"I could not grow misanthropical when I saw in the eyes of so many who
were called old, the gushing fountains of eternal youth, and the light
of an immortal dawn, or when I saw those who were esteemed
unsuccessful and aimless, ruling a fair realm of peace and plenty,
either in themselves, or more perfectly in another--a realm and
princely possession for which they had well renounced a hopeless
search and a belated triumph. I knew one man who had been for years a
by-word for having sought the philosopher's stone. But I looked at him
through the spectacles and saw a satisfaction in concentrated
energies, and a tenacity arising from devotion to a noble dream, which
was not apparent in the youths who pitied him in the aimless
effeminacy of clubs, nor in the clever gentlemen who cracked their
thin jokes upon him over a gossiping dinner.

"And there was your neighbor over the way, who passes for a woman who
has failed in her career, because she is an old maid. People wag
solemn heads of pity, and say that she made so great a mistake in not
marrying the brilliant and famous man who was for long years her
suitor. It is clear that no orange flower will ever bloom for her. The
young people make tender romances about her as they watch her, and
think of her solitary hours of bitter regret, and wasting longing,
never to be satisfied. When I first came to town I shared this
sympathy, and pleased my imagination with fancying her hard struggle
with the conviction that she had lost all that made life beautiful. I
supposed that if I looked at her through my spectacles, I should see
that it was only her radiant temper which so illuminated her dress,
that we did not see it to be heavy sables. But when, one day, I did
raise my glasses and glanced at her, I did not see the old maid whom
we all pitied for a secret sorrow, but a woman whose nature was a
tropic, in which the sun shone, and birds sang, and flowers bloomed
forever. There were no regrets, no doubts and half wishes, but a calm
sweetness, a transparent peace. I saw her blush when that old lover
passed by, or paused to speak to her, but it was only the sign of
delicate feminine consciousness. She knew his love, and honored it,
although she could not understand it nor return it. I looked closely
at her, and I saw that although all the world had exclaimed at her
indifference to such homage, and had declared it was astonishing she
should lose so fine a match, she would only say simply and quietly--

"'If Shakespeare loved me and I did not love him, how could I marry
him?'

"Could I be misanthropical when I saw such fidelity, and dignity, and
simplicity?

"You may believe that I was especially curious to look at that old
lover of hers, through my glasses. He was no longer young, you know,
when I came, and his fame and fortune were secure. Certainly I have
heard of few men more beloved, and of none more worthy to be loved. He
had the easy manner of a man of the world, the sensitive grace of a
poet, and the charitable judgment of a wide traveller. He was
accounted the most successful and most unspoiled of men. Handsome,
brilliant, wise, tender, graceful, accomplished, rich, and famous, I
looked at him, without the spectacles, in surprise, and admiration,
and wondered how your neighbor over the way had been so entirely
untouched by his homage. I watched their intercourse in society, I saw
her gay smile, her cordial greeting; I marked his frank address, his
lofty courtesy. Their manner told no tales. The eager world was
balked, and I pulled out my spectacles.

"I had seen her, already, and now I saw him. He lived only in memory,
and his memory was a spacious and stately palace. But he did not
oftenest frequent the banqueting hall, where were endless hospitality
and feasting--nor did he loiter much in reception rooms, where a
throng of new visitors was forever swarming--nor did he feed his
vanity by haunting the apartment in which were stored the trophies of
his varied triumphs--nor dream much in the great gallery hung with
pictures of his travels. But from all these lofty halls of memory he
constantly escaped to a remote and solitary chamber, into which no one
had ever penetrated. But my fatal eyes, behind the glasses, followed
and entered with him, and saw that the chamber was a chapel. It was
dim, and silent, and sweet with perpetual incense that burned upon an
altar before a picture forever veiled. There, whenever I chanced to
look, I saw him kneel and pray; and there, by day and by night, a
funeral hymn was chanted.

"I do not believe you will be surprised that I have been content to
remain deputy bookkeeper. My spectacles regulated my ambition, and I
early learned that there were better gods than Plutus. The glasses
have lost much of their fascination now, and I do not often use them.
Sometimes the desire is irresistible. Whenever I am greatly
interested, I am compelled to take them out and see what it is that I
admire.

"And yet--and yet," said Titbottom, after a pause, "I am not sure that
I thank my grandfather."

Prue had long since laid away her work, and had heard every word of
the story. I saw that the dear woman had yet one question to ask, and
had been earnestly hoping to hear something that would spare her the
necessity of asking. But Titbottom had resumed his usual tone, after
the momentary excitement, and made no further allusion to himself. We
all sat silently; Titbottom's eyes fastened musingly upon the carpet:
Prue looking wistfully at him, and I regarding both.

It was past midnight, and our guest arose to go. He shook hands
quietly, made his grave Spanish bow to Prue, and taking his hat, went
towards the front door. Prue and I accompanied him. I saw in her eyes
that she would ask her question. And as Titbottom opened the door, I
heard the low words:

"And Preciosa?"

Titbottom paused. He had just opened the door and the moonlight
streamed over him as he stood, turning back to us.

"I have seen her but once since. It was in church, and she was
kneeling with her eyes closed, so that she did not see me. But I
rubbed the glasses well, and looked at her, and saw a white lily,
whose stem was broken, but which was fresh; and luminous, and
fragrant, still."

"That was a miracle," interrupted Prue.

"Madam, it was a miracle," replied Titbottom, "and for that one sight
I am devoutly grateful for my grandfather's gift. I saw, that although
a flower may have lost its hold upon earthly moisture, it may still
bloom as sweetly, fed by the dews of heaven."

The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue put her arm in mine and
we went upstairs together, she whispered in my ear:

"How glad I am that you don't wear spectacles."



MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME

By Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)

[From _The Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1859. Republished in the
volume, _The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales_ (1868), by Edward
Everett Hale (Little, Brown & Co.).]

It is not often that I trouble the readers of _The Atlantic Monthly_.
I should not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife,
who "feels to insist" that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I
have told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is
sure, she says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that
pressure upon public servants which alone drives any man into the
employment of a double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of
her heart, that my fortunes will never be re-made, she has a faint
hope, that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future
publics, from which they may profit, though we die. Owing to the
behavior of my double, or, if you please, to that public pressure
which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write
this communication.

I am, or rather was, a minister, of the Sandemanian connection. I was
settled in the active, wide-awake town of Naguadavick, on one of the
finest water-powers in Maine. We used to call it a Western town in the
heart of the civilization of New England. A charming place it was and
is. A spirited, brave young parish had I; and it seemed as if we might
have all "the joy of eventful living" to our hearts' content.

Alas! how little we knew on the day of my ordination, and in those
halcyon moments of our first housekeeping! To be the confidential
friend in a hundred families in the town--cutting the social trifle,
as my friend Haliburton says, "from the top of the whipped-syllabub to
the bottom of the sponge-cake, which is the foundation"--to keep
abreast of the thought of the age in one's study, and to do one's best
on Sunday to interweave that thought with the active life of an active
town, and to inspirit both and make both infinite by glimpses of the
Eternal Glory, seemed such an exquisite forelook into one's life!
Enough to do, and all so real and so grand! If this vision could only
have lasted.

The truth is, that this vision was not in itself a delusion, nor,
indeed, half bright enough. If one could only have been left to do his
own business, the vision would have accomplished itself and brought
out new paraheliacal visions, each as bright as the original. The
misery was and is, as we found out, I and Polly, before long, that,
besides the vision, and besides the usual human and finite failures in
life (such as breaking the old pitcher that came over in the
Mayflower, and putting into the fire the alpenstock with which her
father climbed Mont Blanc)--besides, these, I say (imitating the style
of Robinson Crusoe), there were pitchforked in on us a great
rowen-heap of humbugs, handed down from some unknown seed-time, in
which we were expected, and I chiefly, to fulfil certain public
functions before the community, of the character of those fulfilled by
the third row of supernumeraries who stand behind the Sepoys in the
spectacle of the _Cataract of the Ganges_. They were the duties, in a
word, which one performs as member of one or another social class or
subdivision, wholly distinct from what one does as A. by himself A.
What invisible power put these functions on me, it would be very hard
to tell. But such power there was and is. And I had not been at work a
year before I found I was living two lives, one real and one merely
functional--for two sets of people, one my parish, whom I loved, and
the other a vague public, for whom I did not care two straws. All this
was in a vague notion, which everybody had and has, that this second
life would eventually bring out some great results, unknown at
present, to somebody somewhere.

Crazed by this duality of life, I first read Dr. Wigan on the _Duality
of the Brain_, hoping that I could train one side of my head to do
these outside jobs, and the other to do my intimate and real duties.
For Richard Greenough once told me that, in studying for the statue of
Franklin, he found that the left side of the great man's face was
philosophic and reflective, and the right side funny and smiling. If
you will go and look at the bronze statue, you will find he has
repeated this observation there for posterity. The eastern profile is
the portrait of the statesman Franklin, the western of Poor Richard.
But Dr. Wigan does not go into these niceties of this subject, and I
failed. It was then that, on my wife's suggestion, I resolved to look
out for a Double.

I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating
at Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the
relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monsonpon House. We
were passing through one of the large halls, when my destiny was
fulfilled! I saw my man!

He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green
baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But
I saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He
had black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He
stooped in walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine.
And--choicest gift of Fate in all--he had, not "a strawberry-mark on
his left arm," but a cut from a juvenile brickbat over his right eye,
slightly affecting the play of that eyebrow. Reader, so have I!--My
fate was sealed!

A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole
thing. It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow,
of the class known as shiftless, who had sealed his fate by marrying a
dumb wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I
left Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to
Judge Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the
name of Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We had explained to the Judge,
what was the precise truth, that an eccentric gentleman wished to
adopt Dennis under this new name into his family. It never occurred to
him that Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to
shorten this preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at
Naguadavick, there entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb laundress,
myself, who am Mr. Frederic Ingham, and my double, who was Mr.
Frederic Ingham by as good right as I.

Oh, the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my
pattern, cutting his hair to match mine, and teaching him how to wear
and how to take off gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were
electroplate, and the glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were
excellent). Then in four successive afternoons I taught him four
speeches. I had found these would be quite enough for the
supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it was well for me they were.
For though he was good-natured, he was very shiftless, and it was, as
our national proverb says, "like pulling teeth" to teach him. But at
the end of the next week he could say, with quite my easy and frisky
air:

1. "Very well, thank you. And you?" This for an answer to casual
salutations.

2. "I am very glad you liked it."

3. "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that
I will not occupy the time."

4. "I agree, in general, with my friend on the other side of the
room."

At first I had a feeling that I was going to be at great cost for
clothing him. But it proved, of course, at once, that, whenever he was
out, I should be at home. And I went, during the bright period of his
success, to so few of those awful pageants which require a black
dress-coat and what the ungodly call, after Mr. Dickens, a white
choker, that in the happy retreat of my own dressing-gowns and jackets
my days went by as happily and cheaply as those of another Thalaba.
And Polly declares there was never a year when the tailoring cost so
little. He lived (Dennis, not Thalaba) in his wife's room over the
kitchen. He had orders never to show himself at that window. When he
appeared in the front of the house, I retired to my sanctissimum and
my dressing-gown. In short, the Dutchman and, his wife, in the old
weather-box, had not less to do with, each other than he and I. He
made the furnace-fire and split the wood before daylight; then he went
to sleep again, and slept late; then came for orders, with a red silk
bandanna tied round his head, with his overalls on, and his dress-coat
and spectacles off. If we happened to be interrupted, no one guessed
that he was Frederic Ingham as well as I; and, in the neighborhood,
there grew up an impression that the minister's Irishman worked
day-times in the factory village at New Coventry. After I had given
him his orders, I never saw him till the next day.

I launched him by sending him to a meeting of the Enlightenment Board.
The Enlightenment Board consists of seventy-four members, of whom
sixty-seven are necessary to form a quorum. One becomes a member under
the regulations laid down in old Judge Dudley's will. I became one by
being ordained pastor of a church in Naguadavick. You see you cannot
help yourself, if you would. At this particular time we had had four
successive meetings, averaging four hours each--wholly occupied in
whipping in a quorum. At the first only eleven men were present; at
the next, by force of three circulars, twenty-seven; at the third,
thanks to two days' canvassing by Auchmuty and myself, begging men to
come, we had sixty. Half the others were in Europe. But without a
quorum we could do nothing. All the rest of us waited grimly for our
four hours, and adjourned without any action. At the fourth meeting we
had flagged, and only got fifty-nine together. But on the first
appearance of my double--whom I sent on this fatal Monday to the fifth
meeting--he was the _sixty-seventh_ man who entered the room. He was
greeted with a storm of applause! The poor fellow had missed his
way--read the street signs ill through his spectacles (very ill, in
fact, without them)--and had not dared to inquire. He entered the
room--finding the president and secretary holding to their chairs two
judges of the Supreme Court, who were also members _ex officio_, and
were begging leave to go away. On his entrance all was changed.
_Presto_, the by-laws were amended, and the Western property was given
away. Nobody stopped to converse with him. He voted, as I had charged
him to do, in every instance, with the minority. I won new laurels as
a man of sense, though a little unpunctual--and Dennis, _alias_
Ingham, returned to the parsonage, astonished to see with how little
wisdom the world is governed. He cut a few of my parishioners in the
street; but he had his glasses off, and I am known to be nearsighted.
Eventually he recognized them more readily than I.

I "set him again" at the exhibition of the New Coventry Academy; and
here he undertook a "speaking part"--as, in my boyish, worldly days, I
remember the bills used to say of Mlle. Celeste. We are all trustees
of the New Coventry Academy; and there has lately been "a good deal of
feeling" because the Sandemanian trustees did not regularly attend the
exhibitions. It has been intimated, indeed, that the Sandemanians are
leaning towards Free-Will, and that we have, therefore, neglected
these semi-annual exhibitions, while there is no doubt that Auchmuty
last year went to Commencement at Waterville. Now the head master at
New Coventry is a real good fellow, who knows a Sanskrit root when he
sees it, and often cracks etymologies with me--so that, in strictness,
I ought to go to their exhibitions. But think, reader, of sitting
through three long July days in that Academy chapel, following the
program from

  Tuesday Morning. English Composition. Sunshine. Miss Jones,

round to

  Trio on Three Pianos. Duel from opera of Midshipman Easy. Marryatt.

coming in at nine, Thursday evening! Think of this, reader, for men
who know the world is trying to go backward, and who would give their
lives if they could help it on! Well! The double had succeeded so well
at the Board, that I sent him to the Academy. (Shade of Plato,
pardon!) He arrived early on Tuesday, when, indeed, few but mothers
and clergymen are generally expected, and returned in the evening to
us, covered with honors. He had dined at the right hand of the
chairman, and he spoke in high terms of the repast. The chairman had
expressed his interest in the French conversation. "I am very glad you
liked it," said Dennis; and the poor chairman, abashed, supposed the
accent had been wrong. At the end of the day, the gentlemen present
had been called upon for speeches--the Rev. Frederic Ingham first, as
it happened; upon which Dennis had risen, and had said, "There has
been so much said, and, on the whole, so well said, that I will not
occupy the time." The girls were delighted, because Dr. Dabney, the
year before, had given them at this occasion a scolding on impropriety
of behavior at lyceum lectures. They all declared Mr. Ingham was a
love--and _so_ handsome! (Dennis is good-looking.) Three of them, with
arms behind the others' waists, followed him up to the wagon he rode
home in; and a little girl with a blue sash had been sent to give him
a rosebud. After this debut in speaking, he went to the exhibition for
two days more, to the mutual satisfaction of all concerned. Indeed,
Polly reported that he had pronounced the trustees' dinners of a
higher grade than those of the parsonage. When the next term began, I
found six of the Academy girls had obtained permission to come across
the river and attend our church. But this arrangement did not long
continue.

After this he went to several Commencements for me, and ate the
dinners provided; he sat through three of our Quarterly Conventions
for me--always voting judiciously, by the simple rule mentioned above,
of siding with the minority. And I, meanwhile, who had before been
losing caste among my friends, as holding myself aloof from the
associations of the body, began to rise in everybody's favor.
"Ingham's a good fellow--always on hand"; "never talks much--but does
the right thing at the right time"; "is not as unpunctual as he used
to be--he comes early, and sits through to the end." "He has got over
his old talkative habit, too. I spoke to a friend of his about it
once; and I think Ingham took it kindly," etc., etc.

This voting power of Dennis was particularly valuable at the quarterly
meetings of the Proprietors of the Naguadavick Ferry. My wife
inherited from her father some shares in that enterprise, which is not
yet fully developed, though it doubtless will become a very valuable
property. The law of Maine then forbade stockholders to appear by
proxy at such meetings. Polly disliked to go, not being, in fact, a
"hens'-rights hen," and transferred her stock to me. I, after going
once, disliked it more than she. But Dennis went to the next meeting,
and liked it very much. He said the armchairs were good, the collation
good, and the free rides to stockholders pleasant. He was a little
frightened when they first took him upon one of the ferry-boats, but
after two or three quarterly meetings he became quite brave.

Thus far I never had any difficulty with him. Indeed, being of that
type which is called shiftless, he was only too happy to be told daily
what to do, and to be charged not to be forthputting or in any way
original in his discharge of that duty. He learned, however, to
discriminate between the lines of his life, and very much preferred
these stockholders' meetings and trustees' dinners and commencement
collations to another set of occasions, from which he used to beg off
most piteously. Our excellent brother, Dr. Fillmore, had taken a
notion at this time that our Sandemanian churches needed more
expression of mutual sympathy. He insisted upon it that we were
remiss. He said, that, if the Bishop came to preach at Naguadavick,
all the Episcopal clergy of the neighborhood were present; if Dr. Pond
came, all the Congregational clergymen turned out to hear him; if Dr.
Nichols, all the Unitarians; and he thought we owed it to each other
that, whenever there was an occasional service at a Sandemanian
church, the other brethren should all, if possible, attend. "It looked
well," if nothing more. Now this really meant that I had not been to
hear one of Dr. Fillmore's lectures on the Ethnology of Religion. He
forgot that he did not hear one of my course on the Sandemanianism of
Anselm. But I felt badly when he said it; and afterwards I always made
Dennis go to hear all the brethren preach, when I was not preaching
myself. This was what he took exceptions to--the only thing, as I
said, which he ever did except to. Now came the advantage of his long
morning-nap, and of the green tea with which Polly supplied the
kitchen. But he would plead, so humbly, to be let off, only from one
or two! I never excepted him, however. I knew the lectures were of
value, and I thought it best he should be able to keep the connection.

Polly is more rash than I am, as the reader has observed in the outset
of this memoir. She risked Dennis one night under the eyes of her own
sex. Governor Gorges had always been very kind to us; and when he gave
his great annual party to the town, asked us. I confess I hated to go.
I was deep in the new volume of Pfeiffer's _Mystics_, which Haliburton
had just sent me from Boston. "But how rude," said Polly, "not to
return the Governor's civility and Mrs. Gorges's, when they will be
sure to ask why you are away!" Still I demurred, and at last she, with
the wit of Eve and of Semiramis conjoined, let me off by saying that,
if I would go in with her, and sustain the initial conversations with
the Governor and the ladies staying there, she would risk Dennis for
the rest of the evening. And that was just what we did. She took
Dennis in training all that afternoon, instructed him in fashionable
conversation, cautioned him against the temptations of the
supper-table--and at nine in the evening he drove us all down in the
carryall. I made the grand star-entrГ©e with Polly and the pretty
Walton girls, who were staying with us. We had put Dennis into a great
rough top-coat, without his glasses--and the girls never dreamed, in
the darkness, of looking at him. He sat in the carriage, at the door,
while we entered. I did the agreeable to Mrs. Gorges, was introduced
to her niece. Miss Fernanda--I complimented Judge Jeffries on his
decision in the great case of D'Aulnay _vs._ Laconia Mining Co.--I
stepped into the dressing-room for a moment--stepped out for
another--walked home, after a nod with Dennis, and tying the horse to
a pump--and while I walked home, Mr. Frederic Ingham, my double,
stepped in through the library into the Gorges's grand saloon.

Oh! Polly died of laughing as she told me of it at midnight! And even
here, where I have to teach my hands to hew the beech for stakes to
fence our cave, she dies of laughing as she recalls it--and says that
single occasion was worth all we have paid for it. Gallant Eve that
she is! She joined Dennis at the library door, and in an instant
presented him to Dr. Ochterlong, from Baltimore, who was on a visit in
town, and was talking with her, as Dennis came in. "Mr. Ingham would
like to hear what you were telling us about your success among the
German population." And Dennis bowed and said, in spite of a scowl
from Polly, "I'm very glad you liked it." But Dr. Ochterlong did not
observe, and plunged into the tide of explanation, Dennis listening
like a prime-minister, and bowing like a mandarin--which is, I
suppose, the same thing. Polly declared it was just like Haliburton's
Latin conversation with the Hungarian minister, of which he is very
fond of telling. "_Quoene sit historia Reformationis in UngariГў?_"
quoth Haliburton, after some thought. And his _confrГЁre_ replied
gallantly, "_In seculo decimo tertio,_" etc., etc., etc.; and from
_decimo tertio_ [Which means, "In the thirteenth century," my dear
little bell-and-coral reader. You have rightly guessed that the
question means, "What is the history of the Reformation in Hungary?"]
to the nineteenth century and a half lasted till the oysters came. So
was it that before Dr. Ochterlong came to the "success," or near it,
Governor Gorges came to Dennis and asked him to hand Mrs. Jeffries
down to supper, a request which he heard with great joy.

Polly was skipping round the room, I guess, gay as a lark. Auchmuty
came to her "in pity for poor Ingham," who was so bored by the stupid
pundit--and Auchmuty could not understand why I stood it so long. But
when Dennis took Mrs. Jeffries down, Polly could not resist standing
near them. He was a little flustered, till the sight of the eatables
and drinkables gave him the same Mercian courage which it gave
Diggory. A little excited then, he attempted one or two of his
speeches to the Judge's lady. But little he knew how hard it was to
get in even a _promptu_ there edgewise. "Very well, I thank you," said
he, after the eating elements were adjusted; "and you?" And then did
not he have to hear about the mumps, and the measles, and arnica, and
belladonna, and chamomile-flower, and dodecathem, till she changed
oysters for salad--and then about the old practice and the new, and
what her sister said, and what her sister's friend said, and what the
physician to her sister's friend said, and then what was said by the
brother of the sister of the physician of the friend of her sister,
exactly as if it had been in Ollendorff? There was a moment's pause,
as she declined champagne. "I am very glad you liked it," said Dennis
again, which he never should have said, but to one who complimented a
sermon. "Oh! you are so sharp, Mr. Ingham! No! I never drink any wine
at all--except sometimes in summer a little currant spirits--from our
own currants, you know. My own mother--that is, I call her my own
mother, because, you know, I do not remember," etc., etc., etc.; till
they came to the candied orange at the end of the feast--when Dennis,
rather confused, thought he must say something, and tried No. 4--"I
agree, in general, with my friend the other side of the room"--which
he never should have said but at a public meeting. But Mrs. Jeffries,
who never listens expecting to understand, caught him up instantly
with, "Well, I'm sure my husband returns the compliment; he always
agrees with you--though we do worship with the Methodists--but you
know, Mr. Ingham," etc., etc., etc., till the move was made upstairs;
and as Dennis led her through the hall, he was scarcely understood by
any but Polly, as he said, "There has been so much said, and, on the
whole, so well said, that I will not occupy the time."

His great resource the rest of the evening was standing in the
library, carrying on animated conversations with one and another in
much the same way. Polly had initiated him in the mysteries of a
discovery of mine, that it is not necessary to finish your sentence in
a crowd, but by a sort of mumble, omitting sibilants and dentals.
This, indeed, if your words fail you, answers even in public extempore
speech--but better where other talking is going on. Thus: "We missed
you at the Natural History Society, Ingham." Ingham replies: "I am
very gligloglum, that is, that you were m-m-m-m-m." By gradually
dropping the voice, the interlocutor is compelled to supply the
answer. "Mrs. Ingham, I hope your friend Augusta is better." Augusta
has not been ill. Polly cannot think of explaining, however, and
answers: "Thank you, ma'am; she is very rearason wewahwewob," in lower
and lower tones. And Mrs. Throckmorton, who forgot the subject of
which she spoke, as soon as she asked the question, is quite
satisfied. Dennis could see into the card-room, and came to Polly to
ask if he might not go and play all-fours. But, of course, she sternly
refused. At midnight they came home delightedly: Polly, as I said,
wild to tell me the story of victory; only both the pretty Walton
girls said: "Cousin Frederic, you did not come near me all the
evening."

We always called him Dennis at home, for convenience, though his real
name was Frederic Ingham, as I have explained. When the election day
came round, however, I found that by some accident there was only one
Frederic Ingham's name on the voting-list; and, as I was quite busy
that day in writing some foreign letters to Halle, I thought I would
forego my privilege of suffrage, and stay quietly at home, telling
Dennis that he might use the record on the voting-list and vote. I
gave him a ticket, which I told him he might use, if he liked to. That
was that very sharp election in Maine which the readers of _The
Atlantic_ so well remember, and it had been intimated in public that
the ministers would do well not to appear at the polls. Of course,
after that, we had to appear by self or proxy. Still, Naguadavick was
not then a city, and this standing in a double queue at townmeeting
several hours to vote was a bore of the first water; and so, when I
found that there was but one Frederic Ingham on the list, and that one
of us must give up, I stayed at home and finished the letters (which,
indeed, procured for Fothergill his coveted appointment of Professor
of Astronomy at Leavenworth), and I gave Dennis, as we called him, the
chance. Something in the matter gave a good deal of popularity to the
Frederic Ingham name; and at the adjourned election, next week,
Frederic Ingham was chosen to the legislature. Whether this was I or
Dennis, I never really knew. My friends seemed to think it was I; but
I felt, that, as Dennis had done the popular thing, he was entitled to
the honor; so I sent him to Augusta when the time came, and he took
the oaths. And a very valuable member he made. They appointed him on
the Committee on Parishes; but I wrote a letter for him, resigning, on
the ground that he took an interest in our claim to the stumpage in
the minister's sixteenths of Gore A, next No. 7, in the 10th Range. He
never made any speeches, and always voted with the minority, which was
what he was sent to do. He made me and himself a great many good
friends, some of whom I did not afterwards recognize as quickly as
Dennis did my parishioners. On one or two occasions, when there was
wood to saw at home, I kept him at home; but I took those occasions to
go to Augusta myself. Finding myself often in his vacant seat at these
times, I watched the proceedings with a good deal of care; and once
was so much excited that I delivered my somewhat celebrated speech on
the Central School District question, a speech of which the State of
Maine printed some extra copies. I believe there is no formal rule
permitting strangers to speak; but no one objected.

Dennis himself, as I said, never spoke at all. But our experience this
session led me to think, that if, by some such "general understanding"
as the reports speak of in legislation daily, every member of Congress
might leave a double to sit through those deadly sessions and answer
to roll-calls and do the legitimate party-voting, which appears
stereotyped in the regular list of Ashe, Bocock, Black, etc., we
should gain decidedly in working power. As things stand, the saddest
state prison I ever visit is that Representatives' Chamber in
Washington. If a man leaves for an hour, twenty "correspondents" may
be howling, "Where was Mr. Prendergast when the Oregon bill passed?"
And if poor Prendergast stays there! Certainly, the worst use you can
make of a man is to put him in prison!

I know, indeed, that public men of the highest rank have resorted to
this expedient long ago. Dumas's novel of _The Iron Mask_ turns on the
brutal imprisonment of Louis the Fourteenth's double. There seems
little doubt, in our own history, that it was the real General Pierce
who shed tears when the delegate from Lawrence explained to him the
sufferings of the people there--and only General Pierce's double who
had given the orders for the assault on that town, which was invaded
the next day. My charming friend, George Withers, has, I am almost
sure, a double, who preaches his afternoon sermons for him. This is
the reason that the theology often varies so from that of the
forenoon. But that double is almost as charming as the original. Some
of the most well-defined men, who stand out most prominently on the
background of history, are in this way stereoscopic men; who owe their
distinct relief to the slight differences between the doubles. All
this I know. My present suggestion is simply the great extension of
the system, so that all public machine-work may be done by it.

But I see I loiter on my story, which is rushing to the plunge. Let me
stop an instant more, however, to recall, were it only to myself, that
charming year while all was yet well. After the double had become a
matter of course, for nearly twelve months before he undid me, what a
year it was! Full of active life, full of happy love, of the hardest
work, of the sweetest sleep, and the fulfilment of so many of the
fresh aspirations and dreams of boyhood! Dennis went to every
school-committee meeting, and sat through all those late wranglings
which used to keep me up till midnight and awake till morning. He
attended all the lectures to which foreign exiles sent me tickets
begging me to come for the love of Heaven and of Bohemia. He accepted
and used all the tickets for charity concerts which were sent to me.
He appeared everywhere where it was specially desirable that "our
denomination," or "our party," or "our class," or "our family," or
"our street," or "our town," or "our country," or "our state," should
be fully represented. And I fell back to that charming life which in
boyhood one dreams of, when he supposes he shall do his own duty and
make his own sacrifices, without being tied up with those of other
people. My rusty Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French,
Italian, Spanish, German and English began to take polish. Heavens!
how little I had done with them while I attended to my _public_
duties! My calls on my parishioners became the friendly, frequent,
homelike sociabilities they were meant to be, instead of the hard work
of a man goaded to desperation by the sight of his lists of arrears.
And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday the
whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to a
people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend! I
never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave the sermon at
home, if I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should do
always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a sensible people like
ours--really more attached to their clergy than they were in the lost
days, when the Mathers and Nortons were noblemen--should choose to
neutralize so much of their ministers' lives, and destroy so much of
their early training, by this undefined passion for seeing them in
public. It springs from our balancing of sects. If a spirited
Episcopalian takes an interest in the almshouse, and is put on the
Poor Board, every other denomination must have a minister there, lest
the poorhouse be changed into St. Paul's Cathedral. If a Sandemanian
is chosen president of the Young Men's Library, there must be a
Methodist vice-president and a Baptist secretary. And if a
Universalist Sunday-School Convention collects five hundred delegates,
the next Congregationalist Sabbath-School Conference must be as large,
"lest 'they'--whoever _they_ may be--should think 'we'--whoever _we_
may be--are going down."

Freed from these necessities, that happy year, I began to know my wife
by sight. We saw each other sometimes. In those long mornings, when
Dennis was in the study explaining to map-peddlers that I had eleven
maps of Jerusalem already, and to school-book agents that I would see
them hanged before I would be bribed to introduce their textbooks into
the schools--she and I were at work together, as in those old dreamy
days--and in these of our log-cabin again. But all this could not
last--and at length poor Dennis, my double, overtasked in turn, undid
me.

It was thus it happened. There is an excellent fellow--once a
minister--I will call him Isaacs--who deserves well of the world till
he dies, and after--because he once, in a real exigency, did the right
thing, in the right way, at the right time, as no other man could do
it. In the world's great football match, the ball by chance found him
loitering on the outside of the field; he closed with it, "camped" it,
charged, it home--yes, right through the other side--not disturbed,
not frightened by his own success--and breathless found himself a
great man--as the Great Delta rang applause. But he did not find
himself a rich man; and the football has never come in his way again.
From that moment to this moment he has been of no use, that one can
see, at all. Still, for that great act we speak of Isaacs gratefully
and remember him kindly; and he forges on, hoping to meet the football
somewhere again. In that vague hope, he had arranged a "movement" for
a general organization of the human family into Debating Clubs, County
Societies, State Unions, etc., etc., with a view of inducing all
children to take hold of the handles of their knives and forks,
instead of the metal. Children have bad habits in that way. The
movement, of course, was absurd; but we all did our best to forward,
not it, but him. It came time for the annual county-meeting on this
subject to be held at Naguadavick. Isaacs came round, good fellow! to
arrange for it--got the townhall, got the Governor to preside (the
saint!--he ought to have triplet doubles provided him by law), and
then came to get me to speak. "No," I said, "I would not speak, if ten
Governors presided. I do not believe in the enterprise. If I spoke, it
should be to say children should take hold of the prongs of the forks
and the blades of the knives. I would subscribe ten dollars, but I
would not speak a mill." So poor Isaacs went his way, sadly, to coax
Auchmuty to speak, and Delafield. I went out. Not long after, he came
back, and told Polly that they had promised to speak--the Governor
would speak--and he himself would close with the quarterly report, and
some interesting anecdotes regarding. Miss Biffin's way of handling
her knife and Mr. Nellis's way of footing his fork. "Now if Mr. Ingham
will only come and sit on the platform, he need not say one word; but
it will show well in the paper--it will show that the Sandemanians
take as much interest in the movement as the Armenians or the
Mesopotamians, and will be a great favor to me." Polly, good soul! was
tempted, and she promised. She knew Mrs. Isaacs was starving, and the
babies--she knew Dennis was at home--and she promised! Night came, and
I returned. I heard her story. I was sorry. I doubted. But Polly had
promised to beg me, and I dared all! I told Dennis to hold his peace,
under all circumstances, and sent him down.

It was not half an hour more before he returned, wild with
excitement--in a perfect Irish fury--which it was long before I
understood. But I knew at once that he had undone me!

What happened was this: The audience got together, attracted by
Governor Gorges's name. There were a thousand people. Poor Gorges was
late from Augusta. They became impatient. He came in direct from the
train at last, really ignorant of the object of the meeting. He opened
it in the fewest possible words, and said other gentlemen were present
who would entertain them better than he. The audience were
disappointed, but waited. The Governor, prompted by Isaacs, said, "The
Honorable Mr. Delafield will address you." Delafield had forgotten the
knives and forks, and was playing the Ruy Lopez opening at the chess
club. "The Rev. Mr. Auchmuty will address you." Auchmuty had promised
to speak late, and was at the school committee. "I see Dr. Stearns in
the hall; perhaps he will say a word." Dr. Stearns said he had come to
listen and not to speak. The Governor and Isaacs whispered. The
Governor looked at Dennis, who was resplendent on the platform; but
Isaacs, to give him his due, shook his head. But the look was enough.
A miserable lad, ill-bred, who had once been in Boston, thought it
would sound well to call for me, and peeped out, "Ingham!" A few more
wretches cried, "Ingham! Ingham!" Still Isaacs was firm; but the
Governor, anxious, indeed, to prevent a row, knew I would say
something, and said, "Our friend Mr. Ingham is always prepared--and
though we had not relied upon him, he will say a word, perhaps."
Applause followed, which turned Dennis's head. He rose, flattered, and
tried No. 3: "There has been so much said, and, on the whole, so well
said, that I will not longer occupy the time!" and sat down, looking
for his hat; for things seemed squally. But the people cried, "Go on!
go on!" and some applauded. Dennis, still confused, but flattered by
the applause, to which neither he nor I are used, rose again, and this
time tried No. 2: "I am very glad you liked it!" in a sonorous, clear
delivery. My best friends stared. All the people who did not know me
personally yelled with delight at the aspect of the evening; the
Governor was beside himself, and poor Isaacs thought he was undone!
Alas, it was I! A boy in the gallery cried in a loud tone, "It's all
an infernal humbug," just as Dennis, waving his hand, commanded
silence, and tried No. 4: "I agree, in general, with my friend the
other side of the room." The poor Governor doubted his senses, and
crossed to stop him--not in time, however. The same gallery-boy
shouted, "How's your mother?"--and Dennis, now completely lost, tried,
as his last shot, No. 1, vainly: "Very well, thank you; and you?"

I think I must have been undone already. But Dennis, like another
Lockhard chose "to make sicker." The audience rose in a whirl of
amazement, rage, and sorrow. Some other impertinence, aimed at Dennis,
broke all restraint, and, in pure Irish, he delivered himself of an
address to the gallery, inviting any person who wished to fight to
come down and do so--stating, that they were all dogs and
cowards--that he would take any five of them single-handed, "Shure, I
have said all his Riverence and the Misthress bade me say," cried he,
in defiance; and, seizing the Governor's cane from his hand,
brandished it, quarter-staff fashion, above his head. He was, indeed,
got from the hall only with the greatest difficulty by the Governor,
the City Marshal, who had been called in, and the Superintendent of my
Sunday School.

The universal impression, of course, was, that the Rev. Frederic
Ingham had lost all command of himself in some of those haunts of
intoxication which for fifteen years I have been laboring to destroy.
Till this moment, indeed, that is the impression in Naguadavick. This
number of _The Atlantic_ will relieve from it a hundred friends of
mine who have been sadly wounded by that notion now for years--but I
shall not be likely ever to show my head there again.

No! My double has undone me.

We left town at seven the next morning. I came to No. 9, in the Third
Range, and settled on the Minister's Lot, In the new towns in Maine,
the first settled minister has a gift of a hundred acres of land. I am
the first settled minister in No. 9. My wife and little Paulina are my
parish. We raise corn enough to live on in summer. We kill bear's meat
enough to carbonize it in winter. I work on steadily on my _Traces of
Sandemanianism in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries_, which I hope to
persuade Phillips, Sampson & Co. to publish next year. We are very
happy, but the world thinks we are undone.



A VISIT TO THE ASYLUM FOR AGED AND DECAYED PUNSTERS

By Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894)

[From _The Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1861. Republished in _Soundings
from the Atlantic_ (1864), by Oliver Wendell Holmes, whose authorized
publishers are the Houghton Mifflin Company.]

Having just returned from a visit to this admirable Institution in
company with a friend who is one of the Directors, we propose giving a
short account of what we saw and heard. The great success of the
Asylum for Idiots and Feeble-minded Youth, several of the scholars
from which have reached considerable distinction, one of them being
connected with a leading Daily Paper in this city, and others having
served in the State and National Legislatures, was the motive which
led to the foundation of this excellent charity. Our late
distinguished townsman, Noah Dow, Esquire, as is well known,
bequeathed a large portion of his fortune to this establishment--
"being thereto moved," as his will expressed it, "by the desire of
_N. Dowing_ some public Institution for the benefit of Mankind."
Being consulted as to the Rules of the Institution and the selection
of a Superintendent, he replied, that "all Boards must construct
their own Platforms of operation. Let them select _anyhow_ and he
should be pleased." N.E. Howe, Esq., was chosen in compliance with
this delicate suggestion.

The Charter provides for the support of "One hundred aged and decayed
Gentlemen-Punsters." On inquiry if there way no provision for
_females_, my friend called my attention to this remarkable
psychological fact, namely:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FEMALE PUNSTER.

This remark struck me forcibly, and on reflection I found that _I
never knew nor heard of one_, though I have once or twice heard a
woman make a _single detached_ pun, as I have known a hen to crow.

On arriving at the south gate of the Asylum grounds, I was about to
ring, but my friend held my arm and begged me to rap with my stick,
which I did. An old man with a very comical face presently opened the
gate and put out his head.

"So you prefer _Cane_ to _A bell_, do you?" he said--and began
chuckling and coughing at a great rate.

My friend winked at me.

"You're here still, Old Joe, I see," he said to the old man.

"Yes, yes--and it's very odd, considering how often I've _bolted_,
nights."

He then threw open the double gates for us to ride through.

"Now," said the old man, as he pulled the gates after us, "you've had
a long journey."

"Why, how is that, Old Joe?" said my friend.

"Don't you see?" he answered; "there's the _East hinges_ on the one
side of the gate, and there's the _West hinges_ on t'other side--haw!
haw! haw!"

We had no sooner got into the yard than a feeble little gentleman,
with a remarkably bright eye, came up to us, looking very serious, as
if something had happened.

"The town has entered a complaint against the Asylum as a gambling
establishment," he said to my friend, the Director.

"What do you mean?" said my friend.

"Why, they complain that there's a _lot o' rye_ on the premises," he
answered, pointing to a field of that grain--and hobbled away, his
shoulders shaking with laughter, as he went.

On entering the main building, we saw the Rules and Regulations for
the Asylum conspicuously posted up. I made a few extracts which may be
interesting:

SECT. I. OF VERBAL EXERCISES.

5. Each Inmate shall be permitted to make Puns freely from eight in
the morning until ten at night, except during Service in the Chapel
and Grace before Meals.

6. At ten o'clock the gas will be turned off, and no further Puns,
Conundrums, or other play on words will be allowed to be uttered, or
to be uttered aloud.