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Read all those philosophers wrangling about a First Cause, deciding on what are miracles, and then again deciding that such miracles cannot be; and when one has answered another, and left in the crucible of wisdom a caput mortuum of ignorance, then turn your eyes, and look at the infant praying to the invisible God at his mother's knees.
To conclude the contention betwixt our three poets I will use the words of Virgil in his fifth AEneid, where AEneas proposes the rewards of the foot-race to the three first who should reach the goal: "Tres praemia primi . . . Accipient, flauaque caput nectentur oliva."
A new and smaller lake was discovered, in which the Mississippi took its rise. The explorers wished to give it an appropriate name. An old voyageur suggested that they make a name, by coining a word. "Will some of you learned ones tell me," said he, "what is the Latin word for true?" "Veritas," was the response. "Well, now, what is the Latin for head" "Caput, of course."
Caput mundi; but a kind of idiot head at that: inchoate, without co-ordination; maggots scampering through what might have been the brain; the life fled, and that great rebellion of the many lives which we call decay having taken its place. And yet, it was no true season for Rome to be dead; it was no natural death; not so much decent death at all as the death in life we call madness.
The Honorable Peckham couldn't have drawn an indictment to save his legal life. Neither could any of the rest. Neither could Caput without his book of ancient forms though he didn't let anybody know it. Shrouded in mystery on a salary of five thousand dollars a year, Caput sat in the shrine of his inner office producing literature of a clarity equaled only by that of George Meredith or Mr.
As the boy had never been known to tell a falsehood in his life, he reaped the reward of good repute, and his father, saying quietly, "That was a bad job, my boy," laid the matter aside as a caput mortuum of no value.
Here and there pieces of their quaint and uncouth shaped apparatus, the aludel, the alembic, and the alkaner, the pelican, the crucible, and the water-bath, occupy their respective stations. The clumsy, heavy, oaken table in the centre is covered with copies of scarce and valuable alchymical tracts, in company with the caput mortum and the hour-glass.
We could now hear shouts of laughter within, and a voice that I was sure belonged to Mr Smoothpate, begging to be released from the pillory he had placed himself in by removing a board in the wooden partition, and sliding it up, and then thrusting his caput from without into the interior of the house, to the no small amazement of the brown fiddler and his daughter who inhabited the same, and who had immediately secured their prize by slipping the displaced board down again, wedging it firmly on the back of his neck, as if he had been fitted for the guillotine, thus nailing him fast, unless he had bolted, and left his head in pawn.
Fool that I was; why did I not "blow up" the servants for paper, wood, and coals, and be "done for properly" instead of thus "doing for myself." Ye alchymistical spirits, said I, invoking the dark drapery, aid me to extract my gold from yonder ashes! but they were deaf to my calls, and the old caput mortum seemed to grin in mockery.
We will make all things go along with us; whence it follows that we consider our death as a very great thing, and that does not so easily pass, nor without the solemn consultation of the stars: "Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes dens," and so much the more think it as we more value ourselves.
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