Part 5

'My dear child,' replied Nella, 'my sister's children used to be mortally ashamed of catching cold because a nurse ridiculed their coughing. Yet they caught cold quite the same. What the _world_ thinks of young men, and what it expects of them, causes a vast amount of hypocrisy. The very natural and creditable yearning for enjoyment, which is keenest in life at that age, is unnoticed or sternly repressed. It isn't, as a general rule, before a man becomes half-blasé that he _begins_ to be knowing or free enough to be happy: and then he must drink when no longer thirsty. Bless me, why, didn't Dr. Maybaum tell us yesterday that when he was at college the _only_ provisions made there were to secure study and 'moral demeanor?' 'The boys would find amusement for themselves soon enough,' said the gouty, opium-steeped, old Incapable of a President. And they _did_ find amusement: the amusements of fools and blackguards combined. Ah! for my part I don't see why as much pains shouldn't be given to supplying youth with recreation, as with 'education,' as people call education. Nature craves pleasure as much as food. I am only a woman, consequently I have been barred as in a cage my life long; but I have good strong eyes, and I have seen something through those bars. I tell you that, with all the suffering on earth--bereavements, poverty, hunger, disease and oppression, that which goads man most is the craving for pleasure, for recreation, or 'distraction.' Teachers and parents close their eyes to the existence of this terrible power, and moralists either treat it as an evil or try to feed it on gruel. The Puritans all hold it to be the downright inspiration of the devil: as they do every thing which is beautiful and joyous like it. Ah! if they could feel as I do, what a stupendous flood of joy and of beauty life is capable of taking in! What _might_ be done for the young if the true power of their minds was understood and provided for! What men of genius, what great and _good_ men might spring up by thousands, who now go to destruction, if it were only understood that enjoyment and pleasure, health and beauty, properly cared for, may be made the great stimulants to exertion. Yes, and to nobility of mind and tenderness. Ah! the sufferings of lonely young hearts in silent chambers for want of this.'

Nella's voice quivered with deep emotion as she spoke. I saw that she had touched one of the depths of her religion of humanity. As she went on, her fingers played with, and she unconsciously placed on her head a beautiful long Arab cap--a fez, which Hiram used to wear. Suddenly she sprang up, and as her ocean of black hair rolled down in ripples to one side, she threw up one beautiful white arm, and said: 'The dear boys, if I only had the governing of them all! Ah! I tell you I would captain them gloriously up to manhood! I have heart enough for _all_ who suffer, for _all_ who fail to get their rights; and the greatest of human rights is to attain the fullest development of _every_ capacity. _Heart!!_ If giving a kiss with all my heart and soul to any youth living, would be a memory of joy to him for years, would lead him on like a light, and be a sweet memory in sorrow, I would _give_ it: freely as a cup of water to the parched pilgrim. Freely! Yes, to thousands on thousands. 'I _mean_ it.''

Oh! that you could have seen the tears rise in her great black eyes. Or how beautiful Nella was when she said this. Wild, and strange, and inspired, as though she saw far in advance some beautiful solemn coming promise, too great for words. Then graceful as a cloud she sank down into the chair, and covered her forehead with her hands. And there was not one present who did not regard her with respect and love. She is a wonder, this Nella. One who in stormy times would be one of the women of the Nation and of History.

But it was not long before all the good folks had subsided into the old calm. The girls went on working: there was the old occasional snip of scissors and bump of worsted balls as they run over the floor; and as there is considerable Liberty Hall in our circle, I lit a segar, and rolling back into the big chair, (such a giant old nest of elastic softness you never did,) I began to _think_.

First I turned to what Nella had been saying of the small amount of care the world's genius takes of the growing generation, just at the time when it needs it most.

Then what a raft of things--here I made a short discursion off, trying to recal a story I once heard of a nigger preacher, who was also a boatman, and who exhorted his hearers to flee frum de raft to come--de great big raft all on fiah dat'll smash yer boats and burn 'em up--glory!

Then I came up to time again, remembering what the world didn't care for, and what a wholesale careless, head-over-heels way it has of caring for what it does attend to, and crack up and idolize. There's history for instance. I'm not smart--wish I was--but one thing _don't_ humbug me, and that's the fashion people teach the boys history.

'All the individuals _on our side_, in all great times, were all saints. I don't believe it,' I spoke aloud.

'I wouldn't believe it, Mr. Sloper,' said Nella, smiling. 'Every revolution had some heroes in it and some fools.'

'A great many of every body, I shouldn't wonder,' I replied. 'Some of the cream and a great deal of skim. Lots of notional people, such as turn Mormons; lots of small-pattern folk, who do the loud talk for their corner-grocery; any quantity of owly follows, who've got hold of a Tom Paine or a Volney, and nothing much else--the same sort who get moony over tracts or perpetual motion. We lose sight of them, though. Yet they make up an immense lot of the rank and file in all great carryings-on which have a new idea in the middle.'

'There was a _canaille_ on both sides in the great Protestant Reformation,' said Nella.

('French for tag-rag and bob-tail,' quoth Hiram.)

'And I suppose that even the Christians of the first age had one.'

'Bet your Cashmere on that,' quoth Sam. 'But you mustn't say it.'

'Mustn't say the _truth_?' I replied. 'Was the American Revolution a lie, because it had Arnolds, and Tories, and all sorts of scallawags?'

'Come,' said Nella, 'this puts me in mind of something. I've got in my desk the queerest poem! It's on this subject. It tries to show, if I remember right, that even in a time which we always think of as being without low and vulgar people, there were probably some who went into ignorant extremes and abused every thing. Sam, suppose you read it.'

And in a few minutes she produced the document. It had been given to a friend of hers by the editor of the _Family Pudding_, who couldn't quite make any thing out of it, except that the style was inelegant and the moral obscure, and who had therefore indorsed it as 'rejected.'

And turning himself round, so as to face the great multitude, Sam began:

The Legend of Crispin.

BY MEISTER KARL.

WHEN the Romans, the never-to-be-forgotten Romans-- Romans, Roman citizens, S. P. Q. R.-- Travelled out of Pompeii, Pompeii! When Mount Vesuvius was pouring down her lava, Dust--Ashes--Scoria, Ruin, Desolation, Eternal Misery! Fire-works, Annihilation, And Things.

They left a Sentry standing at the door, They did. Citizens went rushing past him, Rushing like hurlycanes, Like hydrants, Like rifle-bullets on their travels, Carrying baggage-- Some of it marked 'LUCIUS SEMPRONIUS,' Some of it 'DRUSILLA.' Band-boxes, inscribed with the _nomina_ of MARCIA MESSALINA; The trunks of FLAVIUS GRACCHUS, The bronzes of SPURIUS, The Elephantine books of LAUFELLA, Of ÆGLE, LALAGE, CHIONE, DIONE, CLODIA, SULPITIA, LAIS, BASSA, And the traps of all that fast crowd, The jolly, half-Greek Romans of that Blue-Sea town. It was a fast party, and no mistake; Used to cutting up high old didoes, Going in on Falernian, _Nunc pede libero_, Myrrhine cups, Serican mantles, beautiful slaves, Harp and psaltery, kisses and wine, _alma_ VENUS! Live and love, you beauty--Beauty is Divine! Go it, girls--go it while you're young! _Sic vita--hodie nobis. Disce bone clerice virgines amare, Quare sciunt dulcia oscula prestare. Juventutem floridam tuum conservare, Et cetera._ Now they ran, shrieking, bewildered, pale-white, Scared to fits-- Poor, pretty, little unfortunate devils, Having a hard old time of it: While a newly-escaped convict, a fellow named CRISPIN, Who was to have been thrown to the lions in the circus, But who had got out of his cage and _feliciter evasit_ Just escaped martyrdom and canonization, Stood on a dung-hill, preaching Millerism To the unfortunate Pompeians. 'Sarves yer right,' quoth he, In uncommonly bad Latin. He was a Thracian shoe-maker! 'Sarves yer right-- _Dives eritis_--you used to be rich as blazes, Fat and sarcy--every thing but ragged, Dern you! Now things is workin'-- O _Domine Deus_! an't I glad! Now you're all goin to thunder Along with yer blamed old gods and goddesses, JUPITER JOVIS, MARS, APOLLO! Oh! git ëout! DIANA! Talk about _her_ bein' decent! Shaw! Law bless your soul! she an't no better than she should be. JUNO! she _was_ a nice lot, she was I _don't_ think: Didn't marry her brother nor nothin', I spose! HERCULES! There's a pretty character now, to make a god of! Why, he never was nothing better'n a sort of sporting man: Used to go boxin' rëound in a low way, An' killin' things. Worship him! I'd as soon worship an old chaw tobacco: Fact! Just as live's not. MERCURY! Sounds well, don't it, to be prayin' to _him_? Shows yer derned thieves any how, to think of such a thing. Why, he's nothin' but a pick-pocket, A common burgular; a hoss-stealer; A fellow who shoves the queer and buzzes blokes, as they say in their low slang. That's what _he_ is. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! 'Fore I'd be seen in his temple, I'd go worship CLOACINA. Fact! That's what _I'd_ do. Oh! they're a putty set--these divinities of yourn: MINERVY, for instance. _She_ don't know nothin', She an't o' no account. _She's_ a humbug. Why, I know a gal, PAULA INNOCENTIA; lives round by the Forum; sells slop. Kin read the 'Pistle to the Romans right strut through-- Well _she_ can. That's more'n MINERVY ever did. Then, there's NEPTUNE! Now I arsk you as reas'nable men, _Don't_ you consider him as an old blower--a regular gas-bag. Feller citizens: I arsk you to argy this point temperately and soberly, without usin' no aggravatin language. Don't you think a man must be a blarsted old fool to believe in any such narsty stuff as this beastly _my_-thology of yourn? Shaw! There an't no use talkin', It's all a dead cock in the pit, the hull of this Olympus: I don't say nothin agin PLUTO, however, (Only you ought to call him SATAN by rights.) _Some_ of you'll find out mighty soon, _I_ calculate, whether _he's_ a smellin' rëound or not. Rather! Oh! go 'long with you. Sho-o-o-o! Yeu narsty, indecent, leëwd, unproper critters! Yeu miserable coots. Fellers with about half the interlect of a common-sized shad, Yeu goneys. _Ya--ya--yap--yap_--BOO! Yeu don't have an imparticularly hard time on 't. Sa-ay! Layin' off on _triclinia_, drinkin' Falernian out 'er _pocula_, and snake-handled Etruskin _calices_, _Serpens in patera Myronis arte_, To the health of VENUS! _Ea-au-au-a'a'a'h!_ You make me sick! VENUS!! _Bibis venenum_, you drink serpent pison and no mistake under them 'ere circumstances. VENUS! Sh-aw! She 's just the filthiest.... ....dern'dest.... ....ugh--ugh!' (Here he grew black in the face with howling and spitting.) 'Beautiful indeed! I _hate_ beauty. Blarst it! 'Tan't moral. I'd rather see the lousiest old slave a-goin', Than all the clean-washed beauty of all Lesbos, Corinth, Athens, Rhodes, Or any other man. Look-a-here, you goneys! There's a statue of VENUS now: Mighty putty--an't it? _Vide, dico, vobis!_ Here's a big pavin'-stun. I'm a-goin' to smash her nose in. I'll spile some of your pretty for you--_moecha damnata!_ You carn't do nothin' to one of the Chosen, you know! Here goes at her! Rip! snap!--one, two, three!' And it flew from his hands. The multitude, in terror, Paused in their flight, shocked at the sacrilege, Waiting the wrath of the foam-white-limbed Goddess APHRODITE, eternal daughter of sun-shine, Of the blue-sea and beauty infinite. Was it the accursed stone which struck the features Chiselled by PHIDIAS or SCOPAS? Was it the shock of the earthquake? But as the mountain gave a roar tremendous, As though all Orcus had burst loose on earth, And in a flash, as of all JOVE'S lightning, Down fell the marble queen of loveliness, Crushing to kindred dirt, in one foul mass, CRISPIN the Scoffer. Lo! the gods are just!

'That's a rather Remarkable,' quoth Sam, as he wound up.

('How well you read!' exclaimed four voices at once.)

'It's a great pity!' said Amelia, 'that he broke that beautiful statue. How well it would have looked, Mace, on that pedestal in the corner of the library. I do wish you d buy something to put on it. It looks so empty. I saw a lovely bronze Psyche at Haughwout's the other----'

'Well,' said I, 'I 'spose I must hoe out my row and finish the furnishing: so send her up!'

'And the poem, Nella?'

'Lo! the gods are just,' replied Nella, repeating the last line. Ah! I hope so. I hope that _no_ form of beauty which man ever looked at with love, ever did die, or ever will. I should think that something were wrong if I really believed that that statue which Crispin broke will never be seen again in all eternity by me. No; every lovely face and flower and breath of music lives somewhere, as a grain lies in the earth waiting for the spring. Nature has the germ and the secret: all _will_ rise again more beautiful than ever.'

LIVING ALONE.

BY HENRY P. LELAND.

SILENT he sat in the forest shade, Silent, but not alone-- He and his hound and the unseen form Of one then dead and gone. Not dead, while she lives in his throbbing heart: Not gone, while her dark eyes make him start: Living alone!

Heartless the trees, soulless the rocks, Nothing but wood and stones? No sympathy here for sorrowful hearts, No voices with gentle tones? Not heartless the forest while joy it yields! Not soulless the rock that a sad heart shields! Living alone!

Silent he walked in the cloudless night, Her eyes the stars above; Her voice in the thrilling wind from the south; His world--her world of love!-- Love, that will live and the loved one gone; Love, that will live and forever live on-- Living alone!

Heart of the forest, and soul of the rock, Star eyes in heaven that gleam, Voice of the wind that thrilled his heart, And are ye all a dream? Dream! then let him through life dream on. Dream! yes, DREAM till life is gone! Living alone!

THE TAXIDERMIST.

BY FITZ-HUGH LUDLOW.

I.--THE OLD MAID'S CHAPTER.

----'DIE, if dying I may give Life to one who asks to live, And more nearly, Dying thus, resemble thee!'

'CIEL! Zat is ze true heroique! Zat is ze very far finest ting in all ze literature anglaise! Zere have not been made vun more sublime poesie by your immortel Villiams Shakyspeare! Glorieux! Vat a grandeur moral of ze woman who vill vonce die for her love!'

'_Once?_ I knew a woman who died _thrice_ for _hers_.'

The enthusiastic admirer of Longfellow was a French Professor in one of our American Colleges, by name Gautier Bonenfant. The person who met his panegyric with such a strange response, was Orloff Ruricson, by birth a Swede, by adoption a New-Yorker, and by trade the proprietor of a Natural History Museum. These two, with myself, were sitting on the west piazza of the little inn at Kaaterskill Falls. All of us hard-working men in the hard-working season; but on this tenth day of July, eighteen hundred and fifty-nine, soaking the dust out of our brains in a bath of sunlight and mountain air, forgetting in company that life was not all one sweet vacation.

Bonenfant and I looked at Ruricson with puzzled faces. Though a good fellow and a wisely humorous one, he seldom said any thing whose cleverness lay in a double-entendre.

'Pray, who is that remarkable woman?' said I.

'It is my wife,' replied Orloff Ruricson soberly.

'And she die, von, two, tree time?' asked Bonenfant, with uplifted eye-brows.

'And she died three times for her love,' repeated Orloff Ruricson.

'Perhaps you would have no objection to tell us exactly what you mean?' said I.

'None at all, to _you two_. With this proviso. I know that you, John Tryon, write for the magazines. For aught I know, Bonenfant here, may be a correspondent of the _Constitutionnel_.'

'Mais non! I am ze mose red of Red Republican!'

'Perhaps you are Ledru Rollin, then, travelling in disguise to hunt materials for a book. At any rate, I must exact of both of you a promise, that if a single lineament of the story I am going to relate, ever gets into print through your agency, it shall be represented as fictitious, and under assumed names.'

'C'est fait!'

'It's a bargain!'

'You see, I live by my Museum. And if the public once suspected that I was a visionary man, the press and the pulpit and general opinion would run me down immediately. I should be accused of denying the originality of the human race inferentially, through my orang-outang; of teaching lessons of maternal infidelity through my stuffed ostrich; of seducing youth into a seafaring life by my preserved whale. No more schools, at half-price on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by their principal; no more favorable notices by editors, 'who have been with their families,' for you, Orloff Ruricson!

'And what I am going to tell you will seem visionary. Even to you. Nevertheless, it is as real as any of the hardest facts in my daily life. Take my solemn word for it.

'When I was ten years old, my parents emigrated from Sweden to this country. At the age of twelve, I lost my father. At thirteen, I was apprenticed to a man who stuffed birds in Dutch-street. At fourteen, I was motherless. At twenty, my term was out, and I began to think of setting up as a taxidermist on my own hook. There! The Biographical Dictionary can't beat that summary of ten years, for compactness!

'I made a very liberal offer to my master; in fact, proposed to take him into partnership. He nobly refused to avail himself of my generosity. Bird-stuffing, even in New-York, was not a very lucrative business, and would hardly support two, he suggested. What did I think of one of the river towns? Albany, or Hudson, or Poughkeepsie, for instance? I did not tell him what; but in reality, I thought so little of them, that within ten days after my indenture was cancelled, I had taken a little nook in the Bowery, with window enough to show off three blue-jays, a chameleon, and a very young wild-cat, (whose domesticity I may, at this day, acknowledge to have been slandered by that name,) and sufficient door to display the inscription: 'ORLOFF RURICSON, Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor.' Even at that day, you see, Bonenfant, we impostors had begun to steal your literary title.'

'Sacrebleu! I do very moshe vish zat ze only ting ze plenty humbug professors now-a-days _stuff_ vas ze _birds_!'

'Well, _I_ may have stuffed the public a little, too. At any rate, they patronized me far better than I had any reason to expect. By the time I was of age, I had moved my business one door farther up, to a shop treble the size of the first; and instead of sleeping under and eating on top of my show-case, as I began, I occupied lodgings with a respectable cutler's widow, second-story front of a brick house on Third Avenue, and came down to my store every morning at nine o'clock, like any wholesale grocer.

'I had been installed in my comfortable quarters only six weeks, when a new lodger came to the boarding-house. The first thing that I knew of it, was my beholding, directly opposite me at a Sunday dinner, the most preternaturally homely face I had ever seen. As I took my seat, and opened my napkin, the cutler's widow inclined her head in the direction of the apparition, and uttered the words: 'Miss Brentnall.' I cast a glance and a bow in the same quarter, pronouncing the name after her. 'Mr. Ruricson,' said the landlady laconically, and nodded toward me. 'Mr. Ruricson,' repeated the miracle of plainness, in a voice so sweet that I could not rid myself of the impression that it must be the ventriloquism of some one else. At the same moment she smiled. The smile was as incongruous with the face as the voice; and for that glancing half-minute, Miss Brentnall was a dozen shades more endurable.

'Cruikshank, acting as collaborator with Salvator Rosa, would fall short of any thing more ambitious than a slight sketch of the woman's unearthly homeliness. I dare hardly attempt describing her in words, but for your sake, let me try.

'Her hair was like Bonenfant's Republicanism, 'the most red of red,' but without the usual characteristic of that color, silky fineness. In fact, unless you have been through a New-England corn-field in the dog-days, and noticed the very crispest of all the crisp tassels which a brazen sun has been at work baking for the month previous; unless you have seen some peculiarly unsheltered specimen, to the eye like dried blood, and to the fingers like dust and ashes, you cannot imagine the impression produced by Miss Brentnall's hair. I really trembled lest our awkward waiter's sleeve should touch it, in serving the vegetables, and send it crumbling from her head in the form of a crimson powder. Her forehead was in every respect immense--high, broad, and protuberant enough for the tallest man who ever prided himself on his intellect; still, it might have been pardoned, if it had been fair withal, instead of sallow, wrinkled and freckled. A nose, whose only excuse for its mammoth maturity of size and its Spitzenberg depth of color, lay in the fact that it was exposed to the torrid glare of the tresses, depended, like the nest of the hanging-bird, between a pair of ferrety eyes, which seemed mere pen-knife gashes in a piece of red morocco. At that day, I could not swear to the pupils; but a profane man of sensitive mind, might have sworn at them, for they seemed to be a damp--not a swimming but a soaked damp--pale blue. Flanking the nose, imagine an inch and a half on either side, of dingy parchment, stretched almost to tearing, and you will get the general idea of the sides of Miss Brentnall's face; I will not travesty the word 'cheeks,' by calling them that. Below the nose, a mouth which would have been deformedly small for a child two weeks old; below that, a chin which hardly showed at all in front, and, taking a side view, seemed only an eccentric protraction of the scraggy neck to which it was attached. Now for the figure. High, stooping shoulders; a long, flat, narrow, mannish waist; the lower extremities immoderately short; immense feet: group these in one person, and you have a form to which I know only two parallels out of the world of nightmare, a German wooden doll, and Miss Brentnall.'

'Diable de laideur! You see zat viz your own eyes?'

'Yes, Bonenfant.'

'And yet you be yourself not vare ugly, after all!'