GIFT OF
A, P. /iorrison
THE AUTOCRAT
BREAKFAST-TABLE
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THE
AUTOCRAT
OF
THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
EVERY MAN SIS OWN BOS WELL.
*j]'j*ii t>
,•', J ; :. . j;,; ... . ,;.,
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1875.
GIFT OF
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the jear 1858, by
Oliver Wendell IIolmef,
in tlie Clerk's OQce of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
t C t t (• «,
c^
THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
The interruption referred to in the first sen-
tence of the first of these papers was just a
quarter of a century in duration.
Two articles entitled " The Autocrat of the
Breakfast-Table " will be found in the " New-
England Magazine," formerly published in Bos-
ton by J. T. and E. Buckingham. The date
of the first of these articles is November 1831,
and that of the second February 1832. When
" The Atlantic Monthly " was begun, twenty-
five years afterwards, and the author was asked
to write for it, the recollection of these crude
products of his uncombed literary boyhood
suggested the thought that it would be a cu-
rious experiment to shake the same bough
again, and see if the ripe fruit were better 01
worse than the early windfalls.
So began this series of papers, which nat-
urally brings those earlier attempts to my own
notice and that of some few friends who were
ivil05037
vi THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
idle enough to read them at the time of their
pubhcation. The man is father to the boy
that was, and I am my own son, as it seems
to me, in those papers of the New England
Magazine. If I find it hard to pardon the
boy's faults, otliers would find it harder. They
will not, therefore, be reprinted here, nor as 1
hope, anywhere.
But a sentence or two from them will perhaps
bear reproducing, and with these I trust the
gentle reader, if that kind being still breathes,
will be contented.
— " It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and,
when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your
own conversation."
— " When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down
my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beau-
tiful as that of sentences. The author may arrange the
gems effectively, but their fhape and luftre have been
given by the attrition of ages. Bring me the fineft fim-
ile from the whole range of imaginative writing, and I
will ftiow you a fingle word which conveys a more pro-
found, a more accurate, and a more eloquent analogy." —
— " Once on a time, a notion was flatted, that if all
the people in the world would fhout at once, it might
be heard in the moon. So the projectors agreed it
fhould be done in jufl ten years. Some thousand fhip-
loads of chronometers were diftributed to the seleClmen
and other great folks of all the different nations. For
a year beforehand, nothing else was talked about but the
THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. vii
awful noise that was to be made on the great occafion.
When the time came, everybody had their ears so wide
open, to hear the universal ejaculation of Boo, — the
word agreed upon, — that nobody spoke except a deaf
man in one of the Fejee Islands, and a woman in
Pekin, so that the world was never so ftill fince the
There was nothing better than these things
and there was not a little that was much worse.
A young fellow of two or three and twenty has
as good a right to spoil a magazine-full of
essays in learning how to write, as an oculist
like Wenzel had to spoil his hat-full of eyes
in learning how to operate for cataract, or an
elegant like Brummel to point to an armful of
failures in the attempt to achieve a perfect tie.
This son of mine, whom I have not seen for
these twenty-five years, generously counted,
was a self-willed youth, always too ready to
utter his unchastised fancies. He, like too
many American young people, got the spur
when he should have had the rein. He there-
fore helped to fill the market with that unripe
fruit which his father says in one of these pa
pers abounds in the marts of his native country.
All these by-gone shortcomings he would hope
are forgiven, did he not feel sure that very few
of his readers know anything about them. In
taking the old name for the new papers, he felt
viii THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
bound to say that he had uttered unwise things
under that title, and if it shall appear that liis
unwisdom has not diminished by at least half
while his years have doubled, he promises not
to repeat the experiment if he should live to
double them again and become his own grand-
father.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
Boston Nov, ist 1858.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I WAS just going to say, when I was interrupted,
that one of the many ways of classifying minds is
under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical in-
tellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an
extension or variation of the following arithmetical
formula: 2+2=4. Every philosophical proposition
has the more general character of the expression
a"\-b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and
egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of
figures.
They all stored. There is a divinity student lately
come among us to whom I commonly address re-
marks like the above, allowing him to take a certain
share in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent
questions are involved. He abused his liberty on
this occasion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had
the same observation. — No, sir, I replied, he has not.
2 THE AUTOCK\T OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics,
that sounds something like it, and you found it, not
in the ,orii^mql^ But quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. ]
vyi4 tell the company what he did say, one of thest
If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration ?
— I blush to say that I do not at this present moment
I once did, however. It was the first association to
which I ever heard the term applied; a body of
scientific young men in a great foreign city who ad-
mired their teacher, and to some extent each other.
Many of them deserved it ; they have become famous
since. It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those
beings described by Thackeray —
" Letters four do form his name " —
about a social development which belongs to the very
noblest stage of civilization. All generous companies
of artists, authors, philanthropists, men of science,
are, or ought to be. Societies of Mutual Admiration.
A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not
debarred from admiring the same quality in another,
nor the other from returning his admiration. They
may even associate together and continue to think
highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men,
if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so many.
The being referred to above assumes several false
premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate
each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge oi
THJE OLD G-EjrrtEMAN OPT>OSITB
. THE AUTOCRAT OF THi-: BhEAKFAST-TABLE. J
habitual association destroys our admiration of
persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance.
Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet
together to dine and have a good time, have signed
a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and to
put down him and the fraction of the human race
not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is
an outrage that he is not asked to join them.
Here the company laughed a good deal, and the
old gentleman who sits opposite said, " That's it *
that's it!"
I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to
clever people's hating each other, I think a little
extra talent does sometimes make people jealous.
They become irritated by perpetual attempts and
failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions.
Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is
glorious ; but a weak flavor of genius in an essen-
tially common person is detestable. It spoils the
grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the
rinsings of an unwashed wineglass spoil a draught
of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke
of, who always belongs to this class of slightly
flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the
strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working
and playing together in harmony. He and his fel-
lows are always fighting. With them familiarity
naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each
other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or
4 THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
spavined verses^ nobody ever supposed it was from
admiration ; it was simply a contract between them-
selves and a publisher or dealer.
If the Mutuals have really nothing among them
worth admiring, that alters the question. But if they
are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell
you, that, next to youthful love and family affections,
there is no human sentinaent better than that which
unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And
what would literature or art be without such associa-
tions ? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual
Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben
Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members ?
Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the
centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to
that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and
Reynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admir-
ing among all admirers, met together? Was there
any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and
Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable
cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant
and Sands, and as many more as they chose to asso-
ciate with them ?
The poor creature does not know what he is talk-
ing about, when he abuses this noblest of institutions,
Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole
he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium
for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a
literary metropolis; if a town has not material foi
THE AUTOCRAT- OF THE BREAhf AST-TABLE. 5
it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it,
it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to
lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and
dread and envy such an association of men of varied
powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene,
impregnable, and, by the necessity of the case,
exclusive. Wise ones are prouder of the title
M. S. M. A. than of all their other honors put
together.
All generous minds have a horror of what are
commonly called " facts." They are the brute beasts
of the intellectual domain. Who does not know
fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or
two which they lead after them into decent company
like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at
every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generaliza-
tion, or pleasant fancy ? I allow no " facts " at this
table. What! Because bread is good and whole-
some and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust
a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking ? Do
not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves
of Dread ? and is not my thought the abstract of ten
thousand of these crumbs oi truth with which you
would choke off my speech ?
[The above remark must be conditioned and quali-
fied for the vulgar mind. The reader will of course
understand the precise amount of seasoning which
must be added to it before he adopts it as one
of the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims
6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
all responsibility for its abuse in incompetent
hands.]
This business of conversation is a very serious
matter. There are men that it weakens one to talk
vs^ith an hour more than a day's fasting would do.
Mark this that I am going to say, for it is as good as
a working professional man's advice, and costs you
nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from
your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody
measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor
bandages your brain and marrow after the opera-
tion.
There are men of esprit who are excessively ex-
hausting to some people. They are the talkers who
have what may be called jerky minds. Their
thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence.
They say bright things on all possible subjects, but
their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half-
hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with
a dull friend aifords great relief. It is like taking
the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel.
What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be
sure, at times ! A ground-glass shade over a gas-
lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes
than such a one to our minds.
*' Do not dull people bore you ? " said one of the
lady-boarders, — the same that sent me her autograph-
book last week with a request for a few original
stanzas, not remembering that " The Pactolian " pays
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE ^
me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its
columns.
" Madam," said I, (she and the century were In
their teens together,) " all men are bores, except when
we want them. There never was but one man whom
I would trust with my latch-key."
" Who might that favored person be ? "
" Zimmermann."
The men of genius that I fancy most have
erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remem-
ber what they tell of William Pinkney, the great
pleader; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins
of his neck would swell and his face flush and his
eyes glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy.
The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain
with blood are only second in importance to its own
organization. The bulbous-headed fellows that steam
well when they are at work are the men that draw
big audiences and give us marrowy books and pic-
tures. It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold
when he is writing. A great writer and speaker once
told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot
water ; but for this, all his blood would have run into
his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into
the ball of a thermometer.
You don't suppose that my remarks made at
this table are like so many postage-stamps, do you, —
each to be only once uttered ? If you do, you are
mistaken: He must be a poor creature that does not
8 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the ei
cellent piece of advice, " Know thyself," never alliicl-
ing to that sentiment again during the course of a
protracted existence ! Why, the truths a man carries
about with him are his tools ; and do you think a
carpenter is bound to use the same plane but once
to smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his
hammer after it has driven its first nail ? I shall
never repeat a conversation, but an idea often. ]
shall use the same types when I like, but not com-
monly the same stereotypes. A thought is often
original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
It has come to you over a new route, by a new and
express train of associations.
Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making
the same speech twice over, and yet be held blame-
less. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an
inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of note, was
invited to meet her and others over the social teacup.
She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in
his new occupation. " Yes," he replied, " I am like
the Huma, the bird that never lights, being always
in the cars, as he is always on the wing." — Years
elapsed. The lecturer visited the same place once
more for the same purpose. Another social cup after
the lecture, and a second meeting with the distin-
guished lady. " You are constantly going from place
to place," she said. — " Yes," he answered, " I am like
the Huma," — and finished the sentence as before.
THE AUTOGftAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9
What horrors, when it flashed over him tliat he
fiad made this fine speech, word for word, twice over!
Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have
fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversa-
tion with the Huma daily during that whole interval
of years. On the contrary, he had never once thought
of the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely
the same circumstances brought up precisely tho
same idea. He ought to hav^ been proud of the
accuracy of his mental adjustments. Given certain
factors, and a sound brain should always evolve the
same fixed product with the certainty of Babbage's
calculating machine.
What a satire, by the way, is that machine on
the mere mathematician ! A Frankenstein-monster,
a thing without brains and without heart, too stupid
to make a blunder ; that turns out results lilie a corn-
sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though
it grind a thousand bushels of them !
I have an immense respect for a man of talents
plus " the mathematics." But the calculating power
alone should seem to be the least human of qualities,
and to have the smallest amount of reason in it ;
since a machine can be made to do the work of three
or four calculators, and better than any one of them.
Sometimes I have been troubled that I had not a
deeper intuitive apprehension of the relations of num-
bers. But the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ
has consoled me. 1 always fancy I can hear the
10 TIE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFASl-TABLE
wheels clicking in a calculator's brain. The powei
of dealing with numbers is a kind of " detached lever "
arrangement, which may be put into a mighty poor
watch. I suppose it is about as common as the
power of moving the ears voluntarily, which is a
moderately rare endowment.
Little localized powers, and little narrow
streaks of specialized knowledge, are things men are
very apt to be conceited about. Nature is very wise ;
but for this encouraging principle how many small
talents and little accomplishments would be neg-
lected! Talk about conceit as much as you like,
it is to human character what salt is to the ocean ; it
keeps it sweet, and renders it endurable. Say rather
it is like the natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plu-
mage, which enables him to shed the rain that falls
on him and the wave in which he dips. When one
has had all his conceit taken out of him, when he
has lost all his illusions, his feathers will soon soak
through, and he will fly no more.
" So you admire conceited people, do you ? " said
the young lady who has come to the city to be fin-
ished off for — the duties of life.
I am afraid you do not study logic at your school,
my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be
pickled in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at
Nahant. I say that conceit is just as natural a thing
to human minds as a centre is to a circle. But
little-minded people's thoughts move in such small
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. H
circles that five minutes' conversation gives you an
arc long enough to determine their whole curve. An
arc in the movement of a large intellect does not
sensibly differ from a straight line. Even if it have
the third vowel as its centre, it does not soon betray
it. The highest thought, that is, is the most seem-
ingly impersonal ; it does not obviously imply any
individual centre.
Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is
always imposing. What resplendent beauty that
must have been which could have authorized Phryne
to " peel " in the way she did! What fine speeches,
are those two : " Non omnis moriarj'^ and " I have
taken aU knowledge to be my province " ! Even in
common people, conceit has the virtue of making
them cheerful ; the man who thinks his wife, his
baby, his house, his horse, his dog, and himself sev-
erally unequalled, is almost sure to be a good-
humored person, though liable to be tedious at
times.
What are the great faults of conversation ?
Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are
the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't
doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil
more good talks than anything else ; — long argu-
ments on special points between people who differ
on the fundamental principles upon which these
points depend. No men can have satisfactory re-
lations -^-ith each other until they have agreed on
12 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
certain ultimata of belief not to be disturbed in or-
dinary conversation, and unless they have sense
enough to trace the secondary questions depending
upon these ultimate beliefs to their source. In short,
just as a written constitution is essential to the best
social order, so a code of finalities is a necessary con-
dition of profitable talk between two persons. Talk-
ing is like playing on the harp ; there is as much in
laying the hand on the strings to stop their vibrations
as in twanging them to bring out their music.
Do you mean to say the pun-question is not
clearly settl^^d in your minds ? Let me lay down the
law upon the subject. Life and language are alike
sacred. Homicide and verbicide-^ih^i is, violent
treatment of a word with fatal results to its legiti-
mate meaning, which is its life — are alike forbidden.
Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is
the same as man's laughter, which is the end of the
other. A pun is primd facie an insult to the person
you are talking with. It implies utter indifference to
or sublime contempt for his remarks, no matter how
serious. I speak of total depravity, and one says all
that is written on the subject is deep raving. I have
committed my self-respect by talking with such a
person. I should like to commit him, but cannot,
because he is a nuisance. Or I speak of geological
convulsions, and he asks me what was the cosine of
Noah's ark; also, whether the Deluge was not a
deal huger than any modern inundation.
THE AUTOJRAT OF THE BREAKi< AST-TABLE. 13
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return.
But if a blow were given for such cause, and death
ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts
and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an
aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable
homicide. Thus, in a case lately decided before
Miller, J., Doe presented Roe a subscription paper,
and urged the claims of suffering humanity. Roe
replied by asking, When charity was like a top ? It
was in evidence that Doe preserved a dignified si-
lence. Roe then said, " When it begins to hum."
Doe then — and not till then — struck Roe, and his
head happening to hit a bound volume of the
Monthly Rag-bag and Stolen Miscellany, intense
mortification ensued, with a fatal result. The chief
laid down his notions of the law to his brother jus-
tices, who unanimously replied, " Jest so." The
chief rejoined, that no man should jest so without
being punished for it, and charged for the prisoner,
who was acquitted, and the pun ordered to be
burned by the sheriff. The bound volume was for-
feited as a deodand, but not claimed.
People that make puns are like wanton boys that
put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse
themselves and other children, but their little trick
may upset a freight train of conversation for the
sake of a battered witticism.
I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books,
of which I will mark the places on this slii) of paper
14 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
(While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land*
lady's youngest, is called Benjamin Franklin, after
the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly
merited compliment.)
I wished to refer to two eminent authorities.
Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist
says : " To trifle with the vocabulary which is the
vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the
currency of human intelligence. He who would
violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would in-
vade the recesses of the paternal till without remorse,
and repeat the banquet of Saturn without an indi-
gestion."
And, once more, listen to the historian. " The Pu-
iitans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously
addicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried
them to the verge of license. Majesty itself must
have its Royal quibble. * Ye be burly, my Lord of
Burleigh,' said Queen Elizabeth, * but ye shaU make
less stir in our realm than my Lord of Leicester.'
The gravest wisdom and the highest breeding lent
their sanction to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully
declared himself a descendant of 'Og, the I^ng of
Bashan. Sir Philip Sidney, with his last breath,
reproached the soldier who brought him water, for
wasting a casque full upon a dying man. A courtier,
who saw Othello performed at the Globe Theatre,
remarked, that the blackamoor was a brute, and not
B man. ' Thou hast reason,' replied a great Lord,
niS AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15
according to Plato his saying; for this be a two-
tegged animal with feathers.' The fatal habit be-
came universal. The language was corrupted. The
infection spread to the national conscience. Political
double-dealings naturally grew out of verbal double
meanings. The teeth of the new dragon were sown
by the Cadmus who introduced the alphabet of
equivocation. What was levity in the time of the
Tudors grew to regicide and revolution in the age
of the Stuarts."
Who was that boarder that just whispered some-
thing about the Macaulay-flowers of literature? —
There was a dead sUence. — I said calmly, I shall
henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a
hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my
example. If / have used any such, it has been only
as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot.
We have done with them.
If a logical mind ever found out anything
with its logic ? — I should say that its most frequent
work was to buUd a pons asinorum over chasms which
shrewd people can bestride without such a structure.
You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to
prove anything that you want to prove. You can
buy treatises to show that Napoleon never lived, and
that no battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The
great minds are those with a wide span, which couple
truths related to, but far removed from, each other.
Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track
16 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE.
of which these are the true explorers. I value a irap
mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I un-
derstand truth, — not for any secondary artifice in
handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in
argument are notoriously unsound in judgment. 1
should not trust the counsel of a smart debater, any
more than that of a good chess-player. Either may
of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because
he wrangles or plays well.
The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand
up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression,
" his relations with truth, as I understand truth," and
when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked
like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense
was good enough for him.
Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common sense,
as you understand it. We all have to assume a
standard of judgment in our own minds, either of
things or persons. A man who is willing to take
another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the
choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a
matter as to judge of things for one's self. On the
whole, I had rather judge men's minds by comparing
their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts
by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the
other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not
recognize another man's thoughts as broader and
deeper than my own ; but that does not necessarily
change my opinion, otherwise this would be at tho
711R ai:tocrat of the breakfast-table. 17
mercy of every superior mind that held a different
one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are
like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern,
that serve us well so long as we keep them in our
hand, but spill all if we attempt to set them down !
I have sometimes compared conversation to the
Italian game of mora^ in which one player lifts hia
hand with so many fingers extended, and the other
gives the number if he can. I show my thought,
another his ; if they agree, well ; if they differ, we
find the largest common factor, if we can, but at any
rate avoid disputing about remainders and fractions,
which is to real talk what tuning an instrument is to
playing on it.
What if, instead of talking this morning, ]
should read you a copy of verses, with critical
remarks by the author ? Any of the company can
retire that like.
ALBIBI VERSES.
When Eve had led her lord away,
And .Cain had killed his brother,
The stars and flowers, the poets say,
Agreed with one another
To cheat the cunning tempter's art^
And teach the race its duty,
By keeping on its wicked heart
Their eyes of light and beauty.
%
18 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
A million sleepless lids, they say,
Will be at least a warning ;
And so the flowers would watch by day,
The stars from eve to morning.
On hill and prairie, field and lawn,
Their dewy exes upturning,
The flowers still watch from reddening dawn
Till western skies are burning.
Alas ! each hour of daylight tells
A tale of shame so crushing.
That some turn white as sea-bleached shells,
And some are always blushing.
But when the patient stars look down
On all their light discovers.
The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown,
The hps of lying lovers,
They try to shut their saddening eyes,
And in the vain endeavour
We see them twinkling in the skies,
And so they wink forever.
What do you think of these verses my friends?—.
Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's
daughter. (Aet. 19-I-. Tender-eyed blonde. Long
ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain,
liocket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Ac-
cordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb,
junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says
'^Yes?" when you tell her anything.) — Qui et non^
THI IiANDIiADY*S BAUaSTEr..
IriE AUVOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE. 19
ma petit€f — Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven
verses were written ofF-hand ; the other two took a
week, — that is, were hanging round the desk in a
ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that.
All poets will tell you just such stories. C^est le der-
nier joa^ qui coute. Don't you know how hard it is
for some people to get out of a room after their visit
is really over ? They want to be off, and you want
to have them off, but they don't know how to man-
age it One would think they had been built in your
parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched.
I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane
for such visitors, which being lubricated with cer-
tain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphor!
cally speaking, stern -foremost, into their " native
element," the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now,
there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural
visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the service-
able rhymes, day raj/, beauty, duty, skies, eyes, other,
brother, mountain, fountain, and the like ; and so they
go on until you think it is time for the wind-up,
and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they
lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and
end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet
upon them, and turning them out of doors. I sus-
pect a good many "impromptus" could tell just
such a story as the above. — Here turning to our land-
lady, I used an illustration which pleased the com-
pany much at the time, and has since been highly
20 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
commended. " Madam," I said, " you can pour threvi
gills and three quarters of honey from that pint jug.,
if it is full, in less than one minute ; but. Madam, you
could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you
were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel
upside down for a thousand years.
One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymeSy
such as you see in that copy of verses, — which 1
don't mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always
feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers
to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am
fitting sentiments to these venerablo jingles.
• • youth
• • • morning
• • • . truth
. • warning.
Nine tenths of the " Juvenile Poems " written
spring out of the above musical and suggestive co-
incidences.
" Yes ? " said our landlady's daughter.
I did not address the following remark to her, and
I trust, from her limited range of reading, she will
never see it; I said it softly to my next neighbour.
When a young female wears a flat circular side-
curl, gummed on each temple, — when she walks
with a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against
the back of hers, — and when she says " Yes ? " with
the note of interrogation, you are generally safe in
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 21
'isking her what wages she gets, and who the " feller"
was you saw her with.
" What were you whispering ? " said the daughter
of the house, moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a
very engaging manner.
" I was only laying down a principle of social
diagnosis."
" Yes ? "
It is curious to see how the same wants and
tastes find the same implements and modes of ex-
pression in aU times and places. The young ladies
of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had
a sort of crinoline arrangement fuUy equal in radius
to the largest spread of our own lady-baskets. When
I fling a Bay- State shawl over my shoulders, I am
only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian
had learned before me. A blanket-sha.wl we call it,
and not a plaid ; and we wear it like the aborigines,
and not like the Highlanders.
We are the Romans of the modern world, —
the great assimilating people. Conflicts and con-
quests are of course necessary accidents with us, as
with our prototypes. And so we come to their style
of weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff",
pointed gladius of the Romans ; and the American
bowie-knife is the same tool, modified to meet the
daily wants of civil society. I announce at this
table an axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or
the journals of Congress : —
22 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK.
The race that shortens its weapons lengthens it.
boundaries.
Corollary. It was the Polish lance that left Poland
at last with nothing of her own to bound.
" Dropped from her nerveless grasp the sliattered spear ! "
What business had Sarmatia to be fighting foi
liberty with a fifteen-foot pole between her and the
breasts of her enemies ? If she had but clutched
the old Roman and young American weapon, and
come to close quarters, there might have been a
chance for her ; but it would have spoiled the best
passage in " The Pleasures of Hope."
Self-made men ? — Well, yes. Of course every
body likes and respects self-made men. It is a great
deal better to be made in that way than not to be
made at all. Are any of you younger people old
enough to remember that Irishman's house on the
marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from
drain to chimney-top with his own hands ? It took
him a good many years to build it, and one could
see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little
wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in
general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have
built a better house ; but it was a very good house
for a " self-made " carpenter's house, and people
praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irish-
man had succeeded. They never thought of prais*
ing the fine blocks of houses a little fartner on.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE. 22
Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his
own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that is all,
than- the regular engine-turned article, shaped by the
most approved pattern, and French-polished by so-
ciety and travel. But as to saying that one is every
way the equal of the other, that is another matter.
The right of strict social discrimination of all things
and persons, according to their merits, native or ac-
quired, is one of the most precious republican privi-
leges. I take the liberty to exercise it, when I say,
that, other things being equal.^ in most relations of
life I prefer a man of family.
What do I mean by a man of family ? — O, I'll
give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us
give him a first-rate fit out ; it costs us nothing.
Four or five generations of gentlemen and gentle-
women; among them a member of his Majesty's
Council for the Province, a Governor or so, one or
two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not
later than the time of top-boots with tassels.
Family portraits. The member of the Council,
by Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by Copley,
full length, sitting in his arm-chair, in a velvet cap
and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the
range of his commercial transactions, and letters with
large red seals lying round, one directed conspicu-
ously to The Honourable etc. etc. Great-grand-
mother, by the same artist ; brown satin, lace very
fin^, hands superlative ; grand- old lady, stiifish, but
24 'i'HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, an
gular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of
Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, mediaeval gen-
tleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in his veins,
tempered down with that of a fine old rebel grand-
mother, and warmed up with the best of old India
Madeira ; his face is one flame of ruddy sunshine ;
his ruffled shirt rushes out of his bosom with an im-
petuous generosity, as if it would drag his heart
after it ; and his smile is good for twenty thousand
dollars to the Hospital, besides ample bequests to all
relatives and dependants. 2. Lady of the same;
remarkable cap ; high waist, as in time of Empire ;
bust a la Josephine ; wisps of curls, like celery-tips,
at sides of forehead ; complexion clear and warm,
like rose-cordial. As for the miniatures by Malbone,
we don't count them in the gallery.
Books, too, with the names of old college-students
in them, — family names ; — you will find them at the
head of their respective classes in the days when stu-
dents took rank on the catalogue from their parents'
condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations
of youthful progenitors, and Hie liber est mens on
the title-page. A set of Hogarth's original plates.
Pope, original edition, 15 volumes, London, 1717.
Barrow on the lower shelves, in folio. Tillotson
on the upper, in a little dark platoon of octo-dec-
imos.
Some family silver; a string of wedding and fune-
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25
ral rings ; the arms of the family curiously blazoned
the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt.
If the man of family has an old place to keep
these things in, furnished with claw-footed chairs
and black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged
mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is
complete.
No, my friends, I go (always, other things being
equal) for the man who inherits family traditions
and the cumulative humanities of at least four or
five generations. Above all things, as a child, he
should have tumbled about in a library. All men
are afraid of books, who have not handled them
from infancy. Do you suppose our dear didascalos
over there ever read Poll Synopsis^ or consulted CaS'
lelli Lexicon^ while he was growing up to their stat-
ure ? Not he ; but virtue passed through the hem
of their parchment and leather garments whenever
he touched them, as the precious drugs sweated
through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I
tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invig-
orating fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made
man feels so. One may, it is true, have all the an-
tecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a
shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and
yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them
change places. Our social arrangement has this
great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as
they change specific gravity, without being clogged
26 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLfi.
by layers of prescription. But I still insist on rr )
democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man
with the gallery of family portraits against the one
with the twenty-fi\ e-cent daguerreotype, unless 1
find out that the last is the better of the two.
1 should have felt more nervous about the
.ate comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But
it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken ; and be-
sides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I
cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing.
If certain things, which seem to me essential to a
millennium, had come to pass, I should have been
frightened ; but they haven't. Perhaps you \\ oold
like to hear my
LATTER-DAY WARNINGS.
When legislators keep the law,
When banks dispense with bolts and locks,
When berries, whortle — rasp — and straw —
Grow bigger downwards through the box, —
When he that selleth house or land
Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, —
When haberdashers choose the stand
Whose window hath the broadest light, —
When preachers tell us all they think,
And party leaders all they mean, —
When what we pay for, that we drink,
From real grape and coffee-bean,—
iHE AUfOCRAl OF TllK BREAKFAST-TABLE. 27
When lawyers take wlvU they would give,
And doctoi-s give what they would take,—
When city fathers eat to live,
Save when they fast for conscience* sake, —
When one that hath a horse on sale
Shall bring his merit to the proof,
Without a lie for every nail
That holds the iron on the hoof,—
When in the usual place for rips
Our gloves are stitched with special carOi
And guarded well the whalebone tips
Where first umbrellas need repair, —
When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot
The power of suction to resist.
And claret-bottles harbor not
Such dimples as would hold your fist,—
When publishers no longer steal.
And pay for what they stole before,—
When the first locomotive's wheel
Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore ;—
Till then let Gumming blaze away.
And Miller's saints blow up the globe ;
But when you see that blessed day,
Then order your ascension robe !
The company seemed to like the versea, and 1
promised them to read others occasionally, if they
Had a mind to hear thein. Of cour&e they wo^ld
28 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
not expect it every morning. Neither must the readei
suppose that all these things I have reported were
said at any one breakfast-time. I have not taken the
trouble to date them, as Raspail, pere^ used to date
every proof he sent to the printer ; but they were
scattered over several breakfasts ; and I have said a
good many more things since, which I shall very
possibly print some time or other, if I am urged to
do it by judicious friends.
I finished off with reading some verses of my friend
the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more
by and by. The Professor read them, he told me, at
a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great
Historians met a few of his many friends at their
invitation.
Yes, we knew we must lose him, — ^though friendship may claim
To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame ;
Though fondlj, at parting, we call him our own,
*Tis the whisper of love when the bugle has blown.
As the rider that rests with the spur on his heel, —
As the guardsman that sleeps in his corselet of steel, —
As the archer that stands with his shaft on the string,
He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring.
Wliat pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom
Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall blc<»n,
While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes
That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies I
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29
In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time,
Where f^It the gaunt spectres of passion and crime,
There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung,
There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue 1
Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed
From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed I
Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom,
Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom !
The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake
On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake,
To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine.
With incense they stole from the rose and the pine.
So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed
"WTien the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed :
The true Knight of Learning, — the world holds him dear,—
Love 1/less him, Joy crown him, God speed his career!
IL
I REALLY believe some people save their bright
thoughts, as being too precious for conversation.
What do you think an admiring friend said the
other day to one that was talking good things, —
good enough to print ? " Why," said he, " you are
wasting mechantable literature, a cash article, at
the rate, as nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an
30 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
hour." The talker took him to the window and
asked him to look out and tell what he saw.
" Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, " and
a man driving a sprinkling-machine through it."
" Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that
water ? What would be the state of the highways
of life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers
through them with the valves open, sometimes ?
" Besides, there is another thing about this talking,
which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us ; —
the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls
the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image
a little. I rough otit my thoughts in talk as an artist
models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, —
you can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and
rub out, and fill up, and stick on so easily, when
you work that soft material, that there is nothing
like it for modelling. Out of it come the shapes
which you turn into marble or bronze in your im-
mortal books, if you happen to write such. Or, to
use another illustration, writing or printing is like
shooting with a rifle; you may hit your reader's
mind, or miss it ; — but talking is like playing at a
mark with the pipe of an engine ; if it is within
reach, and you have time enough, you can't help hit-
ting it."
The company agreed that this last illustration was
of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them,
•< Fust-rate." I acknowledged the compliment, but
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TADLE. 31
gently rebuked the expression. " Fust-rate," " prime,"
"a prime article," " a superior piece of goods," "a
handsome garment," *' a gent in a flowered vest,"—
all such expressions are final. They blast the lineage
of him or her who utters them, for generations up
and down. There is one other phrase which will
soon come to be decisive of a man's social status, if
it is not already : " That tells the whole story." It
is an expression which vulgar and conceited people
particularly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who
know better, catch from them. It is intended to
stop all debate, like the previous question in the
General Court. Only it doesn't; simply because
" that " does not usually tell the whole, nor one half
of the whole story.
It is an odd idea, that almost all our people
iiave had a professional education. To become a
doctor a man must study some three years and hear
a thousand lectures, more or less. Just how much
study it takes to make a lawyer I cannot say, but
probably not more than this. Now most decent
people hear one hundred lectures or sermons (dis-
courses) on theology every year, — and this, twenty,
thirty, fifty years together. They read a great many
religious books besides. The clergy, however, rarely
hear any sermons except what they preach them-
selves. A dull preacher might be conceived, there-
fore, to lapse into a state of quasi heathenism, simply
for want of religious instruction. And on the othei
32 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
hand, an attentive and intelligent hearer, listening Yc
a succession of wise teachers, might become actually
better educated in theology than any one of them.
We are all theological students, and more of us qual-
ified as doctors of divinity than have received de-
grees at any of the universities.
It is not strange, therefore, that very good people
should often find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep
their attention fixed upon a sermon treating feebly a
subject which they have thought vigorously about for
years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I
have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull dis-
course acts inductivelp, as electricians would say, in
developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed
to think with what accompaniments and variations
and fioriture I have sometimes followed the droning
of a heavy speaker, — not willingly, — for my habit is
reverential, — ^but as a necessary result of a slight con-
tinuous impression on the senses and the mind, which
kept both in action without furnishing the food they
required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with
a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull
speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plum-
age flaps heavily along his straight-forward course,
while the other sails round him, over him, under him,
leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black
feather, shoots away once more, never losing sight
of him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the
same time the crow does, having cut a perfect laby<<
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ^3
liuth of loops and knots and spirals while the slow
fowl was painfully working from one end of his
straighl line to the other.
[I think these remarks were received rather coolly
A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of
a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a
parchment forehead and a dry little " frisette " shin-
gling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads,
a black dress too rusty for recent grief and contours
in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was
reported to have been very virulent about what I
said. So I went to my good old minister, and re-
peated the remarks, as nearly as I could remember
them, to him. He laughed good-naturedly, and said
there was considerable truth in them. He thought
he could tell when people's minds were wandering,
by their looks. In the earlier years of his ministry
he had sometimes noticed this, when he was preach-
ing ; — very little of late years. Sometimes, when his
colleague was preaching, he observed this kind of
inattention; but after all, it was not so very un-
natural. I will say, by the way, that it is a rule I
have long followed, to tell my worst thoughts to my
minister, and my best thoughts to the young people
I talk with.]
1 want to make a literary confession now,
which I believe nobody has made before me. You
know very well that I write verses sometimes, be-
cause 1 have read some of them at this table. (Tho
2*
84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
company assented, — ^two or three of them in a re«
signed sort of way, as I thought, as if they supposed
I had an epic in my pocket, and was going to read
half a dozen books or so for their benefit.) — I con-
tinued. Of course I write some lines or passages
which are better than others ; some which, compared
with the others, might be called relatively excellent.
It is in the nature of things that I should consider
these relatively excellent lines or passages as abso-
lutely good. So much must be pardoned to human-
ity. Now I never wrote a "good" line in my life,
but the moment after it was written it seemed a
hundred years old. Very commonly I had a sudden
conviction that I had seen it somewhere. Possibly I
may have sometimes unconsciously stolen it, but I
do not remember that I ever once detected any his-
torical truth in these sudden convictions of the an-
tiquity of my new thought or phrase. I have learned
utterly to distrust them, and never allow them to
bully me out of a thought or line.
This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number
of the company was diminished by a small seces-
sion.) Any new formula which suddenly ei.ierges
in our consciousness has its roots in long trains of
thought; it is virtually old when it first makes its
appearance among the recognized growths of our
intellect. Any crystalline group of musical words
has had a long and still period to form in. Here ia
qne theory
t c c f t
TSS SCHOOIiJkCISTSSSS.
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35
But there is a larger law which perhaps compre*
hends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with
which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct
ratio to the squares of their importance. Their ap-
parent age runs up miraculously, like the value of
diamonds, as they increase in magnitude. A great
calamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an
hour after it has happened. It stains backward
through all the leaves we have turned over in the
book of life, before its blot of tears or of blood is dry
on the page we are turning. For this we seem to
have lived ; it was foreshadowed in dreams that we
leaped out of in the cold sweat of terror ; in tlie
" dissolving views " of dark day-visions ; all omens
pointed to it ; all paths led to it After the tossing
half-forgetfulness of the first sleep that follows such
an event, it comes upon us afresh, as a surprise, at
waking ; in a few moments it is old again, — old as
eternity.
[I wish I had not said all this then and there. I
might have known better. The pale schoolmistress,
in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I no-
ticed, with a wild sort of expression. All at once
the blood dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury
drops from a broken barometer-tube, and she melted
Away from her seat like an image of snow ; a slung-
shot could not have brought her down better. God
forgive me !
After this little episode, I continued, to some few
4>6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLfi.
that remained balancing teaspoons on the edges o?
cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of
their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where
they left gratuitous advertisements of various popu-
lar cosmetics.]
When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange,
.-ew position of trial, he finds the place fits him as
if he had been measured for it. He has committed
a great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State
Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations,
privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life,
stamp themselves upon bis consciousness as the
signet on soft wax ; — a single pressure is enough.
Let me strengthen the image a little. Did you ever
happen to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-
handed steam-engine at the Mint? The smooth
piston slides backward and forward as a lady might
slip her delicate finger in and out of a ring. The
engine lays one of Us fingers calmly, but firmly, upon
a bit of metal ; it is a coin now, and will remember
that touch, and tell a new race about it, when the
date upon it is crusted over with twenty centuriesr
So it is that a great silent-moving misery puts a new
stamp on us in an hour or a moment, — as sharp an
impression as if it had taken half a lifetime to en-
grave it.
It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale;
professional dealers in misfortune ; undertakers and
jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK. S'l
out of the individual life you were living into the
rhythmical movements of their horrible machinery
Do the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that
can be thought of, you find yourself in a category of
humanity that stretches back as far as Cain, and
with an expert at your elbow who has studied your
case all out beforehand, and is waiting for you with
his implements of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if
a man were to be burned in any of our cities to-
morrow for heresy, there would be found a master
of ceremonies that knew just how many fagots were
necessary, and the best way of arranging the whole
matter.
So we have not won the Goodwood cup ; au
contraire, we were a " bad fifth," if not worse than
that ; and trying it again, and the third time, has not
yet bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as
any of my fellow-citizens, — too patriotic in fact, for 1
have got into hot water by loving too much of my
country; in short, if any man, whose fighting weight
is not more than eight stone four pounds, disputes
it, I am ready to discuss the point with him. I
should have gloried to see the stars and stripes in
firont at the finish. I love my country, and I love
horses. Stubbs's old mezzotint of Eclipse hangs over
my desk, and Herring's portrait of Plenipotentiary
— whom I saw run at Epsom, — over my fireplace
Did I not elope from school to see Revenge, and
Prospect, and Liltle John, and Peacemaker run ovef
.^8 THE AUIOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE-
the race-course where now yon suburban village
flourishes, in the year eighteen hundred and ever-so-
few? Though I never owned a horse, have I not
been the proprietor of six equine females, of which
one was the prettiest little " Morgin " that ever
stepped ? Listen, then, to an opinion I have often
expressed long before this venture of ours in England.
Horse-racing- is not a republican institution ; horse-
trotting' is. Only very rich persons can keep race-
horses, and everybody knows they are kept mainly
as gambling implements. All that matter about
blood and speed we wont discuss ; we understand
all that ; useful, very, — of course, — great obligations
to the Godolphin " Arabian," and the rest. I say
racing horses are essentially gambling implements,
as much as roulette tables. Now I am not preach-
ing 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 govern-
ment, 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
I HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKEAST-TABLE. 39
horse -racing is the most public way of gambling,
and with all its immense attractions to the sense and
the fe elings, — to which I plead very susceptible, — the
disgu.3e is too thin that covers it, and everybody
knows what it means. Its supporters are the South-
ern gentry, — fine fellows, no doubt, but not republi-
cans exactly, as we understand the term, — a few
Northern millionnaires more or less thoroughly mil-
lioned, who do not represent the real people, and the
mob of sporting men, the best of whom are com-
monly 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 ather hand, with its aristocratic
institutions, racing is a natural growth enough ; the
passion for it spreads downwards through all classes,
from the Queen to the costermonger. London is
like a shelled 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 essen-
tially something to bet upon, as much as the thim-
ble-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
oerfection in England, and that the trotting horses
40 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABI.E.
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, 1
am not so anxious about it. Wherever the trotting
norse 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 troU
ting match a race^ and not to speak of a " thorough-
bred " as a " blooded " horse, unless he has been re-
cently 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 I85, and they
happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like
men and gentlemen about it, if you know how.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 41
[I felt a great deal better after blowing oft* the ill-
temper coiiJensed 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, aro
the \rirtucs 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 im*
portant 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 Sig-
ner Blitz does his dinner-plates ; fetching each one
up, as it begins to " wabble," by an advertisement,
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 full 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 pop-
42 THE AJTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
ular fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded ce*
lebrity. There are various reasons for this forbear
.ance : 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 men-
tioned ; 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 reputa-
tions. A Prince-Rupert's-drop, which is a tear of
unannealed glass, 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 kaleido-
scopic phrases, which can be arranged in ever so
many charming patterns, is at their service I How
kind the " Critical Notices " — where small author-
ship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sug-
ary, and sappy — always are to them ! Well, life
would be nothing without paper-credit and other fic-
tions ; so let them pass current. Don't steal their
chips ; don't puncture their swimming-bladders ; don't
eome down on theii pasteboard boxes ; don't break
rifE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAELE. 4;;
the ends oi* their brittle and unstable reputations,
you fellows who all feel sure that your names wil?
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
latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into
its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby
in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to
fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails bang-
ing 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, — Stone henge-like monoliths. Fresh*
water lakes ; one of them, Mary's lake, crystal-clear,
full of flashing 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
44 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
not to oe put down by Andrews and Stoddard
Then I went on.
Such hospitality as that island has seen there has
not bepn the like of in these our New England sov-
ereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kind-
ness and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which
has not found its home in that ocean-principality.
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 / 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 prink-
ing at the looking-glass.]
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 unpub-
lished 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
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 4.^
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 sail-
ing 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. Watch-
ing them from one of the windows of the great
mansion, I saw these perpetual changes, and mor-
alized 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 chafl" 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 shore 1
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 lea^
O'er the grJfs of the desolate sea.
46 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLB.
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 sunshine 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 shore !
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 mirid does not accumulate
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. 1 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 dis-
credit in every point of view, if he does not. What
is the use of my saying w^hat some of these opinion?
are ? Perhaps more than one of you hold such as 1
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 ia
brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for
the most ( f mankind and perhaps for entire races,—
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKTAST-TABLE. 47
Anything that assumes the necessity of the extermi-
nation 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 circumstances. 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 hu-
man beings, they would become non-compotes at once.
[Nobody understood this but the theological stu-
dent and the schoolmistress. They looked intelli-
gently 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 ask-
ing, 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 title of mistress, and an American female
constitution, 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
Ktrength are most wanted ?]
Ha/e I ever acted in private theatricals?
Often. 1 have played the part of the " Poor Gentle-
48 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
man," before a great many audiences, — more, 1 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 per-
former, 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 hardships 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 freez-
ing 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
I'lIK AbTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 49
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 pleas-
ant voice, acting in those love-dramas which make
lis 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 inter-
fere, 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 alter 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, blushing violently.
Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to
change my caesuras and cadences for anybody ; so
if 5'ou 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 I
5^' THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLK
Wliat 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,
\Vlien the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all,
Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall.
— Here suflfering 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 kneea
On the green — baize, — beneath the (canvas) trees, —
See to her side avenging Valor fly : —
" Ha ! Villain ! Draw ! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die I "
— When the poor hero flounders in despair,
lLk)me dear lost uncle turns up millionnaire, —
Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy,
Sobs on his neck, ''My hoy ! My boy ! ! MY BOY III"
Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night.
Of love that conquers in disaster's spite.
inE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 51
Ladies, attend ! While woful cares and doubt
Wrong tlie soft passion in the world without,
Thou<:jh fortune soowl, though prudence interfere,
One thing is certain ; Love will triumph here I
Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, —
The world's great masters, when you're out of schools-
Learn the brief moral of our evening's play :
Man has his will, — but woman has her way I
"Wliile 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 Ut
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 shaggy-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 hia 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. (His voice was slightly cracked.)
" Friend I have struck," the artist straight replied;
'Wait but one moment, and yourself decide."
52 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
He held his snuff-box, — " Now then, if you please ! **
The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing 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 1
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 criti-
cize 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 I
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." 1
received a note from him in the following words,
containing the copy subjoined, with the emendations
annexed to it.
" Dear Sir, — your poem gives good satisfaction to
the committee. The sentiments expressed with ref-
erence to liquor are not, however, those generally en-
tertained by this community. I have therefore cou'
thp: autocrat of the breakfast-table. 53
suited the clergyman of this place, who has made
some slight changes, which he thinks will remove all
objections, and keep the valuable portions of the
poem. Please tc liiform me of your charge for said
poem. Our means are limited, etc., etc., etc.
" Yours with respect"
HERE IT IS,— WITH THE SLIGHT ALTERATIONS I
Come ! fill a fresh bumper, — for why should we go
logwood
While the fte<dtaf still reddens our cups as they flow ?
decoction
Pour out the rich juicca still bright with the sun,
dye-stuff
nil o'er the brimmed crystal the rubica shall run.
half-ripened apples
The purple glebed cluGtcra their life-dews have bled ;
taste sugar of lead
How sweet is the brea th of the ir agraQcc they shed I
rank poisons wines ! ! I
For summer's lagt roses lie hid in the wtaes
stable-boys smoking long-nines.
That were garnered by mai4efie-??be4ati ghcd thrc u gh th e-ysaefl.
scowl howl scoff sneer
Then a smil*, and a glttris, and a tonSx, and a ehecf,
strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer
For all t he good wiiio, antl - wo'vc s e me of it her e
In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall,
Down, iown, with the tyrant that masters us all !
1-fCDjj^ m C ' Luv - ^ay fcC r v an i ludt lAuglLS lOl Ua a,tr I
The company said I had been shabbily treated, and
54 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
advised me to charge the committee double, — which
I did. But as I never got my pay, I don't know that
it made much difference. I am a very particulai
person about having all I write printed as I write it.
I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a
double re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression
of all my productions, especially verse. A misprint
kills a sensitive author. An intentional change of
his text murders him. No wonder so many poets
die young!
I have nothing more to report at this time, except
two pieces of advice I gave to the young women at
table. One relates to a vulgarism of language,
which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from
female lips. The other is of more serious purport,
and applies to such as contemplate a change of con-
dition, — matrimony, in fact.
The woman who " calc'lates " is lost.
Put not your trust in money, but put youi
money in trust
IIL
[The " Atlantic " obeys the moon, and its Luni-
VERSARY has come round again. I have gathered
up some hasty notes of my remarks made since the
last high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please
to remember this is talk; just as easy and just as
formal as I choose to make it]
THE AUTOCRAT OF THK BREAKFAST -TABLE. 55
1 never saw an author in my life— saving,
perhaps, one — that did not purr as audibly as a full-
grown domestic cat, (Felis CatuSy Lix\n.,) on having
his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand.
But let me give you a caution. Be very careful
how you tell an author he is droll. Ten to one he
will hate you ; and if he does, be sure he can do you
a mischief, and very probably will. Say you cried
over his romance or his verses, and he will love you
and send you a copy. You can laugh over that as
much as you like — in private.
Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed
of being funny ? — Why, there are obvious reasons,
and deep philosophical ones. The clown knows
very well that the women are not in love with him,
but with Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and
plumed hat. Passion never laughs. The wit knows
that his place is at the tail of a procession.
If you want the deep underlying reason, I must
take more time to tell it. There is a perfect con-
sciousness in every form of wit — using that term in
its general sense — that its essence consists in a par-
tial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It
throws a single ray, separated from the rest, — red
yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, — upon an
object; never white light; that is the province of
wisdom. We get beautiful efi'ccts from wit, — all
the prismatic colors, — but never the object as it is in
fair daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a
-i
56 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
different and much shallower trick in mental optics
throwing the shadows of two objects so that one
overlies the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tinta
for special effects, but always keeps its essential ob-
ject in the purest white light of truth. — Will you
allow me to pursue this subject a little further ?
[They didn't allow me at that time, for somebody
happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then ;
which accidental sound, as all must have noticed,
has the instantaneous effect that the cuttins: of the
yellow hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke
the charm, and that breakfast was over.]
Don't flatter yourselves that friendship au
thorizes you to say disagreeable things to your inti-
mates. On the coniarary, the nearer you come into
relation with a person, the more necessary do tact
and courtesy become. Except in cases of necessity,
which are rare, leave your friend to learn unpleasant
truths from his enemies ; they are ready enough to
tell them. Good-breeding never forgets that amour'
propre is universal. When you read the story of
the Archbishop and Gil Bias, you may laugh, if you
will, at the poor old man's delusion ; but don't forget
that the youth was the greater fool of the two, and
that his master served such a booby rightly in turn-
ing him out of doors.
You need not get up a rebellion against what
I say, if you find everything in my sayings is noi
exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man
iHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 57
Who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I
once read an introductory lecture that looked to me
too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found
all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli.
If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up
the little great man, who had once belabored me in
his feeble way. But one can generally tell these
wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not
worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. I
doubt the entire novelty of my remarks just made
on telling unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious*
of any larceny.
Neither make too much of flaws and occasional
overstatements. Some persons seem to think that
absolute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propo-
sitions, is all that conversation admits. This is
precisely as if a musician should insist on having
nothing but perfect chords and simple melodies, — no
diminished fifths, no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on
any account. Now it is fair to say, that, just as
music must have all these, so conversation must
have its partial truths, its embellished truths, its ex-
aggerated tjuths. It is in its higher forms an artistic
product, and admits the ideal element as mucli
as pictures or statues. One man who is a little too
literal can spoil the talk of a whole tableful of men
of esprit. — " Yes," you say, " but who wants to hear
fanciful people's nonsense ? Put the facts to it, and
then see where it is I " — Certainly, if a man is too
3*
58 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TaBLE.
fond of paradox, — if he is flighty and empty, — if,
instead of striking those fifths and sevenths, those
harmonious discords, often so much better than the
twinned octaves, in the music of thought, — if, instead
of striking these, he jangles the chords, stick a fact
into him like a stiletto. But remember that talking
is one of the fine arts, — the noblest, the most impor-
tant, and the most difficult, — and that its fluent har-
monies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a single
harsh note. Therefore conversation which is sug-
gestive rather than argumentative, which lets out
the most of each talker's results of thought, is com-
monly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is
not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together
*^o make the most of each other's thoughts, there are
so many of them.
[The company looked as if they wanted an expla-
nation.]
When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking
together, it is natural enough that among the six
there should be more or less confusion and misappre-
hension.
[Our landlady turned pale ; — no doubt she thought
there was a screw loose in my intellects, — and that
involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe-
looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a
sad cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama,
whom I understand to be the professional ruffian of
the neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lift-
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 59
ing of the brow, drawing down of the corners of the
mouth, and somewhat rasping voce di petto ^ to Fal
Btaff''s nine men in buckram. Everybody looked up
I believe the old gentleman opposite was afraid I
should seize the carving -knife ; at any rate, he slid
it to one side, as it were carelessly.]
I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin
Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities
distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that
dialogue between John and Thomas.
'1. The real John ; known only to his Maker.
2. John's ideal John ; never the real one, and often
Three Johns. -< very unlike him.
3. Thomas's ideal John ; never the real John, nor
John's John, but often very unlike either.
(\. The real Thomas.
Three Thomases, -l 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas.
( 3. John's ideal Thomas.
Only one of the three Johns is taxed ; only one
can be weighed on a platform-balance ; but the other
two are just as important in the conversation. Let
us suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-look-
ing. But as the Higher Powers have not conferred
on men the gift of seeing themselves in the true
light, John very possibly conceives himself to be
youthful, witty, and fascinating, and talks from the
point of view of this ideal. Thomas, again, believe?
him to be an artful rogue, we will say ; therefore he
15, so far as Thomas's attitude in the conversation is
concerned, an artful rogue, though rea'ily simple and
stupid. The same conditions apply to the thre«
(50 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Thomases. It follows, that, until a man can be
found who knows himself as his Maker knows him.
or who sees himself as others see him, there must be
at least six persons engaged in every dialogue be-
tween two. Of these, the least important, philo-
sophically speaking, is the one that we have called
the real person. No wonder two disputants often
get angry, when there are six of them talking and
listening all at the same time.
[A very unphilosophical application of the above
rornarks was made by a young fellow, answering to
the name of John, who sits near me at table. A
certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little
known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me
via this unlettered Johannes. He appropriated the
three that remained in the basket, remarking that
there was just one apiece for him. I convinced
him that his practical inference was hasty and il-
logical, but in the mean time he had eaten the
peaches.]
The opinions of relatives as to a man^s pow-
ers are very commonly of little value ; not merely
because they sometimes overrate their own flesh and
blood, as some may suppose ; on the contrary, they
are quite as likely to underrate those whom they
have grown into the habit of considering like them-
selves. The advent of genius is like what florists
style the breaking of a seedling tulip into what we
raay call high-caste colors, — ten thousand dinghy
THE YOTTNO- FELLOW OI/IiBD JOHN.
-*i
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKF AST-TAB Ml. (]{
flowers, then one with the divine streak; or, if you
prefer it, like the coming up in old Jacob's gard-n
of that most gentlemanly little fruit, the seckel pear,
which I have sometimes seen in shop-windows. It
is a surprise, — there is nothing to account for it. All
at once we find that twice two make Jive. Nature
is fond of what are called " gift-enterprises.'' This
little book of life which she has given into the hands
of its joint possessors is commonly one of the old
story-books bound over again. Only once in a great
while there is a stately poem in it, or its leaves are
illuminated with the glories of art, or they enfold a
draft for untold values signed by the million-fold
millionnaire old mother herself. But strangers are
commonly the first to find the " gift " that came with
the little book. ,
It may be questioned whether anything can be
conscious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-
deer, or the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently
silent animal that might be mentioned, is aware of
any personal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No
man knows his own voice ; many men do not know
their own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's
famous " Characteristics " article ; allow for exag-
gerations, and there is a great deal in his doctrine of
the self-unconsciousness of genius. It comes under
the great law just stated. This incapacity of know-
ing its own traits is often found in the family as well
as in the individual.x So never mind what y )u/
62 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE.
cousins, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest,
say about that fine poem you have written, but send
it (postage-paid) to the editors, if there are any, of
the " Atlantic," — which, by the way, is not so called
because it is a notion^ as some dull wits wish they
had said, but are too late.
Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest
persons, has mingled with it a something which par-
takes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are
bullies, and those who keep company with them are
apt to get a bullying habit of mind ; — not of man-
ners, perhaps ; they may be soft and smooth, but the
smile they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as
the Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly
the best-natured, but not the most diffident of men,
wears upon what he very inelegantly calls his
" mug." Take the man, for instance, who deals in
the mathematical sciences. There is no elasticity
in a mathematical fact ; if you bring up against it,
it never yields a hair's breadth ; everything must go
to pieces that comes in collision with it. What the
mathematician knows being absolute, unconditional,
incapable of suffering question, it should tend, in
the nature of things, to breed a despotic way of
thinking. So of those who deal with the palpable
and often unmistakable facts of external nature ; only
in a less degree. Every probability — and most of
our common, working beliefs are probabilities — is
provided with buffers at both ends, which break the
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 6b
force of opposite opinions clashing against it; but
Bcientific certainty has no spring in it, no courtesy,
no possibility of yielding. All this must react on
the minds which handle these forms of truth.
Oh, you need not tell me that Messrs. A. and
B. are the most gracious, unassuming people in the
world, and yet preeminent in the ranges of science I
am referring to. I know that as well as you. But
mark this which I am going to say once for all : If I
had not force enough to project a principle full in
the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which
seem to contradict it, I would think on]y in single
file from this day forward. A rash man, once visit-
ing a certain noted institution at' South Boston,
ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a
rational being. An old woman who was an attendant
in the Idiot School contradicted the statement, and
appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove
it. The rash man stuck to his hasty generalization,
notwithstanding.
[ It is my desire to be useful to those with
whom I am associated in my daily relations. I not
unfrequently practise the divine art of music in com-
pany with our landlady's daughter, who, as I men
tioned before, is the owner of an accordion. Having
myself a well-marked barytone voice of more than
half an octave in compass, I sometimes add my
vocal powers to her execution of
" Thou, thou reign'st in this bosom,**
64 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
not, however, unless her mother or some other d-^*
creet female is present, to prevent misinterpretation
or remark. I have also taken a good deal of interest
in Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes
called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation
of that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity
and convenience, adopted by some of his betters.
My acquaintance with the French language is very
imperfect, I having never studied it anywhere but in
Paris, which is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to
it with the peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher.
The boy, I think, is doing well, between us, notwith-
standing. The following is an uncorrected French
exercise, written* by this young gentleman. His
mother thinks it very creditable to his abilities ;
though, being unacquainted with the French lan-
guage, her judgment cannot be considered final.
Le Rat des Salons a Lecture.
Ce rat 91 est un animal fort singulier. II a deux pattes de der-
riere sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont il fait
usage pour tenir les journaux. Cet animal a la peau noire pour le
plupart, et porte un cercle blanchatre autour de son cou. On le
trouvetous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, digere, s'il y a
de quoi dans son interleur, respire, tousse, etcrnue, dort, et rcnfle
quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de lire. On ne salt pas
s'il a une autre gite que (^e\k. II a I'air d'une bete tres stupide,
mais il est d'une sagacitd et d'une vitesse extraordinaire quand il
B'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On ne salt pas pourquoi il
lit, paroequ'il ne parait pas avoir des idees. II vocalise rarement,
mais en revanche, il fait des bruits nasaux divers. II porte uj>
rilE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKKAKFAST-TABLE. Gd
crayon dans une do scs poches pectorales, avec Icquel il fait dea
marqnes sur Ics bonis dcs journaux et dcs livres, scmblable aux
luivans : ! ! ! — Bah ! Pooh ! 11 ne faut pas cependant les prendre
pour des signes d'intelligcnce. II ne vole pas, ordinairement ; il
fait raremcnt niemc dcs echanges de parapluie, ct jamais de clia-
peau, parceque son chapcau a toujours un caract^re specificpic. On
ne salt pas au juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier etait d'avia
que c'ctait de I'odeur du cuir des reliures ; ce qu'on dit d'etre une
nourriture animale fort saine, et pea cb^re, II vit bien longtems.
Enfin il meure, en laissant k ses heritiers une carte du Salon k
Lecture ou il avait existd pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il re-
vieut toutes les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On pcut le
voir, dit on, k minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal
du soir, et ayant k sa main un crayon de charbon. Le Icndemain
on trouve des caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce
qui prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les
Professeurs de Cambridge sont des imbeciles qui ne savent rien
du tout, du tout.
I think this exercise, which I have not corrected,
or allowed to be touched in any way, is not discredit-
able to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a
knowledge of zoology at the same time that he is
learning French. Fathers of families in moderate cir-
cumstances will find it profitable to their children, and
an economical mode of instruction, to set them to
revising and amending this boy's exercise. The pas-
sage was originally taken from the " Histoire Na-
turelle des B^tes Ruminaus et Rongeurs, Bipedes et
Autres," lately published in Paris. This was trans-
lated into English and published in London. It was
republished at Great Pc^Uington, with notes and
G6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
additions by the American editor. The notes con
sist of an interrogation-mark on page 53d, and *
reference (p. 127th) to another book " edited " by the
same hand. The additions consist of the editor's
name on the title-page and back, with a complete
and authentic list of said editor's honorary titles
in the first of these localities. Our boy translated
the translation back into French. This may be com-
pared with the original, to be found on Shelf 13, Di-
vision X, of the Public Library of this metropolis.]
Some of you boarders ask me from time to
time why I don't write a story, or a novel, or some-
thing of that kind. Instead of answering each one
of you separately, I will thank you to step up into
the wholesale department for a few moments, where
I deal in answers by the piece and by the bale.
That every articulately-speaking human being has
in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo
has long been with me a cherished belief. It has
been maintained, on the other hand, that many per-
sons cannot write more than one novel, — that all
after that are likely to be failures. — Life is so much
more tremendous a thing in its heights and depths
than any transcript of it can be, that all records of
human experience are as so many bound herbaria to
the innumerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breath-
ing, fragrance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving,
death-distilling leaves and flowers of the forest and
ttie prairies. All we can do with books of human
THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 07
fcxperience is to make them alive again with some-
thing borrowed from our own lives. We can make
a book alive for us just in proportion to its resem-
blance in essence or in form to our own experience.
Now an author's first novel is naturally drawn, to
a great extent, from his personal experiences ; that
is, is a literal copy of nature under various slight dis-
guises. But the moment the author gets out of his
personality, he must have the creative power, as well
as the narrative art and the sentiment, in order to
tell a living story ; and this is rare.
Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life-
story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best
thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded
with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a
few golden grains of wisdom as they flow along.
Oftentimes a single cradling gets them all, and after
that the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud
and worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as
an individual of the human family, could write one
novel or story at any rate, if I would.
Why don't I, then ? — Well, there are several
reasons against it In the first place, I should tell all
my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper
medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme
and the harmonies of musical language, the play of
fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion,
BO hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that
hardly any confession, transfigured in the lurninou.s
-i
68 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLC
halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A
beauty shows herself under the chandeliers, protected
by the glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad
snowdrift of white arms and shoulders laid bare, that,
were she unadorned and in plain calico, she would
bo unendurable — in the opinion of the ladies.
Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up ail
my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers
do not do this ? Now I am afraid all my friends
would not bear showing up very well ; for they have
an average share of the common weakness of hu-
manity, which I am pretty certain would come out.
Of all that have told stories among us there is hard-
ly one I can recall who has not drawn too faithfully
some living portrait that might better have been
spared.
Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible
I might be too dull to write such a story as I should
wish to write.
And finally, I think it very likely I shall write a
story one of these days. Don't be surprised at any
time, if you see me coming out with " The School-
mistress," or " The Old Gentleman Opposite." ■" Ow
schoolmistress and our old gentleman that sits oppo
site had left the table before I said this.] I want mj*
glory for writing the same discounted now, on the
spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready.
How many people live on the reputation of the rep*
utation they might have made !
rilE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 69
1 saw you smiled when I spoke about the
possibility of my being too dull to write a good
story. I don't pretend to know what you meant by
it, but I take occasion to make a remark wiiich may
hereafter prove of value to some among you. — When
one of us who has been led by native vanity or
senseless flattery to think himself or herself possessed
of talent arrives at the full and final conclusion that
he or she is really dull, it is one of the most tranquil-
lizing and blessed convictions that can enter a mor-
tal's mind. All our failures, our short-comings, our
strange disappointments in the effect of our efforts
are lifted from our bruised shoulders, and fall, like
Christian's pack, at the feet of that Omni9otence
which has seen fit to deny us the pleasant gift of
high intelligence, — with which one look may over-
flow us in some wider sphere of being.
How sweetly and honestly one said to me the
other day, " I hate books ! " A gentleman, — singu-
larly free from affectations, — not learned, of course,
but of perfect breeding, which is often so much
better than learning, — by no means dull, in the sense
of knowledge of the world and society, but certainly
not clever either in the arts or sciences, — his com-
pany is pleasing to all who know him. I did not
recognize in him inferiority of literary taste half so
distinctly as I did simplicity of character and fearless
acknowledgment of his inaptitude for scholarship.
In fact, I think there are a great many gentlemen
70 '-THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
and others, who read with a mark to keep theii
place, that really " hate books," bat never had the
wit to find it out, or the manliness to own it. [Entre
nous, I always read with a mark.]
We get into a way of thinking as if what we
call an " intellectual man " was, as a matter of
course, made up of nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of
book-learning, and one-tenth himself. But even if
he is actually so compounded, he need not read
much. Society is a strong solution of books. It
draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading,
as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. If 1
were a prince, I w^ould hire or buy a private literary
tea-pot, in which I would steep all the leaves of new
books that promised well. The infusion would do
for me without the vegetable fibre. You understand
me ; I would have a person whose sole business
should be to read day and night, and talk to me
whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I
would have : a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive
fellow ; knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full
of books about it, which he can use handily, and the
same of all useful arts and sciences ; knows all the
common plots of plays and novels, and the stock
company of characters that are continually coming
on in new costume ; can give you a criticism of an
octavo in an epithet and a wink, and you can de-
pend on it; cares for nobody except for the virtue
there is in what he says ; delights in taking off lig
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRF.AKFAST-TAF5LE. 7i
wigs and professional gowns, and in the disembalm.
•ng and unbandaging of all literary mummies. Yei
he is as tender and reverential to all that bears the
mark of genius, — that is, of a new influx of truth or-
beauty, — as a nun over her missal. In short, he
is one of those men that know everything except
how to make a living. Him would I keep on the
square next my own royal compartment on life's
chessboard. To him I would push up another pawn,
in the shape of a comely and wise young woman,
whom he would of course take — to wife. For all
contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word,
I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, " put
him through " all the material part of life ; see him
sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that,
just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked, — ^with
the privilege of shutting it off at will.
A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like
a harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences,
each answering to some chord of the macrocosm.
They do well to dine together once in a while. A
dinner-party made up of such elements is the last
triumph of civilization over barbarism. Nature and
art combine to charm the senses ; the equatorial zone
of the system is soothed by well-studied artifices;
the faculties are off duty, and fall into their natural
attitudes ; you see wisdom in slippers and science in
a short jacket.
The whole force of con^'^ersation depends on hov9
72 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK.
much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-
players have to play their game out ; nothing short
of the brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their
dull apprehensions. But look at two masters of that
noble game ! White stands well enough, so far as
you can see ; but Red says, Mate in six moves ; —
White looks, — nods; — the game is over. Just so in
talking with first-rate men ; especially when they
are good-natured and expansive, as they are apt to
be at table. That blessed clairvoyance which sees
into things without opening them, — that glorious
license, which, having shut the door and driven the
reporter from its key-hole, calls upon Truth, majestic
virgin! to get off* from her pedestal and drop her
academic poses, and take a festive garland and the
vacant place on the medius lectus, — that carnival-
shower of questions and replies and comments,
large axioms bowled over the mahogany like bomb-
shells from professional mortars, and explosive wit
dropping its trains of many-colored fire, and the
mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelting everybody
that shows himself, — the picture of a truly intellec-
tual banquet is one which the old Divinities might
well have attempted to reproduce in their
T 51
" Oh, oh, oh ! " cried the young fellow whom
chey call John, — " that is from one of your lectures I ''
I know it, I replied, — I concede it, I confess it, I
proclaim it.
" The tiail of ilie serpent is over them all ! "
THi: AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 78
All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have
ruts and grooves in their minds into which their con-
versation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in
riding through the woods of a still June evenings
suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stra-
i nm of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill
-flyer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in
cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay, — where
Ihe Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating
the " Metropolitan " boat-clubs, — find yourself in a
tepid streak, a narrow, local gu]f-stream, a gratuitous
v/arm-bath a little underdone, through which your
glistening shoulders soon flashed, to bring you back
to the cold realities of full-sea temperature ? Just
so, in talking with any of the characters above re-
ferred to, one not unfrequently finds a sudden change
in the style of the conversation. The lack-lustre eye
rayless as a Beacon-Street door-plate in August, all
at once fills with light; the face flings itself wide
open like the church-portals when the bride and
bridegroom enter ; the little man grows in stature
before your eyes, like the small prisoner with hair on
end, beloved yet dreaded of early childhood; you
were talking with a dwarf and an imbecile, — you
have a giant and a trumpet-tongued angel before
yon I Nothing but a streak out of a fifty-dollar
lecture. As when, at some unlooked-for moment,
the mighty fountain-column springs into the air be-
fore the astonished passer-by, — silver-footed, dia*
-*•/
7i IHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-IABLE.
niond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed, — from the bo^oin
of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batra-
chians at home, and the epigrams of a less amiable
and less elevated order of reptilia in other latitudes.
Who was that person that was so abused
some time since for saying that in the conflict of two
races our sympathies naturally go with the higher ?
No matter who he was. Now look at what is going
on in India, — a white, superior " Caucasian " race,
against a dark-skinned, inferior, but still " Caucasian "
race, — and where are English and American sympa-
thies ? We can't stop to settle all the doubtful
questions ; all we know is, that the brute nature is
sure to come out most strongly in the lower race, and
it is the general law that the human side of humanity
should treat the brutal side as it does the same nature
in the inferior animals, — tame it or crush it. The
India mail brings stories of women and children
outraged and murdered; the royal stronghold is in
the hands of the babe-killers. England takes down
the Map of the World, which she has girdled with
empire, and makes a correction thus : DdliHI i Dele,
The civilized world says, Amen.
Do not think, because I talk to you of many
subjects briefly, that I should not find it much lazier
work to take each one of them and dilute it down
to an essay. Borrow some of my old college themes
and water my remarks to suit yourselves, as the
Homeric heroes did with their melas oinoSj — that
TIIR AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75
Dlack sweet, syrupy wine (?) which they used to
alloy with three parts or more of the flowing stream.
[Could it have been melasses, as Webster and his
provincials spell it, — or Mo/ossa's, as dear old smat-
tering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cot-
ton Mather, has it in the " Magnalia " ? Ponder
thereon, ye small antiquaries who make barn-
door-fowl flights of learning in " Notes and Queries ! "
— ye Historical Societies, in one of whose venerable
triremes I, too, ascend the stream of time, while
other hands tug at the oars ! — ye Amines of parasiti-
cal literature, who pick up your grains of native-
grown food with a bodkin, having gorged upon less
honest fare, until, like the great minds Goethe
speaks of, you have "made a Golgotha" of your
pages I — ponder thereon !]
Before you go, this morning, I want to read
you a copy of verses. You wiU understand by the
title that they are written in an imaginary character.
I don't doubt they will fit some family-man weU
enough. I send it forth as " Oak Hall " projects a
coat, on a priori grounds of conviction that it will
suit somebody. There is no loftier illustration of
faith than this. It believes that a soul has been clad
in flesh ; that tender parents have fed and nurturecf
it ; that its mysterious compages or frame- work has
survived its myriad exposures and reached the stature
of maturity; that the Man, now self-determining, has
given in his adhesion to the traditions and habits 0/
76 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEE AKFAST-T ABIE.
the race in favor of artificial clothing ; that he will,
having all the world to choose from, select the very
locality where this audacious generalization has been
acted upon. It builds a garment cut to the pattern
of an Idea, and trusts that Nature will model a ma-
teiial shape to fit it. There is a prophecy in every
seaiii, and its pockets are full of inspiration, — Now
^ear thd verses.
THE OLD MAN DREAMS.
O tor one hour of youthful joy I
Give beick my twentieth spring I
I'd rathei: laugi a bright-haired boy
Than reign a gray-beard king 1
Off "with the wrinitled spoils of age 1
Away with learning'i* crown !
Tear out life's wisdom-wiitten page,
And dash its trophies dow^n 1
One moment let my life-blood tjtreatn
From boyhood's fount of flame I
Give me one giddy, reeling dream
Of life all love and fame I
—My listening angel heard the pra^^".
And calmly smiling, said,
** If I but touch thy silvered hjur,
Thy hasty wish hath sped.
•* But is there nothing in thy track
To bid thee fondly stay,
THE AUTOCUAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 77
Wliile the swift seasons hurry back
To find the wished-for day ? ' '
—Ah, truest soul of womankind 1
Without thee, what were life ?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take — my — precious — wife 1
—The angel took a sapphire pen ,
And wrote in rainbow dew,
** The man would be a boy again,
And be a husband too 1 " ,
— "And is there nothing yet unsaid
Before the change appears ?
Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years I **
Why, yes ; for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys ;
I could not bear to leave them all ;
ril take — ^my — girl — and — ^boys 1
The smiling angel dropped his pen, —
" Why this will never do ;
The man would be a boy again,
And be a father too I "
And so I laughed, — my laughter woke
The household with its noise, —
And wrote my dream, when morning brok6|
To please the gray-haired boya.
-i
78 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAJLE.
IV.
[I AM SO well pleased with my boarding-house that
I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of
course I shall have a great many conversations to
report, and the} will necessarily be of different tone
and on different subjects. The talks are like the
breakfasts, — sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes
dry. You must take them as they come. How can
I do what all these letters ask me to? No. 1.
want serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter
smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes ; wants
me to tell a " good storey " which he has copied out
for me. (I suppose two letters before the word
" good " refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told
the story.) No. 3. (in female hand) — more poetry.
No. 4. wants something that would be of use to a
practical man. (Prahctical mahn he probably pro-
nounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented) —
" more sentiment," — " heart's outpourings."
My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but
report such remarks as I happen to have made at
our breakfast-table. Their character will depend on
many accidents, — a good deal on the particular per
sons in the company to whom they were addressed.
It so happens that those which follow were mainly
intended for the divinity-student and the school-
mistress ; though others, whom I need not mention,
I'KE A,UTOCRAT OF THE BRZAKFAST-TABLE. 73
Ff- V fit to interfere, with more or less propriety, in
the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a
talker ; and of course, if I was not talking for out
whole company, I don't expect all the readers of this
periodical to be interested in my notes of what
was said. Still, I think there may be a few that
will rather like this vein, — possibly prefer it to a live-
lier one, — serious young men, and young women
generally, in life's roseate parenthesis from
years of age to inclusive.
Another privilege of talking is to misquote. — Of
course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut the yel-
low hair, — but Iris. (As I have since told you) it
was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had
used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood
firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian
Here — Juno, in Latin — sent down Iris instead. But
I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentle-
men that do the heavy articles for the celebrated
" Oceanic Miscellany " misquoted Campbell's line
without any excuse. " Waft us home the message "
of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful
for the correction ?]
The more we study the body and the mind,
the more we find both to be governed, not by^ but
according to laws, such as we observe in the larger
universe. — You think you know all about walkings —
don't you, now ? W(?ll, how do you suppose your
ower limbs are held to your body ? They are
80 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREiiKF AST-TABLE.
sucked up by two cupping vessels, (" cotyloid ' ' —
cup-like — cavities,) and held there as long as you
live, and longer. At any rate, you think you move
them backward and forward at such a rate as your
will determines, don't you ? On the contrary, they
swing just as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed
rate, determined by their length. You can alter this
by muscular power, as you can take hold of the pen-
dulum of a clock and make it move faster or slower ;
but your ordinary gait is timed by the same mech-
anism as the movements of the solar system.
[My friend, the Professor, told me all this, referring
me to certain German physiologists by the name of
Weber for proof of the facts, which, however, he
said he had often verified. I appropriated it to my
own use ; what can one do better than this, when
one has a friend that tells him anything worth re-
membering ?
The Professor seems to think that man and the
general powers of the universe are in partnership.
Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a
million to move the Leviathan only so far as they
had got it already. — Why, — said the Professor, —
they might have hired an earthquake for less
money !]
Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom
of many of the bodily movements, just so thought
may be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such
or such a thought comes round periodically, in ita
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 81
turn. Accidental suggestions, however, so far inter-
fere with the regular cycles, that we may find them
practically beyond our power of recognition. Take
all this for what it is worth, but at any rate you will
agree that there are certain particular thoughts that
do not come up once a day, nor once a week, but
that a year would hardly go round without your
having them pass through your mind. Here is one
which comes up at intervals in this way. Some one
speaks of it, and there is an instant and eager smile
of assent in the listener or listeners. Yes, indeed ;
they have often been struck by it.
All at once a conviction flashes through us that we
have been in the same precise circumstances as at the
present instant^ once or many times before.
O, dear, yes ! — said one of the company, — every-
body has had that feeling.
The landlady didn't know anything about such
notions ; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected.
The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of
way, that she knew the feeling well, and didn't like
to experience it ; it made her think she was a ghost,
sometimes.
The young fellow whom they call John said he
knew all about it ; he had just lighted a cheroot the
other day, when a tremendous conviction all at once
came over him that he had done just that same thing
ever so many times before. I looked severely at
him, and his countenance immediately fell — on the
4*
82 THE AUTJCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE.
side toward me ; I cannot answer foi the other, for
he can wink and laugh with either half of his face
without the other half's knowing it.
1 have noticed — I went on to say — the fol-
lowing circumstances connected with these sudden
impressions. First, that the condition which seems
to be the duplicate of a former one is often very
trivial, — one that might have presented itself a hun-
dred times. Secondly, that the impression is very
evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by
any voluntary effort, at least after any time has
elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to
record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity
to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly,
I have often felt that the duplicate condition had not
only occurred once before, but that it was familiar
and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the
same convictions in my dreams.
How do I account for it ? — Why, there are several
ways that I can mention, and you may take your
choice. The first is that which the young lady
hinted at; — ^that these flashes are sudden recollec-
tions of a previous existence. I don't believe that ;
for I remember a poor student I used to know told
me he had such a conviction one day when he was
blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever
lived in another world where they use Day and Mar-
tin.
Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 83
being a double organ, its hemispheres working to*
gether like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of
the hemispheres hangs fir^ they suppose, and the
small interval between the perceptions of the nimble
and th<», sluggish half seems an indefinitely long
period, and therefore the second perception appears
to be the copy of another, ever so old. But even al-
lowing the centre of perception to be double, I can see
no good reason for supposing this indefinite length-
ening of the time, nor any analogy that bears it out.
It seems to me most likely that the coincidence of
circumstances is very partial, but that we take this
partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally
do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture
of circumstances is so far like some preceding one
that we accept it as exactly the same, just as we
accost a stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a
friend. The apparent similarity may be owing per-
haps, quite as much to the mental state at the time,
as to the outward circumstances.
Here is another of these curiously recurring
remarks. I have said it, and heard it many titnes,
and occasionally met with something like it in books,
— somewhere in Bulwer*s novels, I think, and in one
of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know.
Memory^ imagination^ old sentimenU and associa-
tions^ are more readily reached tkrougk the sense of
SMELL than '>y aimusl aw/ other channel.
Of couise the pa-^icular odors which act upon
Si THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
each person's susceptibilities differ.^— O, yes! I wiL
tell you some of mine. The smell of phosphorus is
one of them. During a year or two of adolescence
I used to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and
as about that time I had my little aspirations and
passions like another, some of these things got mixed
up with each other: orange -colored fumes of nitrous
acid, and visions as bright and transient ; reddening
litmus-paper, and blushing cheeks ; — eheu !
" Soles occidere et redire possunt,"
but there is no reagent that will redden the faded
roses of eighteen hundred and spare them!
But, as I \^as saying, phosphorus fires this train of
associations in an instant ; its luminous vapors with
their penetrating odor throw me into a trance ; it
comes to me in a double sense " trailing clouds of
glory." Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne
phosphor-g^eruch, have worn my sensibilities a little.
Then there is the marigold. When I was of
smallest dimensions, and wont to ride impacted
between the knees of fond parental pair, we would
sometimes cross the bridge to the next village-town
and stop opposite a low, brown, " gambrel -roofed "
cottage. Out of it would come one Sally, sister of
its swarthy tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-
voiced, and, bending over her flower-bed, would
gather a " posy," as she called it, for the little boy.
Sally lies in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK. §5
at her head, lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within
the last few years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies,
grenadier-Uke rows of seedling onions, — stateliest of
vegetables, — all are gone, but the breath of a mari
gold brings them all back to me.
Perhaps the herb everlastings the fragrant immor'
telle of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive
odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can
hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions
that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale,
dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepul-
chral spicery, as if it had been brought from the core
of some great pyramid, where it had lain on the
breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of
immortality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so
long in its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why
it ^s my eyes with tears and carries me in blissful
thought to the banks of asphodel that border the
Kiver of Life.
1 should not have talked so much about these
personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to
make about them which I believe is a new one. It is
this. There may be a physical reason for the strange
connection between the sense of smell and the mind.
The olfactory nerve — so my friend, the Professor, tells
me — is the o::ly one directly connected with the hem-
ispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we have
every reason to believe, the intellectual processes are
performed. To speak more truly the olfactory
86 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
" nerve " is not a nerve at all, he says, but a pari of
the brain, in intimate connection with its anteriof
lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at
the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not
decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remem-
bering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of
suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now
the Professor assures me that you will find the nerve
of taste has no immediate connection with the brain
proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal
cord.
[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much
attention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But
while I was speaking about the sense of smell he
nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in
getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief.
Then he lurched a little to the other side, and after
much tribulation at last extricated an ample round
snuff-box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the
wonted pugU. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean
lying therein. I made the manual sign understood
of all mankind that use the precious dust, and
presently my brain, too, responded to the long unused
stimulus. O boys, — that were, — actual papas and
possible grandpapas, — some of you with crowns
like billiard-balls, — some in locks of sable silvered,
and some of silver sabled, — do you remember, as you
doze over this, those after-dinners at the Trois Freres
when the Scotch-plaided snuff-box went round, and
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BBEAKFAST-TABLE. gj
the dry Lundy-Foot tickled its way along into oui
happy sensoria? Then it was that the Chambertin
or the Clos Vougeot came in, slumbering in its straw
cradle. And one among you,^-do you remember
how he would have a bit of ice always in his Bur-
gundy, and sit tinkling it against the sides of the
bubble-like glass, saying that he was hearing the
cow-bells as he used to hear them, when the deep-
breathing kine came home at twilight from the
huckleberry pasture, in the old home a thousand
eagues towards the sunset?]
Ah me! what strains and strophes of unwritten
rerse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain
closet in the ancient house where I was born ! On
its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet- marjoram
and pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip ;
there apples were stored until their seeds should grow
black, which happy period there were sharp little
milk-teeth always ready to anticipate ; there peaches
lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had
lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream of
heaven in their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the
breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score of
dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses.
Do I remember Byron's line about " striking
the electric chain " ? — To be sure I do. I sometimes
think the less the hint that stirs the automatic ma-
chinery of association, the more easily this moves us.
What can be more trivial than that old story of
88 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
opening the folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some
ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christ-
mas pastry between its leaves, shut up in them per-
haps a hundred years ago ? And, lo ! as one looks on
these poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe
changes in the twinkling of an eye ; old George the
Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is coming
into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, promising
young man, and over the Channel they are pulling
the Sieur Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and
across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking
Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William
Henry; all the dead people who have been in the
dust so long — even to the stout-armed cook that
made the pastry — are alive again; the planet un-
winds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the pre-
cession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of
heaven ! And all this for a bit of pie-crust !
1 will thank you for that pie, — said the pro
voking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly.
He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to
his eyes as if moved. — I was thinking, — he said in-
distinctly
How? What is't? — said our landlady.
1 was thinking — said he — who was king of
England when this old pie was baked, — and it made
me feel bad to think how long he must have been
dead.
[Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a wddow»
THE AUrOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ^j)
of /course ; celd va sans dire. She told me her story
once ; it was as if a grain of corn that had beex
ground and bolted had tried to individualize itself b^
a special narrative. There was the wooing and the
wedding, — the start in life, — the disappointment, —
the children she had buried, — the struggle against
fate, — ^the dismantling of life, first of its small lux-
uries, and then of its comforts, — the broken spirits, —
the altered character of the one on whom she leaned,
— and at last the death that came and drew the black
curtain between her and all her earthly hopes.
I never laughed at my landlady after she had told
me her story, but I often cried,. — not those pattering
tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors'
grounds, the stillicidium of self-conscious sentimentj
but those which steal noiselessly through their con-
duits until they reach the cisterns lying round about
the heart ; those tears that we weep inwardly with
unchanging features ; — such I did shed for her often
when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged
at her soul with their red-hot pincers.]
Young man, — I said, — the pasty you speak lightly
of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor to serve
us, especially^ if they are of the weaker sex, is very
old, and yet well worth retaining. May I recommend
to you The following caution, as a guide, whenever
you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet
—if you are handling an editor or politician, it is su-
perfluous advice. I take it from the back of one of
90 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TARL'J:.
those little French toys which contain pasteboard,
figures moved by a small running stream of fine
sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for you:
" Quoiqu^elle soit tres solidement montee, ilfaut ne pas
BRUTALisER la machifie.^^ — I will thank you for the
pie, if you please.
[I took more of it than was good for me, — as
much as 85", T should think, — and had an indiges-
tion in consequence. While I was suffering from it,
I wrote some sadly desponding poems, and a theo-
logical essay which took a very melancholy view of
creation. When I got better I labelled them all
" Pie-crust," and laid them by as scarecrows and
solemn warnings. I have a number of books on my
shelves that I should like to label with some such
title ; but, as they have great names on their title-
pages, — Doctors of Divinity, some of them, — it
wouldn't do.]
-My friend, the Professor, whom I have men-
tioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that
somebody had been abusing him in some of the jour-
nals of his calling. I told him that I didn't doubt
he deserved it ; that I hoped he did deserve a little
abuse occasionally, and would for a number of years
to come ; that nobody could do anything to make
his neighbors wiser or better without being liable to
abuse for it; especially that people hated to have
their little mistakes made fun of, and perhaps he had
been doing something of the kind. — The Professor
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 91
•miled. — Now, said I, hear what I am going to say.
It will not take many years to bring you to the period
of life when men, at least the majority of writing
and talking men, do nothing but praise. Men, like
peaches and pears, grow sweet a little while before
they begin to decay. I don*t know what it is, —
whether a spontaneous change, mental or bodily, or
whether it is thorough experience of the thankless-
ness of critical honesty, — but it is a fact, that most
writers, except sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired
of finding fault at about the time when they are be-
ginning to grow old. As a general thing, I would
not give a great deal for the fair words of a critic, if
he is himself an author, over fifty years of age. At
thirty we are all trying to cut our names in big let-
ters upon the walls of this tenement of life ; twenty
years later we have carved it, or shut up our jack-
knives. Then we are ready to help others, and care
less to hinder any, because nobody's elbows are in
our way. So I am glad you have a little life left ;
you will be saccharine enough in a few years.
Some of the softening effects of advancing
age have struck me very much in what I have heard
or seen here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the
sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you
know that in the gradual passage from maturity to
helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have
a period in which they are gentle and placid as
young children ? I have heard it said, but I cannot
92 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE.
be sponsor for its truth, that the famous chieftain,
Lochiel, was rocked in a cradle like a baby, in hi3
old age. An old man, whose studies had been of
the severest scholastic kind, used to love to hear little
nursery-stories read over and over to him. One who
saw the Duke of Wellington in his last years de-
scribes him as very gentle in his aspect and de-
meanor. I remember a person of singularly stern
and lofty bearing who became remarkably gracious
and easy in all his ways in the later period of his life.
And that leads me to say that men often remind
me of pears in their way of coming to maturity.
Some are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles,
and must be made the most of, for their day is soon
over. Some come into their perfect condition late,
like the autumn kinds, and they last better than the
summer fruit. And some, that, like the Winter-
Nelis, have been hard and uninviting until all the
rest have had their season, get their glow and per-
fume long after the frost and snow have done their
worst with the orchards. Beware of rash criticisms ;
the rough and stringent fruit you condemn may be
an autumn or a winter pear, and that which you
picked up beneath the same bough in August may
have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. Milton
was a Saint- Germain with a graft of the roseate
Early- Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, russet
skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre ; the buda
of a new summer were swelling when he ripened
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93
— There is no power I envy so much — said the
dwmity-student — as that of seeing analogies and
making comparisons. I don't understand how it is
that some minds are continually coupling thoughts
or objects that seem not in the least related to each
other, until all at once they are put in a certain
light, and you wonder that you did not always see
that they were as like as a pair of twins. It appears
to me a sort of miraculous gift.
[He is rather a nice young man, and I think haa
an appreciation of the higher mental qualities re
markable for one of his years and training. I try his
head occasionally as housewives try eggs, — give it
an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so
to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential,
or only contains lifeless albumen.
You call it miraculous^ — I replied, — tossing the ex-
pression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I
fear. — Two men are walking by the polyphloesboean
ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which
he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and
the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly
hold water at all, — and you call the tin cup a mirac-
ulous possession ! It is the ocean that is the miracle,
my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that all
things are in all things, and that just according to
the intensity and extension of our mental being we
shall see the many in the one and the one in the
many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying
94 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
when he made his speech about the ocean, — the child
and the pebbles, you know ? Did he mean to speak
slightingly of a pebble ? Of a spherical solid which
stood sentinel over its compartment of space before
the stone that became the pyramids had grown solid,
and has watched it until now ! A body which knows
all the currents of force that traverse the globe ;
which holds by invisible threads to the ring of Saturn
and the belt of Orion ! A body from the contem-
plation of which an archangel could infer the entire
inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! A
throne of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided its
every atom since the rosary of heaven was strung
with beaded stars !
So, — "to return to our walk by the ocean, — if all
that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved,
all that maddening narcotics have driven through the
brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the
fancies of women, — if the dreams of colleges and
convents and boarding-schools, — if every human feel-
ing that sighs, or smiles, or cm'ses, or shrieks, or
groans, should bring all their innumerable images,
such as come with every hurried heart-beat, — the
epic which held them all, though its letters filled the
zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean
of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the
universe.
[The divinity-student honored himself by the way
in which he received this. He did not swallow it at
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 95
once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a
pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him 1 1
his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his
leisure.]
Here is another remark made for his especial
benefit. — There is a natural tendency in many per-
sons to run their adjectives together in triads, as I
have heard them called, — thus: He was honorable,
courteous, and brave ; she was graceful, pleasing,
and virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this ; I
think it was Bulwer who said you could separate a
paper in the " Rambler " into three distinct essays,
Many of our writers show the same tendency, — my
friend, the Professor, especially. Some think it is in
humble imitation of Johnson, — some that it is for
the sake of the stately sound only. I don't think
they get to the bottom of it. It is, I suspect, an
instinctive and involuntary effort of the mind to
present a thought or image with the three dimensions
that belong to every solid, — an unconscious handling
of an idea as if it had length, breadth, and thickness.
It is a great deal easier to say this than to prove it,
and a great deal easier to dispute it than to disprove
it. But mind this : the more we observe and study,
llie wider we find the range of the automatic and
instinctive principles in body, mind, and morals, and
the narrower the limits of the self-determining con-
Bcious movement.
^—-1 have often seen piano-foite players and
^5 ^fll5 AUTCJdRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
<^lrij^e"fa rixdkc such strange motions over their in-
strariients or song-books that I wanted to laugh at
them. " Where did our friends pick up all these
tine ecstatic airs ? " I would say to myself. Then I
would remember My Lady in " Marriage a la Mode,"
and amuse myself with thinking how affectation was
the same thing in Hogarth's time and in our own.
But one day I bought me a Canary-bird and hung
him up in a cage at my window. By-and-by ho
found himself at home, and began to pipe his little
tunes ; and there he was, sure enough, swimming
and waving about, with all the droopings and lift-
ings and languishing side-turnings of the head that I
had laughed at. And now I should like to ask,
Who taught him all this ? — and me, through him,
that the foolish head was not the one swinging itself
from side to side and bowing and nodding over the
music, but that other which was passing its shallow
and self-satisfied judgment on a creature made of
finer clay than the frame which carried that same
head upon its shoulders ?
Do you want an image of the human will, or
the self-determining principle, as compared with its
prearranged and impassable restrictions ? A drop
of water, imprisoned in a crystal ; you may see such
a one in any mineralogical collection. One little
fluid particle in the crystalline prism of the solid
universe !
Weaken moral obligations ? — No, not weaken,
'{Jt^c0 '-<^
THS FOOB BEIiATION
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 97
but define them. When I preach that sermon
spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down
some principles not fully recognized in some of youi
text-books.
I should have to begin with one most formidable
preliminary. You saw an article the other day in
one of the journals, perhaps, in which some old
Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very
apt to be fools and cowards. But a great many of
the clergyman's patients are not only fools and
cowards, but also liars.
[Immense sensation at the table. — Sudden retire-
ment of the angular female in oxydated bombazine.
Movement of adhesion — as they say in the Chamber
of Deputies — on the part of the young fellow they
call John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's
lower jaw — (gravitation is beginning to get the
better of him.) Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin,
briskly, — Go to school right off, there's a good boy I
Schoolmistress curious, — takes a quick glance at
divinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed
draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big false-
hood — or truth — had hit him in the forehead. My-
self calm.]
1 should not make such a speech as that, you
know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to
fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed.
Will you run up stairs, Benjamin Franklin, (for B.
F. had not gone right off, of course,) and bring down
98 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRSAKFAST-TABLE.
a small volume from the left upper corner of the
right-hand shelves ?
[Look ai the precious little black, ribbed backed,
clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. " Desiderii
Erasmi Colloquia. Amstelodami. Typis Ludo-
vici Elzevirii. 1650." Various names written on
iitle-page. Most conspicuous this : Gul. Cookeson
E. (^11. Omn. Anim. 1725. Oxon.
O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College,
Oxford, — then writing as I now write, — now in the
dust, where I shall lie, — is this line all that remains
to thee of earthly remembrance ? Thy name is at
least once more spoken by living men ; — is it a plea-
sure to thee ? Thou shalt share with me my little
draught of immortality, — its week, its month, its
year, — whatever it may be,— and then we will go
together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Un-
3atalogued Library !]
If you think I have used rather strong lan-
guage, I shall have to read something to you out of
the book of this keen and witty scholar, — the great
Erasmus, — who "laid the egg of the Reformation
which Luther hatched." Oh, you never read his
Naufragium^ or " Shipwreck," did you ? Of course
not ; for, if you had, I don't think you would have
given me credit — or discredit — for entire originality
in that speech of mine. That men are cowards in
the contemplation of futurity he illustrates by the
extraordinary antics of many on board the sinking
TRK AUTOCRAT 01 THE BREAKFAST- T.-lBLE. 99
vessel; that thoy are fools, by their praying to th
sea, and making pronriises to bits of wood from the
true cross, and all manner of similar nonsense ; Ihat
they ai'c fools, cowards, and liars all al once, by this
story : T will put it into rough English for you. — " I
couldn't help laughing to hear one fellow bawling
out, so that he might be sure to be heard, a promise
to Saint Christopher of Paris — the monstrous statue
in the great church there — that he would give him a
wax taper as big as himself. * Mind what you
promise! ' said an acquaintance that stood near him,
poking him with his elbow; 'you couldn't pay for
it, if you sold all your things at auction.' ' Hold
your tongue, you donkey!' said the fellow, — but
softly, so that Saint Christopher should not hear him,
— * do you think I'm in earnest ? If I once get my
foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so much as
a tallow candle ! ' "
Now, therefore, remembering that those who have
been loudest in their talk about the great subject of
which we were speaking have not necessarily been
wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have
very often been wanting in one or two or all of the
qualities these words imply, I should expect to find
a good many doctrines current in the schools which
I should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and
false.
So you would abuse other people's beliefs,
Sur, and yet not tell us your own creed ! — said the
100 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST--TABLE.
divdnity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which
I liked him all the better.
1 have a creed, — I replied ;- -none better, and
none shorter. It is told in two words, — the two first
of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I
mean them. And when I compared the human will
to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define
moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was
what I intended to express: that the fluent, self-
determining power of human beings is a very strictly
limited agency in the universe. The chief planes
of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization,
education, condition. Organization may reduce the
power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots ; and
from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight
gradations. Education is only second to nature.
Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and
Timbuctoo to change places ! Condition does less,
but " Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the
prayer of Agar, and with good reason. If there is
any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting
out of the region of pure abstractions and taking
these every-day working forces into account. The
great theological question now heaving and throb-
bing in the minds of Christian men is this :
No, I wont talk about these things now. My re-
marks might be repeated, and it would give my
friends pain to see vnih what personal incivilities I
should be visited. Besides, what business has a
niL AUTOCRAl OF THE BREAK FAST-TABLK. 101
mere boarder to be talking about such things at a
breakfast-table ? Let him make puns. To be sure,
he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and
learned his alphabet out of a quarto " Concilium
Tridentinum." He has also heard many thousand
theological lectures by men of various denomina-
tions ; and it is not at all to the credit of these teach-
ers, if he is not fit by this time to express an opinion
on theological matters.
I know well enough that there are some of you
who had a great deal rather see me stand on my
head than use it for any purpose of thought. Does
not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two let-
ters a week, requesting him to
. . ., — on the strength of some youthful antic of
nis, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent con-
stituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a
harlequin ?
Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting
lo laugh, and I like to make you laugh, well enough,
when 1 can. But then observe this : if the sense of
the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature,
it is very well ; but if that is all there is in a man,
he had better have been an ape at once, and so have
stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and
tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same ma-
chinery of sensibility ; one is wind-power, and the
other water-power ; that is all. I have often heard
khe Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's
i02 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TaBLE
cleverest illustration of the reciprocal convertibility
of the two states of which these acts are the mani-
festations ; But you may see it every day in chil-
dren ; and if you want to choke with stifled taars at
sight of the transition, as it shows itself in oldei
years, go and see Mr. Blake play Jesse Rural.
It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to
indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh
with him just so long as he amuses them ; but if he
attempts to be serious, they must still have their
laugh, and so they laugh at him. There is in addi-
tion, however, a deeper reason for this than would at
first appear. Do you know that you feel a little
superior to every man who makes you laugh, whether
by making faces or verses? Are you aware that
you have a pleasant sense of pationizing him, when
you condescend so far as to let him turn somersets,
literal or literary, for your royal delight ? Now if a
man can only be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised
platform, and look down on his neighbor who is ex-
erting his talent for him, oh, it is all right ! — first-rate
performance ! — and all the rest of the fine phrases.
But if all at once the performer asks the gentleman
to come upon the floor, and, stepping upon the plat-
form, begins to talk down at him, — ah, that wasn't
in the programme !
I have never forgotten what happened when Syd-
ney Smith — who, as everybody knows, was an ex-
ceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch
IHL AUTOCRAT OF THE BUEAKFAST-TABLF. 103
of him — ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties
of Royalty. Tlie " Quarterly," " so savage and tar
tarly," came down upon him in the most contempt-
uous style, as " a joker of jokes," a " diner-out of the
first water," in one of his own phrases ; sneering at
him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court,
sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have
been mean enough to do to a man of his position
and genius, or to any decent person even. — K I were
giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two
or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all
means to keep his wit in the background until after
he had made a reputation by his more solid qualities.
And so to an actor: Hamlet first, and Bob Logic
afterwards, if you like ; but don't think, as they say
poor Liston used to, that people will be ready to
allow that you can do anything great with Macbeth'' s
dagger after flourishing about with Paul Pry^s um-
brella. Do you know, too, that the majority of men
look upon all who challenge their attention, — for a
while, at least, — as beggars, and nuisances ? They
always try to get off" as cheaply as they can ; and
the cheapest of all things they can give a literary
man — pardon the forlorn pleasantry ! — is the funny'
bone. That is all very well so far as it goes, but
satisfies no man, and makes a good many angry, aa
I told you on a former occasion.
Oh, indeed, no I — I am not ashamed to mako
vou laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you
104 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
something I have in my desk which would probably
make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these
days, if you are patient with me when I am senti-
mental and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous
has its place in the universe ; it is not a human in-
vention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in
the practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long be-
fore Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it
is that we always consider solemnity and the ab-
sence of all gay surprises and encounter of wits as
essential to the idea of the future life of those whom
we thus deprive of half their faculties and then call
blessed I There are not a few who, even in this ive,
seem to be preparing themselves for that smileless
eternity to which they look forward, by banishing all
gayety from their hearts and all joyousness from
their countenances. I meet one such in the street
not unfrequently, a person of intelligence and edu-
cation, but who gives me (and all that he passes)
such a rayless and chilling look of recognition, —
something as if he were one of Heaven's assessors,
come down to "doom" every acquaintance he met,
— that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on the spot,
and gone home with a violent cold, dating from that
instant. I don't doubt he would cut his kitten's tail
off, if he caught her playing with it. Please tell
me, who taught her to play with it ?
No, no ! — give me a chance to talk to you, my fel-
low-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shali
ittK AUTOCRAT OF HIE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 105
nave any scruples about entertaining you, if I can
do it, as well as giving you some of my serious
thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know
nothing in English or any other literature more ad-
mirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne
" Every man truly lives, so long as he acts hi8
NATURE, OR SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OP
HIMSELF."
I find the great thing in this world is not so much
where we stand, as in what direction we are moving:
To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes
with the wind and sometimes against it, — but we
must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. ( There is
one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind
that is really moving onward. It is this : that one
cannot help using his early friends as the seaman
uses the log, to mark his progress. Every now and
then we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with
a string of thought tied to him, and look — I am
afraid with a kind of luxurious and sanctitnonious
compassion — to see the rate at which the string reels
off, while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor
fellow! and we are dashing along with the while
foam and bright sparkle at our bows ; — the ruffled
bosom of prosperity and progress, with a sprig of
diamonds stuck in it! But this is only the senti-
mental side of the matter; for grow we must, if we
outgrow all that we love. /
Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the
5*
106 THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABl.E.
log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying
that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of move-
ment by those with whom we have long been in the
habit of comparing ourselves ; and when they onco
become stationary, we can get our reckoning from
them with painful accuracy. We see just wliat we
were w hen they were our peers, and can strike tlie
balance between that and whatever we may feel
ourselves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes
be mistaken. If we change our last simile to that
very old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the har-
bor and sailing in company for some distant region,
we can get what we want out of it. There is one
of our companions ; — her streamers were torn into
rags before she had got into the open sea, then by
and by her sails blew out of the ropes one after
another, the waves swept her deck, and as night
came on we left her a seeming wreck, as we flew
under our pyramid of canvas. But lo ! at dawn she
is still in sight, — it may be in advance of us. Some
deep ocean-current has been moving her on, strong,
but silent, — yes, stronger than these noisy winds that
pufF our sails until they are swollen as the cheeks of
jubilant cherubim. And when at last the black
steam-tug with the skeleton arms, which comes out
of the mist sooner or later and takes us all in tow,
grapples her and goes off panting and groaning with
her, it is to that harbor where all wrecks are refitted,
and where, alas ! we, towering in our pride, may
never come.
TUE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. IQt
So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of
old friendships, because we cannot help instituting
'comparisons between our present and former selves
by the aid of those who were what we were, but
are not what we are. Nothing strikes one more, in
the race of life, than to see how many give out in
the first half of the course. " Commencement day "
always reminds me of the start for the " Derby,"
when the beautiful high-bred three-year olds of the
season are brought up for trial. That day is the
start, and life is the race. Here we are at Cam-
bridge, and a class is just " graduating." Poor
Harry ! he was to have been there too, but he has
paid forfeit ; step out here into the grass back of the
church ; ah ! there it is : —
" HUNC LAPIDEM POSUERUNT
Soon MCERENTES."
But this is the start, and here they are, — coats bright
as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can
make them. Some of the best of the colts are
pranced round, a few minutes each, to show their
paces. What is that old gentleman crying about ?
and the old lady by him, and the three girls, what
are they all covering their eyes for ? Oh, that is
their colt which has just been trotted up on the
stage. Do they really think those little thin legs
can do anything in such a slashing sweepstakes as is
coming off in these next forty years ? Oh, this ter-
rible gift of second-sight that comes to some of us
108 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLR.
when we begin to look through the silvered rings of
the arcus senilis !
Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few
broken down ; two or three bolted. Several show
in advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems
to be ahead of the rest ; those black colts commonly
get the start, I have noticed, of the others, in. the first
quarter. Meteor has pulled up.
Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock
has dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron-gray,
has the lead. But look I how they have thinned out I
Down flat, — five, — six, — how many? They lie still
enough I they will not get up again in this race, be
very sure ! And the rest of them, what a " tailing
off"! Anybody can see who is going to win, —
perhaps.
Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright
sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins
to make play fast; is getting to be the favourite
with many. But who is that other one that has been
lengthening his stride from the first, and now shows
close up to the front ? Don't you remember the
quiet brown colt Asteroid, with the star in his fore-
head ? That is he ; he is one of the sort that lasts ;
look out for him ! The black " colt," as we used to
call him, is in the background, taking it easily in a
gentle trot. There is one they used to call the Filly^
on account of a certain feminine air he had ; well up,
vou see • the Filly is not to be debased m^ bojf !
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. IQO
Forty years. More dropping off, — but places much
as before.
Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the
course are coming in at a walk ; no more running.
Who is ahead ? Ahead ? What ! and the winning-
post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from
that turf where there is no more jockeying or strain-
ing for victory I Well, the world marks their places
in its betting-book; but be sure that these matter
very little, if they have run as well as they knew
how!
Did I not say to you a little while ago that
the universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and
analogies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or
Wordsworth, just now, to show you what thoughts
were suggested to them by the simplest natural
objects, such as a flower or a leaf ; but I will read
you a few lines, if you dp not object, suggested by
looking at a section of one of those chambered shells
to which is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We
need not trouble ourselves about the distinction be-
tween this and the Paper Nautilus, the Argonauta of
the ancients. The name applied to both shows that
each has long been compared to a ship, as you may
see more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the " En-
cyclopedia," to which he refers. If you will look
into Roget'« Bridgewater Treatise, you will find d
figure of one of these shells, and a section of it. Tht
last will show you the series of enlarging compart
110 i"he autocrat of the breakfast-table.
ments successively dwelt in by the animal that
inhabits the shell, which is built in a widening
spiral. Can you find no lesson in this?
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main, —
The venturous hark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming haur
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl 1
And every chambered cell.
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,—
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed I
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil ;
Still, as the spiral grew.
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through.
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thinks for the heavenly message brought by thee.
Child of the wandering sea.
Cast from her lap forlorn !
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. m
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn I
"While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voico that sings >-
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll !
Leave thy low- vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more Tast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea I
A Lyric conception — my friend, the Poet, said-
hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often
had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck,
and felt that I turned as white as death. Then
comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the
spine, — then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, —
then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels
of the head, — ^then a long sigh, — and the poem is
written.
It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write
it so suddenly, — I replied.
No,— said he,— far from it I said written, but 1
112 THE AUTOCRAT OF IriE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
did not say copied. Every such poem has a Sv>ii.
and a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that
men read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is
born in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to
him a thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet
words, — words that have loved each other from the
cradle of the language, but have never been wedded
until now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself
in a bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncer-
tain ; but it exists potentially from the instant that
the poet turns pale with it. It is enough to stun
and scare anybody, to have a hot thought come
crashing into his brain, and ploughing up those par-
allel ruts where the wagon trains of common ideas
were jogging along in their regular sequences of as-
sociation. No wonder the ancients made the poet-
ical impulse wholly external. M?>tv iku&e Qed • Goddess,
— Muse, — divine afflatus, — something outside always.
/ never wrote any verses worth reading. I can't. I
am too stupid. If I ever copied any that were worth
reading, I was only a medium.
[I was talking all this time to our boarders, you
understand,— ^telling them what this poet told me.
The company listened rather attentively, I thought,
considering the literary character of the remarks.]
The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me
if I ever read anything better than Pope's " Essay
on Man " ? Had I ever perused McFingal ? He was
fond of poetry when he was a boy, — his mothcj
THE AU'lOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. {[Z
taught him to say many little pieces, — he remem
Dered one beautiful hymn ;— and the old gentleman
began, in a clear, loud voice, for his years, —
•' The spacious firmament on high,
With all the blue ethereal sky,
And spangled heavens,"
He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint
flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell
upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded
of a show I once saw at the Museum, — the Sleeping
Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sud-
den breaking out in this way turned every face
towards him, and each kept his posture as if changed
to stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a
foolish fat scullion to burst out crying for a senti-
ment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-
and-high-shouldered type; one of those imported
female servants who are known in public by their
amorphous style of person, their stoop forwards, and
a headlong and as it were precipitous walk, — the
waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at
every heavy footfall. Bridget, constituted for action,
not (ot emotion, was about to deposit a plate heaped
with something upon the table, when I saw the
coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested, — mo-
tionless as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she
couldn't set the plate down while the old gentleman
was speaking!
He was quite silent after this, still wearing the
a4 THE AUTOCRAT 0? THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Blight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the
poetry is dead in an old man because his forehead
is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when
his hand trembles ! If they ever were there, they
are there still !
By and by we got talking again. Does a poet
lov^e the verses written through him, do you think,
Sir ? — said the divinity-student.
So long as they are warm from his mind, carry
any of his animal heat about them, I know he loves
them, — I answered. When they have had time to
cool, he is more indifferent.
A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, — said
the young fellow whom they call John.
The last words, only, reached the ear of the eco-
nomically organized female in black bombazine.
Buckwheat is skerce and high, — she remarked.
[Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady,
— pays nothing, — so she must stand by the guns
and be ready to repel boarders.]
I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I
had some things I wanted to say, and so, after wait-
ing a minute, I began again. — I don't think the
poems I read you sometimes can be fairly appre-
ciated, given to you as they are in the green state.
You don't know what I mean by the green
'State ? Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things
are good for nothing until they have been kept a
long while; and some are good for nothing untij
rna autocrat of the breakfast-table. 115
they have been long kept and used. Of the first,
wine is the illustrious and immortal example. Of
those which must be kept and used I will name
three, — meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The
meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned
a thousand offerings to the cloud-compelling deities.
It comes to us without complexion or flavor, — born
of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but colorless as
pallida Mors herself. The fire is lighted in its cen-
tral shrine, and gradually the juices which the broad
leaves of the Great Vegetable had sucked up from
an acre and curdled into a drachm are diffused
through its thirsting pores. First a discoloration,
then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber tint
spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to
her old brown autumnal hue, you see, — as true in
the fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of
October! And then the cumulative wealth of its
fragrant reminiscences ! he who inhales its vapors
takes a thousand whiffs in a single breath ; and one
cannot touch it without awakening the old joys that
hang around it as the smell of flowers clings to the
dresses of the daughters of the house of Farina !
[Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for I do
not, though I have owned a calumet since my child-
hood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk
species) my grandsire won, together with a tom-
ahawk and beaded knife-sheath ; paying for the lot
'vith a bullet-mark on his right che^k. On the ma-
116 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE' BREAKFAST-TABLE.
ternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tO'
bacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box-wood
Triton, carved with charming liveliness and truth ;
I have often compared it to a figure in Raphael's
" Triumph of Galatea." It came to me in an an-
cient shagreen case, — how old it is I do not know, —
but it must have been made since Sir Walter Ra-
leigh's time. If you are curious, you shall see it
any day. Neither will I pretend that I am so un-
used to the more perishable smoking contrivance
that a few whiffs would make me feel as if I lay
in a ground-swell on the Bay of Biscay. I am
not unacquainted with that fusiform, spiral-wound
bundle of chopped stems and miscellaneous incom-
bustibles, the cigar ^ so called, of the shops, — which
to " draw " asks the suction-power of a nursling in-
fant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate of
an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man,
even if my illustration strike your fancy, to conse-
crate the flower of your life to painting the bowl of
a pipe, for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-
breeding narcotic may strike deeper than you think
for. I have seen the green leaf of early promise grow
brown before its time under such Nicotian regimen,
and thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly
bought at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a wiU
enslaved.]
Violins, too, — the sweet old Amati ! — ^the divine
Stradivari us I Played on by ancient maestros untij
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117
the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers
stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate young en-
thusiast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and
ory his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold
agonies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed
from his dying hand to the cold virtuoso^ who let it
slumber in its case for a generation, till, when his
hoard was broken up, it came forth once more and
rode the stormy symphonies of royal orchestras,
beneath the rushing bow of their lord and leader.
Into lonely prisons with improvident artists ; into
convents from which arose, day and night, the holy
hymns with which its tones were blended ; and back
again to orgies in which it learned to howl and
laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it ; then
again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it down
with easy melodies until it answered him softly as
in the days of the old maestros. And so given into
our hands, its pores all full of music ; stained, like
the meerschaum, through and through, with the con-
centrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies
which have kindled and faded on its strings.
Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used,
like a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as
porous as the meerschaum ; — the more porous it is,
the better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is
capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the
essence of our own humaiiity, — its tenderness, its
heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradu*
118 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
ally stained through with a divine secondary colof
derived from ourselves. So you see it must take
time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony
with our nature, by staining ourselves through every
thought and image our being can penetrate.
Then again as to the mere music of a new poem ,
why, who can expect anything more from that than
from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's
hands ? Now you know very well that there are no
less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These
pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a
century, more or less, to make them thoroughly ac-
quainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony
and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as
if it were a great seed-capsule which had grown from
a garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides,
the wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so,
but at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets toler-
ably dry and comparatively resonant.
Don't you see that all this is just as true of a
poem ? Counting each word as a piece, there are
more pieces in an average copy of verses than in a
violin. The poet has forced all these words together,
and fastened them, and they don't understand it at
first. But let the poem be repeated aloud and mur-
mured over in the mind's muffled whisper often
enough, and at length the parts become knit together
in such absolute solidarity that you could not change
a syllable without the whole world's '^.rying out
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAbLE. II9
against you for meddling with the harmonious fabric.
Observe, too, how the drying process takes place in
the stuff of a poem just as in that of a violin. Here
is a Tyrolesxj fiddle that is just coming to its hun-
dredth birthday,— -(Pedro Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760,)
— the sap is pretty well out of it. And here is th^
song of an old poet whom Neaera cheated : —
" Nox erat, et ccelo fulgebat Luna sereno
Inter minora sidera,
Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum
In verba jurabas mea.**
Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old
dead Latin phrases? Now I tell you that every
word fresh from the dictionary brings with it a cer-
tain succulence; and though I cannot expect the
sheets of the " Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I
sometimes print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp
papyrus that held those words of Horatius Flaccus,
yet you may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp,
and while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly
judge of my performances, and that, if made of th*>
true stuff, they will ring better after a while.
[There was silence for a brief space, after my
somewhat elaborate exposition of these self-evident
analogies. Presently a person turned towards me —
I do not choose to designate the individual — and
said that he rather expected my pieces had given
pretty good " sahtisfahction." — I had, up to this mo-
ment, considered this complimentary phrase as sacred
120 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
to the use of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has
been usually accompanied by a small pecuniary tes-
timonial, have acquired a certain relish for this
moderately tepid and unstimulating expression of
enthusiasm. But as a reward for gratuitous services,
I confess I thought it a little below that blood-heat
standard which a man's breath ought to have,
whether silent, or vocal and articulate. I waited for
a favorable opportunity, however, before making the
remarks which follow.]
There are single expressions, as I have told
you already, that fix a man's position for you before
you have done shaking hands with him. Allow me
to expand a little. There are several things, very
slight in themselves, yet implying other things not
so unimportant. Thus, your French servant has
dSvallse your premises and got caught. Excusez^
says the serg-ent-de-ville, as he politely relieves ' him
of his upper garments and displays his bust in the
full daylight. Good shoulders enough, — a little
marked, — traces of smallpox, perhaps, — but white.
.... Crac ! from the serg-ent'de-ville^s broad palm
on the white shoulder ! Now look ! Vog-ue la g-a-
Icre I Out comes the big red V — mark of the hot
iron; — he had blistered it out pretty nearly, — hadn't
he?— the old rascal VOLEUR, branded in the gal-
leys at Marseilles ! [Don't ! What if he has got
something like this? — nobody supposes I invented
euch a story.]
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK. 121
My man John, who used to drive two of those six
equine females which I told you I had owned, — for,
look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, T
am one that has been driven in his " kerridge," — not
u&ing that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any bat-
tered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more
than one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled
vehicle with a pole^ — my man John, I say, was a re-
tired soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many
of Her Majesty's modest servants have done before
and since. John told me, that when an officer thinks
he recognizes one of these retiring heroes, and would
know if he has really been in the service, that he
may restore him, if possible, to a grateful country,
he comes suddenly upon him, and says, sharply,
" Strap ! " If he has ever worn the shoulder-strap,
he has learned the reprimand for its ill adjustment
The old word of command flashes through his mus-
cles, and his hand goes up in an instant to the place
where the strap used to be.
[I was all the time preparing for my grand covp^
you understand ; but I saw they were not quite
ready for it, and so continued, — always in illustra-
tion of the general principle I had laid down.]
Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody
thinks of There was a legend, that, when the Dan-
ish pirates made descents upon the English coast,
they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the sliape
of Saxons, who would not let them go, — on the con-
6
122 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE
tiary, insisted on theii slaying, and, to make sure of
it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or aa
Bariholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title-
page, and, having divested them of the one esseatied
and perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the
mildest climates, nailed the same on the church-door
as we do the banns of marriage,-m terrorem.
[There was a laugh at this among some of the
young folks ; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw
that " the water stood in her eyes," as it did in Chris-
tiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spi-
der, and I fancied, but wasn't quite sure that the
schoolmistress blushed,, as Mercy did in the same
tionversation, as you remember.]
That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story, — said the
young fellow whom they call John. I abstained
from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and con-
tinued.
Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing
and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain
English village, and among other things thought the
doors should be attended to. One of them particu-
larly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it
were, and as if it would be all the better for scrap-
ing. There happened to be a microscopist in the
village who had heard the old pirate story, and he
took it into his head to examine the crust on this
door? There was no mistake about it ; it was a
genuine historical document, of the Ziska drum-head
fllE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. i23
patiLrn, — a real cutis humana^ stripped from some
old Scandinavian filibuster, and the legend was true.
My friend, the Professor, settled an important his
torical and financial question once by the aid of an
exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document.
Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name
and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to the
passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest
favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had
freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise
inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very nat-
ural under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the
light and quenched the meek luminary, — breaking
through the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now
I don't want to go into minutice at table, you know,
but a naked hand can no more go through a pane of
thick glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to
say the least, behind it, than a butterfly can go
through a sausage-machine without looking the
worse for it. The Professor gathered up the frag-
ments of glass, and with them certain very minute
but entirely satisfactory documents which would
have identified and hanged any rogue in Christen-
dom who had parted with them. — The historical
question. Who did it ? and the financial question.
Who paid for it ? were both settled before the new
'amp was lighted the next evening.
You see, my friends, what immense conclusions,
touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
124 'J HE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
honor, may be reached by means of very insignifi
cant premises. This is eminently true of mannera
and forms of speech ; a movement or a phrase often
tells you all you want to know about a person.
Thus, "How's your health?" (commonly pronounced
haallh) — instead of, How do you do ? or, How are
you? Or calling your little dark entry a "haU," and
your old rickety one-horse wagon a " kerridge." Or
telling a person who has been trying to please you
that he has given you pretty good " sahtisfahction."
Or saying that you "remember of" such a thing, or
that you have been " stoppin' " at Deacon Some-
body's, — and other such expressions. One of my
friends had a little marble statuette of Cupid in the
parlor of his country-house, — bow, arrows, wings,
and all complete. A visitor, indigenous to the region,
looking pensively at the figure, asked the lady of the
house " if that was a statoo of her deceased infant ? "
What a delicious, though somewhat voluminous
biography, social, educational, and aBsthetic in that
brief question !
[Please observe with what Machiavellian astute-
ness I smuggled in the particular offence which it
was my object to hold up to my fellow-boarders,
without too personal an attack on the individual at
whose door it lay.]
That was an exceedingly dull person who made the
remark, Ex pede Herculem. He might as well have
said, " From a peck of apples you may judge of the
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 12»%
oarrel." Ex pede, to be sure! Read, instead, Ex
ungue minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque patrem^
matrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et pronepotes !
Talk to me about your dbcnovaru! Tell me about
Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a tooth, or
Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an undiscovered fish
from a single scale I As the " O " revealed Giotto,
— as the one word " moi " betrayed the Stratford
atte-Bowe-taught Anglais, — so all a man's antece-
dents and possibilities are summed up in a single
utterance which gives at once the gauge of his edu-
cation and his mental organization.
Possibilities, Sir ? — said the divinity-student ; can't
a man who says Haow ? arrive at distinction ?
Sir, — I replied, — in a republic all things are pos-
sible. But the man with a future has almost of
necessity sense enough to see that any odious trick
of speech or manners must be got rid of. Doesn't
Sydney Smith say that a public man in England
never gets over a false quantity uttered in early life ?
Our public men are in little danger of this fatal mis-
step, as few of them are in the habit of introducing
Latin into their speeches, — for good and sufficient
easons. But they are bound to speak decent Eng-
.ish, — unless, indeed, they are rough old campaign-
ers, like General Jackson or General Taylor ; in
which case, a few scars on Priscian's head are par-
doned to old fellows who have quite as many on
their own, and a constituency of thirty empires w
126 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
not at all particular, provided they do not sweai in
their Presidential Messages.
However, it is not for me to talk. I have made
mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never
find them out until they are stereotyped, and then I
think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall
make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over,
and remember them all before another. How one
does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary
stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and
to think how he lays himself open to the imperti-
nences of the captatores verborum, those useful but
humble scavengers of the language, whose business
it is to pick up what might offend or injure, and re-
move it, hugging and feeding on it as they go ! I
don't want to speak too slightingly of these verbal
critics ; — how can I, who am so fond of talking about
errors and vulgarisms of speech? Only there is a
difference between those clerical blunders which al-
most every man commits, knowing better, and that
habitual grossness or meanness of speech which is
unendurable to educated persons, from anybody that
wears silk or broadcloth.
[I write down the above remarks this morning
January 26th, making this record of the date that no-
body may think it was written in wrath, on account
of any particular grievance suffered from the inva-
eion of any individual scarabceus grammaticus,']
^ I wonder if anybody ever finds fault witb
rHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TARLE. J 27
anything I say at this table when it is repeated ? I
hope they do, 1 am sure. I should be very certain
that I had said nothing of much significance, if they
did not.
Did you never, in walking in the fields, come
across a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody
knows how long, just where you found it, with the
grass forming a little hedge, as it were, all round it,
close to its edges, — and have you not, in obedience
to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying
there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot
or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as
a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself,
'* It's done brown enough by this time " ? What an
odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleas-
ant surprise to a small community, the very existence
of which you had not suspected, until the sudden
dismay and scattering among its members produced
by your turning the old stone over ! Blades of grass
flattened down, colorless, matted together, as if they
had been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling
creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny-
shelled, — turtle-bugs one wants to call them ; some
of them softer, but cunningly spread out and com-
pressed like Lepine watches ; (Nature never loses a
crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern
bedstead, but she always has one of her flat-pattern
live timekeepers to slide into it ;) black, glossy
crickets, with their long filaments sticking out like
128 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFASt_taBLE.
the whips of four-horse stage-coaches; motionless,
slug-like creatures, young larvae, perhaps more hor-
rible in their pulpy stillness than even in the infernal
wriggle of maturity! But no sooner is the stone
turned and the wholesome light of day let upon thi?
compressed and blinded community of creeping
things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of
legs — and some of them have a good many — rusl»
round wildly, butting each other and everything i*
their way, and end in a general stampede for under
ground retreats from the region poisoned by sun
shine. Next year you will find the grass growing
tall and green where the stone lay ; the ground-bird
builds her nest where the beetle had his hole ; the
dandelion and the buttercup are growing there, and
the broad fans of insect-angels open and shut over
their golden disks, as the rhythmic waves of blissfu?
consciousness pulsate through their glorified being. '
The young fellow whom they call John saw
fit to say, in his very familiar way, — at which I do
not choose to take offence, but which I sometimes
think it necessary to repress, — that I was coming it
rather strong on the butterflies.
No, I replied; there is meaning in each of those
images, — the butterfly as well as the others. The
stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature
borne down and bleached of all its colour by it. The
shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings
that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 129
kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is
whensoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying
incubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious
face or a laughing one. The next year stands for
the coming time. Then shall the nature which had
lain blanched and broken rise in its full stature and
native hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's
minstrels build their nests in the hearts of a new-
born humanity. Then shall beauty — Divinity taking
outlines and color — light upon the souls of men as
the butterfly, image of the beatified spirit rising
from the dust, soars from the shell that held a poor
grub, which would never have found wings, had not
the stone been lifted.
You never need think you can turn over any old
falsehood without a terrible squirming and scatter-
ing of the horrid little population that dwells under
it.
Every real thought on every real subject
knocks the wind out of somebody or other. As soon
as his breath comes back, he very probably begins to
expend it in hard words. These are the best evidence
a man can have that he has said something it wag
time to say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the
effect of one of his pamphlets. " I think I have not
been attacked enough for it," he said ; — " attack is
the reaction ; I never think I have hit hard unless it
rebounds."
K a fellow attacked my opinions in orint
a*
130 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
would I reply? Not I. Do you think I don't un-
derstand what my friend, the Professor, long ago
called the hydrostatic paradox of controversy ?
Don't know what that means ? — Well, I will tell
you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one
arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and
the other big enough to hold the ocean, water would
stand at the same height in one as in the other
Controversy equalizes fools and wise men in the
same way, — and the fools know it
No, but I often read what they say about
other people. There are about a dozen phrases
which all come tumbling along together, like the
tongs, and the shovel, and the poker, and the brush,
and the bellows, in one of those domestic avalanches
that everybody knows. If you get one, you get the
whole lot.
What are they ? — Oh, that depends a good deal on
latitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isother-
mal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two
families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise,
brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, cele-
brated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and
first writer of the age; or a dull, foolish, wicked,
pert, shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black*
hearted outcast, and disgrace to civilization.
What do I think determines the set of phrases a
man gets ? — Well, I should say a set of influences
Bomething like these : — 1st. Relationships, political
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 131
religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oystera , in the form
of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criti
cisni. I believe in the school, the college, and the
clergy ; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public
opinion — which means commonly the opinion of half
a dozen of the critical gentry — is the following
Major proposition. Oysters au naturel. Minor propo-
sition. The same " scalloped." Conclusion. That
(here insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty,
wise, brilliant, — and the rest.
No, it isn't exactly bribery. One man has
oysters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of
hospitalities ; one gives a " spread " on linen, and the
other on paper, — that is all. Don't you think you
and I should be apt to do just so, if we were in the
critical line ? I am sure I couldn't resist the soften-
ing influences of hospitality. I don't like to dine
out, you know, — I dine so well at our own table, [our
landlady looked radiant,] and the company is so
pleasant [a rustling movement of satisfaction among
the boarders] ; but if I did partake of a man's salt,
with such additions as that article of food requires
to make it palatable, I could never abuse him, and
if I had to speak of him, I suppose I should hang
my set of jingling epithets round him like a string
of sleigh-bells. Good feeling helps society to make
liars of most of us, — not absolute liars, but such
careless handlers of truth that its sharp corners get
terribly roundea. I love truth as chiefest among tho
132 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABIX
virtues; I trust it runs in my blood; but I would
never be a critic, because I know I could not always
tell it. I might write a criticism of a book that
happened to please me ; that is another matter.
Listen, Benjamin Franklin I This is for you,
and such others of tender age as you may tell it to.
When we are as yet small children, long before the
time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice
of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel,
holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his
left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless
ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold —
Truth. The spheres are veined and streaked and
spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above,
where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect
you can make out upon every one of them the three
letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered
very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the
most convenient things in the world ; they roll with
the least possible impulse just where the child would
have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they have
a great talent for standing still, and always keep right
side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds
that things, which roll so easily are very apt to roll
into the WTong corner, and to get out of his way
when he most wants them, while he always knows
where to find the others, which stay where they are
left. Thus he learns — thus we learn — to drop the
dtreaked and speckled globes of falsehf od and to
THE AUTOCRAl OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133
hold fast the white angular blocks of truth. But
then comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and
last of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth
must roll^ or nobody can do anything with it ; and so
the first with her coarse rasp, and the second with
her broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do
so round off and smooth and polish the snow-white
cubes of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy
by use, it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling
spheres of falsehood.
The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that
she was pleased with this, and that she would read
it to her little flock the next day. But she should
tell the children, she said, that there were better rea-
sons for truth than could be found in mere experi-
ence of its convenience and the inconvenience of
lying.
Yes, — I said, — but education always begins through
the senses, and works up to the idea of absolute right
and wrong. The first thing the child has to learn
about this matter is, that lying is unprofitable, —
afterwards, that it is against the peace and dignity
of the universe.
Do I think that the particular form of lying
often seen in newspapers, under the title, " From our
Foreign Correspondent," does any harm ? — Why,
no, — I don't know that it does. I suppose it doesn't
really deceive people any more than the "Arabian
Nights '* or " Gulliver's Travels " do. Sometimes the
134 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE-
writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up
facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny
papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of
information. I cut a piece out of one of the papers,
the other day, which contains a number of improba-
bilities, and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send
up and get it for you, if you would like to hear
it. Ah, this is it ; it is headed
" Our Sumatra Correspondence.
" This island is now the property of the Stamford
family, — having been won, it is said, in a rafHe, by
Sir Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania
of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gen-
tleman may be found in an interesting series of
questions (unfortunately not yet answered) contained
in the ' Notes and Queries/ This island is entirely
surrounded by the ocean, which here contains a large
amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes
remarkable for their symmetry, and frequently dis-
plays on its surface, during calm weather, the rain-
bow tints of the celebrated South- Sea bubbles. The
summers are oppressively hot, and the winters very
probably cold ; but this fact cannot be ascertained
precisely, as, for some peculiar reason, the mercury
in these latitudes never shrinks, as in more northern
regions, and thus the thermometer is rendered useless
in winter.
" The principal vegetable productions of the island
THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 135
are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper
Deing very abundantly produced, a benevolent society
was organized in London during the last century for
supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an
addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received
from Dr. D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oys-
ters were of the kind called natives in England, the
natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct,
refused to touch them, and confined themselves en-
tirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were
brought over. This information was received from
one of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and
exceedingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to
be very skilful in the cuisine peculiar to the island.
" During the season of gathering the pepper, the
persons employed are subject to various incommodi-
ties, the chief of which is violent and long-continued
sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence
of these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of
them are often driven backwards for great distances
at immense speed, on the well-known principle of
the sBolipile. Not being able to see where they are
going, these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces
against the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs
and thus many valuable lives are lost annually. As,
during the whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively
on this stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable.
The smallest injury is resented with ungovernable
rage. A young man suffering from the vepper'fever
136 I'HE AUTOCKAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE.
as it is called, cudgelled another most severely foi
appropriating a superannuated relative of trifling
value, and was only pacified by having a present
made him of a pig of that peculiar species of swine
called the Peccavi by the Catholic Jews, who, it is
well known, abstain from swine's flesh in imitation
of the Mahometan Buddhists.
" The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches
are well known to Europe and America under the
familiar name of maccaroni. The smaller twigs are
called vermicelli. They have a decided animal flavor,
as may be observed in the soups containing them.
Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a
very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly
ferocious by being boiled. The government of the
island, therefore, never allows a stick of it to be ex-
ported without being accompanied by a piston with
which its cavity may at any time be thoroughly
swept out. These are commonly lost or stolen
before the maccaroni arrives among us. It therefore
always contains many of these insects, which,
however, generally die of old age in the shops, so
that accidents from this source are comparatively
rare.
" The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally
of hot rolls. The buttered-muflin variety is supposed
to be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream
found on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the
hybrid in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. 137
splitting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is
commonly served up with cold "
There, — I don't want to read any more of it.
You see that many of these statements are highly
improbable. — No, I shall not mention the paper. — No,
neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the
style of these popular writers. I think the fellow
who wrote it must have been reading some of their
stories, and got them mixed up with his history and
geography. I don't suppose he lies ; — he sells it to
the editor, who knows how many squares off " Suma-
tra" is. The editor, who sells it to the public
By the way, the papers have been very civil —
haven't they? — to the — the — what d'ye call it? —
" Northern Magazine," — isn't it ? — got up by some
of those Come-outers, down East, as an organ for
their local peculiarities.
— The Professor has been to see me. Came in,
glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. Said
he had been with " the boys." On inquiry, found
that " the boys " were certain baldish and grayish old
gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various im-
portant stations of society. The Professor is one of
the same set, but he always talks as if he had been
out of college about ten years, whereas
. . . [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the
company understood, as the reader will, no doubt]
He calls them sometimes " the boys," and sometimes
* the old fellows." Call him by the latter title, and
138 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Bee how he likes it. — Well, he came in last night
glorious, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean
vinously exalted ; he drinks little wine on such occa-
sions, and is well known to all the Peters and Pat-
ricks as the gentleman who always has indefinite
quantities of black tea to kill any extra glass of red
claret he may have swallowed. But the Professor
says he always gets tipsy on old memories at these
gatherings. He was, I forget how many years old
when he went to the meeting ; just turned of twenty
now, — he said. He made various youthful proposals
to me, including a duet under the landlady's daugh-
ter's window. He had just learned a trick, he said,
of one of " the boys," of getting a splendid bass out
of a door-panel by rubbing it with the palm of his
hand. Offered to sing " The sky is bright," accom-
panying himself on the front-door, if I would go
down and help in the chorus. Said there never was
such a set of fellows as the old boys of the set he
has been with. Judges, mayors, Congress-men, Mr.
Speakers, leaders in science, clergymen better thaii
famous, and famous too, poets by the half-dozen,
singers with voices like angels, financiers, wits, three
of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, engi-
neers, agriculturists, — all forms of talent and knowl«
edge he pretended were represented in that meeting,
Then he began to quote Byron about Santa Croce,
and maintained that he could "furnish out creation"
in all its details from that set of his. He would like
HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKF AST-TABLE. 139
to have the whole boodle of them, (I remonstiated
against this word, but the Professor said it was a
diabolish good word, and he would have no other,)
with their wives and children, shipwrecked on a re-
mote island, just to see how splendidly they would
reorganize society. They could build a city^ — they
have done it ; make constitutions and laws ; establish
churches and lyceums ; teach and practise the heal-
ing art ; instruct in every department ; found observ-
atories ; create commerce and manufactures ; write
songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make instru-
ments to accompany the songs with ; lastly, publish
a journal almost as good as the " Northern Maga-
zine," edited by the Come-outers. There was nothing
they were not up to, from a christening to a hanging;
the last, to be sure, could never be called for, unless
some stranger got in among them.
1 let the Professor talk as long as he liked ;
it didn't make much difference to me whether it was
all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and simi-
lar elements. All at once he jumped up and said, —
Don't you want to hear what I just read to the
boys?
I have had questions of a similar character asked
me before, occasionally. A man of iron mould
might perhaps say. No! I am not a man of iron
mould, and said that I should be delighted.
The Professor then read — ^with that slight' y sing-
song cadence which is observed to be common in
140 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE.
poets reading their own verses — the following stajs
zas ; holding them at a focal distance of about twG
feet and a half, with an occasional movement back
or forward for better adjustment, the appearance of
which has been likened by some impertinent young
folks to that of the act of playing on the trombone.
His eyesight was never better ; I have his word for it
MARE RUBRUIVL
Flash out a stream of blood-red wine I—
For I would drink to btlier days ;
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through its crimson blaze.
The roses die, the summers fade ;
But every ghost of boyhood's dream
By Nature's magic power is laid
To sleep beneath this blood-red stream.
It filled the purple grapes that lay
And drank the splendors of the sun
Where the long summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad Garonne ;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, — '
The maidens dancing on the grapes, —
Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.
Beneath these waves of crimson lie,
In rosy fetters prisoned fast,
Those flitting shapes that never die,
The swift- winged visions of the past.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE RREAKFAST-TABLE. m
Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim,
Each shadow rends its flowery chain,
Springs in a bubble from its brim
And walks the chambers of the brain.
Poor Beauty ! time and fortune's wrong
No form nor feature may withstand, —
Thy wrecks are scattered all along,
Like emptied sea-shells on the sand ;—
Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain,
The dust restores each blooming girl.
As if the sea-shells moved again
Their glistening lips of pink and pearL
Here lies the home of school-boy life.
With creaking stair and wind-swept hall,
And, scarred by many a truant knife.
Our old initials on the wall ;
Here rest — their keen vibrations mute —
The shout of voices known so well,
The ringing laugh, the wailing flute.
The chiding of the sharp-tongued beU.
Here, clad in burning robes, are laid
Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed ;
And here those cherished forms have strayed
AVe miss awhile, and call them dead.
What wizard fills the maddening glass ?
What soil the enchanted clusters grew.
That buried passions wake and pass
Li beaded drops of fiery dew ?
Nay, take the cup of blood-red wme, —
Ovir hearts can boast a warmer glow,
142 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Filled from a vintage more divine, —
Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow I
To-niglit the palest wave we sip
Rich as the priceless draught shall be
That wet the bride of Cana's lip, —
The wedding wine of Galilee I
VL
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which
dts them all.
1 think, Sir, — said the divinity-student, — you
must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven
Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other
day.
I thank you, my young friend, — was my reply, —
but I must say something better than that, before T
could pretend to fill out the number.
The schoolmistress wanted to know how
many of these sayings there were on record, and
what, and by whom said.
Why, let us see, — there is that one of Ben-
jamin Franklin, " the great Bostonian," after whom
this lad was named. To be sure, he said a great
many wise things,— and I don't feel sure he didn't
borrow this, — he speaks as if it were old. But then
he applied ii so neatly ! —
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK. 143
" He that has once done you a kindness will be
more ready to do you another than he whom you
yourself have obliged."
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox,
uttered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his
flashing moments : —
" Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense
with its necessaries."
To these must certainly be added that other say
ing of one of the wittiest of men : —
" Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris."
The divinity-student looked grave at this, but
Raid nothing.
The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn't
think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only
another way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place
after New York or Boston.
A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with
the young fellow they call John, — evidently a stran-
ger, — said there was one more wise man's saying
that he had heard ; it was about our place, but he
didn't know who said it. — A civil curiosity was
manifested by the company to hear the fourth wise
Baj/ing. I heard him distinctly whispering to the
young fellow who brought him to dinner. Shall I
tell it? To which the answer was. Go ahead! —
Well, — he said,— this was what I heard : —
" Boston State- House is the hub of the solar sys
lem. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man
144 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
if you had the tire of all creation straightened out
for a crowbar."
Sir, — said I, — I am gratified with your remark. It
expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have
sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness.
The satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston,
~ and of all other considerable — and inconsiderable
— places with which I have had the privilege of
being acquainted. Cockneys think London is the
only place in the world. Frenchmen — you remem-
oer the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc. —
I recollect well, by the way, a sign in that city which
ran thus: "Hotel de I'Univers et des Etats Unis";
and as Paris is the universe to a Frenchman, of
course the United States are outside of it. — " See
Naples and then die." — It is quite as bad with
smaller places. I have been about, lecturing, you
know, and have found the following propositions to
hold true of all of them.
1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through
the centre of each and every town or city.
2. If more than fifty years have passed since its
foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabi-
tants the ^^good old town of" (whatever its name
may happen to be.)
3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes
together to listen to a stranger is invariably declared
to be a " remarkably intelligent audience."
4. The climate of the place is particularly favor-
able to longevity.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 14^
5. 'II contains several persons of vast talent little
Known to the world. (One or two of them, you
may perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces
to the " Pactolian " some time since, which were
" respectfully declined.")
Boston is just like other places of its size ; — only
perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid
fire-department, superior monthly publications, and
correct habit of spelling the English language, it has
some right to look down on the mob of cities. I'll
tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the
real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed
of its intellec't, and will not itself be drained. If it
would only send away its first-rate men, instead of
of its second-rate ones, (no offence to the well-know^n
exceptions, of which we are always proud,) we
should be spared such epigrammatic remarks as that
which the gentleman has quoted. There can never
be a real metropolis in this country, until the biggest
centre can drain the lesser ones of their talent and
wealth. — I have observed, by the way, that the people
who really live in two great cities are by no means
so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller
cities situated within the intellectual basin, or suc-
tion-range^ of one large one, of the pretensions of
any other. Don't you see why? Because their
promising young author and rising lawyer and larg*-
capitalist have been drained off to the neighboring
big city, — their prettiest girl has been exported to
146 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE.
the same market ; all their ambition points there,
and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there.
I hate little toad-eating cities.
V/ould I be so good as to specify any par-
ticular example? — Oh, — an example? Did you evei
see a hear-trap ? Never ? Well, shouldn't you like
to see me put my foot into one ? With sentiments
of the highest consideration I must beg leave to be
excused.
Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming.
If they have an old church or two, a few stately
mansions of former grandees, here raid there an old
dwelling with the second story projecting, (for the
convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the
front-door with their tomahawks,) — if they have, scat-
tered about, those mighty square houses built some-
thing more than half a century ago, and standing
like architectural boulders dropped by the former
diluvium of wealth, whose refluent wave has left
them as its monument, — if they have gardens yrith
elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over
the high board-fence and drop their fruit on the
side-walk, — if they have a little grass in the side-
streets, enough to betoken quiet without proclaiming
decay, — I think I could go to pieces, after my life's
work were done, in one of those tranquil places, as
sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be
rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always with
infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, says, thai
IIIE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117
rapidly growing towns are most unfavorable to the
imaorj native and reflective faculties. Let a man live
in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the
wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by
the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it
up, you may see the sun through it by day and the
stars by night.
Do I think that the little villages have the
conceit of the great towns ? — I don't believe there is
much difference. You know how they read Pope's
line in the smallest town in our State of Massa-
chusetts ? — Well, they read it
"All are but parts of one stupendous Hull ! "
Every person's feelings have a front-door and
a side-door by which they may be entered. The
front-door is on the street. Some keep it always
open ; some keep it latched ; some, locked ; some,
bolted, — with a chain that will let you peep in, but
not get in ; and some nail it up, so that nothing can
pass its threshold. This front-door leads into a pas-
sage which opens into an ante-room, and this into
the inlerior apartments. The side-door opens at
once into the sacred chambers.
There is almost always at least one key to this
side-door. This is carried for years hidden in a
mother's bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and
friends, often, but by no means so universally, have
duplicates of it. The wedding-ring conveys a right
to ons; alas, if none is given with it!
'I
148 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
If nature or accident has put one of these key&
hito the hands of a person who has the torturing ic-
stinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the vvords that
Justice utters over its doomed victim,— The Lord
have mercy on your soul ! You will probably go
mad within a reasonable time, — or, if you are a man,
run off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in
Melbourne or San Francisco, — or, if you are a
woman, quarrel and break your heart, or turn into
a pale, jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it
were alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other.
Be very careful to whom you trust one of these
keys of the side-door. The fact of possessing one
renders those even who are dear to you very terrible
at times. You can keep the world out from your
front-door, or receive visitors only when you are
ready for them ; but those of your own flesh and
blood, or of certain grades of intimacy, can come in
at the side-door, if they will, at any hour and in any
mood. Some of them have a scale of your whole
nervous system, and can play all the gamut of your
sensibilities in semitones, — touching the naked nerve-
pulps as a pianist strikes the keys of his instru-
ment. I am satisfied that there are as great masters
of this nerve-playing as Vieuxtemps or Thalberg in
their lines of performance. Married life is the school
in which the most accomplished artists in this de-
partment are found. A delicate woman is the best
instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 14rj
sensibilities ! From the deep inward moan which
follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the
sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a
crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument
possesses. A few exercises on it daily at home fit a
man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh
him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger
can get a great many notes of torture out of a human
soul ; it takes one that knows it well, — parent, child,
brother, sister, intimate. Be very careful to whom
you give a side-door key ; too many have them al-
ready.
You remember the old story of the tender-
hearted man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom,
and was stung by it when it became thawed ? If we
take a cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better
that it should sting us and we should die than that
its chill should slowly steal into our hearts ; warm it
we never can! I have seen faces of women that
were fair to look upon, yet one could see that the
icicles were forming round these women's hearts. I
knew what freezing image lay on the white breasts
beneath the laces !
A very simple intellectual mechanism answers the
necessities of friendship, and even of the most inti-
mate relations of life. If a watch tells us the hour
and the minute, w^e can be content to carry it about
with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand
and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch, — though
150 A HE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLL.
it IS not enamelled nor jewelled, — in short, though it
has little beyond the wheels required for a trust-
worthy instrument, add 3d to a good face and a pair
of useful hands. The more wheels there are in a
watch or a brain, the more trouble they are to take
care of. The movements of exaltation which belong
to genius are egotistic by their very nature. A calm,
clear mind, not subject to the spasms and crises
which are so often met with in creative or intensely
perceptive natures, is the best basis for love or friend-
ship. — Observe, I am talking about minds. I won't
say, the more intellect, the less capacity for loving ;
for that would do wrong to the understanding and
reason ;— r-but, on the other hand, that the brain often
runs away with the heart's best blood, which gives
the world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment
or poetry, instead of making one other heart happy,
I have no question.
If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or
does not share all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits,
that is a small matter. Intellectual companions can
be found easily in men and books. After all, if v/e
think of it, most of the world's loves and friendship's
have been between people that could not read nor
spell.
But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clot^.,
which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never
warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure
of hand or lip, — this is the great martyrdom of sen-
THE AUTOCRAT OF THK BREAKFAST-TABLE. 151
rfitive beings,— most of all in that perpetual auto da
fe where young womanhood is the sacrifice.
You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about
the loves and friendships of illiterate persons, — that
is, of the human race, with a few exceptions here
and there. I like books, — I was born and bred
among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get
into their presence, that a stable-boy has among
horses. I don't think I undervalue them either as
companions or as instructors. But I can't help re-
membering that the world's great men have not
commonly been great scholars, nor its great scholars
great men. The Hebrew patriarchs had small libra-
ries, I think, if any ; yet they represent to our imag-
inations a very complete idea of manhood, and, I
think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with us
men of letters next Saturday, we should feel honored
by his company.
What I wanted to say about books is this : that
there are times in which every active mind feels
itself above any and all human books.
1 think a man must have a good opinion of
himself. Sir, — said the divinity-student, — who should
feel himself above Shakspeare at any time.
My young friend, — I replied, — the man who is
never conscious of a state of feeling or of intellectual
effort entirely beyond expression by any form of words
whatsoever is a mere creature of language. I can
hardly believe there are any such men. Why, think
>*/>
152 THE AUTOOKAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TACLE
for a moment of the power of music. The nerves
that make us alive to it spread out (so the Professoi
tells me) in the most sensitive region of the marrow
just where it is widening to run upwards into the
hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of sense
rather than of thought. Yet it produces a continu-
ous and, as it were, logical sequence of emotional
and intellectual changes; but how different from
trains of thought proj>er ! how entirely beyond the
reach of symbols! — Think of human passions as
compared with all phrases ! Did you ever hear of a
man^s growing lean by the reading of " Romeo and
Juliet," or blowing his brains out because Desdemona
was maligned? There are a good many symbols,
even, that are njore expressive than words. I re-
member a young wife who had to part with her hus-
band for a time. She did not write a mournful
poem ; indeed, she was a silent person, and perhaps
hardly said a word about it ; but she quietly turned
of a deep orange color with jaundice. A great many
people in this world have but one form of rhetoric
for their profoundest experiences, — namely, to waste
away and die. When a man can read^ his paroxysm
of feeling is passing. When he can read, his thought
has slackened its hold. — You talk about reading
Shakspeare, using him as an expression for the
highest intellect, and you wonder that any common
person should be so presumptuous as to suppose his
thought can rise above the text which lies before
IHK AUTOCRAT OF THE BRKAKFAST-TABLE. 1,53
him. But think a moment. A child's reading of
SLakspeare is one thing, and Coleridge's or Schle-
gePs reading of him is another. The saturation-
point of each mind differs from that of every other.
But I think it is as true for the small mind which
can only take up a little as for the great one which
takes up much, that the suggested trains of thought
and feeling ought always to rise above — not the
author, but the reader's mental version of the author,
whoever he may be.
I think most readers of Shakspeare sometimes
find themselves thrown into exalted mental condi-
tions like those produced by music. Then they may
drop the book, to pass at once into the region of
thought without words. We may happen to be
very dull folks, you and I, and probably are, unless
there is some particular reason to suppose the con-
trary. But we get glimpses now and then of a
sphere of spiritual possibilities, where we, dull as we
are now, may sail in vast circles round the largest
compass of earthly intelligences.
1 confess there are times when I feel like the
friend I mentioned to you some tiriie ago, — 1 liate
the very sight of a book. Sometimes it becomes
almost a physical necessity to talk out what is in
the mind, before putting anything else into it. It ig
very bad to have thoughts and feelings, which were
meant to come out in talk, strike in, as they say of
some comnlaints that ought to show outwardly.
7*
154 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I always believed in life rather than in books. I
suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thou-
sand deaths and something more of births, — with ita
loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs
and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the
books that were ever written, put together. I believe
the flowers growing at this moment send up more
fragrance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all
the essences ever distilled.
Don't I read up various matters to talk about
at this table or elsewhere ? — No, that is the last thing
I would do. I will tell you my rule. Talk about
those subjects you have had long in your mind, and
listen to what others say about subjects you have
studied but recently. Knowledge and timber
shouldn't be much used till they are seasoned.
Physiologists and metaphysicians have had
their attention turned a good deal of late to the
automatic and involuntary actions of the mind. Put
an idea into your intelligence and leave it there an
hour, a day, a year, without ever having occasion to
refer to it. When, at last, you return to it, you do
not find it as it was when acquired. It has domi-
ciliated itself, so to speak, — become at home, —
entered into relations with your other thoughts, and
integrated itself with the whole fabric of the mind.
— Or take a simple and familiar example ; Dr. Car-
penter has adduced it. You forget a name, in con-
versation, — go on talking, without making any effort
c c c a c
c c c c c
"n#^ ^
OUR BENJ. FRANKLIN
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 153
to recall it, — and presently the mind evolves it by
its own involuntary and unconscious action, while
you were pursuing another train of thought, and tho
name rises of itself to your lips.
There are some curious observations I should like
to make about the mental machinery, but I think wt
are getting rather didactic.
-^ 1 should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin
would let me know something of his progress in the
French language. I rather liked that exercise he
read us the other day, though I must confess I should
hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a
remote city where I once lived might think I was
drawing their portraits.
Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I
don't know whether the piece I mentioned from the
French author was intended simply as Natural His-
tory, or whether there was not a little malice in
his description. At any rate, when I gave my trans-
lation to B. F. to turn back again into French, one
reason was that I thought it would sound a little
bald in English, and some people might think it was
meant to have some local bearing or other, — which
the author, of course, didn't mean, inasmuch as he
could not be acquainted with anything on this side
of the water.
[The above remarks were addressed to the school-
mistress, to whom I handed the paper after looking
it over The divinity-student came and read over
156 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BirEAKFAST-TABIE.
her shoulder, — very curious, apparently, but bis eyes
wandered, I thougbt. Fancying that her breathing
was somewhat hurried and high, or thoracic, as my
friend, the Professor, calls it T watched her a little
more closely. — It is none of my business. — After all,
it is the imponderables that move the world, — heat,
electricity, love. — Habet .^]
This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made
into boarding-school French, such as you see here ;
don't expect too much ; — the mistakes give a relish
to it, I think,
LES SOCIETES FOLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES.
Ces Soci^tes Ih sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoina
d'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont surv^^cu a leurs emo-
tions k regard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction dk
Fhabitude de boire.
Pour dcvenir membre d'une de ces Society, on doit avoir le
moins de eheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui reslstcnt
aux depilatolres naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques con-
naissances, nlmporte dans quel genre. D^g le moment qu'on
ouvre la porte de la Society, on a un grand int^ret dans toutea
les choses dont on ne salt rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste demontre
un nouveau flexor du tarse d'un melolnntha vulgaris. Douze sa-
▼ans improvises, portans des besides, et qui ne connjtissent rien des
inscctes, si ce n'est les morsures du culex, se precipitent sur I'instru-
inent, et A'oient — une gi-ande bulle d'air, dont lis s'emerveillent avec
effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle pleln dlnstructlon — pour ceux
qui ne sont pas de ladlte Societe. Tous les membres regardent les
chimistes en particuller avec un air dlntelllgence parfaite pendant
qu'ils prouvent dansun discours d'une demilicuro que O"' N^ H- C
tote, font quel que < hose qui n'e&t bonne k rien, mais qui probable
TUE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 157
mem a une odcur tr^s (16sagreable, selon I'liabltude des produits
ehimiques. Api^-3 celk vient un math^maticien qui vous bourie
avec d«^8 a-f ftet vous rapporte enfin un ar-f-y, dont vous n'avez pas
besoin et qui ne change nuUement vos relations avec la vie. Un
naturaliste vous parle des formations sp6ciales des animaux exces-
sivoment inconnus, dont vous n'avez jamais soup9onne Texistence.
Ainsi il vous d^crit las folUcules de Vappe7idix uermiformis d'un dzig-
guetui. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un follicule. Vous ne
savez pas ce que c'est qu'un appendix uermiformis. Vous n'avez
jamais entendu parler du dzigguetai. Ainsi vous gagnez toutes cea
connaissances k la fois, qui s'attachcnt k votie esprit comme I'eau
adLdre aux plumes d'un canard. On connait toutes les langues
ex officio en devenant membre d'une de ces Societes. Ainsi
quand on entend lire un Essai sur les dialectes Tchutchiens, osi
comprend tout cela de suite, et s'instruit enormement.
' Tl y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours h ces
iSocietes : 1" Le membre k questions ; 2° Le membre a " Bylaws."
La question est une speciality. Celui qui en fait metier ne fait
jamais des r^ponses. La question est une maniere tr^s commode
de dire les choses suivantes : " Me voilk ! Je ne suis pas fossil,
moi, — je respire encore ! J'ai des id^es, — voyezmon intelligence !
Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque chose de
celk ! Ah, nous avons un pen de sagacite, voyez vous ! Nous ne
sommes nuUement la bete qu'on pense ! " — Lefaiseur de questions
donne peu d'attention aux reponses qu'on fait ; ce n'est pas Id dans
sa spicialiie.
Le membre k " Bylaws " est le bouchon de toutes les Amotions
mousseuses et genereuscs qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est
un empereur mancjue, — un tyran k la troisi^me trituration. C'est
un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit dans
les grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne I'aime pa?
dans la Societe, mais on le rcspecte et on le craint. II n'y a qu'un
mot pour ce membre audessus de " Bylaws." Ce mot est pour
lui ce que I'Om est aux Ilindous. C'est sa religion ; il n'y a rien
audelk. Ce mot 1^ c'est la Constitutio-v !
158 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Lesdites Soci6t6s publient des feuilletons de terns en terns. Oc
les trouve abandonn^s k sa porte, nus t jmme des enfans nouveau-
nes, faute de membrane cutanee, ou meme papyracee. Si on
aime la botanique, on y trouve une memoire sur les coquilles ; si
on fait des etudes zoblogiques, on trouve un grand tas de q'^ — 1,
ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que les encyclopedies.
Ainsi il est clair corame la m(5tapliysique qu'on doit devenir mem-
bre d'une Societd telle que nous decrivons.
Recette pour le Depilatoire PhysiopJiilosopJiique
Chaux ^ive lb. ss. Eau bouillante Oj.
Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite.
1 told the boy that his translation into French
>^ as creditable to him ; and some of the company
wishing to hear what there was in the piece that
made me smile, I turned it into English for them, as
well as I could, on the spot.
The landlady's daughter seemed to be much
amused by the idea that a depilatory could take the
place of literary and scientific accomplishments ; she
wanted me to print the piece, so that she might send
a copy of it to her cousin in Mizzourah ; she didn't
think he'd have to do anything to the outside of his
liead to get into any of the societies ; he had to wear
a wig once, when he played a part in a tabuUo.
No, — said I, — I shouldn't think of printing that in
English. I'll tell you why. As soon as you get a
few thousand people together in a town, there is
somebody that every sharp thing you say is sure to
hit. What if a thing was written in Paris or in
Pekin ? — ^that makes no difference. Everybody in
fHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159
those cities, or almost everybody, has his counterpart
here, and in all large places. — You never studied
averages as I have had occasion to.
I'll tell you how I came to know so much about
averages. There was one season when I was lectur-
ing, commonly, five evenings in the week, through
most of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most
speakers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lec-
ture than to keep several in hand.
Don't you get sick to death of one lecture ? —
said the landlady's daughter, — ^who had a new dress
on that day, and was in spirits for conversation.
I was going to talk about averages, — I said, — ^but
I have no objection to telling you about lectures, to
begin with.
A new lecture always has a certain excitement
connected with its delivery. One thinks well of it,
as of most things fresh from his mind. After a few
deliveries of it, one gets tired and then disgusted
with its repetition. Go on delivering it, and the dis-
gust passes off, until, after one has repeated it a
hundred or a hundred and fifty times, he rather
enjoys the hundred and first or hundred and fifty-
first time, before a new audience. But this is on
one condition,-T-that he never lays the lecture down
and lets it cool. If he does, there comes on a loath-
ing for it which is mtense, so that the sight of the
old battered manuscript is as bad as sea-sickness.
A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We
160 1HE AUTOCRAl OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters out
hands, and we hate to touch it. By-and-by out
hands get callous, and then we have no longer any
sensitiveness about it. But if we give it up, the
calluses disappear ; and if we meddle with it again,
we miss the novelty and get the blisters. — The story
is often quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon
was good for nothing until it had been preached
forty times. A lecture doesn't begin to be old until
it has passed its hundredth delivery; and some, I
think, have doubled, if not quadrupled, that number.
These old lectures are a man's best, commonly ;
they improve by age, also, — like the pipes, fiddles,
and poems I told you of the other day. One learns
to make the most of their strong points and to carry
off their weak ones, — to take out the really good
things which don't tell on the audience, and put in
cheaper things that do. All this degrades him, of
course, but it improves the lecture for general deliv-
ery. A thoroughly popular lecture ought to have
nothing in it which five hundred people cannot all
take in a flash, just as it is uttered.
No, indeed, — I should be very sorry to say
anything disrespectful of audiences. I have been
Iftndly treated by a great many, and may occasion-
ally face one hereafter. But I tell you the aver-
age intellect of five hundred persons, taken as
they come, is not very high. It may be sound and
safe, so far as it goes, but it is not ^ery rapid oi
THE AUTOCRAT OF THK BREAKFA;. i lACLE. IGl
profound. A lecture ought to be something which
all can understand, about something which interests
everybody. I think, that, if any experienced lecturei
gives you a different account from this, it will prob-
ably be one of those eloquent or forcible speakers
who hold an audience by the charm of their manner,
whatever they talk about,— even when they don't
talk very well.
But an average^ which was what I meant to speak
about, is one of the most extraordinary subjects of
observation and study. It is awful in its uniformity,
in its automatic necessity of action. Two commu-
nities of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their
actions, so far as we can see. Two lyceum assem-
blies, of five hundred each, are so nearly alike, that
they are absolutely undistinguishable in many cases
oy any definite mark, and there is nothing but the
place and time by which one can tell the " remarka-
bly intelligent audience " of a town in New York or
Ohio from one in any New England town of similar
^\ze. Of course, if any principle of selection has
come in, as in those special associations of young
men which are common in cities, it deranges the uni-
formity of the assemblage. But let there be no such
interfering circumstances, and one knows pretty well
even the look the audience will have, before he goes
in. Front seats : a few old folks, — shiny-headed, —
slant up best ear towards the speaker, — drop off
asleep after a while, when the air be^jins to get a
162 THE AUiOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
littla narcotic with carbonic acid. Bright women^a
face.-', young and middle-aged, a little behind these,
but toward the front — (pick out the best, and lecture
mainly to that.) Here and there a countenance,
sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty female
ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number of paira
of young people, — happy, but not always very at-
tentive. Boys, in the background, more or less
quiel. Dull faces here, there, — in how many places '.
I don't say dull people^ but faces without a ray of
sympathy or a movement of expression. They are
what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with
their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and
suck the warm soul out of him ; — that is the chief
reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season
is over. They render latent any amount of vital
caloric ; they act on our minds as those cold-blooded
creatures I was talking about act on our hearts.
Out of all these inevitable elements the audience
is generated, — a great compound vertebrate, as much
like fifty others you have seen as any two mammals
of the same species are like each other. Each audi-
ence laughs, and each cries, in just the same places
of your lecture ; that is, if you make one laugh or
cry, you make all. Even those little indescribable
movements which a lecturer takes cognizance of,
lust as a driver notices his horse's cocking his ears,
are sure to come in exactly tbe same place of your
.ecture always. I declare to you, that as the monk
THb AU11.0UAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TAB' E. 1G3
(said about the picture in the convent, — that he some-
times thought the living tenants were the shadows,
and the painted figures the realities, — I have some-
times felt as if I were a wandering spirit, and this
great unchanging multivertebrate which I faced night
after night was one ever-listenmg animal, which
writhed along after me wherever I fled, and coiled at
my feet every evening, turning up to me the same
sleepless eyes which I thought I had closed with my
last drowsy incantation I
Oh, yes ! A thousand kindly and courteous
acts, — a thousand faces that melted individually out
of my recollection as the April snow melts, but only
to steal away and find the beds of flowers whose
roots are memory, but which blossom in poetry and
dreams. I am not ungrateful, nor unconscious of all
the good feeling and intelligence everywhere to be
met with through the vast parish to which the lec-
turer ministers. But when I set forth, leading a
string of my mind's daughters to market, as the
country-folk fetch in their strings of horses Pardon
me, that was a coarse fellow who sneered at the sym-
pathy wasted on an unhappy lecturer, as if, because
he was decently paid for his services, he had there-
fore sold his sensibilities. — Family men get dreadfully
homesick. In the remote and bleak village the heart
returns to the red blaze of the logs in one's fireplacje
at home.
" There are his young barbarians all at play," —
...
164 THE AUTOClTAr OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLF
if he owns any youthful savages. — No, the world ha«
a million roosts for a man, but only one nest, i
It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which ah
appeal is always made in all discussions. The men
of facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that
slight tension about the nostrils which the conscious-
ness of carrying a "settler" in the form of a fact
or a revolver gives the individual thus armed. When
a person is really full of information, and does not
abuse it to crush conversation, his part is to that of
the real talkers what the instrumental accompani-
ment is in a trio or quartette of vocalists.
What do I mean by the real talkers ? — Why,
the people with fresh ideas, of course, and plenty of
good warm words to dress them in. Facts always
yield the place of honor, in conversation, to thoughts
about facts ; but if a false note is uttered, down
comes the finger on the key and the man of facts
asserts his true dignity. I have known three of these
men of facts, at least, who were always formidable,
— and one of them was tyrannical.
Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appear-
ance on a particular occasion ; but these men knew
something about almost everything, and never made
mistakes. — He ? Veneers in first-rate style. The
mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then
you see the cheap light stuff. — I found very fine
in conversational information, the other day when
we were in company. The talk ran upon moun*
THK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 163
lains. He was wonderfully well acquainted with
the leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and
the Appalachians ; he had nothing in particular to
Bay about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various other
mountains that were mentioned. By and by some
Revolutionai-y anecdote came up, and he showed
singular familiarity with the lives of the Adamses,
and gave many details relating to Major Andre. A
point of Natm-al History being suggested, he gave
an excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He
was very full upon the subject of agriculture, but
retired from the conversation when horticulture was
introduced in the discussion. So he seemed well
acquainted with the geology of anthracite, but did
not pretend to know anything of other kinds of coal.
There was something so odd about the extent and
limitations of his knowledge, that I suspected all at
once what might be the meaning of it, and waited
till I got an opportunity. — Have you seen the " New
American Cyclopaedia ? " said I. — I have, he replied ;
I received an early copy. — How far does it go ? — He
turned red, and answered, — To Araguay. — Oh, said
I to myself, — not quite so far as Ararat ; — that is the
reason he knew nothing 'about it ; but he must have
read all the rest straight through, and, if he can
remember what is in this volume until he has read
all those that are to come, he will know more than I
ever thought he would.
8ince I had this experience, I hear that somebody
l6G THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLr.
else has related a similar story. T didn't borrow it,
for all that. — I made a comparison at table some
time since, which has often been quoted and received
many compliments. It was that of the mind of a
bigot to the pupil of the eye; the more light you
pour on it, the more it contracts. The simile is a
very obvious, and, I suppose I may now say, a
happy one ; for it has just been shown me that it
occurs in a Preface to certain Political Poems of
Thomas Moore's published long before my remark
was repeated. When a person of fair character for
literary honesty uses an image such as another has
employed before him, the presumption is, that he haj*
struck upon it independently, or unconsciously re-
called it, supposing it his own.
It is impo. sible to tell, in a great many cases,
whether a comparison which suddenly suggests itself
is a new conception or a recollection. I told you
the other day that I never wrote a line of verse that
seemed to me comparatively good, but it appeared
old at once, and often as if it had been borrowed.
But I confess I never suspected the above compari-
son of being old, except from the fact of its obvious-
ness. It is proper, however, that I proceed by a
formal instrument to relinquish all claim to any prop-
erty in an idea given to the world at about the time
when I had just joined the class in which Master
Thomas Moore was then a somewhat advanced
Bcholar.
THE ATTTOCRAT OF TFIE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 1G7
I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty,
out knowing the liability of all men to be elected to
public office, and for that reason feeling uncertain
how soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby
renounce all claim to being considered *-he first per-
son who gave utterance to a certain simile or com-
parison referred to in the accompanying documents,
and relating to the pupil of the eye on the one part
and the mind of the bigot on the other. I hereby
relinquish all glory and profit, and especially all
claims to letters from autograph collectors, founded
upon my supposed property in the above comparison,
—knowing well, that, according to the laws of liter-
ature, they who speak first hold the fee of the thing
said. I do also agree that all Editors of Cyclopedias
and Biographical Dictionaries, all Publishers of Re-
views and Papers, and all Critics writing therein,
shall be at liberty to retract or qualify any opinion
predicated on the supposition that I was the sole and
undisputed author of the above comparison. But,
inasmuch as I do affirm that the comparison afore-
said was uttered by me in the firm belief that it was
new and wholly my own, and as I have good reason
to think that I had never seen or heard it when first
expressed by me, and as it is well known that difter
ent persons may independently utter the same idea,
— as is evinced by that familiar line from Dona
his,-
" Fereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt,** —
168 1~iIK AUTOCRAT OF THE BPEAKFAST-TABLE.
now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that
all well-disposed persons will abstain from asserting
or implying that I am open to any accusation what-
soever touching the said comparison, and, if they
have so asserted or implied, that they will have the
manliness forthwith to retract the same assertion or
insinuation.
I think few persons have a greater disgust for
plagiarism than myself. If I had even suspected
that the idea in question was borrowed, I should
have disclaimed originality, or mentioned the coin-
cidence, as I once did in a case where I had happened
to hit on an idea of Swift's. — But what shall I do
about these verses I was going to read you ? I am
afraid that half mankind would accuse me of steal-
ing their thoughts, if I printed them. I am convinced
that several of you, especially if you are getting a
little on in life, will recognize some of these senti-
ments as having passed through your consciousness
at some time. I can't help it, — it is too late now
The verses are written, and you must have them.
Listen, then, and you shall hear
WHAT WE ALL THINK.
That age was older once than now^
In spite of locks untimely shed,
Or silvered on the youthful brow;
That babes make love and children wed.
T^E AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 16$
Ti««t sunshine had a heavenly glow,
Which faded with those " good old days,"
When wntcrs came with deeper snow,
And autumns with a softer haze.
x'hat — mother, sister, wife, or child —
The " best of women " e<*ch has known.
Were schoolboys ever h?Jf so mid ?
How young the grandpapas have grown
Tliat hut for this our souls were free,
And but for that our lives were blest;
That in some season yet to be
Our cares will leave us time to rest.
Whene'er we groan with ache or pain,
Some common aihneiit of the race, —
Though doctors think the matter plain^^
That ours is " a peculiar case.**
That when like babes with fingers burned
We count one bitter maxim more,
Our lesson all the world has learned.
And men are wiser than before.
That when we sob o'er fancied woes,
The angels hovering overhead
Count every pitying drop that flows
And love us for the tears we shed.
That when we stand w'th tearless eye
And turn the bejmar from our door.
They still approve us when we s5?h.
"Ah, had T but one thousand more J *
(70 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLR
TLdt weakness smoothed the path of sin.
In half the slips our youth has knowu j
And whatsoe'er its blame has been,
That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown.
Though temples crowd the crumbled brink
O'erhanging truth's eternal flow,
Their tablets bold with what we thinky
Their echoes dumb to what we know ;
That one unquestioned text we read,
All doubt beyond, all fear above,
Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed
Can burn or blot it : God is Lovk !
VIL
[This particular record is noteworthy principally
for containing a paper by my friend, the Professor,
with a poem or two annexed or intercalated. ]
would suggest to young persons that they should
pass over it for the present, and read, instead of it,
that story about the young man who was in love
with the young lady, and in great trouble for some-
thing like nine pages, but happily married on the
tenth page or thereabouts, which, I take it for granted,
will be contained in the periodical where this is
found, unless it differ from aJl other publications of
the kind. Perhaps, if such young people will Jaj^
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171
the number aside, and take it up ten years, or a little
more, from the present time, they may find some-
thing in it for their advantage. They can't possibly
understand it all now,]
My friend, the Professor, began talking with nie
one day in a dreary sort of way. I couldn't get at
the difficulty for a good while, but at last it turned
out that somebody had been calling him an old man
— He didn't mind his students calling him the old
man, he said. That was a technical expression, and
he thought that he remembered hearing it applied to
himself when he was about twenty-five. It may be
considered as a familiar ana sometirucs endearing
appellation. An Irishwoman calls her husband " the
old man," and he returns the caressing expression by
speaking of her as "the old woman." But now,
said he, just suppose a case like one of these. A
young stranger is overheard talking of you as a very
nice old gentleman. A friendly and genial critic
speaks of your green old age as illustrating the truth
of some axiom you had uttered with reference to
that period of life. What / call an old man is a
person with a smooth, shining crown and a fringe of
scattered white hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny
days, stooping as he walks, bearing a cane, moving
cautiously and slowly ; telling old stories, smiling at
present follies, living in a narrow world of dry habits ;
one that remains waking when others lave dropped
asleep, and keeps a little night-lamp-flame of life
172 'I'HE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
burning year after year, if the lamp is not upset^
and there is only a careful hand held round it to pre-
vent the puffs of wind from blowing the flame out.
That's what I call an old man.
Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me
that I have got to that yet ? Why, bless you, I am
several years short of the time when — [I knew what
was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing ;
twenty years ago he used to quote it as one of those
absurd speeches men of genius will make, and now
he is going to argue from it] — several years short of
the time when Balzac says that men are — most-— you
know — dangerous to — the hearts of — in short, most
to be dreaded by duennas that have charge of sus-
ceptible females. — What age is that? said I, statisti-
cally. — Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. —
Balzac ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goe-
the said of him that each of his stories must have
been dug out of a woman's heart. But fifty-two is
a high figure.
Stand in the light of the window. Professor, said
I. — The Professor took up the desired position. —
You have white hairs, I said. — Had 'em any time
these twenty years, said the Professor. — And the
crow's-foot, — pes anserinus^ rather. — The Professor
smiled, as I wanted him to, and the folds radiated
like the ridges of a half-opened fan, from the outei
corner of the eyes to the temples. — And the calipers
eaid I. — What are the 'calipers ? he asked, curiously
IHK AJIOCRAT OF Tilt Bi;E A KF AST-TABLE. 173
— V\ hy, the parenthesis, said I. — Parenthesis ? said the
Professor ; what's that ? — Why, look in the glass
when you are disposed to laugh, and see if your
mouth isn't framed in a couple of crescent lines, —
so, my boy ( ). — It's all nonsense, said the Professor ;
just look at my biceps ; — and he began pulling off
his coat to show me his arm. Be careful, said I ;
you can't bear exposure to the air, at your time of
life, as you could once. — I will box with you, said the
Professor, row with you, walk with you, ride with
you, swim with you, or sit at table with you, for
fifty dollars a side. — Pluck survives stamina, I an-
swered.
The Professor went off a little out of humor. A
few weeks afterwards he came in, looking very good-
natured, and brought me a paper, which I have here,
and from which I shall read you some portions, if
you don't object. He had been thinking the matter
over, he said, — had read Cicero " De Senectute," and
made up his mind to meet old age half way. These
were some of his reflections that he had written
down ; so here you have
THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER.
Thkre is no doubt when old age begins. The
human body is a furnace which keeps in blast three-
score years and ten, more or less. It burns about
three hundred pounds of carbon a year, (besides other
Tuel,) when in fair working order, according to a great
174 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE.
cnemist's estimate. "When the fire slackens, lifb de*
clines ; when it goes out, we are dead.
It has been shown by some noted French experi-
menters, that the amount of combustion increases up
to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary to
about forty-five, and then diminishes. This last is
the point where old age starts from. The great fact
of physical life is the perpetual commerce with the
elements, and the fire is the measure of it.
About this time of life, if food is plenty where you
live, — for that, you know, regulates matrimony, —
you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather
some fine morning ; a kind of domestic felicity that
gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as
among the not remotely possible events.
I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. John-
son wrote to Thrale, telling her about life's declining
from thirty -five ; the furnace is in full blast for ten
years longer, as I have said. The Romans came
very near the mark ; their age of enlistment reached
from seventeen to forty-six years.
What is the use of fighting against the seasons,
or the tides, or the movements of the planetary bod-
ies, or this ebb in the wave of life that flows through
us ? We are old fellows from the moment the fire
begins to go out. Let us always behave like gentle*
men when we are introduced to new acquaintance.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175
Incipit Allcgoria Senectutis.
Old Age, this is Mr. Professor ; Mr. Professor, thi..
fs Old Age.
Old Ag-e. — Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well.
I have known you for some time, though I think
you did not know me. Shall we walk down the
street together ?
Professor (drawing back a little). — We can talk
more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell
me how it is you seem to be acquainted with every-
body you are introduced to, though he evidently
considers you an entire stranger ?
Old Age. — I make it a rule never to force myself
upon a person's recognition until I have known him
at least ^ye years.
Professor. — Do you mean to say that you have
known me so long as that ?
Old Age. I do. I left my card on you longer
ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet
I see you have it with you.
Professor. — Where ?
Old Age. — There, between your eyebrows, — three
(Straight lines running up and down ; all the probate
courts know that token, — " Old Age, his mark." Put
your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and
your middle finger on the inner end of the other
eyebrow ; now separate the fingers, and you will
smooth out my sign-manual; that's the way you
used to look before I left my card on you.
276 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLL.
Professor. — What message do people generally
fiend back when you first call on them ?
Old Age. — Not at home. Then I Ica^e a card and
go. Next year I call ; get the same answer ; leave
another card. So for five oi six, — sometimes ten
yf^ars or more. At last, if tlicy don't let me in, I
break in through the fronL door or the windows.
We talked together in chis way some time. Then
Old Age said again,- -Come, let us walk dov^n the
street together, — ana ofTered me a cane, an eyeglass,
a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes. — No, much ob-
liged to you, said I. 1 don't want those things, and
I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in
my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty way
and walked out alone ; — got a fall, caught a cold,
was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think
over this whole matter.
Explicit Alleg-oria Senectutis,
We have settled when old age begins. Like all
Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its
approaches, strewed with illusions, and all its little
griefs soothed by natural sedatives. But the iron
hand is not less irresistible because it wears the
velvet glove. The button-wood throws off its bark
in large flakes, which one may find lying at its foot,
pushed out, and at last pushed off, by that tranquil
movement from beneath, which is too slow to be
aeen, but too powerful to be arrested. One finds
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- 1" ABLE 177
them always, but one rarely sees them fall. So it
is our youth drops from us, — scales off, sapless and
lifeless, and lays bare the tender and immature fresh
growth of old age. Looked at collectively, the
changes of old age appear as a series of personal
insults and indignities, terminating at last in death,
which Sir Thomas Browne has called " the very dis-
grace and ignominy of our natures."
My lady's cheek can boast no more
The cranberry white and pink it wore ;
And where her shining locks divide,
The parting line is all too wide
No, no, — this will never do. Talk about men, if
you will, but spare the poor women.
We have a brief description of seven stages of
life by a remarkably good observer. It is very pre-
sumptuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been
struck with the fact that life admits of a natural
analysis into no less than fifteen distinct periods.
Taking the five primary divisions, infancy, childhood,
youth, manhood, old age, each of these has its own
three periods of immaturity, complete development,
and decline. I recognize on old baby at once, — with
its "pipe and mug," (a stick of candy and a porrin
ger,) — so does everybody; and an old child sheddinj^
its milk-teeth is only a little prototype of the old man
shedding his permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts
is only the childhood, as it were, of old age ; the
178 1HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE.
graybeard youngster must be weaned from his late
Buppers now. So you will see that you have to
make fifteen stages at any rate, and that it would
not be hard to make twenty-five ; five primary, each
with five secondary divisions.
The infanpy and childhood of commencing old
age have the same ingenuous simplicity and de-
lightful unconsciousness about them as the first
stage of the earlier periods of life shows. The great
delusion of mankind is in supposing that to be in-
dividual and exceptional which is universal and ac-
cording to law. A person is always startled when
he hears himself seriously called an old man for the
first time.
Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as
sailors are hurried on board of vessels, — in a state
of intoxication. We are hustled into maturity reel-
ing with our passions and imaginations, and we
have drifted far away from port before we awake out
of our illusions. But to carry us out of maturity
into old age, without our knowing where we are
going, she drugs us with strong opiates, and so we
stagger along with wide open eyes that see nothing
until snow enough has fallen on our heads to rouse
our comatose brains out of their stupid trances.
There is one mark of age that strikes me more
than any of the physical ones ; — I mean the forma-
tion of Habits. An old man who shrinks into him-
self falls into ways that become as positive and aa
IHE AJTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 1/9
much beyond the reach of outside influences as if they
were governed by clock work. . The animal functions,
as the physiologists call them, in distinction from
the organic^ tend, in the process of deterioration to
which age and neglect united gradually lead them,
to assume the periodical or rhythmical type of move-
ment Every man's heart (this organ belongs, you
know, to the organic system) has a regular mode of
action ; but I know a great many men whose brains^
and all their voluntary existence flowing from their
brains, have a systole and diastole as regular as that
of the heart itself. Habit is the approximation of
the animal system to the organic. It is a confession
of failure in the highest function of being, which
involves a perpetual self-determination, in full view
of all existing circumstances. But habit, you see,
is an action in present circumstances from past mo-
tives. It is substituting a vis a tergo for the evolu-
tion of living force.
When a man, instead of burning up three hundred
pounds of carbon a year, has got down to two hun-
dred and fifty, it is plain enough he must economize
force somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving in-
vention which enables a man to get along with less
fuel, — that is all ; for fuel is force, you know, just as
much in the page I am WTiting for you as in the loco
motive or the legs that carry it to you. Carbon is the
same thing whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread
and cheese A reverend gentleman demurred t thki
£80 ^fiK AUTOCRAT OF THE KKEAKFAST-TABLE.
statement; — as if, because combustion is asserted K
be the sine qua non of thought, therefore thought ig
all(»ged to be a purely chemical process. Facts of
chemistry are one thing I told him, and facts of con-
sciousness another. It can be proved to him, by a
very simple analysis of some of his spare elements,
that every Sunday, when he does his duty faithfully,
he uses up more phosphorus out of his brain and
nerves than on ordinary days. But then he had his
choice whether to do his duty, or to neglect it, and
save his phosphorus and other combustibles.
It follows from all this that the formation of habits
ought naturally to be, as it is, the special character-
istic of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass
their maximum long before the time when the true
decline of life begins, if we may judge hy the expe-
rience of the ring. A man is " stale," I think, in
their language, soon after thirty. — often, no doubt,
much earlier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profes-
sion are exceedingly apt to keep their vital fire burn-
ing with the blower up.
So far without Tully. But in the mean time
I have been reading the treatise, " De Senectute." It
Is not long, but a leisurely performance. The old
gentleman was sixty-three years of age when ho
addressed it to his friend T. Pomponius Atticus,
Eq., a person of distinction, some two or three years
older. We read it when we are schoolboys, forget
all about it for thirty years, and then take it up
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 1^51
Kgaln by a natural instinct, — provided always that
we read Latin as we drink water, without stopping
to taste it, as all of us who ever learned it at school
or college ought to do.
Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good
deal of it is what would be called in vulgar phrase
" slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental illustra-
tions which a modern writer would look at the back
of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient
classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency
to this kind of expansion.
An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact)
with some contrivance or other for people with
broken kneepans. As the patient would be confined
for a good while, he might find it dull work to sit
with his hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious
inventor suggested, would be an agreeable mode of
passing the time. He mentioned, in his written ac-
count of his contrivance, various works that might
amuse the weary hour. I remember only three, —
Don Quixote, Tom Jones, and Watts on the Mind, (ifJi^J/i^
It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay
was delivered as a lyceum lecture, (concio pojmlaris,)
at the Temple of Mercury. The journals (papyri)
of the day (" Tempora Quotidiana," — " Tribunus
Quirinalis," — " Preeco Romanus," and the rest) gave
abstracts of it, one of which I have translated and
modernized, as being a substitute for the analysis 1
intended to make.
182 THE AUTOCRAT OJ THE BREAKF VbT-TABLE.
IV. Kal. Mart
The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last even-
ing, was well attended by the elite of our great city.
Two hundred thousand sestertia were thought to
have been represented in the house. The doors
were besieged by a mob of shabby fellows, (illotum
vulgus^) who were at length quieted after two or
three had been somewhat roughly handled {gladio
jugulati). The speaker was the well-known Mark
TuUy, Eq.,— the subject Old Age. Mr. T. has a
lean and scraggy person, with a very unpleasant ex-
crescence upon his nasal feature, from which his
nickname of chick-pea (Cicero) is said by some to
be derived. As a lecturer is public property, we may
remark, that his outer garment (toga) was of cheap
stuff and somewhat worn, and that his general style
and appearance of dress and manner (habitus, vesti^
tusqioe) were somewhat provincial.
The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue
between Cato and Lselius. We found the first por-
tion rather heavy, and retired a few moments for re-
freshment (pocula qucedam vini), — All want to reach
old age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it;
therefore they are donkeys. — The lecturer will allow
us to say that he is the donkey ; we know we shall
grumble at oJd age, but we want to live through
youth and manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall
groan over. — There was considerable prosing as to
what old age can do ani can't. — True, but not new
THE AirrOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 183
Certainly, old folks can't jump, — break the necks of
their thigh-bones, (femorum cervices^) if they do;
can't crack nuts with their teeth; can't climb a
greased pole (malum inunctum scandere non jiossunt) ;
but they can tell old stories and give you good ad-
vice; if they know what you have made up your
mind to do when you ask them. — All this is well
enough, but won't set the Tiber on fire (Tiberim
accendere nequaquam potest.)
There were some clever things enough, {dicta hana
inepta,) a few of which are worth reporting. — Old
people are accused of being forgetful ; but they never
forget where they have put their money. — Nobody is
so old he doesn't think he can live a year. — The
lecturer quoted an ancient maxim, — Grow old early,
if you would be old long, — but disputed it. — Author-
ity, he thought, was the chief privilege of age. — It is
not great to have money, but fine to govern those
that have it. — Old age begins at forty-six years,
according to the common opinion. — It is not every
kind of old age or of wine that grows sour with time.
-Some excellent remarks were made on immortal-
ity, but mainly borrowed from and credited to Plato.
— Several pleasing anecdotes were told. — Old Milo,
champion of the heavy weights in his day, looked at
his arms and whimpered, " They are dead." Not so
dead as you, you old fool, — says Cato ; — you never
were good for an} thing but for yuur shoulders and
flanks. — Pisistratus asked Solon what made him
daie to be so obstinate. Old age, said Solon.
184 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a
credit to oor culture and civilization. — The reportei
goes on to state that there will be no lecture next
week, on account of the expected combat between
the bear and the barbarian. Betting (sponsio) two
to one (duo ad unum) on the bear.
After all, the most encouraging things I find
in the treatise, " De Senectute," are the stories of
men who have found new occupations when grow-
ing old, or kept up their common pursuits in the
extreme period of life. Cato learned Greek when
he was old, and speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle,
or some such instrument, (Jidibus,) after the example
of Socrates. Solon learned something new, every
day, in his old age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cy-
rus pointed out with pride and pleasure the trees he
had planted Vith his own hand. [I remember a
pillar on the Duke of Northumberland's estate at
Alnwick, with an inscription in similar words, if not
the same. That, like other country pleasures, never
wears out. None is too rich, none too poor, none
too young, none too old to enjoy it] There is a New
England story I have heard more to the point, how-
ever, than any of Cicero's. A young farmer was
urged to set out some apple-trees. — No, said he,
they are too long growing, and I don't want to plant
for other people. The young farmer's father was
spoken to about it, but he, with better reason, alleged
THK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ig^
that apple-trees were slow and life was fleeting.
At labt some one mentioned it to the old grandfather
of the young farmer. He had nothing else to do, —
so he stuck in some trees. He lived long enough to
drink barrels of cider made from the apples that
grew on those trees.
As for myself, after visiting a friend lately, — [Do
emember all the time that this is the Professor's
pjLoer.]— rl satisfied myself that I had better concede
the fact that — my contemporaries are not so young
as they have been, — and that, — awkward as it is, —
science and history agree in telling me that I can
claim the immunities and must own the humiliations
of the early stage of senility. Ah I but we have all
gone down the hill together. The dandies of my
time have split their waistbands and taken to high-
low shoes. The beauties of my recollections — where
are they ? They have run the gantlet of the years
as well as I. First the years pelted them with red
roses till their cheeks were all on fire. By and by
they began throwing white roses, and that morn-
ing flush passed away. At last one of the years
threw a snow-ball, and after that no year let the poor
girls pass without throwing snow-balls. And then
came rougher missiles, — ice and stones ; and from
time to time an arrow whistled, and dowm went one
of the poor girls. So there are but few left ; and we
don't call those few girls, but
Ah, me I ncc am 1 groaning just as the o d Greek
1S6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
sighed At, at ! and the old Roman, Eheu ! I have no
doubt we should die of shame and grief at the in-
dignities offered us by age, if it were not that we see
so many others as badly or worse off than ourselves
We always compare ourselves with our contempo-
raries.
[I was interrupted in my reading just here. Be-
fore I began at the next breakfast, I read them these
verses ; — I hope you will like them, and get a usefuj
lesson from them.]
THE LAST BLOSSOM.
Though young no more, we still would dream
Of beauty's dear deluding wiles ;
The leagues of life to graybeards seem
Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles.
Who knows a woman's wild caprice ?
It played with Goethe's silvered hair,
And many a Holy Father's " niece "
Has softly smoothed the papal chair.
When sixty bids us sigh in vain
To melt the heart of sweet sixteen,
We think upon those ladies twain
Who loved so well the tough old Dean.
We see the Patriarch's wintry face,
The maid of Egypt's dusky glow.
And dream that Youth and Age embrace,
As April violets fill with snow.
rH2 AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAtLB. 187
Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile
Hig lotus-lo^^ug Memphian lies, —
The musky daughter of the Nile
With plaited hair and almond eyes.
Maht we but share one wild caress
Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall,
And Earth's brown, clinging lips impreai
The long cold kiss that waits us all I
My bosom heaves, remembering yet
The morning of that blissful day
When Rose, the flower of spring, I met,
And gave my raptured soul away.
Flung from her eyes of purest blue,
A lasso, with its leaping chain
Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew
O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain.
Thou com'st to cheer my waning age,
Sweet vision, waited for so long !
Dove that would seek the poet's cage
Lured by the magic breath of song 1
She blushes ! Ah, reluctant maid.
Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told I
O'er girlhood's yielding barricade
Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold I
Come to my arms ! — love heeds not yean
No frost the bud of passion knows. — -
Ha ! what is this my frenzy hears ?
A /olce behind me uttered, — Rose !
1$^ THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK
Sweet was her smile, — but not for me ;
Alas, when woman looks too kind,
Just turn your foolisli head and see, —
Some youth is walking close behind I
As to giving up because the almanac or the Fam<
ily-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have
no intention of doing any such thing. I grant you
that I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see
people of my standing really good for nothing, de-
crepit, effete, la Icvre inferieure dejd pendante, with
what little life they have left mainly concentrated in
their epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is
epidemic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody that
lives long enough is sure to catch it. I am going to
bay, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I
treat the malady in my own case.
First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do,
there is less time for it than when I was younger, 1
find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and
use my time more economically than ever before ;
so that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my
earlier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a
new study. I took up a difficult language a very
few years ago with good success, and think of math-
ematics and metaphysics by-and-by.
Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a gooa many
neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach,
and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them.
You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old
THE AUTOCRAT OF. THE BREAKFAb l-T ABLE. igg
Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle,
when I had deliberately- taken it up in my old age,
and satisfied myself that I could get much comfort,
if not much music, out of it.
Thirdly. I have found that some ol those active
exercises, which are comrnonly thought to belong to
young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later
period.
A young friend has lately written an admirable
article in one of the journals, entitled, " Saints and
their Bodies." Approving of his general doctrines,
and grateful for his records of personal experience, I
cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirm-
ation of his eulogy of one particular form of active
exercise and amusement, namely, boating-. For the
past nine years, I have rowed about, during a good
part of the summer, on fresh or salt water. My
present fleet on the river Charles consists of three
row-boats. 1. A small flat-bottomed skifl" of the
shape of a flat-iron, kept mainly to lend to boys. 2.
A. fancy " dory " for two pairs of sculls, in which I
sometimes go out with my young folks. 3. My own
particular water-sulky, a " skeleton " or " shell " race-
boat, twenty-two feet long, with huge outriggers,
which boat I pull with ten-foot sculls, — alone, of
course, as it holds but one, and tips him out, if he
doesn't mind what he is about. In this I glide
around the Back Bay, down the stream, up the
Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the Mys«
19U THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
iic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats
which leave a swell after them delightful to rock
upon ; I linger under the bridges, — those " caterpillar
bridges," as my brother professor so happily called
them ; rub against the black sides of old wood-
Bchooners; cool down under the overhanging stern
of some tall Indiaman ; stretch across to the Navy-
Yard, where the sentinel warns me off from the
Ohio, — just as if I should hurt her by lying in her
shadow ; then strike out into the harbor, where the
water gets clear and the air smells of the ocean, —
till all at once I remember, that, if a west wind
blows up of a sudden, I shall drift along past the
islands, out of sight of the dear old State-house, —
plate, tumbler, knife and fork all waiting at home,
but no chair drawn up at the table, — all the dear
people waiting, waiting, waiting, while the boat is
sliding, sliding, sliding into the great desert, where
there is no tree and no fountain. As I don't want
my wreck to be washed up on one of the beaches in
company with devil's-aprons, bladder-weeds, dead
horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, I turn about
and flap my long, narrow wings for home. When
the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splendid
fight to get through the bridges, but always make it
a rule to beat, — though I have been jammed up int(»
pretty tight places at times, and was caught once
between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until
our bones (the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. l&i
been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my
moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the
rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave,
return to the garb of civilization, walk through my
Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common,
and, reaching my habitat, in consideration of my
advanced period of life, indulge in the Elysian aban-
donment of a huge recumbent chair.
When I have established a pair of well-pronounced
feathering-calluses on my thumbs, when I am in
training so that I can do my fifteen miles at a stretch
without coming to grief in any way, when I can
perform my mile in eight minutes or a little less, then
I feel as if I had old Time's head in chancery, and
could give it to him at my leisure.
I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have
bored this ancient city through and through in my
daily travels, until I know it as an old inhabitant of
a Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who,
in the course of these rambles, discovered that re-
markable avenue called Myrtle Street^ stretching in
one long line from east of the Reservoir to a precipi-
tous and rudely paved cliff which looks down on the
grim abode of Science, and beyond it to the far
hills ; a promenade so delicious in its repose, so
cheerfully varied with glimpses down the northern
slope into busy Cambridge Street with its iron rivei
of the horse-railroad, and wheeled barges gliding
back and forward over it, — so delightfully closing at
192 thp: autocrat of the breakfast-table.
its western extremity in sunny courts and passages
where I know peace, and beauty, and virtue, and
serene old age must be perpetual tenants, — so allur-
ing to all who desire to take their daily stroll, in the
words of Dr. Watts, —
"Alike unknowing and unknown," —
that nothing but a sense of duty would have promp-
ted me to reveal the secret of its existence. I
concede, therefore, that walking is an immeasura-
bly fine invention, of which old age ought constantly
to avail itself.
Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable
to sole-leather. The principal objection to it is of a
financial character. But you may be sure that Ba-
con and Sydenham did not recommend it for nothing.
One's hepar, or, in vulgar language, liver, — a ponder^
ous organ, weighing some three or four pounds, —
goes up and down like the dasher of a churn in the
midst of the other vital arrangements, at every step
of a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up
like coppers in a money-box. Riding is good, for
those that are born with a silver-mounted bridle in their
hand, and can ride as much and as often as they like,
without thinking all the time they hear that steady
grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with
calm lateral movement the bank-bills and promises
to pay upon which it is notorious that the profligate
animal in question feeds day and night.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ]93
Instead, however, of considering these kinds of ex-
ercise in this empirical way, I will devote a brief
space to an examination of them in a more scientific
form.
The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely
physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power
in action. The first source of pleasure varies of
course with our condition and tlie state of the sur-
rounding circumstances ; the second with the amount
and kind of power, and the extent and kind of action
In all forms of active exercise there are three powers
simultaneously in action, — the will, the muscles, and
the intellect. Each of these predominates in differ-
ent kinds of exercise. In walking, the will and mus-
cles are so accustomed to work together and perform
their task with so little expenditure of force, that the
intellect is left comparatively free. The mental
pleasure in walking, as such, is in the sense of power
over all our moving machinery. But in riding, I
have the additional pleasure of governing another
will, and my muscles extend to the tips of the ani-
mal's ears and to his four hoofs, instead of stopping
at my hands and feet. Now in this extension of my
volition and my physical frame into another animal,
my tyrannical instincts and my desire for heroic
strength are at once gratified. When the horse
ceases to have a will of his own and his muscles
require no special attention on your part, then you
may live on horseback as Wesley did, and write.
194 mT-: AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
sermons or take naps, as you like. But you wiL
observe, that, in riding on horseback, you always
have a feeling, that, after all, it is not you that do
the work, but the animal, and this prevents the satis-
faction from being complete.
Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I
won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself in one
of tnose miserable tubs, tugging in which is to row-
ing the true boat what riding a cow is to bestriding
an Arab. You know the Esquimaux kayak^ (if that
is the name of it,) don't you ? Look at that model
of one over my door. Sharp, rather ? — On the con-
trary, it is a lubber to the one you and I must have ;
a Dutch fish-wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I
will tell you about. — Our boat, then, is something
of the shape of a pickerel, as you look down upon
his back, he lying in the sunshine just where the
sharp edge of the water cuts in among the lily-pads.
It is a kind of a giant j90<i, as one may say, — tight
everywhere, except in a little place in the middle,
where you sit. Its length is from seven to ten yards,
and as it is only from sixteen to thirty inches wide
in its widest part, you understand why you want
those " outriggers," or projecting iron frames with
the rowlocks in which the oars play. My rowlocks
are five feet apart; double the greatest width of the
boat.
Elere you are, then, afloat with a body a rod and
a half long, with arra s, or wings, as you may choose
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195
to call them, stretching more than twenty feet firon?
tip to tip; every volition of yours extending as per
fectly into them as if your spinal cord ran down the
centre strip of yonr boat, and the nerves of your arms
tingled as far as the broad blades of your oars, —
oars of spruce, balanced, leathered, and ringed under
your own special direction. This, in sober earnest,
is the nearest approach to flying that man has ever
made or perhaps ever will make. As the hawk sails
without flapping his pinions, so you drift with the
tide when you will, in the most luxurious form of lo-
comotion indulged to an embodied spirit. But if youi
blood wants rousing, turn round that stake in the
river, which you see a mile from here ; and when you
•^ome in in sixteen minutes, (if you do, for we are
old boys, and not champion scullers, you remember,)
ihen say if you begin to feel a little warmed up 01
not ! You can row easily and gently all day, and
you can row yourself blind and black in the face in
ten minutes, just as you like. It has been long agreed
that there is no way in which a man can accomplish
so much labor with his muscles as in rowing. It is
in the boat, then, that man finds the largest extension
of his volitional and muscular existence ; and yet he
may tax both of them so slightly, in that most deli-
cious of exercises, that he shall mentally write his
sermon, or his poem, or recall the remarks he ha?
made m company and put them in form fur the pub-
lic, as well as in his easy-ohair.
196 IHK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinito
delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June
morning, when the river and bay are smooth as a
sheet of beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it
up with my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent
closing after me like those wounds of angels which
Milton tells of, but the seam still shining for many a
long rood behind me. To lie still over the Flats,
where the waters are shallow, and see the crabs
crawling and the sculpins gliding busily and silently
beneath the boat, — to rustle in through the long
harsh grass that leads up some tranquil creek, — to
take shelter from the sunbeams under one of the
thousand-footed bridges, and look down its inter-
minable colonnades, crusted with green and oozy
growths, studded with minute barnacles, and belted
with rings of dark muscles, while overhead streams
and thunders that other river whose every wave is a
human soul flowing to eternity as the river below
flows to the ocean, — lying there moored unseen, in
loneliness so profound that the columns of Tadmor
in the Desert could not seem more remote from life,
— the cool breeze on one's forehead, the stream whis-
pering against the half-sunken pillars, — why should
I tell of these things, that I should live to see my b^
loved haunts invaded and the waves blackened with
boats as with a swarm of water-beetles ? What a
city of idiots we mast be not to have covered this
glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we
rilK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 197
have jiist learned to cover the ice in winter with
skaters I
I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stifF-
jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as
we can boast in our Atlantic cities never before
sprang from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. Of the
females that are the mates of these males I do not
here speak. I preached my sermon from the lay-
pulpit on this matter a good while ago. Of course,
if you heard it, you know my belief is that the total
climatic influences here are getting up a number of
new patterns of humanity, some of which are not an
improvement on the old model. Clipper-built, sharp
in the bows, long in the spars, slender to look at,
and fast to go, the ship, which is the great organ of
our national life of relation, is but a reproduction of
the typical form which the elements impress upon its
builder. All this we cannot help ; but we can make
the best of these influences, such as they ate. We
have a few good boatmen, — no good horsemen
that I hear of, — I cannot speak for cricketing, —
but as for any great athletic feat performed by
a gentleman in these latitudes, society would drop a
man who should run round the Common in five
minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, single-stick
olayers, and boxers, we have no reason to be
ftshamed of. Boxing is rough play, but not too
rough for a hearty young fellow. Anything is better
than this white-blooded degeneration to which wa
all to.nd
198 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I dropped into a gentlemen's sparring exhibition
only last evening. It did my heart good to see that
there were a few young and youngish youths left who
could take care of their own heads in case of emer-
gency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolv-
ing himself into the primitive constituents of his hu-
manity. Here is a delicate young man now, with
an intellectual countenance, a slight figure, a sub-
pallid complexion, a most unassuming deportment,
a mild adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jon-
athan fr m between the ploughtails would of course
expect to handle with perfect ease. Oh, he is taking
off his gold-bowed spectacles ! Ah, he is divesting
himself of his cravat! Why, he is stripping off his
coat! Well, here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk
shirt, and with two things that look like batter pud-
dings in the place of his fists. Now see that other
fellow with another pair of batter puddings, — ^the big
one with the broad shoulders ; he will certainly knock
the little man's head off, if he strikes him. Feinting,
dodging, stopping, hitting, countering, — little man's
head not off yet. You might as well try to jump
upon your own shadow as to hit the little man's in-
•tellectual features. He needn't have taken off the
gold-bowed spectacles at all. Quick, cautious,
shifty, nimble, cool, he catches all the fierce lunges
or gets out of their reach, till his turn comes, and
then, whack goes one of the batter puddings against
*he big one's ribs, and bang goes the other into tho
THE AUTOCRAT OF TIIL BR^I.\KFAST-TABLE. 199
Dig one's face, and, staggering, shuflling, slipping,
tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down goes the big
one in a miscellaneous bundle. — If my young friend,
whose excellent article I have referred to, could only
introduce the manly art of self-defence among the
clergy, I am satisfied that we should have better
sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome church-
militant. A bout with the gloves would let off the
ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, united,
have embroiled their subject in a bitter controversy.
We should then often hear that a point of difference
between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being
vehemently discussed in a series of newspaper ar
tides, had been settled by a friendly contest in sev-
eral rounds, at the close of which the parties shook
hands and appeared cordially reconciled.
But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid.
I was for a moment tempted, by the contagion of
muscular electricity last evening, to try the gloves
with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a friend to
the noble art ; but remembering that he had twice
my weight and half my age, besides the advantage
of his training, I sat still and said nothing.
There is one other delicate point I wish to speak
<)f with reference to old age. I refer to the use of
dioptric media which correct the diminished refract-
ing power of the humors of the eye, — in other words,
ipectacles I don't use them. All I ask is a large,
fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard
200 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFASl -TABLE.
of focal distance, and my eyes are as good as ever.
But if your eyes fail, I can tell you something en-
couraging. There is now living in New York State
an old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail,
immediately took to exercising it on the finest print,
and in this way fairly bullied Nature out of her
foolish habit of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or
thereabout. And now this old gentleman performs
the most extraordinary feats with his pen, showing
that his eyes must be a pair of microscopes. I
should be afraid to say to you how much he writes
in the compass of a half-dime, — whether the Psalms
or the Gospels, or the Psalms arid the Gospels, I
won't be positive.
But now let me tell you this. If the time comes
when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow,
because your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten-
foot sculls, because your arms are too weak, and,
after dallying av/hile with eye-glasses, come at last
to the undisguised reality of spectacles, — if the time
comes when that fire of life we spoke of has burned
so low that where its flames reverberated there is
only the sombre stain of regret, and where its coals
glowed, only the white ashes that cover the embers
of memory, — don't let your heart grow cold, and you
may carry cheerfulness and love with you into the
teens of your second century, if you can last so long
A.S our friend, the Poet, once said, in some of those
old-fashioned heroics of his which he keeps for his
private reading, —
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201
Call him not old, whose visionar}' brain
Iloltls o'er the past its undivided reign.
For him in vain the envious seasons roll
Who bears eternal summer in his soul.
If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay,
Spring with her birds, or children with their play,
Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art
Stir the few Ufe-drops creeping round his heart, —
Turn to the record where his years are told, —
Count his gray hairs, — they cannot make him old 1
End of the Pro/essor^s paper.
[The above essay was not read at one* time, but
m several instalments, and accompanied by various
comments from different persons at the table. The
company were in the main attentive, with the excep-
tion of a little somnolence on the part of the old
gentleman opposite at times, and a few sly, mail
cious questions about the " old boys " on the part of
that forward young fellow who has figured occasion
ally, not always to his advantage, in these reports.
On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling 1
am not ashamed of, I have always tried to give a
more appropriate character to our conversation. I
have never read them my sermon yet, and I don't
know that I shall, as some of them might take my
convictions as a personal indignity to themselves.
But having read our company so much of the Pro-
fessor's talk about age and other subjects connected
with physical life, I took the next Sunday morning
to repeat to tliem the following poem of his, which
202 'i'HE AUT0CRA1 OF THE BREAKFAST- TAB LK
1 have had by me some time. He calls it — I sup
pose, for his professional friends — The Anatomist*«
Hymt*: ; but I shall name it — ]
THE LIVING TEMPLE.
Not in the world of light alone,
"VS^here God has built his blazing throne,
Nor yet alone in earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green,
Is all thy Maker's glory seen : -
Look in upon thy wondrous frame, —
Eternal wisdom still the same !
The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves
Flows murmuring through its hidden caves
Whose streams of brightening purple rush
Fired with a new and livelier blush,
While all their burden of decay
The ebbing current steals away,
And red with Nature's flame they start
From the warm fountains of the heart.
No rest that throbbing slave may ask,
Forever quivering o'er his task,
While far and wide a crimson jet
Leaps forth to fill the woven net
Which in unnumbered crossing tides
The flood of burning life divides.
Then kindling each decaying part
Creeps back to find the throbbing heart.
But warmed with that unchanging flame
Behold the outward moving frame.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 208
Its living marbles jointed strons
With glistening band and silvery thong,
And linked to reason's guiding reins
By myriad rings in trembling chains,
Each graven with the threaded zone
Which claims it as the master's own.
See how yon beam of seeming white
Is braided out of seven-hued light,
Yet in those lucid globes no ray
By any chance shall break astray.
Hark how the rolling surge of sound.
Arches and spirals circling round,
Wakes the hushed spirit through thine e
With music it is heaven to hear.
Then mark the cloven sphere that holds
All thought in its mysterious folds,
That feels sensation's faintest thrill
And flashes forth the sovereign will ;
Think on the stormy world that dwells
Locked in its dim and clustering cells I
The lightning gleams of power it sheds
Along its hollow glassy threads 1
O Father ! grant thy love divine
To make these mystic temples thine I
When wasting age and wearying strife
Have sapped the leaning walls of life,
When darkness gathers over all,
And the last tottering pillars fall,
Take the poor dust thy mercy warmf
And mould it iuto heavenly forms !
804 THr, AUTOCKAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLfc
VIIL
I Spring has come. You will find some verses to
that effect at the end of these notes. If you are an
impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading
aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh
verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and,
unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will
confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback
who find it hard to get on and to get off without
assistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and
get into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.]
The old gentleman who sits opposite, find-
ing that spring had fairly come, mounted a white
hat one day, and walked into the street. It seems
to have been a premature or otherwise exceptionable
exhibition, not unlike that commemorated by the
late Mr. Bayly. When the old gentleman came
home, he looked very red in the face, and complained
that he had been " made sport of." By sympathiz-
ing questions, I learned from him that a boy had
called him " old daddy," and asked him when he
had his hat whitewashed.
This incident led me to make some observations
at table the next morning, which I here repeat for
the benefit of the readers of this record.
The bnt is the vulnerable point of the arti*
THE PORT-OHTTCfK.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205
ficial integument. I learned this in early boyhood.
I was once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw,
having a brim of much wider dimensions than were
usual at that time, and sent to school in that portion
of my native town which lies nearest to this me-
tropolis. On my way I was met by a " Port-chuck,"
as we used to call the young gentlemen of that
.ocality, and the following dialogue ensued.
The Port-chuck. Hullo, You-sir, joo unow th'
wuz gon-to be a race to-morrah ?
Myself, No. Who's gon-to run, 'n' wher's't gon-
to be ?
The Port-chuck. Squire Mico 'n' Doctor Wil-
iams, round the brim o' your hat.
These two much-respected gentlemen being the
-)ldest inhabitants at that time, and the alleged race-
course being out of the question, the Port-chuck also
winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I
perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect
has been to make me sensitive and observant re-
specting this article of dress ever since. Here is an
axiom or two relating to it.
A hat which has been popped^ or exploded by
being sat down upon, is never itself again after-
wards.
It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to be-
lieve the contrary.
Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as
•is hat. There is always an unnatural calmness
206 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE.
about its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, suggestive
of a wet brush.
The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in
smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the
ultimum moriens of " respectability."
The old gentleman took all these remarks
and maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that
he had forgotten most of his French except the word
for potatoes, — pummies de tare. — Ultimum moriens,
I told him, is old Italian, and signifies last thing- to
die. With this explanation he was well contented,
and looked quite calm when I saw him afterwards
in the entry with a black hat on his head and the
white one in his hand.
1 think myself fortunate in having the Poet
and the Professor for my intimates. We are so
much together, that we no doubt think and talk a
good deal alike ; yet our points of view are in many
respects individual and peculiar. You know me
well enough by this time. I have not talked with
you so long for nothing and therefore I don't think
it necessary to draw my own portrait. But let me
say a word or two about my friends.
The Professor considers himself, and I consider
him, a very useful and worthy kind of drudge. I
think he has a pride in his small technicalities. I
know that he has a great idea of fidelity; and
though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at times
THK AUTOCRAT OF THE BUEAKF AST-TABLE. 207
at the grand airs " Science " puts on, as she stands
marking time, but not getting on, while the trumpets
are blowing and the big drums beating, — yet I am
sure he has a liking for his specialty, and a respect
for its cultivators.
But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the
Poet the other day. — My boy, said he, I can work
a great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all my
goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours
into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them
down again to your customers. I take mine in at
the level of the ground, and send them off from my
doorstep almost without lifting. I tell you, the
higher a man has to carry the raw material of
thought before he works it up, the more it costs him
in blood, nerve, and muscle. Coleridge knew all
this very well when he advised every literary man
to have a profession.
Sometimes I like to talk with one of them,
and sometimes with the other. After a while I get
tired of both. When a fit of intellectual disgust
comes over me, I will tell you what I have found
admirable as a diversion, in addition to boating and
other amusements which I have spoken of, — that is,
working at my carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical
employment is the greatest possible relief, after the
purely intellectual faculties begin to tire. When I
Vas quarantined once at Marseilles, I got to work
immediatelv at* carvinor a wooden wonder of loose
i
208 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
rings on a stick, and got so interested in it, that,
when we were set loose, I " regained my freedom
with a sigh," because my toy was unfinished.
There are long seasons when I talk only with the
Professor, and others when I give myself wholly up
to the Poet. Now that my winter's work is over
and spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn to the
Poet's company. I don't know anybody more alive
to life than he is. The passion of poe.try seizes on
him every spring, he says, — yet oftentimes he com-
plains, that, when he feels most, he can sing least.
Then a fit of despondency comes over him. — 1
feel ashamed, sometimes, — said he, the other day,— -
to think how far my worst songs fall below my best.
It sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to
others who have told me so, that they ought to be
all best, — if not in actual execution, at least in plan
and motive. I am grateful — he continued — for ail
such criticisms. A man is always pleased to have
his most serious efforts praised, and the highest
aspect of his nature get the most sunshine.
Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many
minds must change their key now and then, on
penalty of getting out of tune or losing their voices.
You know, I suppose, — he said, — what is meant by
complementary colors ? You know the effect, too,
which the prolonged impression of any one color has
on the retina. If you close your eyes after looking
eteadily at a red object, you see a g-reen image.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209
It is SO with many minds, — I will not say with all.
A-fter looking at one aspect of external nature, or of
any form of beauty or truth, when they turn away,
the complementary aspect of the same object stamps
itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind.
Shall they give expression to this secondary mental
state, or not ?
When I contemplate — said my friend, the Poet—
the infinite largeness of comprehension belonging to
the Central Intelligence, how remote the creative
conception is from all scholastic and ethical formul£e,
I am led to think that a healthy mind ought to
change its mood frOm time to time, and come down
from its noblest condition, — never, of course, to de-
grade itself by dwelling upon what is itself debasing,
but to let its lower faculties have a chance to air and
exercise themselves. After the first and second floor
have been out in the bright street dressed in all their
splendors, shall not our humble friends in the base-
ment have their holiday, and the cotton velvet and
the thin-skinned jewelry — simple adornments, but
befitting the station of those who wear them — show
themselves to the crowd, who think them beautiful,
as they ought to, though the people up stairs know
that they are cheap and perishable ?
1 don't know that I may not bring the Poet
here, some day or other, and let him speak for him-
self. Still I think I can tell you what he says quite
IS well as he could do it. — Oh, — he said to me, one
210 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABl i.,
day, — I am but a hand-organ man, — say rather, a
hand-organ. Life turns the winch, and fancy or
accident pulls out the stops. I come under your
windows, some fine spring morning, and play you
one of my adagio movements, and some of you say,
— This is good, — play us so always. But, dear
friends, if I did not change the stop sometimes, the
machine would wear out in one part and rust in
another. How easily this or that tune flows ! — you
say, — there must be no end of just such melodies in
him. — I will open the poor machine for you one mo-
ment, and you shall look. — Ah ! Every note marks
where a spur of steel has been driven in. It is easy
to grind out the song, but to plant these bristling
points which make it was the painful task of time.
I don't like to say it, — he continued, — but poets
commonly have no larger stock of tunes than hand-
organs ; and when you hear them piping up under
your window, you know pretty well what to expect
The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled
out in their turn !
So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of
his stateliest songs, and after it a gay chanson^ and
then a string of epigrams. All true, — he said, — all
flowers of his soul ; only one with the corolla spread,
and another with its disk half opened, and the third
with the heart-leaves covered up and only a petal or
two showing its tip through the calyx. The water*
lily is the type of the poet's soul, — he told me.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE. gH
What do you think, Sir, — said the divinity-
student, — opens the souls of poets most fully ?
Why, there must be the internal force and the ex-
ternal stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A
rose wiU not flower in the dark, and a fern will not
flower anywhere.
What do I think is the true sunshine that opens
the poet's corolla ? — I don't like to say. They spoil
a good many, I am afraid ; or at least they shine on
a good many that never come to anything.
Who are they ? — said the schoolmistress.
Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and
their praise is his best reward.
The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked
pleased. — Did I really think so ? — I do think so ; I
never feel safe until I have pleased them ; I don't
think they are the first to see one's defects, but they
are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a
true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it
is a bow-string, — to a woman and it is a harp-string.
She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs
with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her.
Ah, me ! — said my friend, the Poet, to me, the
other day, — what color would it not have given to
my thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to
ii*y words, had I been fed on women's praises ! I
•hould have grown like Marvell's fawn, —
" Lilies without ; roses within ! "
212 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
But then, — he added, — we all think, if so and so, we
should have been this or that, as you were saying
the other day, in those rhymes of yours.
1 don't think there are many poets in the sense
of creators ; but of those sensitive natures which
reflect themselves naturally in soft and melodious
words, pleading for sympathy with their joys and
sorrows, every literature is full. Nature carves with
her own hands the brain which holds the creative
imagination, but she casts the over-sensitive creatures
in scores from the same mould.
There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two
kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity among
our ladies at table. — Please to tell us about those
blondes, said the schoolmistress.] Why, there are
blondes who are such simply by deficiency of color-
ing matter, — negative or washed blondes, arrested by
Nature on the way to become albinesses. There are
others that are shot through with golden light, with
tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree, — positive or
stained blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as
unlike in their mode of being to the others as an
orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style carries
with it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The
other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in
her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match
v\ ith hei quick glittering glances.
Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive
imaginations, and a far more numerous class of
nifc AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 21*
poets who have a certain kind of moonlight-genius^
given them to compensate for their imperfection oi
imture. Their want of mental coloring-matter makes
them sensitive to those impressions which stronger
minds neglect or never feel at all. Many of then
die young, and all of them are tinged with melan
choly. There is no more beautiful illustration of the
principle of compensation which marks the Divine
benevolence than the fact that some of the holiest
lives and some of the sweetest songs are the growth
of the infirmity which unfits its subject for the
rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of
Cowper, or of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret
Davidson, — of so many gentle, sweet natures, born
to weakness, and mostly dying before their time, —
one cannot help thinking that the human race dies
out singing, like the swan in the old story. The
French poet, Gilbert, who died at the Hotel Dieu, at
the age of twenty-nine, — (killed by a key in his
throat, which he had swallowed when delirious in
consequence of a fall,) — this poor fellow was a very
good exaniple of the poet by excess of sensibility. 1
found, the other day, that some of my literary friends
had never heard of him, though I suppose few edu-
cated Frenchmen do not know the lines which he
wrote, a week before his death, upon a mean bed in
thft great hospital of Paris.
"Au banquet de la vie, infortun^ convive,
tTapparus un jour, et je meurs ;
214 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, oill lentement j'arrive
Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs."
At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest,
One day I pass, then disappear ;
I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest
No friend shall come to shed a tear.
You remember the same thing in other words some
where in Kirke White's poems. It is the burden of
the plaintive songs of all these sweet albino-poets,
" I shall die and be forgotten, and the world will go
on just as if I had never been ; — and yet how I have
loved ! how I have longed ! how I have aspired ! "
And so singing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter,
and their features thinner and thinner, until at last
the veil of flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, they
drop it and pass onward.
Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The
Angel of Life winds them up once for all, then closes
the case, and gives the key into the hand of the
Angel of the Resurrection.
Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our
will cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ,
sleep cannot still them ; madness only makes them
go faster ; death alone can break into the case, and,
seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call
the heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible
escapement we have carried so long beneath ow
wrinkled foreheads.
IIIE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 215
If we could only get at them, as we lie on our
pillows and count the dead beats of thought after
thought and image after image jarring through the
overtired organ I Will nobody block those wheels,
uncouple that pinion, cut the string that holds those
weights, blow up the infernal machine with gun-
powder? What a passion comes over us sometimes
for silence and rest ! — that this dreadful mechanism,
unwinding the endless tapestry of time, embroidered
with spectral figures of life and death, could have
but one brief holiday ! Who can wonder that men
swing themselves off from beams in hempen lassos ?
— that they jump off from parapets into the swift
and gurgling waters beneath ? — that they take coun-
sel of the grim friend who has but to utter his one
peremptory monosyllable and the restless machine is
shivered as a vase that is dashed upon a marble
floor? Under that building which we pass every
day there are strong dungeons, where neither hook,
nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drinking-vessel from which
a sharp fragment may be shattered, shall by an}
chance be seen. There is nothing for it, when the
brain is on fire with the whirling of its wheels, but
1o spring against the stone wall and silence them
with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, — the
kind city fathers, — and the walls are nicely padded,
so that one can take such exercise as he likes with-
out damaging himself on the very plain and service-
able upholstery. If anybody would only contiive
216 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among
the works of this horrid automaton and check them,
or alter their rate of going, what would the world
give for the discovery ?
From half a dime to a dime, according to the
style of the place and the quality of the liquor, —
said the young fellow whom they call John.
You speak trivially, but not unwisely, — I said.
Unless the will maintain a certain control over these
movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some
extent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the
machine by some indirect system of leverage or
other. They clap on the brakes by means of opium ;
they change the maddening monotony of the rhythm
by means of fermented liquors. It is because the
brain is locked up and we cannot touch its move-
ment directly, that we thrust these coarse tools in
through any crevice, by which they may reach the
interior, and so alter its rate of going for a while,
and at last spoil the machine.
Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the
mind which work independently of the will, — poets
and artists, for instance, who follow their imagination
in their creative moments, instead of keeping it in
hand as your logicians and practical men do with
their reasoning faculty, — such men are too apt to call
\n the mechanical appliances to help them govern
their intellects.
' Hg mc:i;i.^ Iht^y get drunk, — said the young
fellow already alluded to by name.
ihik autocrat of the breakfast-table. 217
Do you think men of true genius are apt to in-
dulge in the use of inebriating fluids ? — said the
divinity-student.
If you think you are strong enough to bear what
I am going to say, — I replied, — I will talk to you
about this. But mind, now, these are the things that
tome foolish people call dangerous subjects, — as if
these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the
Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of West-
Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen
than out of sight. Now the true way to deal with
those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long,
some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to
get a piece of silk round their keadsj and pull them
out very cautiously. If you only break them off,
they grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the
person who has the misfortune to harbor one of
them. Whence it is plain that the first thing to do
is to find out where the head lies.
Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this
vice of intemperance. What is the head of it, and
where does it lie? For you may depend upon it,
there is not one of these vices that has not a head
of its own, — an intelligence, — a meaning, — a certain
virtue, I was going to say, — but that might, perhaps,
sound paradoxical. I have heard an immense num
ber of moral physicians lay down the treatment of
moral Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them
would always insist that the creature had no head at
10
2j8 the autocrat of the BREAKFAST- table.
all, but was all body and tail. So I have found a
very common result of their method to be that the
string slipped, or that a piece only of the creature
was broken off, and the worm soon grew again, a3
bad as ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only
appear in church by attorney, and make the best
statement that the facts would bear him out in doing
on behalf of his special virtues, (what we commonly
call vices,) the influence of good teachers would be
much greater than it is. For the arguments by
which the Devil prevails are precisely the ones that
the Devil-queller most rarely answers. The way to
argue down a vice is not to tell lies about it, — to say
that it has no attractions, ' when everybody Ivnows
that it has, — but rather to let it make out its case
just as it certainly will in the moment of temptation,
and then meet it with the weapons furnished by the
Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit the toad on his
spear, you remember, but touched him with it, and
the blasted angel took the sad glories of his true
shape. If he had shown fight then, the fair spirits
would have known how to deal with him.
That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is
not perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with
music, with poetry, with religious excitement, — ■
oftenest with love. Ninoi\ de I'Enclos said she was
BO easily excited that her soup intoxicated her, and
convalescents have been made tipsy by a beef-steak.
There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation
Tin- aUtockat of the breakfast-table. 219
wliicli, in themselves, and without regard to their
consequences, might be considered as positive im-
provements of the persons affected. When the slug
gish intellect is roused, the slow speech quickened,
the cold nature warmed, the latent sympathy devel-
oped, the flagging spirit kindled, — before the trains
of thought become confused, or the will perverted, or
Ihe muscles relaxed, — just at the moment when the
whole human zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown
rose, and is ripe for the subscription-paper or the
contribution-box, — it would be hard to say that a
man was, at that very time, worse, or less to be
loved, than when driving a hard bargain with all his
meaner wits about him. The difficulty is, that the
alcoholic virtues don't wash; but until the water
takes their colors out, the tints are very much like
those of the true celestial stuff.
[Here I was interrupted by a question which I am
very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough
in those friends who examine these records to com-
mit to their candor.
A person at table asked me whether I " went m
for rum as a steady drink?" — His manner made the
question highly offensive, but I restrained myself,
and answered thus : — ]
Rum I take to be the name which unwashed
moraxists apply alike to the product distilled from
molasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard
Burgundy " in all its sunset glow " is rum. Cham-
22C THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
pagne, "the foaming wine of Eastern France," in
rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaKS of as
** The Rhine's breastinilk, gushing cold and bright,
Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light,"
is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism a8
an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder
of our religion ! I address myself to the company. —
I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence,
as a rule for healthy people. I trust that I practice
both. But let me tell you, there are companies of
men of genius into which I sometimes go, where
the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much
more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit
to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if
any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken
acquaintances were generally ruined before they be-
came drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a
vice, no doubt, — sometimes a misfortune, — as when
an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to
indulge in it, — but oftenest of all a punishment.
Empty heads, — heads without ideas in wholesome
variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the
mental clockwork, — ill-regulated heads, where the
faculties are not under the control of the will, — these
are the ones that hold the brains which their owners
are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appli-
ances we have been talking about. Now, when a
gc ntleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221
great extent, his own fault ; and so 't is simple retri-
bution, that, while he lies slothfuUy sleeping or aim-
lessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a
vampyro, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the
while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler
dreams I I am not such a hard-souled being as to
apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no
chan'je to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and
to be taught the lesson of self-government. 1 trust
the cariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale for
them. — and all of us.
But to come back to poets and artists; — if they
really are more prone to the abuse of stimulants, —
and I fear tliat this is true, — the reason of it is only
too clear. A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy,
and the power which flows through him, as I once
explained to you, makes him the medium of a great
poem or a great picture. The creative action is not
voluntary at all, but automatic ; we can only put the
mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind,
that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus
the true state of crealive genius is allied to reverie,
or dreaming. K mind and body were both healthy
and had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether
any men would be more temperate than the imagin-
ative classes. But body and mind often flag, — per-
haps they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with
•read or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way
The automatic action, by which genius wrought 'ts
222 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
wonders, fails. There is only one thing which can
rouse the machine ; not will, — that cannot reach it ;
nothing but a ruinous agent, which hurries the
wheels awhile and sook oats out the heart of tb?
mechanism. The dreaming faculties are always the
dangerous ones, because their mode of action can be
imitated by artificial excitement ; the reasoning ones
are safe, because they imply continued voluntary
effort.
I think you will find it true, that, before any vice
can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature
must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather
on sickly trees, not thriving ones ; and the odious
parasites which fasten on the human frame choose
that which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the
hygeian humorist, declared that he had such a
healthy skin it was impossible for any impurity to
stick to it, and maintained that it was an absurdity
to wash a face which was of necessity always clean.
I don't know how much fancy there was in this;
but there is no fancy in saying that the lassitude of
tired-out operatives, and the languor of imaginative
natures in their periods of collapse, and the vacuity
of minds untrained to labor and discipline, fit the
goul and body for the germination of the seeds of
intemperance.
Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness
ftnds a ship adrift, — no steady wind in its sails, no
thoughtful pilot directing its course, — he steps on
J IE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 223
board, takes the helm, and steers straight for tbft
maelstrom.
1 wonder if you know the terrible smite ?
[The young fellow whom they call John winked
\ery hard, and made a jocular remark, the sense of
which seemed to depend on some double meaning
of the word smile. The company was curious to
know what I meant]
There are persons — I said — who no sooner come
within sight of you than they begin to smile, with
an uncertain movement of the mouth, which con-
veys the idea that they are thinking about them-
selves, and thinking, too, that you are thinking they
are thinking about themselves, — and so look at you
with a wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awk-
wardness, and attempts to carry off both, which are
betrayed by the cowardly behaviour of the eye and
the tell-tale weakness of the lips that characterize
these unfortunate beings.
Why do you call them unfortunate. Sir?—
asked the divinity-student.
Because it is evident that the consciousness of
some imbecility or other is at the bottom of this ex-
traordinary expression. I don't think, however, that
these persons are commonly fools. I have known a
number, and all of them were intelligent. I think
nothing conveys the idea of underbr ceding more
^han this self-betraying smile. Yet I think this pe*
224 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
culiar habit as well as that of meaningless blushing
may be fallen into by very good people who mec
often, or sit opposite each other at table. A true
gentleman's face is infinitely removed from all such
paltriness, — calm-eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Ti-
tian understood the look of a gentleman as well as
anybody that ever lived. The portrait of a young
man holding a glove in his hand, in the Gallery of
the Louvre, if any of you have seen that collection,
will remind you of what I mean.
Do I think these people know the peculiar
look they have ? — I cannot say ; I hope not ; I am
afraid they would never forgive me, if they did.
The worst of it is, the trick is catching ; when one
meets one of these fellows, he feels a tendency to
the same manifestation. The Professor tells me
there is a muscular slip, a dependence of the platysma
myoidesy which is called the risorius Santorini,
Say that once more, — exclaimed the young
fellow mentioned above.
The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip
called Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have
it cut out of my face, if I were born with one of
those constitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am
uncharitable in my judgment of those sour-looking
people I told you of the other day, and of these
smiling folks. It may be that they are born with
these looks, as other people are with more generally
recognized deformities. Both are bad enough, but 1
niK AUIOCRAT OF TUE BRLAKFAST-7ABLE. 22-:
had rather meet three of the scowlers than one of
the smilers.
There is another unfortunate way of looking,
which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not lilie
to find fault with. There are some very pretty, but,
unhappily, very ill-bred women, who don't under-
stand the law of the road with regard to handsome
faces. Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree
in conceding to all males the right of at least two
distinct looks at every comely female countenance,
without any infraction of the rules of courtesy or the
sentiment of respect. The first look is necessary to
define the person of the individual one meets so as
to avoid it in oassing. Any unusual attraction de-
tected in a first glance is a sufficient apology for a
second, — not a prolonged and impertinent stare, but
an appreciating homage of the eyes, such as a
stranger may inoffensively yield to a passing image.
It is astonishing how morbidly sensitive some vul-
gar beauties are to the slightest demonstration of
this kind. When a lady walks the streets, she leaves
her virtuous-indignation countenance at home ; she
knows well enough that the street is a picture-
gallery, where pretty faces framed in pretty bonnets
are meant to be seen, and everybody has a right to
see them.
When we observe how the same features and
style of person and character descend from gener-
ition to generation, we can believe that some in-
10*
226 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
herited weakness may account for these peculiar ilies^
Little snapping" -turtles snap — so the great naturalist
tells us — before they are out of the egg-shell. I am
satisfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life
character is distinctly shown at the age of — 2 or
— 3 months.
My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs
lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity
which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my
observations.] He has been reading the great book
where he found the fact about the little snapping-
turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he
has told me have suggested several odd analogies
enough.
There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in
their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's
or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready
to be laid in the form of books as yet; some of them
are hardly ready to be put into the form of talk.
But as rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies,
there they are; and these are what must form the
future. A man's general notions are not good for
much, unless he has a crop of these intellectual
ovarian eggs in his own brain, or knows them as
they exist in the minds of others. One must be in
the habit of talking with such persons to get at these
rudimentary germs of thought ; for their develop-
ment is necessarily imperfect, and they are moulded
DO new patterns, which must be long and closely
iHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 22 1
studied. But these are the men to talk with. No
fresh truth ever gets into a book.
A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow, — said
one of the company.
I proceeded in spite of the interruption. — All
uttered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is
ot the nature of an excretion. Its materials have
been taken in, and have acted upon the system, and
been reacted on by it; it has circulated and done its
office in one mind before it is given out for the
benefit of others. It may be milk or venom to other
minds ; but, in either case, it is something which the
producer has had the use of and can part with. A
man instinctively tries to get rid of his thought in
conversation or in print so soon as it is matured ;
but it is hard to get at it as it lies imbedded, a
mere potentiality, the germ of a germ, in his in-
tellect.
Where are the brains that are fullest of these
ovarian eggs of thought ? — I decline mentioning
individuals. The producers of thought, who are
few, the "jobbers" of thought, who are many, and
the retailers of thought, who are numberless, are so
mixed up in the popular apprehension, that it would
be hopeless to try to separate them before opinion
has had time to settle. Follow the course of opinion
on the great subjects of human interest for a few
generations or centuries, get its parallax, map out a
small arc of its movement, see where it tends, and
228 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
then see who is in advance of it or even with it ', the
world calls him hard names, probably; but if you
would find the ova of the future, you must look into
the folds of his cerebral convolutions.
[The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at
this suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where
he was to come out, if he computed his arc too
nicely. I think it possible it might cut off a few
corners of his present belief, as it has cut off martyr-
burning and witch-hanging ; — but time will show,
— time will show, as the old gentleman opposite
says.]
Oh, — here is that copy of verses 1 told you
ftboui
SPRING HAS COME.
Intra Muros.
The sunbeams, lost for half a year,
Slant through my pane their mo-rning rayi
For dry Northwesters cold and clear,
The East blows in its thin blue haze.
And first the snowdrop's bells are seen,
Then close a^rainst the sheltering wall
The tulip's horn of dusky green,
The peony's dark unfc^ding balL
The golden-chaliced crociK burns ;
The long narcissus-blades appear ;
The cone-beaked hyacinth returns,
Aivd liiihts Iter blue- flamed chandefieff.
TML AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 22S
The willow's whistling lashes, wrung
By the wild winds of gusty March,
With sallow leaflets lightly strung,
Are swaying by the tufted larch.
The elms have robed their slender spray
With full-blown flower and embryo leaf;
Wide o'er the clasping arch of day
Soars like a cloud their hoary chief.
——[See the proud tulip's flaunting cup,
That flames in glory ibr an hour, —
Behold it withering, — then look up, —
How meek the forest-monarch's flower !—
When wake the violets, Winter dies ;
When sprout the elm-buds. Spring is near ;
When hlacs blossom, Summer cries,
" Bud, Httle roses ! Spring is here 1 **]
The windows blush with fresh bouquets,
Cut with the May-dew on their hps ;
The radish all its bloom displays.
Pink as Aurora's finger-tips.
Nor less the flood of light that showers
On beauty's changed corolla-shades,—
The walks are gay as bridal bowers
With rows of many-petalled maids.
The scarlet shell-fish click and clash
In the blue barrow where they slide ;
The horseman, proud of streak and splash,
Creeps homeward from his morning ride.
J30 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Here comes the dealer's awkward string,
With neck in rope and tail in knot, —
Kough colts, with careless country-swing,
In lazy walk or slouching trot
Wild filly from the mountain-side,
Doomed to the close and chafing thills,
Lend me thy long, untiring stride
To seek with thee thy western hills I
I hear the whispering voice of Spring,
The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry,
Like some poor bird with prisoned wing
That sits and sings, but longs to fly.
Oh for one spot of living green, —
One little spot where leaves can grow,-
To love unblamed, to walk unseen,
To dream above, to sleep below I
IX.
[Aqui esta encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro
Garcias,
If I should ever make a little book out of these
papers, which I hope you are not getting tired of, I
suppose I ought to save the above sentence for a
motto on the title-page. But I want it now, and
must use it I need not say to you that the words
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 231
are Spanish, nor that they are to be found in the
ehort Introduction to " Gil Bias," nor that they mean,
*' Here lies buried the soul of the licentiate Pedro
Garcias."
I warned all young people ofl the premises when
I began my notes referring to oM age. I must be
equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly
requested to leave this paper to ycung persons from
the age of twelve to that of four-score years and ten,
at which latter period of life I am sure that I shall
have at least one youthful reader. You know well
enough what I mean by youth and age ; — something
in the soul, which has no more to do with the color
of the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do
with the grass a thousand feet above it.
I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires
not only youth, but genius, to read this paper. I
don't mean to imply that it required any whatsoever
to talk what I have here written down. It did de-
mand a certain amount of memory, and such com-
mand of the English tongue as is given by a common
school education. So much I do claim. But here I
have related, at length, a string of trivialities. You
must have the imagination of a poet to transfigure
them. These little colored patches are stains upon
the windows of a human soul ; stand on the outside,
they are but dull and meaningless spots of colorj
seen from within, they are glorified shapes with era
purpled wings and sunbright aureoles.
232 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLn;.
My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many
times I have come bearing flowers such as my gar-
den grew; but now I offer you this poor, brown,
homely growth, you may cast it away as worthless.
And yet — and yet — it is something better than
flowers ; it is a seed-capsule. Many a gardener will
cut you a bouquet of his choicest blossoms for small
fee, but he does not love to let the seeds of his rarest
varieties go out of his own hands.
It is by little things that we know ourselves ; a soul
would very probably mistake itself for another, when
once disembodied, were it not for individual experi-
ences which differ from those of others only in de-
tails seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty
thousands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water
was the best of things. I alone, as I think, of all
mankind, remember one particular pailful of water,
flavored with the white-pine of which the pail was
made, and the brown mug out of which one Edmund,
a red-faced and curly-haired boy, was averred to have
bitten a fragment in his haste to drink ; it being then
high summer, and little full-blooded boys feeling very
warm and porous in the low-" studded " school-room
where Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over
young children, many of whom are old ghosts now,
and have known Abraham for tw^enty or thirty years
of our mortal time.
Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in aL
ages ; but that white-pine pail, and that brown mug
/HE AUTOCRAT OF TIIi: BRKAKFAST-TABLE 2o^
oelong to me in particular; and just so of my special
relationships with other things and with my race.
Due could never remember himself in eternity by the
mere fact of having loved or hated any more than by
that of having thirsted ; love and hate have no more
individuality in them than single waves in the ocean ;
—but the accidents or trivial marks which distin-
guished those whom we loved or hated make their
memory our own forever, and with it that of our own
personality also.
Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or
thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this particular
record, and ask yourself seriously whether you are
fit to read such revelations as are to follow. For
observe, you have here no splendid array of petals
such as poets offer you, — nothing but a dry shell,
containing, if you will get out what is in it, a few
small seeds of poems. You may laugh at them, if
you like. I shall never teU you what I think of you
for so doing. But if you can read into the heart of
these things, in the light of other memories as slight,
yet as dear to your soul, then you are neither more
nor less than a Poet, and can afford to write no more
verses during the rest of your natural life, — which
abstinence I take to be one of the surest marks of
your meriting the divine name I have just bestowed
upon you.
May I beg of you who have begun this paper
nobly trusting to your own imagination and sensi-
f34 'fHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFaST-1 ABLL.
bilities to give it the significance which it does not lay
claim to without your kind assistance, — may I beg
of you, I say, to pay particular attention to the
brackets which enclose certain paragraphs ? I want
my " asides," you see, to whisper loud to you who
read my notes, and sometimes I talk a page or two
to you without pretending that I said a word of it
to our boarders. You will find a very long " aside "
to you almost as soon as you begin to read. And
so, dear young friend, fall to at once, taking such
things as I have provided for you ; and if you turn
them, by the aid of your powerful imagination, into
a fair banquet, why, then, peace be with you, and a
summer by the still waters of some quiet river, or by
some yellow beach, where, as my friend the Professor,
says, you can sit with Nature's wrist in your hand
and count her ocean-pulses.]
I should like to make a few intimate revelations
relating especially to my early life, if I thought you
would like to hear them,
[The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and
sat with her face directed partly towards me. — Half-
mourning now; — purple ribbon. That breastpin she
wears has gray hair in it ; her mother's, no doubt; —
I remember our landlady's daughter telling me, soon
after the schoolmistress came to board with us. that
she had lately "buried a payrent." That's what
made her look so pale,- -kept the poor dying thing
alive with her own blopd. Ah . long illness is the
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 2oA
ieal vampyrism ; think of living a year or two after
one is dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail
young creature at one's bedside ! Well, souls grow
white, as well as cheeks, in these holy duties one
that goes in a nurse may come out an angel. — God
bless all good women ! — to their soft hands and pity-
ing hearts we must all come at last ! Tlie school-
mistress has a better color than when she came.
Too late I " It might have been." Amen !
-How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-
beats, sometimes ! There was no long pause after
my remark addressed to the company, but in that
time I had the train of ideas and feelings I have
just given flash through my consciousness sudden
and sharp as the crooked red streak that springs out
of its black sheath like the creese of a Malay in his
death-race, and stabs the earth right and left in its
blind rage.
I don't deny that there was a pang in it, — yes, a
stab; but there was a prayer, too, — the "Amen" be-
longed to that. — Also, a vision of a four-story brick
house, nicely furnished, — I actually saw many specific
articles, — curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could
draw the patterns of them at this moment, — a brick
bouse, I say, looking out on the water, with a fair
parlor, and books ahd busts and pots of flowers and
bird-cages, all complete ; and at the window, looking
on the water, two of us. — " Male and female created
He tliem." — These two were standing at the window,
236 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
when a smaller shape that was playing near th an
looked up at me wdth such a look that I
poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and
then continued.]
I said I should like to tell you some things, such
as people commonly never tell, about my early recol-
lections. Should you like to hear them ?
Should we like to hear them? — said the school-
mistress ; — no, but we should love to.
[The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had
something very pleasant in its tone, just then. — The
four-story brick house, which had gone out like a
transparency when the light behind it is quenched,
glimmered again for a moment ; parlor, books, busts,
flower-pots, bird-cages, aU complete, — and the figures
as before.]
We are waiting with eagerness. Sir, — said the
divinity-student.
[The transparency went out as if a flash of black
lightning had struck it.]
If you want to hear my confessions, the next
thing — I said — is to know whether I can trust you
with them. It is only fair to say that there are a
great many people in the world that laugh at such
things. / think they are fools, but perhaps you
don't all agree with me.
Here are children of tender age talked to as if
they were capable of understanding Calvin's " Insti-
tutes," and nv^body has honesty or sense enough to
iriC AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKt AST-TABLE. 237
teli the plain truth about the little wretches: that
they are as superstitious as naked savages, and such
miserable spiritual cowards — that is, if they have any
imagination — that they will believe anything which
is taught them, and a great deal more which they
teach themselves.
I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty
times, among books and those who knew what was
in books. I was carefully instructed in things tem-
poral and spiritual. But up to a considerable matu-
rity of childhood I believed Raphael and Michaei
Angelo to have been superhuman beings. The
central doctrine of the prevalent religious faith oJ
Christendom was utterly confused and neutralized in
my mind for years by one of those too common sto-
ries of actual life, which I overheard repeated in a
whisper. — Why did I not ask ? you will say. — You
don't remember the rosy pudency of sensitive chil-
dren. The first instinctive movement of the little
creatures is to make a cache^ and bury in it beliefs,
doubts, dreams, hopes, and terrors. I am uncovering
one of these caches. Do you think I was neces-
sarily a greater fool and coward than another ?
I' was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell.
The masts looked frightfully tall, — but they were not
so tall as the steeple of our old yellow meeting-house.
A-t any rate I used to hide my eyes from the sloops
and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of
vhe bridge, and I confess that traces of thds undefined
238 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
terror lasted very long. — One other source of alarm
had a still more fearful significance. There was a
great wooden hand, — a glove-maker's sign, which
used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from
a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside
of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand ! Always hang-
ing there ready to catch up a little boy, who would
come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed, —
whose porringer would be laid away empty thence-
forth, and his half-worn shoes wait until his small
brother grew to fit them.
As for all manner of superstitious observances, I
used once to think I must have been peculiar in
having such a list of them, but I now believe that
naif the children of the same age go through the
same experiences. No Roman soothsayer ever had
such a catalogue of omens as I found in the Sibyl-
line leaves of my childhood. That trick of throwing
a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to
hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in
one or more biographies, I well remember. Stepping
on or over certain particular things or spots — Dr
Johnson's especial weakness — I got the habit of at
a very early age. — I won't swear that I have not
some tendency to these not wise practices even at
this present date. [How many of you that rcao
these notes can say the same thing!]
With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which
I loved so well I would not outgrow them, even
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TAiJLE. 23?
when it required a voluntary effort to put a moment-
ary trust in them. Here is one which I cannot help
telling you.
The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is-
easily heard at the place where I was born and lived.
" There is a ship of war come in," they used to say,
when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that
such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite
years of absence, — suddenly as falling stones ; and
that the great guns roared in their astonishment and
delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the
buy with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-war the
Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing
the Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from
the face of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost.
But there was no proof of it, and, of course, for a
time, hopes were entertained that she might be
heard from. Long after the last real chance had
utterly vanished, I pleased myself with the fond illu-
sion that somewhere on the waste of waters she was
still floating, and there were years during which I
never heard the sound of the great guns boommg
inland from the Navy-yard without saying to myself,
" The Wasp has come I " and almost thinking I
rould see her, as she rolled in, crumpling the water
before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, with shattered
spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed by the shouts
and tears of thousands. This was one of those
dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me make
Js<tU THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABL15.
a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as to
have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far on
towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon has
struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a
thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight,
and the long-unspoken words have articulated them-
selves in the mind's dumb whisper, The Wasp has
come !
Yes, children believe plenty of queer things.
I suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever
when you were little ? — What do I mean ? Why,
ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that
bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in
them. — ^So, too, you must all remember some splen-
did unfulfilled promise of somebody or other, which
fed you with hopes perhaps for years, and which left
a blank in your life which nothing has ever filled up.
— O. T. quitted our household carrying with him the
passionate regrets of the more youthful members.
He was an ingenious youngster ; wrote wonderful
copies, and carved the two initials given above with
great skill on all available surfaces. I thought, by
the way, they were all gone ; but the other day J
found them on a certain door which I will show yon
some time. How it surprised me to find them so
near the ground ! I had thought the boy of no
trivial dimensions. Well, O. T., when he went,
made a solemn promise to two of us. I was to
have a s!i;|), and the other a mar^i/i-house (last syl-
THE AUTOCRAT Oi^' THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241
wdble pronounced as in the word tin). Neither ever
came ; but, oh, how many and many a time I have
stolen to the corner, — the cars pass close by it at this
time, — and looked up that long avenue, thinking
that he must be coming now, almost sure, as I
turned to look northward, that there he would be,
trudging toward me, the ship in one hand and the
mar^m-house in the other I
[You must not suppose that all I am going to say,
as well as all I have said, was told to the whole
company. The young fellow whom they call John
was in the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a
cheroot, the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful,
through the open window. The divinity-student
disappeared in the midst of our talk. The poor
relation in black bombazine, who looked and moved
as if all her articulations were elbow-joints, had
gone off to her chamber, after waiting with a look
of soul-subduing decorum at the foot of the stairs
until one of the male sort had passed her and
ascended into the upper regions. This is a famous
point of etiquette in our boarding-house ; in fact,
between ourselves, they make such an awful fuss
about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather have
them simple enough not to think of such matters at
all. Our landlady's daughter said, the other even-
ing, that she was going to "retire " ; whereupon the
young fellow called John took up a lamp and in*
/listed on lighting her to the foot of the stan*case
11
242 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
Nothing would induce her to pass by him, until tht\
schoolmistress, saying in good plain English thdt i^
was her bed-time, walked straight by them both, not
seeming to trouble herself about either of them.
I have been led away from what I meant the por-
tion included in these brackets to inform my readers
about. I say, then, most of the boarders had left the
table about the time when I began telling some of
these secrets of mine, — all of them, in fact, but tho
old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress. 1
understand why a young woman should like to hear
these simple but genuine experiences of early life,
which are, as I have said, the little brown seeds of
what may yet grow to be poems with leaves of
azure and gold ; but when the old gentleman pushed
up his chair nearer to me, and slanted round his best
ear, and once, when I was speaking of some trifling,
tender reminiscence, drew a long breath, with such a
tremor in it that a little more and it would have
been a sob, why, then I felt there must be something
of nature in them which redeemed their seeming in-
significance. Tell me, man or woman with whom I
am whispering, have you not a small store of recol-
lections, such as these I am uncovering, buried
beneath the dead leaves of many summers, perhaps
under the unmelting snows of fast-returning winters,
— a few such recollections, which, if you should
write them all out, would be swept into some care*
ess editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty half-
THK AUTOCRAT OK THE BKEAKFAST-TABlfi. 243
hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, — and yet, if
Death should cheat you of them, you would not
know yourself in eternity?]
1 made three acquaintances at a very early
period of life, my introduction to whom was neve!
forgotten. The first unequivocal act of wrong that
has left its trace in my memory was this: refus-
ing a small favor asked of me, — nothing more than
telling what had happened at school one morn-
ing. No matter who asked it; but there were cir-
cumstances which saddened and awed me. I had
no heart to speak ; — I faltered some miserable, per-
haps petulant excuse, stole away, and the first battle
of life was lost. What remorse followed I need not
tell. Then and there, to the best of my knowledge,
I first consciously took Sin by the hand and turned
my back on Duty. Time has led me to look upon
my offence more leniently ; I do not believe it or
any other childish wrong is infinite, as some have
pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh if I had but
won that battle !
The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was
that had silenced me, came near me, — ^but never, so
as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my
tender years. There flits dimly before me the image
of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a
schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were
t4)ld that she had died. But what death was 1
nover had any very distinct idea, until one day 1
244 IlIE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE.
climbed the low stone wall of the old burial-grouna
and mingled with a group that were looking into a
very deep, long, narrow hole, dug down through the
green sod, down through the brown loam, down
through the yellow gravel, and there at the bottom
was an oblong red box, and a still, sharp, white face
of a young man seen through an opening at one end
of it. When the lid was closed, and the gravel and
stones rattled down pell-mell, and the woman in
black, who was crying and wringing her hands,
went otf with the other mourners, and left him, then
I felt that I had seen Death, and should never forget
him.
One other acquaintance I made at an earlier pe-
riod of life than the habit of romancers authorizes. —
Love, of course. — She was a famous beauty after-
wards. — I am satisfied that many children rehearse
their parts in the drama of life before they have shed
all their milk-teeth. — I think I won't tell the story
of the golden blonde. — I suppose everybody has had
his childish fancies ; but sometimes they are pas
sionate impulses, which anticipate all the tremulous
emotions belonging to a later period. Most children
remember seeing and adoring an angel before they
were a dozen years old.
[The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and
taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, a
little way from the table. — It's true, it's true, — saia
the old gentleman. — He took hold of a steel watch*
IIIK AUTOCRAT OK THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 245
chain, which carried a large, square gold key at one
end and was supposed to have some kind of time-
keeper at the other. With some trouble he dragged
up an ancient-looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch.
He looked at it for a moment, — hesitated, — touched
the inner corner of his right eye with the pulp of his
middle finger, — looked at the face of the watch, —
said it was getting into the forenoon, — then opened
the watch and handed me the loose outside case
without a word. — The watch-paper had been pink
once, and had a faint tinge still, as if all its tender
life had not yet quite faded out. Two little birds, a
flower, and, in small school-gu*l letters, a date, — 17 . .
— no matter. — Before I was thirteen years old, — said
the old gentleman. 1 don't know what was in
that young schoolmistress's head, nor why she should
have done it ; but she took out the watch-paper and
put it softly to her lips, as if she were kissing the
poor thing that made it so long ago. The old gen-
tleman took the watch-paper carefully from her,
replaced it, turned away and walked out, holding
the watch in his hand. I saw him pass the window
a moment after with that foolish white hat on hivS
head ; he couldn't have been thinking what he was
about when he put it on. So the schoolmistress
and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade
nearer to her, and continued.]
And since I am talking of early recollections, I
don't know wh} 1 shouldn't mention .some others
246 THE AUTOCRAT Of THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
that still cling tc me, — not that you will attach any
very particular meaning to these same images so
full of significance to me, but that you will find
somethi.ig parallel to them in your own memory.
You remember, perhaps, what I said one day about
smells. There were certain sounds also which had a
mysterious suggestiveness to me, — not so intense,
perhaps, as that connected with the other sense, but
yet peculiar, and never to be forgotten.
The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds,
bringing their loads of oak and walnut from the
country, as the slow-swinging oxen trailed them
along over the complaining snow, in the cold, brown
light of early morning. Lying in bed and listening
to their dreary music had a pleasure in it akin to the
Lucretian luxury, or that which Byron speaks of as
to be enjoyed in looking on at a battle by one " who
hath no friend, no brother there."
There was another sound, in itself so sweet, and
so connected with one of those simple and curious
superstitions of childhood of which I have spoken,
that I can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love
for it. — Let me tell the superstitious fancy first.
The Puritan " Sabbath," as everybody knows, began
at " sundown " on Saturday evening. To such
observance of it I was born and bred. As the large,
round disk of day declined, a stillness, a solemnity, a
somewhat melancholy hush came over us all. It
rras time for work to cease, and for playthings to be
iHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 2i7
pat away. The world of active life passed into the
shadow o!" an eclipse, not to emerge until the sun
should sink again beneath the horizon.
It was in this stillness of the world without and
of the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the
evening crickets used to make itself most distinctly
heard, — so that I well remember I used to think that
the purring of these little creatures, which mingled
with the batrachian hymns from the neighboring
swamp, was peculiar to Saturday evenings. I don't
know that anything could give a clearer idea of the
quieting and subduing effect of the old habit of
observance of what was considered holy time, than
this strange, childish fancy.
Yes, and there was still another sound which
mingled its solemn cadences with the waking and
sleeping dreams of my boyhood. It was heard only
at times, — a deep, muffled roar, which rose and
fell, not loud, but vast, — a whistling boy would have
drowned it for his next neighbor, but it must have
been heard over the space of a hundred square miles.
I used to wonder what this raiight be. Could it be
the roar of the thousand wheels and the ten thousand
'ootsteps jarring and trampling along the stones of
the neighboring city ? That would be continuous :
Dut this, as I have said, rose and fell in regular
rhythm. I remember being told, and I suppose this
to have been the true solutio i, that it was the sound
rf the waves, alt^r a high wind, breaking on the lon^^
248 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAO AST-TABLi!..
beaches many miles distant. I should really like t«
know whether any observing people living ten miles,
more or less, inland from long beaches, — in such a
town, for instance, as Cantabridge, in the eastern
part of the Territory of the Massachusetts, — have
ever observed any such sound, and whether it was
rightly accounted for as above.
Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the
low murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain
voices 1 have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to
say it, but our people, I think, have not generally
agreeable voices. The marrowy organisms, with
skins that shed water like the backs of ducks, with
smooth surfaces neatly padded beneath, and velvet
linings to their singing-pipes, are not so common
among us as that other pattern of humanity with
angular outlines and plane surfaces, arid integu-
ments, hair like the fibrous covering of a cocoa-nut
in gloss and suppleness as well as color, and voices
at once thin and strenuous, — acidulous enough to
produce effervescence with alkalis, and stridulous
enough to sing duets with the katydids. I think
our conversational soprano, as sometimes overheard
in the cars, arising from a group of young persons,
who may have taken the train at one of our great
industrial centres, for instance*, — young persons of
the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in
full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and
who, after free discussion, have fixed on two or more
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 919
double seats, which having secured, they proceed to
eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes, — I say,
I think the conversational soprano, heard under these
circumstances, would not be among the allurements
the old Enemy would put in requisition, were he
getting up a new temptation of St. Anthony.
There are sweet voices among us, we all know,
and voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear
them for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any
we shall hear until we listen to some warbling angel
in the overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies
we hope to enjoy. — But why should I tell lies ? If
my friends love me, it is because I try to tell the
truth. I never heard but two voices in my life that
frightened me by their sweetness.
Frightened you? — said the schoolmistress. —
Yes, frightened me. They made me feel as if there
might be constituted a creature with such a chord in
her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she
but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though
it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance
to keep our wits is, that there are so few natural
chords between others' voices and this string in our
souls, and that those which at first may have jarred
a little b^ and by come into harmony with it. — But
I tell you this is no fiction. You may call the story
of Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you
Bay to Mario and the poor lady who followed him ?
Whose were those two voices that bewitched
11*
f,50 'J^HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLjI
me so? — They both belonged to German women
One was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating
The key of my room at a certain great hotel was
missing, and this Teutonic maiden was summoned
to give information respecting it. The simple soul
was evidently not long from her mother-land, and
spoke with sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to
hear her wonder and lament and suggest, with soft,
liquid inflexions, and low, sad murmurs, in tones as
full of serious tenderness for the fate of the lost key
as if it had been a child that had strayed from its
mother, was so winning, that, had her features and
figure been as delicious as her accents, — if she had
'ooked like the marble Clytie, for instance, — why, all
I can say is
[The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that
I stopped short.]
I was only going to say that I should have drowned
myself. For Lake Erie was close by, and it is so
much better to accept asphyxia, which takes only
three minutes by the watch, than a mesalliance^ that
lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes along
down the line of descent, (breaking out in all man-
ner of boorish manifestations of feature and man-
ner, which, if men were only as short-lived as horses,
could be readily traced back through the square-
roots and the cube-roots of the family stem on which
you have hung the armorial bearings of the De
Champignons or the De la Morues, until one came
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 251
to beings that ate with knive.'3 and said " Haow ? ")
that no person of right feeling could have hesitated
for a single moment.
The second of the ravishing voices I have heard
was, as I have sai.l, that of another German w^oman.
— I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that
such a voice could not have come from any Ameri-
canized human being.
What was there in it ? — said the school-
mistress, — and, upon my word, her tones were so
very musical, that I almost wished I had said three
voices instead of two, and not made the unpatriotic
remark above reported. — Oh, I said, it had so mucii
woman in it, — muliebrity^ as well as femineity ; — no
self-assertion, such as free suffrage introduces into
every word and movement ; large, vigorous nature,
running back to those huge-limbed Germans of Taci-
tus, but subdued by the reverential training and
tuned by the kindly culture of fifty generations.
Sharp business habits, a lean soil, independence, en-
terprise, and east winds, are not the best things for
the larynx. Still, you hear noble voices among us,
— I have known families famous for them, — but ask
the first person you meet a question, and ten to one
there is a hard, sharp, metallic, matter-of-busmesa
clink in the accents of the answer, that produces the
effect of one of those bells which small trades-people
connect with their shop-doors, and which spring upon
your ear with such vivacity, as you enter, fnat youi
252 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
first impulse is to retire at once from the pre-
cincts.
Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child
1 saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two
and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snap
ped both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle.
Rough students round her, some in white aprons,
looking fearfully business-like; but the child placid,
perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little
creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly
sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have
heard in the thrush's even-song, that I hear it at this
moment, while I am writing, so many, many years
afterwards. — CPest tout comme un serin, said the
French student at my side.
These are the voices which struck the key-note of
my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear
in heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of
the twelve gates of pearl. There must be other
things besides aerolites that wander from their own
spheres to oursy and when we speak of celestial
sweetness or beauty, we may be nearer the literal
truth than \ye dream. If mankind generally are the
shipwrecked survivors of some pre-Adamitic cata-
clysm, set adrift in these little open boats of humani-
ty to make one more trial to reach the shore, — as some
grave theologians have maintained, — if, in plain Eng-
lish, men are the ghosts of dead devils w^ho have
•^died into life,'* (to borrow an expression from
THK Al TOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 253
Keats,) and walk the earth in a suit of living rags
which lasts thiee or four score summers, — why, there
must have been a few good spirits sent to keep them
company, and these sweet voices I speak of must
belong to them.
1 wish you could once hear my sister's voice,
— said the schoolmistress.
If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, —
said I.
I never thought mine was anything, — said the
schoolmistress.
How should you know ? — said I. — People never
hear their own voices, — any more than they see their
own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for the
voice. Of course, there is something audible to us
when we jpeak ; but that something is not our own
voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I
think, if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we
should not know them in the least. — How pleasant it
jvould be, if in another state of being we could have
fihapes like our former selves for playthings, — we
standing outside or inside of them, as we liked, and
they being to us just what we used to be to others I
1 wonder if there will be nothing like what
we call " play," after our earthly toys are broken, —
said the schoolmistress.
Hush, — said I, — what will the divinity-student
Bay?
[I thought she was hit, that time ; — but the shot
254 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRWAIvFAST-TABLH
must have gone over her, or on one side of her , sub
did not flinch.]
Oh, — said the schoolmistress, — he must look cmt
for my sister's heresies ; I am afraid he will be too
busy with them to take care of mine.
Do you mean to say, — said I, — that it is your siS'
ter whom that student
[The young fellow commonly known as John, who
had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, jumped off
just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a push with
his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking
face in at the window so as to cut my question off
in the middle ; and the schoolmistress leaving the
room a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a
chance to finish it.
The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair,
putting his heels on the top of another.
Pooty girl, — said he.
A fine young lady, — I replied.
Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts, —
said he, — teaches all sorts of things, — Latin and
Italian and music. Folks rich once, — smashed up.
She went right ahead as smart as if she'd been born
to work. That's the kind o' girl I go for. I'd
marry her, only two or three other girls would drown
themselves, if I did.
I think the above is the longest speech of this young
fellow's which I have put on record. I do not like
to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 255
those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de
Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a
good-hearted creature enough, only too fond of his
jokes, — and if it wore not for those heat-lightning
winks on one side of his face, I should not mind his
fun much.]
[Some days after this, when the company were
together again, I talked a little.]
Al don't think I have a genuine hatred for any-
Dody. I am well aware that I differ herein from the
sturdy English moralist and the stout American tra-
gedian. I don't deny that I hate the sight of certain
people ; but the qualities which make me tend to
hate the man himself are such as I am so much dis-
posed to pity, that, except under immediate aggrava-
tion, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them."\ It
is such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so
much worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple
of club-feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to
love the crippled souls, if I may use this expression,
with a certain tenderness which we need not waste
on noble natures. One wlio is born with such con-
genital incapacity that nothing can make a gentle-
man of him is entitled, not to our wrath, but to our
profoundest sympathy. But as we cannot help hat-
ing the sight of these people, just as we do that of
ohysical deformities, we gradually eliminate them
from oui society, — we love them, but open the win*
^oQ THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
dow and let them go. By the time decent people
reach middle age they have weeded their circle pretty
well of these unfortunates, unless they have a taste
for such animals; in which case, no matter w^hat
their position may be, there is something, you may
be sure, in their natures akin to that of their wretched
parasites.
The divinity-student wished to know what 1
thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies ; did 1
believe in love at first sight ?
Sir, — said I, — all men love all women. That is
the prima-facie aspect of the case. The Court of
Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so ;
and the individual man is bound to show cause why
he does not love any particular woman. A man,
says one of my old black-letter law-books, may show
divers good reasons, as thus : He hath not seen the
person named in the indictment ; she is of tender
age, or the reverse of that ; she hath certain personal
disqualifications, — as, for instance, she is a black-
amoor, or hath an ill-favored countenance ; or, his
capacity of loving being limited, his affections are
engrossed by a previous comer ; and so of other
conditions. Not the less is it true that he is bound
by duty and inclined by nature to love each and
every woman. Therefore it is that each woman
virtually summons every man to show cause why he
doth not love her. This is not by written document,
or direct speech, for the most part, but by certain
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 257
signs of silk, gold, and other materials, which say to
all men, — Look on me and love, as in duty bound.
Then the man plcadeth his special incapacity, what-
soever that may be, — as, for instance, impecuniosity,
or that he hath one or many wives in his household,
or that he is of mean figure, or small capacity ; of
which reasons it may be noted, that the first is,
according to late decisions, of chiefest authority. — So
far the old law-book. But there is a note from an
older authority, saying that every woman doth also
love each and every man, except there be some good
reason to the contrary ; and a very observing friend
of mine, a young unmarried clergyman, tells me,
that, so far as his experience goes, he has reason to
think the ancient author had fact to justify his state-
ment.
I'll tell you how it is with the pictures of women
we fall in love with at first sight.
We a'n't talking about pictures, — said the
landlady's daughter, — we're talking about women.
I understood that we were speaking of love at
sight, — I remarked, mildly. — Now, as all a man
knows about a woman whom he looks at is just
what a picture as big as a copper, or a " nickel,'*
rather, at the bottom of his eye can teach him, 1
think I am right in saying we are talking about the
pictures of women. — Well, now, the reason why a
man is not desperately in love with ten thousand
women at once is just that which prevents all oui
258 'fHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
portraits being distinctly seen upon that wall. Thej
all are painted there by reflection from our faces, but
because all of them are painted on each spot, and
each on the same surface, and many other objects at
the same time, no one is seen as a picture. But
darken a chamber and let a single pencil of rays in
through a key-hole, then you have a picture on the
wall. We never fall in love with a woman in dis-
tinction from women, until we can get an image of
her through a pin-hole ; and then we can see nothing
else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in
our mental camera-obscura.
My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave
town whenever the anniversaries come round.
What's the difficulty ? — Why, they all want him
to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts ;
which is just the very thing he doesn't want to do.
He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on
these occasions. But they tease him, and coax him,
and can't do without him, and feel ail over his pooi
weak head until they get their fingers on the fonta-
nelle, (the Professor will tell you what this means, — •
he says the one at the top of the head always re-
mains open in poets,) until, by gentle pressure on
that soft pulsating spot, they stupefy him to the
point of acquiescence.
There are times, though, he says, when it is a
pleasure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to
rush out into one's garden and clutch up a handful
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 251)
of what grows there, — ^weeds and violets together, —
not cutting them ofT, but pulling them up by the
roots with the brown earth they grow in sticking to
them. That's his idea of a post-prandial perform-
ance. Look here, now. These verses I am going
to read you. he tells me, were pulled up by the roots
just in that way, the other day. — Beautiful enter-
tainment, — names there on the plates that flow from
all English-speaking tongues as familiarly as and or
the ; entertainers known wherever good poetry and
fair title-pages are held in esteem; guest a kind-
hearted, modest, genial, hopeful pjet, who sings to
the hearts of his countrymen, the British people, the
songs of good cheer which the better days to come,
as all honest souls trust and believe, will turn into
the prose of common life. My friend, the Poet, says
you must not read such a string of verses too liter-
ally. If he trimmed it nicely below, you wouldn't
see the roots, he says, and he likes to keep them, and
a little of the soil clinging to them.
This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read t'3
nis and our friend, the Poet : —
A GOOD TIME GOING I
Brave singer of the coming time,
Sweet minstrel of the joyous present,
Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme,
The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant,
Good-bye ! Good-bye ! — Our hearts and hands,
Our lips in honest Saxon phrases.
260 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- TABLE.
Cry, God be witli him, till he stands
His feet among the English daisies I
Tis here we part ; — for other eyes
The busy deck, the fluttering streamer,
The dripping arms that plunge and rise,
The waves in foam, the ship in tremor.
The kerchiefs waving from the pier,
The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him,
The deep blue desert, lone and drear,
With heaven above and home before himi
His home ! — the Western giant smiles,
And twirls the sjjotty globe to find it ;—-
This little speck the British Isles ?
'Tis but a freckle, — never mind it ! —
He laughs, and all his prairies roll.
Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles,
And ridges stretched from pole to pole
Heave till they crack their iron knuckles
But memory blushes at the sneer,
And Honor turns with frown defiant.
And Freedom, leaning on her spear.
Laughs louder than the laughing giant : —
" An islet is a world," she said,
" When glory with its dust has blended,
And Britain kecpvi her noble dead
Till earth and seas and skies are rended I *
Beneath each swinging forest-bough
Some arm as stout in death reposes, —
From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissecl brow
Her valor's life-blood runs in roses ;
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 261
Nay, let our brothers of the West
AVrite smiling in their florid pages,
One-half- her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages 1
Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp
Her slender handful holds together ; —
With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between, —
Our little mother isle, God bless her I
In earth's broad temple where we stand,
Fanned by the eastern gales that brought ua,
We hold the missal in our hand,
Bright with the lines our Mother taught us ;
Where'er its blazoned page betrays
The glistening links of gilded fetters,
Behold, the half-turned leaf displays
Her rubric stained in crimson letters 1
Enough ! To speed a parting friend
'Tis vain alike to speak and listen ; —
Yet stay, — these feeble accents blend
With rays of light from eyes that glisten.
Good-bye ! once more, — and kindly tell
In words of peace the young world's story, —
And say, besides, — we love too well
Our mother's soil, our father's glory 1
When my friend, the Professor, found that my
friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this full
262 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
blown style, he got a little excited, as you may liavo
seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up
The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and
thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has
often tried, and now he was determined to try again.
So when some professional friends of his called him
up, one day, after a feast of reason and a regular
" freshet " of soul which had lasted two or three
hours, he read them these verses. He introduced
them with a few remarks, he told me, of which the
only one he remembered was this : that he had
rather write a single line which one among them
should think worth remembering than set them all
laughing with a string of epigrams. It was all
right, I don't doubt ; at any rate, that was his fancy
then, and perhaps another time he may be obsti-
nately hilarious ; however, it may be that he is
growing graver, for time is a fact so long as clocks
and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be a
kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said
the other day.
You must listen to this seriously, for I think the
Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote
t,
THE TWO ARMIES.
As Life's unending column pours,
Two marshalled hosts are seen, —
Two armies on the trampled shores
That Death flows black between.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAB^E 265
One marches to the drum-beat's roll,
The wide-mouthed clarion's bray,
And bears upon a crimson scroll,
* Our glory is to slay.**
One moves in silence by the stream,
With sad, yet watchful eyes,
Calm as the patient planet's gleam
That walks the clouded skies.
Along its front no sabres shme,
No blood-red pennons wave ;
Its banner bears the single line,
" Our duty is to save."
For those no death-bed's lingering shade ;
At Honor's trumpet-call,
"With knitted brow and lifted blade
In Glory's arms they fall.
For these no clashing falchions bright,
No stirring battle-cry ;
The bloodless stabber calls by night, —
Each answers, " Here am I ! "
For those the sculptor's laurelled bust,
The builder's marble piles.
The anthems pealing o'er their dust
Through long cathedral aisles.
For these the blossom-sprinkled turf
That floods the lonely graves.
When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf
In flowery-foaming waves.
2G4 fHE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Two paths lead upward from below,
And angels wait above,
Who count each burning life-drop's flow,
Each falling tear of Love.
Though from the Hero's bleeding breast
Her pulses Freedom drew,
Though the white lilies in her crest
Sprang from that scarlet dew, —
While Valor's haughty champions wait
Till all their scars are shown,
Love walks unchallenged through the gate,
To sit beside the Throne I
X.
[The schoolmistress came down with a rose in
her hair, — a fresh June rose. She has been walking
early; she has brought back two others, — one on
Rach cheek.
I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I
•ould muster for the occasion. Those two blush-
oses I just spoke of turned into a couple of dam-
isks. I suppose all this went through my mind, for
chis was what I went on to say : — ]
I love the damask rose best of aU. The flowers
our mothers and sisters used to love and cherish,
those which grow beneath our eaves and by our
doorstep, are the ones we always love best. If the
THE AnrOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 266
Houyhnhnins should ever catch me, and, finding
me particularly vicious and unmanageable, send a
man-tamer to Rareyfy me, I'll tell you what drugs
he would have to take and how he would have to
use them. Imagine yourself reading a number of
the Houyhiihnm Gazette, giving an account of
such an experiment.
" MAN-TAMING EXTRAORDINARY.
" The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently cap-
tured was subjected to the art of our distinguished
man-tamer in presence of a numerous assembly
The animal was led in by two stout ponies, closely
confined by straps to prevent his sudden and dan
gerous tricks of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking.
His countenance expressed the utmost degree of
ferocity and cunning.
" The operator took a handful of budding lilac-
leaves^ and crushing them slightly between his hoofs,
so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened
them to the end of a long pole and held them tow
ards the creature. Its expression changed in ar
instant, — it drew in their fragrance eagerly, anc"
attempted to seize them with its soft split hoofa
Having thus quieted his suspicious subject, th(
operator proceeded to tie a blue hyacinth to the enc'
of the pole and held it out towards the wild animal
The effect was magical. Its eyes filled as if V7\iV
raindrops, and its lips trembled as it pressed them
12
206 THE AVTOCRAT Ot THE BREAKFAST-TABL^.
to the flower. After this it was perfectly quiet, and
Drought a measure of corn to the man-tamer, with-
out showing the least disposition to strike with tlve
feet or hit from the shoulder."
That wiJl do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. — Do
you ever wonder why poets talk so much about
ilowers ? Did you ever hear of a poet who did not
talk about them ? Don't you think a poem, which,
for the sake of being original, should leave them out,
would be like those verses where the letter a or e or
some other is omitted? No, — they will bloom over
and over again in poems as in the summer fields, to
the end of time, always old and always new. Why
should we be more shy of repeating ourselves than
the spring be tired of blossoms or the night of stars?
Look at Nature. She never wearies of saying over
her floral pater-noster. In the crevices of Cyclopean
walls, — in the dust where men lie, dust also, — on
the mounds that bury huge cities, the wreck of Nin-
eveh and the Babel-heap, — still that same sweet
prayer and benediction. The Amen ! of Nature is
always a flower.
Are you tired of my trivial personalities, — those
splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes per-
haps of sentimentality, which you may see when I
show you my heart's corolla as if it were a tulip ?
Pray, do not give yourself the trouble to fancy me
an idiot whose conceit it is to treat himself as ao
niK AOrOJRAT OF THE BKEaKF AST-TABLE. 267
exceptional being. It is because you are just like
me that I talk and know that you will listen. Wis
are all splashed and streaked with sentiments, — not
with precisely the same tints, or 'in exactly the same
patterns, but by the same hand and from the same
palette.
I don't believe any of you happen to have just
the same passion for the blue hyacinth which I have,
— very certainly not for the crushed lilac-leaf-buds;
many of you do not know how sweet they are.
You love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bay-
berry-leaves, I don't doubt ; but I hardly think that
the last bewitches you with young memories as it
does me. For the same reason I come back to
damask roses, after having raised a good many of
the rarer varieties. I like to go to operas and con-
certs, but there are queer little old homely sounds that
are better than music to me. However, I suppose
it's foolish to tell such things.
It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time,
— said the divinity-student; — saying it, however, in
one of the dead languages, which I think are unpop-
ular for summer-reading, and therefore do not bear
quotation as such.
Well, now, — said I, — suppose a good, clean, whole-
some-looking countryman's cart stops opposite my
door. — Do I want any huckleberries? — If I do not,
there are those that do. Thereupon my soft-voiced
handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then the
268 "^H^' AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure^
spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to
confine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run
nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tum-
ble rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on
the resounding metal beneath. — I won't say that this
rushing huckleberry hail-storm has not more music
for me than the "Anvil Chorus."
1 wonder how my great trees are coming on
ihis summer.
Where are your great trees. Sir ? — said the
divinity-student.
Oh, all round about New England. I call all
trees mine that I have put my wedding-ring on,
and I have as many tree-wives as Brigham Young
has human ones.
One set's as green as the other, — exclaimec?
a boarder, who has never been identified.
They're all Bloomers, — said the young fellow
called John.
[I should have rebuked this trifling with language,
if our landlady's daughter had not asked me just
then what I meant by putting my wedding-ring on
a tree.]
Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my
dear, — said I, — I have worn a tape almost out on
the rough barks of our old New England elms and
o+her big trees. — Don't you want to hear me talk
trees a litde now ? That is one of my specialties.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205
[So they all agreed that they should like to heai
me talli about trees.]
I want you to understand, in the first place, that I
have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in
general, and have had several romantic attachments
to certain trees in particular. Now, if you expect
me to hold forth in a " scientific " way about my
tree-loves, — to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus
Americana, and describe the ciliated edges of its
samara, and all that, — you are an anserine individ-
ual, ^nd I must refer you to a dull friend who will
discourse to you of such matters. What should you
think of a lover who should describe the idol of his
heart in the language of science, thus : Class, Mamma-
lia ; Order, Primates ; Genus, Homo ; Species, Euro-
peus ; Variety, Brown ; Individual, Ann Eliza ; Dental
.2—2 1 — 1 2—2 3 — 3 ,
Formula, i ^—^ c j— -^ p ^—-^ m 3^33, and so on 1
No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see
them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they
are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our
heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand
whispering tongues, looking down on us with that
sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limite J
organisms, — which one sees in the brown eyes of
oxen, but most in the patient posture, the out-
stretched arms, and the heavy -drooping robes of
these vast beings endowed with life, but not with
Boul, — whi( h outgrow us and outlive us, but stand
270 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
helpless, — poor things! — while Nature dresses and
undresses them, like so many fall-sized, but under-
witted children.
Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin ? Slowest
of men, even of English men ; yet delicious in his
slowness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in woman.
1 always supposed " Dr. Syntax " was written to
make fun of him. I have a whole set of his works,
and am very proud of it, with its gray paper, and
open type, and long ff^ and orange-juice landscapes.
The Pere Gilpin had the kind of science I like in
the study of Nature, — a little less observation than
White of Selborne, but a little more poetry. — Just
think of applying the Linnaean system to an elm!
Who cares how many stamens or pistils that little
brown flower, which comes out before the leaf, may
have to classify it by ? What we want is the mean-
ing, the character, the expression of a tree, as a kind
and as an individual.
There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of
tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in
the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for
instance, and we find it always standing as a type
of strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever
thought of the single mark of supremacy which
distinguishes this tree from all our other forest-trees ?
All the rest of them shirk the work of resisting grav-
ity ; the oaK alone defies it. It chooses the horizon-
tal direction for its limbs, so that their whole weight
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 27 i
m-dy tell, — and then stretches them out fifty or sixty
feet, so that the strain may be mighty enough to bf>
worth resisting You will find, that, in passing from
the extreme downward droop of the branches of the
weeping-willow to the extreme upward inclination
of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly half a cir-
cle. At 90° the oak stops short; to slant upward
another degree would mark infirmity of purpose ; to
bend downwards, weakness of organization. The
American elm betrays something of both ; yet some-
times, as we shall see, puts on a certain resemblance
to its sturdier neighbor.
It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about
trees. There is hardly one of them which has not
peculiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I
remember a tall poplar of monumental proportions
and aspect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on
the summit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the
country round. A native of that region saw fit to
build his house very near it, and, having a fancy that
it might blow down some time or other, and exter-
minate himself and any incidental relatives who
might be " stopping " or " tarrying " with him, —
also laboring under the delusion that human life is
under all circumstances to be preferred to vegetable
existence, — had the great poplar cut down. It is so
easy to say, " It is only a poplar I " and so much
harder to replace its living cone thau to build a
granite obelisk I
272 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
I must tell you about some of my tree-wives, j
was at one period of my life much devoted to the
young lady-population of Rhode Island, a small, but
delightful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket.
The number of inhabitants being not very large, I
had leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plan-
tations, to inspect the face of the country in the
intervals of more fascinating studies of physiog-
nomy. I heard some talk of a great elm a short
distance from the locality just mentioned. " Let
us see the great elm," — I said, and proceeded to
find it, — knowing that it was on a certain farm in
a place called Johnston, if I remember rightly. I
shall never forget my ride and my introduction to
the great Johnston elm.
I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I ap-
proach it for the first time. Provincialism has no
scale of excellence in man or vegetable ; it never
knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has
it, and is constantly taking second and third rate
ones for Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree
was afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver came
over it as over a betrothed maiden when she first
stands before the unknown to whom she has been
plighted. Before the measuring-tape the proudest
tree of them all quails and shrinks into itself. All
those stories of four or five men stretching their ai "ns
around it and not touching each other's fingers, "vf ^
one's pacing the shadow at noon and making i^ i
rflE A.UTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLL. 275
many hundred feet, die upon its leafy lips in the
presence of the awful ribbon which has strangled so
many false pretensions.
As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly
for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of
the elms rose from time to time at the road-side.
Wherever one looked taUer and fuller than the rest,
I asked myself, — " Is this it ? " But as I drew
nearer, they grew smaller, — or it proved, perhaps,
that two standing in a line had looked like one,
and so deceived me. At last, all at once, when I
was not thinking of it, — I declare to you it makes
my flesh creep when I think of it now, — all at once
I saw a great, green cloud swelling in the horizon, so
vast, so symmetrical, of such Olympian majesty and
imperial supremacy among the lesser forest-growths,
that my heart stopped short, then jumped at my ribs
as a hunter springs at a five-barred gate, and 1 felt
all through me, without need of uttering the words,
—"This is it!"
You will find this tree described, with many
others, in the excellent Report upon the Trees and
Shrubs of Massachusetts. The author has given my
friend the Professor credit for some of his measure-
ments, but measured this tree himself, carefully. It
is a grand elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and
muscular development, — one of the first, perhaps the
first, of the first class of New England elms.
The largest actual girth I have ever found at five
12*
274 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLK.
feet from the ground is in the great elm lying a
stone's throw or two north of the main road (if my
points of compass are right) in Springfield. But
this has much the appearance of having been formed
by the union of two trunks growing side by side.
The "West- Springfield elm and one upon North-
ampton meadows, belong also to the first class of
trees.
There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield,
which used to spread its claws out over a circumfer-
ence of thirty-five feet or more before they covered
the foot of its bole up with earth. This is the
American elm most like an oak of any I have ever
seen.
The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size
and perfection of form. I have seen nothing that
comes near it in Berkshire County, and few to com-
pare with it anywhere. I am not sure that I remem-
ber any other first-class elms in New England, but
there^may be many.
What makes a first-class elm? — Why, size,
in the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty
feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and
with a spread of branches a hundred feet across,
may claim that title, according to my scale. All of
them, with the questionable exception of the Spring-
field tree above referred to, stop, so far as my expe-
rience goes, at about twenty-two or twenty-three
feet of girth and a hundred and twenty of spread.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275
Elms of the second class, generally ranging from
fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively common.
The queen of them all is that glorious tree near one
of the churches in Springfield. Beautiful and stately
she is beyon 1 all praise. The " great tree " on Bos-
ton Common comes in the second rank, as does the
one at Cohasset, which used to have, and probably
has still, a head as round as an apple-tree, and that
at Newburyport, with scores of others which might
be mentioned. These last two have perhaps been
over-celebrated. Both, however, are pleasing vege-
tables. The poor old Pittsfield elm lives on its past
reputation. A wig of false leaves is indispensable
to make it presentable.
[I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or
other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some re-
mote New England village, which only wants a
sacred singer to make ii cdlebrated. Send us your
measurements, — (certified by the postmaster, to
avoid possible imposition,^ — circumference five feet
firom soil, length of line from bough-end to bough-
end, and we will see what can be done for you.]
1 wish somebody would get us up the follow-
ing work : —
SYLVA NOVANGLICA.
Photographs of New England Elms and othei
Trees, taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude.
With Letter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished
Literary Gentleman. Boston : & Co
185..
276 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAJT.E.
The same camera should be used, — so far as poo
sible, — at a fixed distance. Our friend, who has
given us so many interesting figures in his " Tree?
of America," must not think this Prospectus invade^
his province ; a dozen portraits, with lively descrip
tions, would be a pretty complement to his large,
work, which, so far as published, I find excellent
If my plan were carried out, and another series of e
dozen English trees photographed on the same seale
the comparison would be charming.
It has always been a favorite idea of mine to
bring the life of the Old and the New World face
to face, by an accurate comparison of their various
types of organization. We should begin with man,
of course ; institute a large and exact comparison
between the development of la piaHta umarM, as
AJfieri called it, in different sectioix:^ of €a.ch cc/untry,
in the different callings, at different ages, estimating
height, weight, force by the dynamometer and the
spirometer, and finishing off with a series of typical
photographs, giving the principal national physiog-
nomies. Mr. Hutchinson has given us some excel-
lent English data to begin with.
Then I would follow this up by contrasting the
various parallel forms of life in the two continents.
Our naturalists have often referred to this inciden-
tally or expressly ; but the animus of Nature hy the
two half globes of the planet is so momentous a
point of interest to our race, that it should be made
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK. 277
a subject of express and elaborate study. Go out
with me into that walk which we call the Mall, and
look at the English and American elms. The Amer-
ican elm is tall, graceful, slender-sprayed, and droop-
ing as if from languor. The English elm is com-
pact, robust, holds its branches up, and carries its
lea\es for weeks longer than our own native tree.
Is this typical of the creative force on the two
sides of the ocean, or not ? Nothing but a careful
comparison through the whole realm of life can
answer this question.
There is a parallelism without identity in the
animal and vegetable life of the two continents,
which favors the task of comparison in an extraor-
dinary manner. Just as we have two trees alike in
many ways, yet not the same, both elms, yet easily
distinguishable, just so we have a complete flora and
a fauna, which, parting from the same ideal, embody
it with various modifications. Inventive power is
the only quality of which the Creative Intelligence
seems to be economical ; just as with our largest
human minds, that is the divinest of faculties, and
the one that most exhausts the mind which exercises
it As the same patterns have very commonly been
followed, we can see which is worked out in the
largest spirit, and determine the exact limitations
under which the Creator places the movement of
life in all its manifestations in either locality. We
Bhould find ourselves in a very false position, if it
278 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAS- TABLE.
should prove that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but
die out, if not kept up by fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox
and other more or less wise persons have maintained.
It may turn out the other way, as I have heard one
of our literary celebrities argue, — and though I took
the other side, I liked his best, — that the American is
the Englishman reinforced.
■^ Will you walk out and look at those elms
with me after breakfast? — I said to the school-
mistress.
[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that
she blushed, — as I suppose she ought to have done,
at such a tremendous piece of gallantry as that was
for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she turned
a little pale, — but smiled brightly and said, — Yes,
with pleasure, but she must walk towards her school.
— She went for her bonnet. — The old gentleman
opposite followed her with his eyes, and said he
wished he was a young fellow. Presently she came
down, looking very pretty in her half- mourning bon-
net, and carrying a school-book in her hand.]
MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.
This is the shortest way, — she said, as we came to
a corner. — Then we won't take it, — said I. — The
schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she was ten
minutes early, so she could go round.
We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English
elms The gray squirrels were out looking for their
THE AUTOCRAT OB* THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275
I'feakfasts, and one of them came toward us in light,
Boft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail
of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a
broad blue-slate-stone at its head, ^nd a shrub growing
on it. The stone said this v/as the grave of a young
man who was the son of an Honorable gentleman,
and who died a hundred years ago and more. — Oh,
yes, died, — with a small triangular mark in one
breast, and another smaller opposite, in his back,
where another young man's rapier had slid through
his body ; and so he lay down out there on the Com-
mon, and was found cold the next morning, with the
night-dews and the death-dews mingled on his fore-
head.
Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, —
»aid I. — His bones lie where his body was laid so
long ago, and where the stone says they lie, — which
is more than can be said of most of the tenants of
this and several other burial-grounds.
[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever com-
mitted within my knowledge was the uprooting of
the ancient gravestones in three at least of our city
burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the city,
and planting them in rows to suit the taste for sym-
metry of the perpetrators. Many years ago, when
this disgraceful process was going on under my eyes,
I addressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading
journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary ele-
gance, or too warm in its language ; for no notice
280 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST- f ABLE.
was taken of it, and the hyena-horror \\ as allowed
to complete itself in the face of daylight. I have
never got over it. The bones of my own ancestors,
being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but
the upright stones have been shuffled about like
chessmen, and nothing short of the Day of Judgment
will tell whose dust lies beneath any of those records,
meant by affection to mark one small spot as sacred
to some cherished memory. Shame ! shame ! shame !
— that is all I can say. It was on public thorough-
fares, under the eye of authority, that this infamy
was enacted. The red Indians would have known
better; the selectmen of an African kraal-village
would have had more respect for their ancestors. I
should like to see the gravestones which have been
disturbed all removed, and the ground levelled, leav-
ing the flat tombstones ; epitaphs were never famous
for truth, but the old reproach of " Here lies " never
had such a wholesale illustration as in these out-
raged burial-places, where the stone does lie above,
and the bones do not lie beneath.]
Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's
sigh over poor Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I
think. Twenty years old, and out there fighting
another young fellow on the Common, in the cool
of that old July evening ; — yes, there must have been
love at the bottom of it.
The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in
Uer hand, tnrough the rails, upon the grave of Benja-
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 281
min Woodbridge. That was all her comment upon
what 1 told her. — How wOmen love Love! said I ;—
but she did not speak.
We came opposite the head of a place or court
running eastward from the main street. — Look down
there, — I said, — My friend the Professor lived in that
house at the left hand, next the further corner, for
years and years. He died out of it, the other day. —
Died ? — said the schoolmistress. — Certainly, — said I.
— We die out of houses, just as we die out of our
bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred men :»
houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their mortal
frames and drives out the immortal tenants. Men
sicken of houses until at last they quit them, as the
soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmities.
The body has been called " the house we live in " ;
the house is quite as much the body we live in.
Shall I tell you some things the Professor said the
other day ? — Do ! — said the schoolmistress.
A man's body, — said the Professor, — is whatever
is occupied by his will and his sensibility. The
small room down there, where I wrote those papers
you remember reading, was much more a portion of
my body than a paralytic's senseless and motionless
arm or leg is of his.
The soul of a man has a series of concentric en-
velopes round it, like the core of an onion, or the in-
nermost of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural
garment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial in-
282 THT^ AUTOCilAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
teguments, wi^^h their true skin of solid stuffs, their
cuticle of liglitcY tissues, and their variously-tinted
pigments. Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single cham-
ber or a stately mansion. And then, the whole visi-
ble world, in which Time buttons him up as in a
loose outside wrapper.
You shall observe, — the Professor said, — for, like
Mr. John Hunter and other great men, he brings in
that shall with great effect sometimes, — you shall
observe that a man's clothing or series of envelopes
does aftei a certain time mould itself upon his in-
dividual nature. We know this of our hats, and are
always reminded of it when we happen to put them
on wrong iide foremost. We soon find that the
beaver is ?. hollow cast of the skull, with all its
irreguld' Jjmps and depressions. Just so all that
clothe'j X /i^^an, even to the blue sky which caps his
head,- a iittle loosely, — shapes itself to fit each par-
ticular being beneath it. Farmers, sailors, astrono-
mers, poets, lovers, condemned criminals, all find it
different, according to the eyes with which they
severally look.
But our houses shape themselves palpably on our
inner and outer natures. See a householder breaking
up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell-fish
which builds all manner of smaller shells into the
walls of its own. A house is never a home until we
nave crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives be-
sides those of our own past. See what these are
and you can tell what the occupant is.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283
I had no idea, — said the Professor, — until I pulled
np my domestic establishment the other day, what
an enormous quantity of roots I had been making
during the years I was planted there. Why, there
wasn't a nook or a corner that some fibre had not
worked its way into; and when I gave the last
■7/rench, each of them seemed to shriek like a man-
drake, as it broke its hold and came away.
There is nothing that happens, you know, which
must not inevitably, and which does not actually,
photograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in
all dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past
await but one brief process and all their pictures v/iil
be called out and fixed forever. We had a curious
illustration of the great fact on a very humble scale.
When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place,
for which it was built, was removed, there was
the exact image on the wall of the whole, and of
many of its portions. But in the midst of this pic-
ture was another, — ^the precise outline of a map
which had hung on the wall before the bookcase was
built. We had all forgotten everything about the
map until we saw its photograph on the wall.
Then we remembered it, as some day or other we
may remember a sin which has been built over and
covered up, when this lower universe is pulled away
from before the wall of Infinity, where the wrong-
doing stands self-recorded.
The Professor lived in that house a long timer-
284 THE AUTOCttAT OF THE BRVAKFAST-TaBLE.
not twenty years, but pretty near it. When lie
entered that door, two shadows glided over the
threshold ; five lingered in the doorway when he
passed through it for the last time, — and one of the
shadows was claimed by its owner to be longer than
his own. What changes he saw in that quiet place '
Death rained through every roof but his; children
came into life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded
away, threw themselves away ; the whole drama of
life was played in that stock-company's theatre of a
dozen houses, one of which was his, and no deep
sorrow or severe calamity ever entered his dwelling.
Peace be to those walls, forever, — the Professor said,
— for the many pleasant years he has passed within
them !
The Professor has a friend, now living at a dis-
tance, who has been with him in many of his
changes of place, and who follows him in imagina-
tion with tender interest wherever he goes. — In that
little court, where he lived in gay loneliness so
long,—
— in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut,
where it comes loitering down from its mountain
fastnesses like a great lord, swallowing up the small
proprietary rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it
gets proud and swollen and wantons in huge luxuri-
ous oxbows about the fair Northampton meadows,
and at last overflows the oldest inhabitant's memory
m profligate freshets at Hartford and all along its
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 285
ower shores, — up in that caravansary on the banka
of the stream where Ledyard launched his log canoe,
and the jovial old Colonel used to lead the Com-
mencement processions, — where blue Ascutney looked
down from the far distance, and the hills of Beulah,
as the Professor always called them, rolled up the
opposite horizon in soft climbing masses, so sugges-
tive of the Pilgrim's Heavenward Path that he
used to look through his old " Dollond " to see if the
Shining Ones were not within range of sight, —
sweet visions, sweetest in those Sunday walks which
carried them by the peaceful common, through the
solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness under the
shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus of their
harmless stroll, — the patulous fage, in the Professor's
classic dialect, — the spreading beech, in more familiar
phrase, — [stop and breathe here a moment, for the
sentence is not done yet, and we have another long
journey before us,] —
— and again once more up among those other hills
that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, — dark
stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine be-
neath the lids of auburn-haired, sherry-wine-eyed
dcmi-blondes, — in the home overlooking the winding
stream and the smooth, flat meadow ; looked down
upon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and cata-
mounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter
fenovv; facing the twin summits which rise in the far
Nortn, the highest waves of the gi-eat laad-storm
286 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
in all this billowy region, — suggestive to mad fanciej
of the breasts of a half-buried Titaness, stretched
out by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away
beneath the leaves of the forest, — in that home where
seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in
memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the
beatific vision of the holy dreamer, —
— in that modest dwelling we were just looking
at, not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its
^rab and mahogany, — full of great and little boys'
playthings from top to bottom, — in all these summer
or winter nests he was always at home and always
welcome.
This long articulated sigh of reminiscences, — this
calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed
plains of Beikshire and the mountain-circled green
of Grafton beneath the salt waves which come feel-
ing their way along the wall at my feet, restless and
soft-touching as blind men's busy fingers, — is for
that friend of mine who looks into the waters of the
Patapsco and sees beneath them the same visions
which paint themselves for me in the green depths
of the Charles.
Did I talk all this off" to the schoolmistress ? —
Why, no, — of course not. I have been talking with
you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't
think I should expect any woman to listen to such a
sentence as that long one, without giving her a
cnance to put in a word ?
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 287
What did I say to the schoolmistress?—
Permit me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy
and good-breeding ; but in this particular case, as 1
wao allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very
interesting young woman, you must allow me to
remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase,
used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum
tui negotii.
When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-
room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so
much heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure
it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this
every morning, and made up my mind I would ask
her to let me join her again.
EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL.
( To be burned unread.)
I am afraid I have been a fool ; for I have told as
much of myself to this young person as if she were
of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence
and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited
and listless, lately, — it is coffee, I think, — (I observe
that w^hich is bought ready-ground never affects the
head,) — and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily
when I am downhearted.
There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like
that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except
at dead-low tide.
288 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRKAKFAST-TABLE.
There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the
Bide of my deepest ocean-buried inscription I
Oh, no, no, no ! a thousand times, no ! — Yet
what is this which has been shaping itself in my
goul ? — Is it a thought ? — is it a dream ? — is it apaS'
sion? — Then I know what comes next.
The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy
hill ; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in,
in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all the win-
dows. When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside
that very high fence. But I never see much life in
those groups I sometimes meet; — and then the care-
ful man watches them so closely ! How I remember
that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings,
when I was a schoolboy ! — B., with his arms full of
yellow weeds, — ore from the gold mines which he
discovered long before we heard of California, — Y.,
born to miUions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the
boys said.) dogged, explosive, — made a Polyphemus
of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt
with a stick, — (the multi-millionnaires sent him a
trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with ; but boys
are jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good
people made him easy for life,) — how I remember
them all!
I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis,
in ** Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its
hand from its breast, showed its heart, — a burning
coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder sum-
THE AUTOCRAl OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 289
init. Go there on the next visiting-day, and ask that
figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those
Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the
sitting posture, to lift its hand, — look upon its heart,
and behold, not fire, but ashes. — No, I must not
think of such an ending ! Dying would be a much
more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty.
Make a will and leave her a house or two and some
stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take
away her necessity for keeping school. — I wonder
what nice young man's feet would be in my French
slippers before six months were over ! Well, what
then ? If a man really loves a woman, of course he
wouldn't marry her for the world, if he were not
quite sure that he was the best person she could by
any possibility marry.
It is odd enough to read over what I have
just been writing. — It is the merest fancy that ever
was in the world. I shall never be married. She
will ; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so
far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take
tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No
coffee, I hope, though, — it depresses me sadly. I
feel very miserably ; — they must have been grinding
it at home. — Another morning walk will be good for
me, and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be
glad of a little fresh air before school.
The throbbing flushes of the poetical inter-
13
290 THE AbTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
rnittent have been coming over me from time to
time of late. Did you ever see that electrical expcri
ment which consists in passing a flash through letters
of gold leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some
name or legend springs out of the darkness in char-
acters of fire?
There are songs all written out in my soul, which
1 could read, if the flash might pass through them, —
but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah !
but what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion
has blown by, and one asks for lightning from the
ragged cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered
cumulus of sluggish satiety ? I will call on her
whom the dead poets believed in, whom living ones
no longer worship, — the immortal maid, who, name
her what you will, — Goddess, Muse, Spirit of
Beauty, — sits by the pillow of every youthful poet,
and bends over his pale forehead until her tresses lie
upon his cheek and rain their gold into his dreama.
MUSA;
O MY lost Beauty ! — hast thou folded quite
Thy wings of morning light
Beyond those iron gates
Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates,
And Age upon his mound of ashes waits
To chill our fiery dreams,
Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy strawMS ?
Leave me not fading in these weeds of care,
Whose flowers are silvered hair 1 —
.HE AUTOCRAT OK THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE 291
Have I not loved thee long,
Tboiigh my young lips have often done thee wrong
And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song ?
Ah, wilt thou yet return.
Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar bum ?
Come to me ! — I will flood thy silent shrine
"With my soul's sacred wine,
And heap thy marble floors
As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores
In leafy islands walled with madrepores
And lapped in Orient seas,
When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breen.
Come to me ! — thou shalt feed on honied words,
/ Sweeter than song of birds ; —
No wailing bulbul's throat.
No melting dulcimer's melodious note,
When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float,
Thy ravished sense might soothe
With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth.
Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen.
Sought in those bowers of green
Where loop the clustered vines
And the close-clinging dulcamara twines, —
Pure pearls of Mayaew wnere ihe moonlight shines,
And Summer's fruited gems.
And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems.
Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, —
Or stretched by grass-grown graves,
Whose gray, high-shouldered stones,
Carve<l with old luunes Life's time-worn roll disowns,
292 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE
Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones
Siill slumbering where they lay
While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf awaj
Spreaa o'er my couch thy visionary wing I
Still let me dream and sing, —
Dream of that winding shore
Where scarlet cardinals bloom, — for me no more,—
The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor,
And clustering nenuphars
Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars I
Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed I —
Come while the rose is red, —
While blue-eyed Summer smiles
On the green ripples round yon sunken piles
Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles,
And on the sultry air
The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer 1
Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain
With thrills of wild sweet pain ! —
On life's autumnal blast,
Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast, —
Once loving thee, we love thee to the last f -
Behold thy new-decked shrine,
And hear once more the vol 3e that breathed *' Forever thuiel
I'HE AUTOCRAT OF lUE BKEAKF AST-TABLE. 293
XL
[The company looked a little flustered one morn-
ing when I came in, — so much so, that I inquired of
my neighbor, the divinity-student, what had been
going on. It appears that the young fellow whom
they call John had taken advantage of my being a
little late (I having been rather longer than usual
dressing that morning) to circulate several questions
involving a quibble or play upon words, — in short,
containing that indignity to the human understand-
ing, condemned in the passages from the distin-
guished moralist of the last century and the illustri-
ous historian of the present, which I cited on a
former occasion, and known as a pun. After break-
fast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of
paper containing some of the questions and their
answers. I subjoin two or three of them, to show
what a tendency there is to frivolity and meaningless
talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not
restrained by the presence of more reflective natures.
— It was asked, " Why tertian and quartan fevers
were like certain short-lived insects." Some interest-
ing physiological relation would be naturally sug-
gested. The inquirer blushes to find that the answer
is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip a day or
two. — " Wh) an Engl.shman must go to the Conti*
294 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
nent to weaken his grog or punch." The answer
proves to have no relation whatever to the temper-
ance-movement, as no better reason is ^ven than that
island- (or, as it is absurdly written. He and) water
won't mix. — But when I came to the next question
and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to be a
virtue. " Why an onion is like a piano " is a query
that a person of sensibility would be slow to pro-
pose ; but that in an educated community an indi-
vidual could be found to answer it in these words, —
" Because it smell odious," quasi^ it's melodious, — is
,iot credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.
Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such
things. I know most conversations reported in books
are altogether above such trivial details, but folly
will come up at every table as surely as purslain and
chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This
young fellow ought to have tallied philosophy, I
know perfectly well ; but he didn't, — he made jokes.]
I am willing, — I said, — to exercise your ingenuity
in a rational and contemplative manner. — No, I do
/lot proscribe certain forms of philosophical specula-
don which involve an approach to the absurd or the
ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the
folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in
his famous Disputations, " De Sancto Matrimonio."
[ will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by
reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my
friend the Professor.
THE DEA.0ON.
THE AUTOCKA'f OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29j
THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE:
CB THE WONDERFUL " ONE-HOSS-SHAY."
A LOGICAL STORY.
Have you heard of the wonderful one-haos-shaj,
That was built in such a logical way-
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits, —
Have you ever heard of that, I say ?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive, —
Snuffy old drone from the German hive .
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown.
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.
Now in building of chaises, I tell you what.
There is always somewliere a weakest spot,— •
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill.
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill.
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, — lurking still
Find it somewhere you must and will, —
Above or below, or within or without,^^
And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breaks dc^n, but doesn't wear out
296 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLk
But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell yeou/*)
He would build one sliay to beat the taown
V the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ;
It should be so built that it couldn' break daoim -
— " Fur," said the Deacon, " 't's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan the strain ;
'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain.
Is only jest
T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke, —
That was for spokes and floor and sills ;
He sent for lance wood to make the thills ;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees ;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these ;
The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum,** —
Last of its timber, — they couldn't sell 'em,
Never an axe had seen their chips.
And the wedges fiew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips ;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too.
Steel of the finest, bright and blue ;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide ;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he " put her through." —
** There ! " said the Deacon, " naow she'll dew .*
Do I tel you, J i-ather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less *
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE EBEAKFAST-TABLE. 297
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grand-children — where were they ?
But there stood the stout old oue-hoss-shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day 1
Eighteen hundred ; — it came and found
The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; —
" Hahnsum kerridge ** they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came ; —
Running as usual ; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive.
And then come fifty, and fifty-five.
Little of all we value here
"Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large ;
Take it. — You're welcome. — No extra charge.)
First of November, — the Earthquake-day.—
There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay,
A general flavor of mild decay.
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be, — for the Deacon's art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start
For the wheels were just as strong as the tiiills,
And the floor Avas just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the wliijiplitriM' nc'ilicr luss nor more.
203 THE AUTOCRAT Oi<" THE BEEAKFAST-TABLB
And the back-crossbar as strong as the forfty
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a tvhole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out I
First of November, 'Fifty-five 1
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way I
Here comes the wonderful one-horse-shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
" Huddup 1 " said the parson. — Off went thef
The parson was working his Sunday's text, —
Had got tojiflhly, and stopped perplexed
At what the — Moses — was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still.
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill,
— First a shiver, and then a thrill.
Then something decidedly like a spill, —
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half-past nine by the meet'n-house clock^-*-
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock I
• —What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around ?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground I
You see, of course, if you're not a duncew
How it went to pieces all at once, —
All at once, and nothing first, —
Ju.3t as bubbles do when they burst
End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.
Looic is logic That's all I say.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 2D9
1 think there is one habit, — I said to our com-
pany a day or two afterwards — worse than that of
punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or
flash terms for words which truly characterize their
objects. I have known several very genteel idiots
whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some
half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of
two great categories,— /a^^ or slow, Man's chief end
was to be a brick. When the great calamities of
life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of
as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human
existence were summed up in the single word, bore.
These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols
of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to
discriminate. They are the blank checks of intel-
lectual bankruptcy ; — you may fill them up with
what idea you like ; it makes no difl'erence, for there
are no funds in the treasury upon which they are
drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-
clubs are the places where these conversational fungi
spring up most luxuriantly. JDon't think I under-
value the proper use and application of a cant word
or phrase. It adds piquancy to conversation, as a
mushroom does to a sauce. But it is no better tha/i
a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the
intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of
men and youths capable of talking, as it sometimes
does, j As we hear flash phraseology, it is commonly
the dishwater from the washings of English dandy
300 THi!: AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
ism, school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-
volume novel which had sopped it up, or decanted
from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and
diluted to suit the provincial climate.
The young fellow called John spoke up sharp-
ly and said, it was " rum " to hear me " pitchin' into
fellers " for " goin' it in the slang line," when I used
aU the flash words myself just when I pleased.
1 replied with my usual forbearance. — Cei-
iainly, to give up the algebraic symbol, because a oi
b is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise.
1 have heard a child laboring to express a certain
condition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation,
(as it supposed,) all of which could have been suffi-
ciently explained by the participle — bored. I have
seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect
and a one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his
valuable time (and mine) freely, in developing an
opinion of a brother-minister's discourse which would
have been abundantly characterized by a peach-
down-lipped sophomore in the one word — slow. Lei
us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription.
I am omniverbivorous by nature and training.
Passing by such words as are poisonous, I can
swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot
swallow.
Dandies are not good for much, but they are good
for something. They invent or keep in circulation
those 'conversational blank checks or counters just
fllU AUIOCRAT OF THE BREAKFASl -TABLE. 301
Bpoken of, which intellectual capitalists may some*
times find it worth their while to borrow of them.
They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of
dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and
become, what some old fools would have it, a mat-
ter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes,
I like dandies well enough, — on one condition.
What is that. Sir ? — said the divinity-student
That they have pluck. I find that lies at the
bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed
up very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and
takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks
very silly. But if he turns red in the face and
knotty in the fists, and makes an example of the
biggest of his assailants, throwing ofi" his fine Leg-
horn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary,
to consummate the act of justice, his small toggery
takes on the splendors of the crested helmet that
firightened Astyanax. You remember that the Duke
said his dandy officers were his best officers. The
" Sunday blood," the super-superb sartorial eques-
trian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing of
dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel and
D'Orsay and Byron are not to be snubbed quite so
easily. Look out for " la main de fer sous le gant
de velours," (which I printed in English the other
day without quotation-marks, thinking whether any
scarabcBUS criticus would add this to his globe and
roll in giory witn it into the newspapers, — which he
Kf)2 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST -TABLE.
didn't do it, in the charming pleonasm of the Lon
don language, and therefore I claim the sole merU
of exposing the same.) A good many powerful and
dangerous people have had a decided dash of dandy-
ism about them. There was Alcibiades, the " curled
son of Clinias," an accomplished young man, but
what would be called a " swell " in these day».
There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer,
of whom you have heard, — a philosopher, in short,
whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn,
and is now going to take a generation or more to
learn over again. Regular dandy, he was. So was
Marcus Antonius ; and though he lost his game, he
played for big stakes, and it wasn't his dandyism
that spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be
despised as a scholar or a poet, but he was one of
the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so
was Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forget-
ful. Yes, — a dandy is good for something as such ;
and dandies such as I was just speaking of have
rocked this planet like a cradle, — aye, and left it
swinging to this day. — Still, if I were you, I wouldn't
go to the tailor's, on the strength of these remarks,
and run up a long bill which will render pockets
a superfluity in your next suit. Elegans " nascitur^
non jitP A man is born a dandy, as he is born a
poet. There are heads that can't wear hats ; there
are necks that can't fit cravats ; there are jaws that
can't fill out collars — (Willis touched this last point
iHfi AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303
in one of his earlier ambrotypes, if I remembei
rightly) ; there are tournures nothing can humanize*
and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious
suavity or elegant languor or stately serenity which
belong to different styles of dandyism.
We are forming an aristocracy, as you may ob-
serve, in this country, — not a gratid-Dei^ nor a jure-
divino one, — but a de-facto upper stratum of being,
which floats over the turbid waves of common life
like the iridescent film you may have seen spreading
over the water about our wharves, — very splendid,
though its origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil,
or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then,
we are forming an aristocracy ; and, transitory as its
individual life often is, it maintains itself tolerably,
as a whole. Of course, money is its corner-stone.
But now observe this. Money kept for two or three
generations transforms a race, — I don't mean merely
in manners and hereditary culture, but in blood and
bone. Money buys air and sunshine, in which chil-
dren grow up more kindly, of course, than in close,
back streets ; it buys country-places to give them
'happy and healthy summers, good nursing, good
doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mutton.
When the spring-chickens come to market 1
beg your pardon, — that is not what I was going to
speak of. As the young females of each successive
season come on, the finest specimens among them,
other things being equal are apt to attract those who
804: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Dan afford the expensive luxury of beauty. Th
physical character of the next generation rises in
consequence. It is plain that certain families have
in this way acquired an elevated type of face and
figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections
one may sometimes find models of both sexes which
one of the rural counties would find it hard to match
from all its townships put together. Because there
is a good deal of running down, of degeneration and
waste of life, among the richer classes, you must not
overlook the equally obvious fact I have just spoken
of, — which in one or two generations more will be, 1
think, much more patent than just now.
The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the
same I have alluded to in connection with cheap
dandyism. Its thorough manhood, its high-caste
gallantry, are not so manifest as the plate-glass of its
windows and the more or less legitimate heraldry of
its coach-panels. It is very curious to observe of
how small account military folks are held among our
Northern people. Our young men must gild their
spurs, but they need not win them. The equal
division of property keeps the younger sons of rich
people above the necessity of military service. Thus
the army loses an element of refinement, and the
moneyed upper class forgets what it is to count
heroism among its virtues. Still I don't believe
in any aristocracy without pluck as its backbone.
Ours may show it when the time comes if it evei
does come.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303
These '"United States furnish the greatest
market for intellectual green fruit of all the places in
the world. I think so, at any rate. The demand foi
intellectual labor is so enormous and the market so
far from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like
unripe gooseberries, — get plucked to make a fool of
Think of a country which buys eighty thousand
copies of the " Proverbial Philosophy," while the
author's admiring countrymen have been buying
twelve thousand! How can one let his fruit hang
in the sun until it gets fully ripe, while there are
eighty thousand such hungry mouths ready to swal-
low it and proclaim its praises? Consequently, there
never was such a collection of crude pippins and
half-grown windfalls as our native literature displays
among its fruits. There are literary green-groceries
at every corner, which will buy anything, from a
button-pear to a pine-apple. It takes a long appren-
ticeship to train a whole people to reading and writ-
ing. The temptation of money and fame is too
great for young people. Do I not remember that
glorious moment when the late Mr. we won't
say who, — editor of the we won't say what,
offered me the sum of fifty cents per double-
columned quarto page for shaking my young boughs
over his foolscap apron? Was it not an intoxicat
ing vision of gold and glory? I should doubtless
have revelled in its wealth and splendor, but foi
learning that the fifty cents was to be considered a
806 THK AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAB1.E
rhetorical embellishment, and by no means a literal
expression of past fact or present intention.
Beware of making your moral staple consist
of Iho negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and
teach others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurt-
ful. But making a business of it leads to emacia-
tion of character, unless one feeds largely also on
the more nutritious diet of active sympathetic ben-
evolence.
I don't believe one word of what you are
saying, — spoke up the angular female in black bom-
bazine.
I am sorry you disbelieve it. Madam, — I said,
and added softly to my next neighbor, — but you
prove it.
The yonng fellow sitting near me winked ; and
the divinity-student said, in an undertone, — Optime
dictum.
Your talking Latin, — said I, — reminds me ol an
odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so
much of that language, that his English half turned
into it. He got caught in town, one hot summer, in
pretty close quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a
series of city pastorals. Eclogues he called them,
and meant to have published them by subscription.
I remember some of his verses, if you want to hear
Jiem. — You, Sir, (addressing myself to the divinity-
atudent,) and all such as have been through college,
or> what is the same thing, received an honorary
THE AXJTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABL«. 307
degree, will understand them without a dictionary
The old man had a great deal to say about " sBstiva-
tion," as he called it, in opposition, as one might
say, to hibernation. Intramural OBstivation, or town-
iife in summer, he would say, is a peculiar form of
suspended existence, or semi-asphyxia. One wakes
up from it about the beginning of the last week
in September. This is what I remember of hia
poem : —
-a:STIVATION.
An Unpvblished Poenij by my late Latin Tutor
In candent ire the solar splendor flames ;
The foles, languesccnt, pend from arid rames ;
His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes,
And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes.
How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes,
Dorm on the herb with none to supervise,
Carp the suave berries from the crescent vine,
And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine I
To mc, alas ! no verdurous visions come.
Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, —
No concave vast repeats the tender hue
That laves my milk-jug with celestial blue I
Me wretched I Let mo curr to (jucrcine shades
Eff*und your albld hausts, lactiferous maids !
Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, —
Depart, — be ofl*, — excede, — evade,— erump I
308 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I have lived by the sea-shore and by the»
mountains. — No, I am not going to say which is
best. The one where your place is is the best for
you. But this difference there is : you can domesti-
cate mountains, but the sea is ferce natures. You
may have a hut, or know the owner of one, on the
mountain-side ; you see a light half-way up its as-
cent in the evening, and you know there is a home,
and ^ou might share it. You have noted certain
trees, perhaps ; you know the particular zone where
the hemlocks look so black in October, when the
maples and beeches have faded. All its reliefs and
intaglios have electrotyped themselves in the medal-
lions that hang round the walls of your memory's
'^-hamber. — The sea remembers nothing. It is feline.
It licks your feet, — its huge flanks purr very plea-
santly for you ; but it will crack your bones and eat
you, for all that, and wipe the crimsoned foam from
its jaws as if nothing had happened. The moun-
tains give their lost children berries and water ; the
sea mocks their thirst and lets them die. The moun-
tains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity ; the
sea has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The
mountains lie about like huge ruminants, their broad
backs awful to look upon, but safe to handle. The
sea smooths its silver scales until you cannot see
their joints, — but their shining is that of a snake's
belly, after all. — In deeper suggest! veness I find as
great a difference. The mountains dwarf mankind
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3o9
*nd foreshorten the procession of its long genera-
tions. The sea drowns out humanity and time ; it
has no sympathy with either ; for it belongs to eter-
nity, and of that it sings its monotonous song for-
ever and ever.
Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea-
shore. I should love to gaze out on the wild feline
element from a front window of my own, just as I
should love to look on a caged panther, and see it
stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap
its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself
into rage and show its white teeth and spring at its
bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harm-
less fury. — And then, — to look at it with that inward
eye, — ^who does not love to shuffle off time and its
concerns, at intervals, — to forget who is President
and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what
language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the
firmament his particular planetary system is huug
upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it
beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when
the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing
just as steadily after the human chorus has died out
and man is a fossil on its shores ?
What should decide one, in choosing a sum-
mer residence ? — Constitution, first of all. How much
snow could you melt in an hour, if you were planted
in a hogshead of it ? Comfort is essential to enjoy-
ment All sensitive people should remember that
giQ THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
persons in easy circumstances suffer much more froi**
cold in summer — that is, the warm half of the year
— than in winter, or the other half. You must cut
your climate to your constitution, as much as youi
clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste
and convenience. But if you would be happy in
]3erkshire, you must carry mountains in your brain ;
and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an
ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with
you; you must match her piece, or she will never
give it up to you.
The schoolmistress said, in a rather mischiev-
ous way, that she was afraid some minds or souls
would be a little crowded, if they took in the Rocky
Mountains or the Atlantic.
Have you ever read the little book called " The
Stars and the Earth ? " — said I. — Have you seen the
Declaration of Independence photographed in a sur-
face that a fly's foot would cover ? The forms or
conditions of Time and Space, as Kaot will tell you,
are nothing in themselves, — only our way of looking
at things. You are right, I think, however, in recog-
nizing the category of Space as being quite as appli-
cable to minds as to the outer world. Every man
of reflection is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-
defined circle which is drawn about his intellect. He
has a perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his
intellectual circle include the curves of many othei
minds of which he is cognizant. He often lecognize?
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31]
these as manifestly concentric with his own, but of
less radius. On the other hand, when w^e find s
portion of an arc on the outside of our own, we say
it intersects ours, but are very slow to confess or to
see that it circumscribes it. Every now and then a
man's mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation,
and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.
After looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had
been stretched beyond the limits of its elasticity, and
fitted so loosely on my old ideas of space that I had
to spread these to fit it.
If I thought I should ever see the Alps I —
said the schoolmistress.
Perhaps you will, some time or other, — I said.
It is not very likely, — she answered. — I have had
one or two opportunities, but I had rather be any-
thing than governess in a rich family.
[Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman ! WeU,
I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How
long will school-keeping take to kill you ? Is it pos-
sible the poor thing works with her needle, too ? T
don't like those marks on the side of her forefino^er.
Tableau, Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view
Figures in the foreground ; two of them standing
apart; one of them a gentleman of oh, — ah, —
yes I the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning
on his shoulder. — The ingenuous reader will under-
stand that this was an internal, private, personal,
subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the back*
512 TH12 AUIOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
ground of my own consciousness, and abolished into
black nonentity by the first question which recalled
me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron
shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a
shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but
honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden
and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the
sidewalk) had come down in front of it " by the
run."]
Should you like to hear what moderate
wishes life brings one to at last ? I used to be very
ambitious, — wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in
all my fancies. Read too much in the " Arabian
Nights." Must have the lamp, — couldn't do without
the ring. Exercise every morning on the brazen
horse. Plump down into castles as full of little
milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows.
All love me dearly at once.— Charming idea of life,
but too high-colored for the reality. I have out-
grown all this ; my tastes have become exceedingly
primitive, — almost, perhaps, ascetic. We caiTy hap-
piness into our condition, but must not hope to find
it there. I think you will be willing to hear some
lines which embody the subdued and limited desires
of my maturity.
CONTENTMENT.
" Man wants but little here below."
Little I ask ; my wants are few ;
I only wish a hut of stone,
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. iJlJ
(A very plain brown stone will do,)
That I may call my own ; —
And close at hand is such a one,
In yonder street that fronts the sun.
Plain food is quite enough for me ;
Three courses are as good as ten ; —
If ^Nature can subsist on three,
Thank Heaven for three. Ameni
I always thought cold victual nice ; —
My choice would be vanilla-ice.
I care not much for gold or land ; —
Give me a mortgage here and there, —
Some good bank-stock, — some note of hand)
Or trifling railroad share ; —
I only ask that Fortune send
A lUUe more than I shall spend.
Honors are silly toys, I know,
And titles are but empty names;—
I would, perhaps, be Plenipo, —
But only near St. James ; —
Fm very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator's chair.
Jewels are baubles ; 'tis a sin
To care for such unfruitful things ;—
One good-sized diamond in a pin, —
Some, not so large, in rings, —
A ruby and a pearl, or so.
Will do for me ; — I laugh at show.
My dame should dress in cheap attire ;
(Good, heavy silks are never dear •,)—
14
814 THE AUTOCE.AT OF THE BREARi^AST-TABLE
I own perhaps I miglit desire
Some shawls of true cashmere,—
Some marrowy crapes of China silk,
Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.
I would not have the horse I drive
So fast that folks must stop and stare
An easy gait — two, forty-five —
Suits me ; I do not care ; —
Perhaps, for just a single spurl.,
Some seconds less would do no hurt
Of pictures, I should like to own
Titians and Raphaels three or four,—
I love so much their style and tone, —
One Turner, and no more, —
(A landscape, — ^foreground golden dirt
The sunshine painted with a squirt.)
Of books but few, — some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear;
The rest upon an upper floor ; —
Some little luxury there
Of red morocco's gilded gleam,
And vellum rich as country cream.
Busts, cameos, gems, — such things as theaa*
Which others often show for pride,
I value for their power to please.
And selfish churls deride ; —
One Stradivarius, I confess.
Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess.
Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn.
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool ; —
THE AUTOCttAl OF THh UREAKF AST-TABLE. 315
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,
Rut all must be of buhl ?
Give grasping pomp its double share, —
I ask but one recumbent chair.
Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas' golden touch,
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them muchj —
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content I
MT LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.
(^A Parenthesis.)
I can't say just how many walks she and I had
taken together before this one. I found the effect of
going out every morning was decidedly favorable on
her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for
which were just marked when she came, played,
rhadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled
and nodded good-morning to me from the school-
house-steps.
I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking.
At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said
during the first half-dozen walks we took together, 1
fear tliat I might receive a gentle hint from my
friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my
own risk and expense, would be the proper method
of bringing them before the public.
I would have a woman as true as Death
316 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TA3i.£.
At the first real lie which works from the heart out«
ward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a
better world, where she can have an angel for a
governess, and feed on strange fruits which will
make her all over again, even to her bones and mar-
row. — Whether gifted with the accident of beauty
or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red
clay of Love, before the breath of life made a mov-
ing mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital
endowment ; and I think, after a while, one gets to
know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the
pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them. — Proud she
may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride
in the sense of contemning others less gifted than
herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar
woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Small-
pox and Bankruptcy. — She who nips off the end of
a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle,
to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and
kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes
not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Con-
sciousness of unquestioned position makes people
gracious in proper measure to all ; but if a woman
puts on airs with her real equals, she has something
about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or
ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged
people, who know family histories, generally see
through it. An official of standing was rude to me
once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, — said a
TEE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLEL 317
wise old friend to me, — he was a bocx. — Better too
few words, from the woman we love, than too
many : while she is silent, Nature is working for her ,
while she talks, she is working for herself. — Love is
sparingly soluble in the words of men ; therefore they
speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's
speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart
can hold.
Whether I said any or all of these things
to the schoolmistress, or not, — whether I stole them
out of Lord Bacon, — whether I cribbed them from
Balzac, — whether I dipped them from the ocean of
Tupperian wisdom, — or whether I have just found
them in my head, laid there by that solemn fowl,
Experience, (who, according to my observation,
cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I can-
not say. Wise men have said more foolish things,
— and foolish men, I don't doubt, have said as wise
things. Anyhow, the schoolmistress and I had pleas-
ant walks and long talks, all of which I do not feel
bound to report.
You are a stranger to me. Ma'am. — I don't
doubt you would like to know all I said to the
schDolmistress. — I sha'n't do it; — I had rather get
the publishers to return the money you have invested
in this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it.
I shall tell only what I like of what I remember.
My idea was, in the first place, to search out
ihc picturesque spot? which the city affords a sight
318 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABL ^.
of, to those who have eyes. I know a good mar},
and it was a pleasure to look at them in company
with my young friend. There were the shrubs and
flowers in the Franklin-Place front-yards or borders :
Commerce is just putting his granite foot upon theni.
Then there are certain small seraglio-gardens, into
which one can get a peep through the crevices of
high fences, — one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it,
— here and there one at the North and South Ends.
Then the great elms in Essex Street. Then the
stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers
Street, which hold their outspread hands over your
head, (as I said in my poem the other day,) and look
as if they were whispering, " May grace, mercy, and
peace be with you ! " — and the rest of that benedic-
tion. Nay, there are certain patches of ground,
which, having lain neglected for a time. Nature, who
always has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in
all her pockets, has covered with hungry plebeian
growths, which fight for life with each other, until
Rome of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and
you have a coarse vegetable tapestry which Raphae/
would not have disdained to spread over the fore-
ground of his masterpiece. The Professor pretends
that he found such a one in Charles Street, whichj
in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble
vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of
the Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of
voung tatterdemalions playing pitch-and-toss beats a
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 319
row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at
their head.
But then the Professor has one of his burrows in
that region, and puts everything in high colors relat-
ing to it That is his way about everything.
I hold any man cheap, — he said, — of whom nothing
stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are
swans. How is that, Professor ? — said I ; — I
should have set you down for one of that sort.
Sir, — said he, — I am proud to say, that Nature has
so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a
duck without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever
swam the basin in the garden of the Luxembourg.
And the Professor showed the whites of his eyes
devoutly, like one returning thanks after a dinner of
many courses.
I don't know anything sweeter than this leakmg
in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and
floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of
hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which
was green once. The trees look down from the
hill-sides and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe,
— " What are these people about ? " And the small
herbs at their feet look up and whisper back, — " We
wiU go and see." So the small herbs pack them-
selves up in the least possible bundles, and wait
until the wind steals to them at night and whispers,
— " Come with me." Then they go softly with \\
mto th(i great city, — one to a cleft in the pavement
820 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLS.
one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the
marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to
the grave without a stone where nothing but a man
is buried, — and there they grow, looking down on
the generations of men from mouldy roofs, looking
up from between the Jess-trodden pavements, looking
out through iron cemetery-railings. Listen to them,
when there is only a light breath stirring, and you
will hear them saying to each other, — " Wait awhile!"
The words run along the telegraph of those narrow
green lines that border the roads leading from the
city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the
^ees repeat in low murmurs to each other, — " Wait
awhile ! " By-and-by the flow of life in the streets
jbbs, and the old leafy inhabitants — the smaller
tribes always in front — saunter in, one by one, very
careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they
swarm so that the great stones gape from each other
with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar
begins to be picked out of the granite to find them
food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of
march, and never rest until they have encamped in
the market-place. Wait long enough and you will
find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block
in its yellow underground arms ; that was the corner-
stone of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, this
imperturbable Nature !
Let us cry !
Put all this has nothing to do with my waJks and
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 321
>alks with the schoolraistress. I did not say that 1
would not tell you something about them. Let me
alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought to,,
probably. We never tell our secrets to people that
pump for them.
Books we talked about, and education. It was her
duty to know something of these, and of course she
did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than
she, but I found that the difference between her
reading and mine was like that of a man's and a
woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about
with a bunch of feathers ; the woman goes to work
softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust,
nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, — but she
goes into all the corners, and attends to the leaves
as much as the covers. — Books are the negative pic-
tures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind
that receives their images, the more nicely the finest
lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,)
reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed
the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the
finest of the wheat.
But it was in talking of Life that we came most
nearly together. I thought I knew something about
that, — ^that I could speak or write about it somewhat
to the purpose.
To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a
sponge sucks up water, — to be steeped and soaked
in its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven
14*
822 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
years in a tan-pit, — to have winnowed e^ery wave
of it as a mill-wheel works up the stream that runs
through the flume upon its float-boards, — to have
curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in
the laxest languors of this breathing-sickness, which
keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or
four score years, — to have fought all the devils and
clasped all the angels of its delirium, — and then, just
at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled
down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the
ice-cold stream of some human language or other,
one might think would end in a rhapsody with
something of spring and temper in it. All this I
thought my power and province.
The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a
while one meets with a single soul greater than all
the living pageant which passes before it. As the pale
astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and
thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a
balance, so there are meek, slight women who have
weighed all which this planetary life can ofier, and
hold it like a bauble in the palm of their sleniler
hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left
tier, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor
and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life were
before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face,
gradually regaining a cheerfulness which was ofteii
sprightly, as she became interested in the various
matters wa talked about and places we visited, I saw
THE AUTOCRAT 01- THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. S2tt
that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were
ma.le for love, — unconscious of their sweet office as
yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with tho
natural graces which were meant foi the reward of
nothing less than the Great Passion.
1 never addressed one word of love to the
schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks.
It seemed to me that we talked of everything but
love on that particular morning. There was, per-
haps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my
part than I have commonly shown among our people
at the boarding-house. In fact, I considered myself
the master at the breakfast-table ; but, somehow, I
could not command myself just then so well as
usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to
Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at
noon, — with the condition, however, of being re-
leased in case circumstances occurred to detain me.
The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of
course, as yet.
It was on the Common that we were walking.
The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know,
has various branches leading from it in different
directions. One of these runs down from opposite
Joy Street southward across the whole length of the
Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long
path, and were fond of it.
I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably
obust habit) as we came opposite the head of thi^
324 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice
without making myself distinctly audible. At last
I got out the question,^ Will you take the long
path with me? Certainly, — said the schoolmift-
tress, — ^w^th much pleasure. Think,— I said, —
before you answei • if you take the long path with
me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no
more! The schoolmistress stepped back with a
sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her.
One of the long granite blocks used as seats was
hard by, — the one you may still see close by the
Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down, — I said. No, "^lO,
she answered, softly, — I will walk the Jong path v^ith
you !
The old gentleman who sits opposite me^> us
walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long
path, and said, very charmingly, — " Good morning,
my dears ! "
XII.
[I DID not think it probable that I should have i
great many more talks with our company, and there-
fore I was anxious to get as much as I could into every
conversation. That is the reason why you will find
some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which I wished
to tell at least once, as 1 should not have a chance t<?
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. ^25
tell them habitually, at our breakfast-table. — We're
very free and easy, you know ; we don't read what
we don't like. Our parish is so large, one can't pre-
tend to preach to all the pews at once. One can't
be all the time trying to do the best of one's best
if a company works a steam fire-engine, the firemen
needn't be straining themselves all day to squirt over
the top of the flagstaff. Let them wash some of
those lower-story windows a little. Besides, there is
no use in our quarrelling now, as you will find out
when you get through this paper.]
Travel, according to my experience, does not
exactly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of
most books of travels. I am thinking of travel as
it was when I made the Grand Tour, especially in
Italy. Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish
when he takes it from the brook ; but a dozen miles
of water have run through it without sticking. 1
can prove some facts about travelling by a story or
two. There are certain principles to be assumed, —
such as these : — He who is carried by hor^^s must
deal with rogues. — To-day's dinner subtends a largei
visued angle than yesterday's revolution. A mote ir
my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of Dr.
Gould's private planets. — Every traveller is a self-
taught entomologist. — Old jokes are dynamometer?
of mental tension ; an old joke tells better among
friends travelling than at home, — which shows that
their minds are in a state of diminished, rather than
326 THE AUTOCRA.T OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLr
.ncreased vitality. There was a story about " strahpa
to your pahnts," which was vastly funny to us fel
lows — on the road from Milan to Venice. — Ccehim,
non animunij — travellers change their guineas, but
not their characters. The bore is the same, eating
dates under the cedars of Lebanon, as over a plate
of baked beans in Beacon Street. — Parties of travel-
lers have a morbid instinct for " establishing raws "
upon each other. — A man shall sit down with his
friend at the foot of the Great Pyramid and they will
take up the question they had been talking about
under " the great elm," and forget all about Egypt.
When I was crossing the Po, we were all fighting
about the propriety of one fellow's telling another
that his argument was absurd; one maintaining it to
be a perfectly admissible logical term, as proved by
the phrase " reductio ad absurdum ; " the rest bad-
gering him as a conversational bully. Mighty little
we troubled ourselves for Padus, the Po, " a river
broader and more rapid than the Rhone," and the
times when Hannibal led his grim Africans to its
banks, and his elephants thrust their trunks into
the yellow waters over which that pendulum ferry-
boat was swinging back and forward every ten
minutes !
Here are some of those reminiscences, with
morals prefixed, or annexed, or implied.
Lively emotions ver3r commonly do not strike ua
fulJ in front, but obliquely from the side ; a scene ox
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 327
.'ncident in undress often affects us more than one in
full costume.
" Is this the mighty ocean ? — is this all ? **
says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should
have flooded my soul in the Coliseum did not come.
But walking one day in the fields about the city, I
stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo !
the World's Mistress in her stone girdle — alta moenia
Romas — ^rose before me and whitened my cheek with
her pale shadow as never before or since.
I used very often, when coming home from my
morning's work at one of the public institutions of
Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St. Eti-
enne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, sur-
rounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was
there ; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benign us Wins-
low was there ; there was a noble organ with carved
figures ; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders
of a stooping Samson ; and there was a marvellous
staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention
from memory, but not all of them together impressed
me so much as an inscription on a small slab of
narble fixed in one of the walls. It told how this
ci. Tch of St. Stephen was repaired and beautified in
the year 16**, and how, during the celebration of its
reopening, two girls of the parish {filles de laparoisse)
feU from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade
with them, to the pavement, but by a miracle es-
caped uninjured. Two young girls, nameless, hut
328 THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
real presences to my imagination, as much as when
they came fluttering down on the tiles with a cry
that outscreamed the sharpest treble in the Te Deum
(Look at Carlyle's article on Boswell, and see how
he speaks of the poor young woman Johnson talked
with in the streets one evening.) All the crowd
gone but these two " fiUes de la paroisse," — gone
as utterly as the dresses they wore, as the shoes
that were on their feet, as the bread and meat that
were in the market on that day.
Not the great historical events, but the personal
incidents that call up single sharp pictures of some
human being in its pang or struggle, reach us most
nearly. I remember the platform at Eerne, over the
parapet of which Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse
sprung with him and landed him more than a hun-
dred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but
sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's
servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the
famous bears, and all else. — I remember the Percy
lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick, —
the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight
like a pump-handle, — and why ? Because of the
story of the village boy who must fain bestride the
leaden tail, standing out over the water, — which
breaking, he dropped into the stream far below,
and was taken out an idiot for the rest of his life
Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point,
and the guillotine-axe must have a slanting edge
.HE AUIUCRAT OF THE -JREAKFAST-TALLE. 329
Something intensely human, narrow, and defiriite
pierces to the seat of our sensibilities more readily
than huge occurrences and catastrophes. A nail
will pick a lock that defies hatchet and hammer.
" The Royal George " went down with all her crew,
and Cowper wrote an exquisitely simple poem about
it ; but the leaf which holds it is smooth, while that
which bears the lines on his mother's portrait is
blistered with tears.
My telling these recollections sets me thinking of
others of the same kind which strike the imagination,
especially when one is still young. You remember
the monument in Devizes market to the woman
struck dead with a lie in her mouth. I never saw
that, but it is in the books. Here is one I never
heard mentioned; — if any of the "Note and Query"
tribe can tell the story, I hope they will. Where is
this monument ? I was riding on an English stage-
coach when we passed a handsome marble column
(as I remember it) of considerable size and preten-
sions. — What is that? — I said. — That, — answered
tlie coachman, — is the hangman^s pillar. Then he
told me how a man went out one night, many years
ago, to steal sheep. He caught one, tied its legs
together, passed the rope over his head, and started
for home. In climbing a fence, the rope slipped,
caught him by the neck, and strangled him. Nexi
morning he was found hanging dead on one side of
the fence and the sheep on the other ; in memory
530 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
whereof the lord of the manor caused this monu-
ment to be erected as a warning to all who love
mutton better than virtue. I will send a copy of
this record to him or her who shall first set me right
about this column and its locality.
And telling over these old stories reminds me that
I have something which may interest architects and
perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the
spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest,
I think, in Europe. It is a shaft of stone filigree-
work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts his
arms behind you to keep you from falling. To
climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of
having climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of
one's twenty digits. While I was on it, " pinnacled
dim in the intense inane," a strong wind was blow-
ing, and I felt sure that the spire was rocking. It
swayed back and forward like a stalk of rye or a
cat-o'nine-tails (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I
mentioned it to the guide, and he said that the spire
did really swing back and forward, — I think he said
some feet.
Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some
other line will intersect it. Long afterwards I was
hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old journal,
— the " Magazin Encyclopedique " for Pan troisieme,
(1795,) when I stumbled upon a brief article on the
vibrations of the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A
man can shake it so that the movement shall be
THE aUTuCRAT of THE BREAKFAST- TABLE. 33\
shown in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below
the summit, and higher up the vibration is like that
of an earthquake. I have seen one of those wretched
wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish
some of our stone churches (thinking that the lidlesa
blue eye of heaven cannot tell the counterfeit we
try to pass on it,) swinging like a reed, in a wind,
but one would hardly think of such a thing's hap-
pening in a stone spire. Does the Bunker- Hill Mon-
ument bend in the blast like a blade of grass ? I
suppose so.
You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap
way; — perhaps we will have some philosophy by
and by ; — let me work out this thin mechanical vein.
— I have something more to say about trees. I have
brought down this slice of hemlock to show you.
Tree blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852.
Twelve feet and a half round, fair girth ; — nine feet,
where I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge,
going to the centre, of the general shape of a slice
of apple-pie in a large and not opulent family
Length, about eighteen inches. I have studied the
growth of this tree by its rings, and it is curious.
Three hundred and forty-two rings. Started, there-
fore, about 1510. The thickness of the rings tells
the rate at which it grew. For five or six years the
rate was slow, — then rapid for twenty years. A
little before the year 1550 it began to grow very
slowly, and so continued for about seventy years. In
332 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
1620 it took a new start and grew fast until 1714
then for the most part slowly until 1786, when it
started again and grew pretty well and uniformly
until within the last dozen years, when it seems to
have got on sluggishly.
Look here. Here are some human lives laid down
against the periods of its growth, to which they cor-
responded. This is Shakspeare's. The tree was
seven inches in diameter when he was born ; ten
inches when he died. A little less than ten inches
when Milton was born ; seventeen when he died.
Then comes a long interval, and this thread marks
out Johnson's life, during which the tree increased
from twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter.
Here is the span of Napoleon's career; — the tree
doesn't seem to have minded it.
I never saw the man yet who was not startled at
looking on this section. I have seen many wooden
preachers, — never one like this. How much more
striking would be the calendar counted on the rings
of one of those awful trees which were standing
when Christ was on earth, and where that brief mor-
tal life is chronicled with the stolid apathy of vege-
table being, which remembers all human history as
a thing of yesterday in its own dateless existence !
I have something more to say about elms. A
relative tells me there is one of great glory in Ando-
ver, near Bradford. I have some recollections of the
former place, pleasant and other. [I wonder if the
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 333
old Seminary clock strikes as slowly as it used to.
My room-mate thought, when he first came, it waa
the bell tolling deaths, and people's ages, as they do
in the country. He swore — (ministers' sons get so
familiar with good words that they are apt to handle
them carelessly) — that the children were dying by
the dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran
off next day in recess, when it began to strike eleven,
but was caught before the clock got through strik-
ing.] At the foot of " the hill," down in town, is, or
was, a tidy old elm, which was said to have been
hooped with iron to protect it from Indian toma-
hawks, ( Credat Hahneniannus,) and to have grown
round its hoops and buried them in its wood. Of
course, this is not the tree my relative means.
Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in
Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms which
are to be seen in that town. One hundred and
twenty-seven feet from bough-end to bough-end
What do you say to that? And gentle ladies be-
neath it, that love it and celebrate its praises ! Arjd
that in a town of such supreme, audacious, Alpine
loveliness as Norwich ! — Only the dear people there
must learn to call it Norridge, and not be misled by
the mere accident of spelling.
NoTwic/i.
Porc^ mouth.
CincinnataA.
What a sad pictire of our civilization !
334 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
I did not speak to you of the great tree on what
used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply
because I had not seen it for many years, and did
not like to trust my recollection. But I had it in
memory, and even noted down, as one of the finest
trees in symmetry and beauty I had ever seen. I
have received a document, signed by two citizens of
a neighboring town, certified by the postmaster and
a selectman, and these again corroborated, reinforced,
and sworn to by a member of that extraordinary col-
lege-class to which it is the good fortune of my friend
the Professor to belong, who, though he hasformerlp
been a member of Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy
of confidence. The tree " girts " eighteen and a
half feet, and spreads over a hundred, and is a real
beauty. I hope to meet my friend under its branches
yet ; if we don't have " youth at the prow," we wiu
have " pleasure at the 'elm."
And just now, again, I have got a letter about
some grand willows in Maine, and another about an
elm in Wayland, but too late for anything but
thanks.
[And this leads me to say, that I have received a
great many communications, in prose and verse
since T began printing these notes. The last camo
this very morning, in the shape of a neat and brief
poem, from New Orleans. I could not make any of
them public, though sometimes requested to do so
Some of them have given me great pleasure, and
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE 335
encouraged me to believe I had friends whose faces
I had never seen. If you are pleased with anything
a writer says, and doubt whether to tell him of it, do
not hesitate ; a pleasant word is a cordial to one, who
perhaps thinks he is tiring you, and so becomes tired
himself. I purr very loud over a good, honest letter
that says pretty things to me.]
Sometimes very young persons send commu-
nications which they want forwarded to editors ; and
these young persons do not always seem to have
right conceptions of these same editors, and of the
public, and of themselves. Here is a letter I wrote
to one of these young folks, but, on the whole,
thought it best not to send. It is not fair to single
oat one for such sharp advice, where there are hun-
dreds that are in need of it.
Dear Sir, — You seem to be somewhat, but not a
great deal, wiser than I was at your age. I don't
wish to be understood as saying too much, for 1
think, without committing myself to any opinion on
my present state, that I was not a Solomon at that
stage of development.
You long to " leap at a single bound into celeb-
rity." Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be
remarkable Fame usually comes to those who are
thinking about something else, — very rarely to those
who say to themselves, " Go to, now, let us be a
celebrated individual!" The struggl'^ for fame, as
,S3C THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLK
sucli, commonly ends in notoriety ; — that ladder ia
easy to climb, but it leads to the pillory which is
crowded with fools who could not hold their tongues
and rogues who could not hide their tricks.
If you have the consciousness of genius, do some-
thing to show it. The world is pretty quick, nowa-
days, to catch the flavor of true originality ; if you
write anything remarkable, the magazines and news-
papers will find you out, as the school-boys find out
where the ripe apples and pears are. Produce any-
thing really good, and an intelligent editor will jump
at it. Don't flatter yourself that any article of yours
is rejected because you are unknown to fame. Noth-
ing pleases an editor more than to get anything
worth having from a new hand. There is always a
dearth of really fine articles for a first-rate journal;
for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety are at or
below the sea-level; some have water enough, but
no head; some head enough, but no water; onl}
two or three are from full reservoirs, high up that hill
which is so hard to climb.
You may have genius. The contrary is of course
probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have,
the world wants you more than you want it. It has
not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of
genius that shows itself among us ; there is not a
bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a
ihyme but it is ten to one, among his friends, and
no takers, that he is the real, genuine, no-mistake
Osiris.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 337
Qtiest ce quHl a fait ? "What has he done ? That
was Napoleon's test. What have you done? Turn
up the faces of your picture-cards, my boy ! You
need not make mouths at the public because it has
not accepted you at your own fancy-valuation. Do
the prettiest thing you can and wait your time.
For the verses you send me, I will not say they
are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show
promise. I am not an editor, but I know the stand-
ard of some editors. You must not expect to " leap
with a single bound " into the society of those
whom it is not flattery to call your betters. When
" The Pactolian " has paid you for a copy of verses,
—(I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures,
beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe
Zenith,) — when " The Rag-bag " has stolen your
piece, after carefully scratching your name out, —
when " The Nut-cracker " has thought you worth
shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest
poem, — then, and not till then, you may consider
the presumption against you, from the fact of your
rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let
our friends hear from you, if you think it worth
while. You may possibly think me too candid, and
even accuse me of incivility ; but let me assure you
that 1 am not half so plain-spoken as Nature, nor
half so rude as Time. If you prefer the long jolting
of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship,
try it like a man. Only remember this,- -that, if a
15
338 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Dushv3l of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart with*
out springs to it, the small potatoes always get to
the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc.
I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this
vein ; for these are by far the most exacting, eager,
self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable liter-
ary persons one is like to meet with. Is a young
man in the habit of writing verses ? Then the pre-
sumption is that he is an inferior person. For, look
you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he
writes poor verses. Now the habit of chewing on
rhymes without sense and soul to match them is,
like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof
of feebleness and a debilitating agent. A young man
can get rid of the presumption against him afforded
by his writing verses only by convincing us that
they are verses worth writing.
All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is
not addressed to any individual, and of course does
not refer to any reader of these pages. I would
always treat any given young person passing through
the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief
period of adolescence with great tenderness. God
forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young crea-
tures on the strength of these ugly truths, and so
sooner or later, smite some tender-souled poet ot
poetess on the lips who might have sung the world
into sweet trances, had we not silenced the matio«
niy lurocHAT of the breakfast -table. 339
Bcng in its first low breathings ! Just as my heart
yoains over the unloved, just so it sorrows for the
ungifted who are doomed to the pangs of an un-
deceived seli<»estimate. I have always tried to be
gentle with the most hopeless cases. My experience,
however, has not been encouraging.
X. Y., set. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with
narrow jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red hands,
having been laughed at by the girls in his village,
and " got the mitten " (pronounced mittm) two or
three times, falls to souling and controlling, and
youthing and truthing, in the newspapers. Sends
me some strings of verses, candidates for the Ortho-
pedic Infirmary, all of them, in which I learn for the
millionth time one of the following facts : either
that something about a chime is sublime, or that
something about time is sublime, or that something
about a chime is concerned with time, or that some-
thing about a rhyme is sublime or concerned with
time or with a chime. Wishes my opinion of the
same, with advice as to his future course.
What shall I do about it ? Tell him the whole
truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the
Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth ?
One doesn't like to be cruel, — and yet one hates to
lie. Therefore one softens down the ugly central
fact of donkeyism, — recommends study of good
models, — that writing verse should be an incidental
occupation only, not inteifering with the hoe, the
340 THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
needle, the lapstone, or the ledger, — and, above all
that there should be no hurry in printing what is
written. Not tlie least use in all this. The poetaster
who has tasted type is done for. He is^Jike the man
who has once been a candidate for the Preside^icy.
He feeds on the madder of his delusion all his days,
and his very bones grow red with the glow of his
foolish fancy. One of these young brains is like a
bunch of India crackers ; once touch fire to it and it
is best to keep hands off until it has done popping, —
if it ever stops. I have two letters on file ; one is a
pattern of adulation, the other of impertinence. My
reply to the first, containing the best advice I could
give, conveyed in courteous language, had brought
out the second. There was some sport in this, but
Dulness is not commonly a game fish, and only
sulks after he is struck. You may set it down as a
truth which admits of few exceptions, that those
who ask your opinion really want your praise^ and
will be contented with nothing less.
There is another kind of application to which
editors, or those supposed to have access to them,
are liable, and which often proves trying and painful.
One is appealed to in behalf of some person in
needy circumstances who wishes to make a living
by the pen. A manuscript accompanying the letter
is offered for publication. It is not commonly bril-
liant, too often lamentably deficient. If Rachel's
saying is true, that " fortune is the measure of intel-
-TIE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 34 1
jgence/' then poverty is evidence of limited capacity
which it too frequently proves to be, notwithstand-
ing a noble exception here and there. Now an
ediior is a person under a contract with the public
to furnish them with the best things he can afford
for his money. Charity shown by the publication
of an inferior article would be like the generosity
of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen highway-
men, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the
rich to have the means of relieving them.
Though I am not and never was an editor, I know
something of the trials to which they are submitted.
They have nothing to do but to develope enormous
calluses at every point of contact with authorship.
Their business is not a matter of sympathy, but of
intellect They must reject the unfit productions
of those whom they long to befriend, because it
would be a profligate charity to accept them. One
cannot burn his house down to warm the hands even
of the fatherless and the widow.
THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM.
You haven't heard about my friend the Pro-
fessor's first experiment in the use of anaBsthetics,
have you?
He was mightily pleased with the reception of
that poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to m^
i
342 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
once or twice about another poem of similar charac^
ter he wanted to read me, which I told him I woula
listen to and criticize.
One day, after dinner, he came in with his face
lied up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavv
about the eyes. — Hy'r'ye? — he said, and made for
an arm-chair, in which he placed first his hat and
then his person, going smack through the crown of
the former as neatly as they do the trick at the
circus. The Professor jumped at the explosion as
if he had sat down on one of those small calthrops
our grandfathers used to sow round in the grass
when there were Indians about, — iron stars, each ray
a rusty thorn an inch and a half long, — stick through
moccasins into feet, — cripple 'em on the spot, and
give 'em lockjaw in a day or two.
At the same time he let off one of those big words
which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabu-
lary, but perhaps never turn up in his life, — just
as every man's hair may stand on end, but in most
men it never does.
After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two
Df manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, on which,
as he said, he had just been writing an introduction
or prelude to the main performance. A certain sus-
picion had come into my mind that the Professor
was not quite right, which was confirmed by the
way he talked; but I let him begin. This is the
vray he read it: —
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 343
Prelude.
1 M the fellah that tole one day
The talc of the won'erful one-hoss-shay.
Wan' to hear another ? Say.
— Funny, wasn'it ? Made me laugh, —
I'm too modest, I am, by half, —
Made me laugh '« though 1 sh'd split, —
Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit ?
— Fellahs keep sayin', — " Well, now that* s nice ;
Did it once, but cahn' do it twice." —
Don' you b'lleve the'z no more fat ;
Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that
Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake, —
Han' us the props for another shake ; —
Know rU try, 'n' guess I'll win ;
Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in !
Here I thought it necessary to interpose. — Pro-
fessor, — I said, — you are inebriated. The style of
what you call your " Prelude " shows that it was
written under cerebral excitement. Your articulation
is confused. You have told me three times in suc-
cession, in exactly the same words, that I was the
only true friend you had in the world that you would
unbutton your heart to. You smell distinctly and
decidedly of spirits. — I spoke, and paused ; tender,
but firm.
Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the
Professor's lids, — in obedience to the principle of
gravitation celebrated in that delicious bit of blad
dery bathos, *^ The very law that moulds a tear."
S44 THE Al/rOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAB':.E.
with which the " Edinburgh ReviL'W " a+'cempted
to put down Master George Gordon when that
young man was fooUshly trying to make himself
conspicuous.
One of these tears peeped r^er the edge of the lid
until it lost its balance, — slid a a inch and waited foi
reinforcements, — swelled aga'.r, — rolled down a little
further,^ — stopped, — moved o\i, — and at last fell on
the back of the Professoi's hand. He held it up for
me to look at, and lifted his eyeo, brimful, till they
met mine.
I couldn't stand it, — 1 alv/ays break down when
folks cry in my face, — so I hugged him, and said he
was a dear old boy, and asked him kindly what was
the matter with him, and what made him smell so
dreadfully strong of spirits.
Upset his alcohol lamp, — he said, — and spilt the
alcohol on his legs. That was it. — But what had he
been doing to get his head into such a state ? — had
he really committed an excess? What was the
matter ? — Then it came out that he had been taking
chloroform to have a tooth out, which had left him
in a very queer state, in w^hich he had written the
" Prelude '^ given above, and under the influence of
which he evidently was still.
I took the manuscript from his hands and read
the following continuation of the lines he had begun
to read me, while he made up for two or three nights
lost sleep as he best might.
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 344
PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY:
OR, THE president's OLD ARM-CHAIR.
A HATHEXATICAL STORT.
Facts respecting an old arm-chair.
At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there.
Seems but little the worse for wear.
That's remarkable when T say-
It was old in President Holyoke's day.
(One of his boys, perhaps you know,
Died, at one hundred^ years ago.)
He took lodging for rain or shine
Under green bed-clothes in '69.
Know old Cambridge ? Hope you do.—
Born there ? Don't say so I I was, too.
(Born in a house with a gambrel-roof, —
Standing still, if you must have proof. —
" Gambrel ? — Gambrel ? " — Let me beg
You'll look at a horse's hinder leg, —
First great angle above the hoof, —
That's the gambrel ; hence gambrel-roofc)
— Nicest place that ever was seen, —
Colleges red and Common green,
Sidewalks brownish with trees between.
Sweetest spot beneath the skies
When the canker-worms don't rise, —
When the dust, that sometimes flies
Into your mouth and ears and eyes.
In a quiet slumber lies,
Not in the shape of unbaked pies
Such as barefoot children prize.
A kind of harbor it seems to be,
Facing the flow of a boundless sea.
16*
g46 1HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Rows of gray old Tutors stand
Ranged like rocks above the sand ; '
Rolling beneath them, soft and green,
Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, —
One wave, two waves, three waves, four,
Sliding up the sparkling floor ;
Then it ebbs to flow no more,
Wandering ofi* from shore to shojpe
With its freight of golden ore 1
— Pleasant place for boys to play ; —
Better keep your girls away ;
Hearts get rolled as pebbles do
Which countless fingering waves pursue,
And every classic beach is strown
With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone.
But this is neither here nor there ; —
I'm talking about an old arm-chair.
You've heard, no doubt, of Parson Tu&sll f
Over at Medford he used to dwell ;
Married one of the Mathers' folk ;
Got with his wife a chair of oak, —
Funny old chair, with seat like wedge.
Sharp behind and broad front edge, —
One of the oddest of human things.
Turned all over with knobs and rings, —
But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand,—
Fit for the worthies of the land, —
Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in.
Or Cotton Mather to sit — and lie — in.
^Parson Turell bequeathed the same
To a certain student, — Smith by name f
These were the terms, as we are told ;
" Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holde i
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 847
When he doth graduate, then to passe
To ye oldest Youth in y« Senior Classe.
On Pajment of" — (naming a certain sum) —
** By him to whom ye Chaire shall come ;
He to ye oldest Senior next,
And soe forever," — (thus runs the text,) —
** But one Crown lesse then he gave to chume,
That beirg his Debte for use of same.**
Smith transferred it to one of the Browns,
And took his money, — five silver crowns.
Brown deliven^i it up to Moore,
Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four.
Moore made over the chair to Lee,
Who gave him crowns of silver three.
Lee conveyed it unto Drew,
And now the payment, of course, was two.
Drew gave up the chair to Dunn, — ,
All he got, as you see, was one.
Dunn released the chair to Hall,
And got by the bargain no crown at all.
— And now it passed to a second Brown,
Who took it, and likewise claimed a crown.
When Brown conveyed it unto Ware,
Having had one crown, to make it fair.
He paid him two crowns to take the chair ;
And Ware^ being honest, (as all Wares be,)
He paid one Potter, who took it, three.
Four got Robinson ; five got Dix ;
Johnson primus demanded six ;
• And so the sum kept gathering still
Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill
— When paper money became so cheap.
Folks wouldn't count it, but said " a heap,*
848 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABL*.
A certain Richards, the books declare,
(A. M. m 'DO ? I've looked with care
Through the Triennial, — name not there.')
This person, Richards, was ofTered then
Eight score pounds, but would have ten ;
Nine, I think, was the sum he took, —
Not quite certain, — but see the book.
— By and by the wai-s were still,
But nothing had altered the Parson's wiU.
The old arm-chair was solid yet,
But saddled with such a monstrous debt \
Things grew quite too bad to bear,
Paying such sums to get rid of the chair \
But dead men's fingers hold awful tight.
And there was the will in black and white,
Plain enough for a child to spell.
What should be done no man could tell.
For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse.
And every season but made it worse.
As a last resort, to clear the doubt,
They got old Governor Hancock out.
The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop
And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop ;
Halberds glittered and colors flew,
French horns whinnied and trumpets blew.
The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth
And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneath;
So he rode with all his band,
Till the President met him, cap in hand.
— The Governor " hefted " the crowns, and said,—
•* A will is a will, and the Parson's dead."
The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, —
** There i? yo.ur p'int. And here's my fee.
▼HE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 34S
These are the terms you must fulfil, —
On such conditions I break the avill ! **
The Governor mentioned what these should be.
(Just wait a minute and then you'll see.)
The President prayed. Then all was still,
And the Governor rose and broke the will I
— **■ About those conditions ? " Well, now you go
And do as I tell you, and then you'll know.
Once a year, on Commencement-day,
If you'll only take the pains to stay,
You'll see the President in the Chair,
Likewise the Governor sitting there.
The President rises ; both old and young
May hear his speech in a foreign tongue,
The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear.
Is this : Can I keep this old arm-chair ?
And then his Excellency bows,
As much as to say that he allows.
The Vice-Gub. next is called by name ;
He bows like t'other, which means the same.
And all the officers round *em bow.
As much as to say that they allow.
And a lot of parchments about the chair
Are handed to witnesses then and there.
And then the lawyers hold it clear
That the chair is safe for another year.
God bless you. Gentlemen I Learn to give
Money to colleges while you live.
Don't be silly and think you'll try
To bother the colleges, when you die.
With codicil this, and codicil that,
That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat ;
For there never was pitcher that wouldn't spill.
And there's always a ^aw in a donkey's will I
350 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Hospitality is a good deal a matter of lati-
tude, I suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves
an African for a hut ; his dwelling is all door and no
walls ; everybody can come in. To make a morning
call on an Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep
through a long tunnel ; his house is all walls and no
door, except such a one as an apple with a worm-
hole has. One might, very probably, trace a regular
gradation between these two extremes. In cities
where the evenings are generally hot, the people
have porches at their doors, where they sit, and this
is, of course, a provocative to the interchange of
civilities. A good deal, which in colder regions is
ascribed to mean dispositions, belongs really to
mean temperature.
Once in a while, even in our Northern cities, at
noon, in a very hot summer's day, one may realize,
by a sudden extension in his sphere of conscious-
ness, how closely he is shut up for the most part. —
Do you not remember something like this ? July,
between 1 and 2, p. m., Fahrenheit 96°, or there-
about. Windows all gaping, like the mouths of
panting dogs. Long, stinging cry of a locust comes
in from a tree, half a mile off; had forgotten there
was such a tree. Baby's screams from a house sev-
eral blocks distant; — never knew there were any
babies in the neighborhood before. Tinman pound-
ing something that clatters dreadfully, — very distinct,
but don't remember any tinman's shop near by
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35]
Horses stamping on pavement to get off fliea
When you hear these four sounds, you may set it
down as a warm day. Then it is that one would
like to imitate the mode of life of the native at
Sierra Leone, as somebody has described it: stroU
into the market in natural costume, — buy a water-
melon for a halfpenny, — split it, and scoop out the
middle, — sit down in one half of the empty rind,
clap the other on one's head, and feast upon the
pulp.
1 see some of the London journals have been
attacking some of their literary people for lecturing,
on the ground of its being a public exhibition ol
themselves for money. A popular author can print
his lecture ; if he deliver it, it is a case of quasstum
corpore^ or making profit of his person. None but
" snobs " do that. Ergo^ etc. To this I reply,—
Negatur minor. Her Most Gracious Majesty, the
Queen, exhibits herself to the public as a part of the
service for which she is paid. We do not consider
it low-bred in her to pronounce her own speech, anc
should prefer it so to hearing it from any other per-
son, or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship
exhibit themselves very often for popularity, and
their houses every day for money. — No, if a man
shows himself other than he is, if he belittles him-
self before an audience for hire, then he acts unwor-
thily. But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true
man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars
352 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture. The taunt
must be an outbreak of jealousy against the re-
nowned authors who have the audacity to be also
orators. The sub-lieutenants (of the press) stick a
too popular writer and speaker with an epithet in
England, instead of with a rapier, as in France. —
Poh ! All England is one great menagerie, and, all
at once, the jackal, who admires the gilded cage of
the royal beast, must protest against the vulgarity
of the talking-bird's and the nightingale's being
willing to become a part of the exhibition !
THE LONG PATH.
(Last of the Parentheses.)
Yes, that was my last walk with the school'
mistress. It happened to be the end of a term ; and
before the next began, a very nice young woman,
who had been her assistant, was announced as her
successor, and she was provided for elsewhere. So
it was no longer the schoolmistress that I walked
with, but Let us not be in unseemly haste. I
shall call her the schoolmistress still; some of you
love her under that name.
When it became known among the boarders
that two of their number had joined hands to walk
down the long path of life side by side, there was,
as you may suppose, no small sensation. I confess
I pitied our landlady. It took h ^.r all of a suddin, — »
THE AUIOC^AT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 3^3
ghe said. Had not known that we was kee})in
company, and never mistrusted anything partic'lar
Ma'am was right to better herself. Didn't look very
rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired
halilp, she calc'lated. — The great maternal instinct
came crowding up in her soul just then, and her
eyes wandered until they settled on her daughter*-
No, poor, dear woman, — that could not have
been. But I am dropping one of my internal tears
for you, with this pleasant smile on my face all the
time.
The great mystery of God's providence is the per-
mitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is
maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sen-
timents. In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties
there is hardly anything quite so painful to think ol
as that experiment of putting an animal under the
bell of an air-pump and exhausting the air from it.
[I never saw the accursed trick performed. Laus
Deo ! ] There comes a time when the souls of hu-
man beings, women, perhaps, more even than men,
begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections
they were made to breathe. Then it is that Society
places its transparent bell-glass over the young
woman who is to be the subject of one of its fatal
experiment?". The element by which only the heart
lives is sucked out of her crystalline prison. Watch
her through its transparent walls ; — her bosom is
heaving; but it is in a vacuum. Death is no riddle,
354 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLL.
compared to this. I remember a poor girl's story in
the "Book of Martyrs." The "dry-pan and the
gradual fire" were the images that frightened hel
most. How many have withered and wasted under
as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisi-
tion which we call Civilization I
Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you fool-
ish, plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized,
self-saturated young person, whoever you may be,
now reading this, — little thinking you are what I
describe, and in blissful unconsciousness that you
are destined to the lingering asphyxia of soul which
is the lot of such multitudes worthier than yourself.
But it is only my surface-thought which laughs. For
that great procession of the unloved, who not only
wear the crown of thorns, but must hide it under the
locks of brown or gray, — under the snowy cap, under
the chilling turban, — hide it even from themselves, —
perhaps never know they wear it, though it kills
them, — ^there is no depth of tenderness in my nature
that Pity has not sounded. Somewhere, — some-
where, — love is in store for them, — the universe must
not be allowed to fool them so cruelly. What in-
finite pathos in the small, half-unconscious artifices
by which unattractive young persons seek to recom-
mend themselves to the favor of those towards whom
our dear sisters, the unloved, like the rest, are im-
pelled by their God-given instincts !
Read what the singing- women — one to ten thou
THE AUTOCUAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLi:. -."jo
Band of thu suffering women — tell us, and thiuk of
the griefs that die unspoken ! Nature is in earne.-^t
when she makes a woman ; and there are women
enough lying in the next churchyard with very com-
monplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for
whom it was just as true that " all sounds of life
assumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon,
of whom Elizabeth Browning said it ; but she could
give words to her grief, and they could not. — Will
you hear a few stanzas of mine?
THE VOICELESS.
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, —
But o'er their silent sister's breast
The wild flowers who will stoop to number ?
A few can touch the magic string,
And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; — r
las for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them 1
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone
Whose song has told their hearts* sad story,-
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory 1
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep
On nameless sorrow's churchyard pUlow.
O hearts that break and give no sign
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
S5G THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
Till Death po'Ts out his cordial wine
Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
1 hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badlj
off, after all. That young man from another city
who made the remark which you remember about
Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared
at our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to
me rather attentive to this young lady. Only last
evening I saw him leaning over her while she was
playing the accordion, — indeed, I undertook to join
them in a song, and got as far as " Come rest in this
boo-oo," when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned
off, as one steps out of a procession, and left the
basso and soprano to finish it. I see no reason why
this young woman should not be a very proper
match for a man that laughs about Boston State-
house. He can't be very particular.
The young fellow whom I have so often men-
tioned was a little free in his remarks, but very good-
natured. — Sorry to have you go, — he said. — School-
ma'am made a mistake not to wait for me. Haven't
taken anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since
^ heard of it. Mourning' fruity — said I, — what's
that? Huckleberries and blackberries, — said he;
—couldn't eat in colors, raspberries, currants, and
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 357
such, after a solemn thing like this happening. — The
conceit seemed to please the young fellow. If you
will believe it, when we came down to breakfast the
next morning, he had carried it out as follows. You
know those odious little " saiis-plates " that figure
so largely at boarding-houses, and especially at tav-
erns, into which a strenuous attendant female trowel?
little dabs, sombre of tint and heterogeneous of com-
position, which it makes you feel homesick to look
at, and into which you poke the elastic coppery tea-
spoon with the air of a cat dipping her foot into a
wash-tub, — (not that I mean to say anything against
them, for, when they are of tinted porcelain or starry
many-faceted crystal, and hold clean bright berries,
or pale virgin honey, or " lucent syrups tinct with
cinnamon," and the teaspoon is of white silver, with
the Tower-stamp, solid, but not brutally heavy, — as
people in the green stage of millionism will have
them, — I can dally with their amber semi-fluids or
glossy spherules without a shiver,) — you know these
small, deep dishes, I say. When we came down the
next morning, each of these (two only excepted) was
covered with a broad leaf. On lifting this, each
boarder found a small heap of solemn black huckle-
berries. But one of those plates held red currants,
and was covered with a red rose; the other held
white currants, and was covered with a white rose.
There was a laugh at this at first, and then a short
silence, and I noticed that her lip trembled, and the
3c 8 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
old gentleman opposite was in trouble to ge"^ ai iiia
bandanna handkerchief.
" What was the use in waiting ? We should
be too late for Switzerland, that season, if we waited
much longer." — The hand I held trembled in mine,
and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herselt
before the feet of Ahasuerus. — She had been reading
that chapter, for she looked up, — if there was a film
of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest
shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not
enough to accent the dimples, — and said, in her
pretty, still way, — " If it please the king, and if I
have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem
right before the king, and I be pleasing in his
eyes "
I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or
said when Esther got just to that point of her soft,
humble words, — but I know what I did. That
quotation from Scripture was cut short, anyhow.
We came to a compromise on the great question,
and the time was settled for the last day of summer.
In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders,
much as usual, as you may see by what I have re-
ported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain
tenderness they all showed toward us, after the first
excitement of the news was over. It came out in
trivial matters, — but each one, in his or her way, mani-
fested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, when
we had chickens, sent the liver instead of the ^iz
TRE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TAULE ;J59
zardj with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This
was not an accident; the two are never mistaken,
though some landladies appear as if they did not
know the difference. The whole of the company
were even more respectfully attentive to my remarks
than usual. There was no idle punning, and very
little winking on the part of that lively young gentle
man who, as the reader may remember, occasionally
interposed some playful question or remark, which
could hardly be considered relevant, — except when
the least allusion was made to matrimony, when he
would look at the landlady's daughter, and wink
with both sides of his face, until she would ask what
he was pokin' his fun at her for, and if he wasn't
ashamed of himself. In fact, they all behaved very
handsomely, so that I really felt sorry at the thought
of leaving my boarding-house.
I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a
plain widow-woman's plain table, I was of course
more or less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You
may not be sorry to learn, that, though not what
great merchants call very rich, I was comfortable, —
comfortable, — so that most of those moderate luxu-
ries I described in my verses on Contentment — most
of them, I say — were within our reach, if we chose to
have them. But I found out that the schoolmistress
had a vein of charity about her, which had hithertc
been worked on a small silver and copper basis,
which made her think less, perhaps, of luxurien
Ot)0 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
than even I did, — modestly as I have expressec
my wishes.
It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young
woman, whom one has contrived to win without
showing his rent-roll, that she has found what the
world values so highly, in following the lead of her
affections. That was an enjoyment I was now
ready for.
I began abruptly : — Do you know that you are a
rich young person ?
I know that I am very rich, — she said. — Heaven
has given me more than I ever asked ; for I had not
thought love was ever meant for me.
It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell to
a whisper as it threaded the last words.
I don't mean that, — I said, — you blessed little
saint and seraph ! — if there's an angel missing in the
New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this boarding-
house ! — I don't mean that ! I mean that I — that is,
you — am — are — confound it I — I mean that you'll
be what most people call a lady of fortune. — And ]
looked full in her eyes for the effect of the announce-
ment.
There wasn't any. She said she was thankful
that I had what would save me from drudgery, and
that some other time I should tell her about it. — 1
never made a greater failure in. an attempt to pro-
duce a sensation.
So the last day of summer came. It was oui
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 361
choice to go to the church, but we had a kind ol
reception at the boarding-house. The presents were
all arranged, and among them none gave more plea-
sure than the modest tributes of our fellow-boarders,
— for there was not one, I believe, who did not send
something. The landlady would insist on making
an elegant bride-cake, with her own hands ; to which
Master Benjamin Franklin wished to add certain
embellishments out of his private funds, — namely, a
Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and
two miniature flags with the stars and stripes, which
had a very pleasing effect, I assure you. The land-
lady's daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's
Poems. On a blank leaf was the following, written
in a very delicate and careful hand : —
Presented to . . . by . . .
On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony.
May sunshine ever beam o'er her I
Even the poor relative thought she must do some-
thing, and sent a copy of " The Whole Duty of
Man," bound in very attractive variegated sheep-
skin, the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity-
student came the loveliest English edition ot
" Keble's Christian Year." I opened it, when it
came, to the Fourth Sunday in Lent, and read that
angelic poem, sweeter than anything I can remem-
ber since Xavier's " My God, I love thee."- 1 am
not a Churchman, — I don't believe in planting oaks
in flower-pots, — but such a poem as '' The Rose-
S62 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.
bud " makes one's heart a proselyte to the culture it
grows from. Talk about it as much as you like, —
one's breeding shows itself nowhere moie than
in his religion. A man should be a gentleman in
his hymns and prayers; the fondness for "scenes,"
among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with
that —
" God only and good angels look
Behind the blissful scene,** —
and that other, —
" He could not trust his melting soul
But in his Maker's sight," —
that I hope some of them will see this, and read the
poem, and profit by it.
My laughing and winking young firiend under-
took to procure and arrange the flowers for the table,
and did it with immense zeal. I never saw him
look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily
on one side, and a cheroot in his mouth, with a
huge bunch of tea-roses, which he said were for
« Madam."
One of the last things that came was an old
square box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed.
It bore, in faded ink, the maiKs, " Calcutta, 1805."
On opening it, we found a white Cashmere shawl
with a very brief note firom the dear old gentleman
opposite, saying that he had kept this some years
thinking he might want it, and many more, not
knowing what to do with it, — that he had never
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKP AST-TABLE. 3Gb
seen it unfolded since he was a young supercargo, —
and now, if she would spread it on her shoulders, it
would make him feel young to look at it.
Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of
all work ! What must she do but buy a small copper
breast-pin and put it under " Schoolma'am's " plate
that morning, at breakfast ? And Schoolma'am
would wear it, — though I made her cover it, as well
as I could, with a tea-rose.
It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could
not leave them in utter silence.
Good-by, — I said, — my dear friends, one and all of
you ! I have been long with you, and I find it hard
parting. I have to thank you for a thousand courte-
sies, and above all for the patience and indulgence
with which you have listened to me when I have
tried to instruct or amuse you. My friend the Pro-
fessor (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is una-
voidably absent on this interesting occasion) has
given me reason to suppose that he would occupy
ray empty chair about the first of January next. K
he comes among you, be kind to him, as you have
been to me. May the Lord bless you all ! — And we
shook hands all round the table.
Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and
ihe cloth were gone. I looked up and down the
length of the bare boards over which I had so often
uttered my sentiments and experiences — and
Yes, I am a man, like another.
ain THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREaKFAST-TABLE.
All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old
friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little
more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not
introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the
altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used
to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her
away.
And now we two are walking the long path in
peace together. The " schoolmistress " finds her
skill in teaching called for again, without going
abroad to seek little scholars. Those visions of
mine have all come true.
I hope you all love me none the less for anything
I have told you. Farewell !
INDEX,
Abuse, all good attempts get, 90.
iEsTIVATION, 307.
Affinities and antipathies, 256.
Age, softening ellects of, 91 ; begins
when fire goes down, 174 ; Roman
age of enlistment, 174; its changes
a string of insults, 177.
A GOOD TIME GOING, 259.
AiR-i'UMP, animal under, 353.
Album Vekses, 17.
Alps, etfect of looking at, 311.
American, the Englishman rein-
forced, (a noted person thinks,)
278.
Analogies, power of seeing, 93.
Anatomist's Hymn, The, 202.
Anglo-Saxdns die out in America,
(Dr. Knox thinks,) 278.
Anniveksakies dreaded by the
Professor, and why, 258.
Arguments, what are those which
spoil conversation, 11.
Aristocracy, the forming Ameri-
can, 303 ; pluck the back-bone of,
304.
Artists apt to act mechanically on
their brains, 216.
Assessors, Heaven's, effect of meet-
ing one of them, 104.
AsYLLTki, the, 288.
Audience, average intellect of, 160;
aspect of, 161 ; a compound verte-
brate, 162.
Audiences very nearly alike, 161;
good feeling and intelligence of,
163.
Author does not hate anybody,
255.
Authors, jockeying of, 41; purr if
skilfuUv handled, 55; ashamed of
being funny, 55; hate those who
call them droll, 55; alwavs praise
after fifty, 91.
Automatic prijicii>les appear more
prevalent the more we study, 96 j
mental actions, 154.
AvERAGESj'their awful uniformity,
161.
B.
Babies, old, 177.
Bacon, Lord, 317.
Balzac, 172, 317.
Beauties, vulgar, their virtuous in-
dignation on being looked at, 225.
Beliefs like ancient driuking-
glasses, 17.
Bell-gL/Vss, young woman under,
353.
Benicia Boy, not challenged by thfl
Professor, and why, 199.
Benjamin Franklin, the landla-
dv's son, 14, 59, 64, 80, 97, 132,
155, 156, 287, 361.
Berkshire, 274, 286, 310.
Berne, leap from the platform at,
328.
Blake, Mr., his Jesse Rural, 102.
Blondes, two kinds of, 212.
" Blooded " horses, 40.
Boat, the Professor's own, descrip-
tion of, 194.
Boating, the Professor describes
his, 190.
Boats, the Professor's fleet of, 189.
Books, hating, 69; society a strong
solution of, 70; the mind some-
times feel above them, 151; a
man's and a woman's reading,321.
Bores, all men are, except when wa
want them, 7.
Boston, seven wise men of, their
sayings, 142.
Bowie-knife, the Roman gladius
modified, 21.
Brain, upper and lower stories of,
207; attempts to reach mechani-
cally, 216.
Brains, seventy-year clocks, 214;
d66
INLFX
containing ovarian eggs, how to
know them, 227.
Bridget becomes a caryatid, 113;
presents a breast-pin, 363.
Browne, Sir Thomas, admirable
sentiment of, 105.
Browning, Elizabeth, 355.
Bkuce's Address, alteration of,
52.
Bulbous-headed people, 7.
Bunker-hill, monument, rocking
of, 331.
Btron, his line about striking the
electric chain, 77.
C.
Cache, childreu make instinctively,
237.
Calamities, grow old rapidly in
proportion to their magnitude, 35 ;
the recollection of returns after
the first sleep as if new, 35.
Calculating machine, 9; power,
least hun an of qualities, 9.
Call him not old, 201.
Campbell, misquotation of, 79.
Canary-bird, swimming move-
ments of, 96.
Cant terms, use of, 299.
Carlyle, his article on Boswell,
328.
Carpenter's bench. Author works
at, 207.
Chambers Street, 318.
Chamouni, 311.
Characteristics, Carlyle's article,
61.
Charles Street, 318.
Chaucer compared to an Easter-
Beurrd, 92.
Chess-playing, conversation com-
pared to, 72.
Children, superstitious little
wretches and spiritual cowards,
237.
Chloroform, Professor, the, under,
341.
Chryso-aristocracy, our, the
weak point in, 304.
Cicero de Senectiite, Professor
reads, 1^3; his treatise de Senec-
tute, 180.
Cincinnati, how not to pronounce,
333.
OiRCLEi?, intellectual, 310.
Cities, some of the smaller ones
. char Tiing, 146 ; leaking Df nature
into, 319.
Clergy rarely hear sermcus, 31.
Clergy.aien, their patients not al-
ways truthful, 97.
Clock of the Andover Seminary,
333.
Closet full of sweet smells, 87.
Clubs, advantages of, 71.
Coat, constructed on d f'ion
grounds, 76.
Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr. 18.
Coffee, 287, 289.
Cold-blooded creatures, 149.
Coleridge, his remark on liter-
ary mens' needing a profession,
207.
Coliseum, visit to, 327.
Comet, the late, 26.
Commencement day, like the start
for the Derby, 107.
Co3i:mon sense, as we understand it,
161.
Communications received by tYn
Author, 334.
Company, the sad, 288.
Conceit bred by little localize!
powers and narrow streaks ol
knowledge, 10; natural to the
mind as a centre to a circle, 10 ;
uses of, 10; makes people cheer-
ful, 11.
Constitution, American female,
47; in choice of summer resi-
dence, 309.
Contentment, 312.
Controversy, hvdrostatic paradox
of, 130.
Conundrums indulged in by the
company, 293; rebuked by the
Author,"^ 294.
Conversation, very serious mat-
ter, 6 ; with some persons weaken-
ing, 6; great faults of, 11; spoiled
by certain kinds of argument, 11;
a code of finalities necessary to,
12; compared to Italian game of
mora, 17; shapes our thoxights,
30; ^Zr»V-ing of reported, 44 ; one
of the fine arts, 57; compared to
chess-playing, 72 ; depends on ho«
much is taken for granted, 72 ; o'
Lecturers, 73.
Cookeson, \Tilliam, of All-Souis'
College, 98.
Copley, his portrait of the mer
chant-uncle, 23; of the great
grandmother. 23.
INDEX.
367
• CoRRESPODKfT OUT Foreign,"
133.
Counterparts of people in many
dlfierent cities, 159.
CowpEH, 213; liis lines on his moth-
er's portrait, 329 ; his lines on the
" Royal George," 329.
Creed, the Author's, 100.
Crinoline, Otaheitan, 21.
Crow and king-bird, 32.
Curls, flat circular on temples, 20.
D.
Dandies, uses of, 300; illustrious
ones, 301, 302; men are born, 302
Davidson, Lucretia and Margaret,
213.
Deacon's Masterpiece, The, 295.
Death as a form of rhetoric, 152 ;
introduction to, 243.
Deehfield, elm in, 334.
Devizes, woman struck dead at,
329.
Dighton Rock, inscription on, 287.
Dimensions, three of solids, hand-
ling ideas as if they had, 95.
Divinity, doctors of, many people
qualified to be, 32.
Divinity Student, the, 1, 47, 93,
94, 97, 100, 114, 125, 142, 143, 151,
155, 211, 217, 223, 228, 236, 256,
267, 268, 293, 301, 306, 361.
Doctor, old, his catalogue of books
for light reading, 181.
DniNKiNG-GLAssEs, ancicut, beliefs
like, 17.
Droll, authors dislike to be called,
55.
Drunkenness often a punishment,
220.
Dull persons great comforts at
times, 6; happiness of finding we
are, 69.
Ears, voluntary movement of, 10.
Earth, not ripe yet, 26.
Eakihquake, to' launch Leviathan,
80.
Eblis, hall of, 288.
Editors, appeals tj their benevo-
lence, 340; must get calluses, 341.
Education, professional, most of
our people have had, 31.
Eggs, Ovarian, intellectual, 220.
Elm, American, 271; the great
Johnston, 272; Hatfield, 274; Shef-
field, 274; West Springfield, 274;
Pittsfield, 275; Newburyport, 275;
Cohasset, 275; English and Amer-
ican, comparison of, 277.
Elms, Springfield, 273; first class,
274; second class, 275: Mr. Pad-
dock's row of, 278; in Andover,
332, 335 ; in Norwich, 333 ; in Deer-
field, 335 ; in Lancaster, two very
large ones. See Lancaster.
Emotions strike us obliquely, 327.
Epithets follow isothermal lines,
130.
Erasmus, colloquies of, 98; naufra-
gium or shipwreck of, 98.
Erectile heads, men of genius
with, 7.
Essays, diluted, 74.
Essex Street, 318.
Esther, Queen, and Ahasuerus, 358
Eternity, remembering one's self
in, 233.
Everlasting, the herb, its sugges-
tions, 85.
Exercise, scientifically examined,
193.
Ex pede Herculem, 124.
Experience, a solemn fowl; her
eggs, 317.
Experts in crime and suffering, 3'^
F.
Faces, negative, 162.
Facts, horror of generous minds tor
what are commonly called, 5 ; the
brute beasts of the intelligence, 5;
men of, 164.
Family, man of, 23.
Fancies, youthful, 312.
FarewelL, the Author's, 364.
Fault found with every thing worth
saying, 127.
Feeling that we have been in the
same condition before, 81; modes
of explaining it, 82, 83.
Feelings, every person's, have a
front-door and a side-door, 147.
Fifty 'cents, a figure of rhetoric,
306.
Flash phraseologv, 299.
Flavor, nothing knows its own, 61
Fleet of our companions, 106.
Flowers, why poets talk so muck
of, 2GG.
368
INDEX.
Franklln-place, front-yards in,
318.
French exercise, Benj. Franklin's,
64, 156.
Friends shown up by story-tellers,
68.
Friendship does not authorize one
to say disagi-eeable things.
Fkont-dook and side-door to our
feelings, 147.
Fruit, green, intellectual, these
United States a great market for,
305; mourning, 356.
Fuel, carbon and bread and cheese
are equally, 179.
Funny, authors ashamed of being,
55.
" Fust-rate " and other vulgarism,
31.
G.
Geese for swans, 319.
Genius, a weak flavor of, 3 ; the ad-
vent of, a surprise, 61.
Uift-entekprises, Nature's, 61.
.iiLBEKT, the French poet, 213.
Gil Blas, the archbishop served
him right, 56; motto from, 230.
GiiJ>iN, Daddy, 270.
Girls' story in " Book of MartATS,"
354; two young, their fall from
gallery, 327.
Gizzard and Liver never con-
founded, 359.
Good-by, the Author's, 363.
Grammar, higher law in, 43.
Gravestones, transplanting of,
279.
Green fruit, intellectual, 305.
Ground-bait, literary, 41.
H.
Habit, what its essence is, 179.
Hand, tlie gi*eat wooden, 328.
" HaowV " whether final, 125.
Hat, the old gentleman opposite's
white, 204; the author's youthful
Leghorn, 205.
Hats, aphorisms concerning, 205.
4eakts, inscriptions on, 287.
Heresy, burning for, experts in,
would be found in any large city,
37.
UisTDiMAN. tlie qi *ation from, on
puuniui^, 14.
Honey, emptying the jug of, 20.
Horses, what they feed on, 192.
Hospitamty depends on latitude;
350.
Hot day, sounds of, 350.
Hotel de T Univers et des Eiats Unis^
144.
Housatoxic, the Professor's dwell-
ing by, 285.
Houses, dying out of, 281 ; killed by
commercial smashes, 281; shape
themselves upon our natures, 282.
House, the body we live in, 281;
Irishman's at Cambi'idgeport, 22.
HouYNHNM Gazette, 265.
Huckleberries, hail-storra of, 268.
Hull, how Pope's line is read there,
147.
HuMA, story of, 8.
Humanities, cumulative, 25.
Hyacinth, blue, 265, 267
Hysterics, 101.
I.
Ice in wine-glass, tinkling like cow-
bells, 87.
Ideas, age of, in our memories, 35;
handling them as if they had the
three dimensions of solids, 95.
Imi'onderables move the world,
156.
Impromptus, 18.
Inherited traits show very early,
226.
Insanity, the logic of an accurate
mind overtasked, 46; becomes a
duty under certain circumstances
47.
Instincts, crushing out of, 353.
Intemperance, the Author dis-
courses of, 217.
Intermittent, poetical, 289.
Inventive Power, economically
used, 277.
Iris, cut the yellow hair, 79.
Irishman's house at Cambridge-
port, 22.
Island, the, 43.
Jailers and undertakers magnetizf
people, 36.
Jaundice, as a token of affection
152.
INDEX.
369
John and Thomas, their dialogue of
six persons, 59.
John, the young fellow called, 60,
72, 81, 88,' 114, 128, 201, 216, 223,
224, 241, 254, 268, 293, 300, 306,
356, 362.
Johnson, Dr., his remark on at-
tacks, 129; lines to Thrale, 174.
Jcdg:mknt, standard of, how to es-
tablish, 16.
Keats, 213.
Keblk, his poem, 361.
" Kekkidge," and other character-
istic expressions, 124.
KiRKE White, 214.
Knowledge, little streaks of spe-
cialized, breed conceit, 10.
Knuckles, marks of on broken
glass, 123.
L.
Lady, the real, not sensitive if looked
at, 225.
Lady-Boakder, the, with auto-
graph-book, 6.
Landlady, 58, 88, 122, 352, 361.
Landlady's daughter, 18, 20, 63,
158, 159, 257, 268, 356, 361.
Latter-day Warnings, 26.
Laughter and tears, wind and
water-power, 101.
Lecturers, grooves in their minds,
73 ; talking in streaks out of their
lectures, 73; get homesick, 163;
attacks upon, 351.
Lectures, feelings connected with
their delivery, 159; popular, what
they should' have, 160; old, 160;
what they ouglit to be, 161.
Leibnitz, remark of, 1.
le$ Sucitles Polyi)hysiophUoaophi(]ues,
156.
Letter to an ambitious young man,
335.
Letters with various requests, 78.
Leviathan, launch of, 80.
Like, experience of, 32; compared
to transcript of it, 66; compared
♦o b(X)ks, 154; divisible into nfteen
periods, 177 ; early, revelations
concerning, 234 ; its experiences,
322.
Lilac leaf-biuls, 265, 267.
Lion, the leaden one at Alnwick, 328.
Liston thought himself a tragic
actor, 103.
Literary pickpoHtets, 57.
Living Temtlk, The, 202.
LocHiEL rocked in cradle when old,
92.
Log, using old schoolmates ai, to
mark our rate of sailing, 105.
Logical minds, what they do, 15.
Long path, the, 352; walking to-
gether, 364.
Landon, Letitia, 355.
Love-capacity, 316.
Love, introduction to, 244; its rela
tive solubility in the speech of mea
and women, 317.
Ludicrous, a divine idea, 104.
Luniversary, return of, 54.
Lyric conception hits Uke a bullet,
111.
M.
Macaulay-flowers of Literature,
15.
"Magazine, Northern," got up by
the " Come-Outers," 137.
Maine, willows in, 835.
Man of family, 23.
Mai', photograph of, on the wall, 283.
JIare Hurrum, 140.
Marigold, its suggestions, 84.
Mather, Cotton, 75, 346.
JIeerschaums and poems must be
kept and used, 115, 117.
Men, self-made, 22; all, love all wo-
men, 257.
Mcsttlltnnce, dreadful consequences
of, 250.
Middle-aged female, takes offence,
33.
Millionism, green stage of, 357.
^IiLTON compared to a Saint Ger-
main-pear, etc., 92.
Mind, automatic actions of, 154.
Minds, classification of, 1; jerky
ones fatiguing, 6; logical, what
they do, 15; calm and clear best
basis for love and friendship, 150;
saturation-point of, 153.
Minister, my old, his remaris or
want of attention, 33.
Misery, a great One puts a new
stamp on us, 36.
Misfortune, professional dealers in,
36.
MlSI'RlNTS, 54.
Moi^vssES, Melasses, or Molo.>?",a's 76
370
INDEA
Mora, Italian game of conversation
compared to, 17.
MoKALisT, the great, quotation from
on punning, 14.
Mountains and sea, 308.
^loURMNG fruit, 356.
Mug the bitten, 232.
MuMKBKiTY and femineity in voice,
^ 251.
MusA, 290.
MuscuLAK powers, when they de-
cline, 18.
Muse, the, 290.
Musicians, odd movements of, 95.
AIusic, its effects different from
thought, 152.
Mutual Admiration, Society of, 2.
My Lady's Cheek., (verse,) 177.
Myrtle Street, discovered bv the
Professor, 191 ; description of, 191;
garden in, 318.
N.
Nahant, 310.
Nature, Amen of, 266, leaking of,
into cities, 319.
Nautilus, The Chambered, 110.
Nerve-playing, masters of, 148.
Nerve- TAPPING, 6.
Nerve, olfactory, connection of,
with brain, 85.
Newton, his speech about the child
and the pebbles, 94.
Norwich, elms in, 333 ; how not to
pronounce, 333.
Novel, one, everybody has stuff
for, 66 ; why I do not write, €6.
0.
Oak, its one mark of supremacv,
270
Ocean, the, two men walking by,
93.
Old Age, starting point of, 174; al-
legory of, 175; approach of, 176;
habits the great mark of, 178;
how nature cheats us into, ib.;
in the Professor's contemporaries,
185; remedies for, 188; excellent
remedy for, 200.
Dld Gentleman opposite, the, 2,
59, 68, 97, 112, 201, 204, 206, 228,
242, 244, 362, 3G4.
Oia> Man, a person startled when
he i'ifst nears himself called 9(\
178.
Old Men, always poets if they evex
have been, 114.
Omens, of childhood, 238.
One-hoss-shay, The Wonderfui^
295.
" Our Sumatra Correspond-
ence," 134.
P.
Pail, the white pine, of water, 232.
Parallelism, without identity, in
oriental and occidental nature,
277.
Parentheses, dismount the reader,
204.
Parson Turell's Legacy, 345.
Path, the long, 323.
Pears, men are like, in coming to
maturity, 92.
Phosphorus, its suggestions, 84.
Photographs of the Past, 283.
Phrases, complimentary, applied
to authors, what determines them,
131.
Pie, the young fellow treats disre-
spectfully, 88; the Author takes
too large a piece of, 90.
Piecrust, poems, etc., written un-
der influence of, 90.
Pillar, the Hangman's, 329.
PiNKNEY, William, 7.
Pirates, Danish, their skins on
church doors, 121.
Plagiarism, Author's virtuous dis-
gust for, 168.
Pocket-book fever, 240.
Poem — with the sllyht alter-ations, 53.
Poems, alterations of, 52; have a
body and a soul, 112; green state
of, 114; porous like meerschaums,
117; post-prandial, the Professor's
idea of, 259.
Poet, mv friend, the. 111, 146, 200,
200 et seq., 211, 258, 259, 261.
Poets love verses while warm from
their minds, 114; two kinds of,
212; apt to act mechanically on
their braini?, 216.
Poets and artists, why like to be
prone to abuse of stimnlants, 221.
Poetaster who has ta-sted type,
340.
Poetical impulse exteinal, 112.
Poetry uses white light fcr ita
main object, 56.
INDEX.
371
PoLiaH lance, 22.
Poor relation iu black bombazine,
33, 97, 114, 241, 306, 361.
Popi.AU, murder of one, 271.
Port-chuck, his vivacious sally,
205.
Pou TSMODTH, how not to pronounce,
333.
Powers, little localized, breed con-
ceit, 10.
Preaciikr, dull, might lapse into
qucisi heathenism, 31.
"Prelude," the Professor's, 343.
Prentiss, Dame, 232.
Pride in a woman, 318.
Prince Rupert's di'ops of literature,
42.
Principle, against obvious facts, 63.
Private Journal, extract from my,
287.
Private theatricals, 47.
Probabilities provided with buf-
fers, 63.
Profession, literary men should
have a, 207.
Professor, mv friend the, 28, 80,
90, 101, 123, 130, 137, 170, 171 et
scq., 201, 206 et serj., 224, 226, 227,
262, 281 el seq., 294, 341 et seq.
Prologue, 49.
Public Garden, 318.
Pugilists, when "stale," 180.
Punning, quotations respecting, 14.
Puns, law respecting, 12 ; what they
consist in, 55; siurepti^^iously cir-
culated among the company, 293.
Pupil of the eye, simile concerning,
the Author disgorges, 166.
Quantity, false, Sidney Smith's re-
mark on, 125.
B.
Back of life, the, report of runnmg
in, 108.
Races, our sjnnpathies go naturally
with higher, 74.
Racing, not republican, 38.
flAPHAEL and Michael Angelo, 237.
tlAsi'AiL's proof-sheets, 28.
<tat des SnUms a Lecture, 65.
"iEADiNo ^br the sake of talking,
154; a man'i and a woman's, 321.
Becollectioxs, trivial, essential t«
our identity, 243.
Belatives, opinions of as to i
man's powers, 60.
Repeating one's self, 7.
Beputation, living on contingent,
68.
Reputations, conventional, 41.
" Retiring " at night, etiquette of^
241.
Rhode-Island, near what place,
272.
Rhymes, old, we get tired of, 20;
bad to chew upon, 338.
EiDicuLous, love of, dangerous to
literary men, 102.
Roses, damask, 264, 267.
Rowing, nearest approach to flying,
195; its excellencies, ib. ; its joys,
196.
" Royal George," the, Cowper's
poem on, 329.
Bum, the term applied bj low peo-
ple to noble fluids, 220.
Saas-plates, 357.
Saddle-leather compared to sole-
leather, 192.
" Sahtisfahction," a tepid ex-
pression, 120.
Saint Genevieve, visit to church of,
327.
' Saints and their Bodies," an ad-
mirable Essay, 189.
Santorini's laughing-muscle, 224.
Saving one's thoughts, 29.
Schoolmistress, the, 35, 47, 68, 85,
86, 97, 122, 133, 142, 143, 156, 211,
212, 234 et seq., 242, 244 et seq.,
264, 278, 286 et seq., 311, 358 ei
seq. 364.
" Science," the Professor's inward
smile at her airs, 206,
Scientific certainty has no spring
in it, 63.
Scientific knowledge partakM :/
insolence, 62.
Scraping the floor, effect of, 56.
Sea and Mountains, 308.
Seed capsule (of po^ms,) 232.
Selk-determinino power, limitik
tion of, 100.
Self-esteem, with good ground if
imposing, li.
Sklf-made men, 22
372
INDEX.
Sermon, proposed, of the Author,
97.
Sermons, feeble, hard to listen to,
but may act inductively, 32.
Sentiments, all splashed and
streaked with, 267.
Seven Wise Uen of Boston, their
sayings, 142.
Shakspeare, old copy, with flakes
of pie-crust between its leaves, 88.
Shawl, the Indian blanket, 21.
Shortening weapons and lengthen-
ing boundaries, 22.
Ship, the, and martin-house, 240.
Ships, afraid of, 238.
Shop-blinds, iron, produce a shiver,
312.
Sierra Leone, native of, enjoying
himself, 351.
Sight, pretended failure of, in old
persons, 199.
Similitude and analogies, ocean of,
94.
Sin, its tools and their handle, 142",
introduction to, 243.
Smell, as connected with the mem-
ory, etc. 83.
Smile, the terrible, 223.
Smith, Sidney, abused by London
Quarterly Review, 103.
Sneaking fellows to be regarded
tenderly, 255.
Societies of mutual admiration, 2.
Soul, its concentric envelops, 281.
Sounds, suggestive ones, 246, 247.
Sparring, tiie Professor sees a little,
and describes it, 198.
Spoken language plastic, 30.
Sporting men, virtues of, 41.
Spring has come, 228.
Squirming when old falsehoods are
turned over, 129.
Stage-Ruffian, the, 58.
" Stars, the, and the earth," a little
book, referred to, 310.
State House, Boston, the hub of
the solar system, 143.
'' Statoo of "^deceased infant," 124.
Stillicidium, sentimental, 89.
Stone, flat, turning over of, 127.
Stranger, who came with young
fellow called John, 143, 356.
"Strap!" my m.an John's story,
121.
Strasuurg Cathedral, rocking of its
spire, 331.
Striking in of thoughts and feel-
ings, 153.
Stuart, his two portraits, 24.
Summer residence, choice of, 309.
Sun and Shadow, 45.
Sunday mornings, how the Autb ^
shows his respect for, 201.
Swans, taking his ducks for, 319.
Swift, property restored to, 168.
Swords, Roman and American, 21
Sylva Novanglica, 275.
Syntax, Dr. 270.
T.
Talent, a little makes people jeal-
ous, 2.
Talkers, real, 164.
Talking like playing at a mark
with an engine, 30; one of the
fine arts, 58.
Teapot, literary, 70.
The last Blossom, 186.
The old INIan Dreams, 76.
The two Armies, 262.
The Voiceless, 355.
Theological students, we all are,
32.
Thought revolves in cycles, 80 ; if
uttered, is a kind of excretion, 227.
Thoughts may be original, though
often before uttered, 8; saving,
29; shaped in conversation, 30;
tell worst to minister and best to
young people, 33; my best seem
always old, 34; real, knock out
somebody's wind, 129.
Thought-Sprinklers, 30.
Time and space, 310.
Tobacco-stain may strike into
character, 116.
Tobacco-stopper, lovely one, 116.
Towns, small, not more modest than
cities, 144.
Toy, author carves a wonderful at
jMarseilles, 208.
Toys moved by sand, caution fv >ra
one, 90.
Travel, maxims relating to, 325;
recollections of, 326.
Tree, growth of, as shown by rings
of v/ood, 331 ; slice of a hemlock,
331; its growth compared to hu-
man lives, 332.
Trees, great, 268; mother-idea in
each kind of, 270; afraid of meas-
uring-tape, 272; Mr. Kmerson's
report on, 273; of Anirrica, our
friend's interestins; work on, 27ft
INDEX.
373
Tree-\nives, 26S.
Triads, writing in, 95.
Trois Frdres, dinners at the, 86.
Trotting, democratic and favora-
ble to many virtues, 40 ; matches
not races, 40.
Truth, primary relations with, 16.
Truths and lies compared to cubes
and spheres, 132.
TuppER, 18, 361.
TuppERiAN wisdom, 317.
Tutor, my late Latin, his verses,
807.
U
Unloved, the, 354.
V.
Veneering in conversation, 164.
Verse, proper medium for revealing
our secrets, 67.
Verses, album, 17 ; abstinence from
writing, the mark of a poet, 233.
Verse-writers, their peculiarities,
338.
Violins, soaked in music, 117; take
a century to dry, 118.
Virtues, negative, 306.
Visitors, getting rid of, when their
visit is over, 19
Voice, the Temonic maiden's, 250;
the German woman's, 251; the
little child's in the hospital, 252.
Voices, certain female, 248; fear-
fully sweet ones, 249; hard and
sharp, 251; people do not know
their own, 253; sweet must be-
long to good spirits, 253.
Voleur, brand of, on galley rogues,
120.
Volume, man of one, 165.
W.
Walking arm against arm, 20 ; laws
of, 80; the Professor sanctions,
191 ; riding and rowing compared,
193, 194.
Wasp, sloop of war, 239.
Watch-papeb, the old gentleman's,
244.
Water, the white-pine pail of, 282.
Wedding, the, 364.
Wedding-presents, the, 361.
Wellington, gentle in his old age,
92.
What we all think, 168.
Will, compared to a drop of water
in a crystal, 96.
Willows in Maine, 335.
Wine of ancients, 75.
Wit takes imperfect views of things,
65.
Woman, an excellent instniment for
a nerve-phiyer, 148; to love a,
must see her through a pin-hole,
258; must be true as death, 315;
marks of low and bad blood in,
316; love-capacity in, ib.; pride
in, 316; why she should not say
too much, 317.
Women, young, advice to, 54; first
to detect a poet, 211 ; inspire poets,
211; their praise the poet's re-
ward, 211; all, love all men, 257;
all men love all, 257 ; pictures of,
257; who have weighed all that
life can offer, 322.
Woodbridge, Benjamin, his grave,
279, 280.
World, old and new, comparison
of their types of organizatiow,
276.
Writing with feet in hot water, 7 ;
like shooting with a rifle, 30
Y.
Yes ? in conversation, 20.
Young Fellow called John, 60, 72,
81, 88, 114, 128, 201, 216, 223, 224,
241, 254, 268, 293, 800, 806, 356,
862.
Young Lady come to be finished
off, 10.
Youth, flakes off like button- wood
bark, 177; American, not perfect
type of physical humanity, 197;
and age, what Author means by
231.
Z.
ZmnERMAjni, 7.
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