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- 589
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- palate a questionable smack as of a compounded wine. To any stray
inheritor of these primitive qualities found, like Caspar Hauser,
wandering dazed in any Christian capital of our time, the poet’s famous
invocation, near two thousand years ago, of the good rustic out of his
latitude in the Rome of the Cæsars, still appropriately holds:--
‘Faithful in word and thought,
What hast Thee, Fabian, to the city brought.’
Though our Handsome Sailor had as much of masculine beauty as one can
expect anywhere to see; nevertheless, like the beautiful woman in one of
Hawthorne’s minor tales, there was just one thing amiss in him. No
visible blemish, indeed, as with the lady; no, but an occasional
liability to a vocal defect. Though in the hour of elemental uproar or
peril, he was everything that a sailor should be, yet under sudden
provocation of strong heart-feeling his voice, otherwise singularly
musical, as if expressive of the harmony within, was apt to develop an
organic hesitancy,--in fact, more or less of a stutter or even worse. In
this particular Billy was a striking instance that the arch-interpreter,
the envious marplot of Eden still has more or less to do with every
human consignment to this planet of earth. In every case, one way or
another, he is sure to slip in his little card, as much as to remind
us--I too have a hand here.
The avowal of such an imperfection in the Handsome Sailor should be
evidence not alone that he is not presented as a conventional hero, but
also that the story in which he is the main figure is no romance.
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