PREFACE.

It is pretty well understood, I presume, that while books are written for the entertainment of the public, a preface has fulfilled its mission if it prove a solace to the author and an edification to the proof-reader thereof. Yet (however it may be with an author) an editor must, it seems, write one.

Most mysteriously, then, and I knew not whence or from whom, the manuscript of this work found itself in my study, some time since, accompanied by the request that I should stand sponsor for it.

I shall do nothing of the kind. True, the grammar of it will pass muster, I think; and its morals are above reproach; but the way our author has of sailing into everything and everybody quite takes my breath away. Lawyers, military men, professors and students, parsons, agnostics, statesmen, billiard-players, novelists, poetesses, saints and sinners—he girds at them all. I should not have a friend left in the world were it to go abroad that this Mr. J. B. Whacker’s opinions were also mine. If but to enter this disclaimer, therefore, I must needs write a preface.

This author of ours, then, is, as you shall find, an actor in the scenes he describes, and is quite welcome to any sentiments he may see fit to put into his own mouth. He entertains, I am free to admit, an unusual number of opinions; more than one man’s share, perhaps; but not one of them is either reader or editor called upon to adopt.

It seems fair, too, to warn the eccentric person who shall read this preface, against putting too much faith in the account Mr. Whacker gives of himself. The astounding pedigree to which he lays claim in Chapter I. may be satire, for aught I know; but when he poses as a lawyer, a bachelor, and a ton of a man, weighing (though he does not give the exact figures) not much less than three hundred pounds, he is counting too much on the simplicity of his editor. For the internal evidence of the work itself makes it clear that he is a physician, ever so much married, and nestling amid a very grove of olive branches. He assures us, too, for example (he is never tired of assuring us of something), that he is entirely ignorant of music; yet divides his work not into books (as a Christian should), but into movements; indicating (presumably) the spirit and predominant feeling of each by the opening page of the orchestral score of one of the four numbers of a famous symphony!

One more word and I am done.

Our author has not seen fit to make any reply to the incessant, and still unceasing onslaughts, from pen and pencil alike, to which the South has submitted, and still submits, twenty-one years after Appomattox, with a silence that has been as grand as it is unparalleled.

His only revenge has been to paint his people and the lives they led.

But it seems to me best to say, once for all, that whenever the necessities of the narrative compel him to show his sympathies on one side or the other (as happens two or three times in the course of the story), they will be found to be with those people among whom he was born, by whose side he fought, and with whom he has suffered. And I feel sure that no man who knows me, in the South, and equally sure that no man who knows me, in the North, would deem me capable of printing this book, had it been otherwise.

V. DABNEY,

108 West Forty-ninth Street,

New York.

April, 1886.

THE STORY OF DON MIFF.

CHAPTER I.

1.

Long, long years before these pages shall meet thine almond eye, my Ah Yung Whack, the hand which penned them for thy delectation will have crumbled into dust. Three hundred years and more, let us say; for thou art (or shalt in due time be) my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson.

2.

True, I am not yet married; but I intend to be. Nor is there any need of hurry; seeing what a singularly distant and belated relative thou art.

3.

If then, dear, intended Offspring, you will be so anachronistic as to sit beside your proposed ancestor, and so civil as to lend him your ear, he will give you one or two reasons for addressing you, rather than the general public of his own day.

4.

First, then, humanity.

This poor public of his (that is my) day has been, these many years, so pelted with books, that I cannot bring myself to join the mob of authors, and let fly another.

The very leaves in Vallambrosa, flying before the blasts of autumn, cannot compare with them in numbers, as they go whizzing from innumerable presses.

Why, I read, the other day, a statement (by a stater) that if you were to set up, in rows, all the books that are annually published in Christendom (beg pardon, my boy, evolutiondom), and then fell to sawing out shelves for them in the pine forests of North Carolina, the North Carolinians would, when they awoke, find themselves inhabitants of a prairie, provided, of course, our stater goes on to state, the job were completed in one night.

Or, to put it in another shape:

The earth, adds Mr. Statisticker, the earth, we will allow, for illustration’s sake, to be twenty-five thousand miles around. Now, says he, suppose all these books to be pulled to pieces [shame!] and their leaves pinned together, end to end, they would stretch ever so (for I cannot, at the moment, lay my hands on his little statistic) they would stretch ever so far.

Shall I add to the already unbearable burdens of my generation? Humanity forbid!

5.

And look at this:

In any given country a certain number of undergarments will be worn out, year by year, producing a certain crop of rags. These rags can be converted into so much, and no more, paper. Hence, as any thinking man would have reasoned (until the advent of a recent invention), the advancing flood of literature was practically held in check. So many exhausted shirts, so many books,—so many exhausted washerwomen, so many (and no more) authors. There was a limit.

That day is gone. Wood-pulp and cheap editions have opened the flood-gates of genius upon the world; and the days of our noble forests are numbered; for one tree is sawn into shelves to hold another ground into paper. And already, through the denudation of the land, the Mississippi grows uncontrollable, taxing even the wisdom of Congress. And many a lesser stream, in which once the salmon sported, or which turned a mill, or meandered, at least, past orchard or corn land, a steady source of fruitful moisture, is now a fierce torrent in spring, in autumn a string of stagnant pools. What the builder began, the builder (for that, I hear, is the Greek for him) and the novelist will end.

Shall I too print a book? Patriotism forbid!

6.

The trouble is, however, that I feel that I have something to say, and a man that has something to say, and is not allowed to say it, is (like a woman or a boiler) in danger. Nor has my native land, when I come to think of it, the right to exact of me that I burst, to save a beggarly sapling or so from purification.

7.

Yes, I have something to say, and I’ll out with it. For I have hit upon a plan whereby I can print my book with the merest infinitesimal damage to the Mississippi and other patriotic streams. It is this. I shall have but one copy printed. This, in a strong box, hermetically sealed, shall be addressed to you. I shall hand it to my eldest son, and he to his; and so it will travel down the stream of time till it reach you; which strikes me as a neat, inexpensive, and effectual way of reaching that goal of all authors, posterity. From father to son, and from grandson to great-grandson.

Provided, of course, they shall all have the courage (as I intend to have) to get married. If not—or what would become of the book, should there be twins?—but I leave these details to take care of themselves. One of them might not live, for example.

On second thought, though, it might be as well to have two copies struck off; yes, and while we are about it, a dozen extra ones, for private distribution among my friends.

8.

And one friend, especially, but for whom this nonsense would not now be bubbling up so serenely from my tranquil soul.

9.

I have just had a conversation with my publisher, which greatly disturbs me.

He tells me that all this talk about limiting the edition to a dozen copies is midsummer madness,—where am I to come in? said he, using the language of the period,—and that he intends to print as many copies as he pleases. So everything is upset. And I shall have to recast my entire work, which, you must know, is already, with the exception of this first chapter, finished and ready for the printer, down to the last semicolon. For, as it stands, my boy, everything I say is addressed to you only; and my book may be compared to a telephone with a private wire three hundred years long. But since my publisher is going to give the general public the right to hook on and hear what I am saying, it is extremely probable that my monologue will be very often interrupted. Whenever, therefore, you find me suddenly ceasing to speak to you personally, and, after a word with my contemporaries, dropping back to our private wire, you may be sure that there has been a “Hello?” and a “Who’s that?” and a “Well, good-by!” somewhere along a cross-line.

10.

And this is the thing that I feel that I have to say:

I would tell you something of the land of your forefathers. Something of Virginia. Not new Virginia,—not West Virginia,—but the Old Dominion and her people, such as they were when Plancus was consul. And, first of all, I will tell you why I have thought it worth while to lay the following sketches before you.

11.

The world, in my day, is full of unrest. Everywhere anxious care and the eager struggle for wealth. Mr. Spencer’s Gospel of Recreation finds few adherents, and the Genius of Repose seems to have winged its way to other spheres.

And I fear matters will be worse in your day; and, just as one, on a broiling July afternoon, looks with a real, though evanescent, pleasure upon pictured polar bears gambolling amid icebergs (in the show-window of a soda-water shop), so I cannot but think that it would be a genuine boon to you could I but lead you for an hour from out the dust and heat and turmoil of your life and bid you cease striving for a little while, while I (I, too, forgetting for a moment that every crust must be fought for), while I reproduce from out the cool caves of my memory certain scenes that I have witnessed.

True, some of them I have not seen with my own eyes, but Charley has, or else Alice, which is just as well.

12.

Yes, my lad, I think the glimpses I am about to give you of the old Virginia life will refresh your tired soul. Just as it refreshes mine to draw the pictures for you. For from me, as well, the reality has vanished. Our civil war (war of the rebellion, as the underbred among the victors still call it) swept that into the abyss of the past; but let me with such poor wand as I wield summon it before you.

In Pompeii, the tourist, looking from blank wall to dusty floor, wonders what there is to see in that little hall; but a native goes down upon his hands and knees; with a few brisk passes of his hand the sand is brushed away, and a Numidian lion glares forth from the tessellated pavement. So I, brushing aside the fast-settling dust, would make you see that old life as I saw it.

And, strangely enough, I, too, have a lion to show you. For, while my real object was by a series of sketches to bring into clear relief the careless ease, the sweet tranquillity, the unapproachable serenity of those old days, I did not see my way to making these sketches interesting. (For not alone in a repast for the body is the serving almost everything.) But the thought occurred to me to stitch them together with the thread of a story into a kind of panorama. For this story I had to find a hero. To invent one would have been, I am sure, quite beyond my powers; and what I should have done I am at a loss to conjecture had I not found one ready made to my hand: a very remarkable young man, that is, who in a very remarkable way suddenly made his appearance upon the boards of our little theatre, upon which were serenely enacting the tranquil scenes in which I would steep your care-worn soul. This is the lion that I have to show you. And when he begins to shake his mane and lash his sides, you will find things growing a trifle lurid in our little

impromptu drama. Absolutely none of which was upon the original programme. But dropping from the sky, as it were, in the midst of our troupe, what should he do but straightway fall in love with one of our pretty little actresses. And then the trouble began and the tranquillity came to an end.

13.

As for me, the manager of the show, you will see that I have done my best to relieve the gloom. Between the acts,—between the scenes,—nay, even while they are going on,—you shall find me continually popping out before the foot-lights and interrupting the play, and raking the audience with a rattling rigmarole. All for the sake of keeping their spirits up. And on more than one occasion I go the length (or breadth, as Alice suggests) of standing on my head and making faces at Charley in the prompter’s box. How I should have gotten on had he not sat there, or without Alice in the wings (to superintend the love-passages), I am sure I cannot tell. And if, at the end of the play, I am called before the curtain, I shall refuse to budge unless hand in hand with my two co-workers; who, though content to be for the most part silent partners in this undertaking, have really put in most of the capital.

14.

It is understood, then, between us, Ah Yung, that while this story is composed for your delectation, the injunctions of my publisher force me to recognize the possibility of contemporary readers. The situation is awkward. As though a third person were present at a confidential interview. Ah, I have it.

While I am talking to you, the contemporary reader may nod; and when I turn to her, you have leave to nap it. And small blame to the contemporary reader. For what I shall say to you will seem to her (and especially my didactic spurts) the merest rubbish.

Every school-boy knows that, she will say.

But I am not to be put down by this crushing and familiar phrase of our day, which simply means that the fact in question is known to the Able-Editor, who looked it up in the cyclopædia on his desk an hour since. Every school-boy in ancient times knew, for instance, what kind of a school Aristotle went to, and how he was taught, and what. Aspasia, we may feel sure, knew no German, nor had even a smattering of French; while all conceivable ologies were so much Greek to her. And yet she must have known something. For statesmen and philosophers flocked to her boudoir, and, when she spoke, sat at her feet, silent and wondering. What had she been taught, and how? Every contemporary school-girl knew. What audience could be found now in the wide world that could keep pace with the eloquence of Demosthenes? How had the Athenian populace been taught? For they were more wonderful than their orator. Ah, how much would we not give to know! But no one thought it worth his while to set it all down in a little book; and we know not, and must darkly guess. Else would we rise as one man, and,

rushing with torches to all the colleges and universities of the land, incinerate within their costly walls their armies of professors, along with the hordes of oarsmen and acrobats that they annually empty on the world.

A porch sufficed for Zeno.

Ah, there are thousands of little things which they might have told us, but did not. Ah, that Homer, for instance, had described Helen to us as minutely as he did the shield of Achilles. As it is, we must even conjecture that she had a Grecian nose. And as for her eyes and hair—

And the song the Sirens sang, what was the tune of it? How much would I not have given to hear my dear old grandfather play it on his fiddle!

And how did Socrates make out without a pipe after dinner while Xantippe was explaining to him how many kinds of a worthless husband he was?

Ah, we shall never know! Therefore, my boy, I am determined you shall know something about the Virginians in my day. But excuse me for one moment,—my telephone-bell is ringing.

15.

Some stranger has hooked on.

“Hello!”

“Do you claim that Virginia has ever produced a Socrates?”

“Who’s there?”

“Boston.”

“I do not.”

“Ever see a Virginia Xantippe?”

“Well, good-by!”

This is the way I am likely to be interrupted throughout the entire course of my story. True, I shall leave out the hello and good-by part of the business as too realistic, but you will know when they have been hooking on from my stopping to argue with my supposed readers. By the way, if this chapter bears, to your mind, internal evidence of having been composed in Bedlam, you will understand how it has fared with me when I tell you that I had hardly spoken a dozen words when my telephone began to ring like mad. A thousand cross-lines at least must have been connected with our private wire before my first sentence was finished. Heavens, what a jingling they are keeping up even now! I must speak with them.

“Hello! hello! hello!—Good-by! good-by! good-by!”

And why all this clatter, do you suppose?

It is nearly all about these seven words in my opening sentence,—Thine almond eye, my Ah Yung Whack.

I shall analyze the questions and remarks of the first hundred as a sample of the thousands.

Of this number, three announced themselves as authors of English grammars, adding that they could not sustain me unless I changed my ah to ah my; and of the three, one that I should have said Virginian instead of Virginia Xantippe; quoting a rule from his own grammar. Which I was glad he did, seeing that I had never read a line in any English grammar in my born days; and I find that when you are writing a book no kind of knowledge comes amiss.

I answered him (per telephone) by this question in political economy: whether he thought that by a judicious tariff Massachusettsish enterprise would ever be enabled to raise Indian rubber under glass at a profit and successfully compete with the pauper labor of the sun; and, springing nimbly from political to domestic economy, I trusted that his next Thanksgiving Turkish gobbler would sit light on his stomach. And this I meant, once for all, as a defiance to the whole tribe of grammarians, be they living, dead, or yet unborn.

After the three grammarians come seven spelling reformers, congratulating me on my courage in writing yung instead of young. [How they found this out by tapping my telephone I will explain later, if I have time.] And of these, one, who was also a short-hand writer, thought Whack an improvement on Whacker.

All the remainder of the hundred—that is, ninety—were young ladies.

There is a certain insinuating witchery about the unmarried voice of woman (among males all widowers have it) that is not to be mistaken, even through a telephone. That is, when addressed to an unmarried ear.

Of these ninety, every solitary one asked, “Have you almond eyes?” (for young ladies can underscore, even over a wire), and forty-three of them added, “Oh, how cute!” and forty-seven, “My, how cunning!”

And of these ninety, eighty-nine added that, by a strange coincidence, they, too, were married; the remaining one saying that she was single. She, I take it, was a young widow; especially as she went on to say that she feared that I was a sad, bad, bold, fascinating wretch to speak in my half-frivolous, half-businesslike way of the holy estate of matrimony, which had been commended even of St. Paul. She added that she had often been told that her own eyes sloped a little.

16.