University of Virginia Library

II.
ROMAN RUINS.

(DONE INTO WHAT JEAN PAUL CALLS “STRECK-VERSE,” BY A PARTIALLY INFORMED YANKEE.)

I said, you remember, when I finished that three-part Pome
(As our Southern sisters say) about the Carnival doin's in Rome,
As how I was going to suspend for a while my moral stricters,
And go to see the ruins and the picters.
Well, I've been and seen some of the ruins,
And I'll tell you my private opinion: them's somebody's doin's.
I haven't said it outright, but I've often said so mentally;
Them kind of things don't never come accidentally.
Some of the rubbish does, to be sure, look e'enamost like a part of Natur,
It's been so kivered over and dressed up by old Alma Mater;
But anybody can see, that ain't an impostor or an ignoramus,
That men must have had a hand in it, and some that was pooty famous.
In the town where I was raised there was a feller
(I think his brains must have been considerably meller),
If you showed him them fossil things they dig up in the strater,
You couldn't beat it out of the head of that crater,
They grew there by chance; and sometimes he was so oncivil,
As jest to insinooate they was the work of the divil,
Who went and put 'em there to give poor mortal brains new trouble,
And blow up a great geological bubble.
—But, deary me! where was I? This Rome sets one's brain a spinnin',
So I must e'en go back and begin again at the beginnin'.
Well, one fine morning I went to a place they call the Propergander
(Propergoose! I reckon 'twould puzzle our Amanda
To tell what that word means), and hired a Carrotzy. (By jingo!
I never heard the beat of this Eyetalian lingo!)
'Twas rayther a dirty consarn, that carrotzy;
The lining faded out and the framework summat squatsy.
But I'm one of them folks as ain't very perticler,
Provided they only can get into somethin' vehiclar.
So we druv down through a long narrow alley:
How I wish you could have been there, cousin Sally!
To see the oranges, all golden-yeller,
Peeping over the wall to tantalize a feller:
Some pretend they're the bitter kind,—yes, no doubt, and sour,
As the fox said of the grapes when they was out of his power!
Anyhow they looked beautiful, and so did the roses
And blossoms and bushes, and various kinds of pinks and posies.
And, oh! if you could only have seen that cunnin' lizard
That shot along the wall quicker'n you could say izzard.
They come out on the side o' the walls to get a sunning;
But the moment they see anybody, they commence running.
The little chaps don't stand much frightenin',
And they go it like a streak of green lightnin'.
Well, as I was a saying, we went down that long alley
'Till we came to a place called the Baths of Carrycally.
(That was the name, I think, as I heern 'em tell it,
But I'll be switched if I know how they spell it.)
You go in through a great garden-walk among cabbages and roses,
Lined with curus old stone faces, some without any noses.
The old feller that owns the place let us in through the garden;
He wears a snuff-colored coat, and in making a bargain they say is a hard 'un.
He's one of the Carrycallys, I believe,—one of the later branches;
At any rate, he's got one of the most extrornary ranches,
Richer than any, I guess, in the Mexican valley,
Has this old grand-nephew of the original Carrycally.
He's got a blacksmith's shop in old gran'ther Carrycally's stables,
And there, spread out on ever so many tables,
He's got an assortment of broken legs, arms, and noses
(Marble, of course); and he puts 'em together as he supposes
They was meant to go, and sometimes he hits it,
And finds a piece that'll fit, and goes and fits it.
But when he finds one that won't gee nor haw,
He just throws it aside in the table-draw.
I thought to myself, as I looked at 'em all, I wonder
What the old chap 'd take for all that plunder;
But I didn't dare ask him, for I've a fancy
His price would seem extravagant to our Nancy.
Well, he took us round among his excavations, to view 'em,—
Dickens's Golden Dustman's heap was nothing to 'em.
Seventy feet down we looked, and saw things 'most superhuman—
Sich as, a horse with a dragon's tail, carryin' a woman—
A picter, I mean, on the floor of old Carrycaller,
All painted out to the life, in spots of black and yeller.
It must have dated back e'enamost to the creation;
The man said it come down from the Mosaic dispensation.
Then we went over to a great square brick room they used to swim in;
'Twas meant I s'pose for the men, there didn't seem to be any for the women.
And close by was a round brick room, a large one, very,
Where, when they was scrubbed and rigged, they could go in and make merry.
And high up agin the wall they showed us the traces
Of the gallery where the musical folks had their places.
I couldn't help thinking, as I looked at the walls, that the brick work
Was uncommonly, and I should say, unnecessarily thick work.
And when I thought of all the hod-carrying and brick-making,
It actilly almost set my old bones to aching.
I don't know what sort of a man that old Mr. Carrycally
May or may not have been, but he don't seem to have set much vally
On bricks or bones, no, nor on money nuther;
For it must have cost a heap to get all this together.
Well, I do hope he enjoyed it whilst he was living,
All that splendid establishment, without any shadow of misgiving;
For a brick nightmare of that size, on a man's conscience, I consider,
Must, in the nature of things, have soon left his wife a widder.
But I find my muse is running into melancholy reflections,
And will resume another time in some pleasanter directions.