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diff --git a/7141-0.txt b/7141-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e80a6e --- /dev/null +++ b/7141-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6344 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Suburban Sketches, by William Dean Howells + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Suburban Sketches + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: December, 2004 [EBook #7141] +This file was first posted on March 15, 2003 +Last Updated: February 25, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUBURBAN SKETCHES *** + + + + +Produced by Olaf Voss, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, David Widger, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + + + + + + +SUBURBAN SKETCHES + +By William Dean Howells + + +Author Of “Venetian Life,” “Italian Journeys” Etc. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +MRS. JOHNSON + +DOORSTEP ACQUAINTANCE + +A PEDESTRIAN TOUR + +BY HORSE-CAR TO BOSTON + +A DAY'S PLEASURE + +A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE + +SCENE + +JUBILEE DAYS + +SOME LESSONS FROM THE SCHOOL OF MORALS + +FLITTING + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (not available) + + +SHE LIGHTED A POTENT PIPE + +“BUT I SUPPOSE THIS WINE IS NOT MADE OF GRAPES, SIGNOR?” + +LOOKING ABOUT, I SAW TWO WOMEN + +THE YOUNG LADY IN BLACK, WHO ALIGHTED AT A MOST ORDINARY LITTLE STREET + +THAT SWEET YOUNG BLONDE, WHO ARRIVES BY MOST TRAINS + +FRANK AND LUCY STALKED AHEAD, WITH SHAWLS DRAGGING FROM THEIR ARMS + +THEY SKIRMISH ABOUT HIM WITH EVERY SORT OF QUERY. + +A GAUNT FIGURE OF FORLORN AND CURIOUS SMARTNESS. + +THE SPECTACLE AS WE BEHELD IT + +VACANT AND CEREMONIOUS ZEAL + + + + +MRS. JOHNSON + + +It was on a morning of the lovely New England May that we left the +horse-car, and, spreading our umbrellas, walked down the street to our +new home in Charlesbridge, through a storm of snow and rain so finely +blent by the influences of this fortunate climate, that no flake knew +itself from its sister drop, or could be better identified by the people +against whom they beat in unison. A vernal gale from the east fanned our +cheeks and pierced our marrow and chilled our blood, while the raw, cold +green of the adventurous grass on the borders of the sopping sidewalks +gave, as it peered through its veil of melting snow and freezing rain, +a peculiar cheerfulness to the landscape. Here and there in the vacant +lots abandoned hoop-skirts defied decay; and near the half-finished +wooden houses, empty mortar-beds, and bits of lath and slate strewn over +the scarred and mutilated ground, added their interest to the scene. A +shaggy drift hung upon the trees before our own house (which had been +built some years earlier), while its swollen eaves wept silently and +incessantly upon the embankments lifting its base several feet above the +common level. + +This heavenly weather, which the Pilgrim Fathers, with the idea of +turning their thoughts effectually from earthly pleasures, came so far +to discover, continued with slight amelioration throughout the month of +May and far into June; and it was a matter of constant amazement with +one who had known less austere climates, to behold how vegetable life +struggled with the hostile skies, and, in an atmosphere as chill and +damp as that of a cellar, shot forth the buds and blossoms upon the +pear-trees, called out the sour Puritan courage of the currant-bushes, +taught a reckless native grape-vine to wander and wanton over the +southern side of the fence, and decked the banks with violets as +fearless and as fragile as New England girls; so that about the end of +June, when the heavens relented and the sun blazed out at last, there +was little for him to do but to redden and darken the daring fruits that +had attained almost their full growth without his countenance. + +Then, indeed, Charlesbridge appeared to us a kind of Paradise. The wind +blew all day from the southwest, and all day in the grove across the way +the orioles sang to their nestlings. The butcher's wagon rattled merrily +up to our gate every morning; and if we had kept no other reckoning, we +should have known it was Thursday by the grocer. We were living in the +country with the conveniences and luxuries of the city about us. The +house was almost new and in perfect repair; and, better than all, the +kitchen had as yet given no signs of unrest in those volcanic agencies +which are constantly at work there, and which, with sudden explosion, +make Herculaneums and Pompeiis of so many smiling households. Breakfast, +dinner, and tea came up with illusive regularity, and were all the most +perfect of their kind; and we laughed and feasted in our vain security. +We had out from the city to banquet with us the friends we loved, and +we were inexpressibly proud before them of the Help, who first wrought +miracles of cookery in our honor, and then appeared in a clean white +apron, and the glossiest black hair, to wait upon the table. She was +young, and certainly very pretty; she was as gay as a lark, and was +courted by a young man whose clothes would have been a credit, if they +had not been a reproach, to our lowly basement. She joyfully assented to +the idea of staying with us till she married. + +In fact, there was much that was extremely pleasant about the little +place when the warm weather came, and it was not wonderful to us that +Jenny was willing to remain. It was very quiet; we called one another +to the window if a large dog went by our door; and whole days passed +without the movement of any wheels but the butcher's upon our street, +which flourished in ragweed and butter-cups and daisies, and in +the autumn burned, like the borders of nearly all the streets in +Charlesbridge, with the pallid azure flame of the succory. The +neighborhood was in all things a frontier between city and country. +The horse-cars, the type of such civilization--full of imposture, +discomfort, and sublime possibility--as we yet possess, went by the +head of our street, and might, perhaps, be available to one skilled in +calculating the movements of comets; while two minutes' walk would take +us into a wood so wild and thick that no roof was visible through the +trees. We learned, like innocent pastoral people of the golden age, to +know the several voices of the cows pastured in the vacant lots, and, +like engine-drivers of the iron age, to distinguish the different +whistles of the locomotives passing on the neighboring railroad. The +trains shook the house as they thundered along, and at night were a kind +of company, while by day we had the society of the innumerable birds. +Now and then, also, the little ragged boys in charge of the cows--which, +tied by long ropes to trees, forever wound themselves tight up against +the trunks, and had to be unwound with great ado of hooting and +hammering--came and peered lustfully through the gate at our ripening +pears. All round us carpenters were at work building new houses; but so +far from troubling us, the strokes of their hammers fell softly upon the +sense, like one's heart-beats upon one's own consciousness in the lapse +from all fear of pain under the blessed charm of an anaesthetic. + +We played a little at gardening, of course, and planted tomatoes, +which the chickens seemed to like, for they ate them up as fast as +they ripened; and we watched with pride the growth of our Lawton +blackberries, which, after attaining the most stalwart proportions, were +still as bitter as the scrubbiest of their savage brethren, and which, +when by advice left on the vines for a week after they turned black, +were silently gorged by secret and gluttonous flocks of robins and +orioles. As for our grapes, the frost cut them off in the hour of their +triumph. + +So, as I have hinted, we were not surprised that Jenny should be willing +to remain with us, and were as little prepared for her desertion as for +any other change of our moral state. But one day in September she +came to her nominal mistress with tears in her beautiful eyes and +protestations of unexampled devotion upon her tongue, and said that she +was afraid she must leave us. She liked the place, and she never had +worked for any one that was more of a lady, but she had made up her +mind to go into the city. All this, so far, was quite in the manner +of domestics who, in ghost stories, give warning to the occupants of +haunted houses; and Jenny's mistress listened in suspense for the motive +of her desertion, expecting to hear no less than that it was something +which walked up and down the stairs and dragged iron links after it, +or something that came and groaned at the front door, like populace +dissatisfied with a political candidate. But it was in fact nothing of +this kind; simply, there were no lamps upon our street, and Jenny, after +spending Sunday evening with friends in East Charlesbridge, was always +alarmed, on her return, in walking from the horse-car to our door. The +case was hopeless, and Jenny and our household parted with respect and +regret. + +We had not before this thought it a grave disadvantage that our street +was unlighted. Our street was not drained nor graded; no municipal cart +ever came to carry away our ashes; there was not a water-butt within +half a mile to save us from fire, nor more than the one thousandth part +of a policeman to protect us from theft. Yet, as I paid a heavy tax, I +somehow felt that we enjoyed the benefits of city government, and never +looked upon Charlesbridge as in any way undesirable for residence. +But when it became necessary to find help in Jenny's place, the frosty +welcome given to application at the intelligence offices renewed a +painful doubt awakened by her departure. To be sure, the heads of the +offices were polite enough; but when the young housekeeper had stated +her case at the first to which she applied, and the Intelligencer had +called out to the invisible expectants in the adjoining room, “Anny +wan wants to do giner'l housewark in Charlsbrudge?” there came from the +maids invoked so loud, so fierce, so full a “No!” as shook the lady's +heart with an indescribable shame and dread. The name that, with an +innocent pride in its literary and historical associations, she had +written at the heads of her letters, was suddenly become a matter of +reproach to her; and she was almost tempted to conceal thereafter that +she lived in Charlesbridge, and to pretend that she dwelt upon some +wretched little street in Boston. “You see,” said the head of the +office, “the gairls doesn't like to live so far away from the city. Now +if it was on'y in the Port....” + +This pen is not graphic enough to give the remote reader an idea of the +affront offered to an inhabitant of Old Charlesbridge in these closing +words. Neither am I of sufficiently tragic mood to report here all the +sufferings undergone by an unhappy family in finding servants, or to +tell how the winter was passed with miserable makeshifts. Alas! is it +not the history of a thousand experiences? Any one who looks upon this +page could match it with a tale as full of heartbreak and disaster, +while I conceive that, in hastening to speak of Mrs. Johnson, I approach +a subject of unique interest. + +The winter that ensued after Jenny's departure was the true sister of +the bitter and shrewish spring of the same year. But indeed it is always +with a secret shiver that one must think of winter in our regrettable +climate. It is a terrible potency, robbing us of half our lives, and +threatening or desolating the moiety left us with rheumatisms and +catarrhs. There is a much vaster sum of enjoyment possible to man in the +more generous latitudes; and I have sometimes doubted whether even the +energy characteristic of ours is altogether to be praised, seeing that +it has its spring not so much in pure aspiration as in the instinct of +self-preservation. Egyptian, Greek, Roman energy was an inner impulse; +but ours is too often the sting of cold, the spur of famine. We +must endure our winter, but let us not be guilty of the hypocrisy +of pretending that we like it. Let us caress it with no more vain +compliments, but use it with something of its own rude and savage +sincerity. + +I say, our last Irish girl went with the last snow, and on one of those +midsummer-like days that sometimes fall in early April to our yet bleak +and desolate zone, our hearts sang of Africa and golden joys. A Libyan +longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand +of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for +some sable maid with crisped locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive +train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework +forever, through the right of lawful purchase. But we knew that this was +impossible, and that, if we desired colored help, we must seek it at the +intelligence office, which is in one of those streets chiefly inhabited +by the orphaned children and grandchildren of slavery. To tell the truth +these orphans do not seem to grieve much for their bereavement, but lead +a life of joyous and rather indolent oblivion in their quarter of the +city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and down the street by +which the Charlesbridge cars arrive,--the young with a harmless swagger, +and the old with the generic limp which our Autocrat has already noted +as attending advanced years in their race. They seem the natural +human interest of a street so largely devoted to old clothes; and the +thoughtful may see a felicity in their presence where the pawnbrokers' +windows display the forfeited pledges of improvidence, and subtly remind +us that we have yet to redeem a whole race, pawned in our needy and +reckless national youth, and still held against us by the Uncle of +Injustice, who is also the Father of Lies. How gayly are the young +ladies of this race attired, as they trip up and down the side walks, +and in and out through the pendent garments at the shop doors! They +are the black pansies and marigolds and dark-blooded dahlias among +womankind. They try to assume something of our colder race's demeanor, +but even the passer on the horse-car can see that it is not native with +them, and is better pleased when they forget us, and ungenteelly laugh +in encountering friends, letting their white teeth glitter through the +generous lips that open to their ears. In the streets branching upwards +from this avenue, very little colored men and maids play with broken or +enfeebled toys, or sport on the wooden pavements of the entrances to the +inner courts. Now and then a colored soldier or sailor--looking strange +in his uniform, even after the custom of several years--emerges from +those passages; or, more rarely, a black gentleman, stricken in years, +and cased in shining broadcloth, walks solidly down the brick sidewalk, +cane in hand,--a vision of serene self-complacency, and so plainly the +expression of virtuous public sentiment that the great colored louts, +innocent enough till then in their idleness, are taken with a sudden +sense of depravity, and loaf guiltily up against the house-walls. At +the same moment, perhaps, a young damsel, amorously scuffling with an +admirer through one of the low open windows, suspends the strife, +and bids him, “Go along now, do!” More rarely yet than the gentleman +described, one may see a white girl among the dark neighbors, whose +frowzy head is uncovered, and whose sleeves are rolled up to her elbows, +and who, though no doubt quite at home, looks as strange there as that +pale anomaly which may sometimes be seen among a crew of blackbirds. + +An air not so much of decay as of unthrift, and yet hardly of unthrift, +seems to prevail in the neighborhood, which has none of the aggressive +and impudent squalor of an Irish quarter, and none of the surly +wickedness of a low American street. A gayety not born of the things +that bring its serious joy to the true New England heart--a ragged +gayety, which comes of summer in the blood, and not in the pocket or the +conscience, and which affects the countenance and the whole demeanor, +setting the feet to some inward music, and at times bursting into a +line of song or a child-like and irresponsible laugh--gives tone to +the visible life, and wakens a very friendly spirit in the passer, who +somehow thinks there of a milder climate, and is half persuaded that +the orange-peel on the sidewalks came from fruit grown in the soft +atmosphere of those back courts. + +It was in this quarter, then, that we heard of Mrs. Johnson; and it was +from a colored boarding-house there that she came out to Charlesbridge +to look at us, bringing her daughter of twelve years with her. She was +a matron of mature age and portly figure, with a complexion like coffee +soothed with the richest cream; and her manners were so full of a +certain tranquillity and grace, that she charmed away all out will to +ask for references. It was only her barbaric laughter and her lawless +eye that betrayed how slightly her New England birth and breeding +covered her ancestral traits, and bridged the gulf of a thousand years +of civilization that lay between her race and ours. But in fact, she was +doubly estranged by descent; for, as we learned later, a sylvan wildness +mixed with that of the desert in her veins: her grandfather was an +Indian, and her ancestors on this side had probably sold their lands for +the same value in trinkets that bought the original African pair on the +other side. + +The first day that Mrs. Johnson descended into our kitchen, she conjured +from the malicious disorder in which it had been left by the flitting +Irish kobold a dinner that revealed the inspirations of genius, and +was quite different from a dinner of mere routine and laborious talent. +Something original and authentic mingled with the accustomed flavors; +and, though vague reminiscences of canal-boat travel and woodland +camps arose from the relish of certain of the dishes, there was yet the +assurance of such power in the preparation of the whole, that we +knew her to be merely running over the chords of our appetite with +preliminary savors, as a musician acquaints his touch with the keys +of an unfamiliar piano before breaking into brilliant and triumphant +execution. Within a week she had mastered her instrument; and thereafter +there was no faltering in her performances, which she varied constantly, +through inspiration or from suggestion. She was so quick to receive new +ideas in her art, that, when the Roman statuary who stayed a few weeks +with us explained the mystery of various purely Latin dishes, she caught +their principle at once; and visions of the great white cathedral, +the Coliseum, and the “dome of Brunelleschi” floated before us in the +exhalations of the Milanese _risotto_, Roman _stufadino_, and Florentine +_stracotto_ that smoked upon our board. But, after all, it was in +puddings that Mrs. Johnson chiefly excelled. She was one of those +cooks--rare as men of genius in literature--who love their own dishes; +and she had, in her personally child-like simplicity of taste, and the +inherited appetites of her savage forefathers, a dominant passion +for sweets. So far as we could learn, she subsisted principally upon +puddings and tea. Through the same primitive instincts, no doubt, she +loved praise. She openly exulted in our artless flatteries of her skill; +she waited jealously at the head of the kitchen stairs to hear what was +said of her work, especially if there were guests; and she was never too +weary to attempt emprises of cookery. + +While engaged in these, she wore a species of sightly handkerchief like +a turban upon her head and about her person those mystical swathings in +which old ladies of the African race delight. But she most pleasured our +sense of beauty and moral fitness when, after the last pan was washed +and the last pot was scraped, she lighted a potent pipe, and, taking her +stand at the kitchen door, laded the soft evening air with its pungent +odors. If we surprised her at these supreme moments, she took the pipe +from her lips, and put it behind her, with a low mellow chuckle, and +a look of half-defiant consciousness; never guessing that none of her +merits took us half so much as the cheerful vice which she only feigned +to conceal. + +Some things she could not do so perfectly as cooking, because of her +failing eyesight; and we persuaded her that spectacles would both +become and befriend a lady of her years, and so bought her a pair of +steel-bowed glasses. She wore them in some great emergencies at first, +but had clearly no pride in them. Before long she laid them aside +altogether, and they had passed from our thoughts, when one day we heard +her mellow note of laughter and her daughter's harsher cackle outside +our door, and, opening it, beheld Mrs. Johnson in gold-bowed spectacles +of massive frame. We then learned that their purchase was in fulfillment +of a vow made long ago, in the life-time of Mr. Johnson, that, if ever +she wore glasses, they should be gold-bowed; and I hope the manes of the +dead were half as happy in these votive spectacles as the simple soul +that offered them. + +She and her late partner were the parents of eleven children, some of +whom were dead, and some of whom were wanderers in unknown parts. During +his life-time she had kept a little shop in her native town; and it was +only within a few years that she had gone into service. She cherished a +natural haughtiness of spirit, and resented control, although disposed +to do all she could of her own motion. Being told to say when she wanted +an afternoon, she explained that when she wanted an afternoon she always +took it without asking, but always planned so as not to discommode the +ladies with whom she lived. These, she said, had numbered twenty-seven +within three years, which made us doubt the success of her system in all +cases, though she merely held out the fact as an assurance of her faith +in the future, and a proof of the ease with which places were to be +found. She contended, moreover, that a lady who had for thirty years +had a house of her own, was in nowise bound to ask permission to receive +visits from friends where she might be living, but that they ought +freely to come and go like other guests. In this spirit she once invited +her son-in-law, Professor Jones of Providence, to dine with her; and +her defied mistress, on entering the dining-room, found the Professor +at pudding and tea there,--an impressively respectable figure in black +clothes, with a black face rendered yet more effective by a pair of +green goggles. It appeared that this dark professor was a light of +phrenology in Rhode Island, and that he was believed to have uncommon +virtue in his science by reason of being blind as well as black. + +I am loath to confess that Mrs. Johnson had not a flattering opinion +of the Caucasian race in all respects. In fact, she had very good +philosophical and Scriptural reasons for looking upon us as an upstart +people of new blood, who had come into their whiteness by no creditable +or pleasant process. The late Mr. Johnson, who had died in the West +Indies, whither he voyaged for his health in quality of cook upon a +Down-East schooner, was a man of letters, and had written a book to +show the superiority of the black over the white branches of the +human family. In this he held that, as all islands have been at their +discovery found peopled by blacks, we must needs believe that humanity +was first created of that color. Mrs. Johnson could not show us her +husband's work (a sole copy in the library of an English gentleman at +Port au Prince is not to be bought for money), but she often developed +its arguments to the lady of the house; and one day, with a great show +of reluctance, and many protests that no personal slight was meant, let +fall the fact that Mr. Johnson believed the white race descended from +Gehazi the leper, upon whom the leprosy of Naaman fell when the latter +returned by Divine favor to his original blackness. “And he went out +from his presence a leper as white as snow,” said Mrs. Johnson, +quoting irrefutable Scripture. “Leprosy, leprosy,” she added +thoughtfully,--“nothing but leprosy bleached you out.” + +It seems to me much in her praise that she did not exult in our taint +and degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite +idea that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness +and slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable +approach to whiteness in many of her own offspring. In a kindred spirit +of charity, no doubt, she refused ever to attend church with people of +her elder and wholesomer blood. When she went to church, she said, she +always went to a white church, though while with us I am bound to say +she never went to any. She professed to read her Bible in her bedroom on +Sundays; but we suspected, from certain sounds and odors which used +to steal out of this sanctuary, that her piety more commonly found +expression in dozing and smoking. + +I would not make a wanton jest here of Mrs. Johnson's anxiety to claim +honor for the African color, while denying this color in many of her +own family. It afforded a glimpse of the pain which all her people must +endure, however proudly they hide it or light-heartedly forget it, from +the despite and contumely to which they are guiltlessly born; and when I +thought how irreparable was this disgrace and calamity of a black skin, +and how irreparable it must be for ages yet, in this world where every +other shame and all manner of wilful guilt and wickedness may hope +for covert and pardon, I had little heart to laugh. Indeed, it was so +pathetic to hear this poor old soul talk of her dead and lost ones, +and try, in spite of all Mr. Johnson's theories and her own arrogant +generalizations, to establish their whiteness, that we must have been +very cruel and silly people to turn her sacred fables even into matter +of question. I have no doubt that her Antoinette Anastasia and her +Thomas Jefferson Wilberforce--it is impossible to give a full idea +of the splendor and scope of the baptismal names in Mrs. Johnson's +family--have as light skins and as golden hair in heaven as her reverend +maternal fancy painted for them in our world. There, certainly, +they would not be subject to tanning, which had ruined the delicate +complexion, and had knotted into black woolly tangles the once wavy +blonde locks of our little maid-servant Naomi; and I would fain believe +that Toussaint Washington Johnson, who ran away to sea so many years +ago, has found some fortunate zone where his hair and skin keep the same +sunny and rosy tints they wore to his mother's eyes in infancy. But I +have no means of knowing this, or of telling whether he was the prodigy +of intellect that he was declared to be. Naomi could no more be taken in +proof, of the one assertion than of the other. When she came to us, it +was agreed that she should go to school; but she overruled her mother +in this as in everything else, and never went. Except Sunday-school +lessons, she had no other instruction than that her mistress gave her in +the evenings, when a heavy day's play and the natural influences of the +hour conspired with original causes to render her powerless before words +of one syllable. + +The first week of her service she was obedient and faithful to her +duties; but, relaxing in the atmosphere of a house which seems to +demoralize all menials, she shortly fell into disorderly ways of lying +in wait for callers out of doors, and, when people rang, of running up +the front steps, and letting them in from the outside. As the season +expanded, and the fine weather became confirmed, she modified even this +form of service, and spent her time in the fields, appearing at +the house only when nature importunately craved molasses. She had a +parrot-like quickness, so far as music was concerned, and learned from +the Roman statuary to make the groves and half-finished houses resound, + + “Camicia rossa, + Ove t' ascondi? + T' appella Italia,-- + Tu non respondi!” + +She taught the Garibaldi song, moreover, to all the neighboring +children, so that I sometimes wondered if our street were not about to +march upon Rome in a body. + +In her untamable disobedience, Naomi alone betrayed her sylvan blood, +for she was in all other respects negro and not Indian. But it was of +her aboriginal ancestry that Mrs. Johnson chiefly boasted,--when not +engaged in argument to maintain the superiority of the African race. +She loved to descant upon it as the cause and explanation of her own +arrogant habit of feeling; and she seemed indeed to have inherited +something of the Indian's hauteur along with the Ethiop's supple cunning +and abundant amiability. She gave many instances in which her pride had +met and overcome the insolence of employers, and the kindly old creature +was by no means singular in her pride of being reputed proud. + +She could never have been a woman of strong logical faculties, but she +had in some things a very surprising and awful astuteness. She seldom +introduced any purpose directly, but bore all about it and then suddenly +sprung it upon her unprepared antagonist. At other times she obscurely +hinted a reason, and left a conclusion to be inferred; as when she +warded off reproach for some delinquency by saying in a general way that +she had lived with ladies who used to come scolding into the kitchen +after they had taken their bitters. “Quality ladies took their bitters +regular,” she added, to remove any sting of personality from her remark; +for, from many things she had let fall, we knew that she did not regard +us as quality. On the contrary, she often tried to overbear us with the +gentility of her former places; and would tell the lady over whom +she reigned, that she had lived with folks worth their three and +four hundred thousand dollars, who never complained as she did of the +ironing. Yet she had a sufficient regard for the literary occupations +of the family, Mr. Johnson having been an author. She even professed +to have herself written a book, which was still in manuscript, and +preserved somewhere among her best clothes. + +It was well, on many accounts, to be in contact with a mind so original +and suggestive as Mrs. Johnson's. We loved to trace its intricate yet +often transparent operations, and were perhaps too fond of explaining +its peculiarities by facts of ancestry,--of finding hints of the Powwow +or the Grand Custom in each grotesque development. We were conscious +of something warmer in this old soul than in ourselves, and something +wilder, and we chose to think it the tropic and the untracked forest. +She had scarcely any being apart from her affection; she had no +morality, but was good because she neither hated nor envied; and she +might have been a saint far more easily than far more civilized people. + +There was that also in her sinuous yet malleable nature, so full of +guile and so full of goodness, that reminded us pleasantly of lowly folk +in elder lands, where relaxing oppressions have lifted the restraints of +fear between master and servant, without disturbing the familiarity of +their relation. She advised freely with us upon all household matters, +and took a motherly interest in whatever concerned us. She could be +flattered or caressed into almost any service, but no threat or command +could move her. When she erred, she never acknowledged her wrong in +words, but handsomely expressed her regrets in a pudding, or sent up her +apologies in a favorite dish secretly prepared. We grew so well used to +this form of exculpation, that, whenever Mrs. Johnson took an afternoon +at an inconvenient season, we knew that for a week afterwards we should +be feasted like princes. She owned frankly that she loved us, that she +never had done half so much for people before, and that she never had +been nearly so well suited in any other place; and for a brief and happy +time we thought that we never should part. + +One day, however, our dividing destiny appeared in the basement, and was +presented to us as Hippolyto Thucydides, the son of Mrs. Johnson, +who had just arrived on a visit to his mother from the State of New +Hampshire. He was a heavy and loutish youth, standing upon the borders +of boyhood, and looking forward to the future with a vacant and listless +eye. I mean that this was his figurative attitude; his actual manner, as +he lolled upon a chair beside the kitchen window, was so eccentric, that +we felt a little uncertain how to regard him, and Mrs. Johnson openly +described him as peculiar. He was so deeply tanned by the fervid suns +of the New Hampshire winter, and his hair had so far suffered from +the example of the sheep lately under his charge, that he could not be +classed by any stretch of compassion with the blonde and straight-haired +members of Mrs. Johnson's family. + +He remained with us all the first day until late in the afternoon, when +his mother took him out to get him a boarding-house. Then he departed +in the van of her and Naomi, pausing at the gate to collect his spirits, +and, after he had sufficiently animated himself by clapping his palms +together, starting off down the street at a hand-gallop, to the manifest +terror of the cows in the pastures, and the confusion of the less +demonstrative people of our household. Other characteristic traits +appeared in Hippolyto Thucydides within no very long period of time, and +he ran away from his lodgings so often during the summer that he might +be said to board round among the outlying corn-fields and turnip-patches +of Charlesbridge. As a check upon this habit, Mrs. Johnson seemed to +have invited him to spend his whole time in our basement; for whenever +we went below we found him there, balanced--perhaps in homage to us, +and perhaps as a token of extreme sensibility in himself--upon the low +window-sill, the bottoms of his boots touching the floor inside, and his +face buried in the grass without. + +We could formulate no very tenable objection to all this, and yet +the presence of Thucydides in our kitchen unaccountably oppressed our +imaginations. We beheld him all over the house, a monstrous eidolon, +balanced upon every window-sill; and he certainly attracted unpleasant +notice to our place, no less by his furtive and hang-dog manner +of arrival than by the bold displays with which he celebrated his +departures. We hinted this to Mrs. Johnson, but she could not enter into +our feeling. Indeed, all the wild poetry of her maternal and primitive +nature seemed to cast itself about this hapless boy; and if we had +listened to her we should have believed there was no one so agreeable in +society, or so quick-witted in affairs, as Hippolyto, when he chose. She +used to rehearse us long epics concerning his industry, his courage, and +his talent; and she put fine speeches in his mouth with no more regard +to the truth than if she had been a historian, and not a poet. Perhaps +she believed that he really said and did the things she attributed to +him: it is the destiny of those who repeatedly tell great things either +of themselves or others; and I think we may readily forgive the illusion +to her zeal and fondness. In fact, she was not a wise woman, and she +spoiled her children as if she had been a rich one. + +At last, when we said positively that Thucydides should come to us no +more, and then qualified the prohibition by allowing him to come every +Sunday, she answered that she never would hurt the child's feelings by +telling him not to come where his mother was; that people who did not +love her children did not love her; and that, if Hippy went, she went. +We thought it a master-stroke of firmness to rejoin that Hippolyto must +go in any event; but I am bound to own that he did not go, and that his +mother stayed, and so fed us with every cunning propitiatory dainty, +that we must have been Pagans to renew our threat. In fact, we begged +Mrs. Johnson to go into the country with us, and she, after long +reluctation on Hippy's account, consented, agreeing to send him away to +friends during her absence. + +We made every preparation, and on the eve of our departure Mrs. Johnson +went into the city to engage her son's passage to Bangor, while we +awaited her return in untroubled security. + +But she did not appear till midnight, and then responded with but a sad +“Well, sah!” to the cheerful “Well, Mrs. Johnson!” that greeted her. + +“All right, Mrs. Johnson?” + +Mrs. Johnson made a strange noise, half chuckle and half death-rattle, +in her throat. “All wrong, sah. Hippy's off again; and I've been all +over the city after him.” + +“Then you can't go with us in the morning?” + +“How _can_ I, sah?” + +Mrs. Johnson went sadly out of the room. Then she came back to the door +again, and, opening it, uttered, for the first time in our service, +words of apology and regret: “I hope I ha'n't put you out any. I +_wanted_ to go with you, but I ought to _knowed_ I couldn't. All is, I +loved you too much.” + + + + +DOORSTEP ACQUAINTANCE + + +Vagabonds the world would no doubt call many of my doorstep +acquaintance, and I do not attempt to defend them altogether against +the world, which paints but black and white and in general terms. Yet I +would fain veil what is only half-truth under another name, for I know +that the service of their Gay Science is not one of such disgraceful +ease as we associate with ideas of vagrancy, though I must own that they +lead the life they do because they love it. They always protest that +nothing but their ignorance of our tongue prevents them from practicing +some mechanical trade. “What work could be harder,” they ask, “than +carrying this organ about all day?” but while I answer with honesty that +nothing can be more irksome, I feel that they only pretend a disgust +with it, and that they really like organ-grinding, if for no other +reason than that they are the children of the summer, and it takes them +into the beloved open weather. One of my friends, at least, who in the +warmer months is to all appearance a blithesome troubadour, living + + “A merry life in sun and shade,” + +as a coal-heaver in winter; and though this more honorable and useful +occupation is doubtless open to him the whole year round, yet he does +not devote himself to it, but prefers with the expanding spring to lay +aside his grimy basket, and, shouldering his organ, to quit the dismal +wharves and carts and cellars, and to wander forth into the suburbs, +with his lazy, soft-eyed boy at his heels, who does nothing with his +tambourine but take up a collection, and who, meeting me the other day +in a chance passage of Ferry Street, knew me, and gave me so much of his +father's personal history. + +It was winter even there in Ferry Street, in which so many Italians live +that one might think to find it under a softer sky and in a gentler air, +and which I had always figured in a wide unlikeness to all other streets +in Boston,--with houses stuccoed outside, and with gratings at their +ground-floor windows; with mouldering archways between the buildings, +and at the corners feeble lamps glimmering before pictures of the +Madonna; with weather-beaten shutters flapping overhead, and many +balconies from which hung the linen swathings of young infants, and +love-making maidens furtively lured the velvet-jacketed, leisurely youth +below: a place haunted by windy voices of blessing and cursing, with the +perpetual clack of wooden-heeled shoes upon the stones, and what perfume +from the blossom of vines and almond-trees, mingling with less delicate +smells, the travelled reader pleases to imagine. I do not say that I +found Ferry Street actually different from this vision in most respects; +but as for the vines and almond-trees, they were not in bloom at the +moment of my encounter with the little tambourine-boy. As we stood and +talked, the snow fell as heavily and thickly around us as elsewhere in +Boston. With a vague pain,--the envy of a race toward another born to a +happier clime,--I heard from him that his whole family was going back to +Italy in a month. The father had at last got together money enough, and +the mother, who had long been an invalid, must be taken home; and, so +far as I know, the population of Ferry Street exists but in the hope of +a return, soon or late, to the native or the ancestral land. + +More than one of my doorstep acquaintance, in fact, seemed to have no +other stock in trade than this fond desire, and to thrive with it in our +sympathetic community. It is scarcely possible but the reader has met +the widow of Giovanni Cascamatto, a Vesuvian lunatic who has long set +fire to their home on the slopes of the volcano, and perished in +the flames. She was our first Italian acquaintance in Charlesbridge, +presenting herself with a little subscription-book which she sent in +for inspection, with a printed certificate to the facts of her history +signed with the somewhat conventionally Saxon names of William Tompkins +and John Johnson. These gentlemen set forth, in terms vaguer than can be +reproduced, that her object in coming to America was to get money to go +back to Italy; and the whole document had so fictitious an air that it +made us doubt even the nationality of the bearer; but we were put to +shame by the decent joy she manifested in an Italian salutation. There +was no longer a question of imposture in anybody's mind; we gladly +paid tribute to her poetic fiction, and she thanked us with a tranquil +courtesy that placed the obligation where it belonged. As she turned to +go with many good wishes, we pressed her to have some dinner, but +she answered with a compliment insurpassably flattering, she had just +dined--in another palace. The truth is, there is not a single palace on +Benicia Street, and our little box of pine and paper would hardly have +passed for a palace on the stage, where these things are often contrived +with great simplicity; but as we had made a little Italy together, she +touched it with the exquisite politeness of her race, and it became +for the instant a lordly mansion, standing on the Chiaja, or the Via +Nuovissima, or the Canalazzo. + +I say this woman seemed glad to be greeted in Italian, but not, so far +as I could see, surprised; and altogether the most amazing thing about +my doorstep acquaintance of her nation is, that they are never surprised +to be spoken to in their own tongue, or, if they are, never show it. +A chestnut-roaster, who has sold me twice the chestnuts the same money +would have bought of him in English, has not otherwise recognized the +fact that Tuscan is not the dialect of Charlesbridge, and the mortifying +nonchalance with which my advances have always been received has long +since persuaded me that to the grinder at the gate it is not remarkable +that a man should open the door of his wooden house on Benicia Street, +and welcome him in his native language. After the first shock of this +indifference is past, it is not to be questioned but it flatters with +an illusion, which a stare of amazement would forbid, reducing the +encounter to a vulgar reality at once, and I could almost believe it +in those wily and amiable folk to intend the sweeter effect of their +unconcern, which tacitly implies that there is no other tongue in the +world but Italian, and which makes all the earth and air Italian for the +time. Nothing else could have been the purpose of that image-dealer whom +I saw on a summer's day lying at the foot of one of our meeting-houses, +and doing his best to make it a cathedral, and really giving a sentiment +of medieval art to the noble sculptures of the facade which the +carpenters had just nailed up, freshly painted and newly repaired. This +poet was stretched upon his back, eating, in that convenient posture, +his dinner out of an earthen pot, plucking the viand from it, whatever +it was, with his thumb and fore-finger, and dropping it piecemeal into +his mouth. When the passer asked him “Where are you from?” he held a +morsel in air long enough to answer “Da Lucca, signore,” and then let it +fall into his throat, and sank deeper into a reverie in which that crude +accent even must have sounded like a gossip's or a kinsman's voice, but +never otherwise moved muscle, nor looked to see who passed or lingered. +There could have been little else in his circumstances to remind him of +home, and if he was really in the sort of day-dream attributed to him, +he was wise not to look about him. I have not myself been in Lucca, +but I conceive that its piazza is not like our square, with a pump +and horse-trough in the midst; but that it has probably a fountain and +statuary, though not possibly so magnificent an elm towering above the +bronze or marble groups as spreads its boughs of benison over our pump +and the horse-car switchman, loitering near it to set the switch for the +arriving cars, or lift the brimming buckets to the smoking nostrils of +the horses, while out from the stable comes clanging and banging with +a fresh team that famous African who has turned white, or, if he is +off duty, one of his brethren who has not yet begun to turn. +Figure, besides, an expressman watering his horse at the trough, a +provision-cart backed up against the curb in front of one of the stores, +various people looking from the car-office windows, and a conductor +appearing at the door long enough to call out, “Ready for Boston!”--and +you have a scene of such gayety as Lucca could never have witnessed in +her piazza at high noon on a summer's day. Even our Campo Santo, if the +Lucchese had cared to look round the corner of the meeting-house at its +moss-grown head stones, could have had little to remind him of home, +though it has antiquity and a proper quaintness. But not for him, not +for them of his clime and faith, is the pathos of those simple memorial +slates with their winged skulls, changing upon many later stones, as if +by the softening of creeds and customs, to cherub's heads,--not for him +is the pang I feel because of those who died, in our country's youth +exiles or exiles' children, heirs of the wilderness and toil and +hardship. Could they rise from their restful beds, and look on this +wandering Italian with his plaster statuettes of Apollo, and Canovan +dancers and deities, they would hold his wares little better than Romish +saints and idolatries, and would scarcely have the sentimental interest +in him felt by the modern citizen of Charlesbridge; but I think that +even they must have respected that Lombard scissors-grinder who used to +come to us, and put an edge to all the cutlery in the house. + +He has since gone back to Milan, whence he came eighteen years ago, and +whither he has returned,--as he told me one acute day in the fall, when +all the winter hinted itself, and the painted leaves shuddered earthward +in the grove across the way,--to enjoy a little climate before he died +(_per goder un po' di dima prima di morire_). Our climate was the only +thing he had against us; in every other respect he was a New-Englander, +even to the early stages of consumption. He told me the story of his +whole life, and of how in his adventurous youth he had left Milan +and sojourned some years in Naples, vainly seeking his fortune there. +Afterwards he went to Greece, and set up his ancestral business of +greengrocer in Athens, faring there no better, but rather worse than in +Naples, because of the deeper wickedness of the Athenians, who cheated +him right and left, and whose laws gave him no redress. The Neapolitans +were bad enough, he said, making a wry face, but the Greeks!--and he +spat the Greeks out in the grass. At last, after much misfortune +in Europe, he bethought him of coming to America, and he had never +regretted it, but for the climate. You spent a good deal here,--nearly +all you earned,--but then a poor man was a man, and the people were +honest. It was wonderful to him that they all knew how to read and +write, and he viewed with inexpressible scorn those Irish who came to +this country, and were so little sensible of the benefits it conferred +upon them. Boston he believed the best city in America, and “Tell me,” + said he, “is there such a thing anywhere else in the world as that +Public Library?” He, a poor man, and almost unknown, had taken books +from it to his own room, and was master to do so whenever he liked. He +had thus been enabled to read Botta's history of the United States, an +enormous compliment both to the country and the work which I doubt ever +to have been paid before; and he knew more about Washington than I did, +and desired to know more than I could tell him of the financial question +among us. So we came to national politics, and then to European affairs. +“It appears that Garibaldi will not go to Rome this year,” remarks +my scissors-grinder, who is very red in his sympathies. “The Emperor +forbids! Well, patience! And that blessed Pope, what does he want, that +Pope? He will be king find priest both, he will wear two pairs of shoes +at once!” I must confess that no other of my door-step acquaintance had +so clear an idea as this one of the difference between things here and +at home. To the minds of most we seemed divided here as there into rich +and poor,--_signori, persone eivili_, and _povera gente_,--and their +thoughts about us did not go beyond a speculation as to our individual +willingness or ability to pay for organ-grinding. But this Lombard was +worthy of his adopted country, and I forgive him the frank expression +of a doubt that one day occurred to him, when offered a glass of Italian +wine. He held it daintily between him and the sun for a smiling +moment, and then said, as if our wine must needs be as ungenuine as +our Italian,--was perhaps some expression from the surrounding +currant-bushes, harsh as that from the Northern tongues which could +never give his language the true life and tonic charm,--“But I suppose +this wine is not made of grapes, signor?” Yet he was a very courteous +old man, elaborate in greeting and leave-taking, and with a quicker +sense than usual. It was accounted delicacy in him, that, when he had +bidden us a final adieu, he should never come near us again, though +the date of his departure was postponed some weeks, and we heard him +tinkling down the street, and stopping at the neighbors' houses. He +was a keen-faced, thoughtful-looking man; and he wore a blouse of blue +cotton, from the pocket of which always dangled the leaves of some wild +salad culled from our wasteful vacant lots or prodigal waysides. + +[Illustration: “But I suppose this wine is not made of grapes, signor?”] + +Altogether different in character was that Triestine, who came one +evening to be helped home at the close of a very disastrous career +in Mexico. He Was a person of innumerable bows, and fluttered his +bright-colored compliments about, till it appeared that never before +had such amiable people been asked charity by such a worthy and generous +sufferer. In Trieste he had been a journalist, and it was evident enough +from his speech that he was of a good education. He was vain of his +Italian accent, which was peculiarly good for his heterogeneously +peopled native city; and he made a show of that marvelous facility of +the Triestines in languages, by taking me down French books, Spanish +books, German books, and reading from them all with the properest +accent. Yet with this boyish pride and self-satisfaction there was mixed +a tone of bitter and worldly cynicism, a belief in fortune as the sole +providence. As nearly as I could make out, he was a Johnson man in +American politics; upon the Mexican question he was independent, +disdaining French and Mexicans alike. He was with the former from +the first, and had continued in the service of Maximilian after their +withdrawal, till the execution of that prince made Mexico no place +for adventurous merit. He was now going back to his native country, an +ungrateful land enough, which had ill treated him long ago, but to +which he nevertheless returned in a perfect gayety of temper. What a +light-hearted rogue he was,--with such merry eyes, and such a pleasant +smile shaping his neatly trimmed beard and mustache! After he had +supped, and he Stood with us at the door taking leave, something +happened to be said of Italian songs, whereupon this blithe exile, whom +the compassion of strangers was enabling to go home after many years of +unprofitable toil and danger to a country that had loved him not, fell +to caroling a Venetian barcarole, and went sweetly away in its cadence. +I bore him company as far as the gate of another Italian-speaking +signor, and was there bidden adieu with great effusion, so that I forgot +till he had left me to charge him not to be in fear of the house-dog, +which barked but did not bite. In calling this after him, I had the +misfortune to blunder in my verb. A man of another nation--perhaps +another man of his own nation--would have cared rather for what I said +than how I said it; but he, as if too zealous for the honor of his +beautiful language to endure a hurt to it even in that moment of grief, +lifting his hat, and bowing for the last time, responded with a “Morde, +non morsica, signore!” and passed in under the pines, and next day to +Italy. + +There is a little old Genoese lady comes to sell us pins, needles, +thread, tape, and the like _roba_, whom I regard as leading quite an +ideal life in some respects. Her traffic is limited to a certain number +of families who speak more or less Italian; and her days, so far as +they are concerned, must be passed in an atmosphere of sympathy and +kindliness. The truth is, we Northern and New World folk cannot help but +cast a little romance about whoever comes to us from Italy, whether we +have actually known the beauty and charm of that land or not. Then this +old lady is in herself a very gentle and lovable kind of person, with +a tender mother-face, which is also the face of a child. A smile plays +always upon her wrinkled visage, and her quick and restless eyes are +full of friendliness. There is never much stuff in her basket, however, +and it is something of a mystery how she manages to live from it. None +but an Italian could, I am sure; and her experience must test the full +virtue of the national genius for cheap salads and much-extenuated +soup-meat. I do not know whether it is native in her, or whether it is a +grace acquired from long dealing with those kindly-hearted customers +of hers in Charlesbridge, but she is of a most munificent spirit, and +returns every smallest benefit with some present from her basket. She +makes me ashamed of things I have written about the sordidness of her +race, but I shall vainly seek to atone for them by open-handedness to +her. She will give favor for favor; she will not even count the money +she receives; our bargaining is a contest of the courtliest civilities, +ending in many an “Adieu!” “To meet again!” “Remain well!” and +“Finally!” not surpassed if rivaled in any Italian street. In her +ineffectual way, she brings us news of her different customers, breaking +up their stout Saxon names into tinkling polysyllables which suggest +them only to the practiced sense, and is perfectly patient and contented +if we mistake one for another. She loves them all, but she pities them +as living in a terrible climate; and doubtless in her heart she purposes +one day to go back to Italy, there to die. In the mean time she is +very cheerful; she, too, has had her troubles,--what troubles I do not +remember, but those that come by sickness and by death, and that really +seem no sorrows until they come to us,--yet she never complains. It is +hard to make a living, and the house-rent alone is six dollars a month; +but still one lives, and does not fare so ill either. As it does not +seem to be in her to dislike any one, it must be out of a harmless +guile, felt to be comforting to servant-ridden householders, that she +always speaks of “those Irish,” her neighbors, with a bated breath, a +shaken head, a hand lifted to the cheek, and an averted countenance. + +Swarthiest of the organ-grinding tribe is he who peers up at my window +out of infinitesimal black eyes, perceives me, louts low, and for +form's sake grinds me out a tune before he begins to talk. As we +parley together, say it is eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and a sober +tranquillity reigns upon the dust and nodding weeds of Benicia Street. +At that hour the organ-grinder and I are the only persons of our sex +in the whole suburban population; all other husbands and fathers having +eaten their breakfasts at seven o'clock, and stood up in the early +horse-cars to Boston, whence they will return, with aching backs and +quivering calves, half-pendant by leathern straps from the roofs of the +same luxurious conveyances, in the evening. The Italian might go and +grind his organ upon the front stoop of any one of a hundred French-roof +houses around, and there would be no arm within strong enough to thrust +him thence; but he is a gentleman in his way, and, as he prettily +explains, he never stops to play except where the window smiles on +him: a frowning lattice he will pass in silence. I behold in him a +disappointed man,--a man broken in health, and of a liver baked by long +sojourn in a tropical clime. In large and dim outline, made all the +dimmer by his dialect, he sketches me the story of his life; how in his +youth he ran away from the Milanese for love of a girl in France, who, +dying, left him with so little purpose in the world that, after working +at his trade of plasterer for some years in Lyons, he listened to a +certain gentleman going out upon government service to a French colony +in South America. This gentleman wanted a man-servant, and he said to +my organ-grinder, “Go with me and I make your fortune.” So he, who cared +not whither he went, went, and found himself in the tropics. It was a +hard life he led there; and of the wages that had seemed so great in +France, he paid nearly half to his laundress alone, being forced to be +neat in his master's house. The service was not so irksome in-doors, but +it was the hunting beasts in the forest all day that broke his patience +at last. + +“Beasts in the forest?” I ask, forgetful of the familiar sense of +_bestie_, and figuring cougars at least by the word. + +“Yes, those little beasts for the naturalists,--flies, bugs, +beetles,--Heaven knows what.” + +“But this brought you money?” + +“It brought my master money, but me aches and pains as many as you will, +and at last the fever. When that was burnt out, I made up my mind to +ask for more pay, and, not getting it, to quit that service. I think +the signor would have given it,--but the signora! So I left, empty as I +came, and was cook on a vessel to New York.” + +This was the black and white of the man's story. I lose the color and +atmosphere which his manner as well as his words bestowed upon it. He +told it in a cheerful, impersonal kind of way as the romance of a poor +devil which had interested him, and might possibly amuse me, leaving +out no touch of character in his portrait of the fat, selfish +master,--yielding enough, however, but for his grasping wife, who, with +all her avarice and greed, he yet confessed to be very handsome. By the +wave of a hand he housed them in a tropic residence, dim, cool, close +shut, kept by servants in white linen moving with mute slippered feet +over stone floors; and by another gesture he indicated the fierce thorny +growths of the forest in which he hunted those vivid insects,--the +luxuriant savannas, the gigantic ferns and palms, the hush and shining +desolation, the presence of the invisible fever and death. There was a +touch, too, of inexpressible sadness in his half-ignorant mention of +the exiles at Cayenne, who were forbidden the wide ocean of escape about +them by those swift gunboats keeping their coasts and swooping down upon +every craft that left the shore. He himself had seen one such capture, +and he made me see it, and the mortal despair of the fugitives, standing +upright in their boat with the idle oars in their unconscious hands, +while the corvette swept toward them. + +For all his misfortunes, he was not cast down. He had that lightness of +temper which seems proper to most northern Italians, whereas those from +the south are usually dark-mooded, sad-faced men. Nothing surpasses for +unstudied misanthropy of expression the visages of different Neapolitan +harpers who have visited us; but they have some right to their dejected +countenances as being of a yet half-civilized stock, and as real artists +and men of genius. Nearly all wandering violinists, as well as harpers, +are of their race, and they are of every age, from that of mere +children to men in their prime. They are very rarely old, as many of +the organ-grinders are; they are not so handsome as the Italians of the +north, though they have invariably fine eyes. They arrive in twos and +threes; the violinist briefly tunes his fiddle, and the harper unslings +his instrument, and, with faces of profound gloom, they go through their +repertory,--pieces from the great composers, airs from the opera, not +unmingled with such efforts of Anglo-Saxon genius as Champagne Charley +and Captain Jenks of the Horse Marines, which, like the language of +Shakespeare and Milton, hold us and our English cousins in tender bonds +of mutual affection. Beyond the fact that they come “dal Basilicat',” or +“dal Principat',” one gets very little out of these Neapolitans, though +I dare say they are not so surly at heart as they look. Money does not +brighten them to the eye, but yet it touches them, and they are good +in playing or leaving off to him that pays. Long time two of them stood +between the gateway firs on a pleasant summer's afternoon and twanged +and scraped their harmonious strings, till all the idle boys of the +neighborhood gathered about them, listening with a grave and still +delight. It was a most serious company: the Neapolitans, with their +cloudy brows, rapt in their music; and the Yankee children, with their +impassive faces, warily guarding against the faintest expression of +enjoyment; and when at last the minstrels played a brisk measure, +and the music began to work in the blood of the boys, and one of them +shuffling his reluctant feet upon the gravel, broke into a sudden and +resistless dance, the spectacle became too sad for contemplation. The +boy danced only from the hips down; no expression of his face gave the +levity sanction, nor did any of his comrades: they beheld him with a +silent fascination, but none was infected by the solemn indecorum; and +when the legs and music ceased their play together, no comment was made, +and the dancer turned unheated away. A chance passer asked for what he +called the Gearybaldeye Hymn, but the Neapolitans apparently did not +know what this was. + +My doorstep acquaintance were not all of one race; now and then an alien +to the common Italian tribe appeared,--an Irish soldier, on his way to +Salem, and willing to show me more of his mutilation than I cared to +buy the sight of for twenty-five cents; and more rarely yet an American, +also formerly of the army, but with something besides his wretchedness +to sell. On the hottest day of last summer such a one rang the bell, and +was discovered on the threshold wiping with his poor sole hand the sweat +that stood upon his forehead. There was still enough of the independent +citizen in his maimed and emaciated person to inspire him with +deliberation and a show of that indifference with which we Americans +like to encounter each other; but his voice was rather faint when he +asked if I supposed we wanted any starch to-day. + +“Yes, certainly,” answered what heart there was within, taking note +willfully, but I hope not wantonly, what an absurdly limp figure he was +for a peddler of starch,--“certainly from you, brave fellow;” and the +package being taken from his basket, the man turned to go away, so very +wearily, that a cheap philanthropy protested: “For shame! ask him to sit +down in-doors and drink a glass of water.” + +“No,” answered the poor fellow, when this indignant voice had been +obeyed, and he had been taken at a disadvantage, and as it were +surprised into the confession, “my family hadn't any breakfast this +morning, and I've got to hurry back to them.” + +“Haven't _you_ had any breakfast?” + +“Well, I wa'n't rightly hungry when I left the house.” + +“Here, now,” popped in the virtue before named, “is an opportunity to +discharge the debt we all owe to the brave fellows who gave us back our +country. Make it beer.” + +So it was made beer and bread and cold meat, and, after a little +pressing, the honest soul consented to the refreshment. He sat down in a +cool doorway and began to eat and to tell of the fight before Vicksburg. +And if you have never seen a one-armed soldier making a meal, I can +assure you the sight is a pathetic one, and is rendered none the +cheerfuller by his memories of the fights that mutilated him. This man +had no very susceptible audience, but before he was carried off the +field, shot through the body, and in the arm and foot, he had sold every +package of starch in his basket. I am ashamed to say this now, for I +suspect that a man with one arm, who indulged himself in going about +under that broiling sun of July, peddling starch, was very probably an +impostor. He computed a good day's profits of seventy-five cents, and +when asked if that was not very little for the support of a sick wife +and three children, he answered with a quaint effort at impressiveness, +and with a trick, as I imagined, from the manner of the regimental +chaplain, “You've done your duty, my friend, and more'n your duty. If +every one did their duty like that, we should get along.” So he took +leave, and shambled out into the furnace-heat, the sun beating upon his +pale face, and his linen coat hugging him close, but with his basket +lighter, and I hope his heart also. At any rate, this was the sentiment +which cheap philanthropy offered in self-gratulation, as he passed out +of sight: “There! you are quits with those maimed soldiers at last, and +you have a country which you have paid for with cold victuals as they +with blood.” + +We have been a good deal visited by one disbanded volunteer, not to the +naked eye maimed, nor apparently suffering from any lingering illness, +yet who bears, as he tells me, a secret disabling wound in his side from +a spent shell, and who is certainly a prey to the most acute form +of shiftlessness. I do not recall with exactness the date of our +acquaintance, but it was one of those pleasant August afternoons when +a dinner eaten in peace fills the digester with a millennial tenderness +for the race too rarely felt in the nineteenth century. At such a moment +it is a more natural action to loosen than to tighten the purse-strings, +and when a very neatly dressed young man presented himself at the gate, +and, in a note of indescribable plaintiveness, asked if I had any little +job for him to do that he might pay for a night's lodging, I looked +about the small domain with a vague longing to find some part of it in +disrepair, and experienced a moment's absurd relief when he hinted that +he would be willing to accept fifty cents in pledge of future service. +Yet this was not the right principle: some work, real or apparent, must +be done for the money, and the veteran was told that he might weed the +strawberry bed, though, as matters then stood, it was clean enough for a +strawberry bed that never bore anything. The veteran was neatly dressed, +as I have said: his coat, which was good, was buttoned to the throat +for reasons that shall be sacred against curiosity, and he had on a +perfectly clean paper collar; he was a handsome young fellow, with +regular features, and a solicitously kept imperial and mustache; his +hair, when he lifted his hat, appeared elegantly oiled and brushed. +I did not hope from this figure that the work done would be worth the +money paid, and, as nearly as I can compute, the weeds he took from that +bed cost me a cent apiece, to say nothing of a cup of tea given him in +grace at the end of his labors. + +My acquaintance was, as the reader will be glad to learn, a native +American, though it is to be regretted, for the sake of facts which his +case went far to establish, that he was not a New-Englander by birth. +The most that could be claimed was, that he came to Boston from Delaware +when very young, and that there on that brine-washed granite he had +grown as perfect a flower of helplessness and indolence, as fine a fruit +of maturing civilization, as ever expanded or ripened in Latin lands. +He lived, not only a protest in flesh and blood against the tendency of +democracy to exclude mere beauty from our system, but a refutation +of those Old World observers, who deny to our vulgar and bustling +communities the refining and elevating grace of Repose. There was +something very curious and original in his character, from which the +sentiment of shame was absent, but which was not lacking in the fine +instincts of personal cleanliness, of dress, of style. There was nothing +of the rowdy in him; he was gentle as an Italian noble in his manners: +what other traits they may have had in common, I do not know; perhaps an +amiable habit of illusion. He was always going to bring me his discharge +papers, but he never did, though he came often and had many a pleasant +night's sleep at my cost. If sometimes he did a little work, he spent +great part of the time contracted to me in the kitchen, where it was +understood, quite upon his own agency, that his wages included board. At +other times, he called for money too late in the evening to work it out +that day, and it has happened that a new second girl, deceived by +his genteel appearance in the uncertain light, has shown him into the +parlor, where I have found him to his and my own great amusement, as +the gentleman who wanted to see me. Nothing else seemed to raise his +ordinarily dejected spirits so much. We all know how pleasant it is to +laugh at people behind their backs; but this veteran afforded me at a +very low rate the luxury of a fellow-being whom one might laugh at to +his face as much as one liked. + +Yet with all his shamelessness, his pensiveness, his elegance, I felt +that somehow our national triumph was not complete in him,--that there +were yet more finished forms of self-abasement in the Old World, till +one day I looked out of the window and saw at a little distance my +veteran digging a cellar for an Irishman. I own that the spectacle gave +me a shock of pleasure, and that I ran down to have a nearer view of +what human eyes have seldom, if ever, beheld,--an American, pure blood, +handling the pick, the shovel, and the wheelbarrow, while an Irishman +directed his labors. Upon inspection, it appeared that none of the trees +grew with their roots in the air, in recognition of this great reversal +of the natural law; all the French-roof houses stood right side up. The +phenomenon may become more common in future, unless the American +race accomplishes its destiny of dying out before the more populatory +foreigner, but as yet it graced the veteran with an exquisite and signal +distinction. He, however, seemed to feel unpleasantly the anomaly of his +case, and opened the conversation by saying that he should not work at +that job to-morrow, it hurt his side; and went on to complain of the +inhumanity of Americans to Americans. “Why,” said he, “they'd rather +give out their jobs to a nigger than to one of their own kind. I was +beatin' carpets for a gentleman on the Avenue, and the first thing I +know he give most of 'em to a nigger. I beat seven of 'em in one day, +and got two dollars; and the nigger beat 'em by the piece, and he got a +dollar an' a half apiece. My luck!” + +Here the Irishman glanced at his hireling, and the rueful veteran +hastened to pile up another wheelbarrow with earth. If ever we come to +reverse positions generally with our Irish brethren, there is no doubt +but they will get more work out of us than we do from them at present. + +It was shortly after this that the veteran offered to do second girl's +work in my house if I would take him. The place was not vacant; and as +the summer was now drawing to a close, and I feared to be left with +him on my hands for the winter, it seemed well to speak to him upon +the subject of economy. The next time he called, I had not about me the +exact sum for a night's lodging,--fifty cents, namely--and asked him +if he thought a dollar would do He smiled sadly, as if he did not like +jesting upon such a very serious subject, but said he allowed to work it +out, and took it. + +“Now, I hope you won't think I am interfering with your affairs,” said +his benefactor, “but I really think you are a very poor financier. +According to your own account, you have been going on from year to year +for a long time, trusting to luck for a night's lodging. Sometimes I +suppose you have to sleep out-of-doors.” + +“No, never!” answered the veteran, with something like scorn. “I never +sleep out-doors. I wouldn't do it.” + +“Well, at any rate, some one has to pay for your lodging. Don't you +think you'd come cheaper to your friends, if, instead of going to a +hotel every night, you'd take a room somewhere, and pay for it by the +month?” + +“I've thought of that. If I could get a good bed, I'd try it awhile +anyhow. You see the hotels have raised. I used to get a lodgin' and a +nice breakfast for a half a dollar, but now it is as much as you can do +to get a lodgin' for the money, and it's just as dear in the Port as +it is in the city. I've tried hotels pretty much everywhere, and one's +about as bad as another.” + +If he had been a travelled Englishman writing a book, he could not have +spoken of hotels with greater disdain. + +“You see, the trouble with me is, I ain't got any relations around here. +Now,” he added, with the life and eagerness of an inspiration, “if I had +a mother and sister livin' down at the Port, say, I wouldn't go hunting +about for these mean little jobs everywheres. I'd just lay round home, +and wait till something come up big. What I want is a home.” + +At the instigation of a malignant spirit I asked the homeless orphan, +“Why don't you get married, then?” + +He gave me another smile, sadder, fainter, sweeter than before, and +said: “When would you like to see me again, so I could work out this +dollar?” + +A sudden and unreasonable disgust for the character which had given me +so much entertainment succeeded to my past delight. I felt, moreover, +that I had bought the right to use some frankness with the veteran, and +I said to him: “Do you know now, I shouldn't care if I _never_ saw you +again?” + +I can only conjecture that he took the confidence in good part, for he +did not appear again after that. + + + + +A PEDESTRIAN TOUR. + + +Walking for walking's sake I do not like. The diversion appears to +me one of the most factitious of modern enjoyments; and I cannot help +looking upon those who pace their five miles in the teeth of a north +wind, and profess to come home all the livelier and better for it, +as guilty of a venial hypocrisy. It is in nature that after such an +exercise the bones should ache and the flesh tremble; and I suspect that +these harmless pretenders are all the while paying a secret penalty +for their bravado. With a pleasant end in view, or with cheerful +companionship, walking is far from being the worst thing in life; though +doubtless a truly candid person must confess that he would rather +ride under the same circumstances. Yet it is certain that some sort +of recreation is necessary after a day spent within doors; and one is +really obliged nowadays to take a little walk instead of medicine; for +one's doctor is sure to have a mania on the subject, and there is no +more getting pills or powders out of him for a slight indigestion than +if they had all been shot away at the rebels during the war. For this +reason I sometimes go upon a pedestrian tour, which is of no great +extent in itself, and which I moreover modify by keeping always within +sound of the horse-car bells, or easy reach of some steam-car station. + +I fear that I should find these rambles dull, but that their utter lack +of interest amuses me. I will be honest with the reader, though, and any +Master Pliable is free to forsake me at this point; for I cannot promise +to be really livelier than my walk. There is a Slough of Despond in full +view, and not a Delectable Mountain to be seen, unless you choose so +to call the high lands about Waltham, which we shall behold dark blue +against the western sky presently. As I sally forth upon Benicia Street, +the whole suburb of Charlesbridge stretches about me,--a vast space upon +which I can embroider any fancy I like as I saunter along. I have no +associations with it, or memories of it, and, at some seasons, I might +wander for days in the most frequented parts of it, and meet hardly any +one I know. It is not, however, to these parts that I commonly turn, +but northward, up a street upon which a flight of French-roof houses +suddenly settled a year or two since, with families in them, and many +outward signs of permanence, though their precipitate arrival might +cast some doubt upon this. I have to admire their uniform neatness and +prettiness, and I look at their dormer-windows with the envy of one +to whose weak sentimentality dormer-windows long appeared the supreme +architectural happiness. But, for all my admiration of the houses, I +find a variety that is pleasanter in the landscape, when I reach, beyond +them, a little bridge which appears to span a small stream. It unites +banks lined with a growth of trees and briers nodding their heads above +the neighboring levels, and suggesting a quiet water-course, though in +fact it is the Fitchburg Railroad that purls between them, with rippling +freight and passenger trains and ever-gurgling locomotives. The banks +take the earliest green of spring upon their southward slope, and on a +Sunday morning of May, when the bells are lamenting the Sabbaths of the +past, I find their sunny tranquillity sufficient to give me a slight +heart-ache for I know not what. If I descend them and follow the +railroad westward half a mile, I come to vast brick-yards, which are +not in themselves exciting to the imagination, and which yet, from an +irresistible association of ideas, remind me of Egypt, and are forever +newly forsaken of those who made bricks without straw; so that I have no +trouble in erecting temples and dynastic tombs out of the kilns; while +the mills for grinding the clay serve me very well for those sad-voiced +_sakias_ or wheel-pumps which the Howadji Curtis heard wailing at their +work of drawing water from the Nile. A little farther on I come to the +boarding-house built at the railroad side for the French Canadians who +have by this time succeeded the Hebrews in the toil of the brick-yards, +and who, as they loiter in windy-voiced, good-humored groups about the +doors of their lodgings, insist upon bringing before me the town of +St. Michel at the mouth of the great Mont Cenis tunnel, where so +many peasant folk like them are always amiably quarreling before the +_cabarets_ when the diligence comes and goes. Somewhere, there must be a +gendarme with a cocked hat and a sword on, standing with folded arms to +represent the Empire and Peace among that rural population; if I +looked in-doors, I am sure I should see the neatest of landladies and +landladies' daughters and nieces in high black silk caps, bearing hither +and thither smoking bowls of _bouillon_ and _café-au-lait_. Well, it +takes as little to make one happy as miserable, thank Heaven! and I +derive a cheerfulness from this scene which quite atones to me for the +fleeting desolation suffered from the sunny verdure on the railroad +bank. With repaired spirits I take my way up through the brick-yards +towards the Irish settlement on the north, passing under the long sheds +that shelter the kilns. The ashes lie cold about the mouths of most, +and the bricks are burnt to the proper complexion; in others these are +freshly arranged over flues in which the fire has not been kindled; but +in whatever state I see them, I am reminded of brick-kilns of boyhood. +They were then such palaces of enchantment as any architect should now +vainly attempt to rival with bricks upon the most desirable corner +lot of the Back Bay, and were the homes of men truly to be envied: men +privileged to stay up all night; to sleep, as it were, out of doors; to +hear the wild geese as they flew over in the darkness; to be waking in +time to shoot the early ducks that visited the neighboring ponds; to +roast corn upon the ends of sticks; to tell and to listen to stories +that never ended, save in some sudden impulse to rise and dance a happy +hoe-down in the ruddy light of the kiln-fires. If by day they were seen +to have the redness of eyes of men that looked upon the whiskey when +it was yellow and gave its color in the flask; if now and then the +fragments of a broken bottle strewed the scene of their vigils, and +a head broken to match appeared among those good comrades, the boyish +imagination was not shocked by these things, but accepted them merely as +the symbols of a free virile life. Some such life no doubt is still to +be found in the Dublin to which I am come by the time my repertory of +associations with brick-kilns is exhausted, but, oddly enough, I no +longer care to encounter it. + +It is perhaps in a pious recognition of our mortality that Dublin is +built around the Irish grave-yard. Most of its windows look out upon +the sepulchral monuments and the pretty constant arrival of the funeral +trains with their long lines of carriages bringing to the celebration of +the sad ultimate rites those gay companies of Irish mourners. I suppose +that the spectacle of such obsequies is not at all depressing to the +inhabitants of Dublin; but that, on the contrary, it must beget in them +a feeling which, if not resignation to death, is, at least, a sort of +sub-acute cheerfulness in his presence. None but a Dubliner, however, +would have been greatly animated by a scene which I witnessed during +a stroll through this cemetery one afternoon of early spring. The fact +that a marble slab or shaft more or less sculptured, and inscribed with +words more or less helpless, is the utmost that we can give to one whom +once we could caress with every tenderness of speech and touch, and +that, after all, the memorial we raise is rather to our own grief, and +is a decency, a mere conventionality,--this is a dreadful fact on +which the heart breaks itself with such a pang, that it always seems +a desolation never recognized, an anguish never felt before. Whilst I +stood revolving this thought in my mind, and reading the Irish names +upon the stones and the black head-boards,--the latter adorned with +pictures of angels, once gilt, but now weather-worn down to the yellow +paint,--a wail of intolerable pathos filled the air: “O my darling, O my +darling! O--O--O!” with sobs and groans and sighs; and, looking about, I +saw two women, one standing upright beside another that had cast herself +upon a grave, and lay clasping it with her comfortless arms, uttering +these cries. The grave was a year old at least, but the grief seemed of +yesterday or of that morning. At times the friend that stood beside +the prostrate woman stooped and spoke a soothing word to her, while she +wailed out her woe; and in the midst some little ribald Irish boys came +scuffling and quarreling up the pathway, singing snatches of an obscene +song; and when both the wailing and the singing had died away, an old +woman, decently clad, and with her many-wrinkled face softened by the +old-fashioned frill running round the inside of her cap, dropped down +upon her knees beside a very old grave, and clasped her hands in a +silent prayer above it. + +[Illustration: “Looking about, I saw two women.”] + +If I had beheld all this in some village _campo santo_ in Italy, I +should have been much more vividly impressed by it, as an aesthetical +observer; whereas I was now merely touched as a human being, and had +little desire to turn the scene to literary account. I could not help +feeling that it wanted the atmosphere of sentimental association, the +whole background was a blank or worse than a blank. Yet I have not +been able to hide from myself so much as I would like certain points of +resemblance between our Irish and the poorer classes of Italians. The +likeness is one of the first things that strikes an American in Italy, +and I am always reminded of it in Dublin. So much of the local life +appears upon the street; there is so much gossip from house to house, +and the talk is always such a resonant clamoring; the women, bareheaded, +or with a shawl folded over the head and caught beneath the chin with +the hand, have such a contented down-at-heel aspect, shuffling from door +to door, or lounging, arms akimbo, among the cats and poultry at their +own thresholds, that one beholding it all might well fancy himself upon +some Italian _calle_ or _vicolo_. Of course the illusion does not hold +good on a Sunday, when the Dubliners are coming home from church in +their best,--their extraordinary best bonnets and their prodigious silk +hats. It does not hold good in any way or at any time, except upon the +surface, for there is beneath all this resemblance the difference that +must exist between a race immemorially civilized and one which has +lately emerged from barbarism “after six centuries of oppression.” You +are likely to find a polite pagan under the mask of the modern Italian +you feel pretty sure that any of his race would with a little washing +and skillful manipulation, _restore_, like a neglected painting, +into something genuinely graceful and pleasing; but if one of these +Yankeefied Celts were scraped, it is but too possible that you might +find a kern, a Whiteboy, or a Pikeman. The chance of discovering +a scholar or a saint of the period when Ireland was the centre of +learning, and the favorite seat of the Church, is scarcely one in three. + +Among the houses fronting on the main street of Dublin, every other +one--I speak in all moderation--is a grocery, if I may judge by a tin +case of corn-balls, a jar of candy, and a card of shirt-buttons, with an +under layer of primers and ballads, in the windows. You descend from the +street by several steps into these haunts, which are contrived to secure +the greatest possible dampness and darkness; and if you have made an +errand inside, you doubtless find a lady before the counter in the act +of putting down a guilty-looking tumbler with one hand, while she +neatly wipes her mouth on the back of the other. She has that effect, +observable in all tippling women of low degree, of having no upper +garment on but a shawl, which hangs about her in statuesque folds and +lines. She slinks out directly, but the lady behind the counter gives +you good evening with + + “The affectation of a bright-eyed ease,” + +intended to deceive if you chance to be a State constable in disguise, +and to propitiate if you are a veritable customer: “Who was that woman, +lamenting so, over in the grave-yard?” “O, I don't know, sir,” answered +the lady, making change for the price of a ballad. “Some Irish folks. +They ginerally cries that way.” + +In yet earlier spring walks through Dublin, I found a depth of mud +appalling even to one who had lived three years in Charlesbridge. The +streets were passable only to pedestrians skilled in shifting themselves +along the sides of fences and alert to take advantage of every +projecting doorstep. There were no dry places, except in front of the +groceries, where the ground was beaten hard by the broad feet of loafing +geese and the coming and going of admirably small children making +purchases there. The number of the little ones was quite as remarkable +as their size, and ought to have been even more interesting, if, as +sometimes appears probable, such increase shall--together with the +well-known ambition of Dubliners to rule the land--one day make an end +of us poor Yankees as a dominant plurality. + +The town was somewhat tainted with our architectural respectability, +unless the newness of some of the buildings gave illusion of this; and, +though the streets of Dublin were not at all cared for, and though every +house on the main thoroughfare stood upon the brink of a slough, without +yard, or any attempt at garden or shrubbery, there were many cottages in +the less aristocratic quarters inclosed in palings, and embowered in +the usual suburban pear-trees and currant-bushes. These, indeed, were +dwellings of an elder sort, and had clearly been inherited from a +population now as extinct in that region as the Pequots, and they were +not always carefully cherished. On the border of the hamlet is to be +seen an old farm-house of the poorer sort, built about the beginning of +this century, and now thickly peopled by Dubliners. Its gate is thrown +down, and the great wild-grown lilac hedge, no longer protected by a +fence, shows skirts bedabbled by the familiarity of lawless poultry, as +little like the steady-habited poultry of other times, as the people of +the house are like the former inmates, long since dead or gone West. I +offer the poor place a sentiment of regret as I pass, thinking of +its better days. I think of its decorous, hard-working, cleanly, +school-going, church-attending life, which was full of the pleasure of +duty done, and was not without its own quaint beauty and grace. What +long Sabbaths were kept in that old house, what scanty holidays! +Yet from this and such as this came the dominion of the whole wild +continent, the freedom of a race, the greatness of the greatest people. +It may be that I regretted a little too exultantly, and that out of +this particular house came only peddling of innumerable clocks and +multitudinous tin-ware. But as yet, it is pretty certain that the +general character of the population has not gained by the change. What +is in the future, let the prophets say; any one can see that something +not quite agreeable is in the present; something that takes the wrong +side, as by instinct, in politics; something that mainly helps to prop +up tottering priestcraft among us; something that one thinks of with +dismay as destined to control so largely the civil and religious +interests of the country. This, however, is only the aggregate aspect. +Mrs. Clannahan's kitchen, as it may be seen by the desperate philosopher +when he goes to engage her for the spring house-cleaning, is a strong +argument against his fears. If Mrs. Clannahan, lately of an Irish cabin, +can show a kitchen so capably appointed and so neatly kept as that, the +country may yet be an inch or two from the brink of ruin, and the race +which we trust as little as we love may turn out no more spendthrift +than most heirs. It is encouraging, moreover, when any people can +flatter themselves upon a superior prosperity and virtue, and we may +take heart from the fact that the French Canadians, many of whom have +lodgings in Dublin, are not well seen by the higher classes of the +citizens there. Mrs. Clannahan, whose house stands over against the main +gate of the grave-yard, and who may, therefore, be considered as moving +in the best Dublin society, hints, that though good Catholics, the +French are not thought perfectly honest,--“things have been missed” + since they came to blight with their crimes and vices the once +happy seat of integrity. It is amusing to find Dublin fearful of the +encroachment of the French, as we, in our turn, dread the advance of the +Irish. We must make a jest of our own alarms, and even smile--since we +cannot help ourselves--at the spiritual desolation occasioned by the +settlement of an Irish family in one of our suburban neighborhoods. The +householders view with fear and jealousy the erection of any dwelling of +less than a stated cost, as portending a possible advent of Irish; and +when the calamitous race actually appears, a mortal pang strikes to the +bottom of every pocket. Values tremble throughout that neighborhood, to +which the new-comers communicate a species of moral dry-rot. None but +the Irish will build near the Irish; and the infection of fear spreads +to the elder Yankee homes about, and the owners prepare to abandon +them,--not always, however, let us hope, without turning, at the expense +of the invaders, a Parthian penny in their flight. In my walk from +Dublin to North Charlesbridge, I saw more than one token of the +encroachment of the Celtic army, which had here and there invested a +Yankee house with besieging shanties on every side, and thus given +to its essential and otherwise quite hopeless ugliness a touch of the +poetry that attends failing fortunes, and hallows decayed gentility of +however poor a sort originally. The fortunes of such a house are, of +course, not to be retrieved. Where the Celt sets his foot, there the +Yankee (and it is perhaps wholesome if not agreeable to know that the +Irish citizen whom we do not always honor as our equal in civilization +loves to speak of us scornfully as Yankees) rarely, if ever, returns. +The place remains to the intruder and his heirs forever. We gracefully +retire before him even in politics, as the metropolis--if it is the +metropolis--can witness; and we wait with an anxious curiosity the +encounter of the Irish and the Chinese, now rapidly approaching each +other from opposite shores of the continent. Shall we be crushed in the +collision of these superior races? Every intelligence-office will soon +be ringing with the cries of combat, and all our kitchens strewn with +pig-tails and bark chignons. As yet we have gay hopes of our Buddhistic +brethren; but how will it be when they begin to quarter the Dragon upon +the Stars and Stripes, and buy up all the best sites for temples, and +burn their joss-sticks, as it were, under our very noses? Our grasp upon +the great problem grows a little lax, perhaps? Is it true that, when +we look so anxiously for help from others, the virtue has gone out of +ourselves? I should hope not. + +As I leave Dublin, the houses grow larger and handsomer; and as I +draw near the Avenue, the Mansard-roofs look down upon me with their +dormer-windows, and welcome me back to the American community. There are +fences about all the houses, inclosing ampler and ampler dooryards; the +children, which had swarmed in the thriftless and unenlightened purlieus +of Dublin, diminish in number and finally disappear; the chickens have +vanished; and I hear--I hear the pensive music of the horse-car bells, +which in some alien land, I am sure, would be as pathetic to me as the +Ranz des Vaches to the Swiss or the bagpipes to the Highlander: in the +desert, where the traveller seems to hear the familiar bells of his +far-off church, this tinkle would haunt the absolute silence, and recall +the exile's fancy to Charlesbridge; and perhaps in the mocking mirage +he would behold an airy horse-car track, and a phantasmagoric horse-car +moving slowly along the edge of the horizon, with spectral passengers +closely packed inside and overflowing either platform. + +But before I reach the Avenue, Dublin calls to me yet again, in the +figure of an old, old man, wearing the clothes of other times, and a +sort of ancestral round hat. In the act of striking a match he asks me +the time of day, and, applying the fire to his pipe, he returns me his +thanks in a volume of words and smoke. What a wrinkled and unshorn old +man! Can age and neglect do so much for any of us? This ruinous person +was associated with a hand-cart as decrepit as himself, but not nearly +so cheerful; for though he spoke up briskly with a spirit uttered from +far within the wrinkles and the stubble, the cart had preceded him with +a very lugubrious creak. It groaned, in fact, under a load of tin cans, +and I was to learn from the old man that there was, and had been, in his +person, for thirteen years, such a thing in the world as a peddler +of buttermilk, and that these cans were now filled with that pleasant +drink. They did not invite me to prove their contents, being cans that +apparently passed their vacant moments in stables and even manure-heaps, +and that looked somehow emulous of that old man's stubble and wrinkles. +I bought nothing, but I left the old peddler well content, seated upon +a thill of his cart, smoking tranquilly, and filling the keen spring +evening air with fumes which it dispersed abroad, and made to itself a +pleasant incense of. + +I left him a whole epoch behind, as I entered the Avenue and lounged +homeward along the stately street. Above the station it is far more +picturesque than it is below, and the magnificent elms that shadow +it might well have looked, in their saplinghood, upon the British +straggling down the country road from the Concord fight; and there +are some ancient houses yet standing that must have been filled with +exultation at the same spectacle. Poor old revolutionaries! they would +never have believed that their descendants would come to love the +English as we do. + +The season has advanced rapidly during my progress from Dublin to the +Avenue; and by the time I reach the famous old tavern, not far from the +station, it is a Sunday morning of early summer, and the yellow sunlight +falls upon a body of good comrades who are grooming a marvelous +number of piebald steeds about the stable-doors. By token of these +beasts--which always look so much more like works of art than of +nature--I know that there is to be a circus somewhere very soon; and the +gay bills pasted all over the stable-front tell me that there are to be +two performances at the Port on the morrow. The grooms talk nothing and +joke nothing but horse at their labor; and their life seems such a low, +ignorant, happy life, that the secret nomad lurking in every respectable +and stationary personality stirs within me and struggles to strike hands +of fellowship with them. They lead a sort of pastoral existence in +our age of railroads; they wander over the continent with their great +caravan, and everywhere pursue the summer from South to North and from +North to South again; in the mild forenoons they groom their herds, +and in the afternoons they doze under their wagons, indifferent to +the tumult of the crowd within and without the mighty canvas near +them,--doze face downwards on the bruised, sweet-smelling grass; and +in the starry midnight rise and strike their tents, and set forth again +over the still country roads, to take the next village on the morrow +with the blaze and splendor of their “Grand Entree.” The triumphal +chariot in which the musicians are borne at the head of the procession +is composed, as I perceive by the bills, of four colossal gilt swans, +set tail to tail, with lifted wings and curving necks; but the chariot, +as I behold it beside the stable, is mysteriously draped in white +canvas, through which its gilding glitters only here and there. And does +it move thus shrouded in the company's wanderings from place to place, +and is the precious spottiness of the piebalds then hidden under envious +drapery? O happy grooms,--not clean as to shirts, nor especially neat in +your conversation, but displaying a Wealth of art in India-ink upon +your manly chests and the swelling muscles of your arms, and speaking +in every movement your freedom from all conventional gyves and shackles, +_“seid umschlungen!”_--in spirit; for the rest, you are rather too damp, +and seem to have applied your sudsy sponges too impartially to your +own trousers and the horses' legs to receive an actual embrace from a +_dilettante_ vagabond. + +The old tavern is old only comparatively; but in our new and changeful +life it is already quaint. It is very long, and low-studded in either +story, with a row of windows in the roof, and a great porch, furnished +with benches, running the whole length of the ground-floor. Perhaps +because they take the dust of the street too freely, or because the +guests find it more social and comfortable to gather in-doors in the +wide, low-ceiled office, the benches are not worn, nor particularly +whittled. The room has the desolate air characteristic of offices which +have once been bar-rooms; but no doubt, on a winter's night, there is +talk worth listening to there, of flocks, and herds and horse-trades, +from the drovers and cattle-market men who patronize the tavern; and +the artistic temperament, at least, could feel no regret if that +sepulchrally penitent bar-room then developed a secret capacity for +the wickedness that once boldly glittered behind the counter in rows of +decanters. + +The house was formerly renowned for its suppers, of which all that +was learned or gifted in the old college town of Charlesbridge used to +partake; and I have heard lips which breathe the loftiest song and the +sweetest humor--let alone being “dewy with the Greek of Plato”--smacked +regretfully over the memory of those suppers' roast and broiled. No such +suppers, they say, are cooked in the world any more; and I am somehow +made to feel that their passing away is connected with the decay of good +literature. + +I hope it may be very long before the predestined French-roof villa +occupies the tavern's site, and turns into lawns and gardens its +wide-spreading cattle-pens, and removes the great barn that now +shows its broad, low gable to the street. This is yet older and +quainter-looking than the tavern itself; it is mighty capacious, and +gives a still profounder impression of vastness with its shed, of which +the roof slopes southward down almost to a man's height from the ground, +and shelters a row of mangers, running back half the length of the +stable, and serving in former times for the baiting of such beasts +as could not be provided for within. But the halcyon days of the +cattle-market are past (though you may still see the white horns tossing +above the fences of the pens, when a newly arrived herd lands from the +train to be driven afoot to Brighton), and the place looks now so empty +and forsaken, spite of the circus baggage-wagons, that it were hard to +believe these mangers could ever have been in request, but for the fact +that they are all gnawed, down to the quick as it were, by generations +of horses--vanished forever on the deserted highways of the +past--impatient for their oats or hungering for more. + +The day must come, of course, when the mangers will all be taken from +the stable-shed, and exposed for sale at that wonderful second-hand shop +which stands over against the tavern. I am no more surprised than one +in a dream, to find it a week-day afternoon by the time I have crossed +thither from the circus-men grooming their piebalds. It is an enchanted +place to me, and I am a frequent and unprofitable customer there, buying +only just enough to make good my footing with the custodian of its +marvels, who is, of course, too true an American to show any desire to +sell. Without, on either side of the doorway, I am pretty sure to find, +among other articles of furniture, a mahogany and hair-cloth sofa, a +family portrait, a landscape painting, a bath-tub, and a flower-stand, +with now and then the variety of a boat and a dog-house; while under an +adjoining shed is heaped a mass of miscellaneous movables, of a heavier +sort, and fearlessly left there night and day, being on all accounts +undesirable to steal. The door of the shop rings a bell in opening, and +ushers the customer into a room which Chaos herself might have planned +in one of her happier moments. Carpets, blankets, shawls, pictures, +mirrors, rocking-chairs, and blue overalls hang from the ceiling, and +devious pathways wind amidst piles of ready-made clothing, show-cases +filled with every sort of knick-knack and half hidden under heaps of +hats and boots and shoes, bookcases, secretaries, chests of drawers, +mattresses, lounges, and bedsteads, to the stairway of a loft similarly +appointed, and to a back room overflowing with glassware and crockery. +These things are not all second-hand, but they are all old and equally +pathetic. The melancholy of ruinous auction sales, of changing tastes +or changing fashions, clings to them, whether they are things that have +never had a home and have been on sale ever since they were made, or +things that have been associated with every phase of human life. + +Among other objects, certain large glass vases, ornamented by the +polite art of potichomanie, have long appealed to my fancy, wherein they +capriciously allied themselves to the history of aging single women in +lonely New England village houses,--pathetic sisters lingering upon the +neutral ground between the faded hopes of marriage and the yet unrisen +prospects of consumption. The work implies an imperfect yet real love of +beauty, the leisure for it a degree of pecuniary ease: the thoughts of +the sisters rise above the pickling and preserving that occupied their +heartier and happier mother; they are in fact in that aesthetic, social, +and intellectual mean, in which single women are thought soonest to +wither and decline. With a little more power, and in our later era, they +would be writing stories full of ambitious, unintelligible, self-devoted +and sudden collapsing young girls and amazing doctors; but as they are, +and in their time, they must do what they can. A sentimentalist +may discern on these vases not only the gay designs with which they +ornamented them, but their own dim faces looking wan from the windows of +some huge old homestead, a world too wide for the shrunken family. All +April long the door-yard trees crouch and shudder in the sour east, all +June they rain canker-worms upon the roof, and then in autumn choke the +eaves with a fall of tattered and hectic foliage. From the window the +fading sisters gaze upon the unnatural liveliness of the summer streets +through which the summer boarders are driving, or upon the death-white +drifts of the intolerable winter. Their father, the captain, is dead; +he died with the Calcutta trade, having survived their mother, and left +them a hopeless competency and yonder bamboo chairs; their only brother +is in California; one, though she loved, had never a lover; her sister's +betrothed married West, whither he went to make a home for her,--and +ah! is it vases for the desolate parlor mantel they decorate, or funeral +urns? And when in time, they being gone, the Californian brother sends +to sell out at auction the old place with the household and kitchen +furniture, is it withered rose-leaves or ashes that the purchaser finds +in these jars? + +They are empty now; and I wonder how came they here? How came the +show-case of Dr. Merrifield, Surgeon-Chiropodist here? How came here yon +Italian painting?--a poor, silly, little affected Madonna, simpering +at me from her dingy gilt frame till I buy her, a great bargain, at a +dollar. From what country church or family oratory, in what revolution, +or stress of private fortunes,--then from what various cabinets of +antiquities, in what dear Vicenza, or Ferrara, or Mantua, earnest +thou, O Madonna? Whose likeness are you, poor girl, with your everyday +prettiness of brows and chin, and your Raphaelesque crick in the neck? +I think I know a part of your story. You were once the property of that +ruined advocate, whose sensibilities would sometimes consent that a +_valet de place_ of uncommon delicacy should bring to his ancestral +palace some singularly meritorious foreigner desirous of purchasing from +his rare collection,--a collection of rubbish scarcely to be equaled +elsewhere in Italy. You hung in that family-room, reached after passage +through stately vestibules and grand stairways; and O, I would be +cheated to the bone, if only I might look out again from some such +windows as were there, upon some such damp, mouldy, broken-statued, +ruinous, enchanted garden as lay below! In that room sat the advocate's +mother and hunchback sister, with their smoky _scaldini_ and their +snuffy priest; and there the wife of the foreigner, self-elected the +taste of his party, inflicted the pang courted by the advocate, and +asked if you were for sale. And then the ruined advocate clasped his +hands, rubbed them, set his head heart-brokenly on one side, took you +down, heaved a sigh, shrugged his shoulders, and sold you--you! a family +heirloom! Well, at least you are old, and you represent to me acres of +dim, religious canvas in that beloved land; and here is the dollar now +asked for you: I could not have bought you for so little at home. + +The Madonna is neighbored by several paintings, if the kind called +Grecian for a reason never revealed by the inventor of an art as old as +potichomanie itself. It was an art by which ordinary lithographs were +given a ghastly transparency, and a tone as disagreeable as chromos; and +I doubt if it could have been known to the Greeks in their best age. +But I remember very well when it passed over whole neighborhoods in +some parts of this country, wasting the time of many young women, and +disfiguring parlor walls with the fruit of their accomplishment. It was +always taught by Professors, a class of learned young men who acquired +their title by abandoning the plough and anvil, and, in a suit of +ready-made clothing, travelling about the country with portfolios under +their arms. It was an experience to make loafers for life of them: and +I fancy the girls who learnt their art never afterwards made so good +butter and cheese. + + “Non-ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.” + +Besides the Grecian paintings there are some mezzotints; full length +pictures of presidents and statesmen, chiefly General Jackson, Henry +Clay, and Daniel Webster, which have hung their day in the offices +or parlors of country politicians. They are all statesmanlike and +presidential in attitude; and I know that if the mighty Webster's lips +had language, he would take his hand out of his waistcoat front, and say +to his fellow mezzotints: “Venerable men! you have come down to us from +a former generation, bringing your household furniture and miscellaneous +trumpery of all kinds with you.” + +Some old-fashioned entry lanterns divide my interest with certain old +willow chairs of an hour-glass pattern, which never stood upright, +probably, and have now all a confirmed droop to one side, as from +having been fallen heavily asleep in, upon breezy porches, of hot summer +afternoons. In the windows are small vases of alabaster, fly-specked +Parian and plaster figures, and dolls with stiff wooden limbs and +papier-maché heads, a sort of dolls no longer to be bought in these +days of modish, blue-eyed blondes of biscuit and sturdy india-rubber +brunettes. The show-case is full of an incredible variety, as photograph +albums, fishing-hooks, socks, suspenders, steel pens, cutlery of all +sorts, and curious old colored prints of Adelaide, and Kate, and Ellen. +A rocking-horse is stabled near amid pendent lengths of second-hand +carpeting, hat-racks, and mirrors; and standing cheek-by-jowl with +painted washstands and bureaus are some plaster statues, aptly colored +and varnished to represent bronze. + +There is nothing here but has a marked character of its own, some +distinct yet intangible trait acquired from former circumstances; and +doubtless all these things have that lurking likeness to former owners +which clothes and furniture are apt to take on from long association, +and which we should instantly recognize could they be confronted with +their late proprietors. It seems, in very imaginative moments, as if the +strange assemblage of incongruities must have a consciousness of these +latent resemblances, which the individual pieces betray when their +present keeper turns the key upon them, and abandons them to themselves +at night; and I have sometimes fancied such an effect in the late +twilight, when I have wandered into their resting-place, and have beheld +them in the unnatural glare of a kerosene lamp burning before a brightly +polished reflector, and casting every manner of grotesque shadow upon +the floor and walls. But this may have been an illusion; at any rate I +am satisfied that the bargain-driving capacity of the storekeeper is not +in the least affected by a weird quality in his wares; though they have +not failed to impart to him something of their own desultory character. +He sometimes leaves a neighbor in charge when he goes to meals, and +then, if I enter, I am watchfully followed about from corner to corner, +and from room to room, lest I pocket a mattress or slip a book-case +under my coat. The storekeeper himself never watches me; perhaps +he knows that it is a purely professional interest I take in the +collection; that I am in the trade and have a secondhand shop of my +own, full of poetical rubbish, and every sort of literary odds and +ends, picked up at random, and all cast higgledy-piggledy into the same +chaotic receptacle. His customers are as little like ordinary shoppers +as he is like common tradesmen. They are in part the Canadians who work +in the brickyards, and it is surprising to find how much business can +be transacted, and how many sharp bargains struck without the help of a +common language. I am in the belief, which may be erroneous, that nobody +is wronged in these trades. The taciturn storekeeper, who regards his +customers with a stare of solemn amusement as Critturs born by some +extraordinary vicissitude of nature to the use of a language that +practically amounts to deafness and dumbness, never suffers his +philosophical interest in them to affect his commercial efficiency; +he drops them now and then a curt English phrase, or expressive Yankee +idiom; he knows very well when they mean to buy and when they do +not; and they equally wary and equally silent, unswayed by the glib +allurements of a salesman, judge of price and quality for themselves, +make their solitary offer, and stand or fall by it. + +I am seldom able to conclude a pedestrian tour without a glance at the +wonderful interior of this cheap store, and I know all its contents +familiarly. I recognize wares that have now been on sale there for +years; I miss at first glance such accustomed objects as have been +parted with between my frequent visits, and hail with pleasure the +additions to that extraordinary variety. I can hardly, I suppose, +expect the reader to sympathize with the joy I felt the other night, in +discovering among the latter an adventurous and universally applicable +sign-board advertising This House and Lot for Sale, and, intertwined +with the cast-off suspenders which long garlanded a coffee-mill pendent +from the roof, a newly added second-hand india-rubber ear-trumpet. Here +and there, however, I hope a finer soul will relish, as I do, the poetry +of thus buying and offering for sale the very most recondite, as well +as the commonest articles of commerce, in the faith that one day the +predestined purchaser will appear and carry off the article appointed +him from the beginning of time. This faith is all the more touching, +because the collector cannot expect to live until the whole stock is +disposed of, and because, in the order of nature, much must at last fall +to rein unbought, unless the reporter's Devouring Element appears and +gives a sudden tragical turn to the poem. + +It is the whistle of a train drawing up at the neighboring station that +calls me away from the second-hand store; for I never find myself able +to resist the hackneyed prodigy of such an arrival. It cannot cease +to be impressive. I stand beside the track while the familiar monster +writhes up to the station and disgorges its passengers,--suburbanly +packaged, and bundled, and bagged, and even when empty-handed somehow +proclaiming the jaded character of men that hurry their work all day +to catch the evening train out, and their dreams all night to catch the +morning train in,--and then I climb the station-stairs, and “hang with +grooms and porters on the bridge,” that I may not lose my ever-repeated +sensation of having the train pass under my feet, and of seeing it rush +away westward to the pretty blue hills beyond,--hills not too big for +a man born in a plain-country to love. Twisting and trembling along the +track, it dwindles rapidly in the perspective, and is presently out of +sight. It has left the city and the suburbs behind, and has sought the +woods and meadows; but Nature never in the least accepts it, and rarely +makes its path a part of her landscape's loveliness. The train passes +alien through all her moods and aspects; the wounds made in her face by +the road's sharp cuts and excavations are slowest of all wounds to heal, +and the iron rails remain to the last as shackles upon her. Yet when +the rails are removed, as has happened with a non-paying track in +Charlesbridge, the road inspires a real tenderness in her. Then she +bids it take or the grace that belongs to all ruin; the grass creeps +stealthily over the scarified sides of the embankments; the golden-rod, +and the purple-topped iron-weed, and the lady's-slipper, spring up in +the hollows on either side, and--I am still thinking of that deserted +railroad which runs through Charlesbridge--hide with their leafage the +empty tomato-cans and broken bottles and old boots on the ash-heaps +dumped there; Nature sets her velvety willows a waving near, and lower +than their airy tops plans a vista of trees arching above the track, +which is as wild and pretty and illusive a vista as the sunset ever +cared to look through and gild a board fence beyond. + +Most of our people come from Boston on the horse-cars, and it is only +the dwellers on the Avenue and the neighboring streets whom hurrying +homeward I follow away from the steam-car station. The Avenue is +our handsomest street; and if it were in the cosmopolitan citizen of +Charlesbridge to feel any local interest, I should be proud of it. +As matters are, I perceive its beauty, and I often reflect, with a +pardonable satisfaction, that it is not only handsome, but probably the +very dullest street in the world. It is magnificently long and broad, +and is flanked nearly the whole way from the station to the colleges by +pine palaces rising from spacious lawns, or from the green of trees or +the brightness of gardens. The splendor is all very new, but newness is +not a fault that much affects architectural beauty, while it is the only +one that time is certain to repair: and I find an honest and unceasing +pleasure in the graceful lines of those palaces, which is not surpassed +even by my appreciation of the vast quiet and monotony of the street +itself. Commonly, when I emerge upon it from the grassy-bordered, +succory-blossomed walks of Benicia Street, I behold, looking northward, +a monumental horse-car standing--it appears for ages, if I wish to take +it for Boston--at the head of Pliny Street; and looking southward I see +that other emblem of suburban life, an express-wagon, fading rapidly +in the distance. Haply the top of a buggy nods round the bend under the +elms near the station; and, if fortune is so lavish, a lady appears from +a side street, and, while tarrying for the car, thrusts the point of her +sun-umbrella into the sandy sidewalk. This is the mid-afternoon +effect of the Avenue; but later in the day, and well into the dusk, it +remembers its former gayety as a trotting-course,--with here and there +a spider-wagon, a twinkling-footed mare, and a guttural driver. On +market-days its superb breadth is taken up by flocks of bleating sheep, +and a pastoral tone is thus given to its tranquillity; anon a herd of +beef-cattle appears under the elms; or a drove of pigs, many pausing, +inquisitive of the gutters, and quarrelsome as if they were the heirs of +prosperity instead of doom, is slowly urged on toward the shambles. In +the spring or the autumn, the Avenue is exceptionally enlivened by the +progress of a brace or so of students who, in training for one of the +University Courses of base-ball or boating, trot slowly and earnestly +along the sidewalk, fists up, elbows down, mouths shut, and a sense of +immense responsibility visible in their faces. + +The summer is waning with the day as I turn from the Avenue into Benicia +Street. This is the hour when the fly cedes to the mosquito, as the +Tuscan poet says, and, as one may add, the frying grasshopper yields to +the shrilly cricket in noisiness. The embrowning air rings with the +sad music made by these innumerable little violinists, hid in all the +gardens round, and the pedestrian feels a sinking of the spirits not +to be accounted for upon the theory that the street is duller than the +Avenue, for it really is not so. + +Quick now, the cheerful lamps of kerosene!--without their light, the +cry of those crickets, dominated for an instant, but not stilled, by the +bellowing of a near-passing locomotive, and the baying of a distant dog, +were too much. If it were the last autumn that ever was to be, it could +not be heralded with notes of dismaller effect. This is in fact the hour +of supreme trial everywhere, and doubtless no one but a newly-accepted +lover can be happy at twilight. In the city, even, it is oppressive; in +the country it is desolate; in the suburbs it is a miracle that it +is ever lived through. The night-winds have not risen yet to stir the +languid foliage of the sidewalk maples; the lamps are not yet lighted, +to take away the gloom from the blank, staring windows of the houses +near; it is too late for letters, too early for a book. In town your +fancy would turn to the theatres; in the country you would occupy +yourself with cares of poultry or of stock: in the suburbs you can but +sit upon your threshold, and fight the predatory mosquito. + + + + +BY HORSE-CAR TO BOSTON + + +At a former period the writer of this had the fortune to serve +his country in an Italian city whose great claim upon the world's +sentimental interest is the fact that-- + + “The sea is in her broad, her narrow streets + Ebbing and flowing,” + +and that she has no ways whatever for hoofs or wheels. In his quality +of United States official, he was naturally called upon for information +concerning the estates of Italians believed to have emigrated early in +the century to Buenos Ayres, and was commissioned to learn why certain +persons in Mexico and Brazil, and the parts of Peru, had not, if they +were still living, written home to their friends. On the other hand, he +was intrusted with business nearly as pertinent and hopeful by some of +his own countrymen, and it was not quite with surprise that he one +day received a neatly lithographed circular with his name and address +written in it, signed by a famous projector of such enterprises, asking +him to cooperate for the introduction of horse-railroads in Venice. +The obstacles to the scheme were of such a nature that it seemed hardly +worth while even to reply to the circular; but the proposal was one +of those bold flights of imagination which forever lift objects out of +vulgar association. It has cast an enduring, poetic charm even about the +horse-car in my mind, and I naturally look for many unprosaic aspects of +humanity there. I have an acquaintance who insists that it is the place +above all others suited to see life in every striking phase. He pretends +to have witnessed there the reunion of friends who had not met in many +years, the embrace, figurative of course, of long lost brothers, +the reconciliation of lovers; I do not know but also some scenes +of love-making, and acceptance or rejection. But my friend is an +imaginative man, and may make himself romances. I myself profess to have +beheld for the most part only mysteries; and I think it not the least +of these that, riding on the same cars day after day, one finds so many +strange faces with so little variety. Whether or not that dull, jarring +motion shakes inward and settles about the centres of mental life the +sprightliness that should inform the visage, I do not know; but it is +certain that the emptiness of the average passenger's countenance is +something wonderful, considered with reference to Nature's abhorrence of +a vacuum, and the intellectual repute which Boston enjoys among envious +New-Yorkers. It is seldom that a journey out of our cold metropolis is +enlivened by a mystery so positive in character as the young lady +in black, who alighted at a most ordinary little street in Old +Charlesbridge, and heightened her effect by going into a French-roof +house there that had no more right than a dry goods box to receive a +mystery. She was tall, and her lovely arms showed through the black +gauze of her dress with an exquisite roundness and _morbidezza_. Upon +her beautiful wrists she had heavy bracelets of dead gold, fashioned +after some Etruscan device; and from her dainty ears hung great hoops of +the same metal and design, which had the singular privilege of touching, +now and then, her white columnar neck. A massive chain or necklace, also +Etruscan, and also gold, rose and fell at her throat, and on one +little ungloved hand glittered a multitude of rings. This hand was very +expressive, and took a principal part in the talk which the lady held +with her companion, and was as alert and quick as if trained in the +gesticulation of Southern or Latin life somewhere. Her features, on the +contrary, were rather insipid, being too small and fine; but they were +redeemed by the liquid splendor of her beautiful eyes, and the mortal +pallor of her complexion. She was altogether so startling an apparition, +that all of us jaded, commonplace spectres turned and fastened our +weary, lack-lustre eyes upon her looks, with an utter inability to +remove them. There was one fat, unctuous person seated opposite, to whom +his interest was a torture, for he would have gone to sleep except for +her remarkable presence: as it was, his heavy eyelids fell half-way +shut, and drooped there at an agonizing angle, while his eyes remained +immovably fixed upon that strange, death-white face. How it could have +come of that colorlessness,--whether through long sickness or long +residence in a tropical climate,--was a question that perplexed another +of the passengers, who would have expected to hear the lady speak any +language in the world rather than English; and to whom her companion or +attendant was hardly less than herself a mystery,--being a dragon-like, +elderish female, clearly a Yankee by birth, but apparently of many +years' absence from home. The propriety of extracting these people from +the horse-cars and transferring them bodily to the first chapter of a +romance was a thing about which there could be no manner of doubt, and +nothing prevented the abduction but the unexpected voluntary exit of the +pale lady. As she passed out everybody else awoke as from a dream, or as +if freed from a potent fascination. It is part of the mystery that +this lady should never have reappeared in that theatre of life, the +horse-car; but I cannot regret having never seen her more; she was so +inestimably precious to wonder that it would have been a kind of loss to +learn anything about her. + +[Illustration: “The young lady in black, who alighted at a most ordinary +little street.”] + +On the other hand, I should be glad if two young men who once presented +themselves as mysteries upon the same stage could be so distinctly and +sharply identified that all mankind should recognize them at the day of +judgment. They were not so remarkable in the nature as in the degree of +their offense; for the mystery that any man should keep his seat in a +horse-car and let a woman stand is but too sadly common. They say +that this, public unkindness to the sex has come about through the +ingratitude of women, who have failed to return thanks for places +offered them, and that it is a just and noble revenge we take upon +them. There might be something advanced in favor of the idea that we +law-making men, who do not oblige the companies to provide seats for +every one, deserve no thanks from voteless, helpless women when we offer +them places; nay, that we ought to be glad if they do not reproach us +for making that a personal favor which ought to be a common right. I +would prefer, on the whole, to believe that this selfishness is not a +concerted act on our part, but a flower of advanced civilization; it is +a ripe fruit in European countries, and it is more noticeable in Boston +than anywhere else in America. It is, in fact, one of the points of our +high polish which people from the interior say first strikes them on +coming among us; for they declare--no doubt too modestly--that in their +Boeotian wilds our Athenian habit is almost unknown. Yet it would not +be fair to credit our whole population with it. I have seen a laborer +or artisan rise from his place, and offer it to a lady, while a dozen +well-dressed men kept theirs; and I know several conservative young +gentlemen, who are still so old-fashioned as always to respect the +weakness and weariness of women. One of them, I hear, has settled it +in his own mind that if the family cook appears in a car where he is +seated, he must rise and give her his place. This, perhaps, is a trifle +idealistic; but it is magnificent, it is princely. From his difficult +height, we decline--through ranks that sacrifice themselves for women +with bundles or children in arms, for old ladies, or for very young and +pretty ones--to the men who give no odds to the most helpless creature +alive. These are the men who do not act upon the promptings of human +nature like the laborer, and who do not refine upon their duty like my +young gentlemen, and make it their privilege to befriend the idea of +womanhood; they are men who have paid for their seats and are going to +keep them. They have been at work, very probably, all day, and no +doubt they are tired; they look so, and try hard not to look ashamed of +publicly considering themselves before a sex which is born tired, and +from which our climate and customs have drained so much health that +society sometimes seems little better than a hospital for invalid woman, +where every courtesy is likely to be a mercy done to a sufferer. Yet +the two young men of whom I began to speak were not apparently of this +class, and let us hope they were foreigners,--say Englishmen, since we +hate Englishmen the most. They were the only men seated, in a car full +of people; and when four or five ladies came in and occupied the aisle +before them, they might have been puzzled which to offer their places +to, if one of the ladies had not plainly been infirm. They settled the +question--if there was any in their minds--by remaining seated, while +the lady in front of them swung uneasily to and fro with the car, and +appeared ready to sink at their feet. In another moment she had actually +done so; and, too weary to rise, she continued to crouch upon the floor +of the car for the course of a mile, the young men resolutely keeping +their places, and not rising till they were ready to leave the car. It +was a horrible scene, and incredible,--that well-dressed woman sitting +on the floor, and those two well-dressed men keeping their places; it +was as much out of keeping with our smug respectabilities as a hanging, +and was a spectacle so paralyzing that public opinion took no action +concerning it. A shabby person, standing upon the platform outside, +swore about it, between expectorations: even the conductor's heart +was touched; and he said he had seen a good many hard things aboard +horse-cars, but that was a little the hardest; he had never expected to +come to that. These were simple people enough, and could not interest me +a great deal, but I should have liked to have a glimpse of the complex +minds of those young men, and I should still like to know something of +the previous life that could have made their behavior possible to them. +They ought to make public the philosophic methods by which they reached +that pass of unshamable selfishness. The information would be useful to +a race which knows the sweetness of self-indulgence, and would fain know +the art of so drugging or besotting the sensibilities that it shall no +feel disgraced by any sort of meanness. They might really have much +to say for themselves; as, that the lady, being conscious she could no +longer keep her feet, had no right to crouch at theirs, and put them to +so severe a test; or that, having suffered her to sink there, they fell +no further in the ignorant public opinion by suffering her to continue +there. + +But I doubt if that other young man could say anything for himself, who, +when a pale, trembling woman was about to drop into the vacant place at +his side, stretched his arm across it with, “This seat's engaged,” till +a robust young fellow, his friend, appeared, and took it and kept it +all the way out from Boston. The commission of such a tragical wrong, +involving a violation of common usage as well as the infliction of a +positive cruelty, would embitter the life of an ordinary man, if any +ordinary man were capable of it; but let us trust that nature has +provided fortitude of every kind for the offender, and that he is not +wrung by keener remorse than most would feel for a petty larceny. I dare +say he would be eager at the first opportunity to rebuke the ingratitude +of women who do not thank their benefactors for giving them seats. It +seems a little odd, by the way, and perhaps it is through the peculiar +blessing of Providence, that, since men have determined by a savage +egotism to teach the offending sex manners, their own comfort should +be in the infliction of the penalty, and that it should be as much a +pleasure as a duty to keep one's place. + +Perhaps when the ladies come to vote, they will abate, with other +nuisances, the whole business of overloaded public conveyances. In the +mean time the kindness of women to each other is a notable feature of +all horse-car journeys. It is touching to see the smiling eagerness with +which the poor things gather close their volumed skirts and make room +for a weary sister, the tender looks of compassion which they bend upon +the sufferers obliged to stand, the sweetness with which they rise, if +they are young and strong, to offer their place to any infirm or heavily +burdened person of their sex. + +But a journey to Boston is not entirely an experience of bitterness. +On the contrary, there are many things besides the mutual amiability of +these beautiful martyrs which relieve its tedium and horrors. A whole +car-full of people, brought into the closest contact with one another, +yet in the absence of introductions never exchanging a word, each being +so sufficient to himself as to need no social stimulus whatever, is +certainly an impressive and stately spectacle. It is a beautiful day, +say; but far be it from me to intimate as much to my neighbor, who +plainly would rather die than thus commit himself with me, and who, in +fact, would well-nigh strike me speechless with surprise if he did so. +If there is any necessity for communication, as with the conductor, we +essay first to express ourselves by gesture, and then utter our desires +with a certain hollow and remote effect, which is not otherwise to be +described. I have sometimes tried to speak above my breath, when, being +about to leave the car, I have made a virtue of offering my place to +the prettiest young woman standing, but I have found it impossible; the +_genius loci_, whatever it was, suppressed me, and I have gasped out my +sham politeness as in a courteous nightmare. The silencing influence +is quite successfully resisted by none but the tipsy people who +occasionally ride out with us, and call up a smile, sad as a gleam of +winter sunshine, to our faces by their artless prattle. I remember +one eventful afternoon that we were all but moved to laughter by the +gayeties of such a one, who, even after he had ceased to talk, continued +to amuse us by falling asleep, and reposing himself against the shoulder +of the lady next him. Perhaps it is in acknowledgment of the agreeable +variety they contribute to horse-car life, that the conductor treats his +inebriate passengers with such unfailing tenderness and forbearance. +I have never seen them molested, though I have noticed them in the +indulgence of many eccentricities, and happened once even to see one +of them sit down in a lady's lap. But that was on the night of Saint +Patrick's day. Generally all avoidable indecorums are rare in the +horse-cars, though during the late forenoon and early afternoon, in the +period of lighter travel, I have found curious figures there:--among +others, two old women, in the old-clothes business, one of whom was +dressed, not very fortunately, in a gown with short sleeves, and +inferentially a low neck; a mender of umbrellas, with many unwholesome +whity-brown wrecks of umbrellas about him; a peddler of soap, who +offered cakes of it to his fellow-passengers at a discount, apparently +for friendship's sake; and a certain gentleman with a pock-marked face, +and a beard dyed an unscrupulous purple, who sang himself a hymn all the +way to Boston, and who gave me no sufficient reason for thinking him a +sea-captain. Not far from the end of the Long Bridge, there is apt to be +a number of colored ladies waiting to get into the car, or to get out +of it,--usually one solemn mother in Ethiopia, and two or three mirthful +daughters, who find it hard to suppress a sense of adventure, and to +keep in the laughter that struggles out through their glittering +teeth and eyes, and who place each other at a disadvantage by divers +accidental and intentional bumps and blows. If they are to get out, the +old lady is not certain of the place where, and, after making the car +stop, and parleying with the conductor, returns to her seat, and is +mutely held up to public scorn by one taciturn wink of the conductor's +eye. + +Among horse-car types, I am almost ashamed to note one so common and +observable as that middle-aged lady who gets aboard and will not see the +one vacant seat left, but stands tottering at the door, blind and +deaf to all the modest beckonings and benevolent gasps of her +fellow-passengers. An air as of better days clings about her; she seems +a person who has known sickness and sorrow; but so far from pitying her, +you view her with inexpressible rancor, for it is plain that she +ought to sit down, and that she will not. But for a point of honor the +conductor would show her the vacant place; this forbidding, however, how +can he? There she stands and sniffs drearily when you glance at her, as +you must from time to time, and no wild turkey caught in a trap was ever +more incapable of looking down than this middle-aged (shall I say also +unmarried?) lady. + +Of course every one knows the ladies and gentlemen who sit +cater-cornered, and who will not move up; and equally familiar is +that large and ponderous person, who, feigning to sit down beside you, +practically sits down upon you, and is not incommoded by having your +knee under him. He implies by this brutal conduct that you are taking up +more space than belongs to you, and that you are justly made an example +of. + +I had the pleasure one day to meet on the horse-car an advocate of one +of the great reforms of the day. He held a green bag upon his knees, and +without any notice passed from a question of crops to a discussion of +suffrage for the negro, and so to womanhood suffrage. “Let the women +vote,” said he,--“let 'em vote if they want to. _I_ don't care. Fact is, +I should like to see 'em do it the first time. They're excitable, +you know; they're excitable;” and he enforced his analysis of female +character by thrusting his elbow sharply into my side. “Now, there's +my wife; I'd like to see her vote. Be fun, I tell you. And the +girls,--Lord, the girls! Circus wouldn't be anywhere.” Enchanted with +the picture which he appeared to have conjured up for himself, he +laughed with the utmost relish, and then patting the green bag in his +lap, which plainly contained a violin, “You see,” he went on, “I go +out playing for dancing-parties. Work all day at my trade,--I'm a +carpenter,--and play in the evening. Take my little old ten dollars a +night. And _I_ notice the women a good deal; and _I_ tell you they're +_all_ excitable, and _I sh'd_ like to see 'em vote. Vote right and vote +often,--that's the ticket, eh?” This friend of womanhood suffrage--whose +attitude of curiosity and expectation seemed to me representative of +that of a great many thinkers on the subject--no doubt was otherwise a +reformer, and held that the coming man would not drink wine--if he could +find whiskey. At least I should have said so, guessing from the odors he +breathed along with his liberal sentiments. + +Something of the character of a college-town is observable nearly always +in the presence of the students, who confound certain traditional ideas +of students by their quietude of costume and manner, and whom Padua or +Heidelberg would hardly know, but who nevertheless betray that they are +banded to-- + + “Scorn delights and live laborious days,” + +by a uniformity in the cut of their trousers, or a clannishness of cane +or scarf, or a talk of boats and base-ball held among themselves. One +cannot see them without pleasure and kindness; and it is no wonder that +their young-lady acquaintances brighten so to recognize them on the +horse-cars. There is much good fortune in the world, but none +better than being an undergraduate twenty years old, hale, handsome, +fashionably dressed, with the whole promise of life before: it's a state +of things to disarm even envy. With so much youth forever in her heart, +it must be hard for our Charlesbridge to grow old: the generations arise +and pass away but in her veins is still this tide of warm blood, century +in and century out, so much the same from one age to another that it +would be hardy to say it was not still one youthfulness. There is a +print of the village as it was a cycle since, showing the oldest of +the college buildings and upon the street in front a scholar in his +scholar's-cap and gown, giving his arm to a very stylish girl of that +period, who is dressed wonderfully like the girl of ours, so that but +for the student's antique formality of costume, one might believe that +he was handing her out to take the horse-car. There is no horse-car in +the picture,--that is the only real difference between then and now in +our Charlesbridge, perennially young and gay. Have there not ever been +here the same grand ambitions, the same high hopes,--and is not the +unbroken succession of youth in these? + +As for other life on the horse-car, it shows to little or no effect, +as I have said. You can, of course, detect certain classes; as, in the +morning the business-men going in, to their counters or their desks, and +in the afternoon the shoppers coming out, laden with paper parcels. But +I think no one can truly claim to know the regular from the occasional +passengers by any greater cheerfulness in the faces of the latter. The +horse-car will suffer no such inequality as this, but reduces us all to +the same level of melancholy. It would be but a very unworthy kind of +art which should seek to describe people by such merely external traits +as a habit of carrying baskets or large travelling-bags in the car; and +the present muse scorns it, but is not above speaking of the frequent +presence of those lovely young girls in which Boston and the suburban +towns abound, and who, whether they appear with rolls of music in their +hands, or books from the circulating-libraries, or pretty parcels or +hand-bags, would brighten even the horse-car if fresh young looks +and gay and brilliant costumes could do so much. But they only add +perplexity to the anomaly, which was already sufficiently trying with +its contrasts of splendor and shabbiness, and such intimate association +of velvets and patches as you see in the churches of Catholic countries, +but nowhere else in the world except in our “coaches of the sovereign +people.” + +In winter, the journey to or from Boston cannot appear otherwise than +very dreary to the fondest imagination. Coming out, nothing can look +more arctic and forlorn than the river, double-shrouded in ice and snow, +or sadder than the contrast offered to the same prospect in summer. Then +all is laughing, and it is a joy in every nerve to ride out over the +Long Bridge at high tide, and, looking southward, to see the wide +crinkle and glitter of that beautiful expanse of water, which laps on +one hand the granite quays of the city, and on the other washes among +the reeds and wild grasses of the salt-meadows. A ship coming slowly +up the channel, or a dingy tug violently darting athwart it, gives an +additional pleasure to the eye, and adds something dreamy or vivid +to the beauty of the scene. It is hard to say at what hour of the +summer's-day the prospect is loveliest; and I am certainly not going to +speak of the sunset as the least of its delights. When this exquisite +spectacle is presented, the horse-car passenger, happy to cling with one +foot to the rear platform-steps, looks out over the shoulder next him +into fairy-land. Crimson and purple the bay stretches westward till its +waves darken into the grassy levels, where, here and there, a hay-rick +shows perfectly black against the light. Afar off, southeastward and +westward, the uplands wear a tinge of tenderest blue; and in the nearer +distance, on the low shores of the river, hover the white plumes of +arriving and departing trains. The windows of the stately houses that +overlook the water take the sunset from it evanescently, and begin to +chill and darken before the crimson burns out of the sky. The windows +are, in fact, best after nightfall, when they are brilliantly lighted +from within; and when, if it is a dark, warm night, and the briny +fragrance comes up strong from the falling tide, the lights reflected +far down in the still water, bring a dream, as I have heard travelled +Bostonians say, of Venice and her magical effects in the same kind. But +for me the beauty of the scene needs the help of no such association; +I am content with it for what it is. I enjoy also the hints of spring +which one gets in riding over the Long Bridge at low tide in the first +open days. Then there is not only a vernal beating of carpets on the +piers of the drawbridge, but the piles and walls left bare by the +receding water show green patches of sea-weeds and mosses, and flatter +the willing eye with a dim hint of summer. This reeking and saturated +herbage--which always seems to me, in contrast with dry land growths, +what the water-logged life of seafaring folk is to that which we happier +men lead on shore,--taking so kindly the deceitful warmth and brightness +of the sun, has then a charm which it loses when summer really comes; +nor does one, later, have so keen an interest in the men wading about in +the shallows below the bridge, who, as in the distance they stoop over +to gather whatever shell-fish they seek, make a very fair show of being +some ungainlier sort of storks, and are as near as we can hope to come +to the spring-prophesying storks of song and story. A sentiment of +the drowsiness that goes before the awakening of the year, and is so +different from the drowsiness that precedes the great autumnal slumber, +is in the air, but is gone when we leave the river behind, and strike +into the straggling village beyond. + +I maintain that Boston, as one approaches it and passingly takes in +the line of Bunker Hill Monument, soaring preëminent among the +emulous foundry-chimneys of the sister city, is fine enough to need +no comparison with other fine sights. Thanks to the mansard curves and +dormer-windows of the newer houses, there is a singularly picturesque +variety among the roofs that stretch along the bay, and rise one above +another on the city's three hills, grouping themselves about the State +House, and surmounted by its India-rubber dome. But, after all, does +human weakness crave some legendary charm, some grace of uncertain +antiquity, in the picturesqueness it sees? I own that the future, to +which we are often referred for the “stuff that dreams are made of,” is +more difficult for the fancy than the past, that the airy amplitude of +its possibilities is somewhat chilly, and that we naturally long for the +snug quarters of old, made warm by many generations of life. Besides, +Europe spoils us ingenuous Americans, and flatters our sentimentality +into ruinous extravagances. Looking at her many-storied former times, +we forget our own past, neat, compact, and convenient for the poorest +memory to dwell in. Yet an American not infected with the discontent of +travel could hardly approach this superb city without feeling something +of the coveted pleasure in her, without a reverie of her Puritan and +Revolutionary times, and the great names and deeds of her heroic annals. +I think, however, we were well to be rid of this yearning for a native +American antiquity; for in its indulgence one cannot but regard +himself and his contemporaries as cumberers of the ground, delaying +the consummation of that hoary past which will be so fascinating to +a semi-Chinese posterity, and will be, ages hence, the inspiration of +Pigeon-English poetry and romance. Let us make much of our two +hundred and fifty years, and cherish the present as our golden age. We +healthy-minded people in the horse-cars are loath to lose a moment +of it, and are aggrieved that the draw of the bridge should be up, +naturally looking on what is constantly liable to happen as an especial +malice of the fates. All the drivers of the vehicles that clog the draw +on either side have a like sense of personal injury; and apparently it +would go hard with the captain of that leisurely vessel below if he were +delivered into our hands. But this impatience and anger are entirely +illusive. + +We are really the most patient people in the world, especially as +regards any incorporated, non-political oppressions. A lively Gaul, who +travelled among us some thirty years ago, found that, in the absence +of political control, we gratified the human instinct of obedience by +submitting to small tyrannies unknown abroad, and were subject to the +steamboat-captain, the hotel-clerk, the stage-driver, and the waiter, +who all bullied us fearlessly; but though some vestiges of this bondage +remain, it is probably passing away. The abusive Frenchman's assertion +would not at least hold good concerning the horse-car conductors, who, +in spite of a lingering preference for touching or punching passengers +for their fare instead of asking for it, are commonly mild-mannered and +good-tempered, and disposed to molest us as little as possible. I have +even received from one of them a mark of such kindly familiarity as the +offer of a check which he held between his lips, and thrust out his face +to give me, both his hands being otherwise occupied; and their lives are +in nowise such luxurious careers as we should expect in public despots. +The oppression of the horse-car passenger is not from them, and the +passenger himself is finally to blame for it. When the draw closes at +last, and we rumble forward into the city street, a certain stir of +expectation is felt among us. The long and eventful journey is nearly +ended, and now we who are to get out of the cars can philosophically +amuse ourselves with the passions and sufferings of those who are to +return in our places. You must choose the time between five and six +o'clock in the afternoon, if you would make this grand study of the +national character in its perfection. Then the spectacle offered in any +arriving horse-car will serve your purpose. At nearly every corner of +the street up which it climbs stands an experienced suburban, who darts +out upon the car, and seizes a vacant place in it. Presently all the +places are taken, and before we reach Temple Street, where helpless +groups of women are gathered to avail themselves of the first seats +vacated, an alert citizen is stationed before each passenger who is to +retire at the summons, “Please pass out forrad.” When this is heard in +Bowdoin Square, we rise and push forward, knuckling one another's backs +in our eagerness, and perhaps glancing behind us at the tumult within. +Not only are all our places occupied, but the aisle is left full of +passengers precariously supporting themselves by the straps in the roof. +The rear platform is stormed and carried by a party with bundles; the +driver is instantly surrounded by another detachment; and as the car +moves away from the office, the platform steps are filled. + +“Is it possible,” I asked myself, when I had written as far as this in +the present noble history, “that I am not exaggerating? It can't be +that this and the other enormities I have been describing are of daily +occurrence in Boston. Let me go verify, at least, my picture of the +evening horse-car.” So I take my way to Bowdoin Square, and in the +conscientious spirit of modern inquiry, I get aboard the first car that +comes up. Like every other car, it is meant to seat twenty passengers. +It does this, and besides it carries in the aisle and on the platform +forty passengers standing. The air is what you may imagine, if you know +that not only is the place so indecently crowded, but that in the centre +of the car are two adopted citizens, far gone in drink, who have the +aspect and the smell of having passed the day in an ash-heap. These +citizens being quite helpless themselves, are supported by the public, +and repose in singular comfort upon all the passengers near them; I, +myself, contribute an aching back to the common charity, and a genteelly +dressed young lady takes one of them from time to time on her knee. But +they are comparatively an ornament to society till the conductor objects +to the amount they offer him for fare; for after that they wish to fight +him during the journey, and invite him at short intervals to step out +and be shown what manner of men they are. The conductor passes it off +for a joke, and so it is, and a very good one. + +In that unhappy mass it would be an audacious spirit who should say +of any particular arm or leg, “It is mine,” and all the breath is in +common. Nothing, it would seem, could add to our misery; but we discover +our error when the conductor squeezes a tortuous path through us, and +collects the money for our transportation. I never can tell, during the +performance of this feat, whether he or the passengers are more to be +pitied. + +The people who are thus indecorously huddled and jammed together, +without regard to age or sex, otherwise lead lives of at least comfort, +and a good half of them cherish themselves in every physical way with +unparalleled zeal. They are handsomely clothed; they are delicately neat +in linen; they eat well, or, if not well, as well as their cooks +will let them, and at all events expensively; they house in dwellings +appointed in a manner undreamt of elsewhere in the world,--dwellings +wherein furnaces make a summer-heat, where fountains of hot and cold +water flow at a touch, where light is created or quenched by the turning +of a key, where all is luxurious upholstery, and magical ministry to +real or fancied needs. They carry the same tastes with them to their +places of business; and when they “attend divine service,” it is with +the understanding that God is to receive them in a richly carpeted +house, deliciously warmed and perfectly ventilated, where they may +adore Him at their ease upon cushioned seats,--secured seats. Yet these +spoiled children of comfort, when they ride to or from business or +church, fail to assert rights that the benighted Cockney, who never +heard of our plumbing and registers, or even the oppressed Parisian, +who is believed not to change his linen from one revolution to another, +having paid for, enjoys. When they enter the “full” horse-car, they find +themselves in a place inexorable as the grave to their greenbacks, where +not only is their adventitious consequence stripped from them, but the +courtesies of life are impossible, the inherent dignity of the person is +denied, and they are reduced below the level of the most uncomfortable +nations of the Old World. The philosopher accustomed to draw consolation +from the sufferings of his richer fellow-men, and to infer an overruling +Providence from their disgraces, might well bless Heaven for the +spectacle of such degradation, if his thanksgiving were not prevented +by his knowledge that this is quite voluntary. And now consider that +on every car leaving the city at this time the scene is much the same; +reflect that the horror is enacting, not only in Boston, but in New +York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati,--wherever +the horse-car, that tinkles well-nigh round the Continent, is known; +remember that the same victims are thus daily sacrificed, without an +effort to right themselves: and then you will begin to realize--dimly +and imperfectly, of course--the unfathomable meekness of the American +character. The “full” horse-car is a prodigy whose likeness is +absolutely unknown elsewhere, since the Neapolitan gig went out; and I +suppose it will be incredible to the future in our own country. When I +see such a horse-car as I have sketched move away from its station, I +feel that it is something not only emblematic and interpretative, +but monumental; and I know that when art becomes truly national, the +overloaded horse-car will be celebrated in painting and sculpture. And +in after ages, when the oblique-eyed, swarthy American of that time, +pausing before some commemorative bronze or historical picture of our +epoch, contemplates this stupendous spectacle of human endurance, I hope +he will be able to philosophize more satisfactorily than we can now, +concerning the mystery of our strength as a nation and our weakness as a +public. + + + + +A DAY'S PLEASURE + + +I.--THE MORNING. + + +They were not a large family, and their pursuits and habits were very +simple; yet the summer was lapsing toward the first pathos of autumn +before they found themselves all in such case as to be able to take the +day's pleasure they had planned so long. They had agreed often and often +that nothing could be more charming than an excursion down the Harbor, +either to Gloucester, or to Nahant, or to Nantasket Beach, or to Hull +and Hingham, or to any point within the fatal bound beyond which is +seasickness. They had studied the steamboat advertisements, day after +day, for a long time, without making up their minds which of these +charming excursions would be the most delightful; and when they had at +last fixed upon one and chosen some day for it, that day was sure to be +heralded by a long train of obstacles, or it dawned upon weather that +was simply impossible. Besides, in the suburbs, you are apt to sleep +late, unless the solitary ice-wagon of the neighborhood makes a very +uncommon rumbling in going by; and I believe that the excursion was +several times postponed by the tardy return of the pleasurers from +dreamland, which, after all, is not the worst resort, or the least +interesting--or profitable, for the matter of that. But at last the +great day came,--a blameless Thursday alike removed from the cares of +washing and ironing days, and from the fatigues with which every week +closes. One of the family chose deliberately to stay at home; but +the severest scrutiny could not detect a hindrance in the health +or circumstances of any of the rest, and the weather was delicious. +Everything, in fact, was so fair and so full of promise, that they could +almost fancy a calamity of some sort hanging over its perfection, and +possibly bred of it; for I suppose that we never have anything made +perfectly easy for us without a certain reluctance and foreboding. +That morning they all got up so early that they had time to waste over +breakfast before taking the 7.30 train for Boston; and they naturally +wasted so much of it that they reached the station only in season for +the 8.00. But there is a difference between reaching the station and +quietly taking the cars, especially if one of your company has been left +at home, hoping to cut across and take the cars at a station which they +reach some minutes later, and you, the head of the party, are obliged, +at a loss of breath and personal comfort and dignity, to run down to +that station and see that the belated member has arrived there, and then +hurry back to your own, and embody the rest, with their accompanying +hand-bags and wraps and sun-umbrellas, into some compact shape for +removal into the cars, during the very scant minute that the train stops +at Charlesbridge. Then when you are all aboard, and the tardy member has +been duly taken up at the next station, and you would be glad to spend +the time in looking about on the familiar variety of life which every +car presents in every train on every road in this vast American world, +you are oppressed and distracted by the cares which must attend the +pleasure-seeker, and which the more thickly beset him the more deeply he +plunges into enjoyment. + +I can learn very little from the note-book of the friend whose +adventures I am relating in regard to the scenery of Somerville, and the +region generally through which the railroad passes between Charlesbridge +and Boston; but so much knowledge of it may be safely assumed on the +part of the reader as to relieve me of the grave responsibility of +describing it. Still, I may say that it is not unpicturesque, and that +I have a pleasure, which I hope the reader shares, in anything like salt +meadows and all spaces subject to the tide, whether flooded by it or +left bare with their saturated grasses by its going down. I think, also, +there is something fine in the many-roofed, many-chimneyed highlands of +Chelsea (if it is Chelsea), as you draw near the railroad bridge, and +there is a pretty stone church on a hill-side there which has the good +fortune, so rare with modern architecture and so common with the old, of +seeming a natural outgrowth of the spot where it stands, and which is +as purely an object of aesthetic interest to me, who know nothing of +its sect or doctrine, as any church in a picture could be; and there is, +also, the Marine Hospital on the heights (if it is the Marine Hospital), +from which I hope the inmates can behold the ocean, and exult in +whatever misery keeps them ashore. + +But let me not so hasten over this part of my friend's journey as to +omit all mention of the amphibious Irish houses which stand about on +the low lands along the railroad-sides, and which you half expect to see +plunge into the tidal mud of the neighborhood, with a series of hoarse +croaks, as the train approaches. Perhaps twenty-four trains pass those +houses every twenty-four hours, and it is a wonder that the inhabitants +keep their interest in them, or have leisure to bestow upon any of +them. Yet, as you dash along so bravely, you can see that you arrest +the occupations of all these villagers as by a kind of enchantment; the +children pause and turn their heads toward you from their mud-pies (to +the production of which there is literally no limit in that region); +the matron rests one parboiled hand on her hip, letting the other still +linger listlessly upon the wash-board, while she lifts her eyes from +the suds to look at you; the boys, who all summer long are forever just +going into the water or just coming out of it, cease their buttoning or +unbuttoning; the baby, which has been run after and caught and suitably +posed, turns its anguished eyes upon you, where also falls the mother's +gaze, while her descending palm is arrested in mid air. I forbear to +comment upon the surprising populousness of these villages, where, in +obedience to all the laws of health, the inhabitants ought to be wasting +miserably away, but where they flourish in spite of them. Even Accident +here seems to be robbed of half her malevolence; and that baby (who +will presently be chastised with terrific uproar) passes an infancy of +intrepid enjoyment amidst the local perils, and is no more affected +by the engines and the cars than by so many fretful hens with their +attendant broods of chickens. + +[Illustration: “That sweet young blonde, who arrives by most trains.”] + +When sometimes I long for the excitement and variety of travel, which, +for no merit of mine, I knew in other days, I reproach myself, and +silence all my repinings with some such question as, Where could you +find more variety or greater excitement than abounds in and near the +Fitchburg Depot when a train arrives? And to tell the truth, there +is something very inspiring in the fine eagerness with which all the +passengers rise as soon as the locomotive begins to slow, and huddle +forward to the door, in their impatience to get out; while the +suppressed vehemence of the hackmen is also thrilling in its way, not +to mention the instant clamor of the baggage-men as they read and +repeat the numbers of the checks in strident tones. It would be ever so +interesting to depict all these people, but it would require volumes for +the work, and I reluctantly let them all pass out without a word,--all +but that sweet young blonde who arrives by most trains, and who, putting +up her eye-glass with a ravishing air, bewitchingly peers round among +the bearded faces, with little tender looks of hope and trepidation, for +the face which she wants, and which presently bursts through the circle +of strange visages. The owner of the face then hurries forward to meet +that sweet blonde, who gives him a little drooping hand as if it were a +delicate flower she laid in his; there is a brief mutual hesitation +long enough merely for an electrical thrill to run from heart to +heart through the clasping hands, and then he stoops toward her, and +distractingly kisses her. And I say that there is no law of conscience +or propriety worthy the name of law--barbarity, absurdity, call it +rather--to prevent any one from availing himself of that providential +near-sightedness, and beatifying himself upon those lips,--nothing to +prevent it but that young fellow, whom one might not, of course, care to +provoke. + +Among the people who now rush forward and heap themselves into the +two horse-cars and one omnibus, placed before the depot by a wise +forethought for the public comfort to accommodate the train-load of +two hundred passengers, I always note a type that is both pleasing +and interesting to me. It is a lady just passing middle life; from her +kindly eyes the envious crow, whose footprints are just traceable at +their corners, has not yet drunk the brightness, but she looks just a +thought sadly, if very serenely, from them. I know nothing in the world +of her; I may have seen her twice or a hundred times, but I must always +be making bits of romances about her. That is she in faultless gray, +with the neat leather bag in her lap, and a bouquet of the first +autumnal blooms perched in her shapely hands which are prettily yet +substantially gloved in some sort of gauntlets. She can be easy and +dignified, my dear middle-aged heroine, even in one of our horse-cars, +where people are for the most part packed like cattle in a pen. She +shows no trace of dust or fatigue from the thirty or forty miles which I +choose to fancy she has ridden from the handsome elm-shaded New England +town of five or ten thousand people, where I choose to think she lives. +From a vague horticultural association with those gauntlets, as well +as from the autumnal blooms, I take it she loves flowers, and gardens a +good deal with her own hands, and keeps house-plants in the winter, and +of course a canary. Her dress, neither rich nor vulgar, makes me believe +her fortunes modest and not recent; her gentle face has just so much +intellectual character as it is good to see in a woman's face; I suspect +that she reads pretty regularly the new poems and histories, and I know +that she is the life and soul of the local book-club. Is she married, or +widowed, or one of the superfluous forty thousand? That is what I never +can tell. But I think that most probably she is married, and that her +husband is very much in business, and does not share so much as he +respects her tastes. I have no particular reason for thinking that she +has no children now, and that the sorrow for the one she lost so long +ago has become only a pensive silence, which, however, a long summer +twilight can yet deepen to tears.... Upon my word! Am I then one to give +way to this sort of thing? Madam, I ask pardon. I have no right to be +sentimentalizing you. Yet your face is one to make people dream kind +things of you, and I cannot keep my reveries away from it. + +But in the mean time I neglect the momentous history which I have +proposed to write, and leave my day's pleasurers to fade into the +background of a fantastic portrait. The truth is, I cannot look without +pain upon the discomforts which they suffer at this stage of their +joyous enterprise. At the best, the portables of such a party are apt +to be grievous embarrassments: a package of shawls and parasols and +umbrellas and India-rubbers, however neatly made up at first, quickly +degenerates into a shapeless mass, which has finally to be carried with +as great tenderness as an ailing child; and the lunch is pretty sure to +overflow the hand-bags and to eddy about you in paper parcels; while the +bottle of claret, that bulges the side of one of the bags, and + + “That will show itself without,” + +defying your attempts to look as it were cold tea, gives a crushing +touch of disreputability to the whole affair. Add to this the fact that +but half the party have seats, and that the others have to sway and +totter about the car in that sudden contact with all varieties of +fellow-men, to which we are accustomed in the cars, and you must allow +that these poor merrymakers have reasons enough to rejoice when this +part of their day's pleasure is over. They are so plainly bent upon a +sail down the Harbor, that before they leave the car they become +objects of public interest, and are at last made to give some account of +themselves. + +“Going for a sail, I presume?” says a person hitherto in conversation +with the conductor. “Well, I wouldn't mind a sail myself to-day.” + +“Yes,” answers the head of the party, “going to Gloucester.” + +“Guess not,” says, very coldly and decidedly, one of the passengers, +who is reading that morning's “Advertiser;” and when the subject of this +surmise looks at him for explanations, he adds, “The City Council has +chartered the boat for to-day.” + +Upon this the excursionists fall into great dismay and bitterness, and +upbraid the City Council, and wonder why last night's “Transcript” said +nothing about its oppressive action, and generally bewail their fate. +But at last they resolve to go somewhere, and, being set down, they make +up their warring minds upon Nahant, for the Nahant boat leaves the wharf +nearest them; and so they hurry away to India Wharf, amidst barrels and +bales and boxes and hacks and trucks, with interminable string-teams +passing before them at every crossing. + +“At any rate,” says the leader of the expedition, “we shall see the +Gardens of Maolis,--those enchanted gardens which have fairly been +advertised into my dreams, and where I've been told,” he continues, +with an effort to make the prospect an attractive one, yet not without +a sense of the meagreness of the materials, “they have a grotto and a +wooden bull.” + +Of course, there is no reason in nature why a wooden bull should be +more pleasing than a flesh-and-blood bull, but it seems to encourage the +company, and they set off again with renewed speed, and at last +reach India Wharf in time to see the Nahant steamer packed full of +excursionists, with a crowd of people still waiting to go aboard. It +does not look inviting, and they hesitate. In a minute or two their +spirits sink so low, that if they should see the wooden bull step out of +a grotto on the deck of the steamer the spectacle could not revive them. +At that instant they think, with a surprising singleness, of Nantasket +Beach, and the bright colors in which the Gardens of Maolis but now +appeared fade away, and they seem to see themselves sauntering along the +beautiful shore, while the white-crested breakers crash upon the sand, +and run up + + “In tender-curving lines of creamy spray,” + +quite to the feet of that lotus-eating party. + +“Nahant is all rocks,” says the leader to Aunt Melissa, who hears +him with a sweet and tranquil patience, and who would enjoy or suffer +anything with the same expression; “and as you've never yet seen the +open sea, it's fortunate that we go to Nantasket, for, of course, a +beach is more characteristic. But now the object is to get there. The +boat will be starting in a few moments, and I doubt whether we can walk +it. How far is it,” he asks, turning toward a respectable-looking man, +“to Liverpool Wharf?” + +“Well, it's consid'able ways,” says the man, smiling. + +“Then we must take a hack,” says the pleasurer to his party. “Come on.” + +“I've got a hack,” observes the man, in a casual way, as if the fact +might possibly interest. + +“O, you have, have you? Well, then, put us into it, and drive to +Liverpool Wharf; and hurry.” + +Either the distance was less than the hackman fancied, or else he drove +thither with unheard-of speed, for two minutes later he set them down on +Liverpool Wharf. But swiftly as they had come the steamer had been even +more prompt, and she now turned toward them a beautiful wake, as she +pushed farther and farther out into the harbor. + +The hackman took his two dollars for his four passengers, and was +rapidly mounting his box,--probably to avoid idle reproaches. “Wait!” + said the chief pleasurer. Then, “When does the next boat leave?” he +asked of the agent, who had emerged with a compassionate face from the +waiting-rooms on the wharf. + +“At half past two.” + +“And it's now five minutes past nine,” moaned the merrymakers. + +“Why, I'll tell you what you can do,” said the agent; “you can go to +Hingham by the Old Colony cars, and so come back by the Hull and Hingham +boat.” + +“That's it!” chorused his listeners, “we'll go;” and “Now,” said their +spokesman to the driver, “I dare say you didn't know that Liverpool +Wharf was so near; but I don't think you've earned your money, and you +ought to take us on to the Old Colony Depot for half-fares at the most.” + +The driver looked pained, as if some small tatters and shreds of +conscience were flapping uncomfortably about his otherwise dismantled +spirit. Then he seemed to think of his wife and family, for he put on +the air of a man who had already made great sacrifices, and “I couldn't, +really, I couldn't afford it,” said he; and as the victims turned from +him in disgust, he chirruped to his horses and drove off. + +“Well,” said the pleasurers, “we won't give it up. We will have our +day's pleasure after all. But what _can_ we do to kill five hours and +a half? It's miles away from everything, and, besides, there's nothing +even if we were there.” At this image of their remoteness and the +inherent desolation of Boston they could not suppress some sighs, and in +the mean time Aunt Melissa stepped into the waiting-room, which opened +on the farther side upon the water, and sat contentedly down on one of +the benches; the rest, from sheer vacuity and irresolution, followed, +and thus, without debate, it was settled that they should wait there +till the boat left. The agent, who was a kind man, did what he could to +alleviate the situation: he gave them each the advertisement of his line +of boats, neatly printed upon a card, and then he went away. + +All this prospect of waiting would do well enough for the ladies of the +party, but there is an impatience in the masculine fibre which does +not brook the notion of such prolonged repose; and the leader of the +excursion presently pretended an important errand up town,--nothing +less, in fact, than to buy a tumbler out of which to drink their claret +on the beach. A holiday is never like any other day to the man who takes +it, and a festive halo seemed to enwrap the excursionist as he pushed on +through the busy streets in the cool shadow of the vast granite +palaces wherein the genius of business loves to house itself in this +money-making land, and inhaled the odors of great heaps of leather and +spices and dry goods as he passed the open doorways,--odors that mixed +pleasantly with the smell of the freshly watered streets. When +he stepped into a crockery store to make his purchase a sense of +pleasure-taking did not fail him, and he fell naturally into talk with +the clerk about the weather and such pastoral topics. Even when he +reached the establishment where his own business days were passed some +glamour seemed to be cast upon familiar objects. To the disenchanted eye +all things were as they were on all other dullish days of summer, +even to the accustomed bore leaning up against his favorite desk and +transfixing his habitual victim with his usual theme. Yet to the gaze of +this pleasure-taker all was subtly changed, and he shook hands right +and left as he entered, to the marked surprise of the objects of his +effusion. He had merely come to get some newspapers to help pass away +the long moments on the wharf, and when he had found these, he hurried +back thither to hear what had happened during his absence. + +It seemed that there had hardly ever been such an eventful period in the +lives of the family before, and he listened to a minute account of it +from Cousin Lucy. “You know, Frank,” says she, “that Sallie's one idea +in life is to keep the baby from getting the whooping-cough, and I +declare that these premises have done nothing but reëcho with the most +dolorous whoops ever since you've been gone, so that at times, in my +fear that Sallie would think I'd been careless about the boy, I've been +ready to throw myself into the water, and nothing's prevented me but the +doubt whether it wouldn't be better to throw in the whoopers instead.” + +At this moment a pale little girl, with a face wan and sad through all +its dirt, came and stood in the doorway nearest the baby, and in another +instant she had burst into a whoop so terrific that, if she had meant +to have his scalp next it could not have been more dreadful. Then she +subsided into a deep and pathetic quiet, with that air peculiar to +the victims of her disorder of having done nothing noticeable. But her +outburst had set at work the mysterious machinery of half a dozen other +whooping-coughers lurking about the building, and all unseen they wound +themselves up with appalling rapidity, and in the utter silence which +followed left one to think they had died at the climax. + +“Why, it's a perfect whooping-cough factory, this place,” cries Cousin +Lucy in a desperation. “Go away, do, please, from the baby, you poor +little dreadful object you,” she continues, turning upon the only +visible operative in the establishment. “Here, take this,” and she +bribes her with a bit of sponge-cake, on which the child runs lightly +off along the edge of the wharf. “That's been another of their projects +for driving me wild,” says Cousin Lucy,--“trying to take their own lives +in a hundred ways before my face and eyes. Why _will_ their mothers let +them come here to play?” + +Really, they were very melancholy little figures, and might have gone +near to make one sad, even if they had not been constantly imperilling +their lives. Thanks to its being summer-time, it did not much +matter about the scantiness of their clothing, but their squalor +was depressing, it seemed, even to themselves, for they were a +mournful-looking set of children, and in their dangerous sports trifled +silently and almost gloomily with death. There were none of them above +eight or nine years of age, and most of them had the care of smaller +brothers, or even babes in arms, whom they were thus early inuring to +the perils of the situation. The boys were dressed in pantaloons and +shirts which no excess of rolling up in the legs and arms could make +small enough, and the incorrigible too-bigness of which rendered the +favorite amusements still more hazardous from their liability to trip +and entangle the wearers. The little girls had on each a solitary +garment, which hung about her gaunt person with antique severity of +outline; while the babies were multitudinously swathed in whatever +fragments of dress could be tied or pinned or plastered on. Their faces +were strikingly and almost ingeniously dirty, and their distractions +among the coal-heaps and cord-wood constantly added to the variety and +advantage of these effects. + +“Why do their mothers let them come here?” muses Frank aloud. “Why, +because it's so safe, Cousin Lucy. At home, you know, they'd have to be +playing upon the sills of fourth-floor windows, and here they're out +of the way and can't hurt themselves. Why, Cousin Lucy, this is their +park,--their Public Garden, their Bois de Boulogne, their Cascine. And +look at their gloomy little faces! Aren't they taking their pleasure in +the spirit of the very highest fashion? I was at Newport last summer, +and saw the famous driving on the Avenue in those pony phaetons, +dog-carts, and tubs, and three-story carriages with a pair of footmen +perching like storks upon each gable, and I assure you that all those +ornate and costly phantasms (it seems to me now like a sad, sweet +vision) had just the expression of these poor children. We're taking +a day's pleasure ourselves, cousin, but nobody would know it from our +looks. And has nothing but whooping-cough happened since I've been +gone?” + +“Yes, we seem to be so cut off from every-day associations that I've +imagined myself a sort of tourist, and I've been to that Catholic church +over yonder, in hopes of seeing the Murillos and Raphaels--but I found +it locked up, and so I trudged back without a sight of the masterpieces. +But what's the reason that all the shops hereabouts have nothing but +luxuries for sale? The windows are perfect tropics of oranges, and +lemons, and belated bananas, and tobacco, and peanuts.” + +“Well, the poor really seem to use more of those luxuries than anybody +else. I don't blame them. I shouldn't care for the necessaries of life +myself, if I found them so hard to get.” + +“When I came back here,” says Cousin Lucy, without heeding these +flippant and heartless words, “I found an old gentleman who has +something to do with the boats, and he sat down, as if it were a part of +his business, and told me nearly the whole history of his life. Isn't +it nice of them, keeping an Autobiographer? It makes the time pass so +swiftly when you're waiting. This old gentleman was born--who'd ever +think it?--up there in Pearl Street, where those pitiless big granite +stores are now; and, I don't know why, but the idea of any human baby +being born in Pearl Street seemed to me one of the saddest things I'd +ever heard of.” + +Here Cousin Lucy went to the rescue of the nurse and the baby, who had +got into one of their periodical difficulties, and her interlocutor +turned to Aunt Melissa. + +“I think, Franklin,” says Aunt Melissa, “that it was wrong to let that +nurse come and bring the baby.” + +“Yes, I know, Aunty, you have those old-established ideas, and they're +very right,” answers her nephew; “but just consider how much she enjoys +it, and how vastly the baby adds to the pleasure of this charming +excursion!” + +Aunt Melissa made no reply, but sat thoughtfully out upon the bay. “I +presume you think the excursion is a failure,” she said, after a while; +“but I've been enjoying every minute of the time here. Of course, I've +never seen the open sea, and I don't know about it, but I feel here just +as if I were spending a day at the seaside.” + +“Well,” said her nephew, “I shouldn't call this exactly a +watering-place. It lacks the splendor and gayety of Newport, in a +certain degree, and it hasn't the illustrious seclusion of Nahant. The +surf isn't very fine, nor the beach particularly adapted to bathing; and +yet, I must confess, the outlook from here is as lovely as anything one +need have.” + +And to tell the truth, it was very pretty and interesting. The landward +environment was as commonplace and mean as it could be: a yardful of +dismal sheds for coal and lumber, and shanties for offices, with each +office its safe and its desk, its whittled arm-chair and its spittoon, +its fly that shooed not, but buzzed desperately against the grimy pane, +which, if it had really had that boasted microscopic eye, it never would +have mistaken for the unblemished daylight. Outside of this yard was the +usual wharfish neighborhood, with its turmoil of trucks and carts and +fleet express-wagons, its building up and pulling down, its discomfort +and clamor of every sort, and its shops for the sale, not only of those +luxuries which Lucy had mentioned, but of such domestic refreshments as +lemon-pie and hulled-corn. + +When, however, you turned your thoughts and eyes away from this aspect +of it, and looked out upon the water, the neighborhood gloriously +retrieved itself. There its poverty and vulgarity ceased; there its +beauty and grace abounded. A light breeze ruffled the face of the bay, +and the innumerable little sail-boats that dotted it took the sun and +wind upon their wings, which they dipped almost into the sparkle of the +water, and flew lightly hither and thither like gulls that loved the +brine too well to rise wholly from it; larger ships, farther or nearer, +puffed or shrank their sails as they came and went on the errands +of commerce, but always moved as if bent upon some dreamy affair of +pleasure; the steamboats that shot vehemently across their tranquil +courses seemed only gayer and vivider visions, but not more substantial; +yonder, a black sea-going steamer passed out between the far-off +islands, and at last left in the sky above those reveries of +fortification, a whiff of sombre smoke, dark and unreal as a memory +of battle; to the right, on some line of railroad, long-plumed trains +arrived and departed like pictures passed through the slide of a +magic-lantern; even a pile-driver, at work in the same direction, seemed +to have no malice in the blows which, after a loud clucking, it dealt +the pile, and one understood that it was mere conventional violence like +that of a Punch to his baby. + +“Why, what a lotus-eating life this is!” said Frank, at last. “Aunt +Melissa, I don't wonder you think it's like the seaside. It's a great +deal better than the seaside. And now, just as we've entered into the +spirit of it, the time's up for the 'Rose Standish' to come and bear +us from its delights. When will the boat be in?” he asked of the +Autobiographer, whom Lucy had pointed out to him. + +“Well, she's _ben_ in half an hour, now. There she lays, just outside +the 'John Romer.'” + +There, to be sure, she lay, and those pleasure-takers had been so lost +in the rapture of waiting and the beauty of the scene as never to have +noticed her arrival. + + +II--THE AFTERNOON + + +It is noticeable how many people there are in the world that seem bent +always upon the same purpose of amusement or business as one's self. +If you keep quietly about your accustomed affairs, there are all your +neighbors and acquaintance hard at it too; if you go on a journey, +choose what train you will, the cars are filled with travellers in your +direction. You take a day's pleasure, and everybody abandons his usual +occupation to crowd upon your boat, whether it is to Gloucester, or +Nahant, or to Nantasket Beach you go. It is very hard to believe that, +from whatever channel of life you abstract yourself, still the great sum +of it presses forward as before: that business is carried on though you +are idle, that men amuse themselves though you toil, that every train is +as crowded as that you travel on, that the theatre or the church fills +its boxes or pews without you perfectly well. I suppose it would not be +quite agreeable to believe all this; the opposite illusion is far more +flattering; for if each one of us did not take the world with him now at +every turn, should he not have to leave it behind him when he died? And +that, it must be owned, would not be agreeable, nor is the fact quite +conceivable, though ever so many myriads in so many million years have +proved it. + +When our friends first went aboard the “Rose Standish” that day they +were almost the sole passengers, and they had a feeling of ownership +and privacy which was pleasant enough in its way, but which they lost +afterwards; though to lose it was also pleasant, for enjoyment no more +likes to be solitary than sin does, which is notoriously gregarious, and +I dare say would hardly exist if it could not be committed in company. +The preacher, indeed, little knows the comfortable sensation we have in +being called fellow-sinners, and what an effective shield for his guilt +each makes of his neighbor's hard-heartedness. + +Cousin Frank never felt how strange was a lonely transgression till +that day, when in the silence of the little cabin he took the bottle of +claret from the handbag, and prepared to moisten the family lunch with +it. “I think, Aunt Melissa,” he said, “we had better lunch now, for it's +a quarter past two, and we shall not get to the beach before four. Let's +improvise a beach of these chairs, and that water-urn yonder can stand +for the breakers. Now, this is truly like Newport and Nahant,” he added, +after the little arrangement was complete; and he was about to strip +away the bottle's jacket of brown paper, when a lady much wrapped up +came in, and, reclining upon one of the opposite seats, began to take +them all in with a severe serenity of gaze that made them feel for a +moment like a party of low foreigners,--like a set of German atheists, +say. Frank kept on the bottle's paper jacket, and as the single tumbler +of the party circled from mouth to mouth, each of them tried to give the +honest drink the false air of a medicinal potion of some sort; and to +see Aunt Melissa sipping it, no one could have put his hand on his heart +and sworn it was not elderberry wine, at the worst. In spite of these +efforts, they all knew that they had suffered a hopeless loss of repute; +yet after the loss was confessed, I am not sure that they were not the +gayer and happier through this “freedom of a broken law.” At any rate, +the lunch passed off very merrily, and when they had put back the +fragments of the feast into the bags, they went forward to the bow of +the boat, to get good places for seeing the various people as they came +aboard, and for an outlook upon the bay when the boat should start. + +I suppose that these were not very remarkable people, and that nothing +but the indomitable interest our friends took in the human race could +have enabled them to feel any concern in their companions. It was, +no doubt, just such a company as goes down to Nantasket Beach every +pleasant day in summer. Certain ones among them were distinguishable as +sojourners at the beach, by an air of familiarity with the business of +getting there, an indifference to the prospect, and an indefinable touch +of superiority. These read their newspapers in quiet corners, or, if +they were not of the newspaper sex, made themselves comfortable in the +cabins, and looked about them at the other passengers with looks of +lazy surprise, and just a hint of scorn for their interest in the boat's +departure. Our day's pleasurers took it that the lady whose steady gaze +had reduced them, when at lunch, to such a low ebb of shabbiness, was a +regular boarder, at the least, in one of the beach hotels. A few other +passengers were, like themselves, mere idlers for a day, and were eager +to see all that the boat or the voyage offered of novelty. There were +clerks and men who had book-keeping written in a neat mercantile hand +upon their faces, and who had evidently been given that afternoon for +a breathing-time; and there were strangers who were going down to the +beach for the sake of the charming view of the harbor which the trip +afforded. Here and there were people who were not to be classed with any +certainty,--as a pale young man, handsome in his undesirable way, who +looked like a steamboat pantry boy not yet risen to be bar-tender, but +rapidly rising, and who sat carefully balanced upon the railing of the +boat, chatting with two young girls, who heard his broad sallies with +continual snickers, and interchanged saucy comments with that prompt +up-and-coming manner which is so large a part of non-humorous humor, as +Mr. Lowell calls it, and now and then pulled and pushed each other. It +was a scene worth study, for in no other country could anything so bad +have been without being vastly worse; but here it was evident that there +was nothing worse than you saw; and, indeed, these persons formed a +sort of relief to the other passengers, who were nearly all monotonously +well-behaved. Amongst a few there seemed to be acquaintance, but the far +greater part were unknown to one another, and there were no words wasted +by any one. I believe the English traveller who has taxed our nation +with inquisitiveness for half a century is at last beginning to find +out that we do not ask questions because we have the still more vicious +custom of not opening our mouths at all when with strangers. + +It was a good hour after our friends got aboard before the boat left her +moorings, and then it was not without some secret dreads of sea-sickness +that Aunt Melissa saw the seething brine widen between her and the +familiar wharf-house, where she now seemed to have spent so large a +part of her life. But the multitude of really charming and interesting +objects that presently fell under her eye soon distracted her from those +gloomy thoughts. + +There is always a shabbiness about the wharves of seaports; but I must +own that as soon as you get a reasonable distance from them in Boston, +they turn wholly beautiful. They no longer present that imposing array +of mighty ships which they could show in the days of Consul Plancus, +when the commerce of the world sought chiefly our port, yet the docks +are still filled with the modester kinds of shipping, and if there is +not that wilderness of spars and rigging which you see at New York, let +us believe that there is an aspect of selection and refinement in +the scene, so that one should describe it, not as a forest, but, less +conventionally, as a gentleman's park of masts. The steamships of many +coastwise freight lines gloom, with their black, capacious hulks, +among the lighter sailing-craft, and among the white, green-shuttered +passenger-boats; and behind them those desperate and grimy sheds assume +a picturesqueness, their sagging roofs and crooked gables harmonizing +agreeably with the shipping; and then growing up from all, rises the +mellow-tinted brick-built city, roof, and spire, and dome,--a fair +and noble sight, indeed, and one not surpassed for a certain quiet and +cleanly beauty by any that I know. + +Our friends lingered long upon this pretty prospect, and, as inland +people of light heart and easy fancy will, the ladies made imagined +voyages in each of the more notable vessels they passed,--all cheap and +safe trips, occupying half a second apiece. Then they came forward to +the bow, that they might not lose any part of the harbor's beauty and +variety, and informed themselves of the names of each of the fortressed +islands as they passed, and forgot them, being passed, so that to this +day Aunt Melissa has the Fort Warren rebel prisoners languishing in Fort +Independence. But they made sure of the air of soft repose that hung +about each, of that exquisite military neatness which distinguishes +them, and which went to Aunt Melissa's housekeeping heart, of the green, +thick turf covering the escarpments, of the great guns loafing on the +crests of the ramparts and looking out over the water sleepily, of the +sentries pacing slowly up and down with their gleaming muskets. + +“I never see one of those fellows,” says Cousin Frank, “without setting +him to the music of that saddest and subtlest of Heine's poems. You know +it, Lucy;” and he repeats:-- + + “Mein Herz, mein Herz is traurig, + Doch lustig leuchtet der Mai; + Ich stehe gelehnt an der Linde, + Hoch auf der alten Bastei. + + * * * * * + + “Am alten grauen Thurme + Ein Schilderhäuschen steht; + Ein rothgeröckter Bursche + Dort auf und nieder geht. + + “Er spielt mit seiner Flinte, + Sie funkelt im Sonnenroth, + Er präsentirt, und schultert,-- + Ich wollt', er schösse mich todt.” + + +“O!” says Cousin Lucy, either because the poignant melancholy of the +sentiment has suddenly pierced her, or because she does not quite +understand the German,--you never can tell about women. While Frank +smiles down upon her in this amiable doubt, their party is approached by +the tipsy man who has been making the excursion so merry for the other +passengers, in spite of the fact that there is very much to make one sad +in him. He is an old man, sweltering in rusty black, a two days' gray +beard, and a narrow-brimmed, livid silk hat, set well back upon the nape +of his neck. He explains to our friends, as he does to every one whose +acquaintance he makes, that he was in former days a seafaring man, and +that he has brought his two little grandsons here to show them something +about a ship; and the poor old soul helplessly saturates his phrase with +the rankest profanity. The boys are somewhat amused by their grandsire's +state, being no doubt familiar with it, but a very grim-looking old lady +who sits against the pilot-house, and keeps a sharp eye upon all three, +and who is also doubtless familiar with the unhappy spectacle, seems not +to find it a joke. Her stout matronly umbrella trembles in her hand when +her husband draws near, and her eye flashes; but he gives her as wide a +berth as he can, returning her glare with a propitiatory drunken smile +and a wink to the passengers to let them into the fun. In fact, he is +full of humor in his tipsy way, and one after another falls the prey of +his free sarcasm, which does not spare the boat or any feature of the +excursion. He holds for a long time, by swiftly successive stories of +his seafaring days, a very quiet gentleman, who dares neither laugh too +loudly nor show indifference for fear of rousing that terrible wit at +his expense, and finds his account in looking down at his boots. + +“Well, sir,” says the deplorable old sinner, “we was forty days out from +Liverpool, with a cargo of salt and iron, and we got caught on the Banks +in a calm. 'Cap'n,' says I,--I 'us sec'n' mate,--''s they any man aboard +this ship knows how to pray?' 'No,' says the cap'n; 'blast yer prayers!' +'Well,' says I, 'cap'n, I'm no hand at all to pray, but I'm goin' to see +if prayin' won't git us out 'n this.' And I down on my knees, and I made +a first-class prayer; and a breeze sprung up in a minute and carried us +smack into Boston.” + +At this bit of truculent burlesque the quiet man made a bold push, and +walked away with a somewhat sickened face, and as no one now intervened +between them, the inebriate laid a familiar hand upon Cousin Frank's +collar, and said with a wink at his late listener: “Looks like a +lerigious man, don't he? I guess I give him a good dose, if he _does_ +think himself the head-deacon of this boat.” And he went on to state his +ideas of religion, from which it seemed that he was a person of the most +advanced thinking, and believed in nothing worth mentioning. + +It is perhaps no worse for an Infidel to be drunk than a Christian, but +my friend found this tipsy blasphemer's case so revolting, that he +went to the hand-bag, took out the empty claret-bottle, and seeking a +solitary corner of the boat, cast the bottle into the water, and felt +a thrill of uncommon self-approval as this scapegoat of all the wine +at his grocer's bobbed off upon the little waves. “Besides, it saves +carrying the bottle home,” he thought, not without a half-conscious +reserve, that if his penitence were ever too much for him, he could +easily abandon it. And without the reflection that the gate is always +open behind him, who could consent to enter upon any course of perfect +behavior? If good resolutions could not be broken, who would ever have +the courage to form them? Would it not be intolerable to be made as good +as we ought to be? Then, admirable reader, thank Heaven even for your +lapses, since it is so wholesome and saving to be well ashamed of +yourself, from time to time. + +“What an outrage,” said Cousin Frank, in the glow of virtue, as he +rejoined the ladies, “that that tipsy rascal should be allowed to go on +with his ribaldry. He seems to pervade the whole boat, and to subject +everybody to his sway. He's a perfect despot to us helpless sober +people,--I wouldn't openly disagree with him on any account. We ought +to send a Round Robin to the captain, and ask him to put that religious +liberal in irons during the rest of the voyage.” + +In the mean time, however, the object of his indignation had used up +all the conversible material in that part of the boat, and had deviously +started for the other end. The elderly woman with the umbrella rose and +followed him, somewhat wearily, and with a sadness that appeared more in +her movement than in her face; and as the two went down the cabin, did +the comical affair look, after all, something like tragedy? My reader, +who expects a little novelty in tragedy, and not these stale and common +effects, will never think so. + +“You'll not pretend, Frank,” says Lucy, “that in such an intellectual +place as Boston a crowd as large as this can be got together, and no +distinguished literary people in it. I know there are some notables +aboard: do point them out to me. Pretty near everybody has a literary +look.” + +“Why, that's what we call our Boston look, Cousin Lucy. You needn't have +written anything to have it,--it's as general as tubercular consumption, +and is the effect of our universal culture and habits of reading. I +heard a New-Yorker say once that if you went into a corner grocery in +Boston to buy a codfish, the man would ask you how you liked 'Lucille,' +whilst he was tying it up. No, no; you mustn't be taken in by that +literary look; I'm afraid the real literary men don't always have it. +But I _do_ see a literary man aboard yonder,” he added, craning his neck +to one side, and then furtively pointing,--“the most literary man I ever +knew, one of the most literary men that ever lived. His whole existence +is really bound up in books; he never talks of anything else, and never +thinks of anything else, I believe. Look at him,--what kind and +pleasant eyes he's got! There, he sees me!” cries Cousin Frank, with a +pleasurable excitement. “How d'ye do?” he calls out. + +“O Cousin Frank, introduce us,” sighs Lucy. + +“Not I! He wouldn't thank me. He doesn't care for pretty girls outside +of books; he'd be afraid of 'em; he's the bashfullest man alive, and +all his heroines are fifty years old, at the least. But before I go any +further, tell me solemnly, Lucy, you're not interviewing me? You're not +going to write it to a New York newspaper? No? Well, I think it's best +to ask, always. Our friend there--he's everybody's friend, if you mean +nobody's enemy, by that, not even his own--is really what I say,--the +most literary man I ever knew. He loves all epochs and phases of +literature, but his passion is the Charles Lamb period and all Lamb's +friends. He loves them as if they were living men; and Lamb would have +loved him if he could have known him. He speaks rapidly, and rather +indistinctly, and when you meet him and say Good day, and you suppose +he answers with something about the weather, ten to one he's asking +you what you think of Hazlitt's essays on Shakespeare, or Leigh Hunt's +Italian Poets, or Lamb's roast pig, or Barry Cornwall's songs. He +couldn't get by a bookstall without stopping--for half an hour, at any +rate. He knows just when all the new books in town are to be published, +and when each bookseller is to get his invoice of old English books. +He has no particular address, but if you leave your card for him at any +bookstore in Boston, he's sure to get it within two days; and in the +summer-time you're apt to meet him on these excursions. Of course, he +writes about books, and very tastefully and modestly; there's hardly any +of the brand-new immortal English poets, who die off so rapidly, but has +had a good word from him; but his heart is with the older fellows, from +Chaucer down; and, after the Charles Lamb epoch, I don't know whether +he loves better the Elizabethan age or that of Queen Anne. Think of him +making me stop the other day at a bookstall, and read through an essay +out of the “Spectator!” I did it all for love of him, though money +couldn't have persuaded me that I had time; and I'm always telling him +lies, and pretending to be as well acquainted as he is with authors +I hardly know by name,--he seems so fondly to expect it. He's really +almost a disembodied spirit as concerns most mundane interests--his soul +is in literature, as a lover's in his mistress's beauty; and in the next +world, where, as the Swedenborgians believe, spirits seen at a distance +appear like the things they most resemble in disposition, as doves, +hawks, goats, lambs, swine, and so on, I'm sure that I shall see +his true and kindly soul in the guise of a noble old Folio, quaintly +lettered across his back in old English text, _Tom. I._” + +While our friends talked and looked about them, a sudden change had come +over the brightness and warmth of the day; the blue heaven had turned a +chilly gray, and the water looked harsh and cold. Now, too, they noted +that they were drawing near a wooden pier built into the water, and that +they had been winding about in a crooked channel between muddy shallows, +and that their course was overrun with long, disheveled sea-weed. The +shawls had been unstrapped, and the ladies made comfortable in them. + +“Ho for the beach!” cried Cousin Frank, with a vehement show of +enthusiasm. “Now, then, Aunt Melissa, prepare for the great enjoyment of +the day. In a few moments we shall be of the elves + + 'That on the sand with printless foot + Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him + When he comes back.' + +Come! we shall have three hours on the beach, and that will bring us +well into the cool of the evening, and we can return by the last boat.” + +“As to the cool of the evening,” said Aunt Melissa, “I don't know. It's +quite cool enough for comfort at present, and I'm sure that anything +more wouldn't be wholesome. What's become of our beautiful weather?” she +asked, deeply plotting to gain time. + +“It's one of our Boston peculiarities, not to say merits,” answered +Frank, “which you must have noticed already, that we can get rid of a +fine day sooner than any other region. While you're saying how lovely +it is, a subtle change is wrought, and under skies still blue and a sun +still warm the keen spirit of the east wind pierces every nerve, and +all the fine weather within you is chilled and extinguished. The gray +atmosphere follows, but the day first languishes in yourself. But for +this, life in Boston would be insupportably perfect, if this is indeed a +drawback. You'd find Bostonians to defend it, I dare say. But this isn't +a regular east wind to-day; it's merely our nearness to the sea.” + +“I think, Franklin,” said Aunt Melissa, “that we won't go down to the +beach this afternoon,” as if she had been there yesterday, and would go +to-morrow. “It's too late in the day; and it wouldn't be good for the +child, I'm sure.” + +“Well, aunty, it was you determined us to wait for the boat, and it's +your right to say whether we shall leave it or not. I'm very willing +not to go ashore. I always find that, after working up to an object +with great effort, it's surpassingly sweet to leave it unaccomplished +at last. Then it remains forever in the region of the ideal, amongst the +songs that never were sung, the pictures that never were painted. Why, +in fact, should we force this pleasure? We've eaten our lunch, we've +lost the warm heart of the day; why should we poorly drag over to that +damp and sullen beach, where we should find three hours very long, when +by going back now we can keep intact that glorious image of a day by the +sea which we've been cherishing all summer? You're right, Aunt Melissa; +we won't go ashore; we will stay here, and respect our illusions.” + +At heart, perhaps, Lucy did not quite like this retreat; it was not in +harmony with the youthful spirit of her sex, but she reflected that she +could come again,--O beneficent cheat of Another Time, how much thou +sparest us in our over-worked, over-enjoyed world!--she was very +comfortable where she was, in a seat commanding a perfect view for the +return trip; and she submitted without a murmur. Besides, now that the +boat had drawn up to the pier, and discharged part of her passengers, +and was waiting to take on others, Lucy was interested in a mass of +fluttering dresses and wide-rimmed straw hats that drew down toward +the “Rose Standish,” and gracefully thronged the pier, and prettily +hesitated about, and finally came aboard with laughter and little false +cries of terror, attended through all by the New England disproportion +of that sex which is so foolish when it is silly. It was a large picnic +party which had been spending the day upon the beach, as each of the +ladies showed in her face, where, if the roses upon her cheeks were +somewhat obscured by the imbrowning seaside sun, a bright pink had been +compensatingly bestowed upon the point of her nose. A mysterious quiet +fell upon them all when they were got aboard and had taken conspicuous +places, which was accounted for presently when a loud shout was heard +from the shore, and a man beside an ambulant photographic machine was +seen wildly waving his hat. It is impossible to resist a temptation of +this kind, and our party all yielded, and posed themselves in striking +and characteristic attitudes,--even Aunt Melissa sharing the ambition to +appear in a picture which she should never see, and the nurse coming +out strong from the abeyance in which she had been held, and lifting the +baby high into the air for a good likeness. The frantic gesticulator on +the shore gave an impressive wave with both hands, took the cap from the +instrument, turned his back, as photographers always do, with that air +of hiding their tears, for the brief space that seems so long, and then +clapped on the cap again, while a great sigh of relief went up from the +whole boat-load of passengers. They were taken. + +But the interval had been a luckless one for the “Rose Standish,” and +when she stirred her wheels, clouds of mud rose to the top of the water, +and there was no responsive movement of the boat. She was aground in the +falling tide. + +“There seems a pretty fair prospect of our spending some time here, +after all,” said Frank, while the ladies, who had reluctantly given up +the idea of staying, were now in a quiver of impatience to be off. The +picnic was shifted from side to side; the engine groaned and tugged, +Captain Miles Standish and his crew bestirred themselves vigorously, and +at last the boat swung loose, and strode down the sea-weedy channels; +while our friends, who had already done the great sights of the +harbor, now settled themselves to the enjoyment of its minor traits and +beauties. Here and there they passed small parties on the shore, which, +with their yachts anchored near, or their boats drawn up from the water, +were cooking an out-door meal by a fire that burned bright red upon the +sands in the late afternoon air. In such cases, people willingly indulge +themselves in saluting whatever craft goes by, and the ladies of these +small picnics, as they sat round the fires, kept up a great waving +of handkerchiefs, and sometimes cheered the “Rose Standish,” though +I believe the Bostonians are ordinarily not a demonstrative race. Of +course the large picnic on board fluttered multitudinous handkerchiefs +in response, both to these people ashore and to those who hailed them +from vessels which they met. They did not refuse the politeness even +to the passengers on a rival boat when she passed them, though at heart +they must have felt some natural pangs at being passed. The water was +peopled everywhere by all sorts of sail lagging slowly homeward in +the light evening breeze; and on some of the larger vessels there were +family groups to be seen, and a graceful smoke, suggestive of supper, +curled from the cook's galley. I suppose these ships were chiefly +coasting craft, of one kind or another, come from the Provinces at +farthest; but to the ignorance and the fancy of our friends, they +arrived from all remote and romantic parts of the world,--from India, +from China, and from the South Seas, with cargoes of spices and gums and +tropical fruits; and I see no reason why one should ever deny himself +the easy pleasure they felt in painting the unknown in such lively hues. +The truth is, a strange ship, if you will let her, always brings you +precious freight, always arrives from Wonderland under the command of +Captain Sinbad. How like a beautiful sprite she looks afar off, as if +she came from some finer and fairer world than ours! Nay, we will not go +out to meet her; we will not go on board; Captain Sinbad shall bring us +the invoice of gold-dust, slaves, and rocs' eggs to-night, and we will +have some of the eggs for breakfast; or if he never comes, are we +not just as rich? But I think these friends of ours got a yet keener +pleasure out of the spectacle of a large and stately ship, that with all +sails spread moved silently and steadily out toward the open sea. It is +yet grander and sweeter to sail toward the unknown than to come from it; +and every vessel that leaves port has this destination, and will bear +you thither if you will. + + “It may be that the gulf shall wash us down; + It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, + And see the great Achilles, whom we knew,” + +absently murmured Lucy, looking on this beautiful apparition. + +“But I can't help thinking of Ulysses' cabin-boy, yonder,” said Cousin +Frank, after a pause; “can you, Aunt Melissa?” + +“I don't understand what you're talking about Franklin,” answered Aunt +Melissa, somewhat severely. + +“Why, I mean that there is a poor wretch of a boy on board there, who's +run away, and whose heart must be aching just now at the thought of the +home he has left. I hope Ulysses will be good to him, and not swear at +him for a day or two, or knock him about with a belaying-pin. Just about +this time his mother, up in the country, is getting ready his supper, +and wondering what's become of him, and torturing herself with hopes +that break one by one; and to-night when she goes up to his empty room, +having tried to persuade herself that the truant's come back and climbed +in at the window”--“Why, Franklin, this isn't true, is it?” asks Aunt +Melissa. + +“Well, no, let's pray Heaven it isn't, in this case. It's been true +often enough to be false for once.” + +“What a great, ugly, black object a ship is!” said Cousin Lucy. + +Slowly the city rose up against the distance, sharpening all its +outlines, and filling in all its familiar details,--like a fact which +one dreams is a dream, and which, as the mists of sleep break away, +shows itself for reality. + +The air grows closer and warmer,--it is the breath of the hot and +toil-worn land. + +The boat makes her way up through the shipping, seeks her landing, and +presently rubs herself affectionately against the wharf. The passengers +quickly disperse themselves upon shore, dismissed each with an +appropriate sarcasm by the tipsy man, who has had the means of keeping +himself drunk throughout, and who now looks to the discharge of the +boat's cargo. + +As our friends leave the wharf-house behind them, and straggle uneasily, +and very conscious of sunburn, up the now silent length of Pearl Street +to seek the nearest horse-cars, they are aware of a curious fidgeting +of the nurse, who flies from one side of the pavement to the other and +violently shifts the baby from one arm to the other. + +“What's the matter?” asks Frank; but before the nurse can answer, “Thim +little divils,” he perceives that the whooping-coughers of the morning +have taken the occasion to renew a pleasant acquaintance, and are +surrounding the baby and nurse with an atmosphere of whooping-cough. + +“I say, friends! we can't stand this, you know,” says the anxious +father. “We must part some time, and this is a favorable moment. Now +I'll give you all this, if you don't come another step!” and he empties +out to them, from the hand-bags he carries, the fragments of lunch which +the frugal mind of Aunt Melissa had caused her to store there. Upon +these the whooping-coughers hurl themselves in a body, and are soon left +round the corner. Yet they would have been no disgrace to our party, +whose appearance was now most disreputable: Frank and Lucy stalked +ahead, with shawls dragging from their arms, the former loaded down +with hand-bags and the latter with India-rubbers; Aunt Melissa came next +under a burden of bloated umbrellas; the nurse last, with her hat awry, +and the baby a caricature of its morning trimness, in her embrace. A +day's pleasure is so demoralizing, that no party can stand it, and come +out neat and orderly. + +[Illustration: “Frank and Lucy stalked ahead, with shawls dragging from +their arms.”] + +“Cousin Frank,” asked Lucy, awfully, “what if we should meet the +Mayflowers now?”--the Mayflowers being a very ancient and noble Boston +family whose acquaintance was the great pride and terror of our friends' +lives. + +“I should cut them dead,” said Frank, and scarcely spoke again till his +party dragged slowly up the steps of their minute suburban villa. + +At the door his wife met them with a troubled and anxious face. + +“Calamities?” asked Frank, desperately. + +“O, calamities upon calamities! We've got a lost child in the kitchen,” + answered Mrs. Sallie. + +“O good heavens!” cried her husband. “Adieu, my dreams of repose, so +desirable after the quantity of active enjoyment I've had! Well, where +is the lost child?” + + +III.--THE EVENING + + +“Where is the lost child?” repeats Frank, desperately. “Where have you +got him?” + +“In the kitchen.” + +“Why in the kitchen?” + +“How's baby?” demands Mrs. Sallie, with the incoherent suddenness of +her sex, and running halfway down the steps to meet the nurse. “Um, um, +um-m-m-m,” sounds, which may stand for smothered kisses of rapture and +thanksgiving that baby is not a lost child. “Has he been good, Lucy? +Take him off and give him some cocoa, Mrs. O'Gonegal,” she adds in her +business-like way, and with a little push to the combined nurse and +baby, while Lucy answers, “O beautiful!” and from that moment, being +warned through all her being by something in the other's tone, casts +aside the matronly manner which she has worn during the day, and lapses +into the comfortable irresponsibility of young-ladyhood. + +“What kind of a time did you have?” + +“Splendid!” answers Lucy. “Delightful, _I_ think,” she adds, as if she +thought others might not think so. + +“I suppose you found Gloucester a quaint old place.” + +“O,” says Frank, “we didn't go to Gloucester; we found that the City +Fathers had chartered the boat for the day, so we thought we'd go to +Nahant.” + +“Then you've seen your favorite Gardens of Maolis! What in the world +_are_ they like?” + +“Well; we didn't see the Gardens of Maolis; the Nahant boat was so +crowded that we couldn't think of going on her, and so we decided we'd +drive over to the Liverpool Wharf and go down to Nantasket Beach.” + +“That was nice. I'm so glad on Aunt Melissa's account. It's much better +to see the ocean from a long beach than from those Nahant rocks.” + +“That's what _I_ said. But, you know, when we got to the wharf the boat +had just left.” + +“You _don't_ mean it! Well, then, what under the canopy _did_ you do?” + +“Why, we sat down in the wharf-house, and waited from nine o'clock till +half-past two for the next boat.” + +“Well, I'm glad you didn't back out, at any rate. You did show pluck, +you poor things! I hope you enjoyed the beach after you _did_ get +there.” + +“Why,” says Frank, looking down, “we never got there.” + +“Never got there!” gasps Mrs. Sallie. “Didn't you go down on the +afternoon boat?” + +“Yes.” + +“Why didn't you get to the beach, then?” + +“We didn't go ashore.” + +“Well, that's _like_ you, Frank.” + +“It's a great deal more like Aunt Melissa,” answers Frank. “The air felt +so raw and chilly by the time we reached the pier, that she declared the +baby would perish if it was taken to the beach. Besides, nothing would +persuade her that Nantasket Beach was at all different from Liverpool +Wharf.” + +“Never mind, never mind!” says Mrs. Sallie. “I don't wish to hear +anything more. That's your idea of a day's pleasure, is it? I call it +a day's disgrace, a day's miserable giving-up. There, go in, go in; +I'm ashamed of you all. Don't let the neighbors see you, for pity's +sake.--We keep him in the kitchen,” she continues, recurring to Frank's +long-unanswered question concerning the lost child, “because he prefers +it as being the room nearest to the closet where the cookies are. He's +taken advantage of our sympathies to refuse everything but cookies.” + +“I suppose that's one of the rights of lost childhood,” comments Frank, +languidly; “there's no law that can compel him to touch even cracker.” + +“Well, you'd better go down and see what _you_ can make of him. He's +driven _us_ all wild.” + +So Frank descends to the region now redolent of the preparing tea, and +finds upon a chair, in the middle of the kitchen floor, a very forlorn +little figure of a boy, mutely munching a sweet-cake, while now and then +a tear steals down his cheeks and moistens the grimy traces of former +tears. He and baby are, in the mean time regarding each other with a +steadfast glare, the cook and the nurse supporting baby in this rite of +hospitality. + +“Well, my little man,” says his host, “how did you get here?” + +The little man, perhaps because he is heartily sick of the question, is +somewhat slow to answer that there was a fire; and that he ran after the +steamer; and a girl found him and brought him up here. + +“And that's all the blessed thing you can get out of him,” says cook; +and the lost boy looks as if he felt cook to be perfectly right. + +In spite of the well-meant endeavors of the household to wash him and +brush him, he is still a dreadfully travel-stained little boy, and he +is powdered in every secret crease and wrinkle by that dust of old +Charlesbridge, of which we always speak with an air of affected disgust, +and a feeling of ill-concealed pride in an abomination so strikingly +and peculiarly our own. He looks very much as if he had been following +fire-engines about the streets of our learned and pulverous suburb ever +since he could walk, and he certainly seems to feel himself in trouble +to a certain degree; but there is easily imaginable in his bearing +a conviction that after all the chief care is with others, and that, +though unhappy, he is not responsible. The principal victim of his +sorrows is also penetrated by this opinion, and after gazing forlornly +upon him for a while, asks mechanically, “What's your name?” + +“Freddy,” is the laconic answer. + +“Freddy--?” trying with an artful inflection to lead him on to his +surname. + +“Freddy,” decidedly and conclusively. + +“O, bless me! What's the name of the street your papa lives on?” + +This problem is far too deep for Freddy, and he takes a bite of +sweet-cake in sign that he does not think of solving it. Frank looks at +him gloomily for a moment, and then determines that he can grapple with +the difficulty more successfully after he has had tea. “Send up the +supper, Bridget. I think, my dear,” he says, after they have sat down, +“we'd better all question our lost child when we've finished.” + +So, when they have finished, they have him up in the sitting-room, and +the inquisition begins. + +“Now, Freddy,” his host says, with a cheerful air of lifelong friendship +and confidence, “you know that everybody has got two names. Of course +your first name is Freddy, and it's a very pretty name. Well, I want you +to think real hard, and then tell me what your other name is, so I can +take you back to your mamma.” + +At this allusion the child looks round on the circle of eager and +compassionate faces, and begins to shed tears and to wring all hearts. + +“What's your name?” asks Frank, cheerfully,--“your _other_ name, you +know?” + +“Freddy,” sobbed the forlorn creature. + +“O good heaven! this'll never do,” groaned the chief inquisitor. “Now, +Freddy, try not to cry. What is your papa's name,--Mr.--?” with the +leading inflection as before. + +“Papa,” says Freddy. + +[Illustration: “They skirmish about him with every sort of query.”] + +“O, that'll never do! Not Mr. Papa?” + +“Yes,” persists Freddy. + +“But, Freddy,” interposes Mrs. Sallie, as her husband falls back +baffled, “when ladies come to see your mamma, what do they call her? +Mrs.--?” adopting Frank's alluring inflection. + +“Mrs. Mamma,” answers Freddy, confirmed in his error by this course; and +a secret dismay possesses his questioners. They skirmish about him with +every sort of query; they try to entrap him into some kind of revelation +by apparently irrelevant remarks; they plan ambuscades and surprises; +but Freddy looks vigilantly round upon them, and guards his personal +history from every approach, and seems in every way so to have the best +of it, that it is almost exasperating. + +“Kindness has proved futile,” observes Frank, “and I think we ought as a +last resort, before yielding ourselves to despair, to use intimidation. +Now, Fred,” he says, with sudden and terrible severity, “what's your +father's name?” + +The hapless little soul is really moved to an effort of memory by this, +and blubbers out something that proves in the end to resemble the family +name, though for the present it is merely a puzzle of unintelligible +sounds.” + +“Blackman?” cries Aunt Melissa, catching desperately at these sounds. + +On this, all the man and brother is roused in Freddy's bosom, and he +roars fiercely, “No! he ain't a black man! He's white!” + +“I give it up,” says Frank, who has been looking for his hat. “I'm +afraid we can't make anything out of him; and I'll have to go and report +the case to the police. But, put him to bed, do, Sallie; he's dropping +with sleep.” + +So he went out, of course supported morally by a sense of duty, but I am +afraid also by a sense of adventure in some degree. It is not every day +that, in so quiet a place as Charlesbridge, you can have a lost child +cast upon your sympathies; and I believe that when an appeal is not +really agonizing, we like so well to have our sympathies touched, we +favorites of the prosperous commonplace, that most of us would enter +eagerly into a pathetic case of this kind, even after a day's pleasure. +Such was certainly the mood of my friend, and he unconsciously prepared +himself for an equal interest on the part of the police; but this was +an error. The police heard his statement with all proper attention, +and wrote it in full upon the station-slate, but they showed no feeling +whatever, and behaved as if they valued a lost child no more than a +child snug at home in his own crib. They said that no doubt his parents +would be asking at the police-stations for him during the night, and, +as if my friend would otherwise have thought of putting him into the +street, they suggested that he should just keep the lost child till he +was sent for. Modestly enough Frank proposed that they should make some +inquiry for his parents, and was answered by the question whether they +could take a man off his beat for that purpose; and remembering that +beats in Charlesbridge were of such vastness that during his whole +residence there he had never yet seen a policeman on his street, he was +obliged to own to himself that his proposal was absurd. He felt the need +of reinstating himself by something more sensible, and so he said he +thought he would go down to the Port and leave word at the station +there; and the police tacitly assenting to this he went. + +I who have sometimes hinted that the Square is not a centre of gayety, +or a scene of the greatest activity by day, feel it right to say that +it has some modest charms of its own on a summer's night, about the hour +when Frank passed through it, when the post-office has just been shut, +and when the different groups that haunt the place in front of the +closing shops have dwindled to the loungers fit though few who will keep +it well into the night, and may there be found, by the passenger on the +last horse-car out from Boston, wrapt in a kind of social silence, +and honorably attended by the policeman whose favored beat is in +that neighborhood. They seem a feature of the bygone village life of +Charlesbridge, and accord pleasantly with the town-pump and the public +horse-trough, and the noble elm that by night droops its boughs so +pensively, and probably dreams of its happy younger days when there were +no canker-worms in the world. Sometimes this choice company sits on the +curbing that goes round the terrace at the elm-tree's foot, and then I +envy every soul in it,--so tranquil it seems, so cool, so careless, so +morrowless. I cannot see the faces of that luxurious society, but there +I imagine is the local albino, and a certain blind man, who resorts +thither much by day, and makes a strange kind of jest of his own, with +a flicker of humor upon his sightless face, and a faith that others less +unkindly treated by nature will be able to see the point apparently not +always discernible to himself. Late at night I have a fancy that the +darkness puts him on an equality with other wits, and that he enjoys his +own brilliancy as well as any one. + +At the Port station Frank was pleased and soothed by the tranquil air of +the policeman, who sat in his shirt-sleeves outside the door, and seemed +to announce, by his attitude of final disoccupation, that crimes and +misdemeanors were no more. This officer at once showed a desirable +interest in the case. He put on his blue coat that he might listen +to the whole story in a proper figure, and then he took down the main +points on the slate, and said that they would send word round to the +other stations in the city, and the boy's parents could hardly help +hearing of him that night. + +Returned home, Frank gave his news, and then he and Mrs. Sallie went up +to look at the lost child as he slept. The sumptuous diet to which he +had confined himself from the first seemed to agree with him perfectly, +for he slept unbrokenly, and apparently without a consciousness of his +woes. On a chair lay his clothes, in a dusty little pathetic heap; they +were well-kept clothes, except for the wrong his wanderings had done +them, and they showed a motherly care here and there, which it was not +easy to look at with composure. The spectators of his sleep both thought +of the curious chance that had thrown this little one into their charge, +and considered that he was almost as completely a gift of the Unknown +as if he had been following a steamer in another planet, and had thence +dropped into their yard. His helplessness in accounting for himself was +as affecting as that of the sublimest metaphysician; and no learned man, +no superior intellect, no subtle inquirer among us lost children of the +divine, forgotten home, could have been less able to say how or whence +he came to be just where he found himself. We wander away and away; the +dust of the road-side gathers upon us; and when some strange shelter +receives us, we lie down to our sleep, inarticulate, and haunted with +dreams of memory, or the memory of dreams, knowing scarcely more of the +past than of the future. + +“What a strange world!” sighed Mrs. Sallie; and then, as this was a +mood far too speculative for her, she recalled herself to practical life +suddenly. “If we should have to adopt this child, Frank”--“Why, bless +my soul, we're not obliged to adopt him! Even a lost child can't demand +that.” + +“We shall adopt him, if they don't come for him. And now, I want to +know” (Mrs. Sallie spoke as if the adoption had been effected) “whether +we shall give him our name, or some other?” + +“Well, I don't know. It's the first child I've ever adopted,” said Frank +“and upon my word, I can't say whether you have to give him a new name +or not. In fact, if I'd thought of this affair of a name, I'd never have +adopted him. It's the greatest part of the burden, and if his father +will only come for him, I'll give him up without a murmur.” + +In the interval that followed the proposal of this alarming difficulty, +and while he sat and waited vaguely for whatever should be going +to happen next, Frank was not able to repress a sense of personal +resentment towards the little vagrant sleeping so carelessly there, +though at the bottom of his heart there was all imaginable tenderness +for him. In the fantastic character which, to his weariness, the day's +pleasure took on, it seemed an extraordinary unkindness of fate that +this lost child should have been kept in reserve for him after all +the rest; and he had so small consciousness of bestowing shelter and +charity, and so profound a feeling of having himself been turned out of +house and home by some surprising and potent agency, that if the lost +child had been a regiment of Fenians billeted upon him, it could not +have oppressed him more. While he remained perplexed in this perverse +sentiment of invasion and dispossession, “Hark!” said Mrs. Sallie, +“what's that?” + +It was a noise of dragging and shuffling on the walk in front of the +house, and a low, hoarse whispering. + +“I don't know,” said Frank, “but from the kind of pleasure I've got +out of it so far, I should say that this holiday was capable of an +earthquake before midnight.” + +“Listen!” + +They listened, as they must, and heard the outer darkness rehearse +a raucous dialogue between an unseen Bill and Jim, who were the more +terrible to the imagination from being so realistically named, and who +seemed to have in charge some nameless third person, a mute actor in the +invisible scene. There was doubt, which he uttered, in the mind of Jim, +whether they could get this silent comrade along much farther without +carrying him; and there was a growling assent from Bill that he _was_ +pretty far gone, that was a fact, and that maybe Jim _had_ better go for +the wagon; then there were quick, retreating steps; and then there was +a profound silence, in which the audience of this strange drama sat +thrilled and speechless. The effect was not less dreadful when there +rose a dull sound, as of a helpless body rubbing against the fence, and +at last lowered heavily to the ground. + +“O!” cried Mrs. Sallie. “Do go out and help. He's dying!” + +But even as she spoke the noise of wheels was heard. A wagon stopped +before the door; there came a tugging and lifting, with a sound as of +crunching gravel, and then a “There!” of great relief. + +“Frank!” said Mrs. Sallie very solemnly, “if you don't go out and help +those men, I'll never forgive you.” + +Really, the drama had grown very impressive; it was a mystery, to say +the least; and so it must remain forever, for when Frank, infected at +last by Mrs. Sallie's faith in tragedy, opened the door and offered his +tardy services, the wagon was driven rapidly away without reply. They +never learned what it had all been; and I think that if one actually +honors mysteries, it is best not to look into them. How much finer, +after all, if you have such a thing as this happen before your door at +midnight, not to throw any light upon it! Then your probable tipsy man +cannot be proved other than a tragical presence, which you can match +with any inscrutable creation of fiction; and if you should ever come to +write a romance, as one is very liable to do in this age, there is your +unknown, a figure of strange and fearful interest, made to your hand, +and capable of being used, in or out of the body, with a very gloomy +effect. + +While our friends yet trembled with this sensation, quick steps ascended +to their door, and then followed a sharp, anxious tug at the bell. + +“Ah!” cried Frank, prophetically, “here's the father of our adopted +son;” and he opened the door. + +The gentleman who appeared there could scarcely frame the question to +which Frank replied so cheerfully: “O yes; he's here, and snug in bed, +and fast asleep. Come up-stairs and look at him. Better let him be +till morning, and then come after him,” he added, as they looked down a +moment on the little sleeper. + +“O no, I couldn't,” said the father, _con expressione_; and then he told +how he had heard of this child's whereabouts at the Port station, and +had hurried to get him, and how his mother did not know he was found +yet, and was almost wild about him. They had no idea how he had got +lost, and his own blind story was the only tale of his adventure that +ever became known. + +By this time his father had got the child partly awake, and the two men +were dressing him in men's clumsy fashion; and finally they gave it up, +and rolled him in a shawl. The father lifted the slight burden, and two +small arms fell about his neck. The weary child slept again. + +“How has he behaved?” asked the father. + +“Like a little hero,” said Frank, “but he's been a cormorant for +cookies. I think it right to tell you, in case he shouldn't be very +brilliant to-morrow, that he wouldn't eat a bit of anything else.” + +The father said he was the life of their house; and Frank said he knew +how that was,--that he had a life of the house of his own; and then the +father thanked him very simply and touchingly, and with the decent New +England self-restraint, which is doubtless so much better than any sort +of effusion. “Say good-night to the gentleman, Freddy,” he said at the +door; and Freddy with closed eyes murmured a good-night from far within +the land of dreams, and then was borne away to the house out of which +the life had wandered with his little feet. + +“I don't know, Sallie,” said Frank, when he had given all the eagerly +demanded particulars about the child's father,--“I don't know whether I +should want many such holidays as this, in the course of the summer. +On the whole, I think I'd better overwork myself and not take any +relaxation, if I mean to live long. And yet I'm not sure that the day's +been altogether a failure, though all our purposes of enjoyment have +miscarried. I didn't plan to find a lost child here, when I got home, +and I'm afraid I haven't had always the most Christian feeling towards +him; but he's really the saving grace of the affair; and if this were a +little comedy I had been playing, I should turn him to account with the +jaded audience, and advancing to the foot-lights, should say, with my +hand on my waistcoat, and a neat bow, that although every hope of the +day had been disappointed, and nothing I had meant to do had been done, +yet the man who had ended at midnight by restoring a lost child to the +arms of its father, must own that, in spite of adverse fortune, he had +enjoyed A Day's Pleasure.” + +[Illustration: “A gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness.”] + + + + +A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE + + +It was long past the twilight hour, which has been already mentioned as +so oppressive in suburban places, and it was even too late for visitors, +when a resident, whom I shall briefly describe as a Contributor to the +magazines, was startled by a ring at his door. As any thoughtful person +would have done upon the like occasion, he ran over his acquaintance in +his mind, speculating whether it were such or such a one, and dismissing +the whole list of improbabilities, before he laid down the book he +was reading, and answered the bell. When at last he did this, he was +rewarded by the apparition of an utter stranger on his threshold,--a +gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness towering far above him, +that jerked him a nod of the head, and asked if Mr. Hapford lived there. +The face which the lamp-light revealed was remarkable for a harsh +two days' growth of beard, and a single bloodshot eye; yet it was not +otherwise a sinister countenance, and there was something in the strange +presence that appealed and touched. The contributor, revolving the facts +vaguely in his mind, was not sure, after all, that it was not the man's +clothes rather than his expression that softened him toward the rugged +visage: they were so tragically cheap, and the misery of helpless +needlewomen, and the poverty and ignorance of the purchaser, were so +apparent in their shabby newness, of which they appeared still conscious +enough to have led the way to the very window, in the Semitic quarter of +the city, where they had lain ticketed, “This nobby suit for $15.” + +But the stranger's manner put both his face and his clothes out of mind, +and claimed a deeper interest when, being answered that the person +for whom he asked did not live there, he set his bristling lips hard +together, and sighed heavily. + +“They told me,” he said, in a hopeless way, “that he lived on this +street, and I've been to every other house. I'm very anxious to find +him, Cap'n,”--the contributor, of course, had no claim to the title with +which he was thus decorated,--“for I've a daughter living with him, +and I want to see her; I've just got home from a two years' voyage, +and”--there was a struggle of the Adam's-apple in the man's gaunt +throat--“I find she's about all there is left of my family.” + +How complex is every human motive! This contributor had been lately +thinking, whenever he turned the pages of some foolish traveller,--some +empty prattler of Southern or Eastern lands, where all sensation was +long ago exhausted, and the oxygen has perished from every sentiment, +so has it been breathed and breathed again,--that nowadays the wise +adventurer sat down beside his own register and waited for incidents +to seek him out. It seemed to him that the cultivation of a patient and +receptive spirit was the sole condition needed to insure the occurrence +of all manner of surprising facts within the range of one's own personal +knowledge; that not only the Greeks were at our doors, but the fairies +and the genii, and all the people of romance, who had but to be +hospitably treated in order to develop the deepest interest of fiction, +and to become the characters of plots so ingenious that the most cunning +invention were poor beside them. I myself am not so confident of this, +and would rather trust Mr. Charles Reade, say, for my amusement than any +chance combination of events. But I should be afraid to say how much +his pride in the character of the stranger's sorrows, as proof of the +correctness of his theory, prevailed with the contributor to ask him +to come in and sit down; though I hope that some abstract impulse +of humanity, some compassionate and unselfish care for the man's +misfortunes as misfortunes, was not wholly wanting. Indeed, the helpless +simplicity with which he had confided his case might have touched +a harder heart. “Thank you,” said the poor fellow, after a moment's +hesitation. “I believe I will come in. I've been on foot all day, and +after such a long voyage it makes a man dreadfully sore to walk about +so much. Perhaps you can think of a Mr. Hapford living somewhere in the +neighborhood.” + +He sat down, and, after a pondering silence, in which he had remained +with his head fallen upon his breast, “My name is Jonathan Tinker,” + he said, with the unaffected air which had already impressed the +contributor, and as if he felt that some form of introduction was +necessary, “and the girl that I want to find is Julia Tinker.” Then +he added, resuming the eventful personal history which the listener +exulted, while he regretted, to hear: “You see, I shipped first to +Liverpool, and there I heard from my family; and then I shipped again +for Hong-Kong, and after that I never heard a word: I seemed to miss +the letters everywhere. This morning, at four o'clock, I left my ship as +soon as she had hauled into the dock, and hurried up home. The house was +shut, and not a soul in it; and I didn't know what to do, and I sat down +on the doorstep to wait till the neighbors woke up, to ask them what had +become of my family. And the first one come out he told me my wife had +been dead a year and a half, and the baby I'd never seen, with her; +and one of my boys was dead; and he didn't know where the rest of the +children was, but he'd heard two of the little ones was with a family in +the city.” + +The man mentioned these things with the half-apologetic air observable +in a certain kind of Americans when some accident obliges them to +confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your +sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of +having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk +so far as to say, “Pretty rough!” when the stranger caused; and perhaps +these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's +quavering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark +face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn +cheeks. This demonstration, into which he had been surprised, seemed to +stand for the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall +at such times. He opened his lips with a kind of dry click, and went +on:--“I hunted about the whole forenoon in the city, and at last I found +the children. I'd been gone so long they didn't know me, and somehow +I thought the people they were with weren't over-glad I'd turned up. +Finally the oldest child told me that Julia was living with a Mr. +Hapford on this street, and I started out here to-night to look her up. +If I can find her, I'm all right. I can get the family together, then, +and start new.” + +“It seems rather odd,” mused the listener aloud, “that the neighbors let +them break up so, and that they should all scatter as they did.” + +“Well, it ain't so curious as it seems, Cap'n. There was money for them +at the owners', all the time; I'd left part of my wages when I sailed; +but they didn't know how to get at it, and what could a parcel of +children do? Julia's a good girl, and when I find her I'm all right.” + +The writer could only repeat that there was no Mr. Hapford living on +that street, and never had been, so far as he knew. Yet there might be +such a person in the neighborhood; and they would go out together, and +ask at some of the houses about. But the stranger must first take a +glass of wine; for he looked used up. + +The sailor awkwardly but civilly enough protested that he did not want +to give so much trouble, but took the glass, and, as he put it to his +lips, said formally, as if it were a toast or a kind of grace, “I hope +I may have the opportunity of returning the compliment.” The contributor +thanked him; though, as he thought of all the circumstances of the case, +and considered the cost at which the stranger had come to enjoy his +politeness, he felt little eagerness to secure the return of the +compliment at the same price, and added, with the consequence of another +set phrase, “Not at all.” But the thought had made him the more anxious +to befriend the luckless soul fortune had cast in his way; and so the +two sallied out together, and rang door-bells wherever lights were +still seen burning in the windows, and asked the astonished people who +answered their summons whether any Mr. Hapford were known to live in the +neighborhood. + +And although the search for this gentleman proved vain, the contributor +could not feel that an expedition which set familiar objects in such +novel light? was altogether a failure. He entered so intimately into the +cares and anxieties of his _protege,_ that at times he felt himself +in some inexplicable sort a shipmate of Jonathan Tinker, and almost +personally a partner of his calamities. The estrangement of all things +which takes place, within doors and without, about midnight may have +helped to cast this doubt upon his identity;--he seemed to be visiting +now for the first time the streets and neighborhoods nearest his own, +and his feet stumbled over the accustomed walks. In his quality +of houseless wanderer, and--so far as appeared to others--possibly +worthless vagabond, he also got a new and instructive effect upon the +faces which, in his real character, he knew so well by their looks of +neighborly greeting; and it is his belief that the first hospitable +prompting of the human heart is to shut the door in the eyes of homeless +strangers who present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time the +servants are all abed, and the gentleman of the house answers the bell, +and looks out with a loath and bewildered face, which gradually changes +to one of suspicion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can possibly +want of _him,_ till at last the prevailing expression is one of contrite +desire to atone for the first reluctance by any sort of service. The +contributor professes to have observed these changing phases in the +visages of those whom he that night called from their dreams, or +arrested in the act of going to bed; and he drew the conclusion--very +proper for his imaginable connection with the garroting and other +adventurous brotherhoods--that the most flattering moment for knocking +on the head people who answer a late ring at night is either in their +first selfish bewilderment, or their final self-abandonment to their +better impulses. It does not seem to have occurred to him that he would +himself have been a much more favorable subject for the predatory arts +that any of his neighbors, if his shipmate, the unknown companion of his +researches for Mr. Hapford, had been at all so minded. But the faith +of the gaunt giant upon which he reposed was good, and the contributor +continued to wander about with him in perfect safety. Not a soul among +those they asked had ever heard of a Mr. Hapford,--far less of a Julia +Tinker living with him. But they all listened to the contributor's +explanation with interest and eventual sympathy; and in truth,--briefly +told, with a word now and then thrown in by Jonathan Tinker, who kept at +the bottom of the steps, showing like a gloomy spectre in the night, +or, in his grotesque length and gauntness, like the other's shadow +cast there by the lamplight,--it was a story which could hardly fail to +awaken pity. + +At last, after ringing several bells where there were no lights, in +the mere wantonness of good-will, and going away before they could be +answered (it would be entertaining to know what dreams they caused the +sleepers within), there seemed to be nothing for it but to give up the +search till morning, and go to the main street and wait for the last +horse-car to the city. + +There, seated upon the curbstone, Jonathan Tinker, being plied with a +few leading questions, told in hints and scraps the story of his hard +life, which was at present that of a second mate, and had been that of +a cabin-boy and of a seaman before the mast. The second mate's place he +held to be the hardest aboard ship. You got only a few dollars more than +the men, and you did not rank with the officers; you took your meals +alone, and in every thing you belonged by yourself. The men did not +respect you, and sometimes the captain abused you awfully before the +passengers. The hardest captain that Jonathan Tinker ever sailed with +was Captain Gooding of the Cape. It had got to be so that no man would +ship second mate under Captain Gooding; and Jonathan Tinker was with him +only one voyage. When he had been home awhile, he saw an advertisement +for a second mate, and he went round to the owners'. They had kept it +secret who the captain was; but there was Captain Gooding in the owners' +office. “Why, here's the man, now, that I want for a second mate,” said +he, when Jonathan Tinker entered; “he knows me.”--“Captain Gooding, I +know you 'most too well to want to sail under you,” answered Jonathan. +“I might go if I hadn't been with you one voyage too many already.” + +“And then the men!” said Jonathan, “the men coming aboard drunk, and +having to be pounded sober! And the hardest of the fight falls on the +second mate! Why, there isn't an inch of me that hasn't been cut over or +smashed into a jell. I've had three ribs broken; I've got a scar from a +knife on my cheek; and I've been stabbed bad enough, half a dozen times, +to lay me up.” + +Here he gave a sort of desperate laugh, as if the notion of so much +misery and such various mutilation were too grotesque not to be amusing. +“Well, what can you do?” he went on. “If you don't strike, the men think +you're afraid of them; and so you have to begin hard and go on hard. +I always tell a man, 'Now, my man, I always begin with a man the way +I mean to keep on. You do your duty and you're all right. But if you +don't'--Well, the men ain't Americans any more,--Dutch, Spaniards, +Chinese, Portuguee,--and it ain't like abusing a white man.” + +Jonathan Tinker was plainly part of the horrible tyranny which we all +know exists on shipboard; and his listener respected him the more that, +though he had heart enough to be ashamed of it, he was too honest not to +own it. + +Why did he still follow the sea? Because he did not know what else to +do. When he was younger, he used to love it, but now he hated it. Yet +there was not a prettier life in the world if you got to be captain. He +used to hope for that once, but not now; though he _thought_ he could +navigate a ship. Only let him get his family together again, and he +would--yes, he would--try to do something ashore. + +No car had yet come in sight, and so the contributor suggested that they +should walk to the car-office, and look in the “Directory,” which is +kept there, for the name of Hapford, in search of whom it had already +been arranged that they should renew their acquaintance on the +morrow. Jonathan Tinker, when they had reached the office, heard with +constitutional phlegm that the name of the Hapford, for whom he inquired +was not in the “Directory.” “Never mind,” said the other; “come round +to my house in the morning. We'll find him yet.” So they parted with a +shake of the hand, the second mate saying that he believed he should go +down to the vessel and sleep aboard,--if he could sleep,--and murmuring +at the last moment the hope of returning the compliment, while the other +walked homeward, weary as to the flesh, but, in spite of his sympathy +for Jonathan Tinker, very elate in spirit. The truth is,--and however +disgraceful to human nature, let the truth still be told,--he had +recurred to his primal satisfaction in the man as calamity capable of +being used for such and such literary ends, and, while he pitied +him, rejoiced in him as an episode of real life quite as striking and +complete as anything in fiction. It was literature made to his hand. +Nothing could be better, he mused; and once more he passed the details +of the story in review, and beheld all those pictures which the poor +fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured up: he saw him leaping +ashore in the gray summer dawn as soon as the ship hauled into the +dock, and making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccustomed to the +pavements, up through the silent and empty city streets; he imagined +the tumult of fear and hope which the sight of the man's home must have +caused in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind and deaf +to all his appeals; he saw him sitting down upon what had been his +own threshold, and waiting in a sort of bewildered patience till the +neighbors should be awake, while the noises of the streets gradually +arose, and the wheels began to rattle over the stones, and the milk-man +and the ice-man came and went, and the waiting figure began to be stared +at, and to challenge the curiosity of the passing policeman; he fancied +the opening of the neighbor's door, and the slow, cold understanding of +the case; the manner, whatever it was, in which the sailor was told that +one year before his wife had died, with her babe, and that his children +were scattered, none knew where. As the contributor dwelt pityingly upon +these things, but at the same time estimated their aesthetic value one +by one, he drew near the head of his street, and found himself a few +paces behind a boy slouching onward through the night, to whom he called +out, adventurously, and with no real hope of information,--“Do you +happen to know anybody on this street by the name of Hapford?” + +“Why no, not in this town,” said the boy; but he added that there was +a street of the same name in a neighboring suburb, and that there was a +Hapford living on it. + +“By Jove!” thought the contributor, “this is more like literature +than ever;” and he hardly knew whether to be more provoked at his own +stupidity in not thinking of a street of the same name in the next +village, or delighted at the element of fatality which the fact +introduced into the story; for Tinker, according to his own account, +must have landed from the cars a few rods from the very door he was +seeking, and so walked farther and farther from it every moment. He +thought the case so curious, that he laid it briefly before the boy, +who, however he might have been inwardly affected, was sufficiently true +to the national traditions not to make the smallest conceivable outward +sign of concern in it. + +At home, however, the contributor related his adventures and the story +of Tinker's life, adding the fact that he had just found out where Mr. +Hapford lived. “It was the only touch wanting,” said he; “the whole +thing is now perfect.” + +“It's _too_ perfect,” was answered from a sad enthusiasm. “Don't speak +of it! I can't take it in.” + +“But the question is,” said the contributor, penitently taking himself +to task for forgetting the hero of these excellent misfortunes in his +delight at their perfection, “how am I to sleep to-night, thinking +of that poor soul's suspense and uncertainty? Never mind,--I'll be up +early, and run over and make sure that it is Tinker's Hapford, before he +gets out here, and have a pleasant surprise for him. Would it not be a +justifiable _coup de théâtre_ to fetch his daughter here, and let her +answer his ring at the door when he comes in the morning?” + +This plan was discouraged. “No, no; let them meet in their own way. Just +take him to Hapford's house and leave him.” + +“Very well. But he's too good a character to lose sight of. He's got to +come back here and tell us what he intends to do.” + +The birds, next morning, not having had the second mate on their minds +either as an unhappy man or a most fortunate episode, but having slept +long and soundly, were singing in a very sprightly way in the way-side +trees; and the sweetness of their notes made the contributor's heart +light as he climbed the hill and rang at Mr. Hapford's door. + +The door was opened by a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, whom he knew +at a glance for the second mate's daughter, but of whom, for form's +sake, he asked if there were a girl named Julia Tinker living there. + +“My name's Julia Tinker,” answered the maid, who had rather a +disappointing face. + +“Well,” said the contributor, “your father's got back from his Hong-Kong +voyage.” + +“Hong-Kong voyage?” echoed the girl, with a stare of helpless inquiry, +but no other visible emotion. + +“Yes. He had never heard of your mother's death. He came home yesterday +morning, and was looking for you all day.” + +Julia Tinker remained open-mouthed but mute; and the other was puzzled +at the want of feeling shown, which he could not account for even as a +national trait. “Perhaps there's some mistake,” he said. + +“There must be,” answered Julia: “my father hasn't been to sea for +a good many years. _My_ father,” she added, with a diffidence +indescribably mingled with a sense of distinction,--“_my_ father's in +State's Prison. What kind of looking man was this?” + +The contributor mechanically described him. + +Julia Tinker broke into a loud, hoarse laugh. “Yes, it's him, sure +enough.” And then, as if the joke were too good to keep: “Miss Hapford, +Miss Hapford, father's got out. Do come here!” she called into a back +room. + +When Mrs. Hapford appeared, Julia fell back, and, having deftly caught +a fly on the door-post, occupied herself in plucking it to pieces, while +she listened to the conversation of the others. + +“It's all true enough,” said Mrs. Hapford, when the writer had recounted +the moving story of Jonathan Tinker, “so far as the death of his wife +and baby goes. But he hasn't been to sea for a good many years, and he +must have just come out of State's Prison, where he was put for bigamy. +There's always two sides to a story, you know; but they say it broke his +first wife's heart, and she died. His friends don't want him to find his +children, and this girl especially.” + +“He's found his children in the city,” said the contributor, gloomily, +being at a loss what to do or say, in view of the wreck of his romance. + +“O, he's found 'em has he?” cried Julia, with heightened amusement. +“Then he'll have me next, if I don't pack and go.” + +“I'm very, very sorry,” said the contributor, secretly resolved never to +do another good deed, no matter how temptingly the opportunity presented +itself. “But you may depend he won't find out from _me_ where you are. +Of course I had no earthly reason for supposing his story was not true.” + +“Of course,” said kind-hearted Mrs. Hapford, mingling a drop of honey +with the gall in the contributor's soul, “you only did your duty.” + +And indeed, as he turned away he did not feel altogether without +compensation. However Jonathan Tinker had fallen in his esteem as a +man, he had even risen as literature. The episode which had appeared so +perfect in its pathetic phases did not seem less finished as a farce; +and this person, to whom all things of every-day life presented +themselves in periods more or less rounded, and capable of use as facts +or illustrations, could not but rejoice in these new incidents, as +dramatically fashioned as the rest. It occurred to him that, wrought +into a story, even better use might be made of the facts now than +before, for they had developed questions of character and of human +nature which could not fail to interest. The more he pondered upon +his acquaintance with Jonathan Tinker, the more fascinating the erring +mariner became, in his complex truth and falsehood, his delicately +blending shades of artifice and _naïveté._ He must, it was felt, have +believed to a certain point in his own inventions: nay, starting with +that groundwork of truth,--the fact that his wife was really dead, and +that he had not seen his family for two years,--why should he not place +implicit faith in all the fictions reared upon it? It was probable +that he felt a real sorrow for her loss, and that he found a fantastic +consolation in depicting the circumstances of her death so that they +should look like his inevitable misfortunes rather than his faults. He +might well have repented his offense during those two years of prison; +and why should he not now cast their dreariness and shame out of his +memory, and replace them with the freedom and adventure of a two years' +voyage to China,--so probable, in all respects, that the fact should +appear an impossible nightmare? In the experiences of his life he had +abundant material to furnish forth the facts of such a voyage, and in +the weariness and lassitude that should follow a day's walking equally +after a two years' voyage and two years' imprisonment, he had as much +physical proof in favor of one hypothesis as the other. It was doubtless +true, also, as he said, that he had gone to his house at dawn, and sat +down on the threshold of his ruined home; and perhaps he felt the desire +he had expressed to see his daughter, with a purpose of beginning life +anew; and it may have cost him a veritable pang when he found that his +little ones did not know him. All the sentiments of the situation +were such as might persuade a lively fancy of the truth of its +own inventions; and as he heard these continually repeated by the +contributor in their search for Mr. Hapford, they must have acquired an +objective force and repute scarcely to be resisted. At the same time, +there were touches of nature throughout Jonathan Tinker's narrative +which could not fail to take the faith of another. The contributor, in +reviewing it, thought it particularly charming that his mariner had not +overdrawn himself, or attempted to paint his character otherwise than as +it probably was; that he had shown his ideas and practices of life to be +those of a second mate, nor more nor less, without the gloss of regret +or the pretenses to refinement that might be pleasing to the supposed +philanthropist with whom he had fallen in. Captain Gooding was of course +a true portrait; and there was nothing in Jonathan Tinker's statement of +the relations of a second mate to his superiors and his inferiors which +did not agree perfectly with what the contributor had just read in “Two +Years before the Mast,”--a book which had possibly cast its glamour upon +the adventure. He admired also the just and perfectly characteristic air +of grief in the bereaved husband and father,--those occasional escapes +from the sense of loss into a brief hilarity and forgetfulness, and +those relapses into the hovering gloom, which every one has observed +in this poor, crazy human nature when oppressed by sorrow, and which +it would have been hard to simulate. But, above all, he exulted in that +supreme stroke of the imagination given by the second mate when, at +parting, he said he believed he would go down and sleep on board the +vessel. In view of this, the State's Prison theory almost appeared a +malign and foolish scandal. + +Yet even if this theory were correct, was the second mate wholly +answerable for beginning his life again with the imposture he had +practiced? The contributor had either so fallen in love with the +literary advantages of his forlorn deceiver that he would see no +moral obliquity in him, or he had touched a subtler verity at last in +pondering the affair. It seemed now no longer a farce, but had a pathos +which, though very different from that of its first aspect, was hardly +less tragical. Knowing with what coldness, or, at the best, uncandor, he +(representing Society in its attitude toward convicted Error) would have +met the fact had it been owned to him at first, he had not virtue enough +to condemn the illusory stranger, who must have been helpless to make at +once evident any repentance he felt or good purpose he cherished. Was it +not one of the saddest consequences of the man's past,--a dark necessity +of misdoing,--that, even with the best will in the world to retrieve +himself, his first endeavor must involve a wrong? Might he not, indeed, +be considered a martyr, in some sort, to his own admirable impulses? +I can see clearly enough where the contributor was astray in this +reasoning, but I can also understand how one accustomed to value +realities only as they resembled fables should be won with such pensive +sophistry; and I can certainly sympathize with his feeling that the +mariner's failure to reappear according to appointment added its final +and most agreeable charm to the whole affair, and completed the mystery +from which the man emerged and which swallowed him up again. + + + + +SCENE + + +On that loveliest autumn morning, the swollen tide had spread over +all the russet levels, and gleamed in the sunlight a mile away. As the +contributor moved onward down the street, luminous on either hand +with crimsoning and yellowing maples, he was so filled with the tender +serenity of the scene, as not to be troubled by the spectacle of small +Irish houses standing miserably about on the flats ankle deep, as it +were, in little pools of the tide, or to be aware at first, of a strange +stir of people upon the streets: a fluttering to and fro and lively +encounter and separation of groups of bareheaded women, a flying of +children through the broken fences of the neighborhood, and across the +vacant lots on which the insulted sign-boards forbade them to trespass; +a sluggish movement of men through all, and a pause of different +vehicles along the sidewalks. When a sense of these facts had penetrated +his enjoyment, he asked a matron whose snowy arms, freshly taken from +the wash-tub, were folded across a mighty chest, “What is the matter?” + +“A girl drowned herself, sir-r-r, over there on the flats, last +Saturday, and they're looking for her.” + +“It was the best thing she could do,” said another matron grimly. + +Upon this answer that literary soul fell at once to patching himself +up a romantic story for the suicide, after the pitiful fashion of this +fiction-ridden age, when we must relate everything we see to something +we have read. He was the less to blame for it, because he could not help +it; but certainly he is not to be praised for his associations with the +tragic fact brought to his notice. Nothing could have been more trite +or obvious, and he felt his intellectual poverty so keenly that he might +almost have believed his discomfort a sympathy for the girl who had +drowned herself last Saturday. But of course, this could not be, for +he had but lately been thinking what a very tiresome figure to the +imagination the Fallen Woman had become. As a fact of Christian +civilization, she was a spectacle to wring one's heart, he owned; but +he wished she were well out of the romances, and it really seemed a +fatality that she should be the principal personage of this little +scene. The preparation for it, whatever it was to be, was so deliberate, +and the reality had so slight relation to the French roofs and modern +improvements of the comfortable Charlesbridge which he knew, that he +could not consider himself other than as a spectator awaiting some +entertainment, with a faint inclination to be critical. + +In the mean time there passed through the motley crowd, not so much a +cry as a sensation of “They've found her, they've found her!” and then +the one terrible picturesque fact, “She was standing upright!” + +Upon this there was wilder and wilder clamor among the people, dropping +by degrees and almost dying away, before a flight of boys came down +the street with the tidings, “They are bringing her--bringing her in a +wagon.” + +The contributor knew that she whom they were bringing in the wagon, had +had the poetry of love to her dismal and otherwise squalid death; +but the history was of fancy, not of fact in his mind. Of course, he +reflected, her lot must have been obscure and hard; the aspect of those +concerned about her death implied that. But of her hopes and her fears, +who could tell him anything? To be sure he could imagine the lovers, and +how they first met, and where, and who he was that was doomed to work +her shame and death; but here his fancy came upon something coarse and +common: a man of her own race and grade, handsome after that manner of +beauty which is so much more hateful than ugliness is; or, worse still, +another kind of man whose deceit must have been subtler and wickeder; +but whatever the person, a presence defiant of sympathy or even +interest, and simply horrible. Then there were the details of the +affair, in great degree common to all love affairs, and not varying so +widely in any condition of life; for the passion which is so rich and +infinite to those within its charm, is apt to seem a little tedious +and monotonous in its character, and poor in resources to the cold +looker-on. + +Then, finally, there was the crazy purpose and its fulfillment: the +headlong plunge from bank or bridge; the eddy, and the bubbles on the +current that calmed itself above the suicide; the tide that rose and +stretched itself abroad in the sunshine, carrying hither and thither the +burden with which it knew not what to do; the arrest, as by some ghastly +caprice of fate, of the dead girl, in that upright posture, in which she +should meet the quest for her, as it were defiantly. + +And now they were bringing her in a wagon. + +Involuntarily all stood aside, and waited till the funeral car, which +they saw, should come up toward them through the long vista of the +maple-shaded street, a noiseless riot stirring the legs and arms of the +boys into frantic demonstration, while the women remained quiet with +arms folded or akimbo. Before and behind the wagon, driven slowly, +went a guard of ragged urchins, while on the raised seat above sat +two Americans, unperturbed by anything, and concerned merely with the +business of the affair. + +The vehicle was a grocer's cart which had perhaps been pressed into the +service; and inevitably the contributor thought of Zenobia, and of +Miles Coverdale's belief that if she could have foreboded all the +_post-mortem_ ugliness and grotesqueness of suicide, she never would +have drowned herself. This girl, too, had doubtless had her own ideas +of the effect that her death was to make, her conviction that it was to +wring one heart, at least, and to strike awe and pity to every other; +and her woman's soul must have been shocked from death could she have +known in what a ghastly comedy the body she put off was to play a part. + +In the bottom of the cart lay something long and straight and terrible, +covered with a red shawl that drooped over the end of the wagon; and +on this thing were piled the baskets in which the grocers had delivered +their orders for sugar and flour, and coffee and tea. As the cart jolted +through their lines, the boys could no longer be restrained; they broke +out with wild yells, and danced madly about it, while the red shawl +hanging from the rigid feet nodded to their frantic mirth; and the sun +dropped its light through the maples and shone bright upon the flooded +date. + + + + +JUBILEE DAYS + + +I believe I have no good reason for including among these suburban +sketches my recollections of the Peace Jubilee, celebrated by a monster +musical entertainment at Boston, in June, 1869; and I do not know if it +will serve as excuse for their intrusion to say that the exhibition was +not urban in character, and that I attended it in a feeling of curiosity +and amusement which the Bostonians did not seem to feel, and which I +suspect was a strictly suburban if not rural sentiment. + +I thought, on that Tuesday morning, as our horse-car drew near the Long +Bridge, and we saw the Coliseum spectral through the rain, that Boston +was going to show people representing other parts of the country her +Notion of weather. I looked forward to a forenoon of clammy warmth, and +an afternoon of clammy cold and of east wind, with a misty nightfall +soaking men to the bones. But the day really turned out well enough; it +was showery, but not shrewish, and it smiled pleasantly at sunset, as if +content with the opening ceremonies of the Great Peace Jubilee. + +The city, as we entered it, gave due token of excitement, and we felt +the celebration even in the air, which had a holiday quality very +different from that of ordinary workday air. The crowds filled the +decorous streets, and the trim pathways of the Common and the Public +Garden, and flowed in an orderly course towards the vast edifice on the +Back Bay, presenting the interesting points which always distinguish a +crowd come to town from a city crowd. You get so used to the Boston face +and the Boston dress, that a coat from New York or a visage from Chicago +is at once conspicuous to you; and in these people there was not only +this strangeness, but the different oddities that lurk in out-of-way +corners of society everywhere had started suddenly into notice. +Long-haired men, popularly supposed to have perished with the +institution of slavery, appeared before me, and men with various causes +and manias looking from their wild eyes confronted each other, let alone +such charlatans as had clothed themselves quaintly or grotesquely to add +a charm to the virtue of whatever nostrum they peddled. It was, however, +for the most part, a remarkably well-dressed crowd; and therein it +probably differed more than in any other respect from the crowd which a +holiday would have assembled in former times. There was little rusticity +to be noted anywhere, and the uncouthness which has already disappeared +from the national face seemed to be passing from the national wardrobe. +Nearly all the visitors seemed to be Americans, but neither the Yankee +type nor the Hoosier was to be found. They were apparently very happy, +too; the ancestral solemnity of the race that amuses itself sadly was +not to be seen in them, and, if they were not making it a duty to be +gay, they were really taking their pleasure in a cheerful spirit. + +There was, in fact, something in the sight of the Coliseum, as we +approached it, which was a sufficient cause of elation to whoever is +buoyed up by the flutter of bright flags, and the movement in and about +holiday booths, as I think we all are apt to be. One may not have the +stomach of happier days for the swing or the whirligig; he may not +drink soda-water intemperately; pop-corn may not tempt him, nor +tropical fruits allure; but he beholds them without gloom,--nay, a grin +inevitably lights up his countenance at the sight of a great show of +these amusements and refreshments. And any Bostonian might have +felt proud that morning that his city did not hide the light of her +mercantile merit under a bushel, but blazoned it about on the booths and +walls in every variety of printed and painted advertisement. To the mere +aesthetic observer, these vast placards gave the delight of brilliant +color, and blended prettily enough in effect with the flags; and at +first glance I received quite as much pleasure from the frescoes that +advised me where to buy my summer clothing, as from any bunting I saw. + +I had the good fortune on the morning of this first Jubilee day to view +the interior of the Coliseum when there was scarcely anybody there,--a +trifle of ten thousand singers at one end, and a few thousand other +people scattered about over the wide expanses of parquet and galleries. +The decorations within, as without, were a pleasure to the eyes that +love gayety of color; and the interior was certainly magnificent, with +those long lines of white and blue drapery roofing the balconies, the +slim, lofty columns festooned with flags and drooping banners, the arms +of the States decking the fronts of the galleries, and the arabesques of +painted muslin everywhere. I do not know that my taste concerned itself +with the decorations, or that I have any taste in such things; but I +testify that these tints and draperies gave no small part of the +comfort of being where all things conspired for one's pleasure. The airy +amplitude of the building, the perfect order and the perfect freedom +of movement, the ease of access and exit, the completeness of the +arrangements that in the afternoon gave all of us thirty thousand +spectators a chance to behold the great spectacle as well as to hear +the music, were felt, I am sure, as personal favors by every one. These +minor particulars, in fact, served greatly to assist you in identifying +yourself, when the vast hive swarmed with humanity, and you became a +mere sentient atom of the mass. + +It was rumored in the morning that the ceremonies were to begin with +prayer by a hundred ministers, but I missed this striking feature of the +exhibition, for I did not arrive in the afternoon till the last speech +was being made by a gentleman whom I saw gesticulating effectively, and +whom I suppose to have been intelligible to a matter of twenty thousand +people in his vicinity, but who was to me, of the remote, outlying +thirty thousand, a voice merely. One word only I caught, and I report +it here that posterity may know as much as we thirty thousand +contemporaries did of + +THE PRESIDENT'S SPEECH. + +. . . . . . . (_sensation_.) . . . . . . . . . . (_cheers_.). . . . +refinement . . . . . . . . . . (_great applause_.) + +I do not know if I shall be able to give an idea of the immensity of +this scene; but if such a reader as has the dimensions of the Coliseum +accurately fixed in his mind will, in imagination, densely hide all that +interminable array of benching in the parquet and the galleries and +the slopes at either end of the edifice with human heads, showing here +crowns, there occiputs, and yonder faces, he will perhaps have some +notion of the spectacle as we beheld it from the northern hill-side. +Some thousands of heads nearest were recognizable as attached by the +usual neck to the customary human body, but for the rest, we seemed +to have entered a world of cherubim. Especially did the multitudinous +singers seated far opposite encourage this illusion; and their +fluttering fans and handkerchiefs wonderfully mocked the movement of +those cravat-like pinions which the fancy attributed to them. They rose +or sank at the wave of the director's baton; and still looked like an +innumerable flock of cherubs drifting over some slope of Paradise, or +settling upon it,--if cherubs _can_ settle. + +[Illustration: “The spectacle as we beheld it.”] + +The immensity was quite as striking to the mind as to the eye, and an +absolute democracy was appreciable in it. Not only did all artificial +distinctions cease, but those of nature were practically obliterated, +and you felt for once the full meaning of unanimity. No one was at a +disadvantage; one was as wise, as good, as handsome as another. In most +public assemblages, the foolish eye roves in search of the vanity of +female beauty, and rests upon some lovely visage, or pretty figure; +but here it seemed to matter nothing whether ladies were well or +ill-looking; and one might have been perfectly ascetic without +self-denial. A blue eye or a black,--what of it? A mass of blonde or +chestnut hair, this sort of walking-dress or that,--you might note the +difference casually in a few hundred around you; but a sense of those +myriads of other eyes and chignons and walking-dresses absorbed the +impression in an instant, and left a dim, strange sense of loss, as if +all women had suddenly become Woman. For the time, one would have been +preposterously conceited to have felt his littleness in that crowd; you +never thought of yourself in an individual capacity at all. It was as +if you were a private in an army, or a very ordinary billow of the sea, +feeling the battle or the storm, in a collective sort of way, but unable +to distinguish your sensations from those of the mass. If a rafter had +fallen and crushed you and your unimportant row of people, you could +scarcely have regarded it as a personal calamity, but might have found +it disagreeable as a shock to that great body of humanity. Recall, then, +how astonished you were to be recognized by some one, and to have your +hand shaken in your individual character of Smith. “Smith? My dear +What's-your-name, I am for the present the fifty-thousandth part of an +enormous emotion!” + +It was as difficult to distribute the various facts of the whole effect, +as to identify one's self. I had only a public and general consciousness +of the delight given by the harmony of hues in the parquet below; and +concerning the orchestra I had at first no distinct impression save of +the three hundred and thirty violin-bows held erect like standing wheat +at one motion of the director's wand, and then falling as if with the +next he swept them down. Afterwards files of men with horns, and other +files of men with drums and cymbals, discovered themselves; while far +above all, certain laborious figures pumped or ground with incessant +obeisance at the apparatus supplying the organ with wind. + +What helped, more than anything else, to restore you your dispersed and +wandering individuality was the singing of Parepa-Rosa, as she triumphed +over the harmonious rivalry of the orchestra. There was something in +the generous amplitude and robust cheerfulness of this great artist that +accorded well with the ideal of the occasion; she was in herself a great +musical festival; and one felt, as she floated down the stage with +her far-spreading white draperies, and swept the audience a colossal +courtesy, that here was the embodied genius of the Jubilee. I do not +trust myself to speak particularly of her singing, for I have the +natural modesty of people who know nothing about music, and I have not +at command the phraseology of those who pretend to understand it; but I +say that her voice filled the whole edifice with delicious melody, that +it soothed and composed and utterly enchanted, that, though two hundred +violins accompanied her, the greater sweetness of her note prevailed +over all, like a mighty will commanding many. What a sublime ovation for +her when a hundred thousand hands thundered their acclaim! A victorious +general, an accepted lover, a successful young author,--these know a +measure of bliss, I dare say; but in one throb, the singer's heart, as +it leaps in exultation at the loud delight of her applausive thousands, +must out-enjoy them all. Let me lay these poor little artificial flowers +of rhetoric at the feet of the divine singer, as a faint token of +gratitude and eloquent intention. + +When Parepa (or Prepper, as I have heard her name popularly pronounced) +had sung, the revived consciousness of an individual life rose in +rebellion against the oppression of that dominant vastness. In fact, +human nature can stand only so much of any one thing. To a certain +degree you accept and conceive of facts truthfully, but beyond this a +mere fantasticality rules; and having got enough of grandeur, the senses +played themselves false. That array of fluttering and tuning people on +the southern slope began to look minute, like the myriad heads assembled +in the infinitesimal photograph which you view through one of those +little half-inch lorgnettes; and you had the satisfaction of knowing +that to any lovely infinitesimality yonder you showed no bigger than +a carpet-tack. The whole performance now seemed to be worked by those +tireless figures pumping at the organ, in obedience to signals from +a very alert figure on the platform below. The choral and orchestral +thousands sang and piped and played; and at a given point in the _scena_ +from Verdi, a hundred fairies in red shirts marched down through the +sombre mass of puppets and beat upon as many invisible anvils. + +This was the stroke of anti-climax; and the droll sound of those anvils, +so far above all the voices and instruments in its pitch, thoroughly +disillusioned you and restored you finally to your proper entity and +proportions. It was the great error of the great Jubilee, and where +almost everything else was noble and impressive,--where the direction +was faultless, and the singing and instrumentation as perfectly +controlled as if they were the result of one volition,--this +anvil-beating was alone ignoble and discordant,--trivial and huge +merely. Not even the artillery accompaniment, in which the cannon were +made to pronounce words of two syllables, was so bad. + +The dimensions of this sketch bear so little proportion to those of the +Jubilee, that I must perforce leave most of its features unnoticed; but +I wish to express the sense of enjoyment which prevailed (whenever the +anvils were not beaten) over every other feeling, even over wonder. To +the ear as to the eye it was a delight, and it was an assured success in +the popular affections from the performance of the first piece. For +my own part, if one pleasurable sensation, besides that received from +Parepa's singing, distinguished itself from the rest, it was that given +by the performance of the exquisite Coronation March from Meyerbeer's +“Prophet;” but I say this under protest of the pleasure taken in +the choral rendering of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Closely allying +themselves to these great raptures were the minor joys of wandering +freely about from point to point, of receiving fresh sensations from +the varying lights and aspects in which the novel scene presented itself +with its strange fascinations, and of noting, half consciously, the +incessant movement of the crowd as it revealed itself in changing +effects of color. Then the gay tumult of the fifteen minutes of +intermission between the parts, when all rose with a _susurrus_ of +innumerable silks, and the thousands of pretty singers fluttered +about, and gossiped tremulously and delightedly over the glory of the +performance, revealing themselves as charming feminine personalities, +each with her share in the difficulty and the achievement, each with +her pique or pride, and each her something to tell her friend of the +conduct, agreeable or displeasing, of some particular him! Even the +quick dispersion of the mass at the close was a marvel of orderliness +and grace, as the melting and separating parts, falling asunder, +radiated from the centre, and flowed and rippled rapidly away, and left +the great hall empty and bare at last. + +And as you emerged from the building, what bizarre and perverse feeling +was that you knew? Something as if all-out-doors were cramped and +small, and it were better to return to the freedom and amplitude of the +interior? + +On the second day, much that was wonderful in a first experience of the +festival was gone; but though the novelty had passed away, the cause for +wonder was even greater. If on the first day the crowd was immense, it +was now something which the imperfect state of the language will not +permit me to describe; perhaps _awful_ will serve the purpose as well as +any other word now in use. As you looked round, from the centre of the +building, on that restless, fanning, fluttering multitude, to right and +left and north and south, all comparisons and similitudes abandoned you. +If you were to write of the scene, you felt that your effort, at the +best, must be a meagre sketch, suggesting something to those who had +seen the fact, but conveying no intelligible impression of it to any +one else. The galleries swarmed, the vast slopes were packed, in the +pampa-like parquet even the aisles were half filled with chairs, while +a cloud of placeless wanderers moved ceaselessly on the borders of the +mass under the balconies. + +When that common-looking, uncommon little man whom we have called to +rule over us entered the house, and walked quietly down to his seat in +the centre of it, a wild, inarticulate clamor, like no other noise in +the world, swelled from every side, till General Grant rose and showed +himself, when it grew louder than ever, and then gradully subsided into +silence. Then a voice, which might be uttering some mortal alarm, +broke repeatedly across the stillness from one of the balconies, and a +thousand glasses were leveled in that direction, while everywhere else +the mass hushed itself with a mute sense of peril. The capacity of such +an assemblage for self-destruction was, in fact, but too evident. From +fire, in an edifice of which the sides could be knocked out in a moment, +there could have been little danger; the fabric's strength had been +perfectly tested the day before, and its fall was not to be apprehended; +but we had ourselves greatly to dread. A panic could have been caused by +any mad or wanton person, in which thousands might have been instantly +trampled to death; and it seemed long till that foolish voice was +stilled, and the house lapsed back into tranquillity, and the enjoyment +of the music. In the performance I recall nothing disagreeable, nothing +that to my ignorance seemed imperfect, though I leave it to the wise in +music to say how far the great concert was a success. I saw a flourish +of the director's wand, and I heard the voices or the instruments, +or both, respond, and I knew by my programme that I was enjoying an +unprecedented quantity of Haydn or Handel or Meyerbeer or Rossini or +Mozart, afforded with an unquestionable precision and promptness; but I +own that I liked better to stroll about the three-acre house, and that +for me the music was, at best, only one of the joys of the festival. + +There was good hearing outside for those that desired to listen to the +music, with seats to let in the surrounding tents and booths; and there +was unlimited seeing for the mere looker-on. At least fifty thousand +people seemed to have come to the Jubilee with no other purpose than +to gaze upon the outside of the building. The crowd was incomparably +greater than that of the day before; all the main thoroughfares of the +city roared with a tide of feet that swept through the side streets, and +swelled aimlessly up the places, and eddied there, and poured out again +over the pavements. The carriage-ways were packed with every sort of +vehicle, with foot-passengers crowded from the sidewalks, and with +the fragments of the military parade in honor of the President, with +infantry, with straggling cavalrymen, with artillery. All the paths of +the Common and the Garden were filled, and near the Coliseum the throngs +densified on every side into an almost impenetrable mass, that made the +doors of the building difficult to approach and at times inaccessible. + +The crowd differed from that of the first day chiefly in size. There +were more country faces and country garbs to be seen, though it was +still, on the whole, a regular-featured and well-dressed crowd, with +still very few but American visages. It seemed to be also a very +frugal-minded crowd, and to spend little upon the refreshments and +amusements provided for it. In these, oddly enough, there was nothing +of the march of mind to be observed; they Were the refreshments and +amusements of a former generation. I think it would not be extravagant +to say that there were tons of pie for sale in a multitude of booths, +with lemonade, soda-water, and ice-cream in proportion; but I doubt if +there was a ton of pie sold, and towards the last the venerable pastry +was quite covered with dust. Neither did people seem to care much for +oranges or bananas or peanuts, or even pop-corn,--five cents a package +and a prize in each package. Many booths stood unlet, and in others the +pulverous ladies and gentlemen, their proprietors, were in the enjoyment +of a leisure which would have been elegant if it had not been forced. +There was one shanty, not otherwise distinguished from the rest, +in which French soups were declared to be for sale; but these alien +pottages seemed to be no more favored than the most poisonous of our +national viands. But perhaps they were not French soups, or perhaps +the vicinage of the shanty was not such as to impress a belief in their +genuineness upon people who like French soups. Let us not be too easily +disheartened by the popular neglect of them. If the daring reformer who +inscribed French soups upon his sign will reappear ten years hence, we +shall all flock to his standard. Slavery is abolished; pie must follow. +Doubtless in the year 1900, the managers of a Jubilee would even let the +refreshment-rooms within their Coliseum to a cook who would offer the +public something not so much worse than the worst that could be found in +the vilest shanty restaurant on the ground. At the Jubilee, of which +I am writing, the unhappy person who went into the Coliseum rooms to +refresh himself was offered for coffee a salty and unctuous wash, in +one of those thick cups which are supposed to be proof against the hard +usage of “guests” and scullions in humble eating-houses, and which are +always so indescribably nicked and cracked, and had pushed towards him +a bowl of veteran sugar, and a tin spoon that had never been cleaned in +the world, while a young person stood by, and watched him, asking, “Have +you paid for that coffee?” + +The side-shows and the other amusements seemed to have addressed +themselves to the crowd with the same mistaken notion of its character +and requirements; though I confess that I witnessed their neglect with +regret, whether from a feeling that they were at least harmless, or an +unconscious sympathy with any quite idle and unprofitable thing. Those +rotary, legless horses, on which children love to ride in a perpetual +sickening circle,--the type of all our effort,--were nearly always +mounted; but those other whirligigs, or whatever the dreadful circles +with their swinging seats are called, were often so empty that they must +have been distressing, from their want of balance, to the muscles as +well as the spirits of their proprietors. The society of monsters was +also generally shunned, and a cow with five legs gave milk from the +top of her back to an audience of not more than six persons. The public +apathy had visibly wrought upon the temper of the gentleman who lectured +upon this gifted animal, and he took inquiries in an ironical manner +that contrasted disadvantageously with the philosophical serenity of the +person who had a weighing-machine outside, and whom I saw sitting in the +chair and weighing himself by the hour, with an expression of profound +enjoyment. Perhaps a man of less bulk could not have entered so keenly +into that simple pleasure. + +There was a large tent on the grounds for dramatical entertainments, +with six performances a day, into which I was lured by a profusion of +high-colored posters, and some such announcement, as that the beautiful +serio-comic danseuse and world-renowned cloggist, Mile. Brown, would +appear. About a dozen people were assembled within, and we waited a +half-hour beyond the time announced for the curtain to rise, during +which the spectacle of a young man in black broadcloth, eating a +cocoa-nut with his pen-knife, had a strange and painful fascination. At +the end of this half-hour, our number was increased to eighteen, when +the orchestra appeared,--a snare-drummer and two buglers. These took +their place at the back of the tent; the buglers, who were Germans, blew +seriously and industriously at their horns; but the native-born citizen, +who played the drum, beat it very much at random, and in the mean time +smoked a cigar, while his humorous friend kept time upon his shoulders +by striking him there with a cane. How long this might have lasted, I +cannot tell; but, after another delay, I suddenly bethought me whether +it were not better not to see Mile. Brown, after all? I rose, and +stole softly out behind the rhythmic back of the drummer; and the +world-renowned cloggist is to me at this moment only a beautiful +dream,--an airy shape fashioned upon a hint supplied by the engraver of +the posters. + +What, then, did the public desire, if it would not smile upon the +swings, or monsters, or dramatic amusements that had pleased so long? +Was the music, as it floated out from the Coliseum, a sufficient +delight? Or did the crowd, averse to the shows provided for it, crave +something higher and more intellectual,--like, for example, a course +of the Lowell Lectures? Its general expression had changed: it had no +longer that entire gayety of the first day, but had taken on something +of the sarcastic pathos with which we Americans bear most oppressive and +fatiguing things as a good joke. The dust was blown about in clouds; and +here and there, sitting upon the vacant steps that led up and down +among the booths, were dejected and motionless men and women, passively +gathering dust, and apparently awaiting burial under the accumulating +sand,--the mute, melancholy sphinxes of the Jubilee, with their unsolved +riddle, “Why did we come?” At intervals, the heavens shook out fierce, +sudden showers of rain, that scattered the surging masses, and sent them +flying impotently hither and thither for shelter where no shelter was, +only to gather again, and move aimlessly and comfortlessly to and fro, +like a lost child. + +So the multitude roared within and without the Coliseum as I turned +homeward; and yet I found it wandering with weary feet through the +Garden, and the Common, and all the streets, and it dragged its +innumerable aching legs with me to the railroad station, and, entering +the train, stood up on them,--having paid for the tickets with which the +companies professed to sell seats. + +How still and cool and fresh it was at our suburban station, when +the train, speeding away with a sardonic yell over the misery of the +passengers yet standing up in it, left us to walk across the quiet +fields and pleasant lanes to Benicia Street, through groups of little +idyllic Irish boys playing base-ball, with milch-goats here and there +pastorally cropping the herbage! + +In this pleasant seclusion I let all Bunker Hill Day thunder by, with +its cannons, and processions, and speeches, and patriotic musical +uproar, hearing only through my open window the note of the birds +singing in a leafy coliseum across the street, and making very fair +music without an anvil among them. “Ah, signer!” said one of my doorstep +acquaintance, who came next morning and played me Captain Jenks,--the +new air he has had added to his instrument,--“never in my life, neither +at Torino, nor at Milano, nor even at Genoa, never did I see such +a crowd or hear such a noise, as at that Colosseo yesterday. The +carriages, the horses, the feet! And the dust, O Dio mio! All those +millions of people were as white as so many millers!” + +On the afternoon of the fourth day the city looked quite like the mill +in which these millers had been grinding; and even those unpromisingly +elegant streets of the Back Bay showed mansions powdered with dust +enough for sentiment to strike root in, and so soften them with its +tender green against the time when they shall be ruinous and sentiment +shall swallow them up. The crowd had perceptibly diminished, but it was +still great, and on the Common it was allured by a greater variety +of recreations and bargains than I had yet seen there. There were, of +course, all sorts of useful and instructive amusements,--at least a +half-dozen telescopes, and as many galvanic batteries, with numerous +patented inventions; and I fancied that most of the peddlers and +charlatans addressed themselves to a utilitarian spirit supposed to +exist in us. A man that sold whistles capable of reproducing exactly the +notes of the mocking-bird and the guinea-pig set forth the durability of +the invention. “Now, you see this whistle, gentlemen. It is rubber, all +rubber; and rubber, you know, enters into the composition of a great +many valuable articles. This whistle, then, is entirely of rubber,--no +worthless or flimsy material that drops to pieces the moment you put +it to your lips,”--as if it were not utterly desirable that it should. +“Now, I'll give you the mocking-bird, gentlemen, and then I'll give you +the guinea-pig, upon this pure _India_-rubber whistle.” And he did so +with a great animation,--this young man with a perfectly intelligent and +very handsome face. “Try your strength, and renovate your system!” cried +the proprietor of a piston padded at one end and working into a cylinder +when you struck it a blow with your fist; and the owners of lung-testing +machines called upon you from every side to try their consumption +cure; while the galvanic-battery men sat still and mutely appealed with +inscriptions attached to their cap-visors declaring that electricity +taken from their batteries would rid you of every ache and pain known +to suffering humanity. Yet they were themselves as a class in a state +of sad physical disrepair, and one of them was the visible prey of +rheumatism which he might have sent flying from his joints with a single +shock. The only person whom I saw improving his health with the +battery was a rosy-faced school-boy, who was taking ten cents' worth +of electricity; and I hope it did not disagree with his pop-corn and +soda-water. + +Farther on was a picturesque group of street-musicians,--violinists +and harpers; a brother and four sisters, by their looks,--who afforded +almost the only unpractical amusement to be enjoyed on the Common, +though not far from them was a blind old negro, playing upon an +accordion, and singing to it in the faintest and thinnest of black +voices, who could hardly have profited any listener. No one appeared to +mind him, till a jolly Jack-tar with both arms cut off, but dressed in +full sailor's togs, lurched heavily towards him. This mariner had got +quite a good effect of sea-legs by some means, and looked rather drunker +than a man with both arms ought to be; but he was very affectionate, +and, putting his face close to the other's, at once entered into talk +with the blind man, forming with him a picture curiously pathetic +and grotesque. He was the only tipsy person I saw during the Jubilee +days,--if he was tipsy, for after all they may have been real sea-legs +he had on. + +If the throng upon the streets was thinner, it was greater in the +Coliseum than on the second day; and matters had settled there into +regular working order. The limits of individual liberty had been better +ascertained; there was no longer any movement in the aisles, but a +constant passing to and fro, between the pieces, in the promenades. The +house presented, as before, that appearance in which reality forsook +it, and it became merely an amazing picture. The audience supported the +notion of its unreality by having exactly the character of the former +audiences, and impressed you, despite its restlessness and incessant +agitation, with the feeling that it had remained there from the first +day, and would always continue there; and it was only in wandering upon +its borders through the promenades, that you regained possession of +facts concerning it. In no other way was its vastness more observable +than in the perfect indifference of persons one to another. Each found +himself, as it were, in a solitude; and, sequestered in that wilderness +of strangers, each was freed of his bashfulness and trepidation. Young +people lounged at ease upon the floors, about the windows, on the upper +promenades; and in this seclusion I saw such betrayals of tenderness as +melt the heart of the traveller on our desolate railway trains,--Fellows +moving to and fro or standing, careless of other eyes, with their arms +around the waists of their Girls. These were, of course, people who +had only attained a certain grade of civilization, and were not +characteristic of the crowd, or, indeed, worthy of notice except as +expressions of its unconsciousness. I fancied that I saw a number of +their class outside listening to the address of the agent of a patent +liniment, proclaimed to be an unfailing specific for neuralgia and +headache,--if used in the right spirit. “For,” said the orator, “we like +to cure people who treat us and our medicine with respect. Folks say, +'What is there about that man?--some magnetism or electricity.' And the +other day at New Britain, Connecticut, a young man he come up to the +carriage, sneering like, and he tried the cure, and it didn't have the +least effect upon him.” There seemed reason in this, and it produced a +visible sensation in the Fellows and Girls, who grinned sheepishly at +each other. + +Why will the young man with long hair force himself at this point into +a history, which is striving to devote itself to graver interests? There +he stood with the other people, gazing up at the gay line of streamers +on the summit of the Coliseum, and taking in the Anvil Chorus with the +rest,--a young man well-enough dressed, and of a pretty sensible face, +with his long black locks falling from under his cylinder hat, and +covering his shoulders. What awful spell was on him, obliging him to +make that figure before his fellow-creatures? He had nothing to sell; +he was not, apparently, an advertisement of any kind. Was he in the +performance of a vow? Was he in his right mind? For shame! a person may +wear his hair long if he will. But why not, then, in a top-knot? This +young man's long hair was not in keeping with his frock-coat and his +cylinder hat, and he had not at all the excuse of the old gentleman +who sold salve in the costume of Washington's time; one could not take +pleasure in him as in the negro advertiser, who paraded the grounds in +a costume compounded of a consular _chapeau bras_ and a fox-hunter's +top-boots--the American diplomatic uniform of the future--and offered +every one a printed billet; he had not even the attraction of the +cabalistic herald of Hunkidori. Who was he? what was he? why was he? +The mind played forever around these questions in a maze of hopeless +conjecture. + +Had all those quacks and peddlers been bawling ever since Tuesday to +the same listeners? Had all those swings and whirligigs incessantly +performed their rounds? The cow that gave milk from the top of her back, +had she never changed her small circle of admirers, or ceased her flow? +And the gentleman who sat in the chair of his own balance, how much did +he weigh by this time? One could scarcely rid one's self of the illusion +of perpetuity concerning these things, and I could not believe that, +if I went back to the Coliseum grounds at any future time, I should not +behold all that vast machinery in motion. + +It was curious to see, amid this holiday turmoil men pursuing the +ordinary business of their lives, and one was strangely rescued and +consoled by the spectacle of the Irish hod-carriers, and the bricklayers +at work on a first-class swell-front residence in the very heart of the +city of tents and booths. Even the locomotive, being associated with +quieter days and scenes, appealed, as it whistled to and fro upon the +Providence Railroad, to some soft bucolic sentiment in the listener, and +sending its note, ordinarily so discordant, across that human uproar, +seemed to “babble of green fields.” And at last it wooed us away, and +the Jubilee was again swallowed up by night. + +There was yet another Jubilee Day, on the morning of which the thousands +of public-school children clustered in gauzy pink and white in the place +of the mighty chorus, while the Coliseum swarmed once more with people +who listened to those shrill, sweet pipes blending in unison; but I +leave the reader to imagine what he will about it. A week later, after +all was over, I was minded to walk down towards the Coliseum, and behold +it in its desertion. The city streets were restored to their wonted +summer-afternoon tranquillity; the Public Garden presented its customary +phases of two people sitting under a tree and talking intimately +together on some theme of common interest,--“Bees, bees, was it your +hydromel?”--of the swans sailing in full view upon the little lake of +half a dozen idlers hanging upon the bridge to look at them; of +children gayly dotting the paths here and there; and, to heighten the +peacefulness of the effect, a pretty, pale invalid lady sat, half in +shade and half in sun, reading in an easy-chair. Far down the broad +avenue a single horse-car tinkled slowly; on the steps of one of the +mansions charming little girls stood in a picturesque group full of the +bright color which abounds in the lovely dresses of this time. As I drew +near the Coliseum, I could perceive the desolation which had fallen +upon the festival scene; the white tents were gone; the place where the +world-renowned cloggist gave her serio-comic dances was as lonely and +silent as the site of Carthage; in the middle distance two men were +dismantling a motionless whirligig; the hut for the sale of French soups +was closed; farther away, a solitary policeman moved gloomily across the +deserted spaces, showing his dark-blue figure against the sky. The vast +fabric of the Coliseum reared itself, hushed and deserted within and +without; and a boy in his shirt-sleeves pressed his nose against one +of the painted window-panes in the vain effort to behold the nothing +inside. But sadder than this loneliness surrounding the Coliseum, sadder +than the festooned and knotted banners that drooped funereally upon its +facade, was the fact that some of those luckless refreshment-saloons +were still open, displaying viands as little edible now as carnival +_confetti_. It was as if the proprietors, in an unavailing remorse, had +condemned themselves to spend the rest of their days there, and, slowly +consuming their own cake and pop-corn, washed down with their own +soda-water and lemonade, to perish of dyspepsia and despair. + + + + +SOME LESSONS FROM THE SCHOOL OF MORALS. + + +Any study of suburban life would be very imperfect without some glance +at that larger part of it which is spent in the painful pursuit +of pleasures such as are offered at the ordinary places of public +amusement; and for this reason I excuse myself for rehearsing certain +impressions here which are not more directly suburban, to say the least, +than those recounted in the foregoing chapter. + +It became, shortly after life in Charlesbridge began, a question whether +any entertainment that Boston could offer were worth the trouble of +going to it, or, still worse, coming from it; for if it was misery to +hurry from tea to catch the inward horse-car at the head of the street, +what sullen lexicon will afford a name for the experience of getting +home again by the last car out from the city? You have watched the clock +much more closely than the stage during the last act, and have left your +play incomplete by its final marriage or death, and have rushed up to +Bowdoin Square, where you achieve a standing place in the car, and, +utterly spent as you are with the enjoyment of the evening, you endure +for the next hour all that is horrible in riding or walking. At the end +of this time you declare that you will never go to the theatre again; +and after years of suffering you come at last to keep your word. + +While yet, however, in the state of formation as regards this +resolution, I went frequently to the theatre--or school of morals, +as its friends have humorously called it. I will not say whether any +desired amelioration took place or not in my own morals through the +agency of the stage; but if not enlightened and refined by everything I +saw there, I sometimes was certainly very much surprised. Now that I go +no more, or very, very rarely, I avail myself of the resulting +leisure to set down, for the instruction of posterity, some account of +performances I witnessed in the years 1868-69, which I am persuaded will +grow all the more curious, if not incredible, with the lapse of time. + +There is this satisfaction in living, namely, that whatever we do will +one day wear an air of picturesqueness and romance, and will win the +fancy of people coming after us. This stupid and commonplace present +shall yet appear the fascinating past; and is it not a pleasure to think +how our rogues of descendants--who are to enjoy us aesthetically--will +be taken in with us, when they read, in the files of old newspapers, +of the quantity of entertainment offered us at the theatres during the +years mentioned, and judge us by it? I imagine them two hundred years +hence looking back at us, and sighing, “Ah! there was a touch of the +old Greek life in those Athenians! How they loved the drama in the +jolly Boston of that day! That was the golden age of the theatre: in the +winter of 1868-69, they had dramatic performances in seven places, of +every degree of excellence, and the managers coined money.” As we always +figure our ancestors going to and from church, they will probably figure +us thronging the doors of theatres, and no doubt there will be some +historical gossiper among them to sketch a Boston audience in 1869, with +all our famous poets and politicians grouped together in the orchestra +seats, and several now dead introduced with the pleasant inaccuracy and +uncertainty of historical gossipers. “On this night, when the beautiful +Tostée reappeared, the whole house rose to greet her. If Mr. Alcott was +on one of his winter visits to Boston, no doubt he stepped in from the +Marlborough House,--it was a famous temperance hotel, then in the height +of its repute,--not only to welcome back the great actress, but to enjoy +a chat between the acts with his many friends. Here, doubtless, was seen +the broad forehead of Webster; there the courtly Everett, conversing in +studied tones with the gifted So-and-so. Did not the lovely Such-a-one +grace the evening with her presence? The brilliant and versatile Edmund +Kirke was dead; but the humorous Artemas Ward and his friend Nasby +may have attracted many eyes, having come hither at the close of their +lectures, to testify their love of the beautiful in nature and art; +while, perhaps, Mr. Sumner, in the intervals of state cares, relaxed +into the enjoyment,” etc. “Vous voyez bien le tableau!” + +That far-off posterity, learning that all our theatres are filled every +night, will never understand but we were a theatre-going people in the +sense that it is the highest fashion to be seen at the play; and yet we +are sensible that it is not so, and that the Boston which makes itself +known in civilization--in letters, politics, reform--goes as little to +the theatre as fashionable Boston. + +The stage is not an Institution with us, I should say; yet it affords +recreation to a very large and increasing number of persons, and while +it would be easy to over-estimate its influence for good or evil even +with these, there is no doubt that the stage, if not the drama, is +popular. Fortunately an inquiry like this into a now waning taste +in theatricals concerns the fact rather than the effect of the taste +otherwise the task might become indefinitely hard alike for writer and +for reader. No one can lay his hand on his heart, and declare that he +is the worse for having seen “La Belle Hélène,” for example, or say more +than that it is a thing which ought not to be seen by any one else; yet +I suppose there is no one ready to deny that “La Belle Hélène” was the +motive of those performances that have most pleased the most +people during recent years. There was something fascinating in the +circumstances and auspices under which the united Irma and Tostée +troupes appeared in Boston--_opéra bouffe_ led gayly forward by _finance +bouffe_, and suggesting Erie shares by its watered music and morals; but +there is no doubt that Tostée's grand reception was owing mainly to the +personal favor which she enjoyed here and which we do not vouchsafe to +every one. Ristori did not win it; we did our duty by her, following her +carefully with the libretto, and in her most intense effects turning the +leaves of a thousand pamphlets with a rustle that must have shattered +every delicate nerve in her; but we were always cold to her greatness. +It was not for Tosteés singing, which was but a little thing in itself; +it was not for her beauty, for that was no more than a reminiscence, if +it was not always an illusion; was it because she rendered the spirit of +M. Offenbach's operas so perfectly, that we liked her so much? “Ah, that +movement!” cried an enthusiast, “that swing, that--that--wriggle!” She +was undoubtedly a great actress, full of subtle surprises, and with +an audacious appearance of unconsciousness in those exigencies where +consciousness would summon the police--or should; she was so near, yet +so far from, the worst that could be intended; in tones, in gestures, in +attitudes, she was to the libretto just as the music was, now making +it appear insolently and unjustly coarse, now feebly inadequate in its +explicit immodesty. + +To see this famous lady in “La Grande Duchesse” or “La Belle Hélène” was +an experience never to be forgotten, and certainly not to be described. +The former opera has undoubtedly its proper and blameless charm. There +is something pretty and arch in the notion of the Duchess's falling +in love with the impregnably faithful and innocent Fritz; and the +extravagance of the whole, with the satire upon the typical little +German court, is delightful. But “La Belle Helene” is a wittier play +than “La Grande Duchesse,” and it is the vividest expression of the +spirit of _opéra bouffe_. It is full of such lively mockeries as that of +Helen when she gazes upon the picture of Leda and the Swan: “J'aime á +me recueiller devant ce tableau de famille! Mon père, ma mère, les voici +tous les deux! O mon père, tourne vers ton enfant un bec favorable!”--or +of Paris when he represses the zeal of Calchas, who desires to present +him at once to Helen: “Soit! mais sans lui dire qui je suis;--je désire +garder le plus strict incognito, jusq'au moment où la situation sera +favorable á un coup de théâtre.” But it must be owned that our audiences +seemed not to take much pleasure in these and other witticisms, though +they obliged Mademoiselle Tostée to sing “Un Mari sage” three times, +with all those actions and postures which seem incredible the moment +they have ceased. They possibly understood this song no better than the +strokes of wit, and encored it merely for the music's sake. The effect +was, nevertheless, unfortunate, and calculated to give those French +ladies but a bad opinion of our morals. How could they comprehend that +the taste was, like themselves, imported, and that its indulgence here +did not characterize us? It was only in appearance that, while we did +not enjoy the wit we delighted in the coarseness. And how coarse this +travesty of the old fable mainly is! That priest Calchas, with his +unspeakable snicker his avarice, his infidelity, his hypocrisy, is alone +infamy enough to provoke the destruction of a city. Then that scene +interrupted by Menelaus! It is indisputably witty, and since all those +people are so purely creatures of fable, and dwell so entirely in an +unmoral atmosphere, it appears as absurd to blame it as the murders in +a pantomime. To be sure there is something about murder, some inherent +grace or refinement perhaps, that makes its actual representation upon +the stage more tolerable than the most diffident suggestion of adultery. +Not that “La Belle Hélène” is open to the reproach of over-delicacy +in this scene, or any other, for the matter of that, though there is a +strain of real poetry in the conception of this whole episode of +Helen's intention to pass all Paris's love-making off upon herself for a +dream,--poetry such as might have been inspired by a muse that had +taken too much nectar. There is excellent character, also, as well +as caricature in the drama; not only Calchas is admirably done, but +Agamemnon, and Achilles, and Helen, and Menelaus, “pas un mari ordinaire +... un mari épique,”--and the burlesque is good of its kind. It is +artistic, as it seems French dramatic effort must almost necessarily +be. It could scarcely be called the fault of the _opéra bouffe_ that the +English burlesque should have come of its success; nor could the public +blame it for the great favor the burlesque won in those far-off winters, +if indeed the public wishes to bestow blame for this. No one, however, +could see one of these curious travesties without being reminded, in +an awkward way, of the _morale_ of the _opéra bouffe_, and of the +_personnel_--as I may say--of “The Black Crook,” “The White Fawn,” and +the “Devil's Auction.” There was the same intention of merriment at the +cost of what may be called the marital prejudices, though it cannot be +claimed that the wit was the same as in “La Belle Hélène;” there was the +same physical unreserve as in the ballets of a former season; while in +its dramatic form the burlesque discovered very marked parental traits. + +This English burlesque, this child of M. Offenbach's genius, and the now +somewhat faded spectacular muse, flourished at the time of which I write +in three of our seven theatres for months,--five, from the highest to +the lowest being in turn open to it,--and had begun, in a tentative way, +to invade the deserted stage even so long ago as the previous summer; +and I have sometimes flattered myself that it was my fortune to witness +the first exhibition of its most characteristic feature in a theatre +into which I wandered one sultry night because it was the nearest +theatre. They were giving a play called “The Three Fast Men,” which had +a moral of such powerful virtue that it ought to have reformed everybody +in the neighborhood. Three ladies being in love with the three fast men, +and resolved to win them back to regular hours and the paths of +sobriety by every device of the female heart, dress themselves in men's +clothes,--such is the subtlety of the female heart in the bosoms of +modern young ladies of fashion,--and follow their lovers about from +one haunt of dissipation to another and become themselves exemplarily +vicious,--drunkards, gamblers, and the like. The first lady, who was a +star in her lowly orbit, was very great in all her different _rôles_, +appearing now as a sailor with the hornpipe of his calling, now as an +organ-grinder, and now as a dissolute young gentleman,--whatever was the +exigency of good morals. The dramatist seemed to have had an eye to +her peculiar capabilities, and to have expressly invented edifying +characters and situations that her talents might enforce them. The +second young lady had also a personal didactic gift, rivaling, and +even surpassing in some respects, that of the star; and was very rowdy +indeed. In due time the devoted conduct of the young ladies has its just +effect: the three fast men begin to reflect upon the folly of their wild +courses; and at this point the dramatist delivers his great stroke. The +first lady gives a _soirée dansante et chantante_, and the three fast +men have invitations. The guests seat themselves, as at a fashionable +party, in a semicircle, and the gayety of the evening begins with +conundrums and playing upon the banjo; the gentlemen are in their +morning-coats, and the ladies in a display of hosiery which is now no +longer surprising, and which need not have been mentioned at all except +for the fact that, in the case of the first lady, it seemed not to have +been freshly put on for that party. In this instance an element comical +beyond intention was present, in three young gentlemen, an amateur +musical trio, who had kindly consented to sing their favorite song of +“The Rolling Zuyder Zee,” as they now kindly did, with flushed faces, +unmanageable hands, and much repetition of + + The ro-o-o-o- + The ro-o-o-o- + The ro-o-o-o-ll- + Ing Zuyder Zee, + Zuyder Zee, + Zuyder Zee-e-e! + +Then the turn of the three guardian angels of the fast men being +come again they get up and dance each one a breakdown which seems to +establish their lovers (now at last in the secret of the generous ruse +played upon them) firmly in their resolution to lead a better life. They +are in nowise shaken from it by the displeasure which soon shows itself +in the manner of the first and second ladies. The former is greatest in +the so-called Protean parts of the play, and is obscured somewhat by the +dancing of the latter; but she has a daughter who now comes on and sings +a song. The pensive occasion, the favorable mood of the audience, the +sympathetic attitude of the players, invite her to sing “The Maiden's +Prayer,” and so we have “The Maiden's Prayer.” We may be a low set, +and the song may be affected and insipid enough, but the purity of its +intention touches, and the little girl is vehemently applauded. She is +such a pretty child with her innocent face, and her artless white dress, +and blue ribbons to her waist and hair, that we will have her back +again; whereupon she runs out upon the stage, strikes up a rowdy, rowdy +air, dances a shocking little dance, and vanishes from the dismayed +vision, leaving us a considerably lower set than we were at first, and +glad of our lowness. This is the second lady's own ground, however, and +now she comes out--in a way that banishes far from our fickle minds +all thoughts of the first lady and her mistaken child--with a medley of +singing and dancing, a bit of breakdown, of cancan, of jig, a bit of +“Le Sabre de mon Père,” and of all memorable slang songs, given with +the most grotesque and clownish spirit that ever inspired a woman. Each +member of the company follows in his or her _pas seul_, and then they +all dance together to the plain confusion of the amateur trio, whose +eyes roll like so many Zuyder Zees, as they sit lonely and motionless in +the midst. All stiffness and formality are overcome. The evening party +in fact disappears entirely, and we are suffered to see the artists +in their moments of social relaxation sitting as it were around the +theatrical fireside. They appear to forget us altogether; they exchange +winks, and nods, and jests of quite personal application; they call each +other by name, by their Christian names, their nicknames. It is not +an evening party, it is a family party, and the suggestion of home +enjoyment completes the reformation of the three fast men. We see them +marry the three fast women before we leave the house. + +On another occasion, two suburban friends of the drama beheld a more +explicit precursor of the coming burlesque at one of the minor theatres +last summer. The great actress whom they had come to see on another +scene was ill, and in their disappointment they embraced the hope of +entertainment offered them at the smaller playhouse. The drama itself +was neither here nor there as to intent, but the public appetite or the +manager's conception of it--for I am by no means sure that this whole +business was not a misunderstanding--had exacted that the actresses +should appear in so much stocking, and so little else, that it was +a horror to look upon them. There was no such exigency of dialogue, +situation, or character as asked the indecorum, and the effect upon the +unprepared spectator was all the more stupefying from the fact that most +of the ladies were not dancers, and had not countenances that consorted +with impropriety. Their faces had merely the conventional Yankee +sharpness and wanness of feature, and such difference of air and +character as should say for one and another, shop-girl, shoe-binder, +seamstress; and it seemed an absurdity and an injustice to refer to them +in any way the disclosures of the ruthlessly scant drapery. A grotesque +fancy would sport with their identity: “Did not this or that one write +poetry for her local newspaper?” so much she looked the average culture +and crudeness, and when such a one, coldly yielding to the manager's +ideas of the public taste, stretched herself on a green baize bank with +her feet towards us, or did a similar grossness, it was hard to keep +from crying aloud in protest, that she need not do it; that nobody +really expected or wanted it of her. Nobody? Alas! there were people +there--poor souls who had the appearance of coming every night--who +plainly did expect it, and who were loud in their applauses of the chief +actress. This was a young person of a powerful physical expression, +quite unlike the rest,--who were dyspeptic and consumptive in the range +of their charms,--and she triumphed and wantoned through the scenes with +a fierce excess of animal vigor. She was all stocking, as one may +say, being habited to represent a prince; she had a raucous voice, an +insolent twist of the mouth, and a terrible trick of defying her enemies +by standing erect, chin up, hand on hip, and right foot advanced, +patting the floor. It was impossible, even in the orchestra seats, to +look at her in this attitude and not shrink before her; and on the stage +she visibly tyrannized over the invalid sisterhood with her full-blown +fascinations. These unhappy girls personated, with a pathetic effect not +to be described, such arch and fantastic creations of the poet's mind +as Bewitchingcreature and Exquisitelittlepet, and the play was a kind +of fairy burlesque in rhyme, of the most melancholy stupidity that +ever was. Yet there was something very comical in the conditions of its +performance, and in the possibility that public and manager were +playing at cross-purposes. There we were in the pit, an assemblage of +hard-working Yankees of decently moral lives and simple traditions, +country-bred many of us and of plebeian stock and training, vulgar +enough perhaps, but probably not depraved, and, excepting the first +lady's friends, certainly not educated to the critical enjoyment of such +spectacles; and there on the stage were those mistaken women, in +such sad variety of boniness and flabbiness as I have tried to hint, +addressing their pitiable exposure to a supposed vileness in us, and +wrenching from all original intent the innocent dullness of the +drama, which for the most part could have been as well played in +walking-dresses, to say the least. + +The scene was not less amusing, as regarded the audiences, the ensuing +winter, when the English burlesque troupes which London sent us, +arrived; but it was not quite so pathetic as regarded the performers. Of +their beauty and their abandon, the historical gossiper, whom I descry +far down the future, waiting to refer to me as “A scandalous writer +of the period,” shall learn very little to his purpose of warming his +sketch with a color from mine. But I hope I may describe these ladies +as very pretty, very blonde, and very unscrupulously clever, and still +disappoint the historical gossiper. They seemed in all cases to be +English; no Yankee faces, voices, or accents were to be detected +among them. Where they were associated with people of another race, +as happened with one troupe, the advantage of beauty was upon the +Anglo-Saxon side, while that of some small shreds of propriety was with +the Latins. These appeared at times almost modest, perhaps because +they were the conventional _ballerine_, and wore the old-fashioned +ballet-skirt with its volumed gauze,--a coyness which the Englishry had +greatly modified, through an exigency of the burlesque,--perhaps because +indecorum seems, like blasphemy and untruth, somehow more graceful and +becoming in southern than in northern races. + +As for the burlesques themselves, they were nothing, the performers +personally everything. M. Offenbach had opened Lemprière's Dictionary +to the authors with “La Belle Hélène,” and there, was commonly a flimsy +raveling of parodied myth, that held together the different dances and +songs, though sometimes it was a novel or an opera burlesqued; but there +was always a song and always a dance for each lady, song and dance being +equally slangy, and depending for their effect mainly upon the natural +or simulated personal charms of the performer. + +It was also an indispensable condition of the burlesque's success, that +the characters should be reversed in their representation,--that the +men's _rôles_ should be played by women, and that at least one female +part should be done by a man. It must be owned that the fun all came +from this character, the ladies being too much occupied with the more +serious business of bewitching us with their pretty figures to be very +amusing; whereas this wholesome man and brother, with his blonde wig, +his _panier_, his dainty feminine simperings and languishings, his +falsetto tones, and his general air of extreme fashion, was always +exceedingly droll. He was the saving grace of these stupid plays; and +I cannot help thinking that the _cancan_, as danced, in “Ivanhoe,” by +Isaac of York and the masculine Rebecca, was a moral spectacle; it +was the _cancan_ made forever absurd and harmless. But otherwise, the +burlesques were as little cheerful as profitable. The playwrights who +had adapted them to the American stage--for they were all of English +authorship--had been good enough to throw in some political allusions +which were supposed to be effective with us, but which it was sad to see +received with apathy. It was conceivable from a certain air with which +the actors delivered these, that they were in the habit of stirring +London audiences greatly with like strokes of satire; but except +where Rebecca offered a bottle of Medford rum to Cedric the Saxon, who +appeared in the figure of ex-President Johnson, they had no effect upon +us. We were cold, very cold, to suggestions of Mr. Reverdy Johnson's now +historical speech-making and dining; General Butler's spoons moved us +just a little; at the name of Grant we roared and stamped, of course, +though in a perfectly mechanical fashion, and without thought of any +meaning offered us; those lovely women might have coupled the hero's +name with whatever insult they chose, and still his name would have made +us cheer them. We seemed not to care for points that were intended +to flatter us nationally. I am not aware that anybody signified +consciousness when the burlesque supported our side of the Alabama +controversy, or acknowledged the self-devotion with which a threat that +England should be made to pay was delivered by these English performers. +With an equal impassiveness we greeted allusions to Erie shares and to +the late Mr. Fiske. + +The burlesque chiefly betrayed its descent from the spectacular ballet +in its undressing; but that ballet, while it demanded personal exposure, +had something very observable in its scenic splendors, and all that +marching and processioning in it was rather pretty; while in the +burlesque there seemed nothing of innocent intent. No matter what the +plot, it led always to a final great scene of breakdown,--which was +doubtless most impressive in that particular burlesque where this scene +represented the infernal world, and the ladies gave the dances of the +country with a happy conception of the deportment of lost souls. There, +after some vague and inconsequent dialogue, the wit springing from a +perennial source of humor (not to specify the violation of the seventh +commandment), the dancing commenced, each performer beginning with the +Walk-round of the negro minstrels, rendering its grotesqueness with a +wonderful frankness of movement, and then plunging into the mysteries +of her dance with a kind of infuriate grace and a fierce delight very +curious to look upon. I am aware of the historical gossiper still on the +alert for me, and I dare not say how sketchily these ladies were dressed +or indeed, more than that they were dressed to resemble circus-riders +of the other sex, but as to their own deceived nobody,--possibly did not +intend deceit. One of them was so good a player that it seemed needless +for her to go so far as she did in the dance; but she spared herself +nothing, and it remained for her merely stalwart friends to surpass her, +if possible. This inspired each who succeeded her to wantoner excesses, +to wilder insolences of hose, to fiercer bravadoes of corsage; while +those not dancing responded to the sentiment of the music by singing +shrill glees in tune with it, clapping their hands, and patting Juba, as +the act is called,--a peculiarly graceful and modest thing in woman. The +frenzy grew with every moment, and, as in another Vision of Sin,-- + + “Then they started from their places, + Moved with violence, changed in hue, + Caught each other with wild grimaces, + Half-invisible to the view, + Wheeling with precipitate paces + To the melody, till they flew, + Hair, and eyes, and limbs, and faces + Twisted hard in fierce embraces, + Like to Furies, like to Graces,”-- + +with an occasional exchange of cuffs and kicks perfectly human. The +spectator found now himself and now the scene incredible, and indeed +they were hardly conceivable in relation to each other. A melancholy +sense of the absurdity, of the incongruity, of the whole absorbed at +last even a sense of the indecency. The audience was much the same in +appearance as other audiences, witnessing like displays at the other +theatres, and did not differ greatly from the usual theatrical house. +Not so much fashion smiled upon the efforts of these young ladies, as +upon the _cancan_ of the Signorina Morlacchi a winter earlier; but there +was a most fair appearance of honest-looking, handsomely dressed men +and women; and you could pick out, all over the parquet, faces of one +descent from the deaconship, which you wondered were not afraid +to behold one another there. The truth is, we spectators, like the +performers themselves, lacked that tradition of error, of transgression, +which casts its romance about the people of a lighter race. We had not +yet set off one corner of the Common for a Jardin Mabille; we had not +even the concert-cellars of the gay and elegant New Yorker; and nothing, +really, had happened in Boston to educate us to this new taste in +theatricals, since the fair Quakers felt moved to testify in the streets +and churches against our spiritual nakedness. Yet it was to be noted +with regret that our innocence, our respectability, had no restraining +influence upon the performance; and the fatuity of the hope cherished +by some courageous people, that the presence of virtuous persons would +reform the stage, was but too painfully evident. The doubt whether they +were not nearer right who have denounced the theatre as essentially and +incorrigibly bad would force itself upon the mind, though there was a +little comfort in the thought that, if virtue had been actually allowed +to frown upon these burlesques, the burlesques might have been abashed +into propriety. The caressing arm of the law was cast very tenderly +about the performers, and in the only case where a spectator presumed +to hiss,--it was at a _pas seul_ of the indescribable,--a policeman +descended upon him, and with the succor of two friends of the free +ballet, rent him from his place, and triumphed forth with him. Here was +an end of ungenial criticism; we all applauded zealously after that. + +The peculiar character of the drama to which they devoted themselves had +produced, in these ladies, some effects doubtless more interesting than +profitable to observe. One of them, whose unhappiness it was to take +the part of _soubrette_ in the Laughable Commedietta preceding the +burlesque, was so ill at ease in drapery, so full of awkward jerks and +twitches, that she seemed quite another being when she came on later +as a radiant young gentleman in pink silk hose, and nothing of feminine +modesty in her dress excepting the very low corsage. A strange and +compassionable satisfaction beamed from her face; it was evident that +this sad business was the poor thing's _forte_. In another company was a +lady who had conquered all the easy attitudes of young men of the second +or third fashion, and who must have been at something of a loss to +identify herself when personating a woman off the stage. But Nature +asserted herself in a way that gave a curious and scarcely explicable +shock in the case of that dancer whose impudent song required the action +of fondling a child, and who rendered the passage with an instinctive +tenderness and grace, all the more pathetic for the profaning boldness +of her super masculine dress or undress. Commonly, however, the members +of these burlesque troupes, though they were not like men, were in most +things as unlike women, and seemed creatures of a kind of alien sex, +parodying both. It was certainly a shocking thing to look at them with +their horrible prettiness, their archness in which was no charm, their +grace which put to shame. Yet whoever beheld these burlesque sisters, +must have fallen into perplexing question in his own mind as to whose +was the wrong involved. It was not the fault of the public--all of us +felt that: was it the fault of the hard-working sisterhood, bred to this +as to any other business, and not necessarily conscious of the +indecorum which pains my reader,--obliged to please somehow, and aiming, +doubtless, at nothing but applause? “La Belle Hélène” suggests the only +reasonable explanation: _“C'est la fatalité_.” + + + + +FLITTING + + +I would not willingly repose upon the friendship of a man whose local +attachments are weak. I should not demand of my intimate that he have a +yearning for the homes of his ancestors, or even the scenes of his own +boyhood; that is not in American nature; on the contrary, he is but a +poor creature who does not hate the village where he was born; yet a +sentiment for the place where one has lived two or three years, the +hotel where one has spent a week, the sleeping car in which one has +ridden from Albany to Buffalo,--so much I should think it well to exact +from my friend in proof of that sensibility and constancy without which +true friendship does not exist. So much I am ready to yield on my +own part to a friend's demand, and I profess to have all the possible +regrets for Benicia Street, now I have left it. Over its deficiencies +I cast a veil of decent oblivion, and shall always try to look upon its +worthy and consoling aspects, which were far the more numerous. It was +never otherwise, I imagine, than an ideal region in very great measure; +and if the reader whom I have sometimes seemed to direct thither, +should seek it out, he would hardly find my Benicia Street by the city +sign-board. Yet this is not wholly because it was an ideal locality, but +because much of its reality has now become merely historical, a portion +of the tragical poetry of the past. Many of the vacant lots abutting +upon Benicia and the intersecting streets flourished up, during the four +years we knew it, into fresh-painted wooden houses, and the time came +to be when one might have looked in vain for the abandoned hoop-skirts +which used to decorate the desirable building-sites. The lessening +pasturage also reduced the herds which formerly fed in the vicinity, and +at last we caught the tinkle of the cow-bells only as the cattle were +driven past to remoter meadows. And one autumn afternoon two laborers, +hired by the city, came and threw up an earthwork on the opposite side +of the street, which they said was a sidewalk, and would add to +the value of property in the neighborhood. Not being dressed with +coal-ashes, however, during the winter, the sidewalk vanished next +summer under a growth of rag-weed, and hid the increased values with +it, and it is now an even question whether this monument of municipal +grandeur will finally be held by Art or resumed by Nature,--who indeed +has a perpetual motherly longing for her own, and may be seen in all +outlying and suburban places, pathetically striving to steal back any +neglected bits of ground and conceal them under her skirts of tattered +and shabby verdure. But whatever is the event of this contest, and +whatever the other changes wrought in the locality, it has not yet been +quite stripped of the characteristic charms which first took our hearts, +and which have been duly celebrated in these pages. + +When the new house was chosen, we made preparations to leave the old +one, but preparations so gradual, that, if we had cared much more than +we did, we might have suffered greatly by the prolongation of the +agony. We proposed to ourselves to escape the miseries of moving by +transferring the contents of one room at a time, and if we did not laugh +incredulously at people who said we had better have it over at once and +be done with it, it was because we respected their feelings, and not +because we believed them. We took up one carpet after another; one wall +after another we stripped of its pictures; we sent away all the books +to begin with; and by this subtle and ingenious process, we reduced +ourselves to the discomfort of living in no house at all, as it were, +and of being at home in neither one place nor the other. Yet the logic +of our scheme remained perfect; and I do not regret its failure in +practice, for if we had been ever so loath to quit the old house, its +inhospitable barrenness would finally have hurried us forth. In fact, +does not life itself in some such fashion dismantle its tenement until +it is at last forced out of the uninhabitable place? Are not the poor +little comforts and pleasures and ornaments removed one by one, till +life, if it would be saved, must go too? We took a lesson from the +teachings of mortality, which are so rarely heeded, and we lingered over +our moving. We made the process so gradual, indeed, that I do not feel +myself all gone yet from the familiar work-room, and for aught I can +say, I still write there; and as to the guest-chamber, it is so densely +peopled by those it has lodged that it will never quite be emptied of +them. Friends also are yet in the habit of calling in the parlor, and +talking with us; and will the children never come off the stairs? Does +life, our high exemplar, leave so much behind as we did? Is this what +fills the world with ghosts? + +In the getting ready to go, nothing hurt half so much as the sight of +the little girl packing her doll's things for removal. The trousseaux +of all those elegant creatures, the wooden, the waxen, the biscuit, the +india-rubber, were carefully assorted, and arranged in various small +drawers and boxes; their house was thoughtfully put in order and locked +for transportation; their innumerable broken sets of dishes were packed +in paper and set out upon the floor, a heart-breaking little basketful. +Nothing real in this world is so affecting as some image of reality, +and this travesty of our own flitting was almost intolerable. I will not +pretend to sentiment about anything else, for everything else had in it +the element of self-support belonging to all actual afflictions. When +the day of moving finally came, and the furniture wagon, which ought to +have been only a shade less dreadful to us than a hearse, drew up at our +door, our hearts were of a Neronian hardness. + +“Were I Diogenes,” says wrathful Charles Lamb in one of his letters, “I +would not move out of a kilderkin into a hogshead, though the first had +nothing but small beer in it, and the second reeked claret.” I fancy +this loathing of the transitionary state came in great part from the +rude and elemental nature of the means of moving in Lamb's day. In +our own time, in Charlesbridge at least, everything is so perfectly +contrived, that it is in some ways a pleasant excitement to move; though +I do not commend the diversion to any but people of entire leisure, for +it cannot be denied that it is, at any rate, an interruption to work. +But little is broken, little is defaced, nothing is heedlessly outraged +or put to shame. Of course there are in every house certain objects of +comfort and even ornament which in a state of repose derive a sort of +dignity from being cracked, or scratched, or organically debilitated, +and give an idea of ancestral possession and of long descent to the +actual owner; and you must not hope that this venerable quality will +survive their public exposure upon the furniture wagon. There it +instantly perishes, like the consequence of some country notable huddled +and hustled about in the graceless and ignorant tumult of a great city. +To tell the truth, the number of things that turn shabby under the +ordeal of moving strikes a pang of unaccustomed poverty to the +heart which, loving all manner of makeshifts, is rich even in its +dilapidations. For the time you feel degraded by the spectacle of that +forlornness, and if you are a man of spirit, you try to sneak out of +association with it in the mind of the passer-by; you keep scrupulously +in-doors, or if a fancied exigency obliges you to go back and forth +between the old house and the new, you seek obscure by-ways remote from +the great street down which the wagon flaunts your ruin and decay, +and time your arrivals and departures so as to have the air of merely +dropping in at either place. This consoles you; but it deceives no one; +for the man who is moving is unmistakably stamped with transition. + +Yet the momentary eclipse of these things is not the worst. It _is_ +momentary; for if you will but plant them in kindly corners and +favorable exposures of the new house, a mould of respectability will +gradually overspread them again, and they will once more account for +their presence by the air of having been a long time in the family; but +there is danger that in the first moments of mortification you will be +tempted to replace them with new and costly articles. Even the best of +the old things are nothing to boast of in the hard, unpitying light +to which they are exposed, and a difficult and indocile spirit of +extravagance is evoked in the least profuse. Because of this fact alone +I should not commend the diversion of moving save to people of very +ample means as well as perfect leisure; there are more reasons than the +misery of flitting why the dweller in the kilderkin should not covet the +hogshead reeking of claret. + +But the grosser misery of moving is, as I have hinted, vastly mitigated +by modern science, and what remains of it one may use himself to with +no tremendous effort. I have found that in the dentist's chair,--that +ironically luxurious seat, cushioned in satirical suggestion of +impossible repose,--after a certain initial period of clawing, filing, +scraping, and punching, one's nerves accommodate themselves to the +torment, and one takes almost an objective interest in the operation of +tooth-filling; and in like manner after two or three wagon-loads of your +household stuff have passed down the public street, and all your morbid +associations with them have been desecrated, you begin almost to like +it. Yet I cannot regard this abandon as a perfectly healthy emotion, and +I do not counsel my reader to mount himself upon the wagon and ride to +and fro even once, for afterwards the remembrance of such an excess will +grieve him. + +Of course, I meant to imply by this that moving sometimes comes to an +end, though it is not easy to believe so while moving. The time really +arrives when you sit down in your new house, and amid whatever disorder +take your first meal there. This meal is pretty sure to be that gloomy +tea, that loathly repast of butter and toast, and some kind of cake, +with which the soul of the early-dining American is daily cast down +between the hours of six and seven in the evening; and instinctively +you compare it with the last meal you took in your old house, seeking in +vain to decide whether this is more dispiriting than that. At any rate +that was not at all the meal which the last meal in any house which +has been a home ought to be in fact, and is in books. It was hurriedly +cooked; it was served upon fugitive and irregular crockery; and it was +eaten in deplorable disorder, with the professional movers waiting +for the table outside the dining-room. It ought to have been an act of +serious devotion; it was nothing but an expiation. It should have been a +solemn commemoration of all past dinners in the place, an invocation to +their pleasant apparitions. But I, for my part, could not recall these +at all, though now I think of them with the requisite pathos, and I +know they were perfectly worthy of remembrance. I salute mournfully +the companies that have sat down at dinner there, for they are sadly +scattered now; some beyond seas, some beyond the narrow gulf, so +impassably deeper to our longing and tenderness than the seas. But +more sadly still I hail the host himself, and desire to know of him if +literature was not somehow a gayer science in those days, and if his +peculiar kind of drolling had not rather more heart in it then. In an +odd, not quite expressible fashion, something of him seems dispersed +abroad and perished in the guests he loved. I trust, of course, that all +will be restored to him when he turns--as every man past thirty feels he +may when he likes, and has the time--and resumes his youth. Or if this +feeling is only a part of the great tacit promise of eternity, I am all +the more certain of his getting back his losses. + +I say that now these apposite reflections occur to me with a sufficient +ease, but that upon the true occasion for them they were absent. +So, too, at the first meal in the new house, there was none of +that desirable sense of setting up a family altar, but a calamitous +impression of irretrievable upheaval, in honor of which sackcloth and +ashes seemed the only wear. Yet even the next day the Lares and Penates +had regained something of their wonted cheerfulness, and life had begun +again with the first breakfast. In fact, I found myself already so +firmly established that, meeting the furniture cart which had moved me +the day before, I had the face to ask the driver whom they were turning +out of house and home, as if my own flitting were a memory of the +far-off past. + +Not that I think the professional mover expects to be addressed in a +joking mood. I have a fancy that he cultivates a serious spirit himself, +in which he finds it easy to sympathize with any melancholy on the part +of the moving family. There is a slight flavor of undertaking in his +manner, which is nevertheless full of a subdued firmness very consoling +and supporting; though the life that he leads must be a troubled and +uncheerful one, trying alike to the muscles and the nerves. How often +must he have been charged by anxious and fluttered ladies to be very +careful of that basket of china, and those vases! How often must he have +been vexed by the ignorant terrors of gentlemen asking if he thinks +that the library-table, poised upon the top of his load, will hold! +His planning is not infallible, and when he breaks something uncommonly +precious, what does a man of his sensibility do? Is the demolition of +old homes really distressing to him, or is he inwardly buoyed up by +hopes of other and better homes for the people he moves? Can there +be any ideal of moving? Does he, perhaps, feel a pride in an artfully +constructed load, and has he something like an artist's pang in +unloading it? Is there a choice in families to be moved, and are some +worse or better than others? Next to the lawyer and the doctor, it +appears to me that the professional mover holds the most confidential +relations towards his fellow-men. He is let into all manner of little +domestic secrets and subterfuges; I dare say he knows where half the +people in town keep their skeleton, and what manner of skeleton it +is. As for me, when I saw him making towards a certain closet door, I +planted myself firmly against it. He smiled intelligence; he knew the +skeleton was there, and that it would be carried to the new house after +dark. + +I began by saying that I should wish my friend to have some sort of +local attachment; but I suppose it must be owned that this sentiment, +like pity, and the modern love-passion, is a thing so largely produced +by culture that nature seems to have little or nothing to do with it. +The first men were homeless wanderers; the patriarchs dwelt in tents, +and shifted their place to follow the pasturage, without a sigh; and for +children--the pre-historic, the antique people, of our day--moving is a +rapture. The last dinner in the old house, the first tea in the new, so +doleful to their elders, are partaken of by them with joyous riot. Their +shrill trebles echo gleefully from the naked walls and floors; they race +up and down the carpetless stairs; they menace the dislocated mirrors +and crockery; through all the chambers of desolation they frolic with +a gayety indomitable save by bodily exhaustion. If the reader is of a +moving family,--and so he is as he is an American,--he can recall +the zest he found during childhood in the moving which had for his +elders--poor victims of a factitious and conventional sentiment!--only +the salt and bitterness of tears. His spirits never fell till the +carpets were down; no sorrow touched him till order returned; if Heaven +so blessed him that his bed was made upon the floor for one night, +the angels visited his dreams. Why, then, is the mature soul, however +sincere and humble, not only grieved but mortified by flitting? Why +cannot one move without feeling the great public eye fixed in pitying +contempt upon him? This sense of abasement seems to be something quite +inseparable from the act, which is often laudable, and in every way wise +and desirable; and he whom it has afflicted is the first to turn, +after his own establishment, and look with scornful compassion upon the +overflowing furniture wagon as it passes. But I imagine that Abraham's +neighbors, when he struck his tent, and packed his parlor and kitchen +furniture upon his camels, and started off with Mrs. Sarah to seek a new +camping-ground, did not smile at the procession, or find it worthy of +ridicule or lament. Nor did Abraham, once settled, and reposing in the +cool of the evening at the door of his tent, gaze sarcastically upon the +moving of any of his brother patriarchs. + +To some such philosophical serenity we shall also return, I suppose, +when we have wisely theorized life in our climate, and shall all have +become nomads once more, following June and October up and down and +across the continent, and not suffering the full malice of the winter +and summer anywhere. But as yet, the derision that attaches to moving +attends even the goer-out of town, and the man of many trunks and a +retinue of linen-suited womankind is a pitiable and despicable object +to all the other passengers at the railroad station and on the steamboat +wharf. + +This is but one of many ways in which mere tradition oppresses us. I +protest that as moving is now managed in Charlesbridge, there is hardly +any reason why the master or mistress of the household should put hand +to anything; but it is a tradition that they shall dress themselves in +their worst, as for heavy work, and shall go about very shabby for +at least a day before and a day after the transition. It is a kind of +sacrifice, I suppose, to a venerable ideal; and I would never be the +first to omit it. In others I observe that this vacant and ceremonious +zeal is in proportion to an incapacity to do anything that happens +really to be required; and I believe that the truly sage person would +devote moving-day to paying visits of ceremony in his finest clothes. + +[Illustration: “Vacant and ceremonious zeal.”] + +As to the house which one has left, I think it would be preferable to +have it occupied as soon as possible after one's flitting. Pilgrimages +to the dismantled shrine are certainly to be avoided by the friend of +cheerfulness. A day's absence and emptiness wholly change its character, +though the familiarity continues, with a ghastly difference, as in the +beloved face that the life has left. It is not at all the vacant house +it was when you came first to look at it: for then hopes peopled it, and +now memories. In that golden prime you had long been boarding, and +any place in which you could keep house seemed utterly desirable. How +distinctly you recall that wet day, or that fair day, on which you went +through it and decided that this should be the guest chamber and that +the family room, and what could be done with the little back attic in +a pinch! The children could play in the dining-room; and to be sure the +parlor was rather small if you wanted to have company; but then, who +would ever want to give a party? and besides, the pump in the kitchen +was a compensation for anything. How lightly the dumb waiter ran up and +down,-- + + “Qual piuma al vento!” + +you sang, in very glad-heartedness. Then estimates of the number of +yards of carpeting; and how you could easily save the cost from the +difference between boarding and house-keeping. Adieu, Mrs. Brown! +henceforth let your “desirable apartments, _en suite_ or single, +furnished or unfurnished, to gentlemen only!”--this married pair is +about to escape forever from your extortions. + +Well, if the years passed without making us sadder, should we be much +the wiser for their going? Now you know, little couple, that there are +extortions in this wicked world beside Mrs. Brown's; and some other +things. But if you go into the empty house that was lately your home, +you will not, I believe, be haunted by these sordid disappointments, for +the place should evoke other regrets and meditations. Truly, though the +great fear has not come upon you here, in this room you may have known +moments when it seemed very near, and when the quick, fevered breathings +of the little one timed your own heart-beats. To that door, with many +other missives of joy and pain, came haply the dispatch which hurried +you off to face your greatest sorrow--came by night, like a voice of +God, speaking and warning, and making all your work idle and your aims +foolish. These walls have answered, how many times, to your laughter; +they have had friendly ears for the trouble that seemed to grow by +utterance. You have sat upon the threshold so many summer days; so many +winter mornings you have seen the snows drifted high about it; so often +your step has been light and heavy upon it. There is the study, where +your magnificent performances were planned, and your exceeding small +performances were achieved; hither you hurried with the first criticism +of your first book, and read it with the rapture that nothing but +a love-letter and a favorable review can awaken. Out there is the +well-known humble prospect, that was commonly but a vista into +dreamland; on the other hand is the pretty grove,--its leaves now a +little painted with the autumn, and faltering to their fall. + +Yes, the place must always be sacred, but painfully sacred; and I say +again one should not go near it unless as a penance. If the reader will +suffer me the confidence, I will own that there is always a pang in the +past which is more than any pleasure it can give, and I believe that +he, if he were perfectly honest,--as Heaven forbid I or any one should +be,--would also confess as much. There is no house to which one would +return, having left it, though it were the hogshead out of which one had +moved into a kilderkin; for those associations whose perishing leaves +us free, and preserves to us what little youth we have, were otherwise +perpetuated to our burden and bondage. Let some one else, who has also +escaped from his past, have your old house; he will find it new and +untroubled by memories, while you, under another roof, enjoy a present +that borders only upon the future. + + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Suburban Sketches, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUBURBAN SKETCHES *** + +***** This file should be named 7141-0.txt or 7141-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/7/1/4/7141/ + +Produced by Olaf Voss, Eric Eldred, Charles Franks, David Widger, and +the Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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