第89章
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 consciousness, how closely he is shut up for the most part.- Do you not remember something like this? July, between 1and 2, P.M., Fahrenheit 96 degrees, or thereabout.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 several blocks distant; - never knew there were any babies in the neighborhood before.Tinman pounding something that clatters dreadfully, - very distinct, but don't remember any tinman's shop near by.Horses stamping on pavement to get off flies.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: stroll 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.
- I 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 of themselves for money.A popular author can print his lecture; if he deliver it, it is a case of QUAESTUMCORPORE, 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, and should prefer it so to hearing it from any other person, 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 himself before an audience for hire, then he acts unworthily.But a true word, fresh from the lips of a true man, is worth paying for, at the rate of eight dollars a day, or even of fifty dollars a lecture.The taunt must be an outbreak of jealousy against the renowned 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 SCHOOLMISTRESS.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 Ipitied our landlady.It took her all of a suddin, - she said.Had not known that we was keepin company, and never mistrusted anything particular.Ma'am was right to better herself.Didn't look very rugged to take care of a femily, but could get hired haalp, 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 permitted crushing out of flowering instincts.Life is maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sentiments.In the long catalogue of scientific cruelties there is hardly anything quite so painful to think of 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 human 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 experiments.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, 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 her most.How many have withered and wasted under as slow a torment in the walls of that larger Inquisition which we call Civilization!