The Poet at the Breakfast Table | Page 8

strong English of
the older pattern,--
"Whether 't is nobler--nobler--nobler--"
To do what? O these women! these women! to have puddings or
flapjacks! Oh!--
"Whether 't is nobler--in the mind--to suffer
The slings--and
arrows--of--"

Oh! Oh! these women! I will e'en step over to the parson's and have a
cup of sack with His Reverence for methinks Master Hamlet hath
forgot that which was just now on his lips to speak.
So I shall have to put off making my friends acquainted with the other
boarders, some of whom seem to me worth studying and
describing. I
have something else of a graver character for my readers. I am talking,
you know, as a poet; I do not say I deserve the name, but I have taken it,
and if you consider me at all it must be in that aspect. You will,
therefore, be willing to run your eyes over a few pages read, of course
by request, to a select party of the boarders.
THE GAMBREL-ROOFED HOUSE AND ITS OUTLOOK.
A PANORAMA, WITH SIDE-SHOWS.
My birthplace, the home of my childhood and earlier and later boyhood,
has within a few months passed out of the ownership of my family into
the hands of that venerable Alma Mater who seems to have renewed
her youth, and has certainly repainted her dormitories. In truth, when I
last revisited that familiar scene and looked upon the flammantia mania
of the old halls, "Massachusetts" with the dummy clock-dial, "Harvard"
with the garrulous belfry, little "Holden" with the sculptured
unpunishable cherub over its portal, and the rest of my early
brick-and-mortar acquaintances, I could not help saying to myself that I
had lived to see the peaceable establishment of the Red Republic of
Letters.
Many of the things I shall put down I have no doubt told before in a
fragmentary way, how many I cannot be quite sure, as I do not very
often read my own prose works. But when a man dies a great deal is
said of him which has often been said in other forms, and now this dear
old house is dead to me in one sense, and I want to gather up my
recollections and wind a string of narrative round them, tying them up
like a nosegay for the last tribute: the same blossoms in it I have often
laid on its threshold while it was still living for me.
We Americans are all cuckoos,--we make our homes in the nests of

other birds. I have read somewhere that the lineal descendants of the
man who carted off the body of William Rufus, with Walter Tyrrel's
arrow sticking in it, have driven a cart (not absolutely the same one, I
suppose) in the New Forest, from that day to this. I don't quite
understand Mr. Ruskin's saying (if he said it) that he couldn't get along
in a country where there were no castles, but I do think we lose a great
deal in living where there are so few permanent homes. You will see
how much I parted with which was not reckoned in the price paid for
the old homestead.
I shall say many things which an uncharitable reader might find fault
with as personal. I should not dare to call myself a poet if I did not; for
if there is anything that gives one a title to that name, it is that his inner
nature is naked and is not ashamed. But there are many such things I
shall put in words, not because they are personal, but because they are
human, and are born of just such experiences as those who hear or read
what I say are like to have had in greater or less measure. I find myself
so much like other people that I often wonder at the coincidence. It was
only the other day that I sent out a copy of verses about my
great-grandmother's picture, and I was surprised to find how many
other people had portraits of their greatgrandmothers or other
progenitors, about which they felt as I did
about mine, and for whom
I had spoken, thinking I was speaking for myself only. And so I am not
afraid to talk very freely with you, my precious reader or listener. You
too, Beloved, were born somewhere and remember your birthplace or
your early home; for you some house is haunted by recollections; to
some roof you have bid farewell. Your hand is upon mine, then, as I
guide my pen. Your heart frames the responses to the litany of my
remembrance. For myself it is a tribute of affection I am rendering, and
I should put it on record for my own satisfaction, were there none to
read or to listen.
I hope you will not say that