they had been built in your parlor or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern foremost, into their "native element," the great ocean of outdoors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes, day, ray, beauty, duty, skies, eyes, other, brother, mountain, fountain, and the like; and so they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a story as the above. Here, turning to our landlady, I used an illustration which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly commended. "Madam," I said, "you can pour three gills and three quarters of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute; but, madam, you could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thousand years." verses, One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such as you see in that of copy - which I don't mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top leathers to an old pair of boot soles and bodies, when I am fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles. Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems" written spring out of the above musical and suggestive coincidences. "Yes?" said our landlady's daughter. I did not address the following remark to her, and I trust, from her limited range of reading, she will never see it; I said it softly to my next neighbor. When a young female wears a flat circular side curl, gummed on each temple, when she walks with a male, not arm in arm, but his arm against the back of hers, and when she says "Yes?" with the note of interrogation, you are generally safe in asking her what wages she gets, and who the "feller" was you saw her with. "What were you whispering?" said the daughter of the house, moistening her lips, as she spoke, in a very engaging manner. "I was only giving some hints on the fine arts." "Yes?" - It is curious to see how the same wants and tastes find the same implements and modes of expression in all times and places. The young ladies of Otaheite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a sort of crinoline arrangement fully equal in radius to the largest spread of our own lady baskets. When I fling a Bay State shawl over my shoulders, I am only taking a lesson from the climate that the Indian had learned before me. A blanket shawl we call it, and not a plaid; and we wear it like the aborigines, and not like the Highlanders. We are the Romans of the modern world, - the great assimilating people. Conflicts and conquests are of course necessary accidents with us, as with our prototypes. And so we come to their style of weapon. Our army sword is the short, stiff, pointed gladius of the Romans; and the American bowie knife is the same tool, modified to meet the daily wants of civilized society. I announce at this table an axiom not to be found in Montesquieu or the journals of Congress : The race that shortens its weapons lengthens its boundaries. Corollary. It was the Polish lance that left Poland at last with nothing of her own to bound. Dropped from her nerveless grasp the shattered spear! What business had Sarmatia to be fighting for liberty with a fifteen-foot pole between her and the breasts of her enemies? If she had but clutched the old Roman and young American weapon, and come to close quarters, there might have been a chance for her; but it would have spoiled the best passage in "The Pleasures of Hope.' Self-made men? Well, yes. Of course everybody likes and respects self-made men. It is a great deal better to be made in that way than not to be made at all. Are any of you younger people old enough to remember that Irishman's house on the marsh at Cambridgeport, which house he built from drain to chimney top with his own hands? It took him a good many years to build it, and one could see that it was a little out of plumb, and a little wavy in outline, and a little queer and uncertain in general aspect. A regular hand could certainly have built a better house; but it was a very good house for a "self-made" carpenter's house, and people praised it, and said how remarkably well the Irishman had succeeded. They never thought of praising the fine blocks of houses a little further on. Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his own jackknife, deserves more credit, if that is all, than the regular engine-turned article, shaped by the most approved pattern, and French-polished by society and travel. But as to saying that one is every way the equal of the other, that is another matter. The right of strict social discrimination of all things and persons, according to their merits, native or acquired, is one of the most precious republican privileges. I take the liberty to exercise it, when I say, that, other things being equal, in most relations of life I prefer a man of family. What do I mean by a man of family?O, I'll give you a general idea of what I mean. Let us give him a first-rate fit out; it costs us nothing. Four or five generations of gentlemen and gentlewomen -among them a member of His Majesty's Council for the Province, a Governor or so, one or two Doctors of Divinity, a member of Congress, not later than the time of topboots with tassels. Family portraits. The member of the Council, by Smibert. The great merchant uncle, by Copley, full length, sitting in his armchair, in a velvet cap and flowered robe, with a globe by him, to show the range of his commercial transactions, and letters with large red seals lying round, one directed conspicuously to The Honorable, etc., etc. Great-grandmother, by the same artist; brown satin, lace very fine, hands superlative; grand old lady, stiffish, but imposing. Her mother, artist unknown; flat, angular, hanging sleeves; parrot on fist. A pair of Stuarts, viz., 1. A superb full-blown, medieval gentleman, with a fiery dash of Tory blood in his veins, tempered down with that of a fine old rebel grandmother, and warmed up with the best of old India Madeira; his face is one flame of ruddy sunshine; his ruffled shirt rushes out of his bosom with an impetuous generosity, as if it would drag his heart after it; and his smile is good for twenty thousand dollars to the Hos pital, besides ample bequests to all relatives and dependents. 2. Lady of the same; remarkable cap; high waist, as in time of Empire; bust à la Josephine; wisps of curls, like celery tips, at sides of forehead; complexion clear and warm, like rosecordial. As for the miniatures by Malbone, we don't count them in the gallery. Books, too, with the names of old college students in them, -family names; you will find them at the head of their respective classes in the days when students took rank on the catalogue from their parents' condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations of youthful progenitors and Hic liber est meus on the title-page. A set of Hogarth's original plates. Pope, original edition, 15 volumes, London, 1717. Barrow on the lower shelves, in folio. Tillotson on the upper, in a little dark platoon of octodecimos. Some family silver; a string of wedding and funeral rings; the arms of the family curiously blazoned; the same in worsted, by a maiden aunt. If the man of family has an old place to keep these things in, furnished with claw-foot chairs and black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged mirrors, and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is complete. No, my friends, I go (always, other things being equal) for the man that inherits family traditions and the cumulative humanities of at least four or five generations. Above all things, as a child, he should have tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of books that have not handled them from infancy. Do you suppose our dear Professor over there ever read "Poli Synopsis," or consulted "Castelli Lexicon," while he was growing up to their stature? Not he; but virtue passed through the hem of their parchment and leather garments whenever he touched them, as the precious drugs sweated through the bat's handle in the Arabian story. I tell you he is at home wherever he smells the invigorating fragrance of Russia leather. No self-made man feels so. One may, it is true, have all the antecedents I have spoken of, and yet be a boor or a shabby fellow. One may have none of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the better of the two. I should have felt more nervous about the late comet, if I had thought the world was ripe. But it is very green yet, if I am not mistaken; and besides, there is a great deal of coal to use up, which I cannot bring myself to think was made for nothing. If certain things, which seem to me essential to a millennium, had come to pass, I should have been frightened; but they haven't. Perhaps you would like to hear my LATTER-DAY WARNINGS. When legislators keep the law, When banks dispense with bolts and locks, When berries, whortle When lawyers take what they would give, Save when they fast for conscience' sake, When one that hath a horse on sale Without a lie for every nail That holds the iron on the hoof, When in the usual place for rips Our gloves are stitched with special care, And guarded well the whalebone tips |
