A Dreadful State of Excitement
A retrospective view of some ten or fifteen years, brings up a wonderful "heap of notions," which at their birth made quite a different sensation from that which their "bare remembrance" would seem to sanction now. The statement made in a "morning paper" before us, of a fine horse being actually scared stone and instantaneously dead, by a roaring and hissing locomotive, brings to mind "a circumstance," which though it did not exactly do our knitting, it came precious near the climax!
Some years ago, upon what was then considered the "frontier" of Missouri, we chanced to be laid up with a "game leg," in consequence of a performance of a bullet-headed mule that we were endeavoring to coerce at the end of a corn stalk, for his "intervention" in a fodder stack to which he could lay no legitimate claim. About two miles from our "lodgings" was a store, a "grocery," shotecary pop, boots, hats, gridirons, whiskey, powder and shot, &c., &c., and the post office. About three times a week, we used to hobble down to this modern ark, to read the news, see what was going on down in the world, and – pass a few hours with the proprietor of the store, who chanced to be a man with whom we had had a former acquaintance "in other climes." Well, one day, we dropped down to the store, and found pretty much all the men folks – and they were not numerous around there, the houses or cabins being rather scattering – getting ready to go down the river (Missouri) some ten miles, to see a notorious desperado "stretch hemp." My friend Captain V – , the storekeeper, was about to go along too, and proposed that we should mount and accompany him, or – stay and tend store. We accepted the latter proposition, as we were in no travelling kelter, and had no taste for performances on the tight rope. Having officiated for Captain V – on several former occasions, we had the run of his "grocery" and postal arrangements quite fluent enough to take charge of all the trade likely to turn up that day; so the captain and his friends started, promising a return before sunset.
One individual, living some seven miles up the road, called for his newspaper, and got his jug filled, spent a couple of hours with us – put out, and was succeeded by two squalid Indians, with some skins to trade for corn juice and tobacco; they cleared out, and about two or three P. M., some movers came along; we had a little dicker with them, and that closed up the business accounts of the day.
Having discussed all the availables, from the contents of the post office – seven newspapers and four letters per quarter! – to the crackers and cheese, and business being essentially stagnated, we ups and lies down upon the top of the counter, to take a nap. Captain V – 's store was a log building, about 15 by 30, and stood near the edge of the woods, and at least half a mile from any habitation, except the schoolhouse and blacksmith's shop, two small huts, and at that time – "in coventry." Captain V – was a bachelor; he boarded – that is, he took his meals at the nearest house – half a mile back from the wood, and slept in his store. We soon fell into the soft soothing arms of Morpheus, and – slept. It was fine mild weather – September, and, of course, the door was wide open. How long we slept we were not at all conscious, but were aroused by a heavy hand that gave us a hearty shake by the shoulder, and in a rather sepulchral voice says —
"How are you?"
Gods! we were up quick, for our sleep had been visited by dreams of southwest tragedies, hanging scrapes, and other nightmare affairs, and as we opened our eyes and caught a glimpse of the double-fisted, cadaverous fellow standing over us, a strong inclination to go off into a cold sweat seized us! Lo! it was after sunset! Almost dark in the store, the stars had already began to twinkle in the sky.
Captain V – did a considerable trade at his store, and at times had considerable sums of money laying around. Upon leaving in the morning, he notified us, in case we should require change, to look into the desk, where he kept a shot bag of silver coin, and – his pistols.
"How are you?" the words and manner and looks of the man gave us a cold chill.
"How do you do?" we managed to respond, at the same time sliding down behind the counter. The stranger had a heavy walking stick in his hand, and a knapsack looking bundle swung to his shoulder. He looked like the rough remnants of an ill-spent life; had evidently travelled somewhere where barbers, washer-women and such like civilian delicacies, were more matters of tradition than fact.
"Been asleep, eh?" he carelessly continued.
"It appears so," said we, feeling no better or more satisfactory in our mind, and no reason to, for night was now closing in, and we were going through our performances by the slight illumination of the stars, without any positive certainty as to where the Captain kept his tinder box and candle, that we might furnish some sort of light upon the lugubrious state of affairs.
"Do you keep this store?"
"No, we do not," we answered, watching the man as he put his bundle down upon the counter.
"Who does?" was the next question.
"The gentleman who keeps it," we replied, "is away to-day."
"Ah, gone to see a poor human being put out of the world, eh?"
We said "yes," or something of the kind, and thought to ourself, no doubt you know all that's going on of that sort of business like a book, and a host of other ideas flashed across our mind, while all the evil deeds of note transacted in that region for the past ten years, seemed awakened in our mind's eye, working up our nervous system, until the coon skin cap upon our excited head stood upon about fifteen hairs, with the strange and overwhelming impression that our time had come! We would have given the State of Missouri – if it were in our possession, to have heard Captain V – 's voice, or even have had a fair chance to dash out at the door, and give the fellow before us a specimen of tall walking – lame as we were!
"Ain't you got a light? I'd think you'd be a little timid (a little timid!) about laying around here, alone, in the dark, too?" said the fellow, sticking one hand into his coat pocket, and gazing sharply around the store. Mock heroically says we —
"Afraid? Afraid of what?" our valor, like Bob Acres', oozing out at our fingers.
"These outlaws you've got around here," said he. "They say the man they hanged to-day was a decent fellow to what some are, who prowl around in this country!"
We very modestly said, "that such fellows never bothered us."
"Do you sleep in this store – live here?"
"No, sir, we don't," was our answer.
"Where do you lodge and get your eating?"
"First house up the road."
"How far is it?" says he.
"Half a mile or less."
"Well, close up your shop, and come along with me!" says the fellow.
Now we were coming to the tableaux! He wanted us to step outside in order that the business could be done for us, with more haste and certainty, and we really felt as good as assassinated and hid in the bushes! It was quite astonishing how our visual organs intensified! We could see every wrinkle and line in the fellow's face, could almost count the stitches in his coat, and the more we looked, and the keener and more searching became our observation, the more atrocious and subtle became the fellow and his purpose. With a firmness that astonished ourself, we said —
"No, Sir; if you have business there or elsewhere, you had better go!" and with this determined speech, we walked up to the desk, and with the air of a "man of business" or the nonchalance of a hero, says we —
"What are you after – have you any business with us?"
"You're kind of crusty, Mister," says he. "I'm canvassing this State, —wouldn't you like to subscribe for a first-rate map of Missouri, or a new Edition of Josephus?"
We felt too mean all over to "subscribe," but we found a light, and soon found in the stranger one of the best sort of fellows, a man of information and morality, and, though he had looked dangerous, he turned out harmless as a lamb, and we got intimate as brothers before Captain V – returned that night.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Of all the public lecturers of our time and place, none have attracted more attention from the press, and consequently the people, than Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Lecturing has become quite a fashionable science – and now, instead of using the old style phrases for illustrating facts, we call travelling preachers perambulating showmen, and floating politicians, lecturers.
As a lecturer, Ralph Waldo Emerson is extensively known around these parts; but whether his lectures come under the head of law, logic, politics, Scripture, or the show business, is a matter of much speculation; for our own part, the more we read or hear of Ralph, the more we don't know what it's all about.
Somebody has said, that to his singularity of style or expression, Carlyle and his works owe their great notoriety or fame – and many compare Ralph Waldo to old Carlyle. They cannot trace exactly any great affinity between these two great geniuses of the flash literary school. Carlyle writes vigorously, quaintly enough, but almost always speaks when he says something; on the contrary, our flighty friend Ralph speaks vigorously, yet says nothing! Of all men that have ever stood and delivered in presence of "a reporter," none surely ever led these indefatigable knights of the pen such a wild-goose chase over the verdant and flowery pastures of King's English, as Ralph Waldo Emerson. In ordinary cases, a reporter well versed in his art, catches a sentence of a speaker, and goes on to fill it out upon the most correct impression of what was intended, or what is implied. But no such license follows the outpourings of Mr. Emerson; no thought can fathom his intentions, and quite as bottomless are even his finished sentences. We have known "old stagers," in the newspaporial line, veteran reporters, so dumbfounded and confounded by the first fire of Ralph, and his grand and lofty acrobating in elocution, that they up, seized their hat and paper, and sloped, horrified at the prospect of an attempt to "take down" Mr. Emerson.
If Roaring Ralph touches a homely mullen weed, on a donkey heath, straightway he makes it a full-blown rose, in the land of Ophir, shedding an odor balmy as the gales of Arabia; while with a facility the wonderful London auctioneer Robbins might envy, Ralph imparts to a lime-box, or pig-sty, a negro hovel, or an Irish shanty, all the romance, artistic elegance and finish of a first-class manor-house, or Swiss cottage, inlaid with alabaster and fresco, surrounded by elfin bowers, grand walks, bee hives, and honeysuckles.
Ralph don't group his metaphorical beauties, or dainties of Webster, Walker, &c., but rushes them out in torrents – rattles them down in cataracts and avalanches – bewildering, astounding, and incomprehensible. He hits you upon the left lug of your knowledge box with a metaphor so unwieldy and original, that your breath is soon gone – and before it is recovered, he gives you another rhapsody on t'other side, and as you try to steady yourself, bim comes another, heavier than the first two, while a fourth batch of this sort of elocution fetches you a bang over the eyes, giving you a vertigo in the ribs of your bewildered senses, and before you can say "God bless us!" down he has you —cobim! with a deluge of high-heeled grammar and three-storied Anglo Saxon, settling your hash, and brings you to the ground by the run, as though you were struck by lightning, or in the way of a 36-pounder! Ralph Waldo is death and an entire stud of pale horses on flowery expressions and japonica-domish flubdubs. He revels in all those knock-kneed, antique, or crooked and twisted words we used all of us to puzzle our brains over in the days of our youth, and grammar lessons and rhetoric exercises. He has a penchant as strong as cheap boarding-house butter, for mystification, and a free delivery of hard words, perfectly and unequivocally wonderful. We listened one long hour by the clock of Rumford Hall, one night, to an outpouring of argumentum ad hominem of Mr. Emerson's – at what? A boy under an apple tree! If ten persons out of the five hundred present were put upon their oaths, they could no more have deciphered, or translated Mr. Ralph's argumentation, than they could the hieroglyphics upon the walls of Thebes, or the sarcophagus of old King Pharaoh! When Ralph Waldo opens, he may be as calm as a May morn – he may talk for five minutes, like a book – we mean a common-sensed, understandable book; but all of a sudden the fluid will strike him – up he goes – down he fetches them. He throws a double somerset backwards over Asia Minor – flip-flaps in Greece – wings Turkey – and skeets over Iceland; here he slips up with a flower garden – a torrent of gilt-edged metaphors, that would last a country parson's moderate demand a long lifetime, are whirled with the fury and fleetness of Jove's thunderbolts. After exhausting his sweet-scented receiver of this floral elocution, he pauses four seconds; pointing to vacuum, over the heads of his audience, he asks, in an anxious tone, "Do you see that?" Of course the audience are not expected to be so unmannerly as to ask "What?" If they were, Ralph would not give them time to "go in," for after asking them if they see that, he continues —
"There! Mark! Note! It is a malaria prism! Now, then; here – there; see it! Note it! Watch it!"
During this time, half of the audience, especially the old women and the children, look around, fearful of the ceiling falling in, or big bugs lighting on them. But the pause is for a moment, and anxiety ceases when they learn it was only a false alarm, only —
"Egotism! The lame, the pestiferous exhalation or concrete malformation of society!"
You breathe freer, and Ralph goes in, gloves on.
"Egotism! A metaphysical, calcareous, oleraceous amentum of – society! The mental varioloid of this sublunary hemisphere! One of its worst feelings or features is, the craving of sympathy. It even loves sickness, because actual pain engenders signs of sympathy. All cultivated men are infected more or less with this dropsy. But they are still the leaders. The life of a few men is the life of every place. In Boston you hear and see a few, so in New York; then you may as well die. Life is very narrow. Bring a few men together, and under the spell of one calm genius, what frank, sad confessions will be made! Culture is the suggestion from a few best thoughts that a man should not be a charlatan, but temper and subdue life. Culture redresses his balance, and puts him among his equals. It is a poor compliment always to talk with a man upon his specialty, as if he were a cheese-mite, and was therefore strong on Cheshire and Stilton. Culture takes the grocer out of his molasses and makes him genial. We pay a heavy price for those fancy goods, Fine Arts and Philosophy. No performance is worth loss of geniality. That unhappy man called of genius, is an unfortunate man. Nature always carries her point despite the means!"
If that don't convince you of Ralph's high-heeled, knock-kneed logic, or au fait dexterity in concocting flap-doodle mixtures, you're ahead of ordinary intellect as far as this famed lecturer is in advance of gin and bitters, or opium discourses on – delirium tremens!
In short, Ralph Waldo Emerson can wrap up a subject in more mystery and science of language than ever a defunct Egyptian received at the hands of the mummy manufacturers! In person, Mr. Ralph is rather a pleasing sort of man; in manners frank and agreeable; about forty years of age, and a native of Massachusetts. As a lawyer, he would have been the horror of jurors and judges; as a lecturer, he is, as near as possible, what we have described him.
Humbug
There is no end to the humbug in life. About half we say, and more than half we do, is tinged with humbug. "My Dear Sir," we say, when we address a letter to a fellow we have never seen, and if seen, perhaps don't care a continental cent for him; dear sir! what a humbug expression! "Good morning," (what a lie!) says one, as he meets another one, on a stormy and nasty day, "quite a disagreeable wet day!" What's the use of such a humbug expression as that? If it's a disagreeable and stormy day, every body finds it out, naturally. Full half of the people who appear solicitous about your health, display a gratuitous amount of humbug, for your pocket-book is more beloved than your health; and we have often wondered why matter-of-fact people don't out with it, when they meet, and say – "How's your pocket to-day? Sorry to hear you're out of money!" Or, instead of soft soap, when they meet, why not discard humbug, and say, "Sorry to see you – was blackguarding you all day!" instead of "Glad to see you – have been thinking of you to-day!" or, "I'm glad to see you've been elected Mayor of the city!" when in fact they mean, "Curse you, I wish you had been defeated!" Compliments pass, they say, when gentlemen meet, but, as there are so many counterfeit gentry around, now-a-days, you may bet high that half the compliments that pass are —mere bogus!
Hotel Keeping
Fortunes are made – very readily, it is said, in our large cities, by Hotel keeping. It does look money-making business to a great many people, who stop in a large hotel a day or two, and perhaps, after eating about two meals out of six – walking in quietly and walking out quietly – no fuss, no feathers, find themselves taxed four or five dollars!
We have had occasion to know something of travel and travellers, hotels, hotel-keepers and their bills, and it has now and then entered our head that money was or could be made – in the hotel business. We have stopped in houses where we honestly concluded – we got our money's worth, and we have again had reason to believe ourselves grossly shaved, in a "first-class" hotel, at two dollars a day – all hurry-scurry, poked up in the cock-loft, mid bugs, dirt, heat and effluvia, very little better than a Dutch tavern in fly time.
We did not fail to observe at the same time, that cool impudence and clamor had a most mollifying effect upon landlord and his attaches, the tinsel and mere electrotypes passing for real bullion, galvanized hums by their noise and pretensions faring fifty per cent. better for the same price– than the more republican, quiet and human wayfarer.
Under such auspices, it is not at all wonderful that ourself and scores of others, paying two dollars and a half per diem, got what we could catch, while Kossuth, and a score of his followers, fared and were favored like princes of a monarchical realm – "though all dead heads!"
Hotels now-a-days must be showy, abounding in tin foil, Dutch metal and gamboge, a thousand of the "modern improvements" – mere clap-trap, and as foreign to the solid comforts of solid people, as icebergs to Norwegians or "east winds" to the consumptive. Without the show, they would be quite deserted; men will pay for this show, must pay for it, and all this show costs money; Turkey carpets, life-size mirrors, ottomans and marble slabs, from dome to kitchen, draw well, and those who indulge in the dance, must pay the piper.
The fact is, most people understand these things about as well as we do, and it but remains for us to give a daguerreotype of a few customers which landlords or their clerks and servants now and then meet. The conductor of one of our first-class houses, gives us such a truly piquant and matter-of-fact picture of his experience, that we up and copy it, believing, as we do, that the reader will see some information and amusement in the subject.
A fussy fellow takes it into his head that he will go on a little tour, he pockets a few dollars and a clean dickey or two, and – comes to town. He's no green horn – O! no, he ain't, he has been around some – he has, and knows a thing or two, and something over. He is dumped out of the cars with hundreds of others, in the great depots, and is assailed by vociferous whips who, in quest of stray dimes, watch the incoming trains and shout and bawl —
"Eh 'up! Tremont House!"
"Up —a! American House – right away!"
"Ha! up! Right off for the Revere!"
"Here's the coach – already for the United States!"
"Yee 'up! now we go, git in, best house in town, all ready for the Winthrop House!"
"Eh 'up, ha! now we are off, for the Pavilion!"
"Exchange Coffee House – dollar a day, four meals, no extra charge – right along this way, sir!"
"Hoo-ray, this coach – take you right up, Exchange Hotel!"
"Jump in, tickets for your baggage, sir, take you up – right off, best house in town, hot supper waitin' – way for the Adams House!"
And so they yell and grab at you, and our fussy friend, having heard of the tall arrangements and great doings of the American, he hands himself over to the coachman, and with a load of others he is rolled over to that institution, in a jiffy. Our fussy friend is slightly "took down" at the idea of paying for the hauling up, having a notion that that was a part of the accommodation! However, he ain't a going to look small or verdant; so he pays the coachman, grabs his valise, and rushes into the long colonnaded office; and making his way to the register, slams down his baggage, and in a dignified, authoritative manner, says —
"A room!"
"Yes, sir," responds the Colonel, or some of the clerks – who may be officiating.
"Supper!" says Capt. Fussy, in the same tone of command.
"Certainly, sir – please register your name, sir!"
Captain Fussy off's gloves, seizes the pen, and down goes his autograph, Captain Fussy, Thumperstown, N. H.
"Now, I want a hot steak!" says he.
"You can have it, sir!" blandly replies the Colonel.
"Hot chocolate," continues Fussy.
"Certainly, sir!"
"Eggs, poached, and a – hot roll!"
"They'll be all ready, sir."
"How soon?"
"Five minutes, sir," says the Colonel, talking to a dozen at the same time.
"Ah, well – show me my room!" says Captain Fussy.
The bells are ringing – servants running to and fro, like witches in a whirlwind; fifty different calls – tastes – orders and fancies, are being served, but Capt. Fussy is attended to, a servant seizes his valise and a taper, and in the most winning way, cries —
"This way, sir, right along!" With a measured tread and the air of a man who knew what it was all about, the Captain follows the garcon and mounts one flight of the broad stairs, and is about to ascend another, when it strikes him that he's not going up to the top of the house, nohow!
"Where are you going to take me to – up into the garret?"
"Oh! no, sir; your room's only 182; that's only on the third floor!"
"Third floor!" cries Capt. Fussy, "take me up into the third story?"
"Plenty of gentlemen on the fifth and sixth floors, sir," says the servant, and he goes ahead, Capt. Fussy following, muttering —
"Pooty doin's this, taking a gentleman up three of these cussed long stairs, to room 182! I'll see about this, I will; mus'n't come no gammon over me; I'm able to pay, and want the worth of my money!"
The third floor is reached, and after a brief meandering along the halls, 182 is arrived at, the door thrown open and Capt. Fussy is ushered in; his first effort is to find fault with the carpets, furniture, bedding or something, but as he had never probably seen such a general arrangement for ease, comfort and convenience – he caved in and merely gave a deep-toned —
"Ah. Got better rooms than this, ain't you?"
"There may be, sir, a few better rooms in the house, not many," said the servant.
"Well, you may go – but stop – how soon'll my supper be ready?"
"There'll be a supper set at eight, another at nine, sir."
"Ah, four minutes of eight," says Fussy, pulling out a "bull's eye" watch, with as much flourish as if it was a premium eighteen-carat lever. "Well, call me when you've got supper ready, do you hear?"
"Yes, sir; but you'll hear the gong."
"The gong – what's that? Ain't you got no bells?"
"The gong is used, sir, instead of bells," says the servant.
"Ah, well, clear out – but say, I want a fire in here."
"Yes, sir; I'll send up a fireman."
"A fireman? What do I want with firemen? Bring in some wood, and, stranger – start up – a hello! thunder and saw mills, what's all that racket about – house a-fire?"
"No, sir!" says the grinning servant – "the gong– supper's on the table!"
"Ah, very well; go ahead; where's the room?"
Conducted to the dining-room, Capt. Fussy's eyes stretch at the wholesale display of table-cloths, arm-chairs, "crockery" and cutlery, mirrors and white-aproned waiters. A seat is offered him, he dumps himself down, amazed but determined to look and act like one used to these affairs, from the hour of his birth!
"I ordered hot steak, poached eggs – hain't you got 'em?"
"Certainly, sir!" says the waiter, and the steak and eggs are at hand.
"Coffee or tea, sir?" another servant inquires.
"Coffee and tea! Humph, I ordered chocolate – hain't you got chocolate?"
"Oh, yes, sir; there it is."
"Ah, umph!" and Fussy gazes around and turns his nose slightly up, at the whole concern, waiters, guests, table, steak, eggs, chocolate, and – even the tempting hot rolls – before him.
Fussy calls for a glass of water, wants to know if there's fried oysters on the table; he finds there is not, and Fussy frowns and asks for a lobster salad, which the waiter informs him is never used at supper, in that hotel.
Eventually, Capt. Fussy being crammed, after an hour's diligent feeding, fuss and feathers, retires, asks all sorts of questions about people and places, at the office; what time trains start and steamers come, omnibuses here and stages there, all of which he is politely answered, of course, and he finally goes to his room, rings his bell every ten minutes, for an hour, and then – goes to bed; next day puts the servants and clerks over another course, and on the third day – calls for his bill, finds but few extras charged, hands over a five, puts on his gloves, seizes his valise, looks savagely dignified and stalks out, big as two military officers in regimentals!
"Ah," says Fussy, as he reaches the street, "I put 'em through —I guess I got the worth of my money!"
We calculate he did!