Nature and Human Nature Part 15

"Well, a cultivated field, which is a work of art, dressed with artificial manures, and tilled with artificial tools, perhaps by steam, is called the smiling face of nature. Here nature is strong and there exhausted, now animated and then asleep. At the poles, the features of nature are all frozen, and as stiff as a poker, and in the West Indies burnt up to a cinder. What a pack of stuff it is! It is just a pretty word like pharmacopia and Pierian spring, and so forth.

I hate poets, stock, lock, and barrel; the whole seed, breed, and generation of them. If you see a she one, look at her stockings; they are all wrinkled about her ancles, and her shoes are down to heel, and her hair is as tangled as the mane of a two-year old colt. And if you see a he one, you see a mooney sort of man, either very sad, or so wild-looking you think he is half-mad; he eats and sleeps on earth, and that's all. The rest of the time he is sky-high, trying to find inspiration and sublimity, like Byron, in gin and water. I like folks that have common-sense."

Well, to get back to my story. Said Jessie to me: "Mr Slick, what is natur?"

"Well," sais I, "Miss, it's not very easy to explain it so as to make it intelligible; but I will try. This world, and all that is in it, is the work of G.o.d. When he made it, he gave it laws or properties that govern it, and so to every living or inanimate thing; and these properties or laws are called their nature. Nature therefore is sometimes used for G.o.d himself, and sometimes for the world and its contents, and the secret laws of action imposed upon them when created. There is one nature to men (for though they don't all look alike, the laws of their being are the same), and another to horses, dogs, fish, and so on. Each cla.s.s has its own nature. For instance, it is natural for fish to inhabit water, birds the air, and so on. In general, it therefore means the universal law that governs everything.

Do you understand it?" says I.

"Not just now," she said, "but I will when I have time to think of it.

Do you say there is one nature to all men?"

"Yes, the same nature to Indian as to white men--all the same."

"Which is the best nature?"

"It is the same."

"Indian and white, are they both equal?"

"Quite--"

"Do you think so?"

"Every mite and morsel, every bit and grain. Everybody don't think so?

That's natural; every race thinks it is better than another, and every man thinks he is superior to others; and so does every woman. They think their children the best and handsomest. A bear thinks her nasty, dirty, shapeless, tailless cubs the most beautiful things in all creation."

She laughed at that, but as suddenly relapsed into a fixed gloom. "If red and white men are both equal, and have the same nature," she said, "what becomes of those who are neither red nor white, who have no country, no nation, no tribe, scorned by each, and the tents and the houses of both closed against them. Are they equal? what does nature say?"

"There is no difference," I said; "in the eye of G.o.d they are all alike."

"G.o.d may think and treat them so," she replied, rising with much emotion, "but man does not."

I thought it was as well to change the conversation, and leave her to ponder over the idea of the races which seemed so new to her. "So,"

sais I, "I wonder the doctor hasn't arrived; it's past four. There he is, Jessie; see, he is on the beach; he has returned by water. Come, put on your bonnet and let you and I go and meet him."

"Who, me!" she said, her face expressing both surprise and pleasure.

"To be sure," said I. "You are not afraid of me, Miss, I hope."

"I warn't sure I heard you right," she said, and away she went for her bonnet.

Poor thing! it was evident her position was a very painful one to her, and that her natural pride was deeply injured. Poor dear old Minister!

if you was now alive and could read this Journal, I know what you would say as well as possible. "Sam," you would say, "this is a fulfilment of Scripture. The sins of the fathers are visited on the children, the effects of which are visible in the second and third generation."

CHAPTER VII.

FIDDLING AND DANCING, AND SERVING THE DEVIL.

By the time we had reached the house, Cutler joined us, and we dined off of the doctor's salmon, which was prepared in a way that I had never seen before; and as it was a touch above common, and smacked of the wigwam, I must get the receipt. The only way for a man who travels and wants to get something better than amus.e.m.e.nt out of it, is to notch down anything new, for every place has something to teach you in that line. "The silent pig is the best feeder," but it remains a pig still, and hastens its death by growing too fat. Now the talking traveller feeds his mind as well as his body, and soon finds the less he pampers his appet.i.te the clearer his head is and the better his spirits. The great thing is to live and learn, and learn to live.

Now I hate an epicure above all created things--worse than lawyers, doctors, politicians, and selfish fellows of all kinds. In a giniral way he is a miserable critter, for nothin' is good enough for him or done right, and his appet.i.te gives itself as many airs, and requires as much waitin' on, as a crotchetty, fanciful, peevish old lady of fas.h.i.+on. If a man's sensibility is all in his palate he can't in course have much in his heart. Makin' oneself miserable, fastin' in sackcloth and ashes, ain't a bit more foolish than makin' oneself wretched in the midst of plenty, because the sea, the air, and the earth won't give him the dainties he wants, and Providence won't send the cook to dress them. To spend one's life in eating, drinking, and sleeping, or like a bullock, in ruminating on food, reduces a man to the level of an ox or an a.s.s. The stomach is the kitchen, and a very small one too, in a general way, and broiling, simmering, stewing, baking, and steaming, is a goin' on there night and day. The atmosphere is none of the pleasantest neither, and if a man chooses to withdraw into himself and live there, why I don't see what earthly good he is to society, unless he wants to wind up life by writin' a cookery-book. I hate them--that's just the tarm, and I like tarms that express what I mean.

I shall never forget when I was up to Michelimackinic. A thunderin'

long word, ain't it? We call it Mackinic now for shortness. But perhaps you wouldn't understand it spelt that way, no more than I did when I was to England that Brighton means Brighthelmeston, or Sissiter, Cirencester, for the English take such liberties with words, they can't afford to let others do the same; so I give it to you both ways. Well, when I was there last, I dined with a village doctor, the greatest epicure I think I ever see in all my born days. He thought and talked of nothing else from morning till night but eatin'.

"Oh, Mr Slick," said he, rubbin' his hands, "this is the tallest country in the world to live in. What a variety of food there is here,--fish, flesh, and fowl,--wild, tame, and mongeral,--fruits, vegetables, and spongy plants!"

"What's that?" sais I. I always do that when a fellow uses strange words. "We call a man who drops in accidently on purpose to dinner a sponging fellow, which means if you give him the liquid he will soak it up dry."

"Spongy plants," sais he, "means mushrooms and the like."

"Ah!" said I, "mushrooms are nateral to a new soil like this. Upstarts we call them; they arise at night, and by next mornin' their house is up and its white roof on."

"Very good," said he, but not lookin' pleased at havin' his oratory cut short that way. "Oh, Mr Slick!" said he, "there is a poor man here who richly deserves a pension both from your government and mine. He has done more to advance the culinary art than either Ude or Soyer."

"Who on earth now were they?" said I. I knew well enough who they were, for when I was to England they used to brag greatly of Soyer at the Reform Club. For fear folks would call their a.s.sociation house after their politics, "the cheap and dirty" they built a very splash affair, and to set an example to the state in their own establishment of economy and reform in the public departments, hired Soyer, the best cook of the age, at a salary that would have pensioned half-a-dozen of the poor worn-out clerks in Downing Street. Vulgarity is always showy.

It is a pretty word, "Reformers." The common herd of them I don't mind much, for rogues and fools always find employment for each other. But when I hear of a great reformer like some of the big bugs to England, that have been grinning through horse-collars of late years, like harlequins at fairs, for the amus.e.m.e.nt and instruction of the public, I must say I do expect to see a super-superior hypocrite.

Yes, I know who those great artists Soyer and Ude were, but I thought I'd draw him out. So I just asked who on earth they were, and he explained at great length, and mentioned the wonderful discoveries they had made in their divine art.

"Well," sais I, "why on earth don't your friend the Mackinic cook go to London or Paris, where he won't want a pension, or anything else, if he excels them great men?"

"Bless you, Sir," he replied, "he is merely a voyageur."

"Oh dear," sais I, "I dare say then he can fry ham and eggs and serve 'em up in ile, boil salt beef and pork, and twice lay cod-fish, and perhaps boil potatoes nice and watery like cattle turnips. What discoveries could such a rough-and-tumble fellow as that make?"

"Well," said the doctor, "I didn't want to put myself forward, for it ain't pleasant to speak of oneself."

"Well, I don't know that," sais I, "I ain't above it, I a.s.sure you. If you have a horse to sell, put a thunderin' long price on him, and folks will think he must be the devil and all, and if you want people to vally you right, appraise yourself at a high figure. Braggin' saves advertising'. I always do it; for as the Nova Scotia magistrate said, who sued his debtor before himself, 'What's the use of being a justice, if you can't do yourself justice.' But what was you sayin'

about the voyageur?"

"Why, Sir," said he, "I made the discovery through his instrumentality. He enabled me to do it by suffering the experiments to be made on him. His name was Alexis St Martin; he was a Canadian, and about eighteen years of age, of good const.i.tution, robust, and healthy. He had been engaged in the service of the American Fur Company as a voyageur, and was accidentally wounded by the discharge of a musket, on the 9th of June, 1822. The charge, consisting of powder and duck-shot, was received in his left side; he being at a distance of not more than one yard from the muzzle of the gun. The contents entered posteriorly, and in an oblique direction, forward and inward, literally blowing off integuments and muscles, of the size of a man's hand, fracturing and carrying away the anterior half of the sixth rib, fracturing the fifth, lacerating the lower portion of the left lobe of the lungs, the diaphragm, and perforating the stomach."

"Good gracious!" sais I, "how plain that is expressed! It is as clear as mud, that! I do like doctors, for their talking and writing is intelligible to the meanest capacity."

He looked pleased, and went ahead agin.

"After trying all the means in my power for eight or ten months to close the orifice, by exciting adhesive inflammation in the lips of the wound, without the least appearance of success, I gave it up as impracticable, in any other way than that of incising and bringing them together by sutures; an operation to which the patient would not submit. By using the aperture which providence had supplied us with to communicate with the stomach, I ascertained, by attaching a small portion of food of different kinds to a string, and inserting it through his side, the exact time each takes for digestion, such as beef or pork, or mutton or fowl, or fish or vegetables, cooked in different ways.1 We all know how long it takes to dress them, but we did not know how long a time they required for digestion. I will show you a comparative table."

1 The village doctor appears to have appropriated to himself the credit due to another. The particulars of this remarkable case are to be found in a work published in New York in 1833, ent.i.tled "Experiments and observations on the gastric juices, and the physiology of digestion," by William Beaumont, M. D., Surgeon in the United States' Army, and also in the "Albion" newspaper of the same place for January 4, 1834.

"Thank you," sais I, "but I am afraid I must be a moving. "Fact is, my stomach was movin' then, for it fairly made me sick. Yes, I'd a plaguy sight sooner see a man embroidering, which is about as contemptible an accomplishment as an idler can have, than to hear him everlastingly smack his lips, and see him open his eyes and gloat like an anaconda before he takes down a bullock, horns, hair, and hoof, tank, shank, and flank, at one bolt, as if it was an opium pill to make him sleep.

Well, all this long lockrum arose out of my saying I should like to have the receipt by which Jessie's sister had cooked the salmon for dinner; and I intend to get it too, that's a fact. As we concluded our meal, "Doctor," sais I, "we have been meditating mischief in your absence. What do you say to our makin' a party to visit the 'Bachelor beaver's dam,' and see your museum, fixins, betterments, and what not?"