Autocrat of the Breakfast Table Part 3

Now I am not preaching at this moment; I may read you one of my sermons some other morning; but I maintain that gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It belongs to two phases of society,-a cankered over-civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its primitive elements. Real Republicanism is stern and severe; its essence is not in forms of government, but in the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most public way of gambling, and with all its immense attractions to the sense and the feelings,-to which I plead very susceptible,-the disguise is too thin that covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its supporters are the Southern gentry,-fine fellows, no doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand the term,-a few Northern millionnaires more or less thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in a dark alley.

In England, on the other hand, with its aristocratic inst.i.tutions, racing is a natural growth enough; the pa.s.sion for it spreads downwards through all cla.s.ses, from the Queen to the costermonger. London is like a sh.e.l.led corn-cob on the Derby day, and there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down on his office-stool the next day without wincing.

Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting men.

What better reason do you want for the fact that the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of America beat the world? And why should we have expected that the pick-if it was the pick-of our few and far-between racing stables should beat the pick of England and France? Throw over the fallacious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some of us must plead guilty to.

We may beat yet. As an American, I hope we shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am not so anxious about it. Wherever the trotting horse goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butcher's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon drive with wife and child,-all the forms of moral excellence, except truth, which does not agree with any kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gambling, cursing, swearing, drinking, the eating of oysters, and a distaste for mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues.

And by the way, let me beg you not to call a _trotting match_ a _race_, and not to speak of a "thoroughbred" as a "_blooded_" horse, unless he has been recently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying "blood horse,"

if you like. Also, if, next year, we send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of the great national four-mile race in 7 18.5, and they happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like men and gentlemen about it, if you know how.

[I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill-temper condensed in the above paragraph. To brag little,-to show well,-to crow gently, if in luck,-to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I think we have shown them in any great perfection of late.]

-Apropos of horses. Do you know how important good jockeying is to authors? Judicious management; letting the public see your animal just enough, and not too much; holding him up hard when the market is too full of him; letting him out at just the right buying intervals; always gently feeling his mouth; never slacking and never jerking the rein;-this is what I mean by jockeying.

-When an author has a number of books out a cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor Blitz does his dinner-plates; fetching each one up, as it begins to "wabble," by an advertis.e.m.e.nt, a puff, or a quotation.

-Whenever the extracts from a living writer begin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious reason, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The extracts are _ground-bait_.

-Literary life is fun of curious phenomena. I don't know that there is anything more noticeable than what we may call _conventional reputations_. There is a tacit understanding in every community of men of letters that they will not disturb the popular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded celebrity. There are various reasons for this forbearance: one is old; one is rich; one is good-natured; one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be safe to hiss him from the manager's box. The venerable augurs of the literary or scientific temple may smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned; but the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay with you with the implied compact between you that he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on one of these bandbox reputations. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of unannealed gla.s.s, lasts indefinitely, if you keep it from meddling hands; but break its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into powder. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Rupert's-drops of the learned and polite world.

See how the papers treat them! What an array of pleasant kaleidoscopic phrases, which can be arranged in ever so many charming patterns, is at their service! How kind the "Critical Notices"-where small authors.h.i.+p comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary, and sappy-always are to them! Well, life would be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions; so let them pa.s.s current. Don't steal their chips; don't puncture their swimming-bladders; don't come down on their pasteboard boxes; don't break the ends of their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who all feel sure that your names will be household words a thousand years from now.

"A thousand years is a good while," said the old gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully.

-Where have I been for the last three or four days? Down at the Island, deer-shooting.-How many did I bag? I brought home one buck shot.-The Island is where? No matter. It is the most splendid domain that any man looks upon in these lat.i.tudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall s.h.i.+ps are stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles; beeches, oaks, most numerous;-many of them hung with moss, looking like bearded Druids; some coiled in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as swan's down.

Rocks scattered about,-Stonehenge-like monoliths. Fresh-water lakes; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal-clear, full of flas.h.i.+ng pickerel lying under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle. Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for breakfast. EGO _fecit._

The divinity-student looked as if he would like to question my Latin.

No, sir, I said,-you need not trouble yourself. There is a higher law in grammar, not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. Then I went on.

Such hospitality as that island has seen there has not been the like of in these our New England sovereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kindness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has not found its home in that ocean-princ.i.p.ality. It has welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the pale clergyman who came to breathe the sea-air with its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his white teeth in merriment over the long table, where his wit was the keenest and his story the best.

[I don't believe any man ever talked like that in this world. I don't believe _I_ talked just so; but the fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one cannot help _Blair_-ing it up more or less, ironing out crumpled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as prinking at the looking-gla.s.s.]

-How can a man help writing poetry in such a place? Everybody does write poetry that goes there. In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished verse,-some by well-known hands, and others quite as good, by the last people you would think of as versifiers,-men who could pension off all the genuine poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with the rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in an easterly direction look bright or dark to one who observes them from the north or south, according to the tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and moralized thus:-

SUN AND SHADOW.

As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, The sun gleaming bright on her sail.

Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun,- Of breakers that whiten and roar; How little he cares, if in shadow or sun They see him that gaze from the sh.o.r.e!

He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, To the rock that is under his lee, As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea.

Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves Where life and its ventures are laid, The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves May see us in suns.h.i.+ne or shade; Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark, We'll trim our broad sail as before, And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, Nor ask how we look from the sh.o.r.e!

-Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind does not acc.u.mulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are called _religious_ mental disturbances. I confess that I think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or such opinions. It is very much to his discredit in every point of view, if he does not. What is the use of my saying what some of these opinions are? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as I should think ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in your hearts.

Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind and perhaps for entire races,-anything that a.s.sumes the necessity of the extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated,-no matter by what name you call it,-no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon believes it,-if received, ought to produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. That condition becomes a normal one, under the circ.u.mstances. I am very much ashamed of some people for retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well that if they were not the most stupid or the most selfish of human beings, they would become _non-compotes_ at once.

[n.o.body understood this but the theological student and the schoolmistress. They looked intelligently at each other; but whether they were thinking about my paradox or not, I am not clear.-It would be natural enough. Stranger things have happened. Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking the price of board, or whether there is room for them. Alas, these young people are poor and pallid! Love _should_ be both rich and rosy, but _must_ be either rich or rosy. Talk about military duty! What is that to the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the t.i.tle of mistress, and an American female const.i.tution, which collapses just in the middle third of life, and comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live through the period when health and strength are most wanted?]

-Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. I have played the part of the "Poor Gentleman," before a great many audiences,-more, I trust, than I shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork; but I was placarded and announced as a public performer, and at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet-dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen myself everywhere announced as the most desperate of _buffos_,-one who was obliged to restrain himself in the full exercise of his powers, from prudential considerations. I have been through as many hards.h.i.+ps as Ulysses, in the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I have travelled in cars until the conductors all knew me like a brother. I have run off the rails, and stuck all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind females that would have the window open when one could not wink without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps I shall give you some of my experiences one of these days;-I will not now, for I have something else for you.

Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in country lyceum-halls, are one thing,-and private theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in the characters which show off their graces and talents; most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant voice, acting in those love-dramas which make us young again to look upon, when real youth and beauty will play them for us.

-Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to write. I did not see the play, though. I knew there was a young lady in it, and that somebody was in love with her, and she was in love with him, and somebody (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. The play of course ends charmingly; there is a general reconciliation, and all concerned form a line and take each others' hands, as people always do after they have made up their quarrels,-and then the curtain falls,-if it does not stick, as it commonly does at private theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is detailed to pull it down, which he does, blus.h.i.+ng violently.

Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to change my caesuras and cadences for anybody; so if you do not like the heroic, or iambic trimeter brachy-catalectic, you had better not wait to hear it

THIS IS IT.

A Prologue? Well, of course the ladies know;- I have my doubts. No matter,-here we go!

What is a Prologue? Let our Tutor teach: _Pro_ means beforehand; _logos_ stands for speech.

'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings;- Prologues in metre are to other _pros_ As worsted stockings are to engine-hose.

"The world's a stage," as Shakspeare said, one day; The stage a world-was what he meant to say.

The outside world's a blunder, that is clear; The real world that Nature meant is here.

Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa; Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, The cheats are taken in the traps they laid; One after one the troubles all are past Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, Join hands, _so_ happy at the curtain's fall.

-Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, And black-browed ruffians always come to grief, -When the lorn damsel, with a frantic screech, And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, Cries, "Help, kyind Heaven!" and drops upon her knees On the green-baize,-beneath the (canvas) trees,- See to her side avenging Valor fly:- "Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!"

-When the poor hero flounders in despair, Some dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire,- Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, Sobs on his neck, "_My boy_! MY BOY!! MY BOY!!!"

Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night.

Of love that conquers in disaster's spite.

Ladies, attend! While woful cares and doubt Wrong the soft pa.s.sion in the world without, Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, One thing is certain: Love will triumph here!

Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule,- The world's great masters, when you're out of school,- Learn the brief moral of our evening's play: Man has his will,-but woman has her way!

While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire,- The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves Beats the black giant with his score of slaves.

All earthly powers confess your sovereign art But that one rebel,-woman's wilful heart.

All foes you master; but a woman's wit Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit.

So, just to picture what her art can do, Hear an old story made as good as new.

Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, Alike was famous for his arm and blade.

One day a prisoner Justice had to kill Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill.

Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and s.h.a.ggy-browed, Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd.

His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, As the pike's armor flashes in the stream.

He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow.

"Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act,"

The prisoner said. (Hs voice was slightly cracked.) "Friend I _have_ struck," the artist straight replied; "Wait but one moment, and yourself decide."

He held his snuff-box,-"Now then, if you please!"

The prisoner sniffed, and, with a cras.h.i.+ng sneeze, Off his head tumbled,-bowled along the floor,- Bounced down the steps;-the prisoner said no more!

Woman! thy falchion is a glittering eye; If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die!

Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head; We die with love, and never dream we're dead!

The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No alterations were suggested by the lady to whom it was sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people criticize the poems one sends them, and suggest all sorts of improvements. Who was that silly body that wanted Burns to alter "Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the last line, thus

"_Edward_!" Chains and slavery!

Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a committee for a certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president of the day was what is called a "teetotaller." I received a note from him in the following words, containing the copy subjoined, with the emendations annexed to it.