Part 9

We cannot open a newspaper, without seeing advertisements of those who have compounded numberless medicines for curing almost all the pains and diseases 'which flesh is heir to;' and are desirous of diffusing them, for the relief of all classes of sufferers, for a moderate pecuniary compensation. And surely there can be no impropriety in my publishing this article for the benefit of all concerned, and giving them, _gratis_, my friendly advice, on so interesting a subject. My object is as commendable as theirs; and I presume my prescriptions, if duly observed, would promote the moral health of thousands, and save them from the penalty of 'low spirits;' quicken the healthful circulation of the 'social blood,' and add to the life of multitudes years of comfort, ending in a golden sunset.

_Portland, (Maine,) Nov., 1837._ SENEX.

LAY OF THE MADMAN.[9]

'THIS is the foul fiend! He begins at curfew, and walks till the first cock; he gives the web and the pin, squints the eye, and makes the hare-lip; mildews the white wheat, and hurts the poor creature of earth. Beware of the foul fiend!'

SHAKSPEARE.

MANY a year hath passed away, Many a dark and dismal year, Since last I roam'd in the light of day, Or mingled my own with another's tear; Wo to the daughters and sons of men-- Wo to them all, when I roam again!

Here have I watch'd, in this dungeon cell, Longer than Memory's tongue can tell; Here have I shriek'd, in my wild despair, When the damnéd fiends from their prison came, Sported and gambol'd, and mock'd me here, With their eyes of fire, and their tongues of flame; Shouting for ever and aye my name! And I strove in vain To burst my chain, And longed to be free as the winds, again, That I might spring In the wizard ring, And scatter them back to their hellish den! Wo to the daughters and sons of men-- Wo to them all, when I roam again!

How long I have been in this dungeon here, Little I know, and nothing I care; What to me is the day or night, Summer's heat or autumn sere, Spring-tide flowers, or winter's blight, Pleasure's smile, or sorrow's tear? Time! what care I for thy flight, Joy! I spurn thee with disdain; Nothing love I but this clanking chain; Once I broke from its iron hold, Nothing I said, but silent and bold, Like the shepherd that watches his gentle fold, Like the tiger that crouches in mountain lair, Hours upon hours, so watch'd I here; Till one of the fiends that had come to bring Herbs from the valley and drink from the spring, Stalk'd through my dungeon entrance in! Ha! how he shriek'd to see me free-- Ho! how he trembled and knelt to me, He who had mock'd me many a day, And barred me out from its cheerful ray, Gods! how I shouted to see him pray! I wreath'd my hand in the demon's hair, And chok'd his breath in its mutter'd prayer, And danc'd I then, in wild delight, To see the trembling wretch's fright.

Gods! how I crush'd his hated bones! 'Gainst the jagged wall and the dungeon-stones; And plung'd my arm adown his throat, And dragg'd to life his beating heart, And held it up, that I might gloat, To see its quivering fibres start! Ho! how I drank of the purple flood, Quaff'd and quaff'd again of blood, Till my brain grew dark, and I knew no more, Till I found myself on this dungeon floor, Fetter'd and held by this iron chain; Ho! when I break its links again, Ha! when I break its links again, Wo to the daughters and sons of men!

My frame is shrunk, and my soul is sad, And devils mock, and call me mad; Many a dark and fearful sight Haunts me here, in the gloom of night; Mortal smile or human tear Never cheers or soothes me here; The spider shrinks from my grasp away, Though he's known my form for many a day; The slimy toad, with his diamond eye, Watches afar, but comes not nigh; The craven rat, with her filthy brood, Pilfers and gnaws my scanty food: But when I strive to make her play, Snaps at my hands, and flees away; Light of day or ray of sun, Friend or hope, I've none--I've none!

Yet 'tis not always thus; sweet slumber steals Across my haggard mind, my weary sight; No more my brain the iron pressure feels, Nor damnéd devils howl the live-long night; Visions of hope and beauty seem To mingle with my darker dream; They bear me back to a long-lost day, To the hours and joys of my boyhood's play, To the merry green, And the sportive scene, And the valley the verdant hills between; And a lovely form with a bright blue eye, Flutters my dazzled vision by; A tear starts up to my wither'd eye, Gods! how I love to feel that tear Trickle my haggard visage o'er! The fountain of hope is not yet dry; I feel as I felt in days of yore, When I roam'd at large in my native glen, Honor'd and lov'd by the sons of men, Till, madden'd to find my home defil'd, I grasp'd the knife, in my frenzy wild, And plunged the blade in my sleeping child!

They called me mad--they left me here, To my burning thoughts, and the fiend's despair, Never, ah! never to see again Earth or sky, or sea or plain; Never to hear soft Pity's sigh-- Never to gaze on mortal eye; Doom'd through life, if life it be, To helpless, hopeless misery; Oh, if a single ray of light Had pierced the gloom of this endless night; If the cheerful tones of a single voice Had made the depths of my heart rejoice; If a single thing had loved me here, I ne'er had crouch'd to these fiends' despair!

They come again! They tear my brain! They tremble and dart through my every vein! Ho! could I burst this clanking chain, Then might I spring In the hellish ring, And scatter them back to their den again!

* * * * *

They seize my heart!--they choke my breath! Death?--death! ah, welcome death!

_Savannah, (Geo.,) 1837._ R. M. C.

FOOTNOTE:

[9] ALL who have ever visited the 'ward of the incurables,' in any of the insane asylums of our Atlantic cities, will be forcibly struck with the graphic picture presented in this spirited sketch.

EDS. KNICKERBOCKER.

OLLAPODIANA.

NUMBER XXII.

----AS I was saying last month, beloved reader, that 'I am thine in promise,' or to that purport, I have anchored myself in my _fauteuil_, to the end that I may be thine in fulfilment. In our conversation about the Catskills, I omitted sundry pertinent matters, with the which, however, malgré the postponement, I shall not here afflict. Since that period, I have for the most part been pent i' the populous city, amid the wakeful noises by day thereof, and by night the calm security of the streets thereof. I affect the supernatural bawl of the watchman, as it rings up to my pillow; I love the serenade which the neighboring lover sings to his fair, and of which I get the good as well as herself; I like to see the straggling cloud go floating over the slumbering town at midnight, with the moon silvering its edge; or mayhap to note the sheen of a star greeting the vision over a chimney-pot. All these have charms for my eye and ear; I seem to see holy sights and shapes in the firmament; the winds come and go on their circuits, unknowing how many brows they fan; and at times they hush a whole metropolis to silence, insomuch that its wide boundary scarce produces so much noise 'as doth a chestnut in a farmer's fire.'

* * * * *

BY-THE-BY, when the sun begins to set at right descensions, and make his winter arches, I always think of the roaring fires in the domicil of the rural husbandman, with feelings akin to envy. Ye who toast your heels by anthracite; who survey the meagre 'blue blazes' of Liverpool coal, and whose nostrils take in the dry odor thereof, being reminded thereby of those ever-burning brimstone beds, where Apollyon keeps his court, and Judas has his residence; ye, I say, who have a life-long intimacy with these sorts of fuel, can have but small conception of a winter's fire in the country. Far round doth it illumine the apartment where it rages; intolerable is proximity thereunto; and its 'circle of admirers' is always large, because they cannot come a-nigh. A pleasant disdain is felt for the snow which whirls on whistling winds against the pane; the herds are huddled in their cotes secure; and the storm has permission to mumble its belly full, and spit snow at its pleasure. Hugeous reminiscences of delight come over my spirit, in this connexion; post-school hours; the steaming bowl of flip, or those orthographical convocations, where buxom maidens exulted in their secret heart, as tall words were vociferously mounted, in correct emission, by greenhorn swain. Sleigh-rides likewise; amatory pressures, under skin of buffalo or bison; long processions through wintry villages, whose tall smokes rose from every chimney; pillars of blue, standing upright in the air, like columns of sapphire. Cider, with its acidity of remembrance; apples, that melted on the tongue, as they descended toward the diaphragm; landscapes of snow; and slides down hill!--not forgetting those skating achievements, which for the time being fill the mind with such pride, that one scarcely wishes to reach heaven at last, if that amusement be interdicted among the just made perfect! All these circumstances and events, with curious confusion, hang in a nucleus about my memories of a rural hearth; 'but these I passen by, with nameless numbers moe.' Shakspeare had a good notion of the comforts to which I refer. He puts a lovely sentiment into the mouth of King Richard II., when he causes him to utter to the royal lady this tender language:

'Good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for France: Think I am dead; and that from me thou tak'st, As from my death-bed, my last living leave. In winter's tedious nights, sit by the fire With good old folks; and let them tell thee tales Of woful ages, long ago betid; And ere thou bid good night, to quit their grief, Tell thou the lamentable fall of me!'

* * * * *

I HAVE not, howbeit, reader, as might be inferred from what has been herein before written, spent all the mean season spoken of, in the busy capital. I have made, with household appurtenances, and delights, and responsibilities, an autumnal tour or 'excrescence' into the country, round about the Empire Town. Quotidian columns have borne the register thereof; hence Benevolence prompt to crucify farther infliction. The landscapes surveyed were beautiful; though it may be said of the eminences, as Mr. William Lackaday observes in the play, of his boy-seen uplands: 'Them there hills wasn't clothed with much werder.'

* * * * *

HOW many steam-boat accidents are occurring constantly! One of late astonished the peaceful Delaware. But it did one good act. The explosion blew away a piece of very bad orthography in the cabin of one of those craft which ply between Philadelphia and Camden. Perilous voyages do they make, indeed! Nurses with their blooming charges, and who have never been to sea, embark in them to behold the wonders of the deep! The disaster I speak of arose from that which made the angels fall. 'Twas curst ambition. One boat was going several inches ahead of another, and urged its engine to the rate of at least fifty miles the hour. Rivalry was awakened; the captain of the hapless craft yelled to his assistant: 'Josey, we'll have a race with that t'other imperent boat! _Put that other stick of wood into the furnace!_ My pride is elewated. Never mind the expense _this_ time!'

The command was given; the boiler collapsed; and ambition was ended! The orthography blown from the steamer was this:

'No smoking _aloud_ in the cabing!'

This was an injunction obeyed per force, for it could not be broken.[10] It specified tacit fumigation:

----'Nothing could live Twixt that and silence;'

and the unnecessary monition was no great loss, either to luxury or learning.

* * * * *

LET me here register a letter which I have received from the Jehu who voted for Smith, of Smithopolis. He conveys several curious sentiments; and among other matters, records the demise of the person to whom he was indebted for a lecture:

'_November the 5th, 1837._ 'MY DEAR SIR:

'I have seen a piece which you made and put into a perryogue published down into the city of New-York, to which I am a-going to indict a reply. My indictment will be short, as some of the parties is not present to which you have been allusive. But with respect of that there diwine person you spoke of, I am sorry to remark, that he is uncommonly dead, and wont never give no more lectures. He was so onfortnight as to bu'st a blood-vessel at a pertracted meeting; and I ha'n't hearn nothing onto him sence. His motives was probable good; but in delivering on 'em, it struck me forcibly that he proximated to the _sassy_. However, I never reserves ill will, not ag'inst nobody; and I authorize you to put this into printing, ef'so be that you deem it useful. That's what Smith used to say, when he published his self-nominations in the newspapers, that a man with a horn (they tell me that he has a very large circle of kindred) used to ride post about, and distribit.

'In the sincere congratulation that there has not nothing been said in this communication unproper for the public ear, and for giving you the descriptions of the rackets, and other messuages respecting me, which you deeded to the public, I remain yours until death do us part.

'POST TILLION.' 'Mr. OLLAPOD, M.D.'

Now there is no finding fault with a correspondent of this description. Plain, unadorned, he gives his thoughts the drapery of ink--dresses them in black--and there they stand, ('what is written remains,') evidences at once of his frankness and his erudition. To me, such documents, though light, and perhaps unpalatable to those who prefer the heavier condiments of literature, form the cream or the dessert of life's plenteous table.

* * * * *

TALKING of desserts--by which (whisper) I don't mean the boundless contiguity of western wildernesses, nor the sandy bounds of Zahara, but the after-glories of a dinner--I have of late arrived at some curious embellishments of delicacies, on the part of those who are bent upon improving the English language, at all hazards; upon extending it to the utmost latitude of dainty expression and culture. The Astor-House, I learn, at its Ladies' Ordinary, has furnished forth some glorious specimens of English improved. 'Sir!' said an exquisite, desirous of partaking a certain delicacy for himself and his fair:

'Have you at present any of the _chastised idiot-brother_?'

'Han't seen no relations of your'n here to-day,' murmured the waiter, 'with an imperturbable and 'furtive' smile.'

'Don't be impertinent, fellow!' was the reply; 'I mean something to eat!'

'If you want to eat any thing in the _idiot_ line,' replied the servant, aside, as his inquisitor fingered his moustache, 'I guess you'd better put some butter on your hair, and swaller _yourself_!' And here the sacrilegious usher of sauces and glasses indulged in a half-suppressed guffaw.

'Dar' say you consider that funny, my short _help_,' said the inquirer: 'but what I want is what _you_ call _whipped-syllabub_. Heaven help your ignorance!'

The requisite was handed--the exquisite appeased. But his quiet was brief. Calling to him the same locomotive assistance, he inquired:

'Now, individual, I want some _sacrificed-threshed-indigent-williams_. Have you got any?'

'Not one, upon my soul, your honor; that is, if you mean turnips.'

'Turnips!--curse turnips!--you double-distilled Vandal--you Goth--you Visigoth! I mean, have you any roasted whippoorwills?'

'Holy Paul!' said a Hibernian 'help,' who had drawn a-nigh, attracted by the discussion; 'in the name of the Vargin, what is _them_?'

Just at this juncture, the eaves-dropping by-stander who furnishes the _mem._ of this, came away, leaving the emerald son--more verdant to look at than his native isle--staring as if in a fit of astronomy, in eclipse-time.

* * * * *

ONE of my autumnal recreations, good my reader, is hunting. I pull a most fatal trigger. Venerie delighteth me, when the day is good and the game abundant. I love, (heaven forgive me!) to bring down the squirrel, with the half-munched chestnut in his teeth, what time his bushy tail, (no longer waving in triumph over his back, as he bounds from limb to limb,) quivers in _articulo mortis_. I confess me none of your cockney venators. Some of these I have seen place the deadly muzzle of a double-barrel rifle at the unsuspecting tail of a wren, while the proximity of metal and feathers was less than an inch; and when they fired, they plunged back some several yards, overcome with horror, though the bird had flown without injury, save indeed some blackened down, in extremis--a trifle, with life safe, and the world before her.

The poetry of gunpowder is in making it _tell_. To go out when the woods are so beautiful that you deem a score of dying dolphins hang on every tree,

'When the sound of dropping nuts is heard, though all the leaves are still, And twinkle in the smoky light the waters of the rill;'

to hear the delicate tread of the game on the leaves, rustling amid the murmur of solemn winds, as the westering sun scampers down the west, with a face as red as if he had disgraced the solar family by some misdemeanor; and then, in some thick recess of passing foliage, and innumerous boughs, then and there to bore wingéd fowl, and my gentleman quadrupeds of the sylvan fastness, with cold lead, is exhilarating. All kinds of volant things that wing the autumn air--all sorts of movers on four legs--to make these succumb to the behests of minerals, deadly salts, and a percussion cap to set them on, is a kind of great glory in a very small way. I miss in my excursions of this nature, the kind of sport which I fancy they who course the fields and glades of England must peculiarly enjoy; hare-hunting, namely. 'The ancients,' saith my choice 'Elia,' must have loved hares. Else why adopt the word _lepores_, (obviously from _lepus_,) but from some subtle analogy between the delicate flavor of the latter, and the finer relishes of wit in what we most poorly translate _pleasantries_. The fine madnesses of the poet are the very decoction of his diet. Thence is he hare-brained. Haram-scarum is a libellous, unfounded phrase, of modern usage. 'Tis true the hare is the most circumspect of animals, sleeping with her eyes open. Her ears, ever erect, keep them in that wholesome exercise, which conduces them to form the very tit-bit of the admirers of this noble animal. Noble will I call her, in spite of her detractors, who from occasional demonstrations of the principle of self-preservation (common to all animals,) infer in her a defect of heroism. Half a hundred horsemen, with thrice the number of dogs, scour the country in pursuit of puss, across three counties; and because the well-flavored beast, weighing the odds, is _willing_ to evade the hue and cry, _with her delicate ears shrinking perchance from discord_, comes the grave naturalist, Linnæus, perchance, or Buffon, and gravely sets down the hare as--a timid animal. Why, Achilles, or Bully Dawson, would have declined the preposterous combat!' This is speaking sooth, and vindicates the fame of that class of tremulous tenants of rural haunts, whose ears, most unhappily, are sometimes longer than their lives.

* * * * *

SOMETIMES I surmount my pony, and traverse for miles the banks of the Schuylkill; moving, now fast, now slow, as humor prompts, or clouds portend. The city fades behind me; the beautiful eminence of Fairmount, its spouting fountains, its statues in the many-colored shade; the sheen of the river; the trellised pavilions that hang on its side; the hum of waters, or the cheerings of some regatta, mingle with far obscurity and airy nothing; and then, as I ride, I sing the song of Anacreon Little, laying every tone to my heart, like a treasure and a spell:

'Along by the Schuylkill a wanderer was roving, And dear were its flowery banks to his eye;' (I am bounding along--at a good rate am moving-- I have lost the last lines--unregained, if I try.)

Thus I murder the post-meridian hours, when the weather-office is propitious, and its clerks attentive.

* * * * *

BY-THE-WAY, how often have I pondered on the extreme surprise experienced by Balaam, of Old-Testament memory, when he rode out one day on business. His meditations were most unexpectedly interrupted by the beast he rode; and he was immensely astounded, when he found out the garrulity of the animal. True to her sex, (for she was of the tender gender,) she commenced a few sentences of small-talk, greatly to his dismay. And who could marvel? What man but would listen, _auribus erectis_, when he ascertained that his own ass was opening a conversation with him? 'Twas thus with Balaam. He was well nigh demented. He pommelled his beast with great vehemence; but she turned her head to him, and said in the Hebrew dialect--'_No Go!_'

Is it not wonderful, that those who are skilled in biblical history, who weigh evidence by the ounce, and inference by the pound, is it not a marvel, that they have never traced the obstinacy of this four-footed individual to the right motive? She was, in sooth, the great progenitress of _Animal Magnetism_; and she presented, in her own person, the first instance of _clairvoyance_ on record, either in prose or rhyme. It was at her hinder feet that MESMER sat, in thought, and caught the inspiration of his science. Balaam sat on her patient back, burdened her hallowed vertebras, nor knew how much wisdom he bestrode. Blinded mortal! He looked ahead for the cause of his detention. He saw no reason why he should not push on; and in the Egyptian obliquity of his heart, he 'whaled' his ass to a degree. It did no good; on the contrary, 'twas quite the reverse. The ass and the angel were looking steadfastly at each other; but Balaam saw but one of the parties. He noted not the glittering and glorious obstacle that stopped the narrow way. The loose and expressionless lips of his ass spoke like a book; the _clairvoyance_ was established; but the effect was slow. Henceforth, when the magnetic science is discussed, honor its foundress. Render unto that ass the things which are asses.'

* * * * *

I HAVE achieved a victory which should fire the heart of any tasteful bibliomaniac. _I stand seized of Lamb._ Understand me, reader, 'tis no juvenile mutton, whereof I am possessed; not adolescent merino, or embryo ram. By no manner of means; contrariwise, it is TALFOURD's brief memoir, and a most succulent correspondence, by the author of 'ELIA.' 'Tis a thing over which a father may waken his boy, in the small hours of the morning, (being yet unmovéd bedward,) by a multitudinous guffaw. Rosy slumber, ruptured by obstreperous laughter; but ah! how decidedly unavoidable!