Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/503

1858.] a gay crowd of polkers and waltzers at a ball,—or an oyster bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak and hood,—shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,—like the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people not to come too near him,—might furnish a subject for a planetary joke not unworthy of translation into the language of our dim earth.

One need not be a lonely bachelor, nor a lonely spinster, in order to live alone. The loneliest are those who mingle with men bodily and yet have no contact with them spiritually. There is no desert solitude equal to that of a crowded city where you have no sympathies. I might here quote Paris again, in illustration,—or, indeed, any foreign city. A friend of mine had an atelier once in the top of a house in the Rue St. Honoré. He knew not a soul in the house nor in the neighborhood. There was a German tailor below, who once made him a pair of pantaloons,—so they were connected sartorically and pecuniarily, and, when they met, recognized one another: and there was the concierge below, who knew when he came in and went out,—that was all. All day long the deafened roar of carts and carriages, and the muffled cry of the marchands des légumes, were faintly heard from below. And in an adjoining room a female voice (my friend could never tell whether child's or woman's, for he never saw any one) overflowed in tones of endearment on some unresponding creature,—he could never guess whether it was a baby, or a bird, or a cat, or a dog, or a lizard, (the French have such pets sometimes,) or an enchanted prince, like that poor half-marble fellow in the "Arabian Nights." In that garret the painter experienced for six months the perfection of Parisian solitude. Now I dare say he or I might have found social sympathies, by hunting them up; but he didn't, and I dare say he was to blame, as I should be in the same situation,—and I am willing to place myself in the same category with the menagerie-loving old lady, above referred to, omitting the feathered and canine pets.

As to my mesmerico-telegraphic discovery, it may pass for what it is worth. I shall submit it at least to my cousin Moses, as soon as he returns from the South. People may believe it or not. People may say it may be of practical use, or not. I shall overhaul my terminologies, and, with the "metaphysical aid" of my cousin, fit it with a scientific name which shall overtop all the ologies.

Having dressed my new Fact in a respectable and scholarlike coat, I shall let him take his chance with the judicious public,—and content myself, for the present, with making him a sort of humble colporteur of the valuable tract on Human Brotherhood of which I have herewith furnished a few dry specimens.