of all the wonderful literary treasures in their drawing-room produced a great impression on me, one a caricature of Thackeray's face done by himself with no mercy shown to his flattened, broken nose. A lady said to him: "There is only one thing about you I could never get over, your nose." "No wonder, madam, there is no bridge to it." The other was an invitation to supper in Charles Lamb's own writing, and at the bottom of the page, "Puns at nine."
Two famous story-tellers of the old-fashioned type were Doctor Dixi Crosby of Hanover, and his son "Ben," who made a great name for himself in New York City as a surgeon, and also as a brilliant after-dinner speaker. Doctor Crosby's preference was for the long-drawn-out style, as this example, which I heard him tell several times, shows:
A man gave a lecture in a New England town which failed to elicit much applause and this troubled him. As he left early next morning on the top of the stage-coach, he interviewed the driver, who seemed not anxious to talk. "Did you hear much said about my lecture last night? Do you think it pleased the audience?"
"Oh, I guess they were well enough satisfied; some were anyway."
"Were there any who expressed dissatisfaction?"
"I would not pry into it, stranger; there wasn't much said against it anyhow."
"Now you have aroused my curiosity. I must beg you to let me know. Who criticized it, and what did they say? It might help me to hear it."
"Well, Squire Jones was the man; he does not say much one way or other. But I'll tell you he always gets the gist of it."
"And what was his verdict?"
"If you must know, Squire Jones he said, said he, he thought 'twas—awful shaller."
Doctor Ben's Goffstown Muster was a quicker tempo and had a better climax. 'Twas the great occasion of the annual military reviews. He graphically described boys driving colts hardly broken; mothers nursing babies, very squally; girls and their beaux sitting in the best wagon holding hands and staring about (as Warner said to me, "Young love in the country is a solemn thing"); the booths for sale of gingerbread, peanuts, cider, candies, and popcorn; the marshal of the day dashing here and there on his prancing steed. All was excitement, great crowds, and the blare of the band. Suddenly an aged pair, seemingly skeletons, so bony and wan were they, were seen tottering toward the fence, where they at last stopped. They had come from the direction of the graveyard. The marshal rushed forward calling out, "Go back, go back; this is not the general resurrection, it is only the Goffstown Muster."
Doctor Ben Crosby was one of the most admirable mimics ever known and without a suspicion of ill-nature. Sometimes he would call on us representing another acquaintance, who had just left, so perfectly that the gravest and stiffest were in danger of hysterics. This power his daughter inherited.
John Lord, the historical lecturer, was always a "beacon light" (which was the name he gave his lectures when published) as he discussed the subjects and persons he took for themes before immense audiences everywhere. His conversation was also intensely interesting. He was a social lion and a favourite guest. His lectures have still a large annual sale—no one who once knew him or listened to his pyrotechnic climaxes could ever forget him or them. It was true that he made nine independent and distinct motions simultaneously in his most intense delivery. I once met him going back to his rooms at his hotel carrying a leather bag. He stopped, opened it, showing a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and explained "I am starting in on a lecture on Moses." There was a certain simplicity about the man. Once when his right arm was in a sling, broken by a fall from a horse, he offered prayer in the old church. And unable to use his arm as usual, he so balanced his gyrations that he in some way drifted around until when he said "Amen" his face fronted the whitewashed wall back of his pulpit. He turned to the minister standing by him, saying in a very audible whisper, "Do you think anybody noticed it?"
He was so genuinely hospitable that when a friend suddenly accepted his "come up any time" invitation, he found no one at home but the doctor, who proposed their killing a chicken. Soon one was let out, but she evaded her pursuers. "You shoo, and I'll catch," cried the kind host, but shrank back as the fowl came near, exclaiming: "Say, West, has a hen got teeth?" At last they conquered, plucked, and cooked her for a somewhat tardy meal, with some potatoes clawed up in the potato field. Once, when very absent-minded, at a hotel table in a country tavern, the waitress was astonished to watch him as he took the oil cruet from the castor and proceeded to grease his boots.
Doctor John Ordronaux, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Dartmouth and various other colleges and medical schools, was another erudite scholar, who made a permanent impression on all he met. While yet at college, his words were so unusual and his vocabulary so full that a wag once advertised on the bulletin board on the door of Dartmouth Hall, "Five hundred new adjectives by John Ordronaux."
He was haunted by synonyms, and told me they interfered with his writing, so many clamouring for attention. He was a confirmed bachelor with very regular habits; wanted his bed to be left to air the entire day, he to make it himself at precisely 5.30 P.m., or as near as possible. His walk was peculiar, with knees stiffly bent out and elbows crooked as if to repel all feminine aggression, "a progressive porcupine" as someone described his gait. His hour for retiring was always the same; when calling leaving about 9.30. Rallied about his methodical habits, he was apt to mention many of his old friends who had indulged themselves in earthly pleasures, all of whom he had the sad pleasure of burying.
He was a great admirer of my mother for her loveliness and kind interest in the students; after her death he was a noble aid to me in many ways. I needed his precautions about spreading myself too thin, about being less flamboyantly loquacious, and subduing my excessive enthusiasm and emotional prodigality. Once after giving me a drive, he kindly said, as he helped me out, "I have quite enjoyed your cheerful prattle." Fact was, he had monologued it in his most sesquipedalian phraseology. I had no chance to say one word. He had his own way of gaining magnetism; believed in associating with butchers. Did you ever know one that was anæmic, especially at slaughtering time? From them and the animals there and in stables, and the smell of the flowing blood, he felt that surely a radiant magnetism was gained. Those he visited "thought he was real democratic and a pleasant spoken man." He told of an opportunity he once had for regular employment, riding on the stage-coach by the side of a farmer's pretty daughter. She suggested that he might like a milk route, and "perhaps father can get you one." So formal, dignified, and fastidious was he that this seems improbable, but I quote his own account.
Doctor Ordronaux visited at my uncle's, a physician, when I was resting there from overwork. After his departure, uncle received a letter from him which he handed to me saying, "Guess this is meant for you." I quote proudly:
I rejoice to have been permitted to enjoy so much of Miss Sanborn's society, and to discover what I never before fully appreciated, that beneath the scintillations of a brilliant intellect she hides a vigorous and analytic understanding, and when age shall have somewhat tempered her emotional susceptibilities she will shine with the steady light of a planet, reaching her perihelion and taking a permanent place in the firmament of letters.
Sounds something like a Johnsonian epitaph, but wasn't it great?
I visited his adopted mother at Roslyn, Long Island, and they took me to a Sunday dinner with Bryant at "Cedarmere," a fitting spot for a poet's home. The aged poet was in vigorous health, mind and body. Going to his library he took down an early edition of his Thanatopsis, pointing out the nineteen lines written some time before the rest. Mottoes hung on the wall such as "As thy days so shall thy strength be." I ventured to ask how he preserved such vitality, and he said, "I owe a great deal to daily air baths and the flesh brush, plenty of outdoor air and open fireplaces." What an impressive personality; erect, with white hair and long beard; his eyebrows looked as if snow had fallen on them. His conversation was delightfully
