the royal table.

_Our_ king, as a matter of course, retained his “fool.” The fact is, he

_required_ something in the way of folly—if only to counterbalance the

heavy wisdom of the seven wise men who were his ministers—not to

mention himself.

His fool, or professional jester, was not only a fool, however. His value

was trebled in the eyes of the king, by the fact of his being also a dwarf

and a cripple. Dwarfs were as common at court, in those days, as fools;

and many monarchs would have found it difficult to get through their days

(days are rather longer at court than elsewhere) without both a jester to

laugh with, and a dwarf to laugh at. But, as I have already observed, your

jesters, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, are fat, round, and

unwieldy—so that it was no small source of self-gratulation with our

king that, in Hop-Frog (this was the fool’s name), he possessed a

triplicate treasure in one person.

I believe the name “Hop-Frog” was _not_ that given to the dwarf by his

sponsors at baptism, but it was conferred upon him, by general consent of

the seven ministers, on account of his inability to walk as other men

do. In fact, Hop-Frog could only get along by a sort of interjectional

gait—something between a leap and a wriggle—a movement that

afforded illimitable amusement, and of course consolation, to the king,

for (notwithstanding the protuberance of his stomach and a constitutional

swelling of the head) the king, by his whole court, was accounted a

capital figure.

But although Hop-Frog, through the distortion of his legs, could move only

with great pain and difficulty along a road or floor, the prodigious

muscular power which nature seemed to have bestowed upon his arms, by way

of compensation for deficiency in the lower limbs, enabled him to perform

many feats of wonderful dexterity, where trees or ropes were in question,

or any thing else to climb. At such exercises he certainly much more

resembled a squirrel, or a small monkey, than a frog.

I am not able to say, with precision, from what country Hop-Frog

originally came. It was from some barbarous region, however, that no

person ever heard of—a vast distance from the court of our king.

Hop-Frog, and a young girl very little less dwarfish than himself

(although of exquisite proportions, and a marvellous dancer), had been

forcibly carried off from their respective homes in adjoining provinces,

and sent as presents to the king, by one of his ever-victorious generals.

Under these circumstances, it is not to be wondered at that a close

intimacy arose between the two little captives. Indeed, they soon became

sworn friends. Hop-Frog, who, although he made a great deal of sport, was

by no means popular, had it not in his power to render Trippetta many

services; but she, on account of her grace and exquisite beauty (although

a dwarf), was universally admired and petted; so she possessed much

influence; and never failed to use it, whenever she could, for the benefit

of Hop-Frog.

On some grand state occasion—I forgot what—the king determined

to have a masquerade, and whenever a masquerade or any thing of that kind,

occurred at our court, then the talents, both of Hop-Frog and Trippetta

were sure to be called into play. Hop-Frog, in especial, was so inventive

in the way of getting up pageants, suggesting novel characters, and

arranging costumes, for masked balls, that nothing could be done, it

seems, without his assistance.

The night appointed for the fete had arrived. A gorgeous hall had been

fitted up, under Trippetta’s eye, with every kind of device which could

possibly give eclat to a masquerade. The whole court was in a fever of

expectation. As for costumes and characters, it might well be supposed

that everybody had come to a decision on such points. Many had made up

their minds (as to what roles they should assume) a week, or even a month,

in advance; and, in fact, there was not a particle of indecision anywhere—except

in the case of the king and his seven minsters. Why they hesitated I never

could tell, unless they did it by way of a joke. More probably, they found

it difficult, on account of being so fat, to make up their minds. At all

events, time flew; and, as a last resort they sent for Trippetta and

Hop-Frog.

When the two little friends obeyed the summons of the king they found him

sitting at his wine with the seven members of his cabinet council; but the

monarch appeared to be in a very ill humor. He knew that Hop-Frog was not

fond of wine, for it excited the poor cripple almost to madness; and

madness is no comfortable feeling. But the king loved his practical jokes,

and took pleasure in forcing Hop-Frog to drink and (as the king called it)

“to be merry.”

“Come here, Hop-Frog,” said he, as the jester and his friend entered the

room; “swallow this bumper to the health of your absent friends, [here

Hop-Frog sighed,] and then let us have the benefit of your invention. We

want characters—characters, man—something novel—out of

the way. We are wearied with this everlasting sameness. Come, drink! the

wine will brighten your wits.”

Hop-Frog endeavored, as usual, to get up a jest in reply to these advances

from the king; but the effort was too much. It happened to be the poor

dwarf’s birthday, and the command to drink to his “absent friends” forced

the tears to his eyes. Many large, bitter drops fell into the goblet as he

took it, humbly, from the hand of the tyrant.

“Ah! ha! ha! ha!” roared the latter, as the dwarf reluctantly

drained the beaker. “See what a glass of good wine can do! Why,

your eyes are shining already!”

Poor fellow! his large eyes gleamed, rather than shone; for the effect of

wine on his excitable brain was not more powerful than instantaneous. He

placed the goblet nervously on the table, and looked round upon the

company with a half-insane stare. They all seemed highly amused at

the success of the king’s ‘joke.’

“And now to business,” said the prime minister, a very fat man.

“Yes,” said the King; “Come, Hop-Frog, lend us your

assistance. Characters, my fine fellow; we stand in need of

characters—all of us—ha! ha! ha!” and as this was

seriously meant for a joke, his laugh was chorused by the seven.

Hop-Frog also laughed, although feebly and somewhat vacantly.

“Come, come,” said the king, impatiently, “have you nothing to suggest?”

“I am endeavoring to think of something novel,” replied the dwarf,

abstractedly, for he was quite bewildered by the wine.

“Endeavoring!” cried the tyrant, fiercely; “what do you

mean by _that?_ Ah, I perceive. You are sulky, and want more wine.

Here, drink this!” and he poured out another goblet full and

offered it to the cripple, who merely gazed at it, gasping for breath.

“Drink, I say!” shouted the monster, “or by the

fiends—”

The dwarf hesitated. The king grew purple with rage. The courtiers

smirked. Trippetta, pale as a corpse, advanced to the monarch’s seat, and,

falling on her knees before him, implored him to spare her friend.

The tyrant regarded her, for some moments, in evident wonder at her

audacity. He seemed quite at a loss what to do or say—how most

becomingly to express his indignation. At last, without uttering a

syllable, he pushed her violently from him, and threw the contents of the

brimming goblet in her face.

The poor girl got up the best she could, and, not daring even to sigh,

resumed her position at the foot of the table.

There was a dead silence for about half a minute, during which the falling

of a leaf, or of a feather, might have been heard. It was interrupted by a

low, but harsh and protracted grating sound which seemed to come at once

from every corner of the room.

“What—what—what are you making that noise for?” demanded the

king, turning furiously to the dwarf.

The latter seemed to have recovered, in great measure, from his

intoxication, and looking fixedly but quietly into the tyrant’s face,

merely ejaculated:

“I—I? How could it have been me?”

“The sound appeared to come from without,” observed one of the courtiers.

“I fancy it was the parrot at the window, whetting his bill upon his

cage-wires.”

“True,” replied the monarch, as if much relieved by the suggestion; “but,

on the honor of a knight, I could have sworn that it was the gritting of

this vagabond’s teeth.”

Hereupon the dwarf laughed (the king was too confirmed a joker to object

to any one’s laughing), and displayed a set of large, powerful, and very

repulsive teeth. Moreover, he avowed his perfect willingness to swallow as

much wine as desired. The monarch was pacified; and having drained another

bumper with no very perceptible ill effect, Hop-Frog entered at once, and

with spirit, into the plans for the masquerade.

“I cannot tell what was the association of idea,” observed he, very

tranquilly, and as if he had never tasted wine in his life, “but just

after your majesty, had struck the girl and thrown the wine in her face—just

after your majesty had done this, and while the parrot was making that odd

noise outside the window, there came into my mind a capital diversion—one

of my own country frolics—often enacted among us, at our

masquerades: but here it will be new altogether. Unfortunately, however,

it requires a company of eight persons and—”

“Here we are!” cried the king, laughing at his acute discovery of the

coincidence; “eight to a fraction—I and my seven ministers. Come!

what is the diversion?”

“We call it,” replied the cripple, “the Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs, and

it really is excellent sport if well enacted.”

“We will enact it,” remarked the king, drawing himself up, and lowering

his eyelids.

“The beauty of the game,” continued Hop-Frog, “lies in the fright it

occasions among the women.”

“Capital!” roared in chorus the monarch and his ministry.

“I will equip you as ourang-outangs,” proceeded the dwarf; “leave all that

to me. The resemblance shall be so striking, that the company of

masqueraders will take you for real beasts—and of course, they will

be as much terrified as astonished.”

“Oh, this is exquisite!” exclaimed the king. “Hop-Frog! I will make a man

of you.”

“The chains are for the purpose of increasing the confusion by their

jangling. You are supposed to have escaped, en masse, from your keepers.

Your majesty cannot conceive the effect produced, at a masquerade, by

eight chained ourang-outangs, imagined to be real ones by most of the

company; and rushing in with savage cries, among the crowd of delicately

and gorgeously habited men and women. The _contrast_ is inimitable.”

“It must be,” said the king: and the council arose hurriedly (as it was

growing late), to put in execution the scheme of Hop-Frog.

His mode of equipping the party as ourang-outangs was very simple, but

effective enough for his purposes. The animals in question had, at the

epoch of my story, very rarely been seen in any part of the civilized

world; and as the imitations made by the dwarf were sufficiently

beast-like and more than sufficiently hideous, their truthfulness to

nature was thus thought to be secured.

The king and his ministers were first encased in tight-fitting stockinet

shirts and drawers. They were then saturated with tar. At this stage of

the process, some one of the party suggested feathers; but the suggestion

was at once overruled by the dwarf, who soon convinced the eight, by

ocular demonstration, that the hair of such a brute as the ourang-outang

was much more efficiently represented by _flax_. A thick coating of

the latter was accordingly plastered upon the coating of tar. A long

chain was now procured. First, it was passed about the waist of the king,

_and tied;_ then about another of the party, and also tied; then

about all successively, in the same manner. When this chaining

arrangement was complete, and the party stood as far apart from each

other as possible, they formed a circle; and to make all things appear

natural, Hop-Frog passed the residue of the chain in two diameters, at

right angles, across the circle, after the fashion adopted, at the

present day, by those who capture chimpanzees, or other large apes, in

Borneo.

The grand saloon in which the masquerade was to take place, was a circular

room, very lofty, and receiving the light of the sun only through a single

window at top. At night (the season for which the apartment was especially

designed) it was illuminated principally by a large chandelier, depending

by a chain from the centre of the sky-light, and lowered, or elevated, by

means of a counter-balance as usual; but (in order not to look unsightly)

this latter passed outside the cupola and over the roof.

The arrangements of the room had been left to Trippetta’s superintendence;

but, in some particulars, it seems, she had been guided by the calmer

judgment of her friend the dwarf. At his suggestion it was that, on this

occasion, the chandelier was removed. Its waxen drippings (which, in

weather so warm, it was quite impossible to prevent) would have been

seriously detrimental to the rich dresses of the guests, who, on account

of the crowded state of the saloon, could not all be expected to keep from

out its centre; that is to say, from under the chandelier. Additional

sconces were set in various parts of the hall, out of the way, and a

flambeau, emitting sweet odor, was placed in the right hand of each of the

Caryaides [Caryatides] that stood against the wall—some fifty or

sixty altogether.

The eight ourang-outangs, taking Hop-Frog’s advice, waited patiently until

midnight (when the room was thoroughly filled with masqueraders) before

making their appearance. No sooner had the clock ceased striking, however,

than they rushed, or rather rolled in, all together—for the

impediments of their chains caused most of the party to fall, and all to

stumble as they entered.

The excitement among the masqueraders was prodigious, and filled the heart

of the king with glee. As had been anticipated, there were not a few of

the guests who supposed the ferocious-looking creatures to be beasts of

some kind in reality, if not precisely ourang-outangs. Many of the women

swooned with affright; and had not the king taken the precaution to

exclude all weapons from the saloon, his party might soon have expiated

their frolic in their blood. As it was, a general rush was made for the

doors; but the king had ordered them to be locked immediately upon his

entrance; and, at the dwarf’s suggestion, the keys had been deposited with

him.

While the tumult was at its height, and each masquerader attentive only to

his own safety (for, in fact, there was much real danger from the pressure

of the excited crowd), the chain by which the chandelier ordinarily hung,

and which had been drawn up on its removal, might have been seen very

gradually to descend, until its hooked extremity came within three feet of

the floor.

Soon after this, the king and his seven friends having reeled about the

hall in all directions, found themselves, at length, in its centre, and,

of course, in immediate contact with the chain. While they were thus

situated, the dwarf, who had followed noiselessly at their heels, inciting

them to keep up the commotion, took hold of their own chain at the

intersection of the two portions which crossed the circle diametrically

and at right angles. Here, with the rapidity of thought, he inserted the

hook from which the chandelier had been wont to depend; and, in an

instant, by some unseen agency, the chandelier-chain was drawn so far

upward as to take the hook out of reach, and, as an inevitable

consequence, to drag the ourang-outangs together in close connection, and

face to face.

The masqueraders, by this time, had recovered, in some measure, from their

alarm; and, beginning to regard the whole matter as a well-contrived

pleasantry, set up a loud shout of laughter at the predicament of the

apes.

“Leave them to me!” now screamed Hop-Frog, his shrill voice making itself

easily heard through all the din. “Leave them to me. I fancy I know them.

If I can only get a good look at them, I can soon tell who they are.”

Here, scrambling over the heads of the crowd, he managed to get to the

wall; when, seizing a flambeau from one of the Caryatides, he returned,

as he went, to the centre of the room—leaped, with the agility of a

monkey, upon the kings head, and thence clambered a few feet up the

chain; holding down the torch to examine the group of ourang-outangs, and

still screaming: “I shall soon find out who they are!”

And now, while the whole assembly (the apes included) were convulsed with

laughter, the jester suddenly uttered a shrill whistle; when the chain

flew violently up for about thirty feet—dragging with it the

dismayed and struggling ourang-outangs, and leaving them suspended in

mid-air between the sky-light and the floor. Hop-Frog, clinging to the

chain as it rose, still maintained his relative position in respect to the

eight maskers, and still (as if nothing were the matter) continued to

thrust his torch down toward them, as though endeavoring to discover who

they were.

So thoroughly astonished was the whole company at this ascent, that a dead

silence, of about a minute’s duration, ensued. It was broken by just such

a low, harsh, grating sound, as had before attracted the attention of the

king and his councillors when the former threw the wine in the face of

Trippetta. But, on the present occasion, there could be no question as to

whence the sound issued. It came from the fang-like teeth of the

dwarf, who ground them and gnashed them as he foamed at the mouth, and

glared, with an expression of maniacal rage, into the upturned

countenances of the king and his seven companions.

“Ah, ha!” said at length the infuriated jester. “Ah, ha! I begin to see

who these people are now!” Here, pretending to scrutinize the king more

closely, he held the flambeau to the flaxen coat which enveloped him, and

which instantly burst into a sheet of vivid flame. In less than half a

minute the whole eight ourang-outangs were blazing fiercely, amid the

shrieks of the multitude who gazed at them from below, horror-stricken,

and without the power to render them the slightest assistance.

At length the flames, suddenly increasing in virulence, forced the jester

to climb higher up the chain, to be out of their reach; and, as he made

this movement, the crowd again sank, for a brief instant, into silence.

The dwarf seized his opportunity, and once more spoke:

“I now see distinctly,” he said, “what manner of people these maskers are.

They are a great king and his seven privy-councillors,—a king who

does not scruple to strike a defenceless girl and his seven councillors

who abet him in the outrage. As for myself, I am simply Hop-Frog, the

jester—and this is my last jest.”

Owing to the high combustibility of both the flax and the tar to which it

adhered, the dwarf had scarcely made an end of his brief speech before the

work of vengeance was complete. The eight corpses swung in their chains, a

fetid, blackened, hideous, and indistinguishable mass. The cripple hurled

his torch at them, clambered leisurely to the ceiling, and disappeared

through the sky-light.

It is supposed that Trippetta, stationed on the roof of the saloon, had

been the accomplice of her friend in his fiery revenge, and that,

together, they effected their escape to their own country; for neither was

seen again.

THE MAN OF THE CROWD.

Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.—_La Bruyère_.

It was well said of a certain German book that “_er lasst sich nicht

lesen_”—it does not permit itself to be read. There are some

secrets which do not permit themselves to be told. Men die nightly in

their beds, wringing the hands of ghostly confessors and looking them

piteously in the eyes—die with despair of heart and convulsion of

throat, on account of the hideousness of mysteries which will not suffer

themselves to be revealed. Now and then, alas, the conscience of man takes

up a burthen so heavy in horror that it can be thrown down only into the

grave. And thus the essence of all crime is undivulged.

Not long ago, about the closing in of an evening in autumn, I sat at the

large bow window of the D—— Coffee-House in London. For some

months I had been ill in health, but was now convalescent, and, with

returning strength, found myself in one of those happy moods which are so

precisely the converse of _ennui_—moods of the keenest

appetency, when the film from the mental vision departs—the

αχλυξ η πριυ

επῆευ—and the intellect, electrified,

surpasses as greatly its every-day condition, as does the vivid yet

candid reason of Leibnitz, the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias. Merely

to breathe was enjoyment; and I derived positive pleasure even from many

of the legitimate sources of pain. I felt a calm but inquisitive interest

in every thing. With a cigar in my mouth and a newspaper in my lap, I had

been amusing myself for the greater part of the afternoon, now in poring

over advertisements, now in observing the promiscuous company in the

room, and now in peering through the smoky panes into the street.

This latter is one of the principal thoroughfares of the city, and had

been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the darkness came on,

the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps were well

lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing past

the door. At this particular period of the evening I had never before been

in a similar situation, and the tumultuous sea of human heads filled me,

therefore, with a delicious novelty of emotion. I gave up, at length, all

care of things within the hotel, and became absorbed in contemplation of

the scene without.

At first my observations took an abstract and generalizing turn. I looked

at the passengers in masses, and thought of them in their aggregate

relations. Soon, however, I descended to details, and regarded with minute

interest the innumerable varieties of figure, dress, air, gait, visage,

and expression of countenance.

By far the greater number of those who went by had a satisfied

business-like demeanor, and seemed to be thinking only of making their way

through the press. Their brows were knit, and their eyes rolled quickly;

when pushed against by fellow-wayfarers they evinced no symptom of

impatience, but adjusted their clothes and hurried on. Others, still a

numerous class, were restless in their movements, had flushed faces, and

talked and gesticulated to themselves, as if feeling in solitude on

account of the very denseness of the company around. When impeded in their

progress, these people suddenly ceased muttering, but re-doubled their

gesticulations, and awaited, with an absent and overdone smile upon the

lips, the course of the persons impeding them. If jostled, they bowed

profusely to the jostlers, and appeared overwhelmed with confusion.—There

was nothing very distinctive about these two large classes beyond what I

have noted. Their habiliments belonged to that order which is pointedly

termed the decent. They were undoubtedly noblemen, merchants, attorneys,

tradesmen, stock-jobbers—the Eupatrids and the common-places of

society—men of leisure and men actively engaged in affairs of their

own—conducting business upon their own responsibility. They did not

greatly excite my attention.

The tribe of clerks was an obvious one and here I discerned two remarkable

divisions. There were the junior clerks of flash houses—young

gentlemen with tight coats, bright boots, well-oiled hair, and

supercilious lips. Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which

may be termed deskism for want of a better word, the manner of these

persons seemed to me an exact fac-simile of what had been the perfection

of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months before. They wore the cast-off

graces of the gentry;—and this, I believe, involves the best

definition of the class.

The division of the upper clerks of staunch firms, or of the “steady old

fellows,” it was not possible to mistake. These were known by their coats

and pantaloons of black or brown, made to sit comfortably, with white

cravats and waistcoats, broad solid-looking shoes, and thick hose or

gaiters. They had all slightly bald heads, from which the right

ears, long used to pen-holding, had an odd habit of standing off on end. I

observed that they always removed or settled their hats with both hands,

and wore watches, with short gold chains of a substantial and ancient

pattern. Theirs was the affectation of respectability—if indeed

there be an affectation so honorable.

There were many individuals of dashing appearance, whom I easily

understood as belonging to the race of swell pick-pockets with which all

great cities are infested. I watched these gentry with much

inquisitiveness, and found it difficult to imagine how they should ever be

mistaken for gentlemen by gentlemen themselves. Their voluminousness of

wristband, with an air of excessive frankness, should betray them at once.

The gamblers, of whom I descried not a few, were still more easily

recognisable. They wore every variety of dress, from that of the

desperate thimble-rig bully, with velvet waistcoat, fancy neckerchief,

gilt chains, and filagreed buttons, to that of the scrupulously inornate

clergyman, than which nothing could be less liable to suspicion. Still

all were distinguished by a certain sodden swarthiness of complexion, a

filmy dimness of eye, and pallor and compression of lip. There were two

other traits, moreover, by which I could always detect them: a guarded

lowness of tone in conversation, and a more than ordinary extension of

the thumb in a direction at right angles with the fingers. Very often, in

company with these sharpers, I observed an order of men somewhat

different in habits, but still birds of a kindred feather. They may be

defined as the gentlemen who live by their wits. They seem to prey upon

the public in two battalions—that of the dandies and that of the

military men. Of the first grade the leading features are long locks and

smiles; of the second, frogged coats and frowns.

Descending in the scale of what is termed gentility, I found darker and

deeper themes for speculation. I saw Jew pedlars, with hawk eyes flashing

from countenances whose every other feature wore only an expression of

abject humility; sturdy professional street beggars scowling upon

mendicants of a better stamp, whom despair alone had driven forth into the

night for charity; feeble and ghastly invalids, upon whom death had placed

a sure hand, and who sidled and tottered through the mob, looking every

one beseechingly in the face, as if in search of some chance consolation,

some lost hope; modest young girls returning from long and late labor to a

cheerless home, and shrinking more tearfully than indignantly from the

glances of ruffians, whose direct contact, even, could not be avoided;

women of the town of all kinds and of all ages—the unequivocal

beauty in the prime of her womanhood, putting one in mind of the statue in

Lucian, with the surface of Parian marble, and the interior filled with

filth—the loathsome and utterly lost leper in rags—the

wrinkled, bejewelled and paint-begrimed beldame, making a last effort at

youth—the mere child of immature form, yet, from long association,

an adept in the dreadful coquetries of her trade, and burning with a rabid

ambition to be ranked the equal of her elders in vice; drunkards

innumerable and indescribable—some in shreds and patches, reeling,

inarticulate, with bruised visage and lack-lustre eyes—some in whole

although filthy garments, with a slightly unsteady swagger, thick sensual

lips, and hearty-looking rubicund faces—others clothed in materials

which had once been good, and which even now were scrupulously well

brushed—men who walked with a more than naturally firm and springy

step, but whose countenances were fearfully pale, whose eyes hideously

wild and red, and who clutched with quivering fingers, as they strode

through the crowd, at every object which came within their reach; beside

these, pie-men, porters, coal-heavers, sweeps; organ-grinders,

monkey-exhibitors, and ballad mongers, those who vended with those who

sang; ragged artizans and exhausted laborers of every description, and all

full of a noisy and inordinate vivacity which jarred discordantly upon the

ear, and gave an aching sensation to the eye.

As the night deepened, so deepened to me the interest of the scene; for

not only did the general character of the crowd materially alter (its

gentler features retiring in the gradual withdrawal of the more orderly

portion of the people, and its harsher ones coming out into bolder relief,

as the late hour brought forth every species of infamy from its den,) but

the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the

dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy, and threw over every thing

a fitful and garish lustre. All was dark yet splendid—as that ebony

to which has been likened the style of Tertullian.

The wild effects of the light enchained me to an examination of individual

faces; and although the rapidity with which the world of light flitted

before the window, prevented me from casting more than a glance upon each

visage, still it seemed that, in my then peculiar mental state, I could

frequently read, even in that brief interval of a glance, the history of

long years.

With my brow to the glass, I was thus occupied in scrutinizing the mob,

when suddenly there came into view a countenance (that of a decrepid old

man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age,)—a countenance which

at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of the

absolute idiosyncrasy of its expression. Any thing even remotely

resembling that expression I had never seen before. I well remember that

my first thought, upon beholding it, was that Retzch, had he viewed it,

would have greatly preferred it to his own pictural incarnations of the

fiend. As I endeavored, during the brief minute of my original survey, to

form some analysis of the meaning conveyed, there arose confusedly and

paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution,

of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood

thirstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intense—of

supreme despair. I felt singularly aroused, startled, fascinated. “How

wild a history,” I said to myself, “is written within that bosom!” Then

came a craving desire to keep the man in view—to know more of him.

Hurriedly putting on an overcoat, and seizing my hat and cane, I made my

way into the street, and pushed through the crowd in the direction which I

had seen him take; for he had already disappeared. With some little

difficulty I at length came within sight of him, approached, and followed

him closely, yet cautiously, so as not to attract his attention.

I had now a good opportunity of examining his person. He was short in

stature, very thin, and apparently very feeble. His clothes, generally,

were filthy and ragged; but as he came, now and then, within the strong

glare of a lamp, I perceived that his linen, although dirty, was of

beautiful texture; and my vision deceived me, or, through a rent in a

closely-buttoned and evidently second-handed roquelaire which enveloped

him, I caught a glimpse both of a diamond and of a dagger. These

observations heightened my curiosity, and I resolved to follow the

stranger whithersoever he should go.

It was now fully night-fall, and a thick humid fog hung over the city,

soon ending in a settled and heavy rain. This change of weather had an odd

effect upon the crowd, the whole of which was at once put into new

commotion, and overshadowed by a world of umbrellas. The waver, the

jostle, and the hum increased in a tenfold degree. For my own part I did

not much regard the rain—the lurking of an old fever in my system

rendering the moisture somewhat too dangerously pleasant. Tying a

handkerchief about my mouth, I kept on. For half an hour the old man held

his way with difficulty along the great thoroughfare; and I here walked

close at his elbow through fear of losing sight of him. Never once turning

his head to look back, he did not observe me. By and by he passed into a

cross street, which, although densely filled with people, was not quite so

much thronged as the main one he had quitted. Here a change in his

demeanor became evident. He walked more slowly and with less object than

before—more hesitatingly. He crossed and re-crossed the way

repeatedly without apparent aim; and the press was still so thick that, at

every such movement, I was obliged to follow him closely. The street was a

narrow and long one, and his course lay within it for nearly an hour,

during which the passengers had gradually diminished to about that number

which is ordinarily seen at noon in Broadway near the park—so vast a

difference is there between a London populace and that of the most

frequented American city. A second turn brought us into a square,

brilliantly lighted, and overflowing with life. The old manner of the

stranger re-appeared. His chin fell upon his breast, while his eyes rolled

wildly from under his knit brows, in every direction, upon those who

hemmed him in. He urged his way steadily and perseveringly. I was

surprised, however, to find, upon his having made the circuit of the

square, that he turned and retraced his steps. Still more was I astonished

to see him repeat the same walk several times—once nearly detecting

me as he came round with a sudden movement.

In this exercise he spent another hour, at the end of which we met with

far less interruption from passengers than at first. The rain fell fast;

the air grew cool; and the people were retiring to their homes. With a

gesture of impatience, the wanderer passed into a by-street comparatively

deserted. Down this, some quarter of a mile long, he rushed with an

activity I could not have dreamed of seeing in one so aged, and which put

me to much trouble in pursuit. A few minutes brought us to a large and

busy bazaar, with the localities of which the stranger appeared well

acquainted, and where his original demeanor again became apparent, as he

forced his way to and fro, without aim, among the host of buyers and

sellers.

During the hour and a half, or thereabouts, which we passed in this place,

it required much caution on my part to keep him within reach without

attracting his observation. Luckily I wore a pair of caoutchouc

over-shoes, and could move about in perfect silence. At no moment did he

see that I watched him. He entered shop after shop, priced nothing, spoke

no word, and looked at all objects with a wild and vacant stare. I was now

utterly amazed at his behavior, and firmly resolved that we should not

part until I had satisfied myself in some measure respecting him.

A loud-toned clock struck eleven, and the company were fast deserting the

bazaar. A shop-keeper, in putting up a shutter, jostled the old man, and

at the instant I saw a strong shudder come over his frame. He hurried into

the street, looked anxiously around him for an instant, and then ran with

incredible swiftness through many crooked and people-less lanes, until we

emerged once more upon the great thoroughfare whence we had started—the

street of the D—— Hotel. It no longer wore, however, the same

aspect. It was still brilliant with gas; but the rain fell fiercely, and

there were few persons to be seen. The stranger grew pale. He walked

moodily some paces up the once populous avenue, then, with a heavy sigh,

turned in the direction of the river, and, plunging through a great

variety of devious ways, came out, at length, in view of one of the

principal theatres. It was about being closed, and the audience were

thronging from the doors. I saw the old man gasp as if for breath while he

threw himself amid the crowd; but I thought that the intense agony of his

countenance had, in some measure, abated. His head again fell upon his

breast; he appeared as I had seen him at first. I observed that he now

took the course in which had gone the greater number of the audience—but,

upon the whole, I was at a loss to comprehend the waywardness of his

actions.

As he proceeded, the company grew more scattered, and his old uneasiness

and vacillation were resumed. For some time he followed closely a party of

some ten or twelve roisterers; but from this number one by one dropped

off, until three only remained together, in a narrow and gloomy lane

little frequented. The stranger paused, and, for a moment, seemed lost in

thought; then, with every mark of agitation, pursued rapidly a route which

brought us to the verge of the city, amid regions very different from

those we had hitherto traversed. It was the most noisome quarter of

London, where every thing wore the worst impress of the most deplorable

poverty, and of the most desperate crime. By the dim light of an

accidental lamp, tall, antique, worm-eaten, wooden tenements were seen

tottering to their fall, in directions so many and capricious that scarce

the semblance of a passage was discernible between them. The paving-stones

lay at random, displaced from their beds by the rankly-growing grass.

Horrible filth festered in the dammed-up gutters. The whole atmosphere

teemed with desolation. Yet, as we proceeded, the sounds of human life

revived by sure degrees, and at length large bands of the most abandoned

of a London populace were seen reeling to and fro. The spirits of the old

man again flickered up, as a lamp which is near its death hour. Once more

he strode onward with elastic tread. Suddenly a corner was turned, a blaze

of light burst upon our sight, and we stood before one of the huge

suburban temples of Intemperance—one of the palaces of the fiend,

Gin.

It was now nearly day-break; but a number of wretched inebriates still

pressed in and out of the flaunting entrance. With a half shriek of joy

the old man forced a passage within, resumed at once his original

bearing, and stalked backward and forward, without apparent object, among

the throng. He had not been thus long occupied, however, before a rush to

the doors gave token that the host was closing them for the night. It was

something even more intense than despair that I then observed upon the

countenance of the singular being whom I had watched so pertinaciously.

Yet he did not hesitate in his career, but, with a mad energy, retraced

his steps at once, to the heart of the mighty London. Long and swiftly he

fled, while I followed him in the wildest amazement, resolute not to

abandon a scrutiny in which I now felt an interest all-absorbing. The sun

arose while we proceeded, and, when we had once again reached that most

thronged mart of the populous town, the street of the D——

Hotel, it presented an appearance of human bustle and activity scarcely

inferior to what I had seen on the evening before. And here, long, amid

the momently increasing confusion, did I persist in my pursuit of the

stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and fro, and during the day did not

pass from out the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the

second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in

front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed

me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained

absorbed in contemplation. “This old man,” I said at length,

“is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone.

_He is the man of the crowd._ It will be in vain to follow; for I

shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. The worst heart of the

world is a grosser book than the ‘Hortulus Animæ,’ {*1} and

perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that ‘_er lasst

sich nicht lesen._’”

{*1} The “_Hortulus Animæ cum Oratiunculis Aliquibus Superadditis_”

of Grünninger.

NEVER BET THE DEVIL YOUR HEAD

A Tale With a Moral.

“_Con tal que las costumbres de un autor_,” says Don Thomas de las

Torres, in the preface to his “Amatory Poems” _“sean puras y castas,

importo muy poco que no sean igualmente severas sus obras”_—meaning,

in plain English, that, provided the morals of an author are pure

personally, it signifies nothing what are the morals of his books. We

presume that Don Thomas is now in Purgatory for the assertion. It would be

a clever thing, too, in the way of poetical justice, to keep him there

until his “Amatory Poems” get out of print, or are laid definitely upon

the shelf through lack of readers. Every fiction should have a moral; and,

what is more to the purpose, the critics have discovered that every

fiction has. Philip Melanchthon, some time ago, wrote a commentary upon

the “Batrachomyomachia,” and proved that the poet’s object was to excite a

distaste for sedition. Pierre la Seine, going a step farther, shows that

the intention was to recommend to young men temperance in eating and

drinking. Just so, too, Jacobus Hugo has satisfied himself that, by

Euenis, Homer meant to insinuate John Calvin; by Antinous, Martin Luther;

by the Lotophagi, Protestants in general; and, by the Harpies, the Dutch.

Our more modern Scholiasts are equally acute. These fellows demonstrate a

hidden meaning in “The Antediluvians,” a parable in Powhatan, “new views

in Cock Robin,” and transcendentalism in “Hop O’ My Thumb.” In short, it

has been shown that no man can sit down to write without a very profound

design. Thus to authors in general much trouble is spared. A novelist, for

example, need have no care of his moral. It is there—that is to say,

it is somewhere—and the moral and the critics can take care of

themselves. When the proper time arrives, all that the gentleman intended,

and all that he did not intend, will be brought to light, in the “Dial,”

or the “Down-Easter,” together with all that he ought to have intended,

and the rest that he clearly meant to intend:—so that it will all

come very straight in the end.

There is no just ground, therefore, for the charge brought against me by

certain ignoramuses—that I have never written a moral tale, or, in

more precise words, a tale with a moral. They are not the critics

predestined to bring me out, and develop my morals:—that is the

secret. By and by the “North American Quarterly Humdrum” will make them

ashamed of their stupidity. In the meantime, by way of staying execution—by

way of mitigating the accusations against me—I offer the sad history

appended,—a history about whose obvious moral there can be no

question whatever, since he who runs may read it in the large capitals

which form the title of the tale. I should have credit for this

arrangement—a far wiser one than that of La Fontaine and others, who

reserve the impression to be conveyed until the last moment, and thus

sneak it in at the fag end of their fables.

_Defuncti injuriâ ne afficiantur_ was a law of the twelve tables, and _De

mortuis nil nisi bonum_ is an excellent injunction—even if the dead

in question be nothing but dead small beer. It is not my design,

therefore, to vituperate my deceased friend, Toby Dammit. He was a sad

dog, it is true, and a dog’s death it was that he died; but he himself was

not to blame for his vices. They grew out of a personal defect in his

mother. She did her best in the way of flogging him while an infant—for

duties to her well-regulated mind were always pleasures, and babies,

like tough steaks, or the modern Greek olive trees, are invariably the

better for beating—but, poor woman! she had the misfortune to be

left-handed, and a child flogged left-handedly had better be left

unflogged. The world revolves from right to left. It will not do to whip a

baby from left to right. If each blow in the proper direction drives an

evil propensity out, it follows that every thump in an opposite one knocks

its quota of wickedness in. I was often present at Toby’s chastisements,

and, even by the way in which he kicked, I could perceive that he was

getting worse and worse every day. At last I saw, through the tears in my

eyes, that there was no hope of the villain at all, and one day when he

had been cuffed until he grew so black in the face that one might have

mistaken him for a little African, and no effect had been produced beyond

that of making him wriggle himself into a fit, I could stand it no longer,

but went down upon my knees forthwith, and, uplifting my voice, made

prophecy of his ruin.

The fact is that his precocity in vice was awful. At five months of age he

used to get into such passions that he was unable to articulate. At six

months, I caught him gnawing a pack of cards. At seven months he was in

the constant habit of catching and kissing the female babies. At eight

months he peremptorily refused to put his signature to the Temperance

pledge. Thus he went on increasing in iniquity, month after month, until,

at the close of the first year, he not only insisted upon wearing

moustaches, but had contracted a propensity for cursing and swearing, and

for backing his assertions by bets.

Through this latter most ungentlemanly practice, the ruin which I had

predicted to Toby Dammit overtook him at last. The fashion had “grown with

his growth and strengthened with his strength,” so that, when he came to

be a man, he could scarcely utter a sentence without interlarding it with

a proposition to gamble. Not that he actually laid wagers—no. I will

do my friend the justice to say that he would as soon have laid eggs. With

him the thing was a mere formula—nothing more. His expressions on

this head had no meaning attached to them whatever. They were simple if

not altogether innocent expletives—imaginative phrases wherewith to

round off a sentence. When he said “I’ll bet you so and so,” nobody ever

thought of taking him up; but still I could not help thinking it my duty

to put him down. The habit was an immoral one, and so I told him. It was a

vulgar one—this I begged him to believe. It was discountenanced by

society—here I said nothing but the truth. It was forbidden by act

of Congress—here I had not the slightest intention of telling a lie.

I remonstrated—but to no purpose. I demonstrated—in vain. I

entreated—he smiled. I implored—he laughed. I preached—he

sneered. I threatened—he swore. I kicked him—he called for the

police. I pulled his nose—he blew it, and offered to bet the Devil

his head that I would not venture to try that experiment again.

Poverty was another vice which the peculiar physical deficiency of

Dammit’s mother had entailed upon her son. He was detestably poor, and

this was the reason, no doubt, that his expletive expressions about

betting, seldom took a pecuniary turn. I will not be bound to say that I

ever heard him make use of such a figure of speech as “I’ll bet you a

dollar.” It was usually “I’ll bet you what you please,” or “I’ll bet you

what you dare,” or “I’ll bet you a trifle,” or else, more significantly

still, “I’ll bet the Devil my head.”

This latter form seemed to please him best;—perhaps because it

involved the least risk; for Dammit had become excessively parsimonious.

Had any one taken him up, his head was small, and thus his loss would have

been small too. But these are my own reflections and I am by no means sure

that I am right in attributing them to him. At all events the phrase in

question grew daily in favor, notwithstanding the gross impropriety of a

man betting his brains like bank-notes—but this was a point which

my friend’s perversity of disposition would not permit him to comprehend.

In the end, he abandoned all other forms of wager, and gave himself up to

“I’ll bet the Devil my head,” with a pertinacity and exclusiveness of

devotion that displeased not less than it surprised me. I am always

displeased by circumstances for which I cannot account. Mysteries force a

man to think, and so injure his health. The truth is, there was something

in the air with which Mr. Dammit was wont to give utterance to his

offensive expression—something in his manner of enunciation—which

at first interested, and afterwards made me very uneasy—something

which, for want of a more definite term at present, I must be permitted to

call queer; but which Mr. Coleridge would have called mystical, Mr. Kant

pantheistical, Mr. Carlyle twistical, and Mr. Emerson hyperquizzitistical.

I began not to like it at all. Mr. Dammits soul was in a perilous state. I

resolved to bring all my eloquence into play to save it. I vowed to serve

him as St. Patrick, in the Irish chronicle, is said to have served the

toad,—that is to say, “awaken him to a sense of his situation.” I

addressed myself to the task forthwith. Once more I betook myself to

remonstrance. Again I collected my energies for a final attempt at

expostulation.

When I had made an end of my lecture, Mr. Dammit indulged himself in some

very equivocal behavior. For some moments he remained silent, merely

looking me inquisitively in the face. But presently he threw his head to

one side, and elevated his eyebrows to a great extent. Then he spread out

the palms of his hands and shrugged up his shoulders. Then he winked with

the right eye. Then he repeated the operation with the left. Then he shut

them both up very tight. Then he opened them both so very wide that I became

seriously alarmed for the consequences. Then, applying his thumb to his

nose, he thought proper to make an indescribable movement with the rest of

his fingers. Finally, setting his arms a-kimbo, he condescended to reply.

I can call to mind only the heads of his discourse. He would be obliged to

me if I would hold my tongue. He wished none of my advice. He despised all

my insinuations. He was old enough to take care of himself. Did I still

think him baby Dammit? Did I mean to say any thing against his character?

Did I intend to insult him? Was I a fool? Was my maternal parent aware, in

a word, of my absence from the domiciliary residence? He would put this

latter question to me as to a man of veracity, and he would bind himself

to abide by my reply. Once more he would demand explicitly if my mother

knew that I was out. My confusion, he said, betrayed me, and he would be

willing to bet the Devil his head that she did not.

Mr. Dammit did not pause for my rejoinder. Turning upon his heel, he left

my presence with undignified precipitation. It was well for him that he

did so. My feelings had been wounded. Even my anger had been aroused. For

once I would have taken him up upon his insulting wager. I would have won

for the Arch-Enemy Mr. Dammit’s little head—for the fact is, my

mamma was very well aware of my merely temporary absence from home.

But Khoda shefa midêhed—Heaven gives relief—as the Mussulmans

say when you tread upon their toes. It was in pursuance of my duty that I

had been insulted, and I bore the insult like a man. It now seemed to me,

however, that I had done all that could be required of me, in the case of

this miserable individual, and I resolved to trouble him no longer with my

counsel, but to leave him to his conscience and himself. But although I

forebore to intrude with my advice, I could not bring myself to give up

his society altogether. I even went so far as to humor some of his less

reprehensible propensities; and there were times when I found myself

lauding his wicked jokes, as epicures do mustard, with tears in my eyes:—so

profoundly did it grieve me to hear his evil talk.

One fine day, having strolled out together, arm in arm, our route led us

in the direction of a river. There was a bridge, and we resolved to cross

it. It was roofed over, by way of protection from the weather, and the

archway, having but few windows, was thus very uncomfortably dark. As we

entered the passage, the contrast between the external glare and the

interior gloom struck heavily upon my spirits. Not so upon those of the

unhappy Dammit, who offered to bet the Devil his head that I was hipped.

He seemed to be in an unusual good humor. He was excessively lively—so

much so that I entertained I know not what of uneasy suspicion. It is not

impossible that he was affected with the transcendentals. I am not well

enough versed, however, in the diagnosis of this disease to speak with

decision upon the point; and unhappily there were none of my friends of

the “Dial” present. I suggest the idea, nevertheless, because of a certain

species of austere Merry-Andrewism which seemed to beset my poor friend,

and caused him to make quite a Tom-Fool of himself. Nothing would serve

him but wriggling and skipping about under and over every thing that came

in his way; now shouting out, and now lisping out, all manner of odd

little and big words, yet preserving the gravest face in the world all the

time. I really could not make up my mind whether to kick or to pity him.

At length, having passed nearly across the bridge, we approached the

termination of the footway, when our progress was impeded by a turnstile

of some height. Through this I made my way quietly, pushing it around as

usual. But this turn would not serve the turn of Mr. Dammit. He insisted

upon leaping the stile, and said he could cut a pigeon-wing over it in the

air. Now this, conscientiously speaking, I did not think he could do. The

best pigeon-winger over all kinds of style was my friend Mr. Carlyle, and

as I knew he could not do it, I would not believe that it could be done by

Toby Dammit. I therefore told him, in so many words, that he was a

braggadocio, and could not do what he said. For this I had reason to be

sorry afterward;—for he straightway offered to bet the Devil his

head that he could.

I was about to reply, notwithstanding my previous resolutions, with some

remonstrance against his impiety, when I heard, close at my elbow, a

slight cough, which sounded very much like the ejaculation “ahem!” I

started, and looked about me in surprise. My glance at length fell into a

nook of the frame—work of the bridge, and upon the figure of a

little lame old gentleman of venerable aspect. Nothing could be more

reverend than his whole appearance; for he not only had on a full suit of

black, but his shirt was perfectly clean and the collar turned very neatly

down over a white cravat, while his hair was parted in front like a

girl’s. His hands were clasped pensively together over his stomach, and

his two eyes were carefully rolled up into the top of his head.

Upon observing him more closely, I perceived that he wore a black silk

apron over his small-clothes; and this was a thing which I thought very

odd. Before I had time to make any remark, however, upon so singular a

circumstance, he interrupted me with a second “ahem!”

To this observation I was not immediately prepared to reply. The fact is,

remarks of this laconic nature are nearly unanswerable. I have known a

Quarterly Review non-plussed by the word “Fudge!” I am not ashamed to say,

therefore, that I turned to Mr. Dammit for assistance.

“Dammit,” said I, “what are you about? don’t you hear?—the gentleman

says ‘ahem!’” I looked sternly at my friend while I thus addressed him;

for, to say the truth, I felt particularly puzzled, and when a man is

particularly puzzled he must knit his brows and look savage, or else he is

pretty sure to look like a fool.

“Dammit,” observed I—although this sounded very much like an oath,

than which nothing was further from my thoughts—“Dammit,” I

suggested—“the gentleman says ‘ahem!’”

I do not attempt to defend my remark on the score of profundity; I did not

think it profound myself; but I have noticed that the effect of our

speeches is not always proportionate with their importance in our own

eyes; and if I had shot Mr. D. through and through with a Paixhan bomb, or

knocked him in the head with the “Poets and Poetry of America,” he could

hardly have been more discomfited than when I addressed him with those

simple words: “Dammit, what are you about?—don’t you hear?—the

gentleman says ‘ahem!’”

“You don’t say so?” gasped he at length, after turning more colors than a

pirate runs up, one after the other, when chased by a man-of-war. “Are you

quite sure he said that? Well, at all events I am in for it now, and may

as well put a bold face upon the matter. Here goes, then—ahem!”

At this the little old gentleman seemed pleased—God only knows why.

He left his station at the nook of the bridge, limped forward with a

gracious air, took Dammit by the hand and shook it cordially, looking all

the while straight up in his face with an air of the most unadulterated

benignity which it is possible for the mind of man to imagine.

“I am quite sure you will win it, Dammit,” said he, with the frankest of

all smiles, “but we are obliged to have a trial, you know, for the sake of

mere form.”

“Ahem!” replied my friend, taking off his coat, with a deep sigh, tying a

pocket-handkerchief around his waist, and producing an unaccountable

alteration in his countenance by twisting up his eyes and bringing down

the corners of his mouth—“ahem!” And “ahem!” said he again, after a

pause; and not another word more than “ahem!” did I ever know him to say

after that. “Aha!” thought I, without expressing myself aloud—“this

is quite a remarkable silence on the part of Toby Dammit, and is no doubt

a consequence of his verbosity upon a previous occasion. One extreme

induces another. I wonder if he has forgotten the many unanswerable

questions which he propounded to me so fluently on the day when I gave him

my last lecture? At all events, he is cured of the transcendentals.”

“Ahem!” here replied Toby, just as if he had been reading my thoughts, and

looking like a very old sheep in a revery.

The old gentleman now took him by the arm, and led him more into the shade

of the bridge—a few paces back from the turnstile. “My good fellow,”

said he, “I make it a point of conscience to allow you this much run. Wait

here, till I take my place by the stile, so that I may see whether you go

over it handsomely, and transcendentally, and don’t omit any flourishes of

the pigeon-wing. A mere form, you know. I will say ‘one, two, three, and

away.’ Mind you, start at the word ‘away.’” Here he took his position by

the stile, paused a moment as if in profound reflection, then looked up

and, I thought, smiled very slightly, then tightened the strings of his

apron, then took a long look at Dammit, and finally gave the word as

agreed upon—

_One—two—three—and—away!_

Punctually at the word “away,” my poor friend set off in a strong gallop.

The stile was not very high, like Mr. Lord’s—nor yet very low, like

that of Mr. Lord’s reviewers, but upon the whole I made sure that he would

clear it. And then what if he did not?—ah, that was the question—what

if he did not? “What right,” said I, “had the old gentleman to make any

other gentleman jump? The little old dot-and-carry-one! who is he? If he

asks me to jump, I won’t do it, that’s flat, and I don’t care who the

devil he is.” The bridge, as I say, was arched and covered in, in a very

ridiculous manner, and there was a most uncomfortable echo about it at all

times—an echo which I never before so particularly observed as when

I uttered the four last words of my remark.

But what I said, or what I thought, or what I heard, occupied only an

instant. In less than five seconds from his starting, my poor Toby had

taken the leap. I saw him run nimbly, and spring grandly from the floor of

the bridge, cutting the most awful flourishes with his legs as he went up.

I saw him high in the air, pigeon-winging it to admiration just over the

top of the stile; and of course I thought it an unusually singular thing

that he did not continue to go over. But the whole leap was the affair of

a moment, and, before I had a chance to make any profound reflections,

down came Mr. Dammit on the flat of his back, on the same side of the

stile from which he had started. At the same instant I saw the old

gentleman limping off at the top of his speed, having caught and wrapt up

in his apron something that fell heavily into it from the darkness of the

arch just over the turnstile. At all this I was much astonished; but I had

no leisure to think, for Dammit lay particularly still, and I concluded

that his feelings had been hurt, and that he stood in need of my

assistance. I hurried up to him and found that he had received what might

be termed a serious injury. The truth is, he had been deprived of his

head, which after a close search I could not find anywhere; so I

determined to take him home and send for the homœopathists. In the

meantime a thought struck me, and I threw open an adjacent window of the

bridge, when the sad truth flashed upon me at once. About five feet just

above the top of the turnstile, and crossing the arch of the foot-path so

as to constitute a brace, there extended a flat iron bar, lying with its

breadth horizontally, and forming one of a series that served to

strengthen the structure throughout its extent. With the edge of this

brace it appeared evident that the neck of my unfortunate friend had come

precisely in contact.

He did not long survive his terrible loss. The homœopathists did not give

him little enough physic, and what little they did give him he hesitated

to take. So in the end he grew worse, and at length died, a lesson to all

riotous livers. I bedewed his grave with my tears, worked a bar sinister

on his family escutcheon, and, for the general expenses of his funeral,

sent in my very moderate bill to the transcendentalists. The scoundrels

refused to pay it, so I had Mr. Dammit dug up at once, and sold him for

dog’s meat.

THOU ART THE MAN

I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleborough enigma. I will expound to

you—as I alone can—the secret of the enginery that effected

the Rattleborough miracle—the one, the true, the admitted, the

undisputed, the indisputable miracle, which put a definite end to

infidelity among the Rattleburghers and converted to the orthodoxy of the

grandames all the carnal-minded who had ventured to be sceptical before.

This event—which I should be sorry to discuss in a tone of

unsuitable levity—occurred in the summer of 18—. Mr. Barnabas

Shuttleworthy—one of the wealthiest and most respectable citizens of

the borough—had been missing for several days under circumstances

which gave rise to suspicion of foul play. Mr. Shuttleworthy had set out

from Rattleborough very early one Saturday morning, on horseback, with the

avowed intention of proceeding to the city of ——, about fifteen miles

distant, and of returning the night of the same day. Two hours after his

departure, however, his horse returned without him, and without the

saddle-bags which had been strapped on his back at starting. The animal

was wounded, too, and covered with mud. These circumstances naturally gave

rise to much alarm among the friends of the missing man; and when it was

found, on Sunday morning, that he had not yet made his appearance, the

whole borough arose en masse to go and look for his body.

The foremost and most energetic in instituting this search was the bosom

friend of Mr. Shuttleworthy—a Mr. Charles Goodfellow, or, as he was

universally called, “Charley Goodfellow,” or “Old Charley Goodfellow.”

Now, whether it is a marvellous coincidence, or whether it is that the

name itself has an imperceptible effect upon the character, I have never

yet been able to ascertain; but the fact is unquestionable, that there

never yet was any person named Charles who was not an open, manly, honest,

good-natured, and frank-hearted fellow, with a rich, clear voice, that did

you good to hear it, and an eye that looked you always straight in the

face, as much as to say: “I have a clear conscience myself, am afraid of

no man, and am altogether above doing a mean action.” And thus all the

hearty, careless, “walking gentlemen” of the stage are very certain to be

called Charles.

Now, “Old Charley Goodfellow,” although he had been in Rattleborough not

longer than six months or thereabouts, and although nobody knew any thing

about him before he came to settle in the neighborhood, had experienced no

difficulty in the world in making the acquaintance of all the respectable

people in the borough. Not a man of them but would have taken his bare

word for a thousand at any moment; and as for the women, there is no

saying what they would not have done to oblige him. And all this came of

his having been christened Charles, and of his possessing, in consequence,

that ingenuous face which is proverbially the very “best letter of

recommendation.”

I have already said that Mr. Shuttleworthy was one of the most respectable

and, undoubtedly, he was the most wealthy man in Rattleborough, while “Old

Charley Goodfellow” was upon as intimate terms with him as if he had been

his own brother. The two old gentlemen were next-door neighbours, and,

although Mr. Shuttleworthy seldom, if ever, visited “Old Charley,” and

never was known to take a meal in his house, still this did not prevent

the two friends from being exceedingly intimate, as I have just observed;

for “Old Charley” never let a day pass without stepping in three or four

times to see how his neighbour came on, and very often he would stay to

breakfast or tea, and almost always to dinner, and then the amount of wine

that was made way with by the two cronies at a sitting, it would really be

a difficult thing to ascertain. “Old Charleys” favorite beverage was

Chateau-Margaux, and it appeared to do Mr. Shuttleworthy’s heart good to

see the old fellow swallow it, as he did, quart after quart; so that, one

day, when the wine was in and the wit as a natural consequence, somewhat

out, he said to his crony, as he slapped him upon the back—“I tell

you what it is, ‘Old Charley,’ you are, by all odds, the heartiest old

fellow I ever came across in all my born days; and, since you love to

guzzle the wine at that fashion, I’ll be darned if I don’t have to make

thee a present of a big box of the Chateau-Margaux. Od rot me,”—(Mr.

Shuttleworthy had a sad habit of swearing, although he seldom went beyond

“Od rot me,” or “By gosh,” or “By the jolly golly,”)—“Od rot me,”

says he, “if I don’t send an order to town this very afternoon for a

double box of the best that can be got, and I’ll make ye a present of it,

I will!—ye needn’t say a word now—I will, I tell ye, and

there’s an end of it; so look out for it—it will come to hand some

of these fine days, precisely when ye are looking for it the least!” I

mention this little bit of liberality on the part of Mr. Shuttleworthy,

just by way of showing you how very intimate an understanding existed

between the two friends.

Well, on the Sunday morning in question, when it came to be fairly

understood that Mr. Shuttleworthy had met with foul play, I never saw any

one so profoundly affected as “Old Charley Goodfellow.” When he first

heard that the horse had come home without his master, and without his

master’s saddle-bags, and all bloody from a pistol-shot, that had gone

clean through and through the poor animal’s chest without quite killing

him; when he heard all this, he turned as pale as if the missing man had

been his own dear brother or father, and shivered and shook all over as if

he had had a fit of the ague.

At first he was too much overpowered with grief to be able to do any thing

at all, or to concert upon any plan of action; so that for a long time he

endeavored to dissuade Mr. Shuttleworthy’s other friends from making a

stir about the matter, thinking it best to wait awhile—say for a

week or two, or a month, or two—to see if something wouldn’t turn

up, or if Mr. Shuttleworthy wouldn’t come in the natural way, and explain

his reasons for sending his horse on before. I dare say you have often

observed this disposition to temporize, or to procrastinate, in people who

are labouring under any very poignant sorrow. Their powers of mind seem to

be rendered torpid, so that they have a horror of any thing like action,

and like nothing in the world so well as to lie quietly in bed and “nurse

their grief,” as the old ladies express it—that is to say, ruminate

over the trouble.

The people of Rattleborough had, indeed, so high an opinion of the wisdom

and discretion of “Old Charley,” that the greater part of them felt

disposed to agree with him, and not make a stir in the business “until

something should turn up,” as the honest old gentleman worded it; and I

believe that, after all this would have been the general determination,

but for the very suspicious interference of Mr. Shuttleworthy’s nephew, a

young man of very dissipated habits, and otherwise of rather bad

character. This nephew, whose name was Pennifeather, would listen to

nothing like reason in the matter of “lying quiet,” but insisted upon

making immediate search for the “corpse of the murdered man.” This

was the expression he employed; and Mr. Goodfellow acutely remarked at the

time, that it was “a singular expression, to say no more.” This remark of

“Old Charley’s,” too, had great effect upon the crowd; and one of the

party was heard to ask, very impressively, “how it happened that young Mr.

Pennifeather was so intimately cognizant of all the circumstances

connected with his wealthy uncle’s disappearance, as to feel authorized to

assert, distinctly and unequivocally, that his uncle was ‘a murdered

man.’” Hereupon some little squibbing and bickering occurred among various

members of the crowd, and especially between “Old Charley” and Mr.

Pennifeather—although this latter occurrence was, indeed, by no

means a novelty, for little good-will had subsisted between the parties for

the last three or four months; and matters had even gone so far that Mr.

Pennifeather had actually knocked down his uncle’s friend for some alleged

excess of liberty that the latter had taken in the uncle’s house, of which

the nephew was an inmate. Upon this occasion “Old Charley” is said to have

behaved with exemplary moderation and Christian charity. He arose from the

blow, adjusted his clothes, and made no attempt at retaliation at all—merely

muttering a few words about “taking summary vengeance at the first

convenient opportunity,”—a natural and very justifiable ebullition

of anger, which meant nothing, however, and, beyond doubt, was no sooner

given vent to than forgotten.

However these matters may be (which have no reference to the point now at

issue), it is quite certain that the people of Rattleborough, principally

through the persuasion of Mr. Pennifeather, came at length to the

determination of dispersion over the adjacent country in search of the

missing Mr. Shuttleworthy. I say they came to this determination in the

first instance. After it had been fully resolved that a search should be

made, it was considered almost a matter of course that the seekers should

disperse—that is to say, distribute themselves in parties—for

the more thorough examination of the region round about. I forget,

however, by what ingenious train of reasoning it was that “Old Charley”

finally convinced the assembly that this was the most injudicious plan

that could be pursued. Convince them, however, he did—all except Mr.

Pennifeather, and, in the end, it was arranged that a search should be

instituted, carefully and very thoroughly, by the burghers en masse, “Old

Charley” himself leading the way.

As for the matter of that, there could have been no better pioneer than

“Old Charley,” whom everybody knew to have the eye of a lynx; but,

although he led them into all manner of out-of-the-way holes and corners,

by routes that nobody had ever suspected of existing in the neighbourhood,

and although the search was incessantly kept up day and night for nearly a

week, still no trace of Mr. Shuttleworthy could be discovered. When I say

no trace, however, I must not be understood to speak literally; for trace,

to some extent, there certainly was. The poor gentleman had been tracked,

by his horse’s shoes (which were peculiar), to a spot about three miles to

the east of the borough, on the main road leading to the city. Here the

track made off into a by-path through a piece of woodland—the path

coming out again into the main road, and cutting off about half a mile of

the regular distance. Following the shoe-marks down this lane, the party

came at length to a pool of stagnant water, half hidden by the brambles,

to the right of the lane, and opposite this pool all vestige of the track

was lost sight of. It appeared, however, that a struggle of some nature

had here taken place, and it seemed as if some large and heavy body, much

larger and heavier than a man, had been drawn from the by-path to the

pool. This latter was carefully dragged twice, but nothing was found; and

the party was upon the point of going away, in despair of coming to any

result, when Providence suggested to Mr. Goodfellow the expediency of

draining the water off altogether. This project was received with cheers,

and many high compliments to “Old Charley” upon his sagacity and

consideration. As many of the burghers had brought spades with them,

supposing that they might possibly be called upon to disinter a corpse,

the drain was easily and speedily effected; and no sooner was the bottom

visible, than right in the middle of the mud that remained was discovered

a black silk velvet waistcoat, which nearly every one present immediately

recognized as the property of Mr. Pennifeather. This waistcoat was much

torn and stained with blood, and there were several persons among the

party who had a distinct remembrance of its having been worn by its owner

on the very morning of Mr. Shuttleworthy’s departure for the city; while

there were others, again, ready to testify upon oath, if required, that

Mr. P. did not wear the garment in question at any period during the

remainder of that memorable day, nor could any one be found to say that he

had seen it upon Mr. P.’s person at any period at all subsequent to Mr.

Shuttleworthy’s disappearance.

Matters now wore a very serious aspect for Mr. Pennifeather, and it was

observed, as an indubitable confirmation of the suspicions which were

excited against him, that he grew exceedingly pale, and when asked what he

had to say for himself, was utterly incapable of saying a word. Hereupon,

the few friends his riotous mode of living had left him deserted him at

once to a man, and were even more clamorous than his ancient and avowed

enemies for his instantaneous arrest. But, on the other hand, the

magnanimity of Mr. Goodfellow shone forth with only the more brilliant

lustre through contrast. He made a warm and intensely eloquent defence of

Mr. Pennifeather, in which he alluded more than once to his own sincere

forgiveness of that wild young gentleman—“the heir of the worthy Mr.

Shuttleworthy,”—for the insult which he (the young gentleman) had,

no doubt in the heat of passion, thought proper to put upon him (Mr.

Goodfellow). “He forgave him for it,” he said, “from the very bottom of

his heart; and for himself (Mr. Goodfellow), so far from pushing the

suspicious circumstances to extremity, which he was sorry to say, really

had arisen against Mr. Pennifeather, he (Mr. Goodfellow) would make every

exertion in his power, would employ all the little eloquence in his

possession to—to—to—soften down, as much as he could

conscientiously do so, the worst features of this really exceedingly

perplexing piece of business.”

Mr. Goodfellow went on for some half hour longer in this strain, very much

to the credit both of his head and of his heart; but your warm-hearted

people are seldom apposite in their observations—they run into all

sorts of blunders, contre-temps and mal apropos-isms, in the

hot-headedness of their zeal to serve a friend—thus, often with the

kindest intentions in the world, doing infinitely more to prejudice his

cause than to advance it.

So, in the present instance, it turned out with all the eloquence of “Old

Charley”; for, although he laboured earnestly in behalf of the suspected,

yet it so happened, somehow or other, that every syllable he uttered of

which the direct but unwitting tendency was not to exalt the speaker in

the good opinion of his audience, had the effect to deepen the suspicion

already attached to the individual whose cause he pleaded, and to arouse

against him the fury of the mob.

One of the most unaccountable errors committed by the orator was his

allusion to the suspected as “the heir of the worthy old gentleman Mr.

Shuttleworthy.” The people had really never thought of this before. They

had only remembered certain threats of disinheritance uttered a year or

two previously by the uncle (who had no living relative except the

nephew), and they had, therefore, always looked upon this disinheritance

as a matter that was settled—so single-minded a race of beings were

the Rattleburghers; but the remark of “Old Charley” brought them at once

to a consideration of this point, and thus gave them to see the

possibility of the threats having been nothing more than a threat. And

straightway hereupon, arose the natural question of cui bono?—a

question that tended even more than the waistcoat to fasten the terrible

crime upon the young man. And here, lest I may be misunderstood, permit me

to digress for one moment merely to observe that the exceedingly brief and

simple Latin phrase which I have employed, is invariably mistranslated and

misconceived. “Cui bono?” in all the crack novels and elsewhere,—in

those of Mrs. Gore, for example, (the author of “Cecil,”) a lady who

quotes all tongues from the Chaldaean to Chickasaw, and is helped to her

learning, “as needed,” upon a systematic plan, by Mr. Beckford,—in

all the crack novels, I say, from those of Bulwer and Dickens to those of

Bulwer and Dickens to those of Turnapenny and Ainsworth, the two little

Latin words cui bono are rendered “to what purpose?” or, (as if quo bono,)

“to what good.” Their true meaning, nevertheless, is “for whose

advantage.” Cui, to whom; bono, is it for a benefit. It is a purely legal

phrase, and applicable precisely in cases such as we have now under

consideration, where the probability of the doer of a deed hinges upon the

probability of the benefit accruing to this individual or to that from the

deed’s accomplishment. Now in the present instance, the question cui bono?

very pointedly implicated Mr. Pennifeather. His uncle had threatened him,

after making a will in his favour, with disinheritance. But the threat had

not been actually kept; the original will, it appeared, had not been

altered. Had it been altered, the only supposable motive for murder on the

part of the suspected would have been the ordinary one of revenge; and

even this would have been counteracted by the hope of reinstation into the

good graces of the uncle. But the will being unaltered, while the threat

to alter remained suspended over the nephew’s head, there appears at once

the very strongest possible inducement for the atrocity, and so concluded,

very sagaciously, the worthy citizens of the borough of Rattle.

Mr. Pennifeather was, accordingly, arrested upon the spot, and the crowd,

after some further search, proceeded homeward, having him in custody. On

the route, however, another circumstance occurred tending to confirm the

suspicion entertained. Mr. Goodfellow, whose zeal led him to be always a

little in advance of the party, was seen suddenly to run forward a few

paces, stoop, and then apparently to pick up some small object from the

grass. Having quickly examined it he was observed, too, to make a sort of

half attempt at concealing it in his coat pocket; but this action was

noticed, as I say, and consequently prevented, when the object picked up

was found to be a Spanish knife which a dozen persons at once recognized

as belonging to Mr. Pennifeather. Moreover, his initials were engraved

upon the handle. The blade of this knife was open and bloody.

No doubt now remained of the guilt of the nephew, and immediately upon

reaching Rattleborough he was taken before a magistrate for examination.

Here matters again took a most unfavourable turn. The prisoner, being

questioned as to his whereabouts on the morning of Mr. Shuttleworthy’s

disappearance, had absolutely the audacity to acknowledge that on that

very morning he had been out with his rifle deer-stalking, in the

immediate neighbourhood of the pool where the blood-stained waistcoat had

been discovered through the sagacity of Mr. Goodfellow.

This latter now came forward, and, with tears in his eyes, asked

permission to be examined. He said that a stern sense of the duty he owed

his Maker, not less than his fellow-men, would permit him no longer to

remain silent. Hitherto, the sincerest affection for the young man

(notwithstanding the latter’s ill-treatment of himself, Mr. Goodfellow)

had induced him to make every hypothesis which imagination could suggest,

by way of endeavoring to account for what appeared suspicious in the

circumstances that told so seriously against Mr. Pennifeather, but these

circumstances were now altogether too convincing—too damning; he

would hesitate no longer—he would tell all he knew, although his

heart (Mr. Goodfellow’s) should absolutely burst asunder in the effort. He

then went on to state that, on the afternoon of the day previous to Mr.

Shuttleworthy’s departure for the city, that worthy old gentleman had

mentioned to his nephew, in his hearing (Mr. Goodfellow’s), that his

object in going to town on the morrow was to make a deposit of an

unusually large sum of money in the “Farmers’ and Mechanics’ Bank,” and

that, then and there, the said Mr. Shuttleworthy had distinctly avowed to

the said nephew his irrevocable determination of rescinding the will

originally made, and of cutting him off with a shilling. He (the witness)

now solemnly called upon the accused to state whether what he (the

witness) had just stated was or was not the truth in every substantial

particular. Much to the astonishment of every one present, Mr.

Pennifeather frankly admitted that it was.

The magistrate now considered it his duty to send a couple of constables

to search the chamber of the accused in the house of his uncle. From this

search they almost immediately returned with the well-known steel-bound,

russet leather pocket-book which the old gentleman had been in the habit

of carrying for years. Its valuable contents, however, had been

abstracted, and the magistrate in vain endeavored to extort from the

prisoner the use which had been made of them, or the place of their

concealment. Indeed, he obstinately denied all knowledge of the matter.

The constables, also, discovered, between the bed and sacking of the

unhappy man, a shirt and neck-handkerchief both marked with the initials

of his name, and both hideously besmeared with the blood of the victim.

At this juncture, it was announced that the horse of the murdered man had

just expired in the stable from the effects of the wound he had received,

and it was proposed by Mr. Goodfellow that a post mortem examination of

the beast should be immediately made, with the view, if possible, of

discovering the ball. This was accordingly done; and, as if to demonstrate

beyond a question the guilt of the accused, Mr. Goodfellow, after

considerable searching in the cavity of the chest was enabled to detect

and to pull forth a bullet of very extraordinary size, which, upon trial,

was found to be exactly adapted to the bore of Mr. Pennifeather’s rifle,

while it was far too large for that of any other person in the borough or

its vicinity. To render the matter even surer yet, however, this bullet

was discovered to have a flaw or seam at right angles to the usual suture,

and upon examination, this seam corresponded precisely with an accidental

ridge or elevation in a pair of moulds acknowledged by the accused himself

to be his own property. Upon finding of this bullet, the examining

magistrate refused to listen to any farther testimony, and immediately

committed the prisoner for trial—declining resolutely to take any bail in

the case, although against this severity Mr. Goodfellow very warmly

remonstrated, and offered to become surety in whatever amount might be

required. This generosity on the part of “Old Charley” was only in

accordance with the whole tenor of his amiable and chivalrous conduct

during the entire period of his sojourn in the borough of Rattle. In the

present instance the worthy man was so entirely carried away by the

excessive warmth of his sympathy, that he seemed to have quite forgotten,

when he offered to go bail for his young friend, that he himself (Mr.

Goodfellow) did not possess a single dollar’s worth of property upon the

face of the earth.

The result of the committal may be readily foreseen. Mr. Pennifeather,

amid the loud execrations of all Rattleborough, was brought to trial at

the next criminal sessions, when the chain of circumstantial evidence

(strengthened as it was by some additional damning facts, which Mr.

Goodfellow’s sensitive conscientiousness forbade him to withhold from the

court) was considered so unbroken and so thoroughly conclusive, that the

jury, without leaving their seats, returned an immediate verdict of

“Guilty of murder in the first degree.” Soon afterward the unhappy wretch

received sentence of death, and was remanded to the county jail to await

the inexorable vengeance of the law.

In the meantime, the noble behavior of “Old Charley Goodfellow,” had

doubly endeared him to the honest citizens of the borough. He became ten

times a greater favorite than ever, and, as a natural result of the

hospitality with which he was treated, he relaxed, as it were, perforce,

the extremely parsimonious habits which his poverty had hitherto impelled

him to observe, and very frequently had little reunions at his own house,

when wit and jollity reigned supreme—dampened a little, of course, by the

occasional remembrance of the untoward and melancholy fate which impended

over the nephew of the late lamented bosom friend of the generous host.

One fine day, this magnanimous old gentleman was agreeably surprised at

the receipt of the following letter:

Charles Goodfellow, Esq., Rattleborough

From H.F.B. & Co.

Chat. Mar. A—No. 1.—6 doz. bottles (1/2 Gross)

“Charles Goodfellow, Esquire.

“Dear Sir—In conformity with an order transmitted to our firm

about two months since, by our esteemed correspondent, Mr. Barnabus

Shuttleworthy, we have the honor of forwarding this morning, to your address, a

double box of Chateau-Margaux of the antelope brand, violet seal. Box numbered

and marked as per margin.

“We remain, sir,

“Your most ob’nt ser’ts,

“HOGGS, FROGS, BOGS, & CO.

“City of—, June 21, 18—.

“P.S.—The box will reach you by wagon, on the day after your

receipt of this letter. Our respects to Mr. Shuttleworthy.

“H., F., B., & CO.”

The fact is, that Mr. Goodfellow had, since the death of Mr.

Shuttleworthy, given over all expectation of ever receiving the promised

Chateau-Margaux; and he, therefore, looked upon it now as a sort of

especial dispensation of Providence in his behalf. He was highly

delighted, of course, and in the exuberance of his joy invited a large

party of friends to a petit souper on the morrow, for the purpose of

broaching the good old Mr. Shuttleworthy’s present. Not that he said any

thing about “the good old Mr. Shuttleworthy” when he issued the

invitations. The fact is, he thought much and concluded to say nothing at

all. He did not mention to any one—if I remember aright—that

he had received a present of Chateau-Margaux. He merely asked his friends

to come and help him drink some, of a remarkable fine quality and rich

flavour, that he had ordered up from the city a couple of months ago, and

of which he would be in the receipt upon the morrow. I have often puzzled

myself to imagine why it was that “Old Charley” came to the conclusion to

say nothing about having received the wine from his old friend, but I

could never precisely understand his reason for the silence, although he

had some excellent and very magnanimous reason, no doubt.

The morrow at length arrived, and with it a very large and highly

respectable company at Mr. Goodfellow’s house. Indeed, half the borough

was there,—I myself among the number,—but, much to the

vexation of the host, the Chateau-Margaux did not arrive until a late

hour, and when the sumptuous supper supplied by “Old Charley” had been

done very ample justice by the guests. It came at length, however,—a

monstrously big box of it there was, too—and as the whole party were

in excessively good humor, it was decided, nem. con., that it should be

lifted upon the table and its contents disembowelled forthwith.

No sooner said than done. I lent a helping hand; and, in a trice we had

the box upon the table, in the midst of all the bottles and glasses, not a

few of which were demolished in the scuffle. “Old Charley,” who was pretty

much intoxicated, and excessively red in the face, now took a seat, with

an air of mock dignity, at the head of the board, and thumped furiously

upon it with a decanter, calling upon the company to keep order “during

the ceremony of disinterring the treasure.”

After some vociferation, quiet was at length fully restored, and, as very

often happens in similar cases, a profound and remarkable silence ensued.

Being then requested to force open the lid, I complied, of course, “with

an infinite deal of pleasure.” I inserted a chisel, and giving it a few

slight taps with a hammer, the top of the box flew suddenly off, and at

the same instant, there sprang up into a sitting position, directly facing

the host, the bruised, bloody, and nearly putrid corpse of the murdered

Mr. Shuttleworthy himself. It gazed for a few seconds, fixedly and

sorrowfully, with its decaying and lack-lustre eyes, full into the

countenance of Mr. Goodfellow; uttered slowly, but clearly and

impressively, the words—“Thou art the man!” and then, falling over

the side of the chest as if thoroughly satisfied, stretched out its limbs

quiveringly upon the table.

The scene that ensued is altogether beyond description. The rush for the

doors and windows was terrific, and many of the most robust men in the

room fainted outright through sheer horror. But after the first wild,

shrieking burst of affright, all eyes were directed to Mr. Goodfellow. If

I live a thousand years, I can never forget the more than mortal agony

which was depicted in that ghastly face of his, so lately rubicund with

triumph and wine. For several minutes he sat rigidly as a statue of

marble; his eyes seeming, in the intense vacancy of their gaze, to be

turned inward and absorbed in the contemplation of his own miserable,

murderous soul. At length their expression appeared to flash suddenly out

into the external world, when, with a quick leap, he sprang from his

chair, and falling heavily with his head and shoulders upon the table, and

in contact with the corpse, poured out rapidly and vehemently a detailed

confession of the hideous crime for which Mr. Pennifeather was then

imprisoned and doomed to die.

What he recounted was in substance this:—He followed his victim to

the vicinity of the pool; there shot his horse with a pistol; despatched

its rider with the butt end; possessed himself of the pocket-book; and,

supposing the horse dead, dragged it with great labour to the brambles by

the pond. Upon his own beast he slung the corpse of Mr. Shuttleworthy, and

thus bore it to a secure place of concealment a long distance off through

the woods.

The waistcoat, the knife, the pocket-book, and bullet, had been placed by

himself where found, with the view of avenging himself upon Mr.

Pennifeather. He had also contrived the discovery of the stained

handkerchief and shirt.

Toward the end of the blood-chilling recital the words of the guilty

wretch faltered and grew hollow. When the record was finally exhausted, he

arose, staggered backward from the table, and fell—_dead_.

The means by which this happily-timed confession was extorted, although

efficient, were simple indeed. Mr. Goodfellow’s excess of frankness had

disgusted me, and excited my suspicions from the first. I was present when

Mr. Pennifeather had struck him, and the fiendish expression which then

arose upon his countenance, although momentary, assured me that his threat

of vengeance would, if possible, be rigidly fulfilled. I was thus prepared

to view the manoeuvering of “Old Charley” in a very different light from

that in which it was regarded by the good citizens of Rattleborough. I saw

at once that all the criminating discoveries arose, either directly or

indirectly, from himself. But the fact which clearly opened my eyes to the

true state of the case, was the affair of the bullet, found by Mr. G. in

the carcass of the horse. I had not forgotten, although the Rattleburghers

had, that there was a hole where the ball had entered the horse, and

another where it went out. If it were found in the animal then, after

having made its exit, I saw clearly that it must have been deposited by

the person who found it. The bloody shirt and handkerchief confirmed the

idea suggested by the bullet; for the blood on examination proved to be

capital claret, and no more. When I came to think of these things, and

also of the late increase of liberality and expenditure on the part of Mr.

Goodfellow, I entertained a suspicion which was none the less strong

because I kept it altogether to myself.

In the meantime, I instituted a rigorous private search for the corpse of

Mr. Shuttleworthy, and, for good reasons, searched in quarters as

divergent as possible from those to which Mr. Goodfellow conducted his

party. The result was that, after some days, I came across an old dry

well, the mouth of which was nearly hidden by brambles; and here, at the

bottom, I discovered what I sought.

Now it so happened that I had overheard the colloquy between the two

cronies, when Mr. Goodfellow had contrived to cajole his host into the

promise of a box of Chateaux-Margaux. Upon this hint I acted. I procured a

stiff piece of whalebone, thrust it down the throat of the corpse, and

deposited the latter in an old wine box—taking care so to double the body

up as to double the whalebone with it. In this manner I had to press

forcibly upon the lid to keep it down while I secured it with nails; and I

anticipated, of course, that as soon as these latter were removed, the top

would fly off and the body up.

Having thus arranged the box, I marked, numbered, and addressed it as

already told; and then writing a letter in the name of the wine merchants

with whom Mr. Shuttleworthy dealt, I gave instructions to my servant to

wheel the box to Mr. Goodfellow’s door, in a barrow, at a given signal

from myself. For the words which I intended the corpse to speak, I

confidently depended upon my ventriloquial abilities; for their effect, I

counted upon the conscience of the murderous wretch.

I believe there is nothing more to be explained. Mr. Pennifeather was

released upon the spot, inherited the fortune of his uncle, profited by

the lessons of experience, turned over a new leaf, and led happily ever

afterward a new life.

WHY THE LITTLE FRENCHMAN WEARS HIS HAND IN A SLING

It’s on my visiting cards sure enough (and it’s them that’s all o’ pink

satin paper) that inny gintleman that plases may behould the intheristhin’

words, “Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, 39 Southampton Row, Russell

Square, Parrish o’ Bloomsbury.” And shud ye be wantin’ to diskiver who is

the pink of purliteness quite, and the laider of the hot tun in the houl

city o’ Lonon—why it’s jist mesilf. And fait that same is no wonder

at all at all (so be plased to stop curlin’ your nose), for every inch o’

the six wakes that I’ve been a gintleman, and left aff wid the

bog-throthing to take up wid the Barronissy, it’s Pathrick that’s been

living like a houly imperor, and gitting the iddication and the graces.

Och! and wouldn’t it be a blessed thing for your spirrits if ye cud lay

your two peepers jist, upon Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, when he

is all riddy drissed for the hopperer, or stipping into the Brisky for the

drive into the Hyde Park. But it’s the illigant big figgur that I ’ave, for

the rason o’ which all the ladies fall in love wid me. Isn’t it my own

swate silf now that’ll missure the six fut, and the three inches more nor

that, in me stockins, and that am excadingly will proportioned all over to

match? And it is ralelly more than three fut and a bit that there is, inny

how, of the little ould furrener Frinchman that lives jist over the way,

and that’s a-oggling and a-goggling the houl day, (and bad luck to him,)

at the purty widdy Misthress Tracle that’s my own nixt-door neighbor, (God

bliss her!) and a most particuller frind and acquaintance? You percave the

little spalpeen is summat down in the mouth, and wears his lift hand in a

sling, and it’s for that same thing, by yur lave, that I’m going to give

you the good rason.

The truth of the houl matter is jist simple enough; for the very first day

that I com’d from Connaught, and showd my swate little silf in the strait

to the widdy, who was looking through the windy, it was a gone case

althegither with the heart o’ the purty Misthress Tracle. I percaved it,

ye see, all at once, and no mistake, and that’s God’s truth. First of all

it was up wid the windy in a jiffy, and thin she threw open her two

peepers to the itmost, and thin it was a little gould spy-glass that she

clapped tight to one o’ them and divil may burn me if it didn’t spake to

me as plain as a peeper cud spake, and says it, through the spy-glass:

“Och! the tip o’ the mornin’ to ye, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt,

mavourneen; and it’s a nate gintleman that ye are, sure enough, and it’s

mesilf and me forten jist that’ll be at yur sarvice, dear, inny time o’

day at all at all for the asking.” And it’s not mesilf ye wud have to be

bate in the purliteness; so I made her a bow that wud ha’ broken yur heart

altegither to behould, and thin I pulled aff me hat with a flourish, and

thin I winked at her hard wid both eyes, as much as to say, “True for you,

yer a swate little crature, Mrs. Tracle, me darlint, and I wish I may be

drownthed dead in a bog, if it’s not mesilf, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison,

Barronitt, that’ll make a houl bushel o’ love to yur leddyship, in the

twinkling o’ the eye of a Londonderry purraty.”

And it was the nixt mornin’, sure, jist as I was making up me mind whither

it wouldn’t be the purlite thing to sind a bit o’ writin’ to the widdy by

way of a love-litter, when up com’d the delivery servant wid an illigant

card, and he tould me that the name on it (for I niver could rade the

copperplate printin’ on account of being lift handed) was all about

Mounseer, the Count, A Goose, Look-aisy, Maiter-di-dauns, and that

the houl of the divilish lingo was the spalpeeny long name of the little

ould furrener Frinchman as lived over the way.

And jist wid that in cum’d the little willian himself, and then he made me

a broth of a bow, and thin he said he had ounly taken the liberty of doing

me the honor of the giving me a call, and thin he went on to palaver at a

great rate, and divil the bit did I comprehind what he wud be afther the

tilling me at all at all, excipting and saving that he said “pully wou,

woolly wou,” and tould me, among a bushel o’ lies, bad luck to him, that

he was mad for the love o’ my widdy Misthress Tracle, and that my widdy

Mrs. Tracle had a puncheon for him.

At the hearin’ of this, ye may swear, though, I was as mad as a

grasshopper, but I remimbered that I was Sir Pathrick O’Grandison,

Barronitt, and that it wasn’t althegither gentaal to lit the anger git the

upper hand o’ the purliteness, so I made light o’ the matter and kipt

dark, and got quite sociable wid the little chap, and afther a while what

did he do but ask me to go wid him to the widdy’s, saying he wud give me

the feshionable inthroduction to her leddyship.

“Is it there ye are?” said I thin to mesilf, “and it’s thrue for you,

Pathrick, that ye’re the fortunittest mortal in life. We’ll soon see now

whither it’s your swate silf, or whither it’s little Mounseer

Maiter-di-dauns, that Misthress Tracle is head and ears in the love wid.”

Wid that we wint aff to the widdy’s, next door, and ye may well say it was

an illigant place; so it was. There was a carpet all over the floor, and

in one corner there was a forty-pinny and a Jew’s harp and the divil knows

what ilse, and in another corner was a sofy, the beautifullest thing in

all natur, and sitting on the sofy, sure enough, there was the swate

little angel, Misthress Tracle.

“The tip o’ the mornin’ to ye,” says I, “Mrs. Tracle,” and thin I made

sich an illigant obaysance that it wud ha quite althegither bewildered the

brain o’ ye.

“Wully woo, pully woo, plump in the mud,” says the little furrenner

Frinchman, “and sure Mrs. Tracle,” says he, that he did, “isn’t this

gintleman here jist his reverence Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, and

isn’t he althegither and entirely the most particular frind and

acquaintance that I have in the houl world?”

And wid that the widdy, she gits up from the sofy, and makes the swatest

curthchy nor iver was seen; and thin down she sits like an angel; and

thin, by the powers, it was that little spalpeen Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns

that plumped his silf right down by the right side of her. Och hon! I

ixpicted the two eyes o’ me wud ha cum’d out of my head on the spot, I was

so dispirate mad! Howiver, “Bait who!” says I, after awhile. “Is it there

ye are, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns?” and so down I plumped on the lift side

of her leddyship, to be aven with the willain. Botheration! it wud ha done

your heart good to percave the illigant double wink that I gived her jist

thin right in the face with both eyes.

But the little ould Frinchman he niver beginned to suspict me at all at

all, and disperate hard it was he made the love to her leddyship. “Woully

wou,” says he, “Pully wou,” says he, “Plump in the mud,” says he.

“That’s all to no use, Mounseer Frog, mavourneen,” thinks I; and I talked

as hard and as fast as I could all the while, and throth it was mesilf

jist that divarted her leddyship complately and intirely, by rason of the

illigant conversation that I kipt up wid her all about the dear bogs of

Connaught. And by and by she gived me such a swate smile, from one ind of

her mouth to the ither, that it made me as bould as a pig, and I jist took

hould of the ind of her little finger in the most dilikittest manner in

natur, looking at her all the while out o’ the whites of my eyes.

And then ounly percave the cuteness of the swate angel, for no sooner did

she obsarve that I was afther the squazing of her flipper, than she up wid

it in a jiffy, and put it away behind her back, jist as much as to say,

“Now thin, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, there’s a bitther chance for ye,

mavourneen, for it’s not altogether the gentaal thing to be afther the

squazing of my flipper right full in the sight of that little furrenner

Frinchman, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns.”

Wid that I giv’d her a big wink jist to say, “lit Sir Pathrick alone for

the likes o’ them thricks,” and thin I wint aisy to work, and you’d have

died wid the divarsion to behould how cliverly I slipped my right arm

betwane the back o’ the sofy, and the back of her leddyship, and there,

sure enough, I found a swate little flipper all a waiting to say, “the tip

o’ the mornin’ to ye, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt.” And wasn’t it

mesilf, sure, that jist giv’d it the laste little bit of a squaze in the

world, all in the way of a commincement, and not to be too rough wid her

leddyship? and och, botheration, wasn’t it the gentaalest and dilikittest

of all the little squazes that I got in return? “Blood and thunder, Sir

Pathrick, mavourneen,” thinks I to mesilf, “fait it’s jist the mother’s

son of you, and nobody else at all at all, that’s the handsomest and the

fortunittest young bog-throtter that ever cum’d out of Connaught!” And

with that I givd the flipper a big squaze, and a big squaze it was, by the

powers, that her leddyship giv’d to me back. But it would ha split the

seven sides of you wid the laffin’ to behould, jist then all at once, the

consated behavior of Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns. The likes o’ sich a

jabbering, and a smirking, and a parley-wouing as he begin’d wid her

leddyship, niver was known before upon arth; and divil may burn me if it

wasn’t me own very two peepers that cotch’d him tipping her the wink out

of one eye. Och, hon! if it wasn’t mesilf thin that was mad as a Kilkenny

cat I shud like to be tould who it was!

“Let me infarm you, Mounseer Maiter-di-dauns,” said I, as purlite as iver

ye seed, “that it’s not the gintaal thing at all at all, and not for the

likes o’ you inny how, to be afther the oggling and a-goggling at her

leddyship in that fashion,” and jist wid that such another squaze as it

was I giv’d her flipper, all as much as to say, “isn’t it Sir Pathrick

now, my jewel, that’ll be able to the protectin’ o’ you, my darlint?” and

then there cum’d another squaze back, all by way of the answer. “Thrue for

you, Sir Pathrick,” it said as plain as iver a squaze said in the world,

“Thrue for you, Sir Pathrick, mavourneen, and it’s a proper nate gintleman

ye are—that’s God’s truth,” and with that she opened her two

beautiful peepers till I belaved they wud ha’ cum’d out of her hid

althegither and intirely, and she looked first as mad as a cat at Mounseer

Frog, and thin as smiling as all out o’ doors at mesilf.

“Thin,” says he, the willian, “Och hon! and a wolly-wou, pully-wou,” and

then wid that he shoved up his two shoulders till the divil the bit of his

hid was to be diskivered, and then he let down the two corners of his

purraty-trap, and thin not a haporth more of the satisfaction could I git

out o’ the spalpeen.

Belave me, my jewel, it was Sir Pathrick that was unreasonable mad thin,

and the more by token that the Frinchman kipt an wid his winking at the

widdy; and the widdy she kept an wid the squazing of my flipper, as much

as to say, “At him again, Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, mavourneen:” so I just

ripped out wid a big oath, and says I:

“Ye little spalpeeny frog of a bog-throtting son of a bloody noun!”—and

jist thin what d’ye think it was that her leddyship did? Troth she jumped

up from the sofy as if she was bit, and made off through the door, while I

turned my head round afther her, in a complate bewilderment and

botheration, and followed her wid me two peepers. You percave I had a

reason of my own for knowing that she couldn’t git down the stares

althegither and intirely; for I knew very well that I had hould of her

hand, for the divil the bit had I iver lit it go. And says I:

“Isn’t it the laste little bit of a mistake in the world that

ye’ve been afther the making, yer leddyship? Come back now,

that’s a darlint, and I’ll give ye yur flipper.” But

aff she wint down the stairs like a shot, and thin I turned round to the

little Frinch furrenner. Och hon! if it wasn’t his spalpeeny little

paw that I had hould of in my own—why thin—thin it

wasn’t—that’s all.

And maybe it wasn’t mesilf that jist died then outright wid the laffin’,

to behold the little chap when he found out that it wasn’t the widdy at

all at all that he had had hould of all the time, but only Sir Pathrick

O’Grandison. The ould divil himself niver behild sich a long face as he

pet an! As for Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barronitt, it wasn’t for the

likes of his riverence to be afther the minding of a thrifle of a mistake.

Ye may jist say, though (for it’s God’s thruth), that afore I left hould

of the flipper of the spalpeen (which was not till afther her leddyship’s

futman had kicked us both down the stairs), I giv’d it such a nate little

broth of a squaze as made it all up into raspberry jam.

“Woully wou,” says he, “pully wou,” says he—“Cot tam!”

And that’s jist the thruth of the rason why he wears his lift hand in a

sling.

BON-BON.

Quand un bon vin meuble mon estomac,

Je suis plus savant que Balzac—

Plus sage que Pibrac;

Mon bras seul faisant l’attaque

De la nation Cossaque,

La mettroit au sac;

De Charon je passerois le lac,

En dormant dans son bac;

J’irois au fier Eac,

Sans que mon coeur fit tic ni tac,

Présenter du tabac.

—_French Vaudeville_

That Pierre Bon-Bon was a _restaurateur_ of uncommon qualifications,

no man who, during the reign of——, frequented the little Câfé

in the cul-de-sac Le Febre at Rouen, will, I imagine, feel himself at

liberty to dispute. That Pierre Bon-Bon was, in an equal degree, skilled

in the philosophy of that period is, I presume, still more especially

undeniable. His _patés à la fois_ were beyond doubt immaculate; but

what pen can do justice to his essays _sur la Nature_—his

thoughts _sur l’Ame_—his observations _sur l’Esprit?_ If

his _omelettes_—if his _fricandeaux_ were inestimable,

what _littérateur_ of that day would not have given twice as much for

an “_Idée de Bon-Bon_” as for all the trash of “_Idées_” of all

the rest of the _savants?_ Bon-Bon had ransacked libraries which no

other man had ransacked—had more than any other would have

entertained a notion of reading—had understood more than any other

would have conceived the possibility of understanding; and although, while

he flourished, there were not wanting some authors at Rouen to assert

“that his _dicta_ evinced neither the purity of the Academy, nor the

depth of the Lyceum”—although, mark me, his doctrines were by no

means very generally comprehended, still it did not follow that they were

difficult of comprehension. It was, I think, on account of their

self-evidency that many persons were led to consider them abstruse. It is

to Bon-Bon—but let this go no farther—it is to Bon-Bon that

Kant himself is mainly indebted for his metaphysics. The former was indeed

not a Platonist, nor strictly speaking an Aristotelian—nor did he,

like the modern Leibnitz, waste those precious hours which might be

employed in the invention of a _fricasée_ or, _facili gradú_,

the analysis of a sensation, in frivolous attempts at reconciling the

obstinate oils and waters of ethical discussion. Not at all. Bon-Bon was

Ionic—Bon-Bon was equally Italic. He reasoned _à priori_—He

reasoned also _à posteriori_. His ideas were innate—or

otherwise. He believed in George of Trebizonde—He believed in

Bossarion [Bessarion]. Bon-Bon was emphatically a—Bon-Bonist.

I have spoken of the philosopher in his capacity of _restaurateur_. I

would not, however, have any friend of mine imagine that, in fulfilling

his hereditary duties in that line, our hero wanted a proper estimation of

their dignity and importance. Far from it. It was impossible to say in

which branch of his profession he took the greater pride. In his opinion

the powers of the intellect held intimate connection with the capabilities

of the stomach. I am not sure, indeed, that he greatly disagreed with the

Chinese, who held that the soul lies in the abdomen. The Greeks at all

events were right, he thought, who employed the same words for the mind

and the diaphragm. (*1) By this I do not mean to insinuate a charge of

gluttony, or indeed any other serious charge to the prejudice of the

metaphysician. If Pierre Bon-Bon had his failings—and what great man

has not a thousand?—if Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, had his failings, they

were failings of very little importance—faults indeed which, in

other tempers, have often been looked upon rather in the light of virtues.

As regards one of these foibles, I should not even have mentioned it in

this history but for the remarkable prominency—the extreme _alto

relievo_—in which it jutted out from the plane of his general

disposition. He could never let slip an opportunity of making a bargain.

{*1} MD

Not that he was avaricious—no. It was by no means necessary to the

satisfaction of the philosopher, that the bargain should be to his own

proper advantage. Provided a trade could be effected—a trade of any

kind, upon any terms, or under any circumstances—a triumphant smile

was seen for many days thereafter to enlighten his countenance, and a

knowing wink of the eye to give evidence of his sagacity.

At any epoch it would not be very wonderful if a humor so peculiar as the

one I have just mentioned, should elicit attention and remark. At the

epoch of our narrative, had this peculiarity not attracted observation,

there would have been room for wonder indeed. It was soon reported that,

upon all occasions of the kind, the smile of Bon-Bon was wont to differ

widely from the downright grin with which he would laugh at his own jokes,

or welcome an acquaintance. Hints were thrown out of an exciting nature;

stories were told of perilous bargains made in a hurry and repented of at

leisure; and instances were adduced of unaccountable capacities, vague

longings, and unnatural inclinations implanted by the author of all evil

for wise purposes of his own.

The philosopher had other weaknesses—but they are scarcely worthy

our serious examination. For example, there are few men of extraordinary

profundity who are found wanting in an inclination for the bottle. Whether

this inclination be an exciting cause, or rather a valid proof of such

profundity, it is a nice thing to say. Bon-Bon, as far as I can learn, did

not think the subject adapted to minute investigation;—nor do I. Yet

in the indulgence of a propensity so truly classical, it is not to be

supposed that the restaurateur would lose sight of that intuitive

discrimination which was wont to characterize, at one and the same time,

his essais and his omelettes. In his seclusions the Vin de Bourgogne had

its allotted hour, and there were appropriate moments for the Cotes du

Rhone. With him Sauterne was to Medoc what Catullus was to Homer. He would

sport with a syllogism in sipping St. Peray, but unravel an argument over

Clos de Vougeot, and upset a theory in a torrent of Chambertin. Well had

it been if the same quick sense of propriety had attended him in the

peddling propensity to which I have formerly alluded—but this was by

no means the case. Indeed to say the truth, that trait of mind in the

philosophic Bon-Bon did begin at length to assume a character of strange

intensity and mysticism, and appeared deeply tinctured with the diablerie

of his favorite German studies.

To enter the little _café_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febre was, at the period of

our tale, to enter the sanctum of a man of genius. Bon-Bon was a man of

genius. There was not a sous-cusinier in Rouen, who could not have told

you that Bon-Bon was a man of genius. His very cat knew it, and forebore

to whisk her tail in the presence of the man of genius. His large

water-dog was acquainted with the fact, and upon the approach of his

master, betrayed his sense of inferiority by a sanctity of deportment, a

debasement of the ears, and a dropping of the lower jaw not altogether

unworthy of a dog. It is, however, true that much of this habitual respect

might have been attributed to the personal appearance of the

metaphysician. A distinguished exterior will, I am constrained to say,

have its way even with a beast; and I am willing to allow much in the

outward man of the restaurateur calculated to impress the imagination of

the quadruped. There is a peculiar majesty about the atmosphere of the

little great—if I may be permitted so equivocal an expression—which

mere physical bulk alone will be found at all times inefficient in

creating. If, however, Bon-Bon was barely three feet in height, and if his

head was diminutively small, still it was impossible to behold the

rotundity of his stomach without a sense of magnificence nearly bordering

upon the sublime. In its size both dogs and men must have seen a type of

his acquirements—in its immensity a fitting habitation for his

immortal soul.

I might here—if it so pleased me—dilate upon the matter of

habiliment, and other mere circumstances of the external metaphysician. I

might hint that the hair of our hero was worn short, combed smoothly over

his forehead, and surmounted by a conical-shaped white flannel cap and

tassels—that his pea-green jerkin was not after the fashion of those

worn by the common class of restaurateurs at that day—that the

sleeves were something fuller than the reigning costume permitted—that

the cuffs were turned up, not as usual in that barbarous period, with

cloth of the same quality and color as the garment, but faced in a more

fanciful manner with the particolored velvet of Genoa—that his

slippers were of a bright purple, curiously filigreed, and might have been

manufactured in Japan, but for the exquisite pointing of the toes, and the

brilliant tints of the binding and embroidery—that his breeches were

of the yellow satin-like material called aimable—that his sky-blue

cloak, resembling in form a dressing-wrapper, and richly bestudded all

over with crimson devices, floated cavalierly upon his shoulders like a

mist of the morning—and that his tout ensemble gave rise to the

remarkable words of Benevenuta, the Improvisatrice of Florence, “that it

was difficult to say whether Pierre Bon-Bon was indeed a bird of Paradise,

or rather a very Paradise of perfection.” I might, I say, expatiate upon

all these points if I pleased,—but I forbear, merely personal

details may be left to historical novelists,—they are beneath the

moral dignity of matter-of-fact.

I have said that “to enter the _café_ in the _cul-de-sac_ Le Febre was to

enter the sanctum of a man of genius”—but then it was only the man

of genius who could duly estimate the merits of the _sanctum_. A sign,

consisting of a vast folio, swung before the entrance. On one side of the

volume was painted a bottle; on the reverse a _paté_. On the back were

visible in large letters _Œuvres de Bon-Bon_. Thus was delicately shadowed

forth the two-fold occupation of the proprietor.

Upon stepping over the threshold, the whole interior of the building

presented itself to view. A long, low-pitched room, of antique

construction, was indeed all the accommodation afforded by the _café_. In a

corner of the apartment stood the bed of the metaphysician. An army of

curtains, together with a canopy _à la Grècque_, gave it an air at once

classic and comfortable. In the corner diagonary opposite, appeared, in

direct family communion, the properties of the kitchen and the

_bibliotheque_. A dish of polemics stood peacefully upon the dresser. Here

lay an ovenful of the latest ethics—there a kettle of dudecimo

_mélanges_. Volumes of German morality were hand and glove with the gridiron—a

toasting-fork might be discovered by the side of Eusebius—Plato

reclined at his ease in the frying-pan—and contemporary manuscripts

were filed away upon the spit.

In other respects the _Café de Bon-Bon_ might be said to differ little from

the usual restaurants of the period. A fireplace yawned opposite the door.

On the right of the fireplace an open cupboard displayed a formidable

array of labelled bottles.

It was here, about twelve o’clock one night during the severe

winter of ——, that Pierre Bon-Bon, after having listened to

the comments of his neighbours upon his singular propensity—that

Pierre Bon-Bon, I say, having turned them all out of his house, locked

the door upon them with an oath, and betook himself in no very pacific

mood to the comforts of a leather-bottomed arm-chair, and a fire of

blazing fagots.

It was one of those terrific nights which are only met with once or twice

during a century. It snowed fiercely, and the house tottered to its centre

with the floods of wind that, rushing through the crannies in the wall,

and pouring impetuously down the chimney, shook awfully the curtains of

the philosopher’s bed, and disorganized the economy of his pate-pans and

papers. The huge folio sign that swung without, exposed to the fury of the

tempest, creaked ominously, and gave out a moaning sound from its

stanchions of solid oak.

It was in no placid temper, I say, that the metaphysician drew up his

chair to its customary station by the hearth. Many circumstances of a

perplexing nature had occurred during the day, to disturb the serenity of

his meditations. In attempting _des oeufs à la Princesse_, he had

unfortunately perpetrated an _omelette à la Reine;_ the discovery of a

principle in ethics had been frustrated by the overturning of a stew; and

last, not least, he had been thwarted in one of those admirable bargains

which he at all times took such especial delight in bringing to a

successful termination. But in the chafing of his mind at these

unaccountable vicissitudes, there did not fail to be mingled some degree

of that nervous anxiety which the fury of a boisterous night is so well

calculated to produce. Whistling to his more immediate vicinity the large

black water-dog we have spoken of before, and settling himself uneasily in

his chair, he could not help casting a wary and unquiet eye toward those

distant recesses of the apartment whose inexorable shadows not even the

red firelight itself could more than partially succeed in overcoming.

Having completed a scrutiny whose exact purpose was perhaps unintelligible

to himself, he drew close to his seat a small table covered with books and

papers, and soon became absorbed in the task of retouching a voluminous

manuscript, intended for publication on the morrow.

He had been thus occupied for some minutes when “I am in no hurry,

Monsieur Bon-Bon,” suddenly whispered a whining voice in the apartment.

“The devil!” ejaculated our hero, starting to his feet, overturning the

table at his side, and staring around him in astonishment.

“Very true,” calmly replied the voice.

“Very true!—what is very true?—how came you here?” vociferated

the metaphysician, as his eye fell upon something which lay stretched at

full length upon the bed.

“I was saying,” said the intruder, without attending to the

interrogatives,—“I was saying that I am not at all pushed for time—that

the business upon which I took the liberty of calling, is of no pressing

importance—in short, that I can very well wait until you have

finished your Exposition.”

“My Exposition!—there now!—how do you know?—how came you

to understand that I was writing an Exposition?—good God!”

“Hush!” replied the figure, in a shrill undertone; and, arising quickly

from the bed, he made a single step toward our hero, while an iron lamp

that depended over-head swung convulsively back from his approach.

The philosopher’s amazement did not prevent a narrow scrutiny of the

stranger’s dress and appearance. The outlines of his figure, exceedingly

lean, but much above the common height, were rendered minutely distinct,

by means of a faded suit of black cloth which fitted tight to the skin,

but was otherwise cut very much in the style of a century ago. These

garments had evidently been intended for a much shorter person than their

present owner. His ankles and wrists were left naked for several inches.

In his shoes, however, a pair of very brilliant buckles gave the lie to

the extreme poverty implied by the other portions of his dress. His head

was bare, and entirely bald, with the exception of a hinder part, from

which depended a queue of considerable length. A pair of green spectacles,

with side glasses, protected his eyes from the influence of the light, and

at the same time prevented our hero from ascertaining either their color

or their conformation. About the entire person there was no evidence of a

shirt, but a white cravat, of filthy appearance, was tied with extreme

precision around the throat and the ends hanging down formally side by

side gave (although I dare say unintentionally) the idea of an

ecclesiastic. Indeed, many other points both in his appearance and

demeanor might have very well sustained a conception of that nature. Over

his left ear, he carried, after the fashion of a modern clerk, an

instrument resembling the stylus of the ancients. In a breast-pocket of

his coat appeared conspicuously a small black volume fastened with clasps

of steel. This book, whether accidentally or not, was so turned outwardly

from the person as to discover the words “Rituel Catholique” in white

letters upon the back. His entire physiognomy was interestingly saturnine—even

cadaverously pale. The forehead was lofty, and deeply furrowed with the

ridges of contemplation. The corners of the mouth were drawn down into an

expression of the most submissive humility. There was also a clasping of

the hands, as he stepped toward our hero—a deep sigh—and

altogether a look of such utter sanctity as could not have failed to be

unequivocally preposessing. Every shadow of anger faded from the

countenance of the metaphysician, as, having completed a satisfactory

survey of his visitor’s person, he shook him cordially by the hand, and

conducted him to a seat.

There would however be a radical error in attributing this instantaneous

transition of feeling in the philosopher, to any one of those causes which

might naturally be supposed to have had an influence. Indeed, Pierre

Bon-Bon, from what I have been able to understand of his disposition, was

of all men the least likely to be imposed upon by any speciousness of

exterior deportment. It was impossible that so accurate an observer of men

and things should have failed to discover, upon the moment, the real

character of the personage who had thus intruded upon his hospitality. To

say no more, the conformation of his visitor’s feet was sufficiently

remarkable—he maintained lightly upon his head an inordinately tall

hat—there was a tremulous swelling about the hinder part of his

breeches—and the vibration of his coat tail was a palpable fact.

Judge, then, with what feelings of satisfaction our hero found himself

thrown thus at once into the society of a person for whom he had at all

times entertained the most unqualified respect. He was, however, too much

of the diplomatist to let escape him any intimation of his suspicions in

regard to the true state of affairs. It was not his cue to appear at all

conscious of the high honor he thus unexpectedly enjoyed; but, by leading

his guest into the conversation, to elicit some important ethical ideas,

which might, in obtaining a place in his contemplated publication,

enlighten the human race, and at the same time immortalize himself—ideas

which, I should have added, his visitor’s great age, and well-known

proficiency in the science of morals, might very well have enabled him to

afford.

Actuated by these enlightened views, our hero bade the gentleman sit down,

while he himself took occasion to throw some fagots upon the fire, and

place upon the now re-established table some bottles of _Mousseux_. Having

quickly completed these operations, he drew his chair _vis-à-vis_ to his

companion’s, and waited until the latter should open the conversation. But

plans even the most skilfully matured are often thwarted in the outset of

their application—and the _restaurateur_ found himself _nonplussed_ by

the very first words of his visitor’s speech.

“I see you know me, Bon-Bon,” said he; “ha! ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hi!

hi! hi!—ho! ho! ho!—hu! hu! hu!”—and the devil, dropping

at once the sanctity of his demeanor, opened to its fullest extent a mouth

from ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth,

and, throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and

uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches,

joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off at a tangent,

stood up on end, and shrieked in the farthest corner of the apartment.

Not so the philosopher; he was too much a man of the world either to laugh

like the dog, or by shrieks to betray the indecorous trepidation of the

cat. It must be confessed, he felt a little astonishment to see the white

letters which formed the words “_Rituel Catholique_” on the book in his

guest’s pocket, momently changing both their color and their import, and

in a few seconds, in place of the original title the words _Régitre des

Condamnes_ blazed forth in characters of red. This startling circumstance,

when Bon-Bon replied to his visitor’s remark, imparted to his manner an

air of embarrassment which probably might, not otherwise have been

observed.

“Why sir,” said the philosopher, “why sir, to speak

sincerely—I believe you are—upon my word—the

d——dest—that is to say, I think—I imagine—I

_have_ some faint—some _very_ faint idea—of the

remarkable honor—”

“Oh!—ah!—yes!—very well!” interrupted his Majesty; “say

no more—I see how it is.” And hereupon, taking off his green

spectacles, he wiped the glasses carefully with the sleeve of his coat,

and deposited them in his pocket.

If Bon-Bon had been astonished at the incident of the book, his amazement

was now much increased by the spectacle which here presented itself to

view. In raising his eyes, with a strong feeling of curiosity to ascertain

the color of his guest’s, he found them by no means black, as he had

anticipated—nor gray, as might have been imagined—nor yet

hazel nor blue—nor indeed yellow nor red—nor purple—nor

white—nor green—nor any other color in the heavens above, or

in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. In short, Pierre

Bon-Bon not only saw plainly that his Majesty had no eyes whatsoever, but

could discover no indications of their having existed at any previous

period—for the space where eyes should naturally have been was, I am

constrained to say, simply a dead level of flesh.

It was not in the nature of the metaphysician to forbear making some

inquiry into the sources of so strange a phenomenon, and the reply of his

Majesty was at once prompt, dignified, and satisfactory.

“Eyes! my dear Bon-Bon—eyes! did you say?—oh!—ah!—I

perceive! The ridiculous prints, eh, which are in, circulation, have given

you a false idea of my personal appearance? Eyes!—true. Eyes, Pierre

Bon-Bon, are very well in their proper place—that, you would say, is

the head?—right—the head of a worm. To you, likewise, these

optics are indispensable—yet I will convince you that my vision is

more penetrating than your own. There is a cat I see in the corner—a

pretty cat—look at her—observe her well. Now, Bon-Bon, do you

behold the thoughts—the thoughts, I say,—the ideas—the

reflections—which are being engendered in her pericranium? There it

is, now—you do not! She is thinking we admire the length of her tail

and the profundity of her mind. She has just concluded that I am the most

distinguished of ecclesiastics, and that you are the most superficial of

metaphysicians. Thus you see I am not altogether blind; but to one of my

profession, the eyes you speak of would be merely an incumbrance, liable

at any time to be put out by a toasting-iron, or a pitchfork. To you, I

allow, these optical affairs are indispensable. Endeavor, Bon-Bon, to use

them well;—my vision is the soul.”

Hereupon the guest helped himself to the wine upon the table, and pouring

out a bumper for Bon-Bon, requested him to drink it without scruple, and

make himself perfectly at home.

“A clever book that of yours, Pierre,” resumed his Majesty, tapping our

friend knowingly upon the shoulder, as the latter put down his glass after

a thorough compliance with his visitor’s injunction. “A clever book that

of yours, upon my honor. It’s a work after my own heart. Your arrangement

of the matter, I think, however, might be improved, and many of your

notions remind me of Aristotle. That philosopher was one of my most

intimate acquaintances. I liked him as much for his terrible ill temper,

as for his happy knack at making a blunder. There is only one solid truth

in all that he has written, and for that I gave him the hint out of pure

compassion for his absurdity. I suppose, Pierre Bon-Bon, you very well

know to what divine moral truth I am alluding?”

“Cannot say that I—”

“Indeed!—why it was I who told Aristotle that by sneezing, men

expelled superfluous ideas through the proboscis.”

“Which is—hiccup!—undoubtedly the case,” said the

metaphysician, while he poured out for himself another bumper of Mousseux,

and offered his snuff-box to the fingers of his visitor.

“There was Plato, too,” continued his Majesty, modestly

declining the snuff-box and the compliment it implied—“there

was Plato, too, for whom I, at one time, felt all the affection of a

friend. You knew Plato, Bon-Bon?—ah, no, I beg a thousand pardons.

He met me at Athens, one day, in the Parthenon, and told me he was

distressed for an idea. I bade him write, down that δ

υοῦς εστιν

αυλος. He said that he would do so, and went

home, while I stepped over to the pyramids. But my conscience smote me

for having uttered a truth, even to aid a friend, and hastening back to

Athens, I arrived behind the philosopher’s chair as he was inditing

the ‘αυλος.’

“Giving the lambda a fillip with my finger, I turned it upside down. So

the sentence now read ‘δ

υοῦς εστιν

αυγος’, and is, you perceive, the

fundamental doctrines in his metaphysics.”

“Were you ever at Rome?” asked the _restaurateur_, as he finished his second

bottle of Mousseux, and drew from the closet a larger supply of

Chambertin.

“But once, Monsieur Bon-Bon, but once. There was a time,” said the devil,

as if reciting some passage from a book—“there was a time when

occurred an anarchy of five years, during which the republic, bereft of

all its officers, had no magistracy besides the tribunes of the people,

and these were not legally vested with any degree of executive power—at

that time, Monsieur Bon-Bon—at that time only I was in Rome, and I

have no earthly acquaintance, consequently, with any of its philosophy.”

(*2)

{*2} Ils ecrivaient sur la Philosophie (_Cicero, Lucretius,

Seneca_) mais c’etait la Philosophie Grecque.—_Condorcet_.

“What do you think of—what do you think of—hiccup!—Epicurus?”

“What do I think of whom?” said the devil, in astonishment, “you cannot

surely mean to find any fault with Epicurus! What do I think of Epicurus!

Do you mean me, sir?—I am Epicurus! I am the same philosopher who

wrote each of the three hundred treatises commemorated by Diogenes

Laertes.”

“That’s a lie!” said the metaphysician, for the wine had gotten a little

into his head.

“Very well!—very well, sir!—very well, indeed, sir!” said his

Majesty, apparently much flattered.

“That’s a lie!” repeated the restaurateur, dogmatically; “that’s a—hiccup!—a

lie!”

“Well, well, have it your own way!” said the devil, pacifically, and

Bon-Bon, having beaten his Majesty at argument, thought it his duty to

conclude a second bottle of Chambertin.

“As I was saying,” resumed the visitor—“as I was observing a little

while ago, there are some very _outré_ notions in that book of yours

Monsieur Bon-Bon. What, for instance, do you mean by all that humbug about

the soul? Pray, sir, what is the soul?”

“The—hiccup!—soul,” replied the metaphysician, referring to

his MS., “is undoubtedly—”

“No, sir!”

“Indubitably—”

“No, sir!”

“Indisputably—”

“No, sir!”

“Evidently—”

“No, sir!”

“Incontrovertibly—”

“No, sir!”

“Hiccup!—”

“No, sir!”

“And beyond all question, a—”

“No sir, the soul is no such thing!” (Here the philosopher, looking

daggers, took occasion to make an end, upon the spot, of his third bottle

of Chambertin.)

“Then—hic-cup!—pray, sir—what—what is it?”

“That is neither here nor there, Monsieur Bon-Bon,” replied his Majesty,

musingly. “I have tasted—that is to say, I have known some very bad

souls, and some too—pretty good ones.” Here he smacked his lips,

and, having unconsciously let fall his hand upon the volume in his pocket,

was seized with a violent fit of sneezing.

He continued.

“There was the soul of Cratinus—passable: Aristophanes—racy:

Plato—exquisite—not _your_ Plato, but Plato the comic poet; your

Plato would have turned the stomach of Cerberus—faugh! Then let me

see! there were Naevius, and Andronicus, and Plautus, and Terentius. Then

there were Lucilius, and Catullus, and Naso, and Quintus Flaccus,—dear

Quinty! as I called him when he sung a _seculare_ for my amusement, while I

toasted him, in pure good humor, on a fork. But they want _flavor_, these

Romans. One fat Greek is worth a dozen of them, and besides will _keep_,

which cannot be said of a Quirite. Let us taste your Sauterne.”

Bon-Bon had by this time made up his mind to the _nil admirari_ and endeavored

to hand down the bottles in question. He was, however, conscious of a

strange sound in the room like the wagging of a tail. Of this, although

extremely indecent in his Majesty, the philosopher took no notice:—simply

kicking the dog, and requesting him to be quiet. The visitor continued:

“I found that Horace tasted very much like Aristotle;—you know I am

fond of variety. Terentius I could not have told from Menander. Naso, to

my astonishment, was Nicander in disguise. Virgilius had a strong twang of

Theocritus. Martial put me much in mind of Archilochus—and Titus

Livius was positively Polybius and none other.”

“Hic-cup!” here replied Bon-Bon, and his majesty proceeded:

“But if I have a penchant, Monsieur Bon-Bon—if I have a penchant, it

is for a philosopher. Yet, let me tell you, sir, it is not every dev—I

mean it is not every gentleman who knows how to choose a philosopher. Long

ones are not good; and the best, if not carefully shelled, are apt to be a

little rancid on account of the gall!”

“Shelled!”

“I mean taken out of the carcass.”

“What do you think of a—hic-cup!—physician?”

“Don’t mention them!—ugh! ugh! ugh!” (Here his Majesty retched

violently.) “I never tasted but one—that rascal Hippocrates!—smelt

of asafoetida—ugh! ugh! ugh!—caught a wretched cold washing

him in the Styx—and after all he gave me the cholera morbus.”

“The—hiccup!—wretch!” ejaculated Bon-Bon, “the—hic-cup!—abortion

of a pill-box!”—and the philosopher dropped a tear.

“After all,” continued the visitor, “after all, if a dev—if a

gentleman wishes to live, he must have more talents than one or two; and

with us a fat face is an evidence of diplomacy.”

“How so?”

“Why, we are sometimes exceedingly pushed for provisions. You must know

that, in a climate so sultry as mine, it is frequently impossible to keep

a spirit alive for more than two or three hours; and after death, unless

pickled immediately (and a pickled spirit is not good), they will—smell—you

understand, eh? Putrefaction is always to be apprehended when the souls

are consigned to us in the usual way.”

“Hiccup!—hiccup!—good God! how do you manage?”

Here the iron lamp commenced swinging with redoubled violence, and the

devil half started from his seat;—however, with a slight sigh, he

recovered his composure, merely saying to our hero in a low tone: “I tell

you what, Pierre Bon-Bon, we must have no more swearing.”

The host swallowed another bumper, by way of denoting thorough

comprehension and acquiescence, and the visitor continued.

“Why, there are several ways of managing. The most of us starve: some put

up with the pickle: for my part I purchase my spirits vivente corpore, in

which case I find they keep very well.”

“But the body!—hiccup!—the body!”

“The body, the body—well, what of the body?—oh! ah! I

perceive. Why, sir, the body is not at all affected by the transaction. I

have made innumerable purchases of the kind in my day, and the parties

never experienced any inconvenience. There were Cain and Nimrod, and

Nero, and Caligula, and Dionysius, and Pisistratus, and—and a

thousand others, who never knew what it was to have a soul during the

latter part of their lives; yet, sir, these men adorned society. Why

isn’t there A——, now, who you know as well as I? Is

_he_ not in possession of his faculties, mental and corporeal? Who

writes a keener epigram? Who reasons more wittily? Who—but stay! I

have his agreement in my pocket-book.”

Thus saying, he produced a red leather wallet, and took from it a number

of papers. Upon some of these Bon-Bon caught a glimpse of the letters

_Machi—Maza—Robesp_—with the words _Caligula, George,

Elizabeth_. His Majesty selected a narrow slip of parchment, and from it

read aloud the following words:

“In consideration of certain mental endowments which it is unnecessary to

specify, and in further consideration of one thousand louis d’or, I being

aged one year and one month, do hereby make over to the bearer of this

agreement all my right, title, and appurtenance in the shadow called my

soul. (Signed) A....” {*4} (Here His Majesty repeated a name which I did

not feel justified in indicating more unequivocally.)

{*4} Quere-Arouet?

“A clever fellow that,” resumed he; “but like you, Monsieur Bon-Bon, he

was mistaken about the soul. The soul a shadow, truly! The soul a shadow;

Ha! ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hu! hu! hu! Only think of a fricasseed

shadow!”

“_Only_ think—hiccup!—of a fricasséed shadow!” exclaimed our

hero, whose faculties were becoming much illuminated by the profundity of

his Majesty’s discourse.

“Only think of a hiccup!—fricasséed shadow!! Now, damme!—hiccup!—humph!

If _I_ would have been such a—hiccup!—nincompoop! _My_ soul, Mr.—humph!”

“_Your_ soul, Monsieur Bon-Bon?”

“Yes, sir—hiccup!—_my_ soul is—”

“What, sir?”

“_No_ shadow, damme!”

“Did you mean to say—”

“Yes, sir, my soul is—hiccup!—humph!—yes, sir.”

“Did you not intend to assert—”

“My soul is—hiccup!—peculiarly qualified for—hiccup!—a—”

“What, sir?”

“Stew.”

“Ha!”

“Soufflee.”

“Eh!”

“Fricassee.”

“Indeed!”

“Ragout and fricandeau—and see here, my good fellow! I’ll let you

have it—hiccup!—a bargain.” Here the philosopher slapped his

Majesty upon the back.

“Couldn’t think of such a thing,” said the latter calmly, at the same time

rising from his seat. The metaphysician stared.

“Am supplied at present,” said his Majesty.

“Hiccup!—e-h?” said the philosopher.

“Have no funds on hand.”

“What?”

“Besides, very unhandsome in me—”

“Sir!”

“To take advantage of—”

“Hiccup!”

“Your present disgusting and ungentlemanly situation.”

Here the visitor bowed and withdrew—in what manner could not

precisely be ascertained—but in a well-concerted effort to discharge

a bottle at “the villain,” the slender chain was severed that depended

from the ceiling, and the metaphysician prostrated by the downfall of the

lamp.

SOME WORDS WITH A MUMMY.

The _symposium_ of the preceding evening had been a little too much

for my nerves. I had a wretched headache, and was desperately drowsy.

Instead of going out therefore to spend the evening as I had proposed, it

occurred to me that I could not do a wiser thing than just eat a mouthful

of supper and go immediately to bed.

A light supper of course. I am exceedingly fond of Welsh rabbit. More than

a pound at once, however, may not at all times be advisable. Still, there

can be no material objection to two. And really between two and three,

there is merely a single unit of difference. I ventured, perhaps, upon

four. My wife will have it five;—but, clearly, she has confounded

two very distinct affairs. The abstract number, five, I am willing to

admit; but, concretely, it has reference to bottles of Brown Stout,

without which, in the way of condiment, Welsh rabbit is to be eschewed.

Having thus concluded a frugal meal, and donned my night-cap, with the

serene hope of enjoying it till noon the next day, I placed my head upon

the pillow, and, through the aid of a capital conscience, fell into a

profound slumber forthwith.

But when were the hopes of humanity fulfilled? I could not have completed

my third snore when there came a furious ringing at the street-door bell,

and then an impatient thumping at the knocker, which awakened me at once.

In a minute afterward, and while I was still rubbing my eyes, my wife

thrust in my face a note, from my old friend, Doctor Ponnonner. It ran

thus:

“Come to me, by all means, my dear good friend, as soon as you receive

this. Come and help us to rejoice. At last, by long persevering diplomacy, I

have gained the assent of the Directors of the City Museum, to my examination

of the Mummy—you know the one I mean. I have permission to unswathe it

and open it, if desirable. A few friends only will be present—you, of

course. The Mummy is now at my house, and we shall begin to unroll it at eleven

to-night.

“Yours, ever,

PONNONNER.

By the time I had reached the “Ponnonner,” it struck me that I was as wide

awake as a man need be. I leaped out of bed in an ecstacy, overthrowing

all in my way; dressed myself with a rapidity truly marvellous; and set

off, at the top of my speed, for the doctor’s.

There I found a very eager company assembled. They had been awaiting me

with much impatience; the Mummy was extended upon the dining-table; and

the moment I entered its examination was commenced.

It was one of a pair brought, several years previously, by Captain Arthur

Sabretash, a cousin of Ponnonner’s from a tomb near Eleithias, in

the Lybian mountains, a considerable distance above Thebes on the Nile.

The grottoes at this point, although less magnificent than the Theban

sepulchres, are of higher interest, on account of affording more numerous

illustrations of the private life of the Egyptians. The chamber from

which our specimen was taken, was said to be very rich in such

illustrations—the walls being completely covered with fresco

paintings and bas-reliefs, while statues, vases, and Mosaic work of rich

patterns, indicated the vast wealth of the deceased.

The treasure had been deposited in the Museum precisely in the same

condition in which Captain Sabretash had found it—that is to say,

the coffin had not been disturbed. For eight years it had thus stood,

subject only externally to public inspection. We had now, therefore, the

complete Mummy at our disposal; and to those who are aware how very rarely

the unransacked antique reaches our shores, it will be evident, at once

that we had great reason to congratulate ourselves upon our good fortune.

Approaching the table, I saw on it a large box, or case, nearly seven feet

long, and perhaps three feet wide, by two feet and a half deep. It was

oblong—not coffin-shaped. The material was at first supposed to be

the wood of the sycamore (_platanus_), but, upon cutting into it, we

found it to be pasteboard, or, more properly, _papier mache_,

composed of papyrus. It was thickly ornamented with paintings,

representing funeral scenes, and other mournful subjects—interspersed

among which, in every variety of position, were certain series of

hieroglyphical characters, intended, no doubt, for the name of the

departed. By good luck, Mr. Gliddon formed one of our party; and he had no

difficulty in translating the letters, which were simply phonetic, and

represented the word _Allamistakeo_.

We had some difficulty in getting this case open without injury; but

having at length accomplished the task, we came to a second,

coffin-shaped, and very considerably less in size than the exterior one,

but resembling it precisely in every other respect. The interval between

the two was filled with resin, which had, in some degree, defaced the

colors of the interior box.

Upon opening this latter (which we did quite easily), we arrived at a

third case, also coffin-shaped, and varying from the second one in no

particular, except in that of its material, which was cedar, and still

emitted the peculiar and highly aromatic odor of that wood. Between the

second and the third case there was no interval—the one fitting

accurately within the other.

Removing the third case, we discovered and took out the body itself. We

had expected to find it, as usual, enveloped in frequent rolls, or

bandages, of linen; but, in place of these, we found a sort of sheath,

made of papyrus, and coated with a layer of plaster, thickly gilt and

painted. The paintings represented subjects connected with the various

supposed duties of the soul, and its presentation to different divinities,

with numerous identical human figures, intended, very probably, as

portraits of the persons embalmed. Extending from head to foot was a

columnar, or perpendicular, inscription, in phonetic hieroglyphics, giving

again his name and titles, and the names and titles of his relations.

Around the neck thus ensheathed, was a collar of cylindrical glass beads,

diverse in color, and so arranged as to form images of deities, of the

scarabaeus, etc., with the winged globe. Around the small of the waist

was a similar collar or belt.

Stripping off the papyrus, we found the flesh in excellent preservation,

with no perceptible odor. The color was reddish. The skin was hard,

smooth, and glossy. The teeth and hair were in good condition. The eyes

(it seemed) had been removed, and glass ones substituted, which were very

beautiful and wonderfully life-like, with the exception of somewhat too

determined a stare. The fingers and the nails were brilliantly gilded.

Mr. Gliddon was of opinion, from the redness of the epidermis, that the

embalmment had been effected altogether by asphaltum; but, on scraping the

surface with a steel instrument, and throwing into the fire some of the

powder thus obtained, the flavor of camphor and other sweet-scented gums

became apparent.

We searched the corpse very carefully for the usual openings through which

the entrails are extracted, but, to our surprise, we could discover none.

No member of the party was at that period aware that entire or unopened

mummies are not infrequently met. The brain it was customary to withdraw

through the nose; the intestines through an incision in the side; the body

was then shaved, washed, and salted; then laid aside for several weeks,

when the operation of embalming, properly so called, began.

As no trace of an opening could be found, Doctor Ponnonner was preparing

his instruments for dissection, when I observed that it was then past two

o’clock. Hereupon it was agreed to postpone the internal examination until

the next evening; and we were about to separate for the present, when some

one suggested an experiment or two with the Voltaic pile.

The application of electricity to a mummy three or four thousand years old

at the least, was an idea, if not very sage, still sufficiently original,

and we all caught it at once. About one-tenth in earnest and nine-tenths

in jest, we arranged a battery in the Doctor’s study, and conveyed thither

the Egyptian.

It was only after much trouble that we succeeded in laying bare some

portions of the temporal muscle which appeared of less stony rigidity than

other parts of the frame, but which, as we had anticipated, of course,

gave no indication of galvanic susceptibility when brought in contact with

the wire. This, the first trial, indeed, seemed decisive, and, with a

hearty laugh at our own absurdity, we were bidding each other good night,

when my eyes, happening to fall upon those of the Mummy, were there

immediately riveted in amazement. My brief glance, in fact, had sufficed

to assure me that the orbs which we had all supposed to be glass, and

which were originally noticeable for a certain wild stare, were now so far

covered by the lids, that only a small portion of the _tunica albuginea_

remained visible.

With a shout I called attention to the fact, and it became immediately

obvious to all.

I cannot say that I was alarmed at the phenomenon, because “alarmed” is,

in my case, not exactly the word. It is possible, however, that, but for

the Brown Stout, I might have been a little nervous. As for the rest of

the company, they really made no attempt at concealing the downright

fright which possessed them. Doctor Ponnonner was a man to be pitied. Mr.

Gliddon, by some peculiar process, rendered himself invisible. Mr. Silk

Buckingham, I fancy, will scarcely be so bold as to deny that he made his

way, upon all fours, under the table.

After the first shock of astonishment, however, we resolved, as a matter

of course, upon further experiment forthwith. Our operations were now

directed against the great toe of the right foot. We made an incision over

the outside of the exterior _os sesamoideum pollicis pedis_, and thus

got at the root of the abductor muscle. Readjusting the battery, we now

applied the fluid to the bisected nerves—when, with a movement of

exceeding life-likeness, the Mummy first drew up its right knee so as to

bring it nearly in contact with the abdomen, and then, straightening the

limb with inconceivable force, bestowed a kick upon Doctor Ponnonner,

which had the effect of discharging that gentleman, like an arrow from a

catapult, through a window into the street below.

We rushed out _en masse_ to bring in the mangled remains of the

victim, but had the happiness to meet him upon the staircase, coming up in

an unaccountable hurry, brimful of the most ardent philosophy, and more

than ever impressed with the necessity of prosecuting our experiment with

vigor and with zeal.

It was by his advice, accordingly, that we made, upon the spot, a profound

incision into the tip of the subject’s nose, while the Doctor himself,

laying violent hands upon it, pulled it into vehement contact with the

wire.

Morally and physically—figuratively and literally—was the

effect electric. In the first place, the corpse opened its eyes and winked

very rapidly for several minutes, as does Mr. Barnes in the pantomime; in

the second place, it sneezed; in the third, it sat upon end; in the

fourth, it shook its fist in Doctor Ponnonner’s face; in the fifth,

turning to Messieurs Gliddon and Buckingham, it addressed them, in very

capital Egyptian, thus:

“I must say, gentlemen, that I am as much surprised as I am mortified at

your behavior. Of Doctor Ponnonner nothing better was to be expected. He

is a poor little fat fool who knows no better. I pity and forgive him. But

you, Mr. Gliddon—and you, Silk—who have travelled and resided

in Egypt until one might imagine you to the manor born—you, I say

who have been so much among us that you speak Egyptian fully as well, I

think, as you write your mother tongue—you, whom I have always been

led to regard as the firm friend of the mummies—I really did

anticipate more gentlemanly conduct from you. What am I to think of your

standing quietly by and seeing me thus unhandsomely used? What am I to

suppose by your permitting Tom, Dick, and Harry to strip me of my coffins,

and my clothes, in this wretchedly cold climate? In what light (to come to

the point) am I to regard your aiding and abetting that miserable little

villain, Doctor Ponnonner, in pulling me by the nose?”

It will be taken for granted, no doubt, that upon hearing this speech

under the circumstances, we all either made for the door, or fell into

violent hysterics, or went off in a general swoon. One of these three

things was, I say, to be expected. Indeed each and all of these lines of

conduct might have been very plausibly pursued. And, upon my word, I am at

a loss to know how or why it was that we pursued neither the one nor the

other. But, perhaps, the true reason is to be sought in the spirit of the

age, which proceeds by the rule of contraries altogether, and is now

usually admitted as the solution of every thing in the way of paradox and

impossibility. Or, perhaps, after all, it was only the Mummy’s exceedingly

natural and matter-of-course air that divested his words of the terrible.

However this may be, the facts are clear, and no member of our party

betrayed any very particular trepidation, or seemed to consider that any

thing had gone very especially wrong.

For my part I was convinced it was all right, and merely stepped aside,

out of the range of the Egyptian’s fist. Doctor Ponnonner thrust his hands

into his breeches’ pockets, looked hard at the Mummy, and grew excessively

red in the face. Mr. Glidden stroked his whiskers and drew up the collar

of his shirt. Mr. Buckingham hung down his head, and put his right thumb

into the left corner of his mouth.

The Egyptian regarded him with a severe countenance for some minutes and

at length, with a sneer, said:

“Why don’t you speak, Mr. Buckingham? Did you hear what I asked you, or

not? Do take your thumb out of your mouth!”

Mr. Buckingham, hereupon, gave a slight start, took his right thumb out of

the left corner of his mouth, and, by way of indemnification inserted his

left thumb in the right corner of the aperture above-mentioned.

Not being able to get an answer from Mr. B., the figure turned peevishly

to Mr. Gliddon, and, in a peremptory tone, demanded in general terms what

we all meant.

Mr. Gliddon replied at great length, in phonetics; and but for the

deficiency of American printing-offices in hieroglyphical type, it would

afford me much pleasure to record here, in the original, the whole of his

very excellent speech.

I may as well take this occasion to remark, that all the subsequent

conversation in which the Mummy took a part, was carried on in primitive

Egyptian, through the medium (so far as concerned myself and other

untravelled members of the company)—through the medium, I say, of

Messieurs Gliddon and Buckingham, as interpreters. These gentlemen spoke

the mother tongue of the Mummy with inimitable fluency and grace; but I

could not help observing that (owing, no doubt, to the introduction of

images entirely modern, and, of course, entirely novel to the stranger)

the two travellers were reduced, occasionally, to the employment of

sensible forms for the purpose of conveying a particular meaning. Mr.

Gliddon, at one period, for example, could not make the Egyptian

comprehend the term “politics,” until he sketched upon the wall, with a

bit of charcoal a little carbuncle-nosed gentleman, out at elbows,

standing upon a stump, with his left leg drawn back, right arm thrown

forward, with his fist shut, the eyes rolled up toward Heaven, and the

mouth open at an angle of ninety degrees. Just in the same way Mr.

Buckingham failed to convey the absolutely modern idea “wig,” until (at

Doctor Ponnonner’s suggestion) he grew very pale in the face, and

consented to take off his own.

It will be readily understood that Mr. Gliddon’s discourse turned chiefly

upon the vast benefits accruing to science from the unrolling and

disembowelling of mummies; apologizing, upon this score, for any

disturbance that might have been occasioned him, in particular, the

individual Mummy called Allamistakeo; and concluding with a mere hint (for

it could scarcely be considered more) that, as these little matters were

now explained, it might be as well to proceed with the investigation

intended. Here Doctor Ponnonner made ready his instruments.

In regard to the latter suggestions of the orator, it appears that

Allamistakeo had certain scruples of conscience, the nature of which I did

not distinctly learn; but he expressed himself satisfied with the

apologies tendered, and, getting down from the table, shook hands with the

company all round.

When this ceremony was at an end, we immediately busied ourselves in

repairing the damages which our subject had sustained from the scalpel. We

sewed up the wound in his temple, bandaged his foot, and applied a square

inch of black plaster to the tip of his nose.

It was now observed that the Count (this was the title, it seems, of

Allamistakeo) had a slight fit of shivering—no doubt from the cold.

The Doctor immediately repaired to his wardrobe, and soon returned with a

black dress coat, made in Jennings’ best manner, a pair of sky-blue plaid

pantaloons with straps, a pink gingham chemise, a flapped vest of brocade,

a white sack overcoat, a walking cane with a hook, a hat with no brim,

patent-leather boots, straw-colored kid gloves, an eye-glass, a pair of

whiskers, and a waterfall cravat. Owing to the disparity of size between

the Count and the doctor (the proportion being as two to one), there was

some little difficulty in adjusting these habiliments upon the person of

the Egyptian; but when all was arranged, he might have been said to be

dressed. Mr. Gliddon, therefore, gave him his arm, and led him to a

comfortable chair by the fire, while the Doctor rang the bell upon the

spot and ordered a supply of cigars and wine.

The conversation soon grew animated. Much curiosity was, of course,

expressed in regard to the somewhat remarkable fact of Allamistakeo’s

still remaining alive.

“I should have thought,” observed Mr. Buckingham, “that it is high time

you were dead.”

“Why,” replied the Count, very much astonished, “I am little more than

seven hundred years old! My father lived a thousand, and was by no means

in his dotage when he died.”

Here ensued a brisk series of questions and computations, by means of

which it became evident that the antiquity of the Mummy had been grossly

misjudged. It had been five thousand and fifty years and some months since

he had been consigned to the catacombs at Eleithias.

“But my remark,” resumed Mr. Buckingham, “had no reference to your age at

the period of interment (I am willing to grant, in fact, that you are

still a young man), and my illusion was to the immensity of time during

which, by your own showing, you must have been done up in asphaltum.”

“In what?” said the Count.

“In asphaltum,” persisted Mr. B.

“Ah, yes; I have some faint notion of what you mean; it might be made to

answer, no doubt—but in my time we employed scarcely any thing else

than the Bichloride of Mercury.”

“But what we are especially at a loss to understand,” said Doctor

Ponnonner, “is how it happens that, having been dead and buried in Egypt

five thousand years ago, you are here to-day all alive and looking so

delightfully well.”

“Had I been, as you say, dead,” replied the Count, “it is more than

probable that dead, I should still be; for I perceive you are yet in the

infancy of Galvanism, and cannot accomplish with it what was a common

thing among us in the old days. But the fact is, I fell into catalepsy,

and it was considered by my best friends that I was either dead or should

be; they accordingly embalmed me at once—I presume you are aware of

the chief principle of the embalming process?”

“Why, not altogether.”

“Ah, I perceive—a deplorable condition of ignorance! Well I cannot

enter into details just now: but it is necessary to explain that to embalm

(properly speaking), in Egypt, was to arrest indefinitely all the animal

functions subjected to the process. I use the word ‘animal’ in its widest

sense, as including the physical not more than the moral and vital being.

I repeat that the leading principle of embalmment consisted, with us, in

the immediately arresting, and holding in perpetual abeyance, all the

animal functions subjected to the process. To be brief, in whatever

condition the individual was, at the period of embalmment, in that

condition he remained. Now, as it is my good fortune to be of the blood of

the Scarabaeus, I was embalmed alive, as you see me at present.”

“The blood of the Scarabaeus!” exclaimed Doctor Ponnonner.

“Yes. The Scarabaeus was the insignium or the ‘arms,’ of a very

distinguished and very rare patrician family. To be ‘of the blood of the

Scarabaeus,’ is merely to be one of that family of which the Scarabaeus is

the insignium. I speak figuratively.”

“But what has this to do with you being alive?”

“Why, it is the general custom in Egypt to deprive a corpse, before

embalmment, of its bowels and brains; the race of the Scarabaei alone did

not coincide with the custom. Had I not been a Scarabeus, therefore, I

should have been without bowels and brains; and without either it is

inconvenient to live.”

“I perceive that,” said Mr. Buckingham, “and I presume that all the entire

mummies that come to hand are of the race of Scarabaei.”

“Beyond doubt.”

“I thought,” said Mr. Gliddon, very meekly, “that the Scarabaeus was one

of the Egyptian gods.”

“One of the Egyptian _what?”_ exclaimed the Mummy, starting to its

feet.

“Gods!” repeated the traveller.

“Mr. Gliddon, I really am astonished to hear you talk in this style,” said

the Count, resuming his chair. “No nation upon the face of the earth has

ever acknowledged more than one god. The Scarabaeus, the Ibis, etc., were

with us (as similar creatures have been with others) the symbols, or

media, through which we offered worship to the Creator too august to be

more directly approached.”

There was here a pause. At length the colloquy was renewed by Doctor

Ponnonner.

“It is not improbable, then, from what you have explained,” said he, “that

among the catacombs near the Nile there may exist other mummies of the

Scarabaeus tribe, in a condition of vitality?”

“There can be no question of it,” replied the Count; “all the Scarabaei

embalmed accidentally while alive, are alive now. Even some of those

purposely so embalmed, may have been overlooked by their executors, and

still remain in the tomb.”

“Will you be kind enough to explain,” I said, “what you mean by ‘purposely

so embalmed’?”

“With great pleasure!” answered the Mummy, after surveying me leisurely

through his eye-glass—for it was the first time I had ventured to

address him a direct question.

“With great pleasure,” he said. “The usual duration of man’s life, in my

time, was about eight hundred years. Few men died, unless by most

extraordinary accident, before the age of six hundred; few lived longer

than a decade of centuries; but eight were considered the natural term.

After the discovery of the embalming principle, as I have already

described it to you, it occurred to our philosophers that a laudable

curiosity might be gratified, and, at the same time, the interests of

science much advanced, by living this natural term in installments. In the

case of history, indeed, experience demonstrated that something of this

kind was indispensable. An historian, for example, having attained the age

of five hundred, would write a book with great labor and then get himself

carefully embalmed; leaving instructions to his executors pro tem., that

they should cause him to be revivified after the lapse of a certain period—say

five or six hundred years. Resuming existence at the expiration of this

time, he would invariably find his great work converted into a species of

hap-hazard note-book—that is to say, into a kind of literary arena

for the conflicting guesses, riddles, and personal squabbles of whole

herds of exasperated commentators. These guesses, etc., which passed under

the name of annotations, or emendations, were found so completely to have

enveloped, distorted, and overwhelmed the text, that the author had to go

about with a lantern to discover his own book. When discovered, it was

never worth the trouble of the search. After re-writing it throughout, it

was regarded as the bounden duty of the historian to set himself to work

immediately in correcting, from his own private knowledge and experience,

the traditions of the day concerning the epoch at which he had originally

lived. Now this process of re-scription and personal rectification,

pursued by various individual sages from time to time, had the effect of

preventing our history from degenerating into absolute fable.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Doctor Ponnonner at this point, laying his hand

gently upon the arm of the Egyptian—“I beg your pardon, sir, but may

I presume to interrupt you for one moment?”

“By all means, sir,” replied the Count, drawing up.

“I merely wished to ask you a question,” said the Doctor. “You mentioned

the historian’s personal correction of traditions respecting his own

epoch. Pray, sir, upon an average what proportion of these Kabbala were

usually found to be right?”

“The Kabbala, as you properly term them, sir, were generally discovered to

be precisely on a par with the facts recorded in the un-re-written

histories themselves;—that is to say, not one individual iota of

either was ever known, under any circumstances, to be not totally and

radically wrong.”

“But since it is quite clear,” resumed the Doctor, “that at least five

thousand years have elapsed since your entombment, I take it for granted

that your histories at that period, if not your traditions were

sufficiently explicit on that one topic of universal interest, the

Creation, which took place, as I presume you are aware, only about ten

centuries before.”

“Sir!” said the Count Allamistakeo.

The Doctor repeated his remarks, but it was only after much additional

explanation that the foreigner could be made to comprehend them. The

latter at length said, hesitatingly:

“The ideas you have suggested are to me, I confess, utterly novel. During

my time I never knew any one to entertain so singular a fancy as that the

universe (or this world if you will have it so) ever had a beginning at

all. I remember once, and once only, hearing something remotely hinted, by

a man of many speculations, concerning the origin _of the human race;_

and by this individual, the very word _Adam_ (or Red Earth), which

you make use of, was employed. He employed it, however, in a generical

sense, with reference to the spontaneous germination from rank soil (just

as a thousand of the lower genera of creatures are germinated)—the

spontaneous germination, I say, of five vast hordes of men, simultaneously

upspringing in five distinct and nearly equal divisions of the globe.”

Here, in general, the company shrugged their shoulders, and one or two of

us touched our foreheads with a very significant air. Mr. Silk Buckingham,

first glancing slightly at the occiput and then at the sinciput of

Allamistakeo, spoke as follows:

“The long duration of human life in your time, together with the

occasional practice of passing it, as you have explained, in installments,

must have had, indeed, a strong tendency to the general development and

conglomeration of knowledge. I presume, therefore, that we are to

attribute the marked inferiority of the old Egyptians in all particulars

of science, when compared with the moderns, and more especially with the

Yankees, altogether to the superior solidity of the Egyptian skull.”

“I confess again,” replied the Count, with much suavity, “that I am

somewhat at a loss to comprehend you; pray, to what particulars of science

do you allude?”

Here our whole party, joining voices, detailed, at great length, the

assumptions of phrenology and the marvels of animal magnetism.

Having heard us to an end, the Count proceeded to relate a few anecdotes,

which rendered it evident that prototypes of Gall and Spurzheim had

flourished and faded in Egypt so long ago as to have been nearly

forgotten, and that the manoeuvres of Mesmer were really very contemptible

tricks when put in collation with the positive miracles of the Theban

savans, who created lice and a great many other similar things.

I here asked the Count if his people were able to calculate eclipses. He

smiled rather contemptuously, and said they were.

This put me a little out, but I began to make other inquiries in regard to

his astronomical knowledge, when a member of the company, who had never as

yet opened his mouth, whispered in my ear, that for information on this

head, I had better consult Ptolemy (whoever Ptolemy is), as well as one

Plutarch de facie lunae.

I then questioned the Mummy about burning-glasses and lenses, and, in

general, about the manufacture of glass; but I had not made an end of my

queries before the silent member again touched me quietly on the elbow,

and begged me for God’s sake to take a peep at Diodorus Siculus. As for

the Count, he merely asked me, in the way of reply, if we moderns

possessed any such microscopes as would enable us to cut cameos in the

style of the Egyptians. While I was thinking how I should answer this

question, little Doctor Ponnonner committed himself in a very

extraordinary way.

“Look at our architecture!” he exclaimed, greatly to the indignation of

both the travellers, who pinched him black and blue to no purpose.

“Look,” he cried with enthusiasm, “at the Bowling-Green Fountain in New

York! or if this be too vast a contemplation, regard for a moment the

Capitol at Washington, D. C.!”—and the good little medical man went

on to detail very minutely, the proportions of the fabric to which he

referred. He explained that the portico alone was adorned with no less

than four and twenty columns, five feet in diameter, and ten feet apart.

The Count said that he regretted not being able to remember, just at that

moment, the precise dimensions of any one of the principal buildings of

the city of Aznac, whose foundations were laid in the night of Time, but

the ruins of which were still standing, at the epoch of his entombment, in

a vast plain of sand to the westward of Thebes. He recollected, however,

(talking of the porticoes,) that one affixed to an inferior palace in a

kind of suburb called Carnac, consisted of a hundred and forty-four

columns, thirty-seven feet in circumference, and twenty-five feet apart.

The approach to this portico, from the Nile, was through an avenue two

miles long, composed of sphynxes, statues, and obelisks, twenty, sixty,

and a hundred feet in height. The palace itself (as well as he could

remember) was, in one direction, two miles long, and might have been

altogether about seven in circuit. Its walls were richly painted all over,

within and without, with hieroglyphics. He would not pretend to assert

that even fifty or sixty of the Doctor’s Capitols might have been built

within these walls, but he was by no means sure that two or three hundred

of them might not have been squeezed in with some trouble. That palace at

Carnac was an insignificant little building after all. He (the Count),

however, could not conscientiously refuse to admit the ingenuity,

magnificence, and superiority of the Fountain at the Bowling Green, as

described by the Doctor. Nothing like it, he was forced to allow, had ever

been seen in Egypt or elsewhere.

I here asked the Count what he had to say to our railroads.

“Nothing,” he replied, “in particular.” They were rather slight, rather

ill-conceived, and clumsily put together. They could not be compared, of

course, with the vast, level, direct, iron-grooved causeways upon which

the Egyptians conveyed entire temples and solid obelisks of a hundred and

fifty feet in altitude.

I spoke of our gigantic mechanical forces.

He agreed that we knew something in that way, but inquired how I should

have gone to work in getting up the imposts on the lintels of even the

little palace at Carnac.

This question I concluded not to hear, and demanded if he had any idea of

Artesian wells; but he simply raised his eyebrows; while Mr. Gliddon

winked at me very hard and said, in a low tone, that one had been recently

discovered by the engineers employed to bore for water in the Great Oasis.

I then mentioned our steel; but the foreigner elevated his nose, and asked

me if our steel could have executed the sharp carved work seen on the

obelisks, and which was wrought altogether by edge-tools of copper.

This disconcerted us so greatly that we thought it advisable to vary the

attack to Metaphysics. We sent for a copy of a book called the “Dial,” and

read out of it a chapter or two about something that is not very clear,

but which the Bostonians call the Great Movement of Progress.

The Count merely said that Great Movements were awfully common things in

his day, and as for Progress, it was at one time quite a nuisance, but it

never progressed.

We then spoke of the great beauty and importance of Democracy, and were at

much trouble in impressing the Count with a due sense of the advantages we

enjoyed in living where there was suffrage ad libitum, and no king.

He listened with marked interest, and in fact seemed not a little amused.

When we had done, he said that, a great while ago, there had occurred

something of a very similar sort. Thirteen Egyptian provinces determined

all at once to be free, and to set a magnificent example to the rest of

mankind. They assembled their wise men, and concocted the most ingenious

constitution it is possible to conceive. For a while they managed

remarkably well; only their habit of bragging was prodigious. The thing

ended, however, in the consolidation of the thirteen states, with some

fifteen or twenty others, in the most odious and insupportable despotism

that was ever heard of upon the face of the Earth.

I asked what was the name of the usurping tyrant.

As well as the Count could recollect, it was Mob.

Not knowing what to say to this, I raised my voice, and deplored the

Egyptian ignorance of steam.

The Count looked at me with much astonishment, but made no answer. The

silent gentleman, however, gave me a violent nudge in the ribs with his

elbows—told me I had sufficiently exposed myself for once—and

demanded if I was really such a fool as not to know that the modern

steam-engine is derived from the invention of Hero, through Solomon de

Caus.

We were now in imminent danger of being discomfited; but, as good luck

would have it, Doctor Ponnonner, having rallied, returned to our rescue,

and inquired if the people of Egypt would seriously pretend to rival the

moderns in the all-important particular of dress.

The Count, at this, glanced downward to the straps of his pantaloons, and

then taking hold of the end of one of his coat-tails, held it up close to

his eyes for some minutes. Letting it fall, at last, his mouth extended

itself very gradually from ear to ear; but I do not remember that he said

any thing in the way of reply.

Hereupon we recovered our spirits, and the Doctor, approaching the Mummy

with great dignity, desired it to say candidly, upon its honor as a

gentleman, if the Egyptians had comprehended, at any period, the

manufacture of either Ponnonner’s lozenges or Brandreth’s pills.

We looked, with profound anxiety, for an answer—but in vain. It was

not forthcoming. The Egyptian blushed and hung down his head. Never was

triumph more consummate; never was defeat borne with so ill a grace.

Indeed, I could not endure the spectacle of the poor Mummy’s

mortification. I reached my hat, bowed to him stiffly, and took leave.

Upon getting home I found it past four o’clock, and went immediately to

bed. It is now ten A.M. I have been up since seven, penning these

memoranda for the benefit of my family and of mankind. The former I shall

behold no more. My wife is a shrew. The truth is, I am heartily sick of

this life and of the nineteenth century in general. I am convinced that

every thing is going wrong. Besides, I am anxious to know who will be

President in 2045. As soon, therefore, as I shave and swallow a cup of

coffee, I shall just step over to Ponnonner’s and get embalmed for a

couple of hundred years.

THE POETIC PRINCIPLE

In speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either

thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the

essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite

for consideration, some few of those minor English or American poems which

best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most

definite impression. By “minor poems” I mean, of course, poems of little

length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard

to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully,

has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I

hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase, “a long

poem,” is simply a flat contradiction in terms.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it

excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of

this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal

necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem

to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of

any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the very utmost, it

flags—fails—a revulsion ensues—and then the poem is, in

effect, and in fact, no longer such.

There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling the

critical dictum that the “Paradise Lost” is to be devoutly admired

throughout, with the absolute impossibility of maintaining for it, during

perusal, the amount of enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand.

This great work, in fact, is to be regarded as poetical, only when, losing

sight of that vital requisite in all works of Art, Unity, we view it

merely as a series of minor poems. If, to preserve its Unity—its

totality of effect or impression—we read it (as would be necessary)

at a single sitting, the result is but a constant alternation of

excitement and depression. After a passage of what we feel to be true

poetry, there follows, inevitably, a passage of platitude which no

critical prejudgment can force us to admire; but if, upon completing the

work, we read it again, omitting the first book—that is to say,

commencing with the second—we shall be surprised at now finding that

admirable which we before condemned—that damnable which we had

previously so much admired. It follows from all this that the ultimate,

aggregate, or absolute effect of even the best epic under the sun, is a

nullity:—and this is precisely the fact.

In regard to the Iliad, we have, if not positive proof, at least very good

reason for believing it intended as a series of lyrics; but, granting the

epic intention, I can say only that the work is based in an imperfect

sense of art. The modern epic is, of the supposititious ancient model, but

an inconsiderate and blindfold imitation. But the day of these artistic

anomalies is over. If, at any time, any very long poem _were _popular

in reality, which I doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem

will ever be popular again.

That the extent of a poetical work is, _ceteris paribus, _the measure

of its merit, seems undoubtedly, when we thus state it, a proposition

sufficiently absurd—yet we are indebted for it to the Quarterly

Reviews. Surely there can be nothing in mere _size, _abstractly

considered—there can be nothing in mere _bulk, so _far as a