Roundabout Papers - Penn State University

Roundabout Papersinn; about the bugs there; about ever so many moredetails of that day’s journey from Milan to Venice; aboutLake Garda, which lay on the way from Milan, and soforth. I say what fine things we have thought of, haven’twe, all of us? Ah, what a fine tragedy that was I thoughtof, and never wrote! On the day of the dinner of theOystermongers’ Company, what a noble speech I thoughtof in the cab, and broke down—I don’t mean the cab,but the speech. Ah, if you could but read some of theunwritten Roundabout Papers, how you would beamused! Aha! my friend, I catch you saying, “Well, then,I wish this was unwritten with all my heart.” Very good.I owe you one. I do confess a hit, a palpable hit.One day in the past month, as I was reclining on thebench of thought, with that ocean The Times newspaperspread before me, the ocean cast up on the shore atmy feet two famous subjects for Roundabout Papers,and I picked up those waifs, and treasured them awayuntil I could polish them and bring them to market.That scheme is not to be carried out. I can’t write aboutthose subjects. And though I cannot write about them,I may surely tell what are the subjects I am going not towrite about.The first was that Northumberland Street encounter,which all the papers have narrated. Have any novelistsof our days a scene and catastrophe more strange andterrible than this which occurs at noonday within a fewyards of the greatest thoroughfare in Europe? At thetheatres they have a new name for their melodramaticpieces, and call them “Sensation Dramas.” What a sensationDrama this is! What have people been flockingto see at the Adelphi Theatre for the last hundred andfifty nights? A woman pitched overboard out of a boat,and a certain Miles taking a tremendous “header,” andbringing her to shore? Bagatelle! What is this comparedto the real life-drama, of which a midday representationtakes place just opposite the Adelphi inNorthumberland Street? The brave Dumas, the intrepidAinsworth, the terrible Eugene Sue, the cold-shudderinspiring“Woman in White,” the astounding author ofthe “Mysteries of the Court of London,” never inventedanything more tremendous than this. It might have144