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Page 24
"The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion,
The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the bear,
He will deliver me."
And he smiled to think how his Carmelite companion would start, if he
knew when first he used those words.
So they parted, as men who should meet on the morrow.
But God disposes.
David had left to-morrow's dangers for to-morrow to care for. It seemed
to promise him that he must be in arms against Saul. But, unlike us in
our eagerness to anticipate our conflicts of duty, David _waited_.
And the Lord delivered him. While they were singing by the brookside,
the proud noblemen of the Philistine army had forced an interview with
their king; and, in true native Philistine arrogance, insisted that
"this Hebrew" and his men should be sent away.
With the light of morning the king sent for the minstrel, and
courteously dismissed him, because "the princes of the Philistines have
said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.'"
So David marched his men to Ziklag.
And David and Homer never met on earth again.
NOTE.--This will be a proper place to print the following note,
which I was obliged to write to a second cousin of Miss Dryasdust
after she had read the MS. of the article above:--
"DEAR MADAM:--I thank you for your kind suggestion, in returning
my paper, that it involves a piece of impossible history. You
inform me, that, according to the nomenclatured formulas and
homophonic analogies of Professor Gouraud, of
never-to-be-forgotten memory, "A NEEDLE is less useful for curing
a DEAF HEAD, than for putting ear-rings into a _Miss's
lily-ears_"; and that this shows that the second king of Judah,
named David (or Deaf-head) began to reign in 1055 B.C., and died
1040 B.C.'; and further, that, according to the same authority,
'_Homer flourished_ when the Greeks were fond of his POETRY';
which, being interpreted, signifies that he flourished in 914
B.C., and, consequently, could have had no more to do with David
than to plant ivy over his grave, in some of his voyages to
Phoenicia.
"I thank you for the suggestion. I knew the unforgetting
professor; and I do not doubt that he remembered David and Homer
as his near friends. But, of course, to such a memory, a century
or two might easily slip aside.
"Now, did you look up Clement? And did you not forget the
Arundelian Marbles? For, if you will take the long estimates, you
will find that some folks think Homer lived as long ago as the
year 1150, and some that it was as 'short ago' as 850. And some
set David as long ago as 1170, and some bring him down to a
hundred and fifty years later. These are the long measures and the
short measures. So the long and short of it is, that you can keep
the two poets 320 years apart, while I have rather more than a
century which I can select any night of, for a bivouac scene, in
which to bring them together. Believe me, my dear Miss D., always
yours, &c.
"Confess that you forgot the Arundelian Marbles!"
THE SOUTH AMERICAN EDITOR
[I am tempted to include this little burlesque in this collection simply
in memory of the Boston Miscellany, the magazine in which it was
published, which won for itself a brilliant reputation in its short
career. There was not a large staff of writers for the Miscellany, but
many of the names then unknown have since won distinction. To quote them
in the accidental order in which I find them in the table of contents,
where they are arranged by the alphabetical order of the several papers,
the Miscellany contributors were Edward Everett, George Lunt, Nathan
Hale, Jr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, N.P. Willis, W.W. Story, J.R. Lowell,
C.N. Emerson, Alexander H. Everett, Sarah P. Hale, W.A. Jones, Cornelius
Matthews, Mrs. Kirkland, J.W. Ingraham, H.T. Tuckerman, Evart A.
Duyckinck, Francis A. Durivage, Mrs. J. Webb, Charles F. Powell, Charles
W. Storey, Lucretia P. Hale, Charles F. Briggs, William E. Channing,
Charles Lanman, G.H. Hastings, and Elizabeth B. Barrett, now Mrs.
Browning, some of whose earliest poems were published in this magazine.
These are all the contributors whose names appear, excepting the writers
of a few verses. They furnished nine tenths of the contents of the
magazine. The two Everetts, Powell, William Story, and my brother, who
was the editor, were the principal contributors. And I am tempted to say
that I think they all put some of their best work upon this magazine.
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