There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. —Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwep is pronounced Jackson.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
Friday, December 13. Sailed, at 3 p.m., in the ‘Mararoa’. Summer seas and a good ship—life has nothing better.
Monday. Three days of paradise. Warm and sunny and smooth; the sea a luminous Mediterranean blue . . . . One lolls in a long chair all day under deck-awnings, and reads and smokes, in measureless content. One does not read prose at such a time, but poetry. I have been reading the poems of Mrs. Julia A. Moore, again, and I find in them the same grace and melody that attracted me when they were first published, twenty years ago, and have held me in happy bonds ever since.
“The Sentimental Song Book” has long been out of print, and has been forgotten by the world in general, but not by me. I carry it with me always—it and Goldsmith’s deathless story.
Indeed, it has the same deep charm for me that the Vicar of Wakefield has, and I find in it the same subtle touch—the touch that makes an intentionally humorous episode pathetic and an intentionally pathetic one funny. In her time Mrs. Moore was called “the Sweet Singer of Michigan,” and was best known by that name. I have read her book through twice today, with the purpose of determining which of her pieces has most merit, and I am persuaded that for wide grasp and sustained power, “William Upson” may claim first place—
WILLIAM UPSON.
 
 
 
Air—“The Major’s Only Son."
Come all good people far and near,
Oh, come and see what you can hear,
It’s of a young man true and brave,
That is now sleeping in his grave.
 
Now, William Upson was his name
If it’s not that, it’s all the same
He did enlist in a cruel strife,
And it caused him to lose his life.
 
He was Perry Upson’s eldest son,
His father loved his noble son,
This son was nineteen years of age
When first in the rebellion he engaged.
 
His father said that he might go,
But his dear mother she said no,
“Oh! stay at home, dear Billy,” she said,
But she could not turn his head.
 
He went to Nashville, in Tennessee,
There his kind friends he could not see;
He died among strangers, so far away,
They did not know where his body lay.
 
He was taken sick and lived four weeks,
And Oh! how his parents weep,
But now they must in sorrow mourn,
For Billy has gone to his heavenly home.
 
Oh! if his mother could have seen her son,
For she loved him, her darling son;
If she could heard his dying prayer,
It would ease her heart till she met him there.
 
How it would relieve his mother’s heart
To see her son from this world depart,
And hear his noble words of love,
As he left this world for that above.
 
Now it will relieve his mother’s heart,
For her son is laid in our graveyard;
For now she knows that his grave is near,
She will not shed so many tears.
 
Although she knows not that it was her son,
For his coffin could not be opened
It might be someone in his place,
For she could not see his noble face.
December, 17. Reached Sydney.
December, 19. In the train. Fellow of 30 with four valises; a slim creature, with teeth which made his mouth look like a neglected churchyard. He had solidified hair—solidified with pomatum; it was all one shell. He smoked the most extraordinary cigarettes—made of some kind of manure, apparently. These and his hair made him smell like the very nation. He had a low-cut vest on, which exposed a deal of frayed and broken and unclean shirtfront. Showy studs, of imitation gold—they had made black disks on the linen. Oversized sleeve buttons of imitation gold, the copper base showing through. Ponderous watch-chain of imitation gold. I judge that he couldn’t tell the time by it, for he asked Smythe what time it was, once. He wore a coat which had been gay when it was young; 5-o’clock-tea-trousers of a light tint, and marvelously soiled; yellow mustache with a dashing upward whirl at the ends; foxy shoes, imitation patent leather. He was a novelty—an imitation dude. He would have been a real one if he could have afforded it. But he was satisfied with himself. You could see it in his expression, and in all his attitudes and movements. He was living in a dude dreamland where all his squalid shams were genuine, and himself a sincerity. It disarmed criticism, it mollified spite, to see him so enjoy his imitation languors, and arts, and airs, and his studied daintinesses of gesture and misbegotten refinements. It was plain to me that he was imagining himself the Prince of Wales, and was doing everything the way he thought the Prince would do it. For bringing his four valises aboard and stowing them in the nettings, he gave his porter four cents, and lightly apologized for the smallness of the gratuity—just with the condescendingest little royal air in the world. He stretched himself out on the front seat and rested his pomatum-cake on the middle arm, and stuck his feet out of the window, and began to pose as the Prince and work his dreams and languors for exhibition; and he would indolently watch the blue films curling up fr............