[The company looked a little flustered one morning when I came in,—so
much so, that I inquired of my neighbor, the divinity-student,) what had
been going on. It appears that the young fellow whom they call John had
taken advantage of my being a little late (I having been rather longer
than usual dressing that morning) to circulate several questions
involving a quibble or play upon words,—in short, containing that
indignity to the human understanding, condemned in the passages from the
distinguished moralist of the last century and the illustrious historian
of the present, which I cited on a former occasion, and known as a pun.
After breakfast, one of the boarders handed me a small roll of paper
containing some of the questions and their answers. I subjoin two or
three of them, to show what a tendency there is to frivolity and
meaningless talk in young persons of a certain sort, when not restrained
by the presence of more reflective natures.—It was asked, “Why tertian
and quartan fevers were like certain short-lived insects.” Some
interesting physiological relation would be naturally suggested. The
inquirer blushes to find that the answer is in the paltry equivocation,
that they skip a day or two.—“Why an Englishman must go to the
Continent to weaken his grog or punch.” The answer proves to have no
relation whatever to the temperance-movement, as no better reason is
given than that island—(or, as it is absurdly written, ile and) water
won’t mix.—But when I came to the next question and its answer, I felt
that patience ceased to be a virtue. “Why an onion is like a piano” is a
query that a person of sensibility would be slow to propose; but that in
an educated community an individual could be found to answer it in these
words,—“Because it smell odious,” quasi, it’s melodious,—is not
credible, but too true. I can show you the paper.

Dear reader, I beg your pardon for repeating such things. I know most
conversations reported in books are altogether above such trivial
details, but folly will come up at every table as surely as purslain and
chickweed and sorrel will come up in gardens. This young fellow ought to
have talked philosophy, I know perfectly well; but he didn’t,—he made
jokes.]

I am willing,—I said,—to exercise your ingenuity in a rational and
contemplative manner.—No, I do not proscribe certain forms of
philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the
ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the
Reverend Father Thomas Sanchez, in his famous Disputations, “De Sancto
Matrimonio.” I will therefore turn this levity of yours to profit by
reading you a rhymed problem, wrought out by my friend the Professor.

[Picture: The Deacon]



THE DEACON’S MASTERPIECE:
OR THE WONDERFUL “ONE-HOSS-SHAY.”


A LOGICAL STORY.

HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then, of a sudden, it—ah, but stay,
I’ll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,
Frightening people out of their wits,—
Have you ever heard of that, I say?

Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,—
Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock’s army was done so brown,
Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on the terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss-shay.

Now in building of chaises, I tell you what,
There is always somewhere a weakest spot,—
In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In panel, or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, thoroughbrace,—lurking still
Find it somewhere you must and will,—
Above or below, or within or without,—
And that’s the reason, beyond a doubt,
A chaise breasts down, but doesn’t wear out.

But the Deacon swore (as Deacons do,
With an “I dew vum,” or an “I tell yeou,”)
He would build one shay to beat the taown
’n’ the keounty ’n’ all the kentry raoun’;
It should be so built that it couldn’ break daown—
—“Fur,” said the Deacon, “’t’s mighty plain
Thut the weakes’ place mus’ stan the strain;
’n’ the way t’ fix it, uz I maintain,
Is only jest
T’ make that place uz strong uz the rest.”

So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn’t be split nor bent nor broke,—
That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the straightest trees;
The panels of white-wood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the “Settler’s ellum,”—
Last of its timber,—they couldn’t sell ’em,
Never an axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Thoroughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he “put her through.”—
“There!” said the Deacon, “naow she’ll dew.”

Do! I tell you, I father guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grand-children—where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss-shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED;—it came and found
The Deacon’s Masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hundred increased by ten;—
“Hahnsum kerridge” they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;—
Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arrive,
And then come fifty, and FIFTY-FIVE.

Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.
In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it.—You’re welcome.—No extra charge.)

FIRST OF NOVEMBER,—the Earthquake-day.—
There are traces of age in the one-hoss-shay.
A general flavor of mild decay,
But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn’t be,—for the Deacon’s art
Had made it so like in every part
That there wasn’t a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thills,
And the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whippletree neither less nor more,
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,
And spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!

First of November, ’Fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys, get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-horse-shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
“Huddup!” said the parson.—Off went they.

The parson was working his Sunday’s text,—
Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the—Moses—was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet’n-house on the hill.
—First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,—
And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half-past nine by the meet’n-house clock,—
Just the hour of the Earthquake shock!
—What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you’re not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,—
All at once, and nothing first,—
Just as bubbles do when they burst.

End of the wonderful one-hoss-shay.
Logic is logic. That’s all I say.

—I think there is one habit,—I said to our company a day or two
afterwards—worse than that of punning. It is the gradual substitution of
cant or flash terms for words which truly characterize their objects. I
have known several very genteel idiots whose whole vocabulary had
deliquesced into some half dozen expressions. All things fell into one
of two great categories,—fast or slow. Man’s chief end was to be a
brick. When the great calamities of life overtook their friends, these
last were spoken of as being a good deal cut up. Nine-tenths of human
existence were summed up in the single word, bore. These expressions
come to be the algebraic symbols of minds which have grown too weak or
indolent to discriminate. They are the blank checks of intellectual
bankruptcy;—you may fill them up with what idea you like; it makes no
difference, for there are no funds in the treasury upon which they are
drawn. Colleges and good-for-nothing smoking-clubs are the places where
these conversational fungi spring up most luxuriantly. Don’t think I
undervalue the proper use and application of a cant word or phrase. It
adds piquancy to conversation, as a mushroom does to a sauce. But it is
no better than a toadstool, odious to the sense and poisonous to the
intellect, when it spawns itself all over the talk of men and youths
capable of talking, as it sometimes does. As we hear flash phraseology,
it is commonly the dishwater from the washings of English dandyism,
school-boy or full-grown, wrung out of a three-volume novel which had
sopped it up, or decanted from the pictured urn of Mr. Verdant Green, and
diluted to suit the provincial climate.

—The young fellow called John spoke up sharply and said, it was “rum” to
hear me “pitchin’ into fellers” for “goin’ it in the slang line,” when I
used all the flash words myself just when I pleased.

—I replied with my usual forbearance.—Certainly, to give up the algebraic
symbol, because a or b is often a cover for ideal nihility, would be
unwise. I have heard a child laboring to express a certain condition,
involving a hitherto undescribed sensation (as it supposed,) all of which
could have been sufficiently explained by the participle—bored. I have
seen a country-clergyman, with a one-story intellect and a one-horse
vocabulary, who has consumed his valuable time (and mine) freely, in
developing an opinion of a brother-minister’s discourse which would have
been abundantly characterized by a peach-down-lipped sophomore in the one
word—slow. Let us discriminate, and be shy of absolute proscription.
I am omniverbivorous by nature and training. Passing by such words as
are poisonous, I can swallow most others, and chew such as I cannot
swallow.

Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They
invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or
counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes
find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in
keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate,
and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter of convenience,
and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well enough,—on one
condition.

—What is that, Sir?—said the divinity-student.

—That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true
dandyism. A little boy dressed up very fine, who puts his finger in his
mouth and takes to crying, if other boys make fun of him, looks very
silly. But if he turns red in the face and knotty in the fists, and
makes an example of the biggest of his assailants, throwing off his fine
Leghorn and his thickly-buttoned jacket, if necessary, to consummate the
act of justice, his small toggery takes on the splendors of the crested
helmet that frightened Astyanax. You remember that the Duke said his
dandy officers were his best officers. The “Sunday blood,” the
super-superb sartorial equestrian of our annual Fast-day, is not imposing
or dangerous. But such fellows as Brummel and D’Orsay and Byron are not
to be snubbed quite so easily. Look out for “la main de fer sous le gant
de velours,” (which I printed in English the other day without
quotation-marks, thinking whether any scarabæus criticus would add this
to his globe and roll in glory with it into the newspapers,—which he
didn’t do it, in the charming pleonasm of the London language, and
therefore I claim the sole merit of exposing the same.) A good many
powerful and dangerous people have had a decided dash of dandyism about
them. There was Alcibiades, the “curled son of Clinias,” an accomplished
young man, but what would be called a “swell” in these days. There was
Aristoteles, a very distinguished writer, of whom you have heard,—a
philosopher, in short, whom it took centuries to learn, centuries to
unlearn, and is now going to take a generation or more to learn over
again. Regular dandy, he was. So was Marcus Antonius; and though he
lost his game, he played for big stakes, and it wasn’t his dandyism that
spoiled his chance. Petrarca was not to be despised as a scholar or a
poet, but he was one of the same sort. So was Sir Humphrey Davy; so was
Lord Palmerston, formerly, if I am not forgetful. Yes,—a dandy is good
for something as such; and dandies such as I was just speaking of have
rocked this planet like a cradle,—aye, and left it swinging to this
day.—Still, if I were you, I wouldn’t go to the tailor’s, on the strength
of these remarks, and run up a long bill which will render pockets a
superfluity in your next suit. Elegans “nascitur, non fit.” A man
is born a dandy, as he is born a poet. There are heads that can’t wear
hats; there are necks that can’t fit cravats; there are jaws that can’t
fill out collars—(Willis touched this last point in one of his earlier
ambrotypes, if I remember rightly); there are tournures nothing can
humanize, and movements nothing can subdue to the gracious suavity or
elegant languor or stately serenity which belong to different styles of
dandyism.

We are forming an aristocracy, as you may observe, in this country,—not a
gratiâ-Dei, nor a juredivino one,—but a de-facto upper stratum of
being, which floats over the turbid waves of common life like the
iridescent film you may have seen spreading over the water about our
wharves,—very splendid, though its origin may have been tar, tallow,
train-oil, or other such unctuous commodities. I say, then, we are
forming an aristocracy; and, transitory as its individual life often is,
it maintains itself tolerably, as a whole. Of course, money is its
corner-stone. But now observe this. Money kept for two or three
generations transforms a race,—I don’t mean merely in manners and
hereditary culture, but in blood and bone. Money buys air and sunshine,
in which children grow up more kindly, of course, than in close, back
streets; it buys country-places to give them happy and healthy summers,
good nursing, good doctoring, and the best cuts of beef and mutton. When
the spring-chickens come to market—I beg your pardon,—that is not what I
was going to speak of. As the young females of each successive season
come on, the finest specimens among them, other things being equal, are
apt to attract those who can afford the expensive luxury of beauty. The
physical character of the next generation rises in consequence. It is
plain that certain families have in this way acquired an elevated type of
face and figure, and that in a small circle of city-connections one may
sometimes find models of both sexes whic