Part 3

While the honest Dutchman was thus inhaling the breezes of good fortune, his rivals, Jonas Jones and Company, were fast sinking into obscurity. The exquisite individual whose name gave title and dignity to the firm, was fairly smitten, as we have seen, with the charms of Ellen Van Dyke. For several weeks he devoted himself to all the external blandishments his fancy could invent to arrest the affections of his rival's daughter. These had failed, and worse still, his customers were dropping off, one by one; his supplies were suffering under a collapse. Mr. Jonas Jones soon grew crest-fallen. His elegant form and fascinating attire ceased to be visible on the public walks, as of yore when fortune smiled. His wit had ceased to sparkle like champagne; his wares no longer dazzled the credulous Idlebergers with their cheapness and durability. Adversity had driven him to the bench, where he sat day after day, waxing his ends, brooding over his reverses; now dreaming of Ellen Van Dyke, and now moralizing on the vanity of earthly things in general. Mr. Jonas Jones was evidently in a decline.

While Mr. Jones was sitting one day in this happy frame of mind, tugging very hard at a most obdurate piece of leather, his reflections were suddenly interspersed with a series of original ideas. Unable to compete with his rival, he would call on him immediately, and offer his services as a copartner in his business and a husband for his daughter. Animated by these conceptions, Mr. Jones leaped from his sitting posture with a degree of activity that astonished the Company, threw aside the cumbersome rigging peculiar to his craft, devoted a few minutes to his toilet, and with hasty strides started out on his errand of love and copartnership. By one of those fantastic freaks which Fancy sometimes plays, his first step on the pavement was arrested by a new thought which flashed through his mind, and suffused his weazen face with smiles; and turning on his heel, he reëntered the shop, and walked deliberately into a private apartment, where he remained for several days on the plea of pressing and important business, secluded from the observation even of the Company. He had procured an immense board, and a great pot of black paint; and that was all they knew.

Sailing under a fair sky, with the wind all astern, and his canvass swelling in the breeze, Caleb Van Dyke was little prepared for the clouds that so soon lowered above his head. Early one morning, when on the point of resuming his daily toil, he glanced carelessly up the street, and beheld a great crowd before the Yankee's door, staring at a gigantic sign-board inscribed in quaint characters:

+---------------------------------+ | Jonas Jones and Company. | | | |MEN'S AND WOMEN'S CONSCIA RECTI. | +---------------------------------+

Adjusting his spectacles to reassure him that he was not dreaming, and muttering something very dreadful to think of, he called the school-master from the breakfast table, and directed his attention to the rival sign-board.

'Well, well,' said Nicholas; 'nobody but a Yankee would ever have thought of that. They are very bright over there; they have translated a Latin inscription into English in a manner truly original. I confess I never thought of _that_ before; we will see, however; we will see.' And Nicholas went off in a brown study to his school-room.

Caleb Van Dyke had good cause that day to know that the population of Idleberg was as vacillating as an aspen-leaf, or any thing else that may be shaken by a breath. Not a single customer called that day, nor the next, nor the next. In addition to the crowds of male customers who thronged Mr. Jones's establishment, he saw numbers of the other sex on a similar errand, who were curious to see that particular fashion of shoe called 'women's conscia recti.' Mean time Nicholas Pelt was very grave, and spent all his leisure time in his chamber; and at the end of a week, during which Caleb's shop had been entirely deserted, Nicholas had the satisfaction of showing to his host a sign-board larger, longer, and more imposing than all the rest, inscribed:

MEN'S, WOMEN'S, AND CHILDREN'S CONSCIA RECTI.

It is needless farther to pursue the ebb and flow of popular favor between the rival cobblers. Suffice it to say that this last device succeeded to the entire satisfaction of _our_ cobbler; and men, women, and children, literally flocked to his shop, until his hands were kept busy night and day, and his pockets overflowed with gold, silver, and bank-notes. Yankee had met Yankee in the conflict of intellect, and fortune had smiled upon the school-master. In a very short time Mr. Jonas Jones and Company pulled up their stakes, moved farther west, and were never heard of afterward.

What now interposed to prevent the union of Nicholas and Ellen? How readily the fond father said: 'Yes, certainly, Mr. Pelt. God bless you! I can never repay your kindness.' How beautifully Ellen blushed at the thought that she was actually going to be married; how the parson tied the knot which no enactment of man should ever sunder; how friends gathered there to congratulate the happy pair, and share the bountiful repast prepared by the dame; how the wit of the bridegroom and the beauty of the bride never shone so brightly as then, and how Rip was put to bed of a surfeit; and how through it all the story of the _Mens conscia recti_ was repeated over and over in tones of merriment, until the cobbler's dwelling rang again; these pictures are all too bright for delineation by our feeble pen.

Departing from the well-beaten paths of many writers of legends and chronicles, who usually drop the curtain at the bridal night, we ask but a moment, gentle reader, to record in outline the incidents which grew out of and succeeded this alliance. These weddings, after all, are actual occurrences, and not dreams of romance. Night _will_ slowly retire; the lamps must necessarily go out, even though filled with the oil of Aladdin's; the liveliest tongues will get tired of talking, and the briskest feet of dancing; and then the quiet honeymoon will succeed, and life with its stern realities will wake the loving pair to the thought of duties and pleasures yet in store, until the fading twilight of existence shall restore the bright ideal of 'Love's young dream.'

Nicholas's first step, then, was to inform Caleb Van Dyke that beside being a school-master, he was also a very respectable cobbler; and Caleb was convinced of this fact, almost against his will, at the sight of a pair of sturdy shoes manufactured by the quondam pedagogue, with a neatness and despatch that truly astonished him. Having arrived at the conclusion that the Idlebergers were disposed to spend their money more freely on their feet than their heads, Nicholas delivered his pedestal and birchen-rods to another adventurer who came along soon after in search of a school, and betook himself to cobbling in all its varieties. The firm of Van Dyke and Pelt thrived beyond precedent, and the old sign-board, after having become so illustrious, was permitted to retire, and its place was soon filled by another, composed and executed by the gifted Yankee, as follows:

'Blow, blow, ye winds and breezes All among the leaves and treeses: Sing, oh sing, ye heavenly muses, While we make both boots and shoeses.'

In the mean time Hans Keiser returned to Idleberg, thoroughly cured of his passion for adventure. His old father, while under the combined effects of those genial stimulants, beer and tobacco, received him with great cordiality. Hans soon became reconciled to the loss of Ellen Van Dyke, having found a congenial spirit in the person of a farmer's buxom daughter, who had been for years selling butter, eggs, and poultry, at the sign of the yellow sky and blue stars, until the young Dutchman was suddenly smitten with her charms; and all parties consenting, they were in due time pronounced man and wife by the very parson who had officiated at the nuptials of Nicholas and Ellen.

Since then Idleberg has emerged from the ashes of its primitive obscurity, and has risen into great consideration at home, if not abroad, for its chaste attractions and its elegant society. The spot of ground once occupied by the hostelry of Karl Keiser, now sustains an imposing mansion-house, distinguished hereabouts as the Indian Queen Hotel. During Caleb Van Dyke's life-time nothing could induce the old gentleman to improve the indifferent dwelling to which a long residence had so much attached him; but Nicholas took the earliest advantage of his decease to remove the old shop, and rear upon its ruins a larger and more elegant building. While the Pelts are enjoying the luxuries of elegant country-seats and well-tilled acres, they cherish a commendable pride in remembering the humble means by which they have arisen to competence. Nicholas and Ellen are now enjoying a green old age, surrounded by their numerous and prosperous posterity; and the old family carriage, as it comes rumbling into town every Sunday, drawn by a pair of sterling gray horses, has painted on the pannel of each door an odd-looking pair of shoes of the last century's fashion, beneath which are inscribed in antique characters, the magical words:

MENS CONSCIA RECTI.

PORTUGUESE JOE.

AT the battle of Lake Champlain, a sailor, called Portuguese Joe, performed the gallant exploit of nailing the stripes and stars to the mast, after they had been shot down. He perished in the flames at the late fire in Exchange Place, New-Orleans.

UPON the lake the battle raged, And warmly was each heart engaged, To win their nation's liberty-- To conquer or to die!

The iron hail was flying fast Against the sail, against the mast, And many a warm and gallant frame The prey of death became.

And louder grew the cannon's sound, And faster flew the balls around, And sadly rose above the strife The groans of parting life!

Still the brave tars beheld with pride The stripes and stars exulting ride Where many an eye was fondly cast, Upon the towering mast.

But hark! a shot! 'twas guided well, And suddenly the colors fell! Another--and another--now The flag is lying low!

Upon the deck the stripes and stars Dip in the blood of dying tars; Oh! surely 'tis a glorious stain, The life-blood of the slain!

But who is this who nobly dares Replace those precious stripes and stars? The tattered shrouds his fingers seize!-- 'Tis Joe--the Portuguese!

Into the rigging quick he springs, Close to the splintered mast he clings, And now aloft how eagerly Is gazing every eye!

A long, a loud, a deafening cheer, Bursts from each gallant sailor near, Behold! the flag of liberty Again is waving free!

Three cheers! the flag once more is spread, Joe's shining hat waves o'er his head! And hark! a shout of triumph now! Three cheers from those below!

The fight is o'er--the battle done; 'Twas bravely fought--'twas bravely won; And Joe a glorious part did play, That long-remembered day!

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Long years have passed, and Joe is dead; His ashes to the winds are spread; Long live within our memories Brave Joe--the Portuguese!

_Charleston, June, 1843._

MARY S. B. DANA.

THE POLYGON PAPERS.

NUMBER TEN.

AUTHORS are very unequal. The loftiest sometimes sink lower than the mediocre ever do; the passionate are often lifeless; and the deep and original portrayer of character and the heart frequently utters sententious truisms and apophthegmatic nonsense. I have lately been perusing the writings of La Bruyere, and have been forced more than ever to admire his masterly choice of language, his vivid wit, and keen discrimination. Among some very acute and just remarks I observed one so amazingly juiceless, that for a time I thought it must have been hazarded as a kind of tantalizing puzzle--a hollow nut for fools to crack in the hope of finding a kernel. He says, 'As we become more and more attached to those who benefit us, so we conceive a violent hatred for those who have greatly injured us'--that is, 'we love our friends and hate our enemies!!' A truly profound conclusion, and one requiring long experience and deep philosophy to discover! My efforts to detect _some_ brilliant thread in the triteness, and _some_ savor in the jejuneness of the above childish enunciation, gave rise to the following 'scatterings' on aphorisms, etc., and their writers.

Proverbs have been called 'the condensed wisdom of nations.' They may, I think, with more propriety be entitled 'an epitome of the truths and falsehoods contained in the more extended forms of books, and in the practical commentary of life.' Those of them which are true, are like the rules in the practical sciences, which the most ignorant artisan may apply, although he know nothing of the principles on which they are based, or of the process by which they are proved. If all these adages were true, they would prove of infinite advantage in life; since by a slight effort of the memory we might retain rules for our guidance through almost every difficulty of doubt or of temptation. But the misfortune is that here, as elsewhere, the true is mingled with the false, and only excellent sense with an addition of long experience can inform us which are worthy and which unworthy of reception. Now this same good sense and experience would furnish us with the same wisdom by the induction of our own minds, and thereby supersede the necessity of the written or oral maxims of others. Hence it is clear that proverbs are of little practical utility, since the very wisdom they would teach is a prerequisite to an intelligent adoption of their teachings. Their chief value lies in their conveying a great deal of instruction in a portable form, and presenting it very impressively by the energy of some brief and homely illustration.

The frequent use of aphorisms and proverbial phrases has in all ages been regarded as a vulgarism. Many of them are strikingly true and extremely elegant, having emanated from thoughtful and polished minds; yet in their daily use among writers and speakers of all classes, they become soiled and worn, familiar and profane. They acquire the tone of cant, and are resigned to the possession of those who cannot think and speak for themselves. In the fragments of the old Greek comedy and in others of their familiar writers, we find proverbs usually given up to the subordinate characters. Even in Euripides, 'the philosopher of the scenes,' nearly all whose personages harangue in sententious monostichs like disputants in the Academus or declaimers from the Stoa, the proverbial style is mostly left to messengers and attendants, pedagogues and nurses. Among the Romans, Plautus is most profuse in adages, and with him they drop, thick and fast, from the mouths of pimps and parasites, courtesans, and slaves. Horace employs them seldom, save when personating some humble character; and Cicero, even in his 'Familiar Letters,' often prefaces their introduction by an apologetic 'ut aiunt'--'as they say.' Every one, who has read (and who has _not_ read?) the romance of the renowned Cid Hamet Benengeli, remembers the ludicrous distress suffered by the knight of La Mancha in hearing his squire discharge whole broadsides of rustic proverbs at all times and on all subjects. The Italian language overflows with these trite familiarities. The low characters in the early English comedies, and the old English writers in general, abound in these homely texts, which teach the rustic moralist to _live_. If the novelists of this age of gas and steam-boats place in the mouths of their subaltern heroes few of the thread-bare aphorisms so common in the works of Smollet and Fielding, it is because the 'ignobility' of the present day have arrived at great perfection in a peculiar dialect--a compound of buffoonery and sentiment, of poetry and flash. In place of the quaint proverbs and worn allusions, in which their ancestors couched their humble thoughts, they bedizen their every-day attire of flimsy cant and coarse burlesque with borrowed flowers of fancy and the stolen jewelry of wit.

Writers of apophthegms, maxims, laconisms, etc., are more liable to errors than most other authors. Their aim is to be striking rather than consistent; and hence, in their pages you may frequently find sentiments of the most conflicting tendency. They have conceived a truth, and in order to illustrate it more forcibly, they clinch it with a brilliant catch; that is, they sharpen it with a glittering nothing, or point it with a sparkling lie. They fall into the same category with the epigrammatists of the Martial school, who often bore you with a long and irrelevant preface for the purpose of introducing a smart turn at the conclusion. How infinitely inferior, by the way, with all their wit and all their polish, are the sharp conceits and coquettish affectations of Martial and his successors to the severe and noble simplicity of the Greek epigram! An ingenious thought is commonly a false one. Its very ingenuity and uncommonness are _primâ facie_ evidence that it is neither natural nor correct. The apophthegmatist perceives that a particular fact is frequently associated with another fact. He immediately notes it down, and in a shape of antithetic brevity delivers it to others as a universal guide.

Many of these maxims are like those of Rochefoucault, on which Bulwer and some other self-imagined dissectors of the heart appear to have looked with an envious emulation. They are hard, cold, and brilliant--the deductions of a long, active, and passive experience in scenes of courtly treachery and polished heartlessness. They are gems, that have crystallized by an infusion of selfishness in the residuum of exhausted feeling--sparkling stalactites, formed by continual drippings from the cells of an acute and scheming brain upon the bottom of a cavernous and icy heart. If true at all, they are true, thank God, only among the summits of social life, where the scintillations of loveless intellect flash from peak to peak through an atmosphere of frosty splendor. Even if they be better founded and more widely applicable than I believe, their spirit is baleful, their tendency pernicious. They sow in the warm heart of youth the suspicions of the hackneyed worldling, and teach him that to meet and baffle the simulations and dissimulations of his fellows, he must sheathe his innocent spirit in the panoply of craft, subject every movement to the guidance of consummate art, and conceal every generous impulse and each warm emotion beneath the ice of unchanging coldness, or behind the glittering veil of one inscrutable, invincible, and everlasting smile. Asserting the absolute wickedness of all men, and impressing the necessity of a sleepless and universal doubt, they inoculate the tender nurslings of a rising generation with that poisonous wisdom which diffuses a moral death through the pithless trunk and leafless branches of their riper years. When I hear one rehearsing these odious lessons, and affirming that Virtue lives not in the heart of man, I am not so much convinced of her non-existence in the world as I am of her non-residence in the bosom of her slanderer. Whether the upholders of this infamous doctrine find in their own breasts the prototype of the unmitigated moral deformity which they attribute to their race, I shall not attempt to decide. But it is certain that these degraders of humanity are reduced to this dilemma. They either have an internal consciousness of their own utter depravity, which induces them to think all others equally devoid of worth, or from the evidence of history and experience they infer that mankind are entirely abandoned-devils incarnate. If the first be the basis of their belief, they must indeed be wicked--wicked beyond hope, and beyond redemption; for even thieves, cheats, and impostors proceed on the conviction that there is something good, honest, and unsuspecting in the human breast. If they draw the foul tenet and utter the blasphemous libel from testimony and experience, how poorly must they have read the volume of history, how blindly have moved on the theatre of life, not to have seen that humanity is a mixture of good and evil, and that its eventful records are often bright with kindness, and faithfulness, and every virtue, though oftener alas! black with cruelty, and treachery, and crime! Leave, dear youth, leave 'Timon of Athens' and all others, who have outlived, or fooled away their capacities of enjoyment, to gnash their toothless rage at a world they have abused, and, believe me, you may find on the written and unwritten page of human action a thousand deeds of noblest daring and most unswerving love--deeds whose touching moral beauty will thrill through all your frame, causing your eyes to glisten, your flesh to quiver, and your heart to swell.

The aphorisms of Epictetus, Antoninus, Seneca, and others of that class are not, indeed, of the same heartless and freezing character with those of Rochefoucault, and the Chesterfieldian school; yet they are mostly of too Stoical and superhuman a cast to be of much practical benefit to poor human nature. They counsel you, for instance, to bear the gout with patience, by considering that many have had it before you, have it now, and will have it after you; that impatience will not ease your pain; that your were born for suffering and must expect to suffer, and that, at the worst, it cannot last for ever. All mighty, true, and philosophical, no doubt; but the twinged and wincing sufferer cannot extract one grain of comfort from any of these considerations but the last. Sometimes they bid you reflect whether your sorrows are not the consequences of your own crime or folly. The affusion of _this_ 'oil of consolation' is literally the casting of oil upon the fire. It is a sedative for grief resembling a handful of red-pepper thrown into inflamed eyes. It is adding to the agonies of the previous torture the rage of remorse and the bitterness of self-contempt.