With thy rare single-mindedness, so resented by the ambidextrous double-dealers, a virtue putting thee in a worldly sense almost as much at disadvantage with them as thy single arm (the other lost in the Wilderness under Grant) assuredly would in a personal encounter; the genial humour of thy club-chat, garnished, as not unfrequently it is, even like to a holiday barn, with sprigs of classic parsley set about it or inserted cloves of old English proverbs, or yet older Latin ones equally commonplace, yet never losing the verity in them, their preservative spice; thy yellow, wrinkled parchment from Harvard hung up framed in thy bachelor quarters (so convenient to the Club); thy cherished eagle of the Society of the Cincinnati, a golden insignia thou polishest up and sportest on occasion; and—be it never omitted—thy high relish for the qualities of M. de Grandvin, through frequent communion with whom thou hast caught much of his generous spirit enhancing what is naturally thine own, yes, and something of his beaming aspect as well; insomuch that unto thee—after him—belong all the titles of good fellowship. Dean of the Burgundians, but I love thee! Though some of the points just cited might of themselves avail to denote thee, Dean, two other characteristics there are which peradventure may serve to signalise. Though a soldier of the Civil War, and a gazetted one, thou at all times, even upon that legal holiday which has undesignedly become the annual commemoration of that war, refrainest from wearing on thy person any memorial thereof. And, ever since the Peace, even as during the entire military contest, no superfluous syllable ever fell from thy lips touching the Southern half of thy country.

Now, as to the personal memorial, honourably worn by so many, if thou declined to wear it, was this because thou wert in sympathy with the spirit of thy deplored New England friend, Charles Sumner—whom, for what was sterling in him, thou didst so sincerely honour, though far from sharing in all his advocated measures? Years ago Grant and Lee joined hands at Appomattox. Art thou such an old-fashioned Roman in thy patriotism that thou wouldst consign to oblivion the fact that thy countrymen, claiming the van of Adam’s alleged advance, were but yesterday plunged in patricidal strife? And, for thy never being a partisan animadverter, is that because for all the free thought that beats in thy brain, at heart thou art the captive of Christ, yea, even something of a Christian, and though but dimly conscious of it, perhaps, art not unmindful of the divine text which implies that if sinners abound they are not in vain demarked from the saints by any parallel of latitude. Or, rather, that there are no saints, but that all mankind, not excluding Americans, are sinners—miserable sinners, as even no few Bostonians themselves nowadays contritely respond in the liturgy.

However this be, both the omission and the abstention referred to are in significant contrast with thy words relative to that elder war wherein thy grandfather was one of the ‘rebels,’ a contrast emphasised though involuntarily in thy social utterances upon every recurrence of our one national holiday.

On the fourth morning of each July, about the tenth hour by the club clock, spruced up in thy goodly person and decked at lapel with the golden eagle suspended by the white-bordered blue ribbon, an order which Washington and Lafayette and thy grandfather and father wore before thee, thou takest thy customary place at the club’s bay-window. There thou comfortably settlest thyself till lunch-time, discoursing at whiles with whomsoever may, fortunately for himself, happen to be at hand.

Now thy Fourth-of-July outgivings, though indeed yearly varying in expression, yet in spirit are much the same. Dost thou remember all that thou saidest on the last Fourth, Major? Hardly. But I do; and will try to refresh thy memory by reproducing it, with some accompanying circumstances, and as if all were of to-day.

After gazing out of the open window for a time, noting the strange Sabbatarian quiet of the Avenue, on other week-days so abounding with diversified life, thou mutterest to thyself a strange litany of lamentations touching the general falling-off in the old-time celebration. ‘Well, well,’ thou mutterest, ‘it is getting along now in its second century, this anniversary, and nearly everything falls off with years. In Victoria’s reign is Guy Fawkes’ Day what it was in Elizabeth’s? I trow not. Sic transit, Sic transit!’

Here some swift return of thought to its everyday channel causes thee suddenly to wheel in thy revolving chair and face inward. Thou remarkest the vacant lounges and sofas, thou absorbest the drear silence. Is it the tabernacle on a week-day? Evidently, thou bethinkest thee of the many absentees. Anon, with thy ample white handkerchief mopping the beads from thy brow, thou exclaimest, ‘Shame upon them! Why, even the thermometer, though a creature metallic, is more sensitive than these renegades to the momentous occasion. Sure, the mercury rises to it! But they—they run from it. Now degenerate, not only from their sires, but their own boyhood. Ah, my good sir,’ giving another impulsive turn to the revolving chair so as directly to face the one person present, a somewhat reserved gentleman of mature years engaged in methodically refolding a letter just perused, ‘Ah, my good sir, it is your boy who is your true patriot. He made on the Third for Long Branch or elsewhere? Nay, sir, on the Third, if not before, he lays in his ammunition, his powder-crackers; at early dawn on the blessed Fourth he crams his breeches-pockets with them, and though in his heedless enthusiasm, mixing them up there with his matches, they get ignited and suddenly begin going off like minute-guns hurried up, making him a spluttering blunderbuss to himself and the crowd, what recks he if but luckily he come out of it unharmed? Another boy, a yet more devoted young acolyte of the Salii, should repeated discharges at last burst his toy-cannon, and he go to Hades for it, what then? Ducit amor patriae! That’s the inscription, sir, on General Worth’s monument you and I pass every day. Ten to one you never noticed it—the inscription, I mean. Ah, but he was a paladin, a homespun paladin, General Worth. And happy in his surname, though indeed his worth was of another sort than that of the purse.’

‘And did you personally know the General, Dean?’ inquires the solitary auditor, his curiosity here doing away with a taciturnity seldom yielding but through the persuasive mediation of wine. ‘Did you, personally, know the General, sir?’ ‘Ay, indeed!’ And, after losing thee in revery awhile, and reminiscently ejaculating something to thyself, ‘The last time I saw Will Worth was on the night-boat coming down from Albany—by Jove, it seems but a week or two ago—he then being bound for Mexico to pay his military respects to General Santa Anna in the field. But he came back horizontal who went forth so erect! Ay, but like the great Gustavus, sir, from Lützen field, if dirged yet laurelled. Pray, sir, can you repeat the battle-names on the monumental shaft? Chermbusco, Buena Vista, Resaca de la Palma, San Antonio, Cerro Gordo. There’s a valley for you of vowels and victory! Ay, and Monterey, too, that superb dash of arms, one inspiring my chivalric friend, Charlie Fenno Hoffman—remember Charlie, sir? No, no; you don’t go back so far—inspired his fine lyric.’ Now, after a moment’s pause, to rally the memory belike, thou didst kindle, and springing from thy seat, leaving it spinning on its pivot, thy adorned chest expanded, thou didst sonorously declaim this stanza:—

Then reseating thee, a little panting, and pressing one hand to thy side: ‘Ay, stirring deeds beget stirring rhymes. But stirring rhymes bestir overmuch the cardiac arteries in an old fellow like me. Well, well,’ in reaction lapsing into a muffled mutter, a sort of audible musing, ‘Well, well—they are gone, both gone, hero and bard—long ago. Sic transit.—They sleep, sleep.—In pace, in pace—Requiescant!’

And slowly removing thy gold-rimmed glasses and assiduously rubbing them with thy ample handkerchief, in tone a bit tremulous, thou addressest the mild gentleman thy hearer. ‘The heat of this unwonted season, sir, would not be so inconvenient but for the confounded humidity dampening one’s spectacles so. But where, where now was I? Astraying I’ve been: Let me see—’ shutting thine eyes and clapping a hand to brow, ‘ah, yes, yes—patriotism of boyhood. Well, such a spluttering blunderbuss as I was speaking of a while ago, or rather such a feu de joie in persona our venerable friend, Judge van Groot, inadvertently made himself as a boy, recruiting his fagged patriotism on doughnuts and cider in one of those booths which in auld lang syne belted about our City Hall Park every Fourth. I hear the sharp, quick percussion even now—see the lad starting up, clapping his hands to his exploding powder-houses, and yet more rapidly withdrawing them, till the booth-keeper put him out by dashing a handy bucket of cider on his trowsers. That was—bless my soul—nigh threescore years ago!—And now? Yesterday with one foot in prunella, his Honour limped off to Saratoga, and, I dare say, sir, without so much as a single powder-cracker in his vest pocket; nay, and very likely never once recalling the circumstances that Saratoga as a great Revolutionary battlefield, or giving name to one, is signally associated with this blessed day.’ Then after a few moments of meditative silence, ‘Myndert van Groot is—let me see—yes, about mine own age. His bay-tree, though planted by the rivers of Burgundy, won’t flourish more than a hundred years longer.—Well, well—tempus does fugit—Memento mori!—die we must—consign to dust—leave all!’ Here, settling back in thy chair, thine eyes fixed upon vacancy, thou murmurest from thy Horace in quite other tones than those which late rolled forth the Monterey stanza:—

Silence again. Then, suddenly brisking up, ‘But à propos, as the Marquis says’; and, pulling out thy big watch, ‘ay, the lunch hour is at hand. Tobias, hither, thou Rose of Sharon,’ summoning a ruddy-cheeked young servitor, ‘go, see if the steward has ordered it as I directed, kept that Chambertin three leagues from his refrigerator and the bottles in readiness to be gently immersed up to the neck—mind, up to the neck in a water-cooler, the water of its natural temperature at this season. Go, lad, it is important.’ Then turning to the quiet listener, ‘Sir, for myself I am not so particular about these matters, but the two friends I expect to dine with me—Jerry Bland and Captain Don Tempest of the Navy—well, you know them—are; and one must humour the peculiar tastes of one’s friends, you know.’ Here, suddenly reminded that an immediate courtesy was due. ‘Of course, my good sir, you will join us. Nay, I insist upon it. Not good for a man to be alone, especially on the immortal Fourth. Tobias, come back. Tut, he’s gone. William! Go, say we will dine at the round table in the south-west corner, and let there be four covers—four, mind.’

Even so, Major, or much so, on the last Fourth, sitting in the club parlour didst thou by turns ruminate and expatiate, and humorously rail and feelingly evoke the bygone and glow as in the poetic fervour of youth, and involuntarily sigh the sigh of old philosophy, till in the end the home-sense of the eternal sagacity of all things did but result in awakening in thee but the more vividly thy relish for life and the Chambertin.

But on the forenoon of each thirtieth of May, seated—minus the aforesaid historic decoration—in thy reserved corner of the club balcony, in graven sort thou lookest down on the floral march of the Grand Army. Then seemed thou even less intent on returning the greetings from some hale comrade in the ranks, or less hearty hero borne along in open barouche; less dwelling, too, on the processional wains of nodding flowers, followed close by nodding plumes of the escort—to thee and the other veterans—a new generation of Mars—less absorbed by all this, than musing on the many mounds those same flowers ere nightfall shall dress. Thy constitutional good spirits seem strangely overcast that day. Thou forgoest the banquet. Nevertheless, it is observable that in the balcony thy empty sleeve is disposed more picturesquely, nay, somehow more conspicuously on that aforesaid thirtieth of every May, than on any other morning of the year. It more catches the eye. Now and then, during pauses in the procession, the crowd on the sidewalk below glance up at it, and expressively, and thou turnest not aside.

Not often dost thou discuss the tactics of thy Virginia campaigns, but what things hast thou told us of its byplay—the scouting, the foraging, the riding up to lovely mansions garrisoned by a faithful old slave or two, servants to lovely damsels more terrible than Mars in their feminine indignation at the insolent invader; in other instances being coquettishly served at an improvised lunch on some broad old piazza by less implacable beauties reduced by the calamities to dispensing hospitality for the enemy’s greenbacks. In such and similar passages of the war thou aboundest, passages luckily not susceptible of being formalised into professed history.

But the better for the felicity of thy friends, thou hast more than one string to thy harp, Major. Did any listener ever tire of thy reminiscences of European travel? What signifies that they date so far back, before some of us were born? Even so do sundry inestimable vintages in the Club’s cellar. Pleasant it is when weary of the never-ending daily news, the same sort of thing forever, how pleasant to be spirited back by a tale, by some veteran’s living voice and eloquent gestures, to a period that is no news at all, a time prior to those more pronounced changes which have come over so few portions of that ancient and manifold world across the Atlantic, a world to which we are bound by unsunderable ties of genealogy.

Highly, Major, didst thou relish that title whereby, as regards so many of us Americans, a rare son of New England with happiest simplicity designated that Elder England, from which his progenitor came—Our Old Name. But if thy filial appreciation of the historic Past has something of Nathaniel Hawthorne in it, the medium, Dean, through which thou recallest it, viewing it as through an irradiated vapour, this is not without a touch of our incomparable friend, the Marquis. He, as well thou knowest, never is so happy, never so blissfully serene, as when wandering in a haze along that enchanted beach.

Among all thy over-sea reminiscences not the least entertaining to us juniors is thy liberal version of that famous Afternoon in Naples. In the wee hours, more especially if inspired by the beaming presence of M. de Grandvin, how affluent hast thou been on that theme; how vivid in description; and, for the rest, how frolic, pathetic, indignant, philosophic; and throughout how catholic and humane. But shall such a recital be confined to the small group of the convivially elect, brothers of the Burgundy? Savours that not a little of the exclusive? Have a care, Dean. With even more than is implied in that term, one not lightly to be applied in a democracy, thou hast, unbeknown to thee, perhaps, been reproached.

When General Grant, a bigot for his friends—and thou wert one of his military family in the field—when he, as President, nominated thee consul at that very Naples thou so entertainest us with, what whisper, doubtless started by some rival applicant, what ridiculous whisper, was it buzzed in the lobbies, that in spite even of Grant’s nomination, stranded thee unconfirmed by the Senate? But ‘Pshaw!’ thou exclaimest, amused at the enthusiasm of sophomores, when, ending thy Neapolitan romance we contendingly fire away with:—

‘Bravissimo!’

‘Encore!’

‘Write it out, Major!’

‘Put it in verse!’

‘Good, it will immortalise thee!’

‘And consider, Dean, the glory redounding to the Club!’

To all which thy expression ‘Pshaw!’ and the politely proffered snuff-box by way of an added parry, and little more do we get from thee, O Dean of the Burgundians!

Well, Major, what thou in thy impatience of pen-drudgery and indifference to any reputation except that old-fashioned one of being a man of honour; what thou, for these reasons, perchance, never couldst be persuaded to undertake, I, even I, unsolicited have had the temerity to essay.

And in so doing I have adopted thy earlier rendering of That Afternoon in Naples ere yet thou begannest to exclaim, ‘I don’t know what the dogs is the reason, but I can’t remember anything’; that version seeming to me akin to what engravers call the first proofs, less free from the blur that ensues after repeated impressions from the plate. Moreover, not unmindful of the enthusiastic injunction, ‘Put it in verse,’ I have after a fashion done accordingly. As to the interspersed ballads and ditties—at the which, peradventure, thou mayest stare even as Rip van Winkle, after his resurrection, did at his son—I do assure thee, Dean, they are essentially but thoughts and conceits of thine own, the product of seeds which planted and spontaneously developing in me, eventually effloresced into rhyme.

But to soften the liberty here taken, as well as the licence throughout, yes, and not without hope to propitiate and even please thee, I have so contrived matters that thou personated the part here allotted thee at the special instance of M. de Grandvin; thus in a literary way associating thee with one whose social companionship thou so unaffectedly lovest, and whose magnanimous spirit thou art ever fain to imbibe. Vale!