Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/752

744 But my hamstrings grow loose, and I shake and I shake,

At the sight of the dreadful Old Man;

Yea, I quiver and quake, and I take, and I take,

To my legs with what vigor I can!

Oh, the dreadful Old Man of the Sea, of the Sea!

He's come back like the Wandering Jew!

He has had his cold claw upon me, upon me,—

And be sure that he'll have it on you!

—Pardon my abruptness. In medias res is the rule, you know, formose puer, my excellent old boy! Bring out the Saint Peray, if there be a bottle of that flavorous and flavous tipple in your extensive cellars,—which I doubt, since you never had more than a single flask thereof, presented to you by a returned traveller, who bought it, to my certain knowledge, of a mixer in Congress Street, in Boston. We drank it, O ale-knight, ''sub teg. pat. fag.'' more than five years ago, of a summer evening, in dear old Cambridge, then undisfigured by the New Chapel. That it did not kill us as dead as Stilpo of Megara (vide Seneca de Const. for a notice of that foolish old Stoic) was entirely owing to my abstinence and your naturally strong constitution; for I remember that you bolted nearly the whole of it. You proved yourself to be a Mithridates of white lead; while I—but I say no more. I could quote you an appropriate passage from the tippler of Teos, and in the original Greek, if I had not long ago pawned my copy of Anacreon (Barnes, 12 mo. Cantab. 1721) to a fellow in Cornhill, who sold it on the very next day to a total-abstinence tutor. Episodically I may say, that the purchaser read it to such purpose, that within a week he rose to the honor of sleeping in the station-house, from which keep he was rescued by a tearful friend, who sent him to the country, solitude, and spruce-beer.

"It is useless," says the Staggerite, "for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses." It may also be useless for a sober man to try to write letters to "The New York Scorpion." In your perilous and unhappy situation you must be a rule unto yourself. But remember, O Bobus, the saying of Montaigne, that "apoplexy will knock down Socrates as well as a porter." You are not exactly Socrates; but your best friends have remarked that you are getting to be exceedingly stout. Stick to your cups, but forbear, as Milton says, "to interpose them oft." In medio tutissimus,—Half a noggin is better than no wine. For the sake of the dear old times, spare me the pain of seeing you a reformed inebriate or a Martha Washington!

Between Drunken Barnaby and Neal Dow there is, I trust, a position which a gentleman may occupy. Because I have a touch of Charles Surface in my constitution, I need not make a Toodles of myself. So bring out the smallest canakin and let it clink softly,—for I have news to tell you.

I remember, Bob, my boy, once upon a certain Fourth of July,—I leave the particular Fourth as indefinite as Mr. Webster's "some Fourth" upon which we were to go to war with England,—while there was a tintinnabulation of the bells, and an ear-splitting tantivy of