A House-Boat on the Styx

“He might do as a great many modern writers do,” said Ward; “go in for the Paper-doll Drama.  Cut the whole thing out with a pair of scissors.  As the poet might have said if he’d been clever enough:

Oh, bring me the scissors,
And bring me the glue,
And a couple of dozen old plays.
I’ll cut out and paste
A drama for you
That’ll run for quite sixty-two days.

Oh, bring me a dress
Made of satin and lace,
And a book—say Joe Miller’s—of wit;
And I’ll make the old dramatists
Blue in the face
With the play that I’ll turn out for it.

So bring me the scissors,
And bring me the paste,
And a dozen fine old comedies;
A fine line of dresses,
And popular taste
I’ll make a strong effort to please.

“You draw a very blue picture, it seems to me,” said Shakespeare, sadly.

“Well, it’s true,” said Carlyle.  “The world isn’t at all what it used to be in any one respect, and you fellows who made great reputations centuries ago wouldn’t have even the ghost of a show now.  I don’t believe Homer could get a poem accepted by a modern magazine, and while the comic papers are still printing Diogenes’ jokes the old gentleman couldn’t make enough out of them in these days to pay taxes on his tub, let alone earning his bread.”

“That is exactly so,” said Tennyson.  “I’d be willing to wager too that, in the line of personal prowess, even D’Artagnan and Athos and Porthos and Aramis couldn’t stand London for one day.”

“Or New York either,” said Mr. Barnum, who had been an interested listener.  “A New York policeman could have managed that quartet with one hand.”

“Then,” said Shakespeare, “in the opinion of you gentlemen, we old-time lions would appear to modern eyes to be more or less stuffed?”

“That’s about the size of it,” said Carlyle.

“But you’d draw,” said Barnum, his face lighting up with pleasure.  “You’d drive a five-legged calf to suicide from envy.  If I could take you and Cæsar, and Napoleon Bonaparte and Nero over for one circus season we’d drive the mint out of business.”

“There’s your chance, William,” said Ward.  “You write a play for Bonaparte and Cæsar, and let Nero take his fiddle and be the orchestra.  Under Barnum’s management you’d get enough activity in one season to last you through all eternity.”

“You can count on me,” said Barnum, rising.  “Let me know when you’ve got your plan laid out.  I’d stay and make a contract with you now, but Adam has promised to give me points on the management of wild animals without cages, so I can’t wait.  By-by.”

“Humph!” said Shakespeare, as the eminent showman passed out.  “That’s a gay proposition.  When monkeys move in polite society William Shakespeare will make a side-show of himself for a circus.”

“They do now,” said Thackeray, quietly.

Which merely proved that Shakespeare did not mean what he said; for in spite of Thackeray’s insinuation as to the monkeys and polite society, he has not yet accepted the Barnum proposition, though there can be no doubt of its value from the point of view of a circus manager.

CHAPTER IX: AS TO COOKERY AND SCULPTURE

Robert Burns and Homer were seated at a small table in the dining-room of the house-boat, discussing everything in general and the shade of a very excellent luncheon in particular.

“We are in great luck to-day,” said Burns, as he cut a ruddy duck in twain.  “This bird is done just right.”

“I agree with you,” returned Homer, drawing his chair a trifle closer to the table.  “Compared to the one we had here last Thursday, this is a feast for the gods.  I wonder who it was that cooked this fowl originally?”

“I give it up; but I suspect it was done by some man who knew his business,” said Burns, with a smack of his lips.  “It’s a pity, I think, my dear Homer, that there is no means by which a cook may become immortal.  Cooking is as much of an art as is the writing of poetry, and just as there are immortal poets so there should be immortal cooks.  See what an advantage the poet has—he writes something, it goes out and reaches the inmost soul of the man who reads it, and it is signed.  His work is known because he puts his name to it; but this poor devil of a cook—where is he?  He has done his work as well as the poet ever did his, it has reached the inmost soul of the mortal who originally ate it, but he cannot get the glory of it because he cannot put his name to it.  If the cook could sign his work it would be different.”

“You have hit upon a great truth,” said Homer, nodding, as he sometimes was wont to do.  “And yet I fear that, ingenious as we are, we cannot devise a plan to remedy the matter.  I do not know about you, but I should myself much object if my birds and my flapjacks, and other things, digestible and otherwise, that I eat here were served with the cook’s name written upon them.  An omelette is sometimes a picture—”

“I’ve seen omelettes that looked like one of Turner’s sunsets,” acquiesced Burns.

“Precisely; and when Turner puts down in one corner of his canvas, ‘Turner, fecit,’ you do not object, but if the cook did that with the omelette you wouldn’t like it.”

“No,” said Burns; “but he might fasten a tag to it, with his name written upon that.”

“That is so,” said Homer; “but the result in the end would be the same.  The tags would get lost, or perhaps a careless waiter, dropping a tray full of dainties, would get the tags of a good and bad cook mixed in trying to restore the contents of the tray to their previous condition.  The tag system would fail.”

“There is but one other way that I can think of,” said Burns, “and that would do no good now unless we can convey our ideas into the other world; that is, for a great poet to lend his genius to the great cook, and make the latter’s name immortal by putting it into a poem.  Say, for instance, that you had eaten a fine bit of terrapin, done to the most exquisite point—you could have asked the cook’s name, and written an apostrophe to her.  Something like this, for instance:

Oh, Dinah Rudd! oh, Dinah Rudd!
Thou art a cook of bluest blood!
Nowhere within
This world of sin
Have I e’er tasted better terrapin.
Do you see?”

“I do; but even then, my dear fellow, the cook would fall short of true fame.  Her excellence would be a mere matter of hearsay evidence,” said Homer.

“Not if you went on to describe, in a keenly analytical manner, the virtues of that particular bit of terrapin,” said Burns.  “Draw so vivid a picture of the dish that the reader himself would taste that terrapin even as you tasted it.”

“You have hit it!” cried Homer, enthusiastically.  “It is a grand plan; but how to introduce it—that is the question.”

“We can haunt some modern poet, and give him the idea in that way,” suggested Burns.  “He will see the novelty of it, and will possibly disseminate the idea as we wish it to be disseminated.”

“Done!” said Homer.  “I’ll begin right away.  I feel like haunting to-night.  I’m getting to be a pretty old ghost, but I’ll never lose my love of haunting.”

At this point, as Homer spoke, a fine-looking spirit entered the room, and took a seat at the head of the long table at which the regular club dinner was nightly served.

“Why, bless me!” said Homer, his face lighting up with pleasure.  “Why, Phidias, is that you?”

“I think so,” said the new-comer, wearily; “at any rate, it’s all that’s left of me.”

“Come over here and lunch with us,” said Homer.  “You know Burns, don’t you?”

“Haven’t the pleasure,” said Phidias.

The poet and the sculptor were introduced, after which Phidias seated himself at Homer’s side.

“Are you any relation to Burns the poet?” the former asked, addressing the Scotchman.