The Contributors' Club

A CERTAIN contributor, whose penslips are so rare that it is quite a treat to his readers when he makes one, writes to us as follows : —

The error I committed in ascribing

to Byron instead of to Cowper is going round the globe in the track of the Concord musket-shot. It has reached Paris, and is no doubt still on its travels, so that I may expect to hear from it in Pekin in the course of a few weeks. In order to save labor to the innumerable correspondents who are kindly anxious about the matter, I would like to say, once for all, that they are right, and I accept the correction. But there are palliating circumstances. I was thinking of a passage very similar to that from Cowper, to be found in Childe Harold, Canto I., stanzas 32 and 33, which may very probably have been suggested by the fluvio vel monte dis-tincti dissimiles of Burton. I will cite the second of these stanzas. Byron is referring to the line which separates Spain from Portugal : —

The words in italics correspond very closely to fluvio distincti dissimiles. The idea is the same in the passages from Byron and Cowper ; they lay side by side in my memory, and I got their authorship mixed, that was all.

— Ought there not to be some recognized standard for the spelling and pronunciation of geographical names ? As it is, the petrifying of our language by the dictionary-makers — who have sanctioned all the blunders of the ignorant past, both in typography and in attempts at phonetic renderings of foreign words in a barbarously unphonetic orthography — has made a pretty confusion. The geographers have been true neither to the genius of our own language nor to that of others. Outside of geography, in certain things, we show an undue deference to foreign tongues, particularly in the matter of titles. We call a Frenchman Monsieur, a German Herr, an Italian Signor, a Spaniard Señor, and it would not be surprising if pretty soon we got to calling a Russian Gospod, or whatever may be the Muscovite equivalent of Mister. We carry ourselves in this matter beyond the verge of lingual selfrespect.

Other nations are more sensible. The French and Germans, for instance, use their own titles for persons of other nationalities. It is often ridiculous to hear the struggles of our actors with foreign titles. At a performance of Sardou’s A Scrap of Paper in one of our theatres, I noticed something like a halfdozen different ways of pronouncing Monsieur and Mademoiselle, and no one of them was right.

But to return to geography. It is probably the best plan, as a general rule, to follow the usage in the language of the respective localities. Custom, however, has authorized certain forms from which it would be hardly possible to depart. It would of course be absurd to pronounce Paris as the French do, or to say Roma instead of Rome. Every country has its own spelling and pronunciation for certain names, —like the German Mailand and Venedig for Milan and Venice. Some of the widest departures from the original names are due both to efforts at correct pronunciation and to the subsequent phonetic embodiments of those efforts. Our own authorities have appropriated too indiscriminately the work of French geographers, and have thereby originated pronunciations which are neither French nor English. Take, for example, the I ranch Hague and Prague for the Dutch Haag and the German Prag. The French endeavored to regard the original sounds by adding the ue, and thus preserve the sound of the final g. But English-speaking readers naturally take this spelling to mean a pronunciation of the a like that in plague. In direct disregard of the genius of our language, we have adopted French names for the German Saxon duchies Sachsen-Weimar and Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha: SaxeWeimar and SaxeCoburgGotha. To be correct we should say Saxon Weimar and Saxon Coburg-Gotha. Else why not deny our Anglo-Saxon race, and say Saxe for Saxony ? We also say, with the French, Hesse and Hesse-Cassel for the German Hessen and Hessen-Cassel, when we should call those duchies Hessia and Hessian Cassel, just as we call Thüringen Thuringia.

A case where orthography leads our pronunciation astray is that of Alsace, which people commonly pronounce Alsãce, whereas the German spelling, Elsass, leads us phonetically nearer the truth. It would probably be better for us to use the classic designation, Alsatia. The fact that there is no other civilized language so difficult for the English tongue to master as the French, with its delicate intricacies, its nasals and vocal shadings, is a satire upon the choice of our geographers.

How can a novice judge of the pronunciation of the Alsatian mountains, the Vosges? Singularly enough, the phonetic rendering which school - boys commonly give, — the Vos-ges, — comes much nearer the original name than the French pronunciation. The French designation came from an ineffectual attempt to pronounce the old German name, the Wassigen, or Watery mountains, so called from their abundant brooks. The Germans derived their modern name for these mountains, — the Vogesen, — from the French corruption, which they Germanized, but now that Alsatia has been reannexed, the ancient German name has been restored.

A curious blunder is that whereby we call the Russian capital Saint Petersburg, when rightfully it is simply Petersburg, being named for Peter the Great, and not for the celestial gatekeeper.

Spanish names have not suffered much orthographically at our hands. They are often barbarously mispronounced, however, although there is little excuse for it, Spanish being almost purely a phonetic tongue.

It would be an easy matter to give, in connection with the geographical instruction in our schools, the rules for the continental pronunciation of the vowels, and also of the consonants in various languages. Such peculiarities as the Italian pronunciation of c like our ch, and the Spanish ll, as in Sevilla, like lya (Sevilya), would not be left to be picked up at hap-hazard.

Our ignorance of foreign spellings and pronunciations often leads to some curious mistakes. I have known people to pass through Prague without knowing it, on account of the difference in spelling, although a Frenchman would have have recognized it by the pronunciation. I once met an Englishman in the capital of Bavaria, who actually did not know that he was in Munich. He said that he had been wondering how there could ever have been such a large city as München, and he never have heard of it until he got there. “ And by Jove, it is really a fine place, don’t you see ! ” he exclaimed.

There are people in certain regions of the West who appear to be unaware that there is such a thing as a broad sound to the vowel a, and they accordingly most exasperatingly mash ” out every word as flat as their native prairies. It is enough to set one’s teeth on edge to hear them call Colorado Coloraydo, Nevada Nevayda, and Montana Montayna. These people very irrationally insist on their idea of English phoneticism in some things, and violently disregard it in others. For instance, there are American residents in Arizona’s principal town, Tucson, who delude themselves with the idea that they are speaking correct Spanish when they say Too-son, when there is probably not a Mexican who omits to pronounce the c exactly as it would be spoken in English.

— I am fond of quoting, and still fonder of remembering, an experience of Eugénie de Guérin’s. She says in her journal that, one morning, on her way to church, she passed some little wild flowers, and at first stooped to pick them, but on second thought decided to leave them until she returned, for they would only wilt if she held them in her hand until mass was over. But she went home by another path through the woods, and quite forgot them, and writes in her dear journal that it is often so in life, — our opportunities do not return.

It is a great gift to recognize quickly the things that belong to us, and to seize them with a swift and willing hand, as one goes along the highways and byways of life. To some people’s wellbeing a great many small things are necessary, and nothing makes such persons more miserable than to have lost a chance of securing some such treasure, which we never are offered twice. Sometimes it is through a fit of dullness, that hinders one from appropriating one’s own at first sight, and sometimes the fancied wisdom of a friend’s advice stands in the way ; we are ashamed to carry out our own wishes in the face of disapproval. These words are not said with a view to such readers as are independent of their outward surroundings, — who are not shocked at the thought of beginning life in the next world empty-handed ; who could be as contented in a nun’s cell, without one personal belonging, as in a long-livedin-house, filled with beloved traps and trifles. But there are some people who have not outgrown the instinct for making to themselves idols, and who fill their homes with shrines, old and new. They build themselves a wall of happiness with their treasures, and if one brick has not been secured it always leaves a gap ; its place cannot be filled in with anything else. From the person who clings desperately to a few things that are dear from long association, to the person who has a mania for making collections and filling cabinets, is a very wide range, but it is the same instinct, — a love of things. The often-quoted depravity of inanimate objects seems a slur to them ; they understand only the friendly and companionable side of nature and art; they unconsciously personify things, and attribute much sensitiveness to them.

I do not doubt that Mdlle. de Guérin thought about the flowers more than once afterward, and wished that she could beg their forgiveness for her neglect. It seems sometimes as if the unused life in the world, that waits its proper development, must be stored away in sticks and stones. What should draw some of us so closely to certain flowers, that seem to look eagerly and with perfect self-consciousness into our faces? What is it that makes it impossible for us to leave a table or a chair for somebody else to buy and to live with ?

I remember that one spring, when I was driving in the country, I saw under a barberry bush a blue violet, which appeared to follow me appealingly with its eyes as I went by. I felt an impulse to stop and to gather it, but I did not, — there was some reason. I thought my companion would laugh at me, or for some other cause it was not worth while. But the farther I went away from it the sorrier I was, and that violet has haunted me even to this day. The tall white daisies, or white-weeds, have a way of fixing their eyes upon you, as if they wished for something. And I remember that a friend once told me, in sacred confidence, about a little mapletree that had stood at the roadside as she drove by and begged her to take it away. She did not stop. She never knew, and never would have known, any way, from what loneliness and sorrow it wished to be removed ; but these many years she has regretted that she did not respond to its perfectly evident longing for her sympathy and assistance. It was a very young and small mapletree. She described it to me touchingly : its leaves were brilliant with the colors of its first autumn, and when they had fallen it must have been only a thin, unnoticeable twig.

Desires for certain objects of art lead some persons into careers of wretched extravagance; but to a person who is sensible, and has a proper amount of self-control, there need be no such danger. Indeed, it is the things we saw and loved, and knew to belong to us, and yet did not take or buy, that cause us most sorrow. The things for which we have the greatest and most unbearable yearnings are almost always within our reach, and only hesitation makes us lose them. Perhaps the influence of our surroundings plays a greater part in the development of our characters than we have ever recognized, and we are given our instincts for a picture, or a china cup, or a Chippendale chair, with a wise and secret purpose. Reason should not attempt to decide these questions, for they do not belong to reason’s province. Out-of-doors, flowers are getting ready to bloom for us, and in doors, books and pictures and china cups and little boxes are being made for us here and there all over the world, and we are wise to take them when we find them. If they have gone astray, and landed in some friend’s parlor instead of our own, and can neither be bought nor stolen, we must make the best of it, but remember that they are ours and we are theirs, all the same, and revel in the secret understanding. But it is very puzzling to know why some things should have had anything to do with us. I have been troubled for some time with the small ghost of a cigarette-case that was displayed for sale in the chief room of a quaint old hotel in Northern Italy. It was curiously made of some East Indian grass-cloth fabric, and its colors were soft and pretty. It was filled with cigarettes, and I did not like to be thought a smoker. I did not succeed in giving myself any reasons for buying it, but I went near the case which contained it, and looked at it lovingly and longingly whenever I could, and then at last came away without it, knowing myself to have done wrong, and to be the concealer forever of an incurable regret. But the memory of this is nothing beside the sadder one of a green glass vase, hung with little gold rings, that I left behind me long ago, one day in Amsterdam.

— What ambitious sculptor was that who proposed to hew the side of Mount Athos into the likeness of the human profile ? A bold conception, but not bolder, perhaps, than the converse, which would trace the mountain’s physiognomy in a human face ; yet, it would not have been strange if some tough old Macedonian soldier had been thought by his contemporaries to resemble neighboring Mount Athos. We have lately lost a sculptor (whose tools were heroic words) who could carve a great man’s face in the similitude of the mountain, giving his work an almost vital reality and granite perpetuity. No bust nor portrait of Webster so impresses us as does this graven image of him, done by the hand of Carlyle. The “ amorphous, crag-like face,” who does not see it? and the “dull, black eyes under their precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces ! ” No ether-wrapped mountain, we infer, but one subject to fiery upheavals and throbs of cyclopean activity.

It is not my fortune to know any faces that present so sublime a topography ; indeed, I hesitate, for fear of a reductio ad absurdum, to describe the first facial landscape that comes to my mind. It is a homely, rustic visage; all its features at angular odds with each other ; hair and beard unkempt and wiry, curiously harmonizing in color and quality with the raveled and hanging braids of an old straw hat; lastly, a pair of small, bright, roving eyes. Where does this face lead me ? To a “ slashing,” or partial clearing on the border of the woods. I see charred and hollow stumps, gossamer stretched between and across them, rank blackberry briers, lusty thistles, tall fireweed, and wild lettuce. And the small, roving eyes, — they are the small, quick-flitting birds that commonly haunt the slashing. Another face of my acquaintance possesses a very different picturesqueness, always suggesting Wordsworth’s Lucy, whom Nature took to rear and educate after her own heart. The Lucy whom I know seems to me to have been at the same sylvan school, to have “leaned her ear in many a secret place,” to have walked by musical streams, listening and sympathizing, until “beauty born of murmuring sound” passed into her face. A child was at a loss to describe his teacher so that she might be distinguished among several others. After short reflection, he exclaimed, “ She ’s the one that looks like the lake! ” When, afterwards, I met the original of this description, it was easy to justify the child’s unconscious poesy. There was the lake ; at least, the same cool serenity ; the same sparkling freshness ; the “ unmeasured laughter,” not of waves, but of the pure, jocund spirit that animated the entire countenance.

In this system of live personifications, the four seasons appear to me, at odd intervals, in the faces of four different persons. One looks the spring; another the summer ; a third, with warm, olive complexion and hazy, brown eyes, represents fine, indolent October weather, white a fourth looks the soul of winter, keen, “ frosty, but kindly.”

When we turn to the poets, we find, as we might expect, plentiful illustration of this power to see elemental nature in the human countenance. Sometimes they throw out meteorological suggestion,— delicate indices to the “probabilities ” of the mind. One speaks of “ the cloudy foreheads of the great; ” a description which we might be inclined to question, since, instead of looking for clouds on the foreheads of the great, theirs is just that quarter of the firmament from which we expect sunshine and glad weather. Better are the lines which show us how the author of the Faerie Qneene looked in the large gaze of a young and loving disciple, who hails him across the ages. Thus Keats :

One more instance, — the opening verse in a love song of the seventeenth century, — “There is a garden in her face.” This is an exquisite summary of all the gracious details the poet saw in his lady’s countenance, — inclusive of the roses, the lilies, and the cherries ripe. We would not blame the lover, who, having likened the Most Beautiful Eyes to twin stars, proceeded a step further in hyperbole, and discovered the whole orb of the starry, summer heavens In the face of the Beloved.

— We shall never be able to discover, from any diligent search through the mighty volumes of the invaluable Audubon, any trace whatever of the possible species of that great, innumerable ilock of the feathered tribe so unfairly described, in a low, commercial way, as worth only half as much singly as “ a bird in the hand.” Shall we therefore meekly submit to the uncompromising statement that is so constantly flung at us in its hard and striking shape, and never even pause a moment to give a thought to those humble little fellows, snugly perched out of reach of danger, cooing softly to one another “ in the bush ” ?

The “ bird in the hand ” has been eaten up long ago, bones, feathers, and all ; or he turned stale on our hands ; or, after the most careful attention and lavish expenditure of regard, he slipped away on the first opportunity ; or — the cat got him.

Just for the time, a moment or two, he seemed worth all the other birds in the bush, but not for very long; he was just a little disappointing : too old or too lean, too small or too battered with shot,—something that ought to have been better after all our pains and labors. We started for wild turkeys, or perhaps canvas-back ducks, and this is only a robin, or an ortolan, barely a mouthful. Still, some of the sportsmen regard us with profoundest envy, and even set up various claims to our bird, so that his waning value gets a shade brighter at the sight of other eager claimants, who treat our resistance of their demands with indignation and threats, leaving us, alas! with sneers and envious maledictions, to a solitary enjoyment of our selfish success.

All the time, on a slender twig surrounded by leafy verdure, softly romancing side by side, perch two little birds of lovely plumage, casting their bright, round eyes in all directions, — two little objects that make a picture that changes its aspect as often as we choose; these are the dear little delusive “ two in the bush.” They cannot be approached very closely, and none of the tribe was ever inside of a vulgar cage ; thus our only chance of enjoying them is to watch from a little distance, for, curiously enough, if we succeed in killing them, no remains will be found, so that nothing but disappointment would result from a nearer approach. Oh, those " birds in the bush ” ! —long years of care and strife have been rendered bearable, dark days brightened, pain allayed, and vigor renewed, by a glimpse of that fairy pair, ever cooing their dear, deceptive lay.

Who shall rob us of them — our castles in the air? They are our one safe possession, that none can deprive us of; our exclusive property, out of reach and sight of everybody else, and always in the act of flying to us.

Commercial moralists shall not have it all their own way, and dogmatize us into misers and misanthropes with hard facts and hard lines, too, for away beyond their ken and safe for all times are our sweetest possession, those “ two in the bush.”

Whenever a poor mortal faints by the roadside, and, notwithstanding all the helps of modern science, dies in grief and sadness, if we could carefully scrutinize his inner consciousness we should probably find that life had proved too hard for him, through pinning his faith blindly to the rough, curt dogma, “ A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”

— The other day a young middle-aged person called at my house. She had read certain things of mine which she did not wholly dislike, and desired a few minutes’ converse with me, surrounded by my Lares and Penates. I call her a young middle-aged person because, though she was of an uncertain age, — which always means past thirty-five,— she was, in manner and habiliments, young. She came from the West, the land of promise, the land which gives us our presidents, and is, some day, to give us our literature. She was not a brilliant conversationalist, but she was not without a certain aplomb that fitted her for dropping in on an entire stranger, and occupying time which, so far as she knew, might have been very valuable to him. As a host, it was my duty to be courteous ; as an author, it was my wish not to shatter any possible ideal that she had formed of me from my humble writings. I found that I had undertaken a difficult contract. My elderly young friend had very little to say for herself; she was a most unsuggestive person; her remarks were up-side-down hooks, upon which it was nearly impossible to hang anything. In order to avoid those dreadful hiatuses which occur between constrained or stupid people, I was obliged to talk and talk and talk. At last my guest departed. A few days afterwards I saw everything that I did n’t say on that occasion fully reported in the columns of the Western Reserve Bugle.

I would like to ask some contributor to furnish me with a phrase that will adequately characterize the conduct of that middle-aged young person.