第23章

[The old gentleman opposite did not pay much attention, 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 he 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, - 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 Freres 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 have a bit of ice always in his Burgundy, and sit tinkling it 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 Iwas 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 that 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 machinery of association, the more easily this moves us.What can be more trivial than that old story of opening the folio Shakspeare that used to lie in some ancient 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 Damiens to pieces with wild horses, and across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking Hirams and Jonathans 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 provoking 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 indistinctly -- 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; CELAVA 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 disappointments, - the children she had buried, - the struggle against fate, - the dismantling of life, first of its small luxuries, 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 conduits until they reach the cisterns lying round about the heart; those tears that we weep inwardly with unchanging 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 you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, or a poet - if you are handling an editor or politician, it is superfluous 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;Benjamin Franklin will translate it for you: "QUOIQU'ELLE SOITTRES SOLIDEMENT MONTEE, IL FAUT NE PAS BRUTALISER LA MACHINE." - Iwill thank you for the pie, if you please.

[I took more of it than was good for me - as much as 85 degrees, Ishould 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 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 that I should like to label with some such title; but, as they have great names on their title-pages, - Doctors of Divinity, some of them, - it wouldn't do.]