ON this May-Day, when Nature is putting on her new spring suit of green, and decking herself with new buds and flowers; when every blade of grass shooting up through the brown sod, and every quaint little package of leaf unrolling itself on the bough are new; when restless men and women, carting their Lares and Penates through the streets, are seeking new homes; when new breezes from the North come shiveringly down upon us, telling new stories they learned of the icebergs on their way; and when new asparagus and onions are coming into the market; on this new day, I am free to confess I like the old.
I like old books. I think there is more virtue, and wit, and sense, and solid stuff in the old tomes—brass-clasped and vellum-paged mayhap, made to last forever by the old worthies, over whose heads hundreds of springs have come and gone, and generations of birds have sung, and they none the wiser, for they left their souls in the tomes—than in the reams of gaudy modern trash, born in all sorts of ways, in all sorts of places, and of all sorts of parents, with lives as permanent as a tadpole's, and, like many a human being, carrying all the usefulness and beauty they possess in their covers. Gilt goes a great way with a book, as it does with a man. There are a great many gilded men and women it won't do to touch or examine too closely. The moment you handle them, the gilt rubs off and shows the pewter underneath. There are a great many books of the same description.
I like old wine. There is virtue in the mildewed, cobwebbed bottle, which one of your family, whose portrait hangs in the hall because he is a little old fashioned for the drawing room, placed in the cellar years ago. Break the neck of the bottle, and see how the imprisoned genii of the wine leap sparkling into the sunshine, clad in gold, and fragrant as a rose you stumble upon in the woods. No aquafortis, logwood, or burnt shavings here. This is the nectar which refreshed the giants of old time, which Horace sang, and Anacreon drank, with which Dante pledged Beatrice, and which runs through Beethoven's Scherzos, and inspired the Brindisis of the masters.
I like old songs into which the writers have poured their souls; songs as full of passion and pain as the West sometimes is full of thunder clouds; songs full of sadness which is not the boisterous wo of the hired mute, but as unobtrusive and gentle as the summer rain; songs full of the quaintness, and delicacy, and beauty which time has only mellowed, and which come down to us hallowed with associations which cluster around them like vines. Now and then you get a song which touches the heart at once, but a song, like a friend, must have been tested by experience before you can fully receive it. Who would not take Mendelssohn's "First Violet," and gladly give up all the flower-songs of to-day? Has the religion of to-day anything more delicately beautiful and graceful than Herrick, anything more massive and majestic than the "Ein Feste Berg"? Do our modern lovers sing such dainty serenades as Spenser and Sidney sang to their Phyllises?
I like old friends. A man can't afford to have too many friends. It is too expensive in the social economy, not in the matter of dollars and cents, but in the personal wear and tear they occasion one. A man with a thousand friends is worse off than the Wandering Jew. A man with five hundred friends is to be pitied. A man with a hundred friends is a victim. A man with fifty friends is happy in a quiet way. A man with twenty-five friends can find time to be a philosopher. A man with ten friends, one for each finger, each one of whom will stick to him like his fingers, is justified in crying "Eureka" over the discovery of perfect happiness. The result of my observations in a feminine direction, is, that women are so made that they will be inconsolable without a thousand dear friends, to whom they are bound by the tenderest ties until death, and ten thousand other friends entitled to the confidences which distract the female breast, without which relief, the female breast would be simply a pent up Vesuvius. If, therefore, you have ten friends, and they are old friends who have travelled all along the journey with you, through storm and through sunshine, with any one of whom you would exchange your personal identity, I congratulate you.
It is because I like old things that I paid a visit to the old Tribune Buildings. I have a passion for old buildings. The smell of antiquity about them is as refreshing in the modern combination of smells as the bouquet of good wine in a villainous beer cellar. I like to trace all the habits and peculiarities of the dead and gone men and women, which, in the process of time, have been ingrained into the building, and become part and parcel of it. I have no objection to a ghost or two—none of your mice in the wainscotting, or swaying beams in the attic, but the good old-fashioned ghost of some poor soul, with streaming black hair and pale face, who concealed her malady and carried her secret with her under the turf, and, discontented in Heaven, must come back to the old place where he used to be, and walk under the trees where they used to walk—the trees which know the secret as well as she, for they heard it; or the ghost of the boy who ran away and went to sea and never came home again, whose sad story most any wave crawling up the sand will tell you, if you will listen aright; or the ghost of that wrinkled old flint who hid his ingots under the tiles of the hearth, and comes back now and then to see if they are safe.
I did not see any spirits in the old building; quite the contrary. There was a great deal of life there. It was night when I went there, but by the moonlight I saw some strange sights. Our late co-tenants, the rats, mice, cockroaches and spiders, were holding a general mass-meeting in the various rooms, discussing the changed aspect of affairs. An antique rat, of venerable appearance and gray whiskers, covered with the scars of many a hard-fought fight, and with a tail sadly mutilated by the numerous inkstands and paper-weights which had followed him into his hole many a time and oft, occupied the Managing Editor's old desk, the empty pigeon-holes of which brought him into admirable perspective. He acted as Chairman of the meeting, and presided with dignity, holding a dusty document in his hand for a gavel, which had been laid away fifteen years ago as of immense value, and never thought of since—just as you and I, you know, who think we are of so much value, will be laid away shortly in a pigeon-hole, and never thought of again. Several rows of rats, who had come down from a former generation, occupied an old table, sitting erect, and manifesting a proper appreciation of the spirit of the meeting. The younger rats were compelled to shift for themselves, and were sprinkled about the floor. The gas pipe running up the wall was festooned with mice who looked down upon the assembly with interested countenances, while the three blind mice of song notoriety could be distinguished by their tails, that is, as much of their tails as escaped the carving knife, which protruded from a hole in the wall. Being bereft of the blessing of sight, it was but natural that they should make the mistake of turning their backs upon the Chairman, but they could hear all that was said. The rat who lived in a well, and who, when he died, went to a warmer climate, you may not be aware returned from that place some time since. He was present as an invited guest from the Museum. The cockroaches looked out of the cracks in every direction, and balanced themselves dexterously on shreds of wall paper. The spiders occupied the centres of their webs, apparently asleep, but in reality wide awake, as one unfortunate blue-bottle fly found, who got caught, and was immediately served up and sent to the spiders of the Local-Room as a present. Besides these, there were a few score of old fogy mosquitoes, left over from last year, and a handsome representation of those quiet little brown bugs addicted to bedsteads, and pronounced odor, whom I do not like to mention by name. The Chairman was listening to the complaints of the multitude, for famine was staring them in the face, and some means must be adopted for self-preservation. A motion to serve out an injunction on the Tribune Company, and compel them to replace the goods they had carried away, was canvassed, but failed of rat-ification. One large, portly rat, with a very benevolent face, and getting gray, whom I at once recognized as an old friend I had seen on my old desk many a time, banqueting on paste, was complaining particularly of me. He characterized such conduct as despicable in the highest degree. It was a betrayal of friendship, a breach of confidence, and he would never again repose trust in a biped. All that he had found in my desk, during a visit that evening, was a dried up bouquet or two, rusty pens, one scissor blade, a photograph of a superannuated prima donna, a paper of pins, and a huge package of tickets to amateur concerts. There was a time when he was young and strong. In those days he could gnaw a file, and derive considerable culinary consolation from a paper-weight, but now he was obliged to conform his diet to a weakened digestion and disordered liver. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger, and regretted that Pickle should be fickle.
At this point, a young mouse, perched upon the top of the gas pipe, in a piping voice complained that he had just commenced going through Abbott's History of the War. It was slow work, but he had got through the covers, and part way through the introduction, and he didn't like to be interrupted in this manner. It was true he hadn't derived much sustenance from the thing, but it was a matter of principle when he commenced a piece of work, to keep at it if it killed him. Some fifteen or twenty old fossilized rats, with their wrinkled faces, scanty hairs and shrunk shanks, made the same complaint with reference to the Patent Office Reports and commercial statistics. To be sure they had not thriven well. One of them had devoured half the Georgian Bay Canal; another had swallowed two Board of Trade Reports, and had got as far as lard in the third, to which he was looking forward with great expectations, being then unprofitably engaged upon lumber; a third had almost exhausted himself with devouring a census table, and was just in sight of some quotations of cheese; a fourth had swallowed the Smithsonian Institution, and put the Covode Investigation on the top of it, and was just ready to attack the American Cyclopedia, in which he was sure to find something to agree with him and repay him for the time he had wasted. A sentimental little mouse complained that she had just got into Mrs. E. D. E. N. Alphabet Southworth's "How He Won Her," and was interrupted, at a critical moment, when "he" and "her" were about to say something nice. She was dying to know "how he won her," and she might go down to a premature grave without the knowledge of that interesting secret. A grave looking rat, with a streak of white fur around his neck, and troubled with a slight cough arising from an affection of the throat, announced that he had devoted several nights of hard labor, in getting through the back of a Biblical Cyclopedia, and had just reached the title page. All the world was before him. Vistas of Hebraic and other sorts of lore, opened before his longing eyes. He was about to enter, when the prize was snatched away. He consoled himself with the reflection that all earthly matters are illusions, but he could not help thinking now and then how pleasant that Cyclopedia would have been. There was one wretched old rat who had eaten up a volume of Swinburne, two duplicates of Walt Whitman, and was feasting upon a gorgeous picture of the spectacle of Undine. He had eaten up four blonde wigs, sixteen legs of ballet girls, and left eight coryphees with a leg apiece. He was very indignant over his disappointment, and even swore about it, for which he was called to account by the grave-looking rat with a slight cough. The wicked rodent growled out something in broken Rattish, and retired to his hole, out of which he shook his tail in defiance. Presently four or five good little mice, whom I had not observed before, with their faces very clean, and their fur smoothed down very sleekly, made their complaint in a weak kind of utterance. It was to the effect that they had discovered a little stock of Sunday School books in a paper box, which were very affecting, and narrated how "Little Freddie" and "Good Teddie" and others, committed forty feet of texts in one day, which disagreed with them so that they died very early, not being good enough for this world. They had just succeeded in getting into the box, and now the books were gone.
In this manner, complaint after complaint was made, and the meeting adjourned to another evening without taking action. You should have seen the assembly after adjournment. The whole mass of rats and mice rushed pell-mell through the dusty heaps of papers on the floor. One set danced a polka on fragments of editorials touching the finances and internal revenue, taxation and other topics. In the local room a rather spare rat, with long reddish hair, mounted the City Editor's desk, and read off, to the edification of the crowd, several mutilated fragments of a "Horrible Murder," "Atrocious Villainy in Bridgeport," "Destructive Fire in Holstein," "Scandal Case on Michigan Avenue," "Religious Announcements," etc. In the Commercial Room several casualties occurred. One unfortunate mouse was nearly choked to death with a column of figures which he found on the floor, and attempted to swallow. Another, of a sentimental turn of mind, went insane trying to understand some commercial quotations he found in an antique looking scrap-book, and three incautious little mice, venturing too hastily into Colbert's Astronomy, fell into the Dipper and couldn't get out, until an old rat helped them with the North Pole and a line dropped from the plane of the ecliptic, through the parallax of the sun, whatever that is. In another room, the cockroaches had a carnival in the Night Editor's coffee-pot. It was one of the most touching sights in the world to see them enter in festive procession at the top and come out through the nose. On my own old desk, twenty-three assorted cockroaches, of a beautiful bronze color, each one of whom I have killed twenty-three times in twenty-three various ways, were dancing a can-can. A few of the odoriferous, small brown bugs stood round in various attitudes, like supernumeraries, while an old rat, against whom I once swore eternal war, as Hannibal swore against the Romans, beat time with his stump of a tail. I forgave the rat, but I shall never forget the scene. I shall miss those cockroaches in the coming days, surrounded by the inanimate splendors of the new desk, upon which I write you to-day, looking no more upon the brick walls, but sitting in a flood of roseate light, which pours through the new window from the dying day. I could not bear to interfere with the sports of those poor creatures, and I left them there in the moonlight, engaged in their wild revels. I cannot say with any degree of veracity that I loved them while living with them, but still I know that I shall miss them, and their innocent little ways.
To rat, and mouse, and cockroach, and odoriferous bug, and spider; to the old desk, and the withered bouquets; to the old rooms, which have seen so many come and go, and one of tempered judgment, and calm speech, of dignified presence and upright life, a fast friend and sure adviser, who left us one morning to rejoin her who had gone to Heaven a little while before him; to many pleasant associations and happy scenes; to the familiar stairs worn deeply with the yearly tread of feet as the water weareth away the rock; to all but memory, hail and farewell! And welcome the new!
