A GENTLEMAN OF VIRGINIA
You say they are all alike—the men you meet; that they are all dull, dyspeptic, perfidious and, what's worse, they all dress in the prevailing style. Do you know, madam, unfortunately I am very much of your opinion. I look sometimes at my friends and I am afraid I grow confused; I can't tell the concert singer from my host or the little marquis from the butler. They have the same air and the same manners, and they talk in the same ventriloquistic whisper.
I assure you it wasn't always so. In the past we frequently met individuals and characters in the world and not mere automatons. Yes, and among those I have known there was one who might have pleased you, one whom you might have esteemed, one whom you might have sketched inimitably. To be perfectly candid, madam, I am thinking of one who died before you saw the light; I am thinking of my father.
He was born at a time when the good genii had a hand in the making of men, and modeled them after their own hearts and in divers moulds. He was long-drawn and heroic, like the gentleman of La Mancha, and exceedingly healthy and honest. He passed his best days in the fore half of the century, and cherished a few bold notions regarding politics and morals and the old problem of how folks should wear their garments. He was singular in this—that he never wore anything but what hung loosely around his limbs. His figure was loftier than mine, perhaps even slimmer in girth, and he had a finer tissue of muscles than I—sinews and muscles that served him happily on many occasions, and gave him the nerve and suppleness of an acrobat.
Take heed now, madam, or you'll surely go wrong. My father was never a performer in the ring, nor, so far as I am aware, did he ever appear before the footlights. Really he had no ambition that way, but he had—as we all have, I fear—a pitiable fondness for the arena and the stage. I can't approve of his taste either, for he liked plenty of action in plays—melodramatic movement and sensation. His favorite drama was "Mazeppa." When some beautiful woman took the leading part he was always more than well pleased, and it so happened that no one ever played "Mazeppa" in our town without finding my father foremost among the gallant worthies of the pit.
But with him Byron's "Mazeppa" rivaled that of the dramatist. Doubtless you have heard me mention his own reading of the poem and how vivid it was, how dashing and fiery. Yet, believe me, it shouldn't have been so greatly wondered at, indeed, since no less a master than the elder Booth, whom he loved and wined and made much of, had been his tutor in the mysteries of the poem, and years afterward, when Booth listened to his pupil's recital, he scarcely disguised his emotion; he embraced my father warmly and said things that were at once flattering and memorable. In my earlier days I often heard my father speak of this scene—everybody had heard him speak of it, and he spoke, it is true, rather boastfully—and yet in such tones and with tears!
