But habited wilome by men of salvage fray.
Farre in the North he had an enimie,
Who certes was the knight's true soveraine,
Who likéd not his wicked slaverie,
Which 'cross God's will was counter-wisely laine,
Whiles he himself, it seemeth now right playne,
Did seek to have a kyngdom of his kynde,
Where he, as tyrant-like, mote lonly raine;
So to a treacherie he fetched his mynde,
Which soon was rent in four, and sent upon each wynde.
His enimie thatte liveth in the North,
Who, after all, was not his enimie,
Ydeemed he was a gentilman of worth,
Too proud to make so vile a villianie,
And, therefore, did ne tent his railerie,
But went his ways, as was his wont wilome;
Goliah, he turned out eftsoons, ah! me,
Who leaned upon his speare when David come,
And laughed to scorn the sillie boy his threat'ning doom.
But when his stronghold in ye Southron land,
Of formidable front, Forte Sumter hight,
Did fall into Kyng Coten's rebell hand,
Who coward-wise did challenge to the fight,
Some several men again his host of might;
Then Samuel, for so was he yclipt,
Begun in batail's gear himself to dight,
As being fooled by him with whom he sippt,
And hied him out, loud crying, 'Treason must be nippt!'
O ye who doe the crusades' musters tell,
In wise that maketh myndes incredulous,
And paynte how like Dan Neptune's sweeping swell
The North bore down on the perfidious!
Ne nigh so potent thatte as was with us;
Where men, like locusts, darkened all the land,
As marched they toward the place that's treacherous,
And shippes, that eke did follow the command,
Like forests, motion-got, doe walk along the strand.
Fierce battails ther were fought upon the ground,
Thatte rob'd the heavens alle in ayer dunne;
And shoke the world as doth the thunder's sound,
Till, soth to say, it well-nigh was undone:
But of them alle, ther is an one
That frayle pen dispairs for to descrive,
Which mortalls call the Battail of Bull Run;
But why I mote ne tell, as I'm alive,
Unless it haply be ther running did most thrive.
LAWRENCE MINOT.
'Our Orientalist' appears this month with
EGYPT IN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS
BY A FAST TRAVELER
'You ought to go to the East,' said Mr. Swift, with a wave of his hand; 'I've been there, and seen it under peculiar circumstances.'
'Explain, O howaga! Give us the facts.
'Immediately. Just place the punch-pitcher where I can reach it easily. That's right! Light another Cabañas. So; now for it. In 1858, month of December, I was settled in comfortable quarters in the Santa Lucia, Naples, and fully expected to winter there at my ease, when, to my disgust, I received letters from England, briefly ordering me by first steamer to Alexandria, thence per railroad to Cairo, there to see the head of a certain banking-house; transact my business, and return to Naples with all possible dispatch. No sooner said than done; there was one of the Messagérie steamers up for Malta next day; got my passport visaed, secured berth, all right. Next night I was steaming it past Stromboli, next morning in Messina; then Malta, where I found steamer up for Alexandria that night; in four days was off that port, at six o'clock in the morning, and at half-past eight o'clock was in the cars, landing in Cairo at four o'clock in the afternoon. Posted from the railroad-station to the banker's, saw my man, arranged my business, was to receive instructions at seven o'clock the next morning, and at eight o'clock take the return train to Alexandria, where a steamer was to sail next day, that would carry me back to Naples, presto! as the jugglers say.
'There, breathe a little, and take another glass of punch, while I recall my day in the East.
'Through at the banker's, he recommended me to the Hotel –, where I would find a good table, clean rooms, and none of my English compatriots. I love my native land and my countrymen in it, but as for them out of it, and as Bohemians—ugh! I am too much of a wolf myself to love wolves. Arrived at the hotel, with my head swimming with palm-trees, railroad, turbans, tarbooshes, veiled women, camels, pipes, dust, donkeys, oceans of blue calico, groaning water-wheels, the Nile, far-off view of the Pyramids, etc., I at once asked the headwaiter for a room, water, towels; he passed me into the hands of a very tall Berber answering to the name of Yusef, who was dressed in flowing garments and tarboosh, and who was one of the gentlest beings entitled to wear breeches I have ever seen; he had feet that in my recollection seem a yard long, and how he managed to move so noiselessly, unless both pedals were soft-shod, worries me to the present time. Well, at six o'clock the gong sounded for dinner, and out I went over marble floors to the dining hall, where I found only three other guests, who saluted me courteously when I entered, and at a signal from Yusef, a compromise between a bow and a salaam, we seated ourselves at table. Of the three guests, one was particularly a marked man, apart from his costume, that of a cavalry officer in the Pacha's service; there was something grand in his face, large blue eyes, full of humor and bonhommie, a prominent nose, a broad forehead, burned brown with the sun, his head covered with the omnipresent tarboosh, a mustache like Cartouche's; such was my vis-à-vis at the hotel-table.
'In conversation with this officer, it turned up that one of my most intimate friends was his cousin, and so we had a bottle of old East-India pale sherry over that; then we had another to finally cement our acquaintance; I said finally—I should say, finally for dinner.
'I have seen the interiors of more than three hundred hotels in Europe, Africa, and America; but I have yet to see one that appeared so outrageously romantic as that of the Hotel –, at Cairo, after that second bottle of sherry! The divans on which we reposed, the curious interlacing of the figures on the ceiling, the raised marble floor at the end of the room overlooking the street, the arabesques on the doors, and finally the never-ending masquerade-ball going on in the street under the divans where we sat and smoked.
'I can't tell you how it happened, but after very small cups of very black coffee and a pousse café, in the officer's room, of genuine kirschwasser and good curaçoa, I was mounted on a bay horse; there was a dapple-gray alongside of me; and running ahead of us, to clear the way, the officer's sais afoot, ready to hold our horses when we halted. We were quickly mounted and off like the wind, past turbans, flowing bournouses, tarbooshes, past grand old mosques, petty cafés, where the faithful were squatting on bamboo-seats, smoking pipes or drinking coffee-grounds, while listening to a storyteller, possibly relating some story in the Arabian Nights; then we were through the bazaars, all closed now and silent; then up in the citadel, and through the mosque of Yusef; then down and scouring over the flying sand among the grand old tombs of the Mamelukes and of the caliphs; then off at break-neck speed toward the Mokatamma mountains, from a rise on the lower spur of one of which we saw, in the shadow of the coming night, the Pyramids and the slow-flowing Nile.
'Again we were in Cairo, and now threading narrow street after street, the fall of our horses' hoofs hardly heard on the unpaved ways, as we were passing under overhanging balconies covered with lace-work lattices. As it grew darker, our sais preceded us with lighted lantern, shouting to pedestrians, blind and halt, to clear the road for the coming effendis.
'Halte la!
'My foaming bay was reined in with a strong hand, I leaped from the saddle, and found the sais at hand to hold our horses, while we saw the seventh heaven of the Koran, and by no means al Hotama.
'With a foresight indicating an old campaigner, the officer produced a couple of bottles of sherry from the capacious folds of the sais' mantle, and unlocking the door of the house in front of which we stood, invited me to enter. Two or three turns, a court-yard full of rose-bushes, and an enormous palm-tree, a fountain shooting up its sparkling waters in the moonlight, a clapping of hands, chibouks, sherry cooled in the fountain.
'Then, in the moonlight, the gleam of white flowing garments, the nervous thrill breathed in from perfumes filling the evening air; the great swimming eyes; the kiss; the ah!—other bottles of sherry. The fingans of coffee, the pipe of Latakiah tobacco, the blowing a cloud into dreamland, while Fatima or Zoe insists on taking a puff with you.
'But as she said, 'Hathih al-kissah moaththirah, which, in the vernacular, is. 'This history is affecting,' so let us pass it by. We finished those two bottles of sherry, and if Mohammed, in his majesty, refuses admittance to two Peris into paradise, because they drank sherry that night, let the sins be on our shoulders, WE are to blame.
'Next morning, at seven o'clock, I was at the banker's, and received his orders, and at six o'clock that evening was steaming out of Alexandria, bound to Naples via Malta. A little over twenty-four hours, and I had SEEN THE ORIENT THROUGH SHERRY—pale, golden, and serenely beautiful!
'Pass the punch.'
Very welcome is our pleasant contributor—he who of late discoursed on 'honeyed thefts' and rural religious discipline—and now, in the present letter, he gives us his views on meals, feeds, banquets, symposia, or by whatever name the reader may choose to designate assemblies for the purpose of eating.
Please make room at this table, right here, for me. Surely at a table of such dimensions, there should be plenty of room. Many a table-scene do I now recall, in days gone by, 'all of which I saw, and part of which I was,' but nothing like this. Tables of all sorts and sizes, but never a CONTINENTAL table before. I suppose the nearest approach to it was the picnic dinner the wee youngsters used to eat off the ground! A CONTINENTAL table! The most hospitable idea imaginable. Give place! Do you demand my credentials, my card, my ticket? Here we have it all; a little note from mine host, Mr. LELAND, inviting the bearer to this monthly repast, and requesting, very properly—it was the way we always did, when we used to get up picnics—that the receiver of the note bring some sort of refreshments along. Thank you. This seat is very comfortable. What more appropriate, at such a time, than the discussion of the Meal?
I protest I am no glutton; in fact, I despise the man whose meal-times are the epochs of his life; yet I frankly confess to emotions of a very positive character, in contemplating the associations of the table, and I admit farther, that I take pleasure in the reality as well as in the imagination. I like to be 'one of the company,' whether in palace or in farm-house. I always brighten up when I see the dining-room door thrown open to an angle hospitably obtuse, and am pleased alike with the politely-worded request, 'Will the ladies and gentlemen please walk out and partake of some refreshments?' or the blunt, kindly voice of mine host, 'Come, friends; dinner's ready.' Still I assert my freedom from any slavish fondness for the creature comforts. It is not the bill of fare that so pleases me. In fact, some of the best meals of which I have ever partaken, were those the materials of which I could not have remembered twenty minutes after. Exquisite palatal pleasures, then, are not a sine qua non in the enjoyment of table comforts. No, indeed. There is a condiment which is calculated to impart a high relish to the humblest fare; but without this charmed seasoning, every banquet is a failure. Solomon was a man of nice observation, even in so humble a matter as a meal. Let him reveal the secret in his own words: 'Better is a dinner of herbs, where LOVE is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.'
By a merciful arrangement of Providence, man is so constituted that he may think, talk, and eat, all at one and the same time. Hence, the table is often the scene of animated and very interesting conversations, provided love is there. Many of our Saviour's most interesting and instructive discourses were delivered while 'sitting at meat,' and the 'table-talk' of some authors is decidedly the most meritorious of all their performances.