Part 34 (2/2)

So one night, on the windla.s.s, he sat and sang; and from the ribald jests so common to sailors, the men slid into silence at every verse.

Hushed, and more hushed they grew, till at last Harry sat among them like Orpheus among the charmed leopards and tigers. Harmless now the fangs with which they were wont to tear my zebra, and backward curled in velvet paws; and fixed their once glaring eyes in fascinated and fascinating brilliancy. Ay, still and hissingly all, for a time, they relinquished their prey.

Now, during the voyage, the treatment of the crew threw Harry more and more upon myself for companions.h.i.+p; and few can keep constant company with another, without revealing some, at least, of their secrets; for all of us yearn for sympathy, even if we do not for love; and to be intellectually alone is a thing only tolerable to genius, whose cherisher and inspirer is solitude.

But though my friend became more communicative concerning his past career than ever he had been before, yet he did not make plain many things in his. .h.i.therto but partly divulged history, which I was very curious to know; and especially he never made the remotest allusion to aught connected with our trip to London; while the oath of secrecy by which he had bound me held my curiosity on that point a captive.

However, as it was, Harry made many very interesting disclosures; and if he did not gratify me more in that respect, he atoned for it in a measure, by dwelling upon the future, and the prospects, such as they were, which the future held out to him.

He confessed that he had no money but a few s.h.i.+llings left from the expenses of our return from London; that only by selling some more of his clothing, could he pay for his first week's board in New York; and that he was altogether without any regular profession or business, upon which, by his own exertions, he could securely rely for support. And yet, he told me that he was determined never again to return to England; and that somewhere in America he must work out his temporal felicity.

”I have forgotten England,” he said, ”and never more mean to think of it; so tell me, Wellingborough, what am I to do in America?”

It was a puzzling question, and full of grief to me, who, young though I was, had been well rubbed, curried, and ground down to fine powder in the hopper of an evil fortune, and who therefore could sympathize with one in similar circ.u.mstances. For though we may look grave and behave kindly and considerately to a friend in calamity; yet, if we have never actually experienced something like the woe that weighs him down, we can not with the best grace proffer our sympathy. And perhaps there is no true sympathy but between equals; and it may be, that we should distrust that man's sincerity, who stoops to condole with us.

So Harry and I, two friendless wanderers, beguiled many a long watch by talking over our common affairs. But inefficient, as a benefactor, as I certainly was; still, being an American, and returning to my home; even as he was a stranger, and hurrying from his; therefore, I stood toward him in the att.i.tude of the prospective doer of the honors of my country; I accounted him the nation's guest. Hence, I esteemed it more befitting, that I should rather talk with him, than he with me: that his prospects and plans should engage our attention, in preference to my own.

Now, seeing that Harry was so brave a songster, and could sing such bewitching airs: I suggested whether his musical talents could not be turned to account. The thought struck him most favorably--”Gad, my boy, you have hit it, you have,” and then he went on to mention, that in some places in England, it was customary for two or three young men of highly respectable families, of undoubted antiquity, but unfortunately in lamentably decayed circ.u.mstances, and thread-bare coats--it was customary for two or three young gentlemen, so situated, to obtain their livelihood by their voices: coining their silvery songs into silvery s.h.i.+llings.

They wandered from door to door, and rang the bell--Are the ladies and gentlemen in? Seeing them at least gentlemanly looking, if not sumptuously appareled, the servant generally admitted them at once; and when the people entered to greet them, their spokesman would rise with a gentle bow, and a smile, and say, We come, ladies and gentlemen, to sing you a song: we are singers, at your service. And so, without waiting reply, forth they burst into song; and having most mellifluous voices, enchanted and transported all auditors; so much so, that at the conclusion of the entertainment, they very seldom failed to be well recompensed, and departed with an invitation to return again, and make the occupants of that dwelling once more delighted and happy.

”Could not something of this kind now, be done in New York?” said Harry, ”or are there no parlors with ladies in them, there?” he anxiously added.

Again I a.s.sured him, as I had often done before, that New York was a civilized and enlightened town; with a large population, fine streets, fine houses, nay, plenty of omnibuses; and that for the most part, he would almost think himself in England; so similar to England, in essentials, was this outlandish America that haunted him.

I could not but be struck--and had I not been, from my birth, as it were, a cosmopolite--I had been amazed at his skepticism with regard to the civilization of my native land. A greater patriot than myself might have resented his insinuations. He seemed to think that we Yankees lived in wigwams, and wore bear-skins. After all, Harry was a spice of a c.o.c.kney, and had shut up his Christendom in London.

Having then a.s.sured him, that I could see no reason, why he should not play the troubadour in New York, as well as elsewhere; he suddenly popped upon me the question, whether I would not join him in the enterprise; as it would be quite out of the question to go alone on such a business.

Said I, ”My dear Bury, I have no more voice for a ditty, than a dumb man has for an oration. Sing? Such Macadamized lungs have I, that I think myself well off, that I can talk; let alone nightingaling.”

So that plan was quashed; and by-and-by Harry began to give up the idea of singing himself into a livelihood.

”No, I won't sing for my mutton,” said he--”what would Lady Georgiana say?”

”If I could see her ladys.h.i.+p once, I might tell you, Harry,” returned I, who did not exactly doubt him, but felt ill at ease for my bosom friend's conscience, when he alluded to his various n.o.ble and right honorable friends and relations.

”But surely, Bury, my friend, you must write a clerkly hand, among your other accomplishments; and that at least, will be sure to help you.”

”I do write a hand,” he gladly rejoined--”there, look at the implement!--do you not think, that such a hand as that might dot an i, or cross a t, with a touching grace and tenderness?”

Indeed, but it did betoken a most excellent penmans.h.i.+p. It was small; and the fingers were long and thin; the knuckles softly rounded; the nails hemispherical at the base; and the smooth palm furnis.h.i.+ng few characters for an Egyptian fortune-teller to read. It was not as the st.u.r.dy farmer's hand of Cincinnatus, who followed the plough and guided the state; but it was as the perfumed hand of Petronius Arbiter, that elegant young buck of a Roman, who once cut great Seneca dead in the forum.

His hand alone, would have ent.i.tled my Bury blade to the suffrages of that Eastern potentate, who complimented Lord Byron upon his feline fingers, declaring that they furnished indubitable evidence of his n.o.ble birth. And so it did: for Lord Byron was as all the rest of us--the son of a man. And so are the dainty-handed, and wee-footed half-cast paupers in Lima; who, if their hands and feet were ent.i.tled to consideration, would const.i.tute the oligarchy of all Peru.

<script>