University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

Roger Ascham.

Even thus, apologised the venerable preceptor of England's
virgin queen, when he gave to “all gentlemen and yeomen of
England, pleasaunte for theyr pastyme to rede, and profitable
for theyr use to folow,” that precious birth of “Toxophilus,
the schole of shootinge conteyned in two bookes.” Glorious
old Roger! my master—my father—my friend—my patron
saint! Thy pupil and worshipper is redeemed from the guilt
of “idlenesse and levitie,” by the gracious authority of thy

precept and example. Roger, be with me! Rogere, ut mihi
faveas, adjutorque sis, rogo, obsecro!

On the evening succeeding the night when Ned's travels
met with the ignominious punctuation which has been set
forth in the foregoing chapter, we were all assembled around the
cheerful fire, relating our sports and various adventures of the
day. Ned was in good humor with himself and every body
else, for his sport had been eminently triumphant. Oliver and
I had killed only some twenty coot, and a beach fox; while
he and one of the boys brought in fifty-four brant, seven geese,
five widgeons, three oldwives, a cormorant, and a white owl.
Ned gave us a full account of his captivity and sufferings
among the Pawnee Picks, and Daniel rehearsed, with much
grace and unction, his yarns about pirates Halstead, Conklin,
and Jones. Fatigue and sleep at last succeeded in making
us yawn, and as I had engaged Bill Luff to go with me to
“the middle ground” next morning, early, to lie in a battery, I
proposed that we should “shut up shop,” and go to bed.

“Won't the tide sarve for Mr. Locus to reach to the Lanjan
Empire to-night?” asked Long John of me, stretching out
his immense isthmus of neck, and putting on a most ludicrously
quizzical character of phiz. “I reckon 'ts high water
naaw, and his ship can scratch over the bars, likely, 'bout this
time.”

“It's my 'pinion he rather smashed her last night,” said
Dan; “I shouldn't be 'sprised if Mr. Cypress was to say he
see small piece o' th' wrack himself.”

“Let him keel her up and get the water out o' her, and set
her afloat agen.”

“It's no use. She's got a smart hole into her, and she's
pretty much water-logged, I sh'd say.”

“Let 'im take out some th' cargo, and she'll go. He'd only

got too much freight into her, that's all; and she was loaded
ruther bad, 'corden to my notion.”

“You're right, John,” said I. “Good. Ned, take out Julia
Kleokatrinka and you'll float.”

“Take out all the women, Neddy, and thee can steer thy
vessel with better success,” advised our model of modesty,
Oliver.

“No, no. Leave in the dancen gals,” cried Venus. “Gals
never spiled a sailen party yet, I know it.”

“Well boys, make up your minds,” said Ned, “whether you
want me to start or not. You don't, to be sure, deserve to
have a single sentence more of that journey, and I declare to
you, I would not go on with the recital of my various and singular
adventures upon the voyage, but that I want to tell you
a short yarn about our minister for Africa, and a certain
American gentleman, that is, one who called himself such, but
who was most unworthy of the name,—a great man, in his
own opinion, with whom I met at Gondar, the capital of
Abyssinia.”

“Julius Cæsar!” pleaded I; “Ned, where the devil are you
travelling?”

“Travelling? Where I actually went; down the Red Sea,
through the Straits of Babelmandel, and so around, by Ceylon
and the Straits of Malacca, to the Lanjan Empire, stopping on
the road, now and then, to have a fight or a frolic.”

“Prepare for grief, boys,” said I, in deep despondence,
tumbling back upon the straw. “You've got into a scrape by
urging your last petition. He'll talk to the end of next week.
Good night.”

“No, my sweet boy, you don't escape in that way,” replied
Ned, pulling me up with a grip which I was fain to obey;
“you have contributed more than any one else to fit out this

expedition, and I swear you shall have your share of the proceeds.”

“Don't trouble yourself about the returns now. I'll settle
with you, as ship's husband and supercargo, when you get
back. Good bye. A pleasant voyage to you.”

“No, no. Come back; come back. A press-gang has
got hold of you. You must go with me.”

“Don't ship me, Ned; I'm not an able seaman. I can
neither reef nor steer.”

“Make him steward's mate, Mr. Locus,” said Dan with a
malicious grin. “He can bile coffee, and mix liquor for you,
when your throat gits hoarse callen to th' crew.”

“I'll do it, Dan. Cypress, you are hereby appointed steward's
mate of the felucca `Shiras Suez.' Look to your duty.
There is your pay in advance, and here—filling my champagne
glass—is money to furnish supplies to Mecca.”

Resistance was in vain. I was duly installed. “Now,
Ned, what do you want?”

“A very light duty, Cypress. Your ears, and occasional
tongue. I know my course, but I forget the name of the
man whom I want to glorify. What is it?”

“How, in the name of all the Mahometan saints, should I
know?”

“Repeat me those lines of Anacreon which we used to
sing and mumble in school, when we were `making believe'
study.”

“How can that help you? Do you mean `' ”

“Yes; yes. That is it—

I wish to sing of Cadmus. I want to tell you, boys, about

Mr. Agamemnon Hermanus Spinosus Cadmus. Did you ever
know him, Cypress?”

“O, perfectly well,” replied I, thinking to bother Ned.
“He was a descendant of Longoboos, one of the sons of
Atreus, whose name, by the by, I perceive, is omitted in
Charles Anthon's last, otherwise unexceptionable, edition of
Lempriere. He was a regularly born boy, novertheless, and
he possessed a decidedly more dignified disposition and deportment
than his brothers Menelaus, and Agamemnon.”

“Many laws? d—n him,” cried Venus. “He was in
favor of plenty of banks, and legislaten, I 'spose.”

“Historians differ upon that point, Venus. He was a
brave fellow, at all events. Lactantius records, in his `de ira
divina,' that Menelaus and Agamemnon, instead of being kings,
were most distinct democrats; men who had rather eat a
plain republican bowl of bread and milk with an honest farmer,
than to be clothed in scarlet and fine linen, and sit within
the blessed sound of the divine action of royal grinders. The
other youth, on the contrary, he says, was against universal
suffrage, and in favor of the doctrine that no man can love
his country, or feel an interest in her welfare, unless he has
got plenty of money.”

“D—n him! then, 'stead o' t'other fellow,” interposed
the republican critic again.

“His practice,” I continued, not taking notice of the interruption,
“followed out his principles. He contrived to get
appointed a Colonel in the militia, and then started to travel
in foreign parts. He drove into Corinth a coach and six,
with outriders, spending his money, all the way, with the
profusion of a prince. Lais was at this time in the full blow
of her glory. Cadmus bought off Alcibiades for a hundred
thousand drachms, and set her up in the most magnificent

style. It was in reference to him that Diogenes, the Cynic,
perpetrated that jealous snarl, `non cuivis homini contingit
adire Corinthum.' ”

“Mr. Locus,” said Dan, “I'm 'feard the steward's mate's
taken command o' th' ship, and he's sarven out his darned
Latin 'stead o' th' regler ship's allowance.”

“Cypress, I've been thinking you might as well tell the
story yourself. You seem to know all about it.”

“No, no. I beg pardon, Ned. Go on, go on. I was only
helping hoist sail, and throw off.”

“Well, boys, now stop this deviltry, and I'll start. Where
did I leave off, last night?”

“You stopped when you got 'sleep in Julia Kle—cre—kle
—cre—”

“Kleokatrinka's lap,” finished I.

“No, that was the Siberian puppy dog,” said Ned.

“What's the odds what country the puppy belonged to?”
inquired Raynor, chuckling, and who knew that a fair hit was
always welcome, come when, and come upon whom, it might.

“It must have been yourself, Ned,” said I. “You like to
take your comfort—

“Raynor,” sung out Ned, getting a little vexed, “I wish
you would fine that young gentlemen. What was the punishment
we determined to inflict upon him the next time he
quoted Heathen languages wrongly, or inappositely?”

“A basket of Champagne. Shall I have to send one of
the boys across to Islip, or Jim Smith's, to-morrow morning?”

“Yes, either for him or me, for I make a complaint against
him. Summon the Court of Dover, strait off. Crier! Peter!
call the Court!”

“It will take too long, Ned,” said I. “I'll leave it to
Venus and Peter. They shall be the court with full powers.
Each man state his case, and we'll be bound by their
judgment.”

“Done,” answered Ned. “We'll waive the installation and
ceremony of opening.—Gentlemen of the Court, we were
talking of dogs; and I say that to make a quotation about
cats, and apply it to the more noble canine tribe, is supremely
inappropriate, not to say highly ridiculous.”

“That stands to reason,—seems to me,” said Venus.

“Now, your Honors, the culprit whom I have charged, has
bored us with a pretended illustration of his weak wit, from
a dissolute pagan named Theocritus—I remember him well,
for I was compelled, once on a season, to be familiar with
him;—and he has substituted the effeminacy of lazy cats, for
the sensibly drowsiness of high-spirited, hard-working pointers.
`' means `cats.' ”

“I should think it meant `gals' ” cried out one of the boys.
“Mr. Cypress, you're safe. You'll have Venus on your
side.”

“Order, order in the Court,” cried the crier Judge.

“May it please your honors, that is the whole of my case,
and I will conclude by expressing the most exalted confidence
in the wisdom, discrimination, learning, and sense of
justice of this most reverend and respectable tribunal.”

Alexander Africanus Maximus, President of “the Universal
Court of Dover of the whole world,”—surnamed Aleck
Niger, from his successful exploration of the sources of that
black-region river, as well as of divers other more mixed fluids,
—could not have made a better speech, even if he had had the
immortal George, George the First in the republic, to prompt
him. But I did not despair. I happened to know that it
was not always rowing straight ahead that wins a race, or
that talking sense and truth always gains a cause. Judges
and Juries, in spite of their affectation of stern, solemn unfluctuating
purpose, are like the tides. They have their currents,
and eddies, and under-currents. There is a moon in law and
morals, as well as a moon in physics. I blame not the tides,
nor do I condemn the courts.—“I tax not you, ye elements,
with injustice.”—They are both, I trust, insensible to,
and innocent of, the influence which makes them swell and
fall. But, as Peter once said, in one of his happy moments,

“the tides owns the moon, and men 's judges, and judges is
men, and they know who can give 'em a lift best.” I had
been told, moreover, that many a cause was determined upon
some incidental or collateral point, that had nothing to do, in
realty, with the merits of the case.

“May it please the Court,” I began; “or may it displease
the Court, just as their omnipotence pleases.” There I was
one point ahead of Ned, in the Court of Dover; for that court
always respects an impudent compliment, “I am accused of
making an irreverend abduction from the discourses of a most
exemplary fisherman.”

“Fisherman!” cried both the judges simultaneously.
“Was he a fisherman?”

“Most distinctly may it please the Court,” I replied.

“That alters the case; brother Venus, don't you think
so?” said Judge Peter, turning to his learned coadjutor.

“It makes a smart deal o' difference, I sh'd say,” responded
the worthy associate. “But 'spose he only fished for flounders
and eels, and sich; would'nt it make no odds?”

“Have my doubts, brother.”

“It is false,” cried Ned, hard to be restrained. “Theocritus
never—”

“Silence—silence,” thundered the Judges. “The court never
doubts when it's indifferent. Mr. Locus, you're fined drinks
all 'round, and a paper o' tobacco, for disrespect to the joined-issued
tribunals o' your country. Proceed, Mr. Cypress.”

“Your honors will perceive that my accuser has other objects
in view than the mere unjust persecution of my humble
self. But I will not refer to them. The whole case may
be thus succinctly and successfully defended. I am charged
with making an in-apposite quotation, contrary to the statutes
of the Beach. I spoke of cats. Now, your Honors, are not

cats four-legged animals? I appeal to the Court's own sense
of justice and physical fitness.—”

“He talks like a book, brother Peter.”

“Then here,”—holding up the fox I had shot, and who
was my junior counsel on the argument,—“has not this fox
four legs?”

“An't one of them fore legs shot off?” asked Judge Peter,
dubitans.

“No, your Honor, it is only a little crippled. Now we all
know, and there needs no argument to prove, that a dog runs
on four feet; and so a cat is like a fox, and a dog is like a
fox, and things that are equal to the same are equal to one
another; and so a cat is a dog, and a dog is a cat; and so,
your Honors, I trust I have established my defence, and that
I have not misused words, and that Mr. Locus must pay for
the champagne.”

“Them's my sentiments, brother Venus. Things what's
like is sartenly like, and them what's the same must be the
same, nor they can't be no otherwise, as I can fix it.”

“I coincide with the last speaker,” pronounced Venus.
“Peter, who is chief Justice?”

“I am. No; you be. Go ahead. Stick it on.”

“Respected fellow-citizens, and criminals in general; the
judgment o' this expiscious court is that the fines agin Mr.
Locus, already expounded, stands good, and he pays the champagne.
As for th' rest o' th' company,—extracten the judges,
who is not liable to human frailty,—they'll pay a small glass
to each o' the judges a piece when they get 'shore, on 'count
not making disturbance, so as to give the Court a chance to
show the magnitude o' its justice and the power thereof; and
the defendant will stand over 'till the next meeten o' th' court.
Zoph, be crier. Crier, 'journ the court.”