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THE AUTOCRAT 
 
 OF 
 
 THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 
 
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 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
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 MDCCCC 
 
Copyright, 1858, 1882, 1886, and 1891, 
 BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Horghtoi. & Co. 
 
TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT OF 
 THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 TWENTT-FIYE years more have passed since the si* 
 lence of the preceding twenty-five years was broken 
 by the first words of the self-recording personage 
 who lends his title to these pages, in the "Atlantic 
 Monthly " for November, 1857. The children of 
 those who first read these papers as they appeared 
 are still reading them as kindly as their fathers and 
 mothers read them a quarter of a century ago. And 
 now, for the first time for many years I have read 
 them myself, thinking that they might be improved 
 by various corrections and changes. 
 
 But it is dangerous to tamper in cold blood and in 
 after life with what was written in the glow of an 
 earlier period. Its very defects are a part of its or 
 ganic individuality. It would spoil any character 
 these records may have to attempt to adjust them 
 to the present age of the world or of the author. We 
 have all of us, writer and readers, drifted away from 
 many of our former habits, tastes, and perhaps beliefs. 
 The world could spare every human being who was 
 living when the first sentence of these papers was 
 written ; its destinies would be safe in the hands of 
 the men and women of twenty-five years and under. 
 
VI TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT. 
 
 This book was written for a generation which knew 
 nothing or next to nothing of war, and hardly dreamed 
 of it ; which felt as if invention must have exhausted 
 itself in the miracles it had already wrought. To-day, 
 in a small sea-side village of a few hundred inhabit 
 ants, I see the graveyard fluttering with little flags 
 that mark the soldiers' graves ; we read, by the light 
 the rocks of Pennsylvania have furnished for us, all 
 that is most important in the morning papers of the 
 civilized world ; the lightning, so swift to run our er 
 rands, stands shining over us, white and steady as the 
 moonbeams, burning, but unconsumed ; we talk with 
 people in the neighboring cities as if they were at our 
 elbow, and as our equipages flash along the highway, 
 the silent bicycle glides by us and disappears in the 
 distance. All these since 1857, and how much more 
 than these changes in our every-day conditions ! I can 
 say without offence to-day that which called out the 
 most angry feelings and the hardest language twenty- 
 five years ago. I may doubt everything to-day if I 
 will only do it civilly. 
 
 I cannot make over again the book and those which 
 followed it, and I will not try to mend old garments 
 with new cloth. Let the sensible reader take it for 
 granted that the author would agree with him in 
 changing whatever he would alter, in leaving out what 
 ever he would omit, if it seemed worth while to tam 
 per with what was finished long ago. The notes which 
 have been added will not interrupt the current of the 
 conversational narrative. 
 
 I can never be too grateful for the tokens of regard 
 which these papers and those which followed them 
 have brought me. The kindness of my far-off friends 
 has sometimes over-taxed my power of replying to 
 
TO THE READERS OF THE AUTOCRAT. Vll 
 
 them, but they may be assured that their pleasant 
 words were always welcome, however insufficiently ac 
 knowledged. 
 
 I have experienced the friendship of my readers so 
 long that I cannot help anticipating some measure of 
 its continuance. If I should feel the burden of cor 
 respondence too heavily in the coming years, I desire 
 to record in advance my gratitude to those whom I 
 may not be able to thank so fully and so cordially as 
 I could desire. 
 
 BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., August 29, 1882. 
 
PKEFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. 
 
 ANOTHER decade has nearly closed since the above 
 Preface was written. The Autocrat still finds read 
 ers, among the young as well as among the old. The 
 children of my early readers were writing to me about 
 my books, especially The Autocrat, as I mentioned in 
 that other Preface. Now it is the grandchildren who 
 are still turning to these pages, which I might well 
 have thought would be voted old-fashioned, outworn, 
 an unvalued bequest to posterity with Oblivion as re 
 siduary legatee. I have nothing of importance to add 
 in the way of prefatory remarks. I can only repeat 
 my grateful acknowledgments to the reading public at 
 home and abroad for the hospitable manner in which 
 my thoughts have been received. The expressions 
 of personal regard, esteem, confidence, sympathetic 
 affinity, may not add affection, which this book 
 has brought to me have become an habitual expe 
 rience and an untiring source of satisfaction. I have 
 thanked hundreds, yes, thousands, and many thou 
 sands of these kind correspondents, until my eyes have 
 grown dim and I can no longer read many of their 
 letters except through younger eyes. If my hand does 
 not refuse to hold the pen or to guide it in the form 
 of presentable characters, an occasional cramp of a 
 little muscle which knows its importance and insists 
 
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. IX 
 
 on having it recognized by striking, after its own fash 
 ion, is a hint that I must at length do what I have 
 long said I ought to do, content myself with an en 
 cyclical of thanks and write no more letters except 
 to a few relatives and intimates. 
 
 A single fact strikes me as worth mentioning. Ten 
 years ago I said that there had been a feeling at the 
 time when this book was written as if mechanical in 
 vention had exhausted itself. I referred in the Pre 
 face of 1882 to the new miracles of the telephone and 
 of electric illumination. Since then a new wonder 
 has been sprung upon us in the shape of the electric 
 motor, which has already familiarized itself among us 
 as a common carrier. It is not safe to speculate on 
 what the last decade of the century may yet bring us, 
 but it looks as if the wasted energies of the winds and 
 the waters were to be converted into heat, light, and 
 mechanical movement, in that mysterious form which 
 we call electricity, so as to change the material condi 
 tions of life to an extent to which we can hardly dare 
 to set limits. As to what social and other changes 
 may accompany the altered conditions of human life 
 in the coming era, it is safer to leave the question 
 open to exercise the ingenuity of some as yet youth 
 ful, perhaps unborn Autocrat. 
 
 O. W. H. 
 
 BEVERLY FARMS, MASS., July 28, 1891. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 
 
 THE interruption referred to in the first sentence of 
 the first of these papers was just a quarter of a cen 
 tury in duration. 
 
 Two articles entitled " The Autocrat of the Break 
 fast Table" will be found in the "New England 
 Magazine," formerly published in Boston by J. T. 
 and E. Buckingham. The date of the first of these 
 articles is November, 1831, and that of the second, 
 February, 1832. When " The Atlantic Monthly " was 
 begun, twenty-five years afterwards, and the author 
 was asked to write for it, the recollection of these 
 crude products of his uncombed literary boyhood sug 
 gested the thought that it would be a curious experi 
 ment to shake the same bough again, and see if the 
 ripe fruit were better or worse than the early wind 
 falls. 
 
 So began this series of papers, which naturally 
 brings those earlier attempts to my own notice and 
 that of some few friends who were idle enough to read 
 them at the time of their publication. The man is 
 father to the boy that was, and I am my own son, as 
 it seems to me, in those papers of the " New England 
 Magazine." If I find it hard to pardon the boy's 
 faults, others would find it harder. They will not, 
 therefore, be reprinted here, nor, as I hope, anywhere. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY. xi 
 
 But a sentence or two from them will perhaps bear 
 reproducing, and with these I trust the gentle reader, 
 if that kind being still breathes, will be contented. 
 
 " It is a capital plan to carry a tablet with you, and, 
 when you find yourself felicitous, take notes of your own 
 conversation." 
 
 " When I feel inclined to read poetry I take down 
 my Dictionary. The poetry of words is quite as beautiful 
 as that of sentences. The author may arrange the gems 
 effectively, but their shape and lustre have been given by 
 the attrition of ages. Bring me the finest simile from the 
 whole range of imaginative writing, and I will show you a 
 single word which conveys a more profound, a more accu 
 rate, and a more eloquent analogy." 
 
 " Once on a time, a notion was started, that if all the 
 people in the world would shout at once, it might be heard 
 in the moon. So the projectors agreed it should be done 
 in just ten years. Some thousand shiploads of chronome 
 ters were distributed to the selectmen and other great folks 
 of all the different nations. For a year beforehand, noth 
 ing else was talked about but the awful noise that was to 
 be made on the great occasion. When the time came, 
 everybody had their ears so wide open, to hear the uni 
 versal ejaculation of Boo, the word agreed upon, that 
 nobody spoke except a deaf man in one of the Fejee Isl 
 ands, and a woman in Pekin, so that the world was never 
 so still since the creation." 
 
 There was nothing better than these things and 
 there was not a little that was much worse. A young 
 fellow of two or three and twenty has as good a right 
 to spoil a magazine-full of essays in learning how to 
 write, as an oculist like Wenzel had to spoil his hat- 
 full of eyes in learning how to operate for cataract, or 
 an elegant like Brummel to point to an armful of fail 
 ures in the attempt to achieve a perfect neck-tie. This 
 
Xll 
 
 son of mine, whom I have not seen for these twen 
 ty-five years, generously counted, was a self-willed 
 youth, always too ready to utter his unchastised fan 
 cies. He, like too many American young people, got 
 the spur when he should have had the rein. He there 
 fore helped to fill the market with that unripe fruit 
 which his father says in one of these papers abounds 
 in the marts of his native country. All these by-gone 
 shortcomings he would hope are forgiven, did he not 
 feel sure that very few of his readers know anything 
 about them. In taking the old name for the new 
 papers, he felt bound to say that he had uttered un 
 wise things under that title, and if it shall appear 
 that his unwisdom has not diminished by at least half 
 while his years have doubled, he promises not to re 
 peat the experiment if he should live to double them 
 again and become his own grandfather. 
 
 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 
 BOSTON, November 1, 1868. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT 
 
 OP THE 
 
 BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 I. 
 
 I WAS just going to say, when I was interrupted, 
 that one of the many ways of classifying minds is 
 under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical in 
 tellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an 
 extension or variation of the following arithmetical 
 formula : 2 -}- 2=4. Every philosophical proposition 
 has the more general character of the expression 
 a-\-b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and 
 egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of 
 figures. 
 
 They all stared. There is a divinity student lately 
 come among us to whom I commonly address remarks 
 like the above, allowing him to take a certain share 
 in the conversation, so far as assent or pertinent ques 
 tions are involved. He abused his liberty on this oc 
 casion by presuming to say that Leibnitz had the 
 same observation. No, sir, I replied, he has not. 
 But he said a mighty good thing about mathematics, 
 that sounds something like it, and you found it, not 
 in the original, but quoted by Dr. Thomas Reid. I 
 will tell the company what he did say, one of these 
 days. 
 
2 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 If I belong to a Society of Mutual Admiration ? 
 I blush to say that I do not at this present moment. 
 I once did, however. It was the first association to 
 which I ever heard the term applied ; a body of scien 
 tific young men in a great foreign city a who admired 
 their teacher, and to some extent each other. Many 
 of them deserved it ; they have become famous since. 
 It amuses me to hear the talk of one of those beings 
 described by Thackeray 
 
 " Letters four do form his name " 
 
 about a social development which belongs to the very 
 noblest stage of civilization. All generous companies 
 
 a The " body of scientific young men in a great foreign city " 
 was the Socie'te' d'Observation Medicale, of Paris, of which M. 
 Louis was president, and MM. Earth, Grisotte, and our own 
 Dr. Bowditch were members. They agreed in admiring their 
 justly-honored president, and thought highly of some of their 
 associates, who have since made good their promise of distinc 
 tion. 
 
 About the time when these papers were published, the Sat 
 urday Club was founded, or, rather, found itself in existence, 
 without any organization, almost without parentage. It was 
 natural enough that such men as Emerson, Longfellow, Agassiz, 
 Peirce, with Hawthorne, Motley, Sumner, when within reach, 
 and others who would be good company for them, should meet 
 and dine together once in a while, as they did, in point of fact, 
 every month, and as some who are still living, with other and 
 newer members, still meet and dine. If some of them had not 
 admired each other they would have been exceptions in the 
 world of letters and science. The club deserves being remem 
 bered for having no constitution or by-laws, for making no 
 speeches, reading no papers, observing no ceremonies, coming 
 and going at will without remark, and acting out, though it did 
 not proclaim the motto, " Shall I not take mine ease in mine 
 inn ? " There was and is nothing of the Bohemian element 
 about this club, but it has had many good times and not a little 
 good talking. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 6 
 
 of artists, authors, philanthropists, men of science, 
 are, or ought to be, Societies of Mutual Admiration. 
 A man of genius, or any kind of superiority, is not 
 debarred from admiring the same quality in another, 
 nor the other from returning his admiration. They 
 may even associate together and continue to think 
 highly of each other. And so of a dozen such men ? 
 if any one place is fortunate enough to hold so many. 
 The being referred to above assumes several false 
 premises. First, that men of talent necessarily hate 
 each other. Secondly, that intimate knowledge or 
 habitual association destroys our admiration of 
 persons whom we esteemed highly at a distance. 
 Thirdly, that a circle of clever fellows, who meet 
 together to dine and have a good time, have signed 
 a constitutional compact to glorify themselves and to 
 put down him and the fraction of the human race 
 not belonging to their number. Fourthly, that it is 
 an outrage that he is not asked to join them. 
 
 Here the company laughed a good deal, and the 
 old gentleman who sits opposite said: "'That's it! 
 that 'sit!" 
 
 I continued, for I was in the talking vein. As to 
 clever people's hating each other, I think a little 
 extra talent does sometimes make people jealous. 
 They become irritated by perpetual attempts and 
 failures, and it hurts their tempers and dispositions. 
 Unpretending mediocrity is good, and genius is 
 glorious ; but a weak flavor of genius in an essen 
 tially common person is detestable. It spoils the 
 grand neutrality of a commonplace character, as the 
 rinsings of an unwashed wine-glass spoil a draught 
 of fair water. No wonder the poor fellow we spoke 
 of, who always belongs to this class of slightly 
 
4: THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 flavored mediocrities, is puzzled and vexed by the 
 strange sight of a dozen men of capacity working 
 and playing together in harmony. He and his fel 
 lows are always fighting. With them familiarity 
 naturally breeds contempt. If they ever praise each 
 other's bad drawings, or broken-winded novels, or 
 spavined verses, nobody ever supposed it was from 
 admiration ; it was simply a contract between them 
 selves and a publisher or dealer. 
 
 If the Mutuals have really nothing among them 
 worth admiring, that alters the question. But if they 
 are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell 
 you that, next to youthful love and family affections, 
 there is no human sentiment better than that which 
 unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And 
 what would literature or art be without such associa 
 tions? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual 
 Admiration Society of which Shakespeare, and Ben 
 Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members ? 
 Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the 
 centre, and which gave us the Spectator? Or to 
 that where Johnson, and Goldsmith, and Burke, and 
 Eeynolds, and Beauclerk, and Boswell, most admir 
 ing among all admirers, met together? Was there 
 any great harm in the fact that the Irvings and 
 Paulding wrote in company? or any unpardonable 
 cabal in the literary union of Verplanck and Bryant 
 and Sands, and as many more as they chose to asso 
 ciate with them ? 
 
 The poor creature does not know what he is talk 
 ing about when he abuses this noblest of institutions. 
 Let him inspect its mysteries through the knot-hole 
 he has secured, but not use that orifice as a medium 
 for his popgun. Such a society is the crown of a 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 5 
 
 literary metropolis ; if a town has not material for 
 it, and spirit and good feeling enough to organize it, 
 it is a mere caravansary, fit for a man of genius to 
 lodge in, but not to live in. Foolish people hate and 
 dread and envy such an association of men of varied 
 powers and influence, because it is lofty, serene, im 
 pregnable, and, by the necessity of the case, exclusive. 
 Wise ones are prouder of the title M. S. M. A. than 
 of all their other honors put together. 
 
 All generous minds have a horror of what are 
 commonly called " facts." They are ihe brute beasts 
 of the intellectual domain. Who does not know 
 fellows that always have an ill-conditioned fact or 
 two which they lead after them into decent company 
 like so many bull-dogs, ready to let them slip at 
 every ingenious suggestion, or convenient generaliza 
 tion, or pleasant fancy ? I allow no " facts " at this 
 table. What ! Because bread is good and whole 
 some, and necessary and nourishing, shall you thrust 
 a crumb into my windpipe while I am talking ? Do 
 not these muscles of mine represent a hundred loaves 
 of bread ? and is not my thought the abstract of ten 
 thousand of these crumbs of truth with which you 
 would choke off my speech ? 
 
 [The above remark must be conditioned and quali 
 fied for the vulgar mind. The reader will, of course, 
 understand the precise amount of seasoning which 
 must be added to it before he adopts it as one of 
 the axioms of his life. The speaker disclaims all 
 responsibility for its abuse in incompetent hands.] 
 
 This business of conversation is a very serious 
 matter. There are men whom it weakens one to talk 
 with an hour more than a day's fasting would do. 
 Mark this which I am going to say, for it is as good 
 
6 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 as a working professional man's advice, and costs you 
 nothing: It is better to lose a pint of blood from 
 your veins than to have a nerve tapped. Nobody 
 measures your nervous force as it runs away, nor 
 bandages your brain and marrow after the operation. 
 
 There are men of esprit who are excessively ex 
 hausting to some people. They are the talkers who 
 have what may be called jerky minds. Their 
 thoughts do not run in the natural order of sequence. 
 They say bright things on all possible subjects, but 
 their zigzags rack you to death. After a jolting half- 
 hour with one of these jerky companions, talking with 
 a dull friend affords great relief. It is like taking 
 the cat in your lap after holding a squirrel. 
 
 What a comfort a dull but kindly person is, to be 
 sure, at times! A ground-glass shade over a gas- 
 lamp does not bring more solace to our dazzled eyes 
 than such a one to our minds. 
 
 "Do not dull people bore you?" said one of the 
 lady-boarders, the same who sent me her autograph- 
 book last week with a request for a few original 
 stanzas, not remembering that " The Pactolian " pays 
 me five dollars a line for every thing I write in its 
 columns. 
 
 "Madam," said I (she and the century were in 
 their teens together), " all men are bores, except when 
 we want them. There never was but one man whom 
 I would trust with my latch-key." 
 
 " Who might that favored person be ? " 
 
 " Zimmermann." a 
 
 The men of genius that I fancy most, have 
 
 The " Treatise on Solitude" is not so frequently seen lying 
 about on library tables as in our younger days. I remember 
 that I always respected the title and let the book alone. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 7 
 
 erectile heads like the cobra-di-capello. You remem 
 ber what they tell of William Pinkney, the great 
 pleader ; how in his eloquent paroxysms the veins of 
 his neck would swell and his face flush and his eyes 
 glitter, until he seemed on the verge of apoplexy. 
 The hydraulic arrangements for supplying the brain 
 with blood are only second in importance to its own 
 organization. The bulbous-headed fellows who steam 
 well when they are at work are the men that draw 
 big audiences and give us marrowy books and pic 
 tures. It is a good sign to have one's feet grow cold 
 when he is writing. A great writer and speaker 
 once told me that he often wrote with his feet in hot 
 water ; but for this, all his blood would have run into 
 his head, as the mercury sometimes withdraws into 
 the ball of a thermometer. 
 
 You don't suppose that my remarks made at this 
 table are like so many postage-stamps, do you, each 
 to be only once uttered? If you do, you are mis 
 taken. He must be a poor creature who does not 
 often repeat himself. Imagine the author of the ex 
 cellent piece of advice, " Know thyself," never allud 
 ing to that sentiment again during the course of a 
 protracted existence ! Why, the truths a man carries 
 about with him are his tools ; and do you think a car 
 penter is bound to use the same plane but once to 
 smooth a knotty board with, or to hang up his ham 
 mer after it has driven its first nail? I shall never 
 repeat a conversation, but an idea often. I shall use 
 the same types when I like, but not commonly the 
 same stereotypes. A thought is often original, though 
 you have uttered it a hundred times. It has come to 
 you over a new route, by a new and express train of 
 associations. 
 
8 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Sometimes, but rarely, one may be caught making 
 the same speech twice over, and yet be held blame 
 less. Thus, a certain lecturer, after performing in an 
 inland city, where dwells a Litteratrice of note, was 
 invited to meet her and others over the social teacup. 
 She pleasantly referred to his many wanderings in his 
 new occupation. " Yes," he replied, " I am like the 
 Huma, a the bird that never lights, being always in the 
 cars, as he is always on the wing." Years elapsed. 
 The lecturer visited the same place once more for the 
 same purpose. Another social cup after the lecture, 
 and a second meeting with the distinguished lady. 
 "You are constantly going from place to place," she 
 said. " Yes," he answered, " I am like the Huma," 
 and finished the sentence as before. 
 
 What horrors, when it flashed over him that he had 
 made this fine speech, word for word, twice over! 
 Yet it was not true, as the lady might perhaps have 
 fairly inferred, that he had embellished his conversa 
 tion with the Huma daily during that whole interval of 
 years. On the contrary, he had never once thought of 
 the odious fowl until the recurrence of precisely the 
 same circumstances brought up precisely the same 
 idea. He ought to have been proud of the accuracy 
 of his mental adjustments. Given certain factors, and 
 a sound brain should always evolve the same fixed 
 product with the certainty of Babbage's calculating 
 machine. 
 
 It was an agreeable incident of two consecutive visits to 
 Hartford, Conn., that I met there the late Mrs. Sigourney. The 
 second meeting recalled the first, and with it the allusion to the 
 Huma, which bird is the subject of a short poem by another 
 New England authoress, which may be found in Mr. Griswold's 
 collection. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 9 
 
 What a satire, by the way, is that machine on 
 the mere mathematician ! A Frankenstein-monster, a 
 thing without brains and without heart, too stupid to 
 make a blunder ; which turns out results like a corn- 
 sheller, and never grows any wiser or better, though it 
 grind a thousand bushels of them ! 
 
 I have an immense respect for a man of talents plus 
 " the mathematics." But the calculating power alone 
 should seem to be the least human of qualities, and to 
 have the smallest amount of reason in it ; since a 
 machine can be made to do the work of three or four 
 calculators, and better than any one of them. Some 
 times I have been troubled that I had not a deeper in 
 tuitive apprehension of the relations of numbers. But 
 the triumph of the ciphering hand-organ has consoled 
 me. I always fancy I can hear the wheels clicking in 
 a calculator's brain. The power of dealing with num 
 bers is a kind of " detached lever " arrangement, which 
 may be put into a mighty poor watch. I suppose it is 
 about as common as the power of moving the ears vol 
 untarily, which is a moderately rare endowment. 
 
 Little localized powers, and little narrow streaks 
 of specialized knowledge, are things men are very apt 
 to be conceited about. Nature is very wise ; but f of 
 this encouraging principle how many small talents 
 and little accomplishments would be neglected ! Talk 
 about conceit as much as you like, it is to human 
 character what salt is to the ocean ; it keeps it sweet, 
 und renders it endurable. Say rather it is like the 
 natural unguent of the sea-fowl's plumage, which ena 
 bles him to shed the rain that falls on him and the 
 wave in which he dips. When one has had all his 
 conceit taken out of him, when he has lost all his illu 
 sions, his feathers will soon soak through, and he will 
 fly no more. 
 
10 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 " So you admire conceited people, do you ? " said 
 the young lady who has come to the city to be finished 
 off for the duties of life. 
 
 I am afraid you do not study logic at your school, 
 my dear. It does not follow that I wish to be pickled 
 in brine because I like a salt-water plunge at Nahant. 
 I say that conceit is just as natural a thing to human 
 minds as a centre is to a circle. But little-minded 
 people's thoughts move in such small circles that five 
 minutes' conversation gives you an arc long enough to 
 determine their whole curve. An arc in the move 
 ment of a large intellect does not sensibly differ from 
 a straight line. Even if it have the third vowel as 
 its centre, it does not soon betray it. The highest 
 thought, that is, is the most seemingly impersonal ; it 
 does not obviously imply any individual centre. 
 
 Audacious self-esteem, with good ground for it, is 
 always imposing. What resplendent beauty that 
 must have been which could have authorized Phryne 
 to " peel " in the way she did ! What fine speeches 
 are those two : " Non omnis moriar" and " I have 
 taken all knowledge to be my province " ! Even in 
 common people, conceit has the virtue of making them 
 cheerful ; the man who thinks his wife, his baby, his 
 house, his horse, his dog, and himself severally une 
 qualled, is almost sure to be a good-humored person, 
 though liable to be tedious at times. 
 
 What are the great faults of conversation? 
 Want of ideas, want of words, want of manners, are 
 the principal ones, I suppose you think. I don't 
 doubt it, but I will tell you what I have found spoil 
 more good talks than anything else ; long argu 
 ments on special points between people who differ on 
 the fundamental principles upon which these points 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 11 
 
 depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with 
 each other until they have agreed on certain ultimata 
 of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, 
 and unless they have sense enough to trace the second 
 ary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to 
 their source. In short, just as a written constitution 
 is essential to the best social order, so a code of final 
 ities is a necessary condition of profitable talk between 
 two persons. Talking is like playing on the harp; 
 there is as much in laying the hand on the strings to 
 stop their vibrations as in twanging them to bring out 
 their music. 
 
 Do you mean to say the pun-question is not 
 clearly settled in your minds ? Let me lay down the 
 law upon the subject. Life and language are alike 
 sacred. Homicide and verbidde that is, violent 
 treatment of a word with fatal results to its legitimate 
 meaning, which is its life are alike forbidden. 
 Manslaughter, which is the meaning of the one, is the 
 same as man's laughter, which is the end of the other. 
 A pun is primd facie an insult to the person you are 
 talking with. It implies utter indifference to or sub 
 lime contempt for his remarks, no matter how serious. 
 I speak of total depravity, and one says all that is 
 written on the subject is deep raving. I have commit 
 ted my self-respect by talking with such a person. I 
 should like to commit him, but cannot, because he is a 
 nuisance. Or I speak of geological convulsions, and 
 he asks me what was the cosine of Noah's ark ; also, 
 whether the Deluge was not a deal huger than any 
 modern inundation. 
 
 A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. 
 But if a blow were given for such cause, and death 
 ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and 
 
12 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggra 
 vated character, return a verdict of justifiable homi 
 cide. Thus, in a case lately decided before Miller, J., 
 Doe presented Roe a subscription paper, and urged 
 the claims of suffering humanity. Roe replied by 
 asking, When charity was like a top ? It was in evi 
 dence that Doe preserved a dignified silence. Roe 
 then said, "When it begins to hum." Doe then 
 and not till then struck Roe, and his head happen 
 ing to hit a bound volume of the Monthly Rag-Bag 
 and Stolen Miscellany, intense mortification ensued, 
 with a fatal result. The chief laid down his notions 
 of the law to his brother justices, who unanimously 
 replied, " Jest so." The chief rejoined, that no man 
 should jest so without being punished for it, and 
 charged for the prisoner, who was acquitted, and the 
 pun ordered to be burned by the sheriff. The bound 
 volume was forfeited as a deodand, but not claimed. 
 
 People that make puns are like wanton boys that 
 put coppers on the railroad tracks. They amuse 
 themselves and other children, but their little trick 
 may upset a freight train of conversation for the sake 
 of a battered witticism. 
 
 I will thank you, B. F., to bring down two books, 
 of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. 
 (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land 
 lady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after 
 the celebrated philosopher of that name. A highly 
 merited compliment.) 
 
 I wished to refer to two eminent authorities. Now 
 be so good as to listen. The great moralist says : " To 
 trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of so. 
 cial intercourse is to tamper with the currency of 
 human intelligence. He who would violate the sane 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 13 
 
 titles of his mother tongue would invade the recesses 
 of the paternal till without remorse, and repeat the 
 banquet of Saturn without an indigestion." 
 
 And, once more, listen to the historian. " The Pu 
 ritans hated puns. The Bishops were notoriously ad 
 dicted to them. The Lords Temporal carried them 
 to the verge of license. Majesty itself must have its 
 Royal quibble. ' Ye be burly, my Lord of Burleigh,' 
 said Queen Elizabeth, ' but ye shall make less stir in 
 our realm than my Lord of Leicester.' The gravest 
 wisdom and the highest breeding lent their sanction 
 to the practice. Lord Bacon playfully declared him 
 self a descendant of 'Og, the King of Bashan. Sir 
 Philip Sidney, with his last breath, reproached the 
 soldier who brought him water, for wasting a casque 
 full upon a dying man. A courtier, who saw Othello 
 performed at the Globe Theatre, remarked, that the 
 blackamoor was a brute, and not a man. ' Thou hast 
 reason,' replied a great Lord, ' according to Plato his 
 saying ; for this be a two-legged animal with feath 
 ers.' The fatal habit became universal. The lan 
 guage was corrupted. The infection spread to the 
 national conscience. Political double-dealings natu 
 rally grew out of verbal double meanings. The teeth 
 of the new dragon were sown by the Cadmus who in 
 troduced the alphabet of equivocation. What was 
 levity in the time of the Tudors grew to regicide and 
 revolution in the age of the Stuarts." 
 
 Who was that boarder that just whispered some 
 thing about the Macaulay-flowers of literature ? 
 There was a dead silence. I said calmly, I shall 
 henceforth consider any interruption by a pun as a 
 hint to change my boarding-house. Do not plead my 
 example. If / have used any such, it has been only 
 
14 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 as a Spartan father would show up a drunken helot 
 We have done with them. 
 
 If a logical niind ever f ound out anything with 
 its logic ? I should say that its most frequent work 
 was to build a pons asinorum over chasms which 
 shrewd people can bestride without such a structure. 
 You can hire logic, in the shape of a lawyer, to prove 
 anything that you want to prove. You can buy trea 
 tises to show that Napoleon never lived, and that no 
 battle of Bunker-hill was ever fought. The great 
 minds are those with a wide span, which couple 
 truths related to, but far removed from, each other. 
 Logicians carry the surveyor's chain over the track of 
 which these are the true explorers. I value a man 
 mainly for his primary relations with truth, as I un 
 derstand truth, not for any secondary artifice in 
 handling his ideas. Some of the sharpest men in ar 
 gument are notoriously unsound in judgment. I 
 should not trust the counsel of a clever debater, any 
 more than that of a good chess-player. Either may 
 of course advise wisely, but not necessarily because he 
 wrangles or plays well. 
 
 The old gentleman who sits opposite got his hand 
 up, as a pointer lifts his forefoot, at the expression, 
 " his relations with truth, as I understand truth," and 
 when I had done, sniffed audibly, and said I talked 
 like a transcendentalist. For his part, common sense 
 was good enough for him. 
 
 Precisely so, my dear sir, I replied ; common sense, 
 as you understand it. We all have to assume a 
 standard of judgment in our own minds, either of 
 things or persons. A man who is willing to take 
 
 a There is something like this in J. H. Newman's Grammar o 
 Assent. See Characteristics, arranged by W. S. Lilly, p. 81. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 15 
 
 another's opinion has to exercise his judgment in the 
 choice of whom to follow, which is often as nice a 
 matter as to judge of things for one's self. On the 
 whole, I had rather judge men's minds by comparing 
 their thoughts with my own, than judge of thoughts 
 by knowing who utter them. I must do one or the 
 other. It does not follow, of course, that I may not 
 recognize another man's thoughts as broader and 
 deeper than my own ; but that does not necessarily 
 change my opinion, otherwise this would be at the 
 mercy of every superior mind that held a different 
 one. How many of our most cherished beliefs are 
 like those drinking-glasses of the ancient pattern, that 
 serve us well so long as we keep them in our hand, 
 but spill all if we attempt to set them down ! I have 
 sometimes compared conversation to the Italian game 
 of mora, in which one player lifts his hand with so 
 many fingers extended, and the other gives the num 
 ber if he can. I show my thought, another his, if 
 they agree, well ; if they differ, we find the largest 
 common factor, if we can, but at any rate avoid dis 
 puting about remainders and fractions, which is to 
 real talk what tuning an instrument is to playing 
 on it. 
 
 What if, instead of talking this morning, I 
 should read you a copy of verses, with critical re 
 marks by the author ? Any of the company can re 
 tire that like. 
 
 ALBUM VERSES. 
 
 When Eve had led her lord away, 
 
 And Cain had killed his brother, 
 The stars and flowers, the poets say, 
 
 Agreed with one another 
 
16 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 To cheat the cunning tempter's art, 
 
 And teach the race its duty, 
 By keeping on its wicked heart 
 
 Their eyes of light and beauty. 
 
 A million sleepless lids, they say, 
 
 Will be at least a warning; 
 And so the flowers would watch by day, 
 
 The stars from eve to morning. 
 
 On hill and prairie, field and lawn, 
 
 Their dewy eyes upturning, 
 The flowers still watch from reddening dawn 
 
 Till western skies are burning. 
 
 Alas ! each hour of daylight tells 
 
 A tale of shame so crushing, 
 That some turn white as sea-bleached shells, 
 
 And some are always blushing. 
 
 But when the patient stars look down 
 
 On all their light discovers, 
 The traitor's smile, the murderer's frown, 
 
 The lips of lying lovers, 
 
 They try to shut their saddening eyes, 
 
 And in the vain endeavor 
 We see them twinkling in the skies, 
 
 And so they wink forever. 
 
 What do you think of these verses, my friends ? 
 Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's 
 daughter. (Aet. 19-f-. Tender-eyed blonde. Long 
 ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain 
 Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Ac- 
 cordeon. Keads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, 
 Junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says 
 " Yes ? " when you tell her anything.) Oui et non, 
 ma petite, Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 17 
 
 verses were written off-hand; the other two took a 
 week, that is, were hanging round the desk in a 
 ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that. 
 All poets will tell you just such stories. C'est le 
 DERNIER p as qui coute. Don't you know how hard it 
 is for some people to get out of a room after their 
 visit is really over? They want to be off, and you 
 want to have them off, but they don't know how to 
 manage it. One would think 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 out-doors. 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." . 
 
18 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such 
 as you see in that copy of verses, 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 senti 
 ments to these venerable jingles. 
 
 * > , youth 
 ... morning 
 
 .... truth 
 
 ... warning. 
 
 Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems" written 
 spring out of the above musical and suggestive coinci 
 dences. 
 
 "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 laying down a principle of social diag 
 
 nosis." 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 It is curious to see how the same wants and 
 tastes find the same implements and modes of expres 
 sion in all times and places. The young ladies of Ota- 
 heite, as you may see in Cook's Voyages, had a sort 
 
THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 19 
 
 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 which 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 civil so 
 ciety. 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 Po 
 land 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 lib 
 erty 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 every 
 body 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 
 
20 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 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 suc 
 ceeded. They never thought of praising the fine 
 blocks of houses a little farther on. 
 
 Your self-made man, whittled into shape with his 
 own jack-knife, deserves more credit, if that is all, 
 than the regular engine-turned article, shaped by the 
 most approved pattern, and French-polished by soci 
 ety 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 ac 
 quired, is one of the most precious republican privi 
 leges. 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 '11 
 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 gentle 
 women; 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 long boots with tassels. 
 
 Family portraits." The member of the Council, by 
 
 The full-length pictures by Copley I was thinking of are 
 euch as may be seen in the Memorial Hall of Harvard Univer 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 21 
 
 Smibert. The great merchant-uncle, by Copley, full 
 length, sitting in his arm-chair, 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 
 
 sity, but many are to be met with in different parts of New Eng 
 land, sometimes in the possession of the poor descendants of the 
 rich gentlefolks in lace ruffles and glistening satins, grandees 
 and grand dames of the ante-Revolutionary period. I remember 
 one poor old gentleman who had nothing left of his family pos 
 sessions but the full-length portraits of his ancestors, the Coun 
 sellor and his lady, saying, with a gleam of the pleasantry which 
 had come down from the days of Mather Byles, and " Balch 
 the Hatter," and Sigourney, that he fared not so badly after 
 all, for he had a pair of canvas-backs every day through the 
 whole year. 
 
 The mention of these names, all of which are mere traditions 
 to myself and my contemporaries, reminds me of the long suc 
 cession of wits and humorists whose companionship has been the 
 delight of their generation, and who leave nothing on record by 
 which they will be remembered ; Yoricks who set the table in 
 a roar, story-tellers who gave us scenes of life in monologue 
 better than the stilted presentments of the stage, and those al 
 ways welcome friends with social interior furnishings, whose 
 smile provoked the wit of others and whose rich, musical laugh 
 ter was its abundant reward. Who among us in my earlier 
 days ever told a story or carolled a rippling chanson so gayly, 
 so easily, so charmingly as John Sullivan, whose memory is like 
 the breath of a long bygone summer? Mr. Arthur Gilman has 
 left his monument in the stately structures he planned; Mr. 
 James T. Fields in the pleasant volumes full of precious recol 
 lections; but twenty or thirty years from now old men will tell 
 their boys that the Yankee story-teller died with the first, and 
 that the chief of our literary reminiscents, whose ideal portrait 
 gallery reached from Wordsworth to Swinburne, left us when 
 the second bowed his head and "fell on sleep," no longer to de 
 light the guests whom his hospitality gathered around him with 
 the pictures to which his lips gave life and action. 
 
22 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 same artist ; brown satin, lace very fine, hands super 
 lative ; 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, mediaeval 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 Hospital, besides 
 ample bequests to all relatives and dependants. 2. 
 Lady of the same ; remarkable cap ; high waist, as in 
 time of Empire ; bust d la Josephine ; wisps of curls, 
 like celery-tips, at sides of forehead ; complexion clear 
 and warm, like rose-cordial. 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 stu 
 dents took rank on the catalogue from their parents' 
 condition. Elzevirs, with the Latinized appellations 
 of youthful progenitors, and Hie liber est meus on th& 
 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 octo-decimos. 
 
 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-footed chairs and 
 black mahogany tables, and tall bevel-edged mirrors, 
 and stately upright cabinets, his outfit is complete. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 23 
 
 No, my friends, I go (always, other things being 
 equal) for the man who inherits family traditions and 
 the cumulative humanities of at least four or five gen 
 erations. Above all things, as a child, he should have 
 tumbled about in a library. All men are afraid of 
 books, who have not handled them from infancy. Do 
 you suppose our dear didascalos a over there ever read 
 Poll 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 lay 
 ers of prescription. But I still insist on my demo 
 cratic 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. 
 
 " Our dear didascalos " was meant for Professor James 
 Russell Lowell, now Minister to England. It requires the 
 union of exceptional native gifts and generations of training to 
 bring the " natural man " of New England to the completeness 
 of scholarly manhood, such as that which adds new distinction 
 to the name he bears, already remarkable for its successive gen 
 erations of eminent citizens. 
 
 " Self-made " is imperfectly made, or education is a super 
 fluity and a failure. 
 
24 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 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 cer 
 tain things, which seem to me essential to a millen 
 nium, had come to pass, I should have been fright 
 ened ; but they have n't. Perhaps you would like to 
 hear my 
 
 LATTER-DAY WARNINGS. 
 
 When legislators keep the law, 
 
 When banks dispense with bolts and lockst 
 
 When berries, whortle rasp and straw 
 Grow bigger downwards through the box, 
 
 When he that selleth house or land 
 Shows leak in roof or flaw in right, 
 
 When haberdashers choose the stand 
 
 Whose window hath the broadest light, 
 
 When preachers tell us all they think, 
 
 And party leaders all they mean, 
 When what we pay for, that we drink, 
 
 From real grape and coffee-bean, 
 
 When lawyers take what they would give, 
 And doctors give what they would take, 
 
 When city fathers eat to live, 
 
 Save when they fast for conscience' sake, 
 
 When one that hath a horse on sale 
 
 Shall bring his merit to the proof, 
 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, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 25 
 
 And guarded well the whalebone tips 
 Where first umbrellas need repair, 
 
 When Cuba's weeds have quite forgot 
 
 The power of suction to resist, 
 And claret- bottles harbor not 
 
 Such dimples as would hold your fist, 
 
 When publishers no longer steal, 
 
 And pay for what they stole before, 
 
 When the first locomotive's wheel 
 Rolls through the Hoosac tunnel's bore ; 
 
 Till then let Cumming blaze away, 
 And Miller's saints blow up the globe ; 
 
 But when you see that blessed day, 
 Then order your ascension robe! 
 
 The company seemed to like the verses, and I prom 
 ised them to read others occasionally, if they had a 
 mind to hear them. Of course they would not expect 
 it every morning. Neither must the reader suppose 
 that all these things I have reported were said at any 
 one breakfast-time. I have not taken the trouble to 
 date them, as Raspail, pere, used to date every proof 
 he sent to the printer ; but they were scattered over 
 several breakfasts; and I have said a good many 
 more things since, which I shall very possibly print 
 some time or other, if I am urged to do it by judicious 
 friends. 
 
 " This hoped for, but almost despaired of, event, occurred on 
 the 9th of February, 1875. The writer of the above lines was 
 as much pleased as his fellow-citizens at the termination of an 
 enterprise which gave constant occasion for the most inveterate 
 pun on record. When the other conditions referred to are as 
 happily fulfilled as this has been, he will still say as before, 
 that it is time for the ascension garment to be ordered. 
 
26 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 I finished off with reading some verses of my friend 
 the Professor, of whom you may perhaps hear more 
 by and by. The Professor read them, he told me, at 
 a farewell meeting, where the youngest of our great 
 historians a met a few of his many friends at their in 
 vitation. 
 
 Yes, we knew we must lose him, though friendship may 
 
 claim 
 
 To blend her green leaves with the laurels of fame ; 
 Though fondly, at parting, we call him our own, 
 'T is the whisper of love when the bugle has blown. 
 
 As the rider who rests with the spur on his heel, 
 As the guardsman who sleeps in his corselet of steel, 
 As the archer who stands with his shaft on the string, 
 He stoops from his toil to the garland we bring. 
 
 What pictures yet slumber unborn in his loom 
 
 Till their warriors shall breathe and their beauties shall bloom, 
 
 While the tapestry lengthens the life-glowing dyes 
 
 That caught from our sunsets the stain of their skies ! 
 
 In the alcoves of death, in the charnels of time, 
 Where flit the gaunt spectres of passion and crime, 
 There are triumphs untold, there are martyrs unsung, 
 There are heroes yet silent to speak with his tongue ! 
 
 Let us hear the proud story which time has bequeathed 
 From lips that are warm with the freedom they breathed ! 
 Let him summon its tyrants, and tell us their doom, 
 Though he sweep the black past like Van Tromp with his broom! 
 
 * " The youngest of our great historians," referred to in the 
 poem, was John Lothrop Motley. His career of authorship was 
 as successful as it was noble, and his works are among the chief 
 ornaments of our national literature. Are Republics still un 
 grateful, as of old? 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 27 
 
 The dream flashes by, for the west-winds awake 
 On pampas, on prairie, o'er mountain and lake, 
 To bathe the swift bark, like a sea-girdled shrine, 
 With incense they stole from the rose and the pine. 
 
 So fill a bright cup with the sunlight that gushed 
 
 When the dead summer's jewels were trampled and crushed : 
 
 THE TRUE KNIGHT OP LEARNING, the world holds him 
 
 dear, 
 Love bless him, Joy crown him, God speed his career! 
 
 n. 
 
 I REALLY believe some people save their bright 
 thoughts as being too precious for conversation. 
 What do you think an admiring friend said the other 
 day to one that was talking good things, good 
 enough to print? " Why," said he, "you are wasting 
 merchantable literature, a cash article, at the rate, as 
 nearly as I can tell, of fifty dollars an hour." The 
 talker took him to the window and asked him to look 
 out and tell what he saw. 
 
 "Nothing but a very dusty street," he said, " and a 
 man driving a sprinkling-machine through it." 
 
 "Why don't you tell the man he is wasting that 
 water ? What would be the state of the highways of 
 life, if we did not drive our thought-sprinklers 
 through them with the valves open, sometimes ? 
 
 " Besides, there is another thing about this talking, 
 which you forget. It shapes our thoughts for us ; 
 the waves of conversation roll them as the surf rolls 
 the pebbles on the shore. Let me modify the image 
 a little. I rough out my thoughts in talk as an artist 
 models in clay. Spoken language is so plastic, you 
 
28 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 can pat and coax, and spread and shave, and rub out, 
 and fill up, and stick on so easily, when you work that 
 soft material, that there is nothing like it for model 
 ling. Out of it come the shapes which you turn into 
 marble or bronze in your immortal books, if you hap 
 pen to write such. Or, to use another illustration, 
 writing or printing is like shooting with a rifle ; you 
 may hit your reader's mind, or miss it ; but talking 
 is like playing at a mark with the pipe of an engine; 
 if it is within reach, and you have time enough, you 
 can't help hitting it." 
 
 The company agreed that this last illustration was 
 of superior excellence, or, in the phrase used by them, 
 "Fust-rate." I acknowledged the compliment, but 
 gently rebuked the expression. " Fust-rate," " prime," 
 " a prime article," " a superior piece of goods," " a 
 handsome garment," " a gent in a flowered vest," 
 all such expressions are final. They blast the lineage 
 of him or her who utters them, for generations up and 
 down. There is one other phrase which will soon 
 come to be decisive of a man's social status, if it is 
 not already " That tells the whole story." It is an 
 expression which vulgar and conceited people particu 
 larly affect, and which well-meaning ones, who know 
 better, catch from them. It is intended to stop all de 
 bate, like the previous question in the General Court. 
 Only it does n't ; simply because " that " does not usu 
 ally tell the whole, nor one half of the whole story. 
 
 It is an odd idea, that almost all our people have 
 had a professional education. To become a doctor a 
 man must study some three years and hear a thousand 
 lectures, more or less. Just how much study it takes 
 to make a lawyer I cannot say, but probably not more 
 than this. Now, most decent people hear one hundred 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 29 
 
 lectures or sermons (discourses) on theology every 
 year, and this, twenty, thirty, fifty years together. 
 They read a great many religious books besides. The 
 clergy, however, rarely hear any sermons except what 
 they preach themselves. A dull preacher might be 
 conceived, therefore, to lapse into a state of quasi 
 heathenism, simply for want of religious instruction. 
 And, on the other hand, an attentive and intelligent 
 hearer, listening to a succession of wise teachers, 
 might become actually better educated in theology 
 than any one of them. We are all theological stu 
 dents, and more of us qualified as doctors of divinity 
 than have received degrees at any of the universities. 
 
 It is not strange, therefore, that very good people 
 should often find it difficult, if not impossible, to keep 
 their attention fixed upon a sermon treating feebly a 
 subject which they have thought vigorously about for 
 years, and heard able men discuss scores of times. I 
 have often noticed, however, that a hopelessly dull dis 
 course acts inductively, as electricians would say, in 
 developing strong mental currents. I am ashamed to 
 think with what accompaniments and variations and 
 flourishes I have sometimes followed the droning of a 
 heavy speaker, not willingly, for my habit is rev 
 erential, but as a necessary result of a slight con 
 tinuous impression on the senses and the mind, which 
 kept both in action without furnishing the food they 
 required to work upon. If you ever saw a crow with 
 a king-bird after him, you will get an image of a dull 
 speaker and a lively listener. The bird in sable plum 
 age flaps heavily along his straightforward course, 
 while the other sails round him, over him, under him, 
 leaves him, comes back again, tweaks out a black 
 feather, shoots .away once more, never losing sight of 
 
30 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 him, and finally reaches the crow's perch at the same 
 time the crow does, having cut a perfect labyrinth of 
 loops and knots and spirals while the slow fowl was 
 painfully working from one end of his straight line to 
 the other. 
 
 [I think these remarks were received rather coolly. 
 A temporary boarder from the country, consisting of 
 a somewhat more than middle-aged female, with a 
 parchment forehead and a dry little " frisette " shin 
 gling it, a sallow neck with a necklace of gold beads, 
 a black dress too rusty for recent grief, and contours 
 in basso-rilievo, left the table prematurely, and was 
 reported to have been very virulent about what I said. 
 So I went to my good old minister, and repeated the 
 remarks, as nearly as I could remember them, to him. 
 He laughed good-naturedly, and said there was con 
 siderable truth in them. He thought he could tell 
 when people's minds were wandering, by their looks. 
 In the earlier years of his ministry he had sometimes 
 noticed this, when he was preaching ; very little of 
 late years. Sometimes, when his colleague was preach 
 ing, he observed this kind of inattention ; but after all, 
 it was not so very unnatural. I will say, by the way, 
 that it is a rule I have long followed, to tell my worst 
 thoughts to my minister, and my best thoughts to the 
 young people I talk with.] 
 
 I want to make a literary confession now, which 
 I believe nobody has made before me. You know 
 very well that I write verses sometimes, because I 
 have read some of them at this table. (The company 
 assented, two or three of them in a resigned sort of 
 way, as I thought, as if they supposed I had an epic 
 in my pocket, and were going to read half a dozen 
 books or so for their benefit.) I continued. Ol 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 31 
 
 course I write some lines or passages which are better 
 than others ; some which, compared with the others, 
 might be called relatively excellent. It is in the na 
 ture of things that I should consider these relatively 
 excellent lines or passages as absolutely good. So 
 much must be pardoned to humanity. Now I never 
 
 -^. wrote a " good " line in my life, but the moment after 
 
 jit was written it seemed a hundred years old. Very 
 
 1 commonly I had a sudden conviction that I had seen 
 
 'jr' it somewhere. Possibly I may have sometimes un 
 consciously stolen it, but I do not remember that I 
 ever once detected any historical truth in these sudden 
 convictions of the antiquity of my new thought or 
 phrase. I have learned utterly to distrust them, and 
 never allow them to bully me out of a thought or line. 
 This is the philosophy of it. (Here the number of 
 the company was diminished by a small secession.) 
 Any new formula which suddenly emerges in our con 
 sciousness has its roots in long trains of thought ; it is 
 virtually old when it first makes its appearance among 
 the recognized growths of our intellect. Any crystal 
 line group of musical words has had a long and still 
 period to form in. Here is one theory. 
 
 But there is a larger law which perhaps compre 
 hends these facts. It is this. The rapidity with 
 which ideas grow old in our memories is in a direct 
 ratio to the squares of their importance. Their ap 
 parent age runs up miraculously, like the value of dia- 
 mdnds, as they increase in magnitude. A great ca 
 lamity, for instance, is as old as the trilobites an hour 
 after it has happened. It stains backward through 
 all the leaves we have turned over in the book of life, 
 before its blot of tears or of blood is dry on the page 
 we are turning. For this we seem to have lived ; it 
 
32 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 was foreshadowed in dreams that we leaped out of in 
 the cold sweat of terror ; in the " dissolving views " of 
 dark day-visions; all omens pointed to it; all paths 
 led to it. After the tossing half-forgetfulness of the 
 first sleep that follows such an event, it comes upon us 
 afresh, as a surprise, at waking ; in a few moments it 
 is old again, old as eternity,, 
 
 [I wish I had not said all this then and there. I 
 might have known better. The pale schoolmistress, 
 in her mourning dress, was looking at me, as I noticed, 
 with a wild sort of expression. All at once the blood 
 dropped out of her cheeks as the mercury drops from 
 a broken barometer-tube, and she melted away from 
 her seat like an image of snow; a slung-shot could 
 not have brought her down better. God forgive me ! 
 
 After this little episode, I continued, to some few 
 who remained balancing teaspoons on the edges of 
 cups, twirling knives, or tilting upon the hind legs of 
 their chairs until their heads reached the wall, where 
 they left gratuitous advertisements of various popular 
 cosmetics.] 
 
 When a person is suddenly thrust into any strange, 
 new position of trial, he finds the place fits him as if 
 he had been measured for it. He has committed a 
 great crime, for instance, and is sent to the State 
 Prison. The traditions, prescriptions, limitations, 
 privileges, all the sharp conditions of his new life, 
 stamp themselves upon his consciousness as the signet 
 on soft wax ; a single pressure is enough. Let me 
 strengthen the image a little. Did you ever happen 
 to see that most soft-spoken and velvet-handed steam- 
 engine at the Mint ? The smooth piston slides back 
 ward and forward as a lady might slip her delicate 
 finger in and out of a ring. The engine lays one of 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 33 
 
 its fingers calmly, but firmly, upon a bit of metal ; it 
 is a coin now, and will remember that touch, and tell 
 a new race about it, when the date upon it is crusted 
 over with twenty centuries. So it is that a great 
 silent-moving misery puts a new stamp on us in an 
 hour or a moment, as sharp an impression as if it 
 had taken half a lifetime to engrave it. 
 
 It is awful to be in the hands of the wholesale 
 professional dealers in misfortune; undertakers and 
 jailers magnetize you in a moment, and you pass out 
 of the individual life you were living into the rhyth 
 mical movements of their horrible machinery. Do 
 the worst thing you can, or suffer the worst that can 
 be thought of, you find yourself in a category of hu 
 manity that stretches back as far as Cain, and with an 
 expert at your elbow who has studied your case all 
 out beforehand, and is waiting for you with his imple 
 ments of hemp or mahogany. I believe, if a man 
 were to be burned in any of our cities to-morrow for 
 heresy, there would be found a master of ceremonies 
 who knew just how many fagots were necessary, and 
 the best way of arranging the whole matter.** 
 
 a Accidents are liable to happen if no thoroughly trained ex 
 pert happens to be present. When Catharine Hays was burnt 
 at Tyburn, in 1726, the officiating artist scorched his own 
 hands, and the whole business was awkwardly managed for 
 want of practical familiarity with the process. We have still 
 remaining a guide to direct us in one important part of the ar 
 rangements. Bishop Hooper was burned at Gloucester, Eng 
 land, in the year 1555. A few years ago, in making certain 
 excavations, the charred stump of the stake to which he was 
 6ound was discovered. An account of the interesting cere 
 mony, so important in ecclesiastical history the argumentum 
 ad ignem, with a photograph of the half- burned stick of timber 
 was sent me by my friend, Mr. John Bellows, of Gloucester, a 
 zealous antiquarian, widely known by his wonderful miniature 
 
84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 So we have not won the Goodwood cup ; au con? 
 traire, we were a " bad fifth," if not worse than that ; 
 and trying it again, and the third time, has not yet 
 bettered the matter. Now I am as patriotic as any of 
 my fellow-citizens, too patriotic in fact, for I have 
 got into hot water by loving too much of my country r 
 in short, if any man, whose fighting weight is not more 
 than eight stone four pounds, disputes it, I am ready 
 to discuss the point with him. I should have gloried 
 to see the stars and stripes in front at the finish. I 
 love my country and I love horses. Stubbs's old mez 
 zotint of Eclipse hangs over my desk, and Herring's 
 portrait of Plenipotentiary whom I saw run at Ep- 
 som O ver my fireplace. Did I not elope from 
 school to see Revenge, and Prospect, and Little John, 
 and Peacemaker run over the race-course where now 
 yon suburban village flourishes, in the year eighteen 
 hundred and ever-so-few ? Though I never owned a 
 horse, have I not been the proprietor of six equine fe 
 males, of which one was the prettiest little " Morgin " 
 that ever stepped? Listen, then, to an opinion I have 
 often expressed long before this venture of ours in 
 England. Horse-mcm<7 is not a republican institu 
 tion; horse-trotting is. Only very rich persons can 
 keep race-horses, and everybody knows they are kept 
 mainly as gambling implements. All that matter 
 about blood and speed we won't discuss; we under, 
 stand all that ; useful, very, of course, great ob 
 ligations to the Godolphin " Arabian," and the rest. 
 I say racing-horses are essentially gambling imple- 
 
 French dictionary, one of the scholarly printers and publishers 
 who honor the calling of Aldus and the Elzevirs. The stake 
 was big enough to chain the whole Bench of Bishops to as fast 
 as the Athanasian creed still holds them. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 35 
 
 meiits, as much as roulette tables. Now, I am not 
 preaching at this moment ; I may read you one of my 
 sermons some other morning; but I maintain that 
 gambling, on the great scale, is not republican. It 
 belongs to two phases of society, a cankered over- 
 civilization, such as exists in rich aristocracies, and 
 the reckless life of borderers and adventurers, or the 
 semi-barbarism of a civilization resolved into its prim 
 itive elements. Real Republicanism is stern and se 
 vere ; its essence is not in forms of government, but in 
 the omnipotence of public opinion which grows out of 
 it. This public opinion cannot prevent gambling with 
 dice or stocks, but it can and does compel it to keep 
 comparatively quiet. But horse-racing is the most 
 public way of gambling, and with all its immense at 
 tractions to the sense and the feelings, to which I 
 plead very susceptible, the disguise is too thin that 
 covers it, and everybody knows what it means. Its 
 supporters are the Southern gentry, fine fellows, no 
 doubt, but not republicans exactly, as we understand 
 the term, a few Northern millionnaires more or less 
 thoroughly millioned, who do not represent the real 
 people, and the mob of sporting men, the best of 
 whom are commonly idlers, and the worst very bad 
 neighbors to have near one in a crowd, or to meet in 
 a dark alley. In England, on the other hand, with 
 its aristocratic institutions, racing is a natural growth 
 enough ; the passion for it spreads downwards through 
 all classes, from the Queen to the costermonger. Lon 
 don is like a shelled corn-cob on the Derby day, and 
 there is not a clerk who could raise the money to hire 
 a saddle with an old hack under it that can sit down 
 on his office-stool the next day without wincing. 
 
 Now just compare the racer with the trotter for a 
 
36 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essen 
 tially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble- 
 rigger's " little joker." The trotter is essentially and 
 daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for sporting 
 men. 
 
 What better reason do you want for the fact that 
 the racer is most cultivated and reaches his greatest 
 perfection in England, and that the trotting horses of 
 America beat the world ? And why should we have 
 expected that the pick if it was the pick of our 
 few and far-between racing stables should beat the 
 pick of England and France ? Throw over the falla 
 cious time-test, and there was nothing to show for it 
 but a natural kind of patriotic feeling, which we all 
 have, with a thoroughly provincial conceit, which some 
 of us must plead guilty to. 
 
 We may beat yet. a As an American, I hope we 
 shall. As a moralist and occasional sermonizer, I am 
 not so anxious about it. Wherever the trotting horse 
 
 We have beaten in many races in England since this was 
 m-itten, and at last carried off the blue ribbon of the turf at 
 Epsom. But up to the present time trotting matches and base 
 ball are distinctively American, as contrasted with running races 
 and cricket, which belong, as of right, to England. The won 
 derful effects of breeding and training in a particular direc 
 tion are shown in the records of the trotting horse. In 1844 
 Lady Suffolk trotted a mile in 2:26^, which was, I think, the 
 fastest time to that date. In 1859 Flora Temple's time at Kal- 
 amazoo I remember Mr. Emerson surprised me once by cor 
 recting my error of a quarter of a second in mentioning it was 
 2:19|. Dexter in 1867 brought the figure down to 2:17^. There 
 is now a whole class of horses that can trot under 2:20, and in 
 1881 Maud S. distanced all previous records with 2:10. Many 
 of our best running horses go to England. Racing in distinc 
 tion from trotting, I think, attracts less attention in this country 
 now than in the days of American Eclipse and Henry. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 37 
 
 goes, he carries in his train brisk omnibuses, lively 
 bakers' carts, and therefore hot rolls, the jolly butch 
 er's wagon, the cheerful gig, the wholesome afternoon 
 drive with wife and child, all the forms of moral ex 
 cellence, except truth, which does not agree with any 
 kind of horse-flesh. The racer brings with him gam 
 bling, cursing, swearing, drinking, and a distaste for 
 mob-caps and the middle-aged virtues. 
 
 And by the way, let me beg you not to call a trot 
 ting match a race, and not to speak of a " thorough 
 bred " as a " blooded " horse, unless he has been re 
 cently phlebotomized. I consent to your saying 
 " blood horse," if you like. Also, if, next year, we 
 send out Posterior and Posterioress, the winners of 
 the great national four-mile race in 7:18, and they 
 happen to get beaten, pay your bets, and behave like 
 men and gentlemen about it, if you know how. 
 
 [I felt a great deal better after blowing off the ill- 
 temper condensed in the above paragraph. To brag 
 little, to show well, to crow gently, if in luck, 
 to pay up, to own up, and to shut up, if beaten, are 
 the virtues of a sporting man, and I can't say that I 
 think we have shown them in any great perfection of 
 late.] 
 
 Apropos of horses. Do you know how important 
 good jockeying is to authors ? Judicious management ; 
 letting the public see your animal just enough, and 
 not too much ; holding him up hard when the market 
 is too full of him ; letting him out at just the right 
 buying intervals ; always gently feeling his mouth ; 
 never slacking and never jerking the rein ; this is 
 what I mean by jockeying. 
 
 When an author has a number of books out a 
 cunning hand will keep them all spinning, as Signor 
 
38 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Blitz does his dinner-plates ; fetching each one up, as 
 it begins to " wabble," by an advertisement, a puff, or 
 a quotation. 
 
 Whenever the extracts from a living writer be 
 gin to multiply fast in the papers, without obvious rea 
 son, there is a new book or a new edition coming. The 
 extracts are ground-bait. 
 
 Literary life is full of curious phenomena. I 
 don't know that there is anything more n'oticeable 
 than what we may call conventional reputations. 
 There is a tacit understanding in every community 
 of men of letters that they will not disturb the popu 
 lar fallacy respecting this or that electro-gilded ce 
 lebrity. There are various reasons for this forbear 
 ance : one is old ; one is rich ; one is good-natured ; 
 one is such a favorite with the pit that it would not be 
 pafe to hiss him from the manager's box. The vener 
 able augurs of the literary or scientific temple may 
 smile faintly when one of the tribe is mentioned ; but 
 the farce is in general kept up as well as the Chinese 
 comic scene of entreating and imploring a man to stay 
 with you, with the implied compact between you that 
 he shall by no means think of doing it. A poor 
 wretch he must be who would wantonly sit down on 
 one of these bandbox reputations. A Prince 'Rupert' s- 
 drop, which is a tear of unannealed glass, lasts indefi 
 nitely, if you keep it from meddling hands ; but break 
 its tail off, and it explodes and resolves itself into pow 
 der. These celebrities I speak of are the Prince-Ru 
 pert' s-drops of the learned and polite world. See how 
 the papers treat them ! What an array of pleasant 
 kaleidoscopic phrases, which can be arranged in ever 
 so many charming patterns, is at their service ! How 
 kind the " Critical Notices " where small author- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEEAKFAST-TABLE. 39 
 
 ship comes to pick up chips of praise, fragrant, sugary 
 and sappy always are to them ! Well, life would 
 be nothing without paper-credit and other fictions ; so 
 let them pass current. Don't steal their chips ; don't 
 puncture their swimming-bladders ; don't come down 
 on their pasteboard boxes ; don't break the ends of 
 their brittle and unstable reputations, you fellows who 
 all feel sure that your names will be household words 
 a thousand years from now. 
 
 " A thousand years is a good while," said the old 
 gentleman who sits opposite, thoughtfully. 
 
 Where have I been for the last three or four 
 days? Down at the Island," deer-shooting. How 
 many did I bag? I brought home one buck shot. 
 The Island is where? No matter. It is the most 
 splendid domain that any man looks upon in these 
 latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into 
 its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby 
 in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight 
 the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging 
 and flying in ribbons. Trees, in stretches of miles ; 
 beeches, oaks, most numerous ; many of them hung 
 with moss, looking like bearded Druids ; some coiled 
 in the clasp of huge, dark-stemmed grape-vines. Open 
 patches where the sun gets in and goes to sleep, and 
 the winds come so finely sifted that they are as soft as 
 swan's-down. Rocks scattered about, Stonehenge- 
 like monoliths. Fresh-water lakes; one of them, 
 Mary's lake, crystal-clear, full of flashing pickerel 
 
 The beautiful island referred to is Naushon, the largest of a 
 group lying between Buzzard's Bay and the Vineyard Sound, 
 south of the main land of Massachusetts. It is the noblest do 
 main in New England, and the present Lord of the Manor is 
 worthy of succeeding "the Governor" of blessed memory. 
 
40 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 lying under the lily-pads like tigers in the jungle, 
 Six pounds of ditto killed one morning for breakfast 
 EGO fecit. 
 
 The divinity-student looked as if he would like to 
 question my Latin. No sir, I said, you need not 
 trouble yourself. There is a higher law in grammar 
 not to be put down by Andrews and Stoddard. Then 
 I went on. 
 
 Such hospitality as that island has seen there has 
 not been the like of in these our New England sov 
 ereignties. There is nothing in the shape of kindness 
 and courtesy that can make life beautiful, which has 
 not found its home in that ocean-principality. It has 
 welcomed all who were worthy of welcome, from the 
 pale clergyman who came to breathe the sea-air with 
 its medicinal salt and iodine, to the great statesman 
 who turned his back on the affairs of empire, and 
 smoothed his Olympian forehead, and flashed his 
 white teeth in merriment over the long table, where 
 his wit was the keenest and his story the best. 
 
 [I don't believe any man ever talked like that in 
 this world. I don't believe / talked just so ; but the 
 fact is, in reporting one's conversation, one cannot 
 help Blair-ing it up more or less, ironing out crum 
 pled paragraphs, starching limp ones, and crimping 
 and plaiting a little sometimes; it is as natural as 
 prinking at the looking-glass.] 
 
 How can a man help writing poetry in such a 
 place ? Everybody does write poetry that goes there. 
 In the state archives, kept in the library of the Lord 
 of the Isle, are whole volumes of unpublished verse, 
 some by well-known hands, and others quite as 
 good, by the last people you would think of as versifr 
 ers, men who could pension off all the genuine 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 41 
 
 poets in the country, and buy ten acres of Boston 
 common, if it was for sale, with what they had left. 
 Of course I had to write my little copy of verses with 
 the rest; here it is, if you will hear me read it. 
 When the sun is in the west, vessels sailing in an 
 easterly direction look bright or dark to one who ob 
 serves them from the north or south, according to the 
 tack they are sailing upon. Watching them from one 
 of the windows of the great mansion, I saw these per 
 petual changes, and moralized thus : 
 
 SUN AND SHADOW. 
 
 As I look from the isle, o'er its billows of green, 
 
 To the billows of foam-crested blue, 
 Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, 
 
 Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue : 
 Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray 
 
 As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; 
 Now white as the sea-gull, she flies on her way, 
 
 The sun gleaming bright on her sail. 
 
 Yet her pilot is thinking of dangers to shun, 
 
 Of breakers that whiten and roar; 
 How little he cares, if in shadow or sun 
 
 They see him that gaze from the shore ! 
 He looks to the beacon that looms from the reef, 
 
 To the rock that is under his lee, 
 As he drifts on the blast, like a wind-wafted leaf, 
 
 O'er the gulfs of the desolate sea. 
 
 Thus drifting afar to the dim-vaulted caves 
 
 Where life and its ventures are laid, 
 The dreamers who gaze while we battle the waves 
 
 May see us in sunshine or shade ; 
 Yet true to our course, though our shadow grow dark. 
 
 We'll trim our broad sail as before , 
 And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 
 
 Nor ask how we look from the shore I 
 
42 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind 
 overtasked. Good mental machinery ought to break 
 its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust among 
 them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse 
 their motion. A weak mind does not accumulate 
 force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a 
 man from going mad. We frequently see persons in 
 insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are 
 called religious mental disturbances. I confess that 
 I think better of them than of many who hold the 
 same notions, and keep their wits and appear to enjoy 
 life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent 
 person ought to go mad, if he really holds such or 
 such opinions. It is very much to his discredit in 
 every point of view, if he does not. What is the use 
 of my saying what some of these opinions are ? Per 
 haps more than one of you hold such as I should think 
 ought to send you straight over to Somerville, if you 
 have any logic in your heads or any human feeling in 
 your hearts. Anything that is brutal, cruel, heathen 
 ish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind 
 and perhaps for entire races, anything that assumes 
 the necessity of the extermination of instincts which 
 were given to be regulated, no matter by what 
 name you call it, no matter whether a fakir, or a 
 monk, or a deacon believes it, if received, ought to 
 produce insanity in every well-regulated mind. That 
 condition becomes a normal one, under the circum 
 stances. I am very much ashamed of some people for 
 retaining their reason, when they know perfectly well 
 that if they were not the most stupid or the most self 
 ish of human beings, they would become non-compo 
 tes at once. 
 
 [Nobody understood this but the theological stu- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 43 
 
 dent and the schoolmistress. They looked intelli 
 gently at each other ; but whether they were thinking 
 about my paradox or not, I am not clear. It would 
 be natural enough. Stranger things have happened. 
 Love and Death enter boarding-houses without asking 
 the price of board, or whether there is room for them. 
 Alas ! these young people are poor and pallid ! Love 
 should be both rich and rosy, but must be either rich 
 or rosy. Talk about military duty ! What is that to 
 the warfare of a married maid-of-all-work, with the 
 title of mistress, and an American female constitution, 
 which collapses just in the middle third of life, and 
 comes out vulcanized India-rubber, if it happen to live 
 through the period when health and strength are most 
 wanted ?] 
 
 Have I ever acted in private theatricals? Often. 
 I have played the part of the " Poor Gentleman," be 
 fore a great many audiences, more, I trust, than I 
 shall ever face again. I did not wear a stage-costume, 
 nor a wig, nor moustaches of burnt cork, but I was 
 placarded and announced as a public performer, and 
 at the proper hour I came forward with the ballet- 
 dancer's smile upon my countenance, and made my 
 bow and acted my part. I have seen my name stuck 
 up in letters so big that I was ashamed to show myself 
 in the place by daylight. I have gone to a town 
 with a sober literary essay in my pocket, and seen my 
 self everywhere announced as the most desperate of 
 buffos, one who was obliged to restrain himself in 
 the full exercise of his powers, from prudential consid 
 erations. I have been through as many hardships as 
 Ulysses, in the pursuit of my histrionic vocation. I 
 have travelled in cars until the conductors all knew 
 me like a brother. I have run off the rails, and stuck 
 
44 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 all night in snow-drifts, and sat behind females that 
 would have the window open when one could not 
 wink without his eyelids freezing together. Perhaps 
 I shall give you some of my experiences one of these 
 days ; I will not now, for I have something else for 
 you. 
 
 Private theatricals, as I have figured in them in 
 country lyceum-halls, are one thing, and private 
 theatricals, as they may be seen in certain gilded and 
 frescoed saloons of our metropolis, are another. Yes, 
 it is pleasant to see real gentlemen and ladies, who 
 do not think it necessary to mouth, and rant, and 
 stride, like most of our stage heroes and heroines, in 
 the characters which show off their graces and talents ; 
 most of all to see a fresh, unrouged, unspoiled, high 
 bred young maiden, with a lithe figure, and a pleasant 
 voice, acting in those love-dramas which make us 
 young again to look upon, when real youth and beauty 
 will play them for us. 
 
 Of course I wrote the prologue I was asked to 
 write. I did not see the play, though. I knew there 
 was a young lady in it, and that somebody was in love 
 with her, and she was in love with him, and somebody 
 (an old tutor, I believe) wanted to interfere, and, 
 very naturally, the young lady was too sharp for him. 
 The play of course ends charmingly ; there is a gen 
 eral reconciliation, and all concerned form a line and 
 take each other's hands, as people always do after they 
 have made up their quarrels, and then the curtain 
 falls, if it does not stick, as it commonly does at 
 private theatrical exhibitions, in which case a boy is 
 detailed to pull it down, which he does, blushing vio 
 lently. 
 
 Now, then, for my prologue. I am not going to 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 45 
 
 change my caesuras and cadences for anybody ; so if 
 you do not like the heroic, or iambic trimeter brachy- 
 catalectic, you had better not wait to hear it. 
 
 THIS IS IT. 
 
 A Prologue ? Well, of course the ladies know ; 
 I have my doubts. No matter, here we go J 
 What is a prologue ? Let our Tutor teach : 
 Pro means beforehand; logus stands for speech. 
 'Tis like the harper's prelude on the strings, 
 The prima donna's courtesy ere she sings. 
 
 " The world's a stage," as Shakspeare said, one day; 
 
 The stage a world was what he meant to say. 
 
 The outside world 's a blunder, that is clear; 
 
 The real world that Nature meant is here. 
 
 Here every foundling finds its lost mamma; 
 
 Each rogue, repentant, melts his stern papa ; 
 
 Misers relent, the spendthrift's debts are paid, 
 
 The cheats are taken in the traps they laid ; 
 
 One after one the troubles all are past 
 
 Till the fifth act comes right side up at last, 
 
 When the young couple, old folks, rogues, and all, 
 
 Join hands, so happy at the curtain's fall. 
 
 Here suffering virtue ever finds relief, 
 
 And black-browed ruffians always come to grief, 
 
 When the lorn damsel, with a frantic speech, 
 And cheeks as hueless as a brandy-peach, 
 
 Cries, " Help, kyind Heaven! " and drops upon her knees 
 
 On the green baize, beneath the (canvas) trees, 
 
 See to her side avenging Valor fly: 
 
 4 Ha! Villain! Draw! Now, Terraitorr, yield or die!" 
 
 When the poor hero flounders in despair, 
 
 Some dear lost uncle turns up millionaire, 
 
 Clasps the young scapegrace with paternal joy, 
 
 Sobs on his neck, My boy! MY BOY!! MY BOY UP* 
 
 Ours, then, sweet friends, the real world to-night 
 Of love that conquers in disaster's spite. 
 
46 THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Ladies, attend ! While wof ul cares and doubt 
 Wrong the soft passion in the world without, 
 Though fortune scowl, though prudence interfere, 
 One thing is certain: Love will triumph here! 
 
 Lords of creation, whom your ladies rule, 
 
 The world's great masters, when you're out of school, - 
 
 Learn the brief moral of our evening's play: 
 
 Man has his will, but woman has her way ! 
 
 While man's dull spirit toils in smoke and fire, 
 
 Woman's swift instinct threads the electric wire, 
 
 The magic bracelet stretched beneath the waves 
 
 Beats the black giant with his score of slaves. 
 
 All earthly powers confess your sovereign art 
 
 But that one rebel, woman's wilful heart, 
 
 All foes you master; but a woman's wit 
 
 Lets daylight through you ere you know you're hit. 
 
 So, just to picture what her art can do, 
 
 Hear an old story made as good as new. 
 
 Rudolph, professor of the headsman's trade, 
 
 Alike was famous for his arm and blade. 
 
 One day a prisoner Justice had to kill 
 
 Knelt at the block to test the artist's skill. 
 
 Bare-armed, swart-visaged, gaunt, and shaggy-browed, 
 
 Rudolph the headsman rose above the crowd. 
 
 His falchion lightened with a sudden gleam, 
 
 As the pike's armor flashes in the stream. 
 
 He sheathed his blade; he turned as if to go; 
 
 The victim knelt, still waiting for the blow. 
 
 ** Why strikest not? Perform thy murderous act," 
 
 The prisoner said. (His voice was slightly cracked.) 
 
 " Friend I have struck," the artist straight replied; 
 
 " Wait but one moment, and yourself decide." 
 
 He held his snuff-box, " Now then, if you please! " 
 The prisoner sniffed, and, with a crashing sneeze, 
 Off his head tumbled, bowled along the floor, 
 Bounced down the steps ; the prisoner said no more ! 
 
 Woman ! thy falchion is a glittering eye ; 
 If death lurks in it, oh, how sweet to die! 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 47 
 
 Thou takest hearts as Rudolph took the head ; 
 We die with love, and never dream we 're dead ! 
 
 The prologue went off very well, as I hear. No al 
 terations were suggested by the lady to whom it was 
 sent, so far as I know. Sometimes people criticise 
 the poems one sends them, and suggest all sorts of 
 improvements." Who was that silly body that wanted 
 Burns to alter " Scots wha hae," so as to lengthen the 
 last line, thus ? 
 
 * Edward I ' ' Chains and slavery. 
 
 Here is a little poem I sent a short time since to a 
 committee for a certain celebration. I understood 
 that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and 
 ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president 
 of the day was what is called a " teetotaller." I re 
 ceived a note from him in the following words, con 
 taining the copy subjoined, with the emendations an 
 nexed to it. 
 
 " Dear Sir, your poem gives good satisfaction to 
 the committee. The sentiments expressed with refer 
 ence to liquor are not, however, those generally enter 
 tained by this community. I have therefore consulted 
 the clergyman of this place, who has made some slight 
 changes, which he thinks will remove all objections, 
 and keep the valuable portions of the poem. Please 
 to inform me of your charge for said poem. Our 
 means are limited, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 " Yours with respect." 
 
 a I remember being asked by a celebrated man of letters to 
 let him look over an early, but somewhat elaborate poem of 
 mine. He read the manuscript and suggested the change of 
 one word, which I adopted in deference to his opinion. The 
 emendation was anything but an improvement, and in later 
 editions the passage reads as when first written. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Here it is, with the slight alterations." 
 Come I fill a fresh bumper, for why should we go 
 
 logwood 
 
 While the nootar still reddens our cups as they flow! 
 
 decoction 
 
 Pour out the rich juicco still bright with the sun, 
 
 dye-stuff 
 
 Till o'er the brimmed crystal the rubica shall run. 
 
 half-ripened apples 
 
 The purple glebed clustcro their life-dews have bled; 
 
 taste sugar of lead 
 
 How sweet is the breath of the fragrance they shed ! 
 
 rank poisons wines ! ! ! 
 
 For summer's last roses lie hid in the wiaea 
 
 stable-boys smoking long-nines. 
 
 That were garnered by moidcne who laughed through th 
 
 howl scoff 
 
 Then a smik*-, and a gtes, and a toast, and a ebee*, 
 
 strychnine and whiskey, and ratsbane and beer 
 
 For all tbo good wine, and we've oome of it here 
 In cellar, in pantry, in attic, in hall, 
 
 Down, down, with the tyrant that masters us all ! 
 Long live tbo gay servant that laugha for ua alt ! 
 
 The company said I had been shabbily treated, and 
 advised me to charge the committee double, which 
 I did. But as I never got my pay, I don't know that 
 it made much difference. I am a very particular 
 
 * I recollect a British criticism of the poem " with the slight 
 alterations," in which the writer was quite indignant at the 
 treatment my convivial song had received. No committee, he 
 thought, would dare to treat a Scotch author in that way. I 
 could not help being reminded of Sydney Smith, and the surgi 
 cal operation he proposed, in order to get a pleasantry into the 
 head of a North Briton. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 49 
 
 person about having all I write printed as I write it. 
 I require to see a proof, a revise, a re-revise, and a 
 double re-revise, or fourth-proof rectified impression 
 of all my productions, especially verse. A misprint 
 kills a sensitive author. An intentional change of his 
 text murders him. No wonder so many poets die 
 young! 
 
 I have nothing more to report at this time, except 
 two pieces of advice I gave to the young women at 
 table. One relates to a vulgarism of language, 
 which I grieve to say is sometimes heard even from 
 female lips. The other is of more serious purport, 
 and applies to such as contemplate a change of condi 
 tion, matrimony, in fact. 
 
 The woman who " calc'lates " is lost. 
 
 Put not your trust in money, but put your 
 money in trust. 
 
 m. 
 
 [THE " Atlantic " obeys the moon, and its LUNI- 
 VERSARY has come round again. I have gathered up 
 some hasty notes of my remarks made since the last 
 high tides, which I respectfully submit. Please to 
 remember this is talk ; just as easy and just as for 
 mal as I choose to make it.] 
 
 I never saw an author in my life saving, per 
 haps, one that did not purr as audibly as a full- 
 grown domestic cat (Fdis Catus, LINN.) on having 
 his fur smoothed in the right way by a skilful hand. 
 
 But let me give you a caution. Be very careful 
 how you tell an author he is droll. Ten to one he will 
 hate you ; and if he does, be sure he can do you a 
 
50 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 mischief, and very probably will. Say you cried over 
 his romance or his verses, and he will love you and 
 send you a copy. You can laugh over that as much 
 as you like, in private. 
 
 Wonder why authors and actors are ashamed of 
 being funny ? Why, there are obvious reasons, and 
 deep philosophical ones. The clown knows very well 
 that the women are not in love with him, but with 
 Hamlet, the fellow in the black cloak and plumed hat. 
 Passion never laughs. The wit knows that his place 
 is at the tail of a procession. 
 
 If you want the deep underlying reason, I must 
 take more time to tell it. There is a perfect con 
 sciousness in every form of wit, using that term in 
 its general sense, that its essence consists in a par 
 tial and incomplete view of whatever it touches. It 
 throws a single ray, separated from the rest, red, 
 yellow, blue, or any intermediate shade, upon an 
 object ; never white light ; that is the province of wis 
 dom. We get beautiful effects from wit, all the 
 prismatic colors, but never the object as it is in fair 
 daylight. A pun, which is a kind of wit, is a differ 
 ent and much shallower trick in mental optics ; throw 
 ing the shadows of two objects so that one overlies 
 the other. Poetry uses the rainbow tints for special 
 effects, but always keeps its essential object in the 
 purest white light of truth. Will you allow me to 
 pursue this subject a little farther ? 
 
 [They did n't allow me at that time, for somebody 
 happened to scrape the floor with his chair just then ; 
 which accidental sound, as all must have noticed, has 
 the instantaneous effect that the cutting of the yellow 
 hair by Iris had upon infelix Dido. It broke the 
 charm, and that breakfast was over.] 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 51 
 
 Don't flatter yourselves that friendship author 
 izes you to say disagreeable things to your intimates. 
 On the contrary, the nearer you come into relation 
 with a person, the more necessary do tact and courtesy 
 become. Except in cases of necessity, which are rare, 
 leave your friend to learn unpleasant truths from his 
 enemies ; they are ready enough to tell them. Good- 
 breeding never forgets that amour-propre is univer 
 sal. When you read the story of the Archbishop 
 and Gil Bias, you may laugh, if you will, at the poor 
 old man's delusion ; but don't forget that the youth 
 was the greater fool of the two, and that his master 
 served such a booby rightly in turning him out of 
 doors. 
 
 You need not get up a rebellion against what I 
 say, if you find everything in my sayings is not ex 
 actly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who 
 means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once 
 read an introductory lecture that looked to me too 
 learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all 
 its erudition was taken ready-made from Disraeli. If 
 I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the 
 little great man, who had once belabored me in his 
 feeble way. But one can generally tell these whole 
 sale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the 
 trouble of putting them in the pillory. I doubt the 
 entire novelty of my remarks just made on telling 
 unpleasant truths, yet I am not conscious of any lar 
 ceny. 
 
 Neither make too much of flaws and occasional over 
 statements. Some persons seem to think that abso 
 lute truth, in the form of rigidly stated propositions, 
 is all that conversation admits. This is precisely as if 
 a musician should insist on having nothing but perfect 
 
62 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 chords and simple melodies, no diminished fifths, 
 no flat sevenths, no flourishes, on any account. Now 
 it is fair to say, that, just as music must have all 
 these, so conversation must have its partial truths, its 
 embellished truths, its exaggerated truths. It is in its 
 higher forms an artistic product, and admits the ideal 
 element as much as pictures or statues. One man 
 who is a little too literal can spoil the talk of a whole 
 tableful of men of esprit. "Yes," you say, "but 
 who wants to hear fanciful people's nonsense ? Put 
 the facts to it, and then see where it is ! " Certainly, 
 if a man is too fond of paradox, if he is flighty and 
 empty, if, instead of striking those fifths and sev 
 enths, those harmonious discords, often so much bet 
 ter than the twinned octaves, in the music of thought, 
 if, instead of striking these, he jangles the chords, 
 stick a fact into him like a stiletto. But remember 
 that talking is one of the fine arts, the noblest, the 
 most important, and the most difficult, and that its 
 fluent harmonies may be spoiled by the intrusion of a 
 single harsh note. Therefore conversation which is 
 suggestive rather than argumentative, which lets out 
 the most of each talker's results of thought, is com 
 monly the pleasantest and the most profitable. It is 
 not easy, at the best, for two persons talking together 
 to make the most of each other's thoughts, there are 
 so many of them. 
 
 [The company looked as if they wanted an explana 
 tion.] 
 
 When John and Thomas, for instance, are talking 
 together, it is natural enough that among the six 
 there should be more or less confusion and misappre* 
 hension. 
 
 [Our landlady'turned pale ; no doubt she thought 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 53 
 
 there was a screw loose in my intellects, and that 
 involved the probable loss of a boarder. A severe- 
 looking person, who wears a Spanish cloak and a sad 
 cheek, fluted by the passions of the melodrama, whom 
 I understand to be the professional ruffian of the 
 neighboring theatre, alluded, with a certain lifting of 
 the brow, drawing down of the corners of the mouth, 
 and somewhat rasping voce di petto, to Falstaff's nine 
 men in buckram. Everybody looked up ; I believe 
 the old gentleman opposite was afraid I should seize 
 the carving-knife ; at any rate, he slid it to one side, 
 as it were carelessly.] 
 
 I think, I said, I can make it plain to Benjamin 
 Franklin here, that there are at least six personalities 
 distinctly to be recognized as taking part in that dia 
 logue between John and Thomas. 
 
 (1. The real John ; known only to his Maker. 
 2. John's ideal John ; never the real one, and 
 often very unlike him. 
 3. Thomas's ideal John; never the real John, 
 nor John's John, but often very unlike either. 
 (1. The real Thomas. 
 
 Three Thomases. -I 2. Thomas's ideal Thomas. 
 ( 3. John's ideal Thomas. 
 
 Only one of the three Johns is taxed ; only one can 
 be weighed on a platform-balance ; but the other two 
 are just as important in the conversation. Let us 
 suppose the real John to be old, dull, and ill-looking. 
 But as the Higher Powers have not conferred on men 
 the gift of seeing themselves in the true light, John 
 very possibly conceives himself to be youthful, witty, 
 and fascinating, and talks from the point of view of 
 this ideal. Thomas, again, believes him to be an art 
 ful rogue, we will say; therefore he *s, so far as 
 Thomas's attitude in the conversation is concerned, an 
 
54 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 artful rogue, though really simple and stupid. The 
 same conditions apply to the three Thomases. It fol 
 lows, that, until a man can be found who knows him 
 self as his Maker knows him, or who sees himself as 
 others see him, there must be at least six persons en 
 gaged in every dialogue between two. Of these, the 
 least important, philosophically speaking, is the one 
 that we have called the real person. No wonder two 
 disputants often get angry, when there are six of them 
 talking and listening all at the same time. 
 
 [A very unphilosophical application of the above 
 remarks was made by a young fellow answering to the 
 name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain 
 basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to 
 boarding-houses, was on its way to me vid this unlet 
 tered Johannes. He appropriated the three that re 
 mained in the basket, remarking that there was just 
 one apiece for him. I convinced him that his practi 
 cal inference was hasty and illogical, but in the mea& 
 time he had eaten the peaches.] 
 
 The opinions of relatives as to a man's powers 
 are very commonly of little value ; not merely because 
 they sometimes overrate their own flesh and blood, as 
 some may suppose ; on the contrary, they are quite as 
 likely to underrate those whom they have grown into 
 the habit of considering like themselves. The advent 
 of genius is like what florists style the breaking of a 
 seedling tulip into what we may call high-caste colors, 
 ten thousand dingy flowers, then one with the di 
 vine streak ; or, if you prefer it, like the coming up 
 in old Jacob's garden of that most gentlemanly little 
 fruit, the seckel pear, which I have sometimes seen in 
 shop- windows. It is a surprise, there is nothing to 
 account for it. All at once we find that twice two 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 55 
 
 make five. Nature is fond of what are called "gift- 
 enterprises." This little book of life which she has 
 given into the hands of its joint possessors is com 
 monly one of the old story-books bound over again. 
 Only once in a great while there is a stately poem in 
 it, or its leaves are illuminated with the glories of art, 
 or they enfold a draft for untold values signed by the 
 million-fold millionnaire old mother herself. But 
 strangers are commonly the first to find the " gift " 
 that came with the little book. 
 
 It may be questioned whether anything can be con 
 scious of its own flavor. Whether the musk-deer, or 
 the civet-cat, or even a still more eloquently silent 
 animal that might be mentioned, is aware of any per 
 sonal peculiarity, may well be doubted. No man 
 knows his own voice ; many men do not know their 
 own profiles. Every one remembers Carlyle's famous 
 "Characteristics" article; allow for exaggerations, 
 and there is a great deal in his doctrine of the self- 
 unconsciousness of genius. It comes under the great 
 law just stated. This incapacity of knowing its own 
 traits is often found in the family as well as in the 
 individual. So never mind what your cousins, broth 
 ers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and the rest, say about that 
 fine poem you have written, but send it (postage-paid) 
 to the editors, if there are any, of the " Atlantic," 
 which, by the way, is not so called because it is a no 
 tion, as some dull wits wish they had said, but are too 
 late. 
 
 Scientific knowledge, even in the most modest 
 persons, has mingled with it a something which par 
 takes of insolence. Absolute, peremptory facts are 
 bullies, and those who keep company with them are 
 apt to get a bullying habit of mind ; not of manners, 
 
56 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 perhaps ; they may be soft and smooth, but the smile 
 they carry has a quiet assertion in it, such as the 
 Champion of the Heavy Weights, commonly the best- 
 natured, but not the most diffident of men, wears upon 
 what he very inelegantly calls his " mug." Take the 
 man, for instance, who deals in the mathematical sci 
 ences. There is no elasticity in a mathematical fact 5 
 if you bring up against it, it never yields a hair's 
 breadth; everything must go to pieces that comes in 
 collision with it. What the mathematician knows 
 being absolute, unconditional, incapable of suffering 
 question, it should tend, in the nature of things, to 
 breed a despotic way of thinking. So of those who 
 deal with the palpable and often unmistakable facts 
 of external nature; only in a less degree. Every 
 probability and most of our common, working be 
 liefs are probabilities is provided with buffers at 
 both ends, which break the force of opposite opinions 
 clashing against it; but scientific certainty has no 
 spring in it, no courtesy, no possibility of yielding. 
 All this must react on the minds which handle these 
 forms of truth. 
 
 Oh, you need not tell me that Messrs. A. and B. 
 are the most gracious, unassuming people in the world, 
 and yet preeminent in the ranges of science I am re 
 ferring to. I know that as well as you. But mark 
 this which I am going to say once for all : If I had 
 not force enough to project a principle full in the face 
 of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to 
 contradict it, I would think only in single file from 
 this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain 
 noted institution at South Boston, ventured to express 
 the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old 
 woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School con- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 57 
 
 tradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts be 
 fore the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck 
 to his hasty generalization, notwithstanding. 
 
 [ It is my desire to be useful to those with whom 
 I am associated in my daily relations. I not unfre- 
 quently practise the divine art of music in company 
 with our landlady's daughter, who, as I mentioned be 
 fore, is the owner of an accordion. Having myself a 
 well-marked barytone voice of more than half an oc 
 tave in compass, I sometimes add my vocal powers to 
 her execution of 
 
 " Thou, thou reign 'st in this bosom," 
 
 not, however, unless her mother or some other discreet 
 female is present, to prevent misinterpretation or re 
 mark. I have also taken a good deal of interest in 
 Benjamin Franklin, before referred to, sometimes 
 called B. F., or more frequently Frank, in imitation of 
 that felicitous abbreviation, combining dignity and 
 convenience, adopted by some of his betters. My ac 
 quaintance with the French language is very imperfect, 
 I having never studied it anywhere but in Paris, which 
 is awkward, as B. F. devotes himself to it with the 
 peculiar advantage of an Alsacian teacher. The boy, 
 I think, is doing well, between us, notwithstanding. 
 The following is an uncorrected French exercise, 
 written by this young gentleman. His mother thinks 
 it very creditable to his abilities ; though, being unac 
 quainted with the French language, her judgment can 
 not be considered final. 
 
58 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BRE A XF AST-TABLE. 
 
 LE RAT DES SALONS A LECTURE. 
 
 CE rat 9! est un animal fort singulier. II a deux pattes de 
 derriere sur lesquelles il marche, et deux pattes de devant dont 
 il fait usage pour tenir les journaux. Get animal a la peau 
 noire pour le plupart, et porte un cercle blanchatre autour de son 
 cou. On le trouve tous les jours aux dits salons, ou il demeure, 
 digere, s'il y a de quoi dans son interieur, respire, tousse, eter- 
 nue, dort, et ronfle quelquefois, ayant toujours le semblant de 
 lire. On ne sait pas s'il a une autre gite que 9ela. II a 1'air 
 d'une bete tres stupide, mais il estd'une sagacite et d'une vitesse 
 extraordinaire quand il s'agit de saisir un journal nouveau. On 
 ne sait pas pourquoi il lit, parcequ'il ne parait pas avoir des 
 idees. II vocalise rarement, mais en revanche, il fait des bruits 
 nasaux divers. II porte un crayon dans une de ses poches pec- 
 torales, avec lequel il fait des marques sur les bords des jour 
 naux et des livres, semblable aux suivans : ! ! ! Bah! Pooh! 
 II ne faut pas cependant les prendre pour des signes d'intelli- 
 gence. II ne vole pas, ordinairement ; il fait rarement ineme 
 des echanges de parapluie, et jamais de chapeau, parceque son 
 chapeau a toujours un caractere specifique. On ne sait pas au 
 juste ce dont il se nourrit. Feu Cuvier e*tait d'avis que c'etait 
 de 1'odeur du cuir des reliures ; ce qu'on dit d'etre une nourri- 
 ture animale fort saine, et peu chere. II vit bien longtems. Enfin 
 il meure, en laissant a ses he'ritiers une carte du Salon a Lecture 
 ou il avait existe* pendant sa vie. On pretend qu'il revient toutes 
 les nuits, apres la mort, visiter le Salon. On peut le voir, dit 
 on, a minuit, dans sa place habituelle, tenant le journal du soir, 
 et ayant a sa main un crayon de charbon. Le lendemain on 
 trouve des caracteres inconnus sur les bords du journal. Ce qui 
 prouve que le spiritualisme est vrai, et que Messieurs les Pro- 
 fesseurs de Cambridge sont des imbe9iles qui ne savent rien du 
 tout, du tout. 
 
 I think this exercise, which I have not corrected, 01 
 allowed to be touched in any way, is not discreditable 
 to B. F. You observe that he is acquiring a knowl 
 edge of zoology at the same time that he is learning 
 French. Fathers of families in moderate circumstances 
 will find it profitable to their children, and an econom- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 59 
 
 ical mode of instruction, to set them to revising and 
 amending this boy's exercise. The passage was orig 
 inally taken from the " Histoire Naturelle des B6tes 
 Ruminans et Rongeurs, Bipedes et Autres," lately 
 published in Paris. This was translated into English 
 and published in London. It was republished at 
 Great Pedlington, with notes and additions by the 
 American editor. The notes consist of an interroga 
 tion-mark on page 53d, and a reference (p. 127th) to 
 another book "edited" by the same hand. The ad 
 ditions consist of the editor's name on the title-page 
 and back, with a complete and authentic list of said 
 editor's honorary titles in the first of these localities. 
 Our boy translated the translation back into French. 
 This may be compared with the original, to be found 
 on Shelf 13, Division X, of the Public Library of this 
 metropolis.] 
 
 Some of you boarders ask me from time to time 
 why I don't write a story, or a novel, or something of 
 that kind. Instead of answering each one of you sep 
 arately, I will thank you to step up into the whole 
 sale department for a few moments, where I deal in 
 answers by the piece and by the bale. 
 
 That every articulately-speaking human being has 
 in him stuff for one novel in three volumes duodecimo 
 has long been with me a cherished belief. It has 
 been maintained, on the other hand, that many persons 
 cannot write more than one novel, that all after 
 that are likely to be failures. Life is so much more 
 tremendous a thing in its heights and depths than 
 any transcript of it can be, that all records of human 
 experience are as so many bound herbaria to the in 
 numerable glowing, glistening, rustling, breathing, fra 
 grance-laden, poison-sucking, life-giving, death-distill- 
 
60 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 ing leaves and flowers of the forest and the prairies. All 
 we can do with books of human experience is to make 
 them alive again with something borrowed from our 
 own lives. We can make a book alive for us just in 
 proportion to its resemblance in essence or in form to 
 our own experience. Now an author's first novel is 
 naturally drawn, to a great extent, from his personal 
 experiences ; that is, is a literal copy of nature under 
 various slight disguises. But the moment the author 
 gets out of his personality, he must have the creative 
 power, as well as the narrative art and the sentiment, 
 in order to tell a living story ; and this is rare. 
 
 Besides, there is great danger that a man's first life- 
 story shall clean him out, so to speak, of his best 
 thoughts. Most lives, though their stream is loaded 
 with sand and turbid with alluvial waste, drop a few 
 golden grains of wisdom as they flow along. Often 
 times a single cradling gets them all, and after that 
 the poor man's labor is only rewarded by mud and 
 worn pebbles. All which proves that I, as an individ 
 ual of the human family, could write one novel or story 
 at any rate, if I would. 
 
 Why don't I, then? Well, there are several 
 reasons against it. In the first place, I should tell all 
 my secrets, and I maintain that verse is the proper 
 medium for such revelations. Rhythm and rhyme 
 and the harmonies of musical language, the play of 
 fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, 
 so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly 
 any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of 
 poetry, is reproached as self-exposure. A beauty 
 shows herself under the chandeliers, protected by the 
 glitter of her diamonds, with such a broad snow-drift 
 of white arms and shoalders laid bare, that, were she 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 61 
 
 unadorned and in plain calico, she would be unendura 
 ble in the opinion of the ladies. 
 
 Again, I am terribly afraid I should show up all 
 my friends. I should like to know if all story-tellers 
 do not do this? Now I am afraid all my friends 
 would not bear showing up very well ; for they have 
 an average share of the common weakness of hu 
 manity, which I am pretty certain would come out. 
 Of all that have told stories among us there is hardly 
 one I can recall who has not drawn too faithfully 
 some living portrait which might better have been 
 spared. 
 
 Once more, I have sometimes thought it possible I 
 might be too dull to write such a story as I should 
 wish to write. 
 
 And finally, I think it very likely I shall write a 
 story one of these days. Don't be surprised at any 
 time, if you see me coming out with " The School 
 mistress," or " The Old Gentleman Opposite." [ Our 
 schoolmistress and our old gentleman that sits oppo 
 site had left the table before I said this.] I want my 
 glory for writing the same discounted now, on the 
 spot, if you please. I will write when I get ready. 
 How many people live on the reputation of the repu 
 tation they might have made ! 
 
 I saw you smiled when I spoke about the possi 
 bility of my being too dull to write a good story. I 
 don't pretend to know what you meant by it, but I 
 take occasion to make a remark which may hereafter 
 prove of value to some among you. When one of 
 us who has been led by native vanity or senseless flat 
 tery to think himself or herself possessed of talent 
 arrives at the full and final conclusion that he or she 
 is really dull, it is one of the most tranquillizing and 
 
62 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 blessed convictions that can enter a mortal's mind. 
 All our failures, our short-comings, our strange disap 
 pointments in the effect of our efforts are lifted from 
 our bruised shoulders, and fall, like Christian's pack, 
 at the feet of that Omnipotence which has seen fit to 
 deny us the pleasant gift of high intelligence, with 
 which one look may overflow us in some wider sphere 
 of being. 
 
 How sweetly and honestly one said to me the 
 other day, "I hate books ! " A gentleman, singu 
 larly free from affectations, not learned, of course, 
 but of perfect breeding, which is often so much better 
 than learning, by no means dull, in the sense of 
 knowledge of the world and society, but certainly not 
 clever either in the arts or sciences, his company is 
 pleasing to all who know him. I did not recognize in 
 him inferiority of literary taste half so distinctly as I 
 did simplicity of character and fearless acknowledg 
 ment of his inaptitude for scholarship. In fact, I 
 think there are a great many gentlemen and others, 
 who read with a mark to keep their place, that really 
 " hate books," but never had the wit to find it out, or 
 the manliness to own it. [Entre nous, I always read 
 with a mark.] 
 
 We get into a way of thinking as if what we call an 
 tt intellectual man '' was, as a matter of course, made 
 up of nine tenths, or thereabouts, of book-learning, and 
 one tenth himself. But even if he is actually so com 
 pounded, he need not read much. Society is a strong 
 solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is 
 best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of 
 tea-leaves. If I were a prince, I would hire or buy a 
 private literary tea-pot, in which I would steep all the 
 leaves of new books that promised well. The infusion 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 63 
 
 would do for me without the vegetable fibre. You un 
 derstand me ; I would have a person whose sole busi 
 ness should be to read day and night, and talk to me 
 whenever I wanted him to. I know the man I would 
 have : a quick-witted, out-spoken, incisive fellow ; 
 knows history, or at any rate has a shelf full of books 
 about it, which he can use handily, and the same of 
 all useful arts and sciences ; knows all the common 
 plots of plays and novels, and the stock company of 
 characters that are continually coming on in new cos 
 tume ; can give you a criticism of an octavo in an ep 
 ithet and a wink, and you can depend on it ; cares f 01 
 nobody except for the virtue there is in what he says ; 
 delights in taking off big wigs and professional gowns, 
 and in the disembalming and unbandaging of all lit 
 erary mummies. Yet he is as tender and reverential 
 to all that bears the mark of genius, that is, of a 
 new influx of truth or beauty, as a nun over her 
 missal. In short, he is one of those men that know 
 everything except how to make a living. Him would 
 I keep on the square next my own royal compartment 
 on life's chessboard. To him I would push up another 
 pawn, in the shape of a comely and wise young woman, 
 whom he would of course take, to wife. For all 
 contingencies I would liberally provide. In a word, 
 I would, in the plebeian, but expressive phrase, " put 
 him through" all the material part of life; see him 
 sheltered, warmed, fed, button-mended, and all that, 
 just to be able to lay on his talk when I liked, with 
 the privilege of shutting it off at will. 
 
 A Club is the next best thing to this, strung like a 
 harp, with about a dozen ringing intelligences,* each 
 
 The " Saturday Club," before referred to, answered as well 
 to this description as some others better known to history. 
 
64 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 answering to some chord of the macrocosm. They do 
 well to dine together once in a while. A dinner-party 
 made up of such elements is the last triumph of civil 
 ization over barbarism. Nature and art combine to 
 charm the senses ; the equatorial zone of the system is 
 soothed by well-studied artifices ; the faculties are off 
 duty, and fall into their natural attitudes; you see 
 wisdom in slippers and science in a short jacket. 
 
 The whole force of conversation depends on how 
 much you can take for granted. Vulgar chess-players 
 have to play their game out ; nothing short of the 
 brutality of an actual checkmate satisfies their dull 
 apprehensions. But look at two masters of that noble 
 game ! White stands well enough, so far as you can 
 see ; but Red says, Mate in six moves ; White looks, 
 nods ; the game is over. Just so in talking with 
 first-rate men ; especially when they are good-natured 
 and expansive, as they are apt to be at table. That 
 blessed clairvoyance which sees into things without 
 opening them, that glorious license, which, having 
 shut the door and driven the reporter from its key 
 hole, calls upon Truth, majestic virgin ! to get down 
 from her pedestal and drop her academic poses, and 
 take a festive garland and the vacant place on the 
 medius lectus, that carnival-shower of questions and 
 replies and comments, large axioms bowled over the 
 mahogany like bomb-shells from professional mortars, 
 and explosive wit dropping its trains of many-colored 
 fire, and the mischief-making rain of bon-bons pelt 
 ing everybody that shows himself, the picture of 
 a truly intellectual banquet is one which the old Di- 
 
 Mathematics, music, art, the physical and biological sciences, his 
 tory, philosophy, poetry, and other branches of imaginative liter 
 ature were all represented by masters in their several realms. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 65 
 
 trinities might well have attempted to reproduce in 
 their 
 
 " Oh, oh, oh ! " cried the young fellow whom 
 they call John, " that is from one of your lec 
 tures ! " 
 
 I know it, I replied, I concede it, I confess it, pro 
 claim it. 
 
 u 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 con 
 versation is perpetually sliding. Did you never, in 
 riding through the woods of a still June evening, sud 
 denly feel that you had passed into a warm stratum of 
 air, and in a minute or two strike the chill layer of at 
 mosphere beyond ? Did you never, in cleaving the 
 green waters of the Back Bay, where the Provin 
 cial blue-noses are in the habit of beating the " Met 
 ropolitan " 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 
 tmfrequently 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 bridegoom 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 
 
66 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 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 batra- 
 chians 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 mur 
 dered; 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 : DELHI. Dele. The civilized world 
 says, Amen. 
 
 Do not think, because I talk to you of many sub 
 jects 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 mdas oinos, that black, sweet, 
 syrupy wine which they used to alloy with three parts 
 or more of the flowing stream. [Could it have been 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 67 
 
 melasses, as Webster and his provincials spell it, or 
 Molossrfs, 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 a 
 priori grounds of conviction that it will suit some 
 body. 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 matur 
 ity ; 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 snape to fit 
 it. There is a prophecy in every seam, and its pock 
 ets are full of inspiration. Now hear the verses. 
 
68 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLEe 
 
 THE OLD MAN DREAMS. 
 
 for one hour of youthful joy! 
 Give back my twentieth spring ! 
 
 1 '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 '11 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 ? 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 69 
 
 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 '11 take my girl and boys I 
 
 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. 
 
 IV. 
 
 [I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that 
 I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of 
 course I shall have a great many conversations to re 
 port, and they will necessarily be of different tone 
 and on different subjects. The talks are like the 
 breakfasts, sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes 
 dry. You must take them as they come. How can 
 I do what all these letters ask me to ? No. 1. wants 
 
 * The letters received by authors from unknown correspond 
 ents form a curious and, I believe, almost unrecorded branch of 
 literature. The most interesting fact connected with these let 
 ters is this. If a writer has a distinct personality of character, 
 an intellectual flavor peculiarly his own, and his writings are 
 somewhat widely spread abroad, he will meet with some, and it 
 may be many, readers who are specially attracted to him by a 
 certain singularly strong affinity. A writer need not be sur 
 prised when some simple-hearted creature, evidently perfectly 
 
70 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter smells of 
 bad cigars) must have more jokes ; wants me to tell a 
 " good storey " which he has copied out for me. (I 
 suppose two letters before the word " good " refer to 
 some Doctor of Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. 
 (in female hand) more poetry. No. 4. wants some 
 thing that would be of use to a practical man. 
 (Prahctical mahn he probably pronounces it.) No. 
 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented) " more sentiment," 
 " heart's outpourings." , 
 
 My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but 
 
 sincere, with no poem or story in the back-ground for which he 
 or she wants your critical offices, meaning too frequently your 
 praise, and nothing else, when this kind soul assures him or 
 her that he or she, the correspondent, loves to read the pro 
 ductions of him or her, the writer, better than those of any 
 other author living or dead. There is no need of accounting 
 for their individual preferences. What if a reader prefer you 
 to the classics, whose words are resounding through " the corri 
 dors of time ! " You probably come much . nearer to his intel 
 lectual level. The rose is the sweetest growth of the garden, 
 but shall not your harmless, necessary cat prefer the aroma of 
 that antiquely odorous valerian, not unfamiliar to hysteric 
 womanhood? "How can we stand the fine things that are s.aid 
 of us?" asked one of a bright New Englander, whom New 
 York has borrowed from us. " Because we feel that they are 
 true," he answered. At any rate if they are true for those who 
 eay them, we need not quarrel with their superlatives. 
 
 But what revelations are to be read in these letters! From 
 the lisp of vanity, commending itself to the attention of the 
 object of its admiration, to the cry of despair, which means in 
 sanity or death, if a wise word of counsel or a helping hand 
 does not stay it, what a gamut of human utterances! Each in 
 dividual writer feels as if he or she were the only one to be 
 listened to and succored, little remembering that merely to ac 
 knowledge the receipt of the letters that come by every post 
 is no small part of every day's occupation to a good-natured 
 and moderately popular writer. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 71 
 
 report such remarks as I happen to have made at our 
 breakfast-table. Their character will depend on many 
 accidents, a good deal on the particular persons in 
 the company to whom they were addressed. It so 
 happens that those which follow were mainly in 
 tended for the divinity-student and the schoolmistress ; 
 though others whom I need not mention saw fit to 
 interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conver 
 sation. This is one of my privileges as a talker ; and 
 of course, when I was not talking for our whole com 
 pany I don't expect all the readers . of this periodical 
 to be interested in my notes of what was said. Still, 
 I think there may be a few that will rather like this 
 vein, possibly prefer it to a livelier one, serious 
 young men, and young women generally, in life's 
 roseate parenthesis from years of age to in 
 clusive. 
 
 Another privilege of talking is to misquote. Of 
 course it was n't Proserpina that actually cut the yel 
 low hair, but Iris. (As I have since told you) it 
 was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had 
 used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood 
 firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian 
 Here, Juno, in Latin, sent down Iris instead. But 
 I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentle 
 men that do the heavy articles for the celebrated 
 " Oceanic Miscellany " misquoted Campbell's line 
 without any excuse. " Waft us home the message " 
 of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful for 
 the correction ?] 
 
 The more we study the body and the mind, the 
 more we find both to be governed, not %, but accord 
 ing to laws, such as we observe in the larger universe. 
 You think you know all about walking, don't 
 
72 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 you, now ? Well, how do you suppose your lower 
 limbs are held to your body ? They are sucked up by 
 two cupping vessels (" cotyloid " cup-like cavi 
 ties), and held there as long as you live, and longer. 
 At any rate, you think you move them backward and 
 forward at such a rate as your will determines, don't 
 you ? On the contrary, they swing just as any other 
 pendulums swing, at a fixed rate, determined by their 
 length. You can alter this by muscular power, as you 
 can take hold of the pendulum of a clock and make it 
 move faster or slower ; but your ordinary gait is timed 
 by the same mechanism as the movements of the solar 
 system. 
 
 [My friend, the Professor, told me all this, refer 
 ring me to certain German physiologists by the name 
 of Weber for proof of the facts, which, however, he 
 said he had often verified. I appropriated it to my 
 own use ; what can one do better than this, when one 
 has a friend that tells him anything worth remember 
 ing? 
 
 The Professor seems to think that man and the 
 general powers of the universe are in partnership. 
 Some one was saying that it had cost nearly half a 
 million to move the Leviathan a only so far as they 
 had got it already. Why, said the Professor, 
 they might have hired an EARTHQUAKE for less 
 money !] 
 
 Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom 
 
 a " The Leviathan " was the name first applied to the huge 
 vessel afterwards known as the " Great Eastern." The trouble 
 which rose from its being built out of its " native element," as 
 the newspapers call it, was like the puzzle of the Primrose 
 household after the great family picture, with " as many sheep 
 as the painter could put in for nothing," was finished. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 73 
 
 of many of the bodily movements, just so thought may 
 be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such or such 
 a thought comes round periodically, in its turn. Acci 
 dental suggestions, however, so far interfere with the 
 regular cycles, that we may find them practically be 
 yond our power of recognition. Take all this for what 
 it is worth, but at any rate you will agree that there 
 are certain particular thoughts which do not come up 
 once a day, nor once a week, but that a year would 
 hardly go round without your having them pass 
 through your mind. Here is one which comes up at 
 intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, and there 
 is an instant and eager smile of assent in the listener 
 or listeners. Yes, indeed ; they have often been struck 
 by it. 
 
 All at once a conviction flashes through us that 
 we have been in the same precise circumstances as at 
 the present instant, once or many times before. 
 
 O, dear, yes ! said one of the company, every 
 body has had that feeling. 
 
 The landlady did n't know anything about such no 
 tions; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected. 
 
 The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, 
 that she knew the feeling well, and did n't like to ex 
 perience it ; it made her think she was a ghost, some 
 times. 
 
 The young fellow whom they call John said he knew 
 all about it ; he had just lighted a cheroot the other 
 day, when a tremendous conviction all at once came 
 over him that he had done just that same thing ever 
 so many times before. I looked severely at him, and 
 his countenance immediately fell on the side to 
 ward me ; I cannot answer for the other, for he can 
 wink and laugh with either half of his face without 
 the other half's knowing it. 
 
74 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 I have noticed I went on to say the follow 
 ing circumstances connected with these sudden impres 
 sions. First, that the condition which seems to be the 
 duplicate of a former one is often very trivial, one 
 that might have presented itself a hundred times. 
 Secondly, that the impression is very evanescent, and 
 that it is rarely, if ever, recalled by any voluntary ef 
 fort, at least after any time has elapsed. Thirdly, 
 that there is a disinclination to record the circum 
 stances, and a sense of incapacity to reproduce the 
 state of mind in words. Fourthly, I have often felt 
 that the duplicate condition had not only occurred 
 once before, but that it was familiar and, as it seemed, 
 habitual. Lastly, I have had the same convictions in 
 my dreams. 
 
 How do I account for it ? Why, there are several 
 ways that I can mention, and you may take your 
 choice. The first is that which the young lady hinted 
 at ; that these flashes are sudden recollections of a 
 previous existence. I don't believe that; for I re 
 member a poor student I used to know told me he had 
 such a conviction one day when he was blacking his 
 boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another 
 world where they use Day and Martin. 
 
 Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's 
 being a double organ, its hemispheres working to 
 gether like the two eyes, accounts for it. One of the 
 hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small 
 interval between the perceptions of the nimble and 
 the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, 
 and therefore the second perception appears to be the 
 copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the 
 centre of perception to be double, I can see no good 
 reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of the 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 75 
 
 time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It seems to 
 me most likely that the coincidence of circumstances 
 is very partial, but that we take this partial resem 
 blance for identity, as we occasionally do resemblances 
 of persons. A momentary posture of circumstances 
 is so far like some preceding one that we accept it as 
 exactly the same, just as we accost a stranger occa 
 sionally, mistaking him for a friend. The apparent 
 similarity may be owing perhaps, quite as much to the 
 mental state at the time, as to the outward circum 
 stances. 
 
 Here is another of these curiously recurring re 
 marks. I have said it, and heard it many times, and 
 occasionally met with something like it in books, 
 somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think, and in one of 
 the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know. 
 
 Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associa 
 tions, are more readily reached through the sense of 
 SMELL than by almost any other channel. 
 
 Of course the particular odors which act upon each 
 person's susceptibilities differ. O, yes ! I will tell 
 you some of mine. The smell of phosphorus is one 
 of them. During a year or two of adolescence I used 
 to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as about 
 that time I had my little aspirations and passions like 
 another, some of these things got mixed up with each 
 other : orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and vis 
 ions as bright and transient ; reddening litmus-paper, 
 and blushing cheeks ; eheu ! 
 
 " Soles occidere et redire possunt," 
 
 but there is no reagent that will redden the faded 
 
 roses of eighteen hundred and spare them ! But, 
 
 as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associa- 
 
76 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 tions in an instant; its luminous vapors with their 
 penetrating odor throw me into a trance ; it comes to 
 me in a double sense " trailing clouds of glory." Only 
 the confounded Vienna matches, ohne phosphorge- 
 ruch, have worn my sensibilities a little. 
 
 Then there is the marigold. When I was of small 
 est dimensions, and wont to ride impacted between 
 the knees of fond parental pair, we would sometimes 
 cross the bridge to the next village-town and stop op 
 posite a low, brown, " gambrel-roofed " cottage. Out 
 of it would come one Sally, sister of its swarthy ten 
 ant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, and, 
 bending over her flower-bed, would gather a " posy," 
 as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies in the 
 churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, 
 lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the last few 
 years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, grenadier-like 
 rows of seedling onions, stateliest of vegetables, 
 all are gone, but the breath of a marigold brings them 
 all back to me. 
 
 Perhaps the herb everlasting, the fragrant immor 
 telle of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive 
 odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can 
 hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions 
 which come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, 
 dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepulchral 
 spicery, as if it had been brought from the core of 
 some great pyramid, where it had lain on the breast 
 of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of immor 
 tality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so long in 
 its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why it fills 
 my eyes with tears and carries me in blissful thought 
 to the banks of asphodel that border the Biver of 
 Life. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 77 
 
 I should not have talked so much about these 
 personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to 
 make about them which I believe is a new one. It is 
 this. There may be a physical reason for the strange 
 connection between the sense of smell and the mind. 
 The olfactory nerve, so my friend, the Professor, 
 tells me, is the only one directly connected with the 
 hemispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we 
 have every reason to believe, the intellectual processes 
 are performed. To speak more truly, the olfactory 
 " nerve " is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of 
 the brain, in intimate connection with its anterior 
 lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at 
 the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not 
 decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remem 
 bering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of 
 suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now the 
 Professor assures me that you will find the nerve of 
 taste has no immediate connection with the brain 
 proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal 
 cord. 
 
 [The old gentleman opposite did not pay much at 
 tention, I think, to this hypothesis of mine. But 
 while I was speaking about the sense of smell he 
 nestled about in his seat, and presently succeeded in 
 getting out a large red bandanna handkerchief. Then 
 be lurched a little to the other side, and after much 
 tribulation at last extricated an ample round snuff 
 box. I looked as he opened it and felt for the wonted 
 pugil. Moist rappee, and a Tonka-bean lying therein. 
 I made the manual sign understood of all mankind 
 that use the precious dust, and presently my brain, 
 too, responded to the long unused stimulus. O boys, 
 that were, actual papas and possible grandpapas, 
 
78 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 some of you with crowns like billiard-balls, some 
 in locks of sable silvered, and some of silver sabled, 
 
 do you remember, as you doze over this, those 
 after-dinners at the Trois Frdres, when the Scotch- 
 plaided snuff-box went round, and the dry Lundy- 
 Foot tickled its way along into our happy sensoria? 
 Then it was that the Chambertin or the Clos Vougeot 
 came in, slumbering in its straw cradle. And one 
 among you, do you remember how he would sit 
 dreaming over his Burgundy, and tinkle his fork 
 against the sides of the bubble-like glass, saying that 
 he was hearing the cow-bells as he used to hear them, 
 when the deep-breathing kine came home at twilight 
 from the huckleberry pasture, in the old home a 
 thousand leagues towards the sunset ?] 
 
 Ah me! what strains and strophes of unwritten 
 verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain 
 closet in the ancient house where I was born ! On its 
 shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and 
 pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip ; there 
 apples were stored until their seeds should grow black, 
 which happy period there were sharp little milk-teeth 
 always ready to anticipate ; there peaches lay in the 
 dark, thinking of the sunshine they had lost, until, 
 like the hearts of saints who dream of heaven in their 
 sorrow, they grew fragrant as the breath of angels. 
 The odorous echo of a score of dead summers lingers 
 yet in those dim recesses. 
 
 Do I remember Byron's line about " striking the 
 electric chain " ? To be sure I do. I sometimes 
 think the less the hint that stirs the automatic ma 
 chinery of association, the more easily this moves us. 
 What can be more trivial than that old story of open 
 ing the folio Shakespeare that used to lie in some an- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 79 
 
 cient English hall and finding the flakes of Christmas 
 pastry between its leaves, shut up in them perhaps a 
 hundred years ago? And, lo ! as one looks on these 
 poor relics of a bygone generation, the universe changes 
 in the twinkling of an eye ; old George the Second is 
 back again, and the elder Pitt is coming into power, 
 and General Wolfe is a fine, promising young man, 
 and over the Channel they are pulling the Sieur Da- 
 miens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlan 
 tic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jona 
 thans and Jonases at Fort William Henry ; all the 
 dead people who have been in the dust so long 
 even to the stout-armed cook that made the pastry 
 are alive again ; the planet unwinds a hundred of 
 its luminous coils, and the precession of the equinoxes 
 is retraced on the dial of heaven ! And all this for a 
 bit of pie-crust ! 
 
 I will thank you for that pie, said the pro 
 voking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly- 
 He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to 
 his eyes as if moved. I was thinking, he said in 
 distinctly 
 
 How ? What is 't ? said our landlady. 
 
 I was thinking said he who was king of 
 England when this old pie was baked, and it made 
 me feel bad to think how long he must have been 
 dead. 
 
 [Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a widow 
 of course ; cela va sans dire. She told me her story 
 once ; it was as if a grain of corn that had been 
 ground and bolted had tried to individualize itself by 
 a special narrative. There was the wooing and the 
 wedding, the start in life, the disappointment, 
 the children she had buried, the struggle against 
 
80 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 fate, the dismantling of life, first of its small lux* 
 uries, and then of its comforts the broken spirits, 
 the altered character of the one on whom she leaned, 
 and at last the death that came and drew the black 
 curtain between her and all her earthly hopes. 
 
 I never laughed at my landlady after she had told 
 me her story, but I often cried, not those pattering 
 tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' 
 grounds, the stillicidium of self-conscious sentiment, 
 but those which steal noiselessly through their con 
 duits until they reach the cisterns lying round about 
 the heart ; those tears that we weep inwardly with un 
 changing features ; such I did shed for her often 
 when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged 
 at her soul with their red-hot pincers.] 
 
 Young man, I said the pasty you speak lightly 
 of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor to serve 
 us, especially if they are of the weaker sex, is very 
 old, and yet well worth retaining. May I recommend 
 to you the following caution, as a guide, whenever yon 
 are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet, if 
 you are handling an editor or politician, it is superflu 
 ous advice. I take it from the back of one of those 
 little French toys which contain pasteboard figures 
 moved by a small running stream of fine sand ; Ben 
 jamin Franklin will translate it for you : " Quoiqu'- 
 elle soit tres solidement monte, il faut ne pas BRU- 
 TALISER la machine." I will thank you for the pie, 
 if you please. 
 
 [I took more of it than was good for me, as much 
 as 85, I should think, and had an indigestion in 
 consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote 
 some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay 
 which took a very melancholy view of creation. When 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 81 
 
 I got better I labelled them all " Pie-crust," and laid 
 them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings. I have 
 a number of books on my shelves which I shoulil like 
 to label with some such title ; but, as they have great 
 names on their title-pages, Doctors of Divinity, 
 some of them, it would n't do.] 
 
 My friend, the Professor, whom I have men 
 tioned to you once or twice, told me yesterday that 
 somebody had been abusing him in some of the jour 
 nals of his calling. I told him that I did n't doubt he 
 deserved it ; that I hoped he did deserve a little abuse 
 occasionally, and would for a number of years to come ; 
 that nobody could do anything to make his neighbors 
 wiser or better without being liable to abuse for it ; 
 especially that people hated to have their little mis 
 takes made fun of, and perhaps he had been doing 
 something of the kind. - The Professor smiled. 
 Now, said I, hear what I am going to say. It will not 
 take many years to bring you to the period of life 
 when men, at least the majority of writing and talk 
 ing men, do nothing but praise. Men, like peaches 
 and pears, grow sweet a little while before they begin 
 to decay. I don't know what it is, whether a spon 
 taneous change, mental or bodily, or whether it is 
 thorough experience of the thanklessness of critical 
 honesty, but it is a fact, that most writers, except 
 sour and unsuccessful ones, get tired of finding fault 
 at about the time when they are beginning to grow 
 old. As a general thing, I would not give a great 
 deal for the fair words of a critic, if he is himself an 
 author, over fifty years of age. At thirty we are all 
 trying to cut our names in big letters upon the walls of 
 this tenement of life ; twenty years later we have 
 carved it, or shut up our jack-knives. Then we are 
 
82 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE;. 
 
 ready to help others, and more anxious not to hindei 
 any, because nobody's elbows are in our way* So I 
 am glad you have a little life left; you will be sac 
 charine enough in a few years. 
 
 Some of the softening effects of advancing age 
 have struck me very much in what I have heard or 
 *een here and elsewhere. I just now spoke of the 
 sweetening process that authors undergo. Do you 
 know that in the gradual passage from maturity to 
 helplessness the harshest characters sometimes have a 
 period in which they are gentle and placid as young- 
 children ? I have heard it said, but I cannot be sponsor 
 for its truth, that the famous chieftain, Lochiel, was 
 rocked in a cradle like a baby, in his old age. An 
 old man, whose studies had been of the severest schol 
 astic kind, used to love to hear little nursery-stories 
 read over and over to him. One who saw the Duke 
 of Wellington in his last years describes him as very 
 gentle in his aspect and demeanor. I remember a 
 person of singularly stern and lofty bearing who be- 
 came remarkably gracious and easy in all his ways in 
 the later period of his life. 
 
 And that leads me to say that men often remind me 
 of pears in their way of coming to maturity. Some 
 are ripe at twenty, like human Jargonelles, and must 
 be made the most of, for their day is soon over. Some 
 come into their perfect condition late, like the autumn 
 kinds, and they last better than the summer fruit. 
 And some, that, like the Winter-Nelis, have been hard 
 and uninviting until all the rest have had their season, 
 get their glow and perfume long after the frost and 
 snow have done their worst with the orchards. Be 
 ware of rash criticisms ; the rough and astringent fruit 
 you condemn may be an autumn or a winter pe^r, and 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 83 
 
 that which you picked up beneath the same bough in 
 August may have been only its worm-eaten windfalls. 
 Milton was a Saint-Germain with a graft of the rose 
 ate Early-Catherine. Rich, juicy, lively, fragrant, 
 russet skinned old Chaucer was an Easter-Beurre* ; 
 the buds of a new summer were swelling when he 
 ripened. 
 
 There is no power I envy so much, said the 
 divinity-student, as that of seeing analogies and 
 making comparisons. I don't understand how it is 
 that some minds are continually coupling thoughts or 
 objects that seem not in the least related to each other, 
 until all at once they are put in a certain light and 
 you wonder that you did not always see that they were 
 as like as a pair of twins. It appears to me a sort of 
 miraculous gift. 
 
 [He is a rather nice young man, and I think has 
 an appreciation of the higher mental qualities re 
 markable for one of his years and training. I try his 
 head occasionally as housewives try eggs, give it an 
 intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so to 
 speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, or 
 only contains lifeless albumen.] 
 
 You call it miraculous, I replied, tossing the 
 expression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I 
 fear. Two men are walking by the polyphlcesbo3an 
 ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which 
 he can scoop up a gill of sea-water when he will, and 
 the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly 
 hold water at all, and you call the tin cup a mirac 
 ulous possession ! It is the ocean that is the miracle, 
 my infant apostle ! Nothing is clearer than that all 
 things are in all things, and that just according to 
 the intensity and extension of our mental being we 
 
84 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 shall see the many in the one and the one in the many. 
 Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying when he made 
 Ms speech about the ocean, the child and the peb 
 bles, you know? Did he mean to speak slightingly of 
 a pebble ? Of a spherical solid which stood sentinel 
 over its compartment of space before the stone that be 
 came the pyramids had grown solid, and has watched 
 it until now ! A body which knows all the currents of 
 force that traverse the globe ; which holds by invisible 
 threads to the ring of Saturn and the belt of Orion ! 
 A body from the contemplation of which an archangel 
 could infer the entire inorganic universe as the sim 
 plest of corollaries ! A throne of the all-pervading 
 Deity, who has guided its every atom since the rosary 
 of heaven was strung with beaded stars ! 
 
 So, to return to our walk by the ocean, if all 
 that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, 
 all that maddening narcotics have driven through the 
 brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the 
 tancies of women, if the dreams of colleges and 
 convents and boarding-schools, if every human feel 
 ing that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or 
 groans, should bring all their innumerable images, 
 such as come with every hurried heart-beat, the 
 epic which held them all, though its letters filled the 
 zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean 
 of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the uni 
 verse. 
 
 [The divinity-student honored himself by the way 
 in which he received this. He did not swallow it at 
 once, neither did he reject it ; but he took it as a 
 pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him to 
 his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his 
 leisure.] 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 85 
 
 Here is another remark made for his especial 
 benefit. There is a natural tendency in many per 
 sons to run their adjectives together in triads, as I 
 have heard them called, thus : He was honorable, 
 courteous, and brave ; she was graceful, pleasing, and 
 virtuous. Dr. Johnson is famous for this ; I think it 
 was Bulwer who said you could separate a paper in 
 the " Rambler " into three distinct essays. Many of 
 our writers show the same tendency, my friend, the 
 Professor, especially. Some think it is in humble im 
 itation of Johnson, some that it is for the sake of 
 the stately sound only. I don't think they get to the 
 bottom of it. It is, I suspect, ap instinctive and in 
 voluntary effort of the mind to present a thought or 
 image with the three dimensions which belong to every 
 solid, an unconscious handling of an idea as if it 
 had length, breadth, and thickness. It is a great deal 
 easier to say this than to prove it, and a great deal 
 easier to dispute it than to disprove it. But mind 
 this: the more we observe and study, the wider we 
 find the range of the automatic and instinctive princi 
 ples in body, mind, and morals, and the narrower the 
 limits of the self -determining conscious movement. 
 
 I have often seen piano-forte players and singers 
 make such strange motions over their instruments or 
 song-books that I wanted to laugh at them. " Where 
 did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs ? " I 
 would say to myself. Then I would remember My 
 Lady in "Marriage a la Mode," and amuse myself 
 with thinking how affectation was the same thing in 
 Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day I bought 
 me a Canary-bird and hung him up in a cage at my 
 window. By-and-by he found himself at home, and 
 began to pipe his little tunes , and there he was, sure 
 
86 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 enough, swimming and waving about, with all the 
 droopings and liftings and languishing side-turnings 
 of the head that I had laughed at. And now I should 
 like to ask, WHO taught him all this ? and me, 
 through him, that the foolish head was not the one 
 swinging itself from side to side and bowing and nod- 
 ding over the music, but that other which was passing 
 its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a creature 
 made of finer clay than the frame which carried that 
 same head upon its shoulders ? 
 
 Do you want an image of the human will or the 
 self -determining principle, as compared with its pre-ar 
 ranged and impassable restrictions ? A drop of water, 
 imprisoned in a crystal ; you may see such a one in 
 any mineralogical collection. One little fluid particle 
 in the crystalline prism of the solid universe ! 
 
 Weaken moral obligations ? No, not weaken 
 but define them. When I preach that sermon I 
 spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down some 
 principles not fully recognized in some of your text 
 books. 
 
 I should have to begin with one most formidable 
 preliminary. You saw an article the other day in one 
 of the journals, perhaps, in which some old Doctor or 
 other said quietly that patients were very apt to be 
 fools and cowards. But a great many of the clergy 
 man's patients are not only fools and cowards, but also 
 liars. 
 
 [Immense sensation at the table. Sudden retire 
 ment of the angular female in oxydated bombazine. 
 Movement of adhesion as they say in the Chamber 
 of Deputies on the part of the young fellow they 
 call John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's 
 lower jaw (gravitation is beginning to get the bet- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 87 
 
 ter of him.) Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, 
 briskly, Go to school right off, there 's a good boy ! 
 Schoolmistress curious, takes a quick glance at di 
 vinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed ; 
 draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big false 
 hood, or truth, had hit him in the forehead. My 
 self calm.] 
 
 I should not make such a speech as that, you 
 know, without having pretty substantial indorsers to 
 fall back upon, in case my credit should be disputed. 
 Will you run up-stairs, Benjamin Franklin (for B. 
 F. had not gone right off, of course), and bring down 
 a small volume from the left upper corner of the right- 
 hand shelves ? 
 
 [Look at the precious little black, ribbed backed, 
 clean-typed, vellum-papered 32mo. " DESIDERII ERAS- 
 MI COLLOQUIA. Amstelodami. Typis Ludovici El- 
 zevirii. 1650." Various names written on title-page. 
 Most conspicuous this : Gul. Cookeson, E. Coll. Omn. 
 Anim. 1725. Oxon. 
 
 O William Cookeson, of All-Souls College, Ox- 
 ford, then writing as I now write, now in the 
 dust, where I shall lie, is this line all that remains 
 to thee of earthly remembrance? Thy name is at 
 least once more spoken by living men ; is it a pleas 
 ure to thee? Thou shalt share with me my little 
 draught of immortality, its week, its month, its 
 year, whatever it may be, and then .we will go 
 together into the solemn archives of Oblivion's Uncat- 
 alogued Library !] 
 
 If you think I have used rather strong language, 
 I shall have to read something to you out of the book 
 of this keen and witty scholar, the great Erasmus, 
 who " laid the egg of the Reformation which Lu* 
 
88 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 ther hatched." Oh, you never read his Naufragium^ 
 or " Shipwreck," did you ? Of course not ; for, if you 
 had, I don't think you would have given me credit, 
 or discredit, for entire originality in that speech of 
 mine. That men are cowards in the contemplation of 
 futurity he illustrates by the extraordinary antics of 
 many on board the sinking vessel ; that they are fools, 
 by their praying to the sea, and making promises to 
 bits of wood from the true cross, and all manner of 
 similar nonsense ; that they are fools, cowards, and 
 liars all at once, by this story : I will put it into rough 
 English for you. "I could n't help laughing to hear 
 one fellow bawling out, so that he might be sure to be 
 heard, a promise to Saint Christopher of Paris, the 
 monstrous statue in the great church there, that he 
 would give him a wax taper as big as himself. ' Mind 
 what you promise!' said an acquaintance who stood 
 near him, poking him with his elbow ; ' you could n't 
 pay for it, if you sold all your things at auction/ 
 ' Hold your tongue, you donkey ! ' said the fellow, 
 but softly, so that Saint Christopher should not heai 
 him, ' do you think I 'm in earnest ? If I once 
 get my foot on dry ground, catch me giving him so 
 much as a tallow candle ! ' ' 
 
 Now, therefore, remembering that those who have 
 been loudest in their talk about the great subject of 
 which we were speaking have not necessarily been 
 wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have 
 very often been wanting in one or two or all of the 
 qualities these words imply, I should expect to find a 
 good many doctrines current in the schools which I 
 should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and false. 
 
 So* you would abuse other people's beliefs, Sir T 
 and yet not tell us your own creed ! said the divin- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 89 
 
 ity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked 
 him all the better. 
 
 I have a creed, I replied ; none better, and 
 none shorter. It is told in two words, the two first 
 of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I 
 mean them. And when I compared the human will 
 to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define 
 moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was 
 what I intended to express : that the fluent, self-deter 
 mining power of human beings is a very strictly lim 
 ited agency in the universe. The chief planes of its 
 enclosing solid are, of course, organization, education, 
 condition. Organization may reduce the power of the 
 will to nothing, as in some idiots ; and from this zero 
 the scale mounts upwards by slight gradations. Edu 
 cation is only second to nature. Imagine all the in 
 fants born this year in Boston and Timbuctoo to 
 change places! Condition does less, but "Give me 
 neither poverty nor riches " was the prayer of Agur, 
 and with good reason. If there is any improvement 
 in modern theology, it is in getting out of the region 
 of pure abstractions and taking these every-day work 
 ing forces into account. The great theological ques 
 tion now heaving and throbbing in the minds of 
 "Christian men is this : 
 
 No, I won't talk about these things now. My re 
 marks might be repeated, and it would give my 
 friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I 
 should be visited. Besides, what business has a mere 
 boarder to be talking about such things at a break 
 fast-table ? Let him make puns. To be sure, he was 
 brought up among the Christian fathers, and learned 
 his alphabet out of a quarto " Concilium Tridenti* 
 num." He has also heard many thousand theological 
 
90 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 lectures by men of various denominations ; and it is 
 not at all to the credit of these teachers, if he is not fit 
 by this time to express an opinion on theological mat 
 ters. 
 
 I know well enough that there are some of you who 
 had a great deal rather see me stand on my head than 
 use it for any purpose of thought. Does not my 
 friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a 
 
 week, requesting him to . . ., 
 
 on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, 
 no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of 
 autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin ? 
 
 Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to 
 laugh, and I like to make you laugh well enough, when 
 I can. But then observe this : if the sense of the ri 
 diculous is one side of an impressible nature, it is very 
 well ; but if that is all there is in a man, he had bet 
 ter have been an ape at once, and so have stood at 
 the head of his profession. Laughter and tears are 
 meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of 
 sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water- 
 power ; that is all. I have often heard the Professor 
 talk about hysterics as being Nature's cleverest illus 
 tration of the reciprocal convertibility of the two 
 states of which these acts are the manifestations. But 
 you may see it every day in children ; and if you want 
 to choke with stifled tears at sight of the transition, as 
 it shows itself in older years, go and see Mr. Blake 
 play Jesse Rural. 
 
 It is a very dangerous thing for a literary man to 
 indulge his love for the ridiculous. People laugh with 
 him just so long as he amuses them ; but if he ak 
 tempts to be serious, they must still have their laugh, 
 and so they laugh at him. There is in addition, how 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 91 
 
 ever, a deeper reason for this than would at first ap 
 pear. Do you know that you feel a little superior to 
 every man who makes you laugh, whether by making 
 faces or verses? Are you aware that you have a 
 pleasant sense of patronizing him, when you conde 
 scend so far as to let him turn somersets, literal or lit 
 erary, for your royal delight ? Now if a man can only 
 be allowed to stand on a dais, or raised platform, and 
 look down on his neighbor who is exerting his talent 
 for him, oh, it is all right ! first-rate performance ! 
 and all the rest of the fine phrases. But if all at 
 once the performer asks the gentleman to come upon 
 the floor, and, stepping upon the platform, begins to 
 talk down at him, ah, that was n't in the programme ! 
 I have never forgotten what happened when Syd 
 ney Smith who, as everybody knows, was an ex 
 ceedingly sensible man, and a gentleman, every inch 
 of him ventured to preach a sermon on the Duties 
 of Royalty. The " Quarterly," " so savage and tar- 
 tarly," came down upon him in the most contempt 
 uous style, as " a joker of jokes," a " diner-out of the 
 first water," in one of his own phrases ; sneering at 
 him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, 
 sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been 
 mean enough to do to a man of his position and 
 genius, or to any decent person even. If I were giv 
 ing advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or 
 three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means 
 to keep his wit in the background until after he had 
 made a reputation by his more solid qualities. And 
 so to an actor : Hamlet first, and Bob Logic after 
 wards, if you like ; but don't think, as they say poor 
 Listen used to, that people will be ready to allow that 
 you can do anything great with Macbetfts dagger 
 
92 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 after flourishing about with Paul Pry's umbrella. Do 
 you know, too, that the majority of men look upon all 
 who challenge their attention, for a while, at least, 
 as beggars, and nuisances ? They always try to 
 get off as cheaply as they can ; and the cheapest of all 
 things they can give a literary man pardon the for 
 lorn pleasantry ! is the funny-\*one. That is all 
 very well so far as it goes, but satisfies no man, and 
 makes a good many angry, as I told you on a former 
 occasion. , 
 
 Oh, indeed, no ! I am not ashamed to make 
 you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you 
 something I have in my desk which would probably 
 make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these 
 days, if you are patient with me when I am senti 
 mental and reflective ; not just now. The ludicrous 
 has its place in the universe; it is not a human in 
 vention, but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the 
 practical jokes of kittens and monkeys long before 
 Aristophanes or Shakspeare. How curious it is that 
 we always consider solemnity and the absence of all 
 gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the 
 idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive 
 of half their faculties and then call blessed ! There 
 are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be pre 
 paring themselves for that smileless eternity to which 
 they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their 
 hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. I 
 meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a person 
 of intelligence and education, but who gives me (and 
 all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling look of 
 recognition, something as if he were one of Heaven's 
 assessors, come down to " doom " every acquaintance 
 he met, that I have sometimes begun to sneeze on 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 93 
 
 the spot, and gone home with a violent cold, dating 
 from that instant. I don't doubt he would cut his 
 kitten's tail off, if he caught her playing with it. 
 Please tell me, who taught her to play with it ? 
 
 No, no ! give me a chance to talk to you, my f el- 
 low-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I shall 
 have any scruples about entertaining you, if I can do 
 it, as well as giving you some of my serious thoughts, 
 and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know nothing in 
 English or any other literature more admirable than 
 that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne " EVERY MAN 
 
 TRULY LIVES, SO LONG AS HE ACTS HIS NATURE, OB 
 SOME WAY MAKES GOOD THE FACULTIES OF HIM 
 SELF." 
 
 I find the great thing in this world is not so much 
 where we stand, as in what direction we are moving : 
 To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes 
 with the wind and sometimes against it, but we 
 must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is 
 one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind 
 which is really moving onward. It is this : that one 
 cannot help using his early friends as the seaman uses 
 the log, to mark his progress. Every now and then 
 we throw an old schoolmate over the stern with a 
 string of thought tied to him, and look, I am afraid 
 with a kind of luxurious and sanctimonious compas 
 sion, to see the rate at which the string reels off, 
 while he lies there bobbing up and down, poor fellow ! 
 and we are dashing along with the white foam and 
 bright sparkle at our bows ; the ruffled bosom of 
 prosperity and progress, with a sprig of diamonds 
 stuck in it ! But this is only the sentimental side of 
 the matter ; for grow we must, if we outgrow all that 
 we love. 
 
94 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BSEAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the 
 log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying 
 that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of move 
 ment by those with whom we have long been in the 
 habit of comparing ourselves ; and when they once 
 become stationary, we can get our reckoning from 
 them with painful accuracy. We see just what we 
 were when they were our peers, and can strike the 
 balance between that and whatever we may feel our 
 selves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be 
 mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very 
 old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and 
 sailing in company for some distant region, we can 
 get what we want out of it. There is one of our com 
 panions ; her streamers were torn into rags before 
 she had got into the open sea, then by and by her 
 sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the waves 
 swept her deck, and as night came on we left her a 
 seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid of can 
 vas. But lo ! at dawn she is still in sight, it may 
 be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current has 
 been moving her on, strong, but silent, yes, stronger 
 than these noisy winds that puff our sails until they 
 are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cherubim. And 
 when at last the black steam-tug with the skeleton 
 arms, which comes out of the mist sooner or later and 
 takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes off panting 
 and groaning with her, it is to that harbor where all 
 wrecks are refitted and where, alas ! we, towering in 
 our pride, may never come. 
 
 So you will not think I mean to speak lightly of old 
 friendships, because we cannot help instituting com 
 parisons between our present and former selves by the 
 aid of those who were what we were, but are not what 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 95 
 
 we are. Nothing strikes one more, in the race of life, 
 than to see how many give out in the first half of the 
 course. " Commencement day " always reminds me 
 of the start for the " Derby," when the beautiful high 
 bred three-year-olds of the season are brought up for 
 trial. That day is the start, and life is the race. Here 
 we are at Cambridge, and a class is just " graduating." 
 Poor Harry ! he was to have been there too, but he 
 has paid forfeit ; step out here into the grass behind 
 the church ; ah ! there it is : 
 
 "HUNC LAPIDEM PO8UERUNT 
 SOCII MCERENTEB." 
 
 But this is the start, and here they are, coats bright 
 as silk, and manes as smooth as eau lustrale can make 
 them. Some of the best of the colts are pranced 
 round, a few minutes each, to show their paces. What 
 is that old gentleman crying about ? and the old lady 
 by him, and the three girls, what are they all covering 
 their eyes for ? Oh, that is their colt which has just 
 been trotted up on the stage. Do they really think 
 those little thin legs can do anything in such a slash 
 ing sweepstakes as is coming off in these next forty 
 years? Oh, this terrible gift of second-sight that 
 comes to some of us when we begin to look through 
 the silvered rings of the arcus senilis ! 
 
 Ten years gone. First turn in the race. A few 
 broken down ; two or three bolted. Several show in 
 advance of the ruck. Cassock, a black colt, seems to 
 be ahead of the rest ; those black colts commonly get 
 the start, I have noticed, of the others, in the first 
 quarter. Meteor has pulled up. 
 
 Twenty years. Second corner turned. Cassock 
 has dropped from the front, and Judex, an iron-gray, 
 
96 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 has the lead. But look ! how they have thinned out ! 
 Down flat, five, six, how many ? They lie 
 still enough ! they will not get up again in this race, 
 be very sure ! And the rest of them, what a " tailing 
 off " ! Anybody can see who is going to win, per- 
 
 Thirty years. Third corner turned. Dives, bright 
 sorrel, ridden by the fellow in a yellow jacket, begins 
 to make play fast ; is getting to be the favorite with 
 many. But who is that other one that has been length 
 ening his stride from the first, and now shows close up 
 to the front ? Don't you remember the quiet brown 
 colt Asteroid, with the star in his forehead ? That is 
 he ; he is one of the sort that lasts ; look out for him ! 
 The black " colt," as we used to call him, is in the 
 background, taking it easily in a gentle trot. There 
 is one they used to call the Filly, on account of a cer 
 tain feminine air he had ; well up, you see ; -the Filly 
 is not to be despised, my boy ! 
 
 Forty years. More dropping off, but places much 
 as before. 
 
 Fifty years. Race over. All that are on the 
 course are coming in at a walk ; no more running. 
 Who is ahead ? Ahead ? What ! and the winning- 
 post a slab of white or gray stone standing out from 
 that turf where there is no more jockeying or strain 
 ing for victory ! Well, the world marks their places 
 in its betting-book ; but be sure that these matter 
 very little, if they have run as well as they knew 
 how! 
 
 Did I not say to you a little while ago that the 
 universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analo 
 gies ? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Words 
 worth, just now, to show you what thoughts were sug 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKFAST-TABLE. 97 
 
 gested to them by the simplest natural objects, such as 
 a flower or a leaf ; but I will read you a few lines, if 
 you do not object, suggested by looking at a section of 
 one of those chambered shells to which is given the 
 name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not trouble our 
 selves about the distinction between this and the Paper 
 Nautilus, the Argonauta of the ancients. The name 
 applied to both shows that each has long been com 
 pared to a ship, as you may see more fully in Web 
 ster's Dictionary, or the " Encyclopaedia," to which 
 he refers. If you will look into Roget's Bridgewater 
 Treatise, you will find a figure of one of these shells 
 and a section of it. The last will show you the series 
 of enlarging compartments successively dwelt in by the 
 animal that inhabits the shell, which is built in a 
 widening spiral. Can you find no lesson in this ? 
 
 THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.* 
 
 This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
 
 Sails the unshadowed main, 
 
 The venturous bark that flings 
 On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
 In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 
 
 And coral reefs lie bare, 
 Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 
 
 Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl ; 
 Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 
 
 I have now and then found a naturalist who still worried 
 sver the distinction between the Pearly Nautilus and the Paper 
 Nautilus, or Argonauta. As the stories about both are mere 
 fables, attaching to the Physalia, or Portuguese man-of-war, as 
 well as to these two molluscs, it seems over-nice to quarrel with 
 the poetical handling of a fiction sufficiently justified by the 
 name commonly applied to the ship of pearl as well as the ship 
 of paper. 
 
98 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 And every chambered cell, 
 Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
 As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell, 
 
 Before thee lies revealed, 
 Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed 1 
 
 Year after year beheld the silent toil 
 
 That spread his lustrous coil; 
 
 Still, as the spiral grew, 
 He left the past year's dwelling for the new, 
 Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 
 
 Built up its idle door, 
 Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 
 
 Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 
 
 Child of the wandering sea, 
 
 Cast from her lap forlorn 1 
 From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
 Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn ! 
 
 While on mine ear it rings, 
 Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : 
 
 Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 
 As the swift seasons roll ! 
 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting seal 
 
 V. 
 
 A LYRIC conception my friend, the Poet, said 
 hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often 
 had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, 
 and felt that I turned as white as death. Then comes 
 a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine, 
 then a gasp and a great jump of the heart, then 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 99 
 
 u sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the 
 head, then a long sigh, and the poem is written. 
 
 It is an impromptu, I suppose, then, if you write it 
 so suddenly, I replied. 
 
 No, said he, far from it. I said written, but I 
 did not say copied. Every such poem has a soul and 
 a body, and it is the body of it, or the copy, that men 
 read and publishers pay for. The soul of it is born 
 in an instant in the poet's soul. It comes to him a 
 thought, tangled in the meshes of a few sweet words, 
 words that have loved each other from the cradle 
 of the language, but have never been wedded until 
 now. Whether it will ever fully embody itself in a 
 bridal train of a dozen stanzas or not is uncertain; 
 but it exists potentially from the instant that the poet 
 turns pale with it. It is enough to stun and scare 
 anybody, to have a hot thought come crashing into his 
 brain, and ploughing up those parallel ruts where the 
 wagon trains of common ideas were jogging along in 
 their regular sequences of association. No wonder the 
 ancient, made the poetical impulse wholly external. 
 "Mrfviv actSe <x Goddess, Muse, divine afflatus, 
 something outside always, /never wrote any verses 
 worth reading. I can't. I am too stupid. If I ever 
 copied any that were worth reading, I was only a 
 medium. 
 
 [I was talking all this time to our boarders, you un 
 derstand, telling them what this poet told me. The 
 company listened rather attentively, I thought, consid 
 ering the literary character of the remarks.] 
 
 The old gentleman opposite all at once asked me if 
 I ever read anything better than Pope's " Essay on 
 Man " ? Had I ever perused McFingal ? He was 
 fond of poetry when he was a boy, his mother taught 
 
100 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 him to say many little pieces, he remembered one 
 beautiful hymn ; and the old gentleman began, in 
 a clear, loud voice, for his years, 
 
 " The spacious firmament on high, 
 With all the blue ethereal sky, 
 And spangled heavens," 
 
 He stopped, as if startled by our silence, and a faint 
 flush ran up beneath the thin white hairs that fell 
 upon his cheek. As I looked round, I was reminded 
 of a show I once saw at the Museum, the Sleeping 
 Beauty, I think they called it. The old man's sud 
 den breaking out in this way turned every face to 
 wards him, and each kept his posture as if changed to 
 stone. Our Celtic Bridget, or Biddy, is not a fool 
 ish fat scullion to burst out crying for a sentiment. 
 She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high- 
 shouldered type; one of those imported female ser 
 vants who are known in public by their amorphous 
 style of person, their stoop forwards, and a headlong 
 and as it were precipitous walk, the waist plunging 
 downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy foot 
 fall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, 
 was about to deposit a plate heaped with something 
 upon the table, when I saw the coarse arm stretched 
 by my shoulder arrested, motionless as the arm of 
 a terra-cotta caryatid ; she could n't set the plate down 
 while the old gentleman was speaking ! 
 
 He was quite silent after this, still wearing the 
 slight flush on his cheek. Don't ever think the po 
 etry is dead in an old man because his forehead is 
 wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him when his 
 hand trembles! If they ever were there, they are 
 there still ! 
 
 By and by we got talking again. Does a poet 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 101 
 
 love the verses written through him, do you think, 
 Sir ? said the divinity-student. 
 
 So long as they are warm from his mind, carry 
 any of his animal heat about them, / know he loves 
 them, I answered. When they have had time to 
 cool, he is more indifferent. 
 
 A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes, said 
 the young fellow whom they call John. 
 
 The last words, only, reached the ear of the eco 
 nomically organized female in black bombazine. 
 Buckwheat is skerce and high, she remarked. 
 [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady 
 pays nothing, so she must stand by the guns and 
 be ready to repel boarders.] 
 
 I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I 
 had some things I wanted to say, and so, after waiting 
 a minute, I began again. I don't think the poems 
 I read you sometimes can be fairly appreciated, given 
 to you as they are in the green state. 
 
 You don't know what I mean by the green state ? 
 Well, then, I will tell you. Certain things are good 
 for nothing until they have been kept a long while ; 
 and some are good for nothing until they have been 
 long kept and used. Of the first, wine is the illustri 
 ous and immortal example. Of those which must be 
 kept and used I will name three, meerschaum pipes, 
 violins, and poems. The meerschaum is but a poor 
 affair until it has burned a thousand offerings to the 
 cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without com 
 plexion or flavor, born of the sea-foam, like Aphro 
 dite, but colorless as palllda Mors herself. The fire 
 is lighted in its central shrine, and gradually the juices 
 which the broad leaves of the Great Vegetable had 
 sucked up from an acre and curdled into a drachm are 
 
102 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 diffused through its thirsting pores. First a discolora 
 tion, then a stain, and at last a rich, glowing, umber 
 tint spreading over the whole surface. Nature true to 
 her old brown autumnal hue, you see, as true in the 
 fire of the meerschaum as in the sunshine of October ! 
 And then the cumulative wealth of its fragrant rem 
 iniscences ! he who inhales its vapors takes a thousand 
 whiffs in a single breath; and one cannot touch it 
 without awakening the old joys that hang around it as 
 the smell of flowers clings to the dresses of the daugh 
 ters of the house of Farina ! 
 
 [Don't think I use a meerschaum myself, for I do 
 not, though I have owned a calumet since my child 
 hood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk spe 
 cies) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk 
 and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a 
 bullet-mark on his right cheek. On the maternal side 
 I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper 
 you ever saw. It is a little box-wood Triton, carved 
 with charming liveliness and truth. I have often com 
 pared it to a figure in Raphael's " Triumph of Gala 
 tea." It came to me in an ancient shagreen case, 
 how old it is I do not know, but it must have been 
 made since Sir Walter Raleigh's time. If you are 
 curious, you shall see it any day. Neither will I pre 
 tend that I am so unused to the more perishable 
 smoking contrivance that a few whiffs would make 
 me feel as if I lay in a ground-swell on the Bay of 
 Biscay. I am not unacquainted with that fusiform, 
 spiral-wound bundle of chopped stems and miscellane 
 ous incombustibles, the cigar, so called, of the shops, 
 which to " draw " asks the suction-power of a nurs 
 ling infant Hercules, and to relish, the leathery palate 
 of an old Silenus. I do not advise you, young man, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 103 
 
 even if my illustration strike your fancy, to consecrate 
 the flower of your life to painting the bowl of a pipe, 
 for, let me assure you, the stain of a reverie-breeding 
 narcotic may strike deeper than you think for. I 
 have seen the green leaf of early promise grow brown 
 before its time under such Nicotian regimen, and 
 thought the umbered meerschaum was dearly bought 
 at the cost of a brain enfeebled and a will enslaved.] 
 
 Violins, too, the sweet old Amati! the divine 
 Stradivarius ! Played on by ancient maestros until 
 the bow-hand lost its power and the flying fingers 
 stiffened. Bequeathed to the passionate young enthu 
 siast, who made it whisper his hidden love, and cry 
 his inarticulate longings, and scream his untold ago 
 nies, and wail his monotonous despair. Passed from 
 his dying hand to the cold virtuoso-) who let it slum 
 ber in its case for a generation, till, when his hoard 
 was broken up, it came forth once more and rode the 
 stormy symphonies of royal orchestras, beneath the 
 rushing bow of their lord and leader. Into lonely 
 prisons with improvident artists ; into convents from 
 which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with 
 which its tones were blended; and back again to 
 orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a 
 legion of devils were shut up in it ; then again to the 
 gentle dilettante who calmed it down with easy melo 
 dies until it answered him softly as in the days of the 
 old maestros. And so given into our hands, its pores 
 all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, 
 through and through, with the concentrated hue and 
 sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled 
 and faded on its strings. 
 
 Now I tell you a poem must be kept and used, like 
 a meerschaum, or a violin. A poem is just as porous 
 
104 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 as the meerschaum; the more porous it is, the 
 better. I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable 
 of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of 
 our own humanity, its tenderness, its heroism, its 
 regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained 
 through with a divine secondary color derived from 
 ourselves. So you see it must take time to bring the 
 sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by 
 staining ourselves through every thought and image 
 our being can penetrate. 
 
 Then again as to the mere music of a new poem, 
 why, who can expect anything more from that than 
 from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's 
 hands ? Now you know very well that there are no 
 less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin. These 
 pieces are strangers to each other, and it takes a 
 century, more or less, to make them thoroughly ac 
 quainted. At last they learn to vibrate in harmony 
 and the instrument becomes an organic whole, as if it 
 were a great seed-capsule which had grown from a 
 garden-bed in Cremona, or elsewhere. Besides, the 
 wood is juicy and full of sap for fifty years or so, but 
 at the end of fifty or a hundred more gets tolerably 
 dry and comparatively resonant. 
 
 Don't you see that all this is just as true of a poem ? 
 Counting each word as a piece, there are more pieces 
 in an average copy of verses than in a violin. The 
 poet has forced all these words together, and fastened 
 them, and they don't understand it at first. But let 
 the poem be repeated aloud and murmured over in 
 the mind's muffled whisper often enough, and at 
 length the parts become knit together in such absolute 
 solidarity that you could not change a syllable without 
 the whole world's crying out against you for meddling 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 105 
 
 with the harmonious fabric. Observe, too, how the 
 drying process takes place in the stuff of a poem just 
 as in that of a violin. Here is a Tyrolese fiddle that 
 is just coming to its hundredth birthday, (Pedro 
 Klauss, Tyroli, fecit, 1760), the sap is pretty well 
 out of it. And here is the song of an old poet whom 
 Neaera cheated : 
 
 " Nox erat, et coelo fulgebat Luna sereno 
 
 Intei minora sidera, 
 
 Cum tu magnorum numen laesura deorum 
 In verba jurabas mea." 
 
 Don't you perceive the sonorousness of these old dead 
 Latin phrases? Now I tell you that every word fresh 
 from the dictionary brings with it a certain succu 
 lence ; and though I cannot expect the sheets of the 
 " Pactolian," in which, as I told you, I sometimes 
 print my verses, to get so dry as the crisp papyrus 
 that held those words of Horatius Flaccus, yet you 
 may be sure, that, while the sheets are damp, and 
 while the lines hold their sap, you can't fairly judge 
 of my performances, and that, if made of the true 
 stuff, they will ring better after a while. 
 
 [There was silence for a brief space, after my some 
 what elaborate exposition of these self-evident analo 
 gies. Presently a person turned towards me I do 
 not choose to designate the individual and said that 
 he rather expected my pieces had given pretty good 
 " sahtisfahction." I had, up to this moment, consid 
 ered this complimentary phrase as sacred to the use 
 of secretaries of lyceums, and, as it has been usually 
 accompanied by a small pecuniary testimonial, have 
 acquired a certain relish for this moderately tepid and 
 unstimulating expression of enthusiasm. But as a re- 
 
106 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 ward for gratuitous services I confess I thought it a 
 little below that blood-heat standard which a man's 
 breath ought to have, whether silent, or vocal and ar 
 ticulate. I waited for a favorable opportunity, how 
 ever, before making the remarks which follow.] 
 
 There are single expressions, as I have told you 
 already, that fix a man's position for you before you 
 have done shaking hands with him. Allow me to ex 
 pand a little. There are several things, very slight 
 in themselves, yet implying other things not so unim 
 portant. Thus, your French servant has devalisS 
 your premises and got caught. Excuse^ says the 
 sergent-de-ville, as he politely relieves him of his 
 upper garments and displays his bust in the full day 
 light. Good shoulders enough, a little marked, 
 traces of smallpox, perhaps, but white. . . . Orac ! 
 from the sergent-de-ville's broad palm on the white 
 shoulder! Now look! Vogue la galeref Out 
 comes the big red V mark of the hot iron ; he had 
 blistered it out pretty nearly, had n't he ? the old 
 rascal VOLEUR, branded in the galleys at Mar 
 seilles ! [Don't ! What if he has got something like 
 this ? nobody supposes I invented such a story.] 
 
 My man John, who used to drive two of those six 
 equine females which I told you I had owned, for, 
 look you, my friends, simple though I stand here, I 
 am one that has been driven in his " kerridge," not 
 using that term, as liberal shepherds do, for any bat 
 tered old shabby-genteel go-cart which has more than 
 one wheel, but meaning thereby a four-wheeled vehicle 
 with a pole, my man John, I say, was a retired 
 soldier. He retired unostentatiously, as many of Her 
 Majesty's modest servants have done before and since. 
 John told me, that when an officer thinks he recog^ 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 107 
 
 nizes one of these retiring heroes, and would know if 
 he has really been in the service, that he may restore 
 him, if possible, to a grateful country, he comes sud 
 denly upon him, and says, sharply, " Strap I " If he 
 has ever worn the shoulder-strap, he has learned the 
 reprimand for its ill adjustment. The old word of 
 command flashes through his muscles, and his hand 
 goes up in an instant to the place where the strap 
 used to be. 
 
 [I was all the time preparing for my grand coup, 
 you understand ; but I saw they were not quite ready 
 for it, and so continued, always in illustration of 
 the general principle I had laid down.] 
 
 Yes, odd things come out in ways that nobody 
 thinks of. There was a legend, that, when the Dan 
 ish pirates made descents upon the English coast, 
 they caught a few Tartars occasionally, in the shape 
 of Saxons, who would not let them go, on the con 
 trary, insisted on their staying, and, to make sure of 
 it, treated them as Apollo treated Marsyas, or as Bar- 
 tholinus has treated a fellow-creature in his title-page, 
 and, having divested them of the one essential and 
 perfectly fitting garment, indispensable in the mildest 
 climates, nailed the same on the church-door as we do 
 the banns of marriage, in terrorem. 
 
 [There was a laugh at this among some of the 
 young folks ; but as I looked at our landlady, I saw 
 that " the water stood in her eyes," as it did in Chris 
 tiana's when the interpreter asked her about the spi 
 der, and I fancied, but was n't quite sure that the 
 schoolmistress blushed, as Mercy did in the same 
 conversation, as you remember.] 
 
 That sounds like a cock-and-bull-story, said the 
 young fellow whom they call John. I abstained 
 
108 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 from making Hamlet's remark to Horatio, and con 
 tinued. 
 
 Not long since, the church-wardens were repairing 
 and beautifying an old Saxon church in a certain Eng 
 lish village, and among other things thought the 
 doors should be attended to. One of them particu 
 larly, the front-door, looked very badly, crusted, as it 
 were, and as if it would be all the better for scraping. 
 There happened to be a microscopist in the village 
 who had heard the old pirate story, and he took it into 
 his head to examine the crust on this door. There 
 was no mistake about it ; it was a genuine historical 
 document, of the Ziska drum-head pattern, a real 
 cutis humana, stripped from some old Scandinavian 
 filibuster, and the legend was true. 
 
 My friend, the Professor, settled an important his 
 torical and financial question once by the aid of an 
 exceedingly minute fragment of a similar document. 
 Behind the pane of plate-glass which bore his name 
 and title burned a modest lamp, signifying to the 
 passers-by that at all hours of the night the slightest 
 favors (or fevers) were welcome. A youth who had 
 freely partaken of the cup which cheers and likewise 
 inebriates, following a moth-like impulse very natural 
 under the circumstances, dashed his fist at the light 
 and quenched the meek luminary, breaking through 
 the plate-glass, of course, to reach it. Now I don't 
 want to go into minutice at table, you know, but a 
 naked hand can no more go through a pane of thick 
 glass without leaving some of its cuticle, to say the 
 least, behind it, than a butterfly can go through a sau 
 sage-machine without looking the worse for it. The 
 Professor gathered up the fragments of glass, and with 
 them certain very minute but entirely satisfactory doc- 
 
THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 109 
 
 umerits which would have identified and hanged any 
 rogue in Christendom who had parted with them. 
 The historical question, Who did it ? and the financial 
 question, Who paid for it ? were both settled before 
 the new lamp was lighted the next evening. 
 
 You see, my friends, what immense conclusions, 
 touching our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, 
 may be reached by means of very insignificant prem 
 ises. This is eminently true of manners and forms of 
 speech ; a movement or a phrase often tells you all 
 you want to know about a person. Thus, " How 's 
 your health? " (commonly pronounced haalth) instead 
 of, How do you do ? or, How are you ? Or calling 
 your little dark entry a " hall," and your old rickety 
 one-horse wagon a " kerridge." Or telling a person 
 who has been trying to please you that he has given 
 you pretty good " sahtisfahction." Or saying that you 
 " remember of " such a thing, or that you have been 
 " stoppin' " at Deacon Somebody's, and other such 
 expressions. One of my friends had a little marble 
 statuette of Cupid in the parlor of his country-house, 
 bow, arrows, wings, and all complete. A visitor, 
 indigenous to the region, looking pensively at the fig 
 ure, asked the lady of the house " if that was a statoo 
 of her deceased infant ? " What a delicious, though 
 somewhat voluminous biography, social, educational, 
 and aesthetic, in that brief question ! 
 
 [Please observe with what Machiavellian astuteness 
 I smuggled in the particular offence which it was my 
 object to hold up to my fellow- boarders, without too 
 personal an attack on the individual at whose door it 
 lay.] 
 
 That was an exceedingly dull person who made the 
 remark, Ex pede Herculem. He might as well have 
 
110 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 said, " from a peck of apples you may judge of the 
 barrel." Ex PEDE, to be sure ! Kead, instead, I?% 
 ungue minimi digiti pedis, Herculem, ejusque pa- 
 trem, matrem, avos et proavos, filios, nepotes et pro- 
 nepotes ! Talk to me about your 86s TTOV O-TW / Tell 
 me about Cuvier's getting up a megatherium from a 
 tooth, or Agassiz's drawing a portrait of an undiscov 
 ered fish from a single scale ! As the " O " revealed 
 Giotto, as the one word " moi " betrayed the Strat- 
 ford-atte-Bowe-taught Anglais, so all a man's ante 
 cedents and possibilities are summ 3d up in a single ut 
 terance which gives at once the gauge of his education 
 and his mental organization. 
 
 Possibilities, Sir ? said the divinity-student ; can't 
 a man who says Haow ? arrive at distinction ? 
 
 Sir, I replied, in a republic all things are pos 
 sible. But the man with a future has almost of ne 
 cessity sense enough to see that any odious trick of 
 speech or manners must be got rid of. Does n't Syd 
 ney Smith say that a public man in England never 
 gets over a false quantity uttered in early life ? Our 
 public men are in little danger of this fatal mis-step, 
 as few of them are in the habit of introducing Latin 
 into their speeches, for good and sufficient reasons. 
 But they are bound to speak decent English, un 
 less, indeed, they are rough old campaigners, like Gen 
 eral Jackson or General Taylor; in which case, a few 
 scars on Priscian's head are pardoned to old fellows 
 who have quite as many on their own, and a constitu 
 ency of thirty empires is not at all particular, provided 
 they do not swear in their Presidential Messages. 
 
 However, ?t is not for me to talk. I have made 
 mistakes enough in conversation and print. I never 
 find them out until they are stereotyped, and then 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. Ill 
 
 think they rarely escape me. I have no doubt I shall 
 make half a dozen slips before this breakfast is over, 
 and remember them all before another. How one 
 does tremble with rage at his own intense momentary 
 stupidity about things he knows perfectly well, and to 
 think how he lays himself open to the impertinences 
 of the captatores verborum, those useful but humble 
 scavengers of the language, whose business it is to 
 pick up what might offend or injure, and remove it, 
 hugging and feeding on it as they go ! I don't want 
 io speak too slightingly of these verbal critics ; how 
 can I, who am so fond of talking about errors and 
 vulgarisms of speech ? Only there is a difference be 
 tween those clerical blunders which almost every man 
 commits, knowing better, and that habitual grossness 
 or meanness of speech which is unendurable to edu 
 cated persons, from anybody that wears silk or broad 
 cloth. 
 
 [1 write down the above remarks this morning, 
 January 26th, making this record of the date that no 
 body may think it was written in wrath, on account of 
 any particular grievance suffered from the invasion of 
 any individual scaraboeus grammaticus."] 
 
 1 wonder if anybody ever finds fault with any 
 thing I say at this table when it is repeated ? I hope 
 they do, I am sure. I should be very certain that I 
 had said nothing of much significance, if they did 
 not. 
 
 Did you never, in walking in the fields, come across 
 a large flat stone, which had lain, nobody knows how 
 long, just where you found it, with the grass forming 
 a little hedge, as it were, all round it, close to its edges, 
 and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling 
 that told you it had been lying there long enough, in- 
 
112 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 sinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under 
 its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, 
 when she says to herself, " It 's done brown enough 
 by this time " ? What an odd revelation, and what 
 an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small com 
 munity, the very existence of which you had not sus 
 pected, until the sudden dismay and scattering among 
 its members produced by your turning the old stone 
 over ! Blades of grass flattened down, colorless, 
 matted together, as if they had been bleached and 
 ironed ; hideous crawling creatures, some of them co 
 leopterous or horny-shelled, turtle-bugs one wants 
 to call them , some of them softer, but cunningly 
 spread out and compressed like Lepine watches ; 
 (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, 
 or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has 
 one of her flat-pattern live timekeepers to slide into 
 it ;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments 
 sticking out .like the whips of four-horse stage-coaches : 
 motionless, slug-like creatures, young Iarva3, perhaps 
 more horrible in their pulpy stillness than even in the 
 infernal wriggle of maturity ! But no sooner is the 
 stone turned and the wholesome light of day let upon 
 this compressed and blinded community of creeping 
 things, than all of them which enjoy the luxury of legs 
 and some of them have a good many rush round 
 wildly, butting each other and everything in their way, 
 and end in a general stampede for underground re 
 treats from the region poisoned by sunshine. Next 
 year you will find the grass growing tall and green 
 where the stone lay ; the ground-bird builds her nest 
 where the beetle had his hole ; the dandelion and the 
 buttercup are growing there, and the broad fans ol in- 
 sect-angels open and shut over their golden disks, as 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 113 
 
 the rhythmic waves of blissful consciousness pulsate 
 through their glorified being. 
 
 The young fellow whom they call John saw fit 
 to say, in his very familiar way, at which I do not 
 choose to take offence, but which I sometimes think it 
 necessary to repress, that I was coming it rather strong 
 on the butterflies. 
 
 No, I replied ; there is meaning in each of those 
 images, the butterfly as well as the others. The 
 stone is ancient error. The grass is human nature 
 borne down and bleached of all its color by it. The 
 shapes which are found beneath are the crafty beings 
 that thrive in darkness, and the weaker organisms 
 kept helpless by it. He who turns the stone over is 
 whosoever puts the staff of truth to the old lying in 
 cubus, no matter whether he do it with a serious face 
 or a laughing one. The next year stands for the com 
 ing time. Then shall the nature which had lain 
 blanched and broken rise in its full stature and native 
 hues in the sunshine. Then shall God's minstrels 
 build their nests in the hearts of a newborn humanity. 
 Then shall beauty Divinity taking outlines and 
 color light upon the souls of men as the butterfly, 
 image of the beatified spirit rising from the dust, 
 soars from the shell that held a poor grub, which 
 would never have found wings had not the stone been 
 lifted. 
 
 You never need think you can turn over any old 
 falsehood without a terrible squirming and scattering 
 of the horrid little population that dwells under it. 
 
 Every real thought on every real subject knocks 
 the wind out of somebody or other. As soon as his 
 breath comes back, he very probably begins to expend 
 it in hard words. These are the best evidence a man 
 
114 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 can have that he has said something it was time to 
 say. Dr. Johnson was disappointed in the effect of 
 one of his pamphlets. " I think I have not been at 
 tacked enough for it," he said ; " attack is the re 
 action; I never think I have hit hard unless it re 
 bounds." 
 
 If a fellow attacked my opinions in print would 
 I reply ? Not I. Do you think I don't understand 
 what my friend, the Professor, long ago called the 
 hydrostatic paradox of controversy ? 
 
 Don't know what that means ? Well, I will tell 
 you. You know, that, if you had a bent tube, one 
 arm of which was of the size of a pipe-stem, and the 
 other big enough to hold the ocean, water would 
 stand at the same height in one as in the other. Con 
 troversy equalizes fools and wise men in the same way, 
 and the fools know it. 
 
 No, but I often read what they say about other 
 people. There are about a dozen phrases which all 
 come tumbling along together, like the tongs, and the 
 shovel, and the poker, and the brush, and the bellows, 
 in one of those domestic avalanches that everybody 
 knows. If you get one, you get the whole lot. 
 
 What are they ? Oh, that depends a good deal on 
 latitude and longitude. Epithets follow the isother 
 mal lines pretty accurately. Grouping them in two 
 families, one finds himself a clever, genial, witty, wise, 
 brilliant, sparkling, thoughtful, distinguished, cele 
 brated, illustrious scholar and perfect gentleman, and 
 first writer of the age ; or a dull, foolish, wicked, pert, 
 shallow, ignorant, insolent, traitorous, black-hearted 
 outcast, and disgrace to civilization. 
 
 What do I think determines the set of phrases a 
 man gets ? Well, I should say a set of influences 
 
THE AUTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 115 
 
 something like these : 1st. Relationships, political, 
 religious, social, domestic. 2d. Oysters, in the form 
 of suppers given to gentlemen connected with criti 
 cism. I believe in the school, the college, and the 
 clergy ; but my sovereign logic, for regulating public 
 opinion which means commonly the opinion of half 
 a dozen of the critical gentry is the following. Major 
 proposition. Oysters au naturel. Minor proposition. 
 The same " scalloped." Conclusion. That (here 
 insert entertainer's name) is clever, witty, wise, bril 
 liant, and the rest. 
 
 No, it is n't exactly bribery. One man has oys 
 ters, and another epithets. It is an exchange of hos 
 pitalities ; one gives a " spread " on linen, and the other 
 on paper, that is all. Don't you think you and I 
 should be apt to do just so, if we were in the critical 
 line ? I am sure I could n't resist the softening influ 
 ences of hospitality. I don't like to dine out, you 
 know, I dine so well at our own table [our land 
 lady looked radiant] , and the company is so pleasant 
 [a rustling movement of satisfaction among the board 
 ers] ; but if I did partake of a man's salt, with such 
 additions as that article of food requires to make it 
 palatable, I could never abuse him, and if I had to 
 speak of him, I suppose I should hang my set of jing 
 ling epithets round him like a string of sleigh-bells. 
 Good feeling helps society to make liars of most of us, 
 not absolute liars, but such careless handlers of 
 truth that its sharp corners get terribly rounded. I 
 love truth as chiefest among the virtues ; I trust it 
 runs in my blood ; but I would never be a critic, be 
 cause I know I could not always tell it. I might write 
 a criticism of a book that happened to please me ; that 
 is another matter. 
 
116 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Listen, Benjamin Franklin ! This is for you, and 
 such others of tender age as you may tell it to. 
 
 When we are as yet small children, long before the 
 time when those two grown ladies offer us the choice 
 of Hercules, there comes up to us a youthful angel, 
 holding in his right hand cubes like dice, and in his 
 left spheres like marbles. The cubes are of stainless 
 ivory, and on each is written in letters of gold 
 TRUTH. The spheres are veined and streaked and 
 spotted beneath, with a dark crimson flush above, 
 where the light falls on them, and in a certain aspect 
 you can make out upon every one of them the three 
 letters L, I, E. The child to whom they are offered 
 very probably clutches at both. The spheres are the 
 most convenient things in the world; they roll with 
 the least possible impulse just where the child would 
 have them. The cubes will not roll at all ; they have 
 a great talent for standing still, and always keep right 
 side up. But very soon the young philosopher finds 
 that things which roll so easily are very apt to roll 
 into the wrong corner, and to get out of his way 
 when he most wants them, while he always knows 
 where to find the others, $hich stay where they are 
 left. Thus he learns thus we learn to drop the 
 streaked and speckled globes of falsehood and to hold 
 fast the white angular blocks of truth. But then 
 comes Timidity, and after her Good-nature, and last 
 of all Polite-behavior, all insisting that truth must 
 roll, or nobody can do anything with it ; and so the 
 first with her coarse rasp, and the second with her 
 broad file, and the third with her silken sleeve, do so 
 round off and smooth and polish the snow-white cubes 
 of truth, that, when they have got a little dingy by use, 
 it becomes hard to tell them from the rolling spheres 
 of falsehood. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 117 
 
 The schoolmistress was polite enough to say that 
 she was pleased with this, and that she would read it 
 to her little flock the next day. But she should tell 
 the children, she said, that there were better reasons 
 for truth than could be found in mere experience of 
 its convenience and the inconvenience of lying. 
 
 Yes, I said, but education always begins 
 through the senses, and works up to the idea of ab 
 solute right and wrong. The first thing the child has 
 to learn about this matter is, that lying is unprofita 
 ble, afterwards that it is against the peace and dig 
 nity of the universe. 
 
 Do I think that the particular form of lying 
 often seen in newspapers, under the title, " From our 
 Foreign Correspondent," does any harm ? Why, no, 
 I don't know that it does. I suppose it does n't 
 really deceive people any more than the "Arabian 
 Nights " or " Gulliver's Travels " do. Sometimes the 
 writers compile too carelessly, though, and mix up 
 facts out of geographies, and stories out of the penny 
 papers, so as to mislead those who are desirous of in 
 formation. I cut a piece out of one of the papers the 
 other day, which contains a number of improbabilities, 
 and, I suspect, misstatements. I will send up and get 
 it for you, if you would like to hear it. Ah, this is 
 it ; it is headed 
 
 "OuR SUMATRA CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 " This island is now the property of the Stamford 
 family, having been won, it is said, in a raffle, by 
 
 Sir Stamford, during the stock-gambling mania 
 
 of the South-Sea Scheme. The history of this gentle 
 man may be found in an interesting series of questions 
 (unfortunately not yet answered) contained in the 
 
118 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 4 Notes and Queries.' This island is entirely sur 
 rounded by the ocean, which here contains a large 
 amount of saline substance, crystallizing in cubes re 
 markable for their symmetry, and frequently displays 
 on its surface, during calm weather, the rainbow tints 
 of the celebrated South-Sea bubbles. The summers 
 are oppressively hot, and the winters very probably 
 cold ; but this fact cannot be ascertained precisely, as, 
 for some peculiar reason, the mercury in these lati 
 tudes never shrinks, as in more northern regions, and 
 thus the thermometer is rendered useless in winter. 
 
 " The principal vegetable productions of the island 
 are the pepper tree and the bread-fruit tree. Pepper 
 being very abundantly produced, a benevolent society 
 was organized in London during the last century for 
 supplying the natives with vinegar and oysters, as an 
 addition to that delightful condiment. [Note received 
 from Dr. D. P.] It is said, however, that, as the oys 
 ters were of the kind called natives in England, the 
 natives of Sumatra, in obedience to a natural instinct, 
 refused to touch them, and confined themselves en 
 tirely to the crew of the vessel in which they were 
 brought over. This information was received from one 
 of the oldest inhabitants, a native himself, and exceed 
 ingly fond of missionaries. He is said also to be very 
 skilful in the cuisine peculiar to the island. 
 
 "During the season of gathering the pepper, the 
 persons employed are subject to various incommodi- 
 ties, the chief of which is violent and long-continued 
 sternutation, or sneezing. Such is the vehemence of 
 these attacks, that the unfortunate subjects of them 
 are often driven backwards for great distances at im 
 mense speed, on the well-known principle of the 
 ?eolipile. Not being able to see where they are going, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 119 
 
 these poor creatures dash themselves to pieces against 
 the rocks or are precipitated over the cliffs and thus 
 many valuable lives are lost annually. As, during the 
 whole pepper-harvest, they feed exclusively on this 
 stimulant, they become exceedingly irritable. The 
 smallest injury is resented with ungovernable rage. A 
 young man suffering from the pepper-fever, as it is 
 called, cudgelled another most severely for appropriate 
 ing a superannaated relative of trifling value, and was 
 only pacified by having a present made him of a pig 
 of that peculiar species of swine called the Peccavi by 
 the Catholic Jews, who, it is well known, abstain from 
 swine's flesh in imitation of the Mahometan Bud 
 dhists. 
 
 " The bread-tree grows abundantly. Its branches 
 are well known to Europe and America under the 
 familiar name of maccaroni. The smaller twigs are 
 called vermicelli. They have a decided animal flavor, 
 as may be observed in the soups containing them. 
 Maccaroni, being tubular, is the favorite habitat of a 
 very dangerous insect, which is rendered peculiarly fero^ 
 cious by being boiled. The government of the island, 
 therefore, never allows a stick of it to be exported 
 without being accompanied by a piston with which its 
 cavity may at any time be thoroughly swept ouk 
 These are commonly lost or stolen before the macca 
 roni arrives among us. It therefore always contains 
 many of these insects, which, however, generally die of 
 old age in the shops, so that accidents from this source 
 are comparatively rare. 
 
 " The fruit of the bread-tree consists principally of 
 hot rolls. The buttered-muffin variety is supposed to 
 be a hybrid with the cocoa-nut palm, the cream found 
 on the milk of the cocoa-nut exuding from the hybrid 
 
120 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 in the shape of butter, just as the ripe fruit is split 
 ting, so as to fit it for the tea-table, where it is com 
 monly served up with cold " 
 
 There, I don't want to read any more of it. 
 You see that many of these statements are highly im 
 probable. No, I shall not mention the paper. No, 
 neither of them wrote it, though it reminds me of the 
 style of these popular writers. I think the fellow who 
 wrote it must have been reading some of their stories, 
 and got them mixed up with his history and geog 
 raphy. I don't suppose he lies he sells it to the 
 editor; who knows how many squares off " Sumatra " 
 is. The editor, who sells it to the public By the 
 way, the papers have been very civil haven't they ? 
 to the the what d'ye call it ? " Northern 
 Magazine," isn't it? got up by some of those 
 Gome-outers, down East, as an organ for their local 
 peculiarities. 
 
 The Professor has been to see me. Came in, 
 glorious, at about twelve o'clock, last night. Said he 
 had been with " the boys." On inquiry, found that 
 " the boys " were certain baldish and grayish old 
 gentlemen that one sees or hears of in various im 
 portant stations of society. The Professor is one of 
 the same set, but he always talks as if he had been 
 
 out of college about ten years, whereas 
 
 [Each of these dots was a little nod, which the com 
 pany understood, as the reader will, no doubt.] He 
 calls them sometimes " the boys," and sometimes " the 
 old fellows." Call him by the latter title, and see 
 how he likes it. Well, he came in last night glori 
 ous, as I was saying. Of course I don't mean vin- 
 ously exalted ; he drinks little wine on such occasions, 
 and is well known to all the Peters and Patricks as 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 121 
 
 the gentleman who always has indefinite quantities of 
 black tea to kill any extra glass of red claret he may 
 have swallowed. But the Professor says he always 
 gets tipsy on old memories at these gatherings. He 
 was, I forget how many years old when he went to 
 the meeting ; just turned of twenty now, he said. 
 He made various youthful proposals to me, including 
 a duet under the landlady's daughter's window. He 
 had just learned a trick, he said, of one of " the boys," 
 of getting a splendid bass out of a door-panel by rub 
 bing it with the palm of his hand. Offered to sing 
 "The sky is bright," accompanying himself on the 
 front-door, if I would go down and help in the chorus. 
 Said there never was such a set of fellows as the old 
 boys of the set he has been with. Judges, mayors, 
 Congress-men, Mr. Speakers, leaders in science, clergy 
 men better than famous, and famous too, poets by the 
 half-dozen, singers with voices like angels, financiers, 
 wits, three of the best laughers in the Commonwealth, 
 engineers, agriculturists, all forms of talent and 
 knowledge he pretended were represented in that meet- 
 ing. Then he began to quote Byron about Santa 
 Croce, and maintained that he could " furnish out 
 creation " in all its details from that set of his. He 
 would like to have the whole boodle of them (I re 
 monstrated against this word, but the Professor said it 
 was a diabolish good word, and he would have no 
 other), with their wives and children shipwrecked on 
 a remote island, just to see how splendidly they would 
 reorganize society. They could build a city, they 
 have done it ; make constitutions and laws ; establish 
 churches and lyceums ; teach and practise the heal 
 ing art ; instruct in every department ; found observ 
 atories ; create commerce and manufactures ; write 
 
122 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make instru 
 ments to accompany the songs with ; lastly, publish a 
 journal almost as good as the " Northern Magazine," 
 edited by the Come-outers. There was nothing they 
 were not up to, from a christening to a hanging ; the 
 last, to be sure, could never be called for, unless some 
 stranger got in among them. 
 
 I let the Professor talk as long as he liked ; it 
 did n't make much difference to me whether it was 
 all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and simi 
 lar elements. All at once he jumped up and said, 
 
 Don't you want to hear what I just read to the 
 boys? 
 
 I have had questions of a similar character asked 
 me before, occasionally. A man of iron mould might 
 perhaps say, No ! I am not a man of iron mould, and 
 said that I should be delighted. 
 
 The Professor then read with that slightly sing 
 song cadence which is observed to be common in poets 
 reading their own verses the following stanzas; 
 holding them at a focal distance of about two feet and 
 a half, with an occasional movement back or forward 
 for better adjustment, the appearance of which has 
 been likened by some impertinent young folks to that 
 of the act of playing on the trombone. His eyesight 
 was never better ; I have his word for it. 
 
 MARE RUBRUM. 
 
 Flash out a stream of blood-red wine ! 
 
 For I would drink to other days ; 
 And brighter shall their memory shine, 
 
 Seen flaming through its crimson blaze. 
 The roses die, the summers fade; 
 
 But every ghost of boyhood's dream 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 123 
 
 By Nature's magic power is laid 
 
 To sleep beneath this blood-red stream. 
 
 It filled the purple grapes that lay 
 
 And drank the splendors of the sun 
 Where the long summer's cloudless day 
 
 Is mirrored in the broad Garonne; 
 It pictures still the bacchant shapes 
 
 That saw their hoarded sunlight shed, 
 The maidens dancing on the grapes, 
 
 Their milk-white ankles splashed with red. 
 
 Beneath these waves of crimson lie, 
 
 In rosy fetters prisoned fast, 
 Those flitting shapes that never die, 
 
 The swift-winged visions of the past. 
 Kiss but the crystal's mystic rim, 
 
 Each shadow rends its flowery chain, 
 Springs in a bubble from its brim 
 
 And walks the chambers of the brain. 
 
 Poor Beauty! time and fortune's wrong 
 
 No form nor feature may withstand, 
 Thy wrecks are scattered all along, 
 
 Like emptied sea-shells on the sand ; 
 Yet, sprinkled with this blushing rain, 
 
 The dust restores each blooming girl, 
 As if the sea-shells moved again 
 
 Their glistening lips of pink and pearl. 
 
 Here lies the home of school-boy life, 
 
 With creaking stair and wind-swept hall, 
 And, scarred by many a truant knife, 
 
 Our old initials on the wall ; 
 Here rest their keen vibrations mute 
 
 The shout of voices known so well, 
 The ringing laugh, the wailing flute, 
 
 The chiding of the sharp-tongued bell. 
 
 Here, clad in burning robes, are laid 
 Life's blossomed joys, untimely shed; 
 
124 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 And here those cherished forms have strayed 
 We miss awhile, and call them dead. 
 
 What wizard fills the maddening glass? 
 What soil the enchanted clusters grew, 
 
 That buried passions wake and pass 
 In beaded drops of fiery dew ? 
 
 Nay, take the cup of blood-red wine, 
 
 Our hearts can boast a warmer glow, 
 Filled from a vintage more divine, 
 
 Calmed, but not chilled by winter's snow! 
 To-night the palest wave we sip 
 
 Rich as the priceless draught shall be 
 That wet the bride of Cana's lip, 
 
 The wedding wine of Galilee 1 
 
 VI. 
 
 SIN has many tools, but a lie is the handle which 
 fits them all. 
 
 I think, Sir, said the divinity-student, yon 
 must intend that for one of the sayings of the Seven 
 Wise Men of Boston you were speaking of the other 
 day. , 
 
 I thank you, my young friend, was my reply, 
 but I must say something better than that, before I 
 could pretend to fill out the number. 
 
 The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of 
 these sayings there were on record, and what, and by 
 whom said. 
 
 Why, let us see, there is that one of Benjamin 
 Franklin, " the great Bostonian," after whom this lad 
 was named. To be sure, he said a great many wise 
 things, and I don't feel sure he did n't borrow this, 
 he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it 
 so neatly ! 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 125 
 
 " He that has once done you a kindness will be 
 more ready to do you another than he whom you your 
 self have obliged." 
 
 Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, ut 
 tered by my friend, the Historian, in one of his flash 
 ing moments : 
 
 " Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense 
 with its necessaries." 
 
 To these must certainly be added that other saying 
 of one of the wittiest of men : 
 
 " Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris." 
 
 The divinity-student looked grave at this, but 
 said nothing. 
 
 The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she did n't 
 think the wit meant any irreverence. It was only an 
 other way of saying, Paris is a heavenly place after 
 New York or Boston. 
 
 A jaunty-looking person, who had come in with the 
 young fellow they call John, evidently a stranger, 
 said there was one more wise man's saying that he had 
 heard ; it was about our place, but he did n't know 
 who said it. A civil curiosity was manifested by the 
 company to hear the fourth wise saying. I heard him 
 distinctly whispering to the young fellow who brought 
 him to dinner, Shall I tell it ? To which the answer 
 was, Go ahead! Well, he said, this was what 
 I heard : 
 
 " Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. 
 You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you 
 had the tire of all creation straightened out for a 
 crowbar." 
 
 Sir, said I, I am gratified with your remark. 
 It expresses with pleasing vivacity that which I have 
 sometimes heard uttered with malignant dulness. The 
 
126 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 satire of the remark is essentially true of Boston, 
 and of all other considerable, and inconsiderable, 
 places with which I have had the privilege of being 
 acquainted. Cockneys think London is the only place 
 in the world. Frenchmen you remember the line 
 about Paris, the Court, the World, etc. I recollect 
 well, by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus : 
 " H6tel de 1'Univers et des 6tats Unis ;" and as Paris 
 is the universe to a Frenchman, of course the United 
 States are outside of it. " See Naples and then die." 
 It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been 
 about, lecturing, you know, and have found the follow 
 ing propositions to hold true of all of them. 
 
 1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through 
 the centre of each and every town or city. 
 
 2. If more than fifty years have passed since its 
 foundation, it is affectionately styled by the inhabit 
 ants the " good old town of " (whatever its name 
 may happen to be.) 
 
 3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes to 
 gether to listen to a stranger is invariably declared to 
 be a " remarkably intelligent audience." 
 
 4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable 
 to longevity. 
 
 5. It contains several persons of vast talent little 
 known to the world. (One or two of them, you may 
 perhaps chance to remember, sent short pieces to the 
 " Pactolian " some time since, which were " respect 
 fully declined.") 
 
 Boston is just like other places of its size ; only, 
 perhaps, considering its excellent fish-market, paid 
 fire-department, superior monthly publications, and 
 correct habit of spelling the English language, it has 
 some right to look down on the mob of cities. I '!] 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 127 
 
 tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the 
 real offence of Boston. It drains a large water-shed 
 of its intellect, and will not itself be drained. If it 
 would only send away its first-rate men, instead of its 
 second-rate ones (no offence to the well-known excep 
 tions, of which we are always proud), we should be 
 spared such epigrammatic remarks as that which the 
 gentleman has quoted. There can never be a real me 
 tropolis in this country, until the biggest centre can 
 drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. 1 
 have observed, by the way, that the people who really 
 live in two great cities are by no means so jealous of 
 each other as are those of smaller cities situated within 
 the intellectual basin, or suction-range, of one large 
 one, of the pretensions of any other. Don't you see 
 why ? Because their promising young author and ris 
 ing lawyer and large capitalist have been drained off to 
 the neighboring big city, their prettiest girl has 
 been exported to the same market ; all their ambition 
 points there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes 
 from there. I hate little toad-eating cities. 
 
 Would I be so good as to specify any particular 
 example ? Oh, an example ? Did you ever see a 
 bear-trap ? Never ? Well, should n't you like to see 
 me put my foot into one ? With sentiments of the 
 highest consideration I must beg leave to be excused. 
 
 Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If 
 they have an old church or two, a few stately man 
 sions of former grandees, here and there an old dwell 
 ing with the second story projecting (for the conven 
 ience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front 
 door with their tomahawks), if they have, scattered 
 about, those mighty square houses built something 
 more than half a century ago, and standing like archi- 
 
128 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 tectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of 
 wealth, whose refluent wave has left them as its monu 
 ment, if they have gardens with elbowed apple-trees 
 that push their branches over the high board-fence 
 and drop their fruit on the side-walk, if they have 
 a little grass in the side-streets, enough to betoken 
 quiet without proclaiming decay, I think I could go 
 to pieces, after my life's work were done, in one of 
 those tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that 
 an old man may be rocked to sleep in. I visit such 
 spots always with infinite delight. My friend, the Poet, 
 says, that rapidly growing towns are most unfavor 
 able to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a 
 man live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and 
 the wine of his soul, which is kept thick and turbid by 
 the rattle of busy streets, settles, and, as you hold it up, 
 you may see the sun through it by day and the stars 
 by night. 
 
 Do I think that the little villages have the con 
 ceit of the great towns ? I don't believe there is 
 much difference. You know how they read Pope's 
 line in the smallest town in our State of Massachu 
 setts ? Well, they read it 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous HULL ! " 
 
 Every person's feelings have a front-door and a 
 side-door by which they may be entered. The front 
 door is on the street. Some keep it always open ; 
 some keep it latched ; some, locked ; some bolted, 
 with a chain that will let you peep in, but not get in ; 
 and some nail it up, so that nothing can pass its 
 threshold. This front-door leads into a passage which 
 opens into an ante-room, and this into the interioi 
 apartments. The side-door opens at once into the 
 sacred chambers. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 129 
 
 There is almost always at least one key to this side- 
 door. This is carried for years hidden in a mother's 
 bosom. Fathers, brothers, sisters, and friends, often, 
 but by no means so universally, have duplicates of it. 
 The wedding-ring conveys a right to one ; alas, if none 
 is given with it ! 
 
 If nature or accident has put one of these keys 
 into the hands of a person who has the torturing in 
 stinct, I can only solemnly pronounce the words that 
 Justice utters over its doomed victim, The Lord 
 have mercy on your soul I You will probably go mad 
 within a reasonable time, or, if you are a man, run 
 off and die with your head on a curb-stone, in Mel 
 bourne or San Francisco, or, if you are a woman, 
 quarrel and break your heart, or, turn into a pale, 
 jointed petrifaction that moves about as if it were 
 alive, or play some real life-tragedy or other. 
 
 Be very careful to whom you trust one of these keys 
 of the side-door. The fact of possessing one renders 
 those even who are dear to you very terrible at times. 
 You can keep the world out from your front-door, or 
 receive visitors only when you are ready for them ; 
 but those of your own flesh and blood, or of certain 
 grades of intimacy, can come in at the side-door, if 
 they will, at any hour and in any mood. Some of 
 them have a scale of your whole nervous system, and 
 can play all the gamut of your sensibilities in semi 
 tones, touching the naked nerve-pulps as a pianist 
 strikes the keys of his instrument. I am satisfied 
 that there are as great masters of this nerve-playing 
 as Yieuxtemps or Thalberg in their lines of perform 
 ance. Married life is the school in which the most 
 accomplished artists in this department are found. A 
 delicate woman is the best instrument ; she has such 
 
130 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 a magnificent compass of sensibilities ! From the deep 
 inward moan which follows pressure on the great 
 nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of 
 taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range 
 which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises 
 on it daily at home fit a man wonderfully for his 
 habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he re 
 turns from them. No stranger can get a great many 
 notes of torture out of a human soul ; it takes one that 
 knows it well, parent, child, brother, sister, inti 
 mate. Be very careful to whom you give a side-door 
 key ; too many have them already. 
 
 You remember the old story of the tender-hearted 
 man, who placed a frozen viper in his bosom, and was 
 stung by it when it became thawed ? If we take a 
 cold-blooded creature into our bosom, better that it 
 should sting us and we should die than that its chill 
 should slowly steal into our hearts ; warm it we never 
 can ! I have seen faces of women that were fair to 
 look upon, yet one could see that the icicles were form 
 ing round these women's hearts. I knew what freez 
 ing image lay on the white breasts beneath the laces ! 
 
 A very simple intellectual mechanism answers the 
 necessities of friendship, and even of the most inti 
 mate relations of life. If a watch tells us the hour 
 and the minute, we can be content to carry it about 
 with us for a life-time, though it has no second-hand 
 and is not a repeater, nor a musical watch, though 
 it is not enamelled nor jewelled, in short, though 
 it has little beyond the wheels required for a trust 
 worthy instrument, added to a good face and a pair of 
 useful hands. The more wheels there are in a watch 
 or a brain, the more trouble they are to take care of. 
 The movements of exaltation which belong to genius 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 131 
 
 are egotistic by their very nature. A calm, clear 
 mind, not subject to the spasms and crises which are 
 so often met with in creative or intensely perceptive 
 natures, is the best basis for love or friendship. Ob 
 serve, I am talking about minds. I won't say, the 
 more intellect, the less capacity for loving ; for that 
 would do wrong to the understanding and reason ; 
 but, on the other hand, that the brain often runs 
 away with the heart's best blood, which gives the 
 world a few pages of wisdom or sentiment or poetry, 
 instead of making one other heart happy, I have no 
 question. 
 
 If one's intimate in love or friendship cannot or does 
 not share all one's intellectual tastes or pursuits, that 
 is a small matter. Intellectual companions can b6 
 found easily in men and books. After all, if we 
 think of it, most of the world's loves and friendships 
 have been between people that could not read nor 
 spell. 
 
 But to radiate the heat of the affections into a clod, 
 which absorbs all that is poured into it, but never 
 warms beneath the sunshine of smiles or the pressure 
 of hand or lip, this is the great martyrdom of sen 
 sitive beings, most of all in that perpetual auto daft 
 where young womanhood is the sacrifice. 
 
 You noticed, perhaps, what I just said about the 
 loves and friendships of illiterate persons, that is, of 
 the human race, with a few exceptions here and there. 
 I like books, I was born and bred among them, and 
 have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, 
 that a stable-boy has among horses. I don't think I 
 undervalue them either as companions or instructors. 
 But I can't help remembering that the world's great 
 men have not commonly been great scholars, nor its 
 
132 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 great scholars great men. The Hebrew patriarchs 
 had small libraries, I think, if any ; yet they represent 
 to our imaginations a very complete idea of manhood, 
 and, I think, if we could ask in Abraham to dine with 
 us men of letters next Saturday, we should feel hon 
 ored by his company. 
 
 What I wanted to say about books is this : that 
 there are times in which every active mind feels itself 
 above any and all human books. 
 
 I think a man must have a good opinion of him 
 self, Sir, said the divinity-student, who should 
 feel himself above Shakespeare at any time. 
 
 My young friend, I replied, the man who is 
 never conscious of a state of feeling or of intellectual 
 effort entirely beyond expression by any form of 
 words whatsoever is a mere creature of language. I 
 can hardly believe there are any such men. Why 
 think for a moment of the power of music. The 
 nerves that make us alive to it spread out (so the 
 Professor tells me) in the most sensitive region of the 
 marrow, just where it is widening to run upwards 
 into the hemispheres. It has its seat in the region of 
 sense rather than of thought. Yet it produces a con 
 tinuous and, as it were, logical sequence of emotional 
 and intellectual changes ; but how different from 
 trains of thought proper! how entirely beyond the 
 reach of symbols! Think of human passions as com 
 pared with all phrases ! Did you ever hear of a man's 
 growing lean by the reading of " Romeo and Juliet," 
 or blowing his brains out because Desdemona was ma 
 ligned ? There are a good many symbols, even, that 
 are more expressive than words. I remember a young 
 wife who had to part with her husband for a time. 
 She did not write a mournful poem ; indeed, she waa 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 133 
 
 a silent person, and perhaps hardly said a word about 
 it ; but she quietly turned of a deep orange color with 
 jaundice. A great many people in this world have 
 but one form of rhetoric for their profoundest experi 
 ences, namely, to waste away and die. When a 
 man can read, his paroxysm of feeling is passing. 
 When he can read, his thought has slackened its 
 hold. You talk about reading Shakespeare, using 
 him as an expression for the highest intellect, and you 
 wonder that any common person should be so pre 
 sumptuous as to suppose his thought can rise above 
 the text which lies before him. But think a moment. 
 A child's reading of Shakespeare is one thing, and 
 Coleridge's or Schlegel's reading of him is another. 
 The saturation-point of each mind differs from that of 
 every other. But I think it is as true for the small 
 mind which can only take up a little as for the great 
 one which takes up much, that the suggestive trains 
 of thought and feeling ought always to rise above 
 not the author, but the reader's mental version of the 
 author, whoever he may be. 
 
 I think most readers of Shakespeare sometimes find 
 themselves thrown into exalted mental conditions like 
 those produced by music. Then they may drop the 
 book, to pass at once into the region of thought with 
 out words. We may happen to be very dull folks, 
 you and I, and probably are, unless there is some par 
 ticular reason to suppose the contrary. But we get 
 glimpses now and then of a sphere of spiritual possi 
 bilities, where we, dull as we are now, may sail in vast 
 circles round the largest compass of earthly intelli 
 gences. 
 
 I confess there are times when I feel like the 
 friend I mentioned to you some time ago, I hate 
 
134 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 the very sight of a book. Sometimes it becomes al 
 most a physical necessity to talk out what is in the 
 mind, before putting anything else into it. It is very 
 bad to have thoughts and feelings, which were meant 
 to come out in talk, strike in, as they say of some 
 complaints that ought to show outwardly. 
 
 I always believed in life rather than in books. I 
 suppose every day of earth, with its hundred thou 
 sand deaths and something more of births, with its 
 loves and hates, its triumphs and defeats, its pangs 
 and blisses, has more of humanity in it than all the 
 books that were ever written, put together. I believe 
 the flowers growing at this moment send up more fra 
 grance to heaven than was ever exhaled from all the 
 essences ever distilled. 
 
 Don't I read up various matters to talk about at 
 this table or elsewhere? No, that is the last thing I 
 would do. I will tell you my rule. Talk about those 
 subjects you have had long in your mind, and listen 
 to what others say about subjects you have studied 
 but recently. Knowledge and timber should n't be 
 much used till they are seasoned. 
 
 Physiologists and metaphysicians have had their 
 attention turned a good deal of late to the automatic 
 and involuntary actions of the mind. Put an idea 
 into your intelligence and leave it there an hour, a 
 day, a year, without ever having occasion to refer to 
 it. When, at last, you return to it, you do not find it 
 as it was when acquired. It has domiciliated itself, 
 so to speak, become at home, entered into rela 
 tions with your other thoughts, and integrated itself 
 with the whole fabric of the mind. Or take a simple 
 and familiar example ; Dr. Carpenter has adduced it, 
 You forget a name, in conversation, go on talking, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 135 
 
 without making any effort to recall it, and presently 
 the mind evolves it by its own involuntary and uncon 
 scious action, while you were pursuing another train 
 of thought, and the name rises of itself to your lips. 
 
 There are some curious observations I should like 
 to make about the mental machinery, but I think we 
 are getting rather didactic. 
 
 I should be gratified, if Benjamin Franklin 
 would let me know something of his progress in the 
 French language. I rather liked that exercise he read 
 us the other day, though I must confess I should 
 hardly dare to translate it, for fear some people in a 
 remote city where I once lived might think I was 
 drawing their portraits. 
 
 Yes, Paris is a famous place for societies. I 
 don't know whether the piece I mentioned from the 
 French author was intended simply as Natural His 
 tory, or whether there was not a little malice in his 
 description. At any rate, when I gave my translation 
 to B. F. to turn back again into French, one reason 
 was that I thought it would sound a little bald in 
 English, and some people might think it was meant 
 to have some local bearing or other, which the 
 author, of course, did n't mean, inasmuch as he could 
 not be acquainted with anything on this side of the 
 water. 
 
 [The above remarks were addressed to the school 
 mistress, to whom I handed the paper after looking it 
 over. The divinity-student came and read over her 
 shoulder, very curious, apparently, but his eyes wan 
 dered, I thought. Fancying that her breathing was 
 somewhat hurried and high, or thoracic, as my friend, 
 the Professor, calls it, I watched her a little more 
 closely. It is none of my business. After all, it is 
 
136 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 the imponderables that move the world, heat, elec 
 tricity, love. Habet ? ] 
 
 This is the piece that Benjamin Franklin made into 
 boarding-school French, such as you see here ; don't 
 expect too much ; the mistakes give a relish to it, I 
 think. 
 
 LES SOCI^TES POLYPHYSIOPHILOSOPHIQUES. 
 
 CES Societes Ik sont une Institution pour suppleer aux besoins 
 d 'esprit et de coeur de ces individus qui ont survecu k leurs Emo 
 tions a l'e*gard du beau sexe, et qui n'ont pas la distraction de 
 1'habitude de boire. 
 
 Pour devenir membre d'une de ces Societe"s, on doit avoir le 
 moins de cheveux possible. S'il y en reste plusieurs qui resistent 
 aux ddpilatoires naturelles et autres, on doit avoir quelques con- 
 naissances, n'importe dans quel genre. Des le moment qu'on 
 ouvre la porte de la Societe, on a un grand interet dans toutes 
 les choses dont on ne sait rien. Ainsi, un microscopiste de"montre 
 un nouveau flexor du tarse d'un melolontha vulgaris. Douze sa- 
 vans improvises, portans des besides, et qui ne connaissent rien 
 des insectes, si ce n'est les morsures du culex, se precipitent sur 
 1'instrument, et voient, une grande bulle d'air, dont ils s'e'mer- 
 veillent avec effusion. Ce qui est un spectacle plein d'instruc- 
 tion, pour ceux qui ne sont pa& de ladite Societe. Tous les 
 membres regardent les cliimistes en particulier avec un air d'in- 
 telligence parfaite pendant qu'ils prouvent dans un discours 
 d'une demiheure que O 6 N 8 H 5 C 6 etc. font quelque chose qui 
 n'est bonne a rien, mais qui probablement a une odeur tres 
 desagreable, selon 1'habitude des produits chimiques. Apres celk 
 vient un mathematicien qui vous bourre avec des a -}- b et vous 
 rapporte enfin un x-\-y, dont vous n'avez pas besoin et qui ne 
 change nullement vos relations avec la vie. Un naturaliste vous 
 parle des formations spe'ciales des animaux excessivement incon- 
 nus, dont vous n'avez jamais soupconne 1'existence. Ainsi il 
 vous decrit les follicules de Vappendix vermiformis d'un dzig- 
 guetai. Vous ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un follicule. Vous 
 ne savez pas ce que c'est qu'un appendix vermiformis. Vous 
 n'avez jamais entendu parler du dzigguelai. Ainsi vous gagnez 
 toutes ces connaissances k la fois, qui s 'attachent k votre esprit 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 137 
 
 comme 1'ea'u adhere aux plumes d'un canard. On connait toutes 
 les langues ex officio en devenant membre d'une de ces Societes. 
 Ainsi quand on entend lire un Essai sur les dialectes Tchut- 
 chiens, on comprend tout celk de suite, et s'instruit ^norme'- 
 ment. 
 
 II y a deux especes d'individus qu'on trouve toujours a ces 
 Societes : 1 Le membre a questions; 2 Le membre a ** By 
 laws." 
 
 La question est une specialite. Celui qui en fait me'tier ne fait 
 jamais des reponses. La question est une maniere tres commode 
 de dive les choses suivantes : " Me voila ! Je ne suis pas fossil, 
 moi, je respire encore! J'ai des idees, voyez mon intel 
 ligence ! Vous ne croyiez pas, vous autres, que je savais quelque 
 chose de cela! Ah, nous avons un peu de sagacite*, voyez vous! 
 Nous ne sommes nullement la bSte qu'on pense! " Le faiseur 
 de questions donne peu d' attention aux reponses qu'on fait; ce 
 n' est pas la dans sa specialite. 
 
 Le membre & ' ' Bylaws ' ' est le bouchon de toutes les emotions 
 mousseuses et ge'nereuses qui se montrent dans la Societe. C'est 
 un empereur manque, un tyran a la troisieme trituration. 
 C'est un esprit dur, borne, exact, grand dans les petitesses, petit 
 dans les grandeurs, selon le mot du grand Jefferson. On ne 
 1'aime pas dans la Socie'te, mais on le respecte et on le craint. 
 II n'y a qu'un mot pour ce membre audessus de " Bylaws." Ce 
 mot est pour lui ce que 1'Om est aux Hindous. C'est sa religion; 
 il n'y a rien audela. Ce mot Ik c'est la CONSTITUTION! 
 
 Lesdites Socie'tes publient des feuilletons de terns en terns. 
 On les trouve abandonnes a sa porte, nus comme de enfans 
 nouveaune's, faute de membrane cutane'e, ou meme papyrace'e. 
 Si on aime la botanique, on y trouve une me'moire sur les 
 coquilles ; si on fait des etudes zoologiques, on trouve un grand 
 tas deq'^/ 1, ce qui doit etre infiniment plus commode que 
 les encyclope'dies. Ainsi il est clair comme la me'taphysique 
 qu'on doit devenir membre d'une Societe telle que nous de*- 
 crivons. 
 
 Recette pour le Depilatoire Physiophilosophique. 
 
 Chaux vive Ib. ss. Eau bouillante Oj. 
 
 Depilez avec. Polissez ensuite. 
 
 I told the boy that his translation into French 
 
138 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 was creditable to him ; and some of the company wish* 
 ing to hear what there was in the piece that made me 
 smile, I turned it into English for them, as well as I 
 could, on the spot. 
 
 The landlady's daughter seemed to be much amused 
 by the idea that a depilatory could take the place of 
 literary and scientific accomplishments ; she wanted 
 me to print the piece, so that she might send a copy of 
 it to her cousin in Mizzourah ; she did n't think he 'd 
 have to do anything to the outside of his head to get 
 into any of the societies ; he had to wear a wig once, 
 when he played a part in a tabullo. 
 
 No, said I, I should n't think of printing that 
 in English. I '11 tell you why. As soon as you get a 
 few thousand people together in a town, there is some 
 body that every sharp thing you say is sure to hit. 
 What if a thing was written in Paris or in Pekin ? 
 that makes no difference. Everybody in those cities, 
 or almost everybody, has his counterpart here, and in 
 all large places. You never studied averages, as I 
 have had occasion to. 
 
 I '11 tell you how I came to know so much about av 
 erages. There was one season when I was lecturing, 
 commonly, five evenings in the week, through most 
 of the lecturing period. I soon found, as most speak 
 ers do, that it was pleasanter to work one lecture than 
 to keep several in hand. 
 
 Don't you get sick to death of one lecture ? 
 said the landlady's daughter, who had a new dress 
 on that day, and was in spirits for conversation. 
 
 I was going to talk about averages, I said, but 
 I have no objection to telling you about lectures, to 
 begin with. 
 
 A new lecture always has a certain excitement con- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 139 
 
 nected with its delivery. One thinks well of it, as of 
 most things fresh from his mind. After a few deliv 
 eries of it, one gets tired and then disgusted with its 
 repetition. Go on delivering it, and the disgust 
 passes off, until, after one has repeated it a hundred 
 or a hundred and fifty times, he rather enjoys the 
 hundred and first or hundred and fifty-first time, be 
 fore a new audience. But this is on one condition, 
 that he never lays the lecture down and lets it cool. 
 If he does, there comes on a loathing for it which is 
 intense, so that the sight of the old battered manu 
 script is as bad as sea-sickness. 
 
 A new lecture is just like any other new tool. We 
 use it for a while with pleasure. Then it blisters our 
 hands, and we hate to touch it. By and by our hands 
 get callous, and then we have no longer any sensitive 
 ness about it. But if we give it up, the calluses dis 
 appear ; and if we meddle with it again, we miss the 
 novelty and get the blisters. The story is often 
 quoted of Whitefield, that he said a sermon was good 
 for nothing until it had been preached forty times. 
 A lecture does n't begin to be old until it has passed 
 its hundredth delivery ; and some, I think, have doub 
 led, if not quadrupled, that number. These old lec 
 tures are a man's best, commonly ; they improve by age, 
 also, like the pipes, fiddles, and poems I told you 
 of the other day. One learns to make the most of 
 their strong points and to carry off their weak ones, 
 to take out the really good things which don't tell on 
 the audience, and put in cheaper things that do. All 
 this degrades him, of course, but it improves the lec 
 ture for general delivery. A thoroughly popular lec 
 ture ought to have nothing in it which five hundred 
 people cannot all take in a flash, just as it is uttered. 
 
140 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 No, indeed, I should be very sorry to say any 
 thing disrespectful of audiences. I have been kindly 
 treated by a great many, and may occasionally face 
 one hereafter. But I tell you the average intellect 
 of five hundred persons, taken as they come, is not 
 very high. It may be sound and safe, so far as it 
 goes, but it is not very rapid or profound. A lecture 
 ought to be something which all can understand, about 
 something which interests everybody. I think, that, 
 if any experienced lecturer gives you a different ac 
 count from this, it will probably be one of those elo 
 quent or forcible speakers who hold an audience by 
 the charm of their manner, whatever they talk about, 
 even when they don't talk very well. 
 
 But an average, which was what I meant to speak 
 about, is one of the most extraordinary subjects of ob 
 servation and study. It is awful in its uniformity, in 
 its automatic necessity of action. Two communities 
 of ants or bees are exactly alike in all their actions, so 
 far as we can see. Two lyceum assemblies, of five 
 hundred each, are so nearly alike, that they are abso 
 lutely undistinguishable in many cases by any definite 
 mark, and there is nothing but the place and time by 
 which one can tell the " remarkably intelligent audi 
 ence " of a town in New York or Ohio from one in 
 any New England town of similar size. Of course, if 
 'any principle of selection has come in, as in those 
 special associations of young men which are common 
 in cities, it deranges the uniformity of the assemblage. 
 But let there be no such interfering circumstances, 
 and one knows pretty well even the look the audience 
 will have, before he goes in. Front seats : a few old 
 folks, shiny-headed, slant up best ear towards 
 the speaker, drop off asleep after a while, when the 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 141 
 
 air begins to get a little narcotic with carbonic acid. 
 Bright women's faces, young and middle-aged, a little 
 behind these, but toward the front, (pick out the 
 best, and lecture mainly to that.) Here and there a 
 countenance, sharp and scholarlike, and a dozen pretty 
 female ones sprinkled about. An indefinite number 
 of pairs of young people, happy, but not always 
 very attentive. Boys, in the background, more or less 
 quiet. Dull faces, here, there, in how many places ! 
 I don't say dull people, but faces without a ray of 
 sympathy or a movement of expression. They are 
 what kill the lecturer. These negative faces with 
 their vacuous eyes and stony lineaments pump and 
 suck the warm soul out of him; that is the chief 
 reason why lecturers grow so pale before the season is 
 over. They render latent any amount of vital caloric ; 
 they act on our minds as those cold-blooded creatures 
 I was talking about act on our hearts. 
 
 Out of all these inevitable elements the audience is 
 generated, a great compound vertebrate, as much 
 like fifty others you have seen as any two mammals of 
 the same species are like each other. Each audience 
 laughs, and each cries, in just the same places of your 
 lecture; that is, if you make one laugh or cry, you 
 make all. Even those little indescribable movements 
 which a lecturer takes cognizance of, just as a driver 
 notices his horse's cocking his ears, are sure to come 
 in exactly the same place of your lecture always. I 
 declare to you, that as the monk said about the pic 
 ture in the convent, that he sometimes thought the 
 living tenants were the shadows, and the painted fig 
 ures the realities, I have sometimes felt as if I were 
 a wandering spirit, and this great unchanging multi- 
 vertebrate which I faced night after night was one 
 
142 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 ever-listening animal, which writhed along after me 
 wherever I fled, and coiled at my feet every evening, 
 turning up to me the same sleepless eyes which I 
 thought I had closed with my last drowsy incantation ! 
 
 Oh yes ! A thousand kindly and courteous acts, 
 a thousand faces that melted individually out of my 
 recollection as the April snow melts, but only to steal 
 away and find the beds of flowers whose roots are 
 memory, but which blossom in poetry and dreams. I 
 am not ungrateful, nor unconscious of all the good 
 feeling and intelligence everywhere to be met with 
 through the vast parish to which the lecturer minis 
 ters. But when I set forth, leading a string of my 
 mind's daughters to market, as the country-folk fetch 
 in their strings of horses Pardon me, that was a 
 coarse fellow who sneered at the sympathy wasted on 
 an unhappy lecturer, as if, because he was decently 
 paid for his services, he had therefore sold his sen 
 sibilities. Family men get dreadfully homesick. In 
 the remote and bleak village the heart returns to the 
 red blaze of the logs in one's fireplace at home. 
 
 " There are his young barbarians all at play," 
 
 if he owns any youthful savages. No, the world has 
 a million roosts for a man, but only one nest. 
 
 It is a fine thing to be an oracle to which an ap 
 peal is always made in all discussions. The men of 
 facts wait their turn in grim silence, with that slight 
 tension about the nostrils which the consciousness of 
 carrying a " settler " in the form of a fact or a re 
 volver gives the individual thus armed. When a per 
 son is really full of information, and does not abuse it 
 to crush conversation, his part is to that of the real 
 talkers what the instrumental accompaniment is in y 
 trio or quartette of vocalists. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 143 
 
 What do I mean by the real talkers ? Why, 
 the people with fresh ideas, of course, and plenty of 
 good warm words to dress them in. Facts always 
 yield the place of honor in conversation, to thoughts 
 about facts ; but if a false note is uttered, down comes 
 the finger on the key and the man of facts asserts his 
 true dignity. I have known three of these men of 
 facts, at least, who were always formidable, and one 
 of them was tyrannical. 
 
 Yes, a man sometimes makes a grand appear 
 ance on a particular occasion ; but these men knew 
 something about almost everything, and never made 
 mistakes. He ? Veneers in first-rate style. The 
 mahogany scales off now and then in spots, and then 
 
 you see the cheap light stuff. I found very fine 
 
 in conversational information, the other day when we 
 were in company. The talk ran upon mountains. He 
 was wonderfully well acquainted with the leading 
 facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the Ap 
 palachians ; he had nothing in particular to say about 
 Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various other mountains that 
 were mentioned. By and by some Kevolutionary anec 
 dote came up, and he showed singular familiarity with 
 the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details re 
 lating to Major Andre*. A point of Natural History 
 being suggested, he gave an excellent account of the 
 air-bladder of fishes. He was very full upon the sub 
 ject of agriculture, but retired from the conversation 
 when horticulture was introduced in the discussion. So 
 he seemed well acquainted with the geology of anthra 
 cite, but did not pretend to know anything of other 
 kinds of coal. There was something so odd about the 
 extent and limitations of his knowledge, that I sus 
 pected all at once what might be the meaning of it, 
 
144 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 and waited till I got an opportunity. Have you 
 seen the " New American Cyclopaedia ? " said I. I 
 have, he replied ; I received an early copy. How 
 far does it go ? He turned red, and answered, 
 To Araguay. Oh, said I to myself, not quite so 
 far as Ararat ; that is the reason he knew nothing 
 about it ; but he must have read all the rest straight 
 through, and, if he can remember what is in this 
 volume until he has read all those which are to come, 
 he will know more than I ever thought he would. 
 
 Since I had this experience, I hear that somebody 
 else has related a similar story. I did n't borrow it 
 for all that. I made a comparison at table some 
 time since, which has often been quoted and received 
 many compliments. It was that of the mind of a 
 bigot to the pupil of the eye ; the more light you pour 
 on it, the more it contracts. The simile is a very ob 
 vious, and, I suppose I may now say, a happy one ; for 
 it has just been shown me that it occurs in a Preface 
 to certain Political Poems of Thomas Moore's, pub 
 lished long before my remark was repeated. When a 
 person of fair character for literary honesty uses an 
 image such as another has employed before him, the 
 presumption is, that he has struck upon it independent 
 ly, or unconsciously recalled it, supposing it his own. 
 
 It is impossible to tell, in a great many cases, 
 whether a comparison which suddenly suggests itself 
 is a new conception or a recollection. I told you the 
 other day that I never wrote & line of verse that seemed 
 to me comparatively good, but it appeared old at once, 
 and often as if " had been borrowed. But I confess I 
 never suspected the above comparison of being old, ex 
 cept from the fact of its obviousness. It is proper, 
 however, that I proceed by a formal instrument to re- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 145 
 
 linquish all claim to any property in an idea given to 
 the world at about the time when I had just joined the 
 class in which Master Thomas Moore was then a some 
 what advanced scholar. 
 
 I, therefore, in full possession of my native honesty, 
 but knowing the liability of all men to be elected to 
 public office, and for that reason feeling uncertain how 
 soon I may be in danger of losing it, do hereby re 
 nounce all claim to being considered the first person 
 who gave utterance to a certain simile or comparison 
 referred to in the accompanying documents, and relat 
 ing to the pupil of the eye on the one part and the 
 mind of the bigot on the other. I hereby relinquish 
 all glory and profit, and especially all claims to letters 
 from autograph collectors, founded upon my supposed 
 property in the above comparison, knowing well, 
 that, according to the laws of literature, they who 
 speak first hold the fee of the thing said. I do also 
 agree that all Editors of Cyclopaedias and Biographical 
 Dictionaries, all Publishers of Eeviews and Papers, 
 and all Critics writing therein, shall be at liberty to 
 retract or qualify any opinion predicated on the sup 
 position that I was the sole and undisputed author of 
 the above comparison. But, inasmuch as I do affirm 
 that the comparison aforesaid was uttered by me in 
 the firm belief that it was new and wholly my own, 
 and as I have good reason to think that I had never 
 seen or heard it when first expressed by me, and as it 
 \s well known that different persons may indepen 
 dently utter the same idea, as is evinced by that 
 familiar line from Donatus, 
 
 " Pereant illi qui ante nos nostra dixerunt," 
 now, therefore, I do request by this instrument that 
 
146 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 all well-disposed persons will abstain from asserting or 
 implying that I am open to any accusation whatsoever 
 touching the said comparison, and, if they have so as 
 serted or implied, that they will have the manliness 
 forthwith to retract the same assertion or insinuation. 
 
 I think few persons have a greater disgust for 
 plagiarism than myself. If I had even suspected that 
 the idea in question was borrowed, I should have dis 
 claimed originality, or mentioned the coincidence, as I 
 once did in a case where I had happened to hit on an 
 idea of Swift's. But what shall I do about these 
 verses I was going to read you? I am afraid that 
 half mankind would accuse me of stealing their 
 thoughts, if I printed them. I am convinced that 
 several of you, especially if you are getting a little on 
 in life, will recognize some of these sentiments as hav 
 ing passed through your consciousness at some time. I 
 can't help it, it is too late now. The verses are writ 
 ten, and you must have them. Listen, then, and you 
 shall hear 
 
 WHAT WE ALL THINK. 
 
 That age was older once than now 
 
 In spite of locks untimely shed, 
 Or silvered on the youthful brow; 
 
 That babes make love and children wed. 
 
 That sunshine had a heavenly glow, 
 
 Which faded with those " good old days," 
 
 When winters came with deeper snow, 
 And autumns with a softer haze. 
 
 That mother, sister, wife, or child 
 The " best of women " each has known. 
 
 Were school-boys ever half so wild ? 
 
 How young the grandpapas have grown 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 147 
 
 That but for this our souls were free, 
 And but for that our lives were blest; 
 
 That in some season yet to be 
 
 Our cares will leave us time to rest. 
 
 Whene'er we groan with ache or pain, 
 Some common ailment of the race, 
 
 Though doctors think the matter plain, 
 That ours is " a peculiar case." 
 
 That when like babes with fingers burned 
 
 We count one bitter maxim more, 
 Our lesson all the world has learned, 
 
 And men are wiser than before. 
 
 That when we sob o'er fancied woes, 
 
 The angels hovering overhead 
 Count every pitying drop that flows 
 
 And love us for the tears we shed. 
 
 That when we stand with tearless eye 
 And turn the beggar from our door, 
 
 They still approve us when we sigh 
 *' Ah, had I but one thousand more ! " 
 
 That weakness smoothed the path of sin, 
 In half the slips our youth has known ; 
 
 And whatsoe'er its blame has been, 
 That Mercy flowers on faults outgrown. 
 
 Though temples crowd the crumbled brink 
 
 O'erhanging truth's eternal flow, 
 Their tablets bold with what we think, 
 
 Their echoes dumb to what we know; 
 
 That one unquestioned text we>read, 
 
 All doubt beyond, all fear above, 
 Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed 
 
 Can burn or blot it : GOD is LOVE ! 
 
148 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 VII. 
 
 [THIS particular record is noteworthy principally 
 for containing a paper by my friend, the Professor, 
 with a poem or two annexed or intercalated. I would 
 suggest to young persons that they should pass over 
 it for the present, and read, instead of it, that story 
 about the young man who was in love with the young 
 lady, and in great trouble for something like nine 
 pages, but happily married on the tenth page or there 
 abouts, which, I take it for granted, will be contained 
 in the periodical where this is found, unless it differ 
 from all other publications of the kind. Perhaps, if 
 such young people will lay the number aside, and take 
 it up ten years, or a little more, from the present time, 
 they may find something in it for their advantage. 
 They can't possibly understand it all now.] 
 
 My friend, the Professor, began talking with me 
 one day in a dreary sort of way. I could n't get at 
 the difficulty for a good while, but at last it turned 
 out that somebody had been calling him an old man. 
 He didn't mind his students calling him the old 
 man, he said. That was a technical expression, and 
 he thought that he remembered hearing it applied to 
 himself when he was about twenty-five. It may be 
 considered as a familiar and sometimes endearing ap 
 pellation. An Irishwoman calls her husband " the old 
 man," and he returns the caressing expression by 
 speaking of her as " the old woman." But now, said 
 he, just suppose a case like one of these. A young 
 stranger is overheard talking of you as a very nice old 
 gentleman. A friendly and genial critic speaks of 
 your green old age as illustrating the truth of some 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 149 
 
 axiom you had uttered with reference to that period 
 of life. What I call an old man is a person with a 
 smooth, shining crown and a fringe of scattered white 
 hairs, seen in the streets on sunshiny days, stooping 
 as he walks, bearing a cane, moving cautiously and 
 slowly ; telling old stories, smiling at present follies, 
 living in a narrow world of dry habits ; one that re 
 mains waking when others have dropped asleep, and 
 keeps a little night-lamp-flame of life burning year 
 after year, if the lamp is not upset, and there is only a 
 careful hand held round it to prevent the puffs of wind 
 from blowing the flame out. That 's what I call an 
 old man. 
 
 Now, said the Professor, you don't mean to tell me 
 that I have got to that yet ? Why, bless you, I am 
 several years short of the time when [I knew what 
 was coming, and could hardly keep from laughing ; 
 twenty years ago he used to quote it as one of those 
 absurd speeches men of genius will make, and now he 
 is going to argue from it] several years short of the 
 time when Balzac says that men are most you 
 know dangerous to the hearts of in short, most 
 to be dreaded by duennas that have charge of suscep 
 tible females. What age is that? said I, statistically. 
 - Fifty-two years, answered the Professor. Balzac 
 ought to know, said I, if it is true that Goethe said of 
 him that each of his stories must have been dug out of 
 a woman's heart. But fifty-two is a high figure. 
 
 Stand in the light of the window, Professor, said I. 
 The Professor took up the desired position. You 
 have white hairs, I said. Had 'em any time these 
 twenty years, said the Professor. And the crow's-foot, 
 pes anserinus, rather. The Professor smiled, as 
 I wanted him to, and the folds radiated like the ridges 
 
150 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 of a half-opened fan, from the outer corner of the eyes 
 to the temples. And the calipers, said I. What 
 are the calipers ? he asked, curiously. Why, the 
 parenthesis, said I. Parenthesis ? said the Profes 
 sor ; what 's that ? Why look in the glass when you 
 are disposed to laugh, and see if your mouth is n't 
 framed in a couple of crescent lines, so, my boy ( ). 
 It 's all nonsense, said the Professor ; just look at 
 my biceps ; and he began pulling off his coat, to 
 show me his arm. Be careful, said I ; you can't bear 
 exposure to the air, at your time of life, as you could 
 once. I will box with you, said the Professor, row 
 with you, walk with you, ride with you, swim with 
 you, or sit at table with you, for fifty dollars a side. 
 Pluck survives stamina, I answered. 
 
 The Professor went off a little out of humor. A few 
 weeks afterwards he came in, looking very good-na 
 tured, and brought me a paper, which I have here, and 
 from which I shall read you some portions, if you 
 don't object. He had been thinking the matter over, 
 he said, had read Cicero "De Senectute," and made 
 up his mind to meet old age half way. These were 
 some of his reflections which he had written down; so 
 here you have 
 
 THE PROFESSOR'S PAPER. 
 
 There is no doubt when old age begins. The hu 
 man body is a furnace which keeps in blast three-score 
 years and ten, more or less. It burns about three 
 hundred pounds of carbon a year (besides other fuel), 
 when in fair working order, according to a great chem 
 ist's estimate. When the fire slackens, life declines ; 
 when it goes out, we are dead. 
 
 It has been shown by some noted French experi 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 151 
 
 menters, that the amount of combustion increases up 
 to about the thirtieth year, remains stationary to about 
 forty-five, and then diminishes. This last is the point 
 where old age starts from. The great fact of physical 
 life is the perpetual commerce with the elements, and 
 the fire is the measure of it. 
 
 About this time of life, if food is plenty where you 
 live, for that, you know, regulates matrimony, 
 you may be expecting to find yourself a grandfather 
 some fine morning ; a kind of domestic felicity which 
 gives one a cool shiver of delight to think of, as among 
 the not remotely possible events. 
 
 I don't mind much those slipshod lines Dr. Johnson 
 wrote to Mrs. Thrale, telling her about life's declining 
 from thirty-five ; the furnace is in full blast for ten 
 years longer, as I have said. The Romans came very 
 near the mark ; their age of enlistment reached from 
 seventeen to forty-six years. 
 
 What is the use of fighting against the seasons, or 
 the tides, or the movements of the planetary bodies, or 
 this ebb in the wave of life that flows through us ? 
 We are old fellows from the moment the fire begins 
 to go out. Let us always behave like gentlemen when 
 we are introduced to new acquaintances. 
 
 Incipit Allegoria Senectutis. 
 
 Old Age, this is Mr* Professor ; Mr. Professor, this 
 is Old Age. 
 
 Old Age. Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. 
 I have known you for some time, though I think you 
 did not know me. Shall we walk down the street to 
 gether? 
 
 Professor (drawing back a little). We can talk 
 more quietly, perhaps, in my study. Will you tell 
 
152 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 me how it is you seem to be acquainted with every 
 body you are introduced to, though he evidently con 
 siders you an entire stranger ? 
 
 Old Age. I make it a rule never to force myself 
 upon a person's recognition until I have known him 
 at least five years. 
 
 Professor. Do you mean to say that you have 
 known me so long as that ? 
 
 Old Age. I do. I left my card on you longer 
 ago than that, but I am afraid you never read it; yet 
 I see you have it with you. 
 
 Professor. Where ? 
 
 Old Age. There, between your eyebrows, three 
 straight lines running up and down ; all the probate 
 courts know that token, "Old Age, his mark." 
 Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, 
 and your middle finger on the inner end of the other 
 eyebrow ; now separate the fingers, and you will 
 smooth out my sign-manual ; that 's the way you used 
 to look before I left my card on you. 
 
 Professor. What message do people generally 
 send back when you first call on them ? 
 
 Old Age. Not at "home. Then I leave a card 
 and go. Next year I call ; get the same answer ; leave 
 another card. So for five or six, sometimes ten 
 years or more. At last, if they don't let me in, I 
 break in through the front door or the windows. 
 
 We talked together in this way some time. Then 
 Old Age said again, Come, let us walk down the 
 street together, and offered me a cane, an eyeglass, 
 a tippet, and a pair of over-shoes. No, much 
 obliged to you, said I. I don't want those things, and 
 I had a little rather talk with you here, privately, in 
 my study. So I dressed myself up in a jaunty 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 153 
 
 and walked out alone ; got a fall, caught a cold, 
 was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think 
 over this whole matter. 
 
 Explicit Allegoria Senectutis. 
 
 We have settled when old age begins. Like all 
 Nature's processes, it is gentle and gradual in its ap 
 proaches, strewed with illusions, and all its little griefs 
 are soothed by natural sedatives. But the iron hand is 
 not less irresistible because it wears the velvet glove. 
 The button-wood throws off its bark in large flakes, 
 which one may find lying at its foot, pushed out, and 
 at last pushed off, by that tranquil movement from 
 beneath, which is too slow to be seen, but too power 
 ful to be arrested. One finds them always, but one 
 rarely sees them fall. So it is our youth drops from 
 us, scales off, sapless and lifeless, and lays bare the 
 tender and immature fresh growth of old age. Looked 
 at collectively, the changes of old age appears as a 
 series of personal insults and indignities, terminating 
 at last in death, which Sir Thomas Browne has called 
 " the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures." 
 
 My lady's cheek can boast no more 
 The cranberry white and pink it wore; 
 And where her shining locks divide, 
 The parting line is all too wide 
 
 No, no, this will never do. Talk about men, if you 
 will, but spare the poor women. 
 
 We have a brief description of seven stages of life 
 by a remarkably good observer. It is very presump 
 tuous to attempt to add to it, yet I have been struck 
 with the fact that life admits of a natural analysis 
 into no less than fifteen distinct periods. Taking the 
 five primary divisions, infancy, childhood, youth, man- 
 
154 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKF AST-TABLE. 
 
 hood, old age, each of these has its own three periods 
 of immaturity, complete development, and decline. I 
 recognize an old baby at once, with its " pipe and 
 mug" (a stick of candy and a porringer), so does 
 everybody ; and an old child shedding its milk-teeth 
 is only a little prototype of the old man shedding his 
 permanent ones. Fifty or thereabouts is only the 
 childhood, as it were, of old age; the graybeard 
 youngster must be weaned from his late suppers now. 
 So you will see that you have to make fifteen stages 
 at any rate, and that it would not be hard to make 
 twenty-five ; five primary, each with five secondary di 
 visions. 
 
 The infancy and childhood of commencing old age 
 have the same ingenuous simplicity and delightful un 
 consciousness about them that are shown by the first 
 stage of the earlier periods of life. The great delusion 
 of mankind is in supposing that to be individual and 
 exceptional which is universal and according to law. 
 A person is always startled when he hears himself 
 seriously called an old man for the first time. 
 
 Nature gets us out of youth into manhood, as sailors 
 are hurried on board of vessels, in a state of intoxi 
 cation. We are hustled into maturity reeling with 
 our passions and imaginations, and we have drifted 
 far away from port before we awake out of our illu 
 sions. But to carry us out of maturity into old age, 
 without our knowing where we are going, she drugs 
 us with strong opiates, and so we stagger along with 
 wide open eyes that see nothing until snow enough 
 has fallen on our heads to rouse our half comatose 
 brains out of their stupid trances. 
 
 There is one mark of age which strikes me more than 
 any of the physical ones ; I mean the formation of 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 155 
 
 Habits. An old man who shrinks into himself falls 
 into ways which become as positive and as much be 
 yond the reach of outside influences as if they were 
 governed by clock work. The animal functions, as 
 the physiologists call them, in distinction from the 
 organic, tend, in the process of deterioration to which 
 age and neglect united gradually lead them, to assume 
 the periodical or rhythmical type of movement. Every 
 man's heart (this organ belongs, you know, to the 
 organic system) has a regular mode of action; but 
 I know a great many men whose brains, and all their 
 voluntary existence flowing from their brains, have a 
 systole and diastole as regular as that of the heart 
 itself. Habit is the approximation of the animal sys 
 tem to the organic. It is a confession of failure in 
 the highest function of being, which involves a per 
 petual self-determination, in full view of all existing 
 circumstances. But habit, you see, is an action in 
 present circumstances from past motives. It is sub 
 stituting a vis a tergo for the evolution of living 
 force. 
 
 When a man, instead of burning up three hundred 
 pounds of carbon a year, has got down to two hundred 
 and fifty, it is plain enough he must economize force 
 somewhere. Now habit is a labor-saving invention 
 which enables a man to get along with less fuel, 
 that is all ; for fuel is force, you know, just as much 
 in the page I am writing for you as in the locomotive 
 or the legs which carry it to you. Carbon is the same 
 thing, whether you call it wood, or coal, or bread and 
 cheese. A reverend gentleman demurred to this state 
 ment, as if, because combustion is asserted to be the 
 sine qua non of thought, therefore thought is alleged 
 to be a purely chemical process. Facts of chemistry 
 
156 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 are one thing, I told him, and facts of consciousness 
 another. It can be proved to him, by a very simple 
 analysis of some of his spare elements, that every Sun 
 day, when he does his duty faithfully, he uses up more 
 phosphorus out of his brain and nerves than on or- 
 dinary days. But then he had his choice whether to 
 do his duty, or to neglect it, and save his phosphorus 
 and other combustibles. 
 
 It follows from all this that the formation of habits 
 ought naturally to be, as it is, the special characteristic 
 of age. As for the muscular powers, they pass their 
 maximum long before the time when the true decline 
 of life begins, if we may judge by the experience of 
 the ring. A man is " stale," I think, in their lan 
 guage, soon after thirty, often, no doubt, much ear 
 lier, as gentlemen of the pugilistic profession are ex 
 ceedingly apt to keep their vdtal fire burning with the 
 blower up. 
 
 So far without Tully. But in the mean time 1 
 have been reading the treatise, " De Senectute." It is 
 not long, but is a leisurely performance. The old gen 
 tleman was sixty-three years of age when he addressed 
 it to his friend, T. Pomponius Atticus, Eq., a person of 
 distinction, some two or three years older. We read 
 it when we are school-boys, forget all about it for thirty 
 years, and then take it up again by a natural instinct, 
 provided always that we read Latin as we drink water, 
 without stopping to taste it, as all of us who ever 
 learned it at school o'r college ought to do. 
 
 Cato is the chief speaker in the dialogue. A good 
 deal of it is what would be called in vulgar phrase 
 " slow." It unpacks and unfolds incidental illustra 
 tions which a modern writer would look at the back 
 of, and toss each to its pigeon-hole. I think ancient 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 157 
 
 classics and ancient people are alike in the tendency to 
 this kind of expansion. 
 
 An old doctor came to me once (this is literal fact) 
 with some contrivance or other for people with broken 
 kneepans. As the patient would be confined for a 
 good while, he might find it dull work to sit with his 
 hands in his lap. Reading, the ingenious inventor 
 suggested, would be an agreeable mode of passing 
 the time. He mentioned, in his written account of 
 his contrivance, various works which might amuse the 
 weary hour. I remember only three, Don Quixote, 
 Tom Jones, and Watts on the Mind. 
 
 It is not generally understood that Cicero's essay 
 was delivered as a lyceum lecture (concio popularis) 
 at the Temple of Mercury. The journals (papyri) of 
 the day ("Tempora Quotidiana," " Tribunus Quir- 
 inalis," " Praeco Romanus," and the rest) gave ab 
 stracts of it, one of which I have translated and mod 
 ernized, as being a substitute for the analysis I in 
 tended to make. 
 
 IV. Kal Mart. . . . 
 
 The lecture at the Temple of Mercury, last evening, 
 was well attended by the elite of our great city. Two 
 hundred thousand sestertia were thought to have been 
 represented in the house. The doors were besieged by 
 a mob of shabby fellows (illotum vulgus), who were 
 at length quieted after two or three had been some 
 what roughly handled (gladiojugulati). The speaker 
 was the well-known Mark Tully, Eq., the subject 
 Old Age. Mr. T. has a lean and scraggy person, with 
 a very unpleasant excrescence upon his nasal feature, 
 from which his nickname of chick-pea (Cicero) is said 
 by some to be derived. As a lecturer is public prop* 
 
158 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 erty, we may remark, that his outer garment (toga) 
 was of cheap stuff and somewhat worn, and that his 
 general style and appearance of dress and manner 
 (habitus, vestitusque) were somewhat provincial. 
 
 The lecture consisted of an imaginary dialogue be 
 tween Cato and Lselius. We found the first portion 
 rather heavy, and retired a few moments for refresh 
 ment (pocula qucedam vini). All want to reach old 
 age, says Cato, and grumble when they get it ; there 
 fore they are donkeys. The lecturer will allow us to 
 say that he is the donkey ; we know we shall grumble 
 at old age, but we want to live through youth and 
 manhood, in spite of the troubles we shall groan over. 
 There was considerable prosing as to what old age 
 can do and can't. True, but not new. Certainly, 
 old folks can't jump, break the necks of their thigh 
 bones (femorum cervices'), if they do ; can't crack nuts 
 with their teeth ; can't climb a greased pole (malum 
 inunctum scandere non possunt) ; but they can tell 
 old stories and give you good advice ; if they know 
 what you have made up your mind to do when you ask 
 them. All this is well enough, but won't set the 
 Tiber on fire (Tiberim accendere nequaquam potest.~) 
 
 There were some clever things enough (dicta haud 
 inepta), a few of which are worth reporting. Old 
 people are accused of being forgetful ; but they never 
 forget where they have put their money. Nobody is 
 so old he does n't think he can live a year. The 
 lecturer quoted an ancient maxim, Grow old early, 
 if you would be old long, but disputed it. Author 
 ity, he thought, was the chief privilege of age. It is 
 not great to have money, but fine to govern those who 
 have it. Old age begins at forty-six years, accord- 
 ing to the common opinion. It is not every kind of 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 159 
 
 old age or of wine that grows sour with time. Some 
 excellent remarks were made on immortality, but 
 mainly borrowed from and credited to Plato. Sev 
 eral pleasing anecdotes were told. Old Milo, cham 
 pion of the heavy weights in his day, looked at his 
 arms and whimpered, " They are dead." Not so dead 
 as you, you old fool, says Cato ; you never were 
 good for anything but for your shoulders and flanks. 
 Pisistratus asked Solon what made him dare to be 
 so obstinate. Old age, said Solon. 
 
 The lecture was on the whole acceptable, and a 
 credit to our culture and civilization. The reporter 
 goes on to state that there will be no lecture next 
 week, on account of the expected combat between the 
 bear and the barbarian. Betting (sponsio) two to 
 one (duo ad unum) on the bear. 
 
 After all, the most encouraging things I find in 
 the treatise, "De Senectute," are the stories of men 
 who have found new occupations when growing old, or 
 kept up their common pursuits in the extreme period 
 of life. Cato learned Greek when he was old, and 
 speaks of wishing to learn the fiddle, or some such 
 instrument (fidibus'), after the example of Socrates. 
 Solon learned something new, every day, in his old 
 age, as he gloried to proclaim. Cyrus pointed out 
 with pride and pleasure the trees he had planted with 
 his own hand. [I remember a pillar on the Duke of 
 Northumberland's estate at Alnwick, with an inscrip 
 tion in similar words, if not the same. That, like 
 other country pleasures, never wears out. None is too 
 rich, none too poor, none too young, none too old to 
 enjoy it.] There is a New England story I have heard, 
 more to the point, however, than any of Cicero's. A 
 
160 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 young farmer was urged to set out some apple-trees. 
 No, said he, they are too long growing, and I don't 
 want to plant for other people. The young farmer's 
 father was spoken to about it, but he, with better rea 
 son, alleged that apple-trees were slow and life was 
 fleeting. At last some one mentioned it to the old 
 grandfather of the young farmer. He had nothing 
 else to do, so he stuck in some trees. He lived 
 long enough to drink barrels of cider made from the 
 apples that grew on those trees. 
 
 As for myself, after visiting a friend lately, [Do 
 remember all the time that this is the Professor's 
 paper.] I satisfied myself that I had better concede 
 the fact that, my contemporaries are not so young as 
 they have been, and that, awkward as it is, 
 science and history agree in telling me that I can 
 claim the immunities and must own the humiliations 
 of the early stage of senility. Ah ! but we have all 
 gone down the hill together. The dandies of my time 
 have split their waistbands and taken to high low 
 shoes. The beauties of my recollections where are 
 they ? They have run the gauntlet of the years as well 
 as I. First the years pelted them with red roses till 
 their cheeks were all on fire. By and by they began 
 throwing white roses, and that morning flush passed 
 away. At last one of the years threw a snow-ball, and 
 after that no year let the poor girls pass without 
 throwing snow-balls. And then came rougher mis 
 siles, ice and stones ; and from time to time an 
 arrow whistled, and down went one of the poor girls. 
 So there are but few left ; and we don't call those few 
 qirls, but 
 
 Ah, me ! here am I groaning just as the old Greek 
 sighed At, at/ and the old Roman, Eheul I have no 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 161 
 
 doubt we should die of shame and grief at the indigni 
 ties offered us by age, if it were not that we see so 
 many others as badly as or worse off than ourselves. 
 We always compare ourselves with our contempo 
 raries. 
 
 [I was interrupted in my reading just here. Be 
 fore I began at the next breakfast, I read them these 
 verses ; I hope you will like them, and get a useful 
 lesson from them.] 
 
 THE LAST BLOSSOM. 
 
 Though young no more, we still would dream 
 
 Of beauty's dear deluding wiles; 
 The leagues of life to graybeards seem 
 
 Shorter than boyhood's lingering miles. 
 
 Who knows a woman's wild caprice? 
 
 It played with Goethe's silvered hair, 
 And many a Holy Father's " niece " 
 
 Has softly smoothed the papal chair. 
 
 When sixty bids us sigh in vain 
 
 To melt the heart of sweet sixteen, 
 We think upon those ladies twain 
 
 Who loved so well the tough old Dean. 
 
 We see the Patriarch's wintry face, 
 
 The maid of Egypt's dusky glow, 
 And dream that Youth and Age embrace, 
 
 As April violets fill with snow. 
 
 Tranced in her Lord's Olympian smile 
 
 His lotus-loving Memphian lies, 
 The musky daughter of the Nile 
 
 With plaited hair and almond eyes. 
 
 Might we but share one wild caress 
 Ere life's autumnal blossoms fall, 
 
162 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 And Earth's brown, clinging lips impress 
 The long cold kiss that waits us alll 
 
 My bosom heaves, remembering yet 
 
 The morning of that blissful day 
 When Rose, the flower of spring, I met, 
 
 And gave my raptured soul away. 
 
 Fiung from her eyes of purest blue, 
 
 A lasso, with its leaping chain 
 Light as a loop of larkspurs, flew 
 
 O'er sense and spirit, heart and brain. 
 
 Thou com'st to cheer my waning age, 
 
 Sweet vision, waited for so longl 
 Dove that would seek the poet's cage 
 
 Lured by the magic breath of song! 
 
 She blushes! Ah, reluctant maid, 
 
 Love's drapeau rouge the truth has told; 
 
 O'er girlhood's yielding barricade 
 
 Floats the great Leveller's crimson fold I 
 
 Come to my arms ! love heeds not years. 
 
 No frost the bud of passion knows. 
 Ha! what is this my frenzy hears ? 
 
 A voice behind me uttered, Rose! 
 
 Sweet was her smile, but not for me; 
 
 Alas, when woman looks too kind, 
 Just turn your foolish head and see, 
 
 Some youth is walking close behind! 
 
 As to giving up because the almanac or the Fam 
 ily-Bible says that it is about time to do it, I have no 
 intention of doing any such thing. I grant you that 
 I burn less carbon than some years ago. I see people 
 of my standing really good for nothing, decrepit, 
 effete, la levre inferieure dejd pendante, with what 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 163 
 
 little life they have left mainly concentrated in their 
 epigastrium. But as the disease of old age is epi 
 demic, endemic, and sporadic, and everybody who 
 lives long enough is sure to catch it, I am going to 
 say, for the encouragement of such as need it, how I 
 treat the malady in my own case. 
 
 First. As I feel, that, when I have anything to do, 
 there is less time for it than when I was younger, I 
 find that I give my attention more thoroughly, and 
 use my time more economically than ever before ; so 
 that I can learn anything twice as easily as in my ear 
 lier days. I am not, therefore, afraid to attack a new 
 study. I -took up a difficult language a very few 
 years ago with good success, and think of mathematics 
 and metaphysics by-and-by. 
 
 Secondly. I have opened my eyes to a good many 
 neglected privileges and pleasures within my reach, 
 and requiring only a little courage to enjoy them. 
 You may well suppose it pleased me to find that old 
 Cato was thinking of learning to play the fiddle, when 
 I had deliberately taken it up in my old age, and sat 
 isfied myself that I could get much comfort, if not 
 much music, out of it. 
 
 Thirdly. I have found that some of those active 
 exercises, which are commonly thought to belong to 
 young folks only, may be enjoyed at a much later 
 period. 
 
 A young friend has lately written an admirable 
 article in one of the journals, entitled, " Saints and 
 their Bodies." Approving of his general doctrines, 
 and grateful for his records of personal experience, I 
 cannot refuse to add my own experimental confirma 
 tion of his eulogy of one particular form of active ex 
 ercise and amusement, namely, boating. For the past 
 
164 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 nine years, I have rowed about, during a good part of 
 the summer, on fresh or salt water. My present fleet 
 on the river Charles consists of three row-boats. 1. 
 A small flat-bottomed skiff of the shape of a flat>iron, 
 kept mainly to lend to boys. 2. A fancy " dory " for 
 two pairs of sculls, in which I sometimes go out with 
 my young folks. 3. My own particular water-sulky, 
 a "skeleton" or "shell" race-boat, twenty-two feet 
 long, with huge outriggers, which boat I pull with ten- 
 foot sculls, alone, of course, as it holds but one, and 
 tips him out, if he does n't mind what he is about. In 
 this I glide around the Back Bay, down the stream, 
 up the Charles to Cambridge and Watertown, up the 
 Mystic, round the wharves, in the wake of steamboats, 
 which leave a swell after them delightful to rock 
 upon ; I linger under the bridges, those " caterpillar 
 bridges," as my brother professor so happily called 
 them ; rub against the black sides of old wood-schoon 
 ers ; cool down under the overhanging stern of some 
 tall Indiaman ; stretch across to the Navy Yard, 
 where the sentinel warns me off from the Ohio, just 
 as if I should hurt her by lying in her shadow ; then 
 strike out into the harbor, where the water gets clear 
 and the air smells of the ocean, till all at once I 
 remember, that, if a west wind blows up of a sudden, 
 I shall drift along past the islands, out of sight of the 
 dear old State-house, plate, tumbler, knife and fork 
 all waiting at home, but no chair drawn up at the 
 table, all the dear people waiting, waiting, waiting, 
 while the boat is sliding, sliding, sliding into the great 
 desert, where there is no tree and no fountain. As I 
 don't want my wreck to be washed up on one of the 
 beaches in company with devil' s-aprons, bladder- 
 weeds, dead horse-shoes, and bleached crab-shells, 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 165 
 
 turn about and flap my long, narrow wings for home. 
 When the tide is running out swiftly, I have a splen 
 did fight to get through the bridges, but always make 
 it a rule to beat, though I have been jammed up 
 into pretty tight places at times, and was caught once 
 between a vessel swinging round and the pier, until 
 our bones (the boat's, that is) cracked as if we had 
 been in the jaws of Behemoth. Then back to my 
 moorings at the foot of the Common, off with the 
 rowing-dress, dash under the green translucent wave, 
 return to the garb of civilization, walk through my 
 Garden, take a look at my elms on the Common, and, 
 reaching my habitat, in consideration of my advanced 
 period of life, indulge in the Elysian abandonment of 
 a huge recumbent chair. 
 
 When I have established a pair of well-pronounced 
 feathering-calluses on my thumbs, when I am in train 
 ing so that I can do my fifteen miles at a stretch with 
 out coming to grief in any way, when I can perform 
 my mile in eight minutes or a little more, then I feel 
 as if I had old Time's head in chancery, and could 
 give it to him at my leisure. 
 
 I do not deny the attraction of walking. I have 
 bored this ancient city through and through in my 
 daily travels, until I know it as an old inhabitant of a 
 Cheshire knows his cheese. Why, it was I who, in 
 the course of these rambles, discovered that remarka 
 ble avenue called Myrtle Street, stretching in one long 
 line from east of the Reservoir to a precipitous and 
 rudely paved cliff which looks down on the grim abode 
 of Science, and beyond it to the far hills ; a prome 
 nade so delicious in its repose, so cheerfully varied 
 with glimpses down the northern slope into busy Cam 
 bridge Street with its iron river of the horse-railroad, 
 
166 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 and wheeled barges gliding back and forward over it, 
 so delightfully closing at its western extremity in 
 sunny courts and passages where I know peace, and 
 beauty, and virtue, and serene old age must be per 
 petual tenants, so alluring to all who desire to take 
 their daily stroll, in the words of Dr. Watts, 
 
 " Alike unknowing and unknown,'* 
 
 that nothing but a sense of duty would have prompted 
 me to reveal the secret of its existence. I concede, 
 therefore, that walking is an immeasurably fine inven 
 tion, of which old age ought constantly to avail it 
 self. 
 
 Saddle-leather is in some respects even preferable 
 to sole-leather. The principal objection to it is of a 
 financial character. But you may be sure that Bacon 
 and Sydenham did not recommend it for nothing. 
 One's hepar, or, in vulgar language, liver, a ponder 
 ous organ, weighing some three or four pounds, 
 goes up and down like the dasher of a churn in the 
 midst of the other vital arrangements, at every step of 
 a trotting horse. The brains also are shaken up like 
 coppers in a money-box. Eiding is good, for those 
 that are born with a silver-mounted bridle in their 
 hand, and can ride as much and as often as they like, 
 without thinking all the time they hear that steady 
 grinding sound as the horse's jaws triturate with calm 
 lateral movement the bank-bills and promises to pay 
 upon which it is notorious that the profligate animal 
 in question feeds day and night. 
 
 Instead, however, of considering these kinds of 
 exercise in this empirical way, I will devote a brief 
 space to an examination of them in a more scientific 
 form. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 167 
 
 The pleasure of exercise is due first to a purely 
 physical impression, and secondly to a sense of power 
 in action. The first source of pleasure varies of course 
 with our condition and the state of the surrounding 
 circumstances ; the second with the amount and kind 
 of power, and the extent and kind of action. In all 
 forms of active exercise there are three powers simul 
 taneously in action, the will, the muscles, and the 
 intellect. Each of these predominates in different 
 kinds of exercise. In walking, the will and muscles 
 are so accustomed to work together and perform their 
 task with so little expenditure of force, that the intel 
 lect is left comparatively free. The mental pleasure 
 in walking, as such, is in the sense of power over all 
 our moving machinery. But in riding, I have the ad 
 ditional pleasure of governing another will, and my 
 muscles extend to the tips of the animal's ears and to 
 his four hoofs, instead of stopping at my hands and 
 feet. Now in this extension of my volition and my 
 physical frame into another animal, my tyrannical in 
 stincts and my desire for heroic strength are at once 
 gratified. When the horse ceases to have a will of 
 his own and his muscles require no special attention 
 on your part, then you may live on horseback as Wes 
 ley did, and write sermons or take naps, as you like. 
 But you will observe, that, in riding on horseback 
 you always have a feeling, that, after all, it is not you 
 that do the work, but the animal, and this prevents the 
 satisfaction from being complete. 
 
 Now let us look at the conditions of rowing. I 
 won't suppose you to be disgracing yourself in one of 
 those miserable tubs, tugging in which is to rowing the 
 true boat what riding a cow is to bestriding an Arab. 
 You know the Esquimaux kayak (if that is the name 
 
168 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BEE AKF AST-TABLE. 
 
 of it), don't you? Look at that model of one over 
 my door. Sharp, rather? On the contrary, it is a 
 lubber to the one you and I must have ; a Dutch fish 
 wife to Psyche, contrasted with what I will tell you 
 about. Our boat, then, is something of the shape of 
 a pickerel, as you look down upon his back, he lying 
 in the sunshine just where the sharp edge of the water 
 cuts in among the lily-pads. It is a kind of giant pod, 
 as one may say, tight everywhere, except in a little 
 place in the middle, where you sit. Its length is from 
 seven to ten yards, and as it is only from sixteen to 
 thirty inches wide in its widest part, you understand 
 why you want those " outriggers," or projecting iron 
 frames with the rowlocks in which the oars play. My 
 rowlocks are five feet apart ; double the greatest width 
 of the boat. 
 
 Here you are, then, afloat with a body a rod and a 
 half long, with arms, or wings, as you may choose to 
 call them, stretching more than twenty feet from tip 
 to tip ; every volition of yours extending as perfectly 
 into them as if your spinal cord ran down the centre 
 strip of your boat, and the nerves of your arms tingled 
 as far as the broad blades of your oars, oars of 
 spruce, balanced, leathered and ringed under your own 
 special direction. This, in sober earnest, is the near 
 est approach to flying that man has ever made or per 
 haps ever will make." As the hawk sails without 
 
 a Since the days when this was written the bicycle has ap- 
 peaved as the rival of the wherry. I have witnessed three ap 
 pearances of the pedal locomotive. The first was when I was a 
 boy. (The machine was introduced into Great Britain from 
 France about 1820.) Some of the Harvard College students 
 who boarded in my neighborhood had these machines, then 
 called velocipedes, on which they used to waddle along like so 
 many ducks, their feet pushing against the ground, and looking 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 169 
 
 flapping his pinions, so you drift with the tide when 
 you will, in the most luxurious form of locomotion in 
 dulged to an embodied spirit. But if your blood wants 
 rousing, turn round that stake in the river, which you 
 see a mile from here ; and when you come in in sixteen 
 minutes (if you do, for we are old boys, and not 
 champion scullers, you remember), then say if you be 
 gin to feel a little warmed up or not I You can row 
 easily and gently all day, and you can row yourself 
 blind and black in the face in ten minutes, just as you 
 like. It has been long agreed that there is no way in 
 which a man can accomplish so much labor with his 
 muscles as in rowing. It is in the boat, then, that 
 man finds the largest extension of his volitional and 
 muscular existence ; and yet he may tax both of them 
 so slightly, in that most delicious of exercises, that he 
 shall mentally write his sermon, or his poem, or recall 
 the remarks he has made in company and put them in 
 form for the public, as well as in his easy-chair. 
 
 as if they were perched on portable treadmills. They soon found 
 that legs were made before velocipedes. Our grown-up young 
 people may remember the second advent of the contrivance, 
 now become a treadle-locomotive. There were " rinks " where 
 this form of roller-skating had a brief run, and then legs again 
 asserted their prior claim and greater convenience. At the 
 Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia, in 1876, I first saw the 
 modern bicycles, some of them, at least, from Coventry, Eng 
 land. Since that time the bicycle glides in and out everywhere, 
 noiseless as a serpent, 
 
 And [wheels] rush in where [horses] fear to tread. 
 
 The boat flies like a sea-bird with its long, narrow, outstretched 
 pinions; the bicycle rider, like feathered Mercury, with his 
 wings on his feet. There seems to be nothing left to perfect in 
 the way of human locomotion but aerial swimming, which some 
 fancy is to be a conquest of the future. 
 
170 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 I dare not publicly name the rare joys, the infinite 
 delights, that intoxicate me on some sweet June morn 
 ing, when the river and bay are smooth as a sheet of 
 beryl-green silk, and I run along ripping it up with 
 my knife-edged shell of a boat, the rent closing after 
 me like those wounds of angels which Milton tells of, 
 but the seam still shining for many a long rood be 
 hind me. To lie still over the Flats, where the waters 
 are shallow, and see the crabs crawling and the scul- 
 pins gliding busily and silently beneath the boat, to 
 rustle in through the long harsh grass that leads up 
 some tranquil creek, to take shelter from the sun 
 beams under one of the thousand-footed bridges, and 
 look down its interminable colonnades, crusted with 
 green and oozy growths, studded with minute bar 
 nacles, and belted with rings of dark mussels, while 
 overhead streams and thunders that other river whose 
 every wave is a human soul flowing to eternity as the 
 river below flows to the ocean, lying there moored 
 unseen, in loneliness so profound that the columns of 
 Tadmor in the Desert could not seem more remote 
 from life the cool breeze on one's forehead, the 
 stream whispering against the half -sunken pillars, 
 why should I tell of these things, that I should live to 
 see my beloved haunts invaded and the waves black 
 ened with boats as with a swarm of water-beetles? 
 What a city of idiots we must be not to have covered 
 this glorious bay with gondolas and wherries, as we 
 have just learned to cover the ice in winter with 
 skaters ! 
 
 I am satisfied that such a set of black-coated, stiff- 
 jointed, soft-muscled, paste-complexioned youth as we 
 can boast in our Atlantic cities never before sprang 
 from loins of Anglo-Saxon lineage. Of the females 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 171 
 
 that are the mates of these males I do not here speak, 
 I preached my sermon from the lay-pulpit on this 
 matter a good while ago. Of course, if you heard it, 
 you know my belief is that the total climatic influences 
 here are getting up a number of new patterns of hu 
 manity, some of which are not an improvement on the 
 old model. Clipper-built, sharp in the bows, long in 
 the spars, slender to look at, and fast to go, the ship, 
 which is the great organ of our national life of rela 
 tion, is but a reproduction of the typical form which 
 the elements impress upon its builder. All this we 
 cannot help ; but we can make the best of these in 
 fluences, such as they are. We have a few good boat 
 men, no good horsemen that I hear of, I cannot 
 speak for cricketing, but as for any great athletic 
 feat performed by a gentleman in these latitudes, soci 
 ety would drop a man who should run round the Com 
 mon in five minutes. Some of our amateur fencers, 
 single-stick players, and boxers, we have no reason to 
 be ashamed of. Boxing is rough play, but not too 
 rough for a hearty young fellow. Anything is better 
 than this white-blooded degeneration to which we all 
 tend. 
 
 I dropped in at a gentlemen's sparring exhibition 
 only last evening. It did my heart good to see that 
 there were a few young and youngish youths left who 
 could take care of their own heads in case of emer 
 gency. It is a fine sight, that of a gentleman resolv 
 ing himself into the primitive constituents of his hu 
 manity. Here is a delicate young man now, with an 
 intellectual countenance, a slight figure, a subpallid 
 complexion, a most unassuming deportment, a mild 
 adolescent in fact, that any Hiram or Jonathan from 
 between the ploughtails would of course expect to 
 
172 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 handle with perfect ease. Oh, he is taking off hia 
 gold-bowed spectacles ! Ah, he is divesting himself of 
 his cravat 1 Why, he is stripping off his coat I Well, 
 here he is, sure enough, in a tight silk shirt, and with 
 two things that look like batter puddings in the place 
 of his fists. Now see that other fellow with another 
 pair of batter puddings, the big one with the broad 
 shoulders ; he will certainly knock the little man's 
 head off, if he strikes him. Feinting, dodging, stop 
 ping, hitting, countering, little man's head not off 
 yet. You might as well try to jump upon your own 
 shadow as to hit the little man's intellectual features. 
 He need n't have taken off the gold-bowed spectacles 
 at all. Quick, cautious, shifty, nimble, cool, he catches 
 all the fierce lunges or gets out of their reach, till his 
 turn comes, and then, whack goes one of the batter 
 puddings against the big one's ribs, and bang goes the 
 other into the big one's face and, staggering, shuffling, 
 slipping, tripping, collapsing, sprawling, down goes 
 the big one in a miscellaneous bundle. If my young 
 friend, whose excellent article I have referred to, 
 could only introduce the manly art of self-defence 
 among the clergy, I am satisfied that we should have 
 better sermons and an infinitely less quarrelsome 
 church-militant. A bout with the gloves would let off 
 the ill-nature, and cure the indigestion, which, united, 
 have embroiled their subject in a bitter controversy. 
 We should then often hear that a point of difference 
 between an infallible and a heretic, instead of being 
 vehemently discussed in a series of newspaper articles, 
 had been settled by a friendly contest in several 
 rounds, at the close of which the parties shook hands 
 and appeared cordially reconciled. 
 
 But boxing you and I are too old for, I am afraid 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 173 
 
 I was for a moment tempted, by the contagion of 
 muscular electricity last evening, to try the gloves 
 with the Benicia Boy, who looked in as a friend to the 
 noble art; but remembering that he had twice my 
 weight and half my age, besides the advantage of his 
 training, I sat still and said nothing. 
 
 There is one other delicate point I wish to speak of 
 with reference to old age. I refer to the use of diop 
 tric media which correct the diminished refracting 
 power of the humors of the eye, in other words, 
 spectacles. I don't use them. All I ask is a large, 
 fair type, a strong daylight or gas-light, and one yard 
 of focal distance, and my eyes are as good as ever. 
 But if your eyes fail, I can tell you something encour 
 aging. There is now living in New York State an 
 old gentleman who, perceiving his sight to fail, imme 
 diately took to exercising it on the finest print, and in 
 this way fairly bullied Nature out of her foolish habit 
 of taking liberties at five-and-forty, or thereabout. 
 And now this old gentleman performs the most ex 
 traordinary feats with his pen, showing that his eyes 
 must be a pair of microscopes. I should be afraid to 
 say to you how much he writes in the compass of a 
 half -dime, whether the Psalms or the Gospels, or 
 the Psalms and the Gospels, I won't be positive. 
 
 But now let me tell you this. If the time comes 
 when you must lay down the fiddle and the bow, be 
 cause your fingers are too stiff, and drop the ten-foot 
 sculls, because your arms are too weak, and, after dal 
 lying a while with eye-glasses, come at last to the un 
 disguised reality of spectacles, if the time comes 
 when that fire of life we spoke of has burned so low 
 that where its flames reverberated there is only the 
 sombre stain of regret, and where its coals glowed, 
 
174 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 only the white ashes that cover the embers of memory, 
 don't let your heart grow cold, and you may carry 
 cheerfulness and love with you into the teens of your 
 second century, if you can last so long. As our 
 friend, the Poet, once said, in some of those old-fash 
 ioned heroics of his which he keeps for his private 
 reading, 
 
 Call him not old, whose visionary brain 
 
 Holds o'er the past its undivided reign. 
 
 For him in vain the envious seasons roll 
 
 Who bears eternal summer in his soul. 
 
 If yet the minstrel's song, the poet's lay, 
 
 Spring with her birds, or children with their play, 
 
 Or maiden's smile, or heavenly dream of art 
 
 Stir the few life-drops creeping round his heart, 
 
 Turn to the record where his years are told, 
 
 Count his gray hairs, they cannot make him old ! 
 
 End of the Professor's paper. 
 
 [The above essay was not read at one time, but in 
 several instalments, and accompanied by various com 
 ments from different persons at the table. The com 
 pany were in the main attentive, with the exception of 
 a little somnolence on the part of the old gentleman 
 opposite at times, and a few sly, malicious questions 
 about the " old boys " on the part of that forward 
 young fellow who has figured occasionally, not always 
 to his advantage, in these reports. 
 
 On Sunday mornings, in obedience to a feeling I 
 am not ashamed of, I have always tried to give a more 
 appropriate character to our conversation. I have 
 never read them my sermon yet, and I don't know 
 that I shall, as some of them might take my convic 
 tions as a personal indignity to themselves. But hav 
 ing read our company so much of the Professor's talk 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 175 
 
 about age and other subjects connected with physical 
 life, I took the next Sunday morning to repeat to 
 them the following poem of his, which I have had by 
 me some time. He calls it I suppose for his pro 
 fessional friends THE ANATOMIST'S HYMN; but I 
 shall name it ] 
 
 THE LIVING TEMPLE. 
 
 Not in the world of light alone, 
 
 Where God has built his blazing throne, 
 
 Nor yet alone in earth below, 
 
 With belted seas that come and go, 
 
 And endless isles of sunlit green, 
 
 Is all thy Maker's glory seen: 
 
 Look in upon thy wondrous frame, 
 
 Eternal wisdom still the same ! 
 
 The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves 
 Flows murmuring through its hidden caves 
 Whose streams of brightening purple rush 
 Fired with a new and livelier blush, 
 WTiile all their burden of decay 
 The ebbing current steals away, 
 And red with Nature's flame they start 
 From the warm fountains of the heart. 
 
 No rest that throbbing slave may ask, 
 Forever quivering o'er his task, 
 While far and wide a crimson jet 
 Leaps forth to fill the woven net 
 Which in unnumbered crossing tides 
 The flood of burning life divides, 
 Then kindling each decaying part 
 Creeps back to find the throbbing heart 
 
 But warmed with that unchanging flame 
 Behold the outward moving frame, 
 Its living marbles jointed strong 
 With glistening band and silvery thong, 
 
176 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 And linked to reason's guiding reins 
 By myriad rings in trembling chains, 
 Each graven with the threaded zone 
 Which claims it as the master's own. 
 
 See how yon beam of seeming white 
 Is braided out of seven-hued light, 
 Yet in those lucid globes no ray 
 By any chance shall break astray. 
 Hark how the rolling surge of sound, 
 Arches and spirals circling round, 
 Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear 
 With music it is heaven to hear. 
 
 Then mark the cloven sphere that holds 
 All thought in its mysterious folds, 
 That feels sensation's faintest thrill 
 And flashes forth the sovereign will; 
 Think on the stormy world that dwells 
 Locked in its dim and clustering cells! 
 The lightning gleams of power it sheds 
 Along its slender glassy threads! 
 
 O Father ! grant thy love divine 
 To make these mystic temples thine! 
 When wasting age and wearying strife 
 Have sapped the leaning walls of life, 
 When darkness gathers over all, 
 And the last tottering pillars fall, 
 Take the poor dust thy mercy warms 
 And mould it into heavenly forms. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 [SPRING has come. You will find some verses to 
 that effect at the end of these notes. If you are an 
 impatient reader, skip to them at once. In reading 
 aloud, omit, if you please, the sixth and seventh 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 177 
 
 verses. These are parenthetical and digressive, and, 
 unless your audience is of superior intelligence, will 
 confuse them. Many people can ride on horseback 
 who find it hard to get on and to get off without as 
 sistance. One has to dismount from an idea, and get 
 into the saddle again, at every parenthesis.] 
 
 The old gentleman who sits opposite, finding that 
 spring had fairly come, mounted a white hat one day, 
 and walked into the street. It seems to have been a 
 premature or otherwise exceptionable exhibition, not 
 unlike that commemorated by the late Mr. Bayly. 
 When the old gentleman came home, he looked very 
 red in the face, and complained that he had been 
 "made sport of." By sympathizing questions, I 
 learned from him that a boy had called him " old 
 daddy," and asked him when he had his hat white 
 washed. 
 
 This incident led me to make some observations at 
 table the next morning, which I here repeat for the 
 benefit of the readers of this record. 
 
 The hat is the vulnerable point of the artificial 
 integument. I learned this in early boyhood. I was 
 once equipped in a hat of Leghorn straw, having a 
 brim of much wider dimensions than were usual at 
 that time, and sent to school in that portion of my na 
 tive town which lies nearest to this metropolis. On 
 my way I was met by a " Port-chuck," as we used to 
 call the young gentlemen of that locality, and the fol 
 lowing dialogue ensued. 
 
 The Port-chuck. Hullo, You-sir, joo know th' wuz 
 gon-to be a race to-morrah ? 
 
 Myself. No. Who 's gon-to run, V wher 's 't gon- 
 to be? 
 
178 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 The Port-chucL Squire Mycall V Doctor Wil- 
 liams, round the brim o' your hat. 
 
 These two much-respected gentlemen being the 
 oldest inhabitants at that time, and the alleged race 
 course being out of the question, the Port-chuck also 
 winking and thrusting his tongue into his cheek, I 
 perceived that I had been trifled with, and the effect 
 has been to make me sensitive and observant respect 
 ing this article of dress ever since. Here is an axiom 
 or two relating to it. 
 
 A hat which has been popped, or exploded by being 
 sat down upon, is never itself again afterwards. 
 
 It is a favorite illusion of sanguine natures to be 
 lieve the contrary. 
 
 Shabby gentility has nothing so characteristic as its 
 hat. There is always an unnatural calmness about 
 its nap, and an unwholesome gloss, suggestive of a 
 wet brush. 
 
 The last effort of decayed fortune is expended in 
 smoothing its dilapidated castor. The hat is the ulti- 
 mum moriens of " respectability." 
 
 The old gentleman took all these remarks and 
 maxims very pleasantly, saying, however, that he had 
 forgotten most of his French except the word for po 
 tatoes, pummies de tare. Ultimum moriens, I 
 told him, is old Italian, and signifies last thing to die. 
 With this explanation he was well contented, and 
 looked quite calm when I saw him afterwards in the 
 entry with a black hat on his head and the white one 
 in his hand. 
 
 I think myself fortunate in having the Poet and 
 the Professor for my intimates. We are so much to 
 gether, that we no doubt think and talk a good deal 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 179 
 
 alike ; yet our points of view are in many respects in 
 dividual and peculiar. You know me well enough by 
 this time. I have not talked with you so long for 
 nothing and therefore I don't think it necessary to 
 draw my own portrait. But let me say a word or two 
 about my friends. 
 
 The Professor considers himself, and I consider 
 him, a very useful and worthy kind of drudge. I 
 think he has a pride in his small technicalities. I 
 know that he has a great idea of fidelity; and 
 though I suspect he laughs a little inwardly at times, 
 at the grand airs " Science " puts on, as she stands 
 marking time, but not getting on, while the trumpets 
 are blowing and the big drums beating, yet I am 
 sure he has a liking for his specialty, and a respect for 
 its cultivators. 
 
 But I'll tell you what the Professor said to the 
 Poet the other day. My boy, said he, I can work a 
 great deal cheaper than you, because I keep all my 
 goods in the lower story. You have to hoist yours 
 into the upper chambers of the brain, and let them 
 down again to your customers. I take mine in at the 
 level of the ground, and send them off from my door 
 step almost without lifting. I tell you, the higher a 
 man has to carry the raw material of thought before 
 he works it up, the more it costs him in blood, nerve, 
 and muscle. Coleridge knew all this very well when 
 he advised every literary man to have a profession. 
 
 Sometimes I like to talk with one of them, and 
 sometimes with the other. After a while I get tired 
 of both. When a fit of intellectual disgust comes over 
 me, I will tell you what I have found admirable as a 
 diversion, in addition to boating and other amuse 
 ments which I have spoken of, that is, working at 
 
180 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 
 
 my carpenter's-bench. Some mechanical employment 
 is the greatest possible relief, after the purely in 
 tellectual faculties begin to tire. When I was quaran 
 tined once at Marseilles, I got to work immediately at 
 carving a wooden wonder of loose rings on a stick, and 
 got so interested in it, that, when we were let out, I 
 " regained my freedom with a sigh," because my toy 
 was unfinished. 
 
 There are long seasons when I talk only with the 
 Professor, and others when I give myself wholly up 
 to the Poet. Now that my winter's work is over and 
 spring is with us, I feel naturally drawn to the Poet's 
 company. I don't know anybody more alive to life 
 than he is. The passion of poetry seizes on him every 
 spring, he says, yet oftentimes he complains, that 
 when he feels most, he can sing least. 
 
 Then a fit of despondency comes over him. I feel 
 ashamed sometimes, said he, the other day, to 
 think how far my worst songs fall below my best. It 
 sometimes seems to me, as I know it does to others 
 who have told me so, that they ought to be all best, 
 if not in actual execution, at least in plan and motive. 
 I am grateful he continued for all such criti 
 cisms. A man is always pleased to have his most seri 
 ous efforts praised, and the highest aspect of his na 
 ture get the most sunshine. 
 
 Yet I am sure, that, in the nature of things, many 
 minds must change their key now and then, on pen 
 alty of getting out of tune or losing their voices. You 
 know, I suppose, - he said, what is meant by com 
 plementary colors ? You know the effect, too, which 
 the prolonged impression of any one color has on the 
 retina. If you close your eyes after looking steadily 
 at a red object, you see a green image. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 181 
 
 It is so with many minds, I will not say with all. 
 After looking at one aspect of external nature, or of 
 any form of beauty or truth, when they turn away, 
 the complementary aspect of the same object stamps 
 itself irresistibly and automatically upon the mind. 
 Shall they give expression to this secondary mental 
 state, or not ? 
 
 When I contemplate said my friend, the Poet 
 the infinite largeness of comprehension belonging to 
 the Central Intelligence, how remote the creative con 
 ception is from aU scholastic and ethical formulae, I 
 am led to think that a healthy mind ought to change 
 its mood from time to time, and come down from its 
 noblest condition, never, of course, to degrade it 
 self by dwelling upon what is itself debasing, but to 
 let its lower faculties have a chance to air and exercise 
 themselves. After the first and second floor have been 
 out in the bright street dressed in all their splendors, 
 shall not our humble friends in the basement have 
 their holiday, and the cotton velvet and the thin- 
 skinned jewelry simple adornments, but befitting 
 the station of those who wear them show them 
 selves to the crowd, who think them beautiful, as they 
 ought to, though the people up-stairs know that they 
 are cheap and perishable ? 
 
 I don't know that I may not bring the Poet 
 here, some day or other, and let him speak for him 
 self. Still I think I can tell you what he says quite 
 as well as he could do it. Oh, he said to me, one 
 day, I am but a hand-organ man, say rather, a 
 hand-organ. Life turns the winch, and fancy or ac 
 cident pulls out the stops. I come under your win 
 dows, some fine spring morning, and play you one of 
 my adagio movements, and some of you say, This 
 
182 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 is good, play us so always. But, dear friends, if I 
 did not change the stop sometimes, the machine would 
 wear out in one part and rust in another. How easily 
 this or that tune flows ! you say, there must be 
 no end of just such melodies in him. I will open 
 the poor machine for you one moment, and you shall 
 look. Ah ! Every note marks where a spur of 
 steel has been driven in. It is easy to grind out the 
 song, but to plant these bristling points which make it 
 was the painful task of time. 
 
 I don't like to say it, he continued, but poets 
 commonly have no larger stock of tunes than hand- 
 organs; and when you hear them piping up under 
 your window, you know pretty well what to expect. 
 The more stops, the better. Do let them all be pulled 
 out in their turn ! 
 
 So spoke my friend, the Poet, and read me one of 
 Jhis stateliest songs, and after it a gay chanson, and 
 then a string of epigrams. All true, he said, 
 all flowers of his soul; only one with the corolla 
 spread, and another with its disk half opened, and the 
 third with the heart-leaves covered up and only a 
 petal or two showing its tip through the calyx. The 
 water-lily is the type of the poet's soul, he told me. 
 
 What do you think, Sir, said the divinity- 
 student, opens the souls of poets most fully ? 
 
 Why, there must be the internal force and the ex 
 ternal stimulus. Neither is enough by itself. A rose 
 will not flower in the dark, and a fern will not flower 
 anywhere. 
 
 What do I think is the true sunshine that opens 
 the poet's corolla? I don't like to say. They spoil 
 a good many, I am afraid ; or at least they shine on a 
 good many that never come to anything. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 183 
 
 Who are they ? said the schoolmistress. 
 
 Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and 
 their praise is his best reward. 
 
 The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked 
 pleased. Did I really think so ? I do think so ; I 
 never feel safe until I have pleased them; I don't 
 think they are the first to see one's defects, but they 
 are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a true 
 poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a 
 bow-string, to a woman and it is a harp-string. 
 She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs with 
 slighter musical tremblings of the air about her. 
 Ah, me ! said my friend, the Poet, to me, the other 
 day,. what color would it not have given to my 
 thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to my 
 words, had I been fed on women's praises! I should 
 have grown like Marvell's fawn, 
 
 " Lilies without; roses within ! " 
 
 But then, he added, we all think, if so and so, we 
 should have been this or that, as you were saying the 
 other day, in those rhymes of yours. 
 
 I don't think there are many poets in the sense 
 of creators ; but of those sensitive natures which reflect 
 themselves naturally in soft and melodious words, 
 pleading for sympathy with their joys and sorrows, 
 every literature is full. Nature carves with her own 
 hands the brain which holds the creative imagination, 
 but she casts the over-sensitive creatures in scores 
 from the same mould. 
 
 There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two 
 kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity among our 
 ladies at table. Please to tell us about those blondes, 
 said the schoolmistress.] Why, there are blondes 
 
184 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 who are such simply by deficiency of coloring matter, 
 negative or washed blondes, arrested by Nature on 
 the way to become albinesses. There are others that 
 are shot through with golden light, with tawny or ful 
 vous tinges in various degree, positive or stained 
 blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as unlike in 
 their mode of being to the others as an orange is un 
 like a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a 
 wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The other, or the 
 leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in her clear eye, 
 which the brunette can hardly match with her quick 
 glittering glances. 
 
 Just so we have the great sun-kindled, constructive 
 imaginations, and a far more numerous class of poets 
 who have a certain kind of moonlight-genius given 
 them to compensate for their imperfection of nature. 
 Their want of mental coloring-matter makes them 
 sensitive to those impressions which stronger minds 
 neglect or never feel at all. Many of them die young, 
 and all of them are tinged with melancholy. There 
 is no more beautiful illustration of the principle of 
 compensation which marks the Divine benevolence 
 than the fact that some of the holiest lives and some 
 of the sweetest songs are the growth of the infirmity 
 which unfits its subject for the rougher duties of life. 
 When one reads the life of Cowper, or of Keats, or 
 of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, of so many 
 gentle, sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly 
 dying before their time, one cannot help thinking 
 that the human race dies out singing, like the swan in 
 the old story. The French poet, Gilbert, who died at 
 the H6tel Dieu, at the age of twenty-nine, (killed 
 by a key in his throat, which he had swallowed when 
 delirious in consequence of a fall), this poor fellow 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 185 
 
 was a very good example of the poet by excess of 
 sensibility. I found, the other day, that some of my 
 literary friends had never heard of him, though I 
 suppose few educated Frenchmen do not know the 
 lines which he wrote, a week before his death, upon a 
 mean bed in the great hospital of Paris. 
 
 " Au banquet de la vie, infortune* convive 
 
 J'apparus un jour, et je meurs; 
 Je meurs, et sur ma tombe, ou lenteraent j 'arrive 
 Nul ne viendra verser des pleurs." 
 
 At life's gay banquet placed, a poor unhappy guest, 
 
 One day I pass, then disappear ; 
 I die, and on the tomb where I at length shall rest 
 
 No friend shall come to shed a tear. 
 
 You remember the same thing in other words some 
 where in Kirke White's poems. It is the burden of 
 the plaintive songs of all these sweet albino-poets. " I 
 shall die and be forgotten, and the world will go on 
 just as if I had never been ; and yet how I have 
 loved I how I have longed ! how I have aspired ! " 
 And so singing, their eyes grow brighter and brighter, 
 and their features thinner and thinner, until at last 
 the veil of flesh is threadbare, and, still singing, they 
 drop it and pass onward. 
 
 Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel 
 of Life winds them up once for all, then closes the 
 case, and gives the key into the hand of the Angel of 
 the Eesurrection. 
 
 Tic-tac ! tic-tac ! go the wheels of thought ; our will 
 cannot stop them ; they cannot stop themselves ; sleep 
 cannot still them; madness only makes them go 
 Caster ; death alone can break into the case, and, seiz- 
 
186 THE ATJTOCKAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 ing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the 
 heart, silence at last the clicking of the terrible es 
 capement we have carried so long beneath our wrin 
 kled foreheads. 
 
 If we could only get at them, as we lie on our pil 
 lows and count the dead beats of thought after thought 
 and image after image jarring through the overtired 
 organ ! Will nobody block those wheels, uncouple 
 that pinion, cut the string that holds those weights, 
 blow up the infernal machine with gunpowder? What 
 a passion comes over us sometimes for silence and 
 rest I that this dreadful mechanism, unwinding the 
 endless tapestry of time, embroidered with spectral 
 figures of life and death, could have but one brief hol 
 iday ! Who can wonder that men swing themselves 
 off from beams in hempen lassos ? that they jump 
 off from parapets into the swift and gurgling waters 
 beneath ? that they take counsel of the grim friend 
 who has but to utter his one peremptory monosyllable 
 and the restless machine is shivered as a vase that is 
 dashed upon a marble floor? Under that building 
 which we pass every day there are strong dungeons, 
 where neither hook, nor bar, nor bed-cord, nor drink- 
 ing-vessel from which a sharp fragment may be shat 
 tered, shall by any chance be seen. There is nothing 
 for it, when the brain is on fire with the whirling of its 
 wheels, but to spring against the stone wall and silence 
 them with one crash. Ah, they remembered that, 
 the kind city fathers, and the walls are nicely pad 
 ded, so that one can take such exercise as he likes 
 without damaging himself on the very plain and ser 
 viceable upholstery. If anybody would only contrive 
 some kind of a lever that one could thrust in among 
 the works of this horrid automaton and check them, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 187 
 
 or alter their rate of going, what would the world give 
 for the discovery ? 
 
 From half a dime to a dime, according to the 
 style of the place and the quality of the liquor, said 
 the young fellow whom they call John. 
 
 You speak trivially, but not unwisely, I said. 
 Unless the will maintain a certain control over these 
 movements, which it cannot stop, but can to some ex 
 tent regulate, men are very apt to try to get at the 
 machine by some indirect system of leverage or other. 
 They clap on the brakes by means of opium ; they 
 change the maddening monotony of the rhythm by 
 means of fermented liquors. It is because the brain 
 is locked up and we cannot touch its movement di 
 rectly, that we thrust these coarse tools in through any 
 crevice, by which they may reach the interior, and so 
 alter its rate of going for a while, and at last spoil the 
 machine. 
 
 Men who exercise chiefly those faculties of the mind 
 which work independently of the will, poets and 
 artists, for instance, who follow their imagination in 
 their creative moments, instead of keeping it in hand 
 as your logicians and practical men do with their 
 reasoning faculty, such men are too apt to call in 
 the mechanical appliances to help them govern their 
 intellects. 
 
 He means they get drunk, said the young fel 
 low already alluded to by name. 
 
 Do you think men of true genius are apt to indulge 
 in the use of inebriating fluids ? said the divinity- 
 student. 
 
 If you think you are strong enough to bear what I 
 am going to say, I replied, I will talk to you 
 about this. But mind, now, these are the things that 
 
188 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 some foolish people call dangerous subjects, as if 
 these vices which burrow into people's souls, as the 
 Guinea-worm burrows into the naked feet of West- 
 Indian slaves, would be more mischievous when seen 
 tha"n out of sight. Now the true way to deal with 
 those obstinate animals, which are a dozen feet long, 
 some of them, and no bigger than a horse hair, is to 
 get a piece of silk round their heads, and pull them 
 out very cautiously. If you only break them off, they 
 grow worse than ever, and sometimes kill the person 
 who has the misfortune to harbor one of them. 
 Whence it is plain that the first thing to do is to find 
 out where the head lies. 
 
 Just so of all the vices, and particularly of this vice 
 of intemperance. What is the head of it, and where 
 does it lie ? For you may depend upon it, there is not 
 one of these vices that has not a head of its own, 
 an intelligence, a meaning, a certain virtue, I 
 was going to say, but that might, perhaps, sound 
 paradoxical. I have heard an immense number of 
 moral physicians lay down the treatment of moral 
 Guinea-worms, and the vast majority of them would 
 always insist that the creature had no head at all, but 
 was all body and tail. So I have found a very com 
 mon result of their method to be that the string 
 slipped, or that a piece only of the creature was 
 broken off, and the worm soon grew again, as bad as 
 ever. The truth is, if the Devil could only appear in 
 church by attorney, and make the best statement that 
 the facts would bear him out in doing on behalf of his 
 special virtues (what we commonly call vices), the in 
 fluence of good teachers would be much greater than 
 it is. For the arguments by which the Devil prevails 
 are precisely the ones that the Devil-queller most 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 189 
 
 rarely answers. The way to argue down a vice is not 
 to tell lies about it, to say that it has no attractions, 
 when everybody knows that it has, but rather to let 
 it make out its case just as it certainly will in the mo 
 ment of temptation, and then meet it with the weapons 
 furnished by the Divine armory. Ithuriel did not spit 
 the toad on his spear, you remember, but touched him 
 with it, and the blasted angel took the sad glories of 
 his true shape. If he had shown fight then, the 
 fair spirits would have known how to deal with him. 
 
 That all spasmodic cerebral action is an evil is not 
 perfectly clear. Men get fairly intoxicated with mu 
 sic, with poetry, with religious excitement, oftenest 
 with love. Ninon de TEnclos said she was so easily 
 excited that her soup intoxicated her, and convalescents 
 have been made tipsy by a beef -steak. 
 
 There are forms and stages of alcoholic exaltation 
 which, in themselves, and without regard to their con 
 sequences, might be considered as positive improve 
 ments of the persons affected. When the sluggish in 
 tellect is roused, the slow speech quickened, the cold 
 nature warmed, the latent sympathy developed, the 
 flagging spirit kindled, before the trains of thought 
 become confused, or the will perverted, or the muscles 
 relaxed, just at the moment when the whole human 
 zoophyte flowers out like a full-blown rose, and is ripe 
 for the subscription-paper or the contribution-box, 
 it would be hard to say that a man was, at that very 
 time, worse, or less to be loved, than when driving a 
 hard bargain with all his meaner wits about him. 
 The difficulty is, that the alcoholic virtues don't wash ; 
 but until the water takes their colors out, the tints are 
 very much like those of the true celestial stuff. 
 
 [Here I was interrupted by a question which I am 
 
190 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 very unwilling to report, but have confidence enough 
 in those friends who examine these records to commit 
 to their candor. 
 
 A per son at table asked me whether I " went in for 
 rum as a steady drink ? " His manner made the 
 question highly offensive, but I restrained myself, and 
 answered thus : ] 
 
 Rum I take to be the name which unwashed mor 
 alists apply alike to the product distilled from mo 
 lasses and the noblest juices of the vineyard. Bur 
 gundy " in all its sunset glow" is rum. Champagne, 
 soul of " the foaming grape of Eastern France," is 
 rum. Hock, which our friend, the Poet, speaks of as 
 " The Rhine's breastmilk, gushing cold and bright, , 
 Pale as the moon, and maddening as her light," 
 
 is rum. Sir, I repudiate the loathsome vulgarism as 
 an insult to the first miracle wrought by the Founder 
 of our religion ! I address myself to the company. 
 I believe in temperance, nay, almost in abstinence, as 
 a rule for healthy people. I trust that I practice 
 both. But let me tell you, there are companies of 
 men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the 
 atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more 
 stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take 
 wine, it would be to keep me sober. 
 
 Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if 
 any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken ac 
 quaintances were generally ruined before they became 
 drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no 
 doubt, sometimes a misfortune, as when an al 
 most irresistible hereditary propensity exists to in 
 dulge in it, but oftenest of all a punishment. 
 
 Empty heads, heads without ideas in wholesome 
 variety and sufficient number to furnish food for the 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 191 
 
 mental clockwork, ill-regulated heads, where the 
 faculties are not under the control of the will, these 
 are the ones that hold the brains which their owners 
 are so apt to tamper with, by introducing the appli 
 ances we have been talking about. Now, when a 
 gentleman's brain is empty or ill-regulated, it is, to a 
 great extent, his own fault ; and so it is simple retri 
 bution, that, while he lies slothfully sleeping or aim 
 lessly dreaming, the fatal habit settles on him like a 
 vampire, and sucks his blood, fanning him all the 
 while with its hot wings into deeper slumber or idler 
 dreams! I am not such a hard-souled being as to 
 apply this to the neglected poor, who have had no 
 chance to fill their heads with wholesome ideas, and 
 to be taught the lesson of self-government. 1 trust the 
 tariff of Heaven has an ad valorem scale for them, 
 and all of us. 
 
 But to come back to poets and artists; if they 
 really are more prone to the abuse of stimulants, 
 and I fear that this is true, the reason of it is only 
 too clear. A man abandons himself to a fine frenzy, 
 and the power which flows through him, as I once ex 
 plained to you, makes him the medium of a great 
 poem or a great picture. The creative action is not 
 voluntary at all, but automatic ; we can only put the 
 mind into the proper attitude, and wait for the wind, 
 that blows where it listeth, to breathe over it. Thus 
 the true state of creative genius is allied to reverie, 
 or dreaming. If mind and body were both healthy and 
 had food enough and fair play, I doubt whether any 
 men would be more temperate than the imaginative 
 classes. But body and mind often flag, perhaps 
 they are ill-made to begin with, underfed with bread 
 or ideas, overworked, or abused in some way. The 
 
192 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 automatic action, by which genius wrought its won 
 ders, fails. There is only one thing which can rouse 
 the machine ; not will, that cannot reach it, nothing 
 but a ruinous agent, which hurries the wheels a while 
 and soon eats out the heart of the mechanism. The 
 dreaming faculties are always the dangerous ones, be 
 cause their mode of action can be imitated by artificial 
 excitement ; the reasoning ones are safe, because they 
 imply continued voluntary effort. 
 
 I think you will find it true, that, before any vice 
 can fasten on a man, body, mind, or moral nature 
 must be debilitated. The mosses and fungi gather on 
 sickly trees, not thriving ones ; and the odious para 
 sites which fasten on the human frame choose that 
 which is already enfeebled. Mr. Walker, the hygeian 
 humorist, declared that he had such a healthy skin it 
 was impossible for any impurity to stick to it, and 
 maintained that it was an absurdity to wash a face 
 which was of necessity always clean. I don't know 
 how much fancy there was in this ; but there is no 
 fancy in saying that the lassitude of tired-out opera 
 tives, and the languor of imaginative natures in their 
 periods of collapse, and the vacuity of minds untrained 
 to labor and discipline, fit the soul and body for the 
 germination of the seeds of intemperance. 
 
 Whenever the wandering demon of Drunkenness 
 finds a ship adrift, no steady wind in its sails, no 
 thoughtful pilot directing its course, he steps on 
 board, takes the helm, and steers straight for the 
 maelstrom. 
 
 I wonder if you know the terrible smile ? [The 
 young fellow whom they call John winked very hard, 
 and made a jocular remark, the sense of which seemed 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 193 
 
 to depend on some double meaning of the word smile. 
 The company was curious to know what I meant.] 
 
 There are persons I said who no sooner come 
 within sight of you than they begin to smile, with an 
 uncertain movement of the mouth, which conveys the 
 idea that they are thinking about themselves, and 
 thinking, too, that you are thinking they are think 
 ing about themselves, and so look at you with a 
 wretched mixture of self-consciousness, awkwardness, 
 and attempts to carry off both, which are betrayed by 
 the cowardly behavior of the eye and the tell-tale 
 weakness of the lips that characterize these unfor 
 tunate beings. 
 
 Why do you call them unfortunate, Sir ? asked 
 the divinity-student. 
 
 Because it is evident that the consciousness of some 
 imbecility or other is at the bottom of this extraordi 
 nary expression. I don't think, however, that these 
 persons are commonly fools. I have known a number, 
 and all of them were intelligent. I think nothing 
 conveys the idea of underbreeding more than this 
 self-betraying smile. Yet I think this peculiar habit 
 as well as that of meaningless blushing may be fallen 
 into by very good people who meet often, or sit op 
 posite each other at table. A true gentleman's face 
 is infinitely removed from all such paltriness, calm- 
 eyed, firm-mouthed. I think Titian understood the 
 look of a gentleman as well as anybody that ever lived. 
 The portrait of a young man holding a glove in his 
 hand, in the Gallery of the Louvre, if any of you have 
 seen that collection, will remind you of what I mean. 
 
 Do I think these people know the peculiar look 
 they have ? I cannot say ; I hope not ; I am afraid 
 they would never forgive me, if they did. The worst 
 
194 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 of it is, the trick is catching ; when one meets one of 
 these fellows, he feels a tendency to the same mani 
 festation. The Professor tells me there is a muscular 
 slip, a dependence of the platysma myoides, which is 
 called the risorius Santorini. 
 
 Say that once more, exclaimed the young fel 
 low mentioned above. 
 
 The Professor says there is a little fleshy slip called 
 Santorini's laughing muscle. I would have it cut 
 out of my face, if I were born with one of those con 
 stitutional grins upon it. Perhaps I am uncharita 
 ble in my judgment of those sour-looking people I 
 told you of the other day, and of these smiling folks. 
 It may be that they are born with these looks, as other 
 people are with more generally recognized deformities. 
 Both are bad enough, but I had rather meet three of 
 the scowlers than one of the smilers. 
 
 There is another unfortunate way of looking, 
 which is peculiar to that amiable sex we do not like to 
 find fault with. There are some very pretty, but, un 
 happily, very ill-bred women, who don't understand 
 the law of the road with regard to handsome faces. 
 Nature and custom would, no doubt, agree in conced 
 ing to all males the right of at least two distinct looks 
 at every comely female countenance, without any in 
 fraction of the rules of courtesy or the sentiment of 
 respect. The first look is necessary to define the per 
 son of the individual one meets so as to recognize an 
 acquaintance. Any unusual attraction detected in a 
 first glance is a sufficient apology for a second, not 
 a prolonged and impertinent stare, but an appreciating 
 homage of the eyes, such as a stranger may inoffen 
 sively yield to a passing image. It is astonishing how 
 morbidly sensitive some vulgar beauties are to the 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 195 
 
 slightest demonstration of this kind. When a lady 
 walks the streets, she leaves her virtuous-indignation 
 countenance at home ; she knows well enough that the 
 street is a picture-gallery, where pretty faces framed 
 in pretty bonnets are meant to be seen, and everybody 
 has a right to see them. 
 
 When we observe how the same features and 
 style of person and character descend from generation 
 to generation, we can believe that some inherited weak 
 ness may account for these peculiarities. Little snap- 
 ping-turtles snap so the great naturalist tells us 
 before they are fairly out of the egg-shell. I am sat 
 isfied, that, much higher up in the scale of life, char 
 acter is distinctly shown at the age of 2 or 3 
 months. 
 
 My friend, the Professor, has been full of eggs 
 lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity which 
 I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observa 
 tions.] He has been reading the great book where 
 he found the fact about the little snapping-turtles men 
 tioned above. Some of the things he has told me havo 
 suggested several odd analogies enough. 
 
 There are half a dozen men, or so, who carry in 
 their brains the ovarian eggs of the next generation's 
 or century's civilization. These eggs are not ready to 
 be laid in the form of books as yet ; some of them are 
 hardly ready to be put into the form of talk. But as 
 rudimentary ideas or inchoate tendencies, there they 
 are ; and these are what must form the future. A 
 man's general notions are not good for much, unless 
 he has a crop of these intellectual ovarian eggs in his 
 own brain, or knows them as they exist in the minds 
 of others. One must be in the habit of talking with 
 such persons to get at these rudimentary germs of 
 
196 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 thought ; for their development is necessarily imper 
 fect, and they are moulded on new patterns, which 
 must be long and closely studied. But these are the 
 men to talk with. No fresh truth ever gets into a 
 book. 
 
 A good many fresh lies get in, anyhow, said 
 one of the company. 
 
 I proceeded in spite of the interruption. All ut 
 tered thought, my friend, the Professor, says, is of the 
 nature of an excretion. Its materials have been taken 
 in, and have acted upon the system, and been reacted 
 on by it ; it has circulated and done its office in one 
 mind before it is given out for the benefit of others. 
 It may be milk or venom to other minds; but, in 
 either case, it is something which the producer has 
 had the use of and can part with. A man instinct 
 ively tries to get rid of his thought in conversation or 
 in print so soon as it is matured ; but it is hard to get 
 at it as it lies imbedded, a mere potentiality, the germ 
 of a germ, in his intellect. 
 
 Where are the brains that are fullest of these 
 ovarian eggs of thought ? I decline mentioning in 
 dividuals. The producers of thought, who are few, 
 the " jobbers " of thought, who are many, and the re 
 tailers of thought, who are numberless, are so mixed 
 up in the popular apprehension, that it would be hope 
 less to try to separate them before opinion has had 
 time to settle. Follow the course of opinion on the 
 great subjects of human interest for a few generations 
 or centuries, get its parallax, map out a small arc of 
 its movement, see where it tends, and then see who is 
 in advance of it or even with it ; the world calls him 
 hard names, probably ; but if you would find the ova 
 of the future, you must look into the folds of his cere* 
 bral convolutions. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 197 
 
 [The divinity-student looked a little puzzled at this 
 suggestion, as if he did not see exactly where he was 
 to come out, if he computed his arc too nicely. I 
 think it possible it might cut off a few corners of his 
 present belief, as it has cut off martyr-burning and 
 witch-hanging; but time will show, time will 
 show, as the old gentleman opposite says.] 
 
 Oh, here is that copy of verses I told you 
 about. 
 
 SPRING HAS COME. 
 
 Intra Muros. 
 
 The sunbeams, lost for half a year, 
 
 Slant through my pane their morning rays 
 
 For dry Northwesters cold and clear, 
 The East blows in its thin blue haze. 
 
 And first the snowdrop's bells are seen, 
 Then close against the sheltering wall 
 
 The tulip's horn of dusky green, 
 The peony's dark unfolding ball. 
 
 The golden- chaliced crocus burns; 
 
 The long narcissus-blades appear; 
 The cone-beaked hyacinth returns, 
 
 And lights her blue-flamed chandelier. 
 
 The willow's whistling lashes, wrung 
 By the wild winds of gusty March, 
 
 With sallow leaflets lightly strung, 
 Are swaying by the tufted larch. 
 
 The elms have robed their slender spray 
 With full-blown flower and embryo leaf; 
 
 Wide o'er the clasping arch of day 
 Soars like a cloud their hoary chief. 
 
 [See the proud tulip's flaunting cup, 
 That flames in glory for an hour, 
 
198 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Behold it withering, then look up, 
 How meek the forest-monarch's flower! 
 
 When wake the violets, Winter dies; 
 
 When sprout the elm-buds, Spring is nears 
 When lilacs blossom, Summer cries, 
 
 " Bud, little roses! Spring is here! "] 
 
 The windows blush with fresh bouquets, 
 Cut with the May-dew on their lips; 
 
 The radish all its bloom displays, 
 Pink as Aurora's finger-tips. 
 
 Nor less the flood of light that showers 
 On beauty's changed corolla-shades, 
 
 The walks are gay as bridal bowers 
 With rows of many-petalled maids. 
 
 The scarlet shell-fish click and clash 
 In the blue barrow where they slide, 
 
 The horseman, proud of streak and splash, 
 Creeps homeward from his morning ride. 
 
 Here conies the dealer's awkward string, 
 With neck in rope and tail in knot, 
 
 Rough colts, with careless country-swing, 
 In lazy walk or slouching trot. 
 
 Wild filly from the mountain-side, 
 Doomed to the close and chafing thills, 
 
 Lend me thy long, untiring stride 
 To seek with thee thy western hills! 
 
 I hear the whispering voice of Spring, 
 The thrush's trill, the cat-bird's cry, 
 
 Like some poor bird with prisoned wing 
 That sits and sings, but longs to fly. 
 
 Oh for one spot of living green, 
 
 One little spot where leaves can grow, 
 
 To love unblamed, to walk unseen, 
 To dream above, to sleep below! 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 199 
 
 IX. 
 
 \_Aqui estd encerrada el alma del licendado Pedra 
 Garcias. 
 
 If I should ever make a* little book out of these 
 papers, which I hope you are not getting tired of, I 
 suppose I ought to save the above sentence for a motto 
 on the title-page. But I want it now, and must use 
 it. I need not say to you that the words are Spanish, 
 nor that they are to be found in the short Introduction 
 to " Gil Bias," nor that they mean, " Here lies buried 
 the soul of the licentiate Pedro Garcias." 
 
 I warned all young people off the premises when 
 I began my notes referring to old age. I must be 
 equally fair with old people now. They are earnestly 
 requested to leave this paper to young persons from 
 the age of twelve to that of four-score years and ten, 
 at which latter period of life 1 am sure that I shall 
 have at least one youthful reader. You know well 
 enough what I mean by youth and age ; something 
 in the soul, which has no more to do with the color of 
 the hair than the vein of gold in a rock has to do with 
 the grass a thousand feet above it. 
 
 I am growing bolder as I write. I think it requires 
 not only youth, but genius, to read this paper. I don't 
 mean to imply that it required any whatsover to talk 
 what I have here written down. It did demand a 
 certain amount of memory, and such command of the 
 English tongue as is given by a common school educa 
 tion. So much I do claim. But here I have related, 
 at length, a string of trivialities. You must have the 
 imagination of a poet to transfigure them. These lit 
 tle colored patches are stains upon the windows of a 
 
200 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 human soul ; stand on the outside, they are but dull 
 and meaningless spots of color ; seen from within, they 
 are glorified shapes with empurpled wings and sun- 
 bright aureoles. 
 
 My hand trembles when I offer you this. Many 
 times I have come bearing flowers such as my garden 
 grew ; but now I offer you this poor, brown, homely 
 growth, you may cast it away as worthless. And yet, 
 and yet, it is something better than flowers ; it is 
 a seed-capsule. Many a gardener will cut you a bou 
 quet of his choicest blossoms for small fee, but he does 
 not love to let the seeds of his rarest varieties go out 
 of his own hands. 
 
 It is by little things that we know ourselves ; a soul 
 would very probably mistake itself for another, when 
 once disembodied, were it not for individual experi 
 ences which differ from those of others only in details 
 seemingly trifling. All of us have been thirsty thou 
 sands of times, and felt, with Pindar, that water was 
 the best of things. I alone, as I think, of all mankind, 
 remember one particular pailful of water, flavored 
 with the white-pine of which the pail was made, and 
 the brown mug out of which one Edmund, a red-faced 
 and curly-haired boy, was averred to have bitten a 
 fragment in his haste to drink; it being then high 
 summer, and little full-blooded boys feeling very warm 
 and porous in the low-" studded " school-room where 
 Dame Prentiss, dead and gone, ruled over young chil 
 dren, many of whom are old ghosts now, and have 
 known Abraham for twenty or thirty years of our mor 
 tal time. 
 
 Thirst belongs to humanity, everywhere, in all ages ; 
 but that white-pine pail, and that brown mug belong 
 to me in particular ; and just so of my special relation 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 201 
 
 ships with other things and with my race. One could 
 never remember himself in eternity by the mere fact 
 of having loved or hated any more than by that of 
 having thirsted ; love and hate have no more individu 
 ality in them than single waves in the ocean ; but 
 the accidents or trivial marks which distinguished 
 those whom we loved or hated make their memory 
 our own forever, and with it that of our own person 
 ality also. 
 
 Therefore, my aged friend of five-and-twenty, or 
 thereabouts, pause at the threshold of this particular 
 record, and ask yourself seriously whether you are fit 
 to read such revelations as are to follow. For observe, 
 you have here no splendid array of petals such as 
 poets offer you, nothing but a dry shell, containing, 
 if you will get out what is in it, a few small seeds of 
 poems. You may laugh at them, if you like. I shall 
 never tell you what I think of you for so doing. But 
 if you can read into the heart of these things, in the 
 light of other memories as slight yet as dear to your 
 soul, then you are neither more nor less than a POET, 
 and can afford to write no more verses during the rest 
 of your natural life, which abstinence I take to be 
 one of the surest marks of your meriting the divine 
 name I have just bestowed upon you. 
 
 May I beg of you who have begun this paper nobly 
 trusting to your own imagination and sensibilities to 
 give it the significance which it does not lay claim to 
 without your kind assistance, may I beg of you, I 
 say, to pay particular attention to the brackets which 
 inclose certain paragraphs ? I want my " asides," 
 you see, to whisper loud to you who read my notes, 
 and sometimes I talk a page or two to you without 
 pretending that I said a word of it to our boarders. 
 
202 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 You will find a very long " aside " to you almost as 
 soon as you begin to read. And so, dear young friend, 
 fall to at once, taking such things as I have provided 
 for you ; and if you turn them, by the aid of your pow 
 erful imagination, into a fair banquet, why, then, peace 
 be with you, and a summer by the still waters of some 
 quiet river, or by some yellow beach, where, as my 
 friend, the Professor, says, you can sit with Nature's 
 wrist in your hand and count her ocean pulses.] 
 
 I should like to make a few intimate revelations re 
 lating especially to my early life, if I thought you 
 would like to hear them. 
 
 [The schoolmistress turned a little in her chair, and 
 sat with her face directed partly toward me. Half- 
 inourning now ; purple ribbon. That breastpin she 
 wears has gray hair in it ; her mother's no doubt ; 
 I remember our landlady's daughter telling me, soon 
 after the schoolmistress came to board with us, that 
 she had lately " buried a payrent." That 's what made 
 her look so pale, kept the poor dying thing alive 
 with her own blood. Ah ! long illness is the real 
 vampyrism ; think of living a year or two after one is 
 dead, by sucking the life-blood out of a frail young 
 creature at one's bedside ! Well, souls grow white, as 
 well as cheeks, in these holy duties ; one that goes in 
 a nurse may come out an angel. God bless all good 
 women ! to their soft hands and pitying hearts we 
 must all come at last! The schoolmistress has a bet 
 ter color than when she came. Too late! "It 
 might have been." Amen ! 
 
 How many thoughts go to a dozen heart-beats, 
 sometimes ! There was no long pause after my remark 
 addressed to the company, but in that time I had the 
 train of ideas and feelings I have just given flash 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 203 
 
 through my consciousness sudden and sharp as the 
 crooked red streak that springs out of its black sheath 
 like the creese of a Malay in his death-race, and 
 stabs the earth right and left in its blind rage. 
 
 I don't deny that there was a pang in it, yes, a 
 stab ; but there was a prayer, too, the " Amen " be 
 longed to that. Also, a vision of a four-story brick 
 house, nicely furnished, I actually saw many specific 
 articles, curtains, sofas, tables, and others, and could 
 draw the patterns of them at this moment, a brick 
 house, I say, looking out on the water, with a fair 
 parlor, and books and busts and pots of flowers and 
 bird-cages, all complete ; and at the window, looking on 
 the water, two of us. " Male and female created He 
 them " These two were standing at the window, 
 when a smaller shape that was playing near them 
 
 looked up at me with such a look that I 
 
 poured out a glass of water, drank it all down, and 
 then continued.] 
 
 I said I should like to tell you some things, such as 
 people commonly never tell, about my early recollec 
 tions. Should you like to hear them ? 
 
 Should we like to hear them? said the school 
 mistress ; no, but we should love to. 
 
 [The voice was a sweet one, naturally, and had 
 something very pleasant in its tone, just then. The 
 four-story brick house, which had gone out like a 
 transparency when the light behind it is quenched, 
 glimmered again for a moment ; parlor, books, busts, 
 flower-pots, bird-cages, all complete, and the figures 
 as before.] 
 
 We are waiting with eagerness, Sir, said the di 
 vinity-student. 
 
 [The transparency went out as if a flash of black 
 lightning had struck it.] 
 
204 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 If you want to hear my confessions, the next thing, 
 I said, is to know whether I can trust you with 
 them. It is only fair to say that there are a great 
 many people in the world who laugh at such things. 
 / think they are fools, but perhaps you don't all agree 
 with me. 
 
 Here are children of tender age talked to as if they 
 were capable of understanding Calvin's " Institutes," 
 and nobody has honesty or sense enough to tell the 
 plain truth about the little wretches : that they are as 
 superstitious as naked savages, and such miserable 
 spiritual cowards that is, if they have any imagina 
 tion that they will believe anything which is taught 
 them, and a great deal more which they teach them 
 selves. 
 
 I was born and bred, as I have told you twenty 
 times, among books and those who knew what was in 
 books. I was carefully instructed in things temporal 
 and spiritual. But up to a considerable maturity of 
 childhood I believed Raphael and Michael Angelo to 
 have been superhuman beings. The central doctrine 
 of the prevalent religious faith of Christendom was 
 utterly confused and neutralized in my mind for years 
 by one of those too common stories of actual life, 
 which I overheard repeated in a whisper. Why did 
 I not ask? you will say. You don't remember the 
 rosy pudency of sensitive children. The first in 
 stinctive movement of the little creatures is to make a 
 cache, and bury in it beliefs, doubts, dreams, hopes, 
 and terrors. I am uncovering one of these caches. 
 Do you think I was necessarily a greater fool and 
 coward than another ? 
 
 I was afraid of ships. Why, I could never tell 
 The masts looked frightfully tall, but they were not 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 205 
 
 BO tall as the steeple of our old yellow meeting-house. 
 At any rate I used to hide my eyes from the sloops 
 and schooners that were wont to lie at the end of the 
 bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined 
 terror lasted very long. One other source of alarm 
 had a still more fearful significance. There was a 
 great wooden HAND, a glove-maker's sign, which 
 used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from 
 a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of 
 the city. Oh, the dreadful hand ! Always hanging 
 there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come 
 home to supper no more, nor yet to bed, whose por 
 ringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and his 
 half-worn shoes wait until his small brother grew to 
 fit them. 
 
 As for all manner of superstitious observances, I 
 used once to think I must have been peculiar in hav 
 ing such a list of them, but I now believe that half the 
 children of the same age go through the same experi 
 ences. No Roman soothsayer ever had such a cata 
 logue of omens as I found in the Sibylline leaves of 
 my childhood. That trick of throwing a stone at a 
 tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or 
 missing, which you will find mentioned in one or 
 more biographies, I well remember. Stepping on or 
 over certain particular things or spots, Dr. John 
 son's especial weakness, I got the habit of at a very 
 early age. I won't swear that I have not some ten 
 dency to these not wise practices even at this present 
 date. [How many of you that read these notes can 
 say the same thing !] 
 
 With these follies mingled sweet delusions, which 
 I loved so well I would not outgrow them, even when 
 it required a voluntary effort to put a momentary trust 
 
206 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 in them. Here is one which I cannot help telling 
 you. 
 
 The firing of the great guns at the Navy-yard is 
 easily heard at the place where I was born and lived. 
 " There is a ship of war come in," they used to say, 
 when they heard them. Of course, I supposed that 
 such vessels came in unexpectedly, after indefinite 
 years of absence, suddenly as falling stones ; and 
 that the great guns roared in their astonishment and 
 delight at the sight of the old war-ship splitting the 
 bay with her cutwater. Now, the sloop-of-war the 
 Wasp, Captain Blakely, after gloriously capturing the 
 Reindeer and the Avon, had disappeared from the face 
 of the ocean, and was supposed to be lost. But there 
 was no proof of it, and, of course, for a time, hopes 
 were entertained that she might be heard from. Long 
 after the last real chance had utterly vanished, I 
 pleased myself with the fond illusion that somewhere 
 on the waste of waters she was still floating, and there 
 were years during which I never heard the sound of the 
 great gun booming inland from the Navy-yard with- 
 ous saying to myself, " The Wasp has come ! " and al 
 most thinking I could see her, as she rolled in, crump 
 ling the water before her, weather-beaten, barnacled, 
 with shattered spars and threadbare canvas, welcomed 
 by the shouts and tears of thousands. This was one 
 of those dreams that I nursed and never told. Let me 
 make a clean breast of it now, and say, that, so late as 
 to have outgrown childhood, perhaps to have got far 
 on towards manhood, when the roar of the cannon 
 has struck suddenly on my ear, I have started with a 
 thrill of vague expectation and tremulous delight, and 
 the long-unspoken words have articulated themselves 
 in the mind's dumb whisper, The Wasp has come 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 207 
 
 Yes, children believe plenty of queer things. I 
 suppose all of you have had the pocket-book fever 
 when you were little? What do I mean? Why, 
 ripping up old pocket-books in the firm belief that 
 bank-bills to an immense amount were hidden in them. 
 So, too, you must all remember some splendid un 
 fulfilled promise of somebody or other, which fed you 
 with hopes perhaps for years, and which left a blank 
 in your life which nothing has ever filled up. O. T. 
 quitted our household carrying with him the passionate 
 regrets of the more youthful members. He was an in 
 genious youngster ; wrote wonderful copies, and carved 
 the two initials given above with great skill on all 
 available surfaces. I thought, by the way, they were 
 all gone ; but the other day I found them on a certain 
 door which I will show you some time. How it sur 
 prised me to find them so near the ground! I had 
 thought the boy of no trivial dimensions. Well, O. T., 
 when he went, made a solemn promise to two of us. I 
 was to have a ship, and the other a martfm-house (last 
 syllable pronounced as in the word tin). Neither ever 
 came ; but, oh, how many and many a time I have 
 stolen to the corner, the cars pass close by it at this 
 time, and looked up that long avenue, thinking that 
 he must be coming now, almost sure, as I turned to 
 look northward, that there he would be, trudging to 
 ward me, the ship in one hand and the marta'/i-house 
 in the other ! 
 
 [You must not suppose that all I am going to say, 
 as well as all I have said, was told to the whole com 
 pany. The young fellow whom they call John was in 
 the yard, sitting on a barrel and smoking a cheroot, 
 the fumes of which came in, not ungrateful, through 
 the open window. The divinity-student disappeared 
 
208 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 in the midst of our talk. The poor relation in black 
 bombazine, who looked and moved as if all her articu 
 lations were elbow-joints, had gone off to her chamber, 
 after waiting with a look of soul-subduing decorum at 
 the foot of the stairs until one of the male sort had 
 passed her and ascended into the upper regions. This 
 is a famous point of etiquette in our boarding-house ; 
 in fact, between ourselves, they make such an awful 
 fuss about it, that I, for one, had a great deal rather 
 have them simple enough not to think of such matters 
 at all. Our landlady's daughter said, the other even 
 ing, that she was going to " retire " ; whereupon the 
 young fellow called John took up a lamp and insisted 
 on lighting her to the foot of the staircase. Nothing 
 would induce her to pass by him, until the school 
 mistress, saying in good plain English that it was her 
 bed-time, walked straight by them both, not seeming 
 to trouble herself about either of them. 
 
 I have been led away from what I meant the por 
 tion included in these brackets to inform my readers 
 about. I say, then, most of the boarders had left the 
 table about the time when I began telling some of 
 these secrets of mine, all of them, in fact, but the 
 old gentleman opposite and the schoolmistress. I un 
 derstand why a young woman should like to hear these 
 simple but genuine experiences of early life, which are, 
 as I have said, the little brown seeds of what may yet 
 grow to be poems with leaves of azure and gold ; but 
 when the old gentleman pushed up his chair nearer to 
 me, and slanted round his best ear, and once, when I 
 was speaking of some trifling, tender reminiscence, 
 drew a long breath, with such a tremor in it that a 
 little more and it would have been a sob, why, then I 
 felt there must be something of nature in them which 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 209 
 
 redeemed their seeming insignificance. Tell me, man 
 or woman with whom I am whispering, have you not 
 a small store of recollections, such as these I am un 
 covering, buried beneath the dead leaves of many sum 
 mers, perhaps under the unmelting snows of fast re 
 turning winters, a few such recollections, which, if 
 you should write them all out, would be swept into 
 some careless editor's drawer, and might cost a scanty 
 half hour's lazy reading to his subscribers, and yet, 
 if Death should cheat you out of them, you would not 
 know yourself in eternity ?] 
 
 I made three acquaintances at a very early period 
 of life, my introduction to whom was never forgotten. 
 The first unequivocal act of wrong that has left its 
 trace in my memory was this : refusing a small favor 
 asked of me, nothing more than telling what had 
 happened at school one morning. No matter who 
 asked it ; but there were circumstances which sad 
 dened and awed me. I had no heart to speak ; I 
 faltered some miserable, perhaps petulant excuse, stole 
 away, and the first battle of life was lost. What re 
 morse followed I need not tell. Then and there, to 
 the best of my knowledge, I first consciously took Sin 
 by the hand and turned my back on Duty. Time has 
 led me to look upon my offence more leniently ; I do 
 not believe it or any other childish wrong is infinite, 
 as some have pretended, but infinitely finite. Yet, oh 
 if I had but won that battle ! 
 
 The great Destroyer, whose awful shadow it was 
 that had silenced me, came near me, but never, so 
 as to be distinctly seen and remembered, during my 
 tender years. There flits dimly before me the image 
 of a little girl, whose name even I have forgotten, a 
 schoolmate, whom we missed one day, and were told 
 
210 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 that she had died. But what death was I never had 
 any very distinct idea, until one day I climbed the low 
 stone wall of the old burial-ground and mingled with 
 a group that were looking into a very deep, long, nar 
 row hole, dug down through the green sod, down 
 through the brown loam, down through the yellow 
 gravel, and there at the bottom was an oblong red box, 
 and a still, sharp, white face of a young man seen 
 through an opening at one end of it. When the lid 
 was closed, and the gravel and stones rattled down 
 pell-mell, and the woman in black, who was crying and 
 wringing her hands, went off with the other mourn 
 ers, and left him, then I felt that I had seen Death, 
 and should never forget him. 
 
 One other acquaintance I made at an earlier period 
 of life than the habit of romancers authorizes. 
 Love, of course. She was a famous beauty after 
 wards. I am satisfied that many children rehearse 
 their parts in the drama of life before they have shed 
 all their milk-teeth. I think I won't tell the story 
 of the golden blonde. I suppose everybody has had 
 his childish fancies ; but sometimes they are passionate 
 impulses, which anticipate all the tremulous emotions 
 belonging to a later period. Most children remember 
 seeing and adoring an angel before they were a dozen 
 years old. 
 
 [The old gentleman had left his chair opposite and 
 taken a seat by the schoolmistress and myself, a little 
 way from the table. It 's true, it 's true, said the 
 old gentleman. He took hold of a steel watch-chain, 
 which carried a large, square gold key at one end and 
 was supposed to have some kind of time-keeper at the 
 other. With some trouble he dragged up an ancient- 
 looking, thick, silver, bull's-eye watch. He looked at it 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 211 
 
 for a moment, hesitated, touched the inner corner 
 of his right eye with the pulp of his middle finger, 
 looked at the face of the watch, said it was getting 
 into the forenoon, then opened the watch and handed 
 me the loose outside case without a word. The 
 watch-paper had been pink once, and had a faint tinge 
 still, as if all its tender life had not yet quite faded 
 out. Two little birds, a flower, and, in small school 
 girl letters, a date, 17 . . no matter. Before 
 I was thirteen years old, said the old gentleman. 
 I don't know what was in that young schoolmistress's 
 head, nor why she should have done it ; but she took 
 out the watch-paper and put it softly to her lips, as if 
 she were kissing the poor thing that made it so long 
 ago. The old gentleman took the watch-paper care 
 fully from her, replaced it, turned away and walked 
 out, holding the watch in his hand. I saw him pass 
 the window a moment after with that foolish white hat 
 on his head ; he could n't have been thinking what he 
 was about when he put it on. So the schoolmistress 
 and I were left alone. I drew my chair a shade 
 nearer to her, and continued.] 
 
 And since I am talking of early recollections, I don't 
 know why I should n't mention some others that still 
 cling to me, not that you will attach any very par 
 ticular meaning to these same images so full of signif 
 icance to me, but that you will find something par 
 allel to them in your own memory. You remember, 
 perhaps, what I said one day about smells. There 
 were certain sounds also which had a mysterious sug- 
 gestiveness to me, not so intense, perhaps, as that 
 connected with the other sense, but yet peculiar, and 
 never to be forgotten. 
 
 The first was the creaking of the wood-sleds, bring' 
 
212 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 ing their loads of oak and walnut from the country, as 
 the slow-swinging oxen trailed them along over the 
 complaining snow, in the cold, brown light of early 
 morning. Lying in bed and listening to their dreary 
 music had a pleasure in it akin to the Lucretian lux 
 ury, or that which Byron speaks of as to be enjoyed 
 in looking on at a battle by one " who hath no friend, 
 no brother there." 
 
 There was another sound, in itself so sweet, ancJ. so 
 connected with one of those simple and curious super 
 stitions of childhood of which I have spoken, that I 
 can never cease to cherish a sad sort of love for it. 
 Let me tell the superstitious fancy first. The Puritan 
 " Sabbath," as everybody knows, began at " sundown " 
 on Saturday evening. To such observance of it I was 
 born and bred. As the large, round disk of day de 
 clined, a stillness, a solemnity, a somewhat melancholy 
 hush came over us all. It was time for work to cease, 
 and for playthings to be put away. The world of ac 
 tive life passed into the shadow of an eclipse^ not to 
 emerge until the sun should sink again beneath the 
 horizon. 
 
 It was in this stillness of the world without and of 
 the soul within that the pulsating lullaby of the even 
 ing crickets used to make itself most distinctly heard, 
 so that I well remember I used to think that the 
 purring of these little creatures, which mingled with 
 the batrachian hymns from the neighboring swamp, 
 was peculiar to /Saturday evenings. I don't know 
 that anything could give a clearer idea of the quieting 
 and subduing effect of the old habit of observance of 
 what was considered holy time, than this strange, 
 childish fancy. 
 
 Yes, and there was still another sound which mil* 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 213 
 
 gled its solemn cadences with the waking and sleeping 
 dreams of my boyhood. It was heard only at times, 
 a deep, muffled roar, which rose and fell, not loud, 
 but vast, a whistling boy would have drowned it for 
 his next neighbor, but it must have been heard over 
 the space of a hundred square miles. I used to won 
 der what this might be. Could it be the roar of the 
 thousand wheels and the ten thousand footsteps jarring 
 and trampling along the stones of the neighboring 
 city ? That would be continuous ; but this, as I have 
 said, rose and fell in regular rhythm. I remember 
 being told, and I suppose this to have been the true 
 solution, that it was the sound of the waves, after a 
 high wind, breaking on the long beaches many miles 
 distant. I should really like to know whether any 
 observing people living ten miles, more or less, inland 
 from long beaches, in such a town, for instance, as 
 Cantabridge, in the eastern part of the Territory of 
 the Massachusetts, have ever observed any such 
 sound, and whether it was rightly accounted for as 
 above. 
 
 Mingling with these inarticulate sounds in the low 
 murmur of memory, are the echoes of certain voices I 
 have heard at rare intervals. I grieve to say it, but 
 our people, I think, have not generally agreeable 
 voices. The marrowy organisms, with skins that shed 
 water like the backs of ducks, with smooth surfaces 
 neatly padded beneath, and velvet linings to their 
 singing-pipes, are not so common among us as that 
 other pattern of humanity with angular outlines and 
 plane surfaces, arid integumeats, hair like the fibrous 
 covering of a cocoa-nut in gloss and suppleness as well 
 as color, and voices at once thin and strenuous; 
 acidulous enough to produce effervescence with alkalis, 
 
214 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 and stridulous enough to sing duets with the katydids. 
 I think our conversational soprano, as sometimes 
 overheard in the cars, arising from a group of young 
 persons, who may have taken the train at one of our 
 great industrial centres, for instance, young persons 
 of the female sex, we will say, who have bustled in, 
 full-dressed, engaged in loud strident speech, and who, 
 after free discussion, have fixed on two or more 
 double seats, which having secured, they proceed to 
 eat apples and hand round daguerreotypes, I say I 
 think the conversational soprano, heard under these 
 circumstances, would not be among the allurements 
 the old Enemy would put in requisition, were he get 
 ting up a new temptation of St. Anthony. 
 
 There are sweet voices among us, we all know, and 
 voices not musical, it may be, to those who hear them 
 for the first time, yet sweeter to us than any we shall 
 hear until we listen to some warbling angel in the 
 overture to that eternity of blissful harmonies we hope 
 to enjoy. But why should I tell lies ? If my friends 
 love me, it is because I try to tell the truth. I never 
 heard but two voices in my life that frightened me by 
 their sweetness. 
 
 Frightened you? said the schoolmistress. 
 Yes, frightened me. They made me feel as if there 
 might be constituted a creature with such a chord in 
 her voice to some string in another's soul, that, if she 
 but spoke, he would leave all and follow her, though 
 it were into the jaws of Erebus. Our only chance to 
 keep our wits is, that there are so few natural chords 
 between others' voices and this string in our souls, 
 and that those which at first may have jarred a little 
 by and by come into harmony with it. But I tell 
 you this is no fiction. You may call the story oi 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 215 
 
 Ulysses and the Sirens a fable, but what will you say 
 to Mario and the poor lady who followed him ? 
 
 Whose were those two voices that bewitched me 
 so ? They both belonged to German women. One 
 was a chambermaid, not otherwise fascinating. The 
 key of my room at a certain great hotel was missing, 
 and this Teutonic maiden was summoned to give in 
 formation respecting it. The simple soul was evi 
 dently not long from her mother-land, and spoke with 
 sweet uncertainty of dialect. But to hear her wonder 
 and lament and suggest with soft, liquid inflexions, 
 and low, sad murmurs, in tones as full of serious ten 
 derness for the fate of the lost key as if it had been a 
 child that had strayed from its mother, was so win 
 ning, that, had her features and figure been as deli 
 cious as her accents, if she had looked like the mar 
 ble Clytie, for instance, why, all I can say is 
 
 [The schoolmistress opened her eyes so wide, that I 
 stopped short.] 
 
 I was only going to say that I should have drowned 
 myself. For Lake Erie was close by, and it is so 
 much better to accept asphyxia, which takes only 
 three minutes by the watch, than a mesalliance^ that 
 lasts fifty years to begin with, and then passes along 
 down the line of descent (breaking out in all manner 
 of boorish manifestations of feature and manner, 
 which, if men were only as short-lived as horses, could 
 be readily traced back through the square-roots and 
 the cube-roots of the family stem on which you have 
 hung the armorial bearings of the De Champignons 
 or the De la Morues, until one came to beings that 
 ate with knives and said "Haow?"), that no person 
 of right feeling could have hesitated for a single mo 
 ment. 
 
216 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 The second of the ravishing voices I have heard 
 was, as I have said, that of another German woman. 
 I suppose I shall ruin myself by saying that such 
 a voice could not have come from any Americanized 
 human being. 
 
 - What was there in it ? said the schoolmistress, 
 and, upon my word, her tones were so very musical, 
 that I almost wished I had said three voices instead of 
 two, and not made the unpatriotic remark above re 
 ported. Oh, I said, it had so much woman in it, 
 muliebrity, as well as femineity ; no self-assertion, 
 such as free suffrage introduces into every word and 
 movement; large, vigorous nature, running back to 
 those huge-limbed Germans of Tacitus, but subdued 
 by the reverential training and tuned by the kindly 
 culture of fifty generations. Sharp business habits, a 
 lean soil, independence, enterprise, and east winds, are 
 not the best things for the larynx. Still, you hear 
 noble voices among us, I have known families fa 
 mous for them, but ask the first person you meet a 
 question, and ten to one there is a hard, sharp, metal 
 lic, matter-of-business clink in the accents of the an 
 swer, that produces the effect of one of those bells 
 which small trades-people connect with their shop- 
 doors, and which spring upon your ear with such vi 
 vacity, as you enter, that your first impulse is to retire 
 at once from the precincts. 
 
 Ah, but I must not forget that dear little child I 
 saw and heard in a French hospital. Between two 
 and three years old. Fell out of her chair and snapped 
 both thigh-bones. Lying in bed, patient, gentle. 
 Rough students round her, some in white aprons, 
 looking fearfully business-like ; but the child placid, 
 perfectly still. I spoke to her, and the blessed little 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 217 
 
 creature answered me in a voice of such heavenly 
 sweetness, with that reedy thrill in it which you have 
 heard in the thrush's even-song, that I seeni to hear it 
 at this moment, while I am writing, so many, many 
 years afterwards. C'est tout comme un serin, said 
 the French student at my side. 
 
 These are the voices which struck the key-note of 
 my conceptions as to what the sounds we are to hear in 
 heaven will be, if we shall enter through one of the 
 twelve gates of pearl. There must be other things 
 besides aerolites that wander from their own spheres 
 to ours ; and when we speak of celestial sweetness or 
 beauty, we may be nearer the literal truth than we 
 dream. If mankind generally are the shipwrecked 
 survivors of some pre-Adamitic cataclysm, set adrift 
 hi these little open boats of humanity to make one 
 more trial to reach the shore, as some grave theolo 
 gians have maintained, if , in plain English, men are 
 the ghosts of dead devils who have " died into life " 
 (to borrow an expression from Keats), and walk the 
 earth in a suit of living rags which lasts three or four 
 score summers, why, there must have been a few 
 good spirits sent to keep them company, and these 
 sweet voices I speak of must belong to them. 
 
 I wish you could once hear my sister's voice, 
 said the schoolmistress. 
 
 If it is like yours, it must be a pleasant one, 
 said I. 
 
 I never thought mine was anything, said the 
 schoolmistress. 
 
 How should you know ? said I. People never 
 hear their own voices, any more than they see their 
 own faces. There is not even a looking-glass for the 
 voice. Of course, there is something audible to us 
 
218 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 when we speak; but that something is not our own 
 voice as it is known to all our acquaintances. I think, 
 if an image spoke to us in our own tones, we should 
 not know them in the least. How pleasant it would 
 be, if in another state of being we could have shapes 
 like our former selves for playthings, we standing 
 outside or inside of them, as we liked, and they being 
 to us just what we used to be to others ! 
 
 I wonder if there will be nothing like what we 
 call " play," after our earthly toys are broken, said 
 the schoolmistress. 
 
 Hush, said I, what will the divinity-student 
 say? 
 
 [I thought she was hit, that time ; but the shot 
 must have gone over her, or on one side of her ; she 
 did not flinch.] 
 
 Oh, said the schoolmistress, he must look out 
 for my sister's heresies ; I am afraid he will be too 
 busy with them to take care of mine. 
 
 Do you mean to say, said I, that it is your sis 
 ter whom that student 
 
 [The young fellow commonly known as John, who 
 had been sitting on the barrel, smoking, jumped off 
 just then, kicked over the barrel, gave it a push with 
 his foot that set it rolling, and stuck his saucy-looking 
 face in at the window so as to cut my question off in 
 the middle ; and the schoolmistress leaving the room 
 a few minutes afterwards, I did not have a chance to 
 finish it. 
 
 The young fellow came in and sat down in a chair, 
 putting his heels on the top of another, 
 
 Pooty girl, said he. 
 
 A fine young lady, I replied. 
 
 Keeps a fust-rate school, according to accounts, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 219 
 
 Said he, teaches all sorts of things, Latin and 
 Italian and music. Folks rich once, smashed up. 
 She went right ahead as smart as if she 'd been born 
 to work. That 's the kind o' girl I go for. I 'd marry 
 her, only two or three other girls would drown them 
 selves, if I did. 
 
 I think the above is the longest speech of this young 
 fellow's which I have put on record. I do not like 
 to change his peculiar expressions, for this is one of 
 those cases in which the style is the man, as M. de 
 Buffon says. The fact is, the young fellow is a good- 
 hearted creature enough, only too fond of his jokes, 
 and if it were not for those heat-lightning winks 
 on one side of his face, I should not mind his fun 
 much.] 
 
 [Some days after this, when the company were to 
 gether again, I talked a little.] 
 
 I don't think I have a genuine hatred for any 
 body. I am well aware that I differ herein from 
 the sturdy English moralist and the stout American 
 tragedian. I don't deny that I hate the sight of cer 
 tain people ; but the qualities which make me tend to 
 hate the man himself are such as I am so much dis 
 posed to pity, that, except under immediate aggrava 
 tion, I feel kindly enough to the worst of them. It is 
 such a sad thing to be born a sneaking fellow, so much 
 worse than to inherit a hump-back or a couple of club- 
 feet, that I sometimes feel as if we ought to love the 
 crippled souls, if I may use this expression, with a cer 
 tain tenderness which we need not waste on noble 
 natures. One who is born with such congenital inca 
 pacity that nothing can make a gentleman of him is 
 entitled, not to our wrath,, but to our profoundest 
 
220 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 sympathy. But as we cannot help hating the sight of 
 these people, just as we do that of physical deformi 
 ties, we gradually eliminate them from our society, 
 we love them, but open the window and let them go. 
 By the time decent people reach middle age they have 
 weeded their circle pretty well of these unfortunates, 
 unless they have a taste for such animals ; in which 
 case, no matter what their position may be, there is 
 something, you may be sure, in their natures akin to 
 that of their wretched parasites. 
 
 The divinity-student wished to know what I 
 thought of affinities, as well as of antipathies ; did I 
 believe in love at first sight ? 
 
 Sir, said I, all men love all women. That is 
 the primd-facie aspect of the case. The Court of 
 Nature assumes the law to be, that all men do so ; and 
 the individual man is bound to show cause why he 
 does not love any particular woman. A man, says 
 one of my old black-letter law-books, may show divers 
 good reasons, as thus : He hath not seen the person 
 named in the indictment ; she is of tender age, or the 
 reverse of that; she hath certain personal disqualifica 
 tions, as, for instance, she is a blackamoor, or hath 
 an ill-favored countenance ; or, his capacity of loving 
 being limited, his affections are engrossed by a pre 
 vious comer ; and so of other conditions. Not the less 
 is it true that he is bound by duty and inclined by 
 nature to love each and every woman. Therefore it 
 is that each woman virtually summons every man to 
 show cause why he doth not love her. This is not by 
 written document, or direct speech, for the most part, 
 but by certain signs of silk, gold, and other materials, 
 which say to all men, Look on me and love, as in 
 duty bound. Then the man pleadeth his special in- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 221 
 
 capacity, whatsoever that may be, as, for instance, 
 impecuniosity, or that he hath one or many wives in 
 his household, or that he is of mean figure, or small 
 capacity ; of which reasons it may be noted, that the 
 first is, according to late decisions, of chiefest author 
 ity. So far the old law-book. But there is a note 
 from an older authority, saying that every woman doth 
 also love each and every man, except there be some 
 good reason to the contrary; and a very observing 
 friend of mine, a young unmarried clergyman, tells 
 me, that, so far as his experience goes, he has reason 
 to think the ancient author had fact to justify his 
 statement. 
 
 I '11 tell you how it is with the pictures of women 
 we fall in love with at first sight. 
 
 We a'n't talking about pictures, said the land 
 lady's daughter, we 're talking about women. 
 
 I understood that we were speaking of love at sight, 
 I remarked, mildly. Now, as all a man knows 
 about a woman whom he looks at is just what a picture 
 as big as a copper, or a " nickel," rather, at the bottom 
 of his eye can teach him, I think I am right in saying 
 we are talking about the pictures of women. Well, 
 now, the reason why a man is not desperately in love 
 with ten thousand women at once is just that which 
 prevents all our portraits being distinctly seen upon 
 that wall. They all are painted there by reflection 
 from our faces, but because all of them are painted on 
 each spot, and each on the same surface, and many 
 other objects at the same time, no one is seen as a 
 picture. But darken a chamber and let a single pencil 
 of rays in through a key-hole, then you have a picture 
 on the wall. We never fall in love with a woman in 
 distinction from women, until we can get an image of 
 
222 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 her though a pin-hole ; and then we can see nothing 
 else, and nobody but ourselves can see the image in 
 our mental camera-obscura. 
 
 My friend, the Poet, tells me he has to leave 
 town whenever the anniversaries come round. 
 
 What 's the difficulty? Why, they all want him 
 to get up and make speeches, or songs, or toasts ; 
 which is just the very thing he does n't want to do. 
 He is an old story, he says, and hates to show on these 
 occasions. But they tease him, and coax him, and 
 can't do without him, and feel all over his poor weak 
 head until they get their fingers on the fontanelle 
 (the Prof essor will tell you what this means, he says 
 the one at the top of the head always remains open in 
 poets), until, by gentle pressure on that soft pulsating 
 spot, they stupefy him to the point of acquiescence. 
 
 There are times, though, he says, when it is a pleas 
 ure, before going to some agreeable meeting, to rush 
 out into one's garden and clutch up a handful of what 
 grows there, weeds and violets together, not cut 
 ting them off, but pulling them up by the roots with 
 the brown earth they grow in sticking to them. That 's 
 his idea of a post-prandial performance. Look here, 
 now. These verses I am going to read you, he tells me, 
 were pulled up by the roots just in that way, the other 
 day. Beautiful entertainment, names there on 
 the plates that flow from all English-speaking tongues 
 as familiarly as and or the, ; entertainers known when 
 ever good poetry and fair title-pages are held in es 
 teem; guest a kind-hearted, modest, genial, hopeful 
 poet, who sings to the hearts of his countrymen, the 
 British people, the songs of good cheer which the 
 better days to come, as all honest souls trust and be 
 lieve, will turn into the prose of common life. My 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 223 
 
 friend, the Poet, says you must not read such a string 
 of verses too literally. If he trimmed it nicely below, 
 you would n't see the roots, he says, and he likes to 
 keep them, and a little of the soil clinging to them. 
 
 This is the farewell my friend, the Poet, read to his 
 and our friend, the Poet : 
 
 A GOOD TIME GOING! 
 
 Brave singer of the coming time, 
 
 Sweet minstrel of the joyous present, 
 Crowned with the noblest wreath of rhyme, 
 
 The holly-leaf of Ayrshire's peasant, 
 Good-bye ! Good-bye ! Our hearts and hands, 
 
 Our lips in honest Saxon phrases, 
 Cry, God be with him, till he stands 
 
 His feet among the English daisies! 
 
 'T is here we part ; for other eyes 
 
 The busy deck, the fluttering streamer, 
 The dripping arms that plunge and rise, 
 
 The waves in foam, the ship in tremor, 
 The kerchiefs waving from the pier, 
 
 The cloudy pillar gliding o'er him, 
 The deep blue desert, lone and drear, 
 
 With heaven above and home before him! 
 
 His home ! the Western giant smiles, 
 
 And twirls the spotty globe to find it, 
 This little speck the British Isles ? 
 
 'T is but a freckle, never mind it! 
 He laughs, and all his prairies roll, 
 
 Each gurgling cataract roars and chuckles, 
 And ridges stretched from pole to pole 
 
 Heave till they crack their iron knuckles 
 
 But Memory blushes at the sneer, 
 And Honor turns with frown defiant, 
 
 And Freedom, leaning on her spear, 
 
 Laughs louder than the laughing giant: 
 
224 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE 
 
 " An islet is a world," she said, 
 
 " When glory with its dust has blended, 
 And Britain keeps her noble dead 
 
 Till earth and seas and skies are rendedl " 
 
 Beneath each swinging forest-bough 
 
 Some arm as stout in death reposes, 
 From wave-washed foot to heaven-kissed brow 
 
 Her valor's life-blood runs in roses; 
 Nay, let our brothers of the West 
 
 Write smiling in their florid pages, 
 One-half her soil has walked the rest 
 
 In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages! 
 
 Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp, 
 
 From sea- weed fringe to mountain heather, 
 The British oak with rooted grasp 
 
 Her slender handful holds together, 
 With cliffs of white and bowers of green, 
 
 And Ocean narrowing to caress her, 
 And hills and threaded streams between, 
 
 Our little mother isle, God bless her! 
 
 In earth's broad temple where we stand, 
 
 Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us, 
 
 We hold the missal in our hand, 
 
 Bright with the lines our Mother taught us; 
 
 Where'er its blazoned page betrays 
 The glistening links of gilded fetters, 
 
 Behold, the half-turned leaf displays 
 Her rubric stained in crimson letters ! 
 
 Enough ! To speed a parting friend 
 
 'T is vain alike to speak and listen; 
 Yet stay, these feeble accents blend 
 
 With rays of light from eyes that glisten. 
 Good-bye! once more, and kindly tell 
 
 In words of peace the young world's story, 
 And say, besides, we love too well 
 
 Our mothers' soil, our fathers' glory! 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 225 
 
 When my friend, the Professor, found that my 
 friend, the Poet, had been coming out in this full 
 blown style, he got a little excited, as you may have 
 seen a canary, sometimes, when another strikes up. 
 The Professor says he knows he can lecture, and 
 thinks he can write verses. At any rate, he has often 
 tried, and now he was determined to try again. So 
 when some professional friends of his called him up, 
 one day, after a feast of reason and a regular " freshet " 
 of soul which had lasted two or three hours, he read 
 them these verses. He introduced them with a few 
 remarks, he told me, of which the only one he remem 
 bered was this : that he had rather write a single line 
 which one among them should think worth remember 
 ing than set them all laughing with a string of epi 
 grams. It was all right, I don't doubt ; at any rate, 
 that was his fancy then, and perhaps another time he 
 may be obstinately hilarious ; however, it may be that 
 he is growing graver, for time is a fact so long as 
 clocks and watches continue to go, and a cat can't be 
 a kitten always, as the old gentleman opposite said 
 the other day. 
 
 You must listen to this seriously, for I think the 
 Professor was very much in earnest when he wrote it. 
 
 THE TWO ARMIES." 
 
 As Life's unending column pours, . 
 
 Two marshalled hosts are seen, 
 Two armies on the trampled shores 
 
 That Death flows black between. 
 
 One marches to the drum-beat's roll, 
 The wide-mouthed clarion's bray, 
 
 This poem was written for and read at a meeting of the 
 Massachusetts Medical Society. 
 
226 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BKEAKF AST-TABLE. 
 
 And bears upon a crimson scroll, 
 '* Our glory is to slay." 
 
 One moves in silence by the stream, 
 
 With sad, yet watchful eyes, 
 Calm as the patient planet's gleam 
 
 That walks the clouded skies. 
 
 Along its front no sabres shine, 
 
 No blood-red pennons wave; 
 Its banner bears the single line, 
 
 " Our duty is to save.'* 
 
 For those no death-bed's lingering shade; 
 
 At Honor's trumpet-call, 
 With knitted brow and lifted blade 
 
 In Glory's arms they fall. - 
 
 For these no clashing falchions bright, 
 
 No stirring battle-cry ; 
 The bloodless stabber calls by night, 
 
 Each answers, " Here am II " 
 
 For those the sculptor's laurelled bust, 
 
 The builder's marble piles, 
 The anthems pealing o'er their dust 
 
 Through long cathedral aisles. 
 
 For these the blossom-sprinkled turf 
 
 That floods the lonely graves, 
 When Spring rolls in her sea-green surf 
 
 In flowery-foaming waves. 
 
 Two paths lead upward from below, 
 
 And angels wait above, 
 Who count each burning life-drop's flow, 
 
 Each falling tear of love. 
 
 Though from the Hero's bleeding brea?t 
 Her pulses Freedom drew, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 227 
 
 Though the white lilies in her crest 
 Sprang from that scarlet dew, 
 
 While Valor's haughty champions wait 
 
 Till all their scars are shown, 
 Love walks unchallenged through the gate, 
 
 To sit beside the Throne 1 
 
 [THE schoolmistress came down with a rose in her 
 hair, a fresh June rose. She has been walking 
 early; she has brought back two others, one on 
 each cheek. 
 
 I told her so, in some such pretty phrase as I could 
 muster for the occasion. Those two blush-roses I just 
 spoke of turned into a couple of damasks. I suppose 
 all this went through my mind, for this was what I 
 went on to say : ] 
 
 I love the damask rose best of all. The flowers our 
 mothers and sisters used to love and cherish, those 
 which grow beneath our eaves and by our doorstep, 
 are the ones we always love best. If the Houyhnhnms 
 should ever catch me, and, finding me particularly vi 
 cious and unmanageable, send a man-tamer to Rareyfy 
 me, I '11 tell you what drugs he would have to take 
 and how he would have to use them. Imagine your 
 self reading a number of the Houyhnhnm Gazette, 
 giving an account of such an experiment. 
 
 " The soft-hoofed semi-quadruped recently captured 
 was subjected to the art of our distinguished man- 
 tamer in presence of a numerous assembly. The ani- 
 
228 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 mal was led in by two stout ponies, closely confined 
 by straps to prevent his sudden and dangerous tricks 
 of shoulder-hitting and foot-striking. His counte 
 nance expressed the utmost degree of ferocity and cun 
 ning. 
 
 " The operator took a handful of budding lilac- 
 leaves^ and crushing them slightly between his hoofs, 
 so as to bring out their peculiar fragrance, fastened 
 them to the end of a long pole and held them towards 
 the creature. Its expression changed in an instant, 
 it drew in their fragrance eagerly, and attempted to 
 seize them with its soft split hoofs. Having thus qui 
 eted his suspicious subject, the operator proceeded to 
 tie a blue hyacinth to the end of the pole and held it 
 out towards the wild animal. The effect was magical. 
 Its eyes filled as if with raindrops, and its lips trem 
 bled as it pressed them to the flower. After this it 
 was perfectly quiet, and brought a measure of corn to 
 the man-tamer, without showing the least disposition 
 to strike with the feet or hit from the shoulder." 
 
 That will do for the Houyhnhnm Gazette. Do 
 you ever wonder why poets talk so much about flowers ? 
 Did you ever hear of a poet who did not talk about 
 them ? Don't you think a poem, which, for the sake 
 of being original, should leave them out, would be like 
 those verses where the letter a or e or some other is 
 omitted ? No, they will bloom over and over again 
 in poems as in the summer fields, to the end of time, 
 always old and always new. Why should we be more 
 shy of repeating ourselves than the spring be tired of 
 blossoms or the night of stars ? Look at Nature. She 
 never wearies of saying over her floral pater-noster. 
 In the crevices of Cyclopean walls, in the dust where 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 229 
 
 men lie, dust also, on the mounds that bury huge 
 cities, the wreck of Nineveh and the Babel-heap, 
 still that same sweet prayer and benediction. The 
 Amen ! of Nature is always a flower. 
 
 Are you tired of my trivial personalities, those 
 splashes and streaks of sentiment, sometimes perhaps 
 of sentimentality, which you may see when I show you 
 my heart's corolla as if it were a tulip ? Pray, do not 
 give yourself the trouble to fancy me an idiot whose 
 conceit it is to treat himself as an exceptional being. 
 It is because you are just like me that I talk and know 
 that you will listen. We are all splashed and streaked 
 with sentiments, not with precisely the same tints, 
 or in exactly the same patterns, but by the same hand 
 and from the same palette. 
 
 I don't believe any of you happen to have just the 
 same passion for the blue hyacinth which I have, 
 very certainly not for the crushed lilac-leaf-buds ; 
 many of you do not know how sweet they are. You 
 love the smell of the sweet-fern and the bay-berry- 
 leaves, I don't doubt ; but I hardly think that the last 
 bewitches you with young memories as it does me. 
 For the same reason I come back to damask roses, 
 after having raised a good many of the rarer varieties. 
 I like to go to operas and concerts, but there are queer 
 little old homely sounds that are better than music to 
 me. However, I .suppose it 's foolish to tell such 
 things. 
 
 It is pleasant to be foolish at the right time, 
 said the divinity-student ; saying it, however, in one 
 of the dead languages, which I think are unpopular 
 for summer-reading, and therefore do not bear quota 
 tion as such. 
 
 Well, now, said I, suppose a good, clean, 
 
230 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 wholesome-looking countryman's cart stops opposite 
 my door. Do I want any huckleberries ? If I do 
 not, there are those that do. Thereupon my soft- 
 voiced handmaid bears out a large tin pan, and then 
 the wholesome countryman, heaping the peck-measure, 
 spreads his broad hands around its lower arc to con 
 fine the wild and frisky berries, and so they run 
 nimbly along the narrowing channel until they tumble 
 rustling down in a black cascade and tinkle on the re 
 sounding metal beneath. I won't say that this rush 
 ing huckleberry hail-storm has not more music for me 
 than the " Anvil Chorus." 
 
 I wonder how my great trees are coming on this 
 summer. 
 
 Where are your great trees, Sir? said the divin 
 ity-student. 
 
 Oh, all round about New England. I call all trees 
 mine that I have put my wedding-ring on, and I have 
 as many tree-wives as Brigham Young has human ones. 
 
 One set 's as green as the other, exclaimed a 
 boarder, who has never been identified. 
 
 They're all Bloomers, said the young fellow 
 called John. 
 
 [I should have rebuked this trifling with language, 
 if our landlady's daughter had not asked me just then 
 what I meant by putting my wedding-ring on a tree.] 
 
 Why, measuring it with my thirty-foot tape, my 
 dear, said I, I have worn a tape almost out on 
 the rough barks of our old New England elms and 
 other big trees. Don't you want to hear me talk 
 trees a little now ? That is one of my specialties. 
 
 [So they all agreed that they should like to hear me 
 talk about trees.] 
 
 I want you to understand, in the first place, that 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 231 
 
 have a most intense, passionate fondness for trees in 
 general, and have had several romantic attachments to 
 certain trees in particular. Now, if you expect me to 
 hold forth in a " scientific " way about my tree-loves, 
 to talk, for instance, of the Ulmus Americana, and 
 describe the ciliated edges of its samara, and all that, 
 you are an anserine individual, and I must refer 
 you to a dull friend who will discourse to you of such 
 matters. What should you think of a lover who 
 should describe the idol of his heart in the language 
 of science, thus : Class, Mammalia ; Order, Primates ; 
 Genus, Homo ; Species, Europeus ; Variety, Brown ; 
 Individual, Ann Eliza ; Dental Formula, 
 .2 2 1 1 2 2 3 3 
 t o o c 1 1 P 2 2 m 3 3' an< * so on ? 
 
 No, my friends, I shall speak of trees as we see 
 them, love them, adore them in the fields, where they 
 are alive, holding their green sun-shades over our 
 heads, talking to us with their hundred thousand 
 whispering tongues, looking down on us with that 
 sweet meekness which belongs to huge, but limited 
 organisms, which one sees in the brown eyes of 
 oxen, but most in the patient posture, the outstretched 
 arms, and the heavy-drooping robes of these vast be 
 ings endowed with life, but not with soul, which 
 outgrow us and outlive us, but stand helpless, poor 
 things ! while Nature dresses and undresses them, 
 like so many full-sized, but under-witted children. 
 
 Did you ever read old Daddy Gilpin ? Slowest of 
 men, even of English men; yet delicious in his slow 
 ness, as is the light of a sleepy eye in woman. I always 
 supposed " Dr. Syntax " was written to make fun of 
 him. I have a whole set of his works, and am very 
 proud of it, with its gray paper, and open type, and 
 
32 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 long ff, and orange - juice landscapes. Pere Gilpin 
 had the kind of science I like in the study of Nature, 
 a little less observation than White of Selborne, 
 but a little more poetry. Just think of applying the 
 Linnsean system to an elm ! Who cares how many 
 stamens or pistils that little brown flower, which comes 
 out before the leaf, may have to classify it by ? What 
 we want is the njeaning, the character, the expression 
 of a tree, as a kind and as an individual. 
 
 There is a mother-idea in each particular kind of 
 tree, which, if well marked, is probably embodied in 
 the poetry of every language. Take the oak, for in 
 stance, and we find it always standing as a type of 
 strength and endurance. I wonder if you ever thought 
 of the single mark of supremacy which distinguishes 
 this tree from those around it ? The others shirk the 
 work of resisting gravity ; the oak defies it. It chooses 
 the horizontal direction for its limbs so that their 
 whole weight may tell, and then stretches them out 
 fifty or sixty feet, so that the strain may be mighty 
 enough to be worth resisting. You will find, that, in 
 passing from the extreme downward droop of the 
 branches of the weeping-willow to the extreme upward 
 inclination of those of the poplar, they sweep nearly 
 half a circle. At 90 the oak stops short ; to slant 
 upward another degree would mark infirmity of pur 
 pose; to bend downwards, weakness of organization. 
 The American elm betrays something of both; yet 
 sometimes, as we shall see, puts on a certain resem 
 blance to its sturdier neighbor. 
 
 It won't do to be exclusive in our taste about 
 trees. There is hardly one of them which has not pe 
 culiar beauties in some fitting place for it. I remem- 
 ber a tall poplar of monumental proportions and as- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 233 
 
 pect, a vast pillar of glossy green, placed on the sum 
 mit of a lofty hill, and a beacon to all the country 
 round. A native of that region saw fit to build his 
 house very near it, and, having a fancy that it might 
 blow down some time or other, and exterminate him 
 self and any incidental relatives who might be " stop 
 ping " or " tarrying " with him, also laboring under 
 the delusion that human life is under all circumstances 
 to be preferred to vegetable existence, had the great 
 poplar cut down. It is so easy to say, " It is only a 
 poplar," and so much harder to replace its living cone 
 than to build a granite obelisk ! 
 
 I must tell you about some of my tree-wives. I was 
 at one period of my life much devoted to the young 
 lady-population of Rhode Island, a small but delight 
 ful State in the neighborhood of Pawtucket. The 
 number of inhabitants being not very large, I had 
 leisure, during my visits to the Providence Plantations, 
 to inspect the face of the country in the intervals of 
 more fascinating studies of physiognomy. I heard 
 some talk of a great elm a short distance from the lo 
 cality just mentioned. " Let us see the great elm," 
 I said, and proceeded to find it, knowing that it 
 was on a certain farm in a place called Johnston, if 
 I remember rightly. I shall never forget my ride and 
 my introduction to the great Johnston elm. 
 
 I always tremble for a celebrated tree when I ap 
 proach it for the first time. Provincialism has no 
 scale of excellence in man or vegetable ; it never 
 knows a first-rate article of either kind when it has it, 
 and is constantly taking second and third rate ones 
 for Nature's best. I have often fancied the tree was 
 afraid of me, and that a sort of shiver came over it as 
 over a betrothed maiden when she first stands before 
 
234 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 the unknown to whom she has been plighted. Before 
 the measuring tape the proudest tree of them all quails 
 and shrinks into itself. All those stories of four or 
 five men stretching their arms around it and not 
 touching each other's fingers, of one's pacing the 
 shadow at noon and making it so many hundred feet, 
 die upon its leafy lips in the presence of the awful rib 
 bon which has strangled so many false pretensions. 
 
 As I rode along the pleasant way, watching eagerly 
 for the object of my journey, the rounded tops of the 
 elms rose from time to time at the road-side. Wher 
 ever one looked taller and fuller than the rest, I asked 
 myself, " Is this it? " But as I drew nearer, they 
 grew smaller, or it proved, perhaps, that two stand 
 ing in a line had looked like one, and so deceived me. 
 At last, all at once, when I was not thinking of it, 
 I declare to you it makes my flesh creep when I think 
 of it now, all at once I saw a great green cloud 
 swelling in the horizon, so vast, so symmetrical, of 
 such Olympian majesty and imperial supremacy 
 among the lesser forest-growths, that my heart stopped 
 short, then jumped at my ribs as a hunter springs at a 
 five-barred gate, and I felt all through me, without 
 need of uttering the words, " This is it ! " 
 
 You will find this tree described, with many others, 
 in the excellent Report upon the Trees and Shrubs of 
 Massachusetts. The author has given my friend the 
 Professor credit for some of his measurements, but 
 measured this tree himself, carefully. It is a grand 
 elm for size of trunk, spread of limbs, and muscular 
 development, one of the first, perhaps the first, of 
 the first class of New England elms. 
 
 The largest actual girth I have ever found at five 
 Ceet from the ground is in the great elm lying a stone's 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 235 
 
 throw or two north of the main road (if my points of 
 compass are right) in Springfield. But this has much 
 the appearance of having been formed by the union of 
 two trunks growing side by side. 
 
 The West-Springfield elm and one upon North- 
 ampton meadows belong also to the first class of 
 trees. 
 
 There is a noble old wreck of an elm at Hatfield, 
 which used to spread its claws out over a circumfer 
 ence of thirty-five feet or more before they covered 
 the foot of its bole up with earth. This is the 
 American elm most like an oak of any I have ever 
 seen. 
 
 The Sheffield elm is equally remarkable for size and 
 perfection of form. I have seen nothing that comes 
 near it in Berkshire County, and few to compare with 
 it anywhere. I am not sure that I remember any 
 other first-class elms in New England, but there may 
 be many. 
 
 What makes a first-class elm ? Why, size, in 
 the first place, and chiefly. Anything over twenty 
 feet of clear girth, five feet above the ground, and 
 with a spread of branches a hundred feet across, may 
 claim that title, according to my scale. All of them, 
 with the questionable exception of the Springfield 
 tree above referred to, stop, so far as my experience 
 goes, at about twenty-two or twenty-three feet of 
 girth and a hundred and twenty of spread. 
 
 Elms of the second class, generally ranging from 
 fourteen to eighteen feet, are comparatively common. 
 The queen of them all is that glorious tree near one of 
 the churches in Springfield. Beautiful and stately she 
 is beyond all praise. The " great tree " on Boston 
 common comes in the second rank, as does the one at 
 
236 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Cohasset, which used to have, and probably has still, 
 a head as round as an apple-tree, and that at Newbury. 
 port, with scores of others which might be mentioned. 
 These last two have perhaps been over-celebrated. 
 Both, however, are pleasing vegetables. The poor old 
 Pittsfield elm lives on its past reputation. A wig of 
 false leaves is indispensable to make it presentable. 
 
 [I don't doubt there may be some monster-elm or 
 other, vegetating green, but inglorious, in some remote 
 New England village, which only wants a sacred singer 
 to make it celebrated. Send us your measurements? 
 (certified by the postmaster, to avoid possible im 
 position), circumference five feet from soil, length 
 of line from bough-end to bough-end, and we will see 
 what can be done for you.] 
 
 I wish somebody would get us up the following 
 work : 
 
 SYLVA NOVANGLICA. 
 
 Photographs of New England Elms and other Trees, 
 taken upon the Same Scale of Magnitude. With Let 
 ter-Press Descriptions, by a Distinguished Literary 
 Gentleman. Boston & Co. 185 . . 
 
 The same camera should be used, so far as pos 
 sible, at a fixed distance. Our friend, who has 
 given us so many interesting figures in his " Trees of 
 America," must not think this Prospectus invades his 
 province ; a dozen portraits, with lively descriptions, 
 would be a pretty complement to his large work, which, 
 so far as published, I find excellent. If my plan were 
 carried out, and another series of a dozen English 
 trees photographed on the same scale, the comparison 
 would be charming. 
 
 It has always been a favorite idea of mine to bring 
 the life of the Old and the New World face to face 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 237 
 
 by an accurate comparison of their various types of 
 organization. We should begin with man, of course ; 
 institute a large and exact comparison between the 
 development of la pianta umana, as Alfieri called it, 
 in different sections of each country, in the different 
 callings, at different ages, estimating height, weight, 
 force by the dynamometer and the spirometer, and 
 finishing off with a series of typical photographs, giv 
 ing the principal national physiognomies. Mr. Hutch- 
 inson has given us some excellent English data to 
 begin with. 
 
 Then I would follow this up by contrasting the vari 
 ous parallel forms of life in the two continents. Our 
 naturalists have often referred to this incidentally or 
 expressly ; but the animus of Nature in the two half 
 globes of the planet is so momentous a point of interest 
 to our race, that it should be made a subject of ex 
 press and elaborate study. Go out with me into that 
 walk which we call the Mall, and look at the English 
 and American elms. The American elm is tall, grace 
 ful, slender-sprayed, and drooping as if from languor. 
 The English elm is compact, robust, holds its branches 
 up, and carries its leaves for weeks longer than our 
 own native tree. 
 
 Is this typical of the creative force on the two sides 
 of the ocean, or not ? Nothing but a careful compari 
 son through the whole realm of life can answer this 
 question. 
 
 There is a parallelism without identity in the animal 
 and vegetable life of the two continents, which favors 
 the task of comparison in an extraordinary manner. 
 Just as we have two trees alike in many ways, yet not 
 the same, both elms, yet easily distinguishable, just so 
 we have a complete flora and a fauna, which, parting 
 
238 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 from the same ideal, embody it with various modifica 
 tions. Inventive power is the only quality of which 
 the Creative Intelligence seems to be economical ; just 
 as with our largest human minds, that is the divinest 
 of faculties, and the one that most exhausts the mind 
 which exercises it. As the same patterns have very 
 commonly been followed, we can see which is worked 
 out in the largest spirit, and determine the exact lim 
 itations under which the Creator places the movement 
 of life in all its manifestations in either locality. We 
 should find ourselves in a very false position, if it 
 should prove that Anglo-Saxons can't live here, but 
 die out, if not kept up by fresh supplies, as Dr. Knox 
 and other more or less wise persons have maintained. 
 It may turn out the other way, as I have heard one of 
 our literary celebrities argue, and though I took 
 the other side, I liked his best, that the American 
 is the Englishman reinforced. 
 
 Will you walk out and look at those elms with 
 me after breakfast ? I said to the schoolmistress. 
 
 [I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that 
 she blushed, as I suppose she ought to have done, 
 at such a tremendous piece of gallantry as that was 
 for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she turned 
 a little pale, but smiled brightly and said, Yes, 
 with pleasure, but she must walk towards her school 
 She went for her bonnet. The old gentleman op 
 posite followed her with his eyes, and said he wished 
 he was a young fellow. Presently she came down, 
 looking very pretty in her half-mourning bonnet, and 
 carrying a school-book in her hand.] 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 239 
 MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 
 
 This is the shortest way, she said, as we came to 
 a corner. Then we won't take it, said I. The 
 schoolmistress laughed a little, and said she was ten 
 minutes early, so she could go round. 
 
 We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English 
 elms. a The gray squirrels were out looking for their 
 breakfasts, and one of them came toward us in light, 
 soft, intermittent leaps, until he was close to the rail 
 of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a broad 
 blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. 
 The stone said this was the grave of a young man who 
 was the son of an Honorable gentleman, and who died 
 a hundred years ago and more. Oh, yes, died, 
 with a small triangular mark in one breast, and an 
 other smaller opposite, in his back, where another 
 young man's rapier had slid through his body ; and so 
 he lay down out there on the Common, and was 
 found cold the next morning, with the night-dews and 
 the death-dews mingled on his forehead. 
 
 Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, 
 said I. His bones lie where his body was laid so 
 long ago, and where the stone says they lie, which 
 is more than can be said of most of the tenants of this 
 and several other burial-grounds. 
 
 [The most accursed act of Vandalism ever com 
 mitted within my knowledge was the uprooting of the 
 ancient gravestones in three at least of our city burial- 
 grounds, and one at least just outside the city, and 
 planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry 
 
 " Mr. Paddock's row of English elms " has gone, but " Poor 
 Benjamin " lies quietly under the same stone the schoolmistress 
 saw through the iron rails. 
 
240 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 of the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this dis 
 graceful process was going on under my eyes, I ad 
 dressed an indignant remonstrance to a leading jour^ 
 nal. I suppose it was deficient in literary elegance, 
 or too warm in its language ; for no notice was taken 
 of it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete it 
 self in the face of daylight. I have never got over it. 
 The bones of my own ancestors, being entombed, lie 
 beneath their own tablet ; but the upright stones have 
 been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing short 
 of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies be 
 neath any of those records, meant by affection to mark 
 one small spot as sacred to some cherished memory. 
 Shame ! shame ! shame ! that is all I can say. It 
 was on public thoroughfares, under the eye of author 
 ity, that this infamy was enacted. The red Indians 
 would have known better ; the selectmen of an Afri 
 can kraal-village would have had more respect for 
 their ancestors. I should like to see the gravestones 
 which have been disturbed all removed, and the 
 ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones ; epitaphs 
 were never famous for truth, but the old reproach of 
 " Here lies " never had such a wholesale illustration 
 as in these outraged burial-places, where the stone 
 does lie above and the bones do not lie beneath.] 
 
 Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's 
 sigh over poor Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I 
 think. Twenty years old, and out there fighting an 
 other young fellow on the Common, in the cool of that 
 old July evening ; yes, there must have been love 
 at the bottom of it. 
 
 The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in 
 her hand, through the rails, upon the grave of Benja 
 min Woodbridge. That was all her comment upon 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 241 
 
 what I told her. How women love Love ! said I ; 
 but she did not speak. 
 
 We came opposite the head of a place or court run 
 ning eastward from the main street. Look down 
 there, I said, My friend, the Professor, lived in 
 that house at the left hand, next the further corner, 
 for years and years. He died out of it, the other day. 
 Died ? said the schoolmistress. Certainly, 
 said I. We die out of houses, just as we die out of 
 our bodies. A commercial smash kills a hundred 
 men's houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their 
 mortal frames and drives out the immortal tenants. 
 Men sicken of houses until at last they quit them, as 
 the soul leaves its body when it is tired of its infirmi 
 ties. The body has been called "the house we live 
 in " ; the house is quite as much the body we live in. 
 Shall I tell you some things the Professor said the 
 other day ? Do ! said the schoolmistress. 
 
 A man's body, said the Professor, is whatever 
 is occupied by his will and his sensibility. The small 
 room down there, where I wrote those papers you re 
 member reading, was much more a portion of my body 
 than a paralytic's senseless and motionless arm or leg 
 is of his. 
 
 The soul of a man has a series of concentric envel 
 opes round it, like the core of an onion, or the inner 
 most of a nest of boxes. First, he has his natural gar 
 ment of flesh and blood. Then, his artificial integu 
 ments, with their true skin of solid stuffs, their cuticle 
 of lighter tissues, and their variously-tinted pigments. 
 Thirdly, his domicile, be it a single chamber or a 
 stately mansion. And then, the whole visible world, 
 in which Time buttons him up as in a loose outside 
 wrapper. 
 
242 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 You shall observe, the Professor said, for, like 
 Mr. John Hunter and other great men, he brings in 
 that shall with great effect sometimes, you shall ob 
 serve that a man's clothing or series of envelopes does 
 after a certain time mould itself upon his individual 
 nature. We know this of our hats, and are always 
 reminded of it when we happen to put them on wrong 
 side foremost. We soon find that the beaver is a hol 
 low cast of the skull, with all its irregular bumps and 
 depressions. Just so all that clothes a man, even to 
 the blue sky which caps his head, a little loosely, 
 shapes itself to fit each particular being beneath it. 
 Farmers, sailors, astronomers, poets, lovers, condemned 
 criminals, all find it different, according to the eyes 
 with which they severally look. 
 
 But our houses shape themselves palpably on our 
 inner and outer natures. See a householder breaking 
 up and you will be sure of it. There is a shell-fish 
 which builds all manner of smaller shells into the 
 walls of its own. A house is never a home until we 
 have crusted it with the spoils of a hundred lives be 
 sides those of our own past. See what these are and 
 you can tell what the occupant is. 
 
 I had no idea, said the Professor, until I pulled 
 up my domestic establishment the other day, what an 
 enormous quantity of roots I had been making during 
 the years I was planted there. Why, there was n't a 
 nook or a corner that some fibre had not worked its 
 way into ; and when I gave the last wrench, each of 
 them seemed to shriek like a mandrake as it broke its 
 hold and came away. 
 
 There is nothing that happens, you know, which 
 must not inevitably, and which does not actually, pho 
 tograph itself in every conceivable aspect and in all 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 243 
 
 dimensions. The infinite galleries of the Past await 
 but one brief process and all their pictures will be 
 called out and fixed forever. We had a curious il 
 lustration of the great fact on a very humble scale. 
 When a certain bookcase, long standing in one place, 
 for which it was built, was removed, there was the ex 
 act image on the wall of the whole, and of many of its 
 portions. But in the midst of this picture was another, 
 the precise outline of a map which had hung on the 
 wall before the bookcase was built. We had all for 
 gotten everything about the map until we saw its pho 
 tograph on the wall. Then we remembered it, as some 
 day or other we may remember a sin which has been 
 built over and covered up, when this lower universe is 
 pulled away from before the wall of Infinity, where 
 the wrong-doing stands self-recorded. 
 
 The Professor lived in that house a long time 
 not twenty years, but pretty near it. When he en 
 tered that door, two shadows glided over the thresh 
 old; five lingered in the doorway when he passed 
 through it for the last time, and one of the shadows 
 was claimed by its owner to be longer than his own. 
 What changes he saw in that quiet place! Death 
 rained through every roof but his ; children came into 
 life, grew to maturity, wedded, faded away, threw them 
 selves away ; the whole drama of life was played in 
 that stock company's theatre of a dozen houses, one of 
 which was his, and no deep sorrow or severe calamity 
 ever entered his dwelling. Peace be to those walls, 
 forever, the Professor said, for the many pleas 
 ant years he has passed within them ! 
 
 The Professor has a friend, now living at a distance, 
 who has been with him in many of his changes of 
 place, and who follows him in imagination with tender 
 
244 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE, 
 
 interest wherever lie goes. In that little court, where 
 he lived in gay loneliness so long, 
 
 in his autumnal sojourn by the Connecticut, where 
 it comes loitering down from its mountain fastnesses 
 like a great lord, swallowing up the small proprietary 
 rivulets very quietly as it goes, until it gets proud and 
 swollen and wantons in huge luxurious oxbows about 
 the fair Northampton meadows, and at last overflows 
 the oldest inhabitant's memory in profligate freshets 
 at Hartford and all along its lower shores, up in 
 that caravansary on the banks of the stream where 
 Ledyard launched his log canoe, and the jovial old 
 Colonel used to lead the Commencement processions, 
 where blue Ascutney looked down from the far dis 
 tance, and the hills of Beulah, as the Professor always 
 called them, rolled up the opposite horizon in soft 
 climbing masses, so suggestive of the Pilgrim's Heav 
 enward Path that he used to look through his old 
 " Dollond " to see if the Shining Ones were not within 
 range of sight, sweet visions, sweetest in those Sun 
 day walks which carried them by the peaceful Common, 
 through the solemn village lying in cataleptic stillness 
 under the shadow of the rod of Moses, to the terminus 
 of their harmless stroll, the patulous fage, in the 
 Professor's classic dialect, the spreading beech, in 
 more familiar phrase, [stop and breathe here a 
 moment, for the sentence is not done yet, and we have 
 another long journey before us,] 
 
 and again once more up among those other hills 
 that shut in the amber-flowing Housatonic, dark 
 stream, but clear, like the lucid orbs that shine be* 
 neath the lids of auburn - haired, sherry-wine-eyed 
 demi-blondes, in the home overlooking the winding 
 stream and the smooth, flat meadow ; looked down 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 245 
 
 npon by wild hills, where the tracks of bears and cata 
 mounts may yet sometimes be seen upon the winter 
 snow ; facing the twin summits which rise in the far 
 North, the highest waves of the great land-storm in 
 all this billowy region, suggestive to mad fancies 
 of the breasts of a half -buried Titaness, stretched out 
 by a stray thunderbolt, and hastily hidden away be 
 neath the leaves of the forest, in that home where 
 seven blessed summers were passed, which stand in 
 memory like the seven golden candlesticks in the be 
 atific vision of the holy dreamer, 
 
 in that modest dwelling we were just looking at, 
 not glorious, yet not unlovely in the youth of its drab 
 and mahogany, full of great and little boys' play 
 things from top to bottom, in all these summer or 
 winter nests he was always at home and always wel 
 come. 
 
 This long articulated sigh of reminiscences, this 
 calenture which shows me the maple-shadowed plains 
 of Berkshire and the mountain-circled green of Graf- 
 ton beneath the salt waves which come feeling their 
 way along the wall at my feet, restless and soft^touch- 
 ing as blind men's busy fingers, is for that friend of 
 mine a who looks into the waters of the Patapsco and 
 sees beneath them the same visions which paint them 
 selves for me in the green depths of the Charles. 
 
 a " That friend of mine " was the late Joseph Roby, once a 
 fellow-teacher with me in the Medica\ School of Dartmouth Col 
 lege, afterwards professor in the University of Maryland. He 
 was a man of keen intellect and warm affections, but out of the 
 range of his official duties seen of few and understood only by a 
 very limited number of intimates. I used to refer to my wise 
 friend so often, and he was so rarely visible, that some doubted 
 if there was any such individual, or if he were not of the imper 
 sonal nature of Sairy Gamp's Mrs. Harris. I remember Emer 
 son was one of these smiling sceptics. 
 
246 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress ? . 
 Why, no, of course not. I have been talking with 
 you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don't 
 think I should expect any woman to listen to such a 
 sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance 
 to put in a word ? 
 
 - What did I say to the schoolmistress ? Permit 
 me one moment. I don't doubt your delicacy and 
 good-breeding ; but in this particular case, as I was 
 allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very 
 interesting young woman, you must allow me to re 
 mark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used 
 by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is nullum tui 
 negotii. 
 
 When the schoolmistress and I reached the school 
 room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so much 
 heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure it 
 would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every 
 morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to 
 let me join her again. 
 
 EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL. 
 (To be burned unread.) 
 
 I am afraid I have been a fool ; for I have told as 
 much of myself to this young person as if she were 
 of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence 
 and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited 
 and listless, lately, it is coffee, I think, (I ob 
 serve that which is bought ready-ground never affects 
 the head), and I notice that I tell my secrets too 
 easily when I am down-hearted. 
 
 There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like 
 that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except 
 at dead-low tide. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 247 
 
 There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side 
 of my deepest ocean-buried inscription ! 
 
 Oh, no, no, no ! a thousand times, no ! Yet 
 what is this which has been shaping itself in my soul ? 
 
 Is it a thought? is it a dream? is it a, passion? 
 
 Then I know what comes next. 
 
 The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill ; 
 those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad 
 weather. But there are iron bars to all the windows. 
 When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside that very 
 high fence. But I never see much life in those 
 groups I sometimes meet ; and then the careful 
 man watches them so closely ! How I remember 
 that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings, 
 when I was a schoolboy ! B., with his arms full of 
 yellow weeds, ore from the gold mines which he 
 discovered long before we heard of California, Y., 
 born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake (the 
 boys said), dogged, explosive, made a Polyphemus 
 of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with 
 a stick, (the multi-millionnaires sent him a trifle, 
 it was said, to buy another eye with ; but boys are 
 jealous of rich folks, and I don't doubt the good 
 people made him easy for life), how I remember 
 them all ! 
 
 I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, 
 in "Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its 
 hand from its breast, showed its heart, a burning 
 coal. The real Hall of Eblis stands on yonder sum 
 mit. Go there on the next visiting-day and ask that 
 figure crouched in the corner, huddled up like those 
 Indian mummies and skeletons found buried in the 
 sitting posture, to lift its hand, look upon its heart, 
 and behold, not fire, but ashes. No, I must not 
 
248 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 think of such an ending! Dying would be a much 
 more gentlemanly way of meeting the difficulty. 
 Make a will and leave her a house or two and some 
 stocks, and other little financial conveniences, to take 
 away her necessity for keeping school. I wonder 
 what nice young man's feet would be in my French 
 slippers before six months were over! Well, what 
 then ? If a man really loves a woman, of course he 
 would n't marry her for the world, if he were not 
 quite sure that he was the best person she could by 
 any possibility marry. 
 
 It is odd enough to read over what I have 
 just been writing. It is the merest fancy that ever 
 was in the world. I shall never be married. She 
 will; and if she is as pleasant as she has been so 
 far, I will give her a silver tea-set, and go and take 
 tea with her and her husband, sometimes. No coffee, 
 I hope, though, it depresses me sadly. I feel very 
 miserably ; they must have been grinding it at 
 home. Another morning walk will be good for me, 
 and I don't doubt the schoolmistress will be glad of 
 a little fresh air before school. 
 
 The throbbing flushes of the poetical intermit 
 tent have been coming over me from time to time 
 of late. Did you ever see that electrical experiment 
 which consists in passing a flash through letters of 
 gold leaf in a darkened room, whereupon some name 
 or legend springs out of the darkness in characters of 
 fire? 
 
 There are songs all written out in my soul, which 
 I could read, if the flash might pass through them, 
 but the fire must come down from heaven. Ah ! but 
 what if the stormy nimbus of youthful passion has 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 249 
 
 blown by, and one asks for lightning from the ragged 
 cirrus of dissolving aspirations, or the silvered cumu 
 lus of sluggish satiety? I will call on her whom the 
 dead poets believed in, whom living ones no longer 
 worship, the immortal maid, who, name her what 
 you will, Goddess, Muse, Spirit of Beauty, sits 
 by the pillow of every youthful poet and bends over 
 his pale forehead until her tresses lie upon his cheek 
 and rain their gold into his dreams. 
 
 MUSA. 
 
 O my lost Beauty ! hast thou folded quite 
 
 Thy wings of morning light 
 
 Beyond those iron gates 
 
 Where Life crowds hurrying to the haggard Fates, 
 And Age upon his mound of ashes waits 
 
 To chill our fiery dreams, 
 Hot from the heart of youth plunged in his icy streams ? 
 
 Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, 
 
 Whose flowers are silvered hair ! 
 
 Have I not loved thee long, 
 
 Though my young lips have often done thee wrong. 
 And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song ? 
 
 Ah, wilt thou yet return, 
 Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn ? 
 
 Come to me ! I will flood thy silent shrine 
 
 With my soul's sacred wine, 
 
 And heap thy marble floors 
 
 As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores 
 In leafy islands walled with madrepores 
 
 And lapped in Orient seas, 
 When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze 
 
 Come to me! thou shalt feed on honied words, 
 Sweeter than song of birds; 
 No wailing bulbul's throat, 
 
250 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE* 
 
 No melting dulcimer's melodious note, 
 
 When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, 
 
 Thy ravished sense might soothe 
 With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet- smooth. 
 
 Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, 
 
 Sought in those bowers of green 
 
 Where loop the clustered vines 
 And the close-clinging dulcamara twines, 
 Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, 
 
 And Summer's fruited gems, 
 And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. 
 
 Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves, 
 
 Or stretched by grass-grown graves, 
 
 Whose gray, high- shouldered stones, 
 Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, 
 Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones 
 
 Still slumbering where they lay 
 While the sad pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away. 
 
 Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! 
 
 Still let me dream and sing, 
 
 Dream of that winding shore 
 
 Where scarlet cardinals bloom, for me no more, 
 The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, 
 
 And clustering nenuphars 
 Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars ! 
 
 Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shedl 
 
 Come while the rose is red, 
 
 While blue-eyed Summer smiles 
 On the green ripples round yon sunken piles 
 Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, 
 
 And on the sultry air 
 The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer, 
 
 Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain 
 With thrills of wild sweet pain! 
 On life's autumnal blast, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 251 
 
 Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast, 
 Once loving thee, we love thee to the last ! 
 
 Behold thy new-decked shrine, 
 And hear once more the voice that breathed " Forever thine.** 
 
 XI. 
 
 [THE company looked a little flustered one morning 
 when I came in, so much so, that I inquired of my 
 neighbor, the divinity-student, what had been going 
 on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call 
 John had taken advantage of my being a little late (I 
 having been rather longer than usual dressing that 
 morning) to circulate several questions involving a 
 quibble or play upon words, in short, containing 
 that indignity to the human understanding, condemned 
 in the passages from the distinguished moralist of the 
 last century and the illustrious historian of the pres 
 ent, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as 
 a pun. After breakfast, one of the boarders handed 
 me a small roll of paper containing some of the 
 questions and their answers. I subjoin two or three 
 of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity 
 and meaningless talk in young persons of a certain 
 sort, when not restrained by the presence of more re 
 flective natures. It was asked, "Why tertian and 
 quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects." 
 Some interesting physiological relation would be nat 
 urally suggested. The inquirer blushes to find that 
 the answer is in the paltry equivocation, that they skip 
 a day or two. " Why an Englishman must go to the 
 Continent to weaken his grog or punch." The an 
 swer proves to have no relation whatever to the tern- 
 
252 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 perance-movement, as no better reason is given than 
 that island- (or, as it is absurdly written, He and) 
 water won't mix. But when I came to the next 
 question and its answer, I felt that patience ceased to 
 be a virtue. 4i Why an onion is like a piano " is a 
 query that a person of sensibility would be slow to 
 propose; but that in an educated community an in 
 dividual could be found to answer it in these words, 
 " Because it smell odious," quasi, it 's melodious, is 
 not credible, but too true. I can show you the paper. 
 
 Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such 
 things. I know most conversations reported in books 
 are altogether above such trivial details, but folly will 
 come up at every table as surely as purslain and chick- 
 weed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young 
 fellow ought to have talked philosophy, I know per 
 fectly well ; but he did n't, he made jokes.] 
 
 I am willing, I said, to exercise your ingenuity 
 in a rational and contemplative manner. No, I do 
 not proscribe certain forms of philosophical specula 
 tion which involve an approach to the absurd or the 
 ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the 
 folio of the Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his 
 famous Disputations, "De Sancto Matrimonio." I 
 will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by 
 reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my 
 friend the Professor. 
 
 THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: 
 OR THE WONDERFUL " ONE-HOSS-SHAY." 
 
 A LOGICAL STORY. 
 
 Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss-shay, 
 That was built in such a logical way 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 It ran a hundred years to a day, 
 And then, of a sudden, it ah, but stay, 
 I '11 tell you what happened without delay, 
 Scaring the parson into fits, 
 Frightening people out of their wits, 
 Have you ever heard of that, I say ? 
 
 Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, 
 Georgius Secundus was then alive, 
 Snuffy old drone from the German hive; 
 That was the year when Lisbon-town 
 Saw the earth open and gulp her down, 
 And Braddock's army was done so brown, 
 Left without a scalp to its crown. 
 It was on the terrible earthquake-day 
 That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay. 
 
 Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, 
 There is always somewhere a weakest spot, 
 In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill, 
 In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill, 
 In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace, lurking still, 
 Find it somewhere you must and will, 
 Above or below, or within or without, 
 And that 's the reason, beyond a doubt, 
 A chaise breaks down, but does n't wear out. 
 
 But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do, 
 With an " I dew vum," or an " I tell yeou,") 
 He would build one shay to beat the taown 
 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun' ; 
 It should be so built that it couldn' break daown, 
 Fur," said the Deacon, 4< 't 's mighty plain 
 Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain ; 
 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, 
 
 Is only jest 
 T' make that place uz strong uz the rest." 
 
 So the Deacon inquired of the village folk 
 Where he could find the strongest oak, 
 
254 THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 That could n't be split nor bent nor broke, 
 
 That was for spokes and floor and sills; 
 
 He sent for lance wood to make the thills; 
 
 The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees, 
 
 The panels of white- wood, that cuts like cheese, 
 
 But lasts like iron for things like these; 
 
 The hubs of logs from the " Settler's ellum," 
 
 Last of its timber, they could n't sell 'em, 
 
 Never an axe had seen their chips, 
 
 And the wedges flew from between their lips, 
 
 Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips; 
 
 Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw, 
 
 Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too, 
 
 Steel of the finest, bright and blue ; 
 
 Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide; 
 
 Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide 
 
 Found in the pit when the tanner died. 
 
 That was the way he * put her through." 
 
 " There! " said the Deacon, " naow she '11 dew." 
 
 Do! I tell you, I rather guess 
 
 She was a wonder, and nothing less ! 
 
 Colts grew horses, beards turned gray, 
 
 Deacon and deaconess dropped away, 
 
 Children and grand-children where were they ? 
 
 But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay 
 
 As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day ! 
 
 EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; it came and found 
 The Deacon's Masterpiece strong and sound. 
 Eighteen hundred increased by ten ; 
 " Hahnsum kerridge " they called it then. 
 Eighteen hundred and twenty came; 
 Running as usual ; much the same. 
 Thirty and forty at last arrive, 
 And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE. 
 
 Little of all we value here 
 
 Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year 
 
 Without both feeling and looking queer. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 255 
 
 In fact, there 's nothing that keeps its youth, 
 
 So far as I know, but a tree and truth. 
 
 (This is a moral that runs at large; 
 
 Take it. You 're welcome. No extra charge.) 
 
 FIRST OF NOVEMBER, the Earthquake-day. 
 There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay, 
 A general flavor of mild decay, 
 But nothing local, as one may say. 
 There couldn't be, for the Deacon's art 
 Had made it so like in every part 
 That there was n't a chance for one to start. 
 For the wheels were just as strong as the thills, 
 And the floor was just as strong as the sills, 
 And the panels just as strong as the floor, 
 And the whippletree neither less nor more, 
 And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore, 
 And spring and axle and hub encore. 
 And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt 
 In another hour it will be worn out I 
 
 First of November, 'Fifty-five! 
 
 This morning the parson takes a drive. 
 
 Now, small boys, get out of the way! 
 
 Here comes the wonderful one-hoss-shay, 
 
 Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay. 
 
 " Huddup! " said the parson. Off went they. 
 
 The parson was working his Sunday's text, 
 Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed 
 At what the Moses was coming next. 
 All at once the horse stood still, 
 Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill. 
 
 First a shiver, and then a thrill, 
 Then something decidedly like a spill, 
 And the parson was sitting upon a rock, 
 
 At hall-past nine by the meet'n'-house clock, 
 Just the hour of the Earthquake shock ! 
 
 What do you think the parson found, 
 When he got up and stared around? 
 
256 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 The poor old chaise in a heap or mound, 
 As if it had been to the mill and ground. 
 You see, of course, if you 're not a dunce, 
 How it went to pieces all at once, 
 All at once, and nothing first, 
 Just as bubbles do when they burst. 
 
 End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay. 
 Logic is logic. That 's all I say. 
 
 I think there is one habit, I said to our com 
 pany a day or two afterwards, worse than that of 
 punning. It is the gradual substitution of cant or 
 slang terms for words which truly characterize their 
 objects. I have known several very genteel idiots 
 whose whole vocabulary had deliquesced into some 
 half dozen expressions. All things fell into one of 
 two great categories, fast or slow. Man's chief 
 end was to be a brick. When the great calamities of 
 life overtook their friends, these last were spoken of 
 as being a good deal cut up. Nine tenths of human 
 existence were summed up in the single word, bore. 
 These expressions come to be the algebraic symbols 
 of minds which have grown too weak or indolent to 
 discriminate. They are the blank checks of intel 
 lectual bankruptcy ; you may fill them up with 
 what idea you like ; it makes no difference, for there 
 are no funds in the treasury upon which they are 
 drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs 
 are the places where these conversational fungi spring 
 up most luxuriantly. Don't think I undervalue the 
 proper use and application of a cant word or phrase, 
 It adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does 
 to a sauce. But it is no better than a toadstool, odious 
 to the sense and poisonous to the intellect, when it 
 spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 257 
 
 capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear 
 slang phraseology, it is commonly the dish-water from 
 the washings of English dandyism, schoolboy or full- 
 grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had 
 sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of 
 Mr. Verdant Green, and diluted to suit the provincial 
 climate. 
 
 The young fellow called John spoke up sharply 
 and said, it was " rum " to hear me " pitchin' into 
 fellers " for " goin' it in the slang line," when I used 
 all the flash words myself just when I pleased. 
 
 I replied with my usual forbearance. Cer 
 tainly, to give up the algebraic symbol because a or 
 5 is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be unwise. 
 I have heard a child laboring to express a certain con 
 dition, involving a hitherto undescribed sensation (as 
 it supposed), all of which could have been sufficiently 
 explained by the participle bored. I have seen a 
 country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a 
 one-horse vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable 
 time (and mine) freely, in developing an opinion of a 
 brother-minister's discourse which would have been 
 abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped soph 
 omore in the one word slow. Let us discriminate, 
 and be shy of absolute proscription. I am omniver- 
 bivorous by nature and training. Passing by such 
 words as are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and 
 chew such as I cannot swallow. 
 
 Dandies are not good for much, but they are good 
 for something. They invent or keep in circulation 
 those conversational blank checks or counters just 
 spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may some 
 times find it worth their while to borrow of them. 
 They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of 
 
258 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and be 
 come, what some old fools would have it, a matter of 
 convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like 
 dandies well enough, on one condition. 
 
 What is that, Sir ? said the divinity-student. 
 
 That they have pluck. I find that lies at the 
 bottom of all true dandyism. A little boy dressed up 
 very fine, who puts his finger in his mouth and takes 
 to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks very 
 silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in 
 the fists, and makes an example of the biggest of his 
 assailants, throwing off his fine Leghorn and his 
 thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to consummate 
 the act of justice, his small toggery takes on the splen 
 dors of the crested helmet that frightened Astyanax. 
 You remember that the Duke said his dandy officers 
 were his best officers. The " Sunday blood," the su 
 per-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast-day, 
 is not imposing or dangerous. But such fellows as 
 Brummel and D'Orsay and Byron are not to be 
 snubbed quite so easily. Look out for " la main de f er 
 sous le gant de velours" (which I printed in Eng 
 lish the other day without quotation-marks, thinking 
 whether any scarabceus criticus would add this to his 
 globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers, 
 which he did n't do it, in the charming pleonasm of 
 the London language, and therefore I claim the sole 
 merit of exposing the same). A good many powerful 
 and dangerous people have had a decided dash of 
 dandyism about them. There was Alcibiades, the 
 " curled son of Clinias " an accomplished young man, 
 but what would be called a " swell " in these days, 
 There was Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, of 
 whom you have heard, a philosopher, in short, whom 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 259 
 
 it took centuries to learn, centuries to unlearn, and 
 is now going to take a generation or more to learn 
 over again. Regular dandy he was. So was Marcus 
 Antonius ; and though he lost his game, he played for 
 big stakes, and it was n't his dandyism that spoiled 
 his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a 
 scholar or a poet, but he was one of the same sort. 
 So was Sir Humphrey Davy ; so was Lord Palmers- 
 ton, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes, a dandy 
 is good for something as such ; and dandies such as I 
 was just speaking of have rocked this planet like a 
 cradle, aye, and left it swinging to this day. 
 Still, if I were you, I would n't go to the tailor's, on 
 the strength of these remarks, and run up a long bill 
 which will render pockets a superfluity in your next 
 suit. Elegans " nascitur, non fit" A man is born 
 a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that 
 can't wear hats ; there are necks that can't fit cravats ; 
 there are jaws that can't fill out collars (Willis 
 touched this last point in one of his earlier ambro- 
 types, if I remember rightly) ; there are tournures 
 nothing can humanize, and movements nothing can sub 
 due to the gracious suavity or elegant languor or stately 
 serenity which belong to different styles of dandyism. 
 We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, 
 in this country, not a gratid-Dei^ nor a jure-divino 
 one, but a de-facto upper stratum of being, which 
 floats over the turbid waves of common life like the ir 
 idescent film you may have seen spreading over the 
 water about our wharves, very splendid, though its 
 origin may have been tar, tallow, train-oil, or other 
 such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are form 
 ing an aristocracy ; and, transitory as its individual 
 life often is, it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. 
 
260 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Of course money is its corner-stone. But now observe 
 this. Money kept for two or three generations trans 
 forms a race, I don't mean merely in manners and 
 hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money 
 buys air and sunshine, in which children grow up more 
 kindly, of course, than in close, back streets ; it buys 
 country places to give them happy and healthy sum 
 mers, good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts 
 of beef and mutton. When the spring-chickens come 
 
 to market 1 beg your pardon, that is not what 
 
 was I going to speak of. As the young females of each 
 successive season come on, the finest specimens among 
 them, other things being equal, are apt to attract those 
 who can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The 
 physical character of the next generation rises in con 
 sequence. It is plain that certain families have in this 
 way acquired an elevated type of face and figure, and 
 that in a small circle of city-connections one may some 
 times find models of both sexes which one of the rural 
 counties would find it hard to match from all its town 
 ships put together. Because there is a good deal of run 
 ning down, of degeneration and waste of life, among 
 the richer classes, you must not overlook the equally 
 obvious fact I have just spoken of, which in one or 
 two generations more will be, I think, much more pa 
 tent than just now. 
 
 The weak point in our chryso-aristocracy is the same 
 I have alluded to in connection with cheap dandyism. 
 Its thorough manhood, its high-caste gallantry, are not 
 so manifest as the plate-glass of its windows and the 
 more or less legitimate heraldry of its coach-panels. 
 It is very curious to observe of how small account mil 
 itary folks are held among our Northern people. Our 
 young men must gild their spurs, but they need not 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 261 
 
 win them. The equal division of property keeps the 
 younger sons of rich people above the necessity of 
 military service. Thus the army loses an element of 
 refinement, and the moneyed upper class forgets what 
 it is to count heroism among its virtues. Still I don't 
 believe in any aristocracy without pluck as its back 
 bone. Ours may show it when the time comes if it 
 ever does come. a 
 
 These United States furnish the greatest market 
 for intellectual green fruit of all the places in the 
 world. I think so, at any rate. The demand for in 
 tellectual labor is so enormous and the market so far 
 from nice, that young talent is apt to fare like un 
 ripe gooseberries, get plucked to make a fool of. 
 Think of a country which buys eighty thousand cop 
 ies of the " Proverbial Philosophy," while the author's 
 admiring countrymen have been buying twelve thou 
 sand ! How can one let his fruit hang in the sun until 
 it gets fully ripe, while there are eighty thousand such 
 hungry mouths ready to swallow it and proclaim its 
 praises ? Consequently, there never was such a collec 
 tion of crude pippins and half-grown windfalls as our 
 native literature displays among its fruits. There are 
 literary green-groceries at every corner, which will buy 
 anything, from a button-pear to a pine-apple. It takes 
 a long apprenticeship to train a whole people to read 
 ing and writing. The temptation of money and fame 
 is too great for young people. Do I not remember that 
 glorious moment when the late Mr. we won't say 
 
 The marble tablets and memorial windows in our churches 
 and monumental buildings bear evidence as to whether the 
 young men of favored social position proved worthy of their 
 privileges or not during the four years of trial which left us a 
 nation. 
 
262 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 who, editor of the we won't say what, offered 
 
 me the sum of fifty cents per double-columned quarto 
 page for shaking my young boughs over his foolscap 
 apron? Was it not an intoxicating vision of gold and 
 glory ? I should doubtless have revelled in its wealth 
 and splendor, but for learning that the fifty cents was 
 to be considered a rhetorical embellishment, and by no 
 means a literal expression of past fact or present in 
 tention. 
 
 Beware of making your moral staple consist of 
 the negative virtues. It is good to abstain, and teach 
 others to abstain, from all that is sinful or hurtful. 
 But making a business of it leads to emaciation of 
 character, unless one feeds largely also on the more 
 nutritious diet of active sympathetic benevolence. 
 
 I don't believe one word of what you are saying, 
 spoke up the angular female in black bombazine. 
 
 I am sorry you disbelieve it, Madam, I said, and 
 added softly to my next neighbor, but you prove 
 it. 
 
 The young fellow sitting near me winked ; and the 
 divinity-student said, in an undertone, Optime dic 
 tum. 
 
 Your talking Latin, said I, reminds me of an 
 odd trick of one of my old tutors. He read so much 
 of that language, that his English half turned into it. 
 He got caught in town, one hot summer, in pretty close 
 quarters, and wrote, or began to write, a series of city 
 pastorals. Eclogues he called them, and meant to 
 have published them by subscription. I remember 
 some of his verses, if you want to hear them. You r 
 Sir (addressing myself to the divinity-student), and 
 all such as have been through college, or what is the 
 same thing, received an honorary degree, will under- 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 263 
 
 stand them without a dictionary. The old man had a 
 great deal to say about " aestivation," as he called it, 
 in opposition, as one might say, to hibernation. In 
 tramural aestivation, or town-life in summer, he would 
 say, is a peculiar form of suspended existence, or semi- 
 asphyxia. One wakes up from it about the beginning 
 of the last week in September. This is what I re 
 member of his poem : 
 
 ESTIVATION. 
 An Unpublished Poem, by my late Latin Tutor. 
 
 In candent ire the solar splendor flames; 
 The foles, languescent, pend from arid rames; 
 His humid front the cive, anheling, wipes, 
 And dreams of erring on ventiferous ripes. 
 
 How dulce to vive occult to mortal eyes, 
 Dorm on the herb with none to supervise, 
 Carp the suave berries from the crescent vinei 
 And bibe the flow from longicaudate kine! 
 
 To me, alas! no verdurous visions come, 
 Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, 
 No concave vast repeats the tender hue 
 That laves my milk-jug with celestial bluel 
 
 Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades! 
 Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids! 
 Oh, might I vole to some umbrageous clump, 
 Depart, be off, excede, evade, erumpl 
 
 I have lived by the sea-shore and by the moun 
 tains. No, I am not going to say which is best. 
 The one where your place is is the best for you. But 
 this difference there is: you can domesticate moun 
 tains, but the sea is ferce naturae. You may have a 
 hut, or know the owner of one, on the mountain-side; 
 
264 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 you see a light half-way up its ascent in the evening, 
 and you know there is a home, and you might share 
 it. You have noted certain trees, perhaps ; you know 
 the particular zone where the hemlocks look so black 
 in October, when the maples and beeches have faded. 
 All its reliefs and intaglios have electrotyped them 
 selves in the medallions that hang round the walls of 
 your memory's chamber. The sea remembers noth 
 ing. It is feline. It licks your feet, its huge 
 flanks purr very pleasantly for you ; but it will crack 
 your bones and eat you, for all that, and wipe the 
 crimsoned foam from its jaws as if nothing had hap 
 pened. The mountains give their lost children berries 
 and water ; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them 
 die. The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable 
 tranquillity ; the sea has a fascinating, treacherous in 
 telligence. The mountains lie about like huge rumi 
 nants, their broad backs awful to look upon, but safe 
 to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you 
 cannot see their joints, but their shining is that of a 
 snake's belly, after all. In deeper suggestiveness I 
 find as great a difference. The mountains dwarf 
 mankind and foreshorten the procession of its long 
 generations. The sea drowns out humanity and time ; 
 it has no sympathy with either ; for it belongs to eter 
 nity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever 
 and ever. 
 
 Yet I should love to have a little box by the sea 
 shore. I should love to gaze out on the wild feline 
 element from a front window of my own, just as I 
 should love to look on a caged panther, and see it 
 stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap 
 its smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself 
 into rage and show its white teeth and spring at its 
 
THE AUTOCEAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 265 
 
 bars, and howl the cry of its mad, but, to me, harm* 
 less fury. And then, to look at it with that inward 
 eye, who does not love to shuffle off time and its 
 concerns, at intervals, to forget who is President 
 and who is Governor, what race he belongs to, what 
 language he speaks, which golden-headed nail of the 
 firmament his particular planetary system is hung 
 upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it 
 beats its solemn measure, steadily swinging when 
 the solo or duet of human life began, and to swing 
 just as steadily after the human chorus has died out 
 and man is a fossil on its shores ? 
 
 What should decide one, in choosing a summer 
 residence? Constitution, first of all. How much 
 snow could you melt in an hour, if you were planted 
 in a hogshead of it ? Comfort is essential to enjoy 
 ment. All sensitive people should remember that 
 persons in easy circumstances suffer much more from 
 cold in summer that is, the warm half of the year 
 than in winter, or the other half. You must cut 
 your climate to your constitution, as much as your 
 clothing to your shape. After this, consult your taste 
 and convenience. But if you would be happy in 
 Berkshire, you must carry mountains in your brain ; 
 and if you would enjoy Nahant, you must have an 
 ocean in your soul. Nature plays at dominos with 
 you ; you must match her piece, or she will never give 
 it up to you. 
 
 The schoolmistress said, in a rather mischievous 
 way, that she was afraid some minds or souls would 
 be a little crowded, if they took in the Kocky Moun 
 tains or the Atlantic. 
 
 Have you ever read the little book called "The 
 Stars and the Earth?" said I. Have you seen 
 
266 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 the Declaration of Independence photographed in a 
 surface that a fly's foot would cover ? The forms or 
 conditions of Time and Space, as Kant will tell you, 
 are nothing in themselves, only our way of looking 
 at things. You are right, I think, however, in recog 
 nizing the idea of Space as being quite as applicable 
 to minds as to the outer world. Every man of reflec 
 tion is vaguely conscious of an imperfectly-defined 
 circle which is drawn about his intellect. He has a 
 perfectly clear sense that the fragments of his intel 
 lectual circle include the curves of many other minds 
 of which he is cognizant. He often recognizes these 
 as manifestly concentric with his own, but of less 
 radius. On the other hand, when we find a portion 
 of an arc on the outside of our own, we say it inter 
 sects ours, but are very slow to confess or to see that 
 it circumscribes it. Every now and then a man's 
 mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and 
 never shrinks back to its former dimensions. After 
 looking at the Alps, I felt that my mind had been 
 stretched beyond the limits of elasticity, and fitted so 
 loosely on my old ideas of space that I had to spread 
 these to fit it. 
 
 If I thought I should ever see the Alps ! said 
 the schoolmistress. 
 
 Perhaps you will, some time or other,- I said. 
 
 It is not very likely, she answered. I have had 
 one or two opportunities, but I had rather be any 
 thing than governess in a rich family. 
 
 [Proud, too, you little soft-voiced woman ! Well, 
 I can't say I like you any the worse for it. How 
 long will school-keeping take to kill you ? Is it pos 
 sible the poor thing works with her needle, too ? I 
 don't like those marks on the side of her forefinger. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 267 
 
 Tableau. Chamouni. Mont Blanc in full view. 
 Figures in the foreground ; two of them standing 
 
 apart; one of them a gentleman of oh, ah, 
 
 yes ! the other a lady in a white cashmere, leaning 
 on his shoulder. The ingenuous reader will under 
 stand that this was an internal, private, personal, 
 subjective diorama, seen for one instant on the back 
 ground of my own consciousness, and abolished into 
 black nonentity by the first question which recalled 
 me to actual life, as suddenly as if one of those iron 
 shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a 
 shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but hon 
 est shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and 
 unexpected descent, and left outside upon the side 
 walk) had come down in front of it " by the run."] 
 
 Should you like to hear what moderate wishes 
 life brings one to at last? I used to be very am 
 bitious, wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in all 
 my fancies. Read too much in the "Arabian Nights." 
 Must have the lamp, could n't do without the ring. 
 Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump 
 down into castles as full of little milk-white princesses 
 as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at 
 once. Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for 
 the reality. I have out-grown all this ; my tastes have 
 become exceedingly primitive, almost, perhaps, as 
 cetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but 
 must not hope to find it there. I think you will be 
 willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued 
 and limited desires of my maturity. 
 
268 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 CONTENTMENT. 
 
 " Man wants but little here below." 
 
 Little I ask ; my wants are few ; 
 
 I only wish a hut of stone, 
 (A very plain brown stone will do,) 
 That I may call my own ; 
 And close at hand is such a one, 
 In yonder street that fronts the sun. 
 
 Plain food is quite enough for me; 
 
 Three courses are as good as ten ; 
 If Nature can subsist on three, 
 
 Thank Heaven for three. Amen! 
 I always thought cold victual nice; 
 My choice would be vanilla-ice. 
 
 I care not much for gold or land ; 
 
 Give me a mortgage here and there, 
 Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, 
 
 Or trifling railroad share; 
 I only ask that Fortune send 
 A little more than I shall spend. 
 
 Honors are silly toys, I know, 
 
 And titles are but empty names; 
 I would, perhaps, be Plenipo, 
 
 But only near St. James; 
 I 'm very sure I should not care 
 To fill our Gubernator's chair. 
 
 Jewels are baubles ; 't is a sin 
 
 To care for such unfruitful things; 
 One good- sized diamond in a pin, 
 Some, not so large, in rings, 
 A ruby and a pearl, or so, 
 Will do for me; I laugh at show. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 269 
 
 My dame should dress in cheap attire; 
 
 (Good, heavy silks are never dear;) 
 I own perhaps I might desire 
 
 Some shawls of true cashmere, 
 Some marrowy crapes of China silk, 
 Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk. 
 
 I would not have the horse I drive 
 
 So fast that folks must stop and stare: 
 An easy gait two, forty-five 
 Suits me ; I do not care ; 
 Perhaps, for just a single spurt, 
 Some seconds less would do no hurt. 
 
 Of pictures, I should like to own 
 
 Titians and Raphaels three or four. 
 I love so much their style and tone, 
 
 One Turner, and no more, 
 ( A landscape, foreground golden dirt, 
 The sunshine painted with a squirt.) 
 
 Of books but few, some fifty score 
 For daily use, and bound for wear ; 
 The rest upon an upper floor ; 
 
 Some little luxury there 
 Of red morocco's gilded gleam, 
 And vellum rich as country cream. 
 
 Busts, cameos, gems, such things as these, 
 
 Which others often show for pride, 
 1 value for their power to please, 
 
 And selfish churls deride ; 
 One Stradivarius, I confess, 
 Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess. 
 
 Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, 
 
 Nor ape the glittering upstart fool ; 
 Shall not carved tables serve my turn, 
 
 But all must be of buhl? 
 Give grasping pomp its double share, 
 I ask but one recumbent chair. 
 
270 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Thus humble let me live and die, 
 
 Nor long for Midas' golden touch, 
 If Heaven more generous gifts deny, 
 I shall not miss them much, 
 Too grateful for the blessing lent 
 Of simple tastes and mind content ! 
 
 MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS. 
 (A Parenthesis.) 
 
 I can't say just how many walks she and I had 
 taken together before this one. I found the effect of 
 going out every morning was decidedly favorable on 
 her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for 
 which were just marked when she came, played, 
 shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled 
 and nodded good-morning to me from the school- 
 house-steps. 
 
 I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. 
 At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said 
 during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I 
 fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends 
 the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk 
 and expense, would be the proper method of bringing 
 them before the public. 
 
 I would have a woman as true as Death. At the 
 first real lie which works from the heart outward, she 
 should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, 
 where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed 
 on strange fruits which will make her all over again, 
 even to her bones and marrow. Whether gifted with 
 the accident of beauty or not, she should have been 
 moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the 
 breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love- 
 capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 271 
 
 after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued na 
 tures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counter 
 feits of them. Proud she may be, in the sense of re 
 specting herself ; but pride, in the sense of contemning 
 others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest 
 circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punish 
 ments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. She who nips 
 off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip 
 of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought 
 cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact 
 that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad 
 blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes 
 people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a 
 woman put on airs with her real equals, she has some 
 thing about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or 
 ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged peo 
 ple, who know family histories, generally see through 
 it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, 
 that is the maternal grandfather, said a wise old 
 friend to me, he was a boor. Better too few 
 words, from the woman we love, than too many : while 
 she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she 
 talks, she is working for herself. Love is sparingly 
 soluble in the words of men ; therefore they speak 
 much of it; but one syllable of woman's speech can 
 dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold. 
 
 Whether I said any or all of these things to the 
 schoolmistress, or not, whether I stole them out of 
 Lord Bacon, whether I cribbed them from Balzac, 
 whether I dipped them from the ocean of Tupperian 
 wisdom, or whether I have just found them in my 
 head, laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience 
 (who, according to my observation, cackles oftener 
 than she drops real live eggs), I cannot say. Wise 
 
272 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 men have said more foolish things, and foolish men, 
 I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the 
 schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long 
 talks, all of which I do not feel bound to report. 
 
 You are a stranger to me, Ma'am. I don't 
 doubt you would like to know all I said to the school 
 mistress. I sha'n't do it ; I had rather get the pub 
 lishers to return the money you have invested in these 
 pages. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I 
 shall tell only what I like of what I remember. 
 
 My idea was, in the first place, to search out the 
 picturesque spots which the city affords a sight of, to 
 those who have eyes. I know a good many, and it 
 was a pleasure to look at them in company with my 
 young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in 
 the Franklin-Place front-yards or borders : Commerce 
 is just putting his granite foot upon them. Then there 
 are certain small seraglio-gardens, into which one can 
 get a peep through the crevices of high fences, one 
 in Myrtle Street, or at the back of it, here and 
 there one at the North and South ends. Then the 
 great elms in Essex Street. Then the stately horse- 
 chestnuts in that vacant lot in Chambers Street, which 
 hold their outspread hands over your head (as I said 
 in my poem the other day), and look as if they were 
 whispering, " May grace, mercy, and peace be with 
 you ! " and the rest of that benediction. Nay, there 
 are certain patches of ground, which, having lain neg 
 lected for a time, Nature, who always has her pockets 
 full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has covered 
 with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with 
 each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and 
 succulent, and you have a coarse vegetable tapestry 
 which Raphael would not have disdained to spread 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 273 
 
 over the foreground of his masterpiece. The Professor 
 pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street, 
 which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble 
 vegetation, beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the 
 Public Garden as ignominiously as a group of young 
 tatterdemalions playing pitch-and-toss beats a row of 
 Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at their head. 
 
 But then the Professor has one of his burrows in 
 that region, and puts everything in high colors relat 
 ing to it. That is his way about everything. I 
 hold any man cheap, he said, of whom nothing 
 stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are 
 swans. How is that, Professor ? said I ; I 
 should have set you down for one of that sort. Sir, 
 
 said he, I am proud to say, that Nature has so 
 far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a duck 
 without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever swam the 
 basin in the garden of the Luxembourg. And the 
 Professor showed the whites of his eyes devoutly, like 
 one returning thanks after a dinner of many courses. 
 
 I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in 
 of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and 
 floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn 
 rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was 
 green once. The trees look down from the hill-sides 
 and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, " What 
 are these people about ? " And the small herbs at 
 their feet look up and whisper back, " We will go 
 and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in 
 the least possible bundles, and wait until the wind 
 steals to them at night and whispers, " Come with 
 me." Then they go softly with it into the great city, 
 
 one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the 
 roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentle- 
 
274 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 man's bones, and one to the grave without a stone 
 where nothing but a man is buried, and there they 
 grow, looking down on the generations of men from 
 mouldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trod 
 den pavements, looking out through iron cemetery- 
 railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light 
 breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each 
 other, " Wait awhile ! " The words run along the 
 telegraph of those narrow green lines that border the 
 roads leading from the city, until they reach the slope 
 of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to 
 each other, " Wait awhile ! " By-and-by the flow 
 of life in the streets ebbs, and the old leafy inhabit 
 ants the smaller tribes always in front saunter 
 in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tena 
 cious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape 
 from each other with the crowding of their roots, and 
 the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to 
 find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn 
 line of march, and never rest until they have en 
 camped in the market-place. Wait long enough and 
 you will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn 
 block in its yellow underground arms ; that was the 
 corner-stone of the State-House. Oh, so patient she is, 
 this imperturbable Nature ! 
 
 Let us cry ! 
 
 But all this has nothing to do with my walks and 
 talks with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I 
 would not tell you something about them. Let me 
 alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought to, 
 probably. We never tell our secrets to people that 
 pump for them. 
 
 Books we talked about, and education. It was her 
 duty to know something of these, and of course she 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 275 
 
 did. Perhaps I was somewhat more learned than she, 
 but I found that the difference between her reading 
 and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's 
 dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch 
 of feathers ; the woman goes to work softly with a 
 cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her 
 own eyes and mouth with it, but she goes into all 
 the corners and attends to the leaves as much as to the 
 covers. Books are the negative pictures of thought, 
 and the more sensitive the mind that receives their 
 images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. 
 A woman (of the right kind), reading after a man, 
 follows him as Kuth followed the reapers of Boaz, and 
 her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. 
 
 But it was in talking of Life that we came most 
 nearly together. I thought I knew something about 
 that, that I could speak or write about it somewhat 
 to the purpose. 
 
 To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a 
 sponge sucks up water, to be steeped and soaked in 
 its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven years 
 in a tan-pit, to have winnowed every wave of it as a 
 mill-wheel works up the stream that runs through the 
 flume upon its float-boards, to have curled up in the 
 keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors 
 of this breathing-sickness, which keeps certain parcels 
 of matter uneasy for three or four score years, to 
 have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels 
 of its delirium, and then, just at the point when the 
 white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, 
 plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some 
 human language or other, one might think would end 
 in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in 
 it. All this I thought my power and province. 
 
276 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a 
 while one meets with a single soul greater than all the 
 living pageant which passes before it. As the pale 
 astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin 
 fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a bal 
 ance, so there are meek, slight women who have 
 weighed all which this planetary life can offer, and 
 hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender 
 hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, 
 sorrow had baptized her ; the routine of labor and the 
 loneliness of almost friendless city-life were before 
 her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradu 
 ally regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, 
 as she became interested in the various matters we 
 talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and 
 lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, 
 unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meet 
 ing the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces 
 which were meant for the reward of nothing less than 
 the Great Passion. 
 
 I never addressed one word of love to the school 
 mistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It 
 seemed to me that we talked of everything but love on 
 that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little 
 more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have 
 commonly shown among our people at the boarding- 
 house. In fact, I considered myself the master at the 
 breakfast-table ; but, somehow, I could not command 
 myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had 
 secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which 
 was to leave at noon, with the condition, however, 
 of being released in case circumstances occurred to 
 detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about 
 all this, of course, as yet. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 277 
 
 It was on the Common that we were walking. The 
 mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has va 
 rious branches leading from it in different directions. 
 One of these runs down from opposite Joy Street 
 southward across the whole length of the Common to 
 Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and 
 were fond of it. 
 
 I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably 
 robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this 
 path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice 
 without making myself distinctly audible. At last I 
 got out the question, Will you take the long path 
 with me? Certainly, said the schoolmistress, 
 with much pleasure. Think, I said, before you 
 answer: if you take the long path with me now, 1 
 shall interpret it that we are to part no more ! The 
 schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, 
 as if an arrow had struck her. 
 
 One of the long granite blocks used as seats was 
 hard by, the one you may still see close by the 
 Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down, I said. No, no, 
 she answered, softly, I will walk the long path with 
 you! 
 
 The old gentleman who sits opposite met us 
 walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long 
 path, and said, very charmingly, " Good-morning, 
 my dears ! " 
 
 XII. 
 
 [I DID not think it probable that I should have a 
 great many more talks with our company, and there 
 fore I was anxious to get as much as I could into 
 
278 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 every conversation. That is the reason why you will 
 find some odd, miscellaneous facts here, which 1 
 wished to tell at least once, as I should not have a 
 chance to tell them habitually, at our breakfast-table. 
 
 We 're very free and easy, you know ; we don't 
 read what we don't like. Our parish is so large, one 
 can't pretend to preach to all the pews at once. One 
 can't be all the time trying to do the best of one's 
 best ; if a company works a steam fire-engine, the fire 
 men need n't be straining themselves all day to squirt 
 over the top of the flagstaff. Let them wash some of 
 those lower-story windows a little. Besides, there is 
 no use in our quarrelling now, as you will find out 
 when you get through this paper.] 
 
 Travel, according to my experience, does not ex 
 actly correspond to the idea one gets of it out of most 
 books of travels. I am thinking of travel as it was 
 when I made the Grand Tour, especially in Italy. 
 Memory is a net; one finds it full of fish when he 
 takes it from the brook ; but a dozen miles of water 
 have run through it without sticking. I can prove 
 some facts about travelling by a story or two. There 
 are certain principles to be assumed, such as these : 
 - He who is carried by horses must deal with rogues. 
 To-day's dinner subtends a larger visual angle than 
 yesterday's revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger 
 to me than the biggest of Dr. Gould's private planets. 
 
 Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist. 
 Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an 
 old joke tells better among friends travelling than at 
 home, which shows that their minds are in a state 
 of diminished, rather than increased, vitality. There 
 was a story about " strahps to your pahnts," which 
 was vastly funny to us fellows, on the road from 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 279 
 
 Milan to Venice. Coelwn, non animum, travellers 
 change their guineas, but not their characters. The 
 bore is the same, eating dates under the cedars of 
 Lebanon, as over a plate of baked beans in Beacon 
 Street. Parties of travellers have a morbid instinct 
 for "establishing raws" upon each other. A man 
 shall sit down with his friend at the foot of the Great 
 Pyramid and they will take up the question they had 
 been talking about under " the great elm," and forget 
 all about Egypt. When I was crossing the Po, we 
 were all fighting about the propriety of one fellow's 
 telling another that his argument was absurd; one 
 maintaining it to be a perfectly admissible logical 
 term, as proved by the phrase "reductio ad absur- 
 dum;" the rest badgering him as a conversational 
 bully. Mighty little we troubled ourselves for Padus, 
 the Po, "a river broader and more rapid than the 
 Rhone," and the times when Hannibal led his grim 
 Africans to its banks, and his elephants thrust their 
 trunks into the yellow waters over which that pendu 
 lum ferry-boat was swinging back and forward every 
 ten minutes ! 
 
 Here are some of those reminiscences, with mor 
 als prefixed, or annexed, or implied. 
 
 Lively emotions very commonly do not strike us 
 full in front, but obliquely from the side ; a scene or 
 incident in undress often affects us more than one in 
 full costume. 
 
 " Is this the mighty ocean? Is this all?" 
 
 says the Princess in Gebir. The rush that should 
 have flooded my soul in the Coliseum did not come. 
 But walking one day in the fields about the city, I 
 Stumbled over a fragment of broken masonry, and lo 1 
 
280 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 the World's Mistress in her stone girdle alta mcenia 
 Momoe rose before me and whitened my cheek with 
 her pale shadow as never before or since. 
 
 I used very often, when coming home from my 
 morning's work at one of the public institutions of 
 Paris, to stop in at the dear old church of St. Eti- 
 enne du Mont. The tomb of St. Genevieve, sur 
 rounded by burning candles and votive tablets, was 
 there; the mural tablet of Jacobus Benignus Wins- 
 low was there ; there was a noble organ with carved 
 figures ; the pulpit was borne on the oaken shoulders 
 of a stooping Samson; and there was a marvellous 
 staircase like a coil of lace. These things I mention 
 from memory, but not all of them together impressed 
 me so much as an inscription on a small slab of mar 
 ble fixed in one of the walls. It told how this church 
 of St. Stephen was repaired and beautified in the 
 year 16**, and how, during the celebration of its re 
 opening, two girls of the parish ( filles de la paroisse) 
 fell from the gallery, carrying a part of the balustrade 
 with them, to the pavement, but by a miracle escaped 
 uninjured. Two young girls nameless, but real pres 
 ences to my imagination, as much as when they came 
 fluttering down on the tiles with a cry that outscreamed 
 the sharpest treble in the Te Deum. (Look at Car- 
 lyle's article on Boswell, and see how he speaks of the 
 poor young woman Johnson talked with in the streets 
 one evening.) All the crowd gone but these two 
 " filles de la paroisse," gone as utterly as the dresses 
 they wore, as the shoes that were on their feet, as the 
 bread and meat that were in the market on that day. 
 
 Not the great historical events, but the personal in 
 cidents which call up single sharp pictures of some hu 
 man being in its pang or struggle, reach us most 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 281 
 
 nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the 
 parapet of which Theobald Weinzapfli's restive horse 
 sprung with him and landed him more than a hun 
 dred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but 
 sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's 
 servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the 
 famous bears, and all else. I remember the Percy 
 lion on the bridge over the little river at Alnwick, 
 the leaden lion with his tail stretched out straight like 
 a pump-handle, and why ? Because of the story of 
 the village boy who must fain bestride the leaden tail, 
 standing out over the water, which breaking, he 
 dropped into the stream far below, and was taken out 
 an idiot for the rest of his life. 
 
 Arrow-heads must be brought to a sharp point and 
 the guillotine-axe must have a slanting edge. Some 
 thing intensely human, narrow, and definite pierces to 
 the seat of our sensibilities more readily than huge 
 occurrences and catastrophes. A nail will pick a lock 
 that defies hatchet and hammer. " The Eoyal George " 
 went down with all her crew, and Cowper wrote an 
 exquisitely simple poem about it ; but the leaf which 
 holds it is smooth, while that which bears the lines on 
 his mother's portrait is blistered with tears. 
 
 My telling these recollections sets me thinking of 
 others of the same kind which strike the imagination, 
 especially when one is still young. You remember 
 the monument in Devizes market to the woman struck 
 dead with a lie in her mouth. I never saw that, but 
 it is in the books. Here is one I never heard men 
 tioned ; if any of the " Note and Query " tribe can 
 tell the story, I hope they will. Where is this monu 
 ment ? I was riding on an English stage-coach when 
 we passed a handsome marble column (as I remember 
 
82 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 it) of considerable size and pretensions. What is 
 that ? I said. That, answered the coachman, 
 is the hangman's pillar. Then he told me how a 
 
 It would have been well if I had consulted Notes and 
 Queries before telling this story. A year or two before the 
 time when I was writing, a number of communications relating 
 to the subject were sent to that periodical. A correspondent 
 called my attention to them, and other correspondents, Miss 
 H. P., of London, the librarian of a public institution at Dub 
 lin, a young gentleman, writing from Cornwall, and others, 
 whose residences I do not now remember, wrote to me, men 
 tioning stories like that which the coachman told me. The self- 
 reproduction of the legend wherever there was a stone to hang 
 it on, seems to me so interesting, as bearing on the philosophy 
 of tradition, that I subjoin a number of instances from Note 
 and Queries. 
 
 In the first the thief's booty was a deer and not a sheep, as 
 the common account made it. The incident not only involved 
 a more distinguished quadruped, but also was found worthy of 
 being commemorated in rhyme. 
 
 N. $ Q. for January 5, 1856. 
 
 "In Potter's Churnwood, p. 179, a 'Legend of the Hangman's 
 Stone,' in verse, is given, in which the death of John of Oxley 
 is described. 
 
 * One shaft he drew on his well-tried yew, 
 And a gallant hart lay dead ; 
 He tie"3 its legs, and he hoisted his prize, 
 And he toiled over Lubcloud brow. 
 He reached the tall stone, standing out and alone, 
 Standing then as it standeth now ; 
 
 With his back to the stone he rested his load, 
 And he chuckled with glee to think 
 That the rest of his way on the down hill lay 
 And his wife would have spiced the strong drink. 
 
 A swineherd was passing o'er great Toe's Head, 
 
 When he noticed a motionless man ; 
 
 He shouted in vain no reply could he gain 
 
 So down to the gray stone he ran. 
 
 All was clear. There was Oxley on one side the stone 
 
 On the other the down-hanging deer; 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 283 
 
 man went out one night, many years ago, to steal 
 sheep. He caught one, tied its legs together, passed 
 the rope over his head, and started for home. In 
 
 The burden had slipped, and his neck it had nipped ; 
 He was hanged by his prize all was clear.' 
 
 44 'When I was a youth,' the same writer continues, * there 
 were two fields in the parish of Foremark, Derbyshire, called 
 the Great and the Little Hangman's Stone. In the former 
 there was a stone, five or six feet high, with an indentation 
 running across the top of it, and there was a legend that a 
 sheep-stealer, once upon a time having stolen a sheep, had 
 placed it on the top of the stone, and that it had slipped off and 
 strangled him with the rope with which it was tied, and that 
 the indentation was made by the friction of the rope caused by 
 the struggles of the dying man.' C. S. GREAVES." 
 
 N.fQ., April 5, 1856. 
 
 SIMILAR LEGENDS AT DIFFERENT PLACES. " At the end 
 of Lamber Moor, on the roadside between Haverford West and 
 Little Haven, in the County of Pembroke, there is a stone about 
 four feet high, called ' Hang Davy Stone,' connected with which 
 is a tradition of the accidental strangling of a sheep-steaier, sim 
 ilar to the legend mentioned by Mr. Greaves with reference to 
 the stone at Foremark. J. W. PHILLIPS." 
 
 N. $ Q., May 17, 1856. 
 
 " THE HANGMAN STONE. It may be interesting to your 
 correspondent, Mr. J. W. Phillips, to be informed that at about 
 five miles from Sidmouth, on the road to Colyton, on the right 
 hand side of the road, and near Bovey House, is a large stone 
 known by the name of * Hangman Stone.' The legend is pre 
 cisely similar to that noticed by Mr. Phillips and by Mr. 
 Greaves. N. S. HEINEKER." 
 
 N. # Q,.,May 31, 1856. 
 
 " HANGMAN STONES. Some years ago there was still to be 
 seen, in a meadow belonging to me, situate near the northwest 
 ern boundary of the parish of Littlebury, in Essex, a large 
 stone, the name of which, and the. traditions attached to it, were 
 identical with those recorded by your correspondents treating 
 
284 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 climbing a fence, the rope slipped, caught him by the 
 neck, and strangled him. Next morning he was found 
 hanging dead on one side of the fence and the sheep 
 on the other ; in memory whereof the lord of the 
 manor caused this monument to be erected as a warn 
 ing to all who love mutton better than virtue. I will 
 
 of Hangman Stones. This stone was subsequently removed by 
 the late Mr. Jabez Gibson to Saffron Walden, and still remains 
 in his garden at that place. I have a strong impression that 
 other ' hangman stones ' are to be met with elsewhere, but I am 
 unable to point out the exact localities. BRAYBROOKE." 
 
 4 ' On the right side of the road between Brighton and New- 
 haven (about five miles, I think, from the former place), is a 
 stone designated as above, and respecting which is told the 
 same legend as that which is quoted by Henry Kensington. 
 
 H. E. C." 
 
 N.fQ., June 21, 1856. 
 
 " HANGMAN STONES. At a picturesque angle in the road 
 between Sheffield and Barnsley, and about three miles south of 
 the latter place, there is a toll-bar called * Hangman Stone Bar.' 
 Attached to this title is the usual legend of a sheep-stealer being 
 strangled by the kicking animal, which he had slung across his 
 shoulders, and which pulled him backwards as he tried to climb 
 over the stone wall inclosure with his spoil. I do not know that 
 any particular stone is marked as the one on which the sheep 
 was rested for the convenience of the thief in trying to make his 
 escape, but the Jehu of the now extinct Barnsley mail always 
 told this story to any inquiring passenger who happened to be 
 one of five at top, as quaint a four-in-hand as you shall see. 
 ALFRED GATTY." 
 
 I have little doubt that the story told by the "Jehu," which 
 my memory may have embellished a little, as is not unusual 
 with travellers' recollections, was the one to which I listened as 
 one of the five outsides, and in answer to my question. The 
 country boys used to insist upon it in my young days that stones 
 grew. It seems to me probable that a very moderate monolith 
 may have grown in my recollection to u a handsome marble col 
 umn," and that "the lord of the manor" was my own phrase 
 rather than our coachman's. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 285 
 
 Bend a copy of this record to him or her who shall first 
 set me right about this column and its locality . a 
 
 And telling over these old stories reminds me that 
 I have something which may interest architects and 
 perhaps some other persons. I once ascended the 
 spire of Strasburg Cathedral, which is the highest, I 
 think (at present), in Europe. It is a shaft of stone 
 filigree-work, frightfully open, so that the guide puts 
 his arms behind you to keep you from falling. To 
 climb it is a noonday nightmare, and to think of hav 
 ing climbed it crisps all the fifty-six joints of one's 
 twenty digits. While I was on it, " pinnacled dim in 
 the intense inane," a strong wind was blowing, and I 
 felt sure that the spire was rocking. It swayed back 
 and forward like a stalk of rye or a cat-o'-nine-tails 
 (bulrush) with a bobolink on it. I mentioned it to 
 the guide, and he said that the spire did really swing 
 back and forward, I think he said some feet. 
 
 Keep any line of knowledge ten years and some 
 other line will intersect it. Long afterwards I was 
 hunting out a paper of Dumeril's in an old journal, 
 the " Magazin Encyclope*dique " for Van troisieme 
 (1795), when I stumbled upon a brief article on the 
 vibrations of the spire of Strasburg Cathedral. A 
 man can shake it so that the movement shall be shown 
 in a vessel of water nearly seventy feet below the sum 
 mit, and higher up the vibration is like that of an 
 earthquake. I have seen one of those wretched 
 wooden spires with which we very shabbily finish 
 some of our stone churches (thinking that the lidless 
 blue eye of heaven cannot tell the counterfeit we try 
 to pass on it,) swinging like a reed, in a wind, but one 
 would hardly think of such a thing's happening in a 
 I sent two or three copies to different correspondents. 
 
286 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 stone spire. Does the Bunker-Hill Monument bend in 
 the blast like a blade of grass ? I suppose so. 
 
 You see, of course, that I am talking in a cheap 
 way ; perhaps we will have some philosophy by and 
 by ; let me work out this thin mechanical vein. 
 I have something more to say about trees. I have 
 brought down this slice of hemlock to show you. Tree 
 blew down in my woods (that were) in 1852. Twelve 
 feet and a half round, fair girth ; nine feet, where 
 I got my section, higher up. This is a wedge, go 
 ing to the centre, of the general shape of a slice of 
 apple-pie in a large and not opulent family. Length, 
 about eighteen inches. I have studied the growth 
 of this tree by its rings, and it is curious. Three 
 hundred and forty-two rings. Started, therefore, 
 about 1510. The thickness of the rings tells the 
 rate at which it grew. For five or six years the rate 
 was slow, then rapid for twenty years. A little be 
 fore the year 1550 it began to grow very slowly, and 
 so continued for about seventy years. In 1620 it took 
 a new start and grew fast until 1714, then for the 
 most part slowly until 1786, when it started again and 
 grew pretty well and uniformly until within the last 
 dozen years, when it seems to have got on sluggishly. 
 
 Look here. Here are some human lives laid down 
 against the periods of its growth, to which they cor 
 responded. This is Shakspeare's. The tree was seven 
 inches in diameter when he was born ; ten inches 
 when he died. A little less than ten inches when 
 Milton was born; seventeen when he died. Then 
 comes a long interval, and this thread marks out 
 Johnson's life, during which the tree increased from 
 twenty-two to twenty-nine inches in diameter. Here 
 is the span of Napoleon's career ; the tree does n't 
 seem to have minded it. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 287 
 
 \ I never saw the man yet who was not startled at 
 looking on this section. I have seen many wooden 
 preachers, never one like this. How much more 
 striking would be the calendar counted on the rings 
 of one of those awful trees which were standing when 
 Christ was on earth, and where that brief mortal life 
 is chronicled with the stolid apathy of vegetable be 
 ing, which remembers all human history as a thing of 
 yesterday in its own dateless existence ! 
 
 I have something more to say about elms. A rela 
 tive tells me there is one of great glory in Andover, 
 near Bradford. I have some recollections of the former 
 place, pleasant and other. [I wonder if the old Semi 
 nary clock strikes as slowly as it used to. My room 
 mate thought, when he first came, it was the bell toll* 
 ing deaths, and people's ages, as they do in the coun 
 try. He swore (ministers' sons get so familiar 
 with good words that they are apt to handle them 
 carelessly) that the children were dying by the 
 dozen, of all ages, from one to twelve, and ran off next 
 day in recess, when it began to strike eleven, but was 
 caught before the clock got through striking.] At 
 the foot of " the hill," down in town, is, or was, a tidy 
 old elm, which was said to have been hooped with iron 
 to protect it from Indian tomahawks ( Credat Hahne- 
 mannus), and to have grown round its hoops and 
 buried them in its wood. Of course, this is not the 
 tree my relative means. 
 
 Also, I have a very pretty letter from Norwich, in 
 Connecticut, telling me of two noble elms which are 
 to be seen in the town. One hundred and twenty- 
 seven feet from bough-end to bough-end. What do 
 you say to that ? And gentle ladies beneath it, that 
 love it and celebrate its praises ! And that in a town 
 
288 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 of such supreme, audacious, Alpine loveliness as Nor 
 wich ! Only the dear people there must learn to call 
 it Norridge, and not be misled by the mere accident 
 of spelling. 
 
 'Norwich. % 
 
 PorcAmouth. 
 
 Cincinnati. 
 What a sad picture of our civilization ! 
 
 I did not speak to you of the great tree on what 
 used to be the Colman farm, in Deerfield, simply be 
 cause I had not seen it for many years, and did not 
 like to trust my recollection. But I had it in memory, 
 and even noted down, as one of the finest trees in sym 
 metry and beauty I had ever seen. I have received 
 a document, signed by two citizens of a neighboring 
 town, certified by the postmaster and a selectman, and 
 these again corroborated, reinforced, and sworn to by 
 a member of that extraordinary college-class to which 
 it is the good fortune of my friend the Professor to 
 belong, who, though he has formerly been a member 
 of Congress, is, I believe, fully worthy of confidence. 
 The tree " girts " eighteen and a half feet, and spreads 
 over a hundred, and is a real beauty. I hope to meet 
 my friend under its branches yet ; if we don't have 
 "youth at the prow," we will have "pleasure at the 
 'elm." 
 
 And just now, again, I have got a letter about some 
 grand willows in Maine, and another about an elm in 
 Wayland, but too late for anything but thanks. 
 
 There are trees scattered about our New England towns 
 worth going a dozen or a score of miles to see, if one only knew 
 where to look for them. A mile from where I am now writing 
 (Beverly Farms, Essex County, Massachusetts) is one of the 
 noblest oaks I have ever seen, not distinguished so much for 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 289 
 
 [And this leads me to say, that I have received a 
 great many communications, in prose and verse, since 
 I began printing these notes. The last came this very 
 morning, in the shape of a neat and brief poem, from 
 New Orleans. I could not make any of them public, 
 though sometimes requested to do so. Some of them 
 have given me great pleasure, and encouraged me to 
 believe I had friends whose faces I had never seen. 
 If you are pleased with anything a writer says, and 
 doubt whether to tell him of it, do not hesitate, a 
 pleasant word is a cordial to one, who perhaps thinks 
 he is tiring you, and so becomes tired himself. I purr 
 very loud over a good, honest letter that says pretty 
 things to me.] 
 
 Sometimes very young persons send communica 
 tions which they want forwarded to editors ; and these 
 young persons do not always seem to have right con 
 ceptions of these same editors, and of the public, and 
 of themselves. Here is a letter I wrote to one of these 
 young folks, but, on the whole, thought it best not to 
 send. It is not fair to single out one for such sharp 
 advice, where there are hundreds that are in need of 
 it. 
 
 DEAR SIR, You seem to be somewhat, but not a 
 great deal, wiser than I was at your age. I don't wish 
 to be understood as saying too much, for I think, 
 
 its size, though its branches must spread a hundred feet from 
 bough-end to bough-end, as for its beauty and lusty promise. A 
 few minutes walk from the station at Rockport is a horse-chest 
 nut which is remarkable for size of trunk and richness of foliage. 
 1 found that it measures eight feet and three inches in circum 
 ference, about four feet from the ground. There may be larger 
 horse-chestnut trees in New England, but I have not seen or 
 heard of them. 
 
290 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 without committing myself to any opinion on my pres 
 ent state, that I was not a Solomon at that stage of 
 development. 
 
 You long to "leap at a single bound into celebrity." 
 Nothing is so common-place as to wish to be remark 
 able. Fame usually comes to those who are thinking 
 about something else, very rarely to those who say 
 to themselves, " Go to, now, let us be a celebrated in 
 dividual ! " The struggle for fame, as such, commonly 
 ends in notoriety ; that ladder is easy to climb, but 
 it leads to the pillory which is crowded with fools who 
 could not hold their tongues and rogues who could not 
 hide their tricks. 
 
 If you have the consciousness of genius, do some 
 thing to show it. The world is pretty quick, nowa 
 days, to catch the flavor of true originality; if you 
 write anything remarkable, the magazines and news 
 papers will find you out, as the schoolboys find out 
 where the ripe apples and pears are. Produce any 
 thing really good, and an intelligent editor will jump 
 at it. Don't flatter yourself that any article of yours 
 is rejected because you are unknown to fame. Noth 
 ing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth 
 having from a new hand. There is always a dearth 
 of really fine articles for a first-rate journal ; for of a 
 hundred pieces received, ninety are at or below the 
 sea-level ; some have water enough, but no head ; some 
 head enough, but no water ; only two or three are 
 from full reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard 
 to climb. 
 
 You may have genius. The contrary is of course 
 probable, but it is not demonstrated. If you have, 
 the world wants you more than you want it. It has 
 not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 291 
 
 genius that shows itself among us ; there is not a bull- 
 calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme 
 but it is ten to one, among his friends, and no takers, 
 that he is the real, genuine, no-mistake Osiris. 
 
 Qu'est ce qu'il a fait? What has he done ? That 
 was Napoleon's test. What have you done? Turn 
 up the faces of your picture-cards, my boy ! You 
 need not make mouths at the public because it has not 
 accepted you at your own fancy-valuation. Do the 
 prettiest thing you can and wait your time. 
 
 For the verses you send me, I will not say they are 
 hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show prom 
 ise. I am not an editor, but I know the standard 
 of some editors. You must not expect to " leap with 
 a single bound " into the society of those whom it is 
 not flattery to call your betters. When "The Pacto- 
 lian" has paid you for a copy of verses, (I can fur 
 nish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning 
 with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith), 
 when " The Rag-bag " has stolen your piece, after 
 carefully scratching your name out, when "The Nut 
 cracker " has thought you worth shelling, and strung 
 the kernel of your cleverest poem, then, and not till 
 then, you may consider the presumption against you, 
 from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in 
 question, and let our friends hear from you, if you 
 think it worth while. You may possibly think me 
 too candid, and even accuse me of incivility ; but let 
 me assure you that I am not half so plain-spoken as 
 Nature, nor half so rude as Time. If you prefer the 
 long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of 
 friendship, try it like a man. Only remember this, 
 that, if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart 
 without springs to it, the small potatoes always get to 
 the bottom. Believe me, etc., etc. 
 
292 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this 
 vein ; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, 
 self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable, liter 
 ary persons one is like to meet with. Is a young man 
 in the habit of writing verses? Then the presump 
 tion is that he is an inferior person. For, look you, 
 there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes 
 poor verses. Now the habit of chewing on rhymes 
 without sense and soul to match them is, like that of 
 using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness 
 and a debilitating agent. A young man can get rid 
 of the presumption against him afforded by his writ 
 ing verses only by convincing us that they are verses 
 worth writing. 
 
 All this sounds hard and rough, but, observe, it is 
 not addressed to any individual, and of course does 
 not refer to any reader of these pages. I would 
 always treat any given young person passing through 
 the meteoric showers which rain down on the brief 
 period of adolescence with vgreat tenderness. God 
 forgive us if we ever speak harshly to young creatures 
 on the strength of these ugly truths, and so, sooner or 
 later, smite some tender-souled poet or poetess on the 
 lips who might have sung the world into sweet trances, 
 had we not silenced the matin-song in its first low 
 breathings! Just as my heart yearns over the un 
 loved, just so it sorrows for the ungifted who are 
 doomed to the pangs of an undeceived self-estimate. 
 I have always tried to be gentle with the most hope 
 less cases. My experience, however, has not been en 
 couraging. 
 
 X. Y., set. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with nar 
 row jaws, and broad, bony, cold, red hands, having 
 been laughed at by the girls in his village, and "got 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 293 
 
 the mitten" (pronounced mitten) two or three times, 
 falls to souling and controlling, and youthing and 
 truthing, in the newspapers. Sends me some strings 
 of verses, candidates for the Orthopedic Infirmary, all 
 of them, in which I learn for the millionth time one 
 of the following facts : either that something about a 
 chime is sublime, or that something about time is sub 
 lime, or that something about a chime is concerned 
 with time, or that something about a rhyme is sublime 
 or concerned with time or with a chime. Wishes my 
 opinion of the same, with advice as to his future 
 course. 
 
 What shall I do about it? Tell him the whole 
 truth, and send him a ticket of admission to the In 
 stitution for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth ? One 
 does n't like to be cruel, and yet one hates to lie. 
 Therefore one softens down the ugly central fact of 
 donkeyism, recommends study of good models, 
 that writing verse should be an incidental occupation 
 only, not interfering with the hoe, the needle, the lap- 
 stone, or the ledger, and, above all, that there should 
 be no hurry in printing what is written. Not the 
 least use in all this. The poetaster who has tasted 
 type is done for. He is like the man who has once 
 been a candidate for the Presidency. He feeds on 
 the madder of his delusion all his days, and his very 
 bones grow red with the glow of his foolish fancy. 
 One of these young brains is like a bunch of India 
 crackers ; once touch fire to it and it is best to keep 
 hands off until it has done popping, if it ever stops. 
 I have two letters on file; one is a pattern of adula 
 tion, the other of impertinence. My reply to the first, 
 containing the best advice I could give, conveyed 
 in courteous language, had brought out the second. 
 
294 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 There was some sport in this, but Dulness is not com- 
 monly a game fish, and only sulks after he is struck 
 You may set it down as a truth which admits of few ex- 
 ceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want 
 your praise, and will be contented with nothing less. 
 
 There is another kind of application to which edit 
 ors, or those supposed to have access to them, are li 
 able, and which often proves trying and painful. One 
 is appealed to in behalf of some person in needy cir 
 cumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. 
 A manuscript accompanying the letter is offered for 
 publication. It is not commonly brilliant, too often it is 
 lamentably deficient. If Kachel's saying is true, that 
 " fortune is the measure of intelligence," then poverty 
 is evidence of limited capacity, which it too frequently 
 proves to be, notwithstanding a noble exception here 
 and there. Now an editor is a person under a contract 
 with the public to furnish them with the best things 
 he can afford for his money. Charity shown by the 
 publication of an inferior article would be like the gen 
 erosity of Claude Duval and the other gentlemen high 
 waymen, who pitied the poor so much they robbed the 
 rich to have the means of relieving them. 
 
 Though I am not and never was an editor, I know 
 something of the trials to which they are submitted. 
 They have nothing to do but to develop enormous cal 
 luses at every point of contact with authorship. Their 
 business is not a matter of sympathy, but of intellect. 
 They must reject the unfit productions of those whom 
 they long to befriend, because it would be a profligate 
 charity to accept them. One cannot burn his house 
 down to warm the hands even of the fatherless and 
 the widow. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OP THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 295 
 THE PROFESSOR UNDER CHLOROFORM. 
 
 You have n't heard about my friend the Profes 
 sor's first experiment in the use of anaesthetics, have 
 you? 
 
 He was mightily pleased with the reception of that 
 poem of his about the chaise. He spoke to me once 
 or twice about another poem of similar character, he 
 wanted to read me, which I told him I would listen to 
 and criticise. 
 
 One day, after dinner, he came in with his face tied 
 up, looking very red in the cheeks and heavy about 
 the eyes. Hy'r'ye ? he said, and made for an arm 
 chair, in which he placed first his hat and then his per 
 son, going smack through the crown of the former as 
 neatly as they do the trick at the circus. The Profes 
 sor jumped at the explosion as if he had sat down on 
 one of those small caltrops our grandfathers used to 
 sow round in the grass when there were Indians about, 
 iron stars, each ray a rusty thorn an inch and a half 
 long, stick through moccasins into feet, cripple 
 "em on the spot, and give 'em lockjaw in a day or two. 
 
 At the same time he let off one of those big words 
 which lie at the bottom of the best man's vocabulary, 
 but perhaps never turn up in his life, just as every 
 man's hair may stand on end, but in most men it never 
 does. 
 
 After he had got calm, he pulled out a sheet or two 
 of manuscript, together with a smaller scrap, on which, 
 as he said, he had just been writing an introduction or 
 prelude to the main performance. A certain suspi 
 cion had come into my mind that the Professor was 
 not quite right, which was confirmed by the way he 
 talked ; but I let him begin. This is the way he read 
 it: 
 
296 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Prelude. 
 
 .; I 
 
 I *m the fellah that tole one day 
 The tale of the won' erf ul one-hoss-shay. 
 Wan* to hear another ? Say. 
 
 Funny, was n' it? Made me laugh, 
 I 'm too modest, I am, by half, 
 Made me laugh 's though I sh'd split, 
 Cahn' a fellah like fellah's own wit ? 
 
 Fellahs keep sayin', * Well, now that 's nice; 
 Did it once, but cahn' do it twice." 
 
 Don' you b'lieve the'z no more fat; 
 Lots in the kitch'n 'z good 'z that. 
 Fus'-rate throw, 'n' no mistake, 
 Han' us the props for another shake; 
 Know I '11 try, 'n' guess I '11 win; 
 Here sh' goes for hit 'm ag'in! 
 
 Here I thought it necessary to interpose. Pro* 
 fessor, I said, you are inebriated. The style of 
 what you call your " Prelude " shows that it was 
 written under cerebral excitement. Your articulation 
 is confused. You have told me three times in suc 
 cession, in exactly the same words, that I was the 
 only true friend you had in the world that you would 
 unbutton your heart to. You smell distinctly and 
 decidedly of spirits. I spoke, and paused; tender, 
 but firm. 
 
 Two large tears orbed themselves beneath the Pro 
 fessor's lids, in obedience to the principle of gravi 
 tation celebrated in that delicious bit of bladdery 
 bathos, "The very law that moulds a tear," with 
 which the " Edinburgh Review " attempted to put 
 down Master George Gordon when that young man 
 was foolishly trying to make himself conspicuous. 
 
 One of these tears peeped over the edge of the lid 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 297 
 
 until it lost its balance, slid an inch and waited for 
 reinforcements, swelled again, rolled down a lit 
 tle further, stopped, moved on, and at last fell 
 on the back of the Professor's hand. He held it up 
 for me to look at, and lifted his eyes, brimful, till 
 they met mine. 
 
 I could n't stand it, I always break down when 
 folks cry in my face, so I hugged him, and said he 
 was a dear old boy, and asked him kindly what was 
 the matter with him, and what made him smell so 
 dreadfully strong of spirits. 
 
 Upset his alcohol lamp, he said, and spilt the 
 alcohol on his legs. That was it. But what had he 
 been doing to get his head into such a state? had 
 he really committed an excess ? What was the mat 
 ter ? Then it came out that he had been taking 
 chloroform to have a tooth out, which had left him in 
 a very queer state, in which he had written the " Pre 
 lude " given above, and under the influence of which 
 he evidently was still. 
 
 I took the manuscript from his hands and read 
 the following continuation of the lines he had begun 
 to read me, while he made up for two or three nights' 
 lost sleep as he best might. 
 
 PARSON TURELL'S LEGACY: 
 
 OR, THE PRESIDENT'S OLD ARM-CHAIR. 
 
 A MATHEMATICAL STORY. 
 
 Facts respecting an old arm-chair. 
 At Cambridge. Is kept in the College there. 
 Seems but little the worse for wear. 
 That 's remarkable when I say 
 It was old in President Holyoke's day. 
 
298 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 (One of his boys, perhaps you know, 
 Died, at one hundred, years ago.) 
 He took lodging for rain or shine 
 Under green bed-clothes in '69. 
 
 Know old Cambridge ? Hope you do. 
 Born there? Don't say so! I was, too. 
 (Born in a house with a gambrel-roof , 
 Standing still, if you must have proof. 
 " Gambrel? Gambrel? " Let me beg 
 You '11 look at a horse's hinder leg, 
 First great angle above the hoof, 
 That 's the gambrel; hence gambrel-roof.) 
 
 Nicest place that ever was seen, 
 Colleges red and Common green, 
 Sidewalks brownish with trees between. 
 Sweetest spot beneath the skies 
 When the canker-worms don't rise, 
 When the dust, that sometimes flies 
 Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
 
 In a quiet slumber lies, 
 
 Not in the shape of unbaked pies 
 
 Such as barefoot children prize. 
 
 A kind of harbor it seems to be, 
 Facing the flow of a boundless sea. 
 Rows of gray old Tutors stand 
 Ranged like rocks above the sand ; 
 Rolling beneath them, soft and green, 
 Breaks the tide of bright sixteen, 
 One wave, two waves, three waves, four^ 
 Sliding up the sparkling floor; 
 Then it ebbs to flow no more, 
 Wandering off from shore to shore 
 With its freight of golden ore ! 
 
 Pleasant place for boys to play; 
 Better keep your girls away; 
 Hearts get rolled as pebbles do 
 Which countless fingering waves pursue, 
 And every classic beach is strown 
 
 With heart-shaped pebbles of blood-red stone 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 299 
 
 But this is neither here nor there; 
 I 'm talking about an old arm-chair. 
 You 've heard, no doubt, of PARSON TURELL? 
 Over at Medford he used to dwell; 
 Married one of the Mathers' folk; 
 Got with his wife a chair of oak, 
 Funny old chair, with seat like wedge, 
 Sharp behind and broad front edge, 
 One of the oddest of human things, 
 Turned all over with knobs and rings, 
 But heavy, and wide, and deep, and grand, 
 Fit for the worthies of the land, 
 Chief-Justice Sewall a cause to try in, 
 Or Cotton Mather to sit, and lie, in. 
 
 Parson Turell bequeathed the same 
 To a certain student, SMITH by name; 
 These were the terms, as we are told: 
 
 ** Saide Smith saide Chaire to have and holdej 
 
 When he doth graduate, then to passe 
 
 To y e oldest Youth in y e Senior Classe. 
 
 On Payment of " (naming a certain sum) 
 
 '* By him to whom y e Chaire shall come; 
 
 He to y e oldest Senior next, 
 
 And soe forever," (thus runs the text,) 
 
 *' But one Crown lesse then he gave to claime, 
 
 That being his Debte for use of same." 
 
 Smith transferred it to one of the BROWNS, 
 And took his money, five silver crowns. 
 Brown delivered it up to MOORE, 
 Who paid, it is plain, not five, but four. 
 Moore made over the chair to LEE, 
 Who gave him crowns of silver three. 
 Lee conveyed it unto DREW, 
 And now the payment, of course, was two. 
 Drew gave up the chair to DUNN, 
 All he got, as you see, was one. 
 Dunn released the chair to HALL, 
 And got by the bargain no crown at all. 
 
 And now it passed to a second BROWN, 
 
SOO THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Who took it, and likewise claimed a crown. 
 When Brown conveyed it unto WARE, 
 Having had one crown, to make it fair, 
 He paid him two crowns to take the chair; 
 And Ware, being honest, (as all Wares be,) 
 He paid one POTTER, who took it, three. 
 Four got ROBINSON; five got Dix; 
 JOHNSON primus demanded six ; 
 And so the sum kept gathering still 
 Till after the battle of Bunker's Hill 
 
 When paper money became so cheap, 
 Folks would n't count it, but said " a heap," 
 A certain RICHARDS, the books declare, 
 (A. M. in '90? I 've looked with care 
 Through the Triennial, name not there.) 
 This person, Richards, was offered then 
 Eight score pounds, but would have ten; 
 Nine, I think, was the sum he took, 
 
 Not quite certain, but see the book. 
 
 By and by the wars were still, 
 
 But nothing had altered the Parson's will. 
 The old arm-chair was solid yet, 
 But saddled with such a monstrous debt ! 
 Things grew quite too bad to bear, 
 Paying such sums to get rid of the chair! 
 But dead men's fingers hold awful tight, 
 And there was the will in black and white, 
 Plain enough for a child to spell. 
 What should be done no man could tell, 
 For the chair was a kind of nightmare curse, 
 And every season but made it worse. 
 
 As a last .resort, to clear the doubt, 
 They got old GOVERNOR HANCOCK out. 
 The Governor came, with his Light-horse Troop 
 And his mounted truckmen, all cock-a-hoop; 
 Halberds glittered and colors flew, 
 French horns whinnied and trumpets blew, 
 The yellow fifes whistled between their teeth 
 And the bumble-bee bass-drums boomed beneathy 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 301 
 
 So he rode with all his band, 
 
 Till the President met him, cap in hand. 
 
 The Governor " hefted " the crowns, and said, 
 "A will is a will, and the Parson's dead." 
 
 The Governor hefted the crowns. Said he, 
 " There is your p'int. And here 's my fee. 
 These are the terms you must fulfil, 
 On such conditions I BREAK THE WILL!'* 
 The Governor mentioned what these should be. 
 (Just wait a minute and then you '11 see.) 
 The President prayed. Then all was still, 
 And the Governor rose and BROKE THE WILL! 
 
 "About those conditions? " Well, now you go 
 And do as I tell you, and then you '11 know. 
 Once a year, on Commencement-day, 
 
 If you '11 only take the pains to stay, 
 You '11 see the President in the CHAIR, 
 Likewise the Governor sitting there. 
 The President rises; both old and young 
 May hear his speech in a foreign tongue, 
 The meaning whereof, as lawyers swear, 
 Is this: Can I keep this old arm-chair? 
 And then his Excellency bows, 
 As much as to say that he allows. 
 The Vice-Gub. next is called by name; 
 He bows like t'other, which means the same. 
 And all the officers round 'em bow, 
 As much as to say that they allow. 
 And a lot of parchments about the chair 
 Are handed to witnesses then and there, 
 And then the lawyers hold it clear 
 That the chair is safe for another year. 
 
 God bless you, Gentlemen! Learn to give 
 Money to colleges while you live. 
 Don't be silly and think you '11 try 
 To bother the colleges, when you die, 
 With codicil this, and codicil that, 
 That Knowledge may starve while Law grows fat? 
 For there never was pitcher that would n't spill, 
 And there 's always a flaw in a donkey's will! 
 
302 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 Hospitality is a good deal a matter of latitude, I 
 suspect. The shade of a palm-tree serves an African 
 for a hut ; his dwelling is all door and no walls ; every 
 body can come in. To make a morning call on an 
 Esquimaux acquaintance, one must creep through a 
 long tunnel; his house is all walls and no door, ex 
 cept such a one as an apple with a worm-hole has c 
 One might, very probably, trace a regular gradation 
 between these two extremes. In cities where the 
 evenings are generally hot, the people have porches 
 at their doors, where they sit, and this is, of course, 
 a provocative to the interchange of civilities. A good 
 deal, which in colder regions is ascribed to mean dis 
 positions, belongs really to mean temperature. 
 
 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, be 
 tween 1 and 2 P. M., Fahrenheit 96, 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 neighbor 
 hood before. Tinman pounding something that clat 
 ters 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, 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 303 
 
 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 them 
 selves for money. A popular author can print his 
 lecture ; if he deliver it, it is a case of qucestum cor- 
 pore, 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 per 
 son, or reading it. His Grace and his Lordship ex 
 hibit 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 out 
 break of jealousy against the renowned authors who 
 have the audacity to be also orators. The sub-lieuten 
 ants (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 ad 
 mires 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 ex 
 hibition ! 
 
304 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 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 school 
 mistress 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 I 
 pitied our landlady. It took her all of a suddin, 
 she said. Had not known that we was keepin' com 
 pany, and never mistrusted anything partic'lar. Ma'am 
 was right to better herself. Did n'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 wan 
 dered 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 per 
 mitted crushing out of flowering instincts. Life is 
 maintained by the respiration of oxygen and of sen 
 timents. 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 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 305 
 
 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 trans 
 parent 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 Mar 
 tyrs." 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 Civiliza 
 tion ! 
 
 Yes, my surface-thought laughs at you, you foolish, 
 plain, overdressed, mincing, cheaply-organized, self- 
 saturated young person, whoever you may be, now 
 reading this, little thinking you are what I describe, 
 and in blissful unconsciousness that you are destined 
 to the lingering asphyxia of soul which is the lot of 
 such multitudes worthier than yourself. But it is only 
 my surface-thought which laughs. For that great pro 
 cession of the UNLOVED, who not only wear the crown 
 of thorns, but must hide it under the locks of brown 
 or gray, under the snowy cap, under the chilling 
 turban, hide it even from themselves, perhaps 
 never know they wear it, though it kills them, there 
 is no depth of tenderness in my nature that Pity has 
 not sounded. Somewhere, somewhere, love is in 
 store for them, the universe must not be allowed to 
 
306 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 fool them so cruelly. What infinite pathos in the 
 small, half-unconscious artifices by which unattractive 
 young persons seek to recommend themselves to the 
 favor of those towards whom our dear sisters, the un 
 loved, like the rest, are impelled by their God-given 
 instincts ! 
 
 Read what the singing-women one to ten thou 
 sand of the suffering women tell us, and think of 
 the griefs that die unspoken! Nature is in earnest 
 when she makes a woman ; and there are women 
 enough lying in the next churchyard with very com 
 monplace blue slate-stones at their head and feet, for 
 whom it was just as true that " all sounds of life as 
 sumed one tone of love," as for Letitia Landon, of 
 whom Elizabeth Browning said it ; but she could give 
 words to her grief, and they could not. Will you 
 hear a few stanzas of mine ? 
 
 THE VOICELESS. 
 
 We count the broken lyres that rest 
 
 Where the sweet wailing singers slumber, 
 But o'er their silent sister's breast 
 
 The wild flowers who will stoop to number? 
 A few can touch the magic string, 
 
 And noisy Fame is proud to win them ; 
 Alas for those who never sing, 
 
 But die with all their music in them! 
 
 Nay, grieve not for the dead alone 
 
 Whose song has told their hearts' sad story, - 
 Weep for the voiceless, who have known 
 
 The cross without the crown of glory ! 
 Not where Leucadian breezes sweep 
 
 O'er Sappho's memory-haunted billow, 
 But where the glistening night-dews weep 
 
 On nameless sorrow's churchyard pillow. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 307 
 
 O hearts that break and give no sign 
 
 Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 
 Till Death pours out his cordial wine 
 
 Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses, 
 If singing breath or echoing chord 
 
 To every hidden pang were given, 
 What endless melodies were poured, 
 
 As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven ! 
 
 I hope that our landlady's daughter is not so badly 
 off, after all. That young man from another city, 
 who made the remark which you remember about 
 Boston State-house and Boston folks, has appeared at 
 our table repeatedly of late, and has seemed to me 
 rather attentive to this young lady. Only last evening 
 I saw him leaning over her while she was playing the 
 accordion, indeed, I undertook to join them in a 
 song, and got as far as " Come rest in this boo-oo," 
 when, my voice getting tremulous, I turned off, as one 
 steps out of a procession, and left the basso and so 
 prano to finish it. I see no reason why this young 
 woman should not be a very proper match for a man 
 who laughs about Boston State-house. He can't be 
 very particular. 
 
 The young fellow whom I have so often mentioned 
 was a little free in his remarks, but very good-natured. 
 Sorry to have you go, he said. Schoolma'am 
 made a mistake not to wait for me. Have n't taken 
 anything but mournin' fruit at breakfast since I heard 
 of it. Mourning fruit, said I, what 's that ? 
 Huckleberries and blackberries, said he ; could n't 
 eat in colors, raspberries, currants, and such, after a 
 solemn thing like this happening. The conceit 
 seemed to please the young fellow. If you will be 
 lieve it, when we came down to breakfast the next 
 
308 THE AUTOCBAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 morning, he had carried it out as follows. You know 
 those odious little " saas-plates " that figure so largely 
 at boarding-houses, and especially at taverns, into 
 which a strenuous attendant female trowels little dabs, 
 sombre of tint and heterogeneous of composition, which 
 it makes you feel homesick to look at, and into which 
 you poke the elastic coppery teaspoon with the air of 
 a cat dipping her foot into a wash-tub, (not that I 
 mean to say anything against them, for, when they are 
 of tinted porcelain or starry many-faceted crystal, 
 and hold clean bright berries, or pale virgin honey, 
 or " lucent syrups tinct with cinnamon," and the tea 
 spoon is of white silver, with the Hall-mark, solid, but 
 not brutally heavy, as people in the green stage of 
 millionism will have them, I can dally with their 
 amber semi-fluids or glossy spherules without a 
 shiver), you know these small, deep dishes, I say. 
 When we came down the next morning, each of these 
 (two only excepted) was covered with a broad leaf. 
 On lifting this, each boarder found a small heap of 
 solemn black huckleberries. But one of those plates 
 held red currants, and was covered with a red rose : 
 the other held white currants, and was covered with a 
 white rose. There was a laugh at this at first, and 
 then a short silence, and I noticed that her lip trem 
 bled, and the old gentleman opposite was in trouble to 
 get at his bandanna handkerchief. 
 
 " What was the use in waiting ? We should be 
 too late for Switzerland, that season, if we waited 
 much longer." The hand I held trembled in mine, 
 and the eyes fell meekly, as Esther bowed herself be 
 fore the feet of Ahasuerus. She had been reading 
 that chapter, for she looked up, if there was a film 
 of moisture over her eyes there was also the faintest 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 309 
 
 shadow of a distant smile skirting her lips, but not 
 enough to accent the dimples, and said, in her 
 pretty, still way, " If it please the king, and if I 
 have found favor in his sight, and the thing seem 
 right before the king, and I be pleasing in his 
 eyes " 
 
 I don't remember what King Ahasuerus did or said 
 when Esther got just to that point of her soft, humble 
 words, but I know what I did. That quotation 
 from Scripture was cut short, anyhow. We came to 
 a compromise on the great question, and the time was 
 settled for the last day of summer. 
 
 In the mean time, I talked on with our boarders, 
 much as usual, as you may see by what I have re 
 ported. I must say, I was pleased with a certain ten. 
 derness they all showed toward us, after the first 
 excitement of the news was over. It came out in 
 trivial matters, but each one, in his or her way, 
 manifested kindness. Our landlady, for instance, 
 when we had chickens, sent the liver instead of the 
 gizzard, with the wing, for the schoolmistress. This 
 was not an accident; the two are never mistaken, 
 though some landladies appear as if they did not 
 know the difference. The whole of the company were 
 even more respectfully attentive to my remarks than 
 usual. There was no idle punning, and very little 
 winking on the part of that lively young gentleman 
 who, as the reader may remember, occasionally inter 
 posed some playful question or remark, which could 
 hardly be considered relevant, except when the least 
 allusion was made to matrimony, when he would look 
 at the landlady's daughter, and wink with both sides 
 of his face, until she would ask what he was pokin' 
 his fun at her for, and if he was n't ashamed of him- 
 
310 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 self. In fact, they all behaved very handsomely, so 
 that I really felt sorry at the thought of leaving my 
 boarding-house. 
 
 I suppose you think, that, because I lived at a plain 
 widow-woman's plain table, I was of course more or 
 less infirm in point of worldly fortune. You may not 
 be sorry to learn, that, though not what great mer 
 chants call very rich, I was comfortable, comforta^ 
 ble, so that most of those moderate luxuries I de 
 scribed in my verses on Contentment most of them % 
 I say were within our reach, if we chose to have 
 them. But I found out that the schoolmistress had 
 a vein of charity about her, which had hitherto been 
 worked on a small silver and copper basis, which made 
 her think less, perhaps, of luxuries than even I did, 
 modestly as I have expressed my wishes. 
 
 It is a rather pleasant thing to tell a poor young 
 woman, whom one has contrived to win without show 
 ing his rent-roll, that she has found what the world 
 values so highly, in following the lead of her affec 
 tions. That was an enjoyment I was now ready for. 
 
 I began abruptly : Do you know that you are a 
 rich young person ? 
 
 I know that I am very rich, she said. Heaven 
 has given me more than I ever asked ; for I had not 
 thought love was ever meant for me. 
 
 It was a woman's confession, and her voice fell to 
 a whisper as it threaded the last words. 
 
 I don't mean that, I said, you blessed little 
 saint and seraph ! if there 's an angel missing in the 
 New Jerusalem, inquire for her at this boarding-house ! 
 
 I don't mean that ! I mean that I that is, you 
 
 am are confound it ! I mean that you '11 be 
 what most people call a lady of fortune. And 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 311 
 
 looked full in her eyes for the effect of the announce, 
 ment. 
 
 There was n't any. She said she was thankful that 
 I had what would save me from drudgery, and that 
 some other time I should tell her about it. I never 
 made a greater failure in an attempt to produce a 
 sensation. 
 
 So the last day of summer came. It was our choice 
 to go to the church, but we had a kind of reception at 
 the boarding-house. The presents were all arranged, 
 and among them none gave more pleasure than the 
 modest tributes of our fellow-boarders, for there was 
 not one, I believe, who did not send something. The 
 landlady would insist on making an elegant bride 
 cake, with her own hands ; to which Master Benjamin 
 Franklin wished to add certain embellishments out of 
 his private funds, namely, a Cupid in a mouse-trap, 
 done in white sugar, and two miniature flags with the 
 stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I as 
 sure you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly bound 
 copy of Tupper's Poems. On a blank leaf was the fol 
 lowing, written in a very delicate and careful hand : 
 
 Presented to ... by ... 
 
 On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony. 
 May sunshine ever beam o'er her! 
 
 Even the poor relative thought she must do some 
 thing, and sent a copy of " The Whole Duty of 
 Man," bound in very attractive variegated sheepskin, 
 the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity-student 
 came the loveliest English edition of " Keble's Chris^ 
 tian Year." I opened it, when it came, to the Fourth 
 Sunday in Lent, and read that angelic poem, sweeter 
 than anything I can remember since Xavier's "My 
 God, I love Thee." I am not a Churchman, 1 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 don't believe in planting oaks in flower-pots, but 
 such a poem as " The Kosebud " makes one's heart a 
 proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about 
 it as much as you like, one's breeding shows itself 
 nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be 
 a gentleman in his hymns and prayers ; the fondness 
 for " scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly 
 with that 
 
 " God only and good angels look 
 Behind the blissful scene," 
 
 and that other, 
 
 " He could not trust his melting soul 
 But in his Maker's sight," 
 
 that I hope some of them will see this, and read the 
 poem, and profit by it. 
 
 My laughing and winking young friend undertook 
 to procure and arrange the flowers for the table, and 
 did it with immense zeal. I never saw him look hap- 
 pier than when he came in, his hat saucily on one side, 
 and a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of tea- 
 roses, which he said were for " Madam." 
 
 One of the last things that came was an old square 
 box, smelling of camphor, tied and sealed. It bore, 
 in faded ink, the marks, " Calcutta, 1805." On open 
 ing it, we found a white Cashmere shawl with a very 
 brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, say 
 ing that he had kept this some years thinking he 
 might want it, and many more, not knowing what to 
 do with it, that he had never seen it unfolded since 
 he was a young supercargo, and now, if she would 
 spread it on her shoulders, it would make him feel 
 young to look at it. 
 
 Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of all 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 313 
 
 work! What must she do but buy a small copper 
 breast-pin and put it under " Schoolma'am's " plate 
 that morning, at breakfast ? And Schoolma'am would 
 wear it, though I made her cover it, as well as I 
 could, with a tea-rose. 
 
 It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could 
 not leave them in utter silence. 
 
 Good-by, I said, my dear friends, one and all 
 of you ! I have been long with you, and I find it hard 
 parting. I have to thank you for a thousand courte 
 sies, and above all for the patience and indulgence 
 with which you have listened to me when I have tried 
 to instruct or amuse you. My friend the Professor 
 (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is unavoidably 
 absent on this interesting occasion) has given me rea 
 son to suppose that he would occupy my empty chair 
 about the first of January next. If he comes among 
 you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. May 
 the Lord bless you all ! And we shook hands all 
 round the table. 
 
 Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and 
 the cloth were gone. I looked up and down the length 
 of the bare boards over which I had so often uttered 
 my sentiments and experiences and Yes, I am a 
 man, like another. 
 
 All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old 
 friends of mine, whom you know, and others a little 
 more up in the world, perhaps, to whom I have not 
 introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the 
 altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used 
 to sit opposite, and who would insist on giving her 
 away. 
 
 And now we two are walking the long path in peace 
 together. The "schoolmistress" finds her skill in 
 
314 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE. 
 
 teaching called for again, without going abroad to 
 seek little scholars. Those visions of mine have all 
 come true. 
 
 I hope you all love me none the less for anything I 
 have told you. Farewell ! 
 
INDEJL 
 
 ABUSE, all good attempts get, 81. 
 
 Estivation, 263. 
 
 Affinities and antipathies. 220. 
 
 Agassiz, 2. 
 
 Age, softening effects of, 81 ; begins 
 
 when fire goes down, 150 ; Roman 
 
 age'of enlistment, 151 ; its changes a 
 
 string of insults, 153. 
 A good time going, 223. 
 Air-pump, animal under, 304. 
 Album Verses, 15. 
 Alps, effect of looking at, 267. 
 American, the Englishman reinforced 
 
 (a noted person thinks), 238. 
 Analogies, power of seeing, 83. 
 Anatomist's Hymn, The, 175. 
 Anglo-Saxons die out in America (Dr. 
 
 Knox thinks), 238. 
 Anniversaries dreaded by the Poet, and 
 
 why, 222. 
 Argonauta, 97. 
 Arguments, what are those which spoil 
 
 conversation, 10. 
 Aristocracy, the forming American, 259 ; 
 
 pluck the back-bone of, 261. 
 Artists apt to act mechanically on their 
 
 brains, 187. 
 Assessors, Heaven's, effect of meeting 
 
 one of them, 92. 
 Asylum, the, 247. 
 
 Audience, average intellect of, 140 ; as 
 pect of, 140 ; a compound vertebrate, 
 
 Audiences very nearly alike, 141 ; good 
 feeling and intelligence of, 142. 
 
 Author does not hate anybody, 219. 
 
 Authors, jockeying of, 37 ; purr if skil 
 fully handled, 49; hate those who 
 call them droll, 49; ashamed of being 
 l.inny, 50; always praise after fifty, 
 81. 
 
 Automatic principles appear more prev 
 alent the more we study, 85 ; mental 
 actions, 134. 
 
 Averages, their awful uniformity, 140. 
 
 BABIES, old, 154. 
 Bacon. Lord, 271. 
 Balzac, 149, 271. 
 
 Beauties, vulgar, their virtuous indigna 
 tion OP being looked at, 194, 
 
 Beliefs like ancient drlnking-glasses, 15. 
 
 Bell-glass, young woman under, 305. 
 
 Benicia Boy, not challenged by the Pro 
 fessor, and why, 173. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin, the landlady's son, 
 12, 53, 57, 87, 116, 135, 136, 246, 311. 
 
 Berkshire, 235, 245, 265. 
 
 Berne, leap from the platform at, 281. 
 
 Blake, Mr., his Jesse Rural, 90. 
 
 Blondes, two kinds of, 184. 
 
 " Blooded " horses, 37. 
 
 Boat, the Professor's own. description 
 of, 168. 
 
 Boating, the Professor describes his, 
 163. 
 
 Boats, the Professor's fleet of, 164. 
 
 Books, hating, 62 ; society a strong so 
 lution of, 62; the mind sometimes 
 feels above them, 132; a man's and 
 a woman's reading, 275. 
 
 Bores, all men are, except when wo 
 want them, 6. 
 
 Boston, seven wise men of, their say. 
 ings, 124. 
 
 Bowie-knife, the Romam gladius modi* 
 fied,19. 
 
 Brain, upper and lower stories of, 179; 
 attempts to reach mechanically, 187. 
 
 Brains, seventy-year clocks, 185; con 
 taining ovarian eggs, how to know 
 them, 196. 
 
 Bridget becomes a caryatid, 100 ; pre 
 sents a breast-pin, 313. 
 
 Browne, Sir Thomas, admirable senti 
 ment of, 93. 
 
 Browning, Elizabeth, 306. 
 
 Bruce's Addross, alteration of, 47. 
 
 Bulbous-headed people, 7. 
 
 Bunker-hill monument, rocking of, 286. 
 
 Byron, his line about striking the elec 
 tric chain, 78. 
 
 CACHE, children make instinctively, 204. 
 
 Calamities, grow old rapidly in propor 
 tion to their magnitude, 31 ; the recol 
 lection of returns after the first sleep 
 asif new, 32. 
 
 Calculating machine, 8; power, least 
 human of qualities, 9. 
 
 Call him not old, 171. 
 
 Campbell, misquotation of, 71. 
 
316 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Canary-bird, swimming movements of, 
 
 85. 
 
 Cant terms, use of, 256. 
 Carlyle, his article on Boswell, 280. 
 Carpenter's bench, Author works at, 
 
 180. 
 
 Chambers Street, 272. 
 Chamouni, 267. 
 
 Characteristics, Carlyle's article, 55. 
 Charles Street, 273. 
 Chaucer compared to an Easter-Beurre", 
 
 83. 
 Chess-playing, conversation compared 
 
 to, 64. 
 Children, superstitious little wretches 
 
 and spiritual cowards, 204. 
 Chloroform, Professor, the, under, 295. 
 Chryso-aristocracy, our, the weak point 
 
 in, 260. 
 Cicero de Senectute, Professor reads, 
 
 150 ; his treatise de Seneclute, 156. 
 Cincinnati, how not to pronounce. 288. 
 Circles intellectual, 266. 
 Cities, some of the smaller ones charm 
 ing, 127 ; leaking of nature into, 273. 
 Clergy rarely hear sermons, 29. 
 Clergymen, their patients not always 
 
 truthful, 86. 
 
 Clock of the Andover Seminary, 287. 
 Close* full of sweet smells, 78. 
 Clubs, advantages of, 64. 
 Coat, constructed oil a priori grounds, 
 
 67. 
 
 Cobb, Sylvanus, Jr., 16. 
 Coffee, 246, 248. 
 Cold-blooded creatures, 130. 
 Coleridge, his remark on literary men's 
 
 needing a profession, 179. 
 Coliseum, visit to, 279. 
 Comet, the late, 24. 
 Commencement day, like the start for 
 
 the Derby, 95. ' 
 
 Common sense, as we understand it, 14. 
 Communications received by the Au 
 thor, 288. 
 
 Company, the sad, 247. 
 Conceit bred by little localized powers 
 
 and narrow streaks of knowledge, 9 ; 
 
 natural to the mind as a centre to a 
 
 circle, 10 ; uses of, 10 ; makes people 
 
 cheerful, 10. 
 Constitution, American female, 43; in 
 
 choice of summer residence, 265. 
 Contentment, 268. 
 Controversy, hydrostatic paradox of, 
 
 Conundrums indulged in by the com 
 pany, 251 ; rebuked by the Author, 
 252. 
 
 Conversation, very serious matter, 5; 
 with some persons weakening, 5 ; 
 great faults of, 10 ; spoiled by certain 
 kinds of argument, 10 ; a code of final 
 ities necessary to, 11 ; compared to 
 Italian game of mora, 15 ; shapes our 
 thoughts, 27; Slair-ing of reported, 
 40 ; one of the nut arts, 52 ; compared 
 
 to chess-playing, 64 ; depends on how 
 much is taken for granted, 64; of 
 Lecturers, 65. 
 Cookeson, William, of All-Souls College, 
 
 Copley, his portrait of the merchant- 
 uncle, 21 ; of the great-grandmother. 
 
 " Correspondent, our Foreign," 117. 
 
 Counterparts of people in many differ 
 ent cities, 138. 
 
 Cowper, 184 ; his lines on his mother's 
 portrait, 281 ; his lines on the " Royal 
 George," 281. 
 
 Creed, the Author's, 89. 
 
 Crinoline, Otaheitan, 19. 
 
 Crow and king-bird, 29. 
 
 Curls, fiat circular, on temples, 18. 
 
 DANDIES, uses of, 257 ; illustrious one<% 
 258, 259 ; men are born, 259. 
 
 Davidson, Lucretia and Margaret, 184. 
 
 Deacon's Masterpiece, The, 252. 
 
 Death as a form of rhetoric, 132 ; intro 
 duction to, 209. 
 
 Deerfield. elm in, 288. 
 
 Devizes, woman struck dead at, 281. 
 
 Dighton Rock, inscription on, 246. 
 
 Dimensions, three of solids, handling 
 ideas as if they had, 85. 
 
 Divinity, doctors of, many people quali 
 fied to be, 29. 
 
 Divinity Student, the, 1, 42, 83, 84, 87. 
 88, 101, 110, 124, 125, 132, 135, 182, 
 187, 193, 197, 203, 220, 229, 230, 251, 
 258, 262, 311. 
 
 Doctor, old, his catalogue of books for 
 light reading, 157. 
 
 Drinking-glasses, ancient, beliefs like, 
 
 Droll, authors dislike to be called, 49. 
 Drunkenness often a punishment, 190. 
 Dull persons great comforts at times, 6f 
 happiness of finding we are, 61. 
 
 EARS, voluntary movement of, 10. 
 
 Earth, not ripe yet, 24. 
 
 Earthquake, to launch the Leviathan, 
 72. 
 
 Eblis, hall of, 247. 
 
 Editors, appeals to their benevolence, 
 293 ; must get callous, 294. 
 
 Education, professional, most of our 
 people have had, 28. 
 
 Eggs, ovarian, intellectual, 195. 
 
 Elm, American, 232 ; the great John- 
 ston, 232; Hatfield, 235; Sheffield, 
 235 ; West Springfield, 235 Pittsfield, 
 236 ; Newburyport, 236 , Cohasset, 
 236 ; English and American, compari 
 son of, 237. 
 
 Elms, Springfield, 234; first-class, 235 ; 
 second-class, 2bJ ; Mr. Paddock's row 
 of, 239 ; in Andover, 287 ; in Norwich 
 287 ; in Deerfield, 288. 
 
 Emerson, 2. 
 
 Emotions strike tu> obliquely, 279. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 317 
 
 Epithets follow isothermal lines, 114. 
 Erasmus, colloquies of, 87 ; uaufragium 
 
 or shipwreck of, 88. 
 Erectile heads, men of genius with, 7. 
 Essays, diluted, 66. 
 Essex Street, 272. 
 
 Esther, Queen, and Ahasuerus, 309. 
 Eternity, remembering one's self in, 
 
 201. 
 Everlasting, the herb, its suggestions, 
 
 76. 
 
 Exercise, scientifically examined, 166. 
 Ex pede Herculem, 109. 
 Experience, a solemn fowl; her eggs, 
 
 Experts in crime and suffering, 33. 
 
 FACES, negative, 141. 
 
 Facts, horror of generous minds for 
 what are commonly called, 5 ; the 
 brute beasts of the intelligence, 6; 
 men of, 142. 
 
 Family, man of, 20. 
 
 Fancies, youthful, 267. 
 
 Farewell, tha Author's, 313. 
 
 Fault found with everything worth say 
 ing, 111. 
 
 Peeling that we have been in the same 
 condition before, 73', modes of explain 
 ing it, 74, 75. 
 
 Feelings, every person's, have a front 
 door and a side-door, 128. 
 
 Fields, James T., 21. 
 
 Fifty cents, a figure of rhetoric, 262. 
 
 Flash phraseology, 256. 
 
 Flavor, nothing knows its own, 55. 
 
 Fleet of our companions, 94. 
 
 Flowers, why poets talk so much of, 22. 
 
 Franklin-place, f Font-yards in, 272. 
 
 French exercise, Benjamin Franklin's, 
 58, 136. 
 
 Friends shown up by story-tellers, 61. 
 
 Friendship does not authorize one to say 
 disagreeable things, 51. 
 
 Front-door and side-door to our feelings, 
 128. 
 
 Fruit, green, intellectual, these United 
 States a great market for, 261 ; 
 mourning, 307. 
 
 Fuel, carbon and bread and cheese are 
 equally, 155. 
 
 Funny, authors ashamed of being, 50. 
 
 "Fust-rate " and other vulgarism, 28. 
 
 GEESE for swans, 233. 
 
 Genius, a weak flavor of, 3 ; the advent 
 
 of, a surprise, 54. 
 Gift-enterprises, Nature's, 55. 
 Gilbert, the French poet, 184. 
 Gil Bias, the archbishop served him 
 
 right, 51 ; motto from, 199. 
 Gilman, Arthur, 21. 
 Gilpin, Daddy, 231. 
 Gingko-tree, 277. 
 Girls' story in " Book of Martyrs," 305 
 
 two young, their fall from gallery, 
 
 I Gizzard and liver never confounded 
 
 309. 
 
 Good-by, the Author's, 313. 
 Grammar, higher law in, 40. 
 Grammar of Assent, Newman's, 14. 
 Gravestones, transplanting of, 239. 
 Green fruit, 'intellectual, 261. 
 Ground-bait, literary, 38. 
 
 HABIT, what its essence is, 155. 
 
 Hand, the great wooden, 205. 
 
 ' Haow ? " whether final, 110. 
 
 Harvard University, 20. 
 
 Hat, the old gentleman opposite's white, 
 
 177 ; the author's youthful Leghorn, 
 
 177. 
 
 Hats, aphorisms concerning, 177. 
 Hawthorne, 2. 
 Hearts, inscriptions on, 246. 
 Heresy, burning for, experts in, would 
 
 be found hi any large city, 33. 
 Historian, the quotation from, on pun- 
 
 ning, 13. 
 
 Honey, emptying the jug of, 17. 
 Hoosac Tunnel, completion of the, 25. 
 Horse-chestnut at Rockport, 289. 
 Horses, what they feed < -\ 166. 
 Hospitality depends on latitude, 302. 
 Hot day, Bounds of, 302. 
 Hotel de VUnivers ti des JSlats Unis. 
 
 126. 
 Housatonic, the Professor's dwelling by, 
 
 244. 
 Houses, dying out of, 241 ; killed by 
 
 commercial smashes, 241 ; shape 
 
 themselves upon our natures, 242. 
 House, the bod/ we "ve in, 241 ; Irish 
 man's at Cambridgeport, 19. 
 Houynhnm Gazette, 227. 
 Huckleberries, hail-storm of, 230. 
 Hull, how Pope's line is read there, 
 
 128. 
 
 Hu'.na, story of, 8. 
 Humanities, cumulative, 23. 
 Hyacinth, blue, 228, 229. 
 Hysterics, 90. 
 
 ICE in wine-glass, tinkling like cow* 
 
 bells, 78. 
 Ideas, age of, in our memories, 31 ; 
 
 handling them as if they bad the 
 
 three dimensions of solids, 85. 
 Imponderables move the world, 136. 
 Impromptus, 17. 
 
 Inherited traits show very early, 195. 
 Insanity, the logic of an accurate mind 
 
 overtasked, 42 ; becomes a duty under 
 
 certain circumstances, 42. 
 Instincts, crushing out of, 304. 
 Intemperance, the Author discourses of, 
 
 Intermittent, poetical, 248. 
 
 Inventive Power, economically used, 
 
 238. 
 
 Iris, cut the yellow hair, 50. 
 Irishman's house at Cambridgeport, 19, 
 Island, the, 39. 
 
318 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 JJLHJEBS and undertakers magnetize peo 
 ple, 33. 
 
 Jaundice, as a token of affection, 133. 
 
 John and Thomas, their dialogue of six 
 persons, 53. 
 
 John, the young fellow called, 54, 65, 
 73?79, 101, 113, 174, 187, 192, 194, 207, 
 218, 230, 251, 257, 266, 307, 312. 
 
 Johnson, Dr., his remark on attacks, 
 114 ; lines to Thrale, 151. 
 
 Judgment, standard of, how to estab 
 lish, 14. 
 
 KEATS, 184. 
 
 Keble, his poem, 311. 
 
 "Kerridge," and other characteristic 
 
 expressions, 109. 
 Kirke White, 185. 
 Knowledge, little streaka of specialized, 
 
 breed conceit, 9. 
 Knuckles, marks of, on broken glass, 
 
 108. 
 
 LADY, the real, not sensitive if looked 
 at, 194. 
 
 Lady-Boarder, the, with autograph- 
 book, 6. 
 
 Landlady, 52, 72, 107, 304, 311. 
 
 Landlady's daughter, 16, 18, 57, 138, 221, 
 230, 307, 311. 
 
 Landon, Letitia, 306. 
 
 Latter-day Warnings, 24. 
 
 Laughter and tears, wind and water- 
 power, 90. 
 
 Lecturers, grooves in their minds, 65; 
 talking in streaks out of their lec 
 tures, 65 ; get homesick, 142 ; attacks 
 upon, 303. 
 
 Lectures, feelings connected with their 
 delivery, 138; popular, what they 
 ghould have, 139 ; old, 139 ; what they 
 ought to be, 140. 
 
 Leibnitz, remark of, 1. 
 
 Les SocieUs Polyphysiophilosophiques, 
 136. 
 
 Letter to an ambitious young man, 289. 
 
 Letters with various requests, 69. 
 
 Leviathan, launch of, 72. 
 
 Life, experience of, 29; compared to 
 transcript of it, 59; compared to 
 books, 134; divisible into fifteen pe 
 riods, 153 ; early, revelations concern 
 ing, 202 ; its experiences, 275. 
 
 Lilac leaf-buds, 228, 229. 
 
 Lion, the leaden one at Alnwick, 281. 
 
 Listou thought himself a tragic actor, 91. 
 
 Literary pickpockets, 51. 
 
 Living Temple, The, 175. 
 
 Lochiel rocked in cradle when old, 82. 
 
 Log, using old schoolmates as, to mark 
 our rate of sailing, 93. 
 
 Logical minds, what they do, 14. 
 
 Longfellow, 2. 
 
 Long path, the, 304; walking together, 
 313. 
 
 Lowell, James Russell, 23. 
 
 Love-capacity, 270. 
 
 Love, Introduction to, 210; its relative 
 solubility in the speech Of men and 
 women, 271. 
 
 Ludicrous, a divine idea, 92. 
 
 Luniversary, return of, 49. 
 
 Lyric conception hits like a bullet, 98. 
 
 MACAULAY-FLOWERS of Literature, 13. 
 
 "Magazine, Northern," got up by the 
 "Come-Outers,"120. 
 
 Maine, willows in, 288. 
 
 Man of family, 20. 
 
 Map, photograph of, on the wall, 243. 
 
 Mare Rubrum, 122. 
 
 Marigold, its suggestions, 76. 
 
 Mather, Cotton, 67, 299. 
 
 Meerschaums and poems must be kept 
 and used, 101, 103. 
 
 Men, self-made, 20; all, love all worn- 
 en, 221. 
 
 Mesalliance, dreadful consequences of, 
 215. 
 
 Middle-aged female, takes offence, 30. 
 
 Millionism, green stage of, 308. 
 
 Milton compared to a Saint-Germain 
 pear, etc., 83. 
 
 Mind, automatic actions of, 134. 
 
 Minds, classification of, 1 ; jerky ones 
 fatiguing, 6 ; logical, what they do, 
 14 ; calm and clear, best basis for love 
 and friendship, 131 ; saturation-point 
 of, 133. 
 
 Minister, my old, his remarks on want 
 of attention, 30. 
 
 Misery, a great one puts a new stamp 
 on us, 32. 
 
 Misfortune, professional dealers in, 33. 
 
 Misprints, 49. 
 
 Molasses, Melasses, or Molossa's, 67. 
 
 Mora, Italian game of conversation com 
 pared to, 15. 
 
 Moralist, the great, quotation from, 00 
 punning, 12. 
 
 Motley, John Lothrop, 2, 26. 
 
 Mountains and sea, 264. 
 
 Mourning fruit, 307. 
 
 Mug, the bitten, 200. 
 
 Muliebrity and femineity in voice, 216. 
 
 Musa, 249. 
 
 Muscular powers, when they decline 
 156. 
 
 Muse, the, 249. 
 
 Musicians, odd movements of, 85. 
 
 Music, its effects different from thought, 
 132. 
 
 Mutual Admiratio, Society of, 2. 
 
 My Lady's Cheek (verse), 153. 
 
 Myrtle Street, discovered by the Pro- 
 fessor, 165 ; description of, 165 ; gar 
 den in, 272. 
 
 NAHANT, 265. 
 
 Nature, Amen of, 229 ; leaking of, into 
 
 cities, 273. 
 
 Nautilus, The Chambered, 97. 
 Nerve-playing, masters of, 129. 
 Nerve-tapping, 6. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 319 
 
 Nerve, olfactory, connection of, with 
 brain, 77. 
 
 Newman's Grammar of Assent, 147. 
 
 tfewton, his speech about the child and 
 the pebbles, 84. 
 
 Naushou Island, 39. 
 
 Norwich, elms in, 287 ; how not to pro 
 nounce, 288. 
 
 Novel, one, everybody has stuff for, 59 ; 
 why I do not write a, 59. 
 
 OAK, its one mark of mipremacy, 232; 
 at Beverly Farms, 288. 
 
 Ocean, the, two men walking by, 83. 
 
 Old Age, starting point of, 151 ; allegory 
 of, 151 ; approach of, 152; how nature 
 cheats us into, 154 ; habits the great 
 mark of, 155 ; in the Professor's con- 
 temporaries, 160; remedies for, 1G3; 
 excellent remedy for, 173. 
 
 Old Gentleman opposite, 3, 53, 61, 86, 
 99, 174, 177, 178, 197, 208, 210, 312, 313. 
 
 Old Man, a person startled when he 
 first hears himself called so, 154. 
 
 Old Men, always poets if they ever have 
 been, 100. 
 
 Omens, of childhood, 205, 
 
 One-hoss-sliay, The Wonderful, 252. 
 
 "Our Sumatra Correspondence," 117. 
 
 PAIL, the white pine, of water, 200. 
 Parallelism, without identity, in ori 
 ental and occidental nature, 237. 
 Parentheses, dismount the reader, 179. 
 Parson Turell's Legacy, 297. 
 Path, the long, 277. 
 Pears, men are like, in coming to ma- 
 
 Pedal locomotives, 168. 
 
 Peirce, 2. 
 
 Phosphorus, Its suggestions. 75. 
 
 Photographs of the Past, 242. 
 
 Phrases, complimentary, applied to au 
 thors, what determines them, 115. 
 
 Physalia, 97. 
 
 Pie, the Voung fellow treats, disrespect 
 fully, 79; the Author takes too large 
 a piece of, 80. 
 
 Piecrust, poems, etc., written under in- 
 fluenceof.80. 
 
 Pillar, the Hangman's, 288 et teq. 
 
 Pinkney, William, 7. 
 
 Pirates, Danish, their skins on ihurch 
 doors, 107. 
 
 Plagiarism, Author's virtuous disgust 
 for, 146. 
 
 Pocket-book fever, 207. 
 
 Poem with the slight alterations, 48. 
 
 Poems, alterations of, 47 ; have a body 
 and a soul, 99; green state of, 101 
 porous like meerschaums. 103 ; post 
 prandial, the Professor's idea of, 222. 
 
 Poet, my friend the, 98, 128, 174, 1<8 
 et seq., 183, 222, 223, 225. 
 
 Poets love verses while warm from their 
 mind*, 101 ; two kinds of, 183; apt to 
 act mechanically on their brains, 187. 
 
 Poets and artists, why like to fee jrone 
 to abuse of stimulants, 199. 
 
 Poetaster who has tasted type, 293. 
 
 Poetical impulse external, 99. 
 
 Poetry uses white light for its main ob 
 ject, 50. 
 
 Polish lance, 19. 
 
 Poor relation in black bombazine, 8G, 
 101, 208, 262, 311. 
 
 Poplar, murder of one, 232. 
 
 Port-chuck, his vivacious sally, 177. 
 
 Portsmouth, how not to pronounce, 288. 
 
 Powers, little localized, breed conceit 
 9. 
 
 Preacher, dull, might lapse Into quasi 
 heathenism, 29. 
 
 * Prelude," the Professor's, 296. 
 
 Prentiss, Dame, 200. 
 
 Pride in a woman, 271. 
 
 Prince Rupert's drops of literature, 88 
 
 Principle against obvious facts, 50. 
 
 Private Journal, extract from my, 246. 
 
 Private theatricals, 43. 
 
 Probabilities provided with buffers^ 56. 
 
 Profession, literary men should have a, 
 179. 
 
 Professor, my friend the, 26, 72, 81, 90, 
 108, 114, 120, 148 et seq.. 174, 178 et 
 seq., 194, 195, 196, 225, 241 et teq., 
 252, Wbetseq. 
 
 Prologue, 45. 
 
 Public Garden, 273. 
 
 Pugilists, when " stale," 156. 
 
 Punning, quotations respecting, 12. 
 
 Puns, law respecting, 11 ; what they 
 consist to, 50; surreptitiously circu 
 lated among the company, 251. 
 
 Pupil of the eye, simile concerning, tha 
 Author disgorges, 144. 
 
 QUANTITY, false, Sidney Smith's remark 
 on, 110. 
 
 RACK of life, the, report of running in, 
 Races, our sympathies go naturally with 
 
 not republican, 84 ; records of, 
 
 Raphael and Michael Angelo, 204. 
 Raspail's proof-sheets, 25. 
 Rat des Salons a lecture, 58. 
 Reading for the sake of talking, 134; a 
 
 man's and a woman's, 275. 
 Recollections, trivial, essential to our 
 
 identity, 209. 
 Relatives, opinions of, as to a mau'l 
 
 powers, 54. 
 
 Repeating one's self, 7. 
 Reputation, living on contingent, 61. 
 Reputations, conventional, 38. 
 "Retiring " at night, etiquette of, 208. 
 Rhode Island, near what place, 233. 
 Rhymes, old, we get tired of, 18 ; bad ta 
 
 chew upon, 292. 
 Ridiculous, love of, dangerous to liter 
 
 ary men, 90. 
 
320 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Boby, Jowph, 245. 
 
 Roses, damask, 227, 229. 
 
 Kowing, nearest approach to flying, 168 ; 
 
 its excellences, 169 ; its joys, 170. 
 ** Royal George," the, Cowper's poem 
 
 on, 281. 
 Rum, the term applied by low people to 
 
 noble fluids, 190. 
 
 SAAS-PLATES, 308. 
 
 Saddle-leather compared to sole-leather, 
 
 166. 
 "Sahtisfahction," a tepid expression, 
 
 109. 
 
 Saint Genevieve. visit to church of, 280. 
 " Saints and their bodies," an admirable 
 
 Essay, 163. 
 
 Santoriui's laughing-muscle, 194. 
 Saturday Club, the, of Boston, 2. 
 
 Schoolmistress, the, 32, 43, 61, 87, 107, 
 117, 124, 125, 135, 183, 202 el seq. t 208, 
 210 et seq., 227, 239, 246 et sea.. 266, 
 309 et seq., 313. 
 
 "Science," the Professor's inward smile 
 at her airs, 179. 
 
 Scientific certainty has no spring in it, 
 56. 
 
 Scientific knowledge partakes of inso 
 lence, 55. 
 
 Scraping the floor, effect of, 50. 
 
 Sea and Mountains, 264. 
 
 Seed capsule (of poems), 200. 
 
 Self-determining power, limitation of, 
 89. 
 
 Self-esteem, with good ground, is impos 
 ing, 10. 
 
 Self-made men, 19. 
 
 Sermon, proposed, of the Author, 86. 
 
 Sermons, feeble, hard to listen to, but 
 may act inductively, 29. 
 
 Sentiments, all splashed and streaked 
 with, 229. 
 
 Seven Wise Men of Boston, their say 
 ings, 124. 
 
 Shakespeare, old copy, with flakes of pie 
 crust between its leaves, 78. 
 
 Shawl, the Indian blanket, 19. 
 
 Shortening weapons and lengthening 
 boundaries, 19. 
 
 Ship, the, and martin-house, 207. 
 
 Ships, afraid of, 204. 
 
 Shop-blinds, iron, produce n shiver, 267. 
 
 Sierra Leone, native of enjoying him 
 self, 302. 
 
 Sight, pretended failure of, in old per 
 sons, 173. 
 
 Sigourney, Mrs., 8. 
 
 Similitude and analogies, ocean of, 84. 
 
 Bin, its tools and their handle, 124 ; in 
 troduction to, 209. 
 
 Smell, as connected with the memory, 
 etc., 75. 
 
 Smile, the terrible, 192. 
 
 Smith, Sidney, surgical operation pro- 
 hy,_ 48 ; abused by London 
 jview, 91. 
 
 Sneaking fellows to bo regarded tea 
 
 derly, 219. 
 Societes, les, Polyphysiophilosophiques^ 
 
 1*36. 
 
 Societies of mutual admiration, 2. 
 Soul, its concentric envelopes, 241. 
 Sounds, suggestive ones, 211, 212. 
 Sparring, the Professor sees a little, and 
 
 describes it, 171. 
 Spoken language, plastic, 27. 
 Sporting men, virtues of, 37. 
 Spring has come, 197. 
 Squirming when old falsehoods art 
 
 turned over, 113. 
 Stage-Ruffian, the, 53. 
 "Stars, the, and the earth," a littto 
 
 book, referred to, 265. 
 State House, Boston, the hub of the so 
 lar system, 125. 
 
 " Statoo of deceased infant," 109. 
 Stillicidium, sentimental, 80. 
 Stone, flat, turning over of, 111. 
 Stranger, who came with young fellow 
 
 called John, 125, 307. 
 " Strap I " my man John's story, 106. 
 Strasburg Cathedral, rocking of its 
 
 spire, 285. 
 Striking in of thoughts and feeling* 
 
 Stuart, his two portraits, 22. 
 
 Sullivan, John, 21. 
 
 Summer residence, choice of, 265. 
 
 Sumner, 2. 
 
 Sun and Shadow, 41. 
 
 Sunday mornings, how the Authoi 
 
 shows his respect for, 174. 
 Swans, taking his ducks for, 273. 
 Swift, property restored to, 146. 
 Swords, Roman and American, 19. 
 Sylva Novanglica, 236. 
 Syntax, Dr., 231. 
 
 TALENT, a little, makes people jealous. 3. 
 
 Talkers, real, 143. 
 
 Talking like playing at a mark with aw 
 engine, 28 ; one of the fine arts, 52. 
 
 Teapot, literary, 62. 
 
 The last Blossom, 161. 
 
 The old Man Dreams, 68. 
 
 The two Armies, 225. 
 
 The Voiceless, 306. 
 
 Theological students, wo all are, 29. 
 
 Thought revolves hi cycles, 73; if ut 
 tered, is a kind of excretion, 196. 
 
 Thoughts may be original, though often 
 before uttered, 7 saving, 27 ; shaped 
 in conversation, 27 ; tell worst to min 
 ister and best to young people, 30; 
 my best seem always old, 31 ; real, 
 knock out somebody's wind, 113. 
 
 Thought-Sprinklers, 27. 
 
 Time and space, 266. 
 
 Tobacco-stain may strike into charactea 
 
 Tobacco-stopper, lovely one, 102. 
 Towns, small, not more modest khan 
 cities, 126. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 321 
 
 Toy, author carves a wonderful, at Mar 
 seilles, 180. 
 
 Toys moved by sand, caution from one, 
 80. 
 
 Travel, maxims relating to, 278 ; recol 
 lections of, 279. 
 
 Tree, growth of, as shown by rings of 
 wood, 286 ; slice of a hemlock, 286 ; 
 its growth compared to human lives, 
 286 
 
 Trees, great, 230 ; mother-idea in each 
 kind of, 232; afraid of measuring- 
 tape, 233 ; Mr. Emerson's report on, 
 234; of America, our friend's inter 
 esting work on, 236. 
 
 Tree-wives, 230. 
 
 Triads, writing in, 85. 
 
 Trois Freres, dinners at the, 78. 
 
 Trotting, democratic and favorable to 
 many virtues, 37 ; matches not races, 
 
 Truth, primary relations with, 14. 
 Truths and lies compared to cubes and 
 
 spheres, 116. 
 Tupper, 16, 311. 
 Tupperian wisdom, 271. 
 Tutor, my late Latin, his verses, 262. 
 Tyburn, 33. 
 
 UNLOVED, the, 305. 
 
 VENEERING in conversation, 143. 
 Verse, proper medium for revealing our 
 
 secrets, GO. 
 
 Verses, Album, 15 ; abstinence from writ 
 ing, the mark of a poet. 201. 
 Verse-writers, their peculiarities, 292. 
 Violins, soaked in music, 103 ; take a 
 
 century to dry, 104. 
 Virtues, negative, 262. 
 Visitors, getting rid of, when their visit 
 
 is over, 17. 
 Voice, the Teutonic maiden's, 215 ; the 
 
 German woman's, 216 ; the little child's 
 
 in the hospital, 217. 
 Voices, certain female. 214 ; fearfully 
 
 sweet ones, 214 ; hard and sharp, 216 ; 
 
 people do not know their own, 217 ; 
 
 sweet, must belong to good spirits, 
 
 217. 
 
 Voleur, brand of, on palley rogues, 106. 
 Volume, man of one, 143. 
 
 WALKING arm against arm, 18 ; laws of, 
 72 ; the Professor sanctions, 165 ; rid 
 ing and rowing compared with, 167. 
 
 Wasp, sloop of war, 206. 
 
 Watch-paper, the old gentleman's, 211. 
 
 Water, the white-pine pail of, 200. 
 
 Wedding, the, 313. 
 
 Wedding-presents, the, 313. 
 
 Wellington, gentle in his old age, 82. 
 
 What we all think, 146. 
 
 Will, compared to a drop of water in a 
 crystal, 86. 
 
 Willows in Maine, 288. 
 
 Wine of ancients, 66. 
 
 Wit takes imperfect views of things, 50. 
 
 Woman, an excllent instrument for a 
 nerve-player, 129 ; to love a, must see 
 her through a pin-hole, 221 ; must be 
 true as death, 270; love-capacity in, 
 270 ; marks of low and bad blood in, 
 271 ; pride in, 271 ; why she should 
 not say too much, 271. 
 
 Women, young, advice to, 49 ; first to 
 detect a poet, 183 ; inspire poets, 183 ; 
 their praise the poet's reward, 183 ; 
 all men love all, 220; all, love all 
 men, 221 ; pictures of, 221 ; who have 
 weighed all that life can offer, 276. 
 
 Woodbridge, Benjamin, his grave, 239, 
 240. 
 
 World, old and new, comparison of their 
 types of organization, 236. 
 
 Writing with feet in hot water, 7 ; like 
 shooting with a rifle, 28. 
 
 YES ? in conversation, 18. 
 
 Yoricks, 21. 
 
 Young Fellow called John, 54, 65, 73, 
 79, 101, 113, 174, 187, 192, 194, 207, 
 218, 230, 251, 257, 266, 307, 312. 
 
 Young Lady come to be finished off, 10. 
 
 Youth, flakes off like button-wood bark, 
 153; American, not perfect type of 
 physical humanity, 171 ; and age, what 
 Author means by, 199. 
 
 ZIMMERMANN'S Treatise on Solitud*, 6. 
 
STORED AT NBJ.F 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ 
 
 This book is due on the last DATE stamped below. 
 
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