Mosses from an old manse
of the Revolution. And besides, there were the patents of nobility of
German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the
worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the
bran-new parchment of the latest lord who has received his honors from
the fair hand of Victoria.
At sight of the dense volumes of smoke, mingled with vivid jets of
flame, that gushed and eddied forth from this immense pile of earthly
distinctions, the multitude of plebeian spectators set up a joyous
shout, and clapped their hands with an emphasis that made the welkin
echo. That was their moment of triumph, achieved, after long ages, over
creatures of the same clay and the same spiritual infirmities, who had
dared to assume the privileges due only to Heaven’s better workmanship.
But now there rushed towards the blazing heap a gray-haired man, of
stately presence, wearing a coat, from the breast of which a star, or
other badge of rank, seemed to have been forcibly wrenched away. He had
not the tokens of intellectual power in his face; but still there was
the demeanor, the habitual and almost native dignity, of one who had
been born to the idea of his own social superiority, and had never felt
it questioned till that moment.
“People,” cried he, gazing at the ruin of what was dearest to his eyes
with grief and wonder, but nevertheless with a degree of
stateliness,—“people, what have you done? This fire is consuming all
that marked your advance from barbarism, or that could have prevented
your relapse thither. We, the men of the privileged orders, were those
who kept alive from age to age the old chivalrous spirit; the gentle
and generous thought; the higher, the purer, the more refined and
delicate life. With the nobles, too, you cast off the poet, the
painter, the sculptor,—all the beautiful arts; for we were their
patrons, and created the atmosphere in which they flourish. In
abolishing the majestic distinctions of rank, society loses not only
its grace, but its steadfastness—”
More he would doubtless have spoken; but here there arose an outcry,
sportive, contemptuous, and indignant, that altogether drowned the
appeal of the fallen nobleman, insomuch that, casting one look of
despair at his own half-burned pedigree, he shrunk back into the crowd,
glad to shelter himself under his new-found insignificance.
“Let him thank his stars that we have not flung him into the same
fire!” shouted a rude figure, spurning the embers with his foot. “And
henceforth let no man dare to show a piece of musty parchment as his
warrant for lording it over his fellows. If he have strength of arm,
well and good; it is one species of superiority. If he have wit,
wisdom, courage, force of character, let these attributes do for him
what they may; but from this day forward no mortal must hope for place
and consideration by reckoning up the mouldy bones of his ancestors.
That nonsense is done away.”
“And in good time,” remarked the grave observer by my side, in a low
voice, however, “if no worse nonsense comes in its place; but, at all
events, this species of nonsense has fairly lived out its life.”
There was little space to muse or moralize over the embers of this
time-honored rubbish; for, before it was half burned out, there came
another multitude from beyond the sea, bearing the purple robes of
royalty, and the crowns, globes, and sceptres of emperors and kings.
All these had been condemned as useless bawbles, playthings at best,
fit only for the infancy of the world or rods to govern and chastise it
in its nonage, but with which universal manhood at its full-grown
stature could no longer brook to be insulted. Into such contempt had
these regal insignia now fallen that the gilded crown and tinselled
robes of the player king from Drury Lane Theatre had been thrown in
among the rest, doubtless as a mockery of his brother monarchs on the
great stage of the world. It was a strange sight to discern the crown
jewels of England glowing and flashing in the midst of the fire. Some
of them had been delivered down from the time of the Saxon princes;
others were purchased with vast revenues, or perchance ravished from
the dead brows of the native potentates of Hindustan; and the whole now
blazed with a dazzling lustre, as if a star had fallen in that spot and
been shattered into fragments. The splendor of the ruined monarchy had
no reflection save in those inestimable precious stones. But enough on
this subject. It were but tedious to describe how the Emperor of
Austria’s mantle was converted to tinder, and how the posts and pillars
of the French throne became a heap of coals, which it was impossible to
distinguish from those of any other wood. Let me add, however, that I
noticed one of the exiled Poles stirring up the bonfire with the Czar
of Russia’s sceptre, which he afterwards flung into the flames.
“The smell of singed garments is quite intolerable here,” observed my
new acquaintance, as the breeze enveloped us in the smoke of a royal
wardrobe. “Let us get to windward and see what they are doing on the
other side of the bonfire.”
We accordingly passed around, and were just in time to witness the
arrival of a vast procession of Washingtonians,—as the votaries of
temperance call themselves nowadays,—accompanied by thousands of the
Irish disciples of Father Mathew, with that great apostle at their
head. They brought a rich contribution to the bonfire, being nothing
less than all the hogsheads and barrels of liquor in the world, which
they rolled before them across the prairie.
“Now, my children,” cried Father Mathew, when they reached the verge of
the fire, “one shove more, and the work is done. And now let us stand
off and see Satan deal with his own liquor.”
Accordingly, having placed their wooden vessels within reach of the
flames, the procession stood off at a safe distance, and soon beheld
them burst into a blaze that reached the clouds and threatened to set
the sky itself on fire. And well it might; for here was the whole
world’s stock of spirituous liquors, which, instead of kindling a
frenzied light in the eyes of individual topers as of yore, soared
upwards with a bewildering gleam that startled all mankind. It was the
aggregate of that fierce fire which would otherwise have scorched the
hearts of millions. Meantime numberless bottles of precious wine were
flung into the blaze, which lapped up the contents as if it loved them,
and grew, like other drunkards, the merrier and fiercer for what it
quaffed. Never again will the insatiable thirst of the fire-fiend be so
pampered. Here were the treasures of famous bon vivants,—liquors that
had been tossed on ocean, and mellowed in the sun, and hoarded long in
the recesses of the earth,—the pale, the gold, the ruddy juice of
whatever vineyards were most delicate,—the entire vintage of Tokay,—all
mingling in one stream with the vile fluids of the common pot house,
and contributing to heighten the self-same blaze. And while it rose in
a gigantic spire that seemed to wave against the arch of the firmament
and combine itself with the light of stars, the multitude gave a shout
as if the broad earth were exulting in its deliverance from the curse
of ages.
But the joy was not universal. Many deemed that human life would be
gloomier than ever when that brief illumination should sink down. While
the reformers were at work I overheard muttered expostulations from
several respectable gentlemen with red noses and wearing gouty shoes;
and a ragged worthy, whose face looked like a hearth where the fire is
burned out, now expressed his discontent more openly and boldly.
“What is this world good for,” said the last toper, “now that we can
never be jolly any more? What is to comfort the poor man in sorrow and
perplexity? How is he to keep his heart warm against the cold winds of
this cheerless earth? And what do you propose to give him in exchange
for the solace that you take away? How are old friends to sit together
by the fireside without a cheerful glass between them? A plague upon
your reformation! It is a sad world, a cold world, a selfish world, a
low world, not worth an honest fellow’s living in, now that good
fellowship is gone forever!”
This harangue excited great mirth among the bystanders; but,
preposterous as was the sentiment, I could not help commiserating the
forlorn condition of the last toper, whose boon companions had dwindled
away from his side, leaving the poor fellow without a soul to
countenance him in sipping his liquor, nor indeed any liquor to sip.
Not that this was quite the true state of the case; for I had observed
him at a critical moment filch a bottle of fourth-proof brandy that
fell beside the bonfire and hide it in his pocket.
The spirituous and fermented liquors being thus disposed of, the zeal
of the reformers next induced them to replenish the fire with all the
boxes of tea and bags of coffee in the world. And now came the planters
of Virginia, bringing their crops of tobacco. These, being cast upon
the heap of inutility, aggregated it to the size of a mountain, and
incensed the atmosphere with such potent fragrance that methought we
should never draw pure breath again. The present sacrifice seemed to
startle the lovers of the weed more than any that they had hitherto
witnessed.
“Well, they’ve put my pipe out,” said an old gentleman, flinging it
into the flames in a pet. “What is this world coming to? Everything
rich and racy—all the spice of life—is to be condemned as useless. Now
that they have kindled the bonfire, if these nonsensical reformers
would fling themselves into it, all would be well enough!”
“Be patient,” responded a stanch conservative; “it will come to that in
the end. They will first fling us in, and finally themselves.”
From the general and systematic measures of reform I now turn to
consider the individual contributions to this memorable bonfire. In
many instances these were of a very amusing character. One poor fellow
threw in his empty purse, and another a bundle of counterfeit or
insolvable bank-notes. Fashionable ladies threw in their last season’s
bonnets, together with heaps of ribbons, yellow lace, and much other
half-worn milliner’s ware, all of which proved even more evanescent in
the fire than it had been in the fashion. A multitude of lovers of both
sexes—discarded maids or bachelors and couples mutually weary of one
another—tossed in bundles of perfumed letters and enamored sonnets. A
hack politician, being deprived of bread by the loss of office, threw
in his teeth, which happened to be false ones. The Rev. Sydney
Smith—having voyaged across the Atlantic for that sole purpose—came up
to the bonfire with a bitter grin and threw in certain repudiated
bonds, fortified though they were with the broad seal of a sovereign
state. A little boy of five years old, in the premature manliness of
the present epoch, threw in his playthings; a college graduate, his
diploma; an apothecary, ruined by the spread of homeopathy, his whole
stock of drugs and medicines; a physician, his library; a parson, his
old sermons; and a fine gentleman of the old school, his code of
manners, which he had formerly written down for the benefit of the next
generation. A widow, resolving on a second marriage, slyly threw in her
dead husband’s miniature. A young man, jilted by his mistress, would
willingly have flung his own desperate heart into the flames, but could
find no means to wrench it out of his bosom. An American author, whose
works were neglected by the public, threw his pen and paper into the
bonfire and betook himself to some less discouraging occupation. It
somewhat startled me to overhear a number of ladies, highly respectable
in appearance, proposing to fling their gowns and petticoats into the