UNPLEASANT OBJECTS
The first object I saw in the Sandwich Islands was an unpleasant one, and
hence it suggested the beginning of my lecture. We cannot forget unpleasant
things. In an old cathedral in Milan they showed me relics and other
unpleasant objects, but one above all I remember simply because it was a
very unpleasant thing. It was a curious, ancient statue, ascribed to
Phidias, because it was imagined that no other artist could have ever copied
nature so delicately and accurately. It was a figure carved in stone of a
man without skin. It was a thoroughly skinned man, and every vein, artery,
fiber, tendon, and even the tissue of the human frame, were marvelously and
faithfully portrayed even to the minutest detail. It was not a pleasant
thing to look at, but, somehow, there was a fascination about it because it
looked so natural. It did. It looked as if it was in pain, and you felt that
a thoroughly skinned man could only look like that. I have tried to get rid
of such an unpleasant association, and dreamed and dreamed—that he
had come to stay a week with me. I remember once when a mere
girl—a child, so to speak—I ran away from school. I was
afraid to go home at night—not that I cared anything about it
myself, but my parents were prejudiced against that sort of thing, and
although my judgment was quite as good as theirs, still as they had the
majority they generally settled everything their own way, and so I was
afraid to go home. I went to my father's office and laid myself on the
lounge. It was late at night. The moon was beginning to creep up and to cast
a few beams of light upon the floor. Looking upon the floor I discovered a
long and mysterious looking shape. I turned my back upon it. It annoyed me;
not that I was frightened, oh no, but just when I knew the moon's rays must
have lighted up the spot I turned and looked, and lo! it was a dead man, his
white face turned up to the moonlight, and he was cold and stiff and stark.
I never before felt so sick in my life. I never before wanted to take a walk
so badly as I did then. I did not go away in a hurry. I simply went through
the window and took the sash with me. I did not need the sash, but it was
handier to take than it was to leave it. I was not scared but a good deal
agitated. I have never got rid of that man yet. He had—it
appeared—fallen lifeless in the street, and they had brought him
in to hold an inquest upon him, or to try him, and of course they found him
guilty. It is not advisable to go to one's subject in a direct line and that
accounts for the foregoing remarks. If a man is going to pop the question he
begins a long way from his subject and talks of the weather. So it is with
me; great subjects should be approached cautiously. I shall tell the truth
as nearly as I can and quite as nearly as any
newspaperman can. The nonsense with which I shall embellish it will not
detract from its truthfulness; that will be but as the barnacle to the
oyster. I don't know—sotto
voce—whether the barnacle does stick to the oyster or the
oyster to the barnacle—that figure is of my own invention. I was
born and reared a long way from tidewater and I don't know whether the
barnacle does stick to the oyster, but if it don't I do.
