Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/465

1858.]  O fearful heart and troubled brain!
 * Take hope and strength from this,—

That Nature never hints in vain,
 * Nor prophesies amiss.

Her wild birds sing the same sweet stave,
 * Her lights and airs are given,

Alike to playground and the grave,—
 * And over both is Heaven.

so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great many conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of different tone and on different subjects. The talks are like the breakfasts,—sometimes dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must take them as they come. How can I do what all these letters ask me to? No. 1. wants serious and earnest thought. No. 2. (letter smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; wants me to tell a "good storey" that he has copied out for me. (I suppose two letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand)—more poetry. No. 4. wants something that would be of use to a practical man. (Prahctical mahn he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented)—"more sentiment,"—"heart's outpourings."

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their character will depend on many accidents,—a good deal on the particular persons in the company to whom they were addressed. It so happens that those which follow were mainly intended for the divinity-student and the school-mistress; though others, whom I need not mention, saw fit to interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conversation. This is one of my privileges as a talker; and of course, if I was not talking for our whole company, I don't expect all the readers of this periodical to be interested in my notes of what was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will rather like this vein,—possibly prefer it to a livelier one,—serious young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate parenthesis from years of age to  inclusive.

Another privilege of talking is to mis-quote.—Of course it wasn't Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair,—but Iris. It was the former lady's regular business, but Dido had used herself ungenteelly, and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on the point of etiquette. So the bathycolpian Here—Juno, in Latin—sent down Iris instead. But I was mightily pleased to see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy articles for this magazine misquoted Campbell's line without any excuse. "Waft us home the message" of course it ought to be. Will he be duly grateful for the correction?]

The more we study the body and the mind, the more we find both to be governed, not by, but according to laws, such as we observe in the larger universe.—You think you know all about walking,—don't you, now? Well, how