 | EARLY TWIG-ERY.
NO. II. Sporting scenes and sundry sketches |  |
A FEW INTERESTING INCIDENTS IN THE TERRESTRIAL
EXISTENCE OF A YOUNG MAN
WHO USED TO LIKE HORSES.
I love a good, fast horse. I luxuriate in a well balanced
buggy. If my biography be ever written, “gaudet equis” will
be the weathercock quotation set above the history to show
which way the wind of its lucubration is about to blow. My
equine propensities were developed as soon as I could toddle
upon truant feet to the nearest stable in the neighborhood. At
the sixth year's existence, I abstracted a shilling from my stepmother's
work box, to pay the man that kept the zebra; but I
honestly paid it back, with funds acquired the next day by
running away from school and holding the horses of two militia
colonels, when they dismounted on the parade ground,
for a grand review by the brigadier general.
Our milk-man had a horse; he was not a very especial
beauty; but couldn't he go fast around the corner! I once
knocked down a little peanut girl, and turned Maiden-lane into
a very palpably milky way, by trying to find the maximum of
proximity which might be attained between a pump and the
hub of a wheel, without any necessary collision of contiguous
particles of matter. Like many other philosophers, I came
near sacrificing my life to my scientific zeal, just at the moment
when I deemed my discovery secure, and my triumph
certain and glorious. The jealous fates, as usual, interfered,
and with violent rage at my promised success, precipitated
me across the street into the centre of the peanut establishment
just referred to. Down went the lady-merchant, and
down went her apples, peanuts and barbers'-poles. I felt sorry
for the poor thing, but it was all her fault, for not getting out
such a stubborn hydrodynamical obstacle at the corner of
the street.
This was but the preface to more glorious exploits, the entitulement
of a long chapter of spirit-stirring accidents. The
incidents of my life have been but a catalogue of the names
of danger. I have been run away with by frightened, and
kicked and bitten by vicious steeds; I have been thrown from
stumblers; I have broken down in sulkies; I have been upset
in gigs—in fine,—for the whole catalogue would be
tedious,—I have been crushed, and banged and bruised, and
battered in all manner of imaginable fashions; so that it is a
crying mercy that I have fingers left to write this penitential
confession. Indeed, when I reflect upon my various hair-breath
salvations, I cannot help thinking of what an eminently
amiable Dutch gentlewoman told certain foraging pupils of a
country boarding-school, concerning some choice forbidden
fruit, touching which we had mounted a tree in her garden.
“Don't hook them are cherries, boys,” she screamed, “I'me resarved
them for presarves.” O! what a jubilate would go up
from my blessed maiden aunts, were the promise of a hope to
be shadowed forth, that I am reserved for some better function
than to moisten the shears of Mistress Beldame Atropos!
When I had escaped so far as my sixteenth year, I was
driving a spirited, half-broken colt before a pleasure wagon,
near a country village, in the neighborhood of which myself
and my companion expected to shoot on the succeeding day.
It was just at night, and our journey was nearly completed.
All of a sudden, our whiffle-tree became detached from the
vehicle, and fell upon the horse's heels. Off then he started,
in the madness of his fright, utterly uncontrollable, and whirling
us after him in the bounding wagon. The trees and fences
that I could pray for, was to be able to keep our racer in the
road, and I hoped to hold him on a straight and steady run,
until the furious animal should be exhausted. Vain hope!
my hands were soon powerless from the strain of holding and
sawing and pulling on the reins. Just at this crisis, a little
green lane, running at right angles with the turnpike, invited
the wilful feet of our crazy colt, by a fair promise of an easy
road, and a speedy barn-yard termination. But, alas! not
three bounds had the runaway made upon his new chosen
course, before he brought us upon a spot where they were
mending the track, and where the way was accordingly strewn
with huge, rough stones. That was the last I saw, and it is
all I remember of the matter.
Two days afterwards, I awoke, and found myself in bed, in
a strange place. I raised my hand to rub my eyes open, and
dispel the supposed dream, but to my astonishment, I found
that my arm was stiff and bandaged, as though I had been
lately bled. I was weak and sore in all my bones. There
was a smell of camphor in the room. A bottle marked “soap
liniment,” stood upon a table by my bed-side. The window-shutters
were half closed, but a curiously cut crescent,—the
crowning glory, no doubt, of the artificer of the domicil,—admitted
the bright rays of a mid-day sun. All was still as the
solitude of a wilderness.
I fell back upon the pillow in amazement. It was a neat,
pleasant, little room, plainly, but comfortably furnished,
adorned with peacocks' feathers, tastefully arranged around
the walls, and a large boquet of fresh flowers in the fire-place.
The appointments of the bed were delightful; the sheets were
white as snow, and the curtains were of old-fashioned chintz,
blue and white, presenting to my wondering eyes innumerable
the sun shining in the window, bright as noonday?
A newspaper lay upon the foot of my bed; I took it up, and
gazed upon it vacantly. It was the village hebdomodal, just
moist from the press. A mist floated before my eyes as they
fell upon my own name. When I regained my uncertain vision,
I made out with difficulty to comprehend the following
editorial announcement: “We regret to mention, that on
Thursday evening last, a serious accident befell Mr. Renovare
Dolorem, jun. and Dr. Cerberus Angelo, of New-York, as they
were riding in a wagon, in the vicinity of this village. The
horse taking fright, ran away, upset the vehicle, and threw out
the gentlemen near the toll-gate. Mr. D. was taken up for
dead, but the doctor escaped unhurt. Fortunately, Squire
Hoel Bones was passing by at the time, and he and the doctor
conveyed Mr. D. to a house in the neighborhood, where,
we are happy to say, every attention is rendered to the unfortunate
sufferer. Mr. D. continues still insensible.”
Here then was a development of the why and wherefore of
my stiff joints and meridian repose. “So, then, now for another
week's repentance,” I sighed aloud; but there was some
one at the door, and I stopped and shut my eyes. I heard
the rustling of frocks, and soft footsteps fell upon the floor,
and presently the curtains were drawn aside, and I perceived
the shadows of two light figures bending over me, and I heard
low, restrained breathings. A small forefinger wandered
about my wrist, in search of my pulse; a little hand was
drawn several times across my forehead, and then it put back
the tangled hair that overhung my eyebrows: I thought it
seemed to linger about my temples, as though its owner wished
there was another matted tuft yet to be adjusted.
“He has got more color than he had, sister;” was the first
spoken sentence. No reply was made.
“Poor fellow! I wonder if he will die. Is n't he handsome,
Mary?” said the same fair speaker, after a little pause.
I am telling a true story, and if I have to rehearse compliments
that were paid me when a boy, it must not be set down
under the head of vanity.
Mary answered not, but she sighed. That was voice and
speech enough for me. She was evidently the younger of
the two, and my boyish fancy quickly formed the beau ideal
of the girl who heaved that sigh for my misadventures and
dangers. I was at once in love, deeply, devotedly. I cared
not to open my eyes; I would willingly have been blind for
ever, the vision of my imagination was so happy. Yet it was
painful to lie there, a hypocrite, affecting insensibility, and
hear my physiognomy and my chance of recovery discussed
between the maidens. Perhaps I was bashful—O quantum
mutatus! and had not the courage to encounter the eyes of
beings whom I knew not, but in the kind discharge of the
grateful offices of guardian angels. I wonder they did not
feel my quick beating pulse, and hear my throbbing heart
beating against my ribs!
Presently they left my bed-side and glided to the looking-glass,
where they conversed in inaudible wispers. I ventured
to peep through a crevice in the curtain, and reconnoitre
my gentle nurses. Need I say they were both beautiful?
Presumptuous wretch! O! worse than profaner of the
mysteries of the Bona Dea, to gaze with unlicensed eye upon
the delicate services of the toilet! The cruelly punished Actæon
was to be pitied, for he rushed unwittingly into the presence
of the hunter goddess; but I courted my just punishment,
but a merciful judgment!
The elder sister was, I thought, about twenty; Mary had
scarcely passed her fifteenth year. Had it not been for that
newspaper, I might have revelled in the fancies of a Turkish
paradise.
Jenneatte took out her comb, and there gushed down her
back a full bright flow of auburn tresses, that almost reached
her feet.
Sister Mary assisted her in plating and adjusting and putting
them up, and then tightened her corset-lacing, and then
—, spare me, spare me, too faithful memory! and then
sister Jenneatte left Mary and me alone.
If the doctor had come in at the moment, he could have
told whether I had a fever, without taking out his watch, and
looking wise.
I closed my eyes, for Mary was at my bedside, and her
evident agitation assured me that there was pity in her heart.
Kind, good girl! that innocent sympathy would have won the
mercy of the coldest censor. She put her arm under the
pillow, and gently raised my head. Something rested on my
cheek; it was warm and moist; there was a gentle pressure
about it; it was still and quiet; and Mary's breath was with
it; and it came again, and again—yes, Mary kissed me—
gods!
Fudge. I am getting rhapsodical. What can have made
my eyes so misty? Mary is nothing to me—now that—,
pshaw!
When Doctor Cerberus Angelo came in to see me, I was
alone, tossing to and fro with a burning fever. Consternation
and hurry were written on his face, for he came upon a
waked up, and was very wild and flighty.
The lancet renewed its office, and sudorifices and antifebriles
were again my bitter portion. But all the doctor's
practice reached not my disease. That night, that night!
how I suffered! I raved and ranted all manner of incoherent
nonsense; now calling upon Mary, and now crying for Jenneatte.
The doctor soothed, and scolded, and brought me mint
tea, and swore at me. At last, I fell asleep, and there was a
quiet house until the next morning, when I awoke faint, weak,
and melancholy.
I tried to reason with myself upon the absurdity of my passion
for the two girls, but without avail. It was a species of
insanity which I could not cure. I slowly recovered my
strength and health, but before a fortnight had elapsed, I had
offered my boy-heart to each of the sisters, and was engaged
to be married to them both.
This was not villainy, but madness. The doctor found it
out, and read me a lecture on gratitude. I think he was jealous
of me. He wrote also to my father, and a close carriage
soon conveyed me from the place where my heart was doubly
pledged. Jenneatte kissed me good-by at the door. She
could do it with propriety—she was so much older than me;
but Mary ran up into her room, to cry, by herself.
When I arrived at man's estate, did I not of course continue
to love Mary, and make the tender-hearted little country
girl my wedded wife?—
I am wandering again. Let me proceed to another incident.
We were talking of horses and accidents.
I am romantic enough to love to ride upon a moonlit night.
into a clear, blue sky, just after the snow has done falling,
and the wind is lulled into an almost infant's breath! How
it makes one think of sleigh-bells, and fur cloaks, and buffalo
skins, and mulled wine, and bright eyes, and cold elastic
cheeks, and warm merry hearts! “On such a night as this,”
my college chum Harry and I drove a gallant pair of coursers
up to old Dorus Van Stickler's mansion, in New-Jersey. The
girls had promised to go, and the sleighing was capital, and
there was to be a ball at Valley-grotto, about nine miles off.
We left the horses in charge of sable Sam, and bounded into
the house. Harry's sweetheart was all ready, but Jemima
my Jemima had a bad headache, and could not go. This grief
was distressing enough, in all conscience; but what think you
of her aunt Starchy's stalking into the room, rigged out with
muff and tippet—as I am a sinner!—and telling me that it
was a pity that I should be disappointed, and that she would
go with me herself, in Mima's place?
Fire and ice! what benevolence! and O! provident antiquity!
she put into my hands as a pledge of her sincerity, her
snuff-box, and a towel-full of gingerbread, to sneeze and eat
upon the road.
I was patient; very patient. Yet, nevertheless, I did think
of going out and breaking one of the horses' legs. “But after
all,” whispered my good genius to me, and then I to Harry,
“what need we care! To be sure, we can't go to the
ball, and we'll have to come home early; but trust to fate.
I'll try to get rid of her. Remember, I shall drive.”
I assisted the old lady into the sleigh. It was like lifting
an icicle or a chesnut rail.
We rode more than a mile before a word was spoken, except
to the horses. I had the reins. Harry and his loved
Happy, happy Harry!
The old woman, after a while, grew drowsy—she did, by
Jove. She pitched backwards and forwards, now knocking
Harry, and now saluting me with her honored cranium. She
seemed used to it, for despite of all my hopes, she would not
tumble out of the sleigh.
At last we approached a tavern, near which was a beautiful,
deep snow-drift. I knew the ground. It was rough, and
a little precipitous on the roadside, and unless I drove with
uncommon carefulness, we should certainly be upset. I
looked at Harry. There was a contagious wickedness in his
eye that made my hand unsteady. I must have pulled on the
near-side rein a little too hard, for the runner went down into
a deep rut, our centre of gravity was lost, and we were unceremoniously
tumbled helter-skelter into the snow-bank.
Aunt Starchy screeched out, as though every bone in her
body was broken. Harry lifted her up, and brushed the snow
off her, while I got the horses into the road. She insisted
upon going to the tavern, to ascertain whether she had not
received some inward bruise, declaring, in spite of all our entreaties,
that she would ride no further, and that we must go
on without her.
Accordingly, we hoisted her in, and drove up to Boniface's.
The first thing that I did there, was to get her a stiff glass of
gin and water, which the old lady drank off with great comfort
to her weak stomach, declaring that she always admired
how considerate I was. This prescription being so well received,
I was satisfied that a hot rum-toddy might be swallowed
with additional benefit; and I am proud to declare that
my course of practice upon this occasion made the most rapid
ceased to grunt, and she presently fell into a pleasant sleep.
It would have been cruel to awake her and renew our entreaties
to accompany us; so we tucked her up, and told Mrs.
Boniface we would call for her when we came back, and off
we started for the ball. O! had Jemima but been with us,
then! However, little Sue de Mott and Jane Antonides both
lived on our road.
Every body has been on a sleighing frolic once, and it
would be foreign to our business, to tell what else took place.
Harry stopped for the old lady on his return about three
o'clock next morning. Something detained me in the neighborhood
of the ball-room until daylight.
Riding of a dark stormy night cannot be esteemed a pleasure.
Yet a frequent roadster must sometimes be prepared to say composedly
to the clouds, “pour on, I will endure.” My last experience
of a wet ride was shared by Doctor Gulielm Belgium.
Fate has been ironical with me, in more than once giving me
a doctor for a companion in my travelling distresses. I told
this story once to Angelo, in a letter which I have begged
back to help my memory. I cannot do better than to quote my
recital on the impulse of the adventure. Here it is.
“—So he invited me to take some vehicular enjoyment on
the road to Cato's.
“Allons! and we started.
“He was made up with more than even his own exquisiteness,
this afternoon. His mere vestimental arrangements
were enough to show that in his time he had read a book, and
travelled out of his county. There was nothing flash or
Corinthian in the structure; the order of the architecture was
what a harmony of composition! He had crowned his caput
with a bran new golgotha, beneath whose gracefully curved
brim, his late shorn locks showed here and there their glossy
edges, just sufficiently to satisfy the careless gazer of the ample
stock from which they descended, and without encroaching too
much upon the boasted beauty of his well-framed forehead.
His whiskers—they were so accurately and curiously cut, you
would have been reminded of the days when people trimmed
trees and hedges into the likeness of birds and beasts; they
were so thick, and smooth, and regular, that a stray mosquito
planting his tired feet upon their tangling meshes, might have
thought himself upon the surface of a swath of his own native
meadows, just after it had been swept by the scythe of the
merry mower. His cheek had a ruddy, hearty glow of health
upon it. His eye was bright and keen. You would have
thought it had not twinkled over hochheimer for a month.
But the coup de grace of all was a kidded forefinger, against
which gently pressing digital there seemed to languish a slender
walking-stick, of the most singular and severe virtue. No
vulgar man ever sported such a staff. There was but one
other like it in the world. It was the rarest quality of sandalwood,
precious as the golden rod, that led the pious æneas
to the elysian fields. It cost judgment, taste and a price. It
was of eastern origin, and drew its earliest breath in India.
You might have suspected that, from the voluptuous perfume
that was breathed from the wood, and from its delicate form
and tint, and from the fineness of its texture and fibre. The
color was slightly changeable, and nearest of any thing else
to the invisible orange of the neck plumage of a Barbary
pheasant.
“None but a brave man, and a good-looking, well-dressed
fellow would have dared to wear it.
“We reached our original destination in safety, and then,
tempted by the mildness of the evening, extended our jaunt
in the pleasant twilight to Harlaem, and returned at our easy
leisure to the Roman's. Here a sudden and violent midnight-black
mass of rain and thunder and lightning blocked up the
road, so that we were fain compelled to stop and comfort ourselves
with tongue and a salad. When the storm abated, we
renewed our travel homeward, Belgium commanding the reins.
Soon, however, again the darkness became so thick, that it
rested upon our eyelids like a palpable weight; we could not
see our way except when the heavenly fulgurations set it all
on fire. Still on we went. There is a place about two hundred
yards from the censor's, on the return to the city, where
the alderman of the twelfth ward has provided a deep ditch
on the roadside, for the devil to set man-traps. I had a feint
recollection of the existence of these pitfalls, and I entreated
my learned friend to let me have the reins.
“B. was a good fair-weather driver, and one of the few whom
I could trust by daylight; but he had not the owl eyes of an
old traveller by night. His pride, however, stood up at the
insinuation that I could see better in the dark than he, and he
peremptorily refused.
“Of all the agonies of apprehension, save me from the incubus
of an unskilful, head-strong driver! I begged and beseeched
him to yield, for I saw that he was leaving the road;
but no, he insisted that he was right, and that he could not be
mistaken.
“`Drive to the right, for mercy's sake,' I cried, feeling the
left wheel of the vehicle already on the descent into the ditch.
“`Drive to Tartarus and be quiet,' or something like it, was
the kind and amiable response.
“I grew angry now, and tried the influence of abuse; but
nothing could move the obstinate madness of my Dutchman.
`I see the road plainly enough, don't be a fool,' and other
such gentle phrases were all the reward that I got for my poor
pains. On urged the headlong Jehu, and not long deferred
was our embrace of `mater et terra genitrix.' Down went
our five hundred dollar mare, some eight or ten feet into the
bottom of the ditch, and in a little brief moment were figured
out a group of horse, and men, and buggy, precipitated, conglomerated
and accumulated, at sight of which Hogarth would
have wept for joy.
“The violence of the fall stunned me for a minute. When
I came to myself, I was uncertain whether terrene habitations
yet possessed me, or whether I was a groping ghost upon the
banks of the dark Styx. I listened for the noise of Ixion's
wheel, and the rumbling of the stone of Sisyphus, but I heard
instead the doctor cry out, `d— it,' as he turned over upon
his side, in a mud-puddle by the head of our poor beast. Assured
by this unequivocal evidence of vitality, I got upon my
feet, and without waiting to make any inquiries about bones,
I plunged through the rain to the house of our late host for
relief. I soon returned to the scene of distress with a lantern,
and a sleepy negro. Then, dear Angelo, there was a sight
to look at. O! could you have seen B. come up to me, at
that moment, with his pet cane, his unique, broken in his
hands, with that wo-begone expression on his countenance—
with that tragical attitude, hatless—his heavy eye-brow dripping
with rain—his hair seeming to be in a state of liquidation,
and fast flowing down upon the muddy adornments of coat
and white—ah! once white pantaloons; his left hand pointing
thing to be lamented or cared for; while the mare lay groaning
in the ditch, and the lightning flashed, and the wind and rain
beat and whistled around us, and the negro yawned, and the
light of the lantern threw a narrow streak now upon one, and
then upon another feature of the scene; now disclosing a hat
—or rather what had once been a hat—and now an umbrella,
and now a buggy-cushion. If your neck had been broken,
you would have laughed at this ludicrous piece of picturesque.
How can I give you an idea of the appearance of the hero of
the scene? Think of old Lear, bare-headed in the tempest;—
no, that's not it. Think of Othello, in his bitterest anguish,
harrowing up his soul with the thoughts of what had been.
Do you remember Kean's air, and attitude, when he comes to
this melancholy passage—
To try me with affliction, etc. *****
But there, where I have garnered up my heart,
Where either I must live, or bear no life.'
“I have given you brush, easel and canvas; you have a good
fancy—draw the waterscape yourself.
“But be amazed at our escape. A broken dashboard, a
strained shoulder, and the doctor's ruined habiliments, made
the sum total of our added up distresses. I must confess for
myself some undefinable rheumatics; but I am willing to bear
that infliction, by way of warning against rides by night, and
opinionated drivers.”
| EARLY TWIG-ERY.
NO. II. Sporting scenes and sundry sketches | |