away. She could not resist my voice, in whose tones burned all the
love that filled my heart and brain. The very effort to resist the
desire of seeing her as I saw everybody else, gave a frenzy and an
unnatural tension to my feeling and my manner. I sat by her side,
looking into her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart,
which was sunken and deep - why not forever? - in that dream of peace. I
ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with joy, and sat the
whole night through, thrilled into happiness by the thought of her
love and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answering
the airiest sigh of the breeze with music. Then came calmer days - the
conviction of deep love settled upon our lives - as after the hurrying,
heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant summer.
"'It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,' I said to her,
one day; and there came no answer, for happiness is speechless.
"We are happy then," I said to myself, "there is no excitement now.
How glad I am that I can now look at her through my spectacles."
"I feared lest some instinct should warn me to beware.
I escaped from her arms, and ran home and seized the glasses and
bounded back again to Preciosa. As I entered the room I was heated, my
head was swimming with confused apprehension, my eyes must have
glared. Preciosa was frightened, and rising from her seat, stood with
an inquiring glance of surprise in her eyes. But I was bent with
frenzy upon my purpose. I was merely aware that she was in the room. I
saw nothing else. I heard nothing. I cared for nothing, but to see her
through that magic glass, and feel at once, all the fulness of
blissful perfection which that would reveal. Preciosa stood before the
mirror, but alarmed at my wild and eager movements, unable to
distinguish what I had in my hands, and seeing me raise them suddenly
to my face, she shrieked with terror, and fell fainting upon the
floor, at the very moment that I placed the glasses before my eyes,
and beheld - myself, reflected in the mirror, before which she had been
standing.
"Dear madam," cried Titbottom, to my wife, springing up and falling
back again in his chair, pale and trembling, while Prue ran to him and
took his hand, and I poured out a glass of water - "I saw myself."
There was silence for many minutes. Prue laid her hand gently upon the
head of our guest, whose eyes were closed, and who breathed softly,
like an infant in sleeping. Perhaps, in all the long years of anguish
since that hour, no tender hand had touched his brow, nor wiped away
the damps of a bitter sorrow. Perhaps the tender, maternal fingers of
my wife soothed his weary head with the conviction that he felt the
hand of his mother playing with the long hair of her boy in the soft
West Indian morning. Perhaps it was only the natural relief of
expressing a pent-up sorrow. When he spoke again, it was with the old,
subdued tone, and the air of quaint solemnity.
"These things were matters of long, long ago, and I came to this
country soon after. I brought with me, premature age, a past of
melancholy memories, and the magic spectacles. I had become their
slave. I had nothing more to fear. Having seen myself, I was compelled
to see others, properly to understand my relations to them. The lights
that cheer the future of other men had gone out for me. My eyes were
those of an exile turned backwards upon the receding shore, and not
forwards with hope upon the ocean. I mingled with men, but with little
pleasure. There are but many varieties of a few types. I did not find
those I came to clearer sighted than those I had left behind. I heard
men called shrewd and wise, and report said they were highly
intelligent and successful. But when I looked at them through my
glasses, I found no halo of real manliness. My finest sense detected
no aroma of purity and principle; but I saw only a fungus that had
fattened and spread in a night. They all went to the theater to see
actors upon the stage. I went to see actors in the boxes, so
consummately cunning, that the others did not know they were acting,
and they did not suspect it themselves.
"Perhaps you wonder it did not make me misanthropical. My dear
friends, do not forget that I had seen myself. It made me
compassionate, not cynical. Of course I could not value highly the
ordinary standards of success and excellence. When I went to church
and saw a thin, blue, artificial flower, or a great sleepy cushion
expounding the beauty of holiness to pews full of eagles, half-eagles,
and threepences, however adroitly concealed in broadcloth and boots:
or saw an onion in an Easter bonnet weeping over the sins of Magdalen,
I did not feel as they felt who saw in all this, not only propriety,
but piety. Or when at public meetings an eel stood up on end, and
wriggled and squirmed lithely in every direction, and declared that,
for his part, he went in for rainbows and hot water - how could I help
seeing that he was still black and loved a slimy pool?
"I could not grow misanthropical when I saw in the eyes of so many who
were called old, the gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light
of an immortal dawn, or when I saw those who were esteemed
unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace and plenty,
either in themselves, or more perfectly in another - a realm and
princely possession for which they had well renounced a hopeless
search and a belated triumph. I knew one man who had been for years a
by-word for having sought the philosopher's stone. But I looked at him
through the spectacles and saw a satisfaction in concentrated
energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion to a noble dream, which
was not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the aimless
effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen who cracked their
thin jokes upon him over a gossiping dinner.
"And there was your neighbor over the way, who passes for a woman who
has failed in her career, because she is an old maid. People wag
solemn heads of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake in not
marrying the brilliant and famous man who was for long years her
suitor. It is clear that no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The
young people make tender romances about her as they watch her, and
think of her solitary hours of bitter regret, and wasting longing,
never to be satisfied. When I first came to town I shared this
sympathy, and pleased my imagination with fancying her hard struggle
with the conviction that she had lost all that made life beautiful. I
supposed that if I looked at her through my spectacles, I should see
that it was only her radiant temper which so illuminated her dress,
that we did not see it to be heavy sables. But when, one day, I did
raise my glasses and glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom
we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a woman whose nature was a
tropic, in which the sun shone, and birds sang, and flowers bloomed
forever. There were no regrets, no doubts and half wishes, but a calm
sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw her blush when that old lover
passed by, or paused to speak to her, but it was only the sign of
delicate feminine consciousness. She knew his love, and honored it,
although she could not understand it nor return it. I looked closely
at her, and I saw that although all the world had exclaimed at her
indifference to such homage, and had declared it was astonishing she
should lose so fine a match, she would only say simply and quietly -
"'If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, how could I marry
him?'
"Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, and dignity, and
simplicity?
"You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old
lover of hers, through my glasses. He was no longer young, you know,
when I came, and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have
heard of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. He
had the easy manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a
poet, and the charitable judgment of a wide traveller. He was
accounted the most successful and most unspoiled of men. Handsome,
brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished, rich, and famous, I
looked at him, without the spectacles, in surprise, and admiration,
and wondered how your neighbor over the way had been so entirely
untouched by his homage. I watched their intercourse in society, I saw
her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked his frank address, his
lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager world was
balked, and I pulled out my spectacles.
"I had seen her, already, and now I saw him. He lived only in memory,
and his memory was a spacious and stately palace. But he did not
oftenest frequent the banqueting hall, where were endless hospitality
and feasting - nor did he loiter much in reception rooms, where a
throng of new visitors was forever swarming - nor did he feed his
vanity by haunting the apartment in which were stored the trophies of
his varied triumphs - nor dream much in the great gallery hung with
pictures of his travels. But from all these lofty halls of memory he
constantly escaped to a remote and solitary chamber, into which no one
had ever penetrated. But my fatal eyes, behind the glasses, followed
and entered with him, and saw that the chamber was a chapel. It was
dim, and silent, and sweet with perpetual incense that burned upon an
altar before a picture forever veiled. There, whenever I chanced to
look, I saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day and by night, a
funeral hymn was chanted.
"I do not believe you will be surprised that I have been content to
remain deputy bookkeeper. My spectacles regulated my ambition, and I
early learned that there were better gods than Plutus. The glasses
have lost much of their fascination now, and I do not often use them.
Sometimes the desire is irresistible. Whenever I am greatly
interested, I am compelled to take them out and see what it is that I
admire.
"And yet - and yet," said Titbottom, after a pause, "I am not sure that
I thank my grandfather."
Prue had long since laid away her work, and had heard every word of
the story. I saw that the dear woman had yet one question to ask, and
had been earnestly hoping to hear something that would spare her the
necessity of asking. But Titbottom had resumed his usual tone, after
the momentary excitement, and made no further allusion to himself. We
all sat silently; Titbottom's eyes fastened musingly upon the carpet:
Prue looking wistfully at him, and I regarding both.
It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go. He shook hands
quietly, made his grave Spanish bow to Prue, and taking his hat, went
towards the front door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw in her eyes
that she would ask her question. And as Titbottom opened the door, I
heard the low words:
"And Preciosa?"
Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door and the moonlight
streamed over him as he stood, turning back to us.
"I have seen her but once since. It was in church, and she was
kneeling with her eyes closed, so that she did not see me. But I
rubbed the glasses well, and looked at her, and saw a white lily,
whose stem was broken, but which was fresh; and luminous, and
fragrant, still."
"That was a miracle," interrupted Prue.
"Madam, it was a miracle," replied Titbottom, "and for that one sight
I am devoutly grateful for my grandfather's gift. I saw, that although
a flower may have lost its hold upon earthly moisture, it may still
bloom as sweetly, fed by the dews of heaven."
The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue put her arm in mine and
we went upstairs together, she whispered in my ear:
"How glad I am that you don't wear spectacles."
MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME
By Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)
[From _The Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1859. Republished in the
volume, _The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales_ (1868), by Edward
Everett Hale (Little, Brown & Co.).]
It is not often that I trouble the readers of _The Atlantic Monthly_.
I should not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife,
who "feels to insist" that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I
have told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is
sure, she says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that
pressure upon public servants which alone drives any man into the
employment of a double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of
her heart, that my fortunes will never be re-made, she has a faint
hope, that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future
publics, from which they may profit, though we die. Owing to the
behavior of my double, or, if you please, to that public pressure
which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write
this communication.
I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was
settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the
finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the
heart of the civilization of New England. A charming place it was and
is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might
have all "the joy of eventful living" to our hearts' content.
Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those
halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! To be the confidential
friend in a hundred families in the town - cutting the social trifle,
as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped-syllabub to
the bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation" - to keep
abreast of the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best
on Sunday to interweave that thought with the active life of an active
town, and to inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the
Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life!
Enough to do, and all so real and so grand! If this vision could only
have lasted.
The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor,
indeed, half bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his
own business, the vision would have accomplished itself and brought
out new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the original. The
misery was and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that,
besides the vision, and besides the usual human and finite failures in
life (such as breaking the old pitcher that came over in the
Mayflower, and putting into the fire the alpenstock with which her
father climbed Mont Blanc) - besides, these, I say (imitating the style
of Robinson Crusoe), there were pitchforked in on us a great
rowen-heap of humbugs, handed down from some unknown seed-time, in
which we were expected, and I chiefly, to fulfil certain public
functions before the community, of the character of those fulfilled by
the third row of supernumeraries who stand behind the Sepoys in the
spectacle of the _Cataract of the Ganges_. They were the duties, in a
word, which one performs as member of one or another social class or
subdivision, wholly distinct from what one does as A. by himself A.
What invisible power put these functions on me, it would be very hard
to tell. But such power there was and is. And I had not been at work a
year before I found I was living two lives, one real and one merely
functional - for two sets of people, one my parish, whom I loved, and
the other a vague public, for whom I did not care two straws. All this
was in a vague notion, which everybody had and has, that this second
life would eventually bring out some great results, unknown at
present, to somebody somewhere.
Crazed by this duality of life, I first read Dr. Wigan on the _Duality
of the Brain_, hoping that I could train one side of my head to do
these outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties.
For Richard Greenough once told me that, in studying for the statue of
Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was
philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If
you will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has
repeated this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is
the portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of Poor Richard.
But Dr. Wigan does not go into these niceties of this subject, and I
failed. It was then that, on my wife's suggestion, I resolved to look
out for a Double.
I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating
at Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the
relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monsonpon House. We
were passing through one of the large halls, when my destiny was
fulfilled! I saw my man!
He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green
baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But
I saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He
had black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He
stooped in walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine.
And - choicest gift of Fate in all - he had, not "a strawberry-mark on
his left arm," but a cut from a juvenile brickbat over his right eye,
slightly affecting the play of that eyebrow. Reader, so have I! - My
fate was sealed!
A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole
thing. It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow,
of the class known as shiftless, who had sealed his fate by marrying a
dumb wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I
left Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to
Judge Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the
name of Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We had explained to the Judge,
what was the precise truth, that an eccentric gentleman wished to
adopt Dennis under this new name into his family. It never occurred to
him that Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to
shorten this preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at
Naguadavick, there entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb laundress,
myself, who am Mr. Frederic Ingham, and my double, who was Mr.
Frederic Ingham by as good right as I.
Oh, the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my
pattern, cutting his hair to match mine, and teaching him how to wear
and how to take off gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were
electroplate, and the glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were
excellent). Then in four successive afternoons I taught him four
speeches. I had found these would be quite enough for the
supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it was well for me they were.
For though he was good-natured, he was very shiftless, and it was, as
our national proverb says, "like pulling teeth" to teach him. But at
the end of the next week he could say, with quite my easy and frisky
air:
1. "Very well, thank you. And you?" This for an answer to casual
salutations.
2. "I am very glad you liked it."
3. "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that
I will not occupy the time."
4. "I agree, in general, with my friend on the other side of the
room."
At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for
clothing him. But it proved, of course, at once, that, whenever he was
out, I should be at home. And I went, during the bright period of his
success, to so few of those awful pageants which require a black
dress-coat and what the ungodly call, after Mr. Dickens, a white
choker, that in the happy retreat of my own dressing-gowns and jackets
my days went by as happily and cheaply as those of another Thalaba.
And Polly declares there was never a year when the tailoring cost so
little. He lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife's room over the
kitchen. He had orders never to show himself at that window. When he
appeared in the front of the house, I retired to my sanctissimum and
my dressing-gown. In short, the Dutchman and, his wife, in the old
weather-box, had not less to do with, each other than he and I. He
made the furnace-fire and split the wood before daylight; then he went
to sleep again, and slept late; then came for orders, with a red silk
bandanna tied round his head, with his overalls on, and his dress-coat
and spectacles off. If we happened to be interrupted, no one guessed
that he was Frederic Ingham as well as I; and, in the neighborhood,
there grew up an impression that the minister's Irishman worked
day-times in the factory village at New Coventry. After I had given
him his orders, I never saw him till the next day.
I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board.
The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom
sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under
the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by
being ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot
help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four
successive meetings, averaging four hours each - wholly occupied in
whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at
the next, by force of three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third,
thanks to two days' canvassing by Auchmuty and myself, begging men to
come, we had sixty. Half the others were in Europe. But without a
quorum we could do nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our
four hours, and adjourned without any action. At the fourth meeting we
had flagged, and only got fifty-nine together. But on the first
appearance of my double - whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the fifth
meeting - he was the _sixty-seventh_ man who entered the room. He was
greeted with a storm of applause! The poor fellow had missed his
way - read the street signs ill through his spectacles (very ill, in
fact, without them) - and had not dared to inquire. He entered the
room - finding the president and secretary holding to their chairs two
judges of the Supreme Court, who were also members _ex officio_, and
were begging leave to go away. On his entrance all was changed.
_Presto_, the by-laws were amended, and the Western property was given
away. Nobody stopped to converse with him. He voted, as I had charged
him to do, in every instance, with the minority. I won new laurels as
a man of sense, though a little unpunctual - and Dennis, _alias_
Ingham, returned to the parsonage, astonished to see with how little
wisdom the world is governed. He cut a few of my parishioners in the
street; but he had his glasses off, and I am known to be nearsighted.
Eventually he recognized them more readily than I.
I "set him again" at the exhibition of the New Coventry Academy; and
here he undertook a "speaking part" - as, in my boyish, worldly days, I
remember the bills used to say of Mlle. Celeste. We are all trustees
of the New Coventry Academy; and there has lately been "a good deal of
feeling" because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend the
exhibitions. It has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are
leaning towards Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected
these semi-annual exhibitions, while there is no doubt that Auchmuty
last year went to Commencement at Waterville. Now the head master at
New Coventry is a real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he
sees it, and often cracks etymologies with me - so that, in strictness,
I ought to go to their exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting
through three long July days in that Academy chapel, following the
program from
Tuesday Morning. English Composition. Sunshine. Miss Jones,
round to
Trio on Three Pianos. Duel from opera of Midshipman Easy. Marryatt.
coming in at nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men
who know the world is trying to go backward, and who would give their
lives if they could help it on! Well! The double had succeeded so well
at the Board, that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade of Plato,
pardon!) He arrived early on Tuesday, when, indeed, few but mothers
and clergymen are generally expected, and returned in the evening to
us, covered with honors. He had dined at the right hand of the
chairman, and he spoke in high terms of the repast. The chairman had
expressed his interest in the French conversation. "I am very glad you
liked it," said Dennis; and the poor chairman, abashed, supposed the
accent had been wrong. At the end of the day, the gentlemen present
had been called upon for speeches - the Rev. Frederic Ingham first, as
it happened; upon which Dennis had risen, and had said, "There has
been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not
occupy the time." The girls were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the
year before, had given them at this occasion a scolding on impropriety
of behavior at lyceum lectures. They all declared Mr. Ingham was a
love - and _so_ handsome! (Dennis is good-looking.) Three of them, with
arms behind the others' waists, followed him up to the wagon he rode
home in; and a little girl with a blue sash had been sent to give him
a rosebud. After this debut in speaking, he went to the exhibition for
two days more, to the mutual satisfaction of all concerned. Indeed,
Polly reported that he had pronounced the trustees' dinners of a
higher grade than those of the parsonage. When the next term began, I
found six of the Academy girls had obtained permission to come across
the river and attend our church. But this arrangement did not long
continue.
After this he went to several Commencements for me, and ate the
dinners provided; he sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions
for me - always voting judiciously, by the simple rule mentioned above,
of siding with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had before been
losing caste among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the
associations of the body, began to rise in everybody's favor.
"Ingham's a good fellow - always on hand"; "never talks much - but does
the right thing at the right time"; "is not as unpunctual as he used
to be - he comes early, and sits through to the end." "He has got over
his old talkative habit, too. I spoke to a friend of his about it
once; and I think Ingham took it kindly," etc., etc.
This voting power of Dennis was particularly valuable at the quarterly
meetings of the Proprietors of the Naguadavick Ferry. My wife
inherited from her father some shares in that enterprise, which is not
yet fully developed, though it doubtless will become a very valuable
property. The law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by
proxy at such meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a
"hens'-rights hen," and transferred her stock to me. I, after going
once, disliked it more than she. But Dennis went to the next meeting,
and liked it very much. He said the armchairs were good, the collation
good, and the free rides to stockholders pleasant. He was a little
frightened when they first took him upon one of the ferry-boats, but
after two or three quarterly meetings he became quite brave.
Thus far I never had any difficulty with him. Indeed, being of that
type which is called shiftless, he was only too happy to be told daily
what to do, and to be charged not to be forthputting or in any way
original in his discharge of that duty. He learned, however, to
discriminate between the lines of his life, and very much preferred
these stockholders' meetings and trustees' dinners and commencement
collations to another set of occasions, from which he used to beg off
most piteously. Our excellent brother, Dr. Fillmore, had taken a
notion at this time that our Sandemanian churches needed more
expression of mutual sympathy. He insisted upon it that we were
remiss. He said, that, if the Bishop came to preach at Naguadavick,
all the Episcopal clergy of the neighborhood were present; if Dr. Pond
came, all the Congregational clergymen turned out to hear him; if Dr.
Nichols, all the Unitarians; and he thought we owed it to each other
that, whenever there was an occasional service at a Sandemanian
church, the other brethren should all, if possible, attend. "It looked
well," if nothing more. Now this really meant that I had not been to
hear one of Dr. Fillmore's lectures on the Ethnology of Religion. He
forgot that he did not hear one of my course on the Sandemanianism of
Anselm. But I felt badly when he said it; and afterwards I always made
Dennis go to hear all the brethren preach, when I was not preaching
myself. This was what he took exceptions to - the only thing, as I
said, which he ever did except to. Now came the advantage of his long
morning-nap, and of the green tea with which Polly supplied the
kitchen. But he would plead, so humbly, to be let off, only from one
or two! I never excepted him, however. I knew the lectures were of
value, and I thought it best he should be able to keep the connection.
Polly is more rash than I am, as the reader has observed in the outset
of this memoir. She risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own
sex. Governor Gorges had always been very kind to us; and when he gave
his great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go.
I was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's _Mystics_, which Haliburton
had just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to
return the Governor's civility and Mrs. Gorges's, when they will be
sure to ask why you are away!" Still I demurred, and at last she, with
the wit of Eve and of Semiramis conjoined, let me off by saying that,
if I would go in with her, and sustain the initial conversations with
the Governor and the ladies staying there, she would risk Dennis for
the rest of the evening. And that was just what we did. She took
Dennis in training all that afternoon, instructed him in fashionable
conversation, cautioned him against the temptations of the
supper-table - and at nine in the evening he drove us all down in the
carryall. I made the grand star-entrée with Polly and the pretty
Walton girls, who were staying with us. We had put Dennis into a great
rough top-coat, without his glasses - and the girls never dreamed, in
the darkness, of looking at him. He sat in the carriage, at the door,
while we entered. I did the agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced
to her niece. Miss Fernanda - I complimented Judge Jeffries on his
decision in the great case of D'Aulnay _vs._ Laconia Mining Co. - I
stepped into the dressing-room for a moment - stepped out for
another - walked home, after a nod with Dennis, and tying the horse to
a pump - and while I walked home, Mr. Frederic Ingham, my double,
stepped in through the library into the Gorges's grand saloon.
Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even
here, where I have to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to
fence our cave, she dies of laughing as she recalls it - and says that
single occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve that
she is! She joined Dennis at the library door, and in an instant
presented him to Dr. Ochterlong, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in
town, and was talking with her, as Dennis came in. "Mr. Ingham would
like to hear what you were telling us about your success among the
German population." And Dennis bowed and said, in spite of a scowl
from Polly, "I'm very glad you liked it." But Dr. Ochterlong did not
observe, and plunged into the tide of explanation, Dennis listening
like a prime-minister, and bowing like a mandarin - which is, I
suppose, the same thing. Polly declared it was just like Haliburton's
Latin conversation with the Hungarian minister, of which he is very
fond of telling. "_Quoene sit historia Reformationis in Ungariâ?_"
quoth Haliburton, after some thought. And his _confrère_ replied
gallantly, "_In seculo decimo tertio,_" etc., etc., etc.; and from
_decimo tertio_ [Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear
little bell-and-coral reader. You have rightly guessed that the
question means, "What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?"]
to the nineteenth century and a half lasted till the oysters came. So
was it that before Dr. Ochterlong came to the "success," or near it,
Governor Gorges came to Dennis and asked him to hand Mrs. Jeffries
down to supper, a request which he heard with great joy.
Polly was skipping round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty
came to her "in pity for poor Ingham," who was so bored by the stupid
pundit - and Auchmuty could not understand why I stood it so long. But
when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could not resist standing
near them. He was a little flustered, till the sight of the eatables
and drinkables gave him the same Mercian courage which it gave
Diggory. A little excited then, he attempted one or two of his
speeches to the Judge's lady. But little he knew how hard it was to
get in even a _promptu_ there edgewise. "Very well, I thank you," said
he, after the eating elements were adjusted; "and you?" And then did
not he have to hear about the mumps, and the measles, and arnica, and
belladonna, and chamomile-flower, and dodecathem, till she changed
oysters for salad - and then about the old practice and the new, and
what her sister said, and what her sister's friend said, and what the
physician to her sister's friend said, and then what was said by the
brother of the sister of the physician of the friend of her sister,
exactly as if it had been in Ollendorff? There was a moment's pause,
as she declined champagne. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis
again, which he never should have said, but to one who complimented a
sermon. "Oh! you are so sharp, Mr. Ingham! No! I never drink any wine
at all - except sometimes in summer a little currant spirits - from our
own currants, you know. My own mother - that is, I call her my own
mother, because, you know, I do not remember," etc., etc., etc.; till
they came to the candied orange at the end of the feast - when Dennis,
rather confused, thought he must say something, and tried No. 4 - "I
agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room" - which
he never should have said but at a public meeting. But Mrs. Jeffries,
who never listens expecting to understand, caught him up instantly
with, "Well, I'm sure my husband returns the compliment; he always
agrees with you - though we do worship with the Methodists - but you
know, Mr. Ingham," etc., etc., etc., till the move was made upstairs;
and as Dennis led her through the hall, he was scarcely understood by
any but Polly, as he said, "There has been so much said, and, on the
whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time."
His great resource the rest of the evening was standing in the
library, carrying on animated conversations with one and another in
much the same way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a
discovery of mine, that it is not necessary to finish your sentence in
a crowd, but by a sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals.
This, indeed, if your words fail you, answers even in public extempore
speech - but better where other talking is going on. Thus: "We missed
you at the Natural History Society, Ingham." Ingham replies: "I am
very gligloglum, that is, that you were m-m-m-m-m." By gradually
dropping the voice, the interlocutor is compelled to supply the
answer. "Mrs. Ingham, I hope your friend Augusta is better." Augusta
has not been ill. Polly cannot think of explaining, however, and
answers: "Thank you, ma'am; she is very rearason wewahwewob," in lower
and lower tones. And Mrs. Throckmorton, who forgot the subject of
which she spoke, as soon as she asked the question, is quite
satisfied. Dennis could see into the card-room, and came to Polly to
ask if he might not go and play all-fours. But, of course, she sternly
refused. At midnight they came home delightedly: Polly, as I said,
wild to tell me the story of victory; only both the pretty Walton
girls said: "Cousin Frederic, you did not come near me all the
evening."
We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real
name was Frederic Ingham, as I have explained. When the election day
came round, however, I found that by some accident there was only one
Frederic Ingham's name on the voting-list; and, as I was quite busy
that day in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I would
forego my privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling
Dennis that he might use the record on the voting-list and vote. I
gave him a ticket, which I told him he might use, if he liked to. That
was that very sharp election in Maine which the readers of _The
Atlantic_ so well remember, and it had been intimated in public that
the ministers would do well not to appear at the polls. Of course,
after that, we had to appear by self or proxy. Still, Naguadavick was
not then a city, and this standing in a double queue at townmeeting
several hours to vote was a bore of the first water; and so, when I
found that there was but one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that one
of us must give up, I stayed at home and finished the letters (which,
indeed, procured for Fothergill his coveted appointment of Professor
of Astronomy at Leavenworth), and I gave Dennis, as we called him, the
chance. Something in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the
Frederic Ingham name; and at the adjourned election, next week,
Frederic Ingham was chosen to the legislature. Whether this was I or
Dennis, I never really knew. My friends seemed to think it was I; but
I felt, that, as Dennis had done the popular thing, he was entitled to
the honor; so I sent him to Augusta when the time came, and he took
the oaths. And a very valuable member he made. They appointed him on
the Committee on Parishes; but I wrote a letter for him, resigning, on
the ground that he took an interest in our claim to the stumpage in
the minister's sixteenths of Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range. He
never made any speeches, and always voted with the minority, which was
what he was sent to do. He made me and himself a great many good
friends, some of whom I did not afterwards recognize as quickly as
Dennis did my parishioners. On one or two occasions, when there was
wood to saw at home, I kept him at home; but I took those occasions to
go to Augusta myself. Finding myself often in his vacant seat at these
times, I watched the proceedings with a good deal of care; and once
was so much excited that I delivered my somewhat celebrated speech on
the Central School District question, a speech of which the State of
Maine printed some extra copies. I believe there is no formal rule
permitting strangers to speak; but no one objected.
Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this
session led me to think, that if, by some such "general understanding"
as the reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress
might leave a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer
to roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears
stereotyped in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we
should gain decidedly in working power. As things stand, the saddest
state prison I ever visit is that Representatives' Chamber in
Washington. If a man leaves for an hour, twenty "correspondents" may
be howling, "Where was Mr. Prendergast when the Oregon bill passed?"
And if poor Prendergast stays there! Certainly, the worst use you can
make of a man is to put him in prison!
I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to