Following the Equator [228]
"The Puritans found an insane asylum in the wilds of America.
"The Stamp Act was to make everybody stamp all materials so they should be null and void.
"Washington died in Spain almost broken-hearted. His remains were taken to the cathedral in Havana.
"Gorilla warfare was where men rode on gorillas."
In Brooklyn, as in India, they examine a pupil, and when they find out he doesn't know anything, they put him into literature, or geometry, or astronomy, or government, or something like that, so that he can properly display the assification of the whole system
"ON LITERATURE.
"'Bracebridge Hall' was written by Henry Irving.
"Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
"Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
"Ben Johnson survived Shakespeare in some respects.
"In the 'Canterbury Tale' it gives account of King Alfred on his way to the shrine of Thomas Bucket.
"Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
"Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow."
We will finish with a couple of samples of "literature," one from America, the other from India. The first is a Brooklyn public-school boy's attempt to turn a few verses of the "Lady of the Lake" into prose. You will have to concede that he did it:
"The man who rode on the horse performed the whip and an instrument made of steel alone with strong ardor not diminishing, for, being tired from the time passed with hard labor overworked with anger and ignorant with weariness, while every breath for labor lie drew with cries full of sorrow, the young deer made imperfect who worked hard filtered in sight."
The following paragraph is from a little book which is famous in India- the biography of a distinguished Hindoo judge, Onoocool Chunder Mookerjee; it was written by his nephew, and is unintentionally funny-in fact, exceedingly so. I offer here the closing scene. If you would like to sample the rest of the book, it can be had by applying to the publishers, Messrs. Thacker, Spink & Co., Calcutta
"And having said these words he hermetically sealed his lips not to open them again. All the well-known doctors of Calcutta that could be procured for a man of his position and wealth were brought,-- Doctors Payne, Fayrer, and Nilmadhub Mookerjee and others; they did what they could do, with their puissance and knack of medical knowledge, but it proved after all as if to milk the ram! His wife and children had not the mournful consolation to hear his last words; he remained sotto voce for a few hours, and then was taken from us at 6.12 P.m. according to the caprice of God which passeth understanding."
CHAPTER LXII.
There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.
We sailed from Calcutta toward the end of March; stopped a day at Madras; two or three days in Ceylon; then sailed westward on a long flight for Mauritius. From my diary:
April 7. We are far abroad upon the smooth waters of the Indian Ocean, now; it is shady and pleasant and peaceful under the vast spread of the awnings, and life is perfect again--ideal.
The difference between a river and the sea is, that the river looks fluid, the sea solid--usually looks as if you could step out and walk on it.
The captain has this peculiarity--he cannot tell the truth in a plausible way. In this he is the very opposite of the austere Scot who sits midway of the table; he cannot tell a lie in an unplausible way. When the captain finishes a statement the passengers glance at each other privately, as who should say, "Do you believe that?" When the Scot finishes one, the look says, "How strange and interesting." The whole secret is in the manner and method of the two men. The captain is a little shy and diffident, and he states the simplest fact as if he were a little afraid of it, while the Scot delivers himself of the most abandoned lie with such an air of stern veracity that one is forced to believe it although one knows it isn't