Ponkapog Papers | Page 8

enchanting glimpse of Tennyson is incidentally given by Charles Brookfield, the English actor, in his "Random Recollections." Mr. Brookfield's father was, on one occasion, dining at the Oxford and Cambridge Club with George Venables, Frank Lushington, Alfred Tennyson, and others. "After dinner," relates the random recollector, "the poet insisted upon putting his feet on the table, tilting back his chair more Americano. There were strangers in the room, and he was expostulated with for his uncouthness, but in vain. 'Do put down your feet!' pleaded his host. 'Why should I?' retorted Tennyson. 'I 'm very comfortable as I am.' 'Every one's staring at you,' said an- other. 'Let 'em stare,' replied the poet, pla- cidly. 'Alfred,' said my father, 'people will think you're Longfellow.' Down went the feet." That more Americano of Brookfield the younger is delicious with its fine insular flavor, but the holding up of Longfellow--the soul of gentleness, the prince of courtesy--as a buga- boo of bad manners is simply inimitable. It will take England years and years to detect the full unconscious humor of it.
GREAT orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct historical shadows to the generations immediately following them. The spell vanishes with the voice. A man's voice is almost the only part of him entirely obliterated by death. The violet of his native land may be made of his ashes, but nature in her economy seems to have taken no care of his intonations, unless she perpetuates them in restless waves of air surging about the poles. The well-graced actor who leaves no perceptible record of his genius has a decided advantage over the mere orator. The tradition of the player's method and presence is associated with works of endur- ing beauty. Turning to the pages of the drama- tist, we can picture to ourselves the greatness of Garrick or Siddons in this or that scene, in this or that character. It is not so easy to conjure up the impassioned orator from the pages of a dry and possibly illogical argument in favor of or against some long-ago-exploded measure of gov- ernment. The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.
ALL the best sands of my life are somehow get- ting into the wrong end of the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?
SHAKESPEARE is forever coming into our affairs --putting in his oar, so to speak--with some pat word or sentence. The conversation, the other evening, had turned on the subject of watches, when one of the gentlemen present, the manager of a large watch-making establish- ment, told us a rather interesting fact. The component parts of a watch are produced by different workmen, who have no concern with the complex piece of mechanism as a whole, and possibly, as a rule, understand it imper- fectly. Each worker needs to be expert in only his own special branch. When the watch has reached a certain advanced state, the work requires a touch as delicate and firm as that of an oculist performing an operation. Here the most skilled and trustworthy artisans are em- ployed; they receive high wages, and have the benefit of a singular indulgence. In case the workman, through too continuous application, finds himself lacking the steadiness of nerve demanded by his task, he is allowed without forfeiture of pay to remain idle temporarily, in order that his hand may recover the requisite precision of touch. As I listened, Hamlet's courtly criticism of the grave-digger's want of sensibility came drifting into my memory. "The hand of little employment hath the dain- tier sense," says Shakespeare, who has left no- thing unsaid.
IT was a festival in honor of Dai Butsu or some one of the auxiliary deities that preside over the destinies of Japland. For three days and nights the streets of Tokio--where the squat little brown houses look for all the world as if they were mimicking the favorite sitting posture of the Japanese--were crowded with smiling hol- iday makers, and made gay with devices of tinted tissue paper, dolphins, devils, dragons, and mythical winged creatures which at night amia- bly turned themselves into lanterns. Garlands of these, arranged close together, were stretched across the streets from ridgepoles to ridgepole, and your jinrikisha whisked you through inter- minable arbors of soft illumination. The spec- tacle gave one an idea of fairyland, but then all Japan does that.
A land not like ours, that land of strange flowers, Of daemons and spooks with mysterious powers-- Of gods who breathe ice, who cause peach-blooms and rice And manage the moonshine and turn on the showers.
Each day has its fair or its festival there, And life seems immune to all trouble and care-- Perhaps only