The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844

Gossip with Readers and Correspondents.—We encounter in our personal correspondence not a few comments, pro and con, upon the papers on ‘Mind and Instinct,’ which appeared in the last two numbers of the Knickerbocker. Our friend and correspondent, ‘Harry Franco,’ among others, in a gossiping epistle to the Editor, writes as follows:

‘I have been considerably interested in your correspondent’s paper on mind and instinct; only I rather wonder at his laboring to prove a theory which few are inclined to question. But he does not after all, it appears to me, draw the right conclusions from his argument. All living beings have a mind, or reason, or what you will, which prompts them to do all that their animal functions are capable of performing. In this respect man is as much governed by instinct as a brute. My neighbor’s dog every night when I come home walks up to me, wags his tail, and looks in my face, and says in his way, ‘How are you?’ His master gives me a nod, takes his pipe from his mouth, and says the same. But when a stranger comes to my door, neither the dog nor his master salutes him; but were he to fall into the brook, they would both run to pull him out. Are they not both influenced by exactly the same feelings? If I should ask my neighbor to endorse my note, he would look sulky, hem! and haw! and refuse; if I should attempt to take a bone from his dog, the brute would snarl and growl, and perhaps bite me. Do you see any marvellous difference between the two animals? A near neighbor of mine, about six months since, had a little boy of four years old, who had a spaniel of which he was very fond. One day during the absence of the father, the child was taken ill with the croup; the mother was alarmed, and it so happened that her servants were away, and she had no one to send for a physician. The poor woman was in great tribulation, for in spite of all her efforts the child grew worse. In about an hour after the child was taken ill, her father’s carriage stopped at the door, and her mother made her appearance. Her father’s house was about two miles distant. The grandmother said that Carlo, the sick child’s dog, ‘came running into the house, all bespattered with mud, and flew about and acted so strangely that she knew something must be the matter with little Billy, her grandson, and she came to see what it was.’ Until then, the mother of the child had not noticed the absence of the dog from the room, for the boy was playing with him when he was taken sick. The child remained ill three or four days, and then died; and during the whole time the dog never left his bed-side; he watched by the corpse until it was buried, and then took possession of the little boy’s chair, which he would allow no one to touch, not even the child’s mother. Every day he absented himself for three or four hours; and the father one day going to look at his child’s grave, found that the dog had almost scratched his way down to the coffin. He was after this kept within doors; but he refused to eat, and in a short time died in the chair of his little master. If I had time, I could tell you a story almost as touching, in relation to a pig, an animal that phrenologically speaking has generally been looked upon as somewhat deficient in the region of the sentiments.’

Now that our attention has been awakened to the subject, we find in our casual reading the testimony in favor of ‘mind in animals’ greatly to increase and multiply. Oleus Magnus, Bishop of Norway, in a work written in Latin some two centuries ago, tells us of a fox that, in order to get rid of the fleas which infested his skin, was accustomed to swim out into a lake with a straw band held high and dry in his mouth. When the water-hating vermin had all escaped from his submerged body to the dry straw, down dived Reynard, leaving his tormentors ‘at sea,’ and rising again beyond the scope of safe jumping. ‘Curious, isn’t it?’ A correspondent at Rochester, ‘who experienced much satisfaction in the perusal of the article’ above alluded to, was yet ‘a little dissatisfied with the closing portion of it.’ The proposition of the writer to ‘abstain entirely from animal food,’ on the score of humanity, he considers ‘especially ridiculous.’ He has ‘the gravest authority for stating, that every drop of water that quenches our thirst or laves our bodies, contains innumerable insects, which are sacrificed to our necessities or comforts; each ingredient in the simplest vegetable fare conveys to inevitable destruction thousands of the most beautiful and harmless of created beings. From the first to the last gasp of our lives, we never inhale the air of heaven without butchering myriads of sentient and innocent creatures. Can we upbraid ourselves then for supporting our lives by the death of a few animals, many of whom are themselves carnivorous, when the infant who has lived for a single day has killed an infinitely greater number of human beings than the longest life would suffice to murder by design? Or, if we sacrifice either our lives or our comforts by scrupulously denying ourselves the use of animal food, can we derive much consolation from considering that we spare a few scores of beings, when we involuntarily, but knowingly, are every moment massacreing more than the longest life-time would suffice to enumerate?’ ••• A reference to the case of ‘Rachael Baker, the American Somnambulist,’ in a late London Magazine, has recalled that remarkable phenomenon very forcibly to our mind. Rachael Baker resided within four miles of ‘the house where we were born;’ and the first exhibitions of her religious exercises during sleep took place alternately at the homestead and the residence of a relation in its near vicinity. We remember as it were but yesterday the solemnity which sat upon the faces of the assembled neighbors, as they awaited the signal-groan from an adjoining apartment, to which, at about seven P. M., the Somnambulist usually retired for the night. When the door was opened the crowd pressed in. The sleeper, dressed in white muslin, lay straight and motionless in bed; her eyes closed, her face white and inflexible as marble; and her fingers with livid marks beneath the nails, clasped meekly upon her bosom. Flecks of foam were visible at the corners of her mouth, and her lips moved ‘as if they would address themselves to speech,’ for some seconds before any audible sound came from them. At length, however, in a clear silvery voice she opened with prayer; a prayer fervent, devotional, and evidently direct from the heart. When this was concluded, and after the lapse of a brief space, she began an exhortation, in language pure, beautiful, often eloquent, and occasionally rising to a noble sublimity; and then closed with prayer. If interrupted with a question, as she frequently was, by clergymen, medical gentlemen, and others, she answered it with readiness, and with a felicity of language surpassing belief. ‘Rachael,’ said a clergyman to her in our hearing one evening, while in the midst of her discourse, ‘why do you engage in these exercises? and why–’ She interrupted the speaker with words to this effect: ‘I, even I, a worm of the dust, am but a feeble instrument in the hands of Him who hath declared, ‘I will pour out of my spirit upon you; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy; your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days of my spirit, and they shall prophesy.’ Even so Father, for so it seemeth good in thy sight!’ The girl was of bashful demeanor; altogether uneducated; could scarcely read; knew little of the Bible; and indeed in her waking hours conversed in a language that was far from being respectable English; but neither in her prayers nor in her exhortations was she ever at fault; nor did she at any time exhibit the slightest hesitation or confusion. Her answers to questions were brief, pointed, and invariably correct. Crowds flocked to see her, until the public curiosity overran all bounds. She was visited by many persons from New-York; and finally, under the direction of a committee of medical gentlemen from the city, was brought to the metropolis, where she created a great sensation. A pamphlet was written upon her case by Dr. Mitchell; and we should feel greatly obliged to any reader who would place it for a short time in our hands. ••• A valued friend and correspondent, to whose kindness we have frequently been indebted, has sent us a ‘Massachusetts Centinel,’ printed in Boston sixty years ago; in which, among many other curious and amusing matters, there is a copy of an original letter written by the celebrated George Alexander Stevens, author of ‘Lecture on Heads,’ etc., dated at ‘Yarmouth Jail, County of Norfolk,’ which runs thus:

‘Sir: When I parted from you at Doncaster, I imagined, long before this, to have met with some oddities worth acquainting you with. It is grown a fashion of late to write lives; I have now, and for a long time have had, leisure enough to undertake mine, but want materials for the latter part of it; for my existence now cannot properly be called living, but what the painters term still life; having ever since February 13, been confined in this town-goal for a London debt.

‘As a hunted deer is always shunned by the happier herd, so am I deserted by the company,7 my share taken off, and no support left me, save what my wife can spare me out of hers:

‘Deserted in my utmost needBy those my former bounty fed.’

‘With an economy, which until now I was a stranger to, I have made shift to victual hitherto my little garrison, but then it has been with the aid of my good friends and allies—my clothes. This week’s eating finishes my last waistcoat; and next, I must atone for my errors upon bread and water.

‘Themistocles had so many towns to furnish his table, and a whole city bore the charge of his meals. In some respects I am like him, for I am furnished by the labors of a multitude. A wig has fed me two days; the trimming of a waistcoat as long; a pair of velvet breeches paid my washerwoman, and a ruffled shirt has found me in shaving. My coats I swallowed by degrees. The sleeves I breakfasted upon for weeks; the body, skirts, etc., served me for dinner two months. My silk stocking have paid my lodgings, and two pair of new pumps enabled me to smoke several pipes. It is incredible how my appetite, (barometer like) rises in proportion as my necessities make their terrible advances. I here could say something droll about a good stomach, but it is ill jesting with edge tools, and I am sure that is the sharpest thing about me. You may think I can have no sense of my condition, that while I am thus wretched, I should offer at ridicule: but, Sir, people constituted like me, with a disproportioned levity of spirits, are always most merry when they are most miserable; and quicken like the eyes of the consumptive, which are always brightest the nearer the patient approaches his dissolution. However, Sir, to show you I am not lost to all reflection, I think myself poor enough to want a favor, and humble enough to ask it here. Sir, I might make an encomium on your good nature, humanity, etc.; but I shall not pay so bad a compliment to your understanding, as to endeavor, by a parade of phrases, to win it over to my interest. If you could, any night at a concert, make a small collection for me, it might be a means of my obtaining my liberty; and you well know, Sir, the first people of rank abroad will perform the most friendly offices for the sick; be not, therefore, offended at the request of a poor (though a deservedly punished) debtor.

‘Geo. A. Stevens.’

Among the facetiæ of the ‘Centinel’ we find a clever hit at two prominent official characters of the name of Day: ‘Titus, a Roman emperor, we are told, once lamented that ‘he had lost a Day.’ If the commonwealth of Massachusetts were to lose two Days, it would not be the cause of much lamentation!’ A correspondent elsewhere observes, that in a procession on a certain solemn occasion in this city, the place of the physician was immediately before the corpse; which, he adds, was ‘exactly consonant with the etiquette observed at capital executions in ancient times; the executioner always going before!’ By the way, ‘speaking of Stevens;’ perhaps the reader of good things at second-hand may not be aware how much he is indebted to this author’s ‘Lectures on Heads’ for amusement and instruction. They were very popular throughout Great Britain; and as illustrated by the author, after the manner of ‘Old Matthews,’ they are said to have been irresistible. It was in this collection that the law-cases of ‘Bullum vs. Boatum’ and ‘Daniel vs. Dishclout’ had their origin. They are familiar to every school-boy, not less for their wit than the canine Latinity in which they abound; ‘Primus strokus est provokus; now who gave the primus strokus? Who gave the first offence?’ Or, ‘a drunken man is ‘homo duplicans,’ or a double man, seeing things double,’ etc., etc. We annex an example or two of the writer’s individuality. The first is a sketch of a nil admirari critic and amateur, who has travelled long enough abroad to fall in love with every thing foreign, and despise every thing belonging to his own country except himself: ‘He pretended to be a great judge of paintings, but only admired those done a great way off, and a great while ago; he could not bear any thing painted by any of his own countrymen. One day being in an auction-room where there was a number of capital pictures, and among the rest an inimitable painting of fruits and flowers, the connoisseur would not give his opinion of the picture until he had examined his catalogue; when, finding it was done by one of his own countrymen, he pulled out his eye-glass, exclaiming: ‘This fellow has spoiled a fine piece of canvass; he’s worse than a sign-post dauber; there’s no keeping, no perspective, no fore-ground, no chiar’oscuro. Look you, he has attempted to paint a fly upon that rose-bud! Why, it is no more like a fly than I am like an –’ But as the connoisseur approached his finger to the picture, the fly flew away. It happened to be the real insect!’ Is not the following a forcible picture of a mercurial, hero-loving Frenchman? ‘Has he property? An edict from the Grand Monarque can take it, and he is satisfied. Pursue him to the Bastile, or the dismal dungeon in the country to which a lettre-de-cachet conveys him, and buries him for life: there see him in all his misery; ask him ‘What is the cause?’ ‘Je ne sai pas; it is the will of the Grand Monarque.’ Give him a soup-maigre, a little sallad, and a hind-quarter of a frog, and he’s in spirits. ‘Fal, lal, lal! Vive le Roi? Vive la bagatelle!’’ Here we have a Materialist proving the affinity of matter: ‘All round things are globular, all square things flat-sided. Now, if the bottom is equal to the top, and the top equal to the bottom, and the bottom and top are equal to the four sides, then all matter is as broad as it is long.’ But the materialist ‘had not in his head matter sufficient to prove matter efficient; and being thus deficient, he knew nothing of the matter.’ One of Stevens’s ‘heads’ was that of a heartless, devil-may-care sort of person, in some respects like the hero of ‘A Capital Joke’ in preceding pages, who is always ‘keeping it up.’ He illustrates his own character very forcibly: ‘I’ll tell you how it was; you see, I was in high spirits, so I stole a dog from a blind man, for I do so love fun! So then the blind man cried for his dog, and that made me laugh; so says I to the blind man. ‘Halloo, master! do you want your dog?’ ‘Yes, Sir, indeed, indeed I do,’ says he. Then says I to the blind man, says I, ‘Go look for him! Keep it up!’ I always turn sick when I think of a parson; and my brother, he’s a parson too, and he hates to hear any body swear; so I always swear when I am along with him, just to roast him. I went to dine with him one day last week; and as soon as I arrived, I began to swear. I never swore so well in all my life; I swore all my new oaths. At last my brother laid down his knife and fork, and lifting up his hands and eyes, he calls out: ‘O Tempora! O Mores.’ ‘Oh, ho! brother,’ says I, ‘don’t think to frighten me by calling all your family about you. I don’t mind you nor your family neither. Only bring Tempora and Moses here—that’s all! I’ll box ’em for five pounds. Keep it up!’ ••• There is many a bereaved heart that will be touched by the following sad, sad lines, from the pen of John Rudolph Sutermeister, a young and gifted poet, whose mortal part has ‘been ashes these many a year,’ and whom the reader may remember as the author of a little poem widely quoted and admired many years ago, commencing:

‘O! for my bright and faded hours!    When life was like a summer stream,On whose gay banks the virgin flowers    Blushed in the morning’s rosy beam,Or danced upon the breeze that bare    Its store of rich perfume along,While the wood-robin poured on air    The ravishing delights of song!’

To us, who are familiar with the painful circumstances under which they were written, and the deep affliction which they deplore, they seem almost to sob with irrepressible grief:

A LAMENT

IGive not to me the wreath of green,    The blooming vase of flowers;They breathe of joy which once hath been,    Of gone and faded hours!I cannot love the rose; though rich,    Its beauty will not last:Give me—give me the bloom o’er which    The early blight hath passed!The yellow buds—give them to restOn my cold brow and joyless breast,    When life is failing fast!IITake far from me the wine-cup bright,    In hours of revelry;It suits glad brows, and bosoms light,    It is not meet for me:Oh! I can pledge the heart no more    I pledged in days gone by;Sorrow hath touched my bosom’s core,    And I am left—to die!Give me to drink of Lethe’s wave,Give me the cold and cheerless grave,    O’er which the night-winds sigh!IIIWake not upon my tuneless ear    Soft music’s stealing strain;It cannot soothe, it cannot cheer    This anguished heart again!But place the Æolian harp upon    The tomb of her I love;There, when Heaven shrouds the dying sun,    My weary steps will rove,While o’er its chords Night pours its breath,To list the serenade of death    Her silent bourne above!IVGive me to seek the lonely tomb    Where sleeps the sainted dead,When the pale night-fall throws its gloom    Above her narrow bed!There, while the winds which sweep along,    O’er the harp-strings are driven,And the funereal soul of song    Upon the air is given,Oh! let my faint and parting breathBe mingled with that song of death,    And flee with it to heaven!

‘Who hath redness of eyes?’ This interrogative ‘portion of divine scripture’ is forcibly illustrated by an anecdote, related with most effective dryness by a friend of ours. An elderly gentleman, accustomed to ‘indulge,’ entered the bar-room of an inn in the pleasant city of H–, on the Hudson, where sat a grave Friend toasting his toes by the fire. Lifting a pair of green spectacles upon his forehead, rubbing his inflamed eyes, and calling for a hot brandy-toddy, he seated himself by the grate; and as he did so, he remarked to Uncle Broadbrim that ‘his eyes were getting weaker and weaker, and that even spectacles didn’t seem to do ‘em any good.’ ‘I’ll tell thee friend,’ rejoined the Quaker, ‘what I think. I think if thee was to wear thy spectacles over thy mouth for a few months, thy eyes would get sound again!’ The ‘complainant’ did not even return thanks for this medical counsel, but sipped his toddy in silence, and soon after left the room, ‘uttering never a word.’ ••• There have been various surmises, and sundry contradictory statements, in relation to the work superscribed ‘Count D’Orsay on Etiquette,’ which we noticed at some length in our December issue. Mr. Willis, of the ‘New Mirror’ weekly journal, seems to question its having been written by the Count, but expresses his belief that he may have loaned his name to the publishers ‘for a consideration;’ and this may possibly have been the fact with the latest London edition. The author of the work in question, however, is Mr. Charles William Day, an English gentleman, whose acquaintance with the usages of the best European society is personal and authentic; who has observed and travelled much; and who is moreover an artist of a high order; painting in miniature, and sketching with admirable skill. An esteemed friend and correspondent of this Magazine writes us from Boston, that the manner of the fraud is somewhat as follows: ‘Mr. Day is the author of a Journal of Travels, which Messrs. Longman and Company of London proposed to publish. As they treated him, however, in a dishonorable manner, he withdrew his MSS. from them and came to America. In retaliation, they sent orders to this country to have a spurious edition published of his work on ‘Etiquette,’ which they had formerly brought out, and which they truly supposed he designed to reprint in New-York or Boston. It has passed through more than twenty editions in London; a fact which I know, from having seen the Messrs. Longmans’ letters and accounts with the author. His own edition is now in press in Boston; and I learn that he has added some ‘Hints’ with an especial eye to Yankee manners.’ We have also received a letter from Mr. Day himself, in which, while he ‘forbears at present to make any comments on the conduct of the Messrs. Longman,’ he proves beyond a doubt that ‘the Count D’Orsay is not the writer of the ‘Hints on Etiquette,’ but that he himself is ‘the real, true author,’ past all peradventure. ••• A friend lately returned from the west, relates among other matters the following anecdote: ‘On board of one of the steam-boats on the Mississippi, I encountered a deck-hand, who went by the name of Barney. Like many of his class, he was a drinking, reckless fellow, but warm-hearted, good-natured, and generous to a fault. In early life he was in easy circumstances; was a husband, and the father of several children. But one night during a violent storm the house in which he resided was struck by lightning, and the whole family, save himself, were instantly killed. His own escape was considered a miracle at the time, not even a hair of his head having been singed. From that time, however, he took to drinking, and so sank lower and lower until he became what I found him. When I had heard his story, I felt somewhat interested in the man, and one day managed to draw him into conversation. He told me his early history with much natural pathos; and finding him in the ‘melting mood’ I endeavored to lead him to some serious thoughts upon the subject of his misfortunes, and especially of that one which had bereft him in so awful a manner of his wife and children. ‘Barney,’ said I, ‘don’t you think it was a signal mercy that you alone should have escaped unharmed from the bolt which destroyed all else you loved upon earth? Was there not at least something singular in the fact?’ ‘That’s what I said myself,’ replied Barney, in a tremulous voice; ‘I always thought it was very sing’lar. But the fact I suppose was this, Mr. Whitehat. The lightning, you see, was afraid of a man, and so like a d–d sneak, it went twisting about to scorch women and little children!’ ••• Blackwood has proclaimed in a late number, the ‘Characteristics of English Society,’ in language of truth and soberness, which goes explicitly to confirm the reports of nearly all American and other ‘foreigners’ who have visited England. We subjoin an extract contrasting English with French society:

‘We should indeed be sorry if our demeanor in those vast crowds, where English people flock together, rather, as it would seem, to assert a right, than to gratify an inclination, were to be taken as an index of our national character: the want of all ease and simplicity, those essential ingredients of agreeable society, which distinguish these dreary meetings have long been unfortunately notorious. Too busy to watch the feelings of others, and too earnest to moderate our own, that true politeness which pays respect to age; which tries to put the most insignificant person in company on a level with the most considerable—virtues which our neighbors possess in an eminent degree—are, except in a few favored instances, unknown among us; while affectation, in other countries the badge of ignorance and vulgarity, is ours, even in its worst shape, when it borrows the mien of rudeness, impertinence, and effrontery, the appendage of those whose station is most conspicuous, and whose dignity is best ascertained. There is more good breeding in the cottage of a French peasant than in all the boudoirs of Grosvenor square. ••• ‘Frivolity and insipidity are the prevailing characteristics of conversation; and nowhere in Europe, perhaps, does difference of fortune or of station produce more unsocial or illiberal separation. Very few of those whom fortune has released from the necessity of following some laborious profession are capable of passing their time agreeably without the assistance of company; not from the spirit of gaity which calls upon society for indulgence; not from any pleasure they take in conversation, where they are frequently languid and taciturn; but to rival each other in the luxury of the table, or by a great variety of indescribable airs, to make others feel the pain of mortification. They meet as if to fight the boundaries of their rank and fashion, and the less definite and perceptible is the line which divides them, the more punctilious is their pride. It is a great mistake to suppose that this low-minded folly is peculiar to people of rank; it is an English disease.’