第20章
"The trail of the serpent is over them all!"All lecturers, all professors, all schoolmasters, have ruts and grooves in their minds into which their conversation is perpetually sliding.Did you never, in riding through the woods of a still June evening, suddenly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of atmosphere beyond? Did you never, in cleaving the green waters of the Back Bay, - where the Provincial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the "Metropolitan" boat-clubs, - find yourself in a tepid streak, a narrow, local gulf-stream, a gratuitous warm-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 referred 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 you! - 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 before the astonished passer-by, - silver-footed, diamond-crowned, rainbow-scarfed, - from the bosom of that fair sheet, sacred to the hymns of quiet batrachians 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 sympathies? 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: [DELPHI] 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 OINOS, - that black 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 MOLOSSA'S, as dear old smattering, chattering, would-be-College-President, Cotton 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 parasitical 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! - ponder thereon!]
- Before you go, this morning, I want to read you a copy of verses.
You will understand by the title that they are written in an imaginary character.I don't doubt they will fit some family-man well enough.I send it forth as "Oak Hall" projects a coat, on APRIORI 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 nurtured 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 of 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 material shape to fit it.There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pockets are full of inspiration.
- Now hear the verses.
THE OLD MAN DREAMS.
O for one hour of youthful joy!
Give back my twentieth spring!
I'd rather laugh a bright-haired boy Than reign a gray-beard king!
Off with the wrinkled spoils of age!
Away with learning's crown!
Tear out life's wisdom-written page, And dash its trophies down!
One moment let my life-blood stream From boyhood's fount of flame!
Give me one giddy, reeling dream Of life all love and fame!
- My listening angel heard the prayer, And calmly smiling, said, "If I but touch thy silvered hair, Thy hasty wish hath sped.
"But is there nothing in thy track To bid thee fondly stay, While the swift seasons hurry back To find the wished-for day?"- Ah, truest soul of womankind!
Without thee, what were life?
One bliss I cannot leave behind:
I'll take - my - precious wife!
- The angel took a sapphire pen And wrote in rainbow dew, "The man would be a boy again, And be a husband too!"- "And is there nothing yet unsaid Before the change appears?
Remember, all their gifts have fled With those dissolving years!"Why, yes; for memory would recall My fond paternal joys;I could not bear to leave them all;
I'll take - my - girl - and - boys!
The smiling angel dropped his pen, -
"Why this will never do;
The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!"And so I laughed, - my laughter woke The household with its noise, -And wrote my dream, when morning broke, To please the gray-haired boys.