University of Virginia Library

PROLOGUE.

Ye Two Poore Authors.

PROLOGUE.

“Mrs. Muggins!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Say that I am sick. Say I am dead—buried—
out of town. In short, say anything you will; but
deny my existence to every one who calls, with the
exception of Mr. Barescythe.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I am going to write a novel, Mrs. Muggins!”

That lady did not exhibit much emotion.

“Yes, sir.”

And Mrs. Muggins ambled out of the room-door,
to which she had been summoned by some
peremptory appeals of my bell. I was somewhat
shocked at the cool manner with which Mrs. Muggins
received the literary intelligence; but she, poor,

simple soul, did not know that my greatness was
a-ripening.

“Some of these days,” said I to myself, turning
toward the window, “some of these days, mayhap
a hundred years hence, as the stranger passes
through Washington Parade Ground, this house—
wrinkled and old then—will be pointed out to his
wonder-loving eyes as the one in which my novel
was written; and the curious stranger will cut his
name on the walls of the room which I never occupied,
and carry away a slice of the door-step!”

I immediately fell in love with this fascinating
thought, and followed it up.

The slender trees which now inhabit the Parade
Ground had grown immensely—the trunks of some
were three feet in diameter, and around them all
was a massive iron railing. The brick and brown-stone
houses on Waverly Place and Fourth-street
had long been removed, and huge edifices with cast-iron
fronts supplanted them. I looked in vain for
the little drug-store on the corner with its red
and green bottles, and the fruit-man's below with
its show of yellow bananas and sour oranges.
The University, dimly seen through the interlacing
branches, was a classic ruin.

Everything was changed and new.

All the old land-marks were gone, save the

Parade Ground, and one quaint old house facing
Mac Dougal-street: the which house was propped
up with beams, for, long and long ago, before
“the memory of the oldest inhabitant” even, an
author, a sweet quiet man, once wrote a famous
book there, and the world of 1956 would preserve
the very floors he trod on!

And so I sat there by my window in the autumnal
sunshine, and watched the golden clouds as
the wind blew them against the square white turrets
of the University, which peered above the
trees.

Ah, Mrs. Muggins, though I, though you only
said “yes, sir,” when I spoke of my novel—though
your name is carved in solid brass on the hall-door,
yet you will be forgotten like a rain that fell
a thousand years ago, when my name, only stamped
with printer's ink, on ephemeral slips of paper, is a
household word.

So I came to pity Mrs. Muggins, and harbored
no ill feelings toward the simple creature who was
so speedily to be gathered under the dusty wings
of oblivion. I wondered how she could be cheerful.
I wondered if she ever thought of being “dead
and forgotten,” and if it troubled her.

Lost in the aromatic fumes of a regalia, I sat
waiting the advent of my friend Barescythe—Barry

for short—to whom I had addressed a laconic note,
begging him to visit me at my rooms without
delay.

I like Barescythe.

He is conceited, but that's a small fault with
genius. His idea of literature does not exactly
chime with mine, for he believes that there have
been no novels, to speak of, since Scott's, and little
poetry since Pope's. But, aside from this, he is a
noble fellow; he carries his heart, like a falcon, on
his hand, where everybody can see it. Barry is
fond of wine—but that's a failing not peculiar to
genius, and not confined to book-critics. He is a
trifle rough in speech, not always the thing in manners;
but “the elements so mix in him”—that I
have a great mind to finish that excellent quotation.

I heard his familiar step on the stairs, and a
second afterwards he kicked open my room-door
with his characteristic disregard of ceremony.

“Ralph,” said he, with some anxiety, “what's
up?”

“Sit down!”

“Are you sick?”

“No.”

“Are you going to be?”

“No.”

“Then why, in the name of the many-headed Hydra,
did you send me such an article as this?
Read it.”

The note ran as follows:

“O, yes!” said I, laughing; “I left out a word.
I meant to have said, `I have got an idea.”'

“Humph! I thought it was a colic.”

Mr. Barescythe had left a host of editorial duties
in the middle and busiest time of the day, expecting
to find me lying at the point of death, and
was quite out of humor because I was not.

There is something extremely human in Barescythe.

“Criticus,” I spoke as deliberately as the subject
would allow, “I am going to write a novel.”

This unfortunate avowal was the rose-leaf which
caused the cup of his indignation to overflow.

“If it had been a case of cholera,” commenced

Barescythe, with visible emotion, “or the measles,
or the croup, or the chicken-pox—if you had broken
your thigh, spine, or neck, I wouldn't have complained.
But a novel—”

And Barry began whistling wildly,
as he invariably does when annoyed. After using up
a variety of popular airs, the shadow of his goodhumor
returned to him.

“Ralph,” he said, taking my hand, “I have a great
respect for you. I don't know why, to be frank,
but I have. I like your little song of—what do
you call it?—in Putnam's Monthly, and your prose
sketches in the Knickerbocker; but don't be a fool,
Ralph!”

With which piece of friendly advice, he put on
his brown felt hat, drew it over his brows, and
stalked out of the room, with

like Mr. Hamlet's father.

I saw no more of Barescythe for two weeks.

The summer months flew away.

The nights were growing longer. The air had
a vein of sparkling cold in it; at every gust the
trees in the Parade Ground shook down golden
ingots; and the grass-plots, and the graveled walks,
and the marble bowl of the fountain, were paved with
emerald and amethyst—a mosaic flooring of tinted
leaves. The clouds were haggard faces, and the wind
wailed like a broken heart. Indeed,

and Mrs. Muggins had made a fire in my grate!

Blessings on him who invented fire-places! A
poor day-dreamer's benediction go with him! The
world in the grate! I have watched its fantastic
palaces and crimson inhabitants — dipped my pen,
as it were, into its stained rivers, and written their
grotesqueness! Dizzy bridges, feudal castles, great
yawning caves, and red-hot gnomes, are to be found
in the grate; mimic volcanos, and ships that sail into
sparry grottos, and delicate fire-shells with pink and
blue lips!

Crash!

The coals sink down, and new figures are born,
like the transient pictures in a kaleidescope. So it
came to pass that I dozed over the metempsychosis
of my fire-world, and commenced the novel.

Give me crisp winter days for writing, and the
long snowy nights for dreamy slumber.

O antique humorist, quaint-mouthed Sancho Panza!
with you, I say, “Blessings on the man who invented
sleep!” Sleep, pleasant sleep!—that little
airy nothing on the eyelids!—that little spell of
thought which comes from no place and goes nowhere!
— which comes upon us silently and splendidly,
like a falling star, and trails its golden fancies
on our waking hours. Sleep for the young—fresh,
dewy sleep! Sleep for the sick! Sleep for the
weary and disconsolate — sweet dreams and sweet
forgetfulness for them! Smooth the white hairs of
the old; place thy invisible fingers on their lips;
close their eyes gently, gently, Sleep, and let them
pass into nothingness!

In a dreamy mood, half awake and half asleep, I
filled sheet after sheet with my curious back-handed
chirography. The white feathery snow came down
cygnet-soft, and I wrote. I heard the wind ditties in
the chimney, the merry wrangling of sleigh-bells,
the sonorous clash of fire-bells, and the manuscript
grew under my pen, as if by magic. I came to
love the nurslings of my fancy as no one else will.
I liked the cold, cynical features of Mr. Flint, with
his undertaker's aspect; the child-spirit, Bell; Daisy
Snarle's eyes; the heart-broken old sailor; the pale

book-keeper; Tim, the office boy; Mr. Hardwill, the
great publisher; Joe Wilkes, and all of them!

Mrs. Muggins occasionally looked in on me.

Mrs. Muggins' regard for me was increasing. She
never left the coal-scuttle on the stairs for my benefit,
as she used to; she was eternally hearing my bell ring
when it didn't, and answering it so promptly when it
did, that I began to think that she lived night and day
just outside my door.

Pleasant Mrs. Muggins!

I tried not to feel elated at these little widowy attentions;
but los hombres son mortales.

She handed me my coffee with a motherly tenderness
that was perfectly touching. She looked at me
with the eyes of Solicitude, and spoke with the lips of
culminating Respect; and once, in a burst of confidence,
she told me that she had six orphan sons, who
were “sealurs.”

My respect increased for Mrs. Muggins. My
novel might run through only one edition, but she,—
she had six editions of herself afloat! And I thought
that, after all, a woman like her who had produced
a half a dozen Neptunes, founded perhaps
a half a dozen races, was rendering more service
to this apple-like globe, than one poor devil of an
author prolifically pregnant with indifferent books.

I spoke to Barescythe about it, and it was pleasant
to have him coincide with me once.

It is an agreeable fact, that

The new year was four months old. The flowers
were teething: the tiny robins were able to go
alone, and above the breezy hum of many thousand
voices, above the monotonous and ocean-like jar
of omnibus wheels, I could hear the babbling of
hyaline rills in pleasant woodland places! I could
not see the silver threads of water winding in and
out among the cool young grass; I could not guess
where they were; but through the city smoke,
over the dingy chimney-tops, they spake to me
with kindly voices!

I knew that daisies were fulling in sunny meadows,
and that the dandelion trailed its gold by the dusty
road-sides: for

I knew it by the geranium at my window. It
had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves
for me, and the world alive with vernal things!
Spring, thou Queen of the Twelve! Dainty, dewy
Spring—

when I write of thee! Thy breath is the amber
sunshine, and thy foot-prints are violets! Hide
Winter in thy mantle: crown his cold brow with
mignionette: hang morning-glories on his icicles: keep him from me forever!

“Barry,” said I, “the sunshine has taken me by
the hand, to lead me into a sweet New-England
village. There is my manuscript. Read it, if you
can, condemn it, if you will, and tell me what you
think of it when I return.”

That awful critic put Daisy's Necklace under
his arm, and walked away—a victim to friendship,
a literary Damon of the Nineteenth Century.