The voice that broke the silence was not the sweet, winsome one we were listening for, but it instantly arrested the attention of the company. It was the grave, manly voice of one used to speaking, and accustomed to be listened to with deference. This was the first time that the company as a whole had heard it, for the speaker was the new-comer who has been repeatedly alluded to,--the one of whom I spoke as "the Counsellor."
"I think I can tell you something about that," said the Counsellor.
"I suppose you will wonder how a man of my profession can know or interest himself about a question so remote from his arid pursuits.
And yet there is hardly one man in a thousand who knows from actual experience a fraction of what I have learned of the lovers' vocabulary in my professional experience. I have, I am sorry to say, had to take an important part in a great number of divorce cases.
These have brought before me scores and hundreds of letters, in which every shade of the great passion has been represented. What has most struck me in these amatory correspondences has been their remarkable sameness. It seems as if writing love-letters reduced all sorts of people to the same level. I don't remember whether Lord Bacon has left us anything in that line,--unless, indeed, he wrote Romeo and Juliet' and the 'Sonnets;' but if he has, I don't believe they differ so very much from those of his valet or his groom to their respective lady-loves. It is always, My darling! my darling! The words of endearment are the only ones the lover wants to employ, and he finds the vocabulary too limited for his vast desires. So his letters are apt to be rather tedious except to the personage to whom they are addressed. As to poetry, it is very common to find it in love-letters, especially in those that have no love in them. The letters of bigamists and polygamists are rich in poetical extracts.
Occasionally, an original spurt in rhyme adds variety to an otherwise monotonous performance. I don't think there is much passion in men's poetry addressed to women. I agree with The Dictator that poetry is little more than the ashes of passion; still it may show that the flame has had its sweep where you find it, unless, indeed, it is shoveled in from another man's fireplace."
"What do you say to the love poetry of women?" asked the Professor.
"Did ever passion heat words to incandescence as it did those of Sappho?"
The Counsellor turned,--not to Number Five, as he ought to have done, according to my programme, but to the Mistress.
"Madam," he said, "your sex is adorable in many ways, but in the abandon of a genuine love-letter it is incomparable. I have seen a string of women's love-letters, in which the creature enlaced herself about the object of her worship as that South American parasite which clasps the tree to which it has attached itself, begins with a slender succulent network, feeds on the trunk, spreads its fingers out to hold firmly to one branch after another, thickens, hardens, stretches in every direction, following the boughs,--and at length gets strong enough to hold in its murderous arms, high up in air, the stump and shaft of the once sturdy growth that was its support and subsistence."
The Counsellor did not say all this quite so formally as I have set it down here, but in a much easier way. In fact, it is impossible to smooth out a conversation from memory without stiffening it; you can't have a dress shirt look quite right without starching the bosom.
Some of us would have liked to hear more about those letters in the divorce cases, but the Counsellor had to leave the table. He promised to show us some pictures he has of the South American parasite. I have seen them, and I can assure you they are very curious.
The following verses were found in the urn, or sugar-bowl.
CACOETHES SCRIBENDI.
If all the trees in all the woods were men, And each and every blade of grass a pen;
If every leaf on every shrub and tree Turned to a sheet of foolscap; every sea Were changed to ink, and all earth's living tribes Had nothing else to do but act as scribes, And for ten thousand ages, day and night, The human race should write, and write, and write, Till all the pens and paper were used up, And the huge inkstand was an empty cup, Still would the scribblers clustered round its brim Call for more pens, more paper, and more ink.