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University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875[X]
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1Author:  Willis Nathaniel Parker 1806-1867Add
 Title:  Fun-jottings, or, Laughs I have taken a pen to  
 Published:  2003 
 Subjects:  University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 
 Description: “Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul? Thy Ione S— calls to thee from the aching void of her lonely spirit! What name bearest thou? What path walkest thou? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love? Thus wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, perhaps, a subscriber to the M—r). Go—truants! Rest not till ye meet his eye. “Dear Tom: If your approaching nuptials are to be sufficiently public to admit of a groomsman, you will make me the happiest of friends by selecting me for that office. “Dear Phil: The devil must have informed you of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be assured I should have chosen no one but yourself to support me on the occasion; and however you have discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less from your noble nature. “Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, which I know not how to broach to you, except by simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, if I inform you, without further preface, that the Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not beautiful, it must in fairness be said; but she has high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any man's respect and affection. She has seen you, of course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this is the result. I am directed to add, that should you consent, the following conditions are imposed—that you marry her within four days, making no inquiry except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, without previous interview, she come veiled to the altar. “You will pardon me that I have taken two days to consider the extraordinary proposition made me in your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection—but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can bring myself to be, in a matter so important. “On a summer morning, twelve years ago, a chimney sweep, after doing his work and singing his song, commenced his descent. It was the chimney of a large house, and becoming embarrassed among the flues, he lost his way and found himself on the hearth of a sleeping-chamber occupied by a child. The sun was just breaking through the curtains of the room, a vacated bed showed that some one had risen lately, probably the nurse, and the sweep, with an irresistible impulse, approached the unconscious little sleeper. She lay with her head upon a round arm buried in flaxen curls, and the smile of a dream on her rosy and parted lips. It was a picture of singular loveliness, and something in the heart of that boy-sweep, as he stood and looked upon the child, knelt to it with an agony of worship. The tears gushed to his eyes. He stripped the sooty blanket from his breast, and looked at the skin white upon his side. The contrast between his condition and that of the fair child sleeping before him brought the blood to his blackened brow with the hot rush of lava. He knelt beside the bed on which she slept, took her hand in his sooty grasp, and with a kiss upon the white and dewy fingers, poured his whole soul with passionate earnestness into a resolve. “You will recognize my handwriting again. I have little to say—for I abandon the intention I had formed to comment on your apparent preference. Your happiness is in your own hands. Circumstances which will be explained to you, and which will excuse this abrupt forwardness, compel me to urge you to an immediate choice. On your arrival at home, you will meet me in your father's house, where I shall call to await you. I confess, tremblingly, that I still cherish a hope. If I am not deceived— if you can consent to love me—if my long devotion is to be rewarded—take my hand when you meet me. That moment will decide the value of my life. But be prepared also to name another, if you love him—for there is a necessity, which I cannot 11 explain to you till you have chosen your husband, that this choice should be made on your arrival. Trust and forgive one who has so long loved you!” I have not written to you in your boy's lifetime—that fine lad, a shade taller than yourself, whom I sometimes meet at my tailor's and bootmaker's. I am not very sure, that after the first month (bitter month) of your marriage, I have thought of you for the duration of a revery—fit to be so called. I loved you— lost you—swore your ruin and forgot you—which is love's climax when jilted. And I never expected to think of you again. Start fair, my sweet Violet! This letter will lie on your table when you arrive at Saratoga, and it is intended to prepare you for that critical campaign. You must know the ammunition with which you go into the field. I have seen service, as you know, and from my retirement (on half-pay), can both devise strategy and reconnoitre the enemy's weakness, with discretion. Set your glass before you on the table, and let us hold a frank council of war. My dear Widow: For the wear and tear of your bright eyes in writing me a letter you are duly credited. That for a real half-hour, as long as any ordinary half-hour, such well-contrived illuminations should have concentrated their mortal using on me only, is equal, I am well aware, to a private audience of any two stars in the firmament—eyelashes and petticoats (if not thrown in) turning the comparison a little in your favor. Thanks—of course—piled high as the porphyry pyramid of Papantla! My dear neph-ling: I congratulate you on the attainment of your degree as “Master of Arts.” In other words, I wish the sin of the Faculty well repented of, in having endorsed upon parchment such a barefaced fabrication. Put the document in your pocket, and come away! There will be no occasion to air it before doomsday, probably, and fortunately for you, it will then revert to the Faculty. Quiescat adhuc—as I used to say of my tailor's bills till they came through a lawyer. All asleep around me, dear Ernest, save the birds and insects to whom night is the time for waking. The stars and they are the company of such lovers of the thought-world as you and I, and, considering how beautiful night is, nature seems to have arranged it for a gentler and loftier order of beings, who alternate the conscious possession of the earth with those who wake by day. Shall we think better of ourselves for joining this nightingale troop, or is it (as I sometimes dread) a culpable shunning of the positive duties which belong to us as creatures of sunshine? Alas! this is but one of many shapes in which the same thought comes up to trouble me! In yielding to this passion for solitude —in communing, perhaps selfishly, with my own thoughts, in preference to associating with friends and companions—in writing, spiritually though it be, to you, in preference to thinking tenderly of him—I seem to myself to be doing wrong. Is it so? Can I divide my two natures, and rightfully pour my spirit's reserve freely out to you, while I give to him who thinks me all his own, only the every-day affection which he seems alone to value? Yet the best portion of my nature would be unappreciated else—the noblest questionings of my soul would be without response—the world I most live in would be utterly lonely. I fear to decide the question yet. I am too happy in writing to you. I will defer it, at least, till I have sounded the depths of the well of angels from which I am now quenching my thirst—till I know all the joy and luxury which, it seems to me, the exchange of these innermost breathings of the soul can alone give. You refuse to let me once rest my eyes upon you. I can understand that there might be a timidity in the first thought of meeting one with whom you had corresponded without acquaintance, but it seems to me that a second thought must remind you how much deeper and more sacred than “acquaintance,” our interchange of sympathies has been. Why, dear Ermengarde, you know me better than those who see me every day. My most intimate companion knows me less. Even she to whom I, perhaps, owe all confidence, and who might weep over the reservation of what I have shared with you, had she the enlargement of soul to comprehend it—even she knows me but as a child knows the binding of a book, while you have read me well. Why should you fear to let me once take your features into my memory, that this vague pain of starry distance and separation may be removed or lessened?
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