第63章

One of our boarders--perhaps more than one was concerned in it--sent in some questions to me, the other day, which, trivial as some of them are, I felt bound to answer.

1.--Whether a lady was ever known to write a letter covering only a single page?

To this I answered, that there was a case on record where a lady had but half a sheet of paper and no envelope; and being obliged to send through the post-office, she covered only one side of the paper (crosswise, lengthwise, and diagonally).

2.--What constitutes a man a gentleman?

To this I gave several answers, adapted to particular classes of questioners.

a.Not trying to be a gentleman.

b.Self-respect underlying courtesy.

c.Knowledge and observance of the fitness of things in social intercourse.

d.f.s.d.(as many suppose.)

3.--Whether face or figure is most attractive in the female sex?

Answered in the following epigram, by a young man about town:

Quoth Tom, "Though fair her features be, It is her figure pleases me.""What may her figure be?" I cried.

"One hundred thousand!" he replied.

When this was read to the boarders, the young man John said he should like a chance to "step up" to a figger of that kind, if the girl was one of the right sort.

The landlady said them that merried for money didn't deserve the blessin' of a good wife.Money was a great thing when them that had it made a good use of it.She had seen better days herself, and knew what it was never to want for anything.One of her cousins merried a very rich old gentleman, and she had heerd that he said he lived ten year longer than if he'd staid by himself without anybody to take care of him.There was nothin' like a wife for nussin' sick folks and them that couldn't take care of themselves.

The young man John got off a little wink, and pointed slyly with his thumb in the direction of our diminutive friend, for whom he seemed to think this speech was intended.

If it was meant for him, he did n't appear to know that it was.

Indeed, he seems somewhat listless of late, except when the conversation falls upon one of those larger topics that specially interest him, and then he grows excited, speaks loud and fast, sometimes almost savagely,--and, I have noticed once or twice, presses his left hand to his right side, as if there were something that ached, or weighed, or throbbed in that region.

While he speaks in this way, the general conversation is interrupted, and we all listen to him.Iris looks steadily in his face, and then he will turn as if magnetized and meet the amber eyes with his own melancholy gaze.I do believe that they have some kind of understanding together, that they meet elsewhere than at our table, and that there is a mystery, which is going to break upon us all of a sudden, involving the relations of these two persons.From the very first, they have taken to each other.The one thing they have in common is the heroic will.In him, it shows itself in thinking his way straightforward, in doing battle for "free trade and no right of search" on the high seas of religious controversy, and especially in fighting the battles of his crooked old city.In her, it is standing up for her little friend with the most queenly disregard of the code of boarding-house etiquette.People may say or look what they like,--she will have her way about this sentiment of hers.

The Poor Relation is in a dreadful fidget whenever the Little Gentleman says anything that interferes with her own infallibility.

She seems to think Faith must go with her face tied up, as if she had the toothache,--and that if she opens her mouth to the quarter the wind blows from, she will catch her "death o' cold."The landlady herself came to him one day, as I have found out, and tried to persuade him to hold his tongue.--The boarders was gettin'

uneasy,--she said,--and some of 'em would go, she mistrusted, if he talked any more about things that belonged to the ministers to settle.She was a poor woman, that had known better days, but all her livin' depended on her boarders, and she was sure there was n't any of 'em she set so much by as she did by him; but there was them that never liked to hear about sech things, except on Sundays.

The Little Gentleman looked very smiling at the landlady, who smiled even more cordially in return, and adjusted her cap-ribbon with an unconscious movement,--a reminiscence of the long-past pairing-time, when she had smoothed her locks and softened her voice, and won her mate by these and other bird-like graces.--My dear Madam,--he said,--I will remember your interests, and speak only of matters to which I am totally indifferent.--I don't doubt he meant this; but a day or two after, something stirred him up, and I heard his voice uttering itself aloud, thus:

-It must be done, Sir! --he was saying,--it must be done! Our religion has been Judaized, it has been Romanized, it has been Orientalized, it has been Anglicized, and the time is at hand when it must be AMERICANIZED! Now, Sir, you see what Americanizing is in politics;--it means that a man shall have a vote because he is a man,--and shall vote for whom he pleases, without his neighbor's interference.If he chooses to vote for the Devil, that is his lookout;--perhaps he thinks the Devil is better than the other candidates; and I don't doubt he's often right, Sir.Just so a man's soul has a vote in the spiritual community; and it doesn't do, Sir, or it won't do long, to call him "schismatic" and "heretic" and those other wicked names that the old murderous Inquisitors have left us to help along "peace and goodwill to men"!