Literary Lapses Part 18
Tennyson was fast losing hope.
Worn out with early rising, they engaged a retired Pullman-car porter to take up his quarters, and being a negro his presence added a touch of colour to their life.
The poet also engaged a neighbouring divine at fifty cents an evening to read to the child the best hundred books, with explanations. The May Queen tolerated him, and used to like to play with his silver hair, but protested that he was prosy.
At the end of his resources the poet resolved upon desperate measures.
He chose an evening when the cottager and his wife were out at a dinner-party.
At nightfall Tennyson and his accomplices entered the girl's room.
She defended herself savagely with her brick, but was overpowered.
The negro seated himself upon her chest, while the clergyman hastily read a few verses about the comfort of early rising at the last day.
As he concluded, the poet drove his pen into her eye.
"Last call!" cried the negro porter triumphantly.
III.-OLD MR. LONGFELLOW ON BOARD THE HESPERUS.
"It was the schooner Hesperus that sailed the wintry sea, And the skipper had taken his little daughter to bear him company."-LONGFELLOW.
There were but three people in the cabin party of the Hesperus: old Mr. Longfellow, the skipper, and the skipper's daughter.
The skipper was much attached to the child, owing to the singular whiteness of her skin and the exceptionally limpid blue of her eyes; she had hitherto remained on sh.o.r.e to fill lucrative engagements as albino lady in a circus.
This time, however, her father had taken her with him for company. The girl was an endless source of amus.e.m.e.nt to the skipper and the crew. She constantly got up games of puss-in-the-corner, forfeits, and Dumb Crambo with her father and Mr. Longfellow, and made Scripture puzzles and geographical acrostics for the men.
Old Mr. Longfellow was taking the voyage to restore his shattered nerves. From the first the captain disliked Henry. He was utterly unused to the sea and was nervous and fidgety in the extreme. He complained that at sea his genius had not a sufficient degree of lat.i.tude. Which was unparalleled presumption.
On the evening of the storm there had been a little jar between Longfellow and the captain at dinner. The captain had emptied it several times, and was consequently in a reckless, quarrelsome humour.
"I confess I feel somewhat apprehensive," said old Henry nervously, "of the state of the weather. I have had some conversation about it with an old gentleman on deck who professed to have sailed the Spanish main. He says you ought to put into yonder port."
"I have," hiccoughed the skipper, eyeing the bottle, and added with a brutal laugh that "he could weather the roughest gale that ever wind did blow." A whole Gaelic society, he said, wouldn't fizz on him.
Draining a final gla.s.s of grog, he rose from his chair, said grace, and staggered on deck.
All the time the wind blew colder and louder.
The billows frothed like yeast. It was a yeast wind.
The evening wore on.
Old Henry shuffled about the cabin in nervous misery.
The skipper's daughter sat quietly at the table selecting verses from a Biblical clock to amuse the ship's bosun, who was suffering from toothache.
At about ten Longfellow went to his bunk, requesting the girl to remain up in his cabin.
For half an hour all was quiet, save the roaring of the winter wind.
Then the girl heard the old gentleman start up in bed.
"What's that bell, what's that bell?" he gasped.
A minute later he emerged from his cabin wearing a cork jacket and trousers over his pyjamas.
"Sissy," he said, "go up and ask your pop who rang that bell."
The obedient child returned.
"Please, Mr. Longfellow," she said, "pa says there weren't no bell."
The old man sank into a chair and remained with his head buried in his hands.
"Say," he exclaimed presently, "someone's firing guns and there's a glimmering light somewhere. You'd better go upstairs again."
Again the child returned.
"The crew are guessing at an acrostic, and occasionally they get a glimmering of it."
Meantime the fury of the storm increased.
The skipper had the hatches battered down.
Presently Longfellow put his head out of a porthole and called out, "Look here, you may not care, but the cruel rocks are goring the sides of this boat like the horns of an angry bull."
The brutal skipper heaved the log at him. A knot in it struck a plank and it glanced off.
Too frightened to remain below, the poet raised one of the hatches by picking out the cotton batting and made his way on deck. He crawled to the wheel-house.
The skipper stood lashed to the helm all stiff and stark. He bowed stiffly to the poet. The lantern gleamed through the gleaming snow on his fixed and gla.s.sy eyes. The man was hopelessly intoxicated.
All the crew had disappeared. When the missile thrown by the captain had glanced off into the sea, they glanced after it and were lost.
At this moment the final crash came.
Something hit something. There was an awful click followed by a peculiar grating sound, and in less time than it takes to write it (unfortunately), the whole wreck was over.
As the vessel sank, Longfellow's senses left him. When he reopened his eyes he was in his own bed at home, and the editor of his local paper was bending over him.
"You have made a first-rate poem of it, Mr. Longfellow," he was saying, unbending somewhat as he spoke, "and I am very happy to give you our cheque for a dollar and a quarter for it."
"Your kindness checks my utterance," murmured Henry feebly, very feebly.
A, B, and C
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN MATHEMATICS