Nature and Human Nature Part 33

"'Better,' sais I, 'than seeing harm in everything, as them galls--'

"'Young ladies,' said she.

"'Well, young ladies, who saw harm in me because I was a man. What harm is there in their seeing a man? You ain't frightened at one, are you, Liddy?'

"She evaded that with a smile, as much as to say, 'Well, I ain't much skeered, that's a fact.'

"'Mr Slick, it is a subject not worth while pursuing,' she replied.

'You know the sensitiveness, nervous delicacy, and scrupulous innocence of the fair s.e.x in this country, and I may speak plainly to you as a man of the world. You must perceive how destructive of all modesty in their juvenile minds, when impressions are so easily made, it would be to familiarise their youthful eyes to the larger limbs of gentlemen enveloped in pantaloons. To speak plainly, I am sure I needn't tell you it ain't decent.'

"'Well,' sais I, 'it wouldn't be decent if they wern't enveloped in them.'

"She looked down to blush, but it didn't come natural, so she looked up and smiled (as much as to say, do get out you impudent critter. I know its bunk.u.m as well as you do, but don't bother me. I have a part to play.) Then she rose and looked at her watch, and said the lecture hour for botany has come.

"'Well,' sais I, a taking up my hat, 'that's a charming study, the loves of the plants, for young ladies, ain't it? they begin with natur, you see, and--(well, she couldn't help laughing). 'But I see you are engaged.'

"'Me,' said she, 'I a.s.sure you, Sir, I know people used to say so, afore General Peleg Smith went to Texas.'

"'What that scallawag,' said I. 'Why, that fellow ought to be kicked out of all refined society. How could you a.s.sociate with a man who had no more decency than to expect folks to call him by name!'

"'How?' said she.

"'Why,' sais I, 'what delicate-minded woman could ever bring herself to say Pe-leg. If he had called himself Hujacious Smith, or Larger-limb Smith, or something of that kind, it would have done, but Peleg is downright ondecent. I had to leave Boston wunst a whole winter, for making a mistake of that kind. I met Miss Sperm one day from Nantucket, and says I, 'Did you see me yesterday, with those two elegant galls from Albany?'

"'No,' said she, 'I didn't.'

"'Strange, too,' said I, 'for I was most sure I caught a glimpse of you, on the other side of the street, and I wanted to introduce you to them, but warn't quite sartain it was you. My,' sais I, 'didn't you see a very unfas.h.i.+onable dressed man' (and I looked down at my Paris boots, as if I was doing modest), 'with two angeliferous females? Why, I had a leg on each arm.'

"She fairly screamed out at that expression, rushed into a milliner's shop, and cried like a gardner's watering-pot. The names she called me ain't no matter. They were the two Miss Legges of Albany, and cut a tall swarth, I tell you, for they say they are descended from a govenor of Nova Scotia, when good men, according to their tell, could be found for govenors, and that their relations in England are some pumpkins, too. I was as innocent as a child, Letty.'

"'Well,' said she, 'you are the most difficult man to understand I ever see--there is no telling whether you are in fun or in earnest.

But as I was a saying, there was some such talk afore General Smith went to Texas; but that story was raised by the Pawtaxet College folks, to injure this inst.i.tution. They did all they could to tear my reputation to chitlins. Me engaged, I should like to see the man that--'

"'Well, you seemed plaguey scared at one just now,' sais I. 'I am sure it was a strange way to show you would like to see a man.'

"'I didn't say that,' she replied, 'but you take one up so quick.'

"'It's a way I have,' said I, 'and always had, since you and I was to singing-school together, and larnt sharps, flats, and naturals. It was a crotchet of mine,' and I just whipped my arm round her waist, took her up and kissed her afore she knowed where she was. Oh Lordy! Out came her comb, and down fell her hair to her waist, like a mill-dam broke loose; and two false curls and a braid fell on the floor, and her frill took to dancin' round, and got wrong side afore, and one of her shoes slipt off, and she really looked as if she had been in an indgian-scrimmage and was ready for scalpin'.

"'Then you ain't engaged, Liddy,' sais I; 'how glad I am to hear that, it makes my heart jump, and cherries is ripe now, and I will help you up into the tree, as I used to did when you and I was boy and gall together. It does seem so nateral, Liddy, to have a game of romps with you again; it makes me feel as young as a two-year-old. How beautiful you do look, too! My, what a pity you is shut up here, with these young galls all day, talking by the yard about the corrallas, calyxes, and staminas of flowers, while you

"'Are doom'd to blush unseen, And waste your sweetness on the desert air.'

"'Oh,' said she, 'Sam, I must cut and run, and 'blush unseen,' that's a fact, or I'm ruinated,' and she up curls, comb, braid, and shoe, and off like a shot into a bed-room that adjoined the parlour, and bolted the door, and double-locked it, as if she was afraid an attachment was to be levied on her and her chattels, by the sheriff, and I was a b.u.m-bailiff.

"Thinks I, old gall, I'll pay you off for treating me the way you did just now, as sure as the world. 'May I ask, Mr Slick, what is the object of this visit?' A pretty way to receive a cousin that you haven't seen so long, ain't it? and though I say it that shouldn't say it, that cousin, too, Sam Slick, the attache to our emba.s.sy to the Court of Victoria, Buckingham Palace. You couldn't a treated me wuss if I had been one of the liveried, powdered, bedizened, be-bloated footmen from 't'other big house there of Aunt Harriette's.' I'll make you come down from your stilts, and walk naterel, I know, see if I don't.

"Presently she returned, all set to rights, and a little righter, too, for she had put a touch of rouge on to make the blush stick better, and her hair was slicked up snugger than before, and looked as if it had growed like anything. She had also slipped a handsome habit-s.h.i.+rt on, and she looked, take her altogether, as if, though she warn't engaged, she ought to have been afore the last five hot summers came, and the general thaw had commenced in the spring, and she had got thin, and out of condition. She put her hand on her heart, and said, 'I am so skared, Sam, I feel all over of a twitteration. The way you act is horrid.'

"'So do I,' sais I, 'Liddy, it's so long since you and I used to--'

"'You ain't altered a bit, Sam,' said she, for the starch was coming out, 'from what you was, only you are more forrider. Our young men, when they go abroad, come back and talk so free and easy, and take such liberties, and say it's the fas.h.i.+on in Paris, it's quite scandalous. Now, if you dare to do the like again, I'll never speak to you the longest day I ever live, I'll go right off and leave, see if I don't.'

"'Oh, I see, I have offended you,' sais I, 'you are not in a humour to consent now, so I will call again some other time.'

"'This lecture on botany must now be postponed,' she said, 'for the hour is out some time ago. If you will be seated, I will set the young students at embroidery instead, and return for a short time, for it does seem so nateral to see you, Sam, you saucy boy,' and she pinched my ear, 'it reminds one, don't it, of bygones?' and she hung her head a one side, and looked sentimental.

"'Of by-gone larks,' said I.

"'Hush, Sam,' she said, 'don't talk so loud, that's a dear soul. Oh, if anybody had come in just then, and caught us.'

("Us," thinks I to myself, "I thought you had no objection to it, and only struggled enough for modesty-like; and I did think you would have said, caught you.")

"'I would have been ruinated for ever and ever, and amen, and the college broke up, and my position in the literary, scientific, and intellectual world scorched, withered, and blasted for ever. Ain't my cheek all burning, Sam? it feels as if it was all a-fire;' and she put it near enough for me to see, and feel tempted beyond my strength.

'Don't it look horrid inflamed, dear?' And she danced out of the room, as if she was skipping a rope.

"Well, well," sais I, when she took herself off. "What a world this is! This is evangelical learning; girls are taught in one room to faint or scream if they see a man, as if he was an incarnation of sin; and yet they are all educated and trained to think the sole object of life is to win, not convert, but win one of these sinners. In the next room propriety, dignity, and decorum, romp with a man in a way to make even his sallow face blush. Teach a child there is harm in everything, however innocent, and so soon as it discovers the cheat, it won't see no sin in anything. That's the reason deacons' sons seldom turn out well, and preachers' daughters are married through a window. Innocence is the sweetest thing in the world, and there is more of it than folks generally imagine. If you want some to transplant, don't seek it in the enclosures of cant, for it has only counterfeit ones, but go to the gardens of truth and of sense. Coerced innocence is like an imprisoned lark, open the door and it's off for ever. The bird that roams through the sky and the groves unrestrained knows how to dodge the hawk and protect itself, but the caged one, the moment it leaves its bars and bolts behind, is pounced upon by the fowler or the vulture.

"Puritans, whether in or out of the church (for there is a whole squad of 'em in it, like rats in a house who eat up its bread and undermine its walls), make more sinners than they save by a long chalk. They ain't content with real sin, the pattern ain't sufficient for a cloak, so they sew on several breadths of artificial offences, and that makes one big enough to wrap round them, and cover their own deformity. It enlarges the margin, and the book, and gives more texts.

"Their eyes are like the great magnifier at the Polytechnic, that shows you many-headed, many-armed, many-footed, and many-tailed awful monsters in a drop of water, which were never intended for us to see, or Providence would have made our eyes like Lord Rosse's telescope (which discloses the secrets of the moon), and given us springs that had none of these canables in 'em. Water is our drink, and it was made for us to take when we were dry, and be thankful. After I first saw one of these drops, like an old cheese chock full of livin' things, I couldn't drink nothing but pure gin or brandy for a week. I was scared to death. I consaited when I went to bed I could audibly feel these critters fightin' like Turks and minin' my inerds, and I got narvous lest my stomach like a citadel might be blowed up and the works destroyed. It was frightful.

"At last I sot up and said, Sam, where is all your common sense gone?

You used to have a considerable sized phial of it, I hope you ain't lost the cork and let it all run out. So I put myself in the witness-stand, and asked myself a few questions.

"'Water was made to drink, warn't it?'

"'That's a fact.'

"'You can't see them critters in it with your naked eye?'

"'I can't see them at all, neither naked or dressed.'

"'Then it warn't intended you should?'

"'Seems as if it wasn't,' sais I.

"'Then drink, and don't be skeered.'

"'I'll be darned if I don't, for who knows them wee-monstrosities don't help digestion, or feed on human pyson. They warn't put into Adam's ale for nothin', that's a fact.'

"It seems as if they warn't,' sais I. 'So now I'll go to sleep.'

"Well, puritans' eyes are like them magnifiers; they see the devil in everything but themselves, where he is plaguy apt to be found by them that want him; for he feels at home in their company. One time they vow he is a dancin' master, and moves his feet so quick folks can't see they are cloven, another time a music master, and teaches children to open their mouths and not their nostrils in singing. Now he is a tailor or milliner, and makes fas.h.i.+onable garments; and then a manager of a theatre, which is the most awful place in the world; it is a reflex of life, and the reflection is always worse than the original, as a man's shadow is more dangerous than he is. But worst of all, they solemnly affirm, for they don't swear, he comes sometimes in lawn sleeves, and looks like a bishop, which is popery, or in the garb of high churchmen, who are all Jesuits. Is it any wonder these cantin'

fellows pervert the understanding, sap the principles, corrupt the heart, and destroy the happiness of so many? Poor dear old Minister used to say, 'Sam, you must instruct your conscience; for an ignorant or superst.i.tious conscience is a snare to the unwary. If you think a thing is wrong that is not, and do it, then you sin, because you are doing what you believe in your heart to be wicked. It is the intention that const.i.tutes the crime.' Those sour crouts therefore, by creating artificial and imitation sin in such abundance, make real sin of no sort of consequence, and the world is so chock full of it, a fellow gets careless at last and won't get out of its way, it's so much trouble to pick his steps.