There is with us a boy of modest dimensions, not otherwise especially entitled to the epithet, who ought be six or seven years old, to judge by the gap left by his front milk teeth, these having resigned in favor of their successors, who have not yet presented their credentials.He is rather old for an enfant terrible, and quite too young to have grown into the bashfulness of adolescence; but he has some of the qualities of both these engaging periods of development, The member of the Haouse calls him "Bub," invariably, such term Itake to be an abbreviation of "Beelzeb," as "bus" is the short form of "omnibus." Many eminently genteel persons, whose manners make them at home anywhere, being evidently unaware of true derivation of this word, are in the habit of addressing all unknown children by one of the two terms, "bub " and "sis," which they consider endears them greatly to the young people, and recommends them to the acquaintance of their honored parents, if these happen to accompany them.The other boarders commonly call our diminutive companion That Boy.He is a sort of expletive at the table, serving to stop gaps, taking the same place a washer does that makes a loose screw fit, and contriving to get driven in like a wedge between any two chairs where there is a crevice.I shall not call that boy by the monosyllable referred to, because, though he has many impish traits at present, he may become civilized and humanized by being in good company.Besides, it is a term which I understand is considered vulgar by the nobility and gentry of the Mother Country, and it is not to be found in Mr.
Worcester's Dictionary, on which, as is well known, the literary men of this metropolis are by special statute allowed to be sworn in place of the Bible.I know one, certainly, who never takes his oath on any other dictionary, any advertising fiction to the contrary, notwithstanding.
I wanted to write out my account of some of the other boarders, but a domestic occurrence--a somewhat prolonged visit from the landlady, who is rather too anxious that I should be comfortable broke in upon the continuity of my thoughts, and occasioned--in short, I gave up writing for that day.
--I wonder if anything like this ever happened.
Author writing, jacks?"
"To be, or not to be: that is the question Whether 't is nobl "--"William, shall we have pudding to-day, or flapjacks?"--"Flapjacks, an' it please thee, Anne, or a pudding, for that matter; or what thou wilt, good woman, so thou come not betwixt me and my thought."--Exit Mistress Anne, with strongly accented closing of the door and murmurs to the effect: "Ay, marry, 't is well for thee to talk as if thou hadst no stomach to fill.We poor wives must swink for our masters, while they sit in their arm-chairs growing as great in the girth through laziness as that ill-mannered fat man William hath writ of in his books of players' stuff.One had as well meddle with a porkpen, which hath thorns all over him, as try to deal with William when his eyes be rolling in that mad way."William--writing once more--after an exclamation in strong English of the older pattern,--"Whether 't is nobler--nobler--nobler To do what? O these women! these women! to have puddings or flapjacks! Oh!--Whether 't is nobler--in the mind--to suffer The slings--and arrows--of Oh! Oh! these women! I will e'en step over to the parson's and have a cup of sack with His Reverence for methinks Master Hamlet hath forgot that which was just now on his lips to speak."So I shall have to put off making my friends acquainted with the other boarders, some of whom seem to me worth studying and describing.I have something else of a graver character for my readers.I am talking, you know, as a poet; I do not say I deserve the name, but I have taken it, and if you consider me at all it must be in that aspect.You will, therefore, be willing to run your eyes over a few pages read, of course by request, to a select party of the boarders.
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE AND ITS OUTLOOK.
A PANORAMA, WITH SIDE-SHOWS.
My birthplace, the home of my childhood and earlier and later boyhood, has within a few months passed out of the ownership of my family into the hands of that venerable Alma Mater who seems to have renewed her youth, and has certainly repainted her dormitories.In truth, when I last revisited that familiar scene and looked upon the flammantia mania of the old halls, "Massachusetts" with the dummy clock-dial, "Harvard" with the garrulous belfry, little "Holden" with the sculptured unpunishable cherub over its portal, and the rest of my early brick-and-mortar acquaintances, I could not help saying to myself that I had lived to see the peaceable establishment of the Red Republic of Letters.
Many of the things I shall put down I have no doubt told before in a fragmentary way, how many I cannot be quite sure, as I do not very often read my own prose works.But when a man dies a great deal is said of him which has often been said in other forms, and now this dear old house is dead to me in one sense, and I want to gather up my recollections and wind a string of narrative round them, tying them up like a nosegay for the last tribute: the same blossoms in it Ihave often laid on its threshold while it was still living for me.
We Americans are all cuckoos,--we make our homes in the nests of other birds.I have read somewhere that the lineal descendants of the man who carted off the body of William Rufus, with Walter Tyrrel's arrow sticking in it, have driven a cart (not absolutely the same one, I suppose) in the New Forest, from that day to this.Idon't quite understand Mr.Ruskin's saying (if he said it) that he couldn't get along in a country where there were no castles, but I do think we lose a great deal in living where there are so few permanent homes.You will see how much I parted with which was not reckoned in the price paid for the old homestead.
