Yet let
this estate be temporary; for it is well to return to our thin diet,
and, instead of jolly after-dinner talk, repeat the high and aspiring
phrases of certain New-Englanders who lead the generous thought and life
of a continent. Phrases! Yes, but how many nebulous ideas, think you,
would it take to stuff out their hollowness? Nay, my objecting friend,
if the ideas are not wholly clear, nor immediately practicable, they are
seldom shallow, and never mean. If the wisdom of our true seers
sometimes seems poured out in thin dilution, it nevertheless soon
hardens to a thousand shining crystals upon men of worldly enterprise
and grasp. And why this digression? I think its suggestion lay in the
fact that Sir Joseph, being the type of the ordinary Englishman, held
and imparted a fine sunniness of temper, and a perfectly balanced
serenity,--good gifts, which, so far as my experience goes, are
possessed in full measure by only one or two exceptional Americans, and
these men of high and acknowledged genius.
"I don't understand it, upon my honor," cried our visitor, after we had
endeavored to explain to him his own spiritual intrusion on the previous
evening. "I have heard of Doctor Pordage and the Dragon, and of the
Drummer of Tedworth; but when you tell a sane British subject that his
apparition comes before him, and takes, as it were, the froth off his
welcome"----
"No, no, my dear friend," interrupted Colonel Prowley, "you must know
that nothing could do that! As to the obituary I had written, it may do
for some other time,--for, indeed, my felicity in such compositions has
been highly commended, and this by mundane authorities of no common
weight.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133