AN ABSENTEE. F ever a man wanted a flapper-no Butcher's mimosa, or catch-fly, but one of those officers in use at the court of Laputa-my friend W— should have such a remembrancer at his elbow. I question whether even the appliance of a bladder full of peas or pebbles would arouse him from some of his abstractions; fits of mental insensibility, parallel with those bodily trances in which persons have sometimes been coffined. Not that he is entangled in abstruse problems, like the nobility of the Flying Island! He does not dive, like Sir Isaac Newton, into a reverie, and turn up again with a Theory of Gravitation. His thoughts are not deeply engaged elsewhere-they are nowhere. His head revolves itself, top-like, into a profound slumber--a blank dose without a dream. He is not carried away by incoherent rambling fancies out of himself, he is not drunk, merely, with the Waters of Oblivion, but drowned in them, body and soul! There is a story, somewhere, of one of these absent persons, who stooped down, when tickled about the calf by a bluebottle, and scratched his neighbour's leg: an act of tolerable forgetfulness, but denoting a state far short of W's absorptions. He would never have felt the fly. To make W's condition more whimsical, he lives in a small bachelor's house, with no other attendant than an old housekeeper-one Mistress Bundy, of faculty as infirm and intermitting as his own. It will be readily believed that her absent fits do not originate, any more than her master's, in abstruse mathematical speculations-a proof with me that such moods result, not from abstractions of mind, but stagnation. How so ill-sorted a couple contrive to get through the commonplace affairs of life, I am not prepared to say: but it is comical indeed to see him ring up Mistress Bundy to receive orders, which he generally forgets to deliver,—or, if delivered, this old Bewildered Maid lets slip out of her remembrance with the same facility. Numberless occurrences of this kind--in many instances more extravagant-are recorded by his friends; but an evening that I spent with him recently, will furnish an abundance of examples. In spite of going by his own invitation, I found W— within. He was too apt, on such occasions, to be denied to his visitors; but what in others would be an unpardonable affront, was overlooked in a man who was not always at home to himself. The door was opened by the housekeeper, whose absence, as usual, would not allow her to decide upon that of her master. Her shrill quavering voice went echoing up-stairs with its old query, "Mr W! are you within?”—then a pause, literally for him to collect himself. Anon came his answer, and I was ushered up-stairs, Mrs Bundy contriving, as usual, to forget my name at the first landing-place. I had therefore to introduce myself formally to Wfriends came to him always as if with new faces. followed, it was one of the old fitful colloquies-a game at conversation, sometimes with a partner, sometimes with a dummy; the old woman's memory in the meantime growing torpid on a kitchen-chair. Hour after hour passed away: no tea-spoon jingled, or tea-cup rattled; no murmuring kettle or hissing urn found its way upward from one Haunt of Forgetfulness to the other. In short, as might have been expected with an Absentee, the tea was absent. whose old As for what It happens that the meal in question is not one of my essentials; I therefore never hinted at the In Tea Speravi of my visit; but at the turn of eleven o'clock, my host rang for the apparatus. The Chinese ware was brought up, but the herb was deficient. Mrs Bundy went forth, by command, for a supply; but it was past grocer-time, and we arranged. to make amends by an early supper, which came, however, as proportionably late as the tea. By dint of those freedoms which you must use with an entertainer who is absent at his own table, I contrived to sup sparely; and W-'s memory, blossoming like certain flowers to the night, reminded him that I was accustomed to go to bed on a tumbler of Geneva and water. He kept but one bottle of each of the three kinds, Rum, Brandy, and Hollands, in the house; and when exhausted, they were replenished at the tavern a few doors off. Luckily, for it was far beyond the midnight hour, when, according to our vapid magistracy, all spirits are evil, the three vessels were full, and merely wanted bringing up-stairs. The kettle was singing on the hob; the tumblers, with spoons in them, stood miraculously ready on the board; and Mrs Bundy was really on her way from below with the one thing needful. Never were fair hopes so unfairly blighted! I could hear her step labouring on the stairs to the very last step, when her memory serving her just as treacherously as her forgetfulness, or rather both betraying her together, there befel the accident which I have endeavoured to record by the following sketch. I never ate or drank with the Barmecide again! Unconscious Imitation. W ODE TO THE CAMELEOPARD. ELCOME to Freedom's birth-place-and a den So very lofty in thy front-but then, So dwindling at the tail!— In truth, thou hast the most unequal legs! Along with other brethren, leopard-spotted, To win it by a neck! That lengthy neck--how like a crane's it looks! To some a long nose, like the elephant's ! Oh! had'st thou any organ to thy bellows, Whether those Seven Mouths have any tail; From that high head, as from a lofty hill, What were the travels of our Major Denham, In that same line, If thou could'st only squat thee down and pen 'em! Strange sights, indeed, thou must have overlook'd, With eyes held ever in such vantage-stations! Hast seen, perchance, unhappy white folks cook'd, And then made free of negro corporations ? |