Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851Various
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine Vol. IV, No. 19, Dec 1851
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
A profound respect for money pervaded Our School, which was, of course,
derived from its Chief. We remember an idiotic, goggle-eyed boy, with a
big head and half-crowns without end, who suddenly appeared as a
parlor-boarder, and was rumored to have come by sea from some mysterious
part of the earth where his parents rolled in gold. He was usually
called "Mr." by the Chief, and was said to feed in the parlor on steaks
and gravy; likewise to drink currant wine. And he openly stated that if
rolls and coffee were ever denied him at breakfast, he would write home
to that unknown part of the globe from which he had come, and cause
himself to be recalled to the regions of gold. He was put into no form
or class, but learnt alone, as little as he liked--and he liked very
little--and there was a belief among us that this was because he was too
wealthy to be "taken down." His special treatment, and our vague
association of him with the sea, and with storms, and sharks, and coral
reefs, occasioned the wildest legends to be circulated as his history. A
tragedy in blank verse was written on the subject--if our memory does
not deceive us, by the hand that now chronicles these recollections--in
which his father figured as a Pirate, and was shot for a voluminous
catalogue of atrocities: first imparting to his wife the secret of the
cave in which his wealth was stored, and from which his only son's
half-crowns now issued. Dumbledon (the boy's name) was represented as
"yet unborn," when his brave father met his fate; and the despair and
grief of Mrs. Dumbledon at that calamity was movingly shadowed forth as
having weakened the parlor-boarder's mind. This production was received
with great favor, and was twice performed with closed doors in the
dining-room. But, it got wind, and was seized as libelous, and brought
the unlucky poet into severe affliction. Some two years afterward, all
of a sudden one day, Dumbledon vanished. It was whispered that the
Chief himself had taken him down to the Docks, and reshipped him for the
Spanish Main; but nothing certain was ever known about his
disappearance. At this hour, we can not thoroughly disconnect him from
California.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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