Letters of Peregrine Pickle. George P. Upton
all the high taxes, all the poor operas, all the tough beefsteaks, all the sour Green Seal, all the fires, murders, explosions, and other such cheerful casualties, are the direct result of the efforts of these people who are Something.
Then, from a theological point of view, remember that if we were all Nothings, the Devil would have Nothing to do, and would have to let his fires go down and hang up his pitchforks, which would be a blessed thing for some of these people who are Somethings.
Nullity is the primal state of man. The Rev. Dr. Homilectics tries to impress upon me, each Sunday, the importance of going back to the days when Adam and Eve, in the latest cut of fig-leaves, played Romeo and Juliet under the apple-trees in Eden. He never stops to think that their innocence was the immediate result of being Nothing and doing Nothing, and that just as soon as they set out to be Something, they entailed the curse of work upon all mankind.
But I go further back than Adam and Eve. In the good old days of chaos, Nothing was in all its glory. It existed everywhere. No sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, No-thing. This was the normal condition.
And of what use was it? says Mrs. Increase, who is bringing up a large family of children, to be used hereafter as grindstones for other people's noses.
Why, my dear woman of facts and figures and spheres of usefulness, God Almighty took it and made this great world out of it, with all its mountains and rocks and rivers, its sunsets and rainbows and stars, its panorama of beauty by day and night, and you yourself, although you are, probably, but a very small and a very ugly part of this creation. Yes, madame, you and I came from this Nothing. I have retained this Nothing with great success. You, on the other hand, have been striving to change your normal condition by being Something. It is not for me to say whether you have succeeded. A great many people who think they are Something are really Nothing, and a poor kind of Nothing at that.
If I have said Nothing in writing on this subject, it was because I had Nothing to say. When one is writing about Nothing, you know, he is not expected to say anything.
Which reminds me of a baby. If you ask me how it reminds me, I cannot tell you. I only know that it reminds me of those little but important animals.
It is cheerful news for the future census-takers that babies have become fashionable in Paris. The "idea" will, of course, come immediately into fashion here. I do not mean French babies, but babies in the abstract. A baby is a good thing, a blessed thing. I cannot conceive what I should have done if I hadn't, once upon a time, been a baby. A baby is a well-spring, and the quantity of lacteal fluid, lumps of sugar, soothing syrups, paregoric, squills, squalls, walking the floor in your long-tailed night shirts, mother's loves, lovey-doveys, and square spanking that one of those well-springs will absorb is astonishing to one who has not had a baby. I have had several; at least, I own stock in several.
Would I sell my experience, past, present or future, in babies?
Not much.
Therefore, I am glad babies are going to come into fashion. Just think of the new topics of conversation, when Mrs. Brown takes her little three-months up to see Mrs. Jones and her two-months, and the two Dear Creatures compare colics. The little cherubs will mollify conversation, and sympathy will take the place of severity. Instead of gossiping on poor Mrs. Cauliflower's unfortunate but innocent faux pas, the Dear Creatures will soothingly compare notes on the baby question and discuss the merits of quieting syrups and puff-boxes. And then there will be the baby reunions, when the great parlor will be filled with baby chairs, and in each chair will be a baby in blue ribbon and white muslin, and in each little rosebud of a mouth will be thrust a dimpled fist. How pleasant it will be to listen to the artless conversation. When Mrs. Jones' baby says "goo," Mrs. Brown's baby will answer "goo, goo," and Mrs. Thompson's baby, whose mother is very talkative, will "goo" a steady stream for five minutes; and then, when one of the cherubs is affected to tears by the point of a pin, or an unusually sharp stroke of the colic, which by so many confiding young mothers has been taken for an angel talking to the little one, how will they all be affected to tears and the room resound with the dear little trebles.
But I must draw a veil over the picture. In the universal rush which will ensue for babies and the competitive result which will inevitably follow between ward and ward and street and street, there must be discrimination used. When Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Johnson sign articles of agreement as to an x number of babies in x time, Miss Aurelia and Miss Celeste must remember that, by the rules of the B. R., they are counted out. I would not advise all to adopt the fashion, but there are many, and there will be more, unless they adopt Swedenborg's notion of affinities, who can safely take up the new fashion.
And I recommend all such to adopt it immediately. As I said before, I don't know what I should have done if I hadn't been a baby.
June 8, 1867.
THE CIRCUS.
IT is safe to say that nine men out of ten—and the tenth man is to be sincerely pitied—looking back, find their starting point in a circus. Next to the maternal shoe, which hung in terrorem over the Lares and Penates, and which will never fade from the memory, my most distant recollection is beneath the canvass. Was there ever such a funny man as the clown? I hung upon his stale wit as Hamlet hung upon Yorick. Were there ever such angels as those ethereal, beautiful, gauzy, smiling women who rode round the ring—now, alas, bandy-legged, lath-armed, tinseled, painted, disconsolate looking creatures, whose whole world is within the narrow limits of the ring?
Did Arabia produce such fiery steeds, brave in gaily caparisoned trappings—now, poor old hacks, full of the spirit of the tread-mill—not all the yells of rider, clown and ringmaster, not all the brutal lashings of whip and thong, can force beyond their customary gait?
Were there ever such candies and cakes and pop corn as that boy peddled whom I used to envy?
Name the sum I would not have given to have been the bugle man who blew "Silver Moon" so gorgeously!
And then I passed from one sphere of Elysium to another when, after the circus, I went to the side-show and saw the fat woman, and the skeleton man, and the calf with three legs, and the dog with two heads, the man who swallowed the sword and the man who took the snake's head in his mouth. And I went home and dreamed that I was ring-master, gorgeous in silver lace, with a long whip which I snapped at the clown, and, rapture of raptures, did I not help the angels to mount their horses? Talk not of the realities of life by the side of that circus, which was an enchanted land!
As I look back to that circus, I see my first original sin or concatenation of sins.
Am I not he who informed my parents that I was going to see another little boy?
Am I not he who stole a watermelon from our neighbor's patch?
Am I not he who took it to old Bliffkins, who lived under the hill, and sold it to him for a shilling?
Am I not he who with the shilling walked two miles, and then found it cost a quarter to get into the circus? Was there ever such a monster as the man at the door, who wouldn't let me in?
I have never known such griefs as my grief that day. I hung round the outside of that tent as sinners are supposed to hang round the walls of Heaven. I heard the music and the hip-hips and the cheers and the snaps of the whips, and in my desperation I tried to look under the canvass, but was detected in the act by the monster at the door, and obliged to fly for my life. I have never known a grief so poignant as that.
I pity the man who has not sinned in his boyhood, all for a circus. He has missed