112 IN PURSUIT OF
A PARSON.
I am trying to make small-talk and propitiate his lawful jailer, I may see him trotting a redfaced atom on his knee, submitting to have his mustache pulled by two lean claws ; yes, maybe four-there may be twins, for what any reasonable being can tell - for, as I said, after the opening degradation, one never knows how far down, into what depths of humiliation and despair lost humanity may descend.
But here I pause, unable to pursue the subject further. Mine is a bachelor-pen, and blushes at the bare idea of thus reaching forward into futurity, and dragging out of its awful maw any such spotted, shrieking, kicking, indistinguishable, and appalling possibilities, as may become actualities in his case.
It was an astonishment te me—I will admit that, all the more readily that it seldom happens that anybody can surprise me now-a-days; but Damon did, I am bound to confess.
I knew his weakness—I knew how easily he ; was bamboozled and made, figuratively, to stand on his head by those descendants of mermaids and the syrens; but I never thought it would have come to this.
After all the warnings he had had, too; after watching with me to see one hapless wretch after another allow himself to be deluded out of our band, with the fatal noose around his neck! Being always the harshest in his judg- ments, the most unsparing in his sarcasm, when at odd times they crept back to make us surrep- titious visits, bearing the marks of the halter so plainly about their necks, grown lean, and care- worn, and melancholy-voiced under their bond- age, or else trying to carry it off with a jaunty, insolent air of triumph, getting red-faced and lazy, and with no more poetry in them than would go to the choosing of a good dinner.
How unmerciful Damon was; how he liked to make them trip if he possibly could; and what a horror and disgust he was to all the spouses of his former friends.
The vile jokes he was accustomed to play! The time Jo Harmon sent him word to go to his tailor and dispatch a pair of pantaloons, and at the same time to fulfill several commissions for Mrs. Harmon; and Damon pretended to make a mistake, and directed the breeches to madam, and a corset to Jo, accounting for that last by } saying he mistook the word corsage, and coolly } adding in his note that he hoped the things fitted and suited the lady.
There was no end to his evil jests and per- formances; and many is the time I have warned him that some horrible fate would befall him if he persevered in his shocking career—but I; never looked for anything so hopeless and irreparable as this! I might have endured his running off with another man's wife and not been surprised; but to see him live to run off with his own - oh! shade of every old bachelor that ever frowned upon matrimony, aid me to chant the harrowing tale.
One of the last men we had seen go was Alf Chauncy-poor, handsome Alf; but everything connected with his faux pas ( or don't you use that word where men are concerned ? ) was so romantic that it appealed to all the blank verse Damon and I had in us, and we bore it with tolerable patience.
Alf fell in love with pretty Marian Lacy on board an ocean steamer, and the steamer caught fire, and he saved her life, and they and a party of the saved were out in 2 small boat for days, and got so short of biscuit that they began te cast hungry eyes at Marian, as looking the youngest and tenderest among them. But they were picked up in time, and Alf fell mad in love with her, and even Damon and I rather applauded it in his case, for there are excep- tions to all rules.
But this was only the beginning of their ro- mance. They quarreled outrageously—I be- lieve most people wait until they are yoked for that—and at last Alf came moaning and tearing his curly hair into this very studio, and dida five act melodrama for Damon’s and my benefit; and we essayed to comfort him with apples, and stay him with flagons, but he was hard bit, and a most dismal old time we had of it with him.
It had got to be summer, and we were just getting ready for a trip to Moosehead Lake, and we carried Alf off with us, though he said he preferred the bottom of the river, or the silent tomb, or some other eligible planting- place of that sort. But we held him fast and touk him withsus; and at the last moment, without knowing why, Damon would go to the Adirondac Woods instead, and I had to give in to his obstinacy, as usual.
We were there for nearly two weeks, and Alf got so that, on ordinary occasions, he could con- duct himself like a civilized being. Of course, he was liable to his attacks, but we got used to them, and never minded when he was moved to rout out of bed in the middle of the night te bay the moon, like a watch-dog, or indulge in other Bedlamitish proceedings, which are apt to -be somewhat confusing to lookers-on, how- ever soothing their effects may be upon the mind of the sufferer.
But I am bound to say that we bore with his whims and vagaries with a patience that was
