I maintain, on the other hand, that there are a number of live fish still swimming in it, and that every one of us has a right to see if he cannot catch some of them.Sometimes I please myself with the idea that I have landed an actual living fish, small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and silvery scales.Then I find the consumers of nothing but the salted and dried article insist that it is poisonous, simply because it is alive, and cry out to people not to touch it.Ihave not found, however, that people mind them much.
The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer.I try every questionable proposition on her.If she winces, I must be prepared for an outcry from the other old women.I frightened her, the other day, by saying that faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance, which, if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a paradox as it sounds at first.So she sent me a book to read which was to cure me of that error.It was an old book, and looked as if it had not been opened for a long time.What should drop out of it, one day, but a small heart-shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight, coarse, brown hair which sets off the sharp faces of so many thin-flanked, large-handed bumpkins! I read upon the paper the name "Hiram." --Love! love! love!--everywhere!
everywhere!--under diamonds and housemaids' "jewelry,"--lifting the marrowy camel's-hair, and rustling even the black bombazine! --No, no,--I think she never was pretty, but she was young once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos.We shall find that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is in love, or will be in love before we have done with him, for aught that I know!
Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor, and no more think of the real life that underlies this despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite as having once been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of throbbing and self-conscious being.There is a wild creature under that long yellow pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,--a wild creature, which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if I should stir him, quiet as you think him.Aheart which has been domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame bullfinch; but a wild heart which has never been fairly broken in flutters fiercely long after you think time has tamed it down,--like that purple finch I had the other day, which could not be approached without such palpitations and frantic flings against the bars of his cage, that I had to send him back and get a little orthodox canary which had learned to be quiet and never mind the wires or his keeper's handling.I will tell you my wicked, but half involuntary experiment on the wild heart under the faded bombazine.
Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this thing.If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it.If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him, limping.
I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke of Wellington himself--without stumbling upon the word "Paddy,"--which Iuse rarely in my common talk.
I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct, which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which Iwas not answerable.It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like endosmosis, with which some of you are acquainted.A thin film of politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought from the stream of conversation.After a time one begins to soak through and mingle with the other.
We were talking about names, one day.--Was there ever anything,--Isaid,--like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious, detestable appellations,--inventing or finding them,--since the time of Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom he called Elpit, as I understood him.Elbridge is common enough, but this sounded oddly.It seems the boy was christened Lord Pitt,--and called for convenience, as above.I have heard a charming little girl, belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called Anges invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes.
Names are cheap.How can a man name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm, Hiram?--The poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned toward me, but I was stupid, and went on.--To think of a man going through life saddled with such an abominable name as that! --The poor relation grew very uneasy.--I continued;for I never thought of all this till afterwards.--I knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the name of Hiram-- What's got into you, Cousin,--said our landlady,--to look so?--There! you 've upset your teacup!
It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the "hysteric ball,"--a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women often complain of.What business had I to be trying experiments on this forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better be watching that young girl.
Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me.
Her skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the flushes they send into her cheeks.She does not seem to be shy, either.I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid.
