The Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. YellowplushThackeray, William Makepeace
General
The Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush
Thackeray, William Makepeace
Didactic fiction; England -- Fiction; Household employees -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Master and servant -- Fiction
In passidge number 2, the same bisniss is going on, though in a more
comprehensable way: the air, the leaves, the otion, are fild with
emocean at Capting Norman's happiness. Pore Nature is dragged in to
partisapate in his joys, just as she has been befor. Once in a poem,
this universle simfithy is very well; but once is enuff, my dear Barnet:
and that once should be in some great suckmstans, surely,--such as the
meeting of Adam and Eve, in “Paradice Lost,” or Jewpeter and Jewno, in
Hoamer, where there seems, as it were, a reasn for it. But sea-captings
should not be eternly spowting and invoking gods, hevns, starrs, angels,
and other silestial influences. We can all do it, Barnet; nothing in
life is esier. I can compare my livry buttons to the stars, or the
clouds of my backopipe to the dark vollums that ishew from Mount Hetna;
or I can say that angels are looking down from them, and the tobacco
silf, like a happy sole released, is circling round and upwards, and
shaking sweetness down. All this is as esy as drink; but it's not
poatry, Barnet, nor natural. People, when their mothers reckonize them,
don't howl about the suckumambient air, and paws to think of the happy
leaves a-rustling--at least, one mistrusts them if they do. Take
another instans out of your own play. Capting Norman (with his eternil
SLACK-JAW!) meets the gal of his art:--
“Look up, look up, my Violet--weeping? fie!
And trembling too--yet leaning on my breast.
In truth, thou art too soft for such rude shelter.
Look up! I come to woo thee to the seas,
My sailor's bride! Hast thou no voice but blushes?
Nay--From those roses let me, like the bee,
Drag forth the secret sweetness!
VIOLET.
“Oh what thoughts
Were kept for SPEECH when we once more should meet,
Now blotted from the PAGE; and all I feel
Is--THOU art with me!”
Very right, Miss Violet--the scentiment is natral, affeckshnit,
pleasing, simple (it might have been in more grammaticle languidge, and
no harm done); but never mind, the feeling is pritty; and I can fancy,
my dear Barnet, a pritty, smiling, weeping lass, looking up in a man's
face and saying it. But the capting!--oh, this capting!--this windy,
spouting captain, with his prittinesses, and conseated apollogies for
the hardness of his busm, and his old, stale, vapid simalies, and his
wishes to be a bee! Pish! Men don't make love in this finniking
way. It's the part of a sentymentle, poeticle taylor, not a galliant
gentleman, in command of one of her Madjisty's vessels of war.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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