Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. XXVI, July 1852, Vol. V

Some spendthrifts belonging to "The Blues" having been obliged to submit their "very superior long-tailed troop horses" to the arbitrament of a London auctioneer's hammer, a wag "improves the occasion" by inditing the following touching parody:

"Upon the ground he stood,To take a last fond lookAt the troopers, as he entered themIn the horse-buyer's book.He listened to the neigh,So familiar to his ear;But the soldier thought of bills to pay,And wiped away a tear."Beside the stable-door,A mare fell on her knees;She cocked aloft her crow-black tail,That fluttered in the breeze,She seemed to breathe a prayer —A prayer he could not hear —For the soldier felt his pockets bare,And wiped away a tear."The soldier blew his nose —Oh! do not deem him weak!To meet his creditors, he knowsHe's not sufficient 'cheek.'Go read the writ-book through,And 'mid the names, I fear,You're sure to find the very BlueWho wiped away the tear!"

We believe it is Dryden who says, "It needs all we know to make things plain." We wonder what he would have thought of this highly intelligible account of blowing up a ship by a submarine battery, as Monsieur Maillefert blew up the rocks in Hellgate:

"There is no doubt that all submarine salts, acting in coalition with a pure phosphate, and coagulating chemically with the sublimate of marine potash, will create combustion in nitrous bodies. It is a remarkable fact in physics, that sulphurous acids, held in solution by glutinous compounds, will create igneous action in aquiferous bodies; and hence it is, therefore, that the pure carbonates of any given quantity of bituminous or ligneous solids will of themselves create the explosions in question."

We have heard men listen to such lucid, pellucid "expositions" as this, with staring eyes:

"And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,That one small head could carry all he knew."

He was a keen observer and a rare discriminator of children, who drew this little picture, in a work upon "Childhood and its Reminiscences:"

"See those two little girls! You hardly know which is the elder, so closely do they follow each other. They were born to the same routine, and will be bred in it for years, perhaps, side by side, in unequal fellowship; one pulling back, the other dragging forward. Watch them for a few moments as they play together, each dragging her doll about in a little cart. Their names are Cecilia and Constance, and they manage their dolls always as differently as they will their children. You ask Cecilia where she is going to drive her doll to, and she will tell you, 'Through the dining-room into the hall, and then back into the dining-room,' which is all literally true. You ask Constance, and with a grave, important air, and a loud whisper, for Doll is not to hear on any account, she answers, 'I am going to take her to London, and then to Brighton, to see her little cousin: the hall is Brighton, you know,' she adds, with a condescending look. Cecilia laments over a dirty frock, with a slit at the knee, and thinks that Mary, the maid, will never give her the new one she promised. Constance's doll is somewhat in the costume of the king of the Sandwich Islands; top-boots and a cocked-hat, having only a skein of worsted tied round her head, and a strip of colored calico or her shoulders; but she is perfectly satisfied that it is a wreath of flowers and a fine scarf; bids you smell of the "rose-oil" in her hair, and then whips herself, to jump over the mat.

"In other matters, the case is reversed. When fear is concerned, Cecilia's imagination becomes active, and Constance's remains perfectly passive. A bluff old gentleman passes through that same hall. The children stop their carts and stare at him, upon which he threatens to put them in his pocket. Poor Cecilia runs away, in the greatest alarm; but Constance coolly says: "You can't put us in your pocket; it isn't half big enough!"

It strikes us that there is an important lesson to parents in this last passage. Because one child has no fear to go to bed in the dark, how many poor trembling children, differently constituted, have passed the night in an agony of fear!

There are few more striking things in verse, in the English Language, than "The Execution of Montrose." The author has not, to our knowledge, been named, and the lines appeared for the first time many years ago. The illustrious head of the great house of Grahame in Scotland was condemned to be hung, drawn, and quartered; his head to be affixed on an iron pin and set on the pinnacle of the Tolbooth in Edinburgh; one hand to be set on the port of Perth, the other on the port of Stirling; one leg and foot on the port of Aberdeen, the other on the port of Glasgow. In the hour of his defeat and of his death he showed the greatness of his soul, by exhibiting the most noble magnanimity and Christian heroism. The few verses which follow will enable the reader to judge of the spirit which pervades the poem:

"'Twas I that led the Highland hostThrough wild Lochaber's snows,What time the plaided clans came downTo battle with Montrose:I've told thee how the Southrons fellBeneath the broad claymore,And how we smote the Campbell clanBy Inverlochy's shore:I've told thee how we swept Dundee,And tamed the Lindsay's pride!But never have I told thee yet,How the Great Marquis died!"A traitor sold him to his foes;Oh, deed of deathless shame!I charge thee, boy, if e'er thou meetWith one of Assynt's name —Be it upon the mountain side,Or yet within the glen,Stand he in martial gear alone,Or backed by armed men —Face him, as thou would'st face the manWho wronged thy sire's renown;Remember of what blood thou art,And strike the caitiff down!"

The poet goes on to describe his riding to the place of execution in a cart, with hands tied behind him, and amidst the jeers and taunts of his enemies; but his noble bearing subdued the hearts of many even of his bitter foes. Arrived at the place of execution, the "Great Marquis" looks up to the scaffold, and exclaims:

"Now by my faith as belted knight,And by the name I bear,And by the red St. Andrew's crossThat waves above us there —Ay, by a greater, mightier oath,And oh! that such should be! —By that dark stream of royal bloodThat lies 'twixt you and me —I have not sought on battle-fieldA wreath of such renown,Nor dared I hope, on my dying day,To win a martyr's crown!"There is a chamber far away,Where sleep the good and brave,But a better place ye have named for meThan by my father's grave.For truth and right 'gainst treason's might,This hand has always striven,And ye raise it up for a witness stillIn the eye of earth and heaven.Then raise my head on yonder tower,Give every town a limb,And God who made, shall gather them;I go from you to Him!"

We know of few sublimer deaths than this, in which the poet has taken no liberties with historical facts.

A cunning old fox is Rothschild, the greatest banker in the world. He said, on one occasion, to Sir Thomas Buxton, in England, "My success has always turned upon one maxim. I said, 'I can do what another man can;' and so I am a match for all the rest of 'em. Another advantage I had: I was always an off-hand man. I made a bargain at once. When I was settled in London, the East India Company had eight hundred thousand pounds in gold to sell. I went to the sale, and bought the whole of it. I knew the Duke of Wellington must have it. I had bought a great many of his bills at a discount. The Government sent for me, and said they must have it. When they had got it, they didn't know how to get it to Portugal, where they wanted it. I undertook all that, and I sent it through France; and that was the best business I ever did in my life.

"It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were to listen to one half the projects proposed to me, I should ruin myself very soon.

"One of my neighbors is a very ill-tempered man. He tries to vex me, and has built a great place for swine close to my walk. So when I go out, I hear first, 'Grunt, grunt,' then 'Squeak, squeak.' But this does me no harm. I am always in good-humor. Sometimes, to amuse myself, I give a beggar a guinea. He thinks it is a mistake, and for fear I should find it out, he runs away as hard as he can. I advise you to give a beggar a guinea sometimes – it is very amusing."

Travelers by railroad, who stop at the "eating stations," and are hurried away by the supernatural shriek of the locomotive before they have begun their repast, will appreciate and laugh at the following:

"We have sometimes seen in a pastry-cook's window, the announcement of 'Soups hot till eleven at night,' and we have thought how very hot the said soups must be at ten o'clock in the morning; but we defy any soup to be so red-hot, so scorchingly and so intensely scarifying to the roof of the mouth, as the soup you are allowed just three minutes to swallow at the railway stations. In the course of our perigrinations, a day or two ago, we had occasion to stop at a distant station. A smiling gentleman, with an enormous ladle, said insinuatingly:

"'Soup, sir?'

"'Thank you – yes.'

"Then the gigantic ladle was plunged into a caldron, which hissed with hot fury at the intrusion of the ladle.

"We were put in possession of a plateful of a colored liquid, that actually took the skin off our face by mere steam. Having paid for the soup, we were just about to put a spoonful to our lips when a bell was rung, and the gentleman who had suggested the soup, ladled out the soup, and got the money for the soup, blandly remarked:

"'Sir, the train is just off!'

"We made a desperate thrust of a spoonful into our mouth, but the skin peeled off our lips, tongue, and palate, like the 'jacket' from a hot potato."

Probably the same soup was served out to the passengers by the next train. Meanwhile the "soup-vendor smiled pleasantly, and evidently enjoyed the fun!"

One of the best of the minor things of Thackeray's – thrown off, doubtless before his temporarily-suspended cigar had gone out – is the following. It is a satire upon the circumstance of some fifty deer being penned into the narrow wood of some English nobleman, for Prince Albert to "hunt" in those confined limits. The lines are by "Jeems, cousin-german on the Scotch side," to "Chawls Yellowplush, Igsquire":

"SONNICK"sejested by prince halbert gratiously killing the stags at jacks cobug gothy"Some forty Ed of sleak and hantlered dear,In Cobug (where such hanimels abound)Was shot, as by the newspaper I 'ear,By Halbert, Usband of the British crownd.Britannia's Queen let fall the pretty tear,Seeing them butchered in their sylvan prisns;Igspecially when the keepers standing round,Came up and cut their pretty innocent whizns.Suppose, instead of this pore Germing sport,This Saxon wenison wich he shoots and bags,Our Prins should take a turn in Capel Court,And make a massyker of Henglish stags.Poor stags of Hengland! were the Untsman at you,What havoc he would make, and what a tremenjus battu.Jeems."

What is pleasure? It is an extremely difficult thing to say what "pleasure" means. Pleasure bears a different scale to every person. Pleasure to a country girl may mean a village ball, and "so many partners that she danced till she could scarcely stand." Pleasure to a school-boy means tying a string to his school-fellow's toe when he is asleep, and pulling it till he wakens him. Pleasure to a "man of inquiring mind" means, "a toad inside of a stone," or a beetle running around with his head off. Pleasure to a hard-laboring man means doing nothing; pleasure to a fashionable lady means, "having something to do to drive away the time." Pleasure to an antiquary means, an "illegible inscription." Pleasure to a connoisseur means, a "dark, invisible, very fine picture." Pleasure to the social, the "human face divine." Pleasure to the morose, "Thank Heaven, I shan't see a soul for the next six months!"

"Why don't you wash and dress yourself when you come into a court of justice?" asked a pompous London judge of a chimney-sweep, who was being examined as a witness. "Dress myself, my lord," said the sweep: "I am dressed as much as your lordship: you are in your working-clothes, and so am I!"

A good while ago that inimitable wag, Punch had some very amusing "Legal Maxims," with comments upon them; a few of which found their way into the "Drawer," and a portion of which we subjoin:

"A personal action dies with the person." – This maxim is clear enough; and means that an action brought against a man, when he dies in the middle of it, can not be continued. Thus, though the law sometimes, and very often, pursues a man to the grave, his rest there is not likely to be disturbed by the lawyers. If a soldier dies in action, the action does not necessarily cease, but is often continued with considerable vigor afterward.

"Things of a higher nature determine things of a lower nature." – Thus a written agreement determines one in words; although if the words are of a very high nature, they put an end to all kinds of agreement between the parties.

"The greater contains the less." – Thus, if a man tenders more money than he ought to pay, he tenders what he owes: for the greater contains the less; but a quart wine-bottle, which is greater than a pint and a half, does not always contain a pint and a half; so that, in this instance, the less is not contained in the greater.

"Deceit and fraud shall be remedied on all occasions." – It may be very true, that deceit and fraud ought to be remedied, but whether they are, is quite another question. It is much to be feared, that in law, as well as in other matters, ought sometimes stands for nothing.

"The law compels no one to impossibilities." – This is extremely considerate on the part of the law; but if it does not compel a man to impossibilities, it sometimes drives him to attempt them. The law, however, occasionally acts upon the principle of two negatives making an affirmative; thus treating two impossibilities as if they amounted to a possibility. As, when a man can not pay a debt, law-expenses are added, which he can not pay either; but the latter being added to the former, it is presumed, perhaps, that the two negatives, or impossibilities may constitute one affirmative or possibility, and the debtor is accordingly thrown into prison, if he fails to accomplish it.

Some country readers of the "Drawer," unacquainted with the dance called the "Mazurka," may like to know how to accomplish that elaborate and fashionable species of saltation. Here follows a practical explanation of the figures:

Get a pair of dress-boats, high heels are the best,And a partner; then stand with six more in a ring;Skip thrice to the right, take two stamps and a rest,Hop thrice to the left, give a kick and a fling;Be careful in stamping some neighbor don't rue it,Though people with corns had better not do it.Your partner you next circumnavigate; thatIs, dance all the way round her, unless she's too fat;Make a very long stride, then two hops for poussette;Lastly, back to your place, if you can, you must get.A general mêlée here always ensues,Begun by the loss of a few ladies' shoes;A faint and a scream – "Oh, dear, I shall fall!""How stupid you are!" – "We are all wrong!" and that's all.

Truly to appreciate such a dancing scene as this, one should see it through a closed window, at a fashionable watering-place, without being able to hear a note of the music, the "moving cause" of all the frisking.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO OUR DRAWER

Miss Trephina and Miss Trephosa, two ancient ladies of virgin fame, formerly kept a boarding-house in the immediate neighborhood of the Crosby-street Medical College. They took in students, did their washing, and to the best of their abilities mended their shirts and their morals. Miss Trephina, in spite of the numerous landmarks which time had set up upon her person, was still of the sentimental order. She always dressed "de rigueur" in cerulean blue, and wore false ringlets, and teeth (miserabile dictu!) of exceedingly doubtful extraction. Miss Trephosa, her sister, was on the contrary an uncommonly "strong-minded" woman. Her appearance would have been positively majestic, had it not been for an unfortunate squint, which went far to upset the dignified expression of her countenance. She wore a fillet upon her brows "à la Grecque," and people did say that her temper was as cross as her eyes. Bob Turner was a whole-souled Kentuckian, for whom his professorial guardian obtained lodgings in the establishment presided over by these two fascinating damsels. Somehow or other, Bob and his hostesses did not keep upon the best of terms very long. Bob had no notion of having his minutest actions submitted to a surveillance as rigid as (in his opinion) it was impertinent. One morning a fellow-student passing by at an early hour, saw the Kentuckian, who was standing upon the steps of the dragons' castle, from which he had just emerged, take from his pocket a slip of paper, and proceed to affix the same, with the aid of wafers, to the street door. The student skulked about the premises until Bob was out of sight, and he could read without observation the inscription placarded upon the panel. It was as follows – we do not vouch for its originality, although we know nothing to the contrary:

"To let or to lease, for the term of her life,A scolding old maid, in the way of a wife;She's old and she's ugly – ill-natured and thin;For further particulars, inquire within!"

An hour afterward the paper had disappeared from the door. Whether Bob was ever detected or not we can not tell, but he changed his lodgings the next term.

The Spaniards have a talent for self-glorification which throws that of all other nations, even our own, into the shade. Some allowance should be made, perhaps, for conventional hyperbolism of style, but vanity has as much to do with it as rhetoric. A traveled friend saw performed at Barcelona a play called "Españoles sobre todos" – "Spaniards before all" – in which the hero, a Spanish knight, and a perfect paladin in prowess, overthrows more English and French knights with his single arm than would constitute the entire regular army of this country. All these absurdities were received by the audience with a grave enthusiasm marvelous enough to witness. The play had a great run in all the cities of Spain, until it reached Madrid, where its first representation scandalized the French embassador to such a degree, that, like a true Gaul as he was, he made it a national question, interfered diplomatically, and the Government suppressed the performance.

There is a light-house at Cadiz – a very good light-house – but in no respect an extraordinary production of art. There is an inscription carved upon it, well peppered with notes of exclamation, and which translated reads as follows:

"This light-house was erected upon Spanish soil, of Spanish stone, by Spanish hands."

An old farmer from one of the rural districts – we may be allowed to say, from one of the very rural districts – recently came to town to see the sights, leaving his better-half at home, with the cattle and the poultry. Among various little keepsakes which he brought back to his wife, on his return to his Penates, was his own daguerreotype. "Oh! these men, these men! what creturs they are!" exclaimed the old lady, on receiving it; "just to think that he should fetch a picture of himself all the way from York, and be so selfish as not to fetch one of me at the same time!"

The following good story is told of George Hogarth, the author of musical history, biography, and criticism, and of "Memoirs of the Musical Drama." It seems that Mr. Hogarth is an intimate friend of Charles Dickens. Upon one occasion, Mr. Dickens had a party at his house, at which were present, among other notabilities, Miss – , the famous singer, and her mother, a most worthy lady, but not one of the "illuminated." Mr. Hogarth's engagement as musical critic for some of the leading London Journals kept him busy until quite late in the evening; and to Mrs. – 's reiterated inquiries as to when Mr. Hogarth might be expected, Mr. Dickens replied that he could not venture to hope that he would come in before eleven o'clock. At about that hour the old gentleman, who is represented as being one of the mildest and most modest of men, entered the rooms, and the excited Mrs. – solicited an immediate introduction. When the consecrated words had been spoken by the amused host, fancy the effect of Mrs. – 's bursting out with the hearty exclamation, "Oh, Mr. Hogarth, how shall I express to you the honor which I feel on making the acquaintance of the author of the 'Rake's Progress!'"

We wish it had been our privilege to see Dickens' face at that moment.

Dr. Dionysius Lardner married an Irish lady, of the city of Dublin, we believe, whose name was Cicily. The Doctor is represented not to have treated her with all conceivable marital tenderness. Among the University wags, he went by the name of "Dionysius, the Tyrant of Cicily" (Sicily.)

The late Pope of Rome, Gregory XVI., was once placed in an extremely awkward dilemma, in consequence of his co-existing authority as temporal and spiritual prince. A child of Jewish parentage was stolen from its home in early infancy. Every possible effort was made to discover the place of its concealment, but for many years without any success. At length, after a long lapse of time, it was accidentally ascertained that the boy, who had now almost grown a man, was residing in a Christian family, in a section of the town far removed from the "Ghetto," or Jews' quarter. The delighted parents eagerly sought to take their child home at once, but his Christian guardians refused to give him up; and the Pope was applied to by both parties, to decide upon the rival claims. On the one hand it was urged, that, as the head of the State, his Holiness could never think of countenancing the kidnapping of a child, and the detaining him from his natural friends. On the other hand it was contended, that, as head of the Church, it was impossible for him to give back to infidelity one who had been brought up a true believer. The case was a most difficult one to pass upon, and what might have been the result it would be hard to tell, had not the voice of habit been stronger than the voice of blood, and the subject of the dispute expressed an earnest desire to cling to the Church rather than be handed over to the Synagogue.

The famous humorist, Horne Tooke, once stood for Parliament in the Liberal interest. His election was contested by a person who had made a large fortune as a public contractor. This gentleman, in his speech from the hustings, exhorted the constituency not to elect a man who had no stake in the country. Mr. Tooke, in reply, said that he must confess, with all humility, that there was, at least, one stake in the country which he did not possess, and that was a stake taken from the public fence.

Upon another occasion, the blank form for the income-tax return was sent in to Mr. Tooke to be filled up. He inserted the word "Nil," signed it, and returned it to the board of county magistrates. Shortly afterward he was called before this honorable body of gentlemen to make an explanation. "What do you mean by 'Nil,' sir?" asked the most ponderous of the gentlemen upon the bench. "I mean literally 'Nil,'" answered the wag.

"We perfectly understand the meaning of the Latin word Nil– nothing," rejoined the magistrate, with an air of self-congratulation upon his learning. "But do you mean to say, sir, that you live without any income at all – that you live upon nothing?"

"Upon nothing but my brains, gentlemen," was Tooke's answer.

"Upon nothing but his brains!" exclaimed the presiding dignitary to his associates. "It seems to me that this is a novel source of income."

"Ah, gentlemen," retorted the humorist, "it is not every man that has brains to mortgage."

In nothing is the irregularity of our orthography shown more than in the pronunciation of certain proper names. The English noble names of Beauchamp, Beauvoir, and Cholmondeley are pronounced respectively Beechum, Beaver, and Chumley.

One of the "Anglo-Saxun" reformers, meeting Lord Cholmondeley one day coming out of his own house, and not being acquainted with his Lordship's person, asked him if Lord Chol-mon-de-ley (pronouncing each syllable distinctly), was at home? "No," replied the Peer, without hesitation, "nor any of his pe-o-ple."