University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

“Certainly I must be one of the most unfortunate
fellows that ever lived. And none the less
so because the bitter strokes come upon me in the
midst of apparent prosperity; but before I tell
you of one disappointment, I must tell you of the
things which preceded it, in the order of their
occurrence.

“On the evening after the assemblage of our
little party at Hazlehurst's, Lamar, Damon, and
myself went to the Italian Opera; and to please
Lamar no less than Damon, we took seats in the
pit.

“The assemblage was brilliant beyond any thing
I have seen, in the two lower tiers of boxes. All
the fashion, and wealth, and beauty of this fair
city seemed to be assembled around us, with their
gay plumage and foreign head-attire, and opera-glasses.
As a shading to this gay picture, there
were the gentlemen, with enormous whiskers and
mustaches curling sentimentally and greasily

over the upper lip; their teeth glistening through
the bristles, ghastly as Peale's mummy itself.

“The passion for hairy visages is a singular
characteristic of this phrenological age. Large and
frizzled locks puffed out on each side of the head
to hide the absence of development are easily
enough accounted for; but this supererogatory disfiguration
of ugly faces is altogether unaccountable
on the same principles.

“`I'll be dad shamed if it ain't all cowardice,
and I hate to see it practised,' said Damon.

“There is, perhaps, more truth in this remark
than you would at first suppose. No man is so
desirous to appear fierce, courageous, and even
piratical as he that is a dastard in his heart. Indeed
most men are fond of making a parade of
those qualifications with which they are least endowed
by nature.

“There is one bewhiskered class, however, from
whom we ought to expect better things; I mean
young and thoughtless men, who are led away by
fashion; many of whom have rubbed through the
walls, if not through the studies, of college; and
whose taste ought to have been more refined by
associating with gentlemen, however great their
stolidity or idleness.

“Finally, as to whiskers, I have seen most of
the American naval and military heroes; and I
cannot now recall a single one of them who ever
wore remarkable whiskers, or bristles on the upper

lip. Nor have I ever seen a polished southern
gentleman remarkable for either. There is one
fact which, if generally known, would root out the
evil at its source; and that is, that men who flourish
large whiskers are very apt to become bald!

“`O! corn-stalks and jews-harps!' said Damon,
after worrying on his seat during the performance
of the overture by the orchestra; `will they tune
their banjoes all night, and never get to playin?'

“`That is called fine Italian music,' said Lamar.

“`Yes! yes!' replied he, `there's `four-and-twenty
fiddlers' sure enough! but I rather suspicion
that it would puzzle some of our Kentuck gals
to dance a reel to that music. O my grandmother!
what jaunty heels they would have to sling after
such elbow-greese as that. But you are stuffing
me with soft corn—I see you are by your laughing.
They know better than to pass that for
music; no, no, catch a weasel asleep!'

“The opera now commenced, and I must own
that I saw more of Damon than I did of the play.
He was struck dumb with astonishment; seemed
scarcely to believe his own senses, but looking
round the house after an unusual silence, and seeing
the audience serious and apparently attentive, he
burst into a cachinnation.

“`Well,' said he, with a long breath, `I wish I
may be tetotally smashed in a cider-mill, if that
don't out-Cherokee old Kentuck; why that ain't
a chaw-tobacco better nor Cherokee! Just wait a

minute, and they'll raise the whoop, it's likely;
and if they do, if I don't give them a touch of Kentuck
pipes that'll make them think somebody's
busted their biler. Look! some of the men have
got rings in their ears too; and leather skinned.
Now I'm snagged if I was to meet that feller in a
Mississip cane-brake, and my rifle on my arm, if I
wouldn't be apt to let the wind through his whistle
cross-ways.'

“`Not if he was to speak to you, and tell you he
was a Christian like yourself?'

“`Speak to me! he would do a devilish sight
better to play dummy: for sure as he spoke, I should
let fly at him, because I wouldn't know but he belonged
to some of those far away tribes of Black-feet,
or the likes of that.'

“`But you do not really think that they look
and speak any thing like the western savages,
Damon?' said I.

“`I'm smashed if I don't bet that I can put
blankets and leggins on the whole tribe, and pass
them through the Cherokee nation for friendly
Black-feet.'

“The incomparable Prima Donna (as she is
called here) now made her first appearance; her
voice is exquisite, Randolph, and her execution
beyond the conception of an unsophisticated student.

“The music is pleasing to the ear, and may
touch an Italian heart, but it found no response
from mine. I tell this to you in all sincerity and

confidence, but it would lower a man, I fear, to
say so in the fashionable circles.

“`Well, Damon, would the Italian ladies pass for
squaws?'

“`No, no; they are better than the men, and
they are right pretty too, if they didn't talk such
outlandish gibberish; but that dark skinn'd man
there, I swear Pete Ironsides would kick him if he
was to go in my stable; for he hates an Injin, as
I do an allegator; poor Pete! I reckon he thinks
I'm skulped.'

“`Pete is well cared for, I will guaranty,' said
Lamar, very pathetically.

“`Look! look!' exclaimed Damon; `what's
that under the green umbrella there, at the front of
the stage among the lights?'

“`That is the prompter, to put them right when
they go wrong.'

“`Yes, yes! I see, I see!' continued he; `he
gives them a wink every now and then.'

“In the operas it is very frequently the case that
one of the subordinate characters comes to the
front of the stage after the principals have made
their exit, and explains what rare sport is coming.

“`What does that fellow slip out here every
now and then like a dropped stitch for?'

“We explained to him the meaning of it, as well
as we understood it ourselves.

“`Ay, ay! I see it now; he is the Nota Bene!'

“We found great difficulty in getting Damon to
understand, with his shrewd natural view of things,

that an opera was nothing more than a common
play; the parts being sung, instead of spoken.

“`Now I wish my head may be knocked into a
cocked-hat, if a man had told this to me of the
Yorkers in old Kentuck, if I wouldn't have thought
he was spinnin long yarns; there is no sense in it,
nor there's no fun in it, as they all take it up there
in the pews; if so moutbe now that they were all
of my way of thinking, and would only join in a
leetle touch of the warwhoop, why we might show
them fellers a little of the real Cherokee, that I
rather suspicion they haven't seen.'

“`Why, what would you do, Damon?'

“`Jist set them four-and-twenty fiddlers to
playin of something like Christian reels; hand the
gals down on the floor; then I reckon there would
be a little sort of a regular hand-round! Confound
their jimmy simequivers, and their supple elbows!
Smash me, if they don't think the whole cream of
the ball lies in rattlin the bones of their elbows.
Give me your long sweeping bow hands, that
saws the music right in under your ribs, and sets
your legs to dancin, whether they will or not. Do
you think them fellers ever made anybody feel in
the humour for a hand-round?'

“`I can't say that I think they ever did.'

“`No, nor they never will! they may set people's
teeth on a wire edge, or make their flesh crawl, or
set them into an ague fit with their shakin, and
grindin, and squawkin. And now I think of it,
the whole business sounds more like grinding ramrods

in an armory, than any thing I ever come
across; there's the squeakin of the wheels, that
would go for them goose guzzles them fellers are
pipin on. The ramrods on the grindstones will go
for the fiddles,—only I don't see any fire flyin out
of the catgut, but I've been watchin sharp for it
some time. Then there's the old leather bellows
groanin and gruntin away, jist like those two fellers
seesawin there, on them two big-bellied fiddles,
and the leather bands flappin every time they
come round, keeps the time for the whole concern.'

“`Well, have you seen any fire yet?' after a
long pause.

“`Yes, plenty of it! they make it fly out of my
eyes, if they don't out of the catguts; confound
them, I say, they keep me all the time drawin
down first one eye and then another, first one corner
of my mouth and then another, jist as if a
horse was on a dead strain, and you were bowing
your neck and stickin your leg straight in the
ground, and then strainin with all your might as if
you could help him; but this is worse! a confounded
sight worse! for every now and then all
the fiddlers and trumpeters comes rattlin down
their tinklin quivers, like a four-horse load of
china, goin to the devil down a steep hill at the
rate of ten knots an hour; and then it all dies
away agin, as if horses, wagon, and chinaware
had all gone over a bank as high as a church
steeple. Then! I begin to draw a long breath

agin, and feel a little comfortable. But here's a
dyin away sound! hop and come agin, rising and
whooping, until the whole team's going full tilt,
pull dick, pull devil, here they go again! old Nick
take the hindmost. See their elbows now, how they
move out and in, out and in, like spinning jinnies.
And see that feller that sets at the top of the
mob, on the high chair in the middle, how his head
goes. See how he looks at that book before him,
as if that stuff could be put down there in black
and white.'

“`It is all down there, Damon.'

“`Come, come, now, strangers, you have stuffed
me enough! I can't swallow that exactly neither!
All the lawyers in Philadelphia couldn't write down
half the wriggle-ma-rees one of them chaps has
made since I set here! Smash my apple-cart, if
I wouldn't like jist to see a goosequill goin at the
rate of one of them elbows. Ink would fly like
mud at a scrub-race, and when it was done it
would look like my copy-book used to do at school;
more stops than words.'

“`But you keep your eye on the orchestra all
the while; why not look on the stage?'

“`I do, I do; and that puzzles me the blamedest,—how
they all come out square at the stops,
fiddlers and all. Every now and then they seem
to git into a fair race, and one feller's eye is poppin
out of his head, and the veins on the woman's neck
is ready to burst, and the fiddlers and the pipers
and the trumpeters are all puffin and blowin, like

our Kentuck jockeys at a pony sweepstakes; and
then all at once, jist as there begins to be a little
sport, to see who has the wind and the bottom, their
heads begin to move first one side and then the
other all so kind, and ready to make a draw game
of it, blabbering all the time; till the trumpeter
sees they're pretty well blown, then he begins to
come down a little with his toot! toot! toot!
That's to call all hands off, you see, and they slip
down as easy and as quiet as if it had all been in
fun. Then they all clear out but one, and he
watches his chance till they're all gone. Then he
comes here to the front, and flaps his wings and
crows over them, as if he had done some great
things, if we hadn't been here to show fair play.'

“I am sure, Randolph, that I give you but a
poor idea of the reality, but you must supply the
deficiencies by your imagination. Damon talked
incessantly, and I enjoyed it far more than I could
have done the opera, even if I had been a perfect
Italian scholar. I find that I must defer the
account of our disappointment till another time,
when I will tell you some matters of interest.