Kitabı oku: «The Humors of Falconbridge», sayfa 20

The Vagaries of Nature

Nature seems to have her fitful, frightful, and funny moods, as well as all her children. Now she gets up a stone bridge, the gigantic proportions and the symmetrical development of which attract great attention from all tourists and historians who venture into or speak of "old Virginia." The old dame goes down far into the bowels of Mother Earth, in Kentucky, and builds herself, silently and alone, a stupendous under-ground palace, that laughs to scorn the puny efforts of man in that branch of business. She gets up sugar-loaf mountains, pillars of salt, great granite breastworks, and stone towers; hews out figure-heads, old men's noses on the beetling cliffs of New Hampshire, and throws up rocky palisades along the Hudson, that win wonder and delight from the floating million. Instances out of all number might be raked up, home and abroad, to show how the old dame has cut didoes in the prosecution of her manifold duties. But in Australia, it would seem, nature has taken most especial pains to appear slightly ridiculous or very eccentric.

Old Captain Rocksalt informs us – and there is always wit, wisdom, and truth in the old man's stories – that he made voyages to Australia many times within the past thirty years, and having visited about all the sea-ports of the Continent, lived and almost died in Australia, his notes are worthy of attention. Capt. Cook discovered and named Botany Bay, the name originating from the fact that the land was covered with a luxurious growth of Botanical specimens. The Dutch discovered and named Van Diemen's Land. The English at once concluded to make Botany Bay a penal colony, and the first living freight of criminals and soldiers sent out, was some 700 in number, in 1788; but Capt. Phillip, the commander of the fleet, being dissatisfied with the looks of Botany Bay, hunted up a better place, and sailed to it. When Capt. Cook was cruising off there, one of his sailors, on the look out, cried, "Land ho!"

Cook was over his wine and beef, in the cabin, and it took him some time to "tumble up" on deck.

"Where the deuce is your land, eh?" bawls the old cruiser.

"Larboard beam, sir!" responds the "lookout;" and, sure enough, a long, faint streak of land was visible from deck. The "lookout" announced a harbor, head-lands, &c.; but the rum old captain, not being able to see any such indication, with a chuckle, says he —

"You booby! harbor, eh? Ha, ha! well, we'll call it a port, you powder monkey —Port Jackson!"

And faith, so the lookout, Jackson, became sponsor to the finest harbor in all Australia; for Capt. Phillip, upon rediscovering the harbor, took his fleet into it, and then and there began the now flourishing city of Sydney.

Australia is an Island, lying opposite another – New Zealand. It is on the Indian Ocean, south side, while the east opens to the Pacific. Australia claims to contain a superficial area of over three million square miles, part desert, rather mountainous, and all being in one of the finest climates on the face of the earth. The air is dry, the soil light and sandy; the high winds stir up the dust and fine sand, and make ophthalmy the only positive ill peculiar to the country. Sheep-grazing, wool-growing, and boiling down sheep and cattle for tallow was the great business of the country from its earliest settlement up to 1851, when the gold fever swept the land.

Australia was inhabited by over 100,000 natives, black cannibals of the ugliest description; but at this day not a hundred of them remain. The natives were exceeding stupid and useless; the first settlers, who, as Capt. Rocksalt observes, were jail-birds and scape-gallows, were not very dainty in dealing with the obnoxious natives; so they determined to get rid of them as fast and easy as possible. For this purpose, they used to gather a horde of them together, and give them poisoned bread and rum, and so kill them off by hundreds. It was a sharp sort of practice, but the ends seemed to justify the means.

Gold, "laying around loose," as it did, was, no doubt, discovered years ago; but not in quantities to lead the ignorant to believe money could be made hunting it. People may be stupid; but it requires a far greener capacity than most of them would confess to – at least, ten years ago – to make them believe gold could be picked up in chunks out in the open fields.

But Australia began to be populated; by convicts first; and then by far better people; though the very worst felons sent out often became decent and respectable men, which is indeed a great "puff," we think, for the healthfulness of the climate. A convict shepherd now and then used to bring into Sydney small lumps of gold and sell them to the watch-makers, and as he refused to say where or how he got them, it was suspicioned that he had secreted guineas or jewelry somewhere, and occasionally melted them for sale.

However, one day the thing broke out, nearly simultaneously, all over Australia. Gold was lying around everywhere. The rocks, ledges, bars, gullies, and river-banks, which were daily familiar to the eyes of thousands, all of a sudden turned up bright and shining gold. Old Dame Nature must have laughed in her sleeve to see the fun and uproar – the scrabble and rush she had caused in her vast household.

"It did beat all!" exclaims the old Captain. "In forty-eight hours Sydney was half-depopulated, Port Phillip nearly desolate, while the interior villages or towns – Bathurst, &c., were run clean out!"

Stores were shut up, the clerks running to the mines, and the proprietors after the clerks. Mechanics dropped work and put out; servants left without winking, leaving people to wait on themselves; doctors left what few patients they had, and bolted for the fields of Ophir; lawyers packed up and cut stick, following their clients and victims to the brighter fields of "causes" and effects. The newspapers became so short-handed that dailies were knocked into weeklies, and the weeklies into cocked hats, or something near it – mere eight-by-ten "handbills."

These "discoveries" wrought as sudden as singular a revolution in men, manners, and things. As we said before, Australia was the very apex of singularities in the way of Dame Nature's fancy-work, long before the gold mania broke out; but now she seemed bent on a general and miscellaneous freak, making the staid, matter-of-fact Englishmen as full of caprice as the land they were living in.

"Only look at it!" exclaims the Captain: "the day comes in the middle of our nights! When we're turning in at home, they are turning out in Australia. Summer begins in the middle of winter; and for snow storms they get rain, thunder and lightning. About the time we are getting used to our woollens and hot fires of the holidays, they are roasting with heat, and going around in linen jackets and wilted dickeys. The land is full of flowers of every hue, gay and beautiful, gorgeous and sublime to look at, but as senseless to the smell and as inodorous as so many dried chips. The swans are numerous, but jet black. The few animals in the country are all provided with pockets in their 'overcoats,' or skin, in which to stow their young ones, or provender. Some of the rivers really appear," says the Captain, "to run up stream! I was completely taken down," says the Captain, "by a bunch of the finest pears you ever saw. Myself and a friend were up the country, and I sees a fine pear tree, breaking down with as elegant-looking fruit as I ever saw.

"'Well, by ginger,' says I, 'them are about as fine pears as I've seen these twenty years!'

"'Yes,' says my friend, who was a resident in the country; 'perhaps you would like to try a few?'

"'That I shall,' says I; so I ups and knocks down a few, and it was a job to get them down, I tell you; and when I had one between my teeth I gave it a nip – see there, two teeth broke off," says the Captain, showing us the fact; "the fine pears were mere wood!

"The country is well supplied with fine birds; but they are dumb as beetles, sir – never heard a bird sing or whistle a note in Australia. The trees make no shade, the leaves hang from the stems edge up, and look just as if they had been whipped into shreds by a gale of wind; and you rarely see a tree with a bit of bark on it.

"But what completely upset me, was the cherries, sir – fine cherries, plenty of them, but the stones were all on the outside! The bees have no stings, the snakes no fangs, and the eagles are all white. The north wind is hot, the south wind cold. Our longest days are in summer; but in Australia, sir, the shortest days come in summer, and the longest in winter; and," says the Captain, "I can't begin to tell you how many curious didoes nature seems to cut, in that country; but, altogether, it's one of the queerest countries I ever did see, by ginger!"

And we have come to the conclusion – it is. If the gold continues to "turn up" in such boulders and "nuggets" as recently reported, Australia is bound to be the richest and most densely populated, as well as queerest country known to man.

A General Disquisition on "Hinges."

Did you ever see a real, true, unadulterated specimen of Down East, enter a store, or other place of every-day business, for the purpose of "looking around," or dicker a little? They are "coons," they are, upon all such occasions. We noted one of these "critters" in the store of a friend of ours, on Blackstone Street, recently. He was a full bloom Yankee– it stuck out all over him. He sauntered into the store, as unconcerned, quietly, and familiarly, as though in no great hurry about anything in particular, and killing time, for his own amusement. Absalom, Abijah, Ananias, Jedediah, or Jeremiah, or whatever else his name may have been, wore a very large fur cap, upon a very small and close-cut head; his features were mightily pinched up; there was a cunning expression about the corner of his eyes, not unlike the embodiment of – "catch a weazel asleep!" while the smallness of his mouth, thinness and blue cast of his chin and lips, bespoke a keen, calculating, pinch a four-pence until it squeaked like a frightened locomotive temperament! His "boughten" sack coat, fitting him all over, similar to a wet shirt on a broom-handle, was pouched out at the pockets with any quantity of numerous articles, in the way of books and boots, pamphlets and perfumery, knick-knacks and gim-cracks, calico, candy, &c. His vest was short, but that deficiency was made up in superfluity of dickey, and a profusion of sorrel whiskers. Having got into the store, he very leisurely walked around, viewing the hardware, separately and minutely, until one of the clerks edged up to him:

"What can we do for you to-day, sir?"

Looking quarteringly at the clerk for about two full minutes, says he —

"I'd dunno, just yet, mister, what yeou kin do."

"Those are nice hinges, real wrought," says the clerk, referring to an article the "customer" had just been gazing at with evident interest.

"Rale wrought?" he asked, after another lapse of two minutes.

"They are, yes, sir," answered the clerk. Then followed another pause; the Yankee with both his hands sunk deep into his trowsers' pockets, and viewing the hinges at a respectful distance, in profound calculation, three minutes full.

"They be, eh?" he at length responded.

"Yes, sir, warranted," replied the clerk. Another long pause. The Yankee approached the hinges, two steps – picks up a bundle of the article, looks knowingly at them two minutes —

"Yeou don't say so?"

"No doubt about that, at all," the clerk replies, rather pertly, as he moves off to wait upon another customer, who bought some eight or ten dollars' worth of cutlery and tools, paid for them, and cleared out, while our Yankee genius was still reconnoitering the hinges.

"I say, mister, where's them made?" inquires the Yankee.

"In England, sir," replied the clerk.

"Not in Neuw England, I'll bet a fo'pence!"

"No, not here – in Europe."

"I knowed they warn't made areound here, by a darn'd sight!"

"We've plenty of American hinges, if you wish them," said the clerk.

"I've seen hinges made in aour place, better'n them."

"Perhaps you have. We have finer hinges," answered the clerk.

"I 'spect you have; I don't call them anything great, no how!"

"Well, here's a better article; better hinges – "

"Well, them's pooty nice," said the Yankee, interrupting the clerk, "but they're small hinges."

"We have all sizes of them, sir, from half an inch to four inches."

"You hev?" inquiringly observed the Yankee, as the clerk again left him and the hinges, to wait on another customer, who bought a keg of nails, &c., and left.

"I see you've got brass hinges, tew!" again continued the Yankee, after musing to himself for twenty minutes, full.

"O, yes, plenty of them," obligingly answered the clerk.

"How's them brass 'uns work?"

"Very well, I guess; used for lighter purposes," said the clerk.

"Put 'em on desks, and cubber-doors, and so on?"

"Yes; they are used in a hundred ways."

"Hinges," says the Yankee, after a pause, "ain't considered, I guess, a very neuw invenshun?"

"I should think not," half smilingly replied the clerk.

"D'yeou ever see wooden hinges, mister?"

"Never," candidly responded the clerk.

"Well, I hev," resolutely echoed the Yankee.

"You have, eh?"

"E' yes, plenty on 'em – eout in Illinoi; seen fellers eout there that never seen an iron hinge or a razor in their lives!"

"I wasn't aware our western friends were so far behind the times as that," said the clerk.

"It's a fact– dreadful, tew, to be eout in a place like that," continued the Yankee. "I kept school eout there, nigh on to a year; couldn't stand it – "

"Ah, indeed!" mechanically echoed the poor clerk.

"No, sir; dreadful place, some parts of Illinoi; folks air almighty green; couldn't tell how old they air, nuff on 'em; when they get mighty old and bald-headed, they stop and die off, of their own accord."

"Illinois must be a healthy place?" observed the clerk.

"Healthy place! I guess not, mister; fever and ague sweetens 'em, I tell you. O, it's dreadful, fever and ague is!"

"That caused you to leave, I suppose?" said the clerk.

"Well, e' yes, partly; the climate, morals, and the water, kind o' went agin me. The big boys had a way o' fightin', cursin', and swearin', pitchin' apple cores and corn at the master, that didn't exactly suit me. Finally, one day, at last, the boys got so confeounded sassy, and I got the fever and agy so bad, that they shook daown the school-house chimney, and I shook my hair nearly all eout by the roots, with the agy– so I packed up and slid!"

The clerk being again called away to wait on a fresh customer, the Yankee was left to his meditations and survey. Having some twenty more minutes to walk around the store, and examine the stock, he brought up opposite the clerk, who was busy tying up gimlets, screws, and stuff, for a carpenter's apprentice. Yankee explodes again.

"Got a big steore of goods layin' areound here, haven't yeou?"

"We have, sir, a fair assortment," said the clerk.

"Them Illinoi folks haven't no idee what a place this Boston is; they haven't. I tried to larn 'em a few things towards civilization, but 'twaren't no sort o' use tryin'!"

"New country yet; the Illinois folks will brighten up after a while, I guess," said the clerk. "Did you wish to examine any other sort of hinges, sir?" he continued.

"Hain't I seen all yeou hev?"

"O, no; here we have another variety of hinges, steel, copper, plated, &c. These are fine for parlor doors, &c.," said the clerk.

"E' yes them air nice, I swow, mister; look like rale silver. I 'spect them cost somethin'?"

"They come rather high," said the clerk, "but we've got them as low as you can buy them in the market."

"I want to know!" quietly echoes the Yankee.

"Yes, sir; what do you wish to use them for?" says the clerk.

"Use 'em?" responded the Yankee.

"Yes; what priced hinges did you require?"

"What priced hinges? – "

"Exactly! Tell me what you require them for, and I can soon come at the sort of hinges you require," said the clerk, making an effort to come to a climax.

"Who said I wanted any hinges?"

"Who said you wanted any? Why, don't you want to buy hinges?"

"Buy hinges? Why, no; I don't want nothin'; I only came in to look areound!"

Having looked around, the imperturbable Yankee stepped out, leaving the poor clerk – quite flabbergasted!

Miseries of Bachelorhood

Dabster says he would not mind living as a bachelor, but when he comes to think that bachelors must die – that they have got to go down to the grave "without any body to cry for them" – it gives him a chill that frost-bites his philosophy. Dabster was seen on Tuesday evening, going convoy to a milliner. Putting this fact to the other, and we think we "smell something," as the fellow said when his shirt took fire.

The Science of "Diddling."

Jeremy Diddlers have existed from time immemorial down, as traces of them are found in all ancient and modern history, from the Bible to Shakspeare, from Shakspeare to the revelations of George Gordon Byron, who strutted his brief hour, acted his part, and – vanished. Diddler is derived from the word diddle, to do– every body who has not yet made his debut to the Elephant. We believe the word has escaped the attention of the ancient lexicographers, and even Worcester, and the still more durable "Webster," have no note of the word, its derivation, or present sense.

A "Jeremy Diddler" is, in fact, one of your first-class vagabonds; a fellow who has been spoiled by indulgent parents, while they were in easy circumstances. Trained up to despise labor, not capacitated by nature or inclination to pass current in a profession, he finds himself at twenty possessed of a genteel address, a respectable wardrobe, a few friends, and – no visible means of support. There are but two ways about it – take to the highway, or become a Diddler – a sponge – and, like woodcock, live on "suction." The early part of a Diddler's life is chiefly spent among the ladies; – they being strongly susceptible of flattering attentions, especially those of "a nice young man," your Diddler lives and flourishes among them like a fighting cock. Diddler's "heyday" being over, he next becomes a politician – an old Hunker; attends caucusses and conventions, dinners and inaugurations. Never aspiring to matrimony among the ladies, he remains an "old bach;" never hoping for office under government, he never gets any; and when, at last, both youth and energies are wasted, Diddler dons a white neckcloth, combs his few straggling hairs behind his ears, and, dressed in a well-brushed but shocking seedy suit of sable, he jines church and turns "old fogie," carries around the plate, does chores for the parson, becomes generally useful to the whole congregation, and finally shuffles off his mortal coil, and ends his eventful and useless life in the most becoming manner.

Cities are the only fields subservient to the successful practice of a respectable Diddler. New York affords them a very fair scope for operation, but of all the American cities, New Orleans is the Diddler's paradise! The mobile state of society, the fluctuations of men and business, the impossibility of knowing any thing or any body there for any considerable period, gives the Diddler ample scope for the exercise of his peculiar abilities to great effect. He dines almost sumptuously at the daily lunches set at the splendid drinking saloons and cafes, he lives for a month at a time on the various upward-bound steamboats. In New Orleans, the departure of a steamer for St. Louis, Cincinnati or Pittsburg, is announced for such an hour "to-day" – positively; Diddler knows it's "all a gag" to get passengers and baggage hurried on, and the steamer keeps going for two to five days before she's gone; so he comes on board, registers one of his commonplace aliases, gets his state-room and board among the crowd of real passengers, up to the hour of the boat's shoving out, then he – slips ashore, and points his boots to another boat. Many's the Diddler who's passed a whole season thus, dead-heading it on the steamers of the Crescent City. Sometimes the Diddler learns bad habits in the South, from being a mere Diddler, which is morally bad enough; he comes in contact with professional gamblers, plunges into the most pernicious and abominable of vices – gambles, cheats, swindles, and finally, as a grand tableau to his utter damnation here and hereafter, opens a store or a bank with a crowbar – or commits murder.