Chapter 119
"Well met, my Union Blucher!"
"Ah!" says Villiam, pensively, "how powerful is Human Instink!"
"Explain, my Blue and Gold."
"Human Instink," says Villiam, softly, "is an involuntary tendency to our normal condition."
"Ahem," said I, sagely, "that sounds like Seward."
"Come with me," says Villiam, gravely, "and I will show you the power of Human Instink."
He led me quietly, my boy, to a corner of the great room, where the guests were nearly all males, and suddenly roared out this extraordinary question:
"Say, Johnny-y-y, how's yer do-o-org?"
The magical sound caught them unprepared, my boy, and before there was time to remember where they were, they unanimously responded with:
"Bully!"
"Ah!" says Villiam, "that's Instink. They all were fellow-firemen last year, and remember the language of the Departmink."
Deeply impressed with a sense of that subtle sympathy with early usages which never leaves a man in life, I again let the hero of a hundred battles lead the way to another corner, where fifty fair ones stood apart in a cl.u.s.ter, waiting for their escorts. Then it was that Captain Villiam Brown suddenly a.s.sumed an air of unspeakable abstraction, and commenced humming the tune of the song:
"Bridget, tend the airy bell, Don't you hear it tinkle?
Butcher's brought the bacon home,-- Cook it in a twinkle."
Without at all thinking or knowing why they were doing so, my boy, two-thirds of those fair ones took up the tune at the first note and hummed it through!
"The fair sect," says Villiam, cautiously, "once heard its mother sing that song, as she had learned it in her native palace; and has the Instink to remember it."
Thus, taking new and beautiful lessons in the ever-fresh volume of animate nature, we sauntered into the ballroom, where our Honest Abe and his lady were viewing the performances from a pair of handsome elevated chairs. Ay, sir: handsome (!) chairs; and that, too, when many an honest poor man in the land has not a single chair with a gilt back to rest upon. Thus are we drifting toward (start not!)--yes sir and madam, toward--Royalty!! Thus, too, are we incurring the highest scorn of the old aristocracy of the capital who had not received invitations.
There was dancing of the ordinary sort in plenty; many solid men of Boston of the oldest age going to the verge of apoplexy in their efforts at double-shuffle; but how can description do justice to the Honorable Gentleman from the Sixth Ward, who performed the celebrated Conflagration Hornpipe!
First, the Honorable Gentleman threw his whole weight upon his left leg, elevated one ear as though intently listening, and tapped distinctly upon the floor with his right heel the number of the district. Then came a confused scuffling, first upon one foot and then upon the other, to represent the hurry and excitement of getting the machine out of the house and whirling her to the scene of the conflagration. The next figure, performed alternately upon the toe, heel, and side of the shoe, was an imitation of the n.o.ble machine in motion; the whole winding up with the Honorable Gentleman's seizing his partner around the waist and plunging into a polka, symbolizing the gallant fireman's rescue of a consuming female from a sixth-story window.
This beautiful dance, my boy, was considered an unanswerable argument in favor of a Volunteer Fire Department; but its finis.h.i.+ng effect was somewhat marred by a piercing note from the famous night-key bugle of the Mackerel Bra.s.s Band: who, in an enfeebled state of mind, was found wandering about the palace a trifle intoxicated, and received prompt
After witnessing, also, the noted walk-around known as the Revenue Stamp, we joined the march for supper, and I sweetly expressed to Captain Villiam Brown my fear of being crowded from the eatables.
"Oh!" says Villiam, catching his case-bottle just in time to save it from sliding through his ruffles to the floor; "I shall work upon human Instink."
Here, this ornament of our National Mackerel organization inserted an elbow under the right ear of a fair being in blue just before us, and says she:
"I don't admire to see you men treating ladies in that manner. The ideor!"
"Ah, Mrs. Nubbins," says Villiam, pleasantly, "when your father, the milkman, used to serve our house, I"--
"Here--you can pa.s.s, sir," said the fair being in blue; and Captain Villiam Brown walked forward deliberately upon the trailing skirts of a beauteous object in pink.
"You're tearing my things--creature!"
"Ah!" says Villiam, abstractedly, to me, "you don't remember stand Number Twelve, Fulton Market, where Miss Poodlem's grandmother used to"--
"There's plenty of room here, sir," observed the beauteous object in pink, and Captain Villiam Brown accidentally brushed against a beat.i.tude in white.
"Plebeian!"
"My fren," says Villiam, as though he and I were entirely alone together on a desert island, "when old Binks gave up the soap-boiling business last fall, and came to"--
"Did you wish to pa.s.s, sir?" said the beat.i.tude in white; and we soon found ourselves beside the banquet board, where all went merry as a fire-bell.
Then did we gorge ourselves, my boy, like the very First Families under similar circ.u.mstances; revelling in such salads as were known to the ancients just before the breaking out of the Asiatic cholera, and paying general attention to a bill of fare which was heartily despised by the old aristocracy of the capital who had received no invitations.
It was past midnight when we retreated to a double-bedded room at Willard's, and as Captain Villiam Brown took his goblet of final soda, he gracefully tipped my gla.s.s, and says he:
"I propose a sentimink."
Villiam raised the Falernian nectar aloft, gazed solemnly at me, and says he:
"Human Instink!"
Let us believe, my boy, that the instincts of those who come to the higher social surface in this, our trying time of war, are, by their own purity from anything actually malignant, sure indications that the nation's heart is good to the very bottom. Let us believe that the pride of Ascent, vain-glorious as it may seem, is n.o.bler in raising the public laugh than is the tyrannical pride of Descent, which too often forces the public tear. Let us believe that, in the course of time, when the soft white hand of Peace shall have thrown a wreath of flowers across the muzzles of our guns, these unaccustomed tradesmen-courtiers who now throng the halls of our upright First Citizen and Friend will prove the sound ancestral stock of a race of brave gentlemen and women fair, to defend and adorn our Republican Court.
Yours, blithely,
ORPHEUS C. KERR.
LETTER CV.
BEING OUR CORRESPONDENT'S LAST EFFORT PRIOR TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF A NEW MACKEREL CAMPAIGN; INTRODUCING A METRICAL PICTURE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE SINGLE COMBAT ON RECORD; AND SHOWING HOW THE ROMANCE OF WOMAN'S SENSITIVE SOUL CAN BE CRUSHED BY THE THING CALLED MAN.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D.C., March 12th, 1865.
This sagacious business of writing national military history once a week, my boy, has at times presented itself to my mind as a public obligation nearly equal in steady mutual delight to the wholesome occupation of organ-grinding. Mark the Italian n.o.bleman who discourses mercenary tw.a.n.gs beneath your window, and you shall find him a person of severe and gloomy visage,--a figure with an expression of being weighed down to the very earth by a something heavier than the mere mahogany box of shrieks out of which he grinds popular misery by the block. Not that he has a distaste for music, my boy; not that he was the less enthusiastic at that past period "when music, heavenly maid, was young" to him; but because the daily recurrence to his ears of precisely the same sounds for ten years, has a horribly depressing effect of unmitigated sameness; and music has become to him an ancient maiden of exasperating pertinacity. It quite affects me, my boy, when I see one of those melancholy sons of song carrying a regularly organized monkey around with him; for it is evident he finds in such companions.h.i.+p a certain relief from the anguish of monotony. Guided by the example, I sometimes get a Brigadier to keep me company also, and you can hardly imagine how often I am saved from gloom by the amus.e.m.e.nt I experience in seeing his shrewd imitation of a real soldier.
But even this resource may fail; for there are periods when such imitations are very bad indeed; and then the mind of the wearied scribe, like that of my departed friend, the Arkansaw Nightingale, may at any moment expire for want of food. Shall I ever forget the time, my boy, when the Nightingale came to Was.h.i.+ngton, as President of the Arkansaw Tract Society, for the express purpose of protesting against the war, and procuring a fresh gla.s.s of the same he had last time?
"This war," says he, waiting for it to grow cooler, and thoughtfully contemplating the reflection of himself in the bowl of a spoon,--"this war, if it goes on, wont never shet pan till the hair's rubbed off the hull country, and the 'Merican Eagle wont hev enough feathers in his tail to oil a watch-spring. Tell you! stranger, it'll be wuss than Tuscaloosa Sam's last tackle; and that wasn't slow."
"What was that?" says I.
"What!" says the Nightingale, stirring in a little sugar, "did you never hearn tell of Tuscaloosa's last? Then here's the screed done into music under my pen and seal; and as it an't quite as long's the hundred nineteenth psalm, you don't want a chair to hear it."