The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out into preposterous
prolixity from beneath his tartans, took his station at the Italian's
feet. He turned a wrinkled and abominable little visage to every
passer-by, and to the circle of children that soon gathered round, and
to Hepzibah's shop-door, and upward to the arched window, whence Phoebe
and Clifford were looking down. Every moment, also, he took off his
Highland bonnet, and performed a bow and scrape. Sometimes, moreover,
he made personal application to individuals, holding out his small
black palm, and otherwise plainly signifying his excessive desire for
whatever filthy lucre might happen to be in anybody's pocket. The mean
and low, yet strangely man-like expression of his wilted countenance;
the prying and crafty glance, that showed him ready to gripe at every
miserable advantage; his enormous tail (too enormous to be decently
concealed under his gabardine), and the deviltry of nature which it
betokened,--take this monkey just as he was, in short, and you could
desire no better image of the Mammon of copper coin, symbolizing the
grossest form of the love of money. Neither was there any possibility
of satisfying the covetous little devil. Phoebe threw down a whole
handful of cents, which he picked up with joyless eagerness, handed
them over to the Italian for safekeeping, and immediately recommenced a
series of pantomimic petitions for more.
Doubtless, more than one New-Englander--or, let him be of what country
he might, it is as likely to be the case--passed by, and threw a look
at the monkey, and went on, without imagining how nearly his own moral
condition was here exemplified. Clifford, however, was a being of
another order. He had taken childish delight in the music, and smiled,
too, at the figures which it set in motion. But, after looking awhile
at the long-tailed imp, he was so shocked by his horrible ugliness,
spiritual as well as physical, that he actually began to shed tears; a
weakness which men of merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the
fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly avoid,
when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens to be presented to
them.
Pyncheon Street was sometimes enlivened by spectacles of more imposing
pretensions than the above, and which brought the multitude along with
them. With a shivering repugnance at the idea of personal contact with
the world, a powerful impulse still seized on Clifford, whenever the
rush and roar of the human tide grew strongly audible to him. This was
made evident, one day, when a political procession, with hundreds of
flaunting banners, and drums, fifes, clarions, and cymbals,
reverberating between the rows of buildings, marched all through town,
and trailed its length of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent
uproar, past the ordinarily quiet House of the Seven Gables. As a mere
object of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than
a procession seen in its passage through narrow streets. The spectator
feels it to be fool's play, when he can distinguish the tedious
commonplace of each man's visage, with the perspiration and weary
self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the
stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of
his black coat. In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from
some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through the
centre of a wide plain, or the stateliest public square of a city; for
then, by its remoteness, it melts all the petty personalities, of which
it is made up, into one broad mass of existence,--one great life,--one
collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating
it. But, on the other hand, if an impressible person, standing alone
over the brink of one of these processions, should behold it, not in
its atoms, but in its aggregate,--as a mighty river of life, massive in
its tide, and black with mystery, and, out of its depths, calling to
the kindred depth within him,--then the contiguity would add to the
effect. It might so fascinate him that he would hardly be restrained
from plunging into the surging stream of human sympathies.