Cincinnati daily press. [volume] (Cincinnati [Ohio]) 1860-1862, 1861-03-26
Behenlanl.m q ,he orsen an.
BoHEM1A, corvivIAI AND tTTrRlRy

bOhkhlA, CONVIYIAL n
He stands only for himself and the NOR.
row is, in his calendar, an intefcalated day.
Ajovial crew Is there within, Judging from
the chimes ofvoices and the ringing glasses
thatPour out upon the lamp.lighted street
when the door of the saloon opens.
Let us enter.
All, here our friends, the Bohemians, once
more; but new faces and new forms. At a
round table, with cigars and wine and cards,
they are merry. making, though the illumi-
mated clock at the corner marks the hour Of
two.
What is time TO them2
Go home, echo they, with a dash Of Bit
terness in their tone we lave no home.
Bohemia is our home, and il is bounded
only by the planets and endless space.
The cards grow wearisome, and are thrown
aside.
The glasses are refilled, and through the
clouds of smoke we behold marked but
pleasant faces, concealed below by hair, and
partially above by broad brimmed hats of
felt, giving them a sort of German student
air.
Flushed with wine, they are brilliant in
speech, and the bon. mots uttered during the
night would furnish Punch or Vanity Fair
with material for a dozen issues.
Severely intellectual is their talk.
Plato, Carnesdes, Plotinus, Fichte, Kant,
Hegel, Bacon, Hobbies, Comte, Homer, Hes.
iod, Horace, Dante, Milton, Byron, Shelley,
H%erodotus, Livy, Gibbin, Hume, Oopernicus,
Goethe, Jean Paul, Rousseau, Voltaire, Vol
ney, Paine, Brantome, Crebillon, Mirabesn,
Bulwer, T~hackeray and Emerson are among
the countless authors they seem to have read
thoroughly; and their conversation is a
stream Of learning and original reflection,
where book. makers might scoop up enough
for a small library, with a retentive auricular
bowl.
This coterie includes a dozen, perhaps,
and is very miscellaneous, of course.
A lawyer, a physician, a merchants clerk,
a poet, two or three journalists, a brace of
compositors on a morning paper, a maga-
zine-contributor, a book. keeper and a man
of fortune and elegant leisure, make up the
number.
They are very dogmatic, these people {:
they determine the exact nature of the
Eleusynian Mysteries; they declare Catul-
lus's Atys superior to the Aeneid they re-
gard as useless the superabundant scholar
ship of Scaliger; they destroy Goldoni's
claims as a writer of comedy make No
yalis one of the greatest of modern philoso-
pliers; declare Carlyle more a poet with his
prose than Milton with his verse; proclaim
Locke a shallow old venter of irrational
notions; annihilate Wordsworth with a de.
nunciation and a sneer believe Strauss
superior to st. Paul. Shelley the first of
English bards, after Shakespeare Bulwer far
greater as a novelist than Scott, and con.
sign that modern utterer of obscene gibberish,
Walt. Whitman, to eternal perdition-this
last act an instance of the taste of Cincinnati
Bohemians that those in the Northeast will
be unable to appreciate.
The ordinary persons who happen in at
earlier hours, know not what to make of our
Bohemians.
Their conversation is utterly incompre-
hensible to them.
Occasionally, the external barbarians look
wisely at each other, and whisper "very
drunk" or touch their own foreheads sig
nifcantly, point to the takers, and go out
with an air of relief.