Part 13 (2/2)

Aloft, where mighty floods the mountains break, To stand, the target of the thousand eyes, And down into the coil and water-quake, To leap, like Maia's offspring, from the skies-- For this all vulgar flights he ventured to despise.

And while Niagara prolongs its thunder, Though still the rock primeval disappears And nations change their bounds--the theme of wonder Shall Sam go down the cataract of long years: And if there be sublimity in tears, Those shall be precious which the adventurer shed When his frail star gave way, and waked his fears, Lest, by the ungenerous crowd it might be said, That he was all a hoax, or that his pluck had fled.

Who would compare the maudlin Alexander, Blubbering because he had no job in hand, Acting the hypocrite, or else the gander, With Sam, whose grief we all can understand?

His crying was not womanish, nor plann'd For exhibition; but his heart o'erswelled With its own agony, when he the grand, Natural arrangements for a jump beheld.

And measuring the cascade, found not his courage quelled.

His last great failure set the final seal Unto the record Time shall never tear, While bravery has its honor--while men feel The holy natural sympathies which are First, last and mightiest in the bosom. Where The tortured tides of Genesee descend, He came--his only intimate a bear-- (We know now that he had another friend), The martyr of renown, his wayward course to end.

The fiend that from the infernal rivers stole h.e.l.l-drafts for man, too much tormented him; With nerves unstrung, but steadfast of his soul, He stood upon the salient current's brim; His head was giddy, and his sight was dim; And then he knew this leap would be his last-- Saw air, and earth, and water, wildly swim, With eyes of many mult.i.tudes, dense and vast, That stared in mockery; none a look of kindness cast.

Beat down, in the huge amphitheatre, ”I see before me the gladiator lie,”

And tier on tier, the myriads waiting there The bow of grace without one pitying eye-- He was a slave--a captive hired to die-- _Sam_ was born free as Caesar; and he might The hopeless issue have refused to try; No! with true leap, but soon with faltering flight-- ”Deep in the roaring gulf, he plunged to endless night.”

But, ere he leapt, he begged of those who made Money by this dread venture, that if he Should perish, such collection should be paid As might be picked up from the ”company”

_To his Mother._ This, his last request, shall be-- Tho' she who bore him ne'er his fate should know-- An iris, glittering o'er his memory-- When all the streams have worn their barriers low, And, by the sea drunk up, forever cease to flow.

On him who chooses to jump down cataracts, Why should the sternest moralist be severe?

Judge not the dead by prejudice--but facts, Such as in strictest evidence appear.

Else were the laurels of all ages sere.

Give to the brave, who have pa.s.sed the final goal-- The gates that ope not back--the generous tear; And let the muse's clerk upon her scroll In coa.r.s.e, but honest verse, make up the judgment roll.

_Therefore it is considered_ that Sam Patch Shall never be forgot in prose or rhyme; His name shall be a portion in the batch Of the heroic dough, which baking Time Kneads for consuming ages--and the chime Of Fame's old bells, long as they truly ring, Shall tell of him; he dived for the sublime, And found it. Thou, who, with the eagle's wing, Being a goose, would'st fly--dream not of such a thing!

THE BRITISH MATRON

(Anonymous)

I have heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people cla.s.s under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame--not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but ma.s.sive, with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the ideal) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round s.p.a.ce of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-defined self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles and dangers, and such st.u.r.dy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four-gun s.h.i.+p in time of peace; for, while you a.s.sure yourself that there is no real danger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counter-injury. She certainly looks tenfold--nay, a hundredfold-- better able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fort.i.tude and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society and in common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up.

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ballroom, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an overblown cabbage-rose as this.

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender, violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien ma.s.s of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, s.h.i.+elded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride, since he led her to the altar, and which make her so much more than he ever bargained for! Is it not a sounder view of the case that the matrimonial bond cannot be held to include the three-fourths of the wife that had no existence when the ceremony was performed? And ought not an English married pair to insist upon the celebration of a silver wedding at the end of twenty-five years to legalize all that corporeal growth of which both parties have individually come into possession since p.r.o.nounced one flesh?--_Our Old Home_.

THE POSTER GIRL

The blessed Poster Girl leaned out From a pinky-purple heaven; One eye was red and one was green; Her bang was cut uneven; She had three fingers on her hand, And the hairs on her head were seven,

Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem, No sunflowers did adorn; But a heavy Turkish portiere Was very neatly worn; And the hat that lay along her back Was yellow like canned corn.

It was a kind of wobbly wave That she was standing on, And high aloft she flung a scarf That must have weighed a ton; And she was rather tall--at least She reached up to the sun.

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