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Our examination then began; names, ages, abodes, birth-places, number of children, color of hair and eyes, were all duly enrolled; then we were measured, and our heights put down; next we delivered up watches, purses, letters, keys in fact emptied our pockets; then I was walked off by the housekeeper into a neighboring cell and searched a surely most needless proceeding; it strikes me this is an unnecessary indignity to which to subject an uncondemned prisoner, except in cases of theft, where stolen property might be concealed about the person.
A language, like a species, when once extinct, never, as Sir C. Lyell remarks, reappears. The same language never has two birth-places. Distinct languages may be crossed or blended together. See remarks to this effect by the Rev. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue."
The gentry of the colonies willingly placed their sons in the royal navy, and many a bit of square bunting has been flying at the royal mast-heads of King's ships, in the nineteenth century, as the distinguishing symbols of flag-officers, who had to look for their birth-places among ourselves.
After travelling towards them leisurely, they came at last to a rising ground whence Leocadia and Teodosia looked down upon their respective birth-places, nor could they restrain their tears at the glad sight which brought back to their recollection all their past vicissitudes.
A recapitulation of the various prophecies made to the Cash Customer would show that he has been promised thirty-three wives, and something over ninety children—that he was brought into the world on various occasions between 1820 and 1833—that he was born under nearly all the planets known to astronomers—that he has more birth-places than he has fingers and toes—that he has passed through so many scenes of unexpected happiness and complicated misfortune in his past life, that he must have lived fifty hours to the day and been wide awake all the time—and he has so many future fortunes marked out for him that at three hundred and fifty years old his work will not be half done, and when at last all is finally accomplished, a minute dissection of his aged corpus will be necessary, that his earthly remains may be buried in all the places set down for him by these prophets.
He herded us into the clerk's office to secure the necessary papers, and the girl clerk that issued them was a stickler for form. We gave our names, our parents' names, our ages, birth-places, and previous states of servitude. I was getting ready to show her my vaccination scar, when she turned coldly critical eyes on me and asked: "Are you white?" This for a Virginian to answer was quite a blow.
"Confound the railroad!" said I. "I came walking from Bangor. I would have you know that I have money in my pocket, and can afford to walk. I am fond of the beauties of nature; now it is impossible to see much of the beauties of nature unless you walk. I am likewise fond of poetry, and take especial delight in inspecting the birth-places and haunts of poets.
My children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth. On emerging from the Old Manse, it was chiefly this strange, indolent, unjoyous attachment for my native town that brought me to fill a place in Uncle Sam's brick edifice, when I might as well, or better, have gone somewhere else. My doom was on me.
And since he is dead, and the thought cannot harm him, I may acknowledge that I firmly believe and I like to believe that he died in so romantic a way. The Puritans were psalm-singers ever; and in Holland the Brownist division of the church came under strong influences from Geneva and Wittenberg, the birth-places of psalm-singing, that made them doubly fond of "worship in song."
A man is never as well off as when he is thriving in his native soil; more especially when that soil is old England, and Devonshire. You are not one of us, young gentleman, though your name happens to be Wychecombe; but, then we are none of us accountable for our own births, or birth-places."
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