Chapter 30

OPENING WITH A POETICAL EULOGY OF THE PRESS AND CONTINUING WITH TALK INSPIRED BY THE SAME.

“‘Praise be unto the press, not Faust’s, but Noah’s; let us extol and magnify the press, the true press of Noah, from which breaketh the true morning. Praise be unto the press, not the black press but the red; let us extol and magnify the press, the red press of Noah, from which cometh inspiration. Ye pressmen of the Rhineland and the Rhine, join in with all ye who tread out the glad tidings on isle Madeira or Mitylene.—Who giveth redness of eyes by making men long to tarry at the fine print?—Praise be unto the press, the rosy press of Noah, which giveth rosiness of hearts, by making men long to tarry at the rosy wine.—Who hath babblings and contentions? Who, without cause, inflicteth wounds? Praise be unto the press, the kindly press of Noah, which knitteth friends, which fuseth foes.—Who may be bribed?—Who may be bound?—Praise be unto the press, the free press of Noah, which will not lie for tyrants, but make tyrants speak the truth.—Then praise be unto the press, the frank old press of Noah; then let us extol and magnify the press, the brave old press of Noah; then let us with roses garland and enwreath the press, the grand old press of Noah, from which flow streams of knowledge which give man a bliss no more unreal than his pain.’”

“You deceived me,” smiled the cosmopolitan, as both now resumed their seats; “you roguishly took advantage of my simplicity; you archly played upon my enthusiasm. But never mind; the offense, if any, was so charming, I almost wish you would offend again. As for certain poetic left-handers in your panegyric, those I cheerfully concede to the indefinite privileges of the poet. Upon the whole, it was quite in the lyric style—a style I always admire on account of that spirit of Sibyllic confidence and assurance which is, perhaps, its prime ingredient. But come,” glancing at his companion’s glass, “for a lyrist, you let the bottle stay with you too long.”

“The lyre and the vine forever!” cried the other in his rapture, or what seemed such, heedless of the hint, “the vine, the vine! is it not the most graceful and bounteous of all growths? And, by its being such, is not something meant—divinely meant? As I live, a vine, a Catawba vine, shall be planted on my grave!”

“A genial thought; but your glass there.”

“Oh, oh,” taking a moderate sip, “but you, why don’t you drink?”

“You have forgotten, my dear Charlie, what I told you of my previous convivialities to-day.”

“Oh,” cried the other, now in manner quite abandoned to the lyric mood, not without contrast to the easy sociability of his companion. “Oh, one can’t drink too much of good old wine—the genuine, mellow old port. Pooh, pooh! drink away.”

“Then keep me company.”

“Of course,” with a flourish, taking another sip—”suppose we have cigars. Never mind your pipe there; a pipe is best when alone. I say, waiter, bring some cigars—your best.”

They were brought in a pretty little bit of western pottery, representing some kind of Indian utensil, mummy-colored, set down in a mass of tobacco leaves, whose long, green fans, fancifully grouped, formed with peeps of red the sides of the receptacle.

Accompanying it were two accessories, also bits of pottery, but smaller, both globes; one in guise of an apple flushed with red and gold to the life, and, through a cleft at top, you saw it was hollow. This was for the ashes. The other, gray, with wrinkled surface, in the likeness of a wasp’s nest, was the match-box. “There,” said the stranger, pushing over the cigar-stand, “help yourself, and I will touch you off,” taking a match. “Nothing like tobacco,” he added, when the fumes of the cigar began to wreathe, glancing from the smoker to the pottery, “I will have a Virginia tobacco-plant set over my grave beside the Catawba vine.”

“Improvement upon your first idea, which by itself was good—but you don’t smoke.”

“Presently, presently—let me fill your glass again. You don’t drink.”

“Thank you; but no more just now. Fill your glass.”

“Presently, presently; do you drink on. Never mind me. Now that it strikes me, let me say, that he who, out of superfine gentility or fanatic morality, denies himself tobacco, suffers a more serious abatement in the cheap pleasures of life than the dandy in his iron boot, or the celibate on his iron cot. While for him who would fain revel in tobacco, but cannot, it is a thing at which philanthropists must weep, to see such an one, again and again, madly returning to the cigar, which, for his incompetent stomach, he cannot enjoy, while still, after each shameful repulse, the sweet dream of the impossible good goads him on to his fierce misery once more—poor eunuch!”

“I agree with you,” said the cosmopolitan, still gravely social, “but you don’t smoke.”

“Presently, presently, do you smoke on. As I was saying about——”

“But why don’t you smoke—come. You don’t think that tobacco, when in league with wine, too much enhances the latter’s vinous quality—in short, with certain constitutions tends to impair self-possession, do you?”

“To think that, were treason to good fellowship,” was the warm disclaimer. “No, no. But the fact is, there is an unpropitious flavor in my mouth just now. Ate of a diabolical ragout at dinner, so I shan’t smoke till I have washed away the lingering memento of it with wine. But smoke away, you, and pray, don’t forget to drink. By-the-way, while we sit here so companionably, giving loose to any companionable nothing, your uncompanionable friend, Coonskins, is, by pure contrast, brought to recollection. If he were but here now, he would see how much of real heart-joy he denies himself by not hob-a-nobbing with his kind.”

“Why,” with loitering emphasis, slowly withdrawing his cigar, “I thought I had undeceived you there. I thought you had come to a better understanding of my eccentric friend.”

“Well, I thought so, too; but first impressions will return, you know. In truth, now that I think of it, I am led to conjecture from chance things which dropped from Coonskins, during the little interview I had with him, that he is not a Missourian by birth, but years ago came West here, a young misanthrope from the other side of the Alleghanies, less to make his fortune, than to flee man. Now, since they say trifles sometimes effect great results, I shouldn’t wonder, if his history were probed, it would be found that what first indirectly gave his sad bias to Coonskins was his disgust at reading in boyhood the advice of Polonius to Laertes—advice which, in the selfishness it inculcates, is almost on a par with a sort of ballad upon the economies of money-making, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small retail traders in New England.”

“I do hope now, my dear fellow,” said the cosmopolitan with an air of bland protest, “that, in my presence at least, you will throw out nothing to the prejudice of the sons of the Puritans.”

“Hey-day and high times indeed,” exclaimed the other, nettled, “sons of the Puritans forsooth! And who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must do them reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies.”

“Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard to Polonius,” observed the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance, expressive of the patience of a superior mind at the petulance of an inferior one; “how do you characterize his advice to Laertes?”

“As false, fatal, and calumnious,” exclaimed the other, with a degree of ardor befitting one resenting a stigma upon the family escutcheon, “and for a father to give his son—monstrous. The case you see is this: The son is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father? Invoke God’s blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible in his trunk? No. Crams him with maxims smacking of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France, with maxims of Italy.”

“No, no, be charitable, not that. Why, does he not among other things say:—

‘The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel’?
Is that compatible with maxims of Italy?”

“Yes it is, Frank. Don’t you see? Laertes is to take the best of care of his friends—his proved friends, on the same principle that a wine-corker takes the best of care of his proved bottles. When a bottle gets a sharp knock and don’t break, he says, ‘Ah, I’ll keep that bottle.’ Why? Because he loves it? No, he has particular use for it.”

“Dear, dear!” appealingly turning in distress, “that—that kind of criticism is—is—in fact—it won’t do.”

“Won’t truth do, Frank? You are so charitable with everybody, do but consider the tone of the speech. Now I put it to you, Frank; is there anything in it hortatory to high, heroic, disinterested effort? Anything like ‘sell all thou hast and give to the poor?’ And, in other points, what desire seems most in the father’s mind, that his son should cherish nobleness for himself, or be on his guard against the contrary thing in others? An irreligious warner, Frank—no devout counselor, is Polonius. I hate him. Nor can I bear to hear your veterans of the world affirm, that he who steers through life by the advice of old Polonius will not steer among the breakers.”

“No, no—I hope nobody affirms that,” rejoined the cosmopolitan, with tranquil abandonment; sideways reposing his arm at full length upon the table. “I hope nobody affirms that; because, if Polonius’ advice be taken in your sense, then the recommendation of it by men of experience would appear to involve more or less of an unhandsome sort of reflection upon human nature. And yet,” with a perplexed air, “your suggestions have put things in such a strange light to me as in fact a little to disturb my previous notions of Polonius and what he says. To be frank, by your ingenuity you have unsettled me there, to that degree that were it not for our coincidence of opinion in general, I should almost think I was now at length beginning to feel the ill effect of an immature mind, too much consorting with a mature one, except on the ground of first principles in common.”

“Really and truly,” cried the other with a kind of tickled modesty and pleased concern, “mine is an understanding too weak to throw out grapnels and hug another to it. I have indeed heard of some great scholars in these days, whose boast is less that they have made disciples than victims. But for me, had I the power to do such things, I have not the heart to desire.”

“I believe you, my dear Charlie. And yet, I repeat, by your commentaries on Polonius you have, I know not how, unsettled me; so that now I don’t exactly see how Shakespeare meant the words he puts in Polonius’ mouth.”

“Some say that he meant them to open people’s eyes; but I don’t think so.”

“Open their eyes?” echoed the cosmopolitan, slowly expanding his; “what is there in this world for one to open his eyes to? I mean in the sort of invidious sense you cite?”

“Well, others say he meant to corrupt people’s morals; and still others, that he had no express intention at all, but in effect opens their eyes and corrupts their morals in one operation. All of which I reject.”

“Of course you reject so crude an hypothesis; and yet, to confess, in reading Shakespeare in my closet, struck by some passage, I have laid down the volume, and said: ‘This Shakespeare is a queer man.’ At times seeming irresponsible, he does not always seem reliable. There appears to be a certain—what shall I call it?—hidden sun, say, about him, at once enlightening and mystifying. Now, I should be afraid to say what I have sometimes thought that hidden sun might be.”

“Do you think it was the true light?” with clandestine geniality again filling the other’s glass.

“I would prefer to decline answering a categorical question there. Shakespeare has got to be a kind of deity. Prudent minds, having certain latent thoughts concerning him, will reserve them in a condition of lasting probation. Still, as touching avowable speculations, we are permitted a tether. Shakespeare himself is to be adored, not arraigned; but, so we do it with humility, we may a little canvass his characters. There’s his Autolycus now, a fellow that always puzzled me. How is one to take Autolycus? A rogue so happy, so lucky, so triumphant, of so almost captivatingly vicious a career that a virtuous man reduced to the poor-house (were such a contingency conceivable), might almost long to change sides with him. And yet, see the words put into his mouth: ‘Oh,’ cries Autolycus, as he comes galloping, gay as a buck, upon the stage, ‘oh,’ he laughs, ‘oh what a fool is Honesty, and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman.’ Think of that. Trust, that is, confidence—that is, the thing in this universe the sacredest—is rattlingly pronounced just the simplest. And the scenes in which the rogue figures seem purposely devised for verification of his principles. Mind, Charlie, I do not say it is so, far from it; but I do say it seems so. Yes, Autolycus would seem a needy varlet acting upon the persuasion that less is to be got by invoking pockets than picking them, more to be made by an expert knave than a bungling beggar; and for this reason, as he thinks, that the soft heads outnumber the soft hearts. The devil’s drilled recruit, Autolycus is joyous as if he wore the livery of heaven. When disturbed by the character and career of one thus wicked and thus happy, my sole consolation is in the fact that no such creature ever existed, except in the powerful imagination which evoked him. And yet, a creature, a living creature, he is, though only a poet was his maker. It may be, that in that paper-and-ink investiture of his, Autolycus acts more effectively upon mankind than he would in a flesh-and-blood one. Can his influence be salutary? True, in Autolycus there is humor; but though, according to my principle, humor is in general to be held a saving quality, yet the case of Autolycus is an exception; because it is his humor which, so to speak, oils his mischievousness. The bravadoing mischievousness of Autolycus is slid into the world on humor, as a pirate schooner, with colors flying, is launched into the sea on greased ways.”

“I approve of Autolycus as little as you,” said the stranger, who, during his companion’s commonplaces, had seemed less attentive to them than to maturing with in his own mind the original conceptions destined to eclipse them. “But I cannot believe that Autolycus, mischievous as he must prove upon the stage, can be near so much so as such a character as Polonius.”