Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/511

1858.] Plain food is quite enough for me; Three courses are as good as ten;-- If Nature can subsist on three, Thank Heaven for three. Amen! I always thought cold victual nice;-- My choice would be vanilla-ice.

I care not much for gold or land;-- Give me a mortgage here and there,-- Some good bank-stock,--some note of hand, Or trifling railroad share;-- I only ask that Fortune send A _little_ more than I shall spend.

Honors are silly toys, I know, And titles are but empty names;-- I would, _perhaps_, be Plenipo,-- But only near St. James;-- I'm very sure I should not care To fill our Gubernator's chair.

Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin To care for such unfruitful things;-- One good-sized diamond in a pin,-- Some, _not so large_, in rings,-- A ruby, and a pearl, or so, Will do for me;--I laugh at show.

My dame should dress in cheap attire; (Good, heavy silks are never dear;)-- I own perhaps I _might_ desire Some shawls of true cashmere,-- Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.

I would not have the horse I drive So fast that folks must stop and stare; An easy gait--two, forty-five-- Suits me; I do not care;-- Perhaps, for just a _single spurt_, Some seconds less would do no hurt.

Of pictures, I should like to own Titians and Raphaels three or four,-- I love so much their style and tone,-- One Turner, and no more (A landscape,--foreground golden dirt; The sunshine painted with a squirt).

Of books but few,--some fifty score For daily use, and bound for wear; The rest upon an upper floor;-- Some _little_ luxury _there_ Of red morocco's gilded gleam, And vellum rich as country cream.

Busts, cameos, gems,--such things as these, Which others often show for pride, _I_ value for their power to please, And selfish churls deride;-- _One_ Stradivarius, I confess, _Two_ Meerschaums, I would fain possess.

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;-- Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But _all_ must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,-- I ask but _one_ recumbent chair.

Thus humble let me live and die, Nor long for Midas' golden touch; If Heaven more generous gifts deny, I shall not miss them _much_.-- Too grateful for the blessing lent Of simple tastes and mind content!

(_A Parenthesis_.)

I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the schoolhouse-steps.

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public.

I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and marrow.--Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of it.--Proud she may