Did the mechanic (this was my first question) possess a kindred soul, or did he not?
Mechanic didn't know as he did.
Was he aware (this with thrilling emphasis) of the meaning of that glorious inscription upon his signboard?
Bless you, mechanic knew all about that 'ere.
Would mechanic (overlooking the suddenness of the invitation) object to adjourn to the neighbouring public-house, and there discuss the point more at leisure?
Mechanic would not object to a drain. On the contrary.
(Adjournment accordingly: brandy-and-water for two: conversation resumed.)
Did the article sell well, especially with the "mobile valgus"!
Mechanic cast a look of good-natured pity on the questioner; the article sold well, he said, and the vulgars bought it most.
Why not add "Novelty" to the inscription? (This was a critical moment: I trembled as I asked the question.)
Not so bad an idea, mechanic thought: time was, it might have answered; but time flies, you see.
Was mechanic alone in his glory, or was there any one else who dealt as largely in the article?
Mechanic would pound it, there was none.
What was the article employed for? (I brought this question out with a gasp, excitement almost choking my utterance.)
It would piece almost anything together, mechanic believed, and make it solider nor stone.
This was a sentence difficult of interpretation, I thought it over a little, and then said, doubtfully, "you mean, I presume, that it serves to connect the broken threads of human destiny? to invest with a — with a sort of vital reality the chimerical products of a fertile imagination?"
Mechanic's answer was short, and anything but encouraging; "mought be — , I's no scollard, bless you."
At this point conversation certainly began to flag; I was seriously debating in my own mind whether this could really be the fulfilment of my life-cherished dream; so ill did the scene harmonize with my ideas of romance, and so painfully did I feel my companion's lack of sympathy in the enthusiasm of my nature — an enthusiasm which has found vent, ere now, in actions which the thoughtless crowd have too often attributed to mere eccentricity.
I have risen with the lark — "day's sweet harbinger" — (once, certainly, if not oftener), with the aid of a patent alarm, and have gone forth at that unseemly hour, much to the astonishment of the housemaid cleaning the door steps, to "brush with hasty steps the dewy lawn", and have witnessed the golden dawn with eyes yet half-closed in sleep. (I have always stated to my friends, in any allusion to the subject, that my raptures at that moment were such that I have never since ventured to expose myself to the influence of excitement so dangerous. In confidence, however, I admit that the reality did not come up to the idea I had formed of it over night, and by no means repaid the struggle of getting out of bed so early.)
I have wandered in the solemn woods at night, and bent me o'er the moss-grown fountain, to lave in its crystal stream my tangled locks and fevered brow. (What though I was laid up with a severe cold in consequence, and that my hair was out of curl for a week? Do paltry considerations such as these, I ask, affect the poetry of the incident?)
I have thrown open my small, but neatly furnished, cottage tenement, in the neighbourhood of St. John's Wood, and invited an aged beggar in to "sit by my fire, and talk the night away". (It was immediately after reading Goldsmith's "Deserted Village". True it is that he told me nothing interesting, and that he took the hall-clock with him when he departed in the morning; still my uncle has always said that he wishes he had been there, and that it displayed in me a freshness and greenness of fancy (or "disposition", I forget which) such as he had never expected to see.)
I feel that it is incumbent on me to enter more fully into this latter topic — the personal history of my uncle: the world will one day learn to revere the talents of that wonderful man, though a want of funds prevents, at present, the publication of the great system of plulosophy of which he is the inventor. Meanwhile, out of the mass of priceless manuscripts which he has bequeathed to an ungrateful nation, I will venture to select one striking specimen. And when the day arrives that my poetry is appreciated by the world at large (distant though it now appear!) then, I feel assured, shall his genius also receive its meed of fame!
Among the papers of that respected relative, I find what appears to have been a leaf torn from some philosophical work of the day: the following passage is scored. "Is this your rose? It is mine. It is yours. Are these your houses? They are mine. Give to me (of) the bread. She gave him a box on the ear." Against this occurs a marginal note in my uncle's handwriting: "some call this unconnected writing: I have my own opinion." This last was a favourite expression of his, veiling a profundity of ethical acumen on which it would be vain to speculate; indeed, so uniformly simple was the language of this great man, that no one besides myself ever suspected his possessing more than the ordinary share of human intellect.
May I, however, venture to express what I believe would have been my uncle's interpretation of this remarkable passage? It appears that the writer intended to distinguish the provinces of Poetry, Real Property, and Personal Property. The inquirer touches first on flowers, and with what a gush of generous feeling docs the answer break upon him! "It is mine. It is yours." That is the beautiful, the true, the good; these are not hampered by petty consideration of "meum." and "tuum"; these are the common property of men. (It was with some such idea as this that I drew up the once celebrated bill, entitled "An Act for exempting Pheasants from the operation of the Game Laws, on the ground of Beauty" — a bill which would, doubtless, have passed both Houses in triumph, but that the member who had undertaken the care of it was unfortunately incarcerated in a Lunatic Asylum before it had reached the second reading.) Encouraged by the success of his first question, our inquirer passes on to "houses" ("Real Property", you will observe); he is here met by the stem, chilling answer, "They are mine"—none of the liberal sentiment which dictated the former reply, but in its place a dignified assertion of the rights of property.
Had this been a genuine Socratic dialogue, and not merely a modern imitation, the inquirer would have probably here interrupted with "To me indeed/' or, "I, for my part," or, "But how otherwise?" or some other of those singular expressions, with which Plato makes his characters display at once their blind acquiescence in their instructor's opinions, and their utter inability to express themselves grammatically. But the writer takes another line of thought; the bold inquirer, undeterred by the coldness of the last reply, proceeds from questions to demands, "give me (of) the bread"; and here the conversation abruptly ceases, but the moral of the whole is pointed in the narrative: "she gave him a box on the ear." This is not the philosophy of one individual or nation, the sentiment is, if I may so say, European; and I am borne out in this theory by the fact that the book has evidently been printed in three parallel columns, English, French, and German.
Such a man was my uncle; and with such a man did I resolve to confront the suspected mechanic. I appointed the following morning for an interview, when I would personally inspect "the article" (I could not bring myself to utter the beloved word itself). I passed a restless and feverish night, crushed by a sense of the approaching crisis.
The hour came at last — the hour of misery and despair; it always does so, it cannot be put off forever; even on a visit to a dentist, as my childhood can attest with bitter experience, we are not forever getting there; the fatal door too surely dawns upon us, and our heart, which for the last half-hour has been gradually sinking lower and lower, until we almost doubt its existence, vanishes suddenly downwards into depths hitherto undreamed of. And so, I repeat it, the hour came at last.