Page images
PDF
EPUB

mache, and Achilles to the embraces of Briseis. I do not blame the prose writer who opens his bosom occasionally to a breath of poetry; neither, on the contrary, can I praise the gait of that pedestrian who lifts up his legs as high on a bare heath as in a cornfield.—Walter Savage Landor.

120. THE GLADIATOR.

I see before me the gladiator lie :

He leans upon his hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony,
And his drooped head sinks gradually low :
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him; he is gone,

Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not; his eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away:

He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize,
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay;
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother-he, their sire,
Butchered to make a Roman holiday.

All this rushed with his blood. Shall he expire,

And unavenged? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire !—Byron.

121. THE NIGHT NOISES OF 'SUBURBIA.'

The night passes calmly until the crescent moon, rising over the housetops, sheds its light on a scene of tranquillity tempered only with cats. Unfortunately, Suburbia being rather sentimental, the appearance of the silvery luminary generally causes a severe conflict between rival pianos, divided from each other only by a brick and a half, while multitudinous voices, not always melodious, pay their homage to chaste Diana in hymns culled from 'La Fille de Madame Angot.' The battle is fierce, but after an hour or two the last quaver dies away, and Suburbia sinks to rest, soothed by the sweet lullaby of caterwauling. Not for long. An hour after midnight gay

chanticleers, afflicted with chronic hoarse throats, and possessing indefinite notions about the dawn, begin to crow. Next, dogs of every degree, having slept through the first part of the night, emerge from small barrels in dark corners, to bay at the moon. Then catdom, outraged in its tenderest feelings, spits viciously from wall-tops; then windows again open; then infants, aroused by the noise, think it their duty to add their quota; then sleepy policemen, possessed with indefinite notions of burglars, create general alarm by causing bright focuses of light to dance like will-o'-the-wisps about the back gardens; and then the market gardeners' vans and milk carts begin to rattle past. After that sleep is but a fitful dream, which also may be said of life itself in the dreary country of Suburbia.Globe.

122. NIAGARA IN WINTER.

As I stood gazing on the sun, and the rainbow, and the glittering spray, and the sparkling snow, and as the constant roar of the cataract had become to me, through its even monotony of sonorous continuity, quite soft and subdued, the very oddest, the very absurdest, the most incongruous thing it is possible to conceive, happened. I thought I had worked myself up to the proper state of rapture. The sun had worked marvels in me. I was absorbed. I was wonder-struck. I was delighted. Here was the grand sight-the Show of Shows-the spectacle that, from the most unimpressionable, extorts the exclamation of wonder. I was invoking Phœbus Apollo-I was crying 'Evoe!' or, 'Mehercle!'—when an abominably ludicrous thing happened.

It was in this wise. Mr. Sol Davis is a thrifty man, and keeps live stock. From the rear of his premises there came gravely and consequentially waddling towards me, a certain domestic bird. This bird, it may be, flattered himself that his plumage was white; but, contrasted with the virgin snow over which he sacrilegiously waddled, he had a dirty, tawny hue. And the varlet thought, no doubt, that he had red legs. Red! These were like unto the worn-out jacket of an untidy militiaman. His bill was unbearable. He was the ugliest biped I ever set eyes upon : and yet I dare say Mr. Sol Davis thought him in the plumpest of condition, and intended to send him

presently into the States, with a view to the Christmas market. There, the truth must out. He was a Goose, and this beast of a bird waddled to the brink of Table Rock, and stood beside me, gazing out upon Niagara.

It would be a mean and paltry thing, I knew, for a strong man to kick a goose over a precipice. It would have been a cruel and dishonest thing to steal Mr. Sol Davis' property, or wring its neck. Yet something must be done, I felt. Why didn't he fly away? Why didn't he waddle back? No; there he remained, ruminating, and occasionally gobbling to himself. Perhaps he was indulging in aspirations that the sage and onion crop had given out, and that he would not be roasted yet. I told him savagely to get out of that. He turned his bill and his eye upwards to me, stood on one leg, and hissed slightly, as though to say, 'Have I not as much right here as you, brother? What do you think of the Falls? As for me,

I am blasé. I am a Goose. Men may come and men may go, but I and the Falls go on for ever. More rain drops from the heavens, and gushes from this source, and feeds the lakes, and flushes the river, and rushes from Erie to Ontario, and tumbles over these rocks, and is shattered into spray and becomes vapour, and in time gathers again in clouds, and falls once more in rain. More goslings chip from the shell, more mother-geese drive off with strong wing and angry hiss the barn-door cat, more geese are baked and roasted, or are set before fires, or caged in coops and crammed that their livers may swell, and the fatty degeneration be made into pies. I am a Goose, and have gone on for thousands of years. And you, brother? I was in Noah's Ark. I saved the Roman Capitol. I once laid golden eggs. The clodhopper thought he had killed me, but here I am again. How old is the world, and for how many thousands of years has this cataract been roaring, and I or my brothers hissing or gobbling on the edge of the precipice?' I declined to answer the implied questions he propounded. I left the abominable brute; and for my part I don't see anything cruel in the process of preparing pâtés de foie gras, or plucking geese alive.

123. THE RED MAN AT THE NIAGARA FALLS.

Slowly and sadly I walked along the precipice road towards the Suspension Bridge, when I came on some one· standing, as I had stood, on the verge of a scarp, and gazing on the Falls.

He had his dog with him-a patient little black fellow with ragged ears-a poverty-stricken mongrel cur. He looked as though he had been bred a turnspit, but, that branch of business declining through the introduction of bottle-jacks, had attempted the water-spaniel line of business. Poor little beast! He shivered and looked lamentably uncomfortable in his sporting character, but was quite meek and resigned. His master was somewhat under the middle size, but was a brawny, thickset fellow. The facial angles of his countenance would not have been amiss on a medal representing one of the Twelve Cæsars, for his nose was purely aquiline, his cheekbones high, his lips firmly set, and his chin broad and massive; but there his classicality stopped. His forehead was low; his eye, though black and lustrous, small and sunken; and his head, so far as I could discern for the.fur cap he wore, thatched with long, coarse, matted black hair-raven black if you please, but the sable of a raven who has fed on anything but succulent garbage. He was very dirty, very ragged, and very greasy. Wrapped round him was a blanket coat, patched here and there with scraps of leather; his loins were girt with a wampum belt, but the beads were broken and lustreless. There was some shabby embroidery, too, on the canvas pouch he carried at his side. His legs were swathed in bandages of coarse linen, with criss-cross ligaments, such as Italian brigands wear, and such as you may note in the statues of the Gauls of old. On his feet he wore moccasins, and these offered a curious contrast to the poverty of the rest of his attire, for they were of new black cloth, glowing with party-coloured passementerie, and, in their embroidery, quite a marvel of beadwork. On one arm rested a long duck-gun with bright barrel, and his shot-belt and powder-flask hung on his hip opposite the pouch. He had been out birding—seeking perchance the ptarmigan or the capercailzie, or more probably in quest of smaller and prettier quarries, such as that exquisite little blue

bird of Canada which forms a centre-piece to the feather fans made by his race.

There he stood, silent and motionless, contemplating the raging waters. He was plainly a poor devil, and the clothes he had on would not have fetched two dollars and a half. His gun was the most valuable part of his accoutrements, and the stock of that weapon even was worn and notched. He had been out probably for many weary hours, and would not gather more than fifty cents by his day's work. He was, in Yankee estimation, battered, unclean, and oleaginous. And even here, on British soil, he was looked upon as a kind of bore and encumbrance, not, it is true, to be absolutely maltreated or violently expelled, but so prevailed upon to 'move on,' and generally wiped out, as early as the proprieties of civilisation would permit of that process. This was clearly no place for him. White hunters could be found to catch the blue bird as well as he, and white women in crinoline could make the fans as deftly as the blanketed squaws of his feeble and scattered race. Niagara was wanted for tourists and excursionists, for hotel-keepers and guide-book sellers. He was an anomaly and an anachronism here. It was time for him to clear out.

Yes, this was a Red Man. He was the first North American Indian, in his own land, I had seen. I am not about to get up any spasmodic enthusiasm concerning the Noble Savage. He is, I am aware, at a painful discount just at present, and I confess that his nobility is, in the main, nonsense, and he himself a nuisance. I have seen a good deal of him in Canada, and I am bound to admit that-according to our ideas of civilisation-he is, at the best, but a poor creature. I have nothing favourable to say about the war-paint, or the war-path, or the war-dance. The calumet of peace has, I know, been smoked to the last ashes. I give up the Noble Savage morally. I confess him to be a shiftless and degraded vagrant, who does not wash himself who is not at all scrupulous about taking things which do not belong to him-who will get blind or mad drunk on rum or whisky whenever he has a chance-who is not a much better shot than a white man, and who has only one special aptitude-that for playing at cards, at which he will cheat you. But, fallen and debased as he is, not much more picturesque than an English gipsy, and quite as dishonest,

« PreviousContinue »