The divinity-student took it calmly, only whispering that he thought there was a little confusion of images between a galvanic battery and a charge of cavalry.
But the Koh-i-noor--the gentleman, you remember, with a very large diamond in his shirt-front laughed his scornful laugh, and made as if to speak.
Sail in, Metropolis!--said that same young man John, by name.And then, in a lower lane, not meaning to be heard,--Now, then, Ma'am Allen!
But he was heard,--and the Koh-i-noor's face turned so white with rage, that his blue-black moustache and beard looked fearful, seen against it.He grinned with wrath, and caught at a tumbler, as if he would have thrown it or its contents at the speaker.The young Marylander fixed his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he could not move it.It was of no use.The youth was his master in muscle, and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;--over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good for threescore years and ten;--one trial enough,--settles the whole matter,--just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and dunghill, come together,-after a jump or two at each other, and a few sharp kicks, there is the end of it; and it is, Apres vous, Monsieur, with the beaten party in all the social relations for all the rest of his days.
I cannot philosophically account for the Koh-i-noor's wrath.For though a cosmetic is sold, bearing the name of the lady to whom reference was made by the young person John, yet, as it is publicly asserted in respectable prints that this cosmetic is not a dye, I see no reason why he should have felt offended by any suggestion that he was indebted to it or its authoress.
I have no doubt that there are certain exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is natural.Nature is fertile in variety.I saw an albiness in London once, for sixpence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,) who looked as if she had been boiled in milk.A young Hottentot of my acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrow-fat peas.One of my own classmates has undergone a singular change of late years,--his hair losing its original tint, and getting a remarkable discolored look; and another has ceased to cultivate any hair at all over the vertex or crown of the head.So I am perfectly willing to believe that the purple-black of the Koh-i-noor's moustache and whiskers is constitutional and not pigmentary.But Ican't think why he got so angry.
The intelligent reader will understand that all this pantomime of the threatened onslaught and its suppression passed so quickly that it was all over by the time the other end of the table found out there was a disturbance; just as a man chopping wood half a mile off may be seen resting on his axe at the instant you hear the last blow he struck.So you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not, interrupted during the time implied by these ex-post-facto remarks of mine, but for some ten or fifteen seconds only.
He did not seem to mind the interruption at all, for he started again.The "Sir" of his harangue was no doubt addressed to myself more than anybody else, but he often uses it in discourse as if he were talking with some imaginary opponent.
--America, Sir,--he exclaimed,--is the only place where man is full-grown!
He straightened himself up, as he spoke, standing on the top round of his high chair, I suppose, and so presented the larger part of his little figure to the view of the boarders.
It was next to impossible to keep from laughing.The commentary was so strange an illustration of the text! I thought it was time to put in a word; for I have lived in foreign parts, and am more or less cosmopolitan.
I doubt if we have more practical freedom in America than they have in England,---I said.--An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and politics.Mr.Martineau speculates as freely as ever Dr.
Channing did, and Mr.Bright is as independent as Mr.Seward.
Sir,--said he,--it is n't what a man thinks or says; but when and where and to whom he thinks and says it.A man with a flint and steel striking sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and striking them over a tinder-box is another.The free Englishman is born under protest; he lives and dies under protest,--a tolerated, but not a welcome fact.Is not freethinker a term of reproach in England? The same idea in the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it antagonistically, and in the soul of an American to whom it is congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element blended with all his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing.You may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting to be on all fours.Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards.The American baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he hangs.
--That's a good joke,--said the young fellow John,--considerin' it commonly belongs to a female Paddy.
I thought--I will not be certain--that the Little Gentleman winked, as if he had been hit somewhere--as I have no doubt Dr.Darwin did when the wooden-spoon suggestion upset his theory about why, etc.If he winked, however, he did not dodge.
