University of Virginia Library

56. CHAPTER LVI.

A sweet thing is a song; and though the Hebrew captives
hung their harps on the willows, that they could not
sing the melodies of Palestine before the haughty beards of
the Babylonians; yet, to themselves, those melodies of other
times and a distant land were sweet as the June dew on
Hermon.

And poor Harry was as the Hebrews. He, too, had been
carried away captive, though his chief captor and foe was
himself; and he, too, many a night, was called upon to sing
for those who through the day had insulted and derided
him.

His voice was just the voice to proceed from a small,
silken person like his; it was gentle and liquid, and meandered
and tinkled through the words of a song, like a musical
brook that winds and wantons by pied and pansied
margins.

“I can't sing to-night”—sadly said Harry to the Dutchman,
who with his watchmates requested him to while away
the middle watch with his melody—“I can't sing to-night.
But, Wellingborough,” he whispered,—and I stooped my
ear,—“come you with me under the lee of the long-boat,
and there I'll hum you an air.”

It was The Banks of the Blue Moselle.

Poor, poor Harry! and a thousand times friendless and
forlorn! To be singing that thing, which was only meant
to be warbled by falling fountains in gardens, or in elegant
alcoves in drawing-rooms,—to be singing it here—here, as I
live, under the tarry lee of our long-boat.

But he sang, and sang, as I watched the waves, and
peopled them all with sprites, and cried “chassez!” “hands
across!” to the multitudinous quadrilles, all danced on the
moonlit, musical floor.

But though it went so hard with my friend to sing his
songs to this ruffian crew, whom he hated, even in his
dreams, till the foam flew from his mouth while he slept;
yet at last I prevailed upon him to master his feelings, and
make them subservient to his interests. For so delighted,
even with the rudest minstrelsy, are sailors, that I well
knew Harry possessed a spell over them, which, for the time
at least, they could not resist; and it might induce them to
treat with more deference the being who was capable of
yielding them such delight. Carlo's organ they did not so
much care for; but the voice of my Bury blade was an
accordeon in their ears.

So one night, on the windlass, he sat and sang; and from
the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence
at every verse. Hushed, and more hushed they grew,
till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the
charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with
which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward
curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in
fascinated and fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly
all, for a time, they relinquished their prey.

Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw
Harry more and more upon myself for companionship; and
few can keep constant company with another, without revealing
some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn
for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually
alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose
cherisher and inspirer is solitude.

But though my friend became more communicative concerning
his past career than ever he had been before, yet he
did not make plain many things in his hitherto but partly
divulged history, which I was very curious to know; and

especially he never made the remotest allusion to aught
connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy
by which he had bound me held my curiosity on that
point a captive. However, as it was, Harry made many
very interesting disclosures; and if he did not gratify me
more in that respect, he atoned for it in a measure, by
dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they
were, which the future held out to him.

He confessed that he had no money but a few shillings
left from the expenses of our return from London; that only
by selling some more of his clothing, could he pay for his
first week's board in New York; and that he was altogether
without any regular profession or business, upon which, by
his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And
yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return
to England; and that somewhere in America he must
work out his temporal felicity.

“I have forgotten England,” he said, “and never more
mean to think of it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am
I to do in America?”

It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who,
young though I was, had been well rubbed, curried, and
ground down to fine powder in the hopper of an evil fortune,
and who therefore could sympathize with one in similar circumstances.
For though we may look grave and behave
kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we
have never actually experienced something like the woe that
weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer
our sympathy. And perhaps there is no true sympathy
but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust
that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.

So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many
a long watch by talking over our common affairs. But
inefficient, as a benefactor, as I certainly was; still, being
an American, and returning to my home; even as he was a
stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward

him in the attitude of the prospective doer of the honors of
my country; I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I
esteemed it more befitting, that I should rather talk with
him, than he with me: that his prospects and plans should
engage our attention, in preference to my own.

Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and
could sing such bewitching airs: I suggested whether his
musical talents could not be turned to account. The thought
struck him most favorably—“Gad, my boy, you have hit it,
you have,” and then he went on to mention, that in some
places in England, it was customary for two or three young
men of highly respectable families, of undoubted antiquity,
but unfortunately in lamentably decayed circumstances,
and thread-bare coats;—it was customary for two or three
young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their livelihood
by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery shillings.

They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell—
Are the ladies and gentlemen in? Seeing them at least
gentlemanly looking, if not sumptuously appareled, the
servant generally admitted them at once; and when the
people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise
with a gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies
and gentlemen, to sing you a song: we are singers, at your
service. And so, without waiting reply, forth they burst
into song; and having most mellifluous voices, enchanted
and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the conclusion
of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be
well recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return
again, and make the occupants of that dwelling once more
delighted and happy.

“Could not something of this kind, now, be done in New
York?” said Harry, “or are there no parlors with ladies in
them, there?” he anxiously added.

Again I assured him, as I had often done before, that
New York was a civilized and enlightened town; with a

large population, fine streets, fine houses, nay, plenty of
omnibuses; and that for the most part, he would almost
think himself in England; so similar to England, in essentials,
was this outlandish America that haunted him.

I could not but be struck—and had I not been, from my
birth, as it were, a cosmopolite—I had been amazed at his
skepticism with regard to the civilization of my native land.
A greater patriot than myself might have resented his insinuations.
He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in
wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a
spice of a Cockney, and had shut up his Christendom in
London.

Having then assured him, that I could see no reason, why
he should not play the troubadour in New York, as well as
elsewhere; he suddenly popped upon me the question,
whether I would not join him in the enterprise; as it
would be quite out of the question to go alone on such a
business.

Said I, “My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty,
than a dumb man has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized
lungs have I, that I think myself well off, that I
can talk; let alone nightingaling.”

So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began
to give up the idea of singing himself into a livelihood.

“No, I won't sing for my mutton,” said he—“what
would Lady Georgiana say?”

“If I could see her ladyship once, I might tell you,
Harry,” returned I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt
ill at ease for my bosom friend's conscience, when he alluded
to his various noble and right honorable friends and relations.

“But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly
hand, among your other accomplishments; and that at least,
will be sure to help you.”

“I do write a hand,” he gladly rejoined—“there, look
at the implement!—do you not think, that such a hand as

that might dot an i, or cross a t, with a touching grace and
tenderness?”

Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmanship.
It was small; and the fingers were long and thin; the
knuckles softly rounded; the nails hemispherical at the base;
and the smooth palm furnishing few characters for an Egyptian
fortune-teller to read. It was not as the sturdy farmer's
hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided the
state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter,
that elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great
Seneca dead in the forum.

His hand alone, would have entitled my Bury blade to
the suffrages of that Eastern potentate, who complimented
Lord Byron upon his feline fingers, declaring that they
furnished indubitable evidence of his noble birth. And so it
did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us—the son of a
man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast
paupers in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were
entitled to consideration, would constitute the oligarchy of
all Peru.

Folly and foolishness! to think that a gentleman is known
by his finger-nails, like Nebuchadnezzar, when his grew long
in the pasture: or that the badge of nobility is to be found
in the smallness of the foot, when even a fish has no foot at
all!

Dandies! amputate yourselves, if you will; but know,
and be assured, oh, democrats, that, like a pyramid, a great
man stands on a broad base. It is only the brittle procelain
pagoda, that tottles on a toe.

But though Harry's hand was lady-like looking, and had
once been white as the queen's cambric handkerchief, and
free from a stain as the reputation of Diana; yet, his late
pulling and hauling of halyards and clew-lines, and his
occasional dabbling in tar-pots and slush-shoes, had somewhat
subtracted from its original daintiness.

Often he ruefully eyed it.

Oh! hand! thought Harry, ah, hand! what have you
come to? Is it seemly, that you should be polluted with
pitch, when you once handed countesses to their coaches?
Is this the hand I kissed to the divine Georgiana? with
which I pledged Lady Blessington, and ratified my bond to
Lord Lovely? This the hand that Georgiana clasped to
her bosom, when she vowed she was mine?—Out of sight,
recreant and apostate!—deep down—disappear in this foul
monkey-jacket pocket where I thrust you!

After many long conversations, it was at last pretty well
decided, that upon our arrival at New York, some means
should be taken among my few friends there, to get Harry
a place in a mercantile house, where he might flourish his
pen, and gently exercise his delicate digits, by traversing
some soft foolscap; in the same way that slim, pallid ladies
are gently drawn through a park for an airing.