8. LETTER VIII
My Dear Doctor: What can keep you in town
during this insufferable hot solstice? I can not fancy,
unless you shrink from a warm welcome in the country.
It is too hot for enthusiasm, and I have sent the
cart to the hay-field, and crept under the bridge in
my slippers, as if I had found a day to be idle, though
I promised myself to see the harvest home, without
missing sheaf or winrow. Yet it must be cooler here
than where you are, for I see accounts of drought on
the seaboard, while with us every hot noon has bred
its thunder-shower, and the corn on the dry hill-sides
is the only crop not kept back by the moisture. Still,
the waters are low, and the brook at my feet has depleted
to a slender vein, scarce stouter than the pulse
that flutters under your thumb in the slightest wrist
in your practice. My lobster is missing — probably
gone to “the springs.” My swallowlets too, who
have, “as it were, eat paper and drunk ink,” have
flitted since yesterday, like illiterate gipseys, leaving
no note of their departure. “Who shall tell Priam
so, or Hecuba.” The old swallows circle about as if
they expected them again. Heaven send they are not
in some crammed pocket in that red school-house,
unwilling listeners to the vexed alphabet, or, perhaps,
squeezed to death in the varlet's perplexity at crooked
S.
I have blotted that last sentence like a school-boy,
but between the beginning and the end of it, I have
lent a neighbor my side-hill plough, besides answering,
by the way, rather an embarrassing question. My
catechiser lives above me on the drink (his name for
the river), and is one of those small farmers, common
here, who live without seeing money from one year's
end to the other. He never buys, he trades. He
takes a bag of wheat, or a fleece, to the village for salt
fish and molasses, pays his doctor in corn or honey,
and “changes work” with the blacksmith, the saddler,
and the shoemaker. He is a shrewd man withal,
likes to talk, and speaks Yankee of the most Bœotian
fetch and purity. Imagine a disjointed-looking Enceladus,
in a homespun sunflower-colored coat, and
small yellow eyes, expressive of nothing but the merest
curiosity, looking down on me by throwing himself
over the railing like a beggar's wallet of broken meats.
“Good morning, Mr. Willisy!”
From hearing my name first used in the possessive
case, probably (Willis's farm, or cow), he regularly
throws me in that that last syllable.
“Ah! good morning!” (Looking up at the interruption,
I made that unsightly blot which you have
just excused.)
“You aint got no side-hill plough?”
“Yes, I have, and I'll lend it to you with pleasure.”
“Wal! you're darn'd quick. I warnt a go'n' to
ask you quite yet. Writin' to your folks at hum?”
“No!”
“Making out a lease!”
“No!”
“How you do spin it off! You haint always work'd
on a farm, have yo?”
It is a peculiarity (a redeeming peculiarity, I think),
of the Yankees, that though their questions are rude,
they are never surprised if you do not answer them.
I did not feel that the thermometer warranted me in
going into the history of my life to my overhanging
neighbor, and I busied myself in crossing my t's and
dotting my i's very industriously. He had a maggot
in his brain, however, and must e'en be delivered of it.
He pulled off a splinter or two from under the bridge
with his long arms, and during the silence William
came to me with a message, which he achieved with
his English under-tone of respect.
“Had to lick that boy some, to make him so darn'd
civil, hadn't ye?”
“You have a son about his age, I think.”
“Yes; but I guess he couldn't be scared to talk
that way. What's the critter `fear'd on?”
No answer.
“You haint been a minister, have ye?”
“No!”
“Wal! they talk a heap about your place. I say,
Mr. Willisy, you aint nothing particular, be ye?”
You should have seen, dear Doctor, the look of
eager and puzzled innocence with which this rather
difficult question was delivered. Something or other
had evidently stimulated my good neighbor's curiosity,
but whether I had been blown up in a steamboat,
or had fatted a prize pig, or what was my claim to the
digito monstrari, it was more than half his errand to
discover. I have put down our conversation, I believe,
with the accuracy of a short-hand writer. Now,
is not this a delicious world in which, out of a museum
neither stuffed nor muzzled, you may find such
an arcadian? What a treasure he would be to those
ancient mariners of polite life, who exist but to tell
you of their little peculiarities!
I have long thought, dear Doctor, and this reminds
me of it, that there were two necessities of society unfitted
with a vocation. (If you know of any middle-aged
gentlemen out of employment, I have no objection
to your reserving the suggestion for a private
charity, but otherwise, I would communicate it to the
world as a new light.) The first is a luxury which no
hotel should be without, no neighborhood, no thoroughfare,
no editor's closet. I mean a professed,
salaried, stationary, and confidential listener. Fancy
the comfort of such a thing. There should be a well-dressed
silent gentleman, for instance, pacing habitually
the long corridor of the Astor, with a single button
on his coat of the size of a door-handle. You enter
in a violent hurry, or with a mind tenanted to suit
yourself, and some fainéant babbler, weary of his
emptiness, must needs take you aside, and rob you of
two mortal hours, more or less, while he tells you his
tale of nothing. If “a penny saved is a penny got,”
what a value it would add to life to be able to transfer
this leech of precious time, by laying his hand politely
on the large button of the listener! “Finish your
story to this gentleman!” quoth you. Then, again,
there is your unhappy man in hotels, newly arrived,
without an acquaintance save the crisp and abbreviating
bar-keeper, who wanders up and down, silent-sick,
and more solitary in the crowd about him than
the hermit on the lone column of the temple of Jupiter.
What a mercy to such a sufferer to be able to
step to the bar, and order a listener. Or to send for
him with a bottle of wine when dining alone (most
particularly alone), at a table of two hundred! Or to
ring for him in number four hundred and ninety-three,
of a rainy Sunday, with punch and cigars! I am deceived
in Stetston of the Astor, if he is not philosopher
enough to see the value of this suggestion
“Baths in the house, and a respectable listener if desired,”
would be an attractive advertisement, let me
promise you!
The other vocation to which I referred, would be
that of a sort of ambulant dictionary, used mostly at
evening parties. It should be a gentleman not distinguishable
from the common animated wall-flower,
except by some conventional sign, as a bit of blue riband
in his button-hole. His qualifications should be
to know all persons moving in the circle, and something
about them — to be up, in short, to the town
gossip — what Miss Thing's expectations are — who
“my friend” is with the died mustache — and which
of the stout ladies on the sofa are the forecast shadows
of coming balls, or the like desirablenesses. There
are a thousand invisible cobwebs threaded through society,
which the stranger is apt to cross
à travers —
committing his enthusiasm, for instance, to the deaf
ears of a
fiancée; or, from ignorance, losing opportunities
of knowing the clever, the witty, and the famous
— all of whom look, at a first glance, very much like
other people. The gentleman with the blue riband,
you see, would remedy all this. You might make
for him after you bow to the lady of the house, and in
ten minutes put yourself
au courant of the entire field.
You might apply to him (if you had been absent to
Santa Fè or the Pyramids) for the last new shibboleth,
the town rage, the name of the new play or poem, the
form and color of the freshest change in the kaleidoscope
of society. It is not uncommon for sensible
people to retire, and “sweep and garnish” their self-respect
in a month's seclusion. It is some time before
they become
au fait again of what it is necessary to
know of the follies of the hour. The graceful yet
bitter wit, the unoffending yet pointed rally, the confidence
which colors all defeats like successes, are delicate
weapons, the dexterity at which depends much
on familiarity with the ground. What an advent to
the diffident and the embarrassed would be such a
profession! How many persons of wit and spirit
there are in society blank for lack of confidence, who,
with such a friend in the corner, would come out like
magic-ink to the fire! “
Ma hardiesse” (says the aspiring
rocket), “
vient de mon ardeur!” But the device
would lose its point did it take a jack-o'-lantern
for a star. Mention these little hints to your cleverest
female friend, dear Doctor. It takes a woman to introduce
an innovation.
Since I wrote to you, I have been adopted by perhaps
the most abominable cur you will see in your
travels. I mention it to ward off the first impression
— for a dog gives a character to a house; and I would
not willingly have a friend light on such a monster in
my premises without some preparation. His first apparition
was upon a small floss carpet at the foot of an
ottoman, the most luxurious spot in the house, of
which he had taken possession with a quiet impudence
that perfectly succeeded. A long, short-legged cur,
of the color of spoiled mustard, with most base tail
and erect ears — villanous in all his marks. Rather a
dandy gentleman, from New-York, was calling on us
when he was discovered, and presuming the dog to be
his, we forbore remark; and, assured by this chance
indulgence, he stretched himself to sleep. The indignant
outcry with which the gentleman disclaimed
all knowledge of him, disturbed his slumber; and,
not to leave us longer in doubt, he walked confidently
across the room, and seated himself between my feet
with a canine freedom I had never seen exhibited, except
upon most familiar acquaintance. I saw clearly
that our visiter looked upon my disclaimer as a “fetch.”
It would have been perilling my credit for veracity to
deny the dog. So no more was said about him, and
since that hour he has kept himself cool in my shadow.
I have tried to make him over to the kitchen,
but he will neither feed nor stay with them. I can
neither outrun him on horseback, nor lose him by
crossing ferries. Very much to the discredit of my
taste, I am now never seen without this abominable
follower — and there is no help for it, unless I kill him,
which, since he loves me, would be worse than shooting
the albatross; besides, I have at least a drachm
(three scruples) of Pythagoreanism in me, and “fear
to kill woodcock, lest I dispossess the soul of my
grandam.” I shall look to the papers to see what
friend I have lost in Italy, or the East. I can think
of some who would come to me thus.
Adieu, dear Doctor. Send me a good name for my
cur — for since he will have me, why I must needs be
his, and he shall be graced with an appellation. I
think his style of politics might be worth something
in love. If I were the lady, it would make a fair beginning.
But I will waste no more ink upon you.
