We're leaving.
And I must say that I haven't actually timed this whole thing
all the way through.
I timed parts of it.
So I'm not sure just how long we may be here--
or some of us, anyway.
I have already decided that I'd better
forgo reading this selection, despite that, that as much
as I would like to read that.
So if it was on the program, it would be read.
From one of my most favorite works in the 20th century,
John Dos Passos's "Trilogy USA," there's a statement that
I'd like to use to kind of preface the reading
for the authors that I've selected.
And it goes, "USA is a slice of a continent.
USA is a group of holding companies, some aggregations,
unions, a set of laws bound in casts,
a radio network, a chain of moving picture theaters,
a column of stock quotations rubbed out and written
in by Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public library
full of old newspapers and dog-eared history books
with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil.
USA is the world's greatest river valley fringed
with mountains and hills.
USA is a set of big-mouthed officials with too many bank
accounts.
USA is a lot of men buried in their uniforms
in Arlington Cemetery.
USA is the letters at the end of an address when you were away
from home.
But mostly, USA is the speech of the people.
It is in a mother's word telling about long ago,
and a father telling about when I was a boy,
and the kidding stories of uncles,
and the lies that kids told at schools.
And it's the workmen's yawns, the tall tales
told after taps in barracks.
It is the heat that clings to the ears,
[INAUDIBLE] that tingles in the blood--
USA."
And that's pretty much the way I feel about my country.
As Shaw said in one of his plays,
they haven't spoken English over there for about two centuries.
And I think that the authors that I want to read here
are writing and speaking in an American speech--
the words, some of which, most of which,
we share with Great Britain.
But this is the language of our country.
And despite all these anglophilic constructions
at the university level in this country,
we do have a literature worth listening to, I think.
First, I want to read from The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon,
as it was called by Washington Irving.
This was written about 150 years ago.
And it tells about how he felt as an American toward Europe.
And I don't know how you may receive this.
But it seems to me to be still pretty accurate.
"Never need an American go beyond his own country
for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery.
But Europe held forth the terms that stared
in political association.
There were to be seen the masterpieces of art,
the refinements of highly cultivated society,
the quaint peculiarities of ancient and local customs.
My native country was full of youthful promise.
Europe was rich and accumulated treasures of age put very real
and told the history of times gone by.
And every moldering stone was a chronicle.
I longed to wander over the seas of renowned achievement,
declared, as it were, in the footsteps of antiquity,
to loiter about the ruined castle,
to meditate on the fallen power, to escape,
in short, from the commonplace realities of the present
and lose myself among the shadowy branches of the past.
None but those who have experienced that
can form an idea of the delicious throng of sensations
which rush into an American when he first
comes in sight of Europe.
There is a volume of associations with the very name.
It is the land of promise, teeming with everything
with which his childhood has heard,
or on with his studious years have pondered.
If you're an American visiting Europe,
the long voyage you have to make is an excellent portrait
of the temporary absence of worldly things
and employment produces a state of mind peculiarly suited
to receive new and vivid impressions.
The vast space of waters that separates the hemispheres
is like a blank page in existence.
There is no gradual transition by which, as in Europe,
the features and population of one country
blend almost imperceptibly with those of another.
From the moment you lose sight of the land you have left,
all is vacant sea until you step on the opposite shore and are
launched at once into the hustle of novelty of another world."
The question that comes next by James
is also about how an American who,
like Irving, was an expatriate, felt some years later--
I think the date of The American, the novel,
it comes from, was 1876, something like that--
how he felt about meeting a fat duchess in Paris in 1876.
Now, he's-- you need to know a little bit about the scene here.
His name is Newman, the American.
He's just become engaged to a very high-born French woman,
young woman, who he loves very, very much,
called Madame, a princess who's been married once before.
And her brother, Monsieur de Bellegarde,
as he is referred to in this passage, and also the Marquis,
as he's also referred to, is introducing
Newman at a coming out party.
Fool you not.
"Newman found himself in the presence
of a lady of monstrous proportions
in a very capacious armchair, with several persons standing
in a semicircle around her.
This little group had divided as the Marquis came up.
And Monsieur de Bellegarde stepped forward.
And he stood for an instant silent and obsequious,
with the brim of his hat raised to his lips,
as Newman had seen some gentlemen stand in churches
as they entered their pews.
The lady indeed bore a very fair likeness to a reverend effigy
at some idolatrous shrine who was monumentally
stout and indescribably serene.
Her aspect was, to Newman, almost formidable.
She had a troubled consciousness of a triple chin,
and small piercing eyes, a vast expanse of uncovered bosoms,
a nodding and twinkling tiara of plumes and gems,
and an immense circumference of satin petticoat.
With her little circle of beholders,
this remarkable woman reminded him of the fat lady at a fair.
She fixed her small, unwinking eyes at the newcomers.
Dear Duchess, said the Marquis, let
me present you our good friend, Newman, of whom
you have heard us speak.
Wishing to make Mr. Newman known to those who are dear to us,
I could not possibly fail to begin with you.
Charmed, dear friend, charmed, monsieur, said the duchess,
while Newman executed his obeisance.
I came on purpose to see monsieur.
I hope he appreciates the compliment.
You have only to look at me to do so, sir,
she continued, sweeping her person
with a much-encompassing glance.
Newman hardly knew what to say, though it seemed to him
that a duchess who joked about her corpulence, one
might say anything.
On hearing that the duchess had come on purpose to see Newman,
the gentleman who surrounded her turned a little
and looked at him with sympathetic curiosity.
The Marquis, with supernatural gravity,
mentioned to him the name of each, while the gentleman who
bore that name bowed.
They were all what are called in France bonhommes.
Newman, I wanted extremely to meet you, the Duchess went on.
C'est positif.
In the first place, I am very fond of the person
you are going to marry.
She is the most charming creature in France.
Mind you, treat her well, or you shall hear some news from me.
But you look as if you were good.
I am told you are very remarkable.
I heard all sorts of extraordinary things about you.
Voyons, are they true?
I don't know what you heard, said Newman.
Oh, you have your légende.
We have heard that you have had quite a career, the most
checkered, the most bizarre.
What is this about you having founded a city some 10 years ago
in the great West, a city that contains today half a million
of inhabitants?
Isn't it half a million, monsieur?
You are exclusive proprietor of this flourishing settlement,
and are consequently fabulously rich.
And you would be richer still if you
didn't grant lands and houses free to those who promised not
to smoke cigars for 10 years.
At this game in three years, you are
going to be made president of the United States.
The duchess recited this amazing legend
with a smooth self-possession which
gave a speech to Newman's mind, the royal beam
and amusing dialogue in a play delivered
by a veteran comic actress.
Before she had finished speaking,
he had burst into loud, irrepressible laughs.
Dear Duchess, dear Duchess, the Marquis
began to murmur soothingly.
Two or three persons came to the door of the room
to see who was laughing at the duchess.
But the lady continued with a soft, serene assurance
of a person who, as a duchess, was
certain of being listened to, and as a garrulous woman, very
independent of the pulse of her auditors.
But I know you are very remarkable.
You must be to have endeared yourself
to this good Marquis and his admirable mother.
They don't disturb their scheme in all the world.
They are very exacting.
I, myself, am not very sure at this hour
of really possessing it.
Eh, Bellegarde?
To please, you, I see, one must be a millionaire.
But the real science, my dear sir, is pleasing the countess.
She is as difficult as a princess in a fairy tale.
Your success is a miracle.
What is your secret?
I don't ask you to reveal it before all these gentlemen.
But come and see me some day.
And give me a specimen of your talents.
The secret is with Madame de Cintré, said Newman.
You must ask her for it.
It consists in her having a great deal of charity.
Very pretty, said the duchess.
That is a very nice specimen to begin with.
What, Bellegarde, are you taking away this monsieur already?
I have a duty to perform, dear friend,
said the Marquis, pointing to the other group.
Ah, for you, I know what that means.
Well, they don't want [INAUDIBLE].
Well, I have been with you.
That is what I wanted.
He can't persuade me that he isn't very clever.
Farewell.
As Newman passed on with his host,
he asked who the duchess was.
The greatest lady in France, said the Marquis."
My Romanian grand dame accent is the same as my French.
So don't ask me about my Czech, and my British,
and the whole works.
The next one concerns also, in a sense, traveling.
The trip, this time a slip of the mind,
and some Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
"In the winter of '46-'47, 100 Irish men with Yankee overseers
came from Cambridge to Walden to get out the ice.
They divided it in cakes by methods too well-known
to require description.
And these, being sledded to the shore,
were rapidly hauled off onto an ice platform in rows
by grappling irons and block and tackle, lifting onto a stack
as surely as so many barrels of flour.
And they were placed evenly side by side and row
upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk
designed to pierce the clouds.
They told me that, in a good day,
they could get out a thousand tons, which was
the yield of about one acre.
Thus, for 16 days, I saw from my window 100 men at work,
like busy husbandmen, with teams, and horses,
and apparently all the implements of farming,
like the picture we'd see in the first page of the Almanac.
And now, they are all gone, and in 30 days, more, probably.
I have to look out to my window on the pure, blue-green Walden
water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees
and sending up its evaporation in solitude.
And no traces will appear that man has ever stood there.
Perhaps I could hear a solitary loon laugh
as he dives and plumes himself, where
it does see a lonely fisher in his boat
like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected
in the waves, where lately, 100 men labored securely.
Thus, it appears, that the sweltering inhabitants
of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras, and Bombay,
and Calcutta, drink at my well.
In the morning, I bathed, my intellect
in a stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita.
Years of the gods have elapsed.
And in comparison with this, our modern world and its literature
seem puny and trivial.
And I vowed, with that philosophy,
it must be referred to a previous state of existence,
so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions.
I lay down the book, the Bhagavad Gita,
and go to my well for water.
And lo, there, I meet the servant
of a Brahmin priest of Brahma, and Vishnu,
and Indra who still sits in his temple on the Ganges
reading the Vedas, where dwells at the root of a tree
with his crust and water jug.
I meet his servant come to draw water for his master.
And our buckets, as it were, grate together in the same well.
The pure Walden water is mixed with the sacred water
of the Ganges.
With favoring winds, it is wafted past the sites
of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and Hesperides,
makes the periplus of Hanno, and floating by Ternate and Tidore
in the mouth of the Persian Gulf,
melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas,
and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names."
Now, that's a very different kind of free planning
than the other men did.
Now, skipping the poetry, in A Man at War, but as a scene,
I think I know there must be a concrete poet down here.
You all have read about comics.
Jack had public writing and publishing poetry in a warship
in '46.
We'll save that for another occasion today.
The next thing here is more or less
in honor of my office mate, Roger Bowen, who
is from Falmouth, England, where Pendennis Castle is,
and where this sketch actually takes place.
And this is from Herman Melville's historical novel
called Israel Potter and a Mirror of His 40 Years' Exile.
And this is a novel about the American Revolution.
And Israel Potter in this scene is only an observer,
or as it were, a listener.
And the scene is, really, as I said about another man, who
characterizes himself as a Christian, a gentleman,
and an American.
"I had an uncle--
his name was Bob--
who I went hunting with when I was boy.
And ever since those days, I've always
appreciated a man who can swear well,
because he had some of the most marvelous round things he said,
like you red-wifted, Presbyterian, letter-headed son
of a bitch.
So this passage has been selected
because Ethan Allen possesses that talent in spades.
It gets a little loud sometimes.
Next day was Sunday.
And about noon, Israel, with others,
was allowed to go ashore from the step for a stroll.
The town was quiet.
Seeing nothing very interesting there,
he passed out alone in the fields along shore,
and suddenly found himself climbing a cliff,
whereon stood Pendennis Castle.
As he stepped upon a short, crisp lawn under its walls,
he started at a violent sound from within,
as though the roar from a tormented lion.
Soon, the sound became articulated.
And he heard the following words bayed out
with an amazing vigor-- brag no more, old England.
Consider you are but an outland.
Order back your broken battalions home.
And repent in ashes long enough that your hired tories
across the sea forgotten the lord, their god,
and bowed down to Howe and Kniphausen-- the Hessian.
Hands up, you red-skinned jackal, wearing the king's plate
as I do.
I have treasures of wrath against you British.
Then came a clanking, as of a chain,
many vengeful sounds all confusedly together
with struggling.
Then, again, the voice--
you brought me out here from my dungeon to this green,
a sunny round Sabbath sun, to see how a rebel looks.
But I'll show you how a true gentleman and Christian can
conduct in adversity, bat dogs.
Respect a gentleman and a Christian, though he be in rags
and smell of bilge water.
Filled with astonishment of these words, which
came from over a massive wall and enclosing
what seemed an open parade space,
Israel pressed forward and soon came
to a black archway leading far within and underneath
the grassy track, through a tower, like two boar's tusks.
Two sentries stood on guard at either side of the opening
jaws of the arch.
Scrutinizing our adventurer a moment,
they signed him to make an entrance.
Arrived at the end of the archway where the sun shone,
Israel stood transfixed at the scene.
Like some baited bullring, crouched
the Patagonian-looking captive, handcuffed as before,
the grass of the green trampled and gored up all around him
both by his own movements and those of the people around.
Except some soldiers and sailors,
these seemed mostly townspeople collected there out
of curiosity.
The stranger was outlandishly arrayed
in the sorry remains of a half-Indian, half-Canadian sort
of a dress, consisting of a fawn skin jacket with fur outside
and hanging in ragged tufts, a half-rotten, bark-like belt
of wampum, aged breeches of sagathy,
bedarned worsted stockings on the knees--
to the knees, old moccasins riddled with holes.
There were metal tags yellowed with salt water
rust, a faded red woolen bonnet, not
unlike a Russian nightcap, or a portentous, ensanguined full
moon, all soiled and stuck along and about
with bits of half-rotted straw.
He seems just broken from the dead leases in David's outlawed
Cave of Adullam.
Unshaved, bearded, and matted, and profuse
as a cornfield beaten down by hailstorms,
his whole marred aspect was that of some wild beast,
but of a royal sort, and unsubdued by the cage.
Aye, stare, stare.
Though but last night they had bowed out
the ship's hold like a smutty tierce, and this morning,
out of your littered barracks here like a murderer.
For all that, you may well stare at Ethan Ticonderoga
Allen, the unconquered soldier, you son of a bitches.
You Turks never saw a Christian before.
Stare on.
I am he who, when your Lord Howe wanted to bribe a patriot
to fall down and worship him by an offer of a major generalship
and 5,000 acres of choice land in old Vermont.
Ha, three times three, for glorious old Vermont
and my Green Mountain Boys.
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.
I am he, I say, who answered your Lord Howe.
You, you offer our land.
You are like a devil in scripture
offering all the kingdoms of the world, you bastard.
He had not a corner lot on Earth.
[AUDIO OUT]
Look, you rebel-- this is the British who's talking to him.
Look, you rebel, you had best heed how you
talk against General Lord Howe.
Here said a thin wasp-waisted, epauletted officer
of the castle, coming near and flourishing his sword
like a schoolmaster's ferule.
General Lord Howe?
Heed how I talk to that toad-hearted king's lick spittle
of a scarlet poltroon, the vilest wriggler in God's
wormhole below?
I tell you, the herds of red-haired devils
are impatiently snorting to lay the Lord Howe with all his gang,
you included, into the sweeniest syrup atop a flame.
At this blast, the wasp-waisted officer
was blown backwards, as from the sudden burst
head of a steam boiler.
Staggering away with snapped spine,
he muttered something about it being beneath his dignity
to bandy words further with a low-lived rebel.
Come, come, Colonel Allen, here said
a mild-looking man, clerical in dress.
Respect the day, better than to talk thus of what lies beyond.
Were you to die this hour, or what
is more probable, be hanged next week at Tower Wharf, you may not
what might become, in eternity, of yourself.
Reverend sir, with a mocking bow, when not better employed
braiding my beard, I have a little dabbled
in your theologies.
And let me tell you, reverend sir,
that as to the world of spirits of which you hint,
though I know nothing of the mode or manner of the world
no more than do you, yet I expect
when I shall arrive there to be treated
as well as any other gentleman of my merit--
that is to say, far better than you British know
how to treat an American officer and meek-hearted Christian
captured in honorable war.
Christ, everyone tells me, as you yourself just breathe,
in a crossing the sea every billow dinged into my ear
that I, Ethan Allen, am to be hung like a fool.
If I am, the great Jehovah, at a mental Congress,
shall avenge me.
While I, for my part, shall show you even
on the tree, how a Christian gentleman can die.
Many a time, sir, if you are the clergyman you look,
act out to conciliatory function by getting an unfortunate
Christian gentleman about to die a bowl of punch."
And this next one is also invective,
but at a very, very different time.
And this is written by Melville's friend,
Daniel Hawthorne in his book known to all of you
as The Scarlet Letter.
It's from a little essay that he called "The Custom House."
And he was very mad because he had
lost a cushy job at the Custom House
when the political parties came to an election.
And he also expressed-- discusses in this essay
and decided to explain his words with polite-leaning words
the politics of his time and the kind of people that hold office.
He expressed a great deal of bitterness
towards his hometown of Salem and said
how much he hated being the child
of the great, great grandson of one
of the founding fathers of that place.
And in "The Custom House," we find this passage,
which I think is kind of a model for putting the knife in slowly
and steadily, rather than taking it off suddenly.
"And the father of the Custom House, the patriarch,
not only would be of this little squad of officials,
but I am bold to say, as a respectful body of tide-waiters
all over the United States, as a certain permanent inspector.
And this inspector, when I first knew him,
was a man of four score years or thereabouts
and certainly one of the most wonderful specimens of these
that he would be likely to discover in a lifetime spent.
With his florid cheeks, his compact figure,
smartly arrayed in a bright and buttoned blue coat,
with brisk and vigorous steps, and a sure and hearty aspect,
altogether he seemed, not young, indeed,
but a kind of new contrivance of mother nature
in the shape of a man whom age and infirmity
had no business to touch.
His voice and laugh, which perpetually
echoed through the Custom House, had
nothing of the tremulous flavor and cackle of an old man's
utterance.
They came spreading out of his lungs like the crow of a cock
or the blast of the crane.
Looking at him merely as an animal,
and there was very little else to look at,
he was a most satisfactory object
that from the feral helpfulness and wholesomeness of the system
in his capacity, at his extreme age
to enjoy all or nearly all of the delights
that he had ever aimed at or conceived of.
The careless security of his life
in the Custom House on a regular income,
and with such flighting and frequent apprehensions
of removal, had no doubt contributed
to make time to come over him.
The original and more potent causes,
however, lay in the rare perfection of his animal nature,
the moderate proportion of intellect,
and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual
ingredients--
these latter qualities, indeed, being
barely enough to make it to keep the old gentleman from walking
on all fours.
He possessed no power of thought, no depth of feelings,
no troublesome sensibilities-- nothing,
in short, but a few commonplace instincts,
which aided by the terrible temper which he inevitably had.
His physical well-being did duty very
respectably, and in general, acceptance in lieu of a heart.
He had been the husband of three wives all along since.
He had the father of 20 children,
most of whom at every age of childhood or maturity
had likewise returned to the dust.
Here, one would suppose might have been sorrow enough
to imbue the sunniest disposition
through and through with a sable skin tinge.
Not so with our old inspector, one big sigh
could suffice to carry off the entire burden
of these dismal pursuits.
The next moment, he was ready for sport
as any unbruised infant, far readier
than the collector's junior clerk, who at 19 years,
was much the older engraver of the two.
One point in which he had vastly the advantage
over his four-footed brethren was his ability
to recollect the good dinners which
had been no small portion of the happiness of his life to eat.
And his gourmand was a highly agreeable trait.
And to hear him talk of roast meat
was as appetizing as a pickle or an oyster.
As he possessed no higher attribute, and neither sacrifice
nor exhibited any spiritual endowment
by devoting all of his energies and ingenuity
to serve the delight and profit of his maw,
it was always pleasing and satisfying for me
to hear him expiate on fish, poultry, and butcher's meat,
and the most eligible method of preparing them for the table.
His reminiscences of good here, however
ancient the date of the actual banquet,
seemed to bring the savor of pitted turkey
under one's very nostrils.
There were flavors on his that lingered there not less than 60
or 70 years and was still apparently as fresh as that
of the mutton chop which he had just devoured for his breakfast.
I have heard him smack his lips over dinners,
every guest of which, except himself, had long
been food for worms.
It was marvelous to observe how the ghosts of bygone meals
were continually rising up before-- and not in anger
or retribution, but as just grateful for his form
of appreciation, and thinking to reduplicate
an endless series of enjoyment, at once shadowy and insensible.
A tenderloin of beef, a hind quarter of veal,
a spare rib of pork, a particular chicken,
or a remarkably praiseworthy turkey,
which had perhaps to join his board in the days of the elder
Adam would be remembered, while all the subsequent experience
of our race and all the events that brightened or darkened
his individual career had gone over him
with as little permanent effect as a passing breeze.
The chief tragic event of the old man's life,
as far as I could judge, was his mishap with a certain goose,
which lived in some 20 or 40 years
ago, a goose of most promising figure,
but which at table, proves so inveterately
tough that the carving knife would make
no impression on its carcass.
And it had to be divided with an ax and a hand saw."
Now, that's a tough enough bit of a big turmoil.
But you know, when people write--
I mean this is written about an actual living man.
So Hawthorne wrote a little preface
to the second edition of Scarlet Letter.
It goes like this first quote.
And I think for exquisite, you know, politeness and scorn,
this same place applies.
"Much to the author's surprise, and if you may say so
without additional offense, considerably to his amusement,
he finds that his sketch of official life introduction
to the Scarlet Letter has created
an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community
and immediately around him.
It could hardly have been more violent, indeed,
had he burned down the Custom House
and clinched its last smoking ember
in the blood of a certain venerable personage
against whom he was supposed to carry out
a particular malevolence.
As the public just approbation would weigh very heavily on him,
were he conscious of deserving it,
the author begs leave to say that he has carefully
read over the introductory pages with a purpose to alter or shun
whatever might be found in it and in its best
reparation in his power for the atrocities of which he
has been a judge guilty.
But it appears to him that the only remarkable features
of this sketch are expressed in genuine good humor
in the general accuracy with which he
has conveyed his sincere impression of the characters
therein described.
That's the immaterial feeling that
any time, personal or political, he utterly disdains such motive.
That such might, perhaps, have been wholly omitted,
without any loss to the public, or detriment to the book.
But having undertaken to write it,
he concedes that it could not have
been done in a better, or a kindly spirit, nor so
far as his ability to avail with a lively effect of truth.
The author is constrained, therefore,
to republish this introductory sketch without the change
of a word."
The next election is a serious short study, all
with one theme, the Civil War.
And it comes from what I think was a very fine book, one
of the very truly human books that I've ever read,
Walt Whitman's autobiography called Specimen Days.
And it tells about the war in chronological order.
He uses one word in here, I suspect,
which is a strong term in the 1850s for someone who is
a southerner, in fact, someone from a seceding state.
Some of these states, some of them have titles.
And when they do have basic titles, I'll read that.
Where they don't, I just pause between them.
"The start of the war.
Even after the bombardment of Sumter,
the gravity of the revolt and the power and will of the slave
states with strong, continued military resistance
to national authority, they not at all realize
that the North is up by a few.
I remember that a couple of companies in the 13th Brooklyn
Regiment who ran the rule of city.
I remember when it started at 30 days
and then were all provided with pieces of rope conspicuously
tied to their musket barrel, with instruction to bring back
each man a prisoner from the audacious South
to be ensnared in a noose on our men's early and triumphant
return.
All this sort of feeling was destined
to be arrested and reversed by a terrible shock.
The Battle of First Bull Run, certainly as we now know,
is one of the most singular fights on record.
All battles and their results are far more matters of action
than it's generally thought.
But this one was thoroughly throughout a casualty at hand.
Each side is supposed to be the last moment one had, and point
of fact that the same right to be routed as the other.
By a fiction or a series of fictions,
the National forces, at the last moment, exploded in a panic
and fled from the field.
The defeated troops commenced pouring into Washington over
the long bridge at daylight on Monday, 22nd of July,
gray drizzling all throughout with rain.
The men appear at first start saying,
it seems safe enough, then thicker
in the streets of Washington.
But here, in Pennsylvania Avenue,
and on the steps and basements of entrances,
they come along in disorderly mobs,
some in squads, stragglers, companies, occasionally
a rare resident in perfect order with its officers, some gap
dead, the two brave marching in silence with lowered faces
stern, years of thinking, all black and dirty.
But every man with his musket's been stepping alive.
But these are the exceptions.
Sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue, 14th Street,
and so on, crowded jammed with citizens, darkies, clerks,
everybody, lookers on, women in the windows glancing at some
faces as those swarms of dirt-covered returned soldiers
there, will they never end, moved by.
But nothing said, no coming.
Half our lookers on to threat of the most venomous kind.
They say nothing, but the Devil snickers in their faces.
During the forenoon, Washington gets all over motley,
as these defeated soldiers clear looking out with strange eyes
and faces drenched--
the steady rain drizzles on all day--
and fearfully worn, hungry, haggard, blistered in the feet.
Good people, but not over many, either,
hurry up something for their grub.
They put black kettles on the fire to heat the coffee.
They set tables on the sidewalk.
Wagon-loads of bread are toasted swiftly, cut into stout chunks.
And with a deep excitement, crowd, emotion,
and desperate eagerness, it seems
strange to see many, very many, of the soldiers sleeping
in the midst of all, sleeping soundly.
They drop down anywhere-- on the steps of houses, up close bunks,
or fences on the sidewalk, outside on some vacant lot
on Beechwood Street.
Meantime in Washington, among the great persons
and their entourage, a mixture of awful consternation,
uncertainty, rage, shame, helplessness, and stupefying
disappointment, the worst is not only imminent, but already
here in a few hours, perhaps before the next meal,
the success generals with their victorious foreheads
will be upon us.
The dream of humanity, the vaunted union
we fought so strong, so impregnable,
lo, it seems already smashed like a china plate.
One bitter, bitter hour, perhaps proud America
will never again know such an hour.
We must pack and fly, no time to spare.
Those white palaces, the dome crowned capital there
on the hill so stately over the trees,
shall they be left or destroyed first?
For it is certain that the talk among certain of the magnates,
and officers, and clerks, and officials everywhere
for 24 hours in and around Washington
after Bull Run was loud and undisguised,
were yielding out and out, and substituting
with Southern rule and Lincoln promptly
abdicating and departing.
If the success officers and forces had immediately followed,
and by a bold Napoleonic movement
had entered Washington the first day or even the second,
they could have had things their own way
and a powerful fashioned North to back them.
But the hour, the day, the night passed.
And whatever returned, an hour, a day,
a night like that can never return to the day.
The president recovered himself, began that very night sternly,
rapidly set about the task of reorganizing his forces
and placing himself in positions for future and sure work.
If there was nothing else of Abraham Lincoln
for his chief of staff and whip, it
is enough to send him with this leak
to the memory of all future times
that he endured that hour, that day, bitterer then gall, indeed,
a crucifixion day, that it did not conquer him,
that the unflinchingly extended and resolved to lift himself
and the Union out of it.
Down at the front, Falmouth, Virginia,
opposite Fredericksburg, December 21, 1862,
began my visit among the camp hospitals
in the Army of the Potomac, spending
the good part of the day in a large brick
mansion on the banks of the Rappahannock,
used as a hospital since the battle,
seems to have received only the worst cases.
Outdoors at the foot of a tree within 10
yards of the front of the house, I
noticed a heap of antiquated feet, legs, arms, hands,
and so forth, a full wagonload for a one-horse cart.
Several dead bodies lying there, each
covered with its brown woolen blanket
in the bare yard towards the river of fresh graves,
most of them officers, their names on pieces of barrel
and broken boards stuck in the dirt.
But for such brave, the ground soldiers
are not comprised in those of one side any more
than the other.
At the war department a few days ago,
I witnessed the presentation of captured flags
to the Secretary of War.
Among others, a soldier named Grant in 104th Ohio volunteers
to hold a Battle Flag, which one of the officers stated to me was
born through the mouth of our cannon and planted there
by a boy but 17 years of age, who actually endeavored to stop
the muzzle of the gun with bent rails.
He was killed in the effort.
Abraham Lincoln-- I see the president almost every day,
as I happen to live where he passes to or from his lodgings
out of town.
He never sleeps at the White House during the hot season,
but has quarters at a healthy location some three miles north
of the city, the soldiers' home, a United States Military
establishment.
I saw him this morning about 8:30 coming into business,
riding on Vermont Avenue near L Street.
He always has a company of 25 or 30
cavalry with sabers drawn and held up right
over their shoulders.
They say this guard was against his personal wish,
but he let his counselors have their way.
The party makes no great show in uniform or horses.
Mr. Lincoln on the saddle generally rides
a good-sized, easygoing gray horse
who's dressed in plain black, somewhat rusty, and wears
a black, stiff hat, and looks about as ordinary in his attire
and so on as the commonest man.
A lieutenant with yellow staff rides to his left,
and following behind, two by two,
from the cavalrymen in their yellow striped jackets.
They are generally going at a slow trot,
as that is the pace set them by the one they wait upon.
The sabers and accoutrements plant
an entire unornamental cortege as it trots toward Lafayette
Square arouses no sensation.
Only some curious stranger stops and gazes.
I see very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face,
with the deep cut lines, the eyes
always continue with a deflating sadness and expression.
We have got so that we exchange vows.
And there's coarser ones.
Sometimes the president goes, and comes, in an open barouche.
The cavalry always accompanies him with drawn sabers.
Often, I notice that he goes out evenings.
And sometimes, in the morning, when he returns early,
he turns off and halts at the lodge and handsome residences
of the Secretary of War on 3rd Street and holds conference
there.
If in his barouche, I can see him from my window.
And he does not alight to sit in with Mr.
Stanton and that contingent.
Sometimes, one of his sons, a boy of 10 or 12,
accompanies him, riding on his right on a pony.
Some specimen cases.
June 19.
In one of the hospitals, I find Thomas Haley, company
in Fourth New York cavalry, a regular Irish boy,
a fine specimen of useful physical manliness,
came over to this country from Ireland to enlist.
He has not a single friend or acquaintance here.
He sits in silence at this moment,
that is, his place of death.
He had a bullet hole straight through the lung.
J.T.L. of company F, Ninth New Hampshire lies in Bed 37,
ward I. He's very fond of tobacco.
I furnished him some, also for a little money
he had gained during the defeat.
It's a pretty bad case, and surely will they be told.
He's a regular specimen of an old-fashioned, rude, hardy New
England countryman.
That pre-war armor has a great hankering
for pickles, something pungent.
After consulting the doctor, I gave him
a small bottle of horseradish, also some apple, also a book.
Some of the nurses are excellent.
The woman nurse in this ward, I like very much, Mrs. Wright.
A year afterwards, I found her in a mansion house hospital,
Alexandria.
She is a perfect girl.
In one bed a young man, Marcus Small, company K, 7th Maine,
sick with dysentery and typhoid fever.
I talk with him often.
He thinks he will die.
Looks like it, indeed.
I write a letter for him home to East Livermore, Maine.
I let him talk to me a little, but not much,
advise him to keep very quiet, do most of the talking myself.
Stay quite a while with him as he holds on to my hand.
Talk to him in a clearing, but slow, low, and natured manner,
talk about his furlough, and going home as soon
as he is able to travel.
This afternoon, I spent a long time with Oscar F. Wilber,
company G, 154th New York, low with chronic diarrhea and a bad
wound also.
He asked me to read him a chapter in the New Testament.
I complied and asked him what I could do.
He said, make your own choice.
I opened it to closed one of the first books, the Evangelist,
and read the chapters describing the latter hours of Christ
and the scenes of the crucifixion.
Poor, wasted, young man asked me to read the following chapter,
also, how Christ rose again.
I read very slowly for Oscar this fable.
It pleased him very much.
He got the tears going in his eyes.
He asked me if I enjoyed religion.
I said, perhaps not, my dear, in the way you mean.
And yet, maybe it is the same thing.
He said, it is my truthful honor.
He talked of death and said he did not fear.
And I said, why, Oscar, don't you think you'll get well?
He said, I may, but it is not probable.
He spoke calmly, with convictions.
The wound was very bad.
It just stirred him up.
Then the diarrhea had crossed over to him.
And I felt that he was living there in a state of dying.
He's a whole gained man and affectionate.
With this, I gazed in his eyes.
About leaving, he returned fourfold.
He gave me his mother's address, Mrs. Sally D. Wilber,
Alleghany post office, Cattaraugus County, New York.
I had several such interviews with him.
He died a few days after knowing just the same.
My preparation is for visits.
In my visits to the hospitals, it
was in a simple matter of personal presence
and emanating ordinary care and magnetism
that I succeeded and helped more than
by medical nursing, or delicacies, or gifts of money,
or anything else.
During the war, I suggest the perfection of physical health.
My habit, when practicable, was to prepare
for starting out on one of the daily or nightly tours
of some couple for four or five hours by fortifying myself
with previous dress, a bath, clean clothes, a good meal,
and as careful as there it was possible.
A silent night ramble, October 20th--
tonight, after leaving the hospital at 10 o'clock,
I had been on self-imposed duty some five hours
pretty closely confined, I wandered a long time
around Washington.
The night was very sweet, very clear, sufficiently cool,
a voluptuous half moon, slightly golden, the space
mirrored of a transparent blue-gray tinge.
I walked up Pennsylvania Avenue, and then to 7th Street,
and a long while along by the office.
Somehow, it looked the beautifully song,
majestic here in delicate moonlight,
the sky, the planets, the constellations all so bright,
so calm, so successively silent, so soothing
after those hospital scenes.
I wandered to and fro, till moist moon set long
after midnight.
A glimpse of war as hell scene--
after the battles of Columbia, Tennessee,
where we were passed about a store of vehement rebel charges,
they left a great many wounded on the ground,
mostly within our range.
Whenever one of these wounded attempted
to move away by any means, generally by crawling off,
our men, without exception, brought them down by a bullet.
They let none fall away, no matter what his condition.
In one of the late movements of our troops
in the Valley near Upperville, I think,
a strong force of Moseby's mounted
guerrillas attacked a chain of wounded, then
the guard of cavalry convoy and men.
The ambulances contained about 60
wounded, quite a number of them officers of rank.
The rebels were in strength.
And the captain and his parked guard, after a short snap,
were effectively accomplished.
No sooner had our men surrendered,
the rebels instantly commenced robbing the team
and murdering their prisoners, even the wounded.
Here is the scene example of it--
10 minutes, all through, among the wounded men
in the ambulances were one of the 10
of the regulars in another fire rank.
These two were dragged down on the ground on their backs
and were now surrounded by the guerrillas, a demonic crowd,
each member of which was stabbing them
in different parts of their bodies.
One of the officers had his feet pinned firmly to the ground
by a bayonet stuck through him and thrust into the ground.
These two officers were afterwards found,
on examination, had received about 20 sets,
with some of them through the mouth, face, tail.
The wounded had all been dragged to give a better chance, also,
for plunder out of the wagon.
Some had been effectively dispatching their bodies
or lying there, lifeless and bloody.
Others not yet dead, but horribly mutilated,
were moaning and groaning.
Of our men who surrendered, most had
been documented as slaughtered.
At that instant, a force of our cavalry,
who had been following the chain at some interval,
suddenly tried to set--
Opened his eyes to have a better chance,
also, for plundering out of the wagon.
Some had been effectively dispatching their bodies
or lying there, lifeless and bloody.
Others not yet dead, but horribly mutilated
were moaning and groaning.
Of our men who surrendered, most had been left
maimed and slaughtered.
At this instance, a force of our cavalry
who had been following the train at some interval, suddenly
tried to harness the suspect's captors, who
proceeded at once to make the best escape they could.
Most of them got away.
But we dabbled two officers and 17 men
in the very active ground.
The fight was one which admitted as little discussion as maybe
imagined.
The 17 captured men and two officers
were put under guard for the night.
But it was decided there and then that they should die.
The next morning, the two officers
were taken in the town, separate places,
put in the center of the street, and shot.
The 17 men were taken out to open ground, a little to one
side.
They were placed in hollows, half
encompassed by two of our cavalry regiment, one of which
regiments had three days before found
the bloody corpses of three of their men
hamstrung and hung up by heels to limbs of trees
by Moseby's guerillas.
And the other had not long before
had 12 men, after surrendering, shot
and then hung by the neck on the limbs of trees.
And hearing and stripping them the breath,
one of the corpses was--
been a sergeant.
Those three and those 12 had been found, I'd say,
by the environment regiment.
Now, with revolvers, they formed a green cordon
of the 17 prisoners.
The latter were placed in the midst of the hollows square
and fastened.
And the ironical remarks made to them
that they were now to be given a chance to themselves.
A few ran for it.
But what use?
From every side, the deadly kills came.
In a few minutes, the 17 corpses strewed the hollows square.
I was curious to know whether some of the Union soldiers,
some skewed, some one or two of at least the youngsters,
did not abstain from shooting on helpless men, not one.
It was no exploitation, very little said,
yet every man contributed his style.
The capital by gaslight--
tonight, I have been wondering for a while in the Capitol
Building, which is all lit up.
The illuminated rotunda looks fine.
I like to stand aside and look a long, long while up at the dome.
It comforts me somehow.
The House and Senate were both in session until very late.
I looked in upon them, but only a few moments.
They were hard at work on tax and appropriation bills.
I wandered through the long and rich corridors and apartments
under the Senate, an old habit of mine,
former winters, and now, more satisfactory than ever.
Not many persons down there-- occasionally,
a splitting figure in the distance.
As I came out of the Capitol, I heard
slow, and clear, deliberate notes of a bugle coming up out
of the silence, sounding so good through the night's mystery--
no hurry, but firm and faithful, floating along, rising,
falling easily, just here and there along notes.
The bugle, well played, sounding cap too,
in one of the army hospitals near here,
where the wounded, some of them personally dear to me,
are lying in their cots.
And then you have six boys come down to the war
from Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, all lost in the war.
Lincoln's inauguration ball, March 6, 1865--
I've been up to look at the dance and supper rooms
for the inauguration ball at the patent office.
And I could not help thinking what
a different scene they presented to my view a while since, filled
with a crowded mass of the worst wounded of the war
brought in from the second battle of Bull Run, Antietam,
and Fredericksburg.
Tonight, beautiful women, perfumes,
the violin's sweetness, the folk there in the ball.
Then the amputation, the blue face, the groan, the glassy eye,
the dying, the clotted rag, the odor of wounds
and blood, and many a mother's son amidst
strangers passing away unattended there,
for the crowd of the badly hurt was great, and much for nurse
to do, and much disturbance.
To the stiffening at the end of the war--
when Sherman's army, long after they left Atlanta,
were marching through South and North Carolina
after leaving Savannah, the news of Lee's capitulation
having been received, the men never moved a mile without,
from some part of the line sending up continued and spirit
in the South.
At intervals all day long sounded out the wild music
of those peculiar army cries.
They would be commenced by one regiment or brigade immediately
taken up by others, and at length, whole corps, an army
to join in these wild, frantic choruses.
It was one of the characteristic expressions
of the Western troops and became a habit
serving as a relief and outlet to men,
events for their feelings of victory returning to the song.
Morning, noon, and afternoon, spontaneous, for occasion
or without occasion, these huge, strange crowds,
different from any other echoing through the open air for many
a mile, expressing youth, joy, wildness,
irrepressible strength, and the ideas of advance and conquest,
founding along the swamps and uplands of the South,
flowed through the sky.
This exuberance continued till the army's arrives at Raleigh.
News of the president's murder was received.
Then no more South to yell, the hush and silence
pervaded all of the army.
May 21, 1865 saw General Sheridan and his cavalry stay.
Strong across the site, the men were mostly young,
a few middle aged.
Superb-looking fellows, brown, stare a team
with well-worn clothing, many with pieces
of waterproof sport around their shoulders hanging down.
They dashed along pretty fast in wide,
closed ranks, all splattered with mud, no holiday soldiers,
brigade after brigade.
I could have watched for a week.
Sheridan stood on a balcony under a big tree,
coolly smoking a cigar.
His looks and manner impressed me thoroughly there.
May 22, I had been taking a walk along Pennsylvania Avenue
and 7th Street North.
The city is full of soldiers running around loose
with officers everywhere of all grades.
All have the weather-beaten look of practical service.
It is a sight I never tire of.
All the army's out here now, or portions of them.
For two days now, the broad spaces
of Pennsylvania Avenue along the Treasury Hill, and so by detour,
around the president's house, and show
up to Georgetown, and across the Aqueduct Bridge
have been alive with a magnificent sight--
the returning army.
In their wide ranks, stretching clear across the Avenue,
I watched them march or ride along at a brisk pace through
two whole days, infantry, cavalry, artillery,
some 200,000 men.
And that's the end of Specimen Days.
I'm sorry that now, for various reasons,
there's not more poetry.
I thank the sponsors for sponsoring this evening.
But it just kind of worked out that way
for other considerations.
I've had to make some choices.
But certainly, we wouldn't want to make any representation
of, I suspect, the American [INAUDIBLE]
without Emily Dickinson.
Anyway, I know when I was an undergraduate
and a graduate student, I always had
the idea that she was a repressed woman,
never touched man, had been touched by a man,
and talked to people around corners, and things like that.
These poems that she wrote about being a wife I
call her epithalamium poems.
An epithalamium, as you know, are married poems,
poems about being married.
And I think they're pretty remarkable poems.
And I think they effectively dispel any idea of her somebody
who was all bottled up inside.
[INAUDIBLE]
None of them have titles, so I'll just read in sequence.
And then we have three other poems by her
also on the subject, plenty of love.
"I'm wife, I think that that other state,
I'm czar, woman now.
It's safer so.
How odd the girl's life look behind this soft eclipse.
I think that Earth feels so that folks in heaven
now would just bring comfort when, at other times it came.
But why compare?
I'm wife, stop there."
And this poem's used the word soft.
And it's used in another one of these other epithalamiums.
And soft, you know, presumes the marriage vow,
as in I pledge myself.
"There came a day at summer's full, entirely for me.
I thought that such were for the saints where resurrections be.
The sun, as common, went abroad, the flowers, accustomed,
blew, as if no soul, the solstice passed,
that maketh all things new.
The time was scarce profaned by speech, the symbol of a word
was needless as at our sacrament,
the wardrobes of our lord, which was to each the sealed church.
Permitted to commune this time lest we too awkward
show at supper of the Lamb.
The hours slid fast, as hours will,
clutched tightly by greedy hands, so faces on two decks
look back, bound to opposing lands.
And so when all the time had me, without external sound, each
bound the other's crucifix, we gave no other bond--
sufficient troth that we shall rise,
disposed at length the grave, to that new marriage,
justified through Calvaries of love.
Title divine is mine, the wife without the sign,
acute degree conferred on me, emperess of cavalry, royal,
all but the crown, whose, without swoon free God sends us
women, when you hold, garnet to garnet, gold to gold, born,
bridled, sprouted in a day, cry victory.
My husband, women say, stroking the melody.
Is this the way?
We arranged a white affection.
When they dislocate my brain, amputate my freckled bosom,
make me bearded like a man, blush
my spirit, in thy fastness, blush my unacknowledged clay,
seven years of troth have taught me more than wifehood ever may.
Love that never leaped its socket, trust entrenched
in narrow pain, constantly through fire awarded,
anguish born of anodyne, burdens borne so far triumphant and none
suspect me of the crown, for I wear the thorns till sunset,
then my diadem put on.
Bid my secrets, but it's bandaged.
It will never get away till the day its weary keeper leads it
to the grave to thee."
I read this, this is one of her--
this is not an epithalamium poem,
with the metaphor of white as the principal motif.
This is a simple one.
This person has a typical tone of hers, a kind of wittiness,
a kind of almost playful mocking of her--
"Heart,
we will forget him, you and I, tonight.
You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.
When you have done, pray tell me, then I may straight begin.
Haste, less while you're lagging, I remember him."
This one here uses two words, also,
that were not part of my vocabulary,
and certainly might have been part of yours.
They're both kinds of cloth.
Plush is a deep piled cloth.
And it has, I think, connection in the way she uses it,
a definite sexual energy to it.
I think you can stitch things down in pile.
And dimity is a sheer, thin, vaporous kind of top cloth.
And I notice the scorn for women, a certain kind
of woman in this poem.
"What soft, cherubic creatures these gentle women are,
one would has soon assault a plush or violate a star.
Such dimity convictions, a horror so refined that supple
human nature, of deity ashamed, it's such a common glory,
a fisherman's degree, redemption, brittle lady,
be so ashamed of thee."
And this last one, I think, in the rhythm of the poem,
bespeaks her experience of her love.
The first line of it is a word, wild--
the word wild night.
"Wild nights, wild nights, were I with thee,
wild nights could be our luxury.
Futile the winds to a heart in port, done with the compass,
done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden, ah, the sea, might I but moor,
tonight in thee."
The last selection I've got here is an author that is also--
those poems, by the way, were written during the same year
that the Civil War was being fought.
Kind of an amazing thing that the Civil War might have taken
place on another planet, as far as Emily Dickinson is concerned.
And last selection is from Mark Twain, whose work--
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
And it's one of the arguments that several arguments
that him and Huck have when they drift down the river on a raft.
And this one concerns the question
of why the Frenchman can't talk like a man.
And Huck has gotten hold of a book.
And he's not a bookish person, you know.
But he's telling him all about the lives of things in which he
knows not a damn thing, really.
But he's full of the authority of having read this book.
"I read considerable to Jim about kings and earls
and dukes and such, and how dowdy they dress,
and how much style they put on, and called each other Your
Majesty, and Your Grace, and Your Lordship,
so on, instead of Mister.
And Jim's eyes bugged out and he was interested.
He says, I didn't know there were so many of them.
I hadn't heard about none of them,
especially, but old King Solomon,
unless you count them things that's in the pack of cards.
How much do a king get?
That, I say, why, they get $1,000 a month.
They can have just as much as they want.
Everything belongs to them.
Ain't that good?
And what they got to do, Huck?
They don't do nothing, why, how you talk?
They just sit around.
No, is that so?
Of course it is.
They just sit around, except maybe when there's a war.
Then they go to the war.
But other times, they just lazy around.
I went to talking about other things and told about Louis 16th
that got his head cut off in France a long time ago,
and about his little boy the Dauphin,
that would have been a king, but they took and shut him up
in jail.
And some say he died there, poor little chap, Jim said.
But some says he got out, and got away, and come to America.
That's good.
But it'll be pretty lonesome here.
There ain't no king here, is there, Huck?
No, then he can't get no position.
What he going to do?
Well, I don't know, some of them gets on the police.
And some of them learn people to talk French.
Why, don't the French people talk the same way we does?
No, Jim.
You couldn't understand a word they said, not a single word.
Well, Huck, how did that come?
I don't know, but it's so.
I got some of their jabber out of a book.
Suppose a man wants to come to here
and say parlez-vous francais?
What would you think?
I wouldn't think nothing.
I'd part and bust him over the head.
That is, if he weren't white.
I wouldn't allow no nigger to talk to me like that.
Shucks, it ain't calling you anything.
It's only saying, you know how to talk French?
Well then why can't he say it?
What do you mean just saying it?
That's the Frenchman's way of saying it.
Well, it's a plenty ridiculous way.
And I don't want to hear no more about it.
There ain't no sense in it.
Look here, again.
Does a cat talk like we do?
No, a cat don't.
Well, does a cow?
No, a cow don't, neither.
Does a cat talk like a cow or a cow talk like a cat?
No, they don't.
It's natural and right, then, to talk different from each other,
ain't it?
Course.
And ain't it natural and right for a cat and a cow
to talk different from us?
Why, most surely it is.
Well, then, why is it natural and right
for Frenchman to talk different from us?
You answer me that.
Is a cat a man, Huck?
No.
Well, then there ain't no sense in a cat talking like a man.
Is a cow a man?
Or a cow a cat?
No, they ain't either of them.
Well then, he's got no business to talk like either one of them
or the other.
Is a Frenchman a man?
Yes.
Well then, god damn it, why don't he talk like a man?
You answer me that.
I see it wasn't no use wasting words.
You can't learn a nigger to argue.
So I quit."
[CLAPPING]
Thank you.
Kind of medium long.
And it's by Melville.
It's not the thing like something else.
So it's from the same book, from White-Jacket.
And I think, if any of you have to leave,
want to leave, feel like you're going to leave, please,
don't be shy about it.
I know this is a fourth encore.
After 100 years of hearing only readings of [INAUDIBLE],
I think we deserve an extra ending for the day.
This is from chapter 51 of White-Jacket.
The title of the chapter is "The Surgeon of the Fleet."
"Cadwallader Cuticle, M.D., an honorary member
of the most distinguished colleges of surgeons,
both in Europe and America, was our surgeon of the fleet.
Nor was he at all blind to the dignity
of his position, to which, indeed, he
was rendered peculiarly competent,
if the reputation he enjoyed was deserved.
He had the name of being the foremost surgeon in the navy,
a gentleman of remarkable science,
and a veteran practitioner.
He was a small, withered man, merely perhaps 60 years of age.
His chest was shallow, his shoulders bent,
his pantaloons hung round skeleton legs,
and his face was singularly attenuated.
In truth, the corporal vitality of this man
seemed, in a good degree, to have died out of him.
He walked abroad a curious patchwork of life and death
with a wig, one glass eye, and a set of false teeth,
while his voice was husky and thick,
but his mind seemed undebilitated
as he seemed as undebilitated as in his youth.
It shone out of his remaining eye with basilic brilliancy.
Like most old physicians and surgeons
who have seen much service and have been promoted
to high official place for their scientific attainment,
this Cuticle was an enthusiast in his calling.
In private, he had once been heard to say confidentially
that he would rather cut off a man's arm
than dismember the wing of the most delicate pheasant.
In particular, the department of morbid anatomy
was his peculiar love.
And in his statement below, he had a most unsightly collection
of Parisian cast in plaster and wax,
representing all imaginable malformation human members,
both organic and induced by disease.
Well knowing the enthusiasm of the surgeon for all specimens
of morbid anatomy, some of the wardroom officers
used to play upon his credulity, though in every case,
Cuticle was not long in discovering their deceptions.
Once, when they had had some sago pudding for dinner,
and Cuticle had chanced to be ashore,
they made up a neat parcel of this bluish-white, firm,
jelly-like preparation and placed it
in a tin box carefully sealed with wax.
They deposited it on the gun room table,
with a note purporting to come from an eminent physician in Rio
connected with the Grand National Museum,
begging leave to present the scientific horror of Cuticle
with the donor's compliments and uncommonly fine
specimen of a cancer.
Descending to the wardroom, Cuticle spied the note,
and no sooner read it than, clutching
the case, he opened it and exclaimed, beautiful, splendid!
I have never seen a finer specimen
of this most interesting disease.
What have you there, Sergeant Cuticle?
said a lieutenant advancing.
Why, sir, look at it.
Did you see more exquisite?
Very exquisite, indeed.
Let me have a bit of it, will you, Cuticle?
Let you have a bit of it? shrieked the surgeon,
starting back.
Let you have one of my limbs.
I wouldn't mark so large a specimen for $100.
But what do you want of it?
You are not making collections.
I'm fond of the article, said the lieutenant.
It's a fine, cold relish to bacon or ham.
You know I was in New Zealand last cruise, Cuticle,
and got into sad dissipation there among the cannibals.
So let's have a bit, if it's only a mouthful.
Why, you infernal Fiji, shouted Cuticle,
eyeing the other with a confounded expression.
You don't really mean to eat a piece of this cancer?
Hand it to me and see whether I will not was the reply.
In God's name, take it, cried the surgeon,
putting the case into his hand and then standing
with his own uplifted.
Steward, cried the lieutenant, the castor, quick.
I always use plenty of pepper with this dish, surgeon.
It's oyster-y.
Ah, this is really delicious, he added, smacking his lips
over a mouthful.
Try it now, surgeon, and you'll never see such a fine dish
as this lying uneaten on your hands
as a mere scientific curiosity.
Cuticle, his whole countenance changed.
And slowly walking up to the table,
he put his nose close to the tin case,
then touched its contents with his fingers and tasted it.
Enough.
Buttoning up his coat in all the trimmings of an old man's rage,
he burst from the wardroom and, calling for a boat,
was not seen for 24 hours."
Now, I will quit.
[CLAPPING]