Part 12 (1/2)

'Listen to those voiceful currents of air, traversing the vast profound below the Platform! What a mighty circ.u.mference do they sweep! Over how many towns, and dwellings, and streams, and incommunicable woods! Murmurs of the dark, sources and awakeners of sublime imagination, swell from afar. You have thoughts of eternity and power here, which shall haunt you evermore. But we must be early stirrers in the morning. Let us to bed.

'You can lie on your pillow at the Kaatskill House, and see the G.o.d of day look upon you from behind the pinnacles of the White Mountains in New Hamps.h.i.+re, hundreds of miles away. n.o.ble prospect! As the great orb heaves up in ineffable grandeur, he seems rising from beneath you, and you fancy that you have attained an elevation where may be seen _the motion of the world_.

No intervening land to limit the view, you seem suspended in mid-air, without one obstacle to check the eye. The scene is indescribable. The chequered and interminable vale, sprinkled with groves, and lakes, and towns, and streams; the mountains afar off, swelling tumultuously heavenward, like waves of the ocean, some incarnadined with radiance, others purpled in shade; all these, to use the language of an auctioneer's advertis.e.m.e.nt, 'are too tedious to mention, but may be seen on the premises.' I know of but one picture which will give the reader an idea of this etherial spot. It was the view which the angel Michael was polite enough, one summer morning, to point out to Adam, from the highest hill of Paradise.'

Many and many a young father will recognize, in the following, his own emotions, as he looks in moments of thoughtfulness upon the little 'olive-branches' around him, in whom he lives over again his own earliest years:

'To those who are disposed to glean philosophy from the mayhap less noticeable objects of this busy world, there are few sights more lovely than childhood. The little cherub who now sits at my knee, and tries, with tiny effort, to clutch the quill with which I am playing for you, good reader; whose capricious taste, varying from ink-stand to paper, and from that to books, and every other portable thing--all 'moveables that I could tell you of'--he has in his little person those elements which const.i.tute both the freshness of our sublunary mortality, and that glorious immortality which the mortal shall yet put on. Gazing upon his fair young brow, his peach-like cheek, and the depths of those violet eyes, I feel myself rejuvenated. That which bothered Nicodemus, is no marvel to me. I feel that I have a new existence; nor can I dispel the illusion. It is harder, indeed, to believe that he will ever be what I am, than that I am otherwise than he is now. I can not imagine that he will ever become a pilous adult, with harvests for the razor on that downy chin. Will those golden locks become the brown auburn? Will that forehead rise as a varied and shade-changing record of pleasure or care? Will the cla.s.sic little lips, now colored as by the radiance of a ruby, ever be fitfully bitten in the glow of literary composition!--and will those sun-bright locks, which hang about his temples like the soft lining of a summer cloud, become meshes where hurried fingers shall thread themselves in play? By the ma.s.s, I can not tell. But this I know. That which hath been, shall be: the lot of manhood, if he live, will be upon him; the charm, the obstacle, the triumphant fever; the glory, the success, the far-reaching thoughts,

'That make them eagle wings To pierce the unborn years.'

The 'Ollapodiana' papers are concluded in the third number, and a portion of the issue is devoted to the commencement of the 'Miscellaneous Prose Papers' of the writer, which are both numerous and various, 'A Chapter on Cats' records an amusing story, replete with incident, which turns upon the deplorable consequences, in one sad instance at least, of cat-killing.

An ill.u.s.trative although not satisfactory pa.s.sage is subjoined:

'I am subject, in summer, to restlessness. Thick-coming fancies mar my rest, and my ear is peculiarly sensitive to the least inappropriate sound. One sultry evening in July, I returned home later than usual, from an arbitration, wherein I lost a cause on which I had counted certainly to win. I suspect I bored the arbitrators with too long a plea, and too voluminous quotations of precedents; for when I finished, two were asleep, and most of the others yawning. They decided against my client, and I came home mad with chagrin, and crept into bed, longing for speedy oblivion in the arms of Sleep.

'But that calm sister of Death would not be won to my embrace. I lay tossing for a long time in 'restless ecstacy,' until vexed and overwearied nature at last sunk to repose. I could not have slumbered over ten minutes, before I was awakened by the most outrageous caterwauling that ever stung the human ear. I arose in a fury, and looked out of the window. All was still. The cause for outcry appeared to have ceased. Now and then there was a low gutteral wail, between a suppressed grunt and a squeal; but it was so faint that nothing could have lived 'twixt that and silence.

After a listening probation of a few minutes, I slunk back into my sheets.

'I had scarcely dozed a quarter of an hour, when the obnoxious vociferations arose again. They were fierce, ill-natured, and shrill. I arose again, vexed beyond endurance. All was quiet in a moment. I am not given to profanity; I deem it foolish and wicked; but on this occasion, after stretching my body like a sheeted ghost, half out of the window, and gazing into the shadows of the garden to discover the object of my annoyance, I exclaimed in a loud and spiteful voice, which expressed my concentrated hate:

----'_D--n that cat!_'

''Young gentleman,' said a pa.s.sing guardian of the night, from the street, 'you had better pop your head in and stop your noise. If you don't, you will rue it; now mind-I-tell-ye.'

''Look here, old Charley,' said I, in return, 'don't be impertinent. It is your business to preserve the peace, and to obviate every evil that looks disgracious in the city's eye. You guard the slumbers of her citizens; and if you expect a dollar from me at Christmas, for the poetry in your next annual address, you will perform what I now request, and what it is your solemn and bounded duty to do. Spring your rattle; comprehend that vagrom cat, and take her to the watch-house, I will appear as plaintiff against the quadruped, before the mayor, in the morning. Her character is bad--her habits are scandalous.'

''Oh, pshaw!' said the watchman, and went clattering up the street, singing 'N'hav p-a-st dwelve o'glock, and a glowdee morn.'

'I reverted to my pillow, and fell into a train of conjectures touching the grimalkin. Possibly it might be the darling old friend of Miss Dillon. Then I thought of others--then I slept.

'I cannot declare to a second how long my fitful slumber lasted, before I was startled from my bed by a yell, which proceeded apparently from a cat in my room. I had just been dreaming of a great mouser, with ears like a jacka.s.s, and claws, armed with long 'pickers and stingers,' sitting on my bosom, and sucking away my breath. I sprang at once into the middle of the room. I searched every where--nothing was in the apartment. Then there rushed toward the zenith one universal cat-shriek, which went echoing off on the night-wind like the reverberation of a sharp thunder-peal.

'My blood was now _up_ for vengeance. One hungry and fiery wish to destroy that diabolical caterwauler, took possession of my soul.

At that instant the clock struck one. It was the death knell of the feline vocalist. I looked out of the window, and in the light of a stray lot of moons.h.i.+ne, streaming through the tall chimneys to the south-east, I saw Miss Dillon's romantic favorite, alternately cooing and fighting with a large mouser of the neighborhood, that I had seen for several afternoons previous, walking leisurely along the garden wall, as if absorbed in deep meditation, and forming some libertine resolve. In fine, they each seemed saturate with the spirit of the Gnome king, Umbriel, in the drama, when he

----'stalked abroad Urging the wolf to tear the buffalo.'

'The death of one of these noisy belligerents being determined on, I looked round my room for the tools of retribution. Not a moveable thing, however, could I discover, save a new pitcher, which had been sent home that very day, and to which my name and address were appended on a bit of card. I clutched it with desperate fury, and pouring into my bowl the water contained in it, I poised it in my hand for the deadly heave. I had been a member of a quoit club in the country, and the principles of a clever throw were familiar to me. I resolved to make the vessel describe what is called in philosophy a _parabolic curve_, so that while it knocked out the brains of one combatant, it should effectually admonish the survivor of the iniquity of his doings. I approached the window--balanced the pitcher--and then drave it home. Its reception was acknowledged by a loud, choking squall--a faint yell of agony, and then a respectful silence. Satisfied that my pitcher had been broken at the fountain of life, and that the silent tabby would not soon tune her pipes again, I retired to bed, and slept with the serenity and comfort of one who is conscious of having performed a virtuous action.

'In the morning, the cat was found 'keeled up' on a bed of pinks, with her head broken in, and her ancient and venerable whiskers dabbled in blood. The shattered pitcher lay by her side. The vessel had done its worst--so had my victim.'

The story proper, upon the consecutive incidents of which we shall not touch, closes with the annexed whimsical anecdote:

'An anonymous wag not long ago, placed an advertis.e.m.e.nt in each of our city journals, signed by an eminent house on the Delaware wharf, and stating that FIVE HUNDRED CATS were wanted immediately by the firm. The said firm in the meantime knew nothing of the matter.

'On visiting their counting-house the next morning, the partners found the streets literally blocked up with enterprising cat-sellers. Huge negroes were there, each with ten or fifteen sage, grave tabbies tied together with a string. Old market-women had brought thither whole families of the feline genus, from the superannuated _Tom_, to the blind kitten. The air resounded with the squallings of the quadrupedal mult.i.tude. New venders, with their noisy property, were seen thronging to the place from every avenue.

''What'll you _guv_ me for this 'ere lot?' said a tall shad-woman, pressing up toward the counting-room. 'The newspapers says you allows liberal prices. I axes a dollar a piece for the old 'uns, and five levys for the kittens.'