"
To begin with a mild egotism,--I do not like De Sautys.
You remember De Sauty? Perched on his steadfast stool, in a deserted
telegraph-house, hard by that bay of the broken promise, De Sauty, like
Poe's raven, "still was sitting, still was sitting," watching, in
forlorn, but hopeful loneliness, the paralyzed tongue of the Atlantic
Cable, to catch the utterances that never came for all his patient
coaxing; and ever and anon he iterated, feebly and more feebly, as if
all his sinking soul he did outpour into the words, that melancholy
monotone which was his only stock and store,--"All right! De Sauty."
I never did like ravens, and I do not like De Sautys; for if, indeed,
it were all right with the De Sautys, it would be all wrong with
certain things that are most dear to the romantic part of me; since De
Sauty is to my imagination the living type of that indiscriminate
sacrilege of trade which would penetrate the beautiful illusions of
remoteness, as through an opera-glass,--which would tie the ends of the
earth together and toss it over shoulder like a peddler's bundle, to
"swop" quaint curiosities, inspiring relics, and solemn symbols, for
British prints or American pig-iron.
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