第72章

It is natural, and in one sense is all right enough.I want to catch a thief and put the extinguisher on an incendiary as much as my neighbors do; but I have two sides to my consciousness as I have two sides to my heart, one carrying dark, impure blood, and the other the bright stream which has been purified and vivified by the great source of life and death,--the oxygen of the air which gives all things their vital heat, and burns all things at last to ashes.

One side of me loves and hates; the other side of me judges, say rather pleads and suspends judgment.I think, if I were left to myself, I should hang a rogue and then write his apology and subscribe to a neat monument, commemorating, not his virtues, but his misfortunes.I should, perhaps, adorn the marble with emblems, as is the custom with regard to the more regular and normally constituted members of society.It would not be proper to put the image of a lamb upon the stone which marked the resting-place of him of the private cemetery.But I would not hesitate to place the effigy of a wolf or a hyena upon the monument.I do not judge these animals, Ionly kill them or shut them up.I presume they stand just as well with their Maker as lambs and kids, and the existence of such beings is a perpetual plea for God Almighty's poor, yelling, scalping Indians, his weasand-stopping Thugs, his despised felons, his murdering miscreants, and all the unfortunates whom we, picked individuals of a picked class of a picked race, scrubbed, combed, and catechized from our cradles upward, undertake to find accommodations for in another state of being where it is to be hoped they will have a better chance than they had in this.

The Master paused, and took off his great round spectacles.I could not help thinking that he looked benevolent enough to pardon Judas Iscariot just at that moment, though his features can knot themselves up pretty, formidably on occasion.

--You are somewhat of a phrenologist, I judge, by the way you talk of instinctive and inherited tendencies--I said.

--They tell me I ought to be,--he answered, parrying my question, as I thought.---I have had a famous chart made out of my cerebral organs, according to which I ought to have been--something more than a poor Magister Artaum.

--I thought a shade of regret deepened the lines on his broad, antique-looking forehead, and I began talking about all the sights Ihad seen in the way of monstrosities, of which I had a considerable list, as you will see when I tell you my weakness in that direction.

This, you understand, Beloved, is private and confidential.

I pay my quarter of a dollar and go into all the side-shows that follow the caravans and circuses round the country.I have made friends of all the giants and all the dwarfs.I became acquainted with Monsieur Bihin, le plus bel homme du monde, and one of the biggest, a great many years ago, and have kept up my agreeable relations with him ever since.He is a most interesting giant, with a softness of voice and tenderness of feeling which I find very engaging.I was on friendly terms with Mr.Charles Freeman, a very superior giant of American birth, seven feet four, I think, in height, "double-jointed," of mylodon muscularity, the same who in a British prize-ring tossed the Tipton Slasher from one side of the rope to the other, and now lies stretched, poor fellow! in a mighty grave in the same soil which holds the sacred ashes of Cribb, and the honored dust of Burke,--not the one "commonly called the sublime,"but that other Burke to whom Nature had denied the sense of hearing lest he should be spoiled by listening to the praises of the admiring circles which looked on his dear-bought triumphs.Nor have Idespised those little ones whom that devout worshipper of Nature in her exceptional forms, the distinguished Barnum, has introduced to the notice of mankind.The General touches his chapeau to me, and the Commodore gives me a sailor's greeting.I have had confidential interviews with the double-headed daughter of Africa,--so far, at least, as her twofold personality admitted of private confidences.Ihave listened to the touching experiences of the Bearded Lady, whose rough cheeks belie her susceptible heart.Miss Jane Campbell has allowed me to question her on the delicate subject of avoirdupois equivalents; and the armless fair one, whose embrace no monarch could hope to win, has wrought me a watch-paper with those despised digits which have been degraded from gloves to boots in our evolution from the condition of quadrumana.

I hope you have read my experiences as good-naturedly as the old Master listened to them.He seemed to be pleased with my whim, and promised to go with me to see all the side-shows of the next caravan.

Before I left him he wrote my name in a copy of the new edition of his book, telling me that it would not all be new to me by a great deal, for he often talked what he had printed to make up for having printed a good deal of what he had talked.

Here is the passage of his Poem the Young Astronomer read to us.

WIND-CLOUDS AND STAR-DRIFTS.

IV

>From my lone turret as I look around O'er the green meadows to the ring of blue, >From slope, from summit, and from half-hid vale The sky is stabbed with dagger-pointed spires, Their gilded symbols whirling in the wind, Their brazen tongues proclaiming to the world, Here truth is sold, the only genuine ware;See that it has our trade-mark!

You will buy Poison instead of food across the way, The lies of "--this or that, each several name The standard's blazon and the battle-cry Of some true-gospel faction, and again The token of the Beast to all beside.

And grouped round each I see a huddling crowd Alike in all things save the words they use;In love, in longing, hate and fear the same.

Whom do we trust and serve? We speak of one And bow to many; Athens still would find The shrines of all she worshipped safe within Our tall barbarian temples, and the thrones That crowned Olympus mighty as of old.