第80章

Busts, cameos, gems, - such things as these, Which others often show for pride, I 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.

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 Ithink, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them.- Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting 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 punishments 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 puts on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be.Middle, and more than middle-aged people, 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 Icribbed 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,) Icannot say.Wise 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 schoolmistress.- I sha'n't do it; - Ihad rather get the publishers to return the money you have invested in this.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.Iknow 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 backing on 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 neglected 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 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 relating 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.