(207.) AURELIA'S YOUNG MAN. Mark Twain is the pseudonym adopted by Samuel Langhorne Clemens. It is said that during a journey down the Mississippi to New Orleans in 1855, Mr. Clemens made friends with the steamboat pilots, and was soon qualified to become himself a river pilot. In this employment he was often directed to "mark twain," that is, that there were two fathoms water; and from this he took his nom de plume. [This is a good-natured satire upon the style in which certain communications are made to editors of weekly periodicals.] When Aurelia was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior. They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives, and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to be characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became infected with an eruption of the most virulent type, and when he recovered from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mould, and his comeliness gone for ever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial. The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge, while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee. Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to reform. And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the premature discharge of a Fourth-of-July cannon, and within three months he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she did, that he could not last for ever under this disastrous process of reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose, that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an alarming depreciation. Still her brave soul bore her up, and she resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little longer. Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed it: Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken off; but, after wavering a while, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not discover that Breckinridge was to blame. So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg. It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience, and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her relatives and renewed her betrothal Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred. There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, of New Jersey. He was hurrying home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair for ever, and in that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had spared his head. At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling-she still loves what is left of him-but her parents are bitterly opposed to the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably. "Now, what should she do?" she asks, with painful and anxious solicitude. It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man; and I feel that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye, and a wig, and give him another show; give him ninety days without grace, and if he does not break his neck in the meantime, marry him and take the chances. It does not seem to me that there is much risk, any way, Aurelia, because if he sticks to his infernal propensity for damaging himself every time he sees a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then you are all right, you know, married or single. If married, the wooden legs, and such other valuables as he may possess, revert to the widow, and you see you sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Aurelia! I have thought the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to feel exasperated at him. (208.) THE FIRST AND THE LAST DINNER. Twelve friends, much about the same age, and fixed by their pursuits, their family connections, and other local interests, as permanent inhabitants of the metropolis, agreed, one day, when they were drinking wine at an hotel, to institute an annual dinner among themselves, under the following regulations: That they should dine alternately at each others' houses on the first and last day of the year; and the first bottle of wine uncorked at the first dinner should be recorked and put away, to be drank by him who should be the last of their number: that they should never admit a new member; that, when one died, eleven should meet, and when another died ten should meet, and so on; and when only one remained, he should, on these two days, dine by himself, and sit the usual hours at his solitary table; but the first time he had so dined, lest it should be the only one, he should then uncork the first bottle, and in the first glass drink to the memory of all who were gone. Some thirty years had now glided away, and only ten remained; but the stealing hand of time had written sundry changes in most legible characters. Raven locks had become grizzled; two or three heads had not as many locks as may be reckoned in a walk of half a mile; one was actually covered with a brown wig; the crow's feet were visible in the corner of the eye; good old port and warm Madeira carried it against hock, claret, red Burgundy, and champaigne; stews, hashes and ragouts, grew into favour; crusts were rarely called for to relish the cheese after dinner; conversation was less boisterous, and it turned chiefly upon politics and the state of the funds, or the value of landed property; apologies were made for coming in thick shoes and warm stockings; the doors and windows were more carefully provided with list and sand-bags; the fire is in more request; and a quiet game of whist filled up the hours that were wont to be devoted to drinking, singing, and riotous merriment. To rubbers, a cup of coffee, and at home by eleven o'clock, was the usual cry, when the fifth or sixth glass had gone round after the removal of the cloth. At parting, too, there was now a long ceremony in the hall—buttoning up great-coats, tying on woollen comforters, fixing silk handkerchiefs over the mouth and up to the ears, and grasping sturdy walking-canes to support unsteady feet. Their fiftieth anniversary came. Four little old men, of withered appearance and decrepit walk, with cracked voices, and dim, rayless eyes, sat down, by the mercy of Heaven, (as they tremulously declared,) to celebrate, for the fiftieth time, the first day of the year —to observe the frolic compact, which, half a century before, they had entered into at the Star and Garter at Richmond. Eight were in their graves. The four that remained stood upon its confines. Yet they chirped cheerily over their glass, though they could scarcely carry it to their lips, if more than half full; and cracked their jokes, though they articulated their words with difficulty, and heard each other with still greater difficulty. They mumbled, they chattered, they laughed, (if a sort of strangled wheezing might be called a laugh,) and as the wine sent their icy blood in warmer pulses through their veins, they talked of their past as if it were but a yesterday that had slipped by them; and of their future as if it were a busy century that lay before them. At length came the last dinner; and the survivor of the twelve, upon whose head fourscore and ten winters had showered their snow, ate his solitary meal. It was in his house, and at his table, they celebrated the first. In his cellar, too, had remained, for more than fifty years, the bottle they had then uncorked, recorked, and which he was that day to uncork again. It stood beside him. With a feeble and reluctant grasp, he took the "frail memorial" of a youthful vow, and for a moment memory was faithful to her office. She threw open the long vista of buried years; and his heart travelled through them all. Their lusty and blithesome spring,—their bright and fervid summer,—their ripe and temperate autumn,-their chill, but not too frozen winter. He saw, as in a mirror, one by one, the laughing companions of that merry hour at Richmond had dropped into eternity. He felt the loneliness of his condition, he had eschewed marriage, and in the veins of no living creature ran a drop of blood whose source was in his own. As he drained the glass which he had filled, "to the memory of those who were gone," the tears slowly trickled down the deep furrows of his aged face. He had thus fulfilled one part of his vow; he prepared himself to discharge the other, by sitting the usual number of hours at his desolate table. With a heavy heart he resigned himself to the gloom of his own thoughts; a lethargic sleep stole over him-his head fell upon his bosom-confused images crowded into his mind - he babbled to himself-was silent-his servant entered the room, alarmed by a noise which he heard he found his master stretched upon the carpet at the foot of the easy-chair, out of which he had slipped in an apoplectic fit. He never spoke again, this was the last dinner.-Anon. (209.) A PARENTAL ODE TO MY INFANT SON. [An author is supposed to be writing an ode on childhood, and his mind is constantly distracted by the presence of the child whom he has set before him to inspire his ideas.] (181) Thou happy, happy elf! (But stop-first let me kiss away that tear) (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin, Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air, (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore afire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou cherub-but of earth; Fit playfellow for fays by moonlight pale, (That dog will bite him if he pulls its tail!) N |