Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE SEXTON AND THE THERMOMETER, by WILLIAM ALLEN BUTLER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE SEXTON AND THE THERMOMETER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A building there is, well known, I conjecture
Last Line: "so, if you take the joke, why, I'll take the dollar!"
Subject(s): Churches; Janitors; Jokes; Thermometers; Cathedrals


A BUILDING there is, well known, I conjecture,
To all the admirers of church architecture,
Flaunting and fine, at the bend of Broadway,
Cathedral-like, gorgeous, and Gothic, and gay,
Soaring sublimely, just as it should,
With its turrets of marble, and steeple of wood,
And windows so brilliant and polychromatic,
Through which the light wanders with colors erratic—
Now, golden and red on the cushions reposes,
Now, yellow and green on parishioners' noses;
While, within and without, the whole edifice glitters
With grandeur in patches, and splendor in fritters;
With its parsonage "fixed" in the style of the Tudors,
And, by way of example to all rash intruders,
Its solid dead wall, built up at great labor
To cut off the windows cut out by its neighbor—
An apt illustration, and always in sight,
Of the way that the Church sometimes shuts out the Light!

Now it chanced at the time of the present relation,
Not a century back from this generation,
When, just as in these days, the world was divided,
And some people this way and that way decided,
And like silly questions the public was vexed on,
One DIGGORY PINK of this church was the sexton.
None of your sextons grave, gloomy, and gruff,
Bell-ringers, pew-openers, takers of snuff,
Dusters of cushions and sweepers of aisles,
But a gentleman sexton, ready enough
For bows and good manners, sweet speeches and smiles;
A gentleman, too, of such versatility,
In his vocation of so much agility,
Blest with such wit and uncommon facility,
That his sextonship rose, by the means he invented,
To a post of importance quite unprecedented.
No mere undertaker was he, or to make
The statement more clear, for veracity's sake,
There was nothing at all he did not undertake;
Discharging at once such a complex variety
Of functions pertaining to genteel society,
As gave him with every one great notoriety;
Blending his care of the church and the cloisters
With funerals, fancy balls, suppers, and oysters,
Dinners for aldermen, parties for brides,
And a hundred and fifty arrangements besides;
Great as he was at a funeral, greater
As master of feasts, purveyor, gustator,
Little less than the host, but far more than the waiter.
Very brisk was his business, because, in advance,
Pink was sure of his patron whatever might chance.
If the turtle he served agreed with him, then
At the next entertainment he fed him again;
If it killed him, Pink grieved at the sudden reversal,
But shifting his part, with a rapid rehearsal,
With all that was richest in pall and in plumes,
Conveyed him, in state, to the grandest of tombs.
Thus whatever befell him, gout, fever, or cough,
It was Pink, in reality, carried him off;
The magical Pink, as well skilled in adorning
The houses of feasting as houses of mourning,
For 'twas all the same thing, on his catholic plan,
If he laid out the money, or laid out the man.
But most with the ladies his power was supreme,
Of disputing his edicts nobody would dream,
For 'twas generally known that Pink kept the key
Of the very selectest society;
Parvenus bribed him to get on his list;
Woe to the man whom his fiat dismissed!
The best thing he could do was to cease to exist,
And retire from a world where he wouldn't be missed.

Thus, plying all trades, but still keeping their balance
By his quick, ready wit and pre-eminent talents,
His life might present, in its manifold texture,
An emblem quite apt of the church architecture,
Which unites, in its grouping of sculpture and column,
A great deal that's comic with much that is solemn!
One Sunday, Friend Pink, who all night had been kept
At a ball in the Avenue, quite overslept,
And though to the church instanter he rushed,
His breakfast untasted, his beaver unbrushed,
He reached it so late that he barely had time
To kindle the fires, when a neighboring chime
(For 'tis thus that all church-bells must figure in rhyme)
Proclaimed that the hour for the service was near;
And, as ill-luck would have it, though sunny and clear,
'Twas the coldest of all the cold days in the year.

Poor Pink, if some artist, with pencil or pen,
Had been on the spot to sketch him just then,
As bewilderment drove him first here and then there,
From chancel and transept to gallery stair,
Now down in the vaults, and now out in the air,
Might have stood as a model of Utter Despair,
Whose crowning expression his countenance wore
As he paused, for a moment, within the grand door,
And glanced at a gentleman, portly and neat,
Advancing quite leisurely up from Tenth Street.
"Mr. Foldrum is coming; oh! what shall I do?
He's got a Thermometer hung in his pew!
As sure as it's there, and the mercury in it,
He'll find what the temperature is in a minute;
And being a vestryman, isn't it clear
That minute will cost me a thousand a year?"

But luck, luck, wonderful luck!
Which never deserts men of genuine pluck,
No matter how deep in the mire they are stuck,
In this very crisis of trouble and pain,
With a brilliant idea illumined his brain;
Down the aisle, like a cannon-ball, Diggory flew,
Snatched the thermometer out of the pew,
And then plunged it, bodily, into the fire
Of the nearest furnace, just by the choir;
Soon to 100 the mercury rose,
And Pink, stealing quietly back on tiptoes,
Hung it up stealthily, on the brass nail,
Just as Foldrum was entering, under full sail.

The church was as chilly and cold and cavernous
As the regions of ice round the shores of Avernus;
Like icebergs, pilasters and columns were gleaming,
While pendants and mouldings seemed icicles streaming.
Foldrum shivered all over, and really looked blue,
As he opened the door and went into his pew,
Then clapping his spectacles firmly his nose on,
Took down the thermometer, surely supposing
The glass would be cracked and the mercury frozen.
No such thing at all; but, surprising to view,
The mercury stood at 72!

It had never deceived him, that great regulator,
Not once to the atmosphere proved itself traitor;
Had it fallen to zero on the equator,
He had shivered all over and doubted it not;
Or if, upon Greenland's iciest shore,
It had happened to rise to 80, or more,
Had thrown off his bearskin and sworn it was hot.
"Place me," might he cry, with the poet of old,
"In the hottest of heat or the coldest of cold,
On Lybian sands, or Siberian barren height,
You never shall shake my faith in my Fahrenheit!"

'Twas charming to see, then (Pink watched him with care),
What a wonderful change came over his air—
How he rubbed both his hands, and a genial glow
Came flooding his cheeks like a sunbeam on snow;
How quickly he doffed both his scarf and his coat,
Unbuttoned his waistcoat down from the throat,
And stifling a sort of shiver spasmodic,
With assumptions of warmth, very clear and methodic,
And with all sorts of genial and satisfied motions,
With fervor engaged in his usual devotions.
Just then enter Doldrum,
Who sits behind Foldrum,
And gauges himself, from beginning to end
Of the year, by his old thermometrical friend,
Well knowing that he takes his practical cue
From the mercury, hanging up there in his pew,
And can't make the mistakes that some people do.
So off goes his pilot-cloth, spite of the cold or
A twinge of rheumatics in his left shoulder;
'Twas freezing, 'twas dreadful, it must be confessed,
But there sat Squire Foldrum, who surely knew best,
With his overcoat off and an unbuttoned vest!
What's mercury made for, except by its ranges
To declare, without fail, atmospherical changes?

At the door the friends met. "Cold in church, was it not?"
Says Doldrum. "Oh no! on the contrary, hot;
Thermometer 70; with these high ceilings
You must go by the mercury—can't trust your feelings.
Take a glass, after dinner, of Old Bourbon whiskey,
Nothing like it to keep the blood active and frisky,
If you're cold, but the air was quite spring-like and mellow;
Why, Doldrum, you're growing old fast, my dear fellow!"
But on Tuesday the joke was all over the town;
Pink enjoyed it so much that he noted it down,
And, thinking it shouldn't be laid on the shelf,
At the risk of his place, he told it himself
To one of the vestry, to use at discretion;
And in very short time 'twas in public possession.
Foldrum heard of it, too; saw how it was done,
And felt that he owed the sexton one.
Next Sunday he paid him. "Pink," said he,
"I owe you a dollar; here, take your fee."
"A dollar, sir? no, sir; what for, if you please?"
"For raising the mercury forty degrees!
Extra service like this deserves extra pay,
Especially done, as this was, on Sunday.
So pocket the cash, without further remark;
But, Pink, for the future, just mind and keep dark."
"Thank you, sir," said the sexton; "I'm not a dull scholar,
So, if you take the joke, why, I'll take the dollar!"





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