第36章

- 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 important 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 company 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 glorious, as I was saying.Of course I don't mean vinously exalted; he drinks little wine on such occasions, and is well known to all the Peters and Patricks as 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 rubbing 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, clergymen 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 meeting.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, (Iremonstrated 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 healing art; instruct in every department; found observatories; create commerce and manufactures; write songs and hymns, and sing 'em, and make instruments 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 didn't make much difference to me whether it was all truth, or partly made up of pale Sherry and similar 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 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;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 grow, Filled from a vantage 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!