第90章 MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS.EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD(3)

It seems forever since you left us,dearest Euthymia!And are you,and is your husband,and Paolo,--good Paolo,--are you all as well and happy as you have been and as you ought to be?I suppose our small village seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in,now that you have become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great city.For all that,it is a pretty busy place this winter,I can tell you.We have sleighing parties,--I never go to them,myself,because I can't keep warm,and my mind freezes up when my blood cools down below 95or 96deg.Fahrenheit.I had a great deal rather sit by a good fire and read about Arctic discoveries.But I like very well to hear the bells'jingling and to see the young people trying to have a good time as hard as they do at a picnic.It may be that they do,but to me a picnic is purgatory and a sleigh-ride that other place,where,as my favorite Milton says,"frost performs the effect of fire."I believe I have quoted him correctly;I ought to,for Icould repeat half his poems from memory once,if I cannot now.

You must have plenty of excitement in your city life.I suppose you recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the "Household Inquisitor:""Mrs.E.K.,very beautiful,in an elegant,"etc.,etc,"with pearls,"etc.,etc.,--as if you were not the ornament of all that you wear,no matter what it is!

I am so glad that you have married a scholar!Why should not Maurice--you both tell me to call him so--take the diplomatic office which has been offered him?It seems to me that he would find himself in exactly the right place.He can talk in two or three languages,has good manners,and a wife who--well,what shall I say of Mrs.Kirkwood but that "she would be good company for a queen,"as our old friend the quondam landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say?

I should so like to see you presented at Court!It seems to me that I should be willing to hold your train for the sake of seeing you in your court feathers and things.

As for myself,I have been thinking of late that I would become either a professional lecturer or head mistress of a great school or college for girls.I have tried the first business a little.Last month I delivered a lecture on Quaternions.I got three for my audience;two came over from the Institute,and one from that men's college which they try to make out to be a university,and where no female is admitted unless she belongs among the quadrupeds.Ienjoyed lecturing,but the subject is a difficult one,and I don't think any one of them had any very clear notion of what I was talking about,except Rhodora,--and I know she did n't.To tell the truth,Iwas lecturing to instruct myself.I mean to try something easier next time.I have thought of the Basque language and literature.

What do you say to that?

The Society goes on famously.We have had a paper presented and read lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked a few of the weaker sort.The writer is that crabbed old Professor of Belles-Lettres at that men's college over there.He is dreadfully hard on the poor "poets,"as they call themselves.It seems that a great many young persons,and more especially a great many young girls,of whom the Institute has furnished a considerable proportion,have taken to sending him their rhymed productions to be criticised,--expecting to be praised,no doubt,every one of them.I must give you one of the sauciest extracts from his paper in his own words:

"It takes half my time to read the 'poems'sent me by young people of both sexes.They would be more shy of doing it if they knew that Irecognize a tendency to rhyming as a common form of mental weakness,and the publication of a thin volume of verse as prima facie evidence of ambitious mediocrity,if not inferiority.Of course there are exceptions to this rule of judgment,but I maintain that the presumption is always against the rhymester as compared with the less pretentious persons about him or her,busy with some useful calling,--too busy to be tagging rhymed commonplaces together.Just now there seems to be an epidemic of rhyming as bad as the dancing mania,or the sweating sickness.After reading a certain amount of manuscript verse one is disposed to anathematize the inventor of homophonous syllabification.[This phrase made a great laugh when it was read.]This,that is rhyming,must have been found out very early,'Where are you,Adam?'

'Here am I,Madam;'but it can never have been habitually practised until after the Fall.

The intrusion of tintinnabulating terminations into the conversational intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled Paradise itself.Milton would not have them even in Paradise Lost,you remember.For my own part,I wish certain rhymes could be declared contraband of written or printed language.Nothing should be allowed to be hurled at the world or whirled with it,or furled upon it or curled over it;all eyes should be kept away from the skies,in spite of os homini sublime dedit;youth should be coupled with all the virtues except truth;earth should never be reminded of her birth;death should never be allowed to stop a mortal's breath,nor the bell to sound his knell,nor flowers from blossoming bowers to wave over his grave or show their bloom upon his tomb.We have rhyming dictionaries,--let us have one from which all rhymes are rigorously excluded.The sight of a poor creature grubbing for rhymes to fill up his sonnet,or to cram one of those voracious,rhyme-swallowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles,makes my head ache and my stomach rebel.Work,work of some kind,is the business of men and women,not the making of jingles!