human
Can you write me a poem about ex officio?
assistant
Sure, here's a poem about ex officio:
  But after all, there is not enough theology, good or bad, in
It is only incidentally, however, that the Professor at the
What he said, what he heard, and what he saw.
--Life is a great bundle of little things,--I said.
(NOW, THEN!) The great end of being, after all, is....
--I should think so,--said that young man whom I hear them call
You speak well, Madam,--I said;--yet there is room for a gloss or
--I don't know what you mean by "depolarizing" an idea,--said the
I will tell you,--I said.--When a given symbol which represents a
Our old friend, Dr. Holyoke, whom we gave the dinner to some time
May I look at it?--I said.
club-foot.
Stop! stop!--I said,--let me come to you.
merchant, it was that blew them all to--
Never mind where he blew them to,--I said; for the little man was
This episode broke me up, as the jockeys say, out of my square
conversational trot; but I settled down to it again.
Here, look at medicine. Big wigs, gold-headed canes, Latin
--You don't know what I mean, indignant and not unintelligent
a little something of each other, and you don't think I am such a
--You don't know what plague has fallen on the practitioners of
--Resuming the conversation, I remarked,--I am, ex officio, as a
I was not,--I replied.
This remark was thought by some of us to have a hidden personal
--My friend who used to board here was accustomed sometimes, in a
--What shall I do with this little man?--There is only one thing
to do,--and that is to let him talk when he will. The day of the
"Autocrat's" monologues is over.
--My friend,--said I to the young fellow whom, as I have said,
the boarders call "John,"--My friend,--I said, one morning, after
What! the Sculpin?--said the young fellow.
About the Sculpin?--said the young fellow.
Yes, yes,--I said, thoughtfully,--the strong hate the weak. It's
all right. The arrangement has reference to the race, and not to
festivals, beginning, "Aldiborontiphoscophornio, Where left you
--The gingerbread-rabbit expression was coming on so fast, that I
Drop him?--he answered,--I ha'n't took him up yet.
--Here we are, then, at our boarding--house. First, myself, the
Professor, a little way from the head of the table, on the right,
broadcloth, A.
We must take care not to confound this frequent difficulty of
--Bridget enters and begins clearing the table.
Tell me, O Provincial! speak, Ceruleo-Nasal!
Lives there one De Sauty extant now among you,
Whispering Boanerges, son of silent thunder,
Holding talk with nations?
Is there a De Sauty, ambulant on Tellus,
Bifid-cleft like mortals, dormient in night-cap,
Having sight, smell, hearing, food-receiving feature
Three times daily patent?
Breathes there such a being, O Ceruleo-Nasal?
Or is he a mythus,--ancient word for "humbug,"
--Such as Livy told about the wolf that wet-nursed
Was he born of woman, this alleged De Sauty?
Or a living product of galvanic action,
Like the status bred in Crosses flint-solution?
Speak, thou Cyano-Rhinal!
Many things thou askest, jackknife-bearing stranger,
Much-conjecturing mortal, pork-and-treacle-waster!
Pretermit thy whittling, wheel thine ear-flap toward me,
Thou shalt hear them answered.
When the charge galvanic tingled through the cable,
At the polar focus of the wire electric
Suddenly appeared a white-faced man among us
Called himself "DE SAUTY."
As the small opossum held in pouch maternal
Grasps the nutrient organ whence the term mammalia,
So the unknown stranger held the wire electric,
Sucking in the current.
When the current strengthened, bloomed the pale-faced stranger,
Took no drink nor victual, yet grew fat and rosy,
And from time to time, in sharp articulation,
Said, "All right!  DE SAUTY."
From the lonely station passed the utterance, spreading
Through the pines and hemlocks to the groves of steeples
Till the land was filled with loud reverberations
Of "All right!  DE SAUTY."
When the current slackened, drooped the mystic stranger,
Faded, faded, faded, as the stream grew weaker,
Wasted to a shadow, with a hartshorn odor
Of disintegration.
Drops of deliquescence glistened on his forehead,
Whitened round his feet the dust of efflorescence,
Till one Monday morning, when the flow suspended,
Nothing but a cloud of elements organic,
Born of stream galvanic, with it he had perished!
There is no De Sauty now there is no current!
Give us a new cable, then again we'll hear him
Cry, "All right!  DE SAUTY."
"Creation's heir,--the world, the world is"
--The Bombazine wanted an explanation.
--I must finish this woman.--
The conscious water saw its Lord and blushed,
Alas for the loved one, too gentle and fair
The joys of the banquet to chasten and share!
Her eye lost its light that his goblet might shine,
And the rose of her cheek was dissolved in his wine!
Don't be "consistent,"--but be simply true.
grinding-down action.--Now give me a chance. Better eternal and
--Thought, conscience, will, to make them all thy own
He rent a pillar from the eternal throne!
--Made in His image, thou must nobly dare
The thorny crown of sovereignty to share.
--Think not too meanly of thy low estate;
Thou hast a choice; to choose is to create!
But, after all, here is a great fact between us. We belong to two
B.--Second voice, or Mental Barytone,--my running accompaniment.
self-repeating idea.
A.--White lace, three skirts, looped with flowers, wreath of
--I should like to ask,--said the divinity-student,--since we are
--I thought it best not to hear this question.
--The young fellow called John arose and placed himself in a neat
Salem! Salem! not Boston,--shouted the little man.
But the Koh-i-noor laughed a great rasping laugh, and the boy
--Do you know Richardson's Dictionary?--I said to my neighbor the
--Boston has enough of England about it to make a good English
I turned and looked him full in the face,--for the pure, manly
intonations arrested me. The voice was youthful, but full of
Good for the Boston boy!--he said.
You're go'n' to have a young lady next you, if you wait till
to-morrow,--said the landlady to him.
--So we are to have a new boarder to-morrow. I hope there will be
voice, and finished in alto rilievo, would be a variety in the
Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys?
If there has, take him out, without making a noise!
Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite!
Old Time is a liar!  We're twenty to-night!
We're twenty!  We're twenty!  Who says we are more?
He's tipsy,--young jackanapes!--show him the door!
--"Gray temples at twenty?"--Yes! white, if we please;
Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze!
Was it snowing I spoke of?  Excuse the mistake!
Look close,--you will see not a sign of a flake;
We want some new garlands for those we have shed,
And these are white roses in place of the red!
We've a trick, we young fellows, you may have been told.
Of talking (in public) as if we were old;
That boy we call Doctor, (1) and this we call Judge (2)
--It's a neat little fiction,--of course it's all fudge.
That fellow's the Speaker, (3)--the one on the right;
Mr. Mayor, (4) my young one, how are you to-night?
That's our "Member of Congress,"(5) we say when we chaff;
There's the "Reverend" (6) What's his name?--don't make me laugh!
That boy with the grave mathematical look(7)
Made believe he had written a wonderful book,
And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true!
So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too.
There's a boy,--we pretend,--with a three-decker-brain
That could harness a team with a logical chain:
When he spoke for our manhood in syllabled fire,
We called him "The Justice,"--but now he's "The Squire."(1)
And there's a nice youngster of excellent pith,(2)
Fate tried to conceal him by naming him Smith,
But he shouted a song for the brave and the free,
--Just read on his medal,--"My country,--of thee!"
You hear that boy laughing?--you think he's all fun,
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all!(3)
Yes, we're boys,--always playing with tongue or with pen,
--And I sometimes have asked,--Shall we ever be men?
Shall we always be youthful and laughing and gay,
Till the last dear companion drops smiling away?
Then here's to our boyhood, its gold and its gray!
The stars of its Winter, the dews of its May!
And when we have done with our life-lasting toys,
Dear Father, take care of thy children, the Boys!
Where would she come from?
Oh, that 's the miracle!
I see that they have crowded the chairs a little at that end of
the table, to make room for another newcomer of the lady sort. A
well-mounted, middle-aged preparation, wearing her hair without a
were fifty-eight separate pieces in a fiddle. How many "swimming
"--misera ante diem, subitoque accensa furore;"
but when he came to the lines,
"Ergo Iris croceis per coelum roscida pennis
Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores,"
"Iris shall be her name!"--he said. So her name was Iris.
In some cases it takes a great many years to kill a tutor by the
crystallization to scholars, and you can never get them away till
So it was with this child. She had glanced off from her parental
By-and-by she went to school, and caricatured the schoolmaster on
counsel.
Yet no man was known to have loved her, or even to have offered
to her.--Well,--these are two highly oxygenated adverbs,
In the little southern parlor of the house you may have seen
Stood the London-made piano I am dreaming of to-night.
Ah me! how I remember the evening when it came!
What a cry of eager voices, what a group of cheeks in flame,
When the wondrous boa was opened that had come from over seas,
With its smell of mastic-varnish and its flash of ivory keys!
Then the children all grew fretful in the restlessness of joy,
For the boy would push his sister, and the sister crowd the boy,
Till the father asked for quiet in his grave paternal way,
For the dear soul knew that music was a very sovereign balm;
She had sprinkled it over Sorrow and seen its brow grow calm,
In the days of slender harpsichords with tapping tinkling quills,
So Mary, the household minstrel, who always loved to please,
Sat down to the new "Clementi," and struck the glittering keys.
Hushed were the children's voices, and every eye grew dim,
As, floating from lip and finger, arose the "Vesper Hymn."
--Catharine, child of a neighbor, curly and rosy-red,
(Wedded since, and a widow,--something like ten years dead,)
Hearing a gush of music such as none before,
Steals from her mother's chamber and peeps at the open door.
Just as the "Jubilate" in threaded whisper dies,
--"Open it! open it, lady!" the little maiden cries,
I don't know whether our literary or professional people are more
The Rev.  Mr. Overcome, by the Clergyman of this Parish.
Mrs.  Overcome, by his estimable lady.
Misses Dorcas, Tabitha, Rachel, and Hannah, Overcome, by their
interesting children.
Peggy, by the female help.
All I meant to say, when I began, was, that this was not a
surprise-party where I read these few lines that follow:
We will not speak of years to-night;
For what have years to bring,
But larger floods of love and light
And sweeter songs to sing?
We will not drown in wordy praise
The kindly thoughts that rise;
If friendship owns one tender phrase,
He reads it in our eyes.
We need not waste our schoolboy art
To gild this notch of time;
Forgive me, if my wayward heart
Has throbbed in artless rhyme.
Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet's radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.
Strength to his hours of manly toil!
Peace to his starlit dreams!
Who loves alike the furrowed soil,
The music-haunted streams!
Sweet smiles to keep forever bright
The sunshine on his lips,
And faith, that sees the ring of light
Round Nature's last eclipse!
seven-hilled city!
two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come
--America, Sir,--he exclaimed,--is the only place where man is
full-grown!
cosmopolitan.
antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is
--What do you mean by the provisional races, Sir?--said the
divinity-student, interrupting him.
Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man has to acclimate
himself. It takes him a good while; but he will come all right
And what of Philadelphia?--said the Marylander.
And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor.
I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of
warmed with their contact:--John Wilkes's--the ugliest man's in
Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and
The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every
Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the
I should stir him, quiet as you think him. A heart which has been
bullfinch; but a wild heart which has never been fairly broken in
I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke of
I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate
anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was
It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the
He, (the person I have been speaking of,)--she said,--seemed to
be kinder hankerin' round after that young woman. It had hurt her
Why, what did she do?
Dropped? dropped what?--I said.
Why, the soap,--said the landlady.
I think Iris loves to hear the Little Gentleman talk. She smiles
Of course, I begged an explanation.
Here are some lines I read to the boarders the other day:--
Ah, here it is! the sliding rail
That marks the old remembered spot,
--The gap that struck our schoolboy trail,
--The crooked path across the lot.
It left the road by school and church,
A pencilled shadow, nothing more,
That parted from the silver birch
And ended at the farmhouse door.
No line or compass traced its plan;
With frequent bends to left or right,
In aimless, wayward curves it ran,
But always kept the door in sight.
The gabled porch, with woodbine green,
--The broken millstone at the sill,
--Though many a rood might stretch between,
The truant child could see them still.
No rocks, across the pathway lie,
--No fallen trunk is o'er it thrown,
--And yet it winds, we know not why,
And turns as if for tree or stone.
Perhaps some lover trod the way
With shaking knees and leaping heart,
--And so it often runs astray
With sinuous sweep or sudden start.
Or one, perchance, with clouded brain
From some unholy banquet reeled,
--And since, our devious steps maintain
His track across the trodden field.
Nay, deem not thus,--no earthborn will
Could ever trace a faultless line;
Our truest steps are human still,
--To walk unswerving were divine!
Truants from love, we dream of wrath;
--Oh, rather let us trust the more!
Through all the wanderings of the path,
We still can see our Father's door!
The Professor finds a Fly in his Teacup.
that silences all complainings! Sleep, sleep, sleep! says the
reasoning down reason.
repetition of an effete Confession of Faith?
In 1817, perhaps you remember, the law of wager by battle was
of semi-barbarism": invasive procedures for the prolongation
of death rather than prolongation of life; "faith" as slimly
based as medieval faith in minute differences between
control and treated groups; statistical manipulation to
prove a prejudice.  Medicine has a good deal to answer for!
Danger to what?--I asked.
Danger to truth,--he replied, after a slight pause.
If a minister had attended lectures on the theory and practice of
according to our regulations.
That was the end of my long conference with the divinity-student.
You must look to yourself,--said the divinity-student,--if your
--Humility is the first of the virtues--for other people.
I don't mind the exclamation of any old stager who drinks Madeira
--I should be sorry,--I remarked, a day or two afterwards, to the
How sweet the sacred legend--if unblamed
In my slight verse such holy things are named
--Of Mary's secret hours of hidden joy,
Silent, but pondering on her wondrous boy!
Ave, Maria!  Pardon, if I wrong
Those heavenly words that shame my earthly song!
The choral host had closed the angel's strain
Sung to the midnight watch on Bethlehem's plain;
And now the shepherds, hastening on their way,
Sought the still hamlet where the Infant lay.
They passed the fields that gleaning Ruth toiled O'er,
They saw afar the ruined threshing-floor
Where Moab's daughter, homeless and forlorn,
Found Boaz slumbering by his heaps of corn;
And some remembered how the holy scribe,
Skilled in the lore of every jealous tribe,
Traced the warm blood of Jesse's royal son
To that fair alien, bravely wooed and won.
So fared they on to seek the promised sign
That marked the anointed heir of David's line.
At last, by forms of earthly semblance led,
They found the crowded inn, the oxen's shed.
No pomp was there, no glory shone around
On the coarse straw that strewed the reeking ground;
One dim retreat a flickering torch betrayed,
In that poor cell the Lord of Life was laid!
The wondering shepherds told their breathless tale
Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale;
Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed;
Told how the shining multitude proclaimed
"Joy, joy to earth!  Behold the hallowed morn!
In David's city Christ the Lord is born!
'Glory to God!' let angels shout on high,
'Good-will to men!' the listening Earth reply!"
They spoke with hurried words and accents wild;
Calm in his cradle slept the heavenly child.
No trembling word the mother's joy revealed,
One sigh of rapture, and her lips were sealed;
Unmoved she saw the rustic train depart,
But kept their words to ponder in her heart.
Twelve years had passed; the boy was fair and tall,
Growing in wisdom, finding grace with all.
The maids of Nazareth, as they trooped to fill
Their balanced urns beside the mountain-rill,
The gathered matrons, as they sat and spun,
Spoke in soft words of Joseph's quiet son.
No voice had reached the Galilean vale
Of star-led kings or awe-struck shepherds' tale;
In the meek, studious child they only saw
The future Rabbi, learned in Israel's law.
So grew the boy; and now the feast was near,
When at the holy place the tribes appear.
Scarce had the home-bred child of Nazareth seen
Beyond the hills that girt the village-green,
Save when at midnight, o'er the star-lit sands,
Snatched from the steel of Herod's murdering bands,
A babe, close-folded to his mother's breast,
Through Edom's wilds he sought the sheltering West.
Then Joseph spake: "Thy boy hath largely grown;
Weave him fine raiment, fitting to be shown;
Fair robes beseem the pilgrim, as the priest
Goes he not with us to the holy feast?"
And Mary culled the flaxen fibres white;
Till eve she spun; she spun till morning light.
The thread was twined; its parting meshes through
From hand to hand her restless shuttle flew,
Till the full web was wound upon the beam,
Love's curious toil,--a vest without a seam!
They reach the holy place, fulfil the days
To solemn feasting given, and grateful praise.
At last they turn, and far Moriah's height
Melts in the southern sky and fades from sight.
All day the dusky caravan has flowed
In devious trails along the winding road,
(For many a step their homeward path attends,
And all the sons of Abraham are as friends.)
Evening has come,--the hour of rest and joy;
Hush! hush!--that whisper,-"Where is Mary's boy?"
O weary hour!  O aching days that passed
Filled with strange fears, each wilder than the last:
The soldier's lance,--the fierce centurion's sword,
The crushing wheels that whirl some Roman lord,
The midnight crypt that suck's the captive's breath,
The blistering sun on Hinnom's vale of death!
Thrice on his cheek had rained the morning light,
Thrice on his lips the mildewed kiss of night,
Crouched by some porphyry column's shining plinth,
Or stretched beneath the odorous terebinth.
At last, in desperate mood, they sought once more
The Temple's porches, searched in vain before;
They found him seated with the ancient men,
The grim old rufflers of the tongue and pen,
Their bald heads glistening as they clustered near;
Their gray beards slanting as they turned to hear,
Lost in half-envious wonder and surprise
That lips so fresh should utter words so wise.
And Mary said,--as one who, tried too long,
Tells all her grief and half her sense of wrong,
"What is this thoughtless thing which thou hast done?
Lo, we have sought thee sorrowing, O my son!"
Few words he spake, and scarce of filial tone,
Strange words, their sense a mystery yet unknown;
Then turned with them and left the holy hill,
To all their mild commands obedient still.
The tale was told to Nazareth's sober men,
And Nazareth's matrons told it oft again;
The maids retold it at the fountain's side;
The youthful shepherds doubted or denied;
It passed around among the listening friends,
With all that fancy adds and fiction fends,
Till newer marvels dimmed the young renown
Of Joseph's son, who talked the Rabbis down.
But Mary, faithful to its lightest word,
Kept in her heart the sayings she had heard,
Till the dread morning rent the Temple's veil,
And shuddering Earth confirmed the wondrous tale.
Youth fades; love droops; the leaves of friendship fall;
A mother's secret hope outlives them all.
cherry-pictorial.
Master Benjamin Franklin rushed into the dialogue with a breezy
But I am a teetotaller,--said the divinity-student in a subdued
He took up his hat and went out.
I began,--The whole essence of true gentle-breeding (one does not
old European monarchies. Only there position is more absolutely
hereditary,--here it is more completely elective.
Does not money go everywhere?--said the Model.
--I don't think the Model exactly liked this. She said,--a little
So do I,--said the young fellow John.
I wish I could,--said the young fellow John.
Thus,--Nothing so vulgar as to be in a hurry. True, but hard of
Under bad manners, as under graver faults, lies very commonly an
I have sometimes thought, with a pang, of the position in which
political chance or contrivance might hereafter place some one of
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
syllogism, I say, is one that most persons have had occasion to
--So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John.
Old fellow?--said I,--whom do you mean?
Why, the one that came with our little beauty, the old fellah in
petticoats.
--Now that means something,--said I to myself.--These rough young
"The frolic wind that breathes the spring,
Zephyr with Aurora playing,"
when the two meet
"--on beds of violets blue,
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew,"
Justice! A good man respects the rights even of brute matter and
But fashion and wealth are two very solemn realities, which the
Wealth, too,--what an endless repetition of the same foolish
Behold the rocky wall
That down its sloping sides
Pours the swift rain-drops, blending, as they fall,
In rushing river-tides!
Yon stream, whose sources run
Turned by a pebble's edge,
Is Athabasca, rolling toward the sun
Through the cleft mountain-ledge.
The slender rill had strayed,
But for the slanting stone,
To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid
Of foam-flecked Oregon.
So from the heights of Will
Life's parting stream descends,
And, as a moment turns its slender rill,
Each widening torrent bends,
From the same cradle's side,
From the same mother's knee,
--One to long darkness and the frozen tide,
Our landlady's daughter is a young lady of some pretensions to
But confound the make-believe women we have turned loose in our
If any gentleman will have the kindness to stop this run-away
"with quivering peals,
And long halloos and screams, and echoes loud
Redoubled and redoubled."
--Our young girl keeps up her early habit of sketching heads and
I have never yet crossed the threshold of the Little Gentleman's
You understand, then, distinctly, that I do not believe there is
Mighty close quarters they were where the young man John bestowed
You have lived in this house some time?--I said,--with a note of
interrogation at the end of the statement.
What do you think of our young Iris?--I began.
Fust-rate little filly;-he said.--Pootiest and nicest little chap
What do you think he employs himself about? said I.
The young man John winked.
I don't believe in witches,--said the young man John.
We were both silent for a few minutes.
He sleeps not here; in hope and prayer
His wandering flock had gone before,
But he, the shepherd, might not share
Their sorrows on the wintry shore.
Before the Speedwell's anchor swung,
Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread,
While round his feet the Pilgrims clung,
The pastor spake, and thus he said:--
"Men, brethren, sisters, children dear!
God calls you hence from over sea;
Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer,
Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.
"Ye go to bear the saving word
To tribes unnamed and shores untrod:
Heed well the lessons ye have heard
From those old teachers taught of God.
"Yet think not unto them was lent
All light for all the coming days,
And Heaven's eternal wisdom spent
In making straight the ancient ways.
"The living fountain overflows
For every flock, for every lamb,
Nor heeds, though angry creeds oppose
With Luther's dike or Calvin's dam."
He spake; with lingering, long embrace,
With tears of love and partings fond,
They floated down the creeping Maas,
Along the isle of Ysselmond.
They passed the frowning towers of Briel,
The "Hook of Holland's" shelf of sand,
And grated soon with lifting keel
The sullen shores of Fatherland.
No home for these!--too well they knew
The mitred king behind the throne;
The sails were set, the pennons flew,
And westward ho! for worlds unknown.
--And these were they who gave us birth,
The Pilgrims of the sunset wave,
Who won for us this virgin earth,
And freedom with the soil they gave.
The pastor slumbers by the Rhine,
--In alien earth the exiles lie,
--Their nameless graves our holiest shrine,
His words our noblest battle-cry!
Still cry them, and the world shall hear,
Ye dwellers by the storm-swept sea!
Ye have not built by Haerlem Meer,
Nor on the land-locked Zuyder-Zee!
There has been a sort of stillness in the atmosphere of our
-Terrible fact?
Now among the visible objects which hint to us fragments of this
Angelico,--and I just now came across a print of Raphael's Santa
smoothest-rolling vehicle. Suddenly we hear the deep underground
reverberation that reveals the unsuspected depth of some abyss of
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me
To him my tale I teach.
That bland, quiet old gentleman, of whom I have spoken as sitting
"Oh that those lips had language!  Life has pass'd
With me but roughly since I heard thee last."
I turned over the leaves of the book before us. Academic studies,
The soul, having studied the article of which it finds itself
"Blest be the art that can immortalize!"
the same remarkable sensibility; the same docility; the same
The Professor (meaning ourselves) is in a hurry, as usual; let
the horn-combers wait,--he shall be bumped without inspecting the
significant.
A short Lecture on Phrenology, read to the Boarders at our
to, certainly, better than you do. The next argument you will all
I proceed, therefore, to explain the self-adjusting mechanism of
Oh! oh! I see.--The argument may be briefly stated thus by the
Each to be accompanied with a wink.
Amativeness, 7.        Most men love the conflicting sex, and all
Alimentiveness, 8.     Don't you see that he has burst off his
lowest waistcoat-button with feeding,--hey
Acquisitiveness, 8.    Of course.  A middle-aged Yankee.
Approbativeness 7+.    Hat well brushed.  Hair ditto.  Mark the
effect of that plus sign.
Self-Esteem 6.         His face shows that.
Benevolence 9.         That'll please him.
Conscientiousness 8 1/2  That fraction looks first-rate.
Mirthfulness 7         Has laughed twice since he came in.
Ideality 9             That sounds well.
And so of the other faculties.
The wolf's long howl from Oonalaska's shore,
No fear lest praise should make us proud!
We know how cheaply that is won;
The idle homage of the crowd
Is proof of tasks as idly done.
A surface-smile may pay the toil
That follows still the conquering Right,
With soft, white hands to dress the spoil
That sunbrowned valor clutched in fight.
Sing the sweet song of other days,
Serenely placid, safely true,
And o'er the present's parching ways
Thy verse distils like evening dew.
But speak in words of living power,
--They fall like drops of scalding rain
That plashed before the burning shower
Swept o'er the cities of the plain!
Then scowling Hate turns deadly pale,
--Then Passion's half-coiled adders spring,
And, smitten through their leprous mail,
Strike right and left in hope to sting.
If thou, unmoved by poisoning wrath,
Thy feet on earth, thy heart above,
Canst walk in peace thy kingly path,
Unchanged in trust, unchilled in love,--
Too kind for bitter words to grieve,
Too firm for clamor to dismay,
When Faith forbids thee to believe,
And Meekness calls to disobey,--
Ah, then beware of mortal pride!
The smiling pride that calmly scorns
Those foolish fingers, crimson dyed
In laboring on thy crown of thorns!
To this I gave several answers, adapted to particular classes of
questioners.
a. Not trying to be a gentleman.
b. Self-respect underlying courtesy.
c. Knowledge and observance of the fitness of things in social
intercourse.
d. f. s. d. (as many suppose.)
Answered in the following epigram, by a young man about town:
Quoth Tom, "Though fair her features be,
It is her figure pleases me."
"What may her figure be?" I cried.
"One hundred thousand!" he replied.
The landlady said them that merried for money didn't deserve the
--Patent thumb-screws,--will crush the bone in three turns.
--The cast-iron boot, with wedge and mallet, only five dollars!
--What story is that?--I said.
That all her features were resigned
To this sole image in her mind.
Women are twice as religious as men;--all the world knows that.
affections.
celibacy of the clergy, which was enforced for so long a period.
The Church of Saint Polycarp had very much the look of a Roman
arrangements. Then there were boys to sing alternately in choirs
During the wars of the French Empire, no doubt,--I said.
You are not well,--she said.
I am never well,--he answered.--His eyes fell mechanically on the
A very odd personage, to be sure! Seems to know what is going on,
Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible,
I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone,
catch others in mischief when they themselves are too mature for
These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much
She gave it to me to carry.
This is full of caricatures of all of us, I am sure,--said I.
She laughed, and said,--No,--not all of you.
I was there, of course?
Why, no,--she had never taken so much pains with me.
Then she would let me see the inside of it?
She would think of it.
Here! sweep these foolish leaves away,
I will not crush my brains to-day!
Look! are the southern curtains drawn?
Fetch me a fan, and so begone!
Not that,--the palm-tree's rustling leaf
Brought from a parching coral-reef!
Its breath is heated;--I would swing
The broad gray plumes,--the eagle's wing.
I hate these roses' feverish blood!
Pluck me a half-blown lily-bud,
A long-stemmed lily from the lake,
Cold as a coiling water-snake.
Rain me sweet odors on the air,
And wheel me up my Indian chair,
And spread some book not overwise
Flat out before my sleepy eyes.
--Who knows it not,--this dead recoil
Of weary fibres stretched with toil,
The pulse that flutters faint and low
When Summer's seething breezes blow?
O Nature! bare thy loving breast
And give thy child one hour of rest,
One little hour to lie unseen
Beneath thy scarf of leafy green!
So, curtained by a singing pine,
Its murmuring voice shall blend with mine,
Till, lost in dreams, my faltering lay
In sweeter music dies away.
I pray thee by the soul of her that bore thee,
By thine own sister's spirit I implore thee,
Deal gently with the leaves that lie before thee!
For Iris had no mother to infold her,
Nor ever leaned upon a sister's shoulder,
Telling the twilight thoughts that Nature told her.
She had not learned the mystery of awaking
Those chorded keys that soothe a sorrow's aching,
Yet lived, wrought, suffered.  Lo, the pictured token!
Why should her fleeting day-dreams fade unspoken,
Like daffodils that die with sheaths unbroken?
She knew not love, yet lived in maiden fancies,
Walked simply clad, a queen of high romances,
And talked strange tongues with angels in her trances.
Twin-souled she seemed, a twofold nature wearing,
Sometimes a flashing falcon in her daring,
Then a poor mateless dove that droops despairing.
Questioning all things: Why her Lord had sent her?
What were these torturing gifts, and wherefore lent her?
Scornful as spirit fallen, its own tormentor.
And then all tears and anguish: Queen of Heaven,
Sweet Saints, and Thou by mortal sorrows riven,
Save me! oh, save me!  Shall I die forgiven?
And then--Ah, God!  But nay, it little matters
Look at the wasted seeds that autumn scatters,
The myriad germs that Nature shapes and shatters!
If she had--Well!  She longed, and knew not wherefore
Had the world nothing she might live to care for?
No second self to say her evening prayer for?
She knew the marble shapes that set men dreaming,
Yet with her shoulders bare and tresses streaming
Showed not unlovely to her simple seeming.
Vain?  Let it be so!  Nature was her teacher.
What if a lonely and unsistered creature
Loved her own harmless gift of pleasing feature,
Saying, unsaddened,--This shall soon be faded,
And double-hued the shining tresses braided,
And all the sunlight of the morning shaded?
--This her poor book is full of saddest follies,
Of tearful smiles and laughing melancholies,
With summer roses twined and wintry hollies.
In the strange crossing of uncertain chances,
Somewhere, beneath some maiden's tear-dimmed glances
May fall her little book of dreams and fancies.
Sweet sister!  Iris, who shall never name thee,
Trembling for fear her open heart may shame thee,
Speaks from this vision-haunted page to claim thee.
Spare her, I pray thee!  If the maid is sleeping,
Peace with her! she has had her hour of weeping.
No more!  She leaves her memory in thy keeping.
creatures,--many small fishes, for instance,--which are literally
In the town called Cantabridge, now a city, water-veined and gas
windpiped, in the street running down to the Bridge, beyond which
The three maidens were of comely presence, and one of them had
had claims to be considered a Beauty. When I saw them in the old
One after another they all three dropped away, objects of kindly
next page a procession wound along, after the fashion of that on
Poets are never young, in one sense. Their delicate ear hears the
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience. I have
"I could lie down like a tired child
And weep away the life of care
Which I have borne and yet must bear."
Talent is a very common family-trait; genius belongs rather to
asparagus-bed wants salt as much as you do. Just at the period of
Take the poet. On the one hand, I believe that a person with the
arrowheads. Whether a hundred or a thousand years old, who knows?
"A vast vacuity! all unawares,
Fluttering his pennons vain, plumb down he drops
Ten thousand fathom deep."
But think of the Old World,--that part of it which is the seat of
the Caesars. In Italy, the works of mediaeval Art seem to be of
When I say difficulty about the heart, I do not mean any of those
I thought it only fair to say something of what I apprehended to
apartment I had so longed to enter.
Her hands are cold; her face is white;
No more her pulses come and go;
Her eyes are shut to life and light;
Fold the white vesture, snow on snow,
And lay her where the violets blow.
But not beneath a graven stone,
To plead for tears with alien eyes;
A slender cross of wood alone
Shall say, that here a maiden lies
In peace beneath the peaceful skies.
And gray old trees of hugest limb
Shall wheel their circling shadows round
To make the scorching sunlight dim
That drinks the greenness from the ground,
And drop their dead leaves on her mound.
When o'er their boughs the squirrels run,
And through their leaves the robins call,
And, ripening in the autumn sun,
The acorns and the chestnuts fall,
Doubt not that she will heed them all.
For her the morning choir shall sing
Its matins from the branches high,
And every minstrel voice of spring,
That trills beneath the April sky,
Shall greet her with its earliest cry.
When, turning round their dial-track,
Eastward the lengthening shadows pass,
Her little mourners, clad in black,
The crickets, sliding through the grass,
Shall pipe for her an evening mass.
At last the rootlets of the trees
Shall find the prison where she lies,
And bear the buried dust they seize
In leaves and blossoms to the skies.
So may the soul that warmed it rise!
If any, born of kindlier blood,
Should ask, What maiden lies below?
Say only this: A tender bud,
That tried to blossom in the snow,
Lies withered where the violets blow.
I may find myself in the midst of strange facts in this little
simplest things turn out to be unfathomable mysteries; the most
A pebble and the spawn of a mollusk! Before you have solved their
interrupted.
I just gave him my hand. I had not the heart to speak.
This poor little man's appeal to my humanity against the supposed
Perhaps it is making a good deal of a slight matter, to tell the
How long?--she said.
That girl will kill herself over me, Sir,--said the poor Little
O Love Divine, that stooped to share
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear,
On Thee we cast each earthborn care,
We smile at pain while Thou art near!
Though long the weary way we tread,
And sorrow crown each lingering year,
No path we shun, no darkness dread,
Our hearts still whispering, Thou art near!
When drooping pleasure turns to grief,
And trembling faith is changed to fear,
The murmuring wind, the quivering leaf
Shall softly tell us, Thou art near!
On Thee we fling our burdening woe,
O Love Divine, forever dear,
Content to suffer, while we know,
Living and dying, Thou art near!
A young fellow, born of good stock, in one of the more thoroughly
And that leads me to say a few words of this young gentleman, who
your respected papa, though, if we should compare a young
girl's man-as-she-thinks-him with a forty-summered matron's
And now the days had come for our little friend, whose whims and
caution.
--All this, of course, was nothing but my poor notion about these
Pray!--said the Little Gentleman.
The divinity-student prayed, in low, tender tones,
Many more petitions he uttered, but all in the same subdued tone
of tenderness. In the presence of helpless suffering, and in the
After a time not to be counted in minutes, as the clock measures,
The Little Gentleman lies where he longed to lie, among the old
As our old boarding-house is still in existence, I do not feel at
Some of the boarders were of opinion that Iris did not return the
But one fine June morning there rumbled up to the door of our
boarding-house a hack containing a lady inside and a trunk on the
The Sunday after the Model's arrival, that lady had an attack of
She looked in his face an instant, as if startled, for there was
In deed and in truth, Iris,---
The poor girl said nothing, but quietly laid her ungloved hand in
Iris did not contradict him.
Lord of all being! throned afar,
Thy glory flames from sun and star,
Centre and soul of every sphere,
Yet to each loving heart how near!
Sun of our life, thy quickening ray
Sheds on our path the glow of day;
Star of our hope, thy softened light
Cheers the long watches of the night.
Our midnight is thy smile withdrawn;
Our noontide is thy gracious dawn;
Our rainbow arch thy mercy's sign;
All, save the clouds of sin, are thine!
Lord of all life, below, above,
Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love,
Before thy ever-blazing throne
We ask no lustre of our own.
Grant us thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for thee,
Till all thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.
One holy light, one heavenly flame.