[Dan De Quille, The Scholarly Tramp, from the New York Sun, June 21, 1885]

 

4                      THE SUN, SUNDAY, JUNE 21, 1885 – TWELVE PAGES.

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THE SCHOLARLY TRAMP.

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The Soliloquy of a Highly Educated Wanderer as Taken by a Nevada Miner.

            Virginia City, Nev., June 10. —— Old Ben is a well-known tramp. He is about sixty-five years old, and is said to be a graduate of Harvard College, and once the editor of a prominent newspaper in Philadelphia. No one here knows his full name, but in Carson City and other Nevada towns his face is as well known as was the face of the lime-kiln man in New York years ago. James Peters is a young Cornish miner who improves his evenings by studying phonography. He caught Old Ben in a gruesome mood not long ago, soliloquizing. With ready pencil he took down the words of the Parson of the Tramps, as Ben is sometimes called. It was in "the dead waste and middle of the night," that noon of thought when "wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars." Ben stood as prop most unstable to an awning post.

            "Did I hear a voice?" he said. "Did some mortal whisper 'Old Ben'? No one! Ah, 'twas but some distant sound; but yet, this to the hour when the sheeted dead do squeak and gibber. Ah me! I am Old Ben now. It seems ages ago that I was Young Ben, and, with diploma in pouch pranced forth into the blazing, flaring world from my college, an erudite incapable — an inflated nihility.

            "'Old Ben! Old Ben!' like the rhythmic tick of a clock pulsates upon my strained tympanum; yet no one calls. Strange, now — passing strange — the hallucinations that are born to my eager and fecund brain. At times it seems that the very dogs bark my name — that the cocks crow it, cattle low it, horses neigh it, asses bray it, winds sigh it, infants cry it, senility mumbles it, each passing car rumbles it — it rolls and surges to and fro, mingling with the roar of the city. Even the prayer-blest bells in the church towers boom forth — 'Old Ben! Old Ben! Old Ben!'

            "But, ah, 'tis cold, bitter cold. This ancient coat is thin, thin, and awning posts a full furlong apart are not umbrageous groves of shelter, yet even one of the smallest outgirths my body. Lean, lean and shriveled is poor old Ben! Hungry, too, and thirsty — beloved Bacchus, how thirsty! My belly has now so long been empty that it must suspect my throat is cut. Even my throat is dusty as a garret. I feel that I must be a lineal descendant of Gargantua, who at birth cried out `Drink! drink!' so lustily that the words were heard in distant cities. My voice, uttering the same cry, has also been heard in many cities, for I have out-walked the Ewige Jude — the Wandering Jew.

            "Had I but a watch now — a paltry silver watch — an old gold ring, any pawnable thing, I soon would feast. Even the ring of Hans Carvel, presented him by the devil, as told by Rabelais, would I spout in this mine emergency. But all my treasures have long since been laid up beyond the reach of all impecunious mortal moths — have gone to that bourne whence no unredeemed pledge returns —

                                                Oh, my prophetic soul,

                                                Mine uncle!

            "Mine uncle, thou receiver of all good and precious gifts! Into thy hands are gone all 'mine ancient, most domestic ornaments.' I would that I were now possessed of the ring of Odin, which dropped eight other rings every ninth night, or all the rings the Doges of Venice have flung from the Bucentaur in wedding the Adriatic. But all wishes are vain. In the language of Jeremiah, the inspired Hebrew, let me cry, 'Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas!'

            "Down, Belly; good fellow, down! Thinkest thou, clamorous fool, that I am unmindful of thee? This instant would I give thee, had I the power, a suffocating fill of pork and beans. A fig, say I — and a 'fig' wouldst thou, too, say, were the savory dish now before us — for either Moses or Pythagoras. What care we for the Hebrew lawgiver's bad opinion of pork, or the 'long-haired Samian's' interdiction of beans? Pork and beans! Ye gods! The thought of their rising steam and spreading aroma warms and perfumes the night. What ho, good waiter, bestir thyself! Pork and beans for nine! Alas, I do but dream. Brave words — noble commands, but coin is required to back them up. Though I stretch my fingers to reach to heaven. I have' one heel nailed in hell.'

            "And now, behold, stalking through the night hitherward comes a policeman, a — to speak the detestable slang of the swinish multitude — a 'peeler.' Sad is my fate; I am beneath the dignity of arrest; he will pass me by in scorn as not worthy of a glance of the policial eye. Would I were a hoodlum, now — a villainous, low-browed, dangerous hoodlum! Then might I hope to be taken in. Many very excellent meals have I eaten in their station houses, and in their jails have I spent many happy, musing days. But now, in my time of sorest need, they will not put hand to my collar. I am but a vapor, scud, rack; a nimbus on the face of nature; am too unsubstantial to even be bodied forth in the form of a vagrant—technically, 'vag.' I am now an example of what the hoodlum ripens into — am a hoodlum in the sere and yellow leaf, dropping overripe and rotten fruit. Was it thus with my aged good sire in the days of his decline?

            "A vision rises before mine eyes. In the far east I see a green and noble mountain. By the door of a far-up cottage, where the river is but a rill, sits a man, gray-haired and old. On a rude bench, with bared head, he sits beneath the contemporaneous trees. On his knee rests the book of books. His is a happy household, though exceeding poor. From within the humble dwelling comes a slender girl; her face is an angel's, and golden is the hair that floats about her neck and rests upon her bosom. Bright is the light in her eyes, and their color is not dimmed under the blue of heaven. Gently her hand, so small and white, falls upon the old man's shoulder. Aroused, he lifts his head and smiles, and she, smiling, kisses his withered cheek. Oh, God! My sister—my father!

            "Great Niobe, a tear! Ha, ha, ha — a tear! Welcome, stranger! but thrice welcome wouldst thou be wert thou a tear such as 'tis written once fell from heaven — fell upon the camps of Israel's murmuring children. Manna, manna! Would I make moan were bread to fall in me from heaven? Would I complain of sameness of diet and howl for the flesh pots of bondage? Never! Besides, if we may credit the Talmudical writers, the manna — this bread from heaven — for the truly good had the taste of fish, flesh, and fowl — the taste of all things under heaven.

            "Though not wholly given up to ungodliness — Gottvergessenheit — could I now be seated at old Belshazzar's feast, the ghostly handwriting on the wall should not make me miss a dish nor pass untasted a single goblet.

            "We should never, good Sancho tells us, 'speak of ropes in the houses of the hanged,' nor to my mind should we speak of wine in the presence of those who are dying of thirst. Oh, could I but achieve a drink — a fierce, soul-searching drink — a drink that would thrill my nerves till each became vibrant and vocal as the strings of a windswept harp! Since to eat is out of the question, beyond my hopes, let me drink. 'Deep calleth unto deep,' and whether I am most tortured by hunger or by thirst is difficult to decide — both gnaw like the 'worm that dieth not.'

            "Digna canis pablo — a dog is worth his food. Would I were a dog. I would be a Cerberus — three-mouthed and three-throated! I may once have been a dog — perhaps a dog of high degree — before appearing in this ignoble biped form. Pythagoras remembered having occupied other forms before birth, and the Ettrick shepherd, in Noctes Ambrosianae, tells of his prehuman life and loves as a lion in the wilds of Africa. What form I next may take remains with the fates. I feel that I am not yet fit, though sufficiently ethereal, to become an angel. Yet a while I must remain and fight the world, the flesh, and the devil.

            "'The corpse of the man slain in battle looks better than the living soldier who has saved himself by flight,' therefore will I still do battle. Flight in my case means suicide, or euthanasia, as the modern advocates of the right of man to shuffle off this mortal coil are pleased by a Greek euphemism to term it.

            "'Where's Gerunto now? And what's become of him? Gerunto's dead because he could not swim.' For Gerunto, let One-eyed Pete be understood; and for 'could not swim,' be more definite and say could not swim the great deep of gin he carried within, and which in its undertow carried him off, probably landing him —

                                                In the Domdaniel caverns

                                                Under the roots of the ocean.

            "A good man was the One-eyed. With his many faults he still had his virtues, and often had a 'half.'

            "'Old Ben' — my name! Now, by the two-headed Janus, mine ears hear aright, and are not deceived by wizards that mow and mutter. And oh, doubly blest in hearing, they hear an invitation to 'stand in' — to sacrifice to the rosy god. 'Tis Fiddler Phil invites, a very Philip of Macedon for drink, but for any judgment he may ever give there will be no appeal; he is never 'Philip sober.' Drink! I would now drink with a pig-eyed Mongolian—a painted Piute, shock-headed autochthon of the deserts! Drink! Yes, I would drink with the baseborn Judean himself — would drink from a skull in the halls of Valhalla—drink anything, if it were but drink! My humble bowels make no aristocratic suggestions. The paltry heats and animosities of the day are forgotten. I embrace my Trinkbruder. Philip, my brother, I smell the sweet winds of the wild groves of Blarney, suggestive of illicit stills and mountain dew! My voice is for whiskey:

                                                Whate'er the standard tipple, whiskey's best

                                                To greet the coming, speed the parting guest!

                                                And he that will this truth deny,

                                                Down among the dead men let him lie.

            "In, in, my noble Philip! Let's 'vex with mirth the drowsy ear of night.' What is wealthy, bloated ease to jocund content? We'll sing a reckless roundelay:

                                                Gin by pailfuls, wine in rivers,

                                                Dash the window glass to shivers.

            "Produce, Philip — bring forth! Behold, dispenser of stimulants, behold the 'filthy lucre,' the 'root of evil!' Set forth thy flagons — put the enemy in battle array!

            "Ha! the timepiece 'smites one,' but we heed it not. We're not of the weak, the vain, the vacillating good. We are of the living dead.

            "Custodian of intoxicants, the enemy! — set forth — no frowns. On my soul, I'd rather be 'cursed in Hungarian by a female gypsy' than see thee frown!

            "Here's to thee, Philip! Man, thou'rt a credit to thy great namesake and to this daedal earth. With such men as thee let me live; with such let me be buried!

            "Fiddler Philip, wielder of a sceptre of ebony and horse hair! we'll make a night of it; we'll emulate the fate of Milo of old, who tore the oak and by the oak was torn! And again, here's to thee, my noble Philip! I look toward you."

DAN DE QUILLE.