No More Learning

I would, were mine a lyre of richer strings,
In soft Sicilian accents wrap his name.
SEA LONGINGS
Th
He first world-sound that fell upon my ear
Was that of the great winds along the coast
Crushing the deep-sea beryl on the rocks -
The distant breakers' sullen cannonade.
Against the spires and gables of the town
The white fog drifted, catching here and there
At overleaning cornice or peaked roof,
And hung - weird gonfalons. The garden walks
Were choked with leaves, and on their ragged biers
Lay dead the sweets of summer
damask rose,
Clove-pink, old-fashioned, loved New England flowers
Only keen salt-sea odors filled the air.
Sea-sounds, sea-odors — these were all my world.
Hence is it that life languishes with me
Inland; the valleys stifle me with gloom
And pent-up prospect; in their narrow bound
Imagination flutters futile wings.
Vainly I seek the sloping pearl-white sand
And the mirage's phantom citadels
Miraculous, a moment seen, then gone.
Among the mountains I am ill at ease,
Missing the stretched horizon's level line
And the illimitable restless blue.
The crag-torn sky is not the sky I love,
But one unbroken sapphire spanning all;
And nobler than the branches of a pine
Aslant upon a precipice's edge
Are the strained spars of some great battle-ship
Plowing across the sunset. No bird's lilt


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
323
So takes me as the whistling of the gale
Among the shrouds. My cradle-song was this,
Strange inarticulate sorrows of the sea,
Blithe rhythms upgathered from the Sirens' caves.
Perchance of earthly voices the last voice
That shall an instant my freed spirit stay
On this world's verge, will be some message blown
Over the dim salt lands that fringe the coast
At dusk, or when the trancèd midnight droops
With weight of stars, or haply just as dawn,
Illumining the sullen purple wave,
Turns the gray pools and willow-stems to gold.
A SHADOW OF THE NIGHT
C
LOSE on the edge of a midsummer dawn
In troubled dreams I went from land to land,
Each seven-colored like the rainbow's arc,
Regions where never fancy's foot had trod
Till then; yet all the strangeness seemed not strange,
At which I wondered, reasoning in my dream
With twofold sense, well knowing that I slept.
At last I came to this our cloud-hung earth,
And somewhere by the seashore was a grave,
A woman's grave, new-made, and heaped with flowers;
And near it stood an ancient holy man
That fain would comfort me, who sorrowed not
For this unknown dead woman at my feet.
But I, because his sacred office held
My reverence, listened; and 'twas thus he spake:-
“When next thou comest thou shalt find her still
In all the rare perfection that she was.
Thou shalt have gentle greeting of thy love!
Her eyelids will have turned to violets,
Her bosom to white lilies, and her breath
To roses. What is lovely never dies,
But passes into other loveliness,
Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower, or winged air.
If this befalls our poor unworthy flesh,
Think thee what destiny awaits the soul!
What glorious vesture it shall wear at last! »
While yet he spoke, seashore and grave and priest
Vanished, and faintly from a neighboring spire
Fell five slow solemn strokes upon my ear.


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324
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Then I awoke with a keen pain at heart,
A sense of swift unutterable loss,
And through the darkness reached my hand to touch
Her cheek, soft-pillowed on one restful palm –
To be quite sure!
OUTWARD BOUND
I
LEAVE behind me the elm-shadowed square
And carven portals of the silent street,
And wander on with listless, vagrant feet
Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air
Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care
Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet.
At the lane's ending lie the white-winged fleet.
O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare?
Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far –
Gaunt hulks of Norway: ships of red Ceylon;
Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores!
'Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar,
Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun:
Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!
REMINISCENCE
T"
"HOUGH I am native to this frozen zone
That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead;
Though the cold azure arching overhead
And the Atlantic's never-ending moan
Are mine by heritage, I must have known
Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled;
For in my veins some Orient blood is red,
And through my thought are lotus blossoms blownı.
I do remember
it was just at dusk,
Near a walled garden at the river's turn,
(A thousand summers seem but yesterday! )
A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khoorja musk,
Came to the water-tank to fill her urn,
And with the urn she bore my heart away!
.


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
325
PÈRE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM
N "
EAR the Levée, and not far from the old French Cathedral in
the Place d'Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-
palm, thirty feet in height, spreading its broad leaves in
the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking
strength from their native earth.
Sir Charles Lyell, in his Second Visit to the United States,
mentions this exotic:- "The tree is seventy or eighty years old;
for Père Antoine, a Roman Catholic priest, who died about
twenty years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it himself,
when he was young.
In his will he provided that they who suc-
ceeded to this lot of ground should forfeit it if they cut down
the palm. ”
Wishing to learn something of Père Antoine's history, Sir
Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient creole inhabitants
of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became
very much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a
mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally blew away, was
the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the tourist's investiga-
tions. This is all that is generally told of Père Antoine.
In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied
by the Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a
lady from Louisiana – Miss Blondeau by name - who gave me
the substance of the following legend touching Père Antoine and
his wonderful date-palm. If it should appear tame to the reader,
it will be because I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk dress,
with a strip of point-lace around my throat, like Miss Blondeau;
it will be because I lack her eyes and lips and Southern music
to tell it with.
When Père Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend
whom he loved as he loved his life. Émile Jardin returned his
passion, and the two, on account of their friendship, became the
marvel of the city where they dwelt. One was never seen with-
out the other; for they studied, walked, ate, and slept together.
Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of Fiammetta telling
her prettiest story to the Florentines in the garden of Boccaccio.
Antoine and Émile were preparing to enter the Church; in-
deed, they had taken the preliminary steps, when a circumstance
occurred which changed the color of their lives. A foreign


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326
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
lady, from some nameless island in the Pacific, had a few
months before moved into their neighborhood. The lady died
suddenly, leaving a girl of sixteen or seventeen, entirely friend-
less and unprovided for. The young men had been kind to the
woman during her illness, and at her death — melting with pity
at the forlorn situation of Anglice, the daughter-swore between
themselves to love and watch over her as if she were their sister.
Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that made other
women seem tame beside her; and in the course of time the
young men found themselves regarding their ward not so much
like brothers as at first. In brief, they found themselves in
love with her.
They struggled with their hopeless passion month after month,
neither betraying his secret to the other; for the austere orders
which they were about to assume precluded the idea of love and
marriage. Until then they had dwelt in the calm air of religious
meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other
ages taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and to smile
amid the flames. But a blonde girl, with great eyes and a voice
like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had come in between them
and their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that had bound
the young men together snapped silently one by one. At last
each read in the pale face of the other the story of his own
despair.
And she ? If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no
story. It was like the face of a saint on a cathedral window.
Once, however, as she came suddenly upon the two men and
overheard words that seemed to burn like fire on the lip of the
speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an instant. Then she passed
on, her face as immobile as before in its setting of wavy gold
hair.
“Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux. ”
It was
One night Émile and Anglice were missing. They had flown
- but whither, nobody knew, and nobody save Antoine cared.
a heavy blow to Antoine — for he had himself half re-
solved to confess his love to Anglice and urge her to fly with him.
A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's prie-
dieu, and fluttered to his feet.
“Do not be angry,” said the bit of paper, piteously; forgive
us, for we love. ” (“Pardonnez-nous, car nous aimons. ”)


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
327
Three years went by wearily enough. Antoine had entered
the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but
his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweet-
ness in life for him.
Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with out-
landish postmarks, was brought to the young priest -a letter
from Anglice. She was dying; — would he forgive her? Émile, ,
the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on
the island; and their child, Anglice, was likely to follow him.
In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child
until she was old enough to enter the convent of the Sacré-
Cour. The epistle was finished hastily by another hand, inform-
ing Antoine of Madame Jardin's death; it also told him that
Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly to leave the
island for some Western port.
The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck, was hardly read
and wept over when little Anglice arrived.
On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise
- she was so like the woman he had worshiped.
The passion that had been crowded down in his heart broke
out and lavished its richness on this child, who was to him
not only the Anglice of years ago, but his friend Émile Jardin
also.
Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of her mother-
the bending, willowy form, the rich tint of skin, the large trop-
ical eyes, that had almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery
to him.
For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new
home. She talked continually of the bright country where she
was born, the fruits and flowers and blue skies, the tall, fan-like
trees, and the streams that went murmuring through them to
Antoine could not pacify her.
By and by she ceased to weep, and went about the cottage in
a weary, disconsolate way that cut Antoine to the heart.
long-tailed paroquet, which she had brought with her in the ship,
walked solemnly behind her from room to room, mutely pining,
it seemed, for those heavy orient airs that used to ruffle its brill-
iant plumage.
Before the year ended, he noticed that the ruddy tinge had
faded from her cheek, that her eyes had grown languid, and her
slight figure more willowy than ever.
the sea.
A


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
now.
(C
I am
A physician was consulted. He could discover nothing wrong
with the child, except this fading and drooping. He failed to
account for that. It was some vague disease of the mind, he
said, beyond his skill.
So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom left the room
At last Antoine could not shut out the fact that the child
was passing away. He had learned to love her so!
“Dear heart,” he said once, “What is 't ails thee ? ”
"Nothing, mon père,” for so she called him.
The winter passed, the balmy spring had come with its mag-
nolia blooms and orange blossoms, and Anglice seemed to revive.
In her small bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed to and fro
in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar undulating motion, like a
graceful tree.
At times something seemed to weigh upon her mind. Antoine
observed it, and waited. Finally she spoke.
"Near our house,” said little Anglice — "near our house, on
the island, the palm-trees are waving under the blue sky. Oh,
how beautiful! I seem to lie beneath them all day long.
very, very happy. I yearned for them so much that I grew ill
- don't you think it was so, mon père ? "
"Hélas, yes! ” exclaimed Antoine, suddenly. « Let us hasten
to those pleasant islands where the palms are waving. ”
Anglice smiled. "I am going there, mon père. ”
A week from that evening the wax candles burned at her
feet and forehead, lighting her on the journey.
All was over. Now was Antoine's heart empty. Death, like
another Émile, had stolen his new Anglice. He had nothing to
do but to lay the blighted flower away.
Père Antoine made a shallow grave in his garden, and heaped
the fresh brown mold over his idol.
In the tranquil spring evenings, the priest was seen sitting
by the mound, his finger closed in the unread breviary.
The summer broke on that sunny land; and in the cool morn-
ing twilight, and after nightfall, Antoine lingered by the grave.
He could never be with it enough.
One morning he observed a delicate stem, with two curiously
shaped emerald leaves, springing up from the centre of the
mound. At first he merely noticed it casually; but presently
the plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike anything he
had ever seen before, that he examined it with care.
>


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
329
How straight and graceful and exquisite it was! When it
swung to and fro with the summer wind, in the twilight, it
seemed to Antoine as if little Anglice were standing there in the
garden.
The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot,
wondering what manner of blossom it would unfold, white, or
scarlet, or golden. One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed,
weather-beaten face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden rail, and
said to him, “What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir! ”
« Mon Dieu! ” cried Père Antoine starting, “and is it a palm ? ”
“Yes, indeed,” returned the man. “I didn't reckon the tree
would flourish in this latitude. ”
“Ah, mon Dieu! ” was all the priest could say aloud; but he
murmured to himself, Bon Dieu, vous m'avez donné cela ! »
If Père Antoine loved the tree before, he worshiped it now.
He watered it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his
arms. Here were Émile and Anglice and the child, all in one!
The years glided away, and the date-palm and the priest
grew together — only one became vigorous and the other feeble.
Père Antoine had long passed the meridian of life. The tree
was in its youth. It no longer stood in an isolated garden; for
pretentious brick and stucco houses had clustered about Antoine's
cottage. They looked down scowling on the humble thatched
roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him off his land.
But he clung to it like lichen and refused to sell.
Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he laughed at
them. Sometimes he was hungry, and cold, and thinly clad; but
he laughed none the less.
“Get thee behind me, Satan! ” said the old priest's smile.
Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but
he could sit under the pliant, caressing leaves of his palm, lov-
ing it like an Arab; and there he sat till the grimmest of specu-
lators came to him.
But even
in death Père Antoine
faithful to his trust: the owner of that land loses it if he harm
the date-tree.
And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful,
dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy
to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored.
May the hand wither that touches her ungently!
"Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice,” said Miss
Blondeau tenderly.
(C
was


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
MISS MEHETABEL'S SON
I
THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR-CORNERS
Yºu
was
gers to dine.
ou will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners as it is
more usually designated, on any map of New England that
I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village: it is
merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called
Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New
Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and
ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel,
you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a hotel
there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well
patronized — by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent
public, I will state at once that, in the early part of this century,
Greenton a point at which the mail-coach on the Great
Northern Route stopped to change horses and allow the passen-
People in the county, wishing to take the early
mail Portsmouth-ward, put up over night at the old tavern,
famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The
tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivaled
his wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away.
At his death the establishment, which included a farm, fell into
the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-
law a hotel- - which sounds handsome — he left him no guests;
for at about the period of the old man's death the old stage-
coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam the other.
Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress, the tavern at
the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-
bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously,
there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; but it
apparently failed, if eleven cellars choked up with débris and
overgrown with burdocks are any indication of failure.
The
farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in New Hamp-
shire, and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law, could afford to snap
his fingers at the traveling public if they came near enough
which they never did.
The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same
as when
Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts in 1840, except that


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
331
Sewell has from time to time sold the furniture of some of the
upper chambers to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar
is still open, and the parlor door says Parlour in tall black
letters. Now and then a passing drover looks in at that lonely
bar-room, where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum
ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shriveled lemon on a
shelf; now and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops
and stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and
then a circus caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with
a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, on which there
is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish horses driven by a
portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by the rain.
Other customers there are none, except that one regular boarder
whom I have mentioned.
If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows,
it is equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil
engineer often takes one into undreamed-of localities. I had
never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept
me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year. I do
not think I would, of my own volition, have selected Greenton
for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the business is
over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me the
guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations
with Miss Mehetabel's Son.
It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that
discovered me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners.
Though the ten miles' ride from K— had been depressing,
especially the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal
rain that had set in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the
rickety open wagon turn round in the road and roll off in the
darkness. There were no lights visible anywhere, and only for
the big, shapeless mass of something in front of me, which the
driver had said was the hotel, I should have fancied that I had
been set down by the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in
no amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull or
knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side of the house with
my heavy walking-stick. In a minute or two I saw a light
flickering somewhere aloft, then I heard the sound of a window
opening, followed by an exclamation of disgust as a blast of
a
wind extinguished the candle which had given me an instant-
aneous picture en silhouette of a man leaning out of a casement.


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"I say, what do you want, down there ? ” inquired an unpre-
possessing voice.
“I want to come in; I want a supper, and a bed, and num-
berless things. ”
“This isn't no time of night to go rousing honest folks out
of their sleep. Who are you, anyway? ”
The question, superficially considered, was a very simple one,
and I, of all people in the world, ought to have been able to
answer it off-hand, but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there
came drifting across my memory the lettering on the back of a
metaphysical work which I had seen years before on a shelf in
the Astor Library. Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collo-
cation of title and author, the lettering read as follows:-“Who
am I? Jones.
”
Evidently it had puzzled Jones to know who
he was, or he wouldn't have written a book about it, and come
to so lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly puzzled me
at that instant to define my identity. « Thirty years ago,
I
reflected, "I was nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing
again, humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am I, sure
enough ? ” It had never before occurred to me what an indefinite
article I was. I wish it had not occurred to me then.
Standing
there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with the prob-
lem, and was constrained to fall back upon a Yankee expedient.
“Isn't this a hotel ? ” I asked finally.
“Well, it is a sort of hotel,” said the voice, doubtfully. My
hesitation and prevarication had apparently not inspired my inter-
locutor with confidence in me.
« Then let me in. I have 'just driven over from K- in
this infernal rain. I am wet through and through. ”
“But what do you want here, at the Corners ?
business? People don't come here, leastways in the middle of
the night. ”
“It isn't in the middle of the night," I returned, incensed.
"I come
on business connected with the new road. I'm the
superintendent of the works. ”
“Oh! ”
"And if you don't open the door at once, I'll raise the whole
neighborhood -- and then go to the other hotel. ”
When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a village with a
population of at least three or four thousand, and was wonder-
ing vaguely at the absence of lights and other signs of human
What's your


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
333
habitation. Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed and
asleep at half past ten o'clock: perhaps I am in the business
section of the town, among the shops.
"You jest wait,” said the voice above.
This request was not devoid of a certain accent of menace,
and I braced myself for a sortie on the part of the besieged, if
he had any such hostile intent. Presently a door opened at the
very place where I least expected a door, at the farther end of
the building, in fact, and a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a
candle with his left hand, appeared on the threshold. I passed
quickly into the house, with Mr. Tobias Sewell (for this was
Mr. Sewell) at my heels, and found myself in a long, low-
studded bar-room.
There were two chairs drawn up before the hearth, on which
a huge hemlock back-log was still smoldering, and on the un-
painted deal counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with
bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent libations.
Against the discolored wall over the bar hung a yellowed hand-
bill, in a warped frame, announcing that “the Next Annual
N. H. Agricultural Fair” would take place on the 10th of Sep-
tember, 1841. There. was no other furniture or decoration in
this dismal apartment, except the cobwebs which festooned the
ceiling, hanging down here and there like stalactites.
Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf, and threw
some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a
blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past
sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, per-
fectly round, like a fish's, and of no particular color. His chief
personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not
enough teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face, as he
turned it towards me, wore a look of interrogation. I replied to
his mute inquiry by taking out my pocket-book and handing him
my business-card, which he held up to the candle and perused
with great deliberation.
« You're a civil engineer, are you? ” he said, displaying his
gums, which gave his countenance an expression of almost infant-
ile innocence. He made no further audible remark, but mum-
bled between his thin lips something which an imaginative person
might have construed into, "If you're a civil engineer, I'll be
blessed if I wouldn't like to see an uncivil one! »
Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than his bite, - owing
to his lack of teeth, probably — for he very good-naturedly set


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
To my
(C
himself to work preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold
ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled condition gave a
grateful flavor, I went to bed in a distant chamber in a most
amiable mood, feeling satisfied that Jones was a donkey to
bother himself about his identity.
When I awoke, the sun was several hours high.
My bed
faced a window, and by raising myself on one elbow I could
look out on what I expected would be the main street.
astonishment I beheld a lonely country road winding up a sterile
hill and disappearing over the ridge. In a cornfield at the right
of the road was a small private graveyard, inclosed by a crum-
bling stone wall with a red gate. The only thing suggestive of
life was this little corner lot occůpied by death. I got out of
bed and went to the other window. There I had an uninter-
rupted view of twelve miles of open landscape, with Mount
Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not a house or a spire in
sight. “Well, I exclaimed, "Greenton doesn't appear to be a
very closely packed metropolis! ” That rival hotel with which I
had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was not a deadly weapon,
looking at it by daylight. "By Jove! ” I reflected, maybe I'm
in the wrong place. ” But there, tacked against a panel of the
bedroom door, was a faded time-table dated Greenton, August
ist, 1839
I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went smiling down-
stairs, where I found Mr. Sewell, assisted by one of the fair sex
in the first bloom of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for
me on a small table — in the bar-room!
"I overslept myself this morning," I remarked apologetically,
and I see that I am putting you to some trouble. In future,
if you will have me called, I will take my meals at the usual
table d'hôte. ”
“At the what ? ” said Mr. Sewell.
“I mean with the other boarders. ”
Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire,
and, resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the
mantel-piece, grinned from ear to ear.
“Bless you! there isn't any other boarders. There hasn't
been anybody put up here sence - let me see
sence father-in-
law died, and that was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there's
Silas; he's a regular boarder: but I don't count him. ”
Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom
when the old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The
(c


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
335
»
>
introduction of steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal
error. "Jest killed local business. Carried it off, I'm darned if
I know where. The whole country has been sort o' retrograding
.
ever sence steam was invented. »
“You spoke of having one boarder," I said.
« Silas ? Yes; he come here the summer 'Tilda died — she
that was 'Tilda Bayley—and he's here yet, going on thirteen
year. He couldn't live any longer with the old man. Between
you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father, was a hard nut.
Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crooking his elbow in inimitable panto-
mime, altogether too often. Found dead in the road hugging
a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus in the barn,” added Mr.
Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a post-mortem
examination had been deemed necessary. «Silas,” he resumed,
in that respectful tone which one should always adopt when speak-
ing of capital, “is a man of considerable property; lives on his
interest, and keeps a hoss and shay. He's a great scholar, too,
Silas: takes all the pe-ri-odicals and the Police Gazette regular. ”
Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop, when the door
opened and a stoutish, middle-aged little gentleman, clad in deep
black, stepped into the room.
«Silas Jaffrey,” said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive sweep
of his arm, picking up me and the new-comer on one fork, so to
speak. Be acquainted! ”
Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his hand with
unlooked-for cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a
a
head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike
an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and
a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which
were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He
reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its
yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker
eating an omelet.
“Silas will take care of you,” said Mr. Sewell, taking down
his hat from a peg behind the door. "I've got the cattle to look
after. Tell him if you want anything. ”
While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped up and down
the narrow bar-room and chirped away as blithely as a bird on a
cherry-bough, occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight fringe
of auburn hair which stood up pertly round his head and seemed
to possess a luminous quality of its own.
»
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
«Don't I find it a little slow up here at the Corners ? Not at
all, my dear sir. I am in the thick of life up here.
So many
interesting things going on all over the world— inventions, dis-
coveries, spirits, railroad disasters, mysterious homicides. Poets,
murderers, musicians, statesmen, distinguished travelers, prodi-
gies of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very few events or
persons escape me. I take six daily city papers, thirteen weekly
journals, all the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I
could not get along with less. couldn't if you asked me. I
never feel lonely. How can I, being on intimate terms, as it
were, with thousands and thousands of people ? There's that
young woman out West.
What an entertaining creature she
is! — now in Missouri, now in Indiana, and now in Minnesota,
always on the go, and all the time shedding needles from vari-
ous parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it! Then there's
that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws
thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs
of giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one may say that
historical colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin, and
fought at the battle of Bunk — no, it is the old negro man who
fought at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that period.
Really, now, it is quite curious to observe how that venerable
female slave — formerly an African princess — is repeatedly dying
in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to life again
punctually every six months in the small-type paragraphs. Are
you aware, sir, that within the last twelve years no fewer than
two hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington's colored
coachmen have died ? »
For the soul of me I could not tell whether this quaint little
gentleman was chaffing me or not. I laid down my knife and
fork, and stared at him.
« Then there are the mathematicians! ” he cried vivaciously,
without waiting for a reply. "I take great interest in them.
Hear this! " and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket in
the tail of his coat, and read as follows:-" It has been estimated
that if all the candles manufactured by this eminent firm (Stear-
ine & Co. ) were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and 7-8
times around the globe. Of course,” continued Mr. Jaffrey, fold-
ing up the journal reflectively, “abstruse calculations of this
kind are not, perhaps, of vital importance, but they indicate
the intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now," he said,


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(
halting in front of the table, “what with books and papers and
drives about the country, I do not find the days too long,
though I seldom
see any one, except when I
go over to
K- for my mail. Existence may be very full to a man who
stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with philo-
sophic eye. Possibly he may see more of the battle than those
who are in the midst of the action. Once I was struggling with
the crowd, as eager and undaunted as the best; perhaps I should
have been struggling still. Indeed, I know my life would have
been very different now if I had married Mehetabel — if I had
married Mehetabel. ”
His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his
bright face, his figure seemed to have collapsed, the light
seemed to have faded out of his hair. With a shuffling step,
the very antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned to the
door and passed into the road.
“Well,” I said to myself, if Greenton had forty thousand
inhabitants, it couldn't turn out a more astonishing old party
than that! ”
II
THE CASE OF SILAS JAFFREY
A MAN with a passion for bric-à-brac is always stumbling over
antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of
Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy Vellum folios
and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected
bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm
to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd
people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain
that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at
I
Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too
brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I
resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinct-
ively recognizing in him an unfamiliar species. My professional
work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occas-
ionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to
employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder.
necessary, as a preliminary step, to learn something of his
previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to Mr.
Sewell that same night.
It was
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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
(
“I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said to the landlord,
as he was fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the
salle à manger and general sitting-room — "I do not want to
seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark
this morning at breakfast which – which was not altogether
clear to me. "
«About Mehetabel ? ” asked Mr. Sewell, uneasily.
Yes. ”
“Well, I wish he wouldn't! »
"He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to
hint to me that he had not married the young woman, and
seemed to regret it. ”
“No, he didn't marry Mehetabel. ”
“May I inquire why he didn't marry Mehetabel ? »
“Never asked her. Might have married the girl forty times.
Old Elkins's daughter, over at K—, She'd have had him
quick enough. Seven years, off and on, he kept company with
Mehetabel, and then she died. ”
“And he never asked her ? »
“He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn't think of it. When
she was dead and gone, then Silas was struck all of a heap-
and that 's all about it. ”
Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything
more, and obviously there was more to tell.
The topic was
plainly disagreeable to him for some reason or other, and that
unknown reason of course piqued my curiosity.
As I was absent from dinner and supper that day, I did not
meet Mr. Jaffrey again until the following morning at break-
fast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of
a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New
York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers' ends.
It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gen-
tleman, with his naïve, benevolent countenance, and his thin
hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre,
reveling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed.
«You come up to my room to-night,” he cried, with horrid
glee, and I'll give you my theory of the murder. I'll make it
as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who
fired the three pistol-shots. ”
It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated
as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept


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THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
339
his invitation. Mr. Jaffrey's bedroom was in an L of the
building, and was in no way noticeable except for the numer-
ous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank
spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which
stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and
threatening to topple over each instant, like the Leaning Tower
at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some
faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-
chairs covered with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between
the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum and brier-
wood pipes.
Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for me and an-
other for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began prattling; but not about
the murder, which appeared to have flown out of his mind. In
fact, I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon,
either then or afterwards.
« Cozy nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently
over the apartment. “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall
of the year, than an open wood-fire ? Do you hear those little
chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood ?
Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang
upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring.
In sum-
mer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees
under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
I take it very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter.
Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would
term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He's a
realist - believes in coming down to what he calls the hardpan’;
but his heart is in the right place, and he's very kind to me.