Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens (ebooks children's books free TXT) 📕

This had passed almost in a whisper, for the distinguished gentleman alluded to sat on Martin’s other hand.

‘Pray, Mr Brick,’ said Martin, turning to him, and asking a question more for conversation’s sake than from any feeling of interest in its subject, ‘who is that;’ he was going to say ‘young’ but thought it prudent to eschew the word—‘that very short gentleman yonder, with the red nose?’

‘That is Pro—fessor Mullit, sir,’ replied Jefferson.

‘May I ask what he is professor of?’ asked Martin.

‘Of education, sir,’ said Jefferson Brick.

‘A sort of schoolmaster, possibly?’ Martin ventured to observe.

‘He is a man of fine moral elements, sir, and not commonly endowed,’ said the war correspondent. ‘He felt it necessary, at the last election for President, to repudiate and denounce his father, who voted on the wrong interest. He has since written some powerful pamphlets, under the signature of “Suturb,” or Brutus reversed. He is one of the most remarkable men in our country, sir.’

‘There seem to be plenty of ‘em,’ thought Martin, ‘at any rate.’

Pursuing his inquiries Martin found that there were no fewer than four majors present, two colonels, one general, and a captain, so that he could not help thinking how strongly officered the American militia must be; and wondering very much whether the officers commanded each other; or if they did not, where on earth the privates came from. There seemed to be no man there without a title; for those who had not attained to military honours were either doctors, professors, or reverends. Three very hard and disagreeable gentlemen were on missions from neighbouring States; one on monetary affairs, one on political, one on sectarian. Among the ladies, there were Mrs Pawkins, who was very straight, bony, and silent; and a wiry-faced old damsel, who held strong sentiments touching the rights of women, and had diffused the same in lectures; but the rest were strangely devoid of individual traits of character, insomuch that any one of them might have changed minds with the other, and nobody would have found it out. These, by the way, were the only members of the party who did not appear to be among the most remarkable people in the country.

Several of the gentlemen got up, one by one, and walked off as they swallowed their last morsel; pausing generally by the stove for a minute or so to refresh themselves at the brass spittoons. A few sedentary characters, however, remained at table full a quarter of an hour, and did not rise until the ladies rose, when all stood up.

‘Where are they going?’ asked Martin, in the ear of Mr Jefferson Brick.

‘To their bedrooms, sir.’

‘Is there no dessert, or other interval of conversation?’ asked Martin, who was disposed to enjoy himself after his long voyage.

‘We are a busy people here, sir, and have no time for that,’ was the reply.

So the ladies passed out in single file; Mr Jefferson Brick and such other married gentlemen as were left, acknowledging the departure of their other halves by a nod; and there was an end of THEM. Martin thought this an uncomfortable custom, but he kept his opinion to himself for the present, being anxious to hear, and inform himself by, the conversation of the busy gentlemen, who now lounged about the stove as if a great weight had been taken off their minds by the withdrawal of the other sex; and who made a plentiful use of the spittoons and their toothpicks.

It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations, seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to THEM!

One who rides at all hazards of limb and life in the chase of a fox, will prefer to ride recklessly at most times. So it was with these gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, in their eyes, who brawled the loudest, and who cared the least for decency. He was their champion who, in the brutal fury of his own pursuit, could cast no stigma upon them for the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes’ straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal assailment; were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and stabs at Freedom, striking far deeper into her House of Life than any sultan’s scimitar could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a grateful scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the seventh heaven of Fame.

Once or twice, when there was a pause, Martin asked such questions as naturally occurred to him, being a stranger, about the national poets, the theatre, literature, and the arts. But the information which these gentlemen were in a condition to give him on such topics, did not extend beyond the effusions of such master-spirits of the time as Colonel Diver, Mr Jefferson Brick, and others; renowned, as it appeared, for excellence in the achievement of a peculiar style of broadside essay called ‘a screamer.’

‘We are a busy people, sir,’ said one of the captains, who was from the West, ‘and have no time for reading mere notions. We don’t mind ‘em if they come to us in newspapers along with almighty strong stuff of another sort, but darn your books.’

Here the general, who appeared to grow quite faint at the bare thought of reading anything which was neither mercantile nor political, and was not in a newspaper, inquired ‘if any gentleman would drink some?’ Most of the company, considering this a very choice and seasonable idea, lounged out, one by one, to the bar-room in the next block. Thence they probably went to their stores and counting-houses; thence to the bar-room again, to talk once more of dollars, and enlarge their minds with the perusal and discussion of screamers; and thence each man to snore in the bosom of his own family.

‘Which would seem,’ said Martin, pursuing the current of his own thoughts, ‘to be the principal recreation they enjoy in common.’ With that, he fell amusing again on dollars, demagogues, and bar-rooms; debating within himself whether busy people of this class were really as busy as they claimed to be, or only had an inaptitude for social and domestic pleasure.

It was a difficult question to solve; and the mere fact of its being strongly presented to his mind by all that he had seen and heard, was not encouraging. He sat down at the deserted board, and becoming more and more despondent, as he thought of all the uncertainties and difficulties of his precarious situation, sighed heavily.

Now, there had been at the dinner-table a middle-aged man with a dark eye and a sunburnt face, who had attracted Martin’s attention by having something very engaging and honest in the expression of his features; but of whom he could learn nothing from either of his neighbours, who seemed to consider him quite beneath their notice. He had taken no part in the conversation round the stove, nor had he gone forth with the rest; and now, when he heard Martin sigh for the third or fourth time, he interposed with some casual remark, as if he desired, without obtruding himself upon a stranger’s notice, to engage him in cheerful conversation if he could. His motive was so obvious, and yet so delicately expressed, that Martin felt really grateful to him, and showed him so in the manner of his reply.

‘I will not ask you,’ said this gentleman with a smile, as he rose and moved towards him, ‘how you like my country, for I can quite anticipate your feeling on that point. But, as I am an American, and consequently bound to begin with a question, I’ll ask you how you like the colonel?’

‘You are so very frank,’ returned Martin, ‘that I have no hesitation in saying I don’t like him at all. Though I must add that I am beholden to him for his civility in bringing me here—and arranging for my stay, on pretty reasonable terms, by the way,’ he added, remembering that the colonel had whispered him to that effect, before going out.

‘Not much beholden,’ said the stranger drily. ‘The colonel occasionally boards packet-ships, I have heard, to glean the latest information for his journal; and he occasionally brings strangers to board here, I believe, with a view to the little percentage which attaches to those good offices; and which the hostess deducts from his weekly bill. I don’t offend you, I hope?’ he added, seeing that Martin reddened.

‘My dear sir,’ returned Martin, as they shook hands, ‘how is that possible! to tell you the truth, I—am—’

‘Yes?’ said the gentleman, sitting down beside him.

‘I am rather at a loss, since I must speak plainly,’ said Martin, getting the better of his hesitation, ‘to know how this colonel escapes being beaten.’

‘Well! He has been beaten once or twice,’ remarked the gentleman quietly. ‘He is one of a class of men, in whom our own Franklin, so long ago as ten years before the close of the last century, foresaw our danger and disgrace. Perhaps you don’t know that Franklin, in very severe terms, published his opinion that those who were slandered by such fellows as this colonel, having no sufficient remedy in the administration of this country’s laws or in the decent and right-minded feeling of its people, were justified in retorting on such public nuisances by means of a stout cudgel?’

‘I was not aware of that,’ said Martin, ‘but I am very glad to know it, and I think it worthy of his memory; especially’—here he hesitated again.

‘Go on,’ said the other, smiling as if he knew what stuck in Martin’s throat.

‘Especially,’ pursued Martin, ‘as I can already understand that it may have required great courage, even in his time, to write freely on any question which was not a party one in this very free country.’

‘Some courage, no doubt,’ returned his new friend. ‘Do you think it would require any to do so, now?’

‘Indeed I think it would; and not a little,’ said Martin.

‘You are right. So very right, that I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomized our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.