The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Finally, filling our pockets with doughnuts, which he was pleased to
find that we called by the same name that he did, and paying for our
entertainment, we took our departure; but he followed us out of doors,
and made us tell him the names of the vegetables which he had raised
from seeds that came out of the Franklin. They were cabbage, broccoli,
and parsley. As I had asked him the names of so many things, he tried me
in turn with all the plants which grew in his garden, both wild and
cultivated. It was about half an acre, which he cultivated wholly
himself. Besides the common garden-vegetables, there were Yellow-Dock,
Lemon-Balm, Hyssop, Gill-go-over-the-ground, Mouse-ear, Chickweed, Roman
Wormwood, Elecampane, and other plants. As we stood there, I saw a
fish-hawk stoop to pick a fish out of his pond.
"There," said I, "he has got a fish."
"Well," said the old man, who was looking all the while, but could see
nothing, "he didn't dive, he just wet his claws."
And, sure enough, he did not this time, though it is said that they
often do, but he merely stooped low enough to pick him out with his
talons; but as he bore his shining prey over the bushes, it fell to the
ground, and we did not see that he recovered it. That is not their
practice.
Thus, having had another crack with the old man, he standing bareheaded
under the eaves, he directed us "athwart the fields," and we took to the
beach again for another day, it being now late in the morning.
It was but a day or two after this that the safe of the Provincetown
Bank was broken open and robbed by two men from the interior, and we
learned that our hospitable entertainers did at least transiently harbor
the suspicion that we were the men.
* * * * *
CHARLES LAMB'S UNCOLLECTED WRITINGS.
THIRD PAPER.
"I remember," says "The Spectator," "upon Mr. Baxter's death, there was
published a sheet of very good sayings, inscribed, 'The Last Words of
Mr. Baxter.' The title sold so great a number of these papers that about
a week after there came out a second sheet, inscribed, 'More Last Words
of Mr. Baxter.'" And so kindly and gladly did the public--or at least
that portion of the public that read the "Atlantic Monthly"--receive the
specimens of Charles Lamb's uncollected writings, published somewhile
since in these pages, that I am induced to print another paper on the
same pleasant and entertaining subject.
The success of that piece of "ingenious nonsense," that gem of
biographical literature, the unique and veracious "Memoir of Liston,"
over which the lovers of wit and the lovers of Charles Lamb have had
many a good laugh, was so great that Lamb was encouraged to try his hand
at another theatrical memoir, and produced a mock and mirthful
autobiography of his old friend and favorite comedian, Munden, whom he
had previously immortalized in one of the best and most admired of the
"Essays of Elia."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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