第31章

"Yet went she not, as not with such discourse Delighted, or not capable her ear Of what was high; such pleasure she reserved, Adam relating, she sole auditress;Her husband the relater she preferred Before the angel, and of him to ask Chose rather; he she knew would intermix Grateful digressions, and solve high dispute With conjugal caresses: from his lips Not words alone pleased her."Everybody laughed, except the Capitalist, who was a little hard of hearing, and the Scarabee, whose life was too earnest for demonstrations of that kind.He had his eyes fixed on the volume, however, with eager interest.

--The p'int 's carried,--said the Member of the Haouse.

Will you let me look at that book a single minute?--said the Scarabee.I passed it to him, wondering what in the world he wanted of Paradise Lost.

Dermestes lardarius,--he said, pointing to a place where the edge of one side of the outer cover had been slightly tasted by some insect.

--Very fond of leather while they 're in the larva state.

--Damage the goods as bad as mice,--said the Salesman.

--Eat half the binding off Folio 67,--said the Register of Deeds.

Something did, anyhow, and it was n't mice.Found the shelf covered with little hairy cases belonging to something or other that had no business there.

Skins of the Dermestes lardaraus,--said the Scarabee,--you can always tell them by those brown hairy coats.That 's the name to give them.

--What good does it do to give 'em a name after they 've eat the binding off my folios? --asked the Register of Deeds.

The Scarabee had too much respect for science to answer such a question as that; and the book, having served its purposes, was passed back to the Lady.

I return to the previous question,--said I,--if our friend the Member of the House of Representatives will allow me to borrow the phrase.

Womanly women are very kindly critics, except to themselves and now and then to their own sex.The less there is of sex about a woman, the more she is to be dreaded.But take a real woman at her best moment,--well dressed enough to be pleased with herself, not so resplendent as to be a show and a sensation, with those varied outside influences which set vibrating the harmonic notes of her nature stirring in the air about her, and what has social life to compare with one of those vital interchanges of thought and feeling with her that make an hour memorable? What can equal her tact, her delicacy, her subtlety of apprehension, her quickness to feel the changes of temperature as the warm and cool currents of talk blow by turns? At one moment she is microscopically intellectual, critical, scrupulous in judgment as an analyst's balance, and the next as sympathetic as the open rose that sweetens the wind from whatever quarter it finds its way to her bosom.It is in the hospitable soul of a woman that a man forgets he is a stranger, and so becomes natural and truthful, at the same time that he is mesmerized by all those divine differences which make her a mystery and a bewilderment to If you fire your popgun at me, you little chimpanzee, I will stick a pin right through the middle of you and put you into one of this gentleman's beetle-cases!

I caught the imp that time, but what started him was more than Icould guess.It is rather hard that this spoiled child should spoil such a sentence as that was going to be; but the wind shifted all at once, and the talk had to come round on another tack, or at least fall off a point or two from its course.

--I'll tell you who I think are the best talkers in all probability, --said I to the Master, who, as I mentioned, was developing interesting talent as a listener,--poets who never write verses.And there are a good many more of these than it would seem at first sight.I think you may say every young lover is a poet, to begin with.I don't mean either that all young lovers are good talkers,--they have an eloquence all their own when they are with the beloved object, no doubt, emphasized after the fashion the solemn bard of Paradise refers to with such delicious humor in the passage we just heard,--but a little talk goes a good way in most of these cooing matches, and it wouldn't do to report them too literally.What Imean is, that a man with the gift of musical and impassioned phrase (and love often deeds that to a young person for a while), who "wreaks" it, to borrow Byron's word, on conversation as the natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse.Agreat pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer.To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes New England every time it is played in full blast.

Do you mean that it is hard work to write a poem?--said the old Master.---I had an idea that a poem wrote itself, as it were, very often; that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken of it as an inspiration rather than a result of volition.

--Did you ever see a great ballet-dancer?--I asked him.

--I have seen Taglioni,--he answered.---She used to take her steps rather prettily.I have seen the woman that danced the capstone on to Bunker Hill Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, the Elssler woman,--Fanny Elssler.She would dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon's wing for you very respectably.

(Confound this old college book-worm,----he has seen everything!)Well, did these two ladies dance as if it was hard work to them?

--Why no, I should say they danced as if they liked it and couldn't help dancing; they looked as if they felt so "corky" it was hard to keep them down.

--And yet they had been through such work to get their limbs strong and flexible and obedient, that a cart-horse lives an easy life compared to theirs while they were in training.

--The Master cut in just here--I had sprung the trap of a reminiscence.