Doctor Oldham at Greystones, and his talk there

Chapter I

The library table and Mrs. Oldham's opinion of it— Idea-images ; the caution necessary in reducing them to feet and inches — Drawers made to prevent husband and wife pulling together ; yet serving to a more loving harmony — Shattered ideals— How Mrs. Oldham was like Sir Isaac Newton's dog, and Doctor Oldham not like Sir Isaac — The wisdom of

Chapter II

"Which grows out of the inartistic way this book began ; but gives the author a chance to speak of the courteous reader of the last age ; and also to explain himself to the courteous reader of the present day, . .15

Chapter III

"Which comes between the last chapter and the next one— The reader may omit if he will ; but he will lose something if he does, .... 20

IV CONTENTS

CHAPTEK IV.

The library not made for the table— The recess that was not realized and the window that was— The library as finished— Doctor Oldham's opinion about good company— He quotes Doctor Southey and discourses about him, 27

CHAPTEK V.

Greystones : and what Downing might have said if he had had the altering of the plan of it, 83

CHAPTER VI.

Henry Eeed— Coleridge on Wordsworth s verses— The Doctor's theory of the distinction between man and the brutes, and also of the edible and potable universe, as propounded to Professor Clare, . . . .49

CHAPTER VII.

Short, if not sweet— Difference between the author and Rabelais, and some other celebrated writers, 62

CHAPTER VIII.

The Doctor visits Mrs. Rossville's school— And tells his wife what he said to the little folks there — Mr. Grim— How God takes care the children shall not be hurt by bad catechisms, 66

CHAPTER IX.

More talk about children — The good Lord's contrivances to prevent their being shut out of the world of fiction, 76

CHAPTER X.

Glimpses biographical and auto-biographical— "With observations interspersed that are worth a chapter in themselves, 84

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XL

How nature shows her gladness — June and Junefulness— "When a nose is a good thing— Is it an organ for the beautiful— The glories of October — Nature's picture gallery — Art and its limitations — Mrs. Oldham asks two very great questions, 93

CHAPTER XII.

Professor Clare — The Doctor's talk about the starry heavens— Addison and • Shakspeare— "Word-painting and other painting— Where the universe ends and how it is filled— Mrs. Oldham's two questions are not answered, .104

CHAPTER XIII.

More about the stars and the earth — Pantheism — Whether any thing can become so small as to become nothing and yet remain something— Time and space— Mrs. Oldham's two great questions again, and the way they were answered, 117

CHAPTER XIV.

The Doctor preaches to his daughter — Quotes Wordsworth and gets into heroics — Also he fulfils a scriptural duty — Remarkable street-sweepers and knife-grinders— Comforting doctrine concerning shirt-making and stocking mending, 133

CHAPTER XV.

Wherein the Doctor says pshaw to something advanced by the author, and advances his own notions— Comfort and swill not the highest felicity for rational beings — The world needs martyrs, but Crooke Racket not the right type, 150

CHAPTER XVI.

Lot's house in Sodom— Jonah in New York— The Doctor villifies universal suffrage and an elective judiciary in a very shocking way ; and

VI CONTENTS.

PAGE

makes the most unsupposable suppositions— An extraordinary ticket for city offices, 158

CHAPTER XVII.

A short chapter on judge-making— Not amusing; and not so likely to be interesting to those who need, as to those who do not need, the instruction it contains, 176

CHAPTER XVIII.

Something on universal suffrage and sacred rights— Wherein is seen how Professor Clare and Pelham Brief differ from each other, and the Doctor from them both, 183

CHAPTER XIX.

Hard and dry, perhaps— But going to the bottom of a subject immensely important to be understood in this country, 195

CHAPTER XX.

Very short, perhaps unpalatable— Yet, if true, ought not to give offence to any good man, 209

CHAPTER XXI.

Also short— Not without interest for some minds— But likely to displease two sorts of readers and to shock one of them, 213

CHAPTER XXII.

The Doctor at a woman's rights convention — What he did not say there, but would have said if he had said any thing, 220

CHAPTER XXIII.

On Dee-deeing, .247

CONTENTS. Vll

PAGE

CIIAPTEK XXIV.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee, 254

CHAPTER XXV.

Some of the Doctor's notions about conversation — His practice is another question, 258

CHAPTER XXVI.

Preliminary to another, 263

CHAPTER XXVII.

Of owls, 265

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The Doctor says some things that sound very strange to Mrs. Garland — Bad Christians and good heathen— Mr. Grim — The necessity for a good God, 266

CHAPTER XXIX.

Professor Clare gets back to Japan, and the Doctor is unduly severe upon cant and the gospel of cotton fields, 278

CHAPTER XXX.

Mr. Stockjob Pile— Alderman Gubbins — Hardhead Bullion— Bob Slender —It takes something inside to make something— which is declared at the end of the chapter, 285

CHAPTER XXXI.

About Caspar Tuberose and his wife — "With other things touching the constitution of a gentleman, 297

CHAPTER XXXII.

The Doctor's horse— What and why about him, 318

Vlll CONTENTS.

PAGB

CHAPTER XXXIII.

All-hang-together-ness, 321

CHAPTEE XXXIT.

LTEnroy, perhaps— Containing something natural— And also something supernatural from which nothing came except some natural remarks of the Doctor's. 835

DOCTOR OLDHAM.

Chapter I

the library table and mrs. oldham's opinion of it. idea-images ; the caution necessary in reducing them to feet

and inches. drawers made to prevent husband and wife

pulling together; yet serving to a more loving harmony. — shattered ideals. how mrs. oldham was like sir

isaac newton's dog and doctor oldham not like sir isaac. the wisdom of nonsense.

The family were all gathered around the large library table, as usual of an evening. I said the large library table ; Mrs. Oldham ^thought it too large, and besides she disliked the shape of it. It was a square-cornered oblong table, and she would have preferred it to be oval. The Doctor, I know, secretly agreed with her ; at least he came to be of the same way of thinking after she had expressed her opinion — a thing he was very apt to do. But he had not frankly confessed his whole mind to her about it ; he had only told her that the oval shape might perhaps have looked better, without much diminishing the size of it, which he had all along insisted was no larger than it ought to be to give room for them all to sit around it — a point he had set his heart on from the beginning.

The truth was, Mrs. Oldham, with her homely, honest way of speaking out her mind, had hurt the Doctor's feelings, without knowing it or intending it. But she had hurt them weeks before^ the very first time she saw the table. And this was the way of it.

The Doctor had set his heart on having a Library table, truly and properly such, a table for a library, one to hold books, one that would allow a good many books to lie on it, and large enough for all the family to sit around it, and read and write without interfering with each other, with room besides for any friend that might chance to drop in upon them. Such was his ideal of a library table. He had long indulged his mind's eye with the pleasing image. It had grown, in fact, to be a weakness of his, something that he in a sort doted on realizing some day. So he had gone and bespoken it six months before the library was finished and ready to receive it, before indeed the foundations of the newly-built part of Greystones were laid. He had ordered it to be made six feet long and three feet wide, going only by the image in his mind's eye, and guessing even at the dimensions of that without having ever measured and noted any actual table of such a width and length. He had done so too without consulting Mrs. Oldham, which was something very unusual with him ; for he had a high opinion of her good sense. Indeed he was wont to say, that in point of practical wisdom he thought his wife very much his superior ; but in the faculty of seeing through a speculative millstone without any hole in it, he did not scruple to say he did not consider her so highly gifted as Jeremy Bentham or himself. This matter of the library table was undoubtedly a practical affair, the getting it made at least, and yet, owing, he supposed, to the pre-occupation of his mind with his ideal, he had neglected to secure her advice and sanction, I mean as to its exact form and dimensions — for he had told her, in a general and passing way, that he was going to have a library table made — but as she made no particular inquiries, not imagining it was to be ordered so long beforehand, it happened that nothing more was said,

So the table was made and brought home and set in its place. Mrs. Oldham looked at it for a moment or two, and then said :

" Husband, I don't like it. It is too large, and the shape of it doesn't please me. Altogether, it looks like a table for a bank parlor or for an insurance office."

Dear woman ! She little thought how inwardly aghast her words struck the Doctor. In the placid sincerity of her womanly and wifely heart, there was the most perfect, and at the same time perfectly unreflected and unconscious confidence in the impossibility of her saying anything, or of his taking anything she could say, in any other than a kindly spirit. So she had spoken as she felt, without thinking of it even as a matter in which there might be a difference of taste between them, still less dreaming that she was giving him pain. She knew nothing of his visions and his images. She did not know this table was his realized ideal. She knew nothing of all he had been dreaming about so long, and which of late, as the time of fulfilment drew near, had so filled his mind's eye. He had never told her ; although he is one of the most open-hearted persons I ever knew, and communicative to a fault, as his wife often told him, and as lie himself has had too many occasions to be conscious of, when he has, in his frank, confiding way, laid himself open to the stupid, the brutal, or the malicious. Yet he had never told anybody, not even her. You may think this strange, but I do not. On the contrary, I think it altogether natural ; for always in your dreaming, speculative natures, like the Doctor's, there are some cherished fancies which, with all their frankness and unreserve, they are shy of revealing to any human creature — from a half consciousness of their weakness about them and their inability to bear any exposure of it to the unsympathetic, and yet an instinctive sense of the impossibility of anybody but themselves fully sympathizing with them. You may think this an over deep and wise lesson in human nature to bring in here to explain such a trifling thing as the Doctor's not telling his wife his secret fancies about a table. But it is a true lesson, and one that everybody ought to learn ; one that will explain a great many other things besides the Doctor's silence ; and you ought to be thankful for a lesson of wisdom, however trivial the occasion that leads me to give it to you.

But so it was, the Doctor had never told even his wife, — not, of course, from any deliberate purpose of concealment, but unconsciously, from the influence of the feeling I have mentioned ; and so she could not know what she was trampling upon. She would not have hurt his feelings for the world. But she had. She had demolished his ideal ; she had shattered his vision. He could not stand up against her opinion. He never could in such matters. He had never been able all the time they had lived together to think right well of anything that did not suit her taste.

But now the shock was great. He could not bring himself to show how much he was wounded. He tried to hold up. He even defended his vilified ideal.

" Too large, my dear ? Why, it is only large enough for us all to sit about it of an evening in that comfortable pleasant way, which I am sure you think so nice. Besides, see here ! " turning her attention away from the size of the table, "here are six drawers, one for each of us, three on one side and three on the other. This one is for me ; that opposite is yours ; here is Phil's ; there Fred's ; this is Lilly's ; and this is for Cousin Kitty when she comes. It is so pleasant to have one's own drawer to put one's things into which one does not wish to leave lying on the table, and yet wants to have always near at hand."

" I see/' said she, taking hold of her drawer and pulling it out, " but, husband, your six drawers are only three, each of them running through the whole width of the table and drawing out on either side. See, your drawer and mine are only one drawer with a partition across the middle and knobs on both ends ; so, when you open your drawer on your side of the table, you draw mine after it out of my reach. What shall we do if we both wish to use our drawers at the same time ? "

" Do ? " said the Doctor, disconcerted at this new discovery to the discredit of his ideal, " do ? do ? Well, my dear," pinching his nose between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, his usual resource in such cases, " I do not know that I can tell you what we must do. But I can tell you what we must not do. We must not do what you and I have always done hitherto/'

" What do you mean ? " she inquired.

"Pull together, my dear. We have always pulled together. But it will not do for us to pull our drawers together. We must pull them in the spirit of compromise, in the spirit of mutual compromise, my dear Mrs. Oldham, and then this very peculiarity in the make of our drawers, — a peculiarity for which I confess I do not see any good mechanical reason — will become, I will not say a memento to the practice of a virtue which even prudence, in a case like this, would dictate to merely selfish natures, but will become — as all outward things, however trivial, do become to right loving hearts — a sermon and a sacrament of divines t charity."

The Doctor paused, inwardly elated with the gentle excitement of his small sermon. The justice of his wife's objection was palpable, and there was not a single compensating advantage. But he did not like to own that the drawers were made in this absurd way by his own special direction, from a notion they would be handier — a notion he had got, not from ever actually seeing and handling any real drawers made in this fashion, but solely from contemplating the idea-image in his mind's eye.

He was glad to get off from the subject. But the truth is that, from this time,

. . . . The glory and the gleam, The consecration and the poet's dream,

began to fade from his realized ideal.- He began to see his table through his wife's eyes. At length every time he looked at the long square-cornered thing, with its shining "bronze imitation leather top, he saw it was not the thing he ought to have ordered. It was too large for the room, though he was still sure it was not too large for them all to sit at together ; still, as a matter of proportion and good looks, it was too large ; its shape was bad ; and it looked too much like a " bank table " — he could not but confess it to himself, although he had felt that to be the unkindest cut in his wife's speech. He could not but secretly think how much better a nicely proportioned oval table, with a rich cloth cover of suitable color, would look.

But he had never brought himself to acknowledge it to her in a full, frank way, before this evening ; because it was only this evening that he had got fairly over the chagrin and soreness of having the glory so torn from the vision of his long dreams. But to night he felt no difficulty in making the admission.

" Mrs. Oldham, my dear," said he, as they were drawing up to the table, " you were right. This is not the table we should have had. It is too large. It is not the right shape. It does look too much like a bank table."

" Husband," said she, in her kind placid voice —

there was no triumph, no gratified vanity in her tone 1* or look, any more than in her honest heart — " husband, you had better have consulted me before getting it made."

" I am sure of it, my dear/' answered the Doctor, " you are an oracle of practical wisdom, Mrs. Oldham ; I never neglect to obtain your advice and sanction in any matter, of affairs, without finding reason to regret it in the end. But my forethoughts, you know, are very much like the Irishman's : they come afterwards. I am as full of notions as a Yankee, and as eager and incautious in realizing them as an Irishman, or, as my friend Idleman calls me, a very c sanguinary man/ I have done many hasty things in my life that I repented of when they were past help. But there is one thing I have never repented of."

" What is that, husband ? "

" Offering myself to you, Mrs. Oldham. You have been my good angel, my dear."

Mrs. Oldham's cheeks — still ruddy and round, though nearly a score of years had passed away since the event to which the Doctor referred — her matronly cheeks flushed slightly at this speech of her husband's ; the more perhaps that not only the children and cousin Kitty were present, but also Maggie Crampton, who had come up from town on a visit, and was sitting at the moment between the Doctor and her.

He went on, however :•

" But, in regard to this table, you do not know what a shock you inflicted upon me. I have reason to say to you 5 as the great Sir Isaac Newton said to his dog Diamond, c Diamond, Diamond, thou •little knowest what harm thou hast done me ! ' "

" Bless me, husband, what have I done ? "

" Shattered my ideal."

" Shattered your what ? "

" My ideal, the vision of my mind. It is all in fragments. And the mischief you have done me, my dear, is not like that which Diamond did his master. That great philosopher could collect the scattered fragments and reproduce what Diamond had destroyed. But my ideal is irretrievable — it is shattered and lost forever."

" My dear husband," said she, in a pitying tone, " I am so sorry for your shattered ideal. But we will have a new and more beautiful one by and by. But indeed I do believe," she added, seeing the smallest trace of a twinkle in the Doctor's eye, " you are not sorry at all that you got so ugly a table made, seeing it has given you a chance to talk so much nonsense."

"Nonsense, my dear/' said he, "I hope you think it charming nonsense. I trust you have a proper esteem for nonsense. It has in it the soul of the deepest wisdom. Like the motley of the Middle Ages, it often covers up more wit and sense than the knight's helmet, the earl's cap of maintenance, or the abhot's mitre. I declare to you some of the most solemn wise things I ever read have not seldom seemed to me the most painfully foolish or the most ridiculously absurd things in the world, while on the other hand, many things that Mrs. Slender thought very foolish, Miss Prim quite improper, and Doctor Rigid highly irreverent, have been to me the most charming lessons of virtue and religion, the purest goodness and the holiest worship, as full of pathos as of fun, making me laugh and making me cry, and making me better by both operations, filling my heart with more love to God and man than a dozen of Doctor Selah Solemn's Sermons on Sanctity, or Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts."

" What would become of us, my dear," he continued, " if all the books that Mrs. Slender thinks foolish, Miss Prim improper, and Doctor Rigid irreverent, were banished from the world ; — no more Mother Goose's Melodies, nor the tragical fate of

AT GBETSTONES. 13

Cock Robin, nor the immoral exploits of Puss in Boots, nor the mournful tale of Little Bopeep's Sheep's Tails, nor the story of the Three Bears with their three porridge pots and chairs and beds, and the mysterious old woman that got in at their door and out at their bedroom window, and has never been heard of since, — no more these and a thousand other nonsensical stories of foolish impossibilities for the little people to laugh over, and weep over, and wonder over ; and no more Rabelais with his Pantagruel and Panurge, Cervantes with his Knight and Squire, Shakespeare with his more talkers of wise nonsense than I can name here ; no more Uncle Toby and Corporal Trim ; no more Doctor Primrose and Moses, nor Elia, nor Doctor Dove, nor Diedrick Knickerbocker, nor Mr. Sparrowgrass, for the delight of old folks and young folks both ; — but all these, and hundreds of others, great like these in nonsense, done away with from the face of the earth, gone from human memory, and nothing left for the young people but Mrs. Sweet's Infant Hymns, and Professor Savethought's Great Things made Small, and nothing for the older folks but Dr. Solemn's Sermons and Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts ! Think of it, my dear Mrs. Oldham ! I really do not believe it would be good for the world/'

The Doctor paused, quite affected by the picture he had drawn.

" But, husband/' said Mrs. Oldham, " it is not every one that can see the soul of wisdom and goodness in those books of nonsense as well as you can, and therefore we ought to be glad there are such writings as Doctor Solemn's Sermons and Mrs. Softly's Serious Thoughts."

" True, my dear, true," replied the Doctor, " but let us also honor wise and holy nonsense."

Chapter II

WHICH GROWS OUT OP THE INARTISTIC WAY THIS BOOK BEGAN; BUT GIVES THE AUTHOR A CHANCE TO SPEAK OF THE COURTEOUS READER OP THE LAST AGE ; AND ALSO TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF TO THE COURTEOUS READER OF THE PRESENT DAY.

What a fine old personage was the " Courteous Header " for whom the writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wrote their books. How delightful the image or eidolon of him that rises before the mind's eye, as we notice in the writings of that time the thousand little tokens of thorough good understanding and mutual respect between the author and his reader. The picture is as distinct and agreeable as that of Sir Koger de Coverley ; and we feel a positive regard for him such as we cannot help feeling for the good old Knight — who was himself undoubtedly one of the most courteous of the courteous readers of his day.

I trust the generation of them is not extinct, although I do not so often perceive them to be expressly addressed in the books of our day : but this, I would fain believe, is owing only to that same change in the fashion and manner of the times which makes the polite forms of social intercourse to be so much more brief and simple, and causes so much to be now tacitly taken for granted in the way of courteous and kindly feeling which it was the custom to give ample and ceremonious expression to in those days.

So I am apt to think. Why not ? Does anybody imagine Sir Koger de Coverley to be dead ? I for one will never believe it. You will not indeed find him in the same fashion of dress, nor journeying along the road in the same way, nor with the same accidents of position and circumstance ; but putting out of view the different way in which modern tailors make up men, and the different modes of travelling — all the accidents of the case, I am bold to say that every body has met him more than once on the steamboats and in the railway cars ; some perhaps without knowing him, but some of us know him well — have been out in fact at his house, and found him the same personage, as fresh and delightful as ever, the same charming mixture of benevolence, old-fashioned politeness, simplicity ; charity, and love of country life and country pleasures.

And if the good Knight is yet alive, why should we doubt that the courteous readers are yet alive ? So I am determined to believe, and that this immortal work will find such readers. There is something so pleasant and mutually honorable to the author and his readers, something so creditable to human nature in the very terms. Courteous Header ! it expresseth the propriety of the relationship between the parties. It expresseth especially the quality of moral fitness on the part of a reader to be a reader. By what other title can he claim ? The author taketh pains, doth his best (it is surely seemly always so to presume), to inform or instruct, convince, persuade, entertain, or amuse ■ — in short, in some form to confer benefit or pleasure or both upon his reader. A courteous reception is therefore his due. It is unfit in itself, and it is unbefitting in you to withhold it. As the boor that passeth on with his cap unlifted and untouched, in churlish disregard of the gentle lady that biddeth him good-morrow, so is the reader that cometh not to the perusal of a book in a candid and kindly temper.

A book therefore — always supposing it to be written, as every book should be, in an honest spirit and for a worthy end — a book and a courteous reader are cognate conceptions that should be as inseparable as gentleness and a lady, gallantry and a knight, honor and a gentleman. To put them asunder implies a contradiction.

I have been led into saying all this because I am sensible that I have begun this book in a way that makes some demand upon the courtesy of the reader. I have not begun at the beginning — which is the order of nature ; nor at the end ; although that is a very possible way to write a book with good effect, and certainly it is an excellent way with some books that are printed to be read from beginning to end, to read them backwards from end to beginning — a thing I shall not quarrel with any reader for doing with this book if ever it come to an end, but rather advise ; nor have I begun in the middle of things, which is recommended in some cases.

Now if any one should come blustering up to me with an insolent air and a menacing tone, and

demand to know why the mischief I opened

my book with that chapter on the Library Table before saying any thing about the house, and where it was, and who and what Doctor Oldham was, — in short why I didn't begin at the beginning, I should know the man was not a courteous reader ;

and I should decline giving him my reasons upon such compulsion. But to those truly courteous readers, who, taking properly for granted that I have very good reasons, may be desirous at this stage to know what they are, I am cheerfully ready to explain myself.

I did not then begin at the beginning, because when I began I did not know where the beginning was.

I did not begin at the end, because I was equally ignorant when, where, and how it would end, and am so still.

I did not begin in the middle, as Horace advises, because that is the rule for an Epic story, and my book is neither an Epic nor a story.

So much for the reasons why I did not begin otherwise than as I did.

Now for the reason why I did begin as I did : I put that chapter on the Library Table first, because I wrote it first, and for no other reason that I am aware of.