University of Virginia Library

A VENERABLE IMPOSTOR.

As I glance across my table, I am somewhat
distracted by the spectacle of a venerable
head whose crown occasionally appears beyond, at
about its level. The apparition of a very small
hand — whose fingers are bunchy and have the
appearance of being slightly webbed — which is
frequently lifted above the table in a vain and
impotent attempt to reach the inkstand, always
affects me as a novelty at each recurrence of the
phenomenon. Yet both the venerable head and
bunchy fingers belong to an individual with whom
I am familiar, and to whom, for certain reasons
hereafter described, I choose to apply the epithet
written above this article.

His advent in the family was attended with
peculiar circumstances. He was received with
some concern — the number of retainers having
been increased by one in honor of his arrival.
He appeared to be weary, — his pretence was that
he had come from a long journey, — so that for
days, weeks, and even months, he did not leave
his bed except when he was carried. But it was
remarkable that his appetite was invariably regular

and healthy, and that his meals, which he
required should be brought to him, were seldom
rejected. During this time he had little conversation
with the family, his knowledge of our vernacular
being limited, but occasionally spoke to
himself in his own language, — a foreign tongue.
The difficulties attending this eccentricity were
obviated by the young woman who had from the
first taken him under her protection, — being, like
the rest of her sex, peculiarly open to impositions,
— and who at once disorganized her own tongue
to suit his. This was affected by the contraction
of the syllables of some words, the addition of
syllables to others, and an ingenious disregard
for tenses and the governing powers of the verb.
The same singular law which impels people in
conversation with foreigners to imitate their
broken English governed the family in their
communications with him. He received these
evidences of his power with an indifference not
wholly free from scorn. The expression of his eye
would occasionally denote that his higher nature
revolted from them. I have no doubt myself that
his wants were frequently misinterpreted; that the
stretching forth of his hands toward the moon and
stars might have been the performance of some religious
rite peculiar to his own country, which was
in ours misconstrued into a desire for physical
nourishment. His repetition of the word “goo-goo,”
— which was subject to a variety of opposite
interpretations, — when taken in conjunction with
his size, in my mind seemed to indicate his aboriginal
or Aztec origin.

I incline to this belief, as it sustains the impression
I have already hinted at, that his extreme
youth is a simulation and deceit; that he is really
older and has lived before at some remote period,
and that his conduct fully justifies his title as A
Venerable Impostor. A variety of circumstances
corroborate this impression: His tottering walk,
which is a senile as well as a juvenile condition;
his venerable head, thatched with such imperceptible
hair that, at a distance, it looks like a mild
aureola, and his imperfect dental exhibition. But
beside these physical peculiarities may be observed
certain moral symptoms, which go to disprove his
assumed youth. He is in the habit of falling into
reveries, caused, I have no doubt, by some circumstance
which suggests a comparison with his experience
in his remoter boyhood, or by some serious
retrospection of the past years. He has been detected
lying awake, at times when he should have
been asleep, engaged in curiously comparing the
bed-clothes, walls, and furniture with some recollection
of his youth. At such moments he has
been heard to sing softly to himself fragments of
some unintelligible composition, which probably
still linger in his memory as the echoes of a music

he has long outgrown. He has the habit of receiving
strangers with the familiarity of one who had
met them before, and to whom their antecedents
and peculiarities were matters of old acquaintance,
and so unerring is his judgment of their previous
character that when he withholds his confidence I
am apt to withhold mine. It is somewhat remarkable
that while the maturity of his years and the
respect due to them is denied by man, his superiority
and venerable age is never questioned by the
brute creation. The dog treats him with a respect
and consideration accorded to none others, and the
cat permits a familiarity which I should shudder
to attempt. It may be considered an evidence of
some Pantheistic quality in his previous education,
that he seems to recognize a fellowship even in inarticulate
objects; he has been known to verbally
address plants, flowers, and fruit, and to extend his
confidence to such inanimate objects as chairs and
tables. There can be little doubt that, in the remote
period of his youth, these objects were endowed
with not only sentient natures, but moral
capabilities, and he is still in the habit of beating
them when they collide with him, and of
pardoning them with a kiss.

As he has grown older — rather let me say, as
we have approximated to his years — he has, in
spite of the apparent paradox, lost much of his
senile gravity. It must be confessed that some of

his actions of late appear to our imperfect comprehension
inconsistent with his extreme age. A
habit of marching up and down with a string tied
to a soda-water bottle, a disposition to ride anything
that could by any exercise of the liveliest
fancy be made to assume equine proportions, a
propensity to blacken his venerable white hair
with ink and coal dust, and an omnivorous appetite
which did not stop at chalk, clay, or cinders, were
peculiarities not calculated to excite respect. In
fact, he would seem to have become demoralized,
and when, after a prolonged absence the other day,
he was finally discovered standing upon the front
steps addressing a group of delighted children out
of his limited vocabulary, the circumstance could
only be accounted for as the garrulity of age.

But I lay aside my pen amidst an ominous silence
and the disappearance of the venerable head
from my plane of vision. As I step to the other
side of the table, I find that sleep has overtaken
him in an overt act of hoary wickedness. The
very pages I have devoted to an exposition of his
deceit he has quietly abstracted, and I find them
covered with cabalistic figures and wild-looking
hieroglyphs traced with his forefinger dipped in
ink, which doubtless in his own language conveys
a scathing commentary on my composition. But
he sleeps peacefully, and there is something in his
face which tells me that he has already wandered

away to that dim region of his youth where I cannot
follow him. And as there comes a strange
stirring at my heart when I contemplate the immeasurable
gulf which lies between us, and how
slight and feeble as yet is his grasp on this world
and its strange realities, I find, too late, that I also
am a willing victim of the Venerable Impostor.