THE CABINET.
(“The Committee” trimming pencil in the Eastern-most
bathing-house on Rockaway beach. Enter the brigadier
with nostrils inflated.)
Brig.—Fmff! fmff! God bless the Atlantic ocean!
Fmff! “Salt sea” indeed! I never smelt a breeze
fresher. Fmff! fmff! fmff! You got the start of
me, my dear boy! (pulls his last high heel out of the
deep sand and sits down on the threshold.) What say
to a strip and dip before we come to business?
Com.—Fie!—general, fie! Look through your
fingers at the other end of the beach! It is the hour
of oceanic beatitude—the ladies bathing! The murmuring
waters will be purer for the interview. Bathe
we in the first wave after!
Brig.—How can you
“Play in wench-like words with that
Which is so serious?”
Did you bring a towel, mi-boy?
Com.—Tut!—would you offend the south wind, that
proffers the same office so wooingly? Walk on the
beach, man, and let the sun peruse you, while you dry!
Brig.—So should I be more red, with a vengeance!
But I don't like this dry-salting, mi-boy! It's too
sticky! Ye gods! look at the foam upon that wave!
What is that like, my poet?
Com.—Like the unrolling of a bale of lace on a
broad counter! The “tenth wave” is the head clerk,
and the clams and soft crabs are the ladies shopping!
How I love the affinities of Art and Nature!
Brig.—Poh! Where's Nature's twine and brown
paper? Don't be transcendental!
Com.—How ignorant you are, not to know eel-grass
and devil's apron—Nature's twine and brown paper!
My dear general, were you ever introduced to the
Atlantic? Is this your first visit? Stand up in the
doorway!
(Brigadier rises and the surf bows to the ground.)
General Morris! the Atlantic ocean. Atlantic
ocean! General Morris. I am happy to bring two
such distinguished “swells” together. Though (apropos,
Mr. “Heaving Main!”) the general is a gay man!
Look out for your “pale Cynthia!” The moon is
not famed for her constancy!
Brig.—What are you mumbling there, mi-boy!
I wish, under the tender influence of these suggesting
waters, to express a wish that you would write some
poetry, or give us a new tale, or dash us off a play, or—
Com.—Or, in some other way make rubbish for
posterity! No, sir! There are no pack-horses in
Posthumousland, and, as much as will ride in a ghost's
knapsack, with his bread and cheese, is as much, in
quantity, as any man should write who has pity for his
pedestrian soul on its way to dooms-day! Why,
general, the TALES which I am about to publish (including
“Inklings,” “Loiterings” etc., etc.), will
make, of themselves, a most adult-looking octavo.
My POEMS and PLAYS have tonnage enough to carry,
at least, all the bulk necessary to a fame; my MISCELLANIES,
yet to be collected, will make a most sizeable
volume of slip-slop; PENCILLINGS is no pamphlet; and
Letters from under a Bridge, and other epistolary
production—do you see how beautifully the sand
immortalizes the industrious waves that write successively
their sparkling lines on the beach!
Brig.—Don't malign your “eternal fame, mi-boy!”
Com.—More eternal, I believe, than the love of the
impertinent Lothario in the sonnet:—
(“But say, my all! my mistress! and my friend!
What day next week th' eternity shall end?”)
but how much more eternal it would be, if they would
make the genesis of a man's works like that of the
patriarchs—dateable from the first satisfactory off-shoot
of his manhood! Do you remember the expressive
genealogy of Shem?
12. And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years and begat
Salah:
13. And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred
and three years and begat sons and daughters.
14. And Eber lived four and thirty years and begat Peleg:
15. And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and
thirty years, and begat sons and daughters.
And so on, up to Abraham, whose father was seventy
years old when he was born. But don't you suppose
these boys did anything before they were thirty-odd?
Their history begins with their first creditable
production! Eber was nothing till he begat Peleg,
though, very likely, the critics of that time “preferred
very much his earlier productions.”
Brig.—And you think you could begin, now, with
your first Peleg and Salah?
Com.—You have said it. But, as I hinted before,
my posthumous knapsack is already full of rubbish,
and—a thought strikes me!
Brig.—“Call it out!”
Com.—I'll change my style and start a new reputation,
incog!
Brig.—Famous!
Com.—And sell some man the glory of it for an
annuity!
Brig.—Good!
Com.—(Thoughtfully)—The old countess of Desmond
shed her teeth three times.
Brig.—A precedent in nature.
Com.—(Firmly)—Soit! Done! So be it! Hang
me if I don't! You'll hear of a new author before
long—one that beats me hollow! Look me up a
purchaser, my dear brigadier! Literary fame furnished
at—say, three thousand dollars per annum!
Brig.—Mi-boy, the ladies have left the beach—I
wonder if the sea would condescend to us, now!
Com.—Peltry after roses and ivory!—I don't know!
Brig.—Talking of Esau—he should have lived in
cravat-time. Well-drest, your hirsute customers looks
not amiss! (No pun, you villain!) Stand back, my
unclad-boy! Here comes a wagon load of women!
Com.—Chambermaids and nurses; who, by the
way they flock to the beach in the male hours, must
either have eyes with a nictitating membrane, or a
modesty that is confined to what they hear. I wish to
heaven that all females were patricians—undesecrated
by low taste and servitude! It's like classifying owls
with angels because they are both feathered, to call
these rude creatures women! What's that scar on
your breast, brigadier?
Brig.—Slide down your “nictitating membrane,”
mi-boy, and don't be too observing! Here goes!
Hup! (The brigadier rushes into the surf, takes a
stitch through three frills of the island's shirt, and rises
like a curly-headed sun from the ocean.)
Com. (solus).—There he swims! God bless him
for a buoyant brigadier! How the waves tumble over
his plump shoulders, delighted to feel the place where
ride his epaulets and his popularity! Look out for
sharks, my dear general! They snuff a poet afar off!
Natural victims we are to them—on land or water!
Hear him laugh as he shakes the brine out of his
whiskers! Was ever such a laugh! His heart gives
that “ha! ha!” a fillip as it sets out! I must swim
off to him! Clear the beach, soft crab and sand-bird!
Morris and Willis must swim together!
Brig. (Sitting down to dry.)—This salting freshens
a man, and this wetting makes him dry. Oh for a
drink and the asp of Cleopatra—a cobbler and a viper!
Shake yourself, mi-boy!
Com.—Suppose we roll in the sand and take a
wrestle, like the athletæ of old—eh? How do you
propose to get the sand and gravel out from your
doigts du pied, general?
Brig.—“Gravelled,” we are, mi-boy, but not “for
lack of matter!” Let's dress first, and then go down
and rinse our feet with the aid of the moon's lover—
lacking a servant to bring a pail! Are you dry?
Com.—Inner and outer man—very! What's this—
dropped out of your pocket!
Brig.—A song[1]
that I wrote for Brown to set to
music. Shall I read it to you?
(Brigadier reads with his hand on his breast.)
'TIS NOW THE PROMISED HOUR.
“The fountains serenade the flowers,
Upon their silver lute—
And, nestled in their leafy bowers
The forest-birds are mute:
The bright and glittering hosts above,
Unbar their golden gates,
While nature holds her court of love,
And for her client waits.
Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise!
'Tis now the promised hour,
When torches kindle in the skies
To light thee to thy bower.
“The day we dedicate to care—
To love the witching night;
For all that's beautiful and fair
In hours like these unite.
E'en thus the sweets to flowerets given—
The moonlight on the tree—
And all the bliss of earth and heaven—
Are mingled, love, in thee.
Then, lady, wake—in beauty rise!
'Tis now the promised hour,
When torches kindle in the skies
To light thee to thy bower.”
Com.—True and smooth as a locomotive on a “T”
rail! Is it sold and set?
Brig.—Beautifully set to music by Brown, and sold
to Atwill, who will publish it immediately.
Com.—It's a delicious song, my happy troubadour,
and destined to tumble over bright lips enough to make
a sunset. That we should so envy the things we
make! My kingdom for a comb! I shall never get
the salt out of my hair—I'm
“briny as the beaten mariner,
Oft soused in swelling Tethys' saltish tears.”
If you want a curl to
keep, now's your time!
Brig.—Willis?
Com.—My lord?
Brig.—I hear you were voted in to the “Light
Guard” last week.
Com.—Yes, sir, an honorary private! I feel the
compliment, for they are a set of tip-top capables, joyous
and gentlemanly—but, my dear martinet, what the
devil do they want of a man's dura mater?
Brig.—A man's what?
Com.—The weary membrane of an author's brain.
Brig.—They want it, you say?
Com.—With the official announcement came an
order to equip myself according to directions, and
“deposite my fatigue-jacket” in the armory of the
corps! What fatigue-jacket have I, but the jacket of
my brain?
Brig.—True! Pick up your boots and come
along?
(Exit the brigadier barefoot, and the cabinet adjourns.)
Half an hour later—room No. 300, Rockaway Pavilion.
Two sherry cobblers on the table, with two
straws, erect in the ice.)
Brig.—How like this great structure on the sand
must be, to a palace amid the ruins of Persepolis!
Com.—The palace of Chilminar with forty columns
and stairs for ten horses to go up abreast!—very like
indeed—especially the sand! Somewhat like, in
another respect, by the way—that the palaces of
Persepolis were the tombs of her kings, and Rockaway
is the place of summer repose for the indignant
aristocracy of Manhattan.
Brig.—True, as to the aristocracy, but why “indignant?”
Com.—That there can be fashion without them at
Saratoga (which there could not be once), and that
“aristocratic” and “fashionable” are two separate
estates, not at all necessary to be combined in one
individual. Rockaway is full, now, of the purest
porcelain—porcelain fathers, porcelain mothers, porcelain
daughters!
Brig.—Then why is not the society perfect at Rockaway?
Com.—Because the beaux go after the crockery at
Saratoga. The rush, the rowdydow, the flirtations,
and game suppers, are all at Saratoga! Aristocracy
likes to have the power of complaining of these things
as nuisances inseparable from its own attraction. Aristocracy
builds high walls, but it likes to have them
pertinaciously overleaped. The being let alone within
their high walls, as they are now at their exclusive
watering-places, was not set down in the plans of aristocratic
campaigns!
Brig.—But they are charming people here, mi-boy?
Com.—The best-bred and most agreeable people in
the world, but the others give a beau more for his
money. In all countries, but ours, people make acquaintances
for life. But the hinderances and obstacles
which are not minded at the beginning of a lifetime
acquaintance, are intolerable in an acquaintance for a
week (the length of most summer acquaintances with
us), and the floating beaux from the south, the west,
the Canadas, and the West Indies, go where they can
begin at the second chapter—omitting the tedious
preface and genealogical introduction.
Brig.—Rockaway is stupid, then.
Com.—Quiet, not stupid. The lack of beaux and
giddy times is only felt by the marriageable girls, and
there are a great many people in the world besides
marriageable girls. And upon this same “many
people,” will depend the prosperity of the Pavilion.
When it is known that it is a delightful place for
everything but flirting, it will be a centre for sober
people to radiate to, and a paradise for penserosos like
you and me, general—eh? I suppose Cranston would
as lief (liefer, indeed) that his rooms should be filled
with tame people as wild.
Brig.—How's your cobbler?
Com.—Fit to immortalize the straw that passes it!
Brig.—What birds are those, my Willis?
Com.—Shore birds that build in the sedge and feed
on molluscous animals—death on the soft crabs!
And, general, do you know that the male of this bird
(called the phalarope), is a most virtuous example to
our sex? What do you think he does?
Brig.—Feeds the little-uns?
Com.—Hatches them, half and half, with the she-bird,
and helps bring them up!
Brig.—Is the gender shown in the plumage?
Com.—No.
Brig.—So I thought. Your handsome peacock,
now, leaves it all to the hen. The domestic virtues
are their own reward—remarkably so! Is that the
dinner-bell?
Com.—Yes, it is that music!
“Give me excess of it—that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
I'll meet you below, my dear general! Adieu!
(Cabinet adjourns for the day.)
