-Oh, as to that, the eating of one's kind is a matter of taste, but the roasting of them has been rather more a specialty of our own particular belief than of any other I am acquainted with.If you broil a saint, I don't see why, if you have a mind, you shouldn't serve him up at your Pop! went the little piece of artillery.Don't tell me it was accident.I know better.You can't suppose for one minute that a boy like that one would time his interruptions so cleverly.Now it so happened that at that particular moment Dr.B.Franklin was not at the table.You may draw your own conclusions.I say nothing, but Ithink a good deal.
--I came back to the Bunker Hill Monument.---I often think--I said--of the dynasty which is to reign in its shadow for some thousands of years, it may be.
The "Man of Letters," so called, asked me, in a tone I did not exactly like, whether I expected to live long enough to see a monarchy take the place of a republic in this country.
--No,--said I,--I was thinking of something very different.I was indulging a fancy of mine about the Man who is to sit at the foot of the monument for one, or it may be two or three thousand years.As long as the monument stands and there is a city near it, there will always be a man to take the names of visitors and extract some small tribute from their pockets, I suppose.I sometimes get thinking of the long, unbroken succession of these men, until they come to look like one Man; continuous in being, unchanging as the stone he watches, looking upon the successive generations of human beings as they come and go, and outliving all the dynasties of the world in all probability.It has come to such a pass that I never speak to the Man of the Monument without wanting to take my hat off and feeling as if I were looking down a vista of twenty or thirty centuries.
The "Man of Letters," so called, said, in a rather contemptuous way, I thought, that he had n't got so far as that.He was n't quite up to moral reflections on toll-men and ticket-takers.Sentiment was n't his tap.
He looked round triumphantly for a response: but the Capitalist was a little hard of hearing just then; the Register of Deeds was browsing on his food in the calm bovine abstraction of a quadruped, and paid no attention; the Salesman had bolted his breakfast, and whisked himself away with that peculiar alacrity which belongs to the retail dealer's assistant; and the Member of the Haouse, who had sometimes seemed to be impressed with his "tahlented mahn's" air of superiority to the rest of us, looked as if he thought the speaker was not exactly parliamentary.So he failed to make his point, and reddened a little, and was not in the best humor, I thought, when he left the table.I hope he will not let off any of his irritation on our poor little Scheherezade; but the truth is, the first person a man of this sort (if he is what I think him) meets, when he is out of humor, has to be made a victim of, and I only hope our Young Girl will not have to play Jephthah's daughter.
And that leads me to say, I cannot help thinking that the kind of criticism to which this Young Girl has been subjected from some person or other, who is willing to be smart at her expense, is hurtful and not wholesome.The question is a delicate one.So many foolish persons are rushing into print, that it requires a kind of literary police to hold them back and keep them in order.Where there are mice there must be cats, and where there are rats we may think it worth our while to keep a terrier, who will give them a shake and let them drop, with all the mischief taken out of them.
But the process is a rude and cruel one at best, and it too often breeds a love of destructiveness for its own sake in those who get their living by it.A poor poem or essay does not do much harm after all; nobody reads it who is like to be seriously hurt by it.But a sharp criticism with a drop of witty venom in it stings a young author almost to death, and makes an old one uncomfortable to no purpose.If it were my business to sit in judgment on my neighbors, I would try to be courteous, at least, to those who had done any good service, but, above all, I would handle tenderly those young authors who are coming before the public in the flutter of their first or early appearance, and are in the trembling delirium of stage-fright already.Before you write that brilliant notice of some alliterative Angelina's book of verses, I wish you would try this experiment.
Take half a sheet of paper and copy upon it any of Angelina's stanzas,--the ones you were going to make fun of, if you will.Now go to your window, if it is a still day, open it, and let the half-sheet of paper drop on the outside.How gently it falls through the soft air, always tending downwards, but sliding softly, from side to side, wavering, hesitating, balancing, until it settles as noiselessly as a snow-flake upon the all-receiving bosom of the earth! Just such would have been the fate of poor Angelina's fluttering effort, if you had left it to itself.It would have slanted downward into oblivion so sweetly and softly that she would have never known when it reached that harmless consummation.
