Finished
Pierre last night. And then I took a cold shower. What a bizarre, dark, disheartening book.
What I have for you today are two short stories written by Herman Melville and published anonymously by Harper's in 1854 (two years after
Pierre). Taken with the understanding of Melville's circumstances after Pierre ruined his literary career and his aspirations, it's not hard to conjecture what he's getting at with these. It is, however, difficult to be sure. Are these efforts at self-consolation or reflections of a genuine change in his attitude?
* * *
The Fiddler
So my poem is damned, and immortal fame is not for me! I am nobody forever and ever. Intolerable fate!
Snatching my hat, I dashed down the criticism, and rushed out into Broadway, where enthusiastic throngs were crowding to a circus in a side-street near by, very recently started, and famous for a capital clown.
Presently my old friend Standard rather boisterously accosted me.
"Well met, Helmstone, my boy! Ah! what's the matter? Haven't been committing murder? Ain't flying justice? You look wild!"
"You have seen it then?" said I, of course referring to the critism.
"Oh yes; I was there at the morning performance. Great clown, I assure you. But here comes Hautboy. Hautboy——Helmstone."
Without having time or inclination to resent so mortifying a mistake, I was instantly soothed as I gazed on the face of the new acquaintance so unceremoniously introduced. His person was short and full, with a juvenile, animated cast to it. His complexion rurally ruddy; his eye sincere, cheery, and gray. His hair alone betrayed that he was not an overgrown boy. From his hair I set him down as forty or more.
"Come, Standard," he gleefully cried to my friend, "are you not going to the circus? The clown is inimitable, they say. Come; Mr. Helmstone, too——come both; and circus over, we'll take a nice stew and punch at Taylor's."
The sterling content, good humor, and extraordinary ruddy, sincere expression of this most singular new acquaintance acted upon me like magic. It seemed mere loyalty to human nature to accept an invitation from so unmistakably kind and honest a heart.
During the circus performance I kept my eye more on Hautboy than on the celebrated clown. Hautboy was the sight for me. Such genuine enjoyment as his struck me to the soul with a sense of the reality of the thing called happiness. The jokes of the clown he seemed to roll under his tongue as ripe magnum bonums. Now the foot, now the hand, was employed to attest his grateful applause. At any hit more than ordinary, he turned upon Standard and me to see if his rare pleasure was shared. In a man of forty I saw a boy of twelve; and this too without the slightest abatement of my respect. Because all was so honest and natural, every expression and attitude so graceful with genuine good-nature, that the marvelous juvenility of Hautboy assumed a sort of divine and immortal air, like that of some forever youthful god of Greece.
But much as I gazed upon Hautboy, and as much as I admired his air, yet that desperate mood in which I had first rushed from the house had not so entirely departed as not to molest me with momentary returns. But from these relapses I would rouse myself, and swiftly glance round the broad amphitheatre of eagerly interested and all-applauding human faces. Hark! claps, thumps, deafening huzzas; the vast assembly seemed frantic, with acclamation; and what, mused I, has caused all this? Why, the clown only comically grinned with one of his extra grins.
Then I repeated in my mind that sublime passage in my poem, in which Cleothemes the Argive vindicates the justice of the war. Aye, aye, thought I to myself, did I now leap into the ring there, and repeat that identical passage, nay, enact the whole tragic poem before them, would they applaud the poet as they applaud the clown? No! They would hoot me, and call me doting or mad. Then what does this prove? Your infatuation or their insensibility? Perhaps both; but indubitably the first. But why wail? Do you seek admiration from the admirers of a buffoon? Call to mind the saying of the Athenian, who when the people vociferously applauded in the forum, asked his friend in a whisper, what foolish thing had he said?
Again my eye swept the circus, and fell on the ruddy radiance of the countenance of Hautboy. But its clear honest cheeriness disdained my disdain. My intolerant pride was rebuked. And yet Hautboy dreamed not what magic reproof to a soul like mine sat on his laughing brow. At the very instant I felt the dart of the censure, his eye twinkled, his hand waved, his voice was lifted in jubilant delight at another joke of the inexhaustible clown.
Circus over, we went to Taylor's. Among crowds of others, we sat down to our stews and punches at one of the small marble tables. Hautboy sat opposite to me. Though greatly subdued from its former hilarity, his face still shone with gladness. But added to this was a quality not so prominent before: a certain serene expression of leisurely, deep good sense. Good sense and good humor in him joined hands. As the conversation proceeded between the brisk Standard and him——for I said little or nothing——I was more and more struck with the excellent judgment he evinced. In most of his remarks upon a variety of topics Hautboy seemed intuitively to hit the exact line between enthusiasm and apathy. It was plain that while Hautboy saw the world pretty much as it was, yet he did not theoretically espouse its bright side nor its dark side. Rejecting all solutions, he but acknowledged facts. What was sad in the world he did not superficially gainsay; what was glad in it he ! did not cynically slur; and all which was to him personally enjoyable, he gratefully took to his heart. It was plain, then——so it seemed at that moment, at least——that his extraordinary cheerfulness did not arise either from deficiency of feeling or thought.
Suddenly remembering an engagement, he took up his hat, bowed pleasantly, and left us.
"Well, Helmstone," said Standard, inaudibly drumming on the slab, "what do you think of your new acquaintance?"
The two last words tingled with a peculiar and novel significance.
"New acquaintance indeed," echoed I. "Standard, I owe you a thousand thanks for introducing me to one of the most singular men I have ever seen. It needed the optical sight of such a man to believe in the possibility of his existence."
"You rather like him, then," said Standard, with ironical dryness.
"I hugely love and admire him, Standard. I wish I were Hautboy."
"Ah? That's a pity, now. There's only one Hautboy in the world."
This last remark set me to pondering again, and somehow it revived my dark mood.
"His wonderful cheerfulness, I suppose," said I, sneering with spleen, "originates not less in a felicitous fortune than in a felicitous temper. His great good sense is apparent; but great good sense may exist without sublime endowments. Nay, I take it, in certain cases, that good sense is simply owing to the absence of those. Much more, cheerfulness. Unpossessed of genius, Hautboy is eternally blessed.
"Ah? You would not think him an extraordinary genius, then?"
"Genius? What! such a short, fat fellow a genius! Genius, like Cassius, is lank."
"Ah? But could you not fancy that Hautboy might formerly have had genius, but luckily getting rid of it, at last fatted up?"
"For a genius to get rid of his genius is as impossible as for a man in the galloping consumption to get rid of that."
"Ah? You speak very decidedly."
"Yes, Standard," cried I, increasing in spleen, "your cheery Hautboy, after all, is no pattern, no lesson for you and me. With average abilities; opinions clear, because circumscribed; passions docile, because they are feeble; a temper hilarious, because he was born to it——how can your Hautboy be made a reasonable example to a handy fellow like you, or an ambitious dreamer like me? Nothing tempts him beyond common limit; in himself he has nothing to restrain. By constitution he is exempted from all moral harm. Could ambition but prick him; had he but once heard applause, or endured contempt, a very different man would your Hautboy be. Acquiescent and calm from the cradle to the grave, he obviously slides through the crowd."
"Ah?"
"Why do you say Ah to me so strangely whenever I speak?"
"Did you ever hear of Master Betty?"
"The great English prodigy, who long ago ousted the Siddons and the Kembles from Drury Lane, and made the whole town run mad with acclamation?
"The same," said Standard, once more inaudibly drumming on the slab.
I looked at him perplexed. He seemed to be holding the master-key of our theme in mysterious reserve; seemed to be throwing out his Master Betty, too, to puzzle me only the more.
"What under heaven can Master Betty, the great genius and prodigy, and English boy twelve years old, have to do with the poor commonplace plodder, Hautboy, an American of forty?"
"Oh, nothing in the least. I don't imagine that they ever saw each other. Besides, Master Betty must be dead and buried long ere this."
"Then why cross the ocean, and rifle the grave to drag his remains into this living discussion?"
"Absent-mindedness, I suppose. I humbly beg pardon. Proceed with your observations on Hautboy. You think he never had genius, quite too contented, and happy and fat for that——ah? You think him no pattern for men in general? affording no lesson of value to neglected merit, genius ignored, or impotent presumption rebuked?——all of which three amount to much the same thing. You admire his cheerfulness, while scorning his commonplace soul. Poor Hautboy, how sad that your very cheerfulness should, by a by-blow, bring you despite!"
"I don't say I scorn him; you are unjust. I simply declare that he is no pattern for me."
A sudden noise at my side attracted my ear. Turning, I saw Hautboy again, who very blithely reseated himself on the chair he had left.
"I was behind time with my engagement," said Hautboy, "so thought I would run back and rejoin you. But come, you have sat long enough here. Let us go to my rooms. It is only a five minutes' walk."
"If you will promise to fiddle for us, we will," said Standard.
Fiddle! thought I——he's a jiggumbob fiddler, then? No wonder genius declines to measure its pace to a fiddler's bow. My spleen was very strong on me now.
"I will gladly fiddle you your fill," replied Hautboy to Standard. "Come on."
In a few minutes we found ourselves in the fifth story of a sort of storehouse, in a lateral street to Broadway. It was curiously furnished with all sorts of odd furniture which seemed to have been obtained, piece by piece, at auctions of old-fashioned household stuff. But all was charmingly clean and cozy.
Pressed by Standard, Hautboy forthwith got out his dented old fiddle and, sitting down on a tall rickety stool, played away right merrily at "Yankee Doodle" and other off-handed, dashing, and disdainfully care-free airs. But common as were the tunes, I was transfixed by something miraculously superior in the style. Sitting there on the old stool, his rusty hat sidways cocked on his head, one foot dangling adrift, he plied the bow of an enchanter. All my moody discontent, every vestige of peevishness, fled. My whole splenetic soul capitulated to the magical fiddle.
"Something of an Orpheus, ah?" said Standard, archly nudging me beneath the left rib.
"And I, the charmed Briun," murmured I.
The fiddle ceased. Once more, with redoubled curiosity, I gazed upon the easy, indifferent Hautboy. But he entirely baffled inquisition.
When, leaving him, Standard and I were in the street once more, I earnestly conjured him to tell me who, in sober truth, this marvelous Hautboy was.
"Why, haven't you seen him? And didn't you yourself lay his whole anatomy open on the marble slab at Taylor's? What more can you possibly learn? Doubtless, your own masterly insight has already put you in possession of all."
"You mock me, Standard. There is some mystery here. Tell me, I entreat you, who is Hautboy?"
"An extraordinary genius, Helmstone," said Standard, with sudden ardor, "who in boyhood drained the whole flagon of glory; whose going from city to city was a going from triumph to triumph. One who has been an object of wonder to the wisest, been caressed by the loveliest, received the open homage of thousands on thousands of the rabble. But to-day he walks Broadway and no man knows him. With you and me, the elbow of the hurrying clerk, and the pole of the remorseless omnibus, shove him. He who has a hundred times been crowned with laurels, now wears, as you see, a bunged beaver. Once fortune poured showers of gold into his lap, as showers of laurel leaves upon his brow. To-day, from house to house he hies, teaching fiddling for a living. Crammed once with fame, he is now hilarious without it. With genius and without fame, he is happier than a king. More a prodigy now than ever."
"His true name?"
"Let me whisper it in your ear."
"What! Oh, Standard, myself, as a child, have shouted myself hoarse applauding that very name in the theatre."
"I have heard your poem was not very handsomely received," said Standard, now suddenly shifting the subject.
"Not a word of that, for Heaven's sake!" cried I. "If Cicero, traveling in the East, found sympathetic solace for his grief in beholding the arid overthrow of a once gorgeous city, shall not my petty affair be as nothing, when I behold in Hautboy the vine and the rose climbing the shattered shafts of his tumbled temple of Fame?"
Next day I tore all my manuscripts, bought me a fiddle, and went to take regular lessons of Hautboy.
* * *
The Happy Failure
A Story of the River Hudson
The appointment was that I should meet my elderly uncle at the
river-side, precisely at nine in the morning. The skiff was to
be ready, and the apparatus to be brought down by his grizzled
old black man. As yet, the nature of the wonderful experiment
remained a mystery to all but the projector.
I was first on the spot. The village was high up the river, and
the inland summer sun was already oppressively warm. Presently
I saw my uncle advancing beneath the trees, hat off, and wiping
his brow; while far behind staggered poor old Yorpy, with what
seemed one of the gates of Gaza on his back.
"Come, hurrah, stump along, Yorpy!" cried my uncle, impatiently
turning round every now and then.
Upon the black's staggering up to the skiff, I perceived that
the great gate of Gaza was transformed into a huge, shabby,
oblong box, hermetically sealed. The sphinx-like blankness of
the box quadrupled the mystery in my mind.
"Is this the wonderful apparatus?" said I, in amazement.
"Why, it's nothing but a battered old dry-goods box, nailed
up. And is this the thing, uncle, that is to make you a
million of dollars ere the year be out? What a forlorn-looking,
lack-lustre, old ash-box it is."
"Put it into the skiff!" roared my uncle to Yorpy, without
heeding my boyish disdain.
"Put it in, you grizzled-headed cherub——put it in carefully,
carefully! If that box bursts, my everlasting fortune collapses."
"Bursts?——collapses?" cried I, in alarm. "It ain't full of
combustibles? Quick! let me go to the further end of the boat!"
"Sit still, you simpleton!" cried my uncle again. "Jump in, Yorpy,
and hold on to the box like grim death while I shove off. Carefully!
carefully! you dunderheaded black! Mind t'other side of the box,
I say! Do you mean to destroy the box?"
"Duyvel take de pox!" muttered old Yorpy, who was a sort of Dutch
African. "De pox has been my cuss for de ten long 'ear."
"Now, then, we're off——take an oar, youngster; you, Yorpy, clinch the
box fast. Here we go now. Carefully! carefully! You, Yorpy, stop shaking
the box! Easy! easy! there's a big snag. Pull now. Hurrah! deep water
at last! Now give way, youngster, and away to the island."
"The island!" said I. "There's no island hereabouts."
"There is ten miles above the bridge, though," said my uncle,
determinately.
"Ten miles off! Pull that old dry-goods box ten miles up the river in
this blazing sun!"
"All that I have to say," said my uncle, firmly, "is that we are bound
to Quash Island."
"Mercy, uncle! If I had known of this great long pull of ten mortal
miles in this fiery sun, you wouldn't have juggled me into the skiff
so easy. What's in that box?——paving-stones? See how the skiff settles
down under it. I won't help pull a box of paving-stones ten miles.
What's the use of pulling 'em?"
"Look you, simpleton," quoth my uncle, pausing upon his suspended oar.
"Stop rowing, will ye! Now then, if you don't want to share in the glory
of my experiment; if you are wholly indifferent to halving its immortal
renown; I say, sir, if you care not to be present at the first trial
of my Great Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus for draining swamps and
marshes, and converting them, at the rate of one acre the hour, into
fields more fertile than those of the Genesee; if you care not, I
repeat, to have this proud thing to tell——in far future days, when poor
old I shall have been long dead and gone, boy——to your children, and your
children's children; in that case, sir, you are free to land forthwith."
"Oh, uncle! I did not mean——"
"No words, sir! Yorpy, take his oar, and help pull him ashore."
"But, my dear uncle; I declare to you that——"
"Not a syllable, sir; you have cast open scorn upon the Great
Hydraulic-Hydrostatic Apparatus. Yorpy, put him ashore, Yorpy. It's
shallow here again. Jump out, Yorpy, and wade with him ashore."
"Now, my dear, good, kind uncle, do but pardon me this one time, and I
will say nothing about the apparatus."
"Say nothing about it! When it is my express end and aim it shall be
famous! Put him ashore, Yorpy."
"Nay, uncle, I will not give up my oar. I have an oar in this
matter, and I mean to keep it. You shall not cheat me out my share
of your glory."
"Ah, now there——that's sensible. You may stay, youngster. Pull again
now."
We were all silent for a time, steadily plying our way. At last I
ventured to break water once more.
"I am glad, dear uncle, you have revealed to me at last the nature and
end of your great experiment. It is the effectual draining of swamps;
an attempt, dear uncle, in which, if you do but succeed (as I know you
will), you will earn the glory denied to a Roman emperor. He tried to
drain the Pontine marsh, but failed."
"The world has shot ahead the length of its own diameter since then,"
quoth my uncle, proudly. "If that Roman emperor were here, I'd show him
what can be done in the present enlightened age."
Seeing my good uncle so far mollified now as to be quite
self-complacent, I ventured another remark.
"This is a rather severe, hot pull, dear uncle."
"Glory is not to be gained, youngster, without pulling hard for
it——against the stream, too, as we do now. The natural tendency
of man, in the mass, is to go down with the universal current
into oblivion."
"But why pull so far, dear uncle, upon the present occasion? Why pull
ten miles for it? You do but propose, as I understand it, to put to
the actual test this admirable invention of yours. And could it not
be tested almost anywhere?"
"Simple boy," quoth my uncle, "would you have some malignant spy steal
from me the fruits of ten long years of high-hearted, persevering
endeavor? Solitary in my scheme, I go to a solitary place to test
it. If I fail——for all things are possible——no one out of the family
will know it. If I succeed, secure in the secrecy of my invention,
I can boldly demand any price for its publication."
"Pardon me, dear uncle; you are wiser than I."
"One would think years and gray hairs should bring wisdom, boy."
"Yorpy there, dear uncle; think you his grizzled locks thatch a brain
improved by long life?"
"Am I Yorpy, boy? Keep to your oar!"
Thus padlocked again, I said no further word till the skiff grounded
on the shallows, some twenty yards from the deep-wooded isle.
"Hush!" whispered my uncle, intensely; "not a word now!" and he sat
perfectly still, slowly sweeping with his glance the whole country
around, even to both banks of the here wide-expanded stream.
"Wait till that horseman, yonder, passes!" he whispered again, pointing
to a speck moving along a lofty, river-side road, which perilously wound
on midway up a long line of broken bluffs and cliffs. "There——he's out
of sight now, behind the copse. Quick! Yorpy! Carefully, though! Jump
overboard, and shoulder the box, and——Hold!"
We were all mute and motionless again.
"Ain't that a boy, sitting like Zacchaeus in yonder tree of the orchard on
the other bank? Look, youngster——young eyes are better than old——don't
you see him?"
"Dear uncle, I see the orchard, but I can't see any boy."
"He's a spy——I know he is," suddenly said my uncle, disregardful of my
answer, and intently gazing, shading his eyes with his flattened hand.
"Don't touch the box, Yorpy. Crouch! crouch down, all of ye!"
"Why, uncle——there——see——the boy is only a withered white bough. I see
it very plainly now."
"You don't see the tree I mean," quoth my uncle, with a decided air of
relief, "but never mind; I defy the boy. Yorpy, jump out, and shoulder
the box. And now then, youngster, off with your shoes and stockings,
roll up your trousers legs, and follow me. Carefully, Yorpy, carefully.
That's more precious than a box of gold, mind."
"Heavy as de gelt, anyhow," growled Yorpy, staggering and splashing in
the shallows beneath it.
"There, stop under the bushes there——in among the flags——so——gently,
gently——there, put it down just there. Now, youngster, are you ready?
Follow——tiptoes, tiptoes!"
"I can't wade in this mud and water on my tiptoes, uncle; and I don't
see the need of it either."
"Go ashore, sir——instantly!"
"Why, uncle, I am ashore."
"Peace! follow me, and no more."
Crouching in the water in complete secrecy, beneath the bushes and among
the tall flags, my uncle now stealthily produced a hammer and wrench
from one of his enormous pockets, and presently tapped the box. But the
sound alarmed him.
"Yorpy," he whispered, "go you off to the right, behind the bushes, and
keep watch. If you see anyone coming, whistle softly. Youngster, you do
the same to the left."
We obeyed; and presently, after considerable hammering and supplemental
tinkering, my uncle's voice was heard in the utter solitude, loudly
commanding our return.
Again we obeyed, and now found the cover of the box removed. All
eagerness, I peeped in, and saw a surprising multiplicity of convoluted
metal pipes and syringes of all sorts and varieties, all sizes and
calibres, inextricably inter-wreathed together in one gigantic coil.
It looked like a huge nest of anacondas and adders.
"Now then, Yorpy," said my uncle, all animation, and flushed with the
foretaste of glory, "do you stand this side, and be ready to tip when I
give the word. And do you, youngster, stand ready to do as much for the
other side. Mind, don't budge it the fraction of a barley-corn till I
say the word. All depends on a proper adjustment."
"No fear, uncle. I will be careful as a lady's tweezers."
"I s'ant life de heavy pox," growled old Yorpy, "till de wort pe given;
no fear o' dat."
"Oh, boy," said my uncle now, upturning his face devotionally, while a
really noble gleam irradiated his gray eyes, locks, and wrinkles; "Oh,
boy! this, this is the hour which for ten long years has, in the
prospect, sustained me through all my painstaking obscurity. Fame will
be the sweeter because it comes at the last; the truer, because it
comes to an old man like me, not to a boy like you. Sustainer! I glorify
Thee."
He bowed over his venerable head, and——as I live——something like
a shower-drop somehow fell from my face into the shallows.
"Tip!"
We tipped.
"A little more!"
We tipped a little more.
"A leetle more!"
We tipped a leetle more.
"Just a leetle, very leetle bit more."
With great difficulty we tipped just a leetle, very leetle more.
All this time my uncle was diligently stooping over, and striving to
peep in, up, and under the box where the coiled anacondas and adders
lay; but the machine being now fairly immersed, the attempt was wholly
vain.
He rose erect, and waded slowly all round the box; his countenance firm
and reliant, but not a little troubled and vexed.
It was plain something or other was going wrong. But as I was left in
utter ignorance as to the mystery of the contrivance, I could not tell
where the difficulty lay, or what was the proper remedy.
Once more, still more slowly, still more vexedly, my uncle waded round
the box, the dissatisfaction gradually deepening, but still controlled,
and still with hope at the bottom of it.
Nothing could be more sure than that some anticipated effect had, as
yet, failed to develop itself. Certain I was, too, that the waterline
did not lower about my legs.
"Tip it a leetle bit——very leetle now."
"Dear uncle, it is tipped already as far as it can be. Don't you see it
rests now square on its bottom?"
"You, Yorpy, take your black hoof from under the box!"
This gust of passion on the part of my uncle made the matter seem still
more dubious and dark. It was a bad symptom, I thought.
"Surely you can tip it just a leetle more!"
"Not a hair, uncle."
"Blast and blister the cursed box, then!" roared my uncle, in a terrific
voice, sudden as a squall. Running at the box, he dashed his bare foot
into it, and with astonishing power all but crushed in the side. Then,
seizing the whole box, he disemboweled it of all its anacondas and
adders, and, tearing and wrenching them, flung them right and left over
the water.
"Hold, hold, my dear, dear uncle!——do, for Heaven's sake, desist. Don't
destroy so, in one frantic moment, all your long calm years of devotion
to one darling scheme. Hold, I conjure!"
Moved by my vehement voice and uncontrollable tears, he paused in his
work of destruction, and stood steadfastly eyeing me, or rather blankly
staring at me, like one demented.
"It is not yet wholly ruined, dear uncle; come put it together now. You
have hammer and wrench; put it together again, and try it once more.
While there is life there is hope."
"While there is life hereafter there is despair," he howled.
"Do, do now, dear uncle——here, here, put these pieces together; or, if
that can't be done without more tools, try a section of it——that will
do just as well. Try it once; try, uncle."
My persistent persuasiveness told upon him. The stubborn stump of hope,
plowed at and uprooted in vain, put forth one last miraculous green sprout.
Steadily and carefully pulling out of the wreck some of the more
curious-looking fragments, he mysteriously involved them together, and
then, clearing out the box, slowly inserted them there, and ranging
Yorpy and me as before, bade us tip the box once again.
We did so; and as no perceptible effect yet followed, I was each moment
looking for the previous command to tip the box over yet more, when,
glancing into my uncle's face, I started aghast. It seemed pinched,
shriveled into mouldy whiteness, like a mildewed grape. I dropped the
box, and sprang toward him just in time to prevent his fall.
Leaving the woeful box where we had dropped it, Yorpy and I helped the
old man into the skiff, and silently pulled from Quash Isle.
How swiftly the current now swept us down! How hardly before had we
striven to stem it! I thought of my poor uncle's saying, not an hour
gone by, about the universal drift of the mass of humanity toward utter
oblivion.
"Boy!" said my uncle at last, lifting his head.
I looked at him earnestly, and was gladdened to see that the terrible
blight of his face had almost departed.
"Boy, there's not much left in an old world for an old man to invent."
I said nothing.
"Boy, take my advice, and never try to invent anything but——happiness."
I said nothing.
"Boy, about ship, and pull back for the box."
"Dear uncle!"
"It will make a good wood-box, boy. And faithful old Yorpy can sell
the old iron for tobacco-money."
"Dear massa! dear old massa! dat be very fust time in de ten long 'ear
yoo hab mention kindly old Yorpy. I tank yoo, dear old massa; I tank
yoo so kindly. Yoo is yourself agin in de ten long 'ear."
"Aye, long ears enough," sighed my uncle; "Æsopian ears. But it's
all over now. Boy, I'm glad I've failed. I say, boy, failure has
made a good old man of me. It was horrible at first, but I'm glad
I've failed. Praise be to God for the failure!"
His face kindled with a strange, rapt earnestness. I have never
forgotten that look. If the event made my uncle a good old man, as
he called it, it made me a wise young one. Example did for me the
work of experience.
When some years had gone by, and my dear old uncle began to fail, and,
after peaceful days of autumnal content, was gathered gently to his
fathers——faithful old Yorpy closing his eyes——as I took my last look at
his venerable face, the pale resigned lips seemed to move. I seemed to
hear again his deep, fervent cry——"Praise be to God for the failure!"
