And the receipts which thence might flow, We could divide between us; Still more attractions to combine, Beside these services of mine, I will throw in a very fine (It would do nicely for a sign) Original Titian's Venus.' Another offered handsome fees If Knott would get Demosthenes (Nay, his mere knuckles, for more ease) To rap a few short sentences; Or if, for want of proper keys, His Greek might make confusion, On Public Elocution. Have not a just conception: Yet, somehow, when a search they made, Was always there before them; The spirits seemed exceeding tame, Call whom you fancied, and he came; The shades august of eldest fame You summoned with an awful ease; Of cunning Mephistopheles, With their astounding glamour; (Sometimes in shocking grammar) With the spirit of his hammer: Whate'er you asked was answered, yet One could not very deeply get Into the obliging spirits' debt, Because they used the alphabet In all communications, And new revealings (though sublime) Rapped out, one letter at a time, With boggles, hesitations, With too excessive rations, Might ask a whole day's patience. "T was strange ('mongst other things) to find In what odd sets the ghosts combined, By some one of the company; Diaz, Josephus, Richard Roe, Old Grimes, Young Norval, Swift, Brissot, Confucius, Hiram Smith, and Fo, With Franklin's expedition; Sometimes the spirits made mistakes, In science or in mystery; They knew so little (and that wrong) Yet rapped it out so bold and strong, One would have said the unnumbered throng Had been Professors of History; Were just the ones that blundered; Nothing could seem absurder; Poor Colonel Jones they all abused And finally downright accused The poor old man of murder; 'T was thus; by dreadful raps was shown Some on ye still are on my books!" A duly licensed follower Of that much - wandering trade that wins Slow profit from the sale of tins And various kinds of hollow-ware; And (the same night) him ferried That what he said was not a lie, And that he did not stir this Foul matter, out of any spite But from a simple love of right; Which statements the Nine Worthies, Rabbi Akiba, Charlemagne, Seth, Colley Cibber, General Wayne, Cambyses, Tasso, Tubal-Cain, The owner of a castle in Spain, Jehanghire, and the Widow of Nain, (The friends aforesaid,) made more plain And by loud raps attested; To the same purport testified Plato, John Wilkes, and Colonel Pride Eliab this occasion seized, Of the Eleven Thousand Virgins! Knott was perplexed and shook his head, He did not wish his child to wed With a suspected murderer, (For, true or false, the rumor spread,) But as for this roiled life he led, "It would not answer," so he said, "To have it go no furderer." At last, scarce knowing what it meant, Accordingly, this artless maid The third door south from Bagg's Arcade,) And gave her hand to Hiram Slade, From which time forth, the ghosts were laid, And ne'er gave trouble after; And found thereunder a jaw-bone, Successive broods of laughter; In color like molasses, Which surgeons, called from far and wide, Upon the horror to decide, Having put on their glasses, May have belonged to Mr. Snooks, From human bones to bare bones." Still, if to Jaalam you go down, And one by Perez Tinkham; Two curious facts which Prince Lee Boo Rapped clearly to a chosen few Whereas the others think 'em A trick got up by Doctor Slade With Deborah the chambermaid And that sly cretur Jinny. That all the revelations wise, At which the Brownites made big eyes, And, last week, did n't Eliab Snooks That no case to his mind occurs (So say the best authorities;) Which ten cannot gloss over, Miss Knott missed not her lover. FRAGMENTS OF AN UNFINISHED POEM In the note introducing Fitz Adam's Story, infra p. 411, will be found a brief account of the unfinished poem of which this is a fragment. I AM a man of forty, sirs, a native of East Haddam, And have some reason to surmise that I descend from Adam; But what's my pedigree to you? That I will soon unravel; I've sucked my Haddam-Eden dry, therefore desire to travel, And, as a natural consequence, presume I need n't say, I wish to write some letters home and have those letters p [I spare the word suggestive of those grim Next Morns that mount Clump, Clump, the stairways of the brain with -"Sir, my small account," And, after every good we gain Love, Fame, Wealth, Wisdom —still, As punctual as a cuckoo clock, hold up their little bill, The garçons in our Café of Life, by dreaming us forgot Sitting, like Homer's heroes, full and musing God knows what, Till they say, bowing, S'il vous plait, voila, Messieurs, la note!] I would not hint at this so soon, but in our callous day, The tollman Debt, who drops his bar across the world's highway, Great Cæsar in mid-march would stop, if Scot-free from Dan to Beersheba upon a Nay, as long back as Bess's time, when Walsingham went over Ambassador to Cousin France, at Canterbury and Dover He was so fleeced by innkeepers that, ere he quitted land, He wrote to the Prime Minister to take the knaves in hand. If I with staff and scallop-shell should try my way to win, Would Bonifaces quarrel as to who should take me in? Or would my pilgrim's progress end where Bunyan started his on, And my grand tour be round and round the backyard of a prison ? I give you here a saying deep and therefore, haply true; 'T is out of Merlin's prophecies, but quite as good as new: The question boath for men and meates longe boyages ht beginne Lhes in a notshell, rather sahe lhes in a case of tinne. But, though men may not travel now, as in the Middle Ages, With self-sustaining retinues of little giltedged pages, Yet one may manage pleasantly, where'er he likes to roam, By sending his small pages (at so much per small page) home; And if a staff and scallop-shell won't serve so well as then, Our outlay is about as small-just paper, ink, and pen. Be thankful! Humbugs never die, more than the wandering Jew; Bankrupt, they publish their own deaths, slink for a while from view, Then take an alias, change the sign, and the old trade renew; Indeed, 't is wondrous how_each_Age, though laughing at the Past, Insists on having its tight shoe made on the same old last; How it is sure its system would break up at once without The bunion which it will believe hereditary There, 'tween each doze, it whiffs and sips and watches with a sneer The green recruits that trudge and sweat where it had swinked whilere, And sighs to think this soon spent zeal should be in simple truth The only interval between old Fogyhood and Youth: "Well," thus it muses, "well, what odds? "T is not for us to warn; 'T will be the same when we are dead, and was ere we were born; Without the Treadmill, too, how grind our store of winter's corn? Had we no stock, nor twelve per cent. received from Treadmill shares, We might... but these poor devils at last will get our easy-chairs. High aims and hopes have great rewards, they, too, serene and snug, Shall one day have their soothing pipe and their enlivening mug; From Adam, empty-handed Youth hath always heard the hum Of Good Times Coming, and will hear until the last day come; Young ears hear forward, old ones back, and, while the earth rolls on, Full-handed Eld shall hear recede the steps of Good Times Gone; Ah what a cackle we set up whene'er an The great New Era dawns, the age of Thought, sure, I feel life stir within, each day with greater strength, When lo, the chick! from former chicks he differed not a jot, But grew and crew and scratched and went, like those before, to pot!" So muse the dim Emeriti, and, mournful though it be, I must confess a kindred thought hath sometimes come to me, Who, though but just of forty turned, have heard the rumorous fame Of nine and ninety Coming Men, all coming till they came. Pure Mephistopheles all this? the vulgar nature jeers? Good friend, while I was writing it, my eyes were dim with tears; Thrice happy he who cannot see, or who his eyes can shut, Life's deepest sorrow is contained in that small word there - But! We're pretty nearly crazy here with change and go ahead, With flinging our caught bird away for two i' th' bush instead, With butting 'gainst the wall which we declare shall be a portal, And questioning Deeps that never yet have oped their lips to mortal; We're growing pale and hollow-eyed, and out of all condition, With mediums and prophetic chairs, and crickets with a mission, (The most astounding oracles since Balaam's donkey spoke, 'T would seem our furniture was all of Dodonean oak.) Make but the public laugh, be sure 't will take you to be somebody; "T will wrench its button from your clutch, my densely earnest glum body; "T is good, this noble earnestness, good in its place, but why Make great Achilles' shield the pan to bake a penny pie? Why, when we have a kitchen-range, insist that we shall stop, And bore clear down to central fires to broil our daily chop? Excalibur and Durandart are swords of price, but then Why draw them sternly when you wish to trim your nails or pen? Small gulf between the ape and man; you bridge it with your staff; But it will be impassable until the ape can laugh; No, no, be common now and then, be sensible, be funny, And, as Siberians bait their traps for bears with pots of honey, From which ere they'll withdraw their snouts, they'll suffer many a clublick, So bait your moral figure-of-fours to catch the Orson public. |