 Book 15 of Pierre, or the Ambiguities by Hermann Melville, the Slipper Box recording is in the public domain. THE CUSINS CHAPTER I Though resolved to face all out to the last at whatever desperate hazard, Pierre had not started for the city without some reasonable plans, both with reference to his more immediate circumstances and his ulterior condition. There resided in the city a cousin of his, Glenn Denning Stanley, better known in the general family as Glenn Stanley, and by Pierre as cousin Glenn. Like Pierre, he was an only son, his parents had died in his early childhood, and within the present year he had returned from a protracted sojourn in Europe to enter at the age of twenty-one into the untrammeled possession of a noble property which in the hands of faithful guardians had largely accumulated. In their boyhood and earlier adolescence, Pierre and Glenn had cherished a much more than cousinly attachment. At the age of ten they had furnished an example of the truth that the friendship of fine-hearted generous boys nurtured amid the romance and genuine conference and elegancies of life sometimes transcends the bounds of mere boyishness and revels for a while in the Empyrean about love which only comes short by one degree of the sweetest sentiment entertained between the sexes. Nor is this boy love without the occasional phillips and spiciness says, which at times by an apparent abatement enhance the permanent delights of those more advanced lovers who love beneath the cestus of Venus. Jealousies are felt, the sight of another lad too much consorting with the boy's beloved object shall fill him with emotions akin to those of a fellow's. A fancied sleight or lessening of the everyday indications of warm feelings shall prompt him to bitter upradings and reproaches or shall plunge him into evil moods for which grim solitude only is congenial. Nor are the letters of Afro-Daitian devotees more charged with headlong vows and protestations more crosswritten and crammed with discursive sentimentalities more undeviating in their semi-weakliness or dailiness as the case may be than are the love friendship missive of boys. Even those bundles of papers which peer in an ill hour so frantically destroyed in the chamber of the end were two large packages of letters densely written and in many cases inscribed crosswise throughout with red ink upon black so that the love in those letters was two layers deep and one pen and one pigment were insufficient to paint it. The first package contained the letters of Glen to peer, the feather those of peer to Glen which just prior to Glen's departure for Europe, peer had obtained from him in order to reread them in his absence and so fortify himself the more in his affection by reviving reference to the young ardent hours of its earliest manifestations. But as the advancing fruit itself extrudes the beautiful blossom, so in many cases does the eventual love of the other sex forever dismiss the preliminary love friendship of boys. The mere outer friendship may in some degree greater or less survive but the singular love in it has perishingly dropped away. If in the eye of unyielding reality and truth the earthly heart of man do indeed ever fix upon some one woman to whom alone then sporthy eternally to be a devotee without a single shadow of the misgivings of its faith and who to him does perfectly embody his finest loftiest dream of feminine loveliness if this indeed be so and may heaven grant that it be nevertheless in metropolitan cases the love of the most single-eyed lover almost invariably is nothing more than the ultimate settling of innumerable wandering glances upon some one specific object. As admonished that the wonderful scope and variety of female loveliness if too long suffered to sway us without decision shall finally confound all power of selection. The confirmed bachelor is in America at least quite as often the victim of a too profound appreciation of the infinite charmingness of woman as made solitary for life by the legitimate empire of a cold and tasteless temperament. Though the peculiar heart longings pertaining to his age had at last found their glowing response in the bosom of Lucy yet for some period prior to that peer had not been insensible to the miscellaneous promptings of the passion so that even before he became a declarative lover, love had yet made him her general votary and so already there had gradually come a cooling over that ardent sentiment which in earlier years he had cherished for Glen. All round and round does the world lie as a not sharp shooter's ambush to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of the age. If the general love for women had in peer sensibly modified his particular sentiment for Glen neither had the thousand nameless fascinations of the then brilliant paradises of France and Italy failed to exert their seductive influence on many of the previous feelings of Glen. For as the very best advantages of life are not without some envious drawback, so it is among the evils of enlarged foreign travel that in young and unsolid minds it dislodges some of the finest feelings of the home-born nature, replacing them with a fastidious superciliousness which like the alleged bigoted federalism of old times would not, according to a political legend, grind its daily coffee in any mills save of European manufacture and was satirically said to have thought of importing European air for domestic consumption. The mutually curtailed, lessening, long postponed, and at last altogether ceasing letters of Pierre Glen were the melancholy attestations of a fact which perhaps neither of them took very severely to heart as certainly concerning it neither took the other to task. In the earlier periods of that strange transition from the generous impulsiveness of youth to the provident circumspectness of age, their general intervenes a brief pause of unpleasant reconsidering. When finding itself all wide of its former spontaneous self, the soul has a taste to commit itself wholly to selfishness more than repents its wanderings yet all this is but transient and again hurried on by the swift current of light, the prompt hearted boy scares longer is to be recognized and matured man, very slow to feel, deliberate even in love and statistical even in piety. During the sway of this peculiar period the boy shall still make some strenuous efforts to retrieve his departing spontaneities, but so alloyed are all such endeavors with the incipiencies of selfishness that they were best not made at all, since too often they seemed but empty and self-deceptive sallies were still worse than mere as hypocritical assumptions. On the return of Glenn from abroad, the commonest courtesy not to say the blood relation between them prompted Pierre to welcome him home with a letter which though not overlong and little enthusiastic still breathed the spirit of cousinly consideration and kindness, pervadingly touched by the then naturally frank and all attractive spirit of Pierre. To this the less earnest and now Europeanized Glenn had replied in a letter all sudden suavity and in a strain of artistic artlessness mourned the apparent decline of their friendship, yet fondly trusted that now notwithstanding their long separation it would revive with added sincerity. Yet upon accidentally fixing his glance upon the opening salutation of this delicate message, Pierre thought he perceived certain not wholly disguiseable chirographic tokens that my very dear Pierre, with which the letter seemed to have been begun, had originally been written dear Pierre, but that when all was concluded and Glenn's signature put to it, then the ardent words of my very had been prefixed to the reconsidered dear Pierre, a casual supposition which possibly however unfounded materially retarded any answering warrant in Pierre lest his generous flame should only embrace a flaunted feather. No was this idea altogether unreinforced when on the reception of a second and now half business letter of which makes sort nearly all the subsequent ones were from Glenn, he found that my very dear Pierre had already retreated into my dear Pierre and on a third occasion into dear Pierre and on a fourth had made a forced and very spirited advance march up to my dearest Pierre, all of which fluctuations augured ill for the determinateness of that love, which however immensely devoted to one cause could yet hoist and sail under the flags of all nations, nor could he but now applaud a still subsequent letter from Glenn, which abruptly and almost with apparent in-decklessness under the circumstances commenced the strain of friendship without any overture of salutation whatever, as if at last owing to its infinite delicateness entirely hopeless of precisely defining the nature of their mystical love, Glenn chose rather to leave that precise definition to the syn-pathetical heart and imagination of Pierre, while he himself would go on to celebrate the general relation by many a sugared sentence of miscellaneous devotion. It was a little curious and rather sardinically diverting to compare these masterly yet not wholly successful and indeterminate tactics of the accomplished Glenn with the unfaltering stream of beloved Pierre's which not only flowed along the top margin of all his earlier letters, but here and there from their subterranean channel flashed out in bright intervals through all the succeeding lines, nor had the chance recollection of these things at all restrained the reckless hand of Pierre when he threw the whole package of letters both new and old into that most honest and summary of all elements which is neither a respect to a person's nor a pinnacle critic of what manner of writing it burns, but like ultimate truth itself of which it is the eloquent symbol consumes all and only consumes. When the betrothment of Pierre to Lucy had become an acknowledged thing, the courtly Glenn besides the customary felicitations upon that event had not omitted so fit an opportunity to retender to his cousin all those previous jars of honey and treacle accompanied by additional boxes of candied citron and plums. Pierre thanked him kindly, but in certain little roguish ambiguities begged leave on the ground of clawing to return him enclosed by far the greater portion of his present whose non-substantialness was allegorically typified in the containing letter itself prepaid with only the usual postage. True love as everyone knows will still withstand many repulses even though rude, but whether it was the love or the politeness of Glenn which on this occasion proved invincible is a matter we will not discuss. Certain it was that quite undaunted Glenn nobly returned to the charge and in a very prompt and unexpected answer extended to Pierre all the courtesies of the general city and all the hospitalities of five sumptuous chambers which he and his luxurious environments can drive nominally to occupy in the most fashionable private hotel of a very opulent town. Nor did Glenn rest here but like Napoleon now seem bent upon gaining the battle by throwing all his regiments upon one point of attack and gaining that point at all hazards. Hearing of some rumor at the tables of his relatives that the day was being fixed for the positive nuptials of Pierre Glenn called all his Parisian portfolios for his rosiest sheet and with scented ink and a pen of gold indicted a most burnished and red letter which after invoking all the blessings of Apollo and Venus and the nine muses and the cardinal virtues upon the coming event concluded at last with a really magnificent testimonial to his love. According to this letter among his other real estate in the city Glenn had inherited a very charming little old house completely furnished in the style of the last century in our quarter of the city which though now not so cherishedly fashionable as of your still in its quiet secludedness possess great attractions for the retired buildings and cooings of a honeymoon. Indeed he begged leave now to christen it the cooery and if after his wedding John Pierre would deign to visit the city with his bride for a month or two sojourn than the cooery would be but too happy in affording him a harbor. His sweet cousin need be under no apprehension owing to the absence of any fit applicant for it the house had now long been without a tenant save an old confidential bachelor clerk of his father's who on a nominal rent and more by way of safekeeping to the house than anything else was now hanging up his well-forbished hat in its hall. This accommodating old clerk would quickly unpack his beaver at the first hint of new occupants Glenn would charge himself with supplying the house in advance with a proper resume of servants fires would be made in the long unoccupied chambers the venerable grotesque or mahogany and marvels and mirror frames and moldings could be very soon dusted and burnished the kitchen was amply provided with the necessary utensils for cooking the strong box of old silver immemorial pertaining to the mansion could be readily carted round from the vaults of the neighboring bank while the hampers of old china still retained in the house needed but little trouble to unpack so that silver and china would soon stand assorted in their appropriate closets at the turning of a fuss in the cellar the best of the city's water would not fail to contribute its ingredient to the concocting of a welcoming glass of neggis before retiring on the first night of their arrival the over fastidiousness of some unhealthily critical minds as well as the moral peaceful anonymity of others equally bars the acceptance of the factually substantial favors from persons whose motive in profing them is not altogether clear and unimpeachable and toward whom perhaps some prior coolness or indifference has been shown but when the acceptance such a favor would be really convenient and desirable to the one party and completely unattended within each series distressed to the other there would seem to be no sensible objection to an immediate embrace of the offer and when the acceptor is in rank and fortune the general equal of the profferer and perhaps the superior so that any courtesy he received can be amply returned in the natural course of future events then all motives to decline are very materially lessened and as for the thousand inconceivable finicalnesses of small pros and cons about the imaginary fitnesses and proprieties and self-consistencies thank heaven in the hour of heart health none such chilly shelling sale tremors ever bulked the onward course of a bluff-minded man he takes the world as it is and carelessly accommodates himself to its whimsical humors nor ever feels any compunction at receiving the greatest possible favors from those who are as able to grant as three to musto he himself bestows upon occasion so that at bottom common charity steps in to dictate a favorable consideration for all possible profferings seeing that the acceptance shall only the more enrich him indirectly for new and larger beneficences of the zone and as for those who no ways pretend with themselves to regulate their deportment by considerations of genuine benevolence and to whom such courteous profferings hypocritically come from persons whom they suspect for secret enemies then to such minds not only will their own worldly tactics at once forbid the uncivil blank repulse of such offers but if they are secretly malicious as well as frigid or if they are at all capable of being fully gratified by the sense of concealed superiority and master ship which precious few men are then how delightful for such persons under the guise of mere acquiescence in his own voluntary civilities to make gentile use of their phone for one would like to know what were those made for except to be used in the rude ages men hunted in javelin the tiger because they hated him for a mischief minded wild beast but in these enlightened times though we love the tiger as little as ever still we mostly hunt him for the sake of his skin a wise man then will wear his tiger every morning put on his tiger for a robe to keep him warm and adorn him in this view foes are far more desirable than friends for who would hunt and kill his own faithful affectionate dog for the sake of his skin and as a dog skin is valuable as a tiger's cases there are where it becomes soberly advisable by direct arts to convert some well-wishers into foes it is false that in point of policy a man should never make enemies as well-wishers some men may not only be nougatory but positive obstacles in your peculiar plans but as foes you may subordinately cement them into your general design but into these ulterior refinements of cool Tuscan policy Pierre as yet have never become initiated his experiences hitherto not having been buried and ripe enough for that besides he had altogether too much generous blood in his heart nevertheless thereafter in a less immature hour though still he shall not have the heart to practice upon such maxims as the above yet shall he have the brain thoroughly to comprehend their practicability which is not always the case and generally inworldly wisdom men will deny to one the possession of all insight which one does not by his everyday outward life practically reveal it is a very common error of some unscrupulously infidel minded selfish unprincipled or downright navish men to suppose that believing men or benevolent hearted men or good men do not know enough to be unscrupulously selfish do not know enough to be unscrupulous nades and thus thanks to the world are there many spies in the world camp who are mistaken for strolling simpletons and these strolling simpletons seem to act upon the principle that in certain things we do not so much learn by showing that already we know a vast deal as by negatively seeming rather ignorant but here we press upon the frontiers of that sort of wisdom which it is very well to possess but not sagacious to show that you possess don't mean there are who having quite done with the world all its mere worldly contents have become so far indifferent that they care little of what mere worldly imprudence they may be guilty now if it were not conscious considerations like to really benevolent or neutral ones first mentioned above it was certainly something akin to them which had induced pier to return a straightforward manly and entire acceptance to his cousin of the offer of the house thanking him over and over for his most super rogatory kindness concerning the pre-engagement of servants and so forth and the setting in order of the silver in china but reminding him nevertheless that he had overlooked all special mention of wines and begged him to store the bins with a few of the very best brands he would likewise be obliged if he would personally purchase out of certain celebrated grocers a small bag of undoubted mocha coffee but glenn need not order to be roasted or ground because pier preferred that both those highly important and flavored deciding operations should be performed instantaneously previous to the final boiling and serving nor did he say that he would pay for the wines and the mocha he contended himself with merely stating the remissness on the part of his cousin and pointing out the best way of remedying it he concluded his letter back intimating that though the rumor of a set day and a near one for his natural was unhappily but your founded yet he would not hold glenn's generous offer as merely based upon that presumption and consequently falling with it but on the contrary would consider it entirely good for whatever time it might prove available to pier he was betrothed beyond a poor adventure and hope to be married or death meanwhile glenn would further oblige him by giving the confidential clerk a standing notice to quit though at first quite amazed at this letter for indeed his offer might possibly have proceeded as much from ostentation as anything else nor had he dreamed of so unhesitating and acceptance pier's cousin was too much of a precocious young man of the world disclosedly to take it in any other than a very friendly and cousinly and humors and yet practical way which he plainly events by a reply far more sincere and every way creditable apparently both to his heart and head than any letter he had written to pier since the days of their boyhood and thus by the bluffness and then some sort on compunctiousness of pier this very artificial youth was well betrayed into an act of effective kindness being forced now to drop the empty mask of ostentation and put on the solid hearty features of a genuine face and just so are some people in the world to be joked into occasional effective goodness when all cornice and coolness all resentments and all solemn preaching would fail chapter two but little would we comprehend the peculiar relation between pier and glenn a relation involving in the end the most serious results where they're not here thrown over the whole equivocal preceding account of it another and more comprehensive equivocals which shall absorb all minor ones in itself and so make one pervading ambiguity the only possible explanation for all the ambiguous details it had long been imagined by pier that prior to his own special devotion to lucy the splendid glenn had not been entirely insensible to her surprising charms yet this conceit in its incipiency he knew not how to account for assuredly his cousin had never in the slightest conceivable hint betrayed it and as for lucy the same intuitive delicacy which forever forbade pier to question her on the subject did equally close her own voluntary lips between pier and lucy delicateness put her sacred signet on this chest of secrecy which like the wax of an executor upon a desk they're capable of being melted into nothing by the smallest candle for all this still possesses to the reverent the prohibited virtue of inexorable bars and bolts if pier superficially considered the deportment of glenn toward him there and he could find no possible warrant for indulging the suspicious idea death jealousy smiles so indignantly and offer its house to the bride still on the other hand to quit the mere surface of the deportment of glenn and penetrate beneath its brocaded vesture there pier sometimes seem to see the long lurking and yet unhealed wound of all a rejected lover's most rankling detestation of a supplanting rival only intensified by their former friendship and the unimparable blood relation between them now viewed by the light of this master solution all the singular enigmas in glenn his capriciousness in the matter of the epistolary dear pier's and dearest pier's the mercurial fall from the fever heat of cordiality to below the zero of indifference then the contrary rise to fever heat and above all his emphatic redundancy of devotion so soon as the positive espouses appear seemed on the point of consummation thus read all these riddles apparently found their cunning solution for the deeper that summon feel a secret and poignant feeling the higher they pile the blind surfaces the friendly deportment of glenn then was to be considered as in direct proportion to his hoarded hate and the climax of that hate was evinced and throwing open his house to the bride yet if hate was the abstract cause hate could not be the immediate motive of the conduct of glenn his hate so hospitable the immediate motive of glenn then must be the intense desire to disguise from the wide world the fact unspeakably humiliating to his gold-laced and haughty soul the fact that in the profoundest desire of his heart pier had so victoriously supplanted him yet was it that very artful deportment in glenn which glenn profoundly assumed to this grand end that consummately artful deportment it was which first intruded upon pier the surmise which by that identical method his cousin was so absorbedly intent upon rendering impossible to him hence we here see that is in the negative way the secrecy of any strong emotion is exceedingly difficult to be kept lastingly private to one's own bosom by any human being so it is one of the most fruitless undertakings in the world to attempt by affirmative assumptions to tender to men the precisely opposite emotion is yours therefore the final wisdom decrees that if you have art which you desire to keep a secret to yourself be a quietest there and do and say nothing at all about it for among all the poor chances this is the least poor pretensions and substitutions are only the recourse of undergraduates in the science of the world in which science on his own ground my lord Chesterfield is the poorest possible preceptor the earliest instinct of the child and the ripest experience of age unite in affirming simplicity to be the truest and profoundest part for man likewise the simplicity is so universal and all-containing as a rule for human life that the subtlest bad man and the purest good man as well as the profoundest wise man do all alike presented on that side which they socially turn to the inquisitive and unscrupulous world chapter three now the matter of the house had remained in precisely the above stated awaiting predicament down to the time appears great life revolution the receipt of isabel's letter and though indeed pierre could not but naturally hesitate as still accepting the use of the dwelling under the widely different circumstances in which he now found himself and though at first the strongest possible spontaneous objections on the ground of personal independence pride and general scorn all clamors late declared in his breast against such a course yet finally the same uncompunctious ever adaptive sort of motive which had induced his original acceptation prompted him in the instill to maintain it and revoked it would at once set him at rest from all immediate tribulations of mere bed and board and by affording him a shelter for an indefinite term enable him the better to look about him and consider what could best be done to further the permanent comfort of those whom fate had entrusted to his charge irrespective it would seem of that wide general awakening of his profounder being consequent upon the extraordinary trials he had so aggregatively encountered of late the thought was indignantly suggested to him that the world must indeed be organically despicable if it held that an offer superfluorously accepted in the hour of his abundance should now be rejected in that of his utmost need and without at all imputing any singularity of benevolent mindedness to his cousin he did not for a moment question that under the changed aspect of affairs glenn would at least pretend the more eagerly to welcome him to the house now that the mere thing of apparent courtesy had been transformed into something like a thing of positive and urgent necessity when pierre also considered that not himself only was concerned but likewise to peculiarly helpless fellow beings one of them bound to him from the first by the most sacred ties and lately inspiring and emotion which passed all human precedent in its mixed and mystical import these added considerations completely overthrew in pierre all remaining dictates of his vague pride and false independence if such indeed had ever been his though the interval elapsing between his decision to depart with his companions for the city and his actual start in the coach had not enabled him to receive any replying word from his cousin and that pierre knew better than to expect it yet prepared to letter to him he had sent and did not doubt that this proceeding would prove well advised in the end in naturally strong minded men however young and inexperienced in some things those great and sudden emergencies which but confound the timid and the weak only serve to call forth all their generous lateness and teach them as by inspiration extraordinary maxims of conduct whose counterpart in other men is only the result of a long variously tried and pains taking life one of these maxims is that went through whatever cause we are suddenly translated from opulence to need or from a fair fame to a foul and straight way it becomes necessary not to contradict the thing so far at least as the mere imputation goes to someone previously entertaining high conventional regard for us and from whom we would now solicit some genuine helping offices then all explanation or palation should be scorn promptness boldness utter gladiatorianism and a defined non-humility should mark every syllable we breathe and every line we trace the preparative letter appeared the glen plunged it once into the very heart of the matter and was perhaps the briefest letter he had ever written him though by no means are such characteristics and variable exponents of the predominant mood or general disposition of a man since so accidental a thing as a numb finger or a bad quill or poor ink or squalor paper or a rickety desk may produce all sorts of modifications yet in the present instance the handwriting appear happened plainly to attest and corroborate the spirit of his communication the sheet was large but the words were applied carded upon it in heavy the rapid lines only six or eight to the page and as the footman of a haughty visitor some counter duke announces the chariot of his lord by a thunderous knock on the portal so to glen to peer in the broad sweeping and prodigious superscription of his letter forewarn him what manner of man was on the road in the moment of strong feeling a wonderful condensatedness points the tongue and pen so that ideas then enunciated sharp and quick as minute guns in some other hour of unruffledness or unstimulatedness require considerable time and trouble to verbally recall not here and now can we set down the precise contents appears letter without a tautology elite doing justice to the ideas themselves and though indeed the dread of tautology be the continual torment of some earnest minds and as such is surely a weakness in them and though no wise men will wonder at conscientious verge all eager at death to burn as a need for a monstrous heap of inefficient superfluity yet not to dread tautology at times only belongs to those enviable dunces whom the partial god hath blessed over all the earth with the inexhaustible self-riches of vanity and folly and a blind self complacency some rumor of the discontinuous of his betrothment to lucy tartan of his already consummated marriage with a poor and friendless orphan of his mother's disowning him consequent upon these events such rumors peer now wrote to his cousin with very probably in the parlors of his city relatives and acquaintances precede his arrival in town but he hinted no word of any possible commentary on these things he simply went on to say that now through the fortune of life which was but the proverbially unreliable fortune of war he was for the present thrown entirely upon his own resources both for his own support and that of his wife as well as for the temporary maintenance of a girl whom he had lately had excellent reason for taking under his special protection he proposed a permanent residence in the city not without some nearly quite several plans as to the procuring of a competent income without any ulterior reference to any member of their wealthy and widely ramified family the house whose temporary occupancy grand had before so handsomely profit him would now be doubly and trebly desirable to him but the pre-engaged servants and the old china and the old silver and the old wines and the mocha were now become altogether unnecessary pier would merely take the place for a short interval of the worthy old clerk and so far as glenn was concerned simply stand guarding of the dwelling till his plans were matured his cousin had originally made his most bounteous overture to welcome the coming of the presumed bride of pier and though another lady had now taken her place at the altar yet pier would still regard the offer of grant as impersonal in that respect and bearing equal reference to any young lady who should prove her claim to the possessed hand of pier since there was no universal law of opinion in such matters glenn on general worldly grounds might not consider the real mrs. glenn dining altogether so suitable a match for pier as he possibly might have held numerous other young ladies in his eye nevertheless glenn would find her ready to return with sincerity all his cousinly regard and attention in conclusion pier said that he and his party meditated an immediate departure and we very probably arrive in town in eight and forty hours after the mailing of the present letter he therefore beg glenn to see the more indispensable domestic appliances of the house set in some little order against their arrival to have the rooms aired and lighted and also forewarned the confidential clerk of what he might soon expect then without any tapering sequel of yours very truly and faithfully my dear cousin glenn he finished the letter with the abrupt and isolated signature of pier end of book 15 book 16 of pier or the ambiguities by herman melville this liver box recording is in the public domain first night of their arrival in the city chapter one the stage was belated the country road they traveled entered the city by a remarkably wide and winding street a great thoroughfare for its less opulent inhabitants there was no moon and few stars it was that pre-looting hour of the night when the shops are just closing and the aspect of almost every way there as he passes through the unequal light reflected from the windows speaks of one hurry not abroad but homeward though the thoroughfare was winding yet no sweep that it made greatly obstructed as long and imposing vista so that when the coach gained the top of the long and very gradual slope running toward the obscure heart of the town and the twinkling perspective of two long and parallel rows of lamps was revealed lamps which seem not so much intended to dispel the general gloom as to show some dim path leading through it into some gloom still deeper beyond when the coach gained this critical point the whole vast triangular town for a moment seemed dimly and despondently to capitulate to the eye and now air descending the gradually sloping declivity and just on its summit as it were the inmates of the coach by numerous hard painful joltings and ponderous dragging trundlings are suddenly made sensible of some great change in the character of the road the coach seems rolling over cannonballs of all calibers grasping pierre's arm is about eagerly and forebodingly demands what is the cause of this most strange and unpleasant transition the pavements is about this is the town is about was silent but the first time for many weeks deli voluntarily spoke it feels not so soft as the green sword master pierre no miss over said pierre very bitterly the buried hearts of some dead citizens have perhaps come to the surface sir said deli and are they so hard hearted here asked isabel ask yonder pavements isabel milk dropped from the milk man's can in december freezes not more quickly on those stones than does snow white innocence if in poverty it chance to fall in these streets then god helped my heart fate master pierre soft deli why did style drag hither a poor outcast like me forgive me miss over exclaimed pierre was sudden warmth and yet most marked respect forgive me never yet have i entered the city by night but somehow it made me feel both bitter and sad come be cheerful we shall soon be comfortably housed and have our comfort all to ourselves the old clerk i spoke to you about is now doubtless ruefully tying his hat on the peg come cheer up isabel there's a long ride but here we are at last come tis not very far now to our welcome i hear a strange shuffling and clattering said deli with a shutter it does not seem so light as just now said isabel yes return pierre it is the shop shutters being put on it is the locking and bolting and barring of windows and doors the townspeople are going to their rest please god they may find it side deli they lock and bar out then when they rest do they pierre said isabel yes and you were thinking that does not bode well for the welcome i spoke of they reached all my soul yes i was thinking of that but whether lead these long narrow dismal side glooms we pass every now and then what are they they seem terribly still i see scarce anybody in them there's another now see how haggardly look it's crisscross far separate lamps what are these side glooms dear pierre whether lead they they are the thym tributaries sweet isabel to the great orinoco thoroughfare we are in and like true tributaries they come from the far hidden places from under dark beatling secrecies of mortar and stone through the long marsh grasses of phyllone and by many a transplanted bow beam where the wretched have hung i know nothing of these things pierre but i like not the town like not the town thinks thou pierre the time will ever come when all the earth shall be paved thank god that never can be these silent side glooms are horrible look me thinks not for the world would i turn into one that moment the nigh four wheel sharply grated under the body of the coach courage cry pierre we are in it not so very solitary either here comes a traveler hark what is that said deli that keen iron ringing sound it passed us just now the keen traveler said pierre he has steel plates to his boot heels some tender sold elder son i suppose pierre said isabel this silence is unnatural is fearful the forests are never so still because brick and mortar have deeper secrets than wood or fell sweet isabel but here we turn again now if i guess right two more turns will bring us to the door courage all will be well doubtless he has prepared a famous supper courage isabel come shall it be tea or coffee some bread or a crisp toast we'll have eggs too and some cold chicken perhaps then mattering to himself i hope not that either no cold colations there's too much of that in these paving stones here set out for the famishing beggars to eat no i won't have the cold chicken then allowed but here we turn again yes just as i thought hoe driver thrusting his head out of the window to the right to the right it should be on the right the first house with the light on the right no lights yet but the streets answer the surly voice of the driver stupid he has passed yes yes he has ho ho stop turn back have you not passed lighted windows no lights but the streets was the rough reply what's the number the number don't keep me beating about here all night the number i say i do not know it return pier but i well know the house you must have passed it i repeat you must turn back surely you have passed lighted windows then them lights must burn black there's no lighted windows in the street i knows the city old maids lives here and they are all to bed rest is warehouses will you stop the coach or not quite pier now and sense that has soliness and continuing to drive on i obey his orders the first house with the light and according to my reckoning though to be sure i don't know nothing of this city where i was born and bred all my life now i knows nothing at all about it according to my reckoning the first light in this here street will be the watch house of the ward yes there it is all right cheap lodgings you've engaged nothing to pay and whittles in to certain temperaments especially when previously agitated by any deep feeling there is perhaps nothing more exasperating and which sooner explodes all self-command than the course jeering insolence of a porter cabin or hack driver fetches and carriers of the worst city infamy as many of them are professionally familiar with the most abandoned haunts in the heart of misery they drive one of the most mercenary of all the trades of guilt day dozers and sluggards on their lazy boxes in the sunlight and for blindly wakeful and cat-eyed in the dark most habituated to midnight streets only trod by sneaking burglar's wantons and debauchies often in actual pandering league with the most abhorrent sinks so that they are equally solicitous and suspectful that every customer they encounter in the dark will prove a profligate or a naïve this hideous tribe of ogres and caron very men to corruption and death naturally slide into the most practically calvinistical view of humanity and old every man at bottom of fit subject for the courses ribaldry and jest only fine coats and full pockets can whip such mangy hounds into decency the least impatience any quickness of temper a sharp remonstrating word from our customer in a seedy coat or betraying any other evidence of poverty however minute and indirect for in that pecuniary respect they are the most piercing and infallible of all the judges of men will be almost sure to provoke in such cases their least indurable disdain perhaps it was the unconscious transferred to the stage driver of some such ideas as these which now prompted the highly irritated peer to enact which in a more benign hour his better reason would have restrained him from he did not see the light to which the driver had referred and was heedless in his sudden wrath that the coach was now going slower in approaching it is about could prevent him he burst open the door and leaping to the pavement spraying ahead of the horses and violently reigned back the leaders by their heads the driver seized his foreign hand whip and with a volley of oaths was about striking out its long coiling lash at pierre when his arm was arrested by a policeman who suddenly leaping on the stage coach commanded him to keep the peace speak what is the difficulty here be quiet ladies nothing serious has happened speak you pierre pierre cried the alarm dis about in an instant pierre was at her side by the window and now turning to the officer explained to him that the driver had persisted in passing the house at which he was ordered to stop then he shall turn to the right about with you sir in double quick time to do you hear i know you rascals well enough turn about you sir and take the gentleman where he directed the cow driver was beginning a long string of criminating explanations when turning to pierre the policeman calmly desired him to re-enter the coach he would see him safely at his destination and then seating himself beside the driver on the box commanded him to tell the number given him by the gentleman he don't know no numbers didn't i say he didn't that's what i got mad about be still said the officer sir turning round and addressing pierre within where do you wish to go i do not know the number but it is a house in this street we have passed it it is i think the fourth or fifth house this side of the last corner returned it must be lighted up too it is the small old-fashioned dwelling with stone lion heads above the windows but make him turn round and drive slowly and i won't soon point it out can't see lines in the dark growl the driver lines jackass is more likely look you said the officer i shall see you tightly house this night my fine fellow if you don't cease your jobber sir he added resuming with pierre i'm sure there is some mistake here i perfectly well know now the house you mean i passed it within the last half hour all is quiet there as ever no one lives there i think i never saw a light in it are you not mistaken in something then pierre paused in perplexity and foreboding was it possible that glenn had willfully and utterly neglected his letter not possible but it might not have come to his hand the mail sometimes delayed then again it was not holding out of the question that the house was prepared for them after all even though it showed no outward sign but that was not probable at any rate as the driver protested that his four horses and lumbering vehicle could not turn short round in that street and that if he must go back it could only be done by driving on and going round the block and so retracing his road and as after such a procedure on his part then in case of a confirmed disappointment respecting the house the driver would seem warranted at least in some of his unmanorliness and as pierre lured the villain all together therefore in order to run no such risks he came to a sudden determination on the spot i owe you very much my good friend said he to the officer for your timely assistance to be frank what you have just told me has indeed perplexed me not a little concerning the place where i propose to stop is there no hotel in this neighborhood where i could leave these ladies while i seek my friend wanted to all manner of deceitfulness and engaged in our calling which unavoidably makes one distrustful of mere appearances however specious however honest the really good-hearted officer now i peer in the dubious light with a most unpleasant scrutiny and he abandoned the sir and the tone of his voice sensibly changed as he replied there is no hotel in this neighborhood it is too off the thoroughfares come come cry the driver now growing bold again though you're an officer i'm a citizen for all that you haven't any further right to keep me out of my bed now he don't know where he wants to go to because he ain't got no place at all to go to so i'll just dump him here and you daren't stay me don't be important now said the officer but not so stonely as before i'll have my rights though i tell you that leave go of my arm damn you get off the box i have the law now i say mister come tramp here goes your luggage and so saying he dragged toward him a light trunk on the top of the stage keep a clean tongue in you now said the officer don't be in quite so great a hurry than addressing pierre who have now reallied from the coach but this can't continue what do you intend to do not to ride further with that man at any rate said pierre i will stop right here for the present he he laughed the driver he he amazing accommodating now we hitches now we do stops right up for the watch house he that's funny off with the luggage then driver said the policeman here had the small trunk and now away and unlashed there behind during all this scene deli had remained perfectly silent in her trembling and rustic alarm well is about by occasional cries to pierre had vainly besought some explanation but though their complete ignorance of city life had caused pierre's two companions to regard the scene thus far with too much trepidation yet now within the obscurity of night and in the heart of a strange town pierre handed them out of the coach into the naked street and they saw their luggage piles so near the white light of a watch house the same ignorance and some sort reversed its effects on them for they little fancied in what really um toward in wretched circumstances they first touched the flagging of the city as the coach lumbered off and went rolling into the wide murkiness beyond pierre spoke to the officer it is a rather strange accident i can trust my friend but strange accidents will sometimes happen in the best of families rejoin the other a little ironically now i must not quarrel with this man thought pierre to himself stung at the officer's tone then said is there anyone in your office no one is yet not late enough well you have the kindness then to house these ladies there for the present while i make haste to provide them with better lodgement lead on if you please the man seemed to hesitate a moment but finally acquiesced and soon they passed under the white light and entered a large plain a most forbidding looking room with hacked wooden benches and bunks ranged along the side and railing before a desk in one corner the permanent keeper of the place was quietly reading a paper by the long central double bat screen gas light and three officers off duty were nodding on a bench not very liberal accommodation said the officer quietly nor always the best of company but we try to be civil be seated ladies politely drawing a small bench toward them hello my friend said pierre approaching the nodding three beyond and tapping them on their shoulder hello i say will you do me a little favor will you help bring some trunks in from the street i will satisfy you for your trouble and be much obliged into the bargain instantly the three noddies used to send awakenings opened their eyes and stared hard and being further enlightened by the bat's wings and first officer promptly brought him the luggage as desired pierre hurriedly sat down by isabel and in a few words gave her to understand that she was now in a perfectly secure place however unwelcoming that the officers would take every care of her while he made all possible speed in running to the house and indubitably ascertaining how matters stood there he hoped to be back in less than 10 minutes with good tidings explaining his intention to the first officer and begging him not to leave the girls till he should return he forthwith salad into the street he quickly came to the house and immediately identified it but all was profoundly silent and dark he rang the bell but no answer and waiting long enough to be certain that either the house was indeed deserted or else the old clerk was unawakeable or absent and at all events certain that no slightest preparation had been made for their arrival pierre bitterly disappointed returned to isabel with this most unpleasant information nevertheless something must be done and quickly turning to one of the officers he begged him to go and seek a hack that the whole party might be taken to some respectable lodging but the man as well as his comrades declined the errand on the score that there was no stand on their beat and they could not on any account leave their beat so pierre himself must go he by no means like to leave isabel and deli again on an expedition which might occupy some time but there seemed no resource and time now imperiously pressed communicating his intention therefore to isabel and again in treating the officers particular services as before and promising not to leave him unrequited pierre again salad out he looked up and down the street and listened but no sound of any approaching the vehicle was audible he ran on and turning the first corner bent his rapid steps toward the greatest and most central avenue of the city assured that there if anywhere he would find what he wanted it was some distance off and he was not without hope that an empty hack would meet him ere he arrived there but the few stray ones he encountered had all muffled bears he continued on and at last gained the great avenue not habitually used to such scenes pierre for a moment was surprised that the instant he turned out of the narrow and dark and deathlike by speed he should find himself suddenly precipitated into the not yet repressed noise and contention and all the garish nightlife of a vast thoroughfare crowded and wedged by day and even now at this late hour brilliant with occasional illuminations and echoing to very many swift wheels and footfalls chapter two i say my pretty one dear dear young man oh love you are in a vast hurry ain't you can't you stop a bit now my dear do there's a sweet fella pierre turned and in the flashing sinister evil crosslights of our druggist's window as i caught the person of a wonderfully beautifully featured girl scarlet cheeked glaringly arrayed and about figure all natural grace but unnatural vivacity her whole form however was horribly lit by the green and yellow rays from the druggist's my god shattered pierre hurrying forward the town's first welcome to you he was just crossing over to where a line of hacks were drawn up against the opposite curb when his eye was arrested by a short yielded name rather reservedly and aristocratically denominating a large and very handsome house the second story of which was profusely lighted he looked up and was very certain that in this house were the apartments of glenn yielding to a sudden impulse he mounted the single step toward the door and rang the bell which was quickly responded to by a very civil black as the door opened he heard the distant interior sound of dancing music and merriment is mr stanley in mr stanley yes but he's engaged how he is somewhere in the drawing rooms my mistress is giving a party to the lodgers i tell mr stanley i wish to see him for one moment if you please only one moment i dare not call him sir he said that possibly someone might call for him tonight they are calling every night for mr stanley but i must admit no one on the plea of the party a dark and bitter suspicion now darted through the mind of pierre and ungovernably yielding to it and resolved to prove or falsify it without delay he said to the black my business is pressing i must see mr stanley i'm sorry sir but orders are orders i am his particular servant here the one that sees his silver every holy day i can't disobey him may i shut the door sir for as it is i cannot admit you the drawing rooms are on the second floor are they not said pierre quietly yes said the black pausing in surprise and holding the door yonder are the stairs i think that way sir but this is yours and the now suspicious black was just on the point of closing the portal violently upon him when pierre thrust him suddenly aside and springing up the long stairs found himself facing an open door from whence proceeded a burst of combined brilliancy and melancholy doubly confusing to one just emerged from the street bubble-wielded and all demented as he momentarily felt he instantly stalked him and confounded the amaze company with his unremoveed slouched heart pale cheek and whole dusty travel stained and ferocious aspect mr stanley where is mr stanley he cried advancing straight through a startle quadrille while all the music suddenly hushed and every eye was fixed in vega fright upon him mr stanley mr stanley cried several blade-ish voices toward the further end of the further drawing room into which the first one widely opened here is the most peculiar fellow after you who the devil is he i think i see him replied singularly cool deliberate and rather drawing voice yet a very silvery one and at bottom perhaps a very resolute one i think i see him stand aside my good fellow will you ladies remove remove from between me and yonder hat the polite compliance of the company thus addressed now revealed to the advancing pierre the tall robust figure of a remarkably splendid looking and brown bearded young man dressed with surprising plainness almost a mirrorness for such an occasion but this plainness of his dress was not so obvious at first the material was so fine and admirably fitted he was carelessly lounging in a half side long attitude upon a large sofa and appeared as if but just interrupted in some very agreeable chat with a diminutive but vivacious brunette occupying the other end the dandy and the man strength and effeminacy courage and indolence were so strangely blended in this superb eyed youth that at first sight it seemed impossible to decide whether there was any genuine metal in him or not some years had gone by since the cousins have met years peculiarly productive of the greatest conceivable changes in the general personal aspect of human beings nevertheless the eyes seldom alters the instant their eyes met they mutually recognized each other but both did not portray the recognition glenn quite pierre and paused a few steps from him but the superb eyed only settled himself lower down in his lounging attitude and slowly withdrawing a small unpretending and unrippin glass from his vest pocket steadily yet not entirely insultingly notwithstanding the circumstances scrutinized pierre then dropping his glass turned slowly round upon the gentleman near him saying in the same peculiar mixed and musical voices before i do not know him it is an entire mistake why don't the servants take him out and the music go on as i was saying miss claire those statues you saw in the louvre are not to be mentioned with those in for instance rome why there now is that vaunters chef duervo the fighting gladiator of the louvre fighting gladiator it is yell pierre leaping toward him like sparticus but the savage impulse in him was restrained by the alarmed female shrieks and wild gestures around him as he paused several gentlemen made motions to pinion him but shaking them all fiercely he stood erect and isolated for an instant and fastening his glance upon his still reclining and apparently unmoved cousin thus spoke glendening Stanley thou disowned pierre not so apparently as pierre does thee by heaven had i a knife glenn i could prick thee on the spot let out all thy glendening blood and then sew up the vile remainder hound and base blot upon the general humanity this is very extraordinary remarkable case of combined imposture and insanity but where are the servants why don't that black advance lead him out my good doc lead him out carefully carefully stay putting his hand in his pocket there take that and have the poor fellow driven off somewhere bolting his rage in him as impossible to be sated by any conduct in such a place pierre now turned spraying down the stairs and fled the house chapter three haxer haxer haxer cab sir cab sir cab sir this way sir this way sir this way sir he's a rogue not him he's a rogue pierre was surrounded by a crowd of contending hack men all holding long whips in their hands while others eagerly beckon to him from their boxes where they sat elevated between their two coach lamps like shabby discarded saints the whip stalks they can round him and several reports of the cracking lashes sharply sounded in his ears just bursting from a scene so goading as his interview with the scornful glenn in the dazzling drawing room to pierre the sudden tumultuous surrounding of him by whip stalks and lashes seemed like the onset of the chastising fiends upon the resties the breaking away from them he sees the first plated door handle near him and leaping into the hack shouted for whoever was the keeper of it to mount his box forthwith and drive off in a given direction the vehicle had proceeded some way down the great avenue when it paused and the driver demanded with or now what place the watch house of the ward cried pier hi hi going to deliver himself up a grin the fellow to himself well that's a sort of honest anyway glang you dogs with we were glang the sights and sounds which met the eye of pierre on re-entering the watch house building with inexpressible horror and fury the before decent drowsy place now fairly reeked with all things unseemly hardly possible was it to tell what conceivable cause or occasion had in the comparatively short absence appear collected such a base congregation in indescribable disorder frantic disease looking men and women of all colors in an all imaginable flaunting immodest grotesque and shattered dresses were leaping yelling and cursing around him the torn madras handkerchiefs of negresses and the red gowns of yellow girls hanging in tatters from their naked bosoms mixed with the rent dresses of deep rouge white women and the spit coats checkered best and protruding shirts of pale or whiskered or haggard or mustached fellows of all nations some of whom seemed scared from their beds and others seemingly arrested in the midst of some crazy and wanton dance on all sides were heard drunken male and female voices in english french spanish and portuguese interlarded now and then with the foulest of all human lingoes that dialect of sin and death known as the camp language or the fly running among this combined babble of persons and voices several of the police were vainly striving to steal the tumult while others were busy handcuffing the more desperate and here and there the distracted wretches both men and women gave downright battle to the officers and still others already handcuffed struck out at them with their joined ironed arms meanwhile words and phrases unrepeatable in god's sunlight and his very existence was utterly unknown and undreamed by tens of thousands of the decent people of the city syllables obscene and accursed were shouted forth in tones plainly evincing that they were the common household breath of their utterers the thieves quarters and all the brothels lock and sin hospitals for incurables and infirmaries and inferners of hell seemed to have made one combined sortee and poured out upon earth through the vile vomitory of some unmentionable seller though the hitherto imperfect and casual city experiences appear illy fitted him entirely to comprehend the specific purport of this terrific spectacle still he knew enough by hearsay of the more infamous life of the town to imagine from whence and who were the objects before him but all his consciousness at the time was absorbed by the one horrified thought of isabel and deli forced to witness a sight hardly indurable for pierre himself or possibly sucked into the tumult and enclosed personal contact with its loathesomeness rushing into the crowd regardless of the random blows and curses he encountered he wildly sought for isabel and soon described her struggling from the delirious reaching arms of a half-clad reeling whisker ronda with an immense blow of his male fist he sent the wretch humming and seizing isabel cried out to two officers near to clear a path for him to the door they did so and in a few minutes the panting isabel was safe in the open air he would have stayed by her but she conjured him to return for deli exposed to worse insults than herself an additional policy of officers now approaching a pierre committing hurt to the care of one of them and summoning two others to join himself now re-entered the room in another quarter of it he saw deli seized on each hand by two bleared and half-buddy women who with fiendish grimaces were ironically tweeting her upon her close-neck dress and had already stripped her handkerchief from her she uttered a cry of mixed anguish and joy at the sight of him and pierre soon succeeded in returning with her to isabel during the absence of pierre in quest of the hack and while isabel and deli were quietly awaiting his return the door had suddenly burst open and the detachment of the police drove in and caged the entire miscellaneous night occupants of a notorious stew which they had stormed and carried during the height of some outrageous orgy the first sight of the interior of the watch house and they're being so quickly huddled together within its four blank walls had suddenly lashed the mob into frenzy so that for the time oblivious of all other considerations the entire force of the police was directed to the quelling of the indoor riot and consequently abandoned to their own protection isabel and deli had been temporarily left to its mercy it was no time for pierre to manifest his indignation at the officer even if he could now find him who had thus falsified his individual pledge concerning the precious charge committed to him there was it any time to distress himself about his luggage still somewhere within quitting all he thrust the bewildered and half lifeless girls into the waiting hack which by his orders drove back in the direction of the stand where pierre had first taken it up when the coach had rolled them well away from the tumult pierre stopped it and said to the man that he desired to be taken to the nearest respectable hotel or boarding house of any kind that he knew up the fellow maliciously diverted by what had happened thus far made some ambiguous and rudely merry rejoinder but warned by his previous rash quarrel with the stage driver pierre passed this unnoticed and in a control calm decided manner repeated his directions the issue was that after a rather roundabout drive they drew up in that very respectable side street before a large respectable looking house illuminated by two tall white lights flanking its portico pierre was glad to notice some little remaining stir within spite of the comparative lateness of the hour a bareheaded tidally dressed and very intelligent looking man with a broom closed brush in his hand appearing scrutinized him rather sharply at first but as pierre advanced further into the light and his countenance became visible the man assuming a respectful but still slightly perplexed air invited the whole party into a closely adjoining parlor whose disorder chairs and general dustiness events that after a day's activity it now waited the morning offices of the house maids baggage sir i've left my baggage at another place that pierre i shall send for it tomorrow ah exclaimed the very intelligent looking man rather dubiously shall i discharge the hackman stay sir pierre but thinking him that it would be well not to let the man know from Wednesday at last come i will discharge it myself thank you sir returning to the sidewalk without debate he paid the hackman an exorbitant fare who anxious to secure such illegal gains beyond all hope of recovery quickly mounted his box and drove off at a gallop we step into the office sir now said the man slightly flourishing with his brush this way sir if you please pierre followed him into an almost deserted dimly lit room with a stand in it going behind the stand the man turned round to him a large ledger like book thickly inscribed with names like any directory and offered him a pen ready dipped in ink understanding the general hint though secretly irritated at something in the manner of the man pierre drew the book to him and wrote in a firm hand at the bottom of the last named column mr and mrs pierre glendoning and miss over the man glanced at the writing inquiringly and then said the other column sir where from truce appeared and wrote saddle meadows the very intelligent looking man reexamined the page and then slowly stroking his shaven chin with a fork made of his thumb for one time and his united four fingers for the other set softly and whisperingly any wears in this country sir yes in the country said pierre evasively and bridling his ire but now show me to two chambers where you the one for myself and wife i desire to have opening into another a third one never mind how small but i must have a dressing room dressing room repeated the man in an ironically deliberative voice dressing room home you will have your luggage taken into the dressing room then i suppose oh i forgot your luggage ain't come yet ah yes yes yes luggage is coming tomorrow oh yes yes certainly tomorrow of course by the way sir i just like to seem at all uncivil and i'm sure you will not deem me so but well sir pierre must bring all his self command for the coming apartments when stranger gentlemen come to this house without luggage we think ourselves bound to ask them to pay their bills in advance sir that is all sir i shall stay here tonight and the whole of tomorrow at any rate rejoin pierre thankful that this was all how much will it be and he drew out his purse the man's eyes fastened with eagerness on the purse he looked from it to the face of him who held it then seemed half hesitating an instant then brightening up said with sudden suavity never mind sir never mind sir though rogue sometimes be gentlemanly gentlemen that our gentlemen never go abroad without their diplomas their diplomas are their friends and their only friends are their dollars you have a purse full of friends we have chambers sir that will exactly suit you i think bring your ladies and i won't show you up to them immediately so saying dropping his brush the very intelligent looking man lighted one lamp and taking two unlighted ones in his other hand led the way down the dusky led she did hall pierre following him with isabel and delin end of book 16 book 17 of pierre or the ambiguities by herman melville this liver vox recording is in the public domain book 17 young america in literature chapter one among the various conflicting modes of writing history there would seem to be two grand practical distinctions under which all the rest must subordinately range by the one mode all contemporaneous circumstances facts and events must be set down contemporaneously by the other they are only to be set down as the general stream of the narrative shall dictate for matters which are kindred in time may be very irrelative in themselves i lacked neither of these i am careless of either both are well enough in their way i write precisely as i please in the earlier chapters of this volume it has somewhere been passingly intimated that pierre was not only a reader of the poets and other fine writers but likewise and what is a very different thing from the other a thorough allegorical understander of them a profound emotional sympathizer with them in other words pierre himself possessed the poetic nature in himself absolutely though but latently and floatingly possessed every wit of the imaginative wealth which he so admired when by vast pains takings in all manner of unrecompensed agonies systematized on the printed page not that as yet his young and immature soul had been accosted by the wonderful mutes and through the vast halls of silent truth had been ushered into the full secret eternally inviolable sanhedram where the poetic magi discuss in glorious gibberish the alpha and omega of the universe but among the beautiful imaginings of the second and third degree of poets he freely comprehensively ranged but it still remains to be said that pierre himself had written many a fugitive thing which had brought him not only vast credit and compliments from his more immediate acquaintances but the less partial applause of the always intelligent and extremely discriminating public in short pierre had frequently done that which many other boys have done published not in the imposing form of a book but in the more modest and becoming way of occasional contributions to magazines and other polite periodicals his magnificent and victoria's debut had been made in that delightful love sonnet entitled the tropical summer not only the public had applauded his gem little sketches of thought and fancy whether in poetry or prose but the high and mighty Campbell clan of editors of all sorts had bestowed upon him those generous commendations which with one instantaneous glance they had immediately perceived was his due they spoke in high terms of his surprising command of language they beg to express their wonder at his euphonious construction of sentences they regarded with reverence the pervading symmetry of his general style but trans sending even this profound insight into the deep merits of pierre they looked infinitely beyond and confessed their complete inability to restrain their unqualified admiration for the highly judicious smoothness and gentleness of the sentiments and fancies expressed this writer said one in an ungovernable burst of admiring fury is characterized throughout by perfect taste another after endorsing the quoting that sapient suppressed maxim of dr. Goldsmiths which asserts that whatever is new is false went on to apply it to the excellent productions before him concluding with this he has translated the unruffled gentleman from the drawing room into the general levy of letters he never permits himself to astonish is never portrayed into anything coarse or new as assured that whatever astonishes is vulgar and whatever is new must be crude yes it is the glory of this admirable young author that vulgarity and vigor to inseparable adjuncts are equally removed from him a third parorated a long and beautifully written review by the bold and startling announcement this writer is unquestionably a highly respectable youth nor had the editors of various moral and religious periodicals failed to render the tribute of their severe appreciation and more enviable because more cherry applause a renowned clerical and philological conductor of a weekly publication of this kind whose surprising proficiency in the Greek Hebrew and chal dake to which he had devoted by far the greater part of his life peculiarly fitted him to pronounce unerring judgment upon works of taste in the English had unhesitatingly delivered himself thus he is blameless in morals and harmless throughout another had unhesitatingly recommended his effusions to the family circle a third had no reserve in saying that the predominant and an aim of this author was evangelical piety a mind less naturally strong than peers might well have been hurried into vast self complacency by such eulogy as this especially as there could be no possible doubt that the primitive verdict pronounced by the editors was irreversible except in the highly improbable event of the near approach of the millennium which might establish a different dynasty of taste and possibly eject the editors it is true that in view of the general practical vagueness of these panagyrics and the circumstance that in essence they were all somehow of the prudently indecisive sort and considering that they were panagyrics and nothing but panagyrics without anything analytical about them an elderly friend of a literary turn had made bold to say to our hero Pierre this is very high praise I grant and you are a surprisingly young author to receive it but I do not see any criticisms as yet criticisms quite pure in amazement why sir they are all criticisms I am the idol of the critics ah said the elderly friend as if suddenly reminded that that was true after all ah and went on with his inoffensive non-committal cigar nevertheless thanks to the editors such at last became the popular literary enthusiasm in behalf of Pierre the two young men recently abandoning the ignoble pursuit of tailoring for the more honorable trait of the publisher probably with an economical view of working up in books the linen and cotton shreds of the cutter's counter after having been subjected to the action of the paper mill had on the daintiest scalloped edge paper and in the neatest possible and fine needlework hand addressed him a letter couched in the following terms the general style of which letter will sufficiently events that though thanks to the manufacturer their linen and cotton shreds may have been very completely transmuted into paper yet the cutters themselves were not yet entirely out of the metamorphosing mill honorable Pierre Glendening reverend sir the fine cut the judicious fit of your production fills us with amazement the fabric is excellent the finest broad cloth of genius we have just started in business your pantaloons productions we mean have never yet been collected they should be published in the library form the tailors we mean the librarians demanded your fame is now in its finest nap now before the gloss is off now is the time for the library form we have recently received an invoice of chamois Russia leather the library form should be a durable form we respectfully offer to dress your amazing productions in the library form if you please we will transmit you a sample of the cloth we mean a sample page with a pattern of the leather we are ready to give you one tenth of the profits less discount for the privilege of arraying your wonderful productions in the library form you cashing the seamstresses printers and binders bills on the day of publication an answer at your earliest convenience will greatly oblige sir your most obsequious servants wonder and when ps we respectfully submit the enclosed block sheet as some earnest of our intentions to do everything in your behalf possible to any firm in the trade in b if the list does not comprise all your illustrious wardrobe works we mean we shall exceedingly regret it we have hunted through all the drawers magazines sample of a coat title for the works of glenn dinning the complete works of glenn dinning author of that world fame production the tropical summer sonnet the weather a thought life and impromptu the late reverend mark graceman and obituary honor astanza beauty anacrostic edgar and anagram the pippin a paragraph et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera et cetera p from a designer pier had received the following sir i approach you with unfeigned trepidation for though you are young in age you are old in fame and ability i cannot express to you my ardent admiration of your works nor can i but deeply regret that the productions of such graphic descriptive power should be unaccompanied by the humbler illustrative labors of the designer my services in this line are entirely at your command i need not say how proud i should be if this hint on my part however presuming should induce you to reply in terms upon which i could found the hope of honoring myself and my profession by a few designs for the works of the illustrious glenn dinning but the cursory mention of your name here fills me with such swelling emotions that i can say nothing more i would only add however that not being at all connected with the trade my business situation unpleasantly forces me to make cash down on delivery of each design the basis of all my professional arrangements your noble soul however would disdain to suppose that this sordid necessity in my merely business concerns could ever impair that profound private veneration and admiration with which i unmercenarily am great and good glenn dinning yours most humbly peter pence chapter two these were stirring letters the library form an illustrated edition his whole heart swelled but unfortunately it occurred to pierre that as all his writings were not only fugitive but it put together could not possibly feel more than a very small duet decimal therefore the library edition seemed a little premature perhaps possibly in a slight degree preposterous then as they were chiefly made up of little sonnets brief meditative poems and more essays the matter for the designer ran some small risk of being but meager in his inexperience he did not know that such was the great height of invention to which the designer's art had been carried that certain gentlemen of that profession had gone to an eminent publishing house with overtures for an illustrated edition of coke upon littleton even the city directory was beautifully illustrated with the exquisite engravings of bricks tongs and flat irons concerning the draft for the title page it must be confessed that on seeing the imposing enumeration of his titles long and magnificent as those preceding the proclamations of some german prince hereditary lord of the backyard of crance jacobi undoubted proprietor by seizure of the bedstead of the late widow van lorn heir apparent through the bank rupt bakery of flats and flits residuary legatee of the confiscated pin money of the late dowager dunker et cetera et cetera et cetera pierre could not entirely repress a momentary feeling of elation yet did he also bow low under the weight of his own ponderosity as the author of such a vast load of literature it occasioned him some slight misgivings however when he considered that already in his 18th year his title page should serve immensely surpassed in voluminous statistical's the simple page which in his father's edition prefix the vast speculations of playto still he comforted himself with the thought that as he could not presume to interfere with the bills the grizz of the gazelle magazine who every month covered the walls of the city with gigantic announcements of his name among the other contributors so neither could he now in the highly improbable event of closing with the author of may sears wonder and when presumed to interfere with the bill sticking department of their business concern for it was plain that they esteemed one's title page but another unwindowed wall infinitely more available than most wall since here was at least one spot in the city where no rival bill stickers dared to encroach nevertheless resolved as he was to let all such bill sticking matters take care of themselves he was sensible of some coy inclination toward that modest method of certain kid-gloved and dainty authors who scorn the vulgarity of a sounding parade contented themselves with simply subscribing their name to the title page as confident that that was sufficient guaranteed to the notice of all true gentlemen of taste it was for petty german princes to sound their prolonged titular flourishes the czar of russia contented himself with putting the simple word nicolas to his loftiest decrees this train of thought terminated at last in various considerations upon the subject of anonymousness in authorship he regretted that he had not started his literary career under that mask that president might be too late already the whole universe knew him and it was in vain at this late day to attempt to hood himself but when he considered the essential dignity and propriety at all points of the inviolably anonymous method he could not but feel the sincerest sympathy for those unfortunate fellows who not only naturally averse to any sort of publicity but progressively ashamed of their own success of productions written chiefly for the mayor's cash we yet cruelly coerced into sounding title pages by sundry bakers and butchers bills and other financial considerations in as much as the placard of the title page indubitably must assist the publisher in his sales but perhaps the ruling though not altogether conscious motive appeared and finally declining as he did the services of mr's wonder and when those eager applicants for the privilege of extending and solidifying his fame arose from the idea that being at this time not very far advanced in years the probability was that his future productions might at least equal if not surpassed in some small degree those already given to the world he resolved to wait for his literary canonization until he should at least have outgrown the sophomore re in insinuation of the law which with a singular affectation of the dignity pronounced him an infant is modesty obscured from him the circumstance of the greatest lettered celebrities of the time had by the divine power of genius become full graduates in the university of fame while yet as legal minors forced to go to their mamas for pennies were with to keep them in peanuts not seldom pierce social placidity was ruffled by polite entreaties from the young ladies that he would be pleased to grace their albums with some nice little song we say that here his social placidity was ruffled for the true charm of agreeable parlor society is that there you lose your own sharp individuality and become delightfully merged in that soft social pantheism as it were that rosy melting of all into one ever prevailing in those drawing rooms which pacifically and deliciously rely their own name in as much as there no one draws the sort of his own individuality but all such ugly weapons are left as a vote with your head and cane in the hall it was very awkward to decline the albums but somehow it was still worse and peculiarly distasteful for pier to comply with equal justice apparently you might either have called that his weakness or his idiosyncrasy he summoned all his swabity and refused and the refused la pier according to miss angelica amabilia of amboside was sweeter than the compliance of others but then prior to the proffer of her album in a cops at amboside pier in a gallant win had in the ladies own presence voluntarily carved miss angelica's initials upon the bark of a beautiful maple but all young ladies are not miss angelica's blandly denied in the parlor they courted repulse in the study in lovely envelopes they dispatched their albums to pier not omitting to drop a little atar of rose in the palm of the domestic who carried them while now pier pushed to the wall in his gallant three chile shall it as to what he must do the awaiting albums multiplied upon him and by and by monopolized an entire shelf in his chamber so that while they're combined ornate bindings barely dazzled his eyes their excessive revelance all but made him to faint though indeed in moderation he was very partial to perfumes so that of really chilly afternoons he was still obliged to drop the upper sashes a few inches the simplest of all things it is to write in a ladies album but qui bono is there such a dearth of printed reading that the monkeys times must be revived and ladies books be in manuscript what could pier write of his own on love or anything else that would surpass the divine hyphens wrote so many long centuries ago was there not an acre on to and catullus and avid all translated and readily accessible and then bless all their souls had the dear creatures forgotten tom more but the handwriting pier they want the side of your hand well up here actual feeling is better than transmitted sight any day i will give them the actual feeling of my hand as much as they want and lips are still better than hands let them send their sweet faces to me and i will kiss lipographs upon them forever and today this was a felicitous idea he called dates and had the albums carried down by the basket full into the dining room he opened and spread them all out upon the extension table there then modeling himself by the pope when his holiness collectively blesses long crates of rosaries he waved one devout kiss to the albums and summoning three servants sent the albums all home with his best compliments accompanied with the confectioner's kiss for each album rolled up in the most ethereal tissue from various quarters of the land both town and country and especially during the preliminary season of autumn pier received various pressing invitations to lecture before lyceum's young men's associations and other literary and scientific societies the letters conveying these invitations possess quite an imposing and most flattering aspect to the unsophisticated pier one was as follows one was as follows a quaratian club for the immediate extension of the limits of all knowledge both human and divine ze doc pratt's bill june 11th 18 so on author of the tropical summer etc honored and dear sir official duty and private inclination in this present case most delightfully blend what was the ardent desire of my heart has now by the action of the committee on lectures become professionally obligatory upon me as chairman of our committee on lectures i here by beg the privilege of intruding that you will honor this society by lecturing before it on any subject you may choose and at any day most convenient to yourself the subject of human destiny we would respectfully suggest without however at all wishing to impede you in your unbiased selection if you honor us by complying with this invitation be assured serve that the committee on lectures will take the best care of you throughout your stay and endeavor to make a ze doc pratt's bill agreeable to you carriage will be in attendance at the stagehouse to convey yourself in luggage to the end under full escort of the committee on lectures with the chairman at their head permit me to join my private homage to my high official consideration for you and to subscribe myself very humbly your servant donald donald chapter three but it was more especially the lecture invitations coming from venerable gray-headed metropolitan societies and indicted by venerable gray-headed secretaries which far from elating fill the youthful pier with the sincerest sense of humility lecture lecture such a stripling as i lecture to 50 benches with 10 gray heads on each 500 gray heads and all shall my one poor inexperienced brain presume to lay down the law in a lecture to 500 life ripened understandings it seemed to absurd for thought yet the 500 through their spokesman had voluntarily extended this identical invitation to him then how could it be otherwise then that an incipient time anism should slide into pier when he considered all the disgraceful inferences to be derived from such a fact he called the mind how that once upon a time during a visit of his to the city the police were called out to quell a portentous ride occasioned by the vast press and contention for seats at the first lecture of an illustrious lad of 19 the author of a week at coney island it is needless to say that pure most conscientiously and respectfully declined all polite overtures of this sort similar disenchantments of his cooler judgment did likewise deprive of their full lusciousness several other equally marked demonstrations of his literary celebrity applications for autographs showered in upon him but in sometimes humorously gratifying the more urgent requests of these singular people peer could not but feel a pang of regret that owing to the very youthful and quite unformed character of his handwriting his signatures are not possessed of inflexible uniformity which for mere prudential reasons of nothing more should always mark the hand of illustrious men his heart thrilled with sympathetic anguish for posterity which would be certain to stand hopelessly perplexed before so many contradictory signatures of one super eminent name alas posterity would be sure to conclude that they were forgery's all that no choreographic relic of the sublime poet glendening survived to their miserable times from the proprietors of the magazines whose pages were honored by his effusions he received very pressing epistolary solicitations for the loan of his portrait in oil in order to take an engraving there from for a frontispiece to their periodicals but here again the most melancholy considerations obtruded it had always been one of the lesser ambitions of peer to sport a flowing beard which he deemed the most noble corporeal badge of the man not to speak of the illustrious author but as yet he was beardless and no cunning compound of roland and sun could force a beard which should arrive at maturity in any reasonable time for the frontispiece besides his voyage features and whole expression were daily changing would he lend his authority to this unprincipled imposter upon posterity honor for bad these epistolary petitions were generally couched in an elaborately respectful style thereby intimating with what deep reverence his portrait would be handled while unavoidably subjected to the discipline indispensable to obtain from it the engraved copy they prayed for but one or two of the persons who made occasional oral requisitions upon him in this matter of his engraved portrait seemed less regardless of the inherent respect due to every man's portrait much more to that of a genius so celebrated as pierre they did not even seem to remember that the portrait of any man generally receives and indeed is entitled to more reverence than the original man himself since one may freely clap a celebrated friend on the shoulder yet would by no means tweak his nose in his portrait the reason whereof may be this that the portrait is better entitled to reverence than the man in as much as nothing belittling can be imagined concerning the portrait whereas many unavoidably belittling things can be fancied as touching the man upon one occasion happening suddenly to encounter a literary acquaintance a joint editor of the captain kid monthly who suddenly popped upon him round the corner pierre was startled by a rapid good morning good morning just the man i wanted to come step around now with me and have your dog you're a type taken get it engraved then in no time want it for the next issue so saying this chief made a captain kid sees pierre's arm and in the most vigorous manner was walking him off like an officer a pick pocket when pierre civilly said pray sir hold if you please i shall do no such thing poo poo must have a public property come along only a door or two now public property rejoin pierre that may do very well for the captain kid monthly it's very captain kiddies to say so but i beg to repeat that i do not intend to exceed don't really cry the other amazingly staring pierre full in the countenance by bless your soul my portrait is published longer ago published can't help that sir said pierre oh come along come along and the chief mate sees him again with the most uncompunctious familiarity by the arm though the sweetest temper youth in the world when but decently treated pierre had an ugly devil in him sometimes very apt to be evoked by the personal profaneness of gentlemen of the captain kid school of literature look you my good fellows that he submitting to his impartial inspection a determinedly double fist drop my arm now or i'll drop you to the devil with you and your dog your type this incident suggested as it was at the time in the sequel had a surprising effect upon pierre for he considered with what infinite readiness now the most faithful portrait of anyone could be taken by the dog your type whereas in former times a faithful portrait was only within the power of the money or mental aristocrats of the earth how natural then the inference that instead as in old times immortalizing a genius a portrait now only data lies to dance besides when everybody has this portrait published true distinction lies in not having yours published at all for if you are published along with tom dick and harry and wear a coat of their cut how then are you distinct from tom dick and harry therefore even so miserable a motive as downright personal vanity help to operate in this matter with pierre some zealous lovers of the general literature of the age as well as declared devotees to his own great genius frequently petitioned him for the materials we're with to frame his biography they assured him that life of all things was most insecure he might feel many years in him yet time might go lightly by him but in any sudden and fatal sickness how would his last hours be embedded by the thought that he was about to depart forever leaving the world utterly unprovided with the knowledge of what were the precise texture and hue of the first trousers he wore these representations did certainly touch him in a very tender spot not previously unknown to the school master who and pierre considered that owing to his extreme youth his own recollections of the past soon merged into all manner of half memories and a general vagueness he could not find it in his conscience to present such materials to the impatient biographers especially as his chief verifying authority in these matters for of his past career was now eternally departed beyond all human appeal his excellent nurse Clarissa have been dead four years and more in vain a young literary friend the well-known author of two indexes and one epic to whom the subject happened to be mentioned warmly espoused the cause of the distressed biographers saying that however unpleasant one must needs pay the penalty of celebrity it was no use to stand back and concluded by taking from the crown of his hat the proof sheets of his own biography which with the most thoughtful consideration for the masses were shortly to be published in the pamphlet form price only a shillen it only the more bewildered and pained him when still other and less delicate applicants sent him there regularly printed by a graph for coat solicitor circulars with his name written in ink begging him to honor them and the world with the neat draft of his life including criticisms on his own writings the printed circular indiscriminately protesting that undoubtedly he knew more of his own life than any other living man and that only he who had put together the great works of blending in could be fully qualified thoroughly to analyze them and cast the ultimate judgment upon their remarkable construction now it was under the influence of the humiliating emotions engendered by things like the above it was when thus haunted by publishers engravers editors critics autograph collectors portrait fanciers biographers and petitioning and monstrating literary friends of all sorts it was then that they're stolen to the youthful soul of pierre melancholy forebodings of the utter unsatisfactoriness of all human fame since the most ardent proprings of the most modernizing demonstrations in his behalf these he was sorrowfully obliged to turn away and it may well be believed that after the wonderful vital world revelations so suddenly made to pierre at the matters a revelation which at moments in some certain things barely time and eyes dim he had not failed to clutch with peculiar nervous detestation and contempt that ample parcel containing the letters of his biographical and other silly correspondence which in a less ferocious hour he had filed away as curiosities it was with an almost infernal grin that he saw that particular heap of rubbish eternally quenched in the fire and felt that as it was consumed before his eyes so when his soul was forever killed the last and my nudist undeveloped microscopic germ of that most despicable vanity to which those absurd correspondence thought to appeal in the book 17