the works of thomas bailey aldrich, vol. 9

8/8/2019 The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Vol. 9

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THE WORKSOF

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICHPONKAPOG PAPERS

A SEA TURN AND OTHER MATTERS

PRINTED BYARRANGEMENTWITHHOUGHTONMIFFLINCOMPANY

THE JEFFERSON PRESSBOSTON NEW YORK


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CONTENTSPONKAPOG PAPERSLEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK. . . IASIDES 43TOM FOLIO 45FLKABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES . . 54A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON" 57PLOT AND CHARACTER ... 62THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE 64LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL... 69DECORATION DAY 74WRITERS AND TALKERS 77ON EARLY RISING 79UN POETE MANQUE 83THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD ... 87ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION QlWISHMAKERS' TOWN 95HISTORICAL NOVELS IOOPOOR YORICK 103THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER IO8

ROBERT HERRICK 115A SEA TURN AND OTHER MATTERSA SEA TURN 151

HIS GRACE THE DUKE 194


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vi CONTENTSSHAW'S FOLLY 211AN UNTOLD STORY 263THE CASE OF THOMAS PHIPPS 273THE WHITE FEATHER 298


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PONKAPOG PAPERS


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ToFRANCIS BARTLETT


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THESE miscellaneous notes and essays arecalled " Ponkapog Papers," not simply becausethey chanced, for the most part, to be writtenwithin the limits of the old Indian Reservation,but, rather, because there is something typicalof their unpretentiousness in the modesty withwhich Ponkapog assumes to being even a village.The little Massachusetts settlement, nestledunder the wing of the Blue Hills, has no illu-sions concerning itself, never mistakes the cackleof the bourg for the sound that echoes roundthe world, and no more thinks of rivaling greatcentres of human activity than these slightpapers dream of inviting comparison betweenthemselves and important pieces of literature.Therefore there seems something especiallyappropriate in the geographical title selected ;and if the author's choice of name need furtherexcuse, it is to be found in the alluring allitera-tion lying ready at his hand.REDMAN FARM, Ponkapog,

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LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOKIN his Memoirs, Krop6tkin states the singu-

lar fact that the natives of the Malayan Archi-pelago have an idea that something is extractedfrom them when their likenesses are taken byphotography. Here is the motive for a fantas-tic short story, in which the hero an author invogue or a popular actor might be depictedas having all his good qualities gradually pho-tographed out of him. This could well be theresult of too prolonged indulgence in the effortto "look natural." First the man loses hischarming simplicity ; then he begins to posein intellectual attitudes, with finger on brow;then he becomes morbidly self-conscious, andfinally ends in an asylum for incurable egotists.His death might be brought about by a coldcaught in going out bareheaded, there being, forthe moment, no hat in the market of sufficientcircumference to meet his enlarged require-ment.

THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bayof Yedo the moon was hanging directly over


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4 PONKAPOG PAPERSYokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon,and might have been manufactured by any ofthe delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter.It impressed one as being a very good imitation,but nothing more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne"-worker at Tokio, could have made a bettermoon.

I NOTICE the announcement of a new editionof "The Two First Centuries of FlorentineLiterature," by Professor Pasquale Villari. I amnot acquainted with the work in question, butI trust that Professor Villari makes it plain tothe reader how both centuries happened to befirst.THE walking delegates of a higher civiliza-

tion, who have nothing to divide, look upon thenotion of property as a purely artificial creationof human society. According to these advancedphilosophers, the time will come when no manshall be allowed to call anything his. The bene-ficent law which takes away an author's rightsin his own books just at the period when oldage is creeping upon him, seems to me a hand-some stride toward the longed-for millennium.SAVE us from our friends our enemies we

can guard against. The well-meaning rector of


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 5the little parish of Woodgates, England, andseveral of Robert Browning's local admirers,have recently busied themselves in erecting atablet to the memory of "the first known fore-father of the poet." This lately turned up an-cestor, who does not date very far back, wasalso named Robert Browning, and is describedon the mural marble as " formerly footman andbutler to Sir John Bankes of Corfe Castle."Now, Robert Browning, the poet, had as goodright as Abou Ben Adhem himself to ask to beplaced on the list of those who love their fellowmen ; but if the poet could have been consultedin the matter, he probably would have preferrednot to have that particular footman exhumed.However, it is an ill wind that blows nobodygood. Sir John Bankes would scarcely havebeen heard of in our young century if it hadnot been for his footman. As Robert stoodday by day, sleek and solemn, behind his mas-ter's chair in Corfe Castle, how little it enteredinto the head of Sir John that his highly re-spectable name would be served up to posterity

like a cold relish by his own butler! ByRobert !

IN the East-Side slums of New York, some-where in the picturesque Bowery district,stretches a malodorous little street wholly given


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6 PONKAPOG PAPERSover to long-bearded, bird-beaked merchantsof ready-made and second-hand clothing. Thecontents of the dingy shops seem to have re-volted, and rushed pell-mell out of doors, andtaken possession of the sidewalk. One couldfancy that the rebellion had been quelled at thispoint, and that those ghastly rows of completesuits strung up on either side of the doorwayswere the bodies of the seditious ringleaders.But as you approach these limp figures, eachdangling and gyrating on its cord in a mostsuggestive fashion, you notice, pinned to thelapel of a coat here and there, a strip of paperannouncing the very low price at which youmay become the happy possessor. That dissi-pates the illusion.

POLONIUS, in the play, gets killed and notany too soon. If it only were practicable to killhim in real life! A story to be called "ThePassing of Polonius " in which a king issues adecree condemning to death every long-winded,didactic person in the kingdom, irrespective ofrank, and is himself instantly arrested and de-capitated. The man who suspects his owntediousness is yet to be born.WHENEVER I take up Emerson's poems I find

myself turning automatically to his "Bacchus."


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 7Elsewhere, in detachable passages embedded inmediocre verse, he rises for a moment to heightsnot reached by any other of our poets ; but"Bacchus" is in the grand style throughout.Its texture can bear comparison with the world'sbest in this kind. In imaginative quality andaustere richness of diction, what other verse ofour period approaches it ? The day Emersonwrote " Bacchus " he had in him, as MichaelDrayton said of Marlowe, " those brave trans-lunary things that the first poets had."

IMAGINE all human beings swept off the faceof the earth excepting one man. Imagine thisman in some vast city, New York or London.Imagine him on the third or fourth day of hissolitude sitting in a house and hearing a ringat the door-bell !

No man has ever yet succeeded in painting anhonest portrait of himself in an autobiography,however sedulously he may have set to workabout it. In spite of his candid purpose heomits necessary touches and adds superfluousones. At times he cannot help draping histhought, and the least shred of drapery becomesa disguise. It is only the diarist who accom-plishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, with-out any such end in view, does it unconsciously.


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8 PONKAPOG PAPERSA man cannot keep a daily record of his com-ings and goings and the little items that makeup the sum of his life, and not inadvertentlybetray himself at every turn. He lays bare hisheart with a candor not possible to the self-consciousness that inevitably colors premedi-tated revelation. While Pepys was filling thosesmall octavo pages with his perplexing cipherhe never once suspected that he was adding aphotographic portrait of himself to the world'sgallery of immortals. We are more intimatelyacquainted with Mr. Samuel Pepys, the innerman his little meannesses and his large gen-erosities than we are with half the personswe call our dear friends.THE young girl in my story is to be as sensi-

tive to praise as a prism is to light. Wheneveranybody praises her she breaks into colors.

IN the process of dusting my study, the othermorning, the maid replaced an engraving ofPhilip II of Spain upside down on the mantel-shelf, and His Majesty has remained in thatundignified posture ever since. I have no dis-position to come to his aid. My abhorrence ofthe wretch is as hearty as if he had not beendead and otherwise provided for these lastthree hundred years. Bloody Mary of England


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 9was nearly as merciless, but she was sincere anduncompromising in her extirpation of heretics.Philip II, whose one recorded hearty laugh wasoccasioned by the news of the St. Bartholomewmassacre, could mask his fanaticism or drop itfor the time being, when it seemed politic todo so. Queen Mary was a maniac ; but the suc-cessor of Torquemada was the incarnation ofcruelty pure and simple, and I have a mind tolet my counterfeit presentment of him stand onits head for the rest of its natural life. I cor-dially dislike several persons, but I hate nobody,living or dead, excepting Philip II of Spain.He appears to give me as much trouble asCharles I gave the amiable Mr. Dick.

AMONG the delightful men and women whomyou are certain to meet at an English country-house there is generally one guest who is sup-posed to be preternaturally clever and amusing"so very droll, don't you know?" He recitesthings, tells stories in costermonger dialect, andmimics public characters. He is a type of aclass, and I take him to be one of the ele-mentary forms of animal life, like the acalephae.His presence is capable of adding a gloom toan undertaker's establishment. The last time Ifell in with him was on a coaching trip throughDevon, and in spite of what I have said I must


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io PONKAPOG PAPERSconfess to receiving an instant of entertainmentat his hands. He was delivering a little dis-sertation on "the English and American lan-guages." As there were two Americans on theback seat it seems we term ourselves " Amur-ricans" his choice of subject was full of tact.It was exhilarating to get a lesson in pronuncia-tion from a gentleman who said boult for bolt,called St. John Sin Jun, and did not knowhow to pronounce the beautiful name of hisown college at Oxford. Fancy a perfectly soberman saying Maudlin for Magdalen ! Perhapsthe purest English spoken is that of the Englishfolk who have resided abroad ever since theElizabethan period, or thereabouts.

EVERY one has a bookplate these days, andthe collectors are after it. The fool and hisbookplate are soon parted. To distribute one'sex-libris is inanely to destroy the only signifi-cance it has, that of indicating the past or presentownership of the volume in which it is placed.WHEN an Englishman is not highly imagina-

tive he is apt to be the most matter-of-fact ofmortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldomhas an alert sense of humor. Yet Englandhas produced the finest of humorists and thegreatest of poets. The humor and imagination


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PONKAPOG PAPERS uwhich are diffused through other peoples con-centrate themselves from time to time in indi-vidual Englishmen.

THIS is a page of autobiography, though notwritten in the first person : Many years agoa noted Boston publisher used to keep a largememorandum-book on a table in his personaloffice. The volume always lay open, and wasin no manner a private affair, being the recep-tacle of nothing more important than hastily-scrawled reminders to attend to this thing orthe other. It chanced one day that a veryyoung, unfledged author, passing through thecity, looked in upon the publisher, who wasalso the editor of a famous magazine. Theunfledged had a copy of verses secreted abouthis person. The publisher was absent, andyoung Milton, feeling that " they also serve whoonly stand and wait," sat down and waited.Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there spread out like a morningnewspaper, and almost in spite of himself heread : " Don't forget to see the binder,"" Don't forget to mail E his contract,""Don't forget H 's proofs," etc. An in-spiration seized upon the youth ; he took apencil, and at the tail of this long list of "don'tforgets " he wrote : " Don't forget to accept


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12 PONKAPOG PAPERSA 's poem." He left his manuscript onthe table and disappeared. That afternoon,when the publisher glanced over his memo-randa, he was not a little astonished at the lastitem ; but his sense of humor was so strongthat he did accept the poem (it required a strongsense of humor to do that), and sent the lad acheck for it, though the verses remain to thisday unprinted. That kindly publisher was wiseas well as kind.

FRENCH novels with metaphysical or psy-chological prefaces are always certain to beparticularly indecent.

I HAVE lately discovered that Master HarrySandford of England, the priggish little boy inthe story of " Sandford and Merton," has aworthy American cousin in one Elsie Dins-more, who sedately pirouettes through a seem-ingly endless succession of girls' books. I cameacross a nest of fifteen of them the other day.This impossible female is carried from infancyup to grandmotherhood, and is, I believe, stillleisurely pursuing her way down to the tomb inan ecstatic state of uninterrupted didacticism.There are twenty-five volumes of her and thegranddaughter, who is also christened Elsie,and is her grandmother's own child, with the


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 13same precocious readiness to dispense ethicalinstruction to her elders. An interesting in-stance of hereditary talent !

H 's intellect resembles a bambooslender, graceful, and hollow. Personally, heis long and narrow, and looks as if he mighthave been the product of a rope-walk. He isloosely put together, like an ill-constructed sen-tence, and affects me like one. His figure isungrammatical.AMERICAN humor is nearly as ephemeral as

the flowers that bloom in the spring. Eachgeneration has its own crop, and, as a rule, in-sists on cultivating a new kind. That of 1860,if it were to break into blossom at the presentmoment, would probably be left to fade uponthe stem. Humor is a delicate shrub, with thepassing hectic flush of its time. The current-topic variety is especially subject to very earlyfrosts, as is also the dialectic species. MarkTwain's humor is not to be classed with thefragile plants ; it has a serious root strikingdeep down into rich earth, and I think it willgo on flowering indefinitely.

I HAVE been imagining an ideal criticaljournal, whose plan should involve the dis-


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14 PONKAPOG PAPERScharge of the chief literary critic and the in-stallment of a fresh censor on the completionof each issue. To place a man in permanentabsolute control of a certain number of pages,in which to express his opinions, is to place himin a position of great personal danger. It isalmost inevitable that he should come to over-rate the importance of those opinions, to takehimself with far too much seriousness, and inthe end adopt the dogma of his own infalli-bility. The liberty to summon this or thatman-of-letters to a supposititious bar of jus-tice is apt to beget in the self-appointed judgean exaggerated sense of superiority. He be-comes impatient of any rulings not his, andsays in effect, if not in so many words : " Iam Sir Oracle, and when I ope my lips letno dog bark." When the critic reaches thisexalted frame of mind his slight usefulness isgone.AFTER a debauch of thunder-shower, the

weather takes the pledge and signs it with arainbow.

I LIKE to have a thing suggested rather thantold in full. When every detail is given, themind rests satisfied, and the imagination losesthe desire to use its own wings. The partly


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16 PONKAPOG PAPERSTHERE is a phrase spoken by Hamlet which

I have seen quoted innumerable times, andnever once correctly. Hamlet, addressingHoratio, says: Give me that man

That is not passion's slave, and I will wear himIn my heart's core, ay, in my heart of heart.

The words italicized are invariably written"heart of hearts" as if a person possessedthat organ in duplicate. Perhaps no one living,with the exception of Sir Henry Irving, is morefamiliar with the play of " Hamlet " than mygood friend Mr. Bram Stoker, who makes hisheart plural on two occasions in his recentnovel, "The Mystery of the Sea." Mrs. Hum-phry Ward also twice misquotes the passagein " Lady Rose's Daughter."BOOKS that have become classics books

that have had their day and now get morepraise than perusal always remind me ofvenerable colonels and majors and captainswho, having reached the age limit, find them-selves retired upon half pay.WHETHER or not the fretful porcupine rolls

itself into a ball is a subject over which myfriend John Burroughs and several brothernaturalists have lately become as heated as ifthe question involved points of theology. Up


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 17among the Adirondacks, and in the very heartof the region of porcupines, I happen to havea modest cottage. This retreat is called " ThePorcupine," and I ought by good rights to knowsomething about the habits of the small animalfrom which it derives its name. Last wintermy dog Buster used to return home on anaverage of three times a month from an excur-sion up Mt. Pisgah with his nose stuck full ofquills, and he ought to have some concreteideas on the subject. We two, then, are pre-pared to testify that the porcupine in itsmoments of relaxation occasionally contractsitself into what might be taken for a ball bypersons not too difficult to please in the matterof spheres. But neither Buster nor I beingunwilling to get into trouble would like toassert that it is an actual ball. That it is ashape with which one had better not thought-lessly meddle is a conviction that my friendBuster stands ready to defend against allcomers.

WORDSWORTH'S characterization of the wo-man in one of his poems as "a creature nottoo bright or good for human nature's dailyfood" has always appeared to me too canni-balesque to be poetical. It directly sets oneto thinking of the South Sea Islanders.


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18 PONKAPOG PAPERSTHOUGH lago was not exactly the kind of

person one would select as a superintendentfor a Sunday School, his advice to youngRoderigo was wisdom itself "Put money inthy purse." Whoever disparages money dis-parages every step in the progress of thehuman race. I listened the other day to a ser-mon in which gold was personified as a sort ofglittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin.I had an instant of natural hesitation when thecontribution plate was passed around immedi-ately afterward. Personally, I believe that thepossession of gold has ruined fewer men thanthe lack of it. What noble enterprises havebeen checked and what fine souls have beenblighted in the gloom of poverty, the world willnever know. " After the love of knowledge,"says Buckle, " there is no one passion whichhas done so much good to mankind as the loveof money."DIALECT tempered with slang is an admir-

able medium of communication between per-sons who have nothing to say and persons whowould not care for anything properly said.

DR. HOLMES had an odd liking for ingeniousdesk-accessories in the way of pencil-sharpen-ers, paper-weights, penholders, etc. The latest


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 19contrivances in this fashion probably droppeddown to him by the inventor angling for anibble of commendation were always makingone another's acquaintance on his study table.He once said to me : "I 'm waiting for some-body to invent a mucilage-brush that you can'tby any accident put into your inkstand. Itwould save me frequent moments of humili-ation."

THE deceptive Mr. False and the volatileMrs. Giddy, who figure in the pages of seven-teenth and eighteenth century fiction, are nottolerated in modern novels and plays. Steal,the burglar, and Palette, the artist, have ceasedto be. A name indicating the quality or occu-pation of the bearer strikes us as a too trans-parent device. Yet there are such names incontemporary real life. That of our worthyAdjutant-General Drum may be instanced.Neal and Pray are a pair of deacons who lin-ger in the memory of my boyhood. Sweet, theconfectioner, and Lamb, the butcher, are indi-viduals with whom I have had dealings. Theold-time sign of Ketchum and Cheetam, Bro-kers, in Wall Street, New York, seems almosttoo good to be true. But it was once, if itis not now, an actuality.


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20 PONKAPOG PAPERSI HAVE observed that whenever a Boston

author dies, New York immediately becomes agreat literary centre.

THE possession of unlimited power will makea despot of almost any man. There is a pos-sible Nero in the gentlest human creature thatwalks.

EVERY living author has a projection of him-self, a sort of eidolon, that goes about in nearand remote places making friends or enemiesfor him among persons who never lay eyesupon the writer in the flesh. When he dies,this phantasmal personality fades away, and theauthor lives only in the impression created byhis own literature. It is only then that theworld begins to perceive what manner of manthe poet, the novelist, or the historian reallywas. Not until he is dead, and perhaps somelong time dead, is it possible for the public totake his exact measure. Up to that point con-temporary criticism has either overrated himor underrated him, or ignored him altogether,having been misled by the eidolon, whichalways plays fantastic tricks with the writertemporarily under its dominion. It invariablyrepresents him as either a greater or a smallerpersonage than he actually is. Presently the


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 21simulacrum works no more spells, good or evil,and the deception is unveiled. The hithertodisregarded author is recognized, and the idolof yesterday, which seemed so important, istaken down from his too large pedestal andcarted off to the dumping-ground of inadequatethings. To be sure, if he chances to have beennot entirely unworthy, and on cool examinationis found to possess some appreciable degree ofmerit, then he is set up on a new slab of ap-propriate dimensions. The late colossal statueshrinks to a modest bas-relief. On the otherhand, some scarcely noticed bust may suddenlybecome a revered full-length figure. Betweenthe reputation of the author living and thereputation of the same author dead there isever a wide discrepancy.A NOT too enchanting glimpse of Tennyson

is incidentally given by Charles Brookfield, theEnglish actor, in his " Random Recollections."Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion,dining at the Oxford and Cambridge Club withGeorge Venables, Frank Lushington, AlfredTennyson, and others. "After dinner," relatesthe random recollector, " the poet insisted uponputting his feet on the table, tilting back hischair more Americano. There were strangersin the room, and he was expostulated with for


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22 PONKAPOG PAPERShis uncouthness, but in vain. ' Do put downyour feet!' pleaded his host. ' Why should I ?'retorted Tennyson. ' I 'm very comfortable asI am.' * Every one's staring at you,' said an-other. 'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, pla-cidly. * Alfred,' said my father, 'people willthink you're Longfellow.' Down went thefeet." That more Americano of Brookfield theyounger is delicious with its fine insular flavor,but the holding up of Longfellow the soulof gentleness, the prince of courtesy as abugaboo of bad manners is simply inimitable.It will take England years and years to detectthe full unconscious humor of it.GREAT orators who are not also great writersbecome very indistinct historical shadows to the

generations immediately following them. Thespell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice isalmost the only part of him entirely obliteratedby death. The violet of his native land may bemade of his ashes, but nature in her economyseems to have taken no care of his intonations,unless she perpetuates them in restless wavesof air surging about the poles. The well-gracedactor who leaves no perceptible record of hisgenius has a decided advantage over the mereorator. The tradition of the player's methodand presence is associated with works of endur-


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 23ing beauty. Turning to the pages of the drama-tist, we can picture to ourselves the greatness ofGarrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in thisor that character. It is not so easy to conjureup the impassioned orator from the pages of adry and possibly illogical argument in favor ofor against some long-ago-exploded measure ofgovernment. The laurels of an orator who is nota master of literary art wither quickly.ALL the best sands of my life are somehow

getting into the wrong end of the hour-glass.If I could only reverse it! Were it in my powerto do so, would I ?SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our

affairs putting in his oar, so to speak withsome pat word or sentence. The conversation,the other evening, had turned on the subjectof watches, when one of the gentlemen present,the manager of a large watch-making establish-ment, told us a rather interesting fact. Thecomponent parts of a watch are produced bydifferent workmen, who have no concern withthe complex piece of mechanism as a whole,and possibly, as a rule, understand it imper-fectly. Each worker needs to be expert in onlyhis own special branch. When the watch hasreached a certain advanced state, the work re-quires a touch as delicate and firm as that of


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24 PONKAPOG PAPERSan oculist performing an operation. Here themost skilled and trustworthy artisans are em-ployed ; they receive high wages, and have thebenefit of a singular indulgence. In case theworkman, through too continuous application,finds himself lacking the steadiness of nervedemanded by his task, he is allowed withoutforfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, inorder that his hand may recover the requisiteprecision of touch. As I listened, Hamlet'scourtly criticism of the grave-digger's wantof sensibility came drifting into my memory." The hand of little employment hath the dain-tier sense," says Shakespeare, who has left no-thing unsaid.

IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu orsome one of the auxiliary deities that presideover the destinies of Japland. For three daysand nights the streets of Tokio where thesquat little brown houses look for all the worldas if they were mimicking the favorite sittingposture of the Japanese were crowded withsmiling holiday makers, and made gay withdevices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils,dragons, and mythical winged creatures which atnight amiably turned themselves into lanterns.Garlands of these, arranged close together, werestretched across the streets from ridgepole to


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 25ridgepole, and your jinrikisha whisked youthrough interminable arbors of soft illumina-tion. The spectacle gave one an idea of fairy-land, but then all Japan does that.A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers,Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powersOf gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and riceAnd manage the moonshine and turn on the showers.

Each day has its fair or its festival there,And life seems immune to all trouble and carePerhaps only seems, in that island of dreams,

Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.They 've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars,And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars ;They 've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone,As if it were trying to reach to the stars.

They 've temple and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs,And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs :Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black,And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.

On roadside and street toddling images meet,And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet ;Their obis are tied with particular pride,

Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet.With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat,Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat ;A fan by its play whispers, " Go now ! " or " Stay ! *" I hate you ! " " I love you ! " a fan can say that !Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or threeSquat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea;They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear

Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree.


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26 PONKAPOG PAPERSAt night ah, at night the long streets are a sight,With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight

Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead,Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illumeStand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom;On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green,They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near,A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear ;Anon the wind brings from a samisen's stringsThe pathos that 's born of a smile and a tear.THE difference between an English audience

and a French audience at the theatre is marked.The Frenchman brings down a witticism on thewing. The Briton pauses for it to alight andgive him reasonable time for deliberate aim. InEnglish playhouses an appreciable number ofseconds usually precede the smile or the rippleof laughter that follows a facetious turn of theleast fineness. I disclaim all responsibility forthis statement of my personal observation, sinceit has recently been indorsed by one of London'smost eminent actors.AT the next table, taking his opal drops of

absinthe, was a French gentleman with theblast aspect of an empty champagne-bottle,which always has the air of saying : " I havelived!"


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 27WE often read of wonderful manifestations

of memory, but they are always instances of thefaculty working in some special direction. It ismemory playing, like Paganini, on one string.No doubt the persons performing the phenome-nal feats ascribed to them have forgotten morethan they remember. To be able to repeat ahundred lines of verse after a single readingis no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so faras the hundred lines go. A man might easilyfail under such a test, and yet have a goodmemory; by which I mean a catholic one, andthat I imagine to be nearly the rarest of gifts.I have never met more than four or five per-sons possessing it. The small boy who definedmemory as " the thing you forget with " de-scribed the faculty as it exists and works in themajority of men and women.

THE survival in publishers of the imitativeinstinct is a strong argument in support of Mr.Darwin's theory of the descent of man. Onepublisher no sooner brings out a new style ofbook cover than half a dozen other publishersfall to duplicating it.

THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets tied to the dintedguard, there being no known grave to decorate.


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28 PONKAPOG PAPERSFor many a year, on each Decoration Day, asorrowful woman had come and fastened theseflowers there. The first time she brought heroffering she was a slender girl, as fresh as herown violets. It is a slender figure still, butthere are threads of silver in the black hair.

FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,who in early youth was taught "to abstain fromrhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing" espe-cially the fine writing. Simplicity is art's lastword.

THE man isclearly

an adventurer. In theseventeenth century he would have worn hugeflint-lock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt,and been something in the seafaring line. Thefellow is always smartly dressed, but where helives and how he lives are as unknown as "whatsong the Sirens sang, or what name Achillesassumed when he hid himself among women."He is a man who apparently has no appoint-ment with his breakfast and whose dinner is achance acquaintance. His probable banker isthe next person. A great city like this is theonly geography for such a character. He wouldbe impossible in a small country town, whereeverybody knows everybody and what every-body has for lunch.


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 29I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for

the proprietor of the saying that " Economy issecond or third cousin to Avarice." I wentrather confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it isnot among that gentleman's light luggage ofcynical maxims.

THERE is a popular vague impression thatbutchers are not allowed to serve as jurors onmurder trials. This is not really the case, butit logically might be. To a man daily familiarwith the lurid incidents of the abattoir, thesummary extinction of a fellow creature (whe-ther the victim or the criminal) can scarcelyseem a circumstance of so serious moment asto another man engaged in less strenuous pur-suits.

WE do not, and cannot, read many of thenovels that most delighted our ancestors.Some of our popular fiction is doubtless as poor,but poor with a difference. There is always aheavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In everygeneration the least cultivated taste has thelargest appetite. There is ragtime literatureas well as ragtime music for the many.G is a man who had rather fail in a great

purpose than not accomplish it in precisely his


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30 PONKAPOG PAPERSown way. He has the courage of his convictionand the intolerance of his courage. He is op-posed to the death penalty for murder, but hewould willingly have any one electrocuted whodisagreed with him on the subject.

I HAVE thought of an essay to be called " Onthe Art of Short-Story Writing," but have givenit up as smacking too much of the shop. Itwould be too intime, since I should have to dealchiefly with my own ways, and so give myselfthe false air of seeming to consider them ofimportance. It would interest nobody to knowthat I always write the last paragraph first, andthen work directly up to that, avoiding all di-gressions and side issues. Then who on earthwould care to be told about the trouble mycharacters cause me by talking too much ?They will talk, and I have to let them ; butwhen the story is finished, I go over the dia-logue and strike out four fifths of the longspeeches. I fancy that makes my characterspretty mad.

THIS is the golden age of the inventor. Heis no longer looked upon as a madman or a wiz-ard, incontinently to be made away with. Twoor three centuries ago Marconi would not haveescaped a ropeless end with his wireless telegra-


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 31phy. Even so late as 1800, the friends of oneRobert Fulton seriously entertained the lumi-nous idea of hustling the poor man into anasylum for the unsound before he had a chanceto fire up the boiler of his tiny steamboat onthe Hudson River. In olden times the pilloryand the whipping-post were among the gentlerforms of encouragement awaiting the inventor.If a man devised an especially practical apple-peeler, he was in imminent danger of beingpeeled with it by an incensed populace. To-daywe hail with enthusiasm a scientific or a me-chanical discovery, and stand ready to make astock company of it.A MAN is known by the company his mind

keeps. To live continually with noble books,with " high-erected thoughts seated in the heartof courtesy," teaches the soul good manners.

THE unconventional has ever a morbid attrac-tion for a certain class of mind. There is al-ways a small coterie of highly intellectual menand women eager to give welcome to whateveris eccentric, obscure, or chaotic. Worshipersat the shrine of the Unpopular, they tingle witha sense of tolerant superiority when they say :11 Of course this is not the kind of thing youwould like." Sometimes these impressionable


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32 PONKAPOG PAPERSsouls almost seem to make a sort of reputationfor their fetish.

I HEAR that B directed to have himselfburied on the edge of the pond where his duck-stand was located, in order that flocks of migrateing birds might fly over his grave every autumn.He did not have to die, to become a dead shot,A comrade once said of him : " Yes, B isa great sportsman. He has peppered every-thing from grouse in North Dakota to his bestfriend in the Maine woods."

WHEN the novelist introduces a bore into hisnovel he must not let him bore the reader. Thefellow must be made amusing, which he wouldnot be in real life. In nine cases out of tenan exact reproduction of real life would provetedious. Facts are not necessarily valuable, andfrequently they add nothing to fiction. The artof the realistic novelist sometimes seems akinto that of the Chinese tailor who perpetuatedthe old patch on the new trousers. True artselects and paraphrases, but seldom gives averbatim translation.

THE last meeting I had with Lowell was inthe north room of his house at Elmwood, thesleeping-room I had occupied during a two years'


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 33tenancy of the place in his absence abroad. Hewas lying half propped up in bed, convalescingfrom one of the severe attacks that were ulti-mately to prove fatal. Near the bed was a chairon which stood a marine picture in aquarellea stretch of calm sea, a bit of rocky shore inthe foreground, if I remember, and a vessel atanchor. The afternoon sunlight, falling throughthe window, cast a bloom over the picture,which was turned toward Lowell. From timeto time, as he spoke, his eyes rested thought-fully on the water-color. A friend, he said, hadjust sent it to him. It seemed to me then, andthe fancy has often haunted me since, that thatship, in the golden haze, with topsails loosened,was waiting to bear his spirit away.

CIVILIZATION is the lamb's skin in which bar-barism masquerades. If somebody has alreadysaid that, I forgive him the mortification hecauses me. At the beginning of the twentiethcentury barbarism can throw off its gentle dis-guise, and burn a man at the stake as compla-cently as in the Middle Ages.WHAT is slang in one age sometimes goes

into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.On the other hand, expressions that once werenot considered inelegant are looked at askance


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34 PONKAPOG PAPERSin the period following. The word "brass"was formerly an accepted synonym for money;but at present, when it takes on that signifi-cance, it is not admitted into genteel circles oflanguage. It may be said to have seen betterdays, like another word I have in mind aword that has become slang, employed in thesense which once did not exclude it from verygood society. A friend lately informed me thathe had " fired " his housekeeper that is, dis-missed her. He little dreamed that he wasspeaking excellent Elizabethan.

THE "Journal des Goncourt" is crowded withbeautiful and hideous things, like a Japanesemuseum."AND she shuddered as she sat, still jilent, on

her seat, and he saw that she shuddered." Thisis from Anthony Trollope's novel, " Can YouForgive Her?" Can you forgive him? is thenext question.A LITTLE thing may be perfect, but perfec-

tion is not a little thing. Possessing this qual-ity, a trifle " no bigger than an agate stone onthe forefinger of an alderman " shall outlast thePyramids. The world will have forgotten allthe great masterpieces of literature when it for-


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 35gets Lovelace's three verses to Lucasta on hisgoing to the wars. More durable than marbleor bronze are the words, " I could not love thee,deare, so much, loved I not honour more."

I CALLED on the dear old doctor this after-noon to say good-by. I shall probably not findhim here when I come back from the long voy-age which I have in front of me. He is veryfragile, and looks as though a puff of wind wouldblow him away. He said himself, with his old-time cheerfulness, that he was attached to thisearth by only a little piece of twine. He hasperceptibly failed since

I saw him a month ago ;but he was full of the wise and radiant talk towhich all the world has listened, and will miss.I found him absorbed in a newly-made card-catalogue of his library. " It was absurd of meto have it done," he remarked. "What I reallyrequire is a little bookcase holding only twovolumes ; then I could go from one to the otherin alternation and always find each book asfresh as if I never had read it." This arraign-ment of his memory was in pure jest, for thedoctor's mind was to the end like an uncloudedcrystal. It was interesting to note how he stud-ied himself, taking his own pulse, as it were,and diagnosing his own case in a sort of scien-tific, impersonal way, as if it were somebody


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36 PONKAPOG PAPERSelse's case and he were the consulting specialist.I intended to spend a quarter of an hour withhim, and he kept me three hours. I went thererather depressed, but I returned home leav-ened with his good spirits, which, I think, willnever desert him, here or hereafter. To keepthe heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly,cheerful, reverent that is to triumph overold age.THE thing one reads and likes, and then for-

gets, is of no account. The thing that stays,and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten,that is the sincere thing. I am describing theimpression left upon me by Mr. Howells's blank-verse sketch called " Father and Mother : aMystery" a strangely touching and imagi-native piece of work, not unlike in effect tosome of Maeterlinck's psychical dramas. As Iread on, I seemed to be standing in a shadowcast by some half-remembered experience of myown in a previous state of existence. When Iwent to bed that night I had to lie awake andthink it over as an event that had actually be-fallen me. I should call the effect weird, if theword had not lately been worked to death. Thegloom of Poe and the spirituality of Hawthornetouch cold finger-tips in those three or fourpages.


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 37FOR a character-study a man made up en-

tirely of limitations. His conservatism and neg-ative qualities to be represented as causing himto attain success where men of conviction andreal ability fail of it.

A DARK, saturnine man sat opposite me attable on board the steamer. During the entirerun from Sandy Hook to Fastnet Light he ad-dressed no one at meal-times excepting histable steward. Seated next to him, on the right,was a vivacious gentleman, who, like Gratiano,in the play, spoke " an infinite deal of nothing."He made persistent and pathetic attempts tolure his silent neighbor (we had christened him"William the Silent") into conversation, but amonosyllable was always the poor result untilone day. It was the last day of the voyage. Wehad stopped at the entrance to Queenstownharbor to deliver the mails, and some fish hadbeen brought aboard. The vivacious gentlemanwas in a high state of excitement that morningat table. " Fresh fish ! " he exclaimed; "actu-ally fresh ! They seem quite different from ours.Irish fish, of course. Can you tell me, sir," heinquired, turning to his gloomy shipmate, " whatX/Wof fish these are ? " " Cork soles," said thesaturnine man, in a deep voice, and then wenton with his breakfast.


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\38 PONKAPOG PAPERSLOWELL used to find food for great mirth in

General George P. Morris's line,Her heart and morning broke together.

Lowell's well-beloved Dr. Donne, however, hadan attack of the same platitude, and possiblyinoculated poor Morris. Even literature seemsto have its mischief-making bacilli. The late"incomparable and ingenious Dean of St.Paul's "says,

The day breaks not, it is my heart.I think Dr. Donne's case rather worse thanMorris's. Chaucer had the malady in a milderform when he wrote :

Up roos the sonne, and up roos Emelye.The charming nafvete" of it !

SITTING in Ellen Terry's dressing-room atthe Lyceum Theatre one evening during thatlady's temporary absence on the stage, SarahBernhardt picked up a crayon and wrote thispretty word on the mirror Dearling, mis-taking it for the word darling. The Frenchactress lighted by chance upon a Spenserianismnow become obsolete without good reason. Itis a more charming adj ective than the one thathas replaced it.


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 39A DEAD author appears to be bereft of all

earthly rights.He is

scarcelyburied before

old magazines and newspapers are ransackedin search of matters which, for reason sufficientto him, he had carefully excluded from the de-finitive edition of his collected writings.

He gave the people of his best ;His worst he kept, his best he gave.

One can imagine a poet tempted to addresssome such appeal as this to any possible futurepublisher of his poems :

Take what thou wilt, a lyric or a line,Take all, take nothing and God send thee cheer 1But my anathema on thee and thineIf thou add'st aught to what is printed here.

THE claim of this country to call itself " TheLand of the Free " must be held in abeyanceuntil every man in it, whether he belongs ordoes not belong to a labor organization, shallhave the right to work for his daily bread.THERE is a strain of primitive poetry running

through the entire Irish race, a fleeting lyricalemotion which expresses itself in a flash, usuallyin connection with love of country and kindredacross the sea, I had a touching illustration ofit the other morning. The despot who reignsover our kitchen was gathering a mess of dan-delions on the rear lawn. It was one of those


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40 PONKAPOG PAPERSblue and gold days which seem especially to be-long to New England. " It 's in County West-meath I 'd be this day," she said, looking up atme. "7V go cool my hands in the grass on myould mother sgrave in the bit of churchyardfore-ninst the priesfs house at Mullingar" I haveseen poorer poetry than that in the magazines.SPEAKING of the late Major Pond, the well-known director of a lecture bureau, an old client

of his remarked : " He was a most capable man-ager, but it always made me a little sore to havehim deduct twenty-five per cent commission."" Pond's Extract," murmured one of the gen-tlemen present.EACH of our great towns has its "Little

Italy," with shops where nothing is spoken butItalian and streets in which the alien pedestrianhad better not linger after nightfall. The chiefindustry of these exotic communities seemsto be spaghetti and stilettos. What with ourLittle Italys and Chinatowns, and the like, anAmerican need not cross the ocean in order tovisit foreign lands and enjoy the benefits ofolder civilizations.

POETS are made as well as born, the proverbnotwithstanding. They are made possible by


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 41the general love of poetry and the consequentimperious demand for it. When this is non-existent, poets become mute, the atmospherestifles them. There would have been no Shake-speare had there been no Elizabethan audience.That was an age when, as Emerson finelyputs it, Men became

Poets, for the air was fame.

THE stolid gentleman in livery who has hiscarriage-stand at the corner opposite my houseis constantly touching on the extremes of hu-man experience, with probably not the remotestperception of the fact. Now he takes a pair oflovers out for an airing, and now he drives theabsconding bank-teller to the railway station.Excepting as question of distance, the man haspositively no choice between a theatre and agraveyard. I met him this morning dashingup to the portals of Trinity Church with abrdal party, and this afternoon, as I was cross-ing Cambridge Bridge, I saw him creepingalong next to the hearse, on his way to MountAuburn. The wedding afforded him no plea-sure, and the funeral gave him no grief ; yethe was a factor in both. It is his odd destinyto be wholly detached from the vital part ofhis own acts. If the carriage itself could


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42 PONKAPOG PAPERSspeak ! The autobiography of a public hackwritten without reservation would be dramaticreading.

IN this blotted memorandum-book are a scoreor two of suggestions for essays, sketches, andpoems, which I have not written, and nevershall write. The instant I jot down an ideathe desire to utilize it leaves me, and I turnaway to do something unpremeditated. Theshabby volume has become a sort of Potter'sField where I bury my literary intentions, goodand bad, without any belief in their final resur-rection.

A STAGE-DIRECTION : Exit Time ; enterEternity with a soliloquy.


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ASIDES


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TOM FOLIOIN my early Boston days a gentle soul was

often to be met with about town, furtivelyhaunting old book-shops and dusty editorialrooms, a man of ingratiating simplicity of man-ner, who always spoke in a low, hesitating voice,with a note of refinement in it. He was a devoutworshiper of Elia, and wrote pleasant discursiveessays smacking somewhat of his master's flavorsuggesting rather than imitating it whichhe signed " Tom Folio." I forget how he glidedinto my acquaintanceship ; doubtless in someway too shy and elusive for remembrance. Inever knew him intimately, perhaps no one did,but the intercourse between us was most cor-dial, and our chance meetings and bookish chatsextended over a space of a dozen years.Tom Folio I cling to the winning pseu-donym was sparely built and under mediumheight, or maybe a slight droop of the shouldersmade it seem so, with a fragile look about himand an aspect of youth that was not his. En-countering him casually on a street corner, youwould, at the first glance, have taken him for a


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46 PONKAPOG PAPERSyoungish man, but the second glance left youdoubtful. It was a figure that struck a note ofsingularity and would have attracted your atten-tion even in a crowd.

During the first four or five years of our ac-quaintance, meeting him only out of doors or inshops, I had never happened to see him with hishat off. One day he recklessly removed it, andin the twinkling of an eye he became an elderlybald-headed man. The Tom Folio I once knewhad virtually vanished. An instant earlier hewas a familiar shape ; an instant later, an almostunrecognizable individual. A narrow fringe oflight-colored hair, extending from ear to earunder the rear brim of his hat, had perpetratedan unintentional deception by leading one tosuppose a head profusely covered with curlylocks. "Tom Folio," I said, "put on your hatand come back ! " But after that day he neverseemed young to me.

I had few or no inklings of his life discon-nected with the streets and the book-stalls,chiefly those on Cornhill or in the vicinity. Itis possible I am wrong in inferring that he oc-cupied a room somewhere at the South Endor in South Boston, and lived entirely alone,heating his coffee and boiling his egg over analcohol lamp. I got from him one or two for-tuitous hints of quaint housekeeping. Every


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 47winter, it appeared, some relative, far or near,sent him a large batch of mince pies, twenty orthirty at least. He once spoke to me of hav-ing laid in his winter pie, just as another mightspeak of laying in his winter coal. The onlyfireside companion Tom Folio ever alluded toin my presence was a Maltese cat, whose poorhealth seriously disturbed him from time totime. I suspected those mince pies. The cat, Irecollect, was named Miss Mowcher.

If he had any immediate family ties beyondthis I was unaware of them, and not curious tobe enlightened on the subject. He was morepicturesque solitary. I preferred him to remainso. Other figures introduced into the back-ground of the canvas would have spoiled theartistic effect.Tom Folio was a cheerful, lonely man arecluse even when he allowed himself to bejostled and hurried along on the turbulentstream of humanity sweeping in opposite direc-tions through Washington Street and its busyestuaries. He was in the crowd, but not of it.I had so little real knowledge of him that I wasobliged

to imagine his more intimate environ-ments. However wide of the mark my conjec-tures may have fallen, they were as satisfyingto me as facts would have been. His secludedroom I could picture to myself with a sense of


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48 PONKAPOG PAPERScertainty the couch (a sofa by day), the cup-board, the writing-table with its student lamp,the litter of pamphlets and old quartos and oc-tavos in tattered bindings, among which werescarce reprints of his beloved Charles Lamb,and perhaps nay, surely an editio princepsof the " Essays."The gentle Elia never had a gentler followeror a more loving disciple than Tom Folio. Hemoved and had much of his being in the early

part of the last century. To him the South-SeaHouse was the most important edifice on theglobe, remaining the same venerable pile it usedto be, in spite of all the changes that had be-fallen it. It was there Charles Lamb passed thenovitiate of his long years of clerkship in theEast India Company. In Tom Folio's fancy aslender, boyish figure was still seated, quill inhand, behind those stately porticoes lookingupon Threadneedle Street and Bishopsgate.That famous first paper in the "Essays," de-scribing the South-Sea House and the group ofhuman oddities which occupied desks within itsgloomy chambers, had left an indelible impres-sion upon the dreamer. Every line traced bythe "lean annuitant" was as familiar to TomFolio as if he had written it himself. Strayscraps, which had escaped the vigilance of ableeditors, were known to him, and it was his to


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 49unearth amid a heap of mouldy, worm-eatenmagazines, a handful of leaves hitherto forgot-ten of all men. Trifles, yes but CharlesLamb's ! " The king's chaff is as good as otherpeople's corn," says Tom Folio.

Often his talk was sweet and racy with old-fashioned phrases ; the talk of a man who lovedbooks and drew habitual breath in an atmos-phere of fine thought. Next to Charles Lamb,but at a convenable distance, Izaak Walton wasTom Folio's favorite. His poet was AlexanderPope, though he thought Mr. Addison's tragedyof "Cato" contained some proper good lines.Our friend was a wide reader in English classics,greatly preferring the literature of the earlierperiods to that of the Victorian age. His smil-ing, tenderly expressed disapprobation of variousmodern authors was enchanting. John Keats'sverses were monstrous pretty, but over-orna-mented. A little too much lucent syrup tinctwith cinnamon, don't you think ? The poetry ofShelley might have been composed in the moonby a slightly deranged, well-meaning person. Ifyou wanted a sound mind in a sound metricalbody, why there was Mr. Pope's "Essay on Man."There was something winsome and bygone inthe general make-up of Tom Folio. No manliving in the world ever seemed to me to live somuch out of it, or to live more comfortably.


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50 PONKAPOG PAPERSAt times I half suspected him of a convales-

cent amatory disappointment. Perhaps longbefore I knew him he had taken a little senti-mental journey, the unsuccessful end of whichhad touched him with a gentle sadness. It wassomething far off and softened by memory. IfTom Folio had any love affair on hand in myday, it must have been of an airy, platonic sort

a chaste secret passion for Mistress PegWoffington or Nell Gwyn, or possibly Mr.Waller's Sacchanssa.Although Tom Folio was not a collector

that means dividends and bank balances hehad a passion for the Past and all its belongings,with a virtuoso's knowledge of them. A fanpainted by Vanloo, a bit of rare Nankin (he hadcaught from Charles Lamb the love of old china),or an undoctored stipple of Bartolozzi, gave himdelight in the handling, though he might notaspire to ownership. I believe he would will-ingly have drunk any horrible decoction froma silver teapot of Queen Anne's time. Thesethings were not for him in a coarse, materialisticsense; in a spiritual sense he held possession ofthem in fee-simple. I learned thus much of histastes one day during an hour we spent togetherin the rear showroom of a dealer in antiquities.

I have spoken of Tom Folio as lonely, but Iam inclined to think that I misstated it. He


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 5'had hosts of friends who used to climb therather steep staircase leading to that modestthird-story front room which I have imaginedfor him a room with Turkey-red curtains, Ilike to believe, and a rare engraving of a scenefrom Mr. Hogarth's excellent moral of "The In-dustrious and Idle Apprentices" pinned againstthe chimney breast. Young Chatterton, whowas not always the best of company, droppedin at intervals. There Mr. Samuel Pepys hada special chair reserved for him by the window,where he could catch a glimpse of the prettyhousemaid over the way, chatting with the po-liceman at the area railing. Dr. Johnson andthe unworldly author of "The Deserted Village"were frequent visitors, sometimes appearing to-gether arm-in-arm, with James Boswell, Esq.,of Auchinleck, following obsequiously behind.Not that Tom Folio did not have callers vastlymore aristocratic, though he could have had nonepleasanter or wholesomer. Sir Philip Sidney(who must have given Folio that copy of the"Arcadia"), the Viscount St. Albans, and eventwo or three others before whom either of thesemight have doffed his bonnet, did not disdainto gather round that hearthstone. Fielding,Smollett, Sterne, Defoe, Dick Steele, DeanSwift there was no end to them ! On certainnights, when all the stolid neighborhood was


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52 PONKAPOG PAPERSlapped in slumber, the narrow street stretchingbeneath Tom Folio's windows must have beenblocked with invisible coaches and sedan-chairs,and illuminated by the visionary glare of torchesborne by shadowy linkboys hurrying hither andthither. A man so sought after and compan-ioned cannot be described as lonely.My memory here recalls the fact that he hada few friends less insubstantial that quaint

anatomy perched on the top of a hand-organ,to whom Tom Folio was wont to give a bite ofhis apple ; and the brown-legged little Neapoli-tan who was always nearly certain of a copperwhen this multi-millionaire strolled through theslums on a Saturday afternoon Saturday prob-ably being the essayist's pay-day. The witheredwoman of the peanut-stand on the corner overagainst Faneuil Hall Market knew him for afriend, as did also the blind lead-pencil mer-chant, whom Tom Folio, on occasions, safelypiloted across the stormy traffic of Dock Square.Noblesse oblige ! He was no stranger in thosepurlieus. Without designing to confuse smallthings with great, I may say that a certain stripof pavement in North Street could be pointedout as Tom Folio's Walk, just as Addison'sWalk is pointed out on the banks of the Cher-well at Oxford.

I used to observe that when Tom Folio was


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 53not in quest of a print or a pamphlet or somesuch urgent thing, but was walking for mererecreation, he instinctively avoided respectablelatitudes. He liked best the squalid, ill-keptthoroughfares shadowed by tall, smudgy tene-ment-houses and teeming with unprosperous,noisy life. Perhaps he had, half consciously,a sense of subtle kinship to the unsuccess andcheerful resignation of it all.

Returning home from abroad one Octobermorning several years ago, I was told that thatsimple spirit had passed on. His death hadbeen little heeded ; but in him had passed awayan intangible genuine bit of Old Boston asgenuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrathimself a personality not to be restored or re-placed. Tom Folio could never happen again !

Strolling to-day through the streets of theolder section of the town, I miss many a ven-erable landmark submerged in the rising tideof change, but I miss nothing quite so much asI do the sight of Tom Folio entering the door-way of the Old Corner Bookstore, or carefullytaking down a musty volume from its shelf atsome melancholy old book-stall on Cornhill.


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FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEERNAMESWHEN an English novelist does us the honor

to introduce any of our countrymen into hisfiction, he generally displays a commendabledesire to present something typical in the wayof names for his adopted characters to give adash of local color, as it were, with his nomen-clature. His success is seldom commensurateto the desire. He falls into the error of appeal-ing to his invention, instead of consulting somecity directory, in which he would find more ma-terial than he could exhaust in ten centuries.Charles Reade might have secured in the pagesof such a compendium a happier title than Full-alove for his Yankee sea-captain ; though Idoubt, on the whole, if Anthony Trollope couldhave discovered anything better than Olivia Q.Fleabody for the young woman from "theStates " in his novel called "Is He Popenjoy ? "To christen a sprightly young female advo-cate of woman's rights Olivia Q. Fleabody wasvery happy indeed ; to be candid, it was much


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 55better than was usual with Mr. Trollope, whoseunderstanding of American life and mannerswas not enlarged by extensive travel in thiscountry. An English tourist's preconceived ideaof us is a thing he brings over with him on thesteamer and carries home again intact ; it is asmuch a part of his indispensable impedimentaas his hat-box. But Fleabody is excellent ; itwas probably suggested by Peabody, which mayhave struck Mr. Trollope as comical (just asTrollope strikes us as comical), or, at least, asnot serious. What a capital name Veronica Trol-lope would be for a hoydenish young woman ina society novel ! I fancy that all foreign namesare odd to the alien. I remember that the signsabove shop doors in England and on the Con-tinent used to amuse me often enough, when Iwas over there. It is a notable circumstancethat extraordinary names never seem extraordi-nary to the persons bearing them. If a fellow-creature were branded Ebenezer Cuttlefish, hewould remain to the end of his days quite un-conscious of anything out of the common.

I am aware that many of our American names.ire sufficiently queer ; but English writers makemerry over them, as if our most eccentric werenot thrown into the shade by some of their own.No American, living or dead, can surpass theverbal infelicity of Knatchbull-Hugessen, for


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$6 PONKAPOG PAPERSexample if the gentleman will forgive me forconscripting him. Quite as remarkable, in agrimly significant way, is the appellation of aBritish officer who was fighting the Boers in theTransvaal in the year of blessed memory 1899.This young soldier, who highly distinguishedhimself on the field, was known to his brothers-in-arms as Major Pine Coffin. I trust that thegallant major became a colonel later and is stillalive. It would eclipse the gayety of nations tolose a man with a name like that.

Several years ago I read in the sober policereports of the "Pall Mall Gazette" an accountof a young man named George F. Onions, whowas arrested (it ought to have been by "apeeler") for purloining money from his em-ployers, Messrs. Joseph Pickles & Son, stuffmerchants, of Bradford des noms bien idyl-liques! What mortal could have a more ludi-crous name than Onions, unless it were Pickles,or Pickled Onions ? And then for Onions torob Pickles ! Could there be a more incrediblecoincidence ? As a coincidence it is nearly sub-lime. No story-writer would dare to presentthat fact or those names in his fiction ; neitherwould be accepted as possible. Meanwhile OliviaQ. Fleabody is ben trovato.


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A NOTE ON "L'AIGLON"THE night scene on the battlefield of Wa-

gram in " L'Aiglon " an episode whose sharppathos pierces the heart and the imaginationlike the point of a rapier bears a striking re-semblance to a picturesque passage in VictorHugo's " Les Mise"rables." It is the one intensegreat moment in the play, and has been widelydiscussed, but so far as I am aware none ofM. Rostand's innumerable critics has touchedon the resemblance mentioned. In the master'sromance it is not the field of Wagram, but thefield of Waterloo, that is magically repeopledwith contending armies of spooks, to use thegrim old Dutch word, and made vivid to themind's eye. The passage occurs at the endof the sixteenth chapter in the second partof " Les Misdrables " (Cosette), and runs asfollows :

"Le champ de Waterloo aujourd'hui a lecalme qui appartient a la terre, support impas-sible de 1'homme, et il resemble a toutes les


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58 PONKAPOG PAPERSplaines. La nuit pourtant une espece de brumevisionnaire s'en de"gage, et si quelque voya-geur s'y promene, s'il regarde, s'il e"coute, s'ilreve comme Virgile dans les funestes plainesde Philippes, Thallucination de la catastrophele saisit. L'effrayant 18 juin revit; la faussecolline-monument s'efface, ce lion quelconque sedissipe, le champ de bataille reprend sa realit^ ;des lignes d'infanterie ondulent dans la plaine,des galops furieux traversent 1'horizon ; le son-geur effare voit Te'clair des sabres, 1'etincelledes bayonnettes, le flamboiement des bombes,1'entre-croisement monstrueux des tonnerres ; ilentend, comme un rale au fond d'une tombe,la clameur vague de la bataille-fantdme; cesombres, ce sont les grenadiers ; ces lueurs, cesont les cuirassiers ; . . . tout cela n'est pluset se heurte et combat encore; et les ravinss'empourprent, et les arbres frissonnent, et ily a de la furie j usque dans les nue"es, et, dansles tenebres, toutes ces hauteurs farouches,Mont-Saint-Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont,Papelotte, Plancenoit, apparaissent confuse*-ment couronne"es de tourbillons de spectress'exterminant." *

1 The field of Waterloo has to-day the peacefulness whichbelongs to earth, the impassive support of man, and is likeall other plains. At night, however, a kind of visionary mistis exhaled, and if any traveler walks there, and watches andlistens, and dreams like Virgil on the sorrowful plains of Phi-


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 59Here is the whole battle scene in "L'Aiglon,"

with scarcely a gruesome detail omitted. Thevast plain glimmering in phantasmal light; theghostly squadrons hurling themselves againstone another (seen only through the eyes of thepoor little Duke of Reichstadt) ; the mangledshapes lying motionless in various postures ofdeath upon the blood-stained sward ; the moansof the wounded rising up and sweeping by likevague wailings of the wind all this mightbe taken for an artful appropriation of VictorHugo's text ; but I do not think it was, thoughit is possible that a faint reflection of a brilliantpage, read in early youth, still lingered on theretina of M. Rostand's memory. If such werethe case, it does not necessarily detract from thelippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe takes possessionof him. The terrible June 18 relives; the artificial com-memorative mound effaces itself, the lion disappears, the fieldof battle assumes its reality; lines of infantry waver on theplain, the horizon is broken by furious charges of cavalry ;the alarmed dreamer sees the gleam of sabres, the glimmerof bayonets, the lurid glare of bursting shells, the clashingof mighty thunderbolts; the muffled clamor of the phantomconflict comes to him like dying moans from the tomb ; theseshadows are grenadiers, these lights are cuirassiers ... all thisdoes not really exist, yet the combat goes on ; the ravinesare stained with purple, the trees tremble, there is fury evenin the clouds, and in the obscurity the sombre heightsMont-Saint-Jean, Hougomont, Frischemont, Papelotte, andPlancenoit appear dimly crowned with throngs of appari-tions annihilating one another.


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60 PONKAPOG PAPERSintegrity of the conception or the playwright'spresentment of it.The idea of repeopling old battlefields withthe shades of vanished hosts is not novel. Insuch tragic spots the twilight always lays a darkhand on the imagination, and prompts one toinvoke the unappeased spirit of the past thathaunts the place. One summer evening longago, as I was standing alone by the ruined wallsof Hougomont, with that sense of not beingalone which is sometimes so strangely stirredby solitude, I had a sudden vision of thatdesperate last charge of Napoleon's Old Guard.Marshal Ney rose from the grave and againshouted those heroic words to Drouet d'Erlon :" Are you not going to get yourself killed ? "For an instant a thousand sabres flashed inthe air. The deathly silence that accompaniedthe ghostly onset was an added poignancy to theshort-lived dream. A moment later I beheld ahunched little figure mounted on a white horsewith housings of purple velvet. The reins layslack in the rider's hand ; his three-corneredhat was slouched over his brows, and his chinrested on the breast of his greatcoat. Thushe slowly rode away through the twilight, andnobody cried, Vive I 'Empereur !The ground on which a famous battle hasbeen fought casts a spell upon every man's


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 61mind ; and the impression made upon two menof poetic genius, like Victor Hugo and EdmondRostand, might well be nearly identical. Thissufficiently explains the likeness between thefantastic silhouette in "Les Mise"rables" andthe battle of the ghosts in "L'Aiglon." Amuse so rich in the improbable as M. Rostand'sneed not borrow a piece of supernaturalnessfrom anybody.


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PLOT AND CHARACTERHENRY JAMES, in his paper on Anthony Trol-

lope, says that if Trollope " had taken sides onthe rather superficial opposition between novelsof character and novels of plot, I can imaginehim to have said (except that he never ex-pressed himself in epigram) that he preferredthe former class, inasmuch as character in itselfis plot, while plot is by no means character." Soneat an antithesis would surely never have founditself between Mr. Trollope's lips if Mr. Jameshad not cunningly lent it to him. Whatevertheory of novel-writing Mr. Trollope may havepreached, his almost invariable practice was tohave a plot. He always had a story to tell, anda story involves beginning, middle, and end inshort, a framework of some description.There have been delightful books filled wholly

with character-drawing, but they have not beengreat novels. The great novel deals with hu-man action as well as with mental portraitureand analysis. That "character in itself is plot "is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motivewith a logical conclusion, is as necessary to


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 63a novel or a romance as it is to a drama. Agroup of skillfully made-up men and womenlounging in the green room or at the wings isnot the play. It is not enough to say that thisis Romeo and that Lady Macbeth. It is notenough to inform us that certain passions aresupposed to be embodied in such and suchpersons: these persons should be placed insituations developing those passions. A seriesof unrelated scenes and dialogues leading tonothing is inadequate.

Mr. James's engaging epigram seems to mevulnerable at both ends unlike Achilles."Plot is by no means character." Strictlyspeaking, it is not. It appears to me, however,that plot approaches nearer to being characterthan character does to being plot. Plot necessi-tates action, and it is impossible to describe aman's actions, under whatever conditions, with-out revealing something of his character, hisway of looking at things, his moral and men-tal pose. What a hero of fiction does paintshim better than what he says, and vastly betterthan anything his creator may say of him. Mr.James asserts that "we care what happensto people only in proportion as we know whatpeople are." I think we care very little whatpeople are (in fiction) when we do not knowwhat happens to them.


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THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCEIN the process of their experiments upon thebodies of living animals some anatomists do

not, I fear, sufficiently realize thatThe poor beetle, that we tread upon,In corporal sufferance, finds a pang as greatAs when a giant dies.

I am not for a moment challenging the neces-sity of vivisection, though distinguished sur-geons have themselves challenged it ; I merelycontend that science is apt to be cold-hearted ;and does not seem always to take into consid-eration the tortures she inflicts in her searchfor knowledge.

Just now, in turning over the leaves of an oldnumber of the "London Lancet," I came uponthe report of a lecture on experimental phy-siology delivered by Professor William Ruther-ford before a learned association in London.Though the type had become antiquated andthe paper yellowed in the lapse of years, thepathos of those pages was alive and palpitating.The following passages from the report willillustrate not unfairly the point I am making.


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 65In the course of his remarks the lecturer ex-hibited certain interesting experiments on livingfrogs. Intellectually I go very strongly for Pro-fessor Rutherford, but I am bound to confessthat the weight of my sympathy rests with thefrogs."Observe this frog [said the professor], itis regarding our manoeuvres with a somewhatlively air. Now and then it gives a jump.What the precise object of its leaps may be Idare not pretend to say; but probably it re-gards us with some apprehension, and desiresto escape."To be perfectly impartial, it must be admitted

that the frog had some slight reason for appre-hension. The lecturer proceeded :" I touch one of its toes, and you see it re-sents the molestation in a very decided manner.Why does it so struggle to get away when Ipinch its toes ? Doubtless, you will say, be-cause it feels the pinch and would rather nothave it repeated. I now behead the animalwith the aid of a sharp chisel. . . . The head-less trunk lies as though it were dead. Thespinal cord seems to be suffering from shock.Probably, however, it will soon recover fromthis. . . . Observe that the animal has nowspontaneously drawn up its legs and arms, and itis sitting with its neck erect just as if it had


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66 PONKAPOG PAPERSnot lost its head at all. I pinch its toes, andyou see the leg is at once thrust out as if tospurn away the offending instrument. Does itstill feel ? and is the motion still the result ofthe volition ? "That the frog did feel, and delicately hinted

at the circumstance, there seems to be no roomto doubt, for Professor Rutherford related thathaving once decapitated a frog, the animal sud-denly bounded from the table, a movement thatpresumably indicated a kind of consciousness.He then returned to the subject immediatelyunder observation, pinched its foot again, thefrog again " resenting the stimulation." Hethen thrust a needle down the spinal cord."The limbs are now flaccid," observed the ex-perimenter; "we may wait as long as we please,but a pinch of the toes will never again causethe limbs of this animal to move." Here iswhere congratulations can come in for la gre-nouille. That frog being concluded, the lec-turer continued :

" I take another frog. In this case I openthe cranium and remove the brain and medullaoblongata. ... I thrust a pin through the noseand hang the animal thereby to a support, sothat it can move its pendent legs without anydifficulty. ... I gently pinch the toes. . . . Theleg of the same side is pulled up. ... I pinch


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 67the same more severely. . . . Both legs arethrown into motion."Having thus satisfactorily proved that the

wretched creature could still suffer acutely, theprofessor resumed :"The cutaneous nerves of the frog are ex-tremely sensitive to acids ; so I put a drop ofacetic acid on the outside of one knee. This,you see, gives rise to most violent movementsboth of arms and legs, and notice particularlythat the animal is using the toes of the leg onthe same side for the purpose of nibbing theirritated spot. I dip the whole animal intowater in order to wash away the acid, and nowit is all at rest again. ... I put a drop of acidon the skin over the lumbar region of thespine. . . . Both feet are instantly raised tothe irritated spot. The animal is able to local-ize the seat of irritation. ... I wash the acidfrom the back, and I amputate one of the feetat the ankle. ... I apply a drop of acid over theknee of the footless leg. . . . Again, the animalturns the leg towards the knee, as if to reachthe irritated spot with the toes; these, however,are not now available. But watch the otherfoot. The foot of the other leg is now beingused to rub away the acid. The animal, findingthat the object is not accomplished with thefoot of the same side, uses the other one."


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68 PONKAPOG PAPERSI think that at least one thing will be patent

to every unprejudiced reader of these excerpts,namely that any frog (with its head on or itshead off) which happened to make the personalacquaintance of Professor Rutherford musthave found him poor company. What benefitscience may have derived from such associa-tion I am not qualified to pronounce upon. Thelecturer showed conclusively that the frog is apeculiarly sensitive and intelligent little batra-chian. I hope that the genial professor, in theyears which followed, did not frequently con-sider it necessary to demonstrate the fact.


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LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORN-WALLIT has recently become the fashion to speak

disparagingly of Leigh Hunt as a poet, to classhim as a sort of pursuivant or shield-bearer toColeridge, Shelley, and Keats. Truth to tell,Hunt was not a Keats nor a Shelley nor a Cole-ridge, but he was a most excellent Hunt. Hewas a delightful essayist quite unsurpassed,indeed, in his blithe, optimistic way and as apoet deserves to rank high among the lessersingers of his time. I should place him farabove Barry Cornwall, who has not half thefreshness, variety, and originality of his com-peer.

I instance Barry Cornwall because there hasseemed a disposition since his death to praisehim unduly. Barry Cornwall has always struckme as extremely artificial, especially in his dra-matic sketches. His verses in this line aremostly soft Elizabethan echoes. Of course adramatist may find it to his profit to go out ofhis own age and atmosphere for inspiration ;but in order successfully to do so he must be a


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70 PONKAPOG PAPERSdramatist. Barry Cornwall fell short of rillingthe role ; he got no farther than the composingof brief disconnected scenes and scraps of so-liloquies, and a tragedy entitled " Mirandola,"for which the stage had no use. His chief claimto recognition lies in his lyrics. Here, as in thedramatic studies, his attitude is nearly alwaysaffected. He studiously strives to reproduce theform and spirit of the early poets. Being a Lon-doner, he naturally sings much of rural Englishlife, but his England is the England of two orthree centuries ago. He has a great deal tosay about the " falcon," but the poor bird hasthe air of beating fatigued wings against thebook-shelves of a well-furnished library. Thiswell-furnished library was if I may be par-doned a mixed image the rock on which BarryCornwall split. He did not look into his ownheart, and write : he looked into his books.A poet need not confine himself to his indi-vidual experiences ; the world is all before him

where to choose; but there are subjects whichhe had better not handle unless he have somepersonal knowledge of them. The sea is one ofthese. The man who sang,

The sea ! the sea ! the open sea !The blue, the fresh, the everfree !(a couplet which the gifted Hopkins might havepenned), should never have permitted himself to


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 71sing of the ocean. I am quoting from one ofBarry Cornwall's most popular lyrics. When Ifirst read this singularly vapid poem years ago,in mid-Atlantic, I wondered if the author hadever laid eyes on any piece of water wider thanthe Thames at Greenwich, and in looking overBarry Cornwall's "Life and Letters" I am notso much surprised as amused to learn that he wasnever out of sight of land in the whole courseof his existence. It is to be said of him morepositively than the captain of the Pinafore saidit of himself, that he was hardly ever sick at sea.

Imagine Byron or Shelley, who knew theocean in all its protean moods, piping suchthin feebleness as

The blue, the fresh, the ever free !To do that required a man whose acquaintancewith the deep was limited to a view of it froman upper window at Margate or Scarborough.Even frequent dinners of turbot and whitebaitat the sign of The Ship and Turtle will not en-able one to write sea poetry.

Considering the actual facts, there is some-thing weird in the statement,

I 'm on the sea ! I 'm on the sea !I am where I would ever be.

The words, to be sure, are placed in the mouthof an imagined sailor, but they are none the


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72 PONKAPOG PAPERSless diverting. The stanza containing the dis-tich ends with a striking piece of realism :

If a storm should come and awake the deep,What matter ? I shall ride and sleep.This is the course of action usually pursuedby sailors during a gale. The first or secondmate goes around and tucks them up comfort-ably, each in his hammock, and serves themout an extra ration of grog after the storm isover.

Barry Cornwall must have had an exception-ally winning personality, for he drew to himthe friendship of men as differently constitutedas Thackeray, Carlyle, Browning, and Forster.He was liked by the best of his time, fromCharles Lamb down to Algernon Swinburne,who caught a glimpse of the aged poet in hisvanishing. The personal magnetism of an au-thor does not extend far beyond the orbit of hiscontemporaries. It is of the lyrist and not ofthe man I am speaking here. One could wishhe had written more prose like his admirable"Recollections of Elia."

Barry Cornwall seldom sounds a natural note,but when he does it is extremely sweet. Thatlittle ballad in the minor key beginning,

Touch us gently, Time !Let us glide adown thy stream,


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PONKAPOG PAPERS 73was written in one of his rare moments. LeighHunt, though not without questionable manner-isms, was rich in the inspiration that came butinfrequently to his friend. Hunt's verse is fullof natural felicities. He also was a bookman,but, unlike Barry Cornwall, he generally knewhow to mint his gathered gold, and to stamp thecoinage with his own head. In "Hero and Lean-der," there is one line which, at my valuing, isworth any twenty stanzas that Barry Cornwallhas written :

So might they now have lived, and so have died ;The story's heart, to mft still beats against its side.

Hunt's fortunate verse about the kiss JaneCarlyle gave him lingers on everybody's lip.That and the rhyme of " Abou Ben Adhem andthe Angel " are spice enough to embalm a man'smemory. After all, it takes only a handful.


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DECORATION DAYHow quickly Nature takes possession of a

deserted battlefield, and goes to work repair-ing the ravages of man ! With invisible magichand she smooths the rough earthworks, fillsthe rifle-pits with delicate flowers, and wrapsthe splintered tree-trunks with her fluent dra-pery of tendrils. Soon the whole sharp outlineof the spot is lost in unremembering grass.Where the deadly rifle-ball whistled through thefoliage, the robin or the thrush pipes its tremu-lous note ; and where the menacing shell de-scribed its curve through

the works of thomas bailey aldrich, vol. 9

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