Part 6 (1/2)
I dreamed all night about Calanthe--got up in the morning, called the waiter ”Calanthe,” and said ”my darling” to him as he handed me my coffee--gave my tailor an order for a new coat and two pairs of pantaloons, and told him to charge them to ”Calanthe”--got a box of cigars and a demijohn of Scotch whiskey, and signed the drayman's receipt ”Calanthe”--all the signs read ”Calanthe”--every street was ”Calanthe” street--all the stages belonged to the ”Calanthe” line, and were going to ”Calanthe” ferry--the s.h.i.+p ”Calanthe” had arrived, the steamboat ”Calanthe” had burst her boiler, and the brig ”Calanthe” been seen bottom upward with her rudder gone. I saw, heard, read, dreamed, thought, and talked nothing but ”Calanthe,” and cannibal that I am, I verily believe I ate nothing but ”Calanthe” for a month.
The day after I saw her first I felt so exceedingly amiable that I bought something of every pedler who came into the store--laid in a stock of matches, pencils, shoe-brushes, suspenders, bootjacks, and blacking, which will last me a short lifetime--bought so much candy that the office-boy had the colic every afternoon for a week--called the applewoman ”my own sweet love,” and said ”thank you, darling,” when she gave me pewter dimes in change.
Wrote spasmodic poetry about Calanthe's hair--lines to her raven tresses--stanzas to her locks of jet--odes to her ebon ringlets--verses to her sable curls--rhymes to her coal-black hair, and commenced a poem in 17 cantos, to her ebony-topped head, but on reflection I was led to doubt the propriety of the comparison.
Called to see her every evening--substantial victuals didn't agree with me--a kind word from her was a good breakfast--a tender glance has served me for a dinner many a time, and once when she pressed my hand I couldn't eat anything for a fortnight but oranges, cream-candy, and vanilla-beans.
We went to the theatre, endured the negro minstrels, and braved the horrors of a second-rate Italian Opera Company--in fact, everywhere, where there was anything to be seen or heard, there were Calanthe Maria, and her devoted Philander.
For a month I forgot my debts, neglected business, ignored entirely this mundane sphere, and lived in a rainbow-colored aerial castle, of the most elegant finish--surrounded by roses, attended by cupids, and just big enough for Calanthe Maria and the subscriber.
In that happy place there were no duns, no tailors' bills, no trouble, no debts, no getting up early cold mornings, no tight boots, no bad cigars: nothing but love, luxury, and Calanthe Maria.
Came down occasionally out of my airy mansion, to speak a few words of compa.s.sion to my companions in the office, who hadn't got any Calanthe, but I went right back again as quick as I could to that rose-colored dream-land where love and Calanthe were ”boss and all hands.”
At last, one fatal evening I was undeceived.
We were waltzing, and through some clumsiness on my part, her hair caught in a gas-fixture--some mysterious string broke, and those glossy ringlets, the object of my adoration, _came off_, leaving her head bald as a brickbat. Relating this sc.r.a.pe of the locks to a friend, he informed me that the rest of her charms would not bear minute inspection, for she wore false teeth, and bought her complexion at Phalon's; that her graceful form was the result of a skilful combination of cotton and whalebone.
This was too much. While I thought Calanthe a woman, I loved her, but the discovery of the _fishy_ element excited a prejudice--as a _female_, she had my affection, and I contemplated matrimony--as a land mermaid, I had no desire to swindle Barnum and become her proprietor.
Coming as I did, from a section of the country where they have _human_ women, and where they don't attempt to deceive masculine mankind with French millinery strategy, I was unprepared for counterfeits, and had been easily deluded by a spurious article. But I find that in New York, perambulating bundles of dry goods not unfrequently pa.s.s current as women--and the milliners now put their eccentric inventions upon these locomotive shams, to the great neglect of those revolving waxen ladies who used to perform their perpetual gyrations in the show-windows.
As an advertising medium, they possess facilities for publicity beyond any of the newspapers, having a city circulation, which is unattainable by anything dumb and unpetticoated.
The great staple of the south has not only ”made” some of our first men, but has been discovered to enter largely into the composition of many of our first ladies.
My madness was now over--the intoxication of love was dissipated, and I was once more able to get about my business without having a feminine name constantly present to my eyes. The stages, the dry-goods' boxes, the streets and signs, were once more lettered in sensible characters. I was guilty of no more poetry, went to no more operas--in short, exhibited no longer any of the signs of insanity, but relapsed at once into my former unpoetical condition--the spell was broken--the blind fiend was exorcised--reason got back to her old bunk, and ”Richard was himself again.”
The difference in my mental condition occasioned my landlady considerable alarm; while I had lived on love, and paid five dollars a week for the privilege of sitting down at table only, she had considered me a profitable boarder; but the disappearance of beef and substantials generally, consequent upon my returning appet.i.te, sensibly diminish her esteem for me. I fancy I can perceive a change in her treatment, for she sets the bread and b.u.t.ter as far away from me as possible.
P. S.--She has raised my board to eight dollars a week, and with a consciousness that I deserve it, I submit.
XV.
Modern Patent Piety--Church-Going in the City
Persons from the rural districts--who are visiting the city for the first time, and who have all their lives been accustomed to no more pretentious religious edifices than the old fas.h.i.+oned country meeting-house, with a ”steeple,” either of the extinguisher or pepper-castor pattern; with great square hot-house windows, built expressly to concentrate and reflect upon the innocent congregation the hottest rays of the sun, as if religion was a green-house plant, and would only bloom beneath a forced and artificial heat--usually expend no small portion of their simple wonder upon the magnificent temples of the town, which aspiring congregations erect ostensibly for the wors.h.i.+p of the manger-cradled Saviour.
It usually too requires some considerable time for such a behind-the-times person to lay aside all his antiquated notions of religion, in which love, charity, and good will to men were essential elements, but which primitive idea of Christianity has, in the more enlightened city precincts, been long since exploded, and adopt the more convenient and showy piety which fas.h.i.+onable city people wear on Sundays--the const.i.tuent parts of which are too often only ostentation and vanity, veneered with a thin sh.e.l.l of decency and decorum. Such church-going people are remarkably easy on the Bible--most of the doctrines therein inculcated having been long since explained away by their three-thousand-dollar clergyman, who measures his people for their religion, and fits them with as much nicety as their tailors or dressmakers do in the case of more visible wardrobe. One or two Sundays after my first appearance in this town of patent Christianity, I attended service for the first time.
Having seen the opera with detestation, the theatres with approbation, George Christy with cachinnation, and No. 2 Dey street with affiliation; having visited Castle Garden, the model artists, and the American Museum; in fact, knowing something of almost all the other places of amus.e.m.e.nt in the city, I resolved to complete and crown my knowledge by going to church, and I hope I may receive due credit for my pursuit of amus.e.m.e.nt under difficulties. I made known my heroic determination to my new-found friends, and they instantly resolved to bear me company--Bull Dogge by way of variety, and Damphool from force of habit--(Bull Dogge seldom goes to church, and Damphool _always_ does).
Sunday morning came, and the aforesaid individuals presented themselves--B. D. looked pugnacious and pugilistic, and Damphool perfectly marvellous--in fact, majestic as this latter-named person had ever borne himself, and importantly huge as he had ever appeared, his coat tails were now so wonderfully short, his collar so enviably large, and so independently upright, and his hat so unusually and magnificently lofty, that he certainly looked a bigger Damphool than ever before.
Walked up Broadway through a crowd of people of all sorts, sizes, colors, and complexions; countrymen running over every third man they met; New Yorkers threading their way through apparently un-get-thro'-a-ble crowds without ruffling their tempers or their s.h.i.+rt collars--(By the way, I have discovered that no one but a genuine New Yorker, born and bred, can cross Broadway upon a dignified walk;) firemen in red s.h.i.+rts, and their coats over their arms; newsboys with a very scanty allowance of s.h.i.+rt, and no coats at all; Dutch emigrants, with dirty faces, nasty breeches, and long loppy looking pipes; Irish emigrants, with dirtier faces, nastier breeches, and short, stubbier pipes; spruce-looking darkies, and wenches arrayed in rainbow-colored habiliments--and at last reached the door of the church.