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diff --git a/3379.txt b/3379.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2fc0302 --- /dev/null +++ b/3379.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5528 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Short Stories and Essays, 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: Short Stories and Essays + From "Literature and Life" + +Author: William Dean Howells + +Release Date: October 22, 2004 [EBook #3379] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +LITERATURE AND LIFE--Short Stories and Essays + +by William Dean Howells + + +CONTENTS: + + Worries of a Winter Walk + Summer Isles of Eden + Wild Flowers of the Asphalt + A Circus in the Suburbs + A She Hamlet + The Midnight Platoon + The Beach at Rockaway + Sawdust in the Arena + At a Dime Museum + American Literature in Exile + The Horse Show + The Problem of the Summer + Aesthetic New York Fifty-odd Years Ago + From New York into New England + The Art of the Adsmith + The Psychology of Plagiarism + Puritanism in American Fiction + The What and How in Art + Politics in American Authors + Storage + "Floating down the River on the O-hi-o" + + + + +WORRIES OF A WINTER WALK + +The other winter, as I was taking a morning walk down to the East River, +I came upon a bit of our motley life, a fact of our piebald civilization, +which has perplexed me from time to time, ever since, and which I wish +now to leave with the reader, for his or her more thoughtful +consideration. + + + + +I. + +The morning was extremely cold. It professed to be sunny, and there was +really some sort of hard glitter in the air, which, so far from being +tempered by this effulgence, seemed all the stonier for it. Blasts of +frigid wind swept the streets, and buffeted each other in a fury of +resentment when they met around the corners. Although I was passing +through a populous tenement-house quarter, my way was not hindered by the +sports of the tenement-house children, who commonly crowd one from the +sidewalks; no frowzy head looked out over the fire-escapes; there were no +peddlers' carts or voices in the road-way; not above three or four +shawl-hooded women cowered out of the little shops with small purchases +in their hands; not so many tiny girls with jugs opened the doors of the +beer saloons. The butchers' windows were painted with patterns of frost, +through which I could dimly see the frozen meats hanging like hideous +stalactites from the roof. When I came to the river, I ached in sympathy +with the shipping painfully atilt on the rocklike surface of the brine, +which broke against the piers, and sprayed itself over them like showers +of powdered quartz. + +But it was before I reached this final point that I received into my +consciousness the moments of the human comedy which have been an +increasing burden to it. Within a block of the river I met a child so +small that at first I almost refused to take any account of her, until +she appealed to my sense of humor by her amusing disproportion to the +pail which she was lugging in front of her with both of her little +mittened hands. I am scrupulous about mittens, though I was tempted to +write of her little naked hands, red with the pitiless cold. This would +have been more effective, but it would not have been true, and the truth +obliges me to own that she had a stout, warm-looking knit jacket on. +The pail-which was half her height and twice her bulk-was filled to +overflowing with small pieces of coal and coke, and if it had not been +for this I might have taken her for a child of the better classes, she +was so comfortably clad. But in that case she would have had to be +fifteen or sixteen years old, in order to be doing so efficiently and +responsibly the work which, as the child of the worse classes, she was +actually doing at five or six. We must, indeed, allow that the early +self-helpfulness of such children is very remarkable, and all the more so +because they grow up into men and women so stupid that, according to the +theories of all polite economists, they have to have their discontent +with their conditions put into their heads by malevolent agitators. + +From time to time this tiny creature put down her heavy burden to rest; +it was, of course, only relatively heavy; a man would have made nothing +of it. From time to time she was forced to stop and pick up the bits of +coke that tumbled from her heaping pail. She could not consent to lose +one of them, and at last, when she found she could not make all of them +stay on the heap, she thriftily tucked them into the pockets of her +jacket, and trudged sturdily on till she met a boy some years older, who +planted himself in her path and stood looking at her, with his hands in +his pockets. I do not say he was a bad boy, but I could see in his +furtive eye that she was a sore temptation to him. The chance to have +fun with her by upsetting her bucket, and scattering her coke about till +she cried with vexation, was one which might not often present itself, +and I do not know what made him forego it, but I know that he did, and +that he finally passed her, as I have seen a young dog pass a little cat, +after having stopped it, and thoughtfully considered worrying it. + +I turned to watch the child out of sight, and when I faced about towards +the river again I received the second instalment of my present +perplexity. A cart, heavily laden with coke, drove out of the coal-yard +which I now perceived I had come to, and after this cart followed two +brisk old women, snugly clothed and tightly tucked in against the cold +like the child, who vied with each other in catching up the lumps of coke +that were jolted from the load, and filling their aprons with them; such +old women, so hale, so spry, so tough and tireless, with the withered +apples red in their cheeks, I have not often seen. They may have been +about sixty years, or sixty-five, the time of life when most women are +grandmothers and are relegated on their merits to the cushioned seats of +their children's homes, softly silk-gowned and lace-capped, dear visions +of lilac and lavender, to be loved and petted by their grandchildren. +The fancy can hardly put such sweet ladies in the place of those nimble +beldams, who hopped about there in the wind-swept street, plucking up +their day's supply of firing from the involuntary bounty of the cart. +Even the attempt is unseemly, and whether mine is at best but a feeble +fancy, not bred to strenuous feats of any kind, it fails to bring them +before me in that figure. I cannot imagine ladies doing that kind of +thing; I can only imagine women who had lived hard and worked hard all +their lives doing it; who had begun to fight with want from their +cradles, like that little one with the pail, and must fight without +ceasing to their graves. But I am not unreasonable; I understand and I +understood what I saw to be one of the things that must be, for the +perfectly good and sufficient reason that they always have been; and at +the moment I got what pleasure I could out of the stolid indifference of +the cart-driver, who never looked about him at the scene which interested +me, but jolted onward, leaving a trail of pungent odors from his pipe in +the freezing eddies of the air behind him. + + + + +II. + +It is still not at all, or not so much, the fact that troubles me; it is +what to do with the fact. The question began with me almost at once, or +at least as soon as I faced about and began to walk homeward with the +wind at my back. I was then so much more comfortable that the aesthetic +instinct thawed out in me, and I found myself wondering what use I could +make of what I had seen in the way of my trade. Should I have something +very pathetic, like the old grandmother going out day after day to pick +up coke for her sick daughter's freezing orphans till she fell sick +herself? What should I do with the family in that case? They could not +be left at that point, and I promptly imagined a granddaughter, a girl of +about eighteen, very pretty and rather proud, a sort of belle in her +humble neighborhood, who should take her grandmother's place. I decided +that I should have her Italian, because I knew something of Italians, and +could manage that nationality best, and I should call her Maddalena; +either Maddalena or Marina; Marina would be more Venetian, and I saw that +I must make her Venetian. Here I was on safe ground, and at once the +love-interest appeared to help me out. By virtue of the law of +contrasts; it appeared to me in the person of a Scandinavian lover, tall, +silent, blond, whom I at once felt I could do, from my acquaintance with +Scandinavian lovers in Norwegian novels. His name was Janssen, a good, +distinctive Scandinavian name; I do not know but it is Swedish; and I +thought he might very well be a Swede; I could imagine his manner from +that of a Swedish waitress we once had. + +Janssen--Jan Janssen, say-drove the coke-cart which Marina's grandmother +used to follow out of the coke-yard, to pick up the bits of coke as they +were jolted from it, and he had often noticed her with deep indifference. +At first he noticed Marina--or Nina, as I soon saw I must call her--with +the same unconcern; for in her grandmother's hood and jacket and check +apron, with her head held shamefacedly downward, she looked exactly like +the old woman. I thought I would have Nina make her self-sacrifice +rebelliously, as a girl like her would be apt to do, and follow the +cokecart with tears. This would catch Janssen's notice, and he would +wonder, perhaps with a little pang, what the old woman was crying about, +and then he would see that it was not the old woman. He would see that +it was Nina, and he would be in love with her at once, for she would not +only be very pretty, but he would know that she was good, if she were +willing to help her family in that way. + +He would respect the girl, in his dull, sluggish, Northern way. He would +do nothing to betray himself. But little by little he would begin to +befriend her. He would carelessly overload his cart before he left the +yard, so that the coke would fall from it more lavishly; and not only +this, but if he saw a stone or a piece of coal in the street he would +drive over it, so that more coke would be jolted from his load. + +Nina would get to watching for him. She must not notice him much at +first, except as the driver of the overladen, carelessly driven cart. +But after several mornings she must see that he is very strong and +handsome. Then, after several mornings more, their eyes must meet, her +vivid black eyes, with the tears of rage and shame in them, and his cold +blue eyes. This must be the climax; and just at this point I gave my +fancy a rest, while I went into a drugstore at the corner of Avenue B to +get my hands warm. + +They were abominably cold, even in my pockets, and I had suffered past +several places trying to think of an excuse to go in. I now asked the +druggist if he had something which I felt pretty sure he had not, and +this put him in the wrong, so that when we fell into talk he was very +polite. We agreed admirably about the hard times, and he gave way +respectfully when I doubted his opinion that the winters were getting +milder. I made him reflect that there was no reason for this, and that +it was probably an illusion from that deeper impression which all +experiences made on us in the past, when we were younger; I ought to say +that he was an elderly man, too. I said I fancied such a morning as this +was not very mild for people that had no fires, and this brought me back +again to Janssen and Marina, by way of the coke-cart. The thought of +them rapt me so far from the druggist that I listened to his answer with +a glazing eye, and did not know what he said. My hands had now got warm, +and I bade him good-morning with a parting regret, which he civilly +shared, that he had not the thing I had not wanted, and I pushed out +again into the cold, which I found not so bad as before. + +My hero and heroine were waiting for me there, and I saw that to be truly +modern, to be at once realistic and mystical, to have both delicacy and +strength, I must not let them get further acquainted with each other. +The affair must simply go on from day to day, till one morning Jan must +note that it was again the grandmother and no longer the girl who was +following his cart. She must be very weak from a long sickness--I was +not sure whether to have it the grippe or not, but I decided upon that +provisionally and she must totter after Janssen, so that he must get down +after a while to speak to her under pretence of arranging the tail-board +of his cart, or something of that kind; I did not care for the detail. +They should get into talk in the broken English which was the only +language they could have in common, and she should burst into tears, and +tell him that now Nina was sick; I imagined making this very simple, but +very touching, and I really made it so touching that it brought the lump +into my own throat, and I knew it would be effective with the reader. +Then I had Jan get back upon his cart, and drive stolidly on again, and +the old woman limp feebly after. + +There should not be any more, I decided, except that one very cold +morning, like that; Jan should be driving through that street, and should +be passing the door of the tenement house where Nina had lived, just as a +little procession should be issuing from it. The fact must be told in +brief sentences, with a total absence of emotionality. The last touch +must be Jan's cart turning the street corner with Jan's figure sharply +silhouetted against the clear, cold morning light. Nothing more. + +But it was at this point that another notion came into my mind, so antic, +so impish, so fiendish, that if there were still any Evil One, in a world +which gets on so poorly without him, I should attribute it to his +suggestion; and this was that the procession which Jan saw issuing from +the tenement-house door was not a funeral procession, as the reader will +have rashly fancied, but a wedding procession, with Nina at the head of +it, quite well again, and going to be married to the little brown youth +with ear-rings who had long had her heart. + +With a truly perverse instinct, I saw how strong this might be made, at +the fond reader's expense, to be sure, and how much more pathetic, in +such a case, the silhouetted figure on the coke-cart would really be. +I should, of course, make it perfectly plain that no one was to blame, +and that the whole affair had been so tacit on Jan's part that Nina might +very well have known nothing of his feeling for her. Perhaps at the very +end I might subtly insinuate that it was possible he might have had no +such feeling towards her as the reader had been led to imagine. + + + + +III. + +The question as to which ending I ought to have given my romance is what +has ever since remained to perplex me, and it is what has prevented my +ever writing it. Here is material of the best sort lying useless on my +hands, which, if I could only make up my mind, might be wrought into a +short story as affecting as any that wring our hearts in fiction; and I +think I could get something fairly unintelligible out of the broken +English of Jan and Nina's grandmother, and certainly something novel. +All that I can do now, however, is to put the case before the reader, and +let him decide for himself how it should end. + +The mere humanist, I suppose, might say, that I am rightly served for +having regarded the fact I had witnessed as material for fiction at all; +that I had no business to bewitch it with my miserable art; that I ought +to have spoken to that little child and those poor old women, and tried +to learn something of their lives from them, that I might offer my +knowledge again for the instruction of those whose lives are easy and +happy in the indifference which ignorance breeds in us. I own there is +something in this, but then, on the other hand, I have heard it urged by +nice people that they do not want to know about such squalid lives, that +it is offensive and out of taste to be always bringing them in, and that +we ought to be writing about good society, and especially creating +grandes dames for their amusement. This sort of people could say to the +humanist that he ought to be glad there are coke-carts for fuel to fall +off from for the lower classes, and that here was no case for sentiment; +for if one is to be interested in such things at all, it must be +aesthetically, though even this is deplorable in the presence of fiction +already overloaded with low life, and so poor in grades dames as ours. + + + + + + +SUMMER ISLES OF EDEN + +It may be all an illusion of the map, where the Summer Islands glimmer a +small and solitary little group of dots and wrinkles, remote from +continental shores, with a straight line descending southeastwardly upon +them, to show how sharp and swift the ship's course is, but they seem so +far and alien from my wonted place that it is as if I had slid down a +steepy slant from the home-planet to a group of asteroids nebulous +somewhere in middle space, and were resting there, still vibrant from the +rush of the meteoric fall. There were, of course, facts and incidents +contrary to such a theory: a steamer starting from New York in the raw +March morning, and lurching and twisting through two days of diagonal +seas, with people aboard dining and undining, and talking and smoking and +cocktailing and hot-scotching and beef-teaing; but when the ship came in +sight of the islands, and they began to lift their cedared slopes from +the turquoise waters, and to explain their drifted snows as the white +walls and white roofs of houses, then the waking sense became the +dreaming sense, and the sweet impossibility of that drop through air +became the sole reality. + + + + +I. + +Everything here, indeed, is so strange that you placidly accept whatever +offers itself as the simplest and naturalest fact. Those low hills, that +climb, with their tough, dark cedars, from the summer sea to the summer +sky, might have drifted down across the Gulf Stream from the coast of +Maine; but when, upon closer inspection, you find them skirted with palms +and bananas, and hedged with oleanders, you merely wonder that you had +never noticed these growths in Maine before, where you were so familiar +with the cedars. The hotel itself, which has brought the Green Mountains +with it, in every detail, from the dormer-windowed mansard-roof, and the +white-painted, green-shuttered walls, to the neat, school-mistressly +waitresses in the dining-room, has a clump of palmettos beside it, +swaying and sighing in the tropic breeze, and you know that when it +migrates back to the New England hill-country, at the end of the season, +you shall find it with the palmettos still before its veranda, and +equally at home, somewhere in the Vermont or New Hampshire July. There +will be the same American groups looking out over them, and rocking and +smoking, though, alas! not so many smoking as rocking. + +But where, in that translation, would be the gold braided red or blue +jackets of the British army and navy which lend their lustre and color +here to the veranda groups? Where should one get the house walls of +whitewashed stone and the garden walls which everywhere glow in the sun, +and belt in little spaces full of roses and lilies? These things must +come from some other association, and in the case of him who here +confesses, the lustrous uniforms and the glowing walls rise from waters +as far away in time as in space, and a long-ago apparition of Venetian +Junes haunts the coral shore. (They are beginning to say the shore is +not coral; but no matter.) To be sure, the white roofs are not accounted +for in this visionary presence; and if one may not relate them to the +snowfalls of home winters, then one must frankly own them absolutely +tropical, together with the green-pillared and green-latticed galleries. +They at least suggest the tropical scenery of Prue and I as one remembers +seeing it through Titbottom's spectacles; and yet, if one supplies roofs +of brown-red tiles, it is all Venetian enough, with the lagoon-like +expanses that lend themselves to the fond effect. It is so Venetian, +indeed, that it wants but a few silent gondolas and noisy gondoliers, +in place of the dark, taciturn oarsmen of the clumsy native boats, to +complete the coming and going illusion; and there is no good reason why +the rough little isles that fill the bay should not call themselves +respectively San Giorgio and San Clemente, and Sant' Elena and San +Lazzaro: they probably have no other names! + + + + +II. + +These summer isles of Eden have this advantage over the scriptural Eden, +that apparently it was not woman and her seed who were expelled, when +once she set foot here, but the serpent and his seed: women now abound in +the Summer Islands, and there is not a snake anywhere to be found. There +are some tortoises and a great many frogs in their season, but no other +reptiles. The frogs are fabled of a note so deep and hoarse that its +vibration almost springs the environing mines of dynamite, though it has +never yet done so; the tortoises grow to a great size and a patriarchal +age, and are fond of Boston brown bread and baked beans, if their +preferences may be judged from those of a colossal specimen in the care +of an American family living on the islands. The observer who +contributes this fact to science is able to report the case of a +parrot-fish, on the same premises, so exactly like a large brown and +purple cockatoo that, seeing such a cockatoo later on dry land, it was +with a sense of something like cruelty in its exile from its native +waters. The angel-fish he thinks not so much like angels; they are of a +transparent purity of substance, and a cherubic innocence of expression, +but they terminate in two tails, which somehow will not lend themselves +to the resemblance. + +Certainly the angel-fish is not so well named as the parrot-fish; it +might better be called the ghostfish, it is so like a moonbeam in the +pools it haunts, and of such a convertible quality with the iridescent +vegetable growths about it. All things here are of a weird +convertibility to the alien perception, and the richest and rarest facts +of nature lavish themselves in humble association with the commonest and +most familiar. You drive through long stretches of wayside willows, and +realize only now and then that these willows are thick clumps of +oleanders; and through them you can catch glimpses of banana-orchards, +which look like dishevelled patches of gigantic cornstalks. The fields +of Easter lilies do not quite live up to their photographs; they are +presently suffering from a mysterious blight, and their flowers are not +frequent enough to lend them that sculpturesque effect near to, which +they wear as far off as New York. The potato-fields, on the other hand, +are of a tender delicacy of coloring which compensates for the lilies' +lack, and the palms give no just cause for complaint, unless because they +are not nearly enough to characterize the landscape, which in spite of +their presence remains so northern in aspect. They were much whipped and +torn by a late hurricane, which afflicted all the vegetation of the +islands, and some of the royal palms were blown down. Where these are +yet standing, as four or five of them are in a famous avenue now quite +one-sided, they are of a majesty befitting that of any king who could +pass by them: no sovereign except Philip of Macedon in his least judicial +moments could pass between them. + +The century-plant, which here does not require pampering under glass, +but boldly takes its place out doors with the other trees of the garden, +employs much less than a hundred years to bring itself to bloom. +It often flowers twice or thrice in that space of time, and ought to take +away the reproach of the inhabitants for a want of industry and +enterprise: a century-plant at least could do no more in any air, and it +merits praise for its activity in the breath of these languorous seas. +One such must be in bloom at this very writing, in the garden of a house +which this very writer marked for his own on his first drive ashore from +the steamer to the hotel, when he bestowed in its dim, unknown interior +one of the many multiples of himself which are now pretty well dispersed +among the pleasant places of the earth. It fills the night with a heavy +heliotropean sweetness, and on the herb beneath, in the effulgence of the +waxing moon, the multiple which has spiritually expropriated the legal +owners stretches itself in an interminable reverie, and hears Youth come +laughing back to it on the waters kissing the adjacent shore, where other +white houses (which also it inhabits) bathe their snowy underpinning. +In this dream the multiple drives home from the balls of either hotel +with the young girls in the little victorias which must pass its sojourn; +and, being but a vision itself, fore casts the shapes of flirtation which +shall night-long gild the visions of their sleep with the flash of +military and naval uniforms. Of course the multiple has been at the +dance too (with a shadowy heartache for the dances of forty years ago), +and knows enough not to confuse the uniforms. + + + + +III. + +In whatever way you walk, at whatever hour, the birds are sweetly calling +in the way-side oleanders and the wild sage-bushes and the cedar-tops. +They are mostly cat-birds, quite like our own; and bluebirds, but of a +deeper blue than ours, and redbirds of as liquid a note, but not so +varied, as that of the redbirds of our woods. How came they all here, +seven hundred miles from any larger land? Some think, on the stronger +wings of tempests, for it is not within the knowledge of men that men +brought them. Men did, indeed, bring the pestilent sparrows which swarm +about their habitations here, and beat away the gentler and lovelier +birds with a ferocity unknown in the human occupation of the islands. +Still, the sparrows have by no means conquered, and in the wilder places +the catbird makes common cause with the bluebird and the redbird, and +holds its own against them. The little ground-doves mimic in miniature +the form and markings and the gait and mild behavior of our turtle-doves, +but perhaps not their melancholy cooing. Nature has nowhere anything +prettier than these exquisite creatures, unless it be the long-tailed +white gulls which sail over the emerald shallows of the landlocked seas, +and take the green upon their translucent bodies as they trail their +meteoric splendor against the midday sky. Full twenty-four inches they +measure from the beak to the tip of the single pen that protracts them a +foot beyond their real bulk; but it is said their tempers are shorter +than they, and they attack fiercely anything they suspect of too intimate +a curiosity concerning their nests. + +They are probably the only short-tempered things in the Summer Islands, +where time is so long that if you lose your patience you easily find it +again. Sweetness, if not light, seems to be the prevailing human +quality, and a good share of it belongs to such of the natives as are in +no wise light. Our poor brethren of a different pigment are in the large +majority, and they have been seventy years out of slavery, with the full +enjoyment of all their civil rights, without lifting themselves from +their old inferiority. They do the hard work, in their own easy way, and +possibly do not find life the burden they make it for the white man, whom +here, as in our own country, they load up with the conundrum which their +existence involves for him. They are not very gay, and do not rise to a +joke with that flashing eagerness which they show for it at home. If you +have them against a background of banana-stems, or low palms, or feathery +canes, nothing could be more acceptably characteristic of the air and +sky; nor are they out of place on the box of the little victorias, where +visitors of the more inquisitive sex put them to constant question. Such +visitors spare no islander of any color. Once, in the pretty Public +Garden which the multiple had claimed for its private property, three +unmerciful American women suddenly descended from the heavens and began +to question the multiple's gardener, who was peacefully digging at the +rate of a spadeful every five minutes. Presently he sat down on his +wheelbarrow, and then shifted, without relief, from one handle of it to +the other. Then he rose and braced himself desperately against the +tool-house, where, when his tormentors drifted away, he seemed to the +soft eye of pity pinned to the wall by their cruel interrogations, whose +barbed points were buried in the stucco behind him, and whose feathered +shafts stuck out half a yard before his breast. + +Whether he was black or not, pity could not see, but probably he was. +At least the garrison of the islands is all black, being a Jamaican +regiment of that color; and when one of the warriors comes down the white +street, with his swagger-stick in his hand, and flaming in scarlet and +gold upon the ground of his own blackness, it is as if a gigantic oriole +were coming towards you, or a mighty tulip. These gorgeous creatures +seem so much readier than the natives to laugh, that you wish to test +them with a joke. But it might fail. The Summer Islands are a British +colony, and the joke does not flourish so luxuriantly, here as some other +things. + +To be sure, one of the native fruits seems a sort of joke when you hear +it first named, and when you are offered a 'loquat', if you are of a +frivolous mind you search your mind for the connection with 'loquor' +which it seems to intimate. Failing in this, you taste the fruit, and +then, if it is not perfectly ripe, you are as far from loquaciousness as +if you had bitten a green persimmon. But if it is ripe, it is delicious, +and may be consumed indefinitely. It is the only native fruit which one +can wish to eat at all, with an unpractised palate, though it is claimed +that with experience a relish may come for the pawpaws. These break out +in clusters of the size of oranges at the top of a thick pole, which may +have some leaves or may not, and ripen as they fancy in the indefinite +summer. They are of the color and flavor of a very insipid little +muskmelon which has grown too near a patch of squashes. + +One may learn to like this pawpaw, yes, but one must study hard. It is +best when plucked by a young islander of Italian blood whose father +orders him up the bare pole in the sunny Sunday morning air to oblige the +signori, and then with a pawpaw in either hand stands talking with them +about the two bad years there have been in Bermuda, and the probability +of his doing better in Nuova York. He has not imagined our winter, +however, and he shrinks from its boldly pictured rigors, and lets the +signori go with a sigh, and a bunch of pink and crimson roses. + +The roses are here, budding and blooming in the quiet bewilderment which +attends the flowers and plants from the temperate zone in this latitude, +and which in the case of the strawberries offered with cream and cake at +another public garden expresses itself in a confusion of red, ripe fruit +and white blossoms on the same stem. They are a pleasure to the nose and +eye rather than the palate, as happens with so many growths of the +tropics, if indeed the Summer Islands are tropical, which some plausibly +deny; though why should not strawberries, fresh picked from the plant in +mid-March, enjoy the right to be indifferent sweet? + + + + +IV. + +What remains? The events of the Summer Islands are few, and none out of +the order of athletics between teams of the army and navy, and what may +be called societetics, have happened in the past enchanted fortnight. +But far better things than events have happened: sunshine and rain of +such like quality that one could not grumble at either, and gales, now +from the south and now from the north, with the languor of the one and +the vigor of the other in them. There were drives upon drives that were +always to somewhere, but would have been delightful the same if they had +been mere goings and comings, past the white houses overlooking little +lawns through the umbrage of their palm-trees. The lawns professed to be +of grass, but were really mats of close little herbs which were not +grass; but which, where the sparse cattle were grazing them, seemed to +satisfy their inexacting stomachs. They are never very green, and in +fact the landscape often has an air of exhaustion and pause which it +wears with us in late August; and why not, after all its interminable, +innumerable summers? Everywhere in the gentle hollows which the coral +hills (if they are coral) sink into are the patches of potatoes and +lilies and onions drawing their geometrical lines across the brown-red, +weedless soil; and in very sheltered spots are banana-orchards which are +never so snugly sheltered there but their broad leaves are whipped to +shreds. The white road winds between gray walls crumbling in an amiable +disintegration, but held together against ruin by a network of maidenhair +ferns and creepers of unknown name, and overhung by trees where the +cactus climbs and hangs in spiky links, or if another sort, pierces them +with speary stems as tall and straight as the stalks of the neighboring +bamboo. The loquat-trees cluster--like quinces in the garden closes, and +show their pale golden, plum-shaped fruit. + +For the most part the road runs by still inland waters, but sometimes it +climbs to the high downs beside the open sea, grotesque with wind-worn +and wave-worn rocks, and beautiful with opalescent beaches, and the black +legs of the negro children paddling in the tints of the prostrate +rainbow. + +All this seems probable and natural enough at the writing; but how will +it be when one has turned one's back upon it? Will it not lapse into the +gross fable of travellers, and be as the things which the liars who swap +them cannot themselves believe? What will be said to you when you tell +that in the Summer Islands one has but to saw a hole in his back yard and +take out a house of soft, creamy sandstone and set it up and go to living +in it? What, when you relate that among the northern and southern +evergreens there are deciduous trees which, in a clime where there is no +fall or spring, simply drop their leaves when they are tired of keeping +them on, and put out others when they feel like it? What, when you +pretend that in the absence of serpents there are centipedes a span long, +and spiders the bigness of bats, and mosquitoes that sweetly sing in the +drowsing ear, but bite not; or that there are swamps but no streams, and +in the marshes stand mangrove-trees whose branches grow downward into the +ooze, as if they wished to get back into the earth and pull in after them +the holes they emerged from? + +These every-day facts seem not only incredible to the liar himself, even +in their presence, but when you begin the ascent of that steep slant back +to New York you foresee that they will become impossible. As impossible +as the summit of the slant now appears to the sense which shudderingly +figures it a Bermuda pawpaw-tree seven hundred miles high, and fruiting +icicles and snowballs in the March air! + + + + + + +WILD FLOWERS OF THE ASPHALT + +Looking through Mrs. Caroline A. Creevey's charming book on the Flowers +of Field, Hill, and Swamp, the other day, I was very forcibly reminded of +the number of these pretty, wilding growths which I had been finding all +the season long among the streets of asphalt and the sidewalks of +artificial stone in this city; and I am quite sure that any one who has +been kept in New York, as I have been this year, beyond the natural time +of going into the country, can have as real a pleasure in this sylvan +invasion as mine, if he will but give himself up to a sense of it. + + + + +I. + +Of course it is altogether too late, now, to look for any of the early +spring flowers, but I can recall the exquisite effect of the tender blue +hepatica fringing the centre rail of the grip-cars, all up and down +Broadway, and apparently springing from the hollow beneath, where the +cable ran with such a brooklike gurgle that any damp-living plant must +find itself at home there. The water-pimpernel may now be seen, by any +sympathetic eye, blowing delicately along the track, in the breeze of the +passing cabs, and elastically lifting itself from the rush of the cars. +The reader can easily verify it by the picture in Mrs. Creevey's book. +He knows it by its other name of brook weed; and he will have my delight, +I am sure, in the cardinal-flower which will be with us in August. It is +a shy flower, loving the more sequestered nooks, and may be sought along +the shady stretches of Third Avenue, where the Elevated Road overhead +forms a shelter as of interlacing boughs. The arrow-head likes such +swampy expanses as the converging surface roads form at Dead Man's Curve +and the corners of Twenty third Street. This is in flower now, and will +be till September; and St.-John's-wort, which some call the false +goldenrod, is already here. You may find it in any moist, low ground, but +the gutters of Wall Street, or even the banks of the Stock Exchange, are +not too dry for it. The real golden-rod is not much in evidence with us, +for it comes only when summer is on the wane. The other night, however, +on the promenade of the Madison Square Roof Garden, I was delighted to +see it growing all over the oblong dome of the auditorium, in response to +the cry of a homesick cricket which found itself in exile there at the +base of a potted ever green. This lonely insect had no sooner sounded its +winter-boding note than the fond flower began sympathetically to wave and +droop along those tarry slopes, as I have seen it on how many hill-side +pastures! But this may have been only a transitory response to the +cricket, and I cannot promise the visitor to the Roof Garden that he will +find golden-rod there every night. I believe there is always Golden Seal, +but it is the kind that comes in bottles, and not in the gloom of "deep, +cool, moist woods," where Mrs. Creevey describes it as growing, along +with other wildings of such sweet names or quaint as Celandine, and Dwarf +Larkspur, and Squirrel-corn, and Dutchman's breeches, and Pearlwort, and +Wood-sorrel, and Bishop's--cap, and Wintergreen, and Indian-pipe, and +Snowberry, and Adder's-tongue, and Wakerobin, and Dragon-root, and +Adam-and-Eve, and twenty more, which must have got their names from some +fairy of genius. I should say it was a female fairy of genius who called +them so, and that she had her own sex among mortals in mind when she +invented their nomenclature, and was thinking of little girls, and slim, +pretty maids, and happy young wives. The author tells how they all look, +with a fine sense of their charm in her words, but one would know how +they looked from their names; and when you call them over they at +once transplant themselves to the depths of the dells between our +sky-scrapers, and find a brief sojourn in the cavernous excavations +whence other sky-scrapers are to rise. + + + + +II. + +That night on the Roof Garden, when the cricket's cry flowered the dome +with golden-rod, the tall stems of rye growing among the orchestra sloped +all one way at times, just like the bows of violins, in the half-dollar +gale that always blows over the city at that height. But as one turns +the leaves of Mrs. Creevey's magic book-perhaps one ought to say turns +its petals--the forests and the fields come and make themselves at home +in the city everywhere. By virtue of it I have been more in the country +in a half-hour than if I had lived all June there. When I lift my eyes +from its pictures or its letter-press my vision prints the eidolons of +wild flowers everywhere, as it prints the image of the sun against the +air after dwelling on his brightness. The rose-mallow flaunts along +Fifth Avenue and the golden threads of the dodder embroider the house +fronts on the principal cross streets; and I might think at times that it +was all mere fancy, it has so much the quality of a pleasing illusion. + +Yet Mrs. Creevey's book is not one to lend itself to such a deceit by any +of the ordinary arts. It is rather matter of fact in form and manner, +and largely owes what magic it has to the inherent charm of its subject. +One feels this in merely glancing at the index, and reading such titles +of chapters as "Wet Meadows and Low Grounds"; "Dry Fields--Waste Places +--Waysides"; "Hills and Rocky Woods, Open Woods"; and "Deep, Cool, Moist +Woods"; each a poem in itself, lyric or pastoral, and of a surpassing +opulence of suggestion. The spring and, summer months pass in stately +processional through the book, each with her fillet inscribed with the +names of her characteristic flowers or blossoms, and brightened with the +blooms themselves. + +They are plucked from where nature bade them grow in the wild places, or +their own wayward wills led them astray. A singularly fascinating +chapter is that called "Escaped from Gardens," in which some of these +pretty runagates are catalogued. I supposed in my liberal ignorance that +the Bouncing Bet was the only one of these, but I have learned that the +Pansy and the Sweet Violet love to gad, and that the Caraway, the +Snapdragon, the Prince's Feather, the Summer Savory, the Star of +Bethlehem, the Day-Lily, and the Tiger-Lily, and even the sluggish Stone +Crop are of the vagrant, fragrant company. One is not surprised to meet +the Tiger-Lily in it; that must always have had the jungle in its heart; +but that the Baby's Breath should be found wandering by the road-sides +from Massachusetts and Virginia to Ohio, gives one a tender pang as for a +lost child. Perhaps the poor human tramps, who sleep in barns and feed +at back doors along those dusty ways, are mindful of the Baby's Breath, +and keep a kindly eye out for the little truant. + + + + +III. + +As I was writing those homely names I felt again how fit and lovely they +were, how much more fit and lovely than the scientific names of the +flowers. Mrs. Creevey will make a botanist of you if you will let her, +and I fancy a very good botanist, though I cannot speak from experience, +but she will make a poet of you in spite of yourself, as I very well +know; and she will do this simply by giving you first the familiar name +of the flowers she loves to write of. I am not saying that the Day-Lily +would not smell as sweet by her title of 'Hemerocallis Fulva', or that +the homely, hearty Bouncing Bet would not kiss as deliciously in her +scholar's cap and gown of 'Saponaria Officinalis'; but merely that their +college degrees do not lend themselves so willingly to verse, or even +melodious prose, which is what the poet is often after nowadays. So I +like best to hail the flowers by the names that the fairies gave them, +and the children know them by, especially when my longing for them makes +them grow here in the city streets. I have a fancy that they would all +vanish away if I saluted them in botanical terms. As long as I talk of +cat-tail rushes, the homeless grimalkins of the areas and the back fences +help me to a vision of the swamps thickly studded with their stiff +spears; but if I called them 'Typha Latifolia', or even 'Typha +Angustifolia', there is not the hardiest and fiercest prowler of the roof +and the fire-escape but would fly the sound of my voice and leave me +forlorn amid the withered foliage of my dream. The street sparrows, +pestiferous and persistent as they are, would forsake my sylvan pageant +if I spoke of the Bird-foot Violet as the 'Viola Pedata'; and the +commonest cur would run howling if he beard the gentle Poison Dogwood +maligned as the 'Rhus Venenata'. The very milk-cans would turn to their +native pumps in disgust from my attempt to invoke our simple American +Cowslip as the 'Dodecatheon Meadia'. + + + + +IV + +Yet I do not deny that such scientific nomenclature has its uses; and I +should be far from undervaluing this side of Mrs. Creevey's book. In +fact, I secretly respect it the more for its botanical lore, and if ever +I get into the woods or fields again I mean to go up to some of the +humblest flowers, such as I can feel myself on easy terms with, and tell +them what they are in Latin. I think it will surprise them, and I dare +say they will some of them like it, and will want their initials +inscribed on their leaves, like those signatures which the medicinal +plants bear, or are supposed to bear. But as long as I am engaged in +their culture amid this stone and iron and asphalt, I find it best to +invite their presence by their familiar names, and I hope they will not +think them too familiar. I should like to get them all naturalized here, +so that the thousands of poor city children, who never saw them growing +in their native places, might have some notion of how bountifully the +world is equipped with beauty, and how it is governed by many laws which +are not enforced by policemen. I think that would interest them very +much, and I shall not mind their plucking my Barmecide blossoms, and +carrying them home by the armfuls. When good-will costs nothing we ought +to practise it even with the tramps, and these are very welcome, in their +wanderings over the city pave, to rest their weary limbs in any of my +pleached bowers they come to. + + + + + + +A CIRCUS IN THE SUBURBS + +We dwellers in cities and large towns, if we are well-to-do, have more +than our fill of pleasures of all kinds; and for now many years past we +have been used to a form of circus where surfeit is nearly as great +misery as famine in that kind could be. For our sins, or some of our +friends' sins, perhaps, we have now gone so long to circuses of three +rings and two raised-platforms that we scarcely realize that in the +country there are still circuses of one ring and no platform at all. +We are accustomed, in the gross and foolish-superfluity of these city +circuses, to see no feat quite through, but to turn our greedy eyes at +the most important instant in the hope of greater wonders in another +ring. We have four or five clowns, in as many varieties of grotesque +costume, as well as a lady clown in befitting dress; but we hear none of +them speak, not even the lady clown, while in the country circus the old +clown of our childhood, one and indivisible, makes the same style of +jokes, if not the very same jokes, that we used to hear there. It is not +easy to believe all this, and I do not know that I should quite believe +it myself if I had not lately been witness of it in the suburban village +where I was passing the summer. + + + + +I. + +The circus announced itself in the good old way weeks beforehand by the +vast posters of former days and by a profusion of small bills which fell +upon the village as from the clouds, and left it littered everywhere with +their festive pink. They prophesied it in a name borne by the first +circus I ever saw, which was also an animal show, but the animals must +all have died during the fifty years past, for there is now no menagerie +attached to it. I did not know this when I heard the band braying +through the streets of the village on the morning of the performance, +and for me the mangy old camels and the pimpled elephants of yore led the +procession through accompanying ranks of boys who have mostly been in +their graves for half a lifetime; the distracted ostrich thrust an +advertising neck through the top of its cage, and the lion roared to +himself in the darkness of his moving prison. I felt the old thrill of +excitement, the vain hope of something preternatural and impossible, and +I do not know what could have kept me from that circus as soon as I had +done lunch. My heart rose at sight of the large tent (which was yet so +very little in comparison with the tents of the three-ring and +two-platform circuses); the alluring and illusory sideshows of fat women +and lean men; the horses tethered in the background and stamping under +the fly-bites; the old, weather-beaten grand chariot, which looked like +the ghost of the grand chariot which used to drag me captive in its +triumph; and the canvas shelters where the cooks were already at work +over their kettles on the evening meal of the circus folk. + +I expected to be kept a long while from the ticket-wagon by the crowd, +but there was no crowd, and perhaps there never used to be much of a +crowd. I bought my admittances without a moment's delay, and the man who +sold me my reserve seats had even leisure to call me back and ask to look +at the change he had given me, mostly nickels. "I thought I didn't give +you enough," he said, and he added one more, and sent me on to the +doorkeeper with my faith in human nature confirmed and refreshed. +It was cool enough outside, but within it was very warm, as it should be, +to give the men with palm-leaf fans and ice-cold lemonade a chance. They +were already making their rounds, and crying their wares with voices from +the tombs of the dead past; and the child of the young mother who took my +seat-ticket from me was going to sleep at full length on the lowermost +tread of the benches, so that I had to step across its prostrate form. +These reserved seats were carpeted; but I had forgotten how little one +rank was raised above another, and how very trying they were upon the +back and legs. But for the carpeting, I could not see how I was +advantaged above the commoner folk in the unreserved seats, and I +reflected how often in this world we paid for an inappreciable splendor. +I could not see but they were as well off as I; they were much more gayly +dressed, and some of them were even smoking cigars, while they were +nearly all younger by ten, twenty, forty, or fifty years, and even more. +They did not look like the country people whom I rather hoped and +expected to see, but were apparently my fellow-villagers, in different +stages of excitement. They manifested by the usual signs their +impatience to have the performance begin, and I confess that I shared +this, though I did not take part in the demonstration. + + + + +II. + +I have no intention of following the events seriatim. Front time to time +during their progress I renewed my old one-sided acquaintance with the +circus-men. They were quite the same people, I believe, but strangely +softened and ameliorated, as I hope I am, and looking not a day older, +which I cannot say of myself, exactly. The supernumeraries were patently +farmer boys who had entered newly upon that life in a spirit of +adventure, and who wore their partial liveries, a braided coat here and a +pair of striped trousers there, with a sort of timorous pride, a +deprecating bravado, as if they expected to be hooted by the spectators +and were very glad when they were not. The man who went round with a dog +to keep boys from hooking in under the curtain had grown gentler, and his +dog did not look as if he would bite the worst boy in town. The man came +up and asked the young mother about her sleeping child, and I inferred +that the child had been sick, and was therefore unusually interesting to +all the great, kind-hearted, simple circus family. He was good to the +poor supes, and instructed them, not at all sneeringly, how best to +manage the guy ropes for the nets when the trapeze events began. + +There was, in fact, an air of pleasing domesticity diffused over the +whole circus. This was, perhaps, partly an effect from our extreme +proximity to its performances; I had never been on quite such intimate +terms with equitation and aerostation of all kinds; but I think it was +also largely from the good hearts of the whole company. A circus must +become, during the season, a great brotherhood and sisterhood, especially +sisterhood, and its members must forget finally that they are not united +by ties of blood. I dare say they often become so, as husbands and wives +and fathers and mothers, if not as brothers. + +The domestic effect was heightened almost poignantly when a young lady in +a Turkish-towel bath-gown came out and stood close by the band, waiting +for her act on a barebacked horse of a conventional pattern. She really +looked like a young goddess in a Turkish-towel bath-gown: goddesses must +have worn bath-gowns, especially Venus, who was often imagined in the +bath, or just out of it. But when this goddess threw off her bath-gown, +and came bounding into the ring as gracefully as the clogs she wore on +her slippers would let her, she was much more modestly dressed than most +goddesses. What I am trying to say, however, is that, while she stood +there by the band, she no more interested the musicians than if she were +their collective sister. They were all in their shirt-sleeves for the +sake of the coolness, and they banged and trumpeted and fluted away as +indifferent to her as so many born brothers. + +Indeed, when the gyrations of her horse brought her to our side of the +ring, she was visibly not so youthful and not so divine as she might have +been; but the girl who did the trapeze acts, and did them wonderfully, +left nothing to be desired in that regard; though really I do not see why +we who have neither youth nor beauty should always expect it of other +people. I think it would have been quite enough for her to do the +trapeze acts so perfectly; but her being so pretty certainly added a +poignancy to the contemplation of her perils. One could follow every +motion of her anxiety in that close proximity: the tremor of her chin as +she bit her lips before taking her flight through the air, the straining +eagerness of her eye as she measured the distance, the frown with which +she forbade herself any shrinking or reluctance. + + + + +III. + +How strange is life, how sad and perplexing its contradictions! Why +should such an exhibition as that be supposed to give pleasure? Perhaps +it does not give pleasure, but is only a necessary fulfilment of one of +the many delusions we are in with regard to each other in this +bewildering world. They are of all sorts and degrees, these delusions, +and I suppose that in the last analysis it was not pleasure I got from +the clown and his clowning, clowned he ever so merrily. I remember that +I liked hearing his old jokes, not because they were jokes, but because +they were old and endeared by long association. He sang one song which I +must have heard him sing at my first circus (I am sure it was he), about +"Things that I don't like to see," and I heartily agreed with him that +his book of songs, which he sent round to be sold, was fully worth the +half-dime asked for it, though I did not buy it. + +Perhaps the rival author in me withheld me, but, as a brother man, I will +not allow that I did not feel for him and suffer with him because of the +thick, white pigment which plentifully coated his face, and, with the +sweat drops upon it, made me think of a newly painted wall in the rain. +He was infinitely older than his personality, than his oldest joke +(though you never can be sure how old a joke is), and, representatively, +I dare say he outdated the pyramids. They must have made clowns whiten +their faces in the dawn of time, and no doubt there were drolls among the +antediluvians who enhanced the effect of their fun by that means. All +the same, I pitied this clown for it, and I fancied in his wildest +waggery the note of a real irascibility. Shall I say that he seemed the +only member of that little circus who was not of an amiable temper? But +I do not blame him, and I think it much to have seen a clown once more +who jested audibly with the ringmaster and always got the better of him +in repartee. It was long since I had known that pleasure. + + + + +IV. + +Throughout the performance at this circus I was troubled by a curious +question, whether it were really of the same moral and material grandeur +as the circuses it brought to memory, or whether these were thin and +slight, too. We all know how the places of our childhood, the heights, +the distances, shrink and dwindle when we go back to them, and was it +possible that I had been deceived in the splendor of my early circuses? +The doubt was painful, but I was forced to own that there might be more +truth in it than in a blind fealty to their remembered magnificence. +Very likely circuses have grown not only in size, but in the richness and +variety of their entertainments, and I was spoiled for the simple joys +of this. But I could see no reflection of my dissatisfaction on the +young faces around me, and I must confess that there was at least so much +of the circus that I left when it was half over. I meant to go into the +side-shows and see the fat woman and the living skeleton, and take the +giant by the hand and the armless man by his friendly foot, if I might be +so honored. But I did none of these things, and I am willing to believe +the fault was in me, if I was disappointed in the circus. It was I who +had shrunk and dwindled, and not it. To real boys it was still the size +of the firmament, and was a world of wonders and delights. At least I +can recognize this fact now, and can rejoice in the peaceful progress all +over the country of the simple circuses which the towns never see, but +which help to render the summer fairer and brighter to the unspoiled eyes +and hearts they appeal to. I hope it will be long before they cease to +find profit in the pleasure they give. + + + + + + +A SHE HAMLET + +The other night as I sat before the curtain of the Garden Theatre and +waited for it to rise upon the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt, a thrill of the +rich expectation which cannot fail to precede the rise of any curtain +upon any Hamlet passed through my eager frame. There is, indeed, no +scene of drama which is of a finer horror (eighteenth-century horror) +than that which opens the great tragedy. The sentry pacing up and down +upon the platform at Elsinore under the winter night; the greeting +between him and the comrade arriving to relieve him, with its hints of +the bitter cold; the entrance of Horatio and Marcellus to these before +they can part; the mention of the ghost, and, while the soldiers are in +the act of protesting it a veridical phantom, the apparition of the +ghost, taking the word from their lips and hushing all into a pulseless +awe: what could be more simply and sublimely real, more naturally +supernatural? What promise of high mystical things to come there is in +the mere syllabling of the noble verse, and how it enlarges us from +ourselves, for that time at least, to a disembodied unity with the +troubled soul whose martyry seems foreboded in the solemn accents! +As the many Hamlets on which the curtain had risen in my time passed in +long procession through my memory, I seemed to myself so much of their +world, and so little of the world that arrogantly calls itself the actual +one, that I should hardly have been surprised to find myself one of the +less considered persons of the drama who were seen but not heard in its +course. + + + + +I. + +The trouble in judging anything is that if you have the materials for an +intelligent criticism, the case is already prejudiced in your hands. +You do not bring a free mind to it, and all your efforts to free your +mind are a species of gymnastics more or less admirable, but not really +effective for the purpose. The best way is to own yourself unfair at the +start, and then you can have some hope of doing yourself justice, if not +your subject. In other words, if you went to see the Hamlet of Mme. +Bernhardt frankly expecting to be disappointed, you were less likely in +the end to be disappointed in your expectations, and you could not blame +her if you were. To be ideally fair to that representation, it would be +better not to have known any other Hamlet, and, above all, the Hamlet of +Shakespeare. + +From the first it was evident that she had three things overwhelmingly +against her--her sex, her race, and her speech. You never ceased to feel +for a moment that it was a woman who was doing that melancholy Dane, and +that the woman was a Jewess, and the Jewess a French Jewess. These three +removes put a gulf impassable between her utmost skill and the +impassioned irresolution of that inscrutable Northern nature which is in +nothing so masculine as its feminine reluctances and hesitations, or so +little French as in those obscure emotions which the English poetry +expressed with more than Gallic clearness, but which the French words +always failed to convey. The battle was lost from the first, and all you +could feel about it for the rest was that if it was magnificent it was +not war. + +While the battle went on I was the more anxious to be fair, because I +had, as it were, pre-espoused the winning side; and I welcomed, in the +interest of critical impartiality, another Hamlet which came to mind, +through readily traceable associations. This was a Hamlet also of French +extraction in the skill and school of the actor, but as much more deeply +derived than the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt as the large imagination of +Charles Fechter transcended in its virile range the effect of her +subtlest womanish intuition. His was the first blond Hamlet known to our +stage, and hers was also blond, if a reddish-yellow wig may stand for a +complexion; and it was of the quality of his Hamlet in masterly +technique. + + + + +II. + +The Hamlet of Fechter, which rose ghostlike out of the gulf of the past, +and cloudily possessed the stage where the Hamlet of Mme. Bernhardt was +figuring, was called a romantic Hamlet thirty years ago; and so it was in +being a break from the classic Hamlets of the Anglo-American theatre. +It was romantic as Shakespeare himself was romantic, in an elder sense of +the word, and not romanticistic as Dumas was romanticistic. It was, +therefore, the most realistic Hamlet ever yet seen, because the most +naturally poetic. Mme. Bernhardt recalled it by the perfection of her +school; for Fechter's poetic naturalness differed from the +conventionality of the accepted Hamlets in nothing so much as the +superiority of its self-instruction. In Mme. Bernhardt's Hamlet, as in +his, nothing was trusted to chance, or "inspiration." Good or bad, what +one saw was what was meant to be seen. When Fechter played Edmond Dantes +or Claude Melnotte, he put reality into those preposterous inventions, +and in Hamlet even his alien accent helped him vitalize the part; it +might be held to be nearer the Elizabethan accent than ours; and after +all, you said Hamlet was a foreigner, and in your high content with what +he gave you did not mind its being in a broken vessel. When he +challenged the ghost with "I call thee keeng, father, rawl-Dane," you +Would hardly have had the erring utterance bettered. It sufficed as it +was; and when he said to Rosencrantz, "Will you pleh upon this pyip?" +it was with such a princely authority and comradely entreaty that you +made no note of the slips in the vowels except to have pleasure of their +quaintness afterwards. For the most part you were not aware of these +betrayals of his speech; and in certain high things it was soul +interpreted to soul through the poetry of Shakespeare so finely, so +directly, that there was scarcely a sense of the histrionic means. + +He put such divine despair into the words, "Except my life, except my +life, except my life!" following the mockery with which he had assured +Polonius there was nothing he would more willingly part withal than his +leave, that the heart-break of them had lingered with me for thirty +years, and I had been alert for them with every Hamlet since. But before +I knew, Mme. Bernhardt had uttered them with no effect whatever. Her +Hamlet, indeed, cut many of the things that we have learned to think the +points of Hamlet, and it so transformed others by its interpretation of +the translator's interpretation of Shakespeare that they passed +unrecognized. Soliloquies are the weak invention of the enemy, for the +most part, but as such things go that soliloquy of Hamlet's, "To be or +not to be," is at least very noble poetry; and yet Mme. Bernhardt was so +unimpressive in it that you scarcely noticed the act of its delivery. +Perhaps this happened because the sumptuous and sombre melancholy of +Shakespeare's thought was transmitted in phrases that refused it its +proper mystery. But there was always a hardness, not always from the +translation, upon this feminine Hamlet. It was like a thick shell with +no crevice in it through which the tenderness of Shakespeare's Hamlet +could show, except for the one moment at Ophelia's grave, where he +reproaches Laertes with those pathetic words-- + + "What is the reason that you use me thus? + I loved you ever; but it is no matter." + +Here Mme. Bernhardt betrayed a real grief, but as a woman would, and not +a man. At the close of the Gonzago play, when Hamlet triumphs in a mad +whirl, her Hamlet hopped up and down like a mischievous crow, a +mischievous she-crow. + +There was no repose in her Hamlet, though there were moments of leaden +lapse which suggested physical exhaustion; and there was no range in her +elocution expressive of the large vibration of that tormented spirit. +Her voice dropped out, or jerked itself out, and in the crises of strong +emotion it was the voice of a scolding or a hysterical woman. At times +her movements, which she must have studied so hard to master, were drolly +womanish, especially those of the whole person. Her quickened pace was a +woman's nervous little run, and not a man's swift stride; and to give +herself due stature, it was her foible to wear a woman's high heels to +her shoes, and she could not help tilting on them. + +In the scene with the queen after the play, most English and American +Hamlets have required her to look upon the counterfeit presentment of two +brothers in miniatures something the size of tea-plates; but Mme. +Bernhardt's preferred full-length, life-size family portraits. The dead +king's effigy did not appear a flattered likeness in the scene-painter's +art, but it was useful in disclosing his ghost by giving place to it in +the wall at the right moment. She achieved a novelty by this treatment +of the portraits, and she achieved a novelty in the tone she took with +the wretched queen. Hamlet appeared to scold her mother, but though it +could be said that her mother deserved a scolding, was it the part of a +good daughter to give it her? + +One should, of course, say a good son, but long before this it had become +impossible to think at all of Mme. Bernhardt's Hamlet as a man, if it +ever had been possible. She had traversed the bounds which tradition as +well as nature has set, and violated the only condition upon which an +actress may personate a man. This condition is that there shall be +always a hint of comedy in the part, that the spectator shall know all +the time that the actress is a woman, and that she shall confess herself +such before the play is over; she shall be fascinating in the guise of a +man only because she is so much more intensely a woman in it. +Shakespeare had rather a fancy for women in men's roles, which, as +women's roles in his time were always taken by pretty and clever boys, +could be more naturally managed then than now. But when it came to the +eclaircissement, and the pretty boys, who had been playing the parts of +women disguised as men, had to own themselves women, the effect must have +been confused if not weakened. If Mme. Bernhardt, in the necessity of +doing something Shakespearean, had chosen to do Rosalind, or Viola, or +Portia, she could have done it with all the modern advantages of women in +men's roles. These characters are, of course, "lighter motions bounded +in a shallower brain" than the creation she aimed at; but she could at +least have made much of them, and she does not make much of Hamlet. + + + + +III. + +The strongest reason against any woman Hamlet is that it does violence to +an ideal. Literature is not so rich in great imaginary masculine types +that we can afford to have them transformed to women; and after seeing +Mme. Bernhardt's Hamlet no one can altogether liberate himself from the +fancy that the Prince of Denmark was a girl of uncertain age, with crises +of mannishness in which she did not seem quite a lady. Hamlet is in +nothing more a man than in the things to which as a man he found himself +unequal; for as a woman he would have been easily superior to them. +If we could suppose him a woman as Mme. Bernhardt, in spite of herself, +invites us to do, we could only suppose him to have solved his +perplexities with the delightful precipitation of his putative sex. +As the niece of a wicked uncle, who in that case would have had to be a +wicked aunt, wedded to Hamlet's father hard upon the murder of her +mother, she would have made short work of her vengeance. No fine +scruples would have delayed her; she would not have had a moment's +question whether she had not better kill herself; she would have out with +her bare bodkin and ended the doubt by first passing it through her +aunt's breast. + +To be sure, there would then have been no play of "Hamlet," as we have +it; but a Hamlet like that imagined, a frankly feminine Hamlet, Mme. +Bernhardt could have rendered wonderfully. It is in attempting a +masculine Hamlet that she transcends the imaginable and violates an +ideal. It is not thinkable. After you have seen it done, you say, as +Mr. Clemens is said to have said of bicycling: "Yes, I have seen it, but +it's impossible. It doesn't stand to reason." + +Art, like law, is the perfection of reason, and whatever is unreasonable +in the work of an artist is inartistic. By the time I had reached these +bold conclusions I was ready to deduce a principle from them, and to +declare that in a true civilization such a thing as that Hamlet would be +forbidden, as an offence against public morals, a violence to something +precious and sacred. + +In the absence of any public regulation the precious and sacred ideals in +the arts must be trusted to the several artists, who bring themselves to +judgment when they violate them. After Mme. Bernhardt was perversely +willing to attempt the part of Hamlet, the question whether she did it +well or not was of slight consequence. She had already made her failure +in wishing to play the part. Her wish impugned her greatness as an +artist; of a really great actress it would have been as unimaginable as +the assumption of a sublime feminine role by a really great actor. There +is an obscure law in this matter which it would be interesting to trace, +but for the present I must leave the inquiry with the reader. I can note +merely that it seems somehow more permissible for women in imaginary +actions to figure as men than for men to figure as women. In the theatre +we have conjectured how and why this may be, but the privilege, for less +obvious reasons, seems yet more liberally granted in fiction. A woman +may tell a story in the character of a man and not give offence, but a +man cannot write a novel in autobiographical form from the personality of +a woman without imparting the sense of something unwholesome. One feels +this true even in the work of such a master as Tolstoy, whose Katia is a +case in point. Perhaps a woman may play Hamlet with a less shocking +effect than a man may play Desdemona, but all the same she must not play +Hamlet at all. That sublime ideal is the property of the human +imagination, and may not be profaned by a talent enamoured of the +impossible. No harm could be done by the broadest burlesque, the most +irreverent travesty, for these would still leave the ideal untouched. +Hamlet, after all the horse-play, would be Hamlet; but Hamlet played by a +woman, to satisfy her caprice, or to feed her famine for a fresh effect, +is Hamlet disabled, for a long time, at least, in its vital essence. +I felt that it would take many returns to the Hamlet of Shakespeare to +efface the impression of Mme. Bernhardt's Hamlet; and as I prepared to +escape from my row of stalls in the darkening theatre, I experienced a +noble shame for having seen the Dane so disnatured, to use Mr. Lowell's +word. I had not been obliged to come; I had voluntarily shared in the +wrong done; by my presence I had made myself an accomplice in the wrong. +It was high ground, but not too high for me, and I recovered a measure of +self-respect in assuming it. + + + + + + +THE MIDNIGHT PLATOON + +He had often heard of it. Connoisseurs of such matters, young newspaper +men trying to make literature out of life and smuggle it into print under +the guard of unwary editors, and young authors eager to get life into +their literature, had recommended it to him as one of the most impressive +sights of the city; and he had willingly agreed with them that he ought +to see it. He imagined it very dramatic, and he was surprised to find it +in his experience so largely subjective. If there was any drama at all +it was wholly in his own consciousness. But the thing was certainly +impressive in its way. + + + + +I. + +He thought it a great piece of luck that he should come upon it by +chance, and so long after he had forgotten about it that he was surprised +to recognize it for the spectacle he had often promised himself the +pleasure of seeing. + +Pleasure is the right word; for pleasure of the painful sort that all +hedonists will easily imagine was what he expected to get from it; though +upon the face of it there seems no reason why a man should delight to see +his fellow-men waiting in the winter street for the midnight dole of +bread which must in some cases be their only meal from the last midnight +to the next midnight. But the mere thought of it gave him pleasure, and +the sight of it, from the very first instant. He was proud of knowing +just what it was at once, with the sort of pride which one has in knowing +an earthquake, though one has never felt one before. He saw the double +file of men stretching up one street, and stretching down the other from +the corner of the bakery where the loaves were to be given out on the +stroke of twelve, and he hugged himself in a luxurious content with his +perspicacity. + +It was all the more comfortable to do this because he was in a coup, +warmly shut against the sharp, wholesome Christmas-week weather, and was +wrapped to the chin in a long fur overcoat, which he wore that night as a +duty to his family, with a conscience against taking cold and alarming +them for his health. He now practised another piece of self-denial: he +let the cabman drive rapidly past the interesting spectacle, and carry +him to the house where he was going to fetch away the child from the +Christmas party. He wished to be in good time, so as to save the child +from anxiety about his coming; but he promised himself to stop, going +back, and glut his sensibility in a leisurely study of the scene. He got +the child, with her arms full of things from the Christmas-tree, into the +coup, and then he said to the cabman, respectfully leaning as far over +from his box to listen as his thick greatcoat would let him: "When you +get up there near that bakery again, drive slowly. I want to have a look +at those men." + +"All right, sir," said the driver intelligently, and he found his why +skilfully out of the street among the high banks of the seasonable +Christmas-week snow, which the street-cleaners had heaped up there till +they could get round to it with their carts. + +When they were in Broadway again it seemed lonelier and silenter than it +was a few minutes before. Except for their own coup, the cable-cars, +with their flaming foreheads, and the mechanical clangor of their gongs +at the corners, seemed to have it altogether to themselves. A tall, +lumbering United States mail van rolled by, and impressed my friend in +the coup with a cheap and agreeable sense of mystery relative to the +letters it was carrying to their varied destination at the Grand Central +Station. He listened with half an ear to the child's account of the fun +she had at the party, and he watched with both eyes for the sight of the +men waiting at the bakery for the charity of the midnight loaves. + +He played with a fear that they might all have vanished, and with an +apprehension that the cabman might forget and whirl him rapidly by the +place where he had left them. But the driver remembered, and checked his +horses in good time; and there were the men still, but in even greater +number than before, stretching farther up Broadway and farther out along +the side street. They stood slouched in dim and solemn phalanx under the +night sky, so seasonably, clear and frostily atwinkle with Christmas-week +stars; two by two they stood, slouched close together, perhaps for their +mutual warmth, perhaps in an unconscious effort to get near the door +where the loaves were to be given out, in time to share in them before +they were all gone. + + + + +II. + +My friend's heart beat with glad anticipation. He was really to see this +important, this representative thing to the greatest possible advantage. +He rapidly explained to his companion that the giver of the midnight +loaves got rid of what was left of his daily bread in that way: the next +day it could not be sold, and he preferred to give it away to those who +needed it, rather than try to find his account in it otherwise. She +understood, and he tried to think that sometimes coffee was given with +the bread, but he could not make sure of this, though he would have liked +very much to have it done; it would have been much more dramatic. +Afterwards he learned that it was done, and he was proud of having +fancied it. + +He decided that when he came alongside of the Broadway file he would get +out, and go to the side door of the bakery and watch the men receiving +the bread. Perhaps he would find courage to speak to them, and ask them +about themselves. At the time it did not strike him that it would be +indecent. + +A great many things about them were open to reasonable conjecture. It +was not probable that they were any of them there for their health, as +the saying is. They were all there because they were hungry, or else +they were there in behalf of some one else who was hungry. But it was +always possible that some of them were impostors, and he wondered if any +test was applied to them that would prove them deserving or undeserving. +If one were poor, one ought to be deserving; if one were rich, it did not +so much matter. + +It seemed to him very likely that if he asked these men questions they +would tell him lies. A fantastic association of their double files and +those of the galley-slaves whom Don Quixote released, with the tonguey +Gines de Passamonte at their head, came into his mind. He smiled, and +then he thought how these men were really a sort of slaves and convicts +--slaves to want and self-convicted of poverty. All at once he fancied +them actually manacled there together, two by two, a coffle of captives +taken in some cruel foray, and driven to a market where no man wanted to +buy. He thought how old their slavery was; and he wondered if it would +ever be abolished, as other slaveries had been. Would the world ever +outlive it? Would some New-Year's day come when some President would +proclaim, amid some dire struggle, that their slavery was to be no more? +That would be fine. + + + + +III. + +He noticed how still the most of them were. A few of them stepped a +little out of the line, and stamped to shake off the cold; but all the +rest remained motionless, shrinking into themselves, and closer together. +They might have been their own dismal ghosts, they were so still, with no +more need of defence from the cold than the dead have. + +He observed now that not one among them had a fur overcoat on; and at a +second glance he saw that there was not an overcoat of any kind among +them. He made his reflection that if any of them were impostors, and not +true men, with real hunger, and if they were alive to feel that stiff, +wholesome, Christmas-week cold, they were justly punished for their +deceit. + +He was interested by the celerity, the simultaneity of his impressions, +his reflections. It occurred to him that his abnormal alertness must be +something like that of a drowning person, or a person in mortal peril, +and being perfectly safe and well, he was obscurely flattered by the +fact. + +To test his condition further he took note of the fine mass of the great +dry-goods store on the hither corner, blocking itself out of the +blue-black night, and of the Gothic beauty of the church beyond, so near +that the coffle of captives might have issued from its sculptured portal, +after vain prayer. + +Fragments of conjecture, of speculation, drifted through his mind. How +early did these files begin to form themselves for the midnight dole of +bread? As early as ten, as nine o'clock? If so, did the fact argue +habitual destitution, or merely habitual leisure? Did the slaves in the +coffle make acquaintance, or remain strangers to one another, though they +were closely neighbored night after night by their misery? Perhaps they +joked away the weary hours of waiting; they must have their jokes. Which +of them were old-comers, and which novices? Did they ever quarrel over +questions of precedence? Had they some comity, some etiquette, which a +man forced to leave his place could appeal to, and so get it back? Could +one say to his next-hand man, "Will you please keep my place?" and would +this man say to an interloper, "Excuse me, this place is engaged"? How +was it with them, when the coffle worked slowly or swiftly past the door +where the bread and coffee were given out, and word passed to the rear +that the supply was exhausted? This must sometimes happen, and what did +they do then? + + + + +IV. + +My friend did not quite like to think. Vague, reproachful thoughts for +all the remote and immediate luxury of his life passed through his mind. +If he reformed that and gave the saving to hunger and cold? But what was +the use? There was so much hunger, so much cold, that it could not go +round. + +The cabman was obeying his orders too faithfully. He was not only +walking by the Broadway coffle, he was creeping by. His action caught +the notice of the slaves, and as the coups passed them they all turned +and faced it, like soldiers under review making ready to salute a +superior. They were perfectly silent, perfectly respectful, but their +eyes seemed to pierce the coupe through and through. + +My friend was suddenly aware of a certain quality of representivity; he +stood to these men for all the ease and safety that they could never, +never hope to know. He was Society: Society that was to be preserved +because it embodies Civilization. He wondered if they hated him in his +capacity of Better Classes. He no longer thought of getting out and +watching their behavior as they took their bread and coffee. He would +have liked to excuse that thought, and protest that he was ashamed of it; +that he was their friend, and wished them well--as well as might be +without the sacrifice of his own advantages or superfluities, which he +could have persuaded them would be perfectly useless. He put his hand on +that of his companion trembling on his arm with sympathy, or at least +with intelligence. + +"You mustn't mind. What we are and what we do is all right. It's what +they are and what they suffer that's all wrong." + + + + +V. + +"Does that view of the situation still satisfy you?" I asked, when he +had told me of this singular experience; I liked his apparently not +coloring it at all. + +"I don't know," he answered. "It seems to be the only way out." + +"Well, it's an easy way," I admitted, "and it's an idea that ought to +gratify the midnight platoon." + + + + + + +THE BEACH AT ROCKAWAY + +I confess that I cannot hear people rejoice in their summer sojourn as +beyond the reach of excursionists without a certain rebellion; and yet I +have to confess also that after spending a Sunday afternoon of late July, +four or five years ago, with the excursionists at one of the beaches near +New York, I was rather glad that my own summer sojourn was not within +reach of them. I know very well that the excursionists must go +somewhere, and as a man and a brother I am willing they should go +anywhere, but as a friend of quiet and seclusion I should be sorry to +have them come much where I am. It is not because I would deny them a +share of any pleasure I enjoy, but because they are so many and I am so +few that I think they would get all the pleasure and I none. I hope the +reader will see how this attitude distinguishes me from the selfish +people who inhumanly exult in their remoteness from excursionists. + + + + +I. + +It was at Rockaway Beach that I saw these fellow-beings whose mere +multitude was too much for me. They were otherwise wholly without +offence towards me, and so far as I noted, towards each other; they were, +in fact, the most entirely peaceable multitude I ever saw in any country, +and the very quietest. + +There were thousands, mounting well up towards tens of thousands, of +them, in every variety of age and sex; yet I heard no voice lifted above +the conversational level, except that of some infant ignorant of its +privileges in a day at the sea-side, or some showman crying the +attractions of the spectacle in his charge. I used to think the American +crowds rather boisterous and unruly, and many years ago, when I lived in +Italy, I celebrated the greater amiability and self-control of the +Italian crowds. But we have certainly changed all that within a +generation, and if what I saw the other day was a typical New York crowd, +then the popular joy of our poorer classes is no longer the terror it +once was to the peaceful observer. The tough was not visibly present, +nor the toughness, either of the pure native East Side stock or of the +Celtic extraction; yet there were large numbers of Americans with rather +fewer recognizable Irish among the masses, who were mainly Germans, +Russians, Poles, and the Jews of these several nationalities. + +There was eating and drinking without limit, on every hand and in every +kind, at the booths abounding in fried seafood, and at the tables under +all the wide-spreading verandas of the hotels and restaurants; yet I saw +not one drunken man, and of course not any drunken women. No one that I +saw was even affected by drink, and no one was guilty of any rude or +unseemly behavior. The crowd was, in short, a monument to the democratic +ideal of life in that very important expression of life, personal +conduct, I have not any notion who or what the people were, or how +virtuous or vicious they privately might be; but I am sure that no +society assemblage could be of a goodlier outside; and to be of a goodly +outside is all that the mere spectator has a right to ask of any crowd. + +I fancied, however, that great numbers of this crowd, or at least all the +Americans in it, were Long-Islanders from the inland farms and villages +within easy distance of the beach. They had probably the hereditary +habit of coming to it, for it was a favorite resort in the time of their +fathers and grandfathers, who had + + --"many an hour whiled away + Listening to the breakers' roar + That washed the beach at Rockaway." + +But the clothing store and the paper pattern have equalized the cheaper +dress of the people so that you can no longer know citizen and countryman +apart by their clothes, still less citizeness and countrywoman; and I can +only conjecture that the foreign-looking folk I saw were from New York +and Brooklyn. They came by boat, and came and went by the continually +arriving and departing trains, and last but not least by bicycles, both +sexes. A few came in the public carriages and omnibuses of the +neighborhood, but by far the vaster number whom neither the boats nor the +trains had brought had their own vehicles, the all-pervading bicycles, +which no one seemed so poor as not to be able to keep. The bicyclers +stormed into the frantic village of the beach the whole afternoon, in the +proportion of one woman to five men, and most of these must have ridden +down on their wheels from the great cities. Boys ran about in the +roadway with bunches of brasses, to check the wheels, and put them for +safekeeping in what had once been the stable-yards of the hotels; the +restaurants had racks for them, where you could see them in solid masses, +side by side, for a hundred feet, and no shop was without its door-side +rack, which the wheelman might slide his wheel into when he stopped for a +soda, a cigar, or a sandwich. All along the road the gay bicycler and +bicycless swarmed upon the piazzas of the inns, munching, lunching, while +their wheels formed a fantastic decoration for the underpinning of the +house and a novel balustering for the steps. + + + + +II. + +The amusements provided for these throngs of people were not different +from those provided for throngs of people everywhere, who must be of much +the same mind and taste the world over. I had fine moments when I moved +in an illusion of the Midway Plaisance; again I was at the Fete de +Neuilly, with all of Paris but the accent about me; yet again the county +agricultural fairs of my youth spread their spectral joys before me. At +none of these places, however, was there a sounding sea or a mountainous +chute, and I made haste to experience the variety these afforded, +beginning with the chute, since the sea was always there, and the chute +might be closed for the day if I waited to view it last. I meant only to +enjoy the pleasure of others in it, and I confined my own participation +to the ascent of the height from which the boat plunges down the watery +steep into the oblong pool below. When I bought my ticket for the car +that carried passengers up, they gave me also a pasteboard medal, +certifying for me, "You have shot the chute," and I resolved to keep this +and show it to doubting friends as a proof of my daring; but it is a +curious evidence of my unfitness for such deceptions that I afterwards +could not find the medal. So I will frankly own that for me it was quite +enough to see others shoot the chute, and that I came tamely down myself +in the car. There is a very charming view from the top, of the sea with +its ships, and all the mad gayety of the shore, but of course my main +object was to exult in the wild absurdity of those who shot the chute. +There was always a lady among the people in the clumsy flat-boat that +flew down the long track, and she tried usually to be a pretty girl, who +clutched her friends and lovers and shrieked aloud in her flight; but +sometimes it was a sober mother of a family, with her brood about her, +who was probably meditating, all the way, the inculpation of their father +for any harm that came of it. Apparently no harm came of it in any case. + +The boat struck the water with the impetus gained from a half- +perpendicular slide of a hundred feet, bounded high into the air, struck +again and again, and so flounced awkwardly across the pond to the farther +shore, where the passengers debarked and went away to commune with their +viscera, and to get their breath as they could. I did not ask any of +them what their emotions or sensations were, but, so far as I could +conjecture, the experience of shooting the chute must comprise the rare +transport of a fall from a ten-story building and the delight of a +tempestuous passage of the Atlantic, powerfully condensed. + +The mere sight was so athletic that it took away any appetite I might +have had to witness the feats of strength performed by Madame La Noire at +the nearest booth on my coming out, though madame herself was at the +door-to testify, in her own living picture, how much muscular force may +be masked in vast masses of adipose. She had a weary, bored look, and +was not without her pathos, poor soul, as few of those are who amuse the +public; but I could not find her quite justifiable as a Sunday +entertainment. One forgot, however, what day it was, and for the time I +did not pretend to be so much better than my neighbors that I would not +compromise upon a visit to, an animal show a little farther on. It was a +pretty fair collection of beasts that had once been wild, perhaps, and in +the cage of the lions there was a slight, sad-looking, long-haired young +man, exciting them to madness by blows of a whip and pistol-shots whom I +was extremely glad to have get away without being torn in pieces, or at +least bitten in two. A little later I saw him at the door of the tent, +very breathless, dishevelled, and as to his dress not of the spotlessness +one could wish. But perhaps spotlessness is not compatible with the +intimacy of lions and lionesses. He had had his little triumph; one +spectator of his feat had declared that you would not see anything like +that at Coney Island; and soiled and dusty as he was in his cotton +tights, he was preferable to the living picture of a young lady whom he +replaced as an attraction of the show. It was professedly a moral show; +the manager exhorted us as we came out to say whether it was good or not; +and in the box-office sat a kind and motherly faced matron who would have +apparently abhorred to look upon a living picture at any distance, much +less have it at her elbow. + +Upon the whole, there seemed a melancholy mistake in it all; the people +to whom the showmen made their appeal were all so much better, evidently, +than the showmen supposed; the showmen themselves appeared harmless +enough, and one could not say that there was personally any harm in the +living picture; rather she looked listless and dull, but as to the face +respectable enough. + +I would not give the impression that most of the amusements were not in +every respect decorous. As a means of pleasure, the merry-go-round, both +horizontal with horses and vertical with swinging cradles, prevailed, and +was none the worse for being called by the French name of carrousel, for +our people aniglicize the word, and squeeze the last drop of Gallic +wickedness from it by pronouncing it carousal. At every other step there +were machines for weighing you and ascertaining your height; there were +photographers' booths, and X-ray apparatus for showing you the inside of +your watch; and in one open tent I saw a gentleman (with his back to the +public) having his fortune read in the lines of his hand by an Egyptian +seeress. Of course there was everywhere soda, and places of the softer +drinks abounded. + + + + +III. + +I think you could only get a hard drink by ordering something to eat and +sitting down to your wine or beer at a table. Again I say that I saw no +effects of drink in the crowd, and in one of the great restaurants built +out over the sea on piers, where there was perpetual dancing to the +braying of a brass-band, the cotillon had no fire imparted to its figures +by the fumes of the bar. In fact it was a very rigid sobriety that +reigned here, governing the common behavior by means of the placards +which hung from the roof over the heads of the dancers, and repeatedly +announced that gentlemen were not allowed to dance together, or to carry +umbrellas or canes while dancing, while all were entreated not to spit on +the floor. + +The dancers looked happy and harmless, if not very wise or splendid; they +seemed people of the same simple neighborhoods, village lovers, young +wives and husbands, and parties of friends who had come together for the +day's pleasure. A slight mother, much weighed down by a heavy baby, +passed, rapt in an innocent envy of them, and I think she and the child's +father meant to join them as soon as they could find a place where to lay +it. Almost any place would do; at another great restaurant I saw two +chairs faced together, and a baby sleeping on them as quietly amid the +coming and going of lagers and frankfurters as if in its cradle at home. + +Lagers and frankfurters were much in evidence everywhere, especially +frankfurters, which seemed to have whole booths devoted to broiling them. +They disputed this dignity with soft-shell crabs, and sections of eels, +piled attractively on large platters, or sizzling to an impassioned brown +in deep skillets of fat. The old acrid smell of frying brought back many +holidays of Italy to me, and I was again at times on the Riva at Venice, +and in the Mercato Vecchio at Florence. But the Continental Sunday +cannot be felt to have quite replaced the old American Sabbath yet; the +Puritan leaven works still, and though so many of our own people consent +willingly to the transformation, I fancy they always enjoy themselves on +Sunday with a certain consciousness of wrong-doing. + + + + +IV. + +I have already said that the spectator quite lost sense of what day it +was. Nothing could be more secular than all the sights and sounds. It +was the Fourth of July, less the fire-crackers and the drunkenness, and +it was the high day of the week. But if it was very wicked, and I must +recognize that the scene would be shocking to most of my readers, I feel +bound to say that the people themselves did not look wicked. They looked +harmless; they even looked good, the most of them. I am sorry to say +they were not very good-looking. The women were pretty enough, and the +men were handsome enough; perhaps the average was higher in respect of +beauty than the average is anywhere else; I was lately from New England, +where the people were distinctly more hard-favored; but among all those +thousands at Rockaway I found no striking types. It may be that as we +grow older and our satisfaction with our own looks wanes, we become more +fastidious as to the looks of others. At any rate, there seems to be +much less beauty in the world than there was thirty or forty years ago. + +On the other hand, the dresses seem indefinitely prettier, as they should +be in compensation. When we were all so handsome we could well afford to +wear hoops or peg-top trousers, but now it is different, and the poor +things must eke out their personal ungainliness with all the devices of +the modiste and the tailor. I do not mean that there was any distinction +in the dress of the crowd, but I saw nothing positively ugly or +grotesquely out of taste. The costumes were as good as the customs, and +I have already celebrated the manners of this crowd. I believe I must +except the costumes of the bicyclesses, who were unfailingly dumpy in +effect when dismounted, and who were all the more lamentable for +tottering about, in their short skirts, upon the tips of their narrow +little, sharp-pointed, silly high-heeled shoes. How severe I am! +But those high heels seemed to take all honesty from their daring in the +wholesome exercise of the wheel, and to keep them in the tradition of +cheap coquetry still, and imbecilly dependent. + + + + +V. + +I have almost forgotten in the interest of the human spectacle that there +is a sea somewhere about at Rockaway Beach, and it is this that the +people have come for. I might well forget that modest sea, it is so +built out of sight by the restaurants and bath-houses and switch-backs +and shops that border it, and by the hotels and saloons and shows flaring +along the road that divides the village, and the planked streets that +intersect this. But if you walk southward on any of the streets, you +presently find the planks foundering in sand, which drifts far up over +them, and then you find yourself in full sight of the ocean and the ocean +bathing. Swarms and heaps of people in all lolling and lying and +wallowing shapes strew the beach, and the water is full of slopping and +shouting and shrieking human creatures, clinging with bare white arms to +the life-lines that run from the shore to the buoys; beyond these the +lifeguard stays himself in his boat with outspread oars, and rocks on the +incoming surf. + +All that you can say of it is that it is queer. It is not picturesque, +or poetic, or dramatic; it is queer. An enfilading glance gives this +impression and no other; if you go to the balcony of the nearest marine +restaurant for a flanking eye-shot, it is still queer, with the added +effect, in all those arms upstretched to the life-lines, of frogs' legs +inverted in a downward plunge. + +On the sand before this spectacle I talked with a philosopher of humble +condition who backed upon me and knocked my umbrella out of my hand. +This made us beg each other's pardon; he said that he did not know I was +there, and I said it did not matter. Then we both looked at the bathing, +and he said: + +"I don't like that." + +"Why," I asked, "do you see any harm in it?" + +"No. But I don't like the looks of it. It ain't nice. It's queer." + +It was indeed like one of those uncomfortable dreams where you are not +dressed sufficiently for company, or perhaps at all, and yet are making a +very public appearance. This promiscuous bathing was not much in excess +of the convention that governs the sea-bathing of the politest people; it +could not be; and it was marked by no grave misconduct. Here and there a +gentleman was teaching a lady to swim, with his arms round her; here and +there a wild nereid was splashing another; a young Jew pursued a flight +of naiads with a section of dead eel in his hand. But otherwise all was +a damp and dreary decorum. I challenged my philosopher in vain for a +specific cause of his dislike of the scene. + +Most of the people on the sand were in bathing-dress, but there were a +multitude of others who had apparently come for the sea-air and not the +sea-bathing. A mother sat with a sick child on her knees; babies were +cradled in the sand asleep, and people walked carefully round and over +them. There were everywhere a great many poor mothers and children, who +seemed getting the most of the good that was going. + + + + +VI. + +But upon the whole, though I drove away from the beach celebrating the +good temper and the good order of the scene to an applausive driver, I +have since thought of it as rather melancholy. It was in fact no wiser +or livelier than a society function in the means of enjoyment it +afforded. The best thing about it was that it left the guests very much +to their own devices. The established pleasures were clumsy and +tiresome-looking; but one could eschew them. The more of them one +eschewed, the merrier perhaps; for I doubt if the race is formed for much +pleasure; and even a day's rest is more than most people can bear. They +endure it in passing, but they get home weary and cross, even after a +twenty-mile run on the wheel. The road, by-the-by, was full of homeward +wheels by this time, single and double and tandem, and my driver +professed that their multitude greatly increased the difficulties of his +profession. + + + + + + +SAWDUST IN THE ARENA + +It was in the old Roman arena of beautiful Verona that the circus events +I wish to speak of took place; in fact, I had the honor and profit of +seeing two circuses there. Or, strictly speaking, it was one entire +circus that I saw, and the unique speciality of another, the dying glory +of a circus on its last legs, the triumphal fall of a circus superb in +adversity. + + + + +I. + +The entire circus was altogether Italian, with the exception of the +clowns, who, to the credit of our nation, are always Americans, or +advertised as such, in Italy. Its chief and almost absorbing event was a +reproduction of the tournament which had then lately been held at Rome in +celebration of Prince Tommaso's coming of age, and for a copy of a copy +it was really fine. It had fitness in the arena, which must have +witnessed many such mediaeval shows in their time, and I am sensible +still of the pleasure its effects of color gave me. There was one +beautiful woman, a red blonde in a green velvet gown, who might have +ridden, as she was, out of a canvas of Titian's, if he had ever painted +equestrian pictures, and who at any rate was an excellent Carpaccio. +Then, the 'Clowns Americani' were very amusing, from a platform devoted +solely to them, and it was a source of pride if not of joy with me to +think that we were almost the only people present who understood their +jokes. In the vast oval of the arena, however, the circus ring looked +very little, not half so large, say, as the rim of a lady's hat in front +of you at the play; and on the gradines of the ancient amphitheatre we +were all such a great way off that a good field-glass would have been +needed to distinguish the features of the actors. I could not make out, +therefore, whether the 'Clowns Americani' had the national expression or +not, but one of them, I am sorry to say, spoke the United States language +with a cockney accent. I suspect that he was an Englishman who had +passed himself off upon the Italian management as a true Yankee, and who +had formed himself upon our school of clowning, just as some of the +recent English humorists have patterned after certain famous wits of +ours. I do not know that I would have exposed this impostor, even if +occasion had offered, for, after all, his fraud was a tribute to our own +primacy in clowning, and the Veronese were none the worse for his erring +aspirates. + +The audience was for me the best part of the spectacle, as the audience +always is in Italy, and I indulged my fancy in some cheap excursions +concerning the place and people. I reflected that it was the same race +essentially as that which used to watch the gladiatorial shows in that +arena when it was new, and that very possibly there were among these +spectators persons of the same blood as those Veronese patricians who had +left their names carved on the front of the gradines in places, to claim +this or that seat for their own. In fact, there was so little +difference, probably, in their qualities, from that time to this, that I +felt the process of the generations to be a sort of impertinence; and if +Nature had been present, I might very well have asked her why, when she +had once arrived at a given expression of humanity, she must go on +repeating it indefinitely? How were all those similar souls to know +themselves apart in their common eternity? Merely to have been +differently circumstanced in time did not seem enough; and I think Nature +would have been puzzled to answer me. But perhaps not; she may have had +her reasons, as that you cannot have too much of a good thing, and that +when the type was so fine in most respects as the Italian you could not +do better than go on repeating impressions from it. + +Certainly I myself could have wished no variation from it in the young +officer of 'bersaglieri', who had come down from antiquity to the topmost +gradine of the arena over against me, and stood there defined against the +clear evening sky, one hand on his hip, and the other at his side, while +his thin cockerel plumes streamed in the light wind. I have since +wondered if he knew how beautiful he was, and I am sure that, if he did +not, all the women there did, and that was doubtless enough for the young +officer of 'bersaglieri'. + + + + +II. + +I think that he was preliminary to the sole event of that partial circus +I have mentioned. This event was one that I have often witnessed +elsewhere, but never in such noble and worthy keeping. The top of the +outer arena wall must itself be fifty feet high, and the pole in the +centre of its oval seemed to rise fifty feet higher yet. At its base an +immense net was stretched, and a man in a Prince Albert coat and a derby +hat was figuring about, anxiously directing the workmen who were fixing +the guy-ropes, and testing every particular of the preparation with his +own hands. While this went on, a young girl ran out into the arena, and, +after a bow to the spectators, quickly mounted to the top of the pole, +where she presently stood in statuesque beauty that took all eyes even +from the loveliness of the officer of 'bersaglieri'. There the man in +the Prince Albert coat and the derby hat stepped back from the net and +looked up at her. + +She called down, in English that sounded like some delocalized, +denaturalized speech, it was so strange then and there, "Is it all +right?" + +He shouted back in the same alienated tongue, "Yes; keep to the left," +and she dived straight downward in the long plunge, till, just before she +reached the net, she turned a quick somersault into its elastic mesh. + +It was all so exquisitely graceful that one forgot how wickedly dangerous +it was; but I think that the brief English colloquy was the great wonder +of the event for me, and I doubt if I could ever have been perfectly +happy again, if chance had not amiably suffered me to satisfy my +curiosity concerning the speakers. A few evenings after that, I was at +that copy of a copy of a tournament, and, a few gradines below me, I saw +the man of the Prince Albert coat and the derby hat. I had already made +up my mind that he was an American, for I supposed that an Englishman +would rather perish than wear such a coat with such a hat, and as I had +wished all my life to speak to a circus-man, I went down and boldly +accosted him. "Are you a brother Yankee?" I asked, and he laughed, and +confessed that he was an Englishman, but he said he was glad to meet any +one who spoke English, and he made a place for me by his side. He was +very willing to tell how he happened to be there, and he explained that +he was the manager of a circus, which had been playing to very good +business all winter in Spain. In an evil hour he decided to come to +Italy, but he found the prices so ruinously low that he was forced to +disband his company. This diving girl was all that remained to him of +its many attractions, and he was trying to make a living for both in a +country where the admission to a circus was six of our cents, with fifty +for a reserved seat. But he was about to give it up and come to America, +where he said Barnum had offered him an engagement. I hope he found it +profitable, and is long since an American citizen, with as good right as +any of us to wear a Prince Albert coat with a derby hat. + + + + +III. + +There used to be very good circuses in Venice, where many Venetians had +the only opportunity of their lives to see a horse. The horses were the +great attraction for them, and, perhaps in concession to their habitual +destitution in this respect, the riding was providentially very good. It +was so good that it did not bore me, as circus-riding mostly does, +especially that of the silk-clad jockey who stands in his high boots, on +his back-bared horse, and ends by waving an American flag in triumph at +having been so tiresome. + +I am at a loss to know why they make such an ado about the lady who jumps +through paper hoops, which have first had holes poked in them to render +her transit easy, or why it should be thought such a merit in her to hop +over a succession of banners which are swept under her feet in a manner +to minify her exertion almost to nothing, but I observe it is so at all +circuses. At my first Venetian circus, which was on a broad expanse of +the Riva degli Schiavoni, there was a girl who flung herself to the +ground and back to her horse again, holding by his mane with one hand, +quite like the goddess out of the bath-gown at my village circus the +other day; and apparently there are more circuses in the world than +circus events. It must be as hard to think up anything new in that kind +as in romanticistic fiction, which circus-acting otherwise largely +resembles. + +At a circus which played all one winter in Florence I saw for the first +time-outside of polite society--the clown in evening dress, who now seems +essential to all circuses of metropolitan pretensions, and whom I missed +so gladly at my village circus. He is nearly as futile as the lady +clown, who is one of the saddest and strangest developments of New +Womanhood. + +Of the clowns who do not speak, I believe I like most the clown who +catches a succession of peak-crowned soft hats on his head, when thrown +across the ring by an accomplice. This is a very pretty sight always, +and at the Hippodrome in Paris I once saw a gifted creature take his +stand high up on the benches among the audience and catch these hats on +his head from a flight of a hundred feet through the air. This made me +proud of human nature, which is often so humiliating; and altogether I do +not think that after a real country circus there are many better things +in life than the Hippodrome. It had a state, a dignity, a smoothness, a +polish, which I should not know where to match, and when the superb coach +drove into the ring to convey the lady performers to the scene of their +events, there was a majesty in the effect which I doubt if courts have +the power to rival. Still, it should be remembered that I have never +been at court, and speak from a knowledge of the Hippodrome only. + + + + + + +AT A DIME MUSEUM + +"I see," said my friend, "that you have been writing a good deal about +the theatre during the past winter. You have been attacking its high +hats and its high prices, and its low morals; and I suppose that you +think you have done good, as people call it." + + + + +I. + +This seemed like a challenge of some sort, and I prepared myself to take +it up warily. I said I should be very sorry to do good, as people called +it; because such a line of action nearly always ended in spiritual pride +for the doer and general demoralization for the doee. Still, I said, a +law had lately been passed in Ohio giving a man who found himself behind +a high hat at the theatre a claim for damages against the manager; and if +the passage of this law could be traced ever so faintly and indirectly to +my teachings, I should not altogether grieve for the good I had done. +I added that if all the States should pass such a law, and other laws +fixing a low price for a certain number of seats at the theatres, or +obliging the managers to give one free performance every month, as the +law does in Paris, and should then forbid indecent and immoral plays-- + +"I see what you mean," said my friend, a little impatiently. "You mean +sumptuary legislation. But I have not come to talk to you upon that +subject, for then you would probably want to do all the talking yourself. +I want to ask you if you have visited any of the cheaper amusements of +this metropolis, or know anything of the really clever and charming +things one may see there for a very little money." + +"Ten cents, for instance?" + +"Yes." + +I answered that I would never own to having come as low down as that; and +I expressed a hardy and somewhat inconsistent doubt of the quality of the +amusement that could be had for that money. I questioned if anything +intellectual could be had for it. + +"What do you say to the ten-cent magazines?" my friend retorted. "And +do you pretend that the two-dollar drama is intellectual?" + +I had to confess that it generally was not, and that this was part of my +grief with it. + +Then he said: "I don't contend that it is intellectual, but I say that it +is often clever and charming at the ten-cent shows, just as it is less +often clever and charming in the ten-cent magazines. I think the average +of propriety is rather higher than it is at the two-dollar theatres; and +it is much more instructive at the ten-cent shows, if you come to that. +The other day," said my friend, and in squaring himself comfortably in +his chair and finding room for his elbow on the corner of my table he +knocked off some books for review, "I went to a dime museum for an hour +that I had between two appointments, and I must say that I never passed +an hour's time more agreeably. In the curio hall, as one of the +lecturers on the curios called it--they had several lecturers in white +wigs and scholars' caps and gowns--there was not a great deal to see, I +confess; but everything was very high-class. There was the inventor of a +perpetual motion, who lectured upon it and explained it from a diagram. +There was a fortune-teller in a three-foot tent whom I did not interview; +there were five macaws in one cage, and two gloomy apes in another. On a +platform at the end of the hall was an Australian family a good deal +gloomier than the apes, who sat in the costume of our latitude, staring +down the room with varying expressions all verging upon melancholy +madness, and who gave me such a pang of compassion as I have seldom got +from the tragedy of the two-dollar theatres. They allowed me to come +quite close up to them, and to feed my pity upon their wild dejection in +exile without stint. I couldn't enter into conversation with them, and +express my regret at finding them so far from their native boomerangs and +kangaroos and pinetree grubs, but I know they felt my sympathy, it was so +evident. I didn't see their performance, and I don't know that they had +any. They may simply have been there ethnologically, but this was a good +object, and the sight of their spiritual misery was alone worth the price +of admission. + +"After the inventor of the perpetual motion had brought his harangue to a +close, we all went round to the dais where a lady in blue spectacles +lectured us upon a fire-escape which she had invented, and operated a +small model of it. None of the events were so exciting that we could +regret it when the chief lecturer announced that this was the end of the +entertainment in the curio hall, and that now the performance in the +theatre was about to begin. He invited us to buy tickets at an +additional charge of five, ten, or fifteen cents for the gallery, +orchestra circle, or orchestra. + +"I thought I could afford an orchestra stall, for once. We were three in +the orchestra, another man and a young mother, not counting the little +boy she had with her; there were two people in the gallery, and a dozen +at least in the orchestra circle. An attendant shouted, 'Hats off!' and +the other man and I uncovered, and a lady came up from under the stage +and began to play the piano in front of it. The curtain rose, and the +entertainment began at once. It was a passage apparently from real life, +and it involved a dissatisfied boarder and the daughter of the landlady. +There was not much coherence in it, but there was a good deal of +conscience on the part of the actors, who toiled through it with +unflagging energy. The young woman was equipped for the dance she +brought into it at one point rather than for the part she had to sustain +in the drama. It was a very blameless dance, and she gave it as if she +was tired of it, but was not going to falter. She delivered her lines +with a hard, Southwestern accent, and I liked fancying her having come up +in a simpler-hearted section of the country than ours, encouraged by a +strong local belief that she was destined to do Juliet and Lady Macbeth, +or Peg Woffington at the least; but very likely she had not. + +"Her performance was followed by an event involving a single character. +The actor, naturally, was blackened as to his skin, but as to his dress +he was all in white, and at the first glance I could see that he had +temperament. I suspect that he thought I had, too, for he began to +address his entire drama to me. This was not surprising, for it would +not have been the thing for him to single out the young mother; and the +other man in the orchestra stalls seemed a vague and inexperienced youth, +whom he would hardly have given the preference over me. I felt the +compliment, but upon the whole it embarrassed me; it was too intimate, +and it gave me a publicity I would willingly have foregone. I did what I +could to reject it, by feigning an indifference to his jokes; I even +frowned a measure of disapproval; but this merely stimulated his +ambition. He was really a merry creature, and when he had got off a +number of very good things which were received in perfect silence, and +looked over his audience with a woe-begone eye, and said, with an effect +of delicate apology, 'I hope I'm not disturbing you any,' I broke down +and laughed, and that delivered me into his hand. He immediately said to +me that now he would tell me about a friend of his, who had a pretty +large family, eight of them living, and one in Philadelphia; and then for +no reason he seemed to change his mind, and said he would sing me a song +written expressly for him--by an expressman; and he went on from one wild +gayety to another, until he had worked his audience up to quite a frenzy +of enthusiasm, and almost had a recall when he went off. + +"I was rather glad to be rid of him, and I was glad that the next +performers, who were a lady and a gentleman contortionist of Spanish- +American extraction, behaved more impartially. They were really +remarkable artists in their way, and though it's a painful way, I +couldn't help admiring their gift in bowknots and other difficult poses. +The gentleman got abundant applause, but the lady at first got none. I +think perhaps it was because, with the correct feeling that prevailed +among us, we could not see a lady contort herself with so much approval +as a gentleman, and that there was a wound to our sense of propriety in +witnessing her skill. But I could see that the poor girl was hurt in her +artist pride by our severity, and at the next thing she did I led off the +applause with my umbrella. She instantly lighted up with a joyful smile, +and the young mother in the orchestra leaned forward to nod her sympathy +to me while she clapped. We were fast becoming a domestic circle, and it +was very pleasant, but I thought that upon the whole I had better go." + +"And do you think you had a profitable hour at that show?" I asked, with +a smile that was meant to be sceptical. + +"Profitable?" said my friend. "I said agreeable. I don't know about +the profit. But it was very good variety, and it was very cheap. I +understand that this is the kind of thing you want the two-dollar theatre +to come down to, or up to." + +"Not exactly, or not quite," I returned, thoughtfully, "though I must say +I think your time was as well spent as it would have been at most of the +plays I have seen this winter." + +My friend left the point, and said, with a dreamy air: "It was all very +pathetic, in a way. Three out of those five people were really clever, +and certainly artists. That colored brother was almost a genius, a very +common variety of genius, but still a genius, with a gift for his calling +that couldn't be disputed. He was a genuine humorist, and I sorrowed +over him--after I got safely away from his intimacy--as I should over +some author who was struggling along without winning his public. Why +not? One is as much in the show business as the other. There is a +difference of quality rather than of kind. Perhaps by-and-by my colored +humorist will make a strike with his branch of the public, as you are +always hoping to do with yours." + +"You don't think you're making yourself rather offensive?" I suggested. + +"Not intentionally. Aren't the arts one? How can you say that any art +is higher than the others? Why is it nobler to contort the mind than to +contort the body?" + +"I am always saying that it is not at all noble to contort the mind," +I returned, "and I feel that to aim at nothing higher than the amusement +of your readers is to bring yourself most distinctly to the level of the +show business." + +"Yes, I know that is your pose," said my friend. "And I dare say you +really think that you make a distinction in facts when you make a +distinction in terms. If you don't amuse your readers, you don't keep +them; practically, you cease to exist. You may call it interesting them, +if you like; but, really, what is the difference? You do your little +act, and because the stage is large and the house is fine, you fancy you +are not of that sad brotherhood which aims to please in humbler places, +with perhaps cruder means--" + +"I don't know whether I like your saws less than your instances, or your +instances less than your saws," I broke in. "Have you been at the circus +yet?" + + + + +II. + +"Yet?" demanded my friend. "I went the first night, and I have been a +good deal interested in the examination of my emotions ever since. +I can't find out just why I have so much pleasure in the trapeze. +Half the time I want to shut my eyes, and a good part of the time I do +look away; but I wouldn't spare any actor the most dangerous feat. +One of the poor girls, that night, dropped awkwardly into the net after +her performance, and limped off to the dressing-room with a sprained +ankle. It made me rather sad to think that now she must perhaps give up +her perilous work for a while, and pay a doctor, and lose her salary, but +it didn't take away my interest in the other trapezists flying through +the air above another net. + +"If I had honestly complained of anything it would have been of the +superfluity which glutted rather than fed me. How can you watch three +sets of trapezists at once? You really see neither well. It's the same +with the three rings. There should be one ring, and each act should have +a fair chance with the spectator, if it took six hours; I would willingly +give the time. Fancy three stages at the theatre, with three plays going +on at once!" + +"No, don't fancy that!" I entreated. "One play is bad enough." + +"Or fancy reading three novels simultaneously, and listening at the same +time to a lecture and a sermon, which could represent the two platforms +between the rings," my friend calmly persisted. "The three rings are an +abuse and an outrage, but I don't know but I object still more to the +silencing of the clowns. They have a great many clowns now, but they are +all dumb, and you only get half the good you used to get out of the +single clown of the old one-ring circus. Why, it's as if the literary +humorist were to lead up to a charming conceit or a subtle jest, and then +put asterisks where the humor ought to come in." + +"Don't you think you are going from bad to worse?" I asked. + +My friend went on: "I'm afraid the circus is spoiled for me. It has +become too much of a good thing; for it is a good thing; almost the best +thing in the way of an entertainment that there is. I'm still very fond +of it, but I come away defeated and defrauded because I have been +embarrassed with riches, and have been given more than I was able to +grasp. My greed has been overfed. I think I must keep to those +entertainments where you can come at ten in the morning and stay till ten +at night, with a perpetual change of bill, only one stage, and no fall of +the curtain. I suppose you would object to them because they're getting +rather dear; at the best of them now they ask you a dollar for the first +seats." + +I said that I did not think this too much for twelve hours, if the +intellectual character of the entertainment was correspondingly high. + +"It's as high as that of some magazines," said my friend, "though I could +sometimes wish it were higher. It's like the matter in the Sunday +papers--about that average. Some of it's good, and most of it isn't. +Some of it could hardly be worse. But there is a great deal of it, and +you get it consecutively and not simultaneously. That constitutes its +advantage over the circus." + +My friend stopped, with a vague smile, and I asked: + +"Then, do I understand that you would advise me to recommend the dime +museums, the circus, and the perpetual-motion varieties in the place of +the theatres?" + +"You have recommended books instead, and that notion doesn't seem to have +met with much favor, though you urged their comparative cheapness. Now, +why not suggest something that is really level with the popular taste?" + + + + + + +AMERICAN LITERATURE IN EXILE + +A recently lecturing Englishman is reported to have noted the unenviable +primacy of the United States among countries where the struggle for +material prosperity has been disastrous to the pursuit of literature. +He said, or is said to have said (one cannot be too careful in +attributing to a public man the thoughts that may be really due to an +imaginative frame in the reporter), that among us, "the old race of +writers of distinction, such as Longfellow, Bryant, Holmes, and +Washington Irving, have (sic) died out, and the Americans who are most +prominent in cultivated European opinion in art or literature, like +Sargent, Henry James, or Marion Crawford, live habitually out of America, +and draw their inspiration from England, France, and Italy." + + + + +I. + +If this were true, I confess that I am so indifferent to what many +Americans glory in that it would not distress me, or wound me in the sort +of self-love which calls itself patriotism. If it would at all help to +put an end to that struggle for material prosperity which has eventuated +with us in so many millionaires and so many tramps, I should be glad to +believe that it was driving our literary men out of the country. This +would be a tremendous object-lesson, and might be a warning to the +millionaires and the tramps. But I am afraid it would not have this +effect, for neither our very rich nor our very poor care at all for the +state of polite learning among us; though for the matter of that, I +believe that economic conditions have little to do with it; and that if a +general mediocrity of fortune prevailed and there were no haste to be +rich and to get poor, the state of polite learning would not be +considerably affected. As matters stand, I think we may reasonably ask +whether the Americans "most prominent in cultivated European opinion," +the Americans who "live habitually out of America," are not less exiles +than advance agents of the expansion now advertising itself to the world. +They may be the vanguard of the great army of adventurers destined to +overrun the earth from these shores, and exploit all foreign countries to +our advantage. They probably themselves do not know it, but in the act +of "drawing their inspiration" from alien scenes, or taking their own +where they find it, are not they simply transporting to Europe "the +struggle for material prosperity," which Sir Lepel supposes to be fatal +to them here? + +There is a question, however, which comes before this, and that is the +question whether they have quitted us in such numbers as justly to alarm +our patriotism. Qualitatively, in the authors named and in the late Mr. +Bret Harte, Mr. Harry Harland, and the late Mr. Harold Frederic, as well +as in Mark Twain, once temporarily resident abroad, the defection is very +great; but quantitatively it is not such as to leave us without a fair +measure of home-keeping authorship. Our destitution is not nearly so +great now in the absence of Mr. James and Mr. Crawford as it was in the +times before the "struggle for material prosperity" when Washington +Irving went and lived in England and on the European continent well-nigh +half his life. + +Sir Lepel Griffin--or Sir Lepel Griffin's reporter--seems to forget the +fact of Irving's long absenteeism when he classes him with "the old race" +of eminent American authors who stayed at home. But really none of those +he names were so constant to our air as he seems--or his reporter seems +--to think. Longfellow sojourned three or four years in Germany, Spain, +and Italy; Holmes spent as great time in Paris; Bryant was a frequent +traveller, and each of them "drew his inspiration" now and then from +alien sources. Lowell was many years in Italy, Spain, and England; +Motley spent more than half his life abroad; Hawthorne was away from us +nearly a decade. + + + + +II. + +If I seem to be proving too much in one way, I do not feel that I am +proving too much in another. My facts go to show that the literary +spirit is the true world-citizen, and is at home everywhere. If any good +American were distressed by the absenteeism of our authors, I should +first advise him that American literature was not derived from the +folklore of the red Indians, but was, as I have said once before, +a condition of English literature, and was independent even of our +independence. Then I should entreat him to consider the case of foreign +authors who had found it more comfortable or more profitable to live out +of their respective countries than in them. I should allege for his +consolation the case of Byron, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt, and more latterly +that of the Brownings and Walter Savage Landor, who preferred an Italian +to an English sojourn; and yet more recently that of Mr. Rudyard Kipling, +who voluntarily lived several years in Vermont, and has "drawn his +inspiration" in notable instances from the life of these States. It will +serve him also to consider that the two greatest Norwegian authors, +Bjornsen and Ibsen, have both lived long in France and Italy. Heinrich +Heine loved to live in Paris much better than in Dusseldorf, or even in +Hamburg; and Tourguenief himself, who said that any man's country could +get on without him, but no man could get on without his country, managed +to dispense with his own in the French capital, and died there after he +was quite free to go back to St. Petersburg. In the last century Rousseau +lived in France rather than Switzerland; Voltaire at least tried to live +in Prussia, and was obliged to a long exile elsewhere; Goldoni left fame +and friends in Venice for the favor of princes in Paris. + +Literary absenteeism, it seems to me, is not peculiarly an American vice +or an American virtue. It is an expression and a proof of the modern +sense which enlarges one's country to the bounds of civilization. +I cannot think it justly a reproach in the eyes of the world, and if any +American feels it a grievance, I suggest that he do what he can to have +embodied in the platform of his party a plank affirming the right of +American authors to a public provision that will enable them to live as +agreeably at home as they can abroad on the same money. In the mean +time, their absenteeism is not a consequence of "the struggle for +material prosperity," not a high disdain of the strife which goes on not +less in Europe than in America, and must, of course, go on everywhere as +long as competitive conditions endure, but is the result of chances and +preferences which mean nothing nationally calamitous or discreditable. + + + + + + +THE HORSE SHOW + +"As good as the circus--not so good as the circus--better than the +circus." These were my varying impressions, as I sat looking down upon +the tanbark, the other day, at the Horse Show in Madison Square Garden; +and I came away with their blend for my final opinion. + + + + +I. + +I might think that the Horse Show (which is so largely a Man Show and a +Woman Show) was better or worse than the circus, or about as good; but I +could not get away from the circus, in my impression of it. Perhaps the +circus is the norm of all splendors where the horse and his master are +joined for an effect upon the imagination of the spectator. I am sure +that I have never been able quite to dissociate from it the +picturesqueness of chivalry, and that it will hereafter always suggest to +me the last correctness of fashion. It is through the horse that these +far extremes meet; in all times the horse has been the supreme expression +of aristocracy; and it may very well be that a dream of the elder world +prophesied the ultimate type of the future, when the Swell shall have +evolved into the Centaur. + +Some such teasing notion of their mystical affinity is what haunts you as +you make your round of the vast ellipse, with the well-groomed men about +you and the well-groomed horses beyond the barrier. + +In this first affair of the new-comer, the horses are not so much on +show as the swells; you get only glimpses of shining coats and tossing +manes, with a glint here and there of a flying hoof through the lines of +people coming and going, and the ranks of people, three or four feet +deep, against the rails of the ellipse; but the swells are there in +perfect relief, and it is they who finally embody the Horse Show to you. +The fact is that they are there to see, of course, but the effect is that +they are there to be seen. + +The whole spectacle had an historical quality, which I tasted with +pleasure. It was the thing that had eventuated in every civilization, +and the American might feel a characteristic pride that what came to Rome +in five hundred years had come to America in a single century. There was +something fine in the absolutely fatal nature of the result, and I +perceived that nowhere else in our life, which is apt to be reclusive in +its exclusiveness, is the prime motive at work in it so dramatically +apparent. "Yes," I found myself thinking, "this is what it all comes to: +the 'subiti guadagni' of the new rich, made in large masses and seeking a +swift and eager exploitation, and the slowly accumulated fortunes, put +together from sparing and scrimping, from slaving and enslaving, in +former times, and now in the stainless white hands of the second or third +generation, they both meet here to the purpose of a common ostentation, +and create a Horse Show." + +I cannot say that its creators looked much as if they liked it, now they +had got it; and, so far as I have been able to observe them, people of +wealth and fashion always dissemble their joy, and have the air of being +bored in the midst of their amusements. This reserve of rapture may be +their delicacy, their unwillingness to awaken envy in the less prospered; +and I should not have objected to the swells at the Horse Show looking +dreary if they had looked more like swells; except for a certain hardness +of the countenance (which I found my own sympathetically taking on) I +should not have thought them very patrician, and this hardness may have +been merely the consequence of being so much stared at. Perhaps, indeed, +they were not swells whom I saw in the boxes, but only companies of +ordinary people who had clubbed together and hired their boxes; +I understand that this can be done, and the student of civilization so +far misled. But certainly if they were swells they did not look quite up +to themselves; though, for that matter, neither do the nobilities of +foreign countries, and on one or two occasions when I have seen them, +kings and emperors have failed me in like manner. They have all wanted +that indescribable something which I have found so satisfying in +aristocracies and royalties on the stage; and here at the Horse Show, +while I made my tour, I constantly met handsome, actor-like folk on foot +who could much better have taken the role of the people in the boxes. +The promenaders may not have been actors at all; they may have been the +real thing for which I was in vain scanning the boxes, but they looked +like actors, who indeed set an example to us all in personal beauty and +in correctness of dress. + +I mean nothing offensive either to swells or to actors. We have not +distinction, as a people; Matthew Arnold noted that; and it is not our +business to have it: When it is our business our swells will have it, +just as our actors now have it, especially our actors of English birth. +I had not this reflection about me at the time to console me for my +disappointment, and it only now occurs to me that what I took for an +absence of distinction may have been such a universal prevalence of it +that the result was necessarily a species of indistinction. But in the +complexion of any social assembly we Americans are at a disadvantage with +Europeans from the want of uniforms. A few military scattered about in +those boxes, or even a few sporting bishops in shovel-hats and aprons, +would have done much to relieve them from the reproach I have been +heaping upon them. Our women, indeed, poor things, always do their duty +in personal splendor, and it is not of a poverty in their modes at the +Horse Show that I am complaining. If the men had borne their part as +well, there would not have been these tears: and yet, what am I saying? +There was here and there a clean-shaven face (which I will not believe +was always an actor's), and here and there a figure superbly set up, and +so faultlessly appointed as to shoes, trousers, coat, tie, hat, and +gloves as to have a salience from the mass of good looks and good clothes +which I will not at last call less than distinction. + + + + +II. + +At any rate, I missed these marked presences when I left the lines of the +promenaders around the ellipse, and climbed to a seat some tiers above +the boxes. I am rather anxious to have it known that my seat was not one +of those cheap ones in the upper gallery, but was with the virtuous poor +who could afford to pay a dollar and a half for their tickets. I bought +it of a speculator on the sidewalk, who said it was his last, so that I +conceived it the last in the house; but I found the chairs by no means +all filled, though it was as good an audience as I have sometimes seen in +the same place at other circuses. The people about me were such as I had +noted at the other circuses, hotel-sojourners, kindly-looking comers from +provincial towns and cities, whom I instantly felt myself at home with, +and free to put off that gloomy severity of aspect which had grown upon +me during my association with the swells below. My neighbors were +sufficiently well dressed, and if they had no more distinction than their +betters, or their richers, they had not the burden of the occasion upon +them, and seemed really glad of what was going on in the ring. + +There again I was sensible of the vast advantage of costume. The bugler +who stood up at one end of the central platform and blew a fine fanfare +(I hope it was a fanfare) towards the gates where the horses were to +enter from their stalls in the basement was a hussar-like shape that +filled my romantic soul with joy; and the other figures of the management +I thought very fortunate compromises between grooms and ringmasters. At +any rate, their nondescript costumes were gay, and a relief from the +fashions in the boxes and the promenade; they were costumes, and costumes +are always more sincere, if not more effective, than fashions. As I have +hinted, I do not know just what costumes they were, but they took the +light well from the girandole far aloof and from the thousands of little +electric bulbs that beaded the roof in long lines, and dispersed the +sullenness of the dull, rainy afternoon. When the knights entered the +lists on the seats of their dog-carts, with their squires beside them, +and their shining tandems before them, they took the light well, too, and +the spectacle was so brilliant that I trust my imagery may be forgiven a +novelist pining for the pageantries of the past. I do not know to this +moment whether these knights were bona fide gentlemen, or only their +deputies, driving their tandems for them, and I am equally at a loss to +account for the variety, of their hats. Some wore tall, shining silk +hats; some flat-topped, brown derbys; some simple black pot-hats;--and is +there, then, no rigor as to the head-gear of people driving tandems? +I felt that there ought to be, and that there ought to be some rule as to +where the number of each tandem should be displayed. As it was, this was +sometimes carelessly stuck into the seat of the cart; sometimes it was +worn at the back of the groom's waist, and sometimes full upon his +stomach. In the last position it gave a touch of burlesque which wounded +me; for these are vital matters, and I found myself very exacting in +them. + +With the horses themselves I could find no fault upon the grounds of my +censure of the show in some other ways. They had distinction; they were +patrician; they were swell. They felt it, they showed it, they rejoiced +in it; and the most reluctant observer could not deny them the glory of +blood, of birth, which the thoroughbred horse has expressed in all lands +and ages. Their lordly port was a thing that no one could dispute, and +for an aristocracy I suppose that they had a high average of +intelligence, though there might be two minds about this. They made me +think of mettled youths and haughty dames; they abashed the humble spirit +of the beholder with the pride of their high-stepping, their curvetting +and caracoling, as they jingled in their shining harness around the long +ring. Their noble uselessness took the fancy, for I suppose that there +is nothing so superbly superfluous as a tandem, outside or inside of the +best society. It is something which only the ambition of wealth and +unbroken leisure can mount to; and I was glad that the display of tandems +was the first event of the Horse Show which I witnessed, for it seemed to +me that it must beyond all others typify the power which created the +Horse Show. I wished that the human side of it could have been more +unquestionably adequate, but the equine side of the event was perfect. +Still, I felt a certain relief, as in something innocent and simple and +childlike, in the next event. + + + + +III. + +This was the inundation of the tan-bark with troops of pretty Shetland +ponies of all ages, sizes, and colors. A cry of delight went up from a +group of little people near me, and the spell of the Horse Show was +broken. It was no longer a solemnity of fashion, it was a sweet and +kindly pleasure which every one could share, or every one who had ever +had, or ever wished to have, a Shetland pony; the touch of nature made +the whole show kin. I could not see that the freakish, kittenish +creatures did anything to claim our admiration, but they won our +affection by every trait of ponyish caprice and obstinacy. The small +colts broke away from the small mares, and gambolled over the tanbark in +wanton groups, with gay or plaintive whinnyings, which might well have +touched a responsive chord in the bosom of fashion itself: I dare say it +is not so hard as it looks. The scene remanded us to a moment of +childhood; and I found myself so fond of all the ponies that I felt it +invidious of the judges to choose among them for the prizes; they ought +every one to have had the prize. + +I suppose a Shetland pony is not a very useful animal in our conditions; +no doubt a good, tough, stubbed donkey would be worth all their tribe +when it came down to hard work; but we cannot all be hard-working +donkeys, and some of us may be toys and playthings without too great +reproach. I gazed after the broken, refluent wave of these amiable +creatures, with the vague toleration here formulated, but I was not quite +at peace in it, or fully consoled in my habitual ethicism till the next +event brought the hunters with their high-jumping into the ring. These +noble animals unite use and beauty in such measure that the censor must +be of Catonian severity who can refuse them his praise. When I reflected +that by them and their devoted riders our civilization had been +assimilated to that of the mother-country in its finest expression, and +another tie added to those that bind us to her through the language of +Shakespeare and Milton; that they had tamed the haughty spirit of the +American farmer in several parts of the country so that he submitted for +a consideration to have his crops ridden over, and that they had all but +exterminated the ferocious anise-seed bag, once so common and destructive +among us, I was in a fit mood to welcome the bars and hurdles which were +now set up at four or five places for the purposes of the high-jumping. +As to the beauty of the hunting-horse, though, I think I must hedge a +little, while I stand firmly to my admiration of his use. To be honest, +the tandem horse is more to my taste. He is better shaped, and he bears +himself more proudly. The hunter is apt to behave, whatever his reserve +of intelligence, like an excited hen; he is apt to be ewe-necked and bred +away to nothing where the ideal horse abounds; he has the behavior of a +turkey-hen when not behaving like the common or garden hen. But there +can be no question of his jumping, which seems to be his chief business +in a world where we are all appointed our several duties, and I at once +began to take a vivid pleasure in his proficiency. I have always felt a +blind and insensate joy in running races, which has no relation to any +particular horse, and I now experienced an impartial rapture in the +performances of these hunters. They looked very much alike, and if it +had not been for the changing numbers on the sign-board in the centre of +the ring announcing that 650, 675, or 602 was now jumping, I might have +thought it was 650 all the time. + +A high jump is not so fine a sight as a running race when the horses have +got half a mile away and look like a covey of swift birds, but it is +still a fine sight. I became very fastidious as to which moment of it +was the finest, whether when the horse rose in profile, or when his +aerial hoof touched the ground (with the effect of half jerking his +rider's head half off), or when he showed a flying heel in perspective; +and I do not know to this hour which I prefer. But I suppose I was +becoming gradually spoiled by my pleasure, for as time went on I noticed +that I was not satisfied with the monotonous excellence of the horses' +execution. Will it be credited that I became willing something should +happen, anything, to vary it? I asked myself why, if some of the more +exciting incidents of the hunting-field which I had read of must befall; +I should not see them. Several of the horses had balked at the barriers, +and almost thrown their riders across them over their necks, but not +quite done it; several had carried away the green-tufted top rail with +their heels; when suddenly there came a loud clatter from the farther +side of the ellipse, where a whole panel of fence had gone down. I +looked eagerly for the prostrate horse and rider under the bars, but they +were cantering safely away. + + + + +IV. + +It was enough, however. I perceived that I was becoming demoralized, and +that if I were to write of the Horse Show with at all the superiority one +likes to feel towards the rich and great, I had better come away. But I +came away critical, even in my downfall, and feeling that, circus for +circus, the Greatest Show on Earth which I had often seen in that place +had certain distinct advantages of the Horse Show. It had three rings +and two platforms; and, for another thing, the drivers and riders in the +races, when they won, bore the banner of victory aloft in their hands, +instead of poorly letting a blue or red ribbon flicker at their horses' +ears. The events were more frequent and rapid; the costumes infinitely +more varied and picturesque. As for the people in the boxes, I do not +know that they were less distinguished than these at the Horse Show, but +if they were not of the same high level in which distinction was +impossible, they did not show it in their looks. + +The Horse Show, in fine, struck me as a circus of not all the first +qualities; and I had moments of suspecting that it was no more than the +evolution of the county cattle show. But in any case I had to own that +its great success was quite legitimate; for the horse, upon the whole, +appeals to a wider range of humanity, vertically as well as horizontally, +than any other interest, not excepting politics or religion. I cannot, +indeed, regard him as a civilizing influence; but then we cannot be +always civilizing. + + + + + + +THE PROBLEM OF THE SUMMER + +It has sometimes seemed to me that the solution of the problem how and +where to spend the summer was simplest with those who were obliged to +spend it as they spent the winter, and increasingly difficult in the +proportion of one's ability to spend it wherever and however one chose. +Few are absolutely released to this choice, however, and those few are +greatly to be pitied. I know that they are often envied and hated for it +by those who have no such choice, but that is a pathetic mistake. If we +could look into their hearts, indeed, we should witness there so much +misery that we should wish rather to weep over them than to reproach them +with their better fortune, or what appeared so. + + + + +I. + +For most people choice is a curse, and it is this curse that the summer +brings upon great numbers who would not perhaps otherwise be afflicted. +They are not in the happy case of those who must stay at home; their hard +necessity is that they can go away, and try to be more agreeably placed +somewhere else; but although I say they are in great numbers, they are an +infinitesimal minority of the whole bulk of our population. Their bane +is not, in its highest form, that of the average American who has no +choice of the kind; and when one begins to speak of the summer problem, +one must begin at once to distinguish. It is the problem of the East +rather than of the West (where people are much more in the habit of +staying at home the year round), and it is the problem of the city and +not of the country. I am not sure that there is one practical farmer in +the whole United States who is obliged to witness in his household those +sad dissensions which almost separate the families of professional men as +to where and how they shall pass the summer. People of this class, which +is a class with some measure of money, ease, and taste, are commonly of +varying and decided minds, and I once knew a family of the sort whose +combined ideal for their summer outing was summed up in the simple desire +for society and solitude, mountain-air and sea-bathing. They spent the +whole months of April, May, and June in a futile inquiry for a resort +uniting these attractions, and on the first of July they drove to the +station with no definite point in view. But they found that they could +get return tickets for a certain place on an inland lake at a low figure, +and they took the first train for it. There they decided next morning to +push on to the mountains, and sent their baggage to the station, but +before it was checked they changed their minds, and remained two weeks +where they were. Then they took train for a place on the coast, but in +the cars a friend told them they ought to go to another place; they +decided to go there, but before arriving at the junction they decided +again to keep on. They arrived at their original destination, and the +following day telegraphed for rooms at a hotel farther down the coast. +The answer came that there were no rooms, and being by this time ready to +start, they started, and in due time reported themselves at the hotel. +The landlord saw that something must be done, and he got them rooms, at a +smaller house, and 'mealed' them (as it used to be called at Mt. Desert) +in his own. But upon experiment of the fare at the smaller house they +liked it so well that they resolved to live there altogether, and they +spent a summer of the greatest comfort there, so that they would hardly +come away when the house closed in the fall. + +This was an extreme case, and perhaps such a venture might not always +turn out so happily; but I think that people might oftener trust +themselves to Providence in these matters than they do. There is really +an infinite variety of pleasant resorts of all kinds now, and one could +quite safely leave it to the man in the ticket-office where one should +go, and check one's baggage accordingly. I think the chances of an +agreeable summer would be as good in that way as in making a hard-and- +fast choice of a certain place and sticking to it. My own experience is +that in these things chance makes a very good choice for one, as it does +in most non-moral things. + + + + +II. + +A joke dies hard, and I am not sure that the life is yet quite out of the +kindly ridicule that was cast for a whole generation upon the people who +left their comfortable houses in town to starve upon farm-board or stifle +in the narrow rooms of mountain and seaside hotels. Yet such people were +in the right, and their mockers were in the wrong, and their patient +persistence in going out of town for the summer in the face of severe +discouragements has multiplied indefinitely the kinds of summer resorts, +and reformed them altogether. I believe the city boarding-house remains +very much what it used to be; but I am bound to say that the country +boarding-house has vastly improved since I began to know it. As for the +summer hotel, by steep or by strand, it leaves little to be complained of +except the prices. I take it for granted, therefore, that the out-of- +town summer has come to stay, for all who can afford it, and that the +chief sorrow attending it is that curse of choice, which I have already +spoken of. + +I have rather favored chance than choice, because, whatever choice you +make, you are pretty sure to regret it, with a bitter sense of +responsibility added, which you cannot feel if chance has chosen for you. +I observe that people who own summer cottages are often apt to wish they +did not, and were foot-loose to roam where they listed, and I have been +told that even a yacht is not a source of unmixed content, though so +eminently detachable. To great numbers Europe looks from this shore like +a safe refuge from the American summer problem; and yet I am not sure +that it is altogether so; for it is not enough merely to go to Europe; +one has to choose where to go when one has got there. A European city is +certainly always more tolerable than an American city, but one cannot +very well pass the summer in Paris, or even in London. The heart there, +as here, will yearn for some blessed seat + + "Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, + Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies + Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns + And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea," + +and still, after your keel touches the strand of that alluring old world, +you must buy your ticket and register your trunk for somewhere in +particular. + + + + +III. + +It is truly a terrible stress, this summer problem, and, as I say, my +heart aches much more for those who have to solve it and suffer the +consequences of their choice than for those who have no choice, but must +stay the summer through where their work is, and be humbly glad that they +have any work to keep them there. I am not meaning now, of course, +business men obliged to remain in the city to earn the bread--or, more +correctly, the cake--of their families in the country, or even their +clerks and bookkeepers, and porters and messengers, but such people as I +sometimes catch sight of from the elevated trains (in my reluctant +midsummer flights through the city), sweltering in upper rooms over +sewing-machines or lap-boards, or stewing in the breathless tenement +streets, or driving clangorous trucks, or monotonous cars, or bending +over wash-tubs at open windows for breaths of the no-air without. +These all get on somehow, and at the end of the summer they have not to +accuse themselves of folly in going to one place rather than another. +Their fate is decided for them, and they submit to it; whereas those who +decide their fate are always rebelling against it. They it is whom I am +truly sorry for, and whom I write of with tears in my ink. Their case is +hard, and it will seem all the harder if we consider how foolish they +will look and how flat they will feel at the judgment-day, when they are +asked about their summer outings. I do not really suppose we shall be +held to a very strict account for our pleasures because everybody else +has not enjoyed them, too; that would be a pity of our lives; and yet +there is an old-fashioned compunction which will sometimes visit the +heart if we take our pleasures ungraciously, when so many have no +pleasures to take. I would suggest, then, to those on whom the curse of +choice between pleasures rests, that they should keep in mind those who +have chiefly pains to their portion in life. + +I am not, I hope, urging my readers to any active benevolence, or +counselling them to share their pleasures with others; it has been +accurately ascertained that there are not pleasures enough to go round, +as things now are; but I would seriously entreat them to consider whether +they could not somewhat alleviate the hardships of their own lot at the +sea-side or among the mountains, by contrasting it with the lot of others +in the sweat-shops and the boiler-factories of life. I know very well +that it is no longer considered very good sense or very good morality to +take comfort in one's advantages from the disadvantages of others, and +this is not quite what I mean to teach. Perhaps I mean nothing more than +an overhauling of the whole subject of advantages and disadvantages, +which would be a light and agreeable occupation for the leisure of the +summer outer. It might be very interesting, and possibly it might be +amusing, for one stretched upon the beach or swaying in the hammock to +inquire into the reasons for his or her being so favored, and it is not +beyond the bounds of expectation that a consensus of summer opinion on +this subject would go far to enlighten the world upon a question that has +vexed the world ever since mankind was divided into those who work too +much and those who rest too much. + + + + + + +AESTHETIC NEW YORK FIFTY-ODD YEARS AGO + +A study of New York civilization in 1849 has lately come into my hands, +with a mortifying effect, which I should like to share with the reader, +to my pride of modernity. I had somehow believed that after half a +century of material prosperity, such as the world has never seen before, +New York in 1902 must be very different from New York in 1849, but if I +am to trust either the impressions of the earlier student or my own, New +York is essentially the same now that it was then. The spirit of the +place has not changed; it is as it was, splendidly and sordidly +commercial. Even the body of it has undergone little or no alteration; +it was as shapeless, as incongruous; as ugly when the author of 'New York +in Slices' wrote as it is at this writing; it has simply grown, or +overgrown, on the moral and material lines which seem to have been +structural in it from the beginning. He felt in his time the same +vulgarity, the same violence, in its architectural anarchy that I have +felt in my time, and he noted how all dignity and beauty perished, amid +the warring forms, with a prescience of my own affliction, which deprives +me of the satisfaction of a discoverer and leaves me merely the sense of +being rather old-fashioned in my painful emotions. + + + + +I. + +I wish I could pretend that my author philosophized the facts of his New +York with something less than the raw haste of the young journalist; but +I am afraid I must own that 'New York in Slices' affects one as having +first been printed in an evening paper, and that the writer brings to the +study of the metropolis something like the eager horror of a country +visitor. This probably enabled him to heighten the effect he wished to +make with readers of a kindred tradition, and for me it adds a certain +innocent charm to his work. I may make myself better understood if I say +that his attitude towards the depravities of a smaller New York is much +the same as that of Mr. Stead towards the wickedness of a much larger +Chicago. He seizes with some such avidity upon the darker facts of the +prisons, the slums, the gambling-houses, the mock auctions, the toughs +(who then called themselves b'hoys and g'hals), the quacks, the theatres, +and even the intelligence offices, and exploits their iniquities with a +ready virtue which the wickedest reader can enjoy with him. + +But if he treated of these things alone, I should not perhaps have +brought his curious little book to the polite notice of my readers. +He treats also of the press, the drama, the art, and, above all, +"the literary soirees" of that remote New York of his in a manner to make +us latest New-Yorkers feel our close proximity to it. Fifty-odd years +ago journalism had already become "the absorbing, remorseless, clamorous +thing" we now know, and very different from the thing it was when +"expresses were unheard of, and telegraphs were uncrystallized from the +lightning's blue and fiery film." Reporterism was beginning to assume +its present importance, but it had not yet become the paramount +intellectual interest, and did not yet "stand shoulder to shoulder" with +the counting-room in authority. Great editors, then as now, ranked great +authors in the public esteem, or achieved a double primacy by uniting +journalism and literature in the same personality. They were often the +owners as well as the writers of their respective papers, and they +indulged for the advantage of the community the rancorous rivalries, +recriminations, and scurrilities which often form the charm, if not the +chief use, of our contemporaneous journals. Apparently, however, +notarially authenticated boasts of circulation had not yet been made the +delight of their readers, and the press had not become the detective +agency that it now is, nor the organizer and distributer of charities. + +But as dark a cloud of doubt rested upon its relations to the theatre as +still eclipses the popular faith in dramatic criticism. "How can you +expect," our author asks, "a frank and unbiassed criticism upon the +performance of George Frederick Cooke Snooks . . . when the editor or +reporter who is to write it has just been supping on beefsteak and stewed +potatoes at Windust's, and regaling himself on brandy-and-water cold, +without, at the expense of the aforesaid George Frederick Cooke Snooks?" +The severest censor of the press, however, would hardly declare now that +"as to such a thing as impartial and independent criticism upon theatres +in the present state of the relations between editors, reporters, +managers, actors--and actresses--the thing is palpably out of the +question," and if matters were really at the pass hinted, the press has +certainly improved in fifty years, if one may judge from its present +frank condemnations of plays and players. The theatre apparently has +not, for we read that at that period "a very great majority of the +standard plays and farces on the stage depend mostly for their piquancy +and their power of interesting an audience upon intrigues with married +women, elopements, seductions, bribery, cheating, and fraud of every +description . . . . Stage costume, too, wherever there is half a +chance, is usually made as lascivious and immodest as possible; and a +freedom and impropriety prevails among the characters of the piece which +would be kicked out of private society the instant it would have the +audacity to make its appearance there." + + + + +II. + +I hope private society in New York would still be found as correct if not +quite so violent; and I wish I could believe that the fine arts were +presently in as flourishing a condition among us as they were in 1849. +That was the prosperous day of the Art Unions, in which the artists +clubbed their output, and the subscribers parted the works among +themselves by something so very like raffling that the Art Unions were +finally suppressed under the law against lotteries. While they lasted, +however, they had exhibitions thronged by our wealth, fashion, and +intellect (to name them in the order they hold the New York mind), as our +private views now are, or ought to be; and the author "devotes an entire +number" of his series "to a single institution"--fearless of being +accused of partiality by any who rightly appreciate the influences of the +fine arts upon the morals and refinement of mankind. + +He devotes even more than an entire number to literature; for, besides +treating of various literary celebrities at the "literary soirees," he +imagines encountering several of them at the high-class restaurants. +At Delmonico's, where if you had "French and money" you could get in that +day "a dinner which, as a work of art, ranks with a picture by +Huntington, a poem by Willis, or a statue by Powers," he meets such a +musical critic as Richard Grant White, such an intellectual epicurean as +N. P. Willis, such a lyric poet as Charles Fenno Hoffman. But it would +be a warm day for Delmonico's when the observer in this epoch could +chance upon so much genius at its tables, perhaps because genius among us +has no longer the French or the money. Indeed, the author of 'New York +in Slices' seems finally to think that he has gone too far, even for his +own period, and brings himself up with the qualifying reservation that if +Willis and Hoffman never did dine together at Delmonico's, they ought to +have done so. He has apparently no misgivings as to the famous musical +critic, and he has no scruple in assembling for us at his "literary +soiree" a dozen distinguished-looking men and "twice as many women.... +listening to a tall, deaconly man, who stands between two candles held by +a couple of sticks summoned from the recesses of the back parlor, reading +a basketful of gilt-edged notes. It is . . . the annual Valentine +Party, to which all the male and female authors have contributed for the +purpose of saying on paper charming things of each other, and at which, +for a few hours, all are gratified with the full meed of that praise +which a cold world is chary of bestowing upon its literary cobweb- +spinners." + +It must be owned that we have no longer anything so like a 'salon' as +this. It is, indeed, rather terrible, and it is of a quality in its +celebrities which may well carry dismay to any among us presently +intending immortality. Shall we, one day, we who are now in the rich +and full enjoyment of our far-reaching fame, affect the imagination of +posterity as these phantoms of the past affect ours? Shall we, too, +appear in some pale limbo of unimportance as thin and faded as "John +Inman, the getter-up of innumerable things for the annuals and +magazines," or as Dr. Rufus Griswold, supposed for picturesque purposes +to be "stalking about with an immense quarto volume under his arm . . . +an early copy of his forthcoming 'Female Poets of America'"; or as Lewis +Gaylord Clark, the "sunnyfaced, smiling" editor of the Knickerbocker +Magazine, "who don't look as if the Ink-Fiend had ever heard of him," +as he stands up to dance a polka with "a demure lady who has evidently +spilled the inkstand over her dress"; or as "the stately Mrs. Seba Smith, +bending aristocratically over the centre-table, and talking in a bright, +cold, steady stream, like an antique fountain by moonlight"; or as "the +spiritual and dainty Fanny Osgood, clapping her hands and crowing like a +baby," where she sits "nestled under a shawl of heraldic devices, like a +bird escaped from its cage"; or as Margaret Fuller, "her large, gray eyes +Tamping inspiration, and her thin, quivering lip prophesying like a +Pythoness"? + +I hope not; I earnestly hope not. Whatever I said at the outset, +affirming the persistent equality of New York characteristics and +circumstances, I wish to take back at this point; and I wish to warn +malign foreign observers, of the sort who have so often refused to see us +as we see ourselves, that they must not expect to find us now grouped in +the taste of 1849. Possibly it was not so much the taste of 1849 as the +author of 'New York in Slices' would have us believe; and perhaps any one +who trusted his pictures of life among us otherwise would be deceived by +a parity of the spirit in which they are portrayed with that of our +modern "society journalism." + + + + + + +FROM NEW YORK INTO NEW ENGLAND + +There is, of course, almost a world's difference between England and the +Continent anywhere; but I do not recall just now any transition between +Continental countries which involves a more distinct change in the +superficial aspect of things than the passage from the Middle States into +New England. It is all American, but American of diverse ideals; and you +are hardly over the border before you are sensible of diverse effects, +which are the more apparent to you the more American you are. If you +want the contrast at its sharpest you had better leave New York on a +Sound boat; for then you sleep out of the Middle State civilization and +wake into the civilization of New England, which seems to give its stamp +to nature herself. As to man, he takes it whether native or alien; and +if he is foreign-born it marks him another Irishman, Italian, Canadian, +Jew, or negro from his brother in any other part of the United States. + + + + +I. + +When you have a theory of any kind, proofs of it are apt to seek you out, +and I, who am rather fond of my faith in New England's influence of this +sort, had as pretty an instance of it the day after my arrival as I could +wish. A colored brother of Massachusetts birth, as black as a man can +well be, and of a merely anthropoidal profile, was driving me along shore +in search of a sea-side hotel when we came upon a weak-minded young +chicken in the road. The natural expectation is that any chicken in +these circumstances will wait for your vehicle, and then fly up before it +with a loud screech; but this chicken may have been overcome by the heat +(it was a land breeze and it drew like the breath of a furnace over the +hay-cocks and the clover), or it may have mistimed the wheel, which +passed over its head and left it to flop a moment in the dust and then +fall still. The poor little tragedy was sufficiently distressful to me, +but I bore it well, compared with my driver. He could hardly stop +lamenting it; and when presently we met a young farmer, he pulled up. +"You goin' past Jim Marden's?" "Yes." "Well, I wish you'd tell him I +just run over a chicken of his, and I killed it, I guess. I guess it was +a pretty big one." "Oh no," I put in, "it was only a broiler. What do +you think it was worth?" I took out some money, and the farmer noted the +largest coin in my hand; "About half a dollar, I guess." On this I put +it all back in my pocket, and then he said, "Well, if a chicken don't +know enough to get out of the road, I guess you ain't to blame." +I expressed that this was my own view of the case, and we drove on. When +we parted I gave the half-dollar to my driver, and begged him not to let +the owner of the chicken come on me for damages; and though he chuckled +his pleasure in the joke, I could see that he was still unhappy, and I +have no doubt that he has that pullet on his conscience yet, unless he +has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially +plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it +breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the +spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile +broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory +negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my train without a pang +for the owner and with only an agreeable pathos for the pullet. + + + + +II. + +The instance is perhaps extreme; and, at any rate, it has carried me in a +psychological direction away from the simpler differences which I meant +to note in New England. They were evident as soon as our train began to +run from the steamboat landing into the country, and they have +intensified, if they have not multiplied, themselves as I have penetrated +deeper and deeper into the beautiful region. The land is poorer than the +land to the southward--one sees that at once; the soil is thin, and often +so thickly burdened with granite bowlders that it could never have borne +any other crop since the first Puritans, or Pilgrims, cut away the +primeval woods and betrayed its hopeless sterility to the light. But +wherever you come to a farm-house, whether standing alone or in one of +the village groups that New England farm-houses have always liked to +gather themselves into, it is of a neatness that brings despair, and of a +repair that ought to bring shame to the beholder from more easy-going +conditions. Everything is kept up with a strenuous virtue that imparts +an air of self-respect to the landscape, which the bleaching and +blackening stone walls, wandering over the hill-slopes, divide into wood +lots of white birch and pine, stony pastures, and little patches of +potatoes and corn. The mowing-lands alone are rich; and if the New +England year is in the glory of the latest June, the breath of the clover +blows honey--sweet into the car windows, and the fragrance of the new-cut +hay rises hot from the heavy swaths that seem to smoke in the sun. + +We have struck a hot spell, one of those torrid mood of continental +weather which we have telegraphed us ahead to heighten our suffering by +anticipation. But the farmsteads and village houses are safe in the +shade of their sheltering trees amid the fluctuation of the grass that +grows so tall about them that the June roses have to strain upward to get +themselves free of it. Behind each dwelling is a billowy mass of +orchard, and before it the Gothic archway of the elms stretches above the +quiet street. There is no tree in the world so full of sentiment as the +American elm, and it is nowhere so graceful as in these New England +villages, which are themselves, I think, the prettiest and wholesomest of +mortal sojourns. By a happy instinct, their wooden houses are all +painted white, to a marble effect that suits our meridional sky, and the +contrast of their dark-green shutters is deliciously refreshing. There +was an evil hour, the terrible moment of the aesthetic revival now +happily past, when white walls and green blinds were thought in bad +taste, and the village houses were often tinged a dreary ground color, or +a doleful olive, or a gloomy red, but now they have returned to their +earlier love. Not the first love; that was a pale buff with white trim; +but I doubt if it were good for all kinds of village houses; the eye +rather demands the white. The pale buff does very well for large +colonial mansions, like Lowell's or Longfellow's in Cambridge; but when +you come, say, to see the great square houses built in Portsmouth, New +Hampshire; early in this century, and painted white, you find that white, +after all, is the thing for our climate, even in the towns. + +In such a village as my colored brother drove me through on the way to +the beach it was of an absolute fitness; and I wish I could convey a due +sense of the exquisite keeping of the place. Each white house was more +or less closely belted in with a white fence, of panels or pickets; the +grassy door-yards glowed with flowers, and often a climbing rose +embowered the door-way with its bloom. Away backward or sidewise +stretched the woodshed from the dwelling to the barn, and shut the whole +under one cover; the turf grew to the wheel-tracks of the road-way, over +which the elms rose and drooped; and from one end of the village to the +other you could not, as the saying is, find a stone to throw at a dog. +I know Holland; I have seen the wives of Scheveningen scrubbing up for +Sunday to the very middle of their brick streets, but I doubt if Dutch +cleanliness goes so far without, or comes from so deep a scruple within, +as the cleanliness of New England. I felt so keenly the feminine quality +of its motive as I passed through that village, that I think if I had +dropped so much as a piece of paper in the street I must have knocked at +the first door and begged the lady of the house (who would have opened it +in person after wiping her hands from her work, taking off her apron, and +giving a glance at herself in the mirror and at me through the window +blind) to report me to the selectmen in the interest of good morals. + + + + +III. + +I did not know at once quite how to reconcile the present foulness of the +New England capital with the fairness of the New England country; and I +am still somewhat embarrassed to own that after New York (even under the +relaxing rule of Tammany) Boston seemed very dirty when we arrived there. +At best I was never more than a naturalized Bostonian; but it used to +give me great pleasure--so penetratingly does the place qualify even the +sojourning Westerner--to think of the defect of New York in the virtue +that is next to godliness; and now I had to hang my head for shame at the +mortifying contrast of the Boston streets to the well-swept asphalt which +I had left frying in the New York sun the afternoon before. Later, +however, when I began to meet the sort of Boston faces I remembered so +well--good, just, pure, but set and severe, with their look of challenge, +of interrogation, almost of reproof--they not only ignored the +disgraceful untidiness of the streets, but they convinced me of a state +of transition which would leave the place swept and garnished behind it; +and comforted me against the litter of the winding thoroughfares and +narrow lanes, where the dust had blown up against the brick walls, and +seemed permanently to have smutched and discolored them. + +In New York you see the American face as Europe characterizes it; in +Boston you see it as it characterizes Europe; and it is in Boston that +you can best imagine the strenuous grapple of the native forces which all +alien things must yield to till they take the American cast. It is +almost dismaying, that physiognomy, before it familiarizes itself anew; +and in the brief first moment while it is yet objective, you ransack your +conscience for any sins you may have committed in your absence from it +and make ready to do penance for them. I felt almost as if I had brought +the dirty streets with me, and were guilty of having left them lying +about, so impossible were they with reference to the Boston face. + +It is a face that expresses care, even to the point of anxiety, and it +looked into the window of our carriage with the serious eyes of our +elderly hackman to make perfectly sure of our destination before we drove +away from the station. It was a little rigorous with us, as requiring us +to have a clear mind; but it was not unfriendly, not unkind, and it was +patient from long experience. In New York there are no elderly hackmen; +but in Boston they abound, and I cannot believe they would be capable of +bad faith with travellers. In fact, I doubt if this class is anywhere as +predatory as it is painted; but in Boston it appears to have the public +honor in its keeping. I do not mean that it was less mature, less +self-respectful in Portsmouth, where we were next to arrive; more so it +could not be; an equal sense of safety, of ease, began with it in both +places, and all through New England it is of native birth, while in New +York it is composed of men of many nations, with a weight in numbers +towards the Celtic strain. The prevalence of the native in New England +helps you sensibly to realize from the first moment that here you are in +America as the first Americans imagined and meant it; and nowhere in New +England is the original tradition more purely kept than in the beautiful +old seaport of New Hampshire. In fact, without being quite prepared to +defend a thesis to this effect, I believe that Portsmouth is preeminently +American, and in this it differs from Newburyport and from Salem, which +have suffered from different causes an equal commercial decline, and, +though among the earliest of the great Puritan towns after Boston, are +now largely made up of aliens in race and religion; these are actually +the majority, I believe, in Newburyport. + + + + +IV. + +The adversity of Portsmouth began early in the century, but before that +time she had prospered so greatly that her merchant princes were able to +build themselves wooden palaces with white walls and green shutters, of a +grandeur and beauty unmatched elsewhere in the country. I do not know +what architect had his way with them, though his name is richly worth +remembrance, but they let him make them habitations of such graceful +proportion and of such delicate ornament that they have become shrines of +pious pilgrimage with the young architects of our day who hope to house +our well-to-do people fitly in country or suburbs. The decoration is +oftenest spent on a porch or portal, or a frieze of peculiar refinement; +or perhaps it feels its way to the carven casements or to the delicate +iron-work of the transoms; the rest is a simplicity and a faultless +propriety of form in the stately mansions which stand under the arching +elms, with their gardens sloping, or dropping by easy terraces behind +them to the river, or to the borders of other pleasances. They are all +of wood, except for the granite foundations and doorsteps, but the stout +edifices rarely sway out of the true line given them, and they look as if +they might keep it yet another century. + +Between them, in the sun-shotten shade, lie the quiet streets, whose +gravelled stretch is probably never cleaned because it never needs +cleaning. Even the business streets, and the quaint square which gives +the most American of towns an air so foreign and Old Worldly, look as if +the wind and rain alone cared for them; but they are not foul, and the +narrower avenues, where the smaller houses of gray, unpainted wood crowd +each other, flush upon the pavements, towards the water--side, are +doubtless unvisited by the hoe or broom, and must be kept clean by a New +England conscience against getting them untidy. + +When you get to the river-side there is one stretch of narrow, high- +shouldered warehouses which recall Holland, especially in a few with +their gables broken in steps, after the Dutch fashion. These, with their +mouldering piers and grass-grown wharves, have their pathos, and the +whole place embodies in its architecture an interesting record of the +past, from the time when the homesick exiles huddled close to the water's +edge till the period of post-colonial prosperity, when proud merchants +and opulent captains set their vast square houses each in its handsome +space of gardened ground. + +My adjectives might mislead as to size, but they could not as to beauty, +and I seek in vain for those that can duly impart the peculiar charm of +the town. Portsmouth still awaits her novelist; he will find a rich +field when he comes; and I hope he will come of the right sex, for it +needs some minute and subtle feminine skill, like that of Jane Austen, to +express a fit sense of its life in the past. Of its life in the present +I know nothing. I could only go by those delightful, silent houses, and +sigh my longing soul into their dim interiors. When now and then a young +shape in summer silk, or a group of young shapes in diaphanous muslin, +fluttered out of them, I was no wiser; and doubtless my elderly fancy +would have been unable to deal with what went on in them. Some girl of +those flitting through the warm, odorous twilight must become the +creative historian of the place; I can at least imagine a Jane Austen now +growing up in Portsmouth. + + + + +V. + +If Miss Jewett were of a little longer breath than she has yet shown +herself in fiction, I might say the Jane Austen of Portsmouth was already +with us, and had merely not yet begun to deal with its precious material. +One day when we crossed the Piscataqua from New Hampshire into Maine, and +took the trolley-line for a run along through the lovely coast country, +we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of her own people, who are a +little different sort of New-Englanders from those of Miss Wilkins. They +began to flock into the car, young maidens and old, mothers and +grandmothers, and nice boys and girls, with a very, very few farmer youth +of marriageable age, and more rustic and seafaring elders long past it, +all in the Sunday best which they had worn to the graduation exercises at +the High School, where we took them mostly up. The womenkind were in a +nervous twitter of talk and laughter, and the men tolerantly gay beyond +their wont, "passing the time of day" with one another, and helping the +more tumultuous sex to get settled in the overcrowded open car. They +courteously made room for one another, and let the children stand between +their knees, or took them in their laps, with that unfailing American +kindness which I am prouder of than the American valor in battle, +observing in all that American decorum which is no bad thing either. We +had chanced upon the high and mighty occasion of the neighborhood year, +when people might well have been a little off their balance, but there +was not a boisterous note in the subdued affair. As we passed the +school-house door, three dear, pretty maids in white gowns and white +slippers stood on the steps and gently smiled upon our company. One +could see that they were inwardly glowing and thrilling with the +excitement of their graduation, but were controlling their emotions to a +calm worthy of the august event, so that no one might ever have it to say +that they had appeared silly. + +The car swept on, and stopped to set down passengers at their doors or +gates, where they severally left it, with an easy air as of private +ownership, into some sense of which the trolley promptly flatters people +along its obliging lines. One comfortable matron, in a cinnamon silk, +was just such a figure as that in the Miss Wilkins's story where the +bridegroom fails to come on the wedding-day; but, as I say, they made me +think more of Miss Jewett's people. The shore folk and the Down-Easters +are specifically hers; and these were just such as might have belonged in +'The Country of the Pointed Firs', or 'Sister Wisby's Courtship', or +'Dulham Ladies', or 'An Autumn Ramble', or twenty other entrancing tales. +Sometimes one of them would try her front door, and then, with a bridling +toss of the head, express that she had forgotten locking it, and slip +round to the kitchen; but most of the ladies made their way back at once +between the roses and syringas of their grassy door-yards, which were as +neat and prim as their own persons, or the best chamber in their white- +walled, green-shuttered, story-and-a-half house, and as perfectly kept as +the very kitchen itself. + +The trolley-line had been opened only since the last September, but in an +effect of familiar use it was as if it had always been there, and it +climbed and crooked and clambered about with the easy freedom of the +country road which it followed. It is a land of low hills, broken by +frequent reaches of the sea, and it is most amusing, most amazing, to see +how frankly the trolley-car takes and overcomes its difficulties. It +scrambles up and down the little steeps like a cat, and whisks round a +sharp and sudden curve with a feline screech, broadening into a loud +caterwaul as it darts over the estuaries on its trestles. Its course +does not lack excitement, and I suppose it does not lack danger; but as +yet there have been no accidents, and it is not so disfiguring as one +would think. The landscape has already accepted it, and is making the +best of it; and to the country people it is an inestimable convenience. +It passes everybody's front door or back door, and the farmers can get +themselves or their produce (for it runs an express car) into Portsmouth +in an hour, twice an hour, all day long. In summer the cars are open, +with transverse seats, and stout curtains that quite shut out a squall of +wind or rain. In winter the cars are closed, and heated by electricity. +The young motorman whom I spoke with, while we waited on a siding to let +a car from the opposite direction get by, told me that he was caught out +in a blizzard last Winter, and passed the night in a snowdrift. "But the +cah was so wa'm, I neva suff'ed a mite." + +"Well," I summarized, "it must be a great advantage to all the people +along the line." + +"Well, you wouldn't 'a' thought so, from the kick they made." + +"I suppose the cottagers"--the summer colony--"didn't like the noise." + +"Oh yes; that's what I mean. The's whe' the kick was. The natives like +it. I guess the summa folks 'll like it, too." + +He looked round at me with enjoyment of his joke in his eye, for we both +understood that the summer folks could not help themselves, and must bow +to the will of the majority. + + + + + + +THE ART OF THE ADSMITH + +The other day, a friend of mine, who professes all the intimacy of a bad +conscience with many of my thoughts and convictions, came in with a bulky +book under his arm, and said, "I see by a guilty look in your eye that +you are meaning to write about spring." + +"I am not," I retorted, "and if I were, it would be because none of the +new things have been said yet about spring, and because spring is never +an old story, any more than youth or love." + +"I have heard something like that before," said my friend, "and I +understand. The simple truth of the matter is that this is the fag-end +of the season, and you have run low in your subjects. Now take my advice +and don't write about spring; it will make everybody hate you, and will +do no good. Write about advertising." He tapped the book under his arm +significantly. "Here is a theme for you." + + + + +I. + +He had no sooner pronounced these words than I began to feel a weird and +potent fascination in his suggestion. I took the book from him and +looked it eagerly through. It was called Good Advertising, and it was +written by one of the experts in the business who have advanced it almost +to the grade of an art, or a humanity. + +"But I see nothing here," I said, musingly, "which would enable a +self-respecting author to come to the help of his publisher in giving due +hold upon the public interest those charming characteristics of his book +which no one else can feel so penetratingly or celebrate so +persuasively." + +"I expected some such objection from you," said my friend. "You will +admit that there is everything else here?" + +"Everything but that most essential thing. You know how we all feel +about it: the bitter disappointment, the heart-sickening sense of +insufficiency that the advertised praises of our books give us poor +authors. The effect is far worse than that of the reviews, for the +reviewer is not your ally and copartner, while your publisher--" + +"I see what you mean," said my friend. "But you must have patience. +If the author of this book can write so luminously of advertising in +other respects, I am sure he will yet be able to cast a satisfactory +light upon your problem. The question is, I believe, how to translate +into irresistible terms all that fond and exultant regard which a writer +feels for his book, all his pervasive appreciation of its singular +beauty, unique value, and utter charm, and transfer it to print, without +infringing upon the delicate and shrinking modesty which is the +distinguishing ornament of the literary spirit?" + +"Something like that. But you understand." + +"Perhaps a Roentgen ray might be got to do it," said my friend, +thoughtfully, "or perhaps this author may bring his mind to bear upon +it yet. He seems to have considered every kind of advertising except +book-advertising." + +"The most important of all!" I cried, impatiently. + +"You think so because you are in that line. If you were in the line of +varnish, or bicycles, or soap, or typewriters, or extract of beef, or of +malt--" + +"Still I should be interested in book--advertising, because it is the +most vital of human interests." + +"Tell me," said my friend, "do you read the advertisements of the books +of rival authors?" + +"Brother authors," I corrected him. + +"Well, brother authors." + +I said, No, candidly, I did not; and I forbore to add that I thought them +little better than a waste of the publishers' money. + + + + +II. + +My friend did not pursue his inquiry to my personal disadvantage, but +seemed to prefer a more general philosophy of the matter. + +"I have often wondered," he said, "at the enormous expansion of +advertising, and doubted whether it was not mostly wasted. But my +author, here, has suggested a brilliant fact which I was unwittingly +groping for. When you take up a Sunday paper"--I shuddered, and my +friend smiled intelligence--"you are simply appalled at the miles of +announcements of all sorts. Who can possibly read them? Who cares even +to look at them? But if you want something in particular--to furnish a +house, or buy a suburban place, or take a steamer for Europe, or go, to +the theatre--then you find out at once who reads the advertisements, and +cares to look at them. They respond to the multifarious wants of the +whole community. You have before you the living operation of that law of +demand and supply which it has always been such a bore to hear about. +As often happens, the supply seems to come before the demand; but that's +only an appearance. You wanted something, and you found an offer to meet +your want." + +"Then you don't believe that the offer to meet your want suggested it?" + +"I see that my author believes something of the kind. We may be full of +all sorts of unconscious wants which merely need the vivifying influence +of an advertisement to make them spring into active being; but I have a +feeling that the money paid for advertising which appeals to potential +wants is largely thrown away. You must want a thing, or think you want +it; otherwise you resent the proffer of it as a kind of impertinence." + +"There are some kinds of advertisements, all the same, that I read +without the slightest interest in the subject matter. Simply the beauty +of the style attracts me." + +"I know. But does it ever move you to get what you don't want?" + +"Never; and I should be glad to know what your author thinks of that sort +of advertising: the literary, or dramatic, or humorous, or quaint." + +"He doesn't contemn it, quite. But I think he feels that it may have had +its day. Do you still read such advertisements with your early zest?" + +"No; the zest for nearly everything goes. I don't care so much for +Tourguenief as I used. Still, if I come upon the jaunty and laconic +suggestions of a certain well-known clothing-house, concerning the +season's wear, I read them with a measure of satisfaction. The +advertising expert--" + +"This author calls him the adsmith." + +"Delightful! Ad is a loathly little word, but we must come to it. It's +as legitimate as lunch. But as I was saying, the adsmith seems to have +caught the American business tone, as perfectly as any of our novelists +have caught the American social tone." + +"Yes," said my friend, "and he seems to have prospered as richly by it. +You know some of those chaps make fifteen or twenty thousand dollars by +adsmithing. They have put their art quite on a level with fiction +pecuniarily." + +"Perhaps it is a branch of fiction." + +"No; they claim that it is pure fact. My author discourages the +slightest admixture of fable. The truth, clearly and simply expressed, +is the best in an ad. + +"It is best in a wof, too. I am always saying that." + +"Wof?" + +"Well, work of fiction. It's another new word, like lunch or ad." + +"But in a wof," said my friend, instantly adopting it, "my author +insinuates that the fashion of payment tempts you to verbosity, while in +an ad the conditions oblige you to the greatest possible succinctness. +In one case you are paid by the word; in the other you pay by the word. +That is where the adsmith stands upon higher moral ground than the +wofsmith." + +"I should think your author might have written a recent article in +'The---------, reproaching fiction with its unhallowed gains." + +"If you mean that for a sneer, it is misplaced. He would have been +incapable of it. My author is no more the friend of honesty in +adsmithing than he is of propriety, He deprecates jocosity in +apothecaries and undertakers, not only as bad taste, but as bad business; +and he is as severe as any one could be upon ads that seize the attention +by disgusting or shocking the reader. + +"He is to be praised for that, and for the other thing; and I shouldn't +have minded his criticising the ready wofsmith. I hope he attacks the +use of display type, which makes our newspapers look like the poster- +plastered fences around vacant lots. In New York there is only one paper +whose advertisements are not typographically a shock to the nerves." + +"Well," said my friend, "he attacks foolish and ineffective display." + +"It is all foolish and ineffective. It is like a crowd of people trying +to make themselves heard by shouting each at the top of his voice. +A paper full of display advertisements is an image of our whole congested +and delirious state of competition; but even in competitive conditions it +is unnecessary, and it is futile. Compare any New York paper but one +with the London papers, and you will see what I mean. Of course I refer +to the ad pages; the rest of our exception is as offensive with pictures +and scare heads as all the rest. I wish your author could revise his +opinions and condemn all display in ads." + +"I dare say he will when he knows what you think," said my friend, with +imaginable sarcasm. + + + + +III. + +"I wish," I went on, "that he would give us some philosophy of the +prodigious increase of advertising within the last twenty-five years, and +some conjecture as to the end of it all. Evidently, it can't keep on +increasing at the present rate. If it does, there will presently be no +room in the world for things; it will be filled up with the +advertisements of things." + +"Before that time, perhaps," my friend suggested, "adsmithing will have +become so fine and potent an art that advertising will be reduced in +bulk, while keeping all its energy and even increasing its +effectiveness." + +"Perhaps," I said, "some silent electrical process will be contrived, so +that the attractions of a new line of dress-goods or the fascination of a +spring or fall opening may be imparted to a lady's consciousness without +even the agency of words. All other facts of commercial and industrial +interest could be dealt with in the same way. A fine thrill could be +made to go from the last new book through the whole community, so that +people would not willingly rest till they had it. Yes, one can see an +indefinite future for advertising in that way. The adsmith may be the +supreme artist of the twentieth century. He may assemble in his grasp, +and employ at will, all the arts and sciences." + +"Yes," said my friend, with a sort of fall in his voice, "that is very +well. But what is to become of the race when it is penetrated at every +pore with a sense of the world's demand and supply?" + +"Oh, that is another affair. I was merely imagining the possible +resources of invention in providing for the increase of advertising while +guarding the integrity of the planet. I think, very likely, if the thing +keeps on, we shall all go mad; but then we shall none of us be able to +criticise the others. Or possibly the thing may work its own cure. You +know the ingenuity of the political economists in justifying the egotism +to which conditions appeal. They do not deny that these foster greed and +rapacity in merciless degree, but they contend that when the wealth- +winner drops off gorged there is a kind of miracle wrought, and good +comes of it all. I never could see how; but if it is true, why shouldn't +a sort of ultimate immunity come back to us from the very excess and +invasion of the appeals now made to us, and destined to be made to us +still more by the adsmith? Come, isn't there hope in that?" + +"I see a great opportunity for the wofsmith in some such dream," said my +friend. "Why don't you turn it to account?" + +"You know that isn't my line; I must leave that sort of wofsmithing to +the romantic novelist. Besides, I have my well-known panacea for all the +ills our state is heir to, in a civilization which shall legislate +foolish and vicious and ugly and adulterate things out of the possibility +of existence. Most of the adsmithing is now employed in persuading +people that such things are useful, beautiful, and pure. But in any +civilization they shall not even be suffered to be made, much less +foisted upon the community by adsmiths." + +"I see what you mean," said my friend; and he sighed gently. "I had much +better let you write about spring." + + + + + + +THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PLAGIARISM + +A late incident in the history of a very widespread English novelist, +triumphantly closed by the statement of his friend that the novelist had +casually failed to accredit a given passage in his novel to the real +author, has brought freshly to my mind a curious question in ethics. +The friend who vindicated the novelist, or, rather, who contemptuously +dismissed the matter, not only confessed the fact of adoption, but +declared that it was one of many which could be found in the novelist's +works. The novelist, he said, was quite in the habit of so using +material in the rough, which he implied was like using any fact or idea +from life, and he declared that the novelist could not bother to answer +critics who regarded these exploitations as a sort of depredation. In a +manner he brushed the impertinent accusers aside, assuring the general +public that the novelist always meant, at his leisure, and in his own +way, duly to ticket the flies preserved in his amber. + + + + +I. + +When I read this haughty vindication, I thought at first that if the case +were mine I would rather have several deadly enemies than such a friend +as that; but since, I have not been so sure. I have asked myself upon a +careful review of the matter whether plagiarism may not be frankly +avowed, as in nowise dishonest, and I wish some abler casuist would take +the affair into consideration and make it clear for me. If we are to +suppose that offences against society disgrace the offender, and that +public dishonor argues the fact of some such offence, then apparently +plagiarism is not such an offence; for in even very flagrant cases it +does not disgrace. The dictionary, indeed, defines it as "the crime of +literary theft"; but as no penalty attaches to it, and no lasting shame, +it is hard to believe it either a crime or a theft; and the offence, if +it is an offence (one has to call it something, and I hope the word is +not harsh), is some such harmless infraction of the moral law as +white-lying. + +The much-perverted saying of Moliere, that he took his own where he found +it, is perhaps in the consciousness of those who appropriate the things +other people have rushed in with before them. But really they seem to +need neither excuse nor defence with the impartial public if they are +caught in the act of reclaiming their property or despoiling the rash +intruder upon their premises. The novelist in question is by no means +the only recent example, and is by no means a flagrant example. While +the ratification of the treaty with Spain was pending before the Senate +of the United States, a member of that body opposed it in a speech almost +word for word the same as a sermon delivered in New York City only a few +days earlier and published broadcast. He was promptly exposed by the +parallel-column system; but I have never heard that his standing was +affected or his usefulness impaired by the offence proven against him. A +few years ago an eminent divine in one of our cities preached as his own +the sermon of a brother divine, no longer living; he, too, was detected +and promptly exposed by the parallel-column system, but nothing whatever +happened from the exposure. Every one must recall like instances, more +or less remote. I remember one within my youthfuller knowledge of a +journalist who used as his own all the denunciatory passages of +Macaulay's article on Barrere, and applied them with changes of name to +the character and conduct of a local politician whom he felt it his duty +to devote to infamy. He was caught in the fact, and by means of the +parallel column pilloried before the community. But the community did +not mind it a bit, and the journalist did not either. He prospered on +amid those who all knew what he had done, and when he removed to another +city it was to a larger one, and to a position of more commanding +influence, from which he was long conspicuous in helping shape the +destinies of the nation. + +So far as any effect from these exposures was concerned, they were as +harmless as those exposures of fraudulent spiritistic mediums which from +time to time are supposed to shake the spiritistic superstition to its +foundations. They really do nothing of the kind; the table-tippings, +rappings, materializations, and levitations keep on as before; and I do +not believe that the exposure of the novelist who has been the latest +victim of the parallel column will injure him a jot in the hearts or +heads of his readers. + + + + +II. + +I am very glad of it, being a disbeliever in punishments of all sorts. +I am always glad to have sinners get off, for I like to get off from my +own sins; and I have a bad moment from my sense of them whenever +another's have found him out. But as yet I have not convinced myself +that the sort of thing we have been considering is a sin at all, for it +seems to deprave no more than it dishonors; or that it is what the +dictionary (with very unnecessary brutality) calls a "crime" and a +"theft." If it is either, it is differently conditioned, if not +differently natured, from all other crimes and thefts. These may be more +or less artfully and hopefully concealed, but plagiarism carries +inevitable detection with it. If you take a man's hat or coat out of his +hall, you may pawn it before the police overtake you; if you take his +horse out of his stable, you may ride it away beyond pursuit and sell it; +if you take his purse out of his pocket, you may pass it to a pal in the +crowd, and easily prove your innocence. But if you take his sermon, or +his essay, or even his apposite reflection, you cannot escape discovery. +The world is full of idle people reading books, and they are only too +glad to act as detectives; they please their miserable vanity by showing +their alertness, and are proud to hear witness against you in the court +of parallel columns. You have no safety in the obscurity of the author +from whom you take your own; there is always that most terrible reader, +the reader of one book, who knows that very author, and will the more +indecently hasten to bring you to the bar because he knows no other, and +wishes to display his erudition. A man may escape for centuries and yet +be found out. In the notorious case of William Shakespeare the offender +seemed finally secure of his prey; and yet one poor lady, who ended in a +lunatic asylum, was able to detect him at last, and to restore the goods +to their rightful owner, Sir Francis Bacon. + +In spite, however, of this almost absolute certainty of exposure, +plagiarism goes on as it has always gone on; and there is no probability +that it will cease as long as there are novelists, senators, divines, and +journalists hard pressed for ideas which they happen not to have in mind +at the time, and which they see going to waste elsewhere. Now and then +it takes a more violent form and becomes a real mania, as when the +plagiarist openly claims and urges his right to a well-known piece of +literary property. When Mr. William Allen Butler's famous poem of +"Nothing to Wear" achieved its extraordinary popularity, a young girl +declared and apparently quite believed that she had written it and lost +the MS. in an omnibus. All her friends apparently believed so, too; and +the friends of the different gentlemen and ladies who claimed the +authorship of "Beautiful Snow" and "Rock Me to Sleep" were ready to +support them by affidavit against the real authors of those pretty +worthless pieces. + +From all these facts it must appear to the philosophic reader that +plagiarism is not the simple "crime" or "theft" that the lexicographers +would have us believe. It argues a strange and peculiar courage on the +part of those who commit it or indulge it, since they are sure of having +it brought home to them, for they seem to dread the exposure, though it +involves no punishment outside of themselves. Why do they do it, or, +having done it, why do they mind it, since the public does not? Their +temerity and their timidity are things almost irreconcilable, and the +whole position leaves one quite puzzled as to what one would do if one's +own plagiarisms were found out. But this is a mere question of conduct, +and of infinitely less interest than that of the nature or essence of the +thing itself. + + + + + + +PURITANISM IN AMERICAN FICTION + +The question whether the fiction which gives a vivid impression of +reality does truly represent the conditions studied in it, is one of +those inquiries to which there is no very final answer. The most +baffling fact of such fiction is that its truths are self-evident; +and if you go about to prove them you are in some danger of shaking the +convictions of those whom they have persuaded. It will not do to affirm +anything wholesale concerning them; a hundred examples to the contrary +present themselves if you know the ground, and you are left in doubt of +the verity which you cannot gainsay. The most that you can do is to +appeal to your own consciousness, and that is not proof to anybody else. +Perhaps the best test in this difficult matter is the quality of the art +which created the picture. Is it clear, simple, unaffected? Is it true +to human experience generally? If it is so, then it cannot well be false +to the special human experience it deals with. + + + + +I. + +Not long ago I heard of something which amusingly, which pathetically, +illustrated the sense of reality imparted by the work of one of our +writers, whose art is of the kind I mean. A lady was driving with a +young girl of the lighter-minded civilization of New York through one of +those little towns of the North Shore in Massachusetts, where the small; +wooden houses cling to the edges of the shallow bay, and the schooners +slip, in and out on the hidden channels of the salt meadows as if they +were blown about through the tall grass. She tried to make her feel the +shy charm of the place, that almost subjective beauty, which those to the +manner born are so keenly aware of in old-fashioned New England villages; +but she found that the girl was not only not looking at the sad-colored +cottages, with their weather-worn shingle walls, their grassy door-yards +lit by patches of summer bloom, and their shutterless windows with their +close-drawn shades, but she was resolutely averting her eyes from them, +and staring straightforward until she should be out of sight of them +altogether. She said that they were terrible, and she knew that in each +of them was one of those dreary old women, or disappointed girls, or +unhappy wives, or bereaved mothers, she had read of in Miss Wilkins's +stories. + +She had been too little sensible of the humor which forms the relief of +these stories, as it forms the relief of the bare, duteous, +conscientious, deeply individualized lives portrayed in them; and no +doubt this cannot make its full appeal to the heart of youth aching for +their stoical sorrows. Without being so very young, I, too, have found +the humor hardly enough at times, and if one has not the habit of +experiencing support in tragedy itself, one gets through a remote New +England village, at nightfall, say, rather limp than otherwise, and in +quite the mood that Miss Wilkins's bleaker studies leave one in. At +midday, or in the bright sunshine of the morning, it is quite possible to +fling off the melancholy which breathes the same note in the fact and the +fiction; and I have even had some pleasure at such times in identifying +this or, that one-story cottage with its lean-to as a Mary Wilkins house +and in placing one of her muted dramas in it. One cannot know the people +of such places without recognizing her types in them, and one cannot know +New England without owning the fidelity of her stories to New England +character, though, as I have already suggested, quite another sort of +stories could be written which should as faithfully represent other +phases of New England village life. + +To the alien inquirer, however, I should be by no means confident that +their truth would evince itself, for the reason that human nature is +seldom on show anywhere. I am perfectly certain of the truth of Tolstoy +and Tourguenief to Russian life, yet I should not be surprised if I went +through Russia and met none of their people. I should be rather more +surprised if I went through Italy and met none of Verga's or Fogazzaro's, +but that would be because I already knew Italy a little. In fact, I +suspect that the last delight of truth in any art comes only to the +connoisseur who is as well acquainted with the subject as the artist +himself. One must not be too severe in challenging the truth of an +author to life; and one must bring a great deal of sympathy and a great +deal of patience to the scrutiny. Types are very backward and shrinking +things, after all; character is of such a mimosan sensibility that if you +seize it too abruptly its leaves are apt to shut and hide all that is +distinctive in it; so that it is not without some risk to an author's +reputation for honesty that he gives his readers the impression of his +truth. + + + + +II. + +The difficulty with characters in fiction is that the reader there finds +them dramatized; not only their actions, but also their emotions are +dramatized; and the very same sort of persons when one meets them in real +life are recreantly undramatic. One might go through a New England +village and see Mary Wilkins houses and Mary Wilkins people, and yet not +witness a scene nor hear a word such as one finds in her tales. It is +only too probable that the inhabitants one met would say nothing quaint +or humorous, or betray at all the nature that she reveals in them; and +yet I should not question her revelation on that account. The life of +New England, such as Miss Wilkins deals with, and Miss Sarah O. Jewett, +and Miss Alice Brown, is not on the surface, or not visibly so, except to +the accustomed eye. It is Puritanism scarcely animated at all by the +Puritanic theology. One must not be very positive in such things, and I +may be too bold in venturing to say that while the belief of some New +Englanders approaches this theology the belief of most is now far from +it; and yet its penetrating individualism so deeply influenced the New +England character that Puritanism survives in the moral and mental make +of the people almost in its early strength. Conduct and manner conform +to a dead religious ideal; the wish to be sincere, the wish to be just, +the wish to be righteous are before the wish to be kind, merciful, +humble. A people are not a chosen people for half a dozen generations +without acquiring a spiritual pride that remains with them long after +they cease to believe themselves chosen. They are often stiffened in the +neck and they are often hardened in the heart by it, to the point of +making them angular and cold; but they are of an inveterate +responsibility to a power higher than themselves, and they are +strengthened for any fate. They are what we see in the stories which, +perhaps, hold the first place in American fiction. + +As a matter of fact, the religion of New England is not now so +Puritanical as that of many parts of the South and West, and yet the +inherited Puritanism stamps the New England manner, and differences it +from the manner of the straightest sects elsewhere. There was, however, +always a revolt against Puritanism when Puritanism was severest and +securest; this resulted in types of shiftlessness if not wickedness, +which have not yet been duly studied, and which would make the fortune of +some novelist who cared to do a fresh thing. There is also a +sentimentality, or pseudo-emotionality (I have not the right phrase for +it), which awaits full recognition in fiction. This efflorescence from +the dust of systems and creeds, carried into natures left vacant by the +ancestral doctrine, has scarcely been noticed by the painters of New +England manners. It is often a last state of Unitarianism, which +prevailed in the larger towns and cities when the Calvinistic theology +ceased to be dominant, and it is often an effect of the spiritualism so +common in New England, and, in fact, everywhere in America. Then, there +is a wide-spread love of literature in the country towns and villages +which has in great measure replaced the old interest in dogma, and which +forms with us an author's closest appreciation, if not his best. But as +yet little hint of all this has got into the short stories, and still +less of that larger intellectual life of New England, or that exalted +beauty of character which tempts one to say that Puritanism was a +blessing if it made the New-Englanders what they are; though one can +always be glad not to have lived among them in the disciplinary period. +Boston, the capital of that New England nation which is fast losing +itself in the American nation, is no longer of its old literary primacy, +and yet most of our right thinking, our high thinking, still begins +there, and qualifies the thinking of the country at large. The good +causes, the generous causes, are first befriended there, and in a +wholesome sort the New England culture, as well as the New England +conscience, has imparted itself to the American people. + +Even the power of writing short stories, which we suppose ourselves to +have in such excellent degree, has spread from New England. That is, +indeed, the home of the American short story, and it has there been +brought to such perfection in the work of Miss Wilkins, of Miss Jewett, +of Miss Brown, and of that most faithful, forgotten painter of manners, +Mrs. Rose Terry Cook, that it presents upon the whole a truthful picture +of New England village life in some of its more obvious phases. I say +obvious because I must, but I have already said that this is a life which +is very little obvious; and I should not blame any one who brought the +portrait to the test of reality, and found it exaggerated, overdrawn, and +unnatural, though I should be perfectly sure that such a critic was +wrong. + + + + + + +THE WHAT AND THE HOW IN ART + +One of the things always enforcing itself upon the consciousness of the +artist in any sort is the fact that those whom artists work for rarely +care for their work artistically. They care for it morally, personally, +partially. I suspect that criticism itself has rather a muddled +preference for the what over the how, and that it is always haunted by a +philistine question of the material when it should, aesthetically +speaking, be concerned solely with the form. + + + + +I. + +The other night at the theatre I was witness of a curious and amusing +illustration of my point. They were playing a most soul-filling +melodrama, of the sort which gives you assurance from the very first that +there will be no trouble in the end, but everything will come out just as +it should, no matter what obstacles oppose themselves in the course of +the action. An over-ruling Providence, long accustomed to the exigencies +of the stage, could not fail to intervene at the critical moment in +behalf of innocence and virtue, and the spectator never had the least +occasion for anxiety. Not unnaturally there was a black-hearted villain +in the piece; so very black-hearted that he seemed not to have a single +good impulse from first to last. Yet he was, in the keeping of the stage +Providence, as harmless as a blank cartridge, in spite of his deadly +aims. He accomplished no more mischief, in fact, than if all his intents +had been of the best; except for the satisfaction afforded by the +edifying spectacle of his defeat and shame, he need not have been in the +play at all; and one might almost have felt sorry for him, he was so +continually baffled. But this was not enough for the audience, or for +that part of it which filled the gallery to the roof. Perhaps he was +such an uncommonly black-hearted villain, so very, very cold-blooded in +his wickedness that the justice unsparingly dealt out to him by the +dramatist could not suffice. At any rate, the gallery took such a vivid +interest in his punishment that it had out the actor who impersonated the +wretch between all the acts, and hissed him throughout his deliberate +passage across the stage before the curtain. The hisses were not at all +for the actor, but altogether for the character. The performance was +fairly good, quite as good as the performance of any virtuous part in the +piece, and easily up to the level of other villanous performances (I +never find much nature in them, perhaps because there is not much nature +in villany itself; that is, villany pure and simple); but the mere +conception of the wickedness this bad man had attempted was too much for +an audience of the average popular goodness. It was only after he had +taken poison, and fallen dead before their eyes, that the spectators +forbore to visit him with a lively proof of their abhorrence; apparently +they did not care to "give him a realizing sense that there was a +punishment after death," as the man in Lincoln's story did with the dead +dog. + + + + +II. + +The whole affair was very amusing at first, but it has since put me upon +thinking (I like to be put upon thinking; the eighteenth-century +essayists were) that the attitude of the audience towards this deplorable +reprobate is really the attitude of most readers of books, lookers at +pictures and statues, listeners to music, and so on through the whole +list of the arts. It is absolutely different from the artist's attitude, +from the connoisseur's attitude; it is quite irreconcilable with their +attitude, and yet I wonder if in the end it is not what the artist works +for. Art is not produced for artists, or even for connoisseurs; it is +produced for the general, who can never view it otherwise than morally, +personally, partially, from their associations and preconceptions. + +Whether the effect with the general is what the artist works for or not, +he, does not succeed without it. Their brute liking or misliking is the +final test; it is universal suffrage that elects, after all. Only, in +some cases of this sort the polls do not close at four o'clock on the +first Tuesday after the first Monday of November, but remain open +forever, and the voting goes on. Still, even the first day's canvass is +important, or at least significant. It will not do for the artist to +electioneer, but if he is beaten, he ought to ponder the causes of his +defeat, and question how he has failed to touch the chord of universal +interest. He is in the world to make beauty and truth evident to his +fellowmen, who are as a rule incredibly stupid and ignorant of both, but +whose judgment he must nevertheless not despise. If he can make +something that they will cheer, or something that they will hiss, he may +not have done any great thing, but if he has made something that they +will neither cheer nor hiss, he may well have his misgivings, no matter +how well, how finely, how truly he has done the thing. + +This is very humiliating, but a tacit snub to one's artist-pride such as +one gets from public silence is not a bad thing for one. Not long ago I +was talking about pictures with a painter, a very great painter, to my +thinking; one whose pieces give me the same feeling I have from reading +poetry; and I was excusing myself to him with respect to art, and perhaps +putting on a little more modesty than I felt. I said that I could enjoy +pictures only on the literary side, and could get no answer from my soul +to those excellences of handling and execution which seem chiefly to +interest painters. He replied that it was a confession of weakness in a +painter if he appealed merely or mainly to technical knowledge in the +spectator; that he narrowed his field and dwarfed his work by it; and +that if he painted for painters merely, or for the connoisseurs of +painting, he was denying his office, which was to say something clear and +appreciable to all sorts of men in the terms of art. He even insisted +that a picture ought to tell a story. + +The difficulty in humbling one's self to this view of art is in the ease +with which one may please the general by art which is no art. Neither +the play nor the playing that I saw at the theatre when the actor was +hissed for the wickedness of the villain he was personating, was at all +fine; and yet I perceived, on reflection, that they had achieved a +supreme effect. If I may be so confidential, I will say that I should be +very sorry to have written that piece; yet I should be very proud if, on +the level I chose and with the quality I cared for, I could invent a +villain that the populace would have out and hiss for his surpassing +wickedness. In other words, I think it a thousand pities whenever an +artist gets so far away from the general, so far within himself or a +little circle of amateurs, that his highest and best work awakens no +response in the multitude. I am afraid this is rather the danger of the +arts among us, and how to escape it is not so very plain. It makes one +sick and sorry often to see how cheaply the applause of the common people +is won. It is not an infallible test of merit, but if it is wanting to +any performance, we may be pretty sure it is not the greatest +performance. + + + + +III. + +The paradox lies in wait here, as in most other human affairs, to +confound us, and we try to baffle it, in this way and in that. We talk, +for instance, of poetry for poets, and we fondly imagine that this is +different from talking of cookery for cooks. Poetry is not made for +poets; they have enough poetry of their own, but it is made for people +who are not poets. If it does not please these, it may still be poetry, +but it is poetry which has failed of its truest office. It is none the +less its truest office because some very wretched verse seems often to do +it. + +The logic of such a fact is not that the poet should try to achieve this +truest office of his art by means of doggerel, but that he should study +how and where and why the beauty and the truth he has made manifest are +wanting in universal interest, in human appeal. Leaving the drama out of +the question, and the theatre which seems now to be seeking only the +favor of the dull rich, I believe that there never was a time or a race +more open to the impressions of beauty and of truth than ours. The +artist who feels their divine charm, and longs to impart it, has now and +here a chance to impart it more widely than ever artist had in the world +before. Of course, the means of reaching the widest range of humanity +are the simple and the elementary, but there is no telling when the +complex and the recondite may not universally please. 288 + +The art is to make them plain to every one, for every one has them in +him. Lowell used to say that Shakespeare was subtle, but in letters a +foot high. + +The painter, sculptor, or author who pleases the polite only has a +success to be proud of as far as it goes, and to be ashamed of that it +goes no further. He need not shrink from giving pleasure to the vulgar +because bad art pleases them. It is part of his reason for being that he +should please them, too; and if he does not it is a proof that he is +wanting in force, however much he abounds in fineness. Who would not +wish his picture to draw a crowd about it? Who would not wish his novel +to sell five hundred thousand copies, for reasons besides the sordid love +of gain which I am told governs novelists? One should not really wish it +any the less because chromos and historical romances are popular. + +Sometime, I believe, the artist and his public will draw nearer together +in a mutual understanding, though perhaps not in our present conditions. +I put that understanding off till the good time when life shall be more +than living, more even than the question of getting a living; but in the +mean time I think that the artist might very well study the springs of +feeling in others; and if I were a dramatist I think I should quite +humbly go to that play where they hiss the villain for his villany, and +inquire how his wickedness had been made so appreciable, so vital, so +personal. Not being a dramatist, I still cannot indulge the greatest +contempt of that play and its public. + + + + + + +POLITICS OF AMERICAN AUTHORS + +No thornier theme could well be suggested than I was once invited to +consider by an Englishman who wished to know how far American politicians +were scholars, and how far American authors took part in politics. In my +mind I first revolted from the inquiry, and then I cast about, in the +fascination it began to have for me, to see how I might handle it and +prick myself least. In a sort, which it would take too long to set +forth, politics are very intimate matters with us, and if one were to +deal quite frankly with the politics of a contemporary author, one might +accuse one's self of an unwarrantable personality. So, in what I shall +have to say in answer to the question asked me, I shall seek above all +things not to be quite frank. + + + + +I. + +My uncandor need not be so jealously guarded in speaking of authors no +longer living. Not to go too far back among these, it is perfectly safe +to say that when the slavery question began to divide all kinds of men +among us, Lowell, Longfellow, Whittier, Curtis, Emerson, and Bryant more +or less promptly and openly took sides against slavery. Holmes was very +much later in doing so, but he made up for his long delay by his final +strenuousness; as for Hawthorne, he was, perhaps, too essentially a +spectator of life to be classed with either party, though his +associations, if not his sympathies, were with the Northern men who had +Southern principles until the civil war came. After the war, when our +political questions ceased to be moral and emotional and became economic +and sociological, literary men found their standing with greater +difficulty. They remained mostly Republicans, because the Republicans +were the anti-slavery party, and were still waging war against slavery in +their nerves. + +I should say that they also continued very largely the emotional +tradition in politics, and it is doubtful if in the nature of things the +politics of literary men can ever be otherwise than emotional. In fact, +though the questions may no longer be so, the politics of vastly the +greater number of Americans are so. Nothing else would account for the +fact that during the last ten or fifteen years men have remained +Republicans and remained Democrats upon no tangible issues except of +office, which could practically concern only a few hundreds or thousands +out of every million voters. Party fealty is praised as a virtue, and +disloyalty to party is treated as a species of incivism next in +wickedness to treason. If any one were to ask me why then American +authors were not active in American politics, as they once were, I should +feel a certain diffidence in replying that the question of other people's +accession to office was, however emotional, unimportant to them as +compared with literary questions. I should have the more diffidence +because it might be retorted that literary men were too unpractical for +politics when they did not deal with moral issues. + +Such a retort would be rather mild and civil, as things go, and might +even be regarded as complimentary. It is not our custom to be tender +with any one who doubts if any actuality is right, or might not be +bettered, especially in public affairs. We are apt to call such a one +out of his name and to punish him for opinions he has never held. This +may be a better reason than either given why authors do not take part in +politics with us. They are a thin-skinned race, fastidious often, and +always averse to hard knocks; they are rather modest, too, and distrust +their fitness to lead, when they have quite a firm faith in their +convictions. They hesitate to urge these in the face of practical +politicians, who have a confidence in their ability to settle all affairs +of State not surpassed even by that of business men in dealing with +economic questions. + +I think it is a pity that our authors do not go into politics at least +for the sake of the material it would yield them; but really they do not. +Our politics are often vulgar, but they are very picturesque; yet, so +far, our fiction has shunned them even more decidedly than it has shunned +our good society--which is not picturesque or apparently anything but a +tiresome adaptation of the sort of drama that goes on abroad under the +same name. In nearly the degree that our authors have dealt with our +politics as material, they have given the practical politicians only too +much reason to doubt their insight and their capacity to understand the +mere machinery, the simplest motives, of political life. + + + + +II. + +There are exceptions, of course, and if my promise of reticence did not +withhold me I might name some striking ones. Privately and +unprofessionally, I think our authors take as vivid an interest in public +affairs as any other class of our citizens, and I should be sorry to +think that they took a less intelligent interest. Now and then, but only +very rarely, one of them speaks out, and usually on the unpopular side. +In this event he is spared none of the penalties with which we like to +visit difference of opinion; rather they are accumulated on him. + +Such things are not serious, and they are such as no serious man need +shrink from, but they have a bearing upon what I am trying to explain, +and in a certain measure they account for a certain attitude in our +literary men. No one likes to have stones, not to say mud, thrown at +him, though they are not meant to hurt him badly and may be partly thrown +in joke. But it is pretty certain that if a man not in politics takes +them seriously, he will have more or less mud, not to say stones, thrown +at him. He might burlesque or caricature them, or misrepresent them, +with safety; but if he spoke of public questions with heart and +conscience, he could not do it with impunity, unless he were authorized +to do so by some practical relation to them. I do not mean that then he +would escape; but in this country, where there were once supposed to be +no classes, people are more strictly classified than in any other. +Business to the business man, law to the lawyer, medicine to the +physician, politics to the politician, and letters to the literary man; +that is the rule. One is not expected to transcend his function, and +commonly one does not. We keep each to his last, as if there were not +human interests, civic interests, which had a higher claim than the last +upon our thinking and feeling. The tendency has grown upon us severally +and collectively through the long persistence of our prosperity; if +public affairs were going ill, private affairs were going so well that we +did not mind the others; and we Americans are, I think, meridional in our +improvidence. We are so essentially of to-day that we behave as if +to-morrow no more concerned us than yesterday. We have taught ourselves to +believe that it will all come out right in the end so long that we have +come to act upon our belief; we are optimistic fatalists. + + + + +III. + +The turn which our politics have taken towards economics, if I may so +phrase the rise of the questions of labor and capital, has not largely +attracted literary men. It is doubtful whether Edward Bellamy himself, +whose fancy of better conditions has become the abiding faith of vast +numbers of Americans, supposed that he was entering the field of +practical politics, or dreamed of influencing elections by his hopes of +economic equality. But he virtually founded the Populist party, which, +as the vital principle of the Democratic party, came so near electing its +candidate for the Presidency some years ago; and he is to be named first +among our authors who have dealt with politics on their more human side +since the days of the old antislavery agitation. Without too great +disregard of the reticence concerning the living which I promised myself, +I may mention Dr. Edward Everett Hale and Colonel Thomas Wentworth +Higginson as prominent authors who encouraged the Nationalist movement +eventuating in Populism, though they were never Populists. It may be +interesting to note that Dr. Hale and Colonel Higginson, who later came +together in their sociological sympathies, were divided by the schism of +1884, when the first remained with the Republicans and the last went off +to the Democrats. More remotely, Colonel Higginson was anti slavery +almost to the point of Abolitionism, and he led a negro regiment in the +war. Dr. Hale was of those who were less radically opposed to slavery +before the war, but hardly so after it came. Since the war a sort of +refluence of the old anti-slavery politics carried from his moorings in +Southern tradition Mr. George W. Cable, who, against the white sentiment +of his section, sided with the former slaves, and would, if the indignant +renunciation of his fellow-Southerners could avail, have consequently +ceased to be the first of Southern authors, though he would still have +continued the author of at least one of the greatest American novels. + +If I must burn my ships behind me in alleging these modern instances, as +I seem really to be doing, I may mention Mr. R. W. Gilder, the poet, as +an author who has taken part in the politics of municipal reform, Mr. +Hamlin Garland has been known from the first as a zealous George man, or +single-taxer. Mr. John Hay, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, and Mr. Henry Cabot +Lodge are Republican politicians, as well as recognized literary men. +Mr. Joel Chandler Harris, when not writing Uncle Remus, writes political +articles in a leading Southern journal. Mark Twain is a leading +anti-imperialist. + + + + +IV. + +I am not sure whether I have made out a case for our authors or against +them; perhaps I have not done so badly; but I have certainly not tried to +be exhaustive; the exhaustion is so apt to extend from the subject to the +reader, and I wish to leave him in a condition to judge for himself +whether American literary men take part in American politics or not. +I think they bear their share, in the quieter sort of way which we hope +(it may be too fondly) is the American way. They are none of them +politicians in the Latin sort. Few, if any, of our statesmen have come +forward with small volumes of verse in their hands as they used to do in +Spain; none of our poets or historians have been chosen Presidents of the +republic as has happened to their French confreres; no great novelist of +ours has been exiled as Victor Hugo was, or atrociously mishandled as +Zola has been, though I have no doubt that if, for instance, one had once +said the Spanish war wrong he would be pretty generally 'conspue'. +They have none of them reached the heights of political power, as several +English authors have done; but they have often been ambassadors, +ministers, and consuls, though they may not often have been appointed for +political reasons. I fancy they discharge their duties in voting rather +faithfully, though they do not often take part in caucuses or +conventions. + +As for the other half of the question--how far American politicians are +scholars--one's first impulse would be to say that they never were so. +But I have always had an heretical belief that there were snakes in +Ireland; and it may be some such disposition to question authority that +keeps me from yielding to this impulse. The law of demand and supply +alone ought to have settled the question in favor of the presence of the +scholar in our politics, there has been such a cry for him among us for +almost a generation past. Perhaps the response has not been very direct, +but I imagine that our politicians have never been quite so destitute of +scholarship as they would sometimes make appear. I do not think so many +of them now write a good style, or speak a good style, as the politicians +of forty, or fifty, or sixty years ago; but this may be merely part of +the impression of the general worsening of things, familiar after middle +life to every one's experience, from the beginning of recorded time. If +something not so literary is meant by scholarship, if a study of finance, +of economics, of international affairs is in question, it seems to go on +rather more to their own satisfaction than that of their critics. But +without being always very proud of the result, and without professing to +know the facts very profoundly, one may still suspect that under an +outside by no means academic there is a process of thinking in our +statesmen which is not so loose, not so unscientific, and not even so +unscholarly as it might be supposed. It is not the effect of specific +training, and yet it is the effect of training. I do not find that the +matters dealt with are anywhere in the world intrusted to experts; and in +this sense scholarship has not been called to the aid of our legislation +or administration; but still I should not like to say that none of our +politicians were scholars. That would be offensive, and it might not be +true. In fact, I can think of several whom I should be tempted to call +scholars if I were not just here recalled to a sense of my purpose not to +deal quite frankly with this inquiry. + + + + + +STORAGE + +It has been the belief of certain kindly philosophers that if the one +half of mankind knew how the other half lived, the two halves might be +brought together in a family affection not now so observable in human +relations. Probably if this knowledge were perfect, there would still be +things, to bar the perfect brotherhood; and yet the knowledge itself is +so interesting, if not so salutary as it has been imagined, that one can +hardly refuse to impart it if one has it, and can reasonably hope, in the +advantage of the ignorant, to find one's excuse with the better informed. + + + + +I. + +City and country are still so widely apart in every civilization that one +can safely count upon a reciprocal strangeness in many every-day things. +For instance, in the country, when people break up house-keeping, they +sell their household goods and gods, as they did in cities fifty or a +hundred years ago; but now in cities they simply store them; and vast +warehouses in all the principal towns have been devoted to their storage. +The warehouses are of all types, from dusty lofts over stores, and +ammoniacal lofts over stables, to buildings offering acres of space, and +carefully planned for the purpose. They are more or less fire-proof, +slow-burning, or briskly combustible, like the dwellings they have +devastated. But the modern tendency is to a type where flames do not +destroy, nor moth corrupt, nor thieves break through and steal. Such a +warehouse is a city in itself, laid out in streets and avenues, with the +private tenements on either hand duly numbered, and accessible only to +the tenants or their order. The aisles are concreted, the doors are +iron, and the roofs are ceiled with iron; the whole place is heated by +steam and lighted by electricity. Behind the iron doors, which in the +New York warehouses must number hundreds of thousands, and throughout all +our other cities, millions, the furniture of a myriad households is +stored--the effects of people who have gone to Europe, or broken up +house-keeping provisionally or definitively, or have died, or been +divorced. They are the dead bones of homes, or their ghosts, or their +yet living bodies held in hypnotic trances; destined again in some future +time to animate some house or flat anew. In certain cases the spell +lasts for many years, in others for a few, and in others yet it prolongs +itself indefinitely. + +I may mention the case of one owner whom I saw visiting the warehouse to +take out the household stuff that had lain there a long fifteen years. +He had been all that while in Europe, expecting any day to come home and +begin life again, in his own land. That dream had passed, and now he was +taking his stuff out of storage and shipping it to Italy. I did not envy +him his feelings as the parts of his long-dead past rose round him in +formless resurrection. It was not that they were all broken or defaced. +On the contrary, they were in a state of preservation far more +heartbreaking than any decay. In well-managed storage warehouses the +things are handled with scrupulous care, and they are so packed into the +appointed rooms that if not disturbed they could suffer little harm in +fifteen or fifty years. The places are wonderfully well kept, and if you +will visit them, say in midwinter, after the fall influx of furniture has +all been hidden away behind the iron doors of the several cells, you +shall find their far-branching corridors scrupulously swept and dusted, +and shall walk up and down their concrete length with some such sense of +secure finality as you would experience in pacing the aisle of your +family vault. + +That is what it comes to. One may feign that these storage warehouses +are cities, but they are really cemeteries: sad columbaria on whose +shelves are stowed exanimate things once so intimately of their owners' +lives that it is with the sense of looking at pieces and bits of one's +dead self that one revisits them. If one takes the fragments out to fit +them to new circumstance, one finds them not only uncomformable and +incapable, but so volubly confidential of the associations in which they +are steeped, that one wishes to hurry them back to their cell and lock it +upon them forever. One feels then that the old way was far better, and +that if the things had been auctioned off, and scattered up and down, as +chance willed, to serve new uses with people who wanted them enough to +pay for them even a tithe of their cost, it would have been wiser. +Failing this, a fire seems the only thing for them, and their removal to +the cheaper custody of a combustible or slow-burning warehouse the best +recourse. Desperate people, aging husbands and wives, who have attempted +the reconstruction of their homes with these + + "Portions and parcels of the dreadful past" + +have been known to wish for an earthquake, even, that would involve their +belongings in an indiscriminate ruin. + + + + +II. + +In fact, each new start in life should be made with material new to you, +if comfort is to attend the enterprise. It is not only sorrowful but it +is futile to store your possessions, if you hope to find the old +happiness in taking them out and using them again. It is not that they +will not go into place, after a fashion, and perform their old office, +but that the pang they will inflict through the suggestion of the other +places where they served their purpose in other years will be only the +keener for the perfection with which they do it now. If they cannot be +sold, and if no fire comes down from heaven to consume them, then they +had better be stored with no thought of ever taking them out again. + +That will be expensive, or it will be inexpensive, according to the sort +of storage they are put into. The inexperienced in such matters may be +surprised, and if they have hearts they may be grieved, to learn that the +fire-proof storage of the furniture of the average house would equal the +rent of a very comfortable domicile in a small town, or a farm by which a +family's living can be earned, with a decent dwelling in which it can be +sheltered. Yet the space required is not very great; three fair-sized +rooms will hold everything; and there is sometimes a fierce satisfaction +in seeing how closely the things that once stood largely about, and +seemed to fill ample parlors and chambers, can be packed away. To be +sure they are not in their familiar attitudes; they lie on their sides or +backs, or stand upon their heads; between the legs of library or dining +tables are stuffed all kinds of minor movables, with cushions, pillows, +pictures, cunningly adjusted to the environment; and mattresses pad the +walls, or interpose their soft bulk between pieces of furniture that +would otherwise rend each other. Carpets sewn in cotton against moths, +and rugs in long rolls; the piano hovering under its ample frame a whole +brood of helpless little guitars, mandolins, and banjos, and supporting +on its broad back a bulk of lighter cases to the fire-proof ceiling of +the cell; paintings in boxes indistinguishable outwardly from their +companioning mirrors; barrels of china and kitchen utensils, and all the +what-not of householding and house-keeping contribute to the repletion. + +There is a science observed in the arrangement of the various effects; +against the rear wall and packed along the floor, and then in front of +and on top of these, is built a superstructure of the things that may be +first wanted, in case of removal, or oftenest wanted in some exigency of +the homeless life of the owners, pending removal. The lightest and +slightest articles float loosely about the door, or are interwoven in a +kind of fabric just within, and curtaining the ponderous mass behind. +The effect is not so artistic as the mortuary mosaics which the Roman +Capuchins design with the bones of their dead brethren in the crypt of +their church, but the warehousemen no doubt have their just pride in it, +and feel an artistic pang in its provisional or final disturbance. + +It had better never be disturbed, for it is disturbed only in some futile +dream of returning to the past; and we never can return to the past on +the old terms. It is well in all things to accept life implicitly, and +when an end has come to treat it as the end, and not vainly mock it as a +suspense of function. When the poor break up their homes, with no +immediate hope of founding others, they must sell their belongings +because they cannot afford to pay storage on them. The rich or richer +store their household effects, and cheat themselves with the illusion +that they are going some time to rehabilitate with them just such a home +as they have dismantled. But the illusion probably deceives nobody so +little as those who cherish the vain hope. As long as they cherish it, +however--and they must cherish it till their furniture or themselves fall +to dust--they cannot begin life anew, as the poor do who have kept +nothing of the sort to link them to the past. This is one of the +disabilities of the prosperous, who will probably not be relieved of it +till some means of storing the owner as well as the' furniture is +invented. In the immense range of modern ingenuity, this is perhaps not +impossible. Why not, while we are still in life, some sweet oblivious +antidote which shall drug us against memory, and after time shall elapse +for the reconstruction of a new home in place of the old, shall repossess +us of ourselves as unchanged as the things with which we shall again +array it? Here is a pretty idea for some dreamer to spin into the filmy +fabric of a romance, and I handsomely make a present of it to the first +comer. If the dreamer is of the right quality he will know how to make +the reader feel that with the universal longing to return to former +conditions or circumstances it must always be a mistake to do so, and he +will subtly insinuate the disappointment and discomfort of the stored +personality in resuming its old relations. With that just mixture of the +comic and pathetic which we desire in romance, he will teach convincingly +that a stored personality is to be desired only if it is permanently +stored, with the implication of a like finality in the storage of its +belongings. + +Save in some signal exception, a thing taken out of storage cannot be +established in its former function without a sense of its comparative +inadequacy. It stands in the old place, it serves the old use, and yet +a new thing would be better; it would even in some subtle wise be more +appropriate, if I may indulge so audacious a paradox; for the time is +new, and so will be all the subconscious keeping in which our lives are +mainly passed. We are supposed to have associations with the old things +which render them precious, but do not the associations rather render +them painful? If that is true of the inanimate things, how much truer it +is of those personalities which once environed and furnished our lives! +Take the article of old friends, for instance: has it ever happened to +the reader to witness the encounter of old friends after the lapse of +years? Such a meeting is conventionally imagined to be full of tender +joy, a rapture that vents itself in manly tears, perhaps, and certainly +in womanly tears. But really is it any such emotion? Honestly is not it +a cruel embarrassment, which all the hypocritical pretences cannot hide? +The old friends smile and laugh, and babble incoherently at one another, +but are they genuinely glad? Is not each wishing the other at that end +of the earth from which he came? Have they any use for each other such +as people of unbroken associations have? + +I have lately been privy to the reunion of two old comrades who are bound +together more closely than most men in a community of interests, +occupations, and ideals. During a long separation they had kept account +of each other's opinions as well as experiences; they had exchanged +letters, from time to time, in which they opened their minds fully to +each other, and found themselves constantly in accord. When they met +they made a great shouting, and each pretended that he found the other +just what he used to be. They talked a long, long time, fighting the +invisible enemy which they felt between them. The enemy was habit, the +habit of other minds and hearts, the daily use of persons and things +which in their separation they had not had in common. When the old +friends parted they promised to meet every day, and now, since their +lines had been cast in the same places again, to repair the ravage of the +envious years, and become again to each other all that they had ever +been. But though they live in the same town, and often dine at the same +table, and belong to the same club, yet they have not grown together +again. They have grown more and more apart, and are uneasy in each +other's presence, tacitly self-reproachful for the same effect which +neither of them could avert or repair. They had been respectively in +storage, and each, in taking the other out, has experienced in him the +unfitness which grows upon the things put away for a time and reinstated +in a former function. + + + + +III. + +I have not touched upon these facts of life, without the purpose of +finding some way out of the coil. There seems none better than the +counsel of keeping one's face set well forward, and one's eyes fixed +steadfastly upon the future. This is the hint we will get from nature if +we will heed her, and note how she never recurs, never stores or takes +out of storage. Fancy rehabilitating one's first love: how nature would +mock at that! We cannot go back and be the men and women we were, any +more than we can go back and be children. As we grow older, each year's +change in us is more chasmal and complete. There is no elixir whose +magic will recover us to ourselves as we were last year; but perhaps we +shall return to ourselves more and more in the times, or the eternity, to +come. Some instinct or inspiration implies the promise of this, but only +on condition that we shall not cling to the life that has been ours, and +hoard its mummified image in our hearts. We must not seek to store +ourselves, but must part with what we were for the use and behoof of +others, as the poor part with their worldly gear when they move from one +place to another. It is a curious and significant property of our +outworn characteristics that, like our old furniture, they will serve +admirably in the life of some other, and that this other can profitably +make them his when we can no longer keep them ours, or ever hope to +resume them. They not only go down to successive generations, but they +spread beyond our lineages, and serve the turn of those whom we never +knew to be within the circle of our influence. + +Civilization imparts itself by some such means, and the lower classes are +clothed in the cast conduct of the upper, which if it had been stored +would have left the inferiors rude and barbarous. We have only to think +how socially naked most of us would be if we had not had the beautiful +manners of our exclusive society to put on at each change of fashion when +it dropped them. + +All earthly and material things should be worn out with use, and not +preserved against decay by any unnatural artifice. Even when broken and +disabled from overuse they have a kind of respectability which must +commend itself to the observer, and which partakes of the pensive grace +of ruin. An old table with one leg gone, and slowly lapsing to decay in +the woodshed, is the emblem of a fitter order than the same table, with +all its legs intact, stored with the rest of the furniture from a broken +home. Spinning-wheels gathering dust in the garret of a house that is +itself falling to pieces have a dignity that deserts them when they are +dragged from their refuge, and furbished up with ribbons and a tuft of +fresh tow, and made to serve the hollow occasions of bric-a-brac, as they +were a few years ago. A pitcher broken at the fountain, or a battered +kettle on a rubbish heap, is a venerable object, but not crockery and +copper-ware stored in the possibility of future need. However carefully +handed down from one generation to another, the old objects have a +forlorn incongruity in their successive surroundings which appeals to the +compassion rather than the veneration of the witness. + +It was from a truth deeply mystical that Hawthorne declared against any +sort of permanence in the dwellings of men, and held that each generation +should newly house itself. He preferred the perishability of the wooden +American house to the durability of the piles of brick or stone which in +Europe affected him as with some moral miasm from the succession of sires +and sons and grandsons that had died out of them. But even of such +structures as these it is impressive how little the earth makes with the +passage of time. Where once a great city of them stood, you shall find a +few tottering walls, scarcely more mindful of the past than "the cellar +and the well" which Holmes marked as the ultimate monuments, the last +witnesses, to the existence of our more transitory habitations. It is +the law of the patient sun that everything under it shall decay, and if +by reason of some swift calamity, some fiery cataclysm, the perishable +shall be overtaken by a fate that fixes it in unwasting arrest, it cannot +be felt that the law has been set aside in the interest of men's +happiness or cheerfulness. Neither Pompeii nor Herculaneum invites the +gayety of the spectator, who as he walks their disinterred thoroughfares +has the weird sense of taking a former civilization out of storage, and +the ache of finding it wholly unadapted to the actual world. As far as +his comfort is concerned, it had been far better that those cities had +not been stored, but had fallen to the ruin that has overtaken all their +contemporaries. + + + + +IV + +No, good friend, sir or madam, as the case may be, but most likely madam: +if you are about to break up your household for any indefinite period, +and are not so poor that you need sell your things, be warned against +putting them in storage, unless of the most briskly combustible type. +Better, far better, give them away, and disperse them by that means to a +continuous use that shall end in using them up; or if no one will take +them, then hire a vacant lot, somewhere, and devote them to the flames. +By that means you shall bear witness against a custom that insults the +order of nature, and crowds the cities with the cemeteries of dead homes, +where there is scarcely space for the living homes. Do not vainly fancy +that you shall take your stuff out of storage and find it adapted to the +ends that it served before it was put in. You will not be the same, or +have the same needs or desire, when you take it out, and the new place +which you shall hope to equip with it will receive it with cold +reluctance, or openly refuse it, insisting upon forms and dimensions that +render it ridiculous or impossible. The law is that nothing taken out of +storage is the same as it was when put in, and this law, hieroglyphed in +those rude 'graffiti' apparently inscribed by accident in the process of +removal, has only such exceptions as prove the rule. + +The world to which it has returned is not the same, and that makes all +the difference. Yet, truth and beauty do not change, however the moods +and fashions change. The ideals remain, and these alone you can go back +to, secure of finding them the same, to-day and to-morrow, that they were +yesterday. This perhaps is because they have never been in storage, but +in constant use, while the moods and fashions have been put away and +taken out a thousand times. Most people have never had ideals, but only +moods and fashions, but such people, least of all, are fitted to find in +them that pleasure of the rococo which consoles the idealist when the old +moods and fashions reappear. + + + + + + +"FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER ON THE O-HI-O" + +There was not much promise of pleasure in the sodden afternoon of a +mid-March day at Pittsburg, where the smoke of a thousand foundry +chimneys gave up trying to rise through the thick, soft air, and fell +with the constant rain which it dyed its own black. But early memories +stirred joyfully in the two travellers in whose consciousness I was +making my tour, at sight of the familiar stern-wheel steamboat lying +beside the wharf boat at the foot of the dilapidated levee, and doing its +best to represent the hundreds of steamboats that used to lie there in +the old days. It had the help of three others in its generous effort, and +the levee itself made a gallant pretence of being crowded with freight, +and succeeded in displaying several saturated piles of barrels and +agricultural implements on the irregular pavement whose wheel-worn +stones, in long stretches, were sunken out of sight in their parent mud. +The boats and the levee were jointly quite equal to the demand made upon +them by the light-hearted youngsters of sixty-five and seventy, who were +setting out on their journey in fulfilment of a long-cherished dream, and +for whom much less freight and much fewer boats would have rehabilitated +the past. + + + + +I. + +When they mounted the broad stairway, tidily strewn with straw to save it +from the mud of careless boots, and entered the long saloon of the +steamboat, the promise of their fancy was more than made good for them. +From the clerk's office, where they eagerly paid their fare, the saloon +stretched two hundred feet by thirty away to the stern, a cavernous +splendor of white paint and gilding, starred with electric bulbs, and +fenced at the stern with wide windows of painted glass. Midway between +the great stove in the bow where the men were herded, and the great stove +at the stern where the women kept themselves in the seclusion which the +tradition of Western river travel still guards, after well-nigh a hundred +years, they were given ample state-rooms, whose appointments so exactly +duplicated those they remembered from far-off days that they could have +believed themselves awakened from a dream of insubstantial time, with the +events in which it had seemed to lapse, mere feints of experience. When +they sat down at the supper-table and were served with the sort of +belated steamboat dinner which it recalled as vividly, the kind, sooty +faces and snowy aprons of those who served them were so quite those of +other days that they decided all repasts since were mere Barmecide +feasts, and made up for the long fraud practised upon them with the +appetites of the year 1850. + + + + +II. + +A rigider sincerity than shall be practised here might own that the table +of the good steamboat 'Avonek' left something to be desired, if tested by +more sophisticated cuisines, but in the article of corn-bread it was of +an inapproachable preeminence. This bread was made of the white corn +which North knows not, nor the hapless East; and the buckwheat cakes at +breakfast were without blame, and there was a simple variety in the +abundance which ought to have satisfied if it did not flatter the choice. +The only thing that seemed strangely, that seemed sadly, anomalous in a +land flowing with ham and bacon was that the 'Avonek' had not imagined +providing either for the guests, no one of whom could have had a +religious scruple against them. + +The thing, indeed, which was first and last conspicuous in the +passengers, was their perfectly American race and character. At the +start, when with an acceptable observance of Western steamboat tradition +the 'Avonek' left her wharf eight hours behind her appointed time, there +were very few passengers; but they began to come aboard at the little +towns of both shores as she swam southward and westward, till all the +tables were so full that, in observance of another Western steamboat +tradition; one did well to stand guard over his chair lest some other who +liked it should seize it earlier. The passengers were of every age and +condition, except perhaps the highest condition, and they seemed none the +worse for being more like Americans of the middle of the last century +than of the beginning of this. Their fashions were of an approximation +to those of the present, but did not scrupulously study detail; their +manners were those of simpler if not sincerer days. + +The women kept to themselves at their end of the saloon, aloof from the +study of any but their husbands or kindred, but the men were everywhere +else about, and open to observation. They were not so open to +conversation, for your mid-Westerner is not a facile, though not an +unwilling, talker. They sat by their tall, cast-iron stove (of the oval +pattern unvaried since the earliest stove of the region), and silently +ruminated their tobacco and spat into the clustering, cuspidors at their +feet. They would always answer civilly if questioned, and oftenest +intelligently, but they asked nothing in return, and they seemed to have +none of that curiosity once known or imagined in them by Dickens and +other averse aliens. They had mostly faces of resolute power, and such a +looking of knowing exactly what they wanted as would not have promised +well for any collectively or individually opposing them. If ever the +sense of human equality has expressed itself in the human countenance it +speaks unmistakably from American faces like theirs. + +They were neither handsome nor unhandsome; but for a few striking +exceptions, they had been impartially treated by nature; and where they +were notably plain their look of force made up for their lack of beauty. +They were notably handsomest in a tall young fellow of a lean face, +absolute Greek in profile, amply thwarted with a branching mustache, and +slender of figure, on whom his clothes, lustrous from much sitting down +and leaning up, grew like the bark on a tree, and who moved slowly and +gently about, and spoke with a low, kind voice. In his young comeliness +he was like a god, as the gods were fancied in the elder world: a chewing +and a spitting god, indeed, but divine in his passionless calm. + +He was a serious divinity, and so were all the mid-Western human-beings +about him. One heard no joking either of the dapper or cockney sort of +cities, or the quaint graphic phrasing of Eastern country folk; and it +may have been not far enough West for the true Western humor. At any +rate, when they were not silent these men still were serious. + +The women were apparently serious, too, and where they were associated +with the men were, if they were not really subject, strictly abeyant, in +the spectator's eye. The average of them was certainly not above the +American woman's average in good looks, though one young mother of six +children, well grown save for the baby in her arms, was of the type some +masters loved to paint, with eyes set wide under low arched brows. She +had the placid dignity and the air of motherly goodness which goes fitly +with such beauty, and the sight of her was such as to disperse many of +the misgivings that beset the beholder who looketh upon the woman when +she is New. As she seemed, so any man might wish to remember his mother +seeming. + +All these river folk, who came from the farms and villages along the +stream, and never from the great towns or cities, were well mannered, if +quiet manners are good; and though the men nearly all chewed tobacco and +spat between meals, at the table they were of an exemplary behavior. The +use of the fork appeared strange to them, and they handled it strenuously +rather than agilely, yet they never used their knives shovel-wise, +however they planted their forks like daggers in the steak: the steak +deserved no gentler usage, indeed. They were usually young, and they +were constantly changing, bent upon short journeys between the shore +villages; they were mostly farm youth, apparently, though some were said +to be going to find work at the great potteries up the river for wages +fabulous to home-keeping experience. + +One personality which greatly took the liking of one of our tourists was +a Kentucky mountaineer who, after three years' exile in a West Virginia +oil town, was gladly returning to the home for which he and all his +brood-of large and little comely, red-haired boys and girls-had never +ceased to pine. His eagerness to get back was more than touching; it was +awing; for it was founded on a sort of mediaeval patriotism that could +own no excellence beyond the borders of the natal region. He had +prospered at high wages in his trade at that oil town, and his wife and +children had managed a hired farm so well as to pay all the family +expenses from it, but he was gladly leaving opportunity behind, that he +might return to a land where, if you were passing a house at meal-time, +they came out and made you come in and eat. "When you eat where I've +been living you pay fifty cents," he explained. "And are you taking all +your household stuff with you?" "Only the cook-stove. Well, I'll tell +you: we made the other things ourselves; made them out of plank, and they +were not worth-moving." Here was the backwoods surviving into the day of +Trusts; and yet we talk of a world drifted hopelessly far from the old +ideals! + + + + +III. + +The new ideals, the ideals of a pitiless industrialism, were sufficiently +expressed along the busy shores, where the innumerable derricks of +oil-wells silhouetted their gibbet shapes against the horizon, and the +myriad chimneys of the foundries sent up the smoke of their torment into +the quiet skies and flamed upon the forehead of the evening like baleful +suns. But why should I be so violent of phrase against these guiltless +means of millionairing? There must be iron and coal as well as wheat and +corn in the world, and without their combination we cannot have bread. If +the combination is in the form of a trust, such as has laid its giant +clutch upon all those warring industries beside the Ohio and swept them +into one great monopoly, why, it has still to show that it is worse than +competition; that it is not, indeed, merely the first blind stirrings of +the universal cooperation of which the dreamers of ideal commonwealths +have always had the vision. + +The derricks and the chimneys, when one saw them, seem to have all the +land to themselves; but this was an appearance only, terrifying in its +strenuousness, but not, after all, the prevalent aspect. That was rather +of farm, farms, and evermore farms, lying along the rich levels of the +stream, and climbing as far up its beautiful hills as the plough could +drive. In the spring and in the Mall, when it is suddenly swollen by the +earlier and the later rains, the river scales its banks and swims over +those levels to the feet of those hills, and when it recedes it leaves +the cornfields enriched for the crop that, has never failed since the +forests were first cut from the land. Other fertilizing the fields have +never had any, but they teem as if the guano islands had been emptied +into their laps. They feel themselves so rich that they part with great +lengths and breadths of their soil to the river, which is not good for +the river, and is not well for the fields; so that the farmers, whose +ease learns slowly, are beginning more and more to fence their borders +with the young willows which form a hedge in the shallow wash such a +great part of the way up and down the Ohio. Elms and maples wade in +among the willows, and in time the river will be denied the indigestion +which it confesses in shoals and bars at low water, and in a difficulty +of channel at all stages. + +Meanwhile the fields flourish in spite of their unwise largesse to the +stream, whose shores the comfortable farmsteads keep so constantly that +they are never out of sight. Most commonly they are of brick, but +sometimes of painted wood, and they are set on little eminences high +enough to save them from the freshets, but always so near the river that +they cannot fail of its passing life. Usually a group of planted +evergreens half hides the house from the boat, but its inmates will not +lose any detail of the show, and come down to the gate of the paling +fence to watch the 'Avonek' float by: motionless men and women, who lean +upon the supporting barrier, and rapt children who hold by their skirts +and hands. There is not the eager New England neatness about these +homes; now and then they have rather a sloven air, which does not discord +with their air of comfort; and very, very rarely they stagger drunkenly +in a ruinous neglect. Except where a log cabin has hardily survived the +pioneer period, the houses are nearly all of one pattern; their facades +front the river, and low chimneys point either gable, where a half-story +forms the attic of the two stories below. Gardens of pot-herbs flank +them, and behind cluster the corn-cribs, and the barns and stables +stretch into the fields that stretch out to the hills, now scantily +wooded, but ever lovely in the lines that change with the steamer's +course. + +Except in the immediate suburbs of the large towns, there is no ambition +beyond that of rustic comfort in the buildings on the shore. There is no +such thing, apparently, as a summer cottage, with its mock humility of +name, up or down the whole tortuous length of the Ohio. As yet the land +is not openly depraved by shows of wealth; those who amass it either keep +it to themselves or come away to spend it in European travel, or pause to +waste it unrecognized on the ungrateful Atlantic seaboard. The only +distinctions that are marked are between the homes of honest industry +above the banks and the homes below them of the leisure, which it is +hoped is not dishonest. But, honest or dishonest, it is there apparently +to stay in the house-boats which line the shores by thousands, and repeat +on Occidental terms in our new land the river-life of old and far Cathay. + +They formed the only feature of their travel which our tourists found +absolutely novel; they could clearly or dimly recall from the past every +other feature but the houseboats, which they instantly and gladly +naturalized to their memories of it. The houses had in common the form +of a freight-car set in a flat-bottomed boat; the car would be shorter or +longer, with one, or two, or three windows in its sides, and a section of +stovepipe softly smoking from its roof. The windows might be curtained +or they might be bare, but apparently there was no other distinction +among the houseboat dwellers, whose sluggish craft lay moored among the +willows, or tied to an elm or a maple, or even made fast to a stake on +shore. There were cases in which they had not followed the fall of the +river promptly enough, and lay slanted on the beach, or propped up to a +more habitable level on its slope; in a sole, sad instance, the house had +gone down with the boat and lay wallowing in the wash of the flood. But +they all gave evidence of a tranquil and unhurried life which the soul of +the beholder envied within him, whether it manifested itself in the lord +of the house-boat fishing from its bow, or the lady coming to cleanse +some household utensil at its stern. Infrequently a group of the house- +boat dwellers seemed to be drawing a net, and in one high event they +exhibited a good-sized fish of their capture, but nothing so strenuous +characterized their attitude on any other occasion. The accepted theory +of them was that they did by day as nearly nothing as men could do and +live, and that by night their forays on the bordering farms supplied the +simple needs of people who desired neither to toil nor to spin, but only +to emulate Solomon in his glory with the least possible exertion. The +joyful witness of their ease would willingly have sacrificed to them any +amount of the facile industrial or agricultural prosperity about them and +left them slumberously afloat, unmolested by dreams of landlord or tax- +gatherer. Their existence for the fleeting time seemed the true +interpretation of the sage's philosophy, the fulfilment of the poet's +aspiration. + + "Why should we only toil, that are the roof and crown of things." + +How did they pass their illimitable leisure, when they rested from the +fishing-net by day and the chicken-coop by night? Did they read the new +historical fictions aloud to one another? Did some of them even meditate +the thankless muse and not mind her ingratitude? Perhaps the ladies of +the house-boats, when they found themselves--as they often did--in +companies of four or five, had each other in to "evenings," at which one +of them read a paper on some artistic or literary topic. + + + + +IV. + +The trader's boat, of an elder and more authentic tradition, sometimes +shouldered the house-boats away from a village landing, but it, too, was +a peaceful home, where the family life visibly went hand-in-hand with +commerce. When the trader has supplied all the wants and wishes of a +neighborhood, he unmoors his craft and drops down the river's tide to +where it meets the ocean's tide in the farthermost Mississippi, and there +either sells out both his boat and his stock, or hitches his home to some +returning steamboat, and climbs slowly, with many pauses, back to the +upper Ohio. But his home is not so interesting as that of the +houseboatman, nor so picturesque as that of the raftsman, whose floor of +logs rocks flexibly under his shanty, but securely rides the current. As +the pilots said, a steamboat never tries to hurt a raft of logs, which is +adapted to dangerous retaliation; and by night it always gives a wide +berth to the lantern tilting above the raft from a swaying pole. By day +the raft forms one of the pleasantest aspects of the river-life, with its +convoy of skiffs always searching the stream or shore for logs which have +broken from it, and which the skiffmen recognize by distinctive brands or +stamps. Here and there the logs lie in long ranks upon the shelving +beaches, mixed with the drift of trees and fence-rails, and frames of +corn-cribs and hencoops, and even house walls, which the freshets have +brought down and left stranded. The tops of the little willows are +tufted gayly with hay and rags, and other spoil of the flood; and in one +place a disordered mattress was lodged high among the boughs of a water- +maple, where it would form building material for countless generations of +birds. The fat cornfields were often littered with a varied wreckage +which the farmers must soon heap together and burn, to be rid of it, and +everywhere were proofs of the river's power to devastate as well as +enrich its shores. The dwellers there had no power against it, in its +moments of insensate rage, and the land no protection from its +encroachments except in the simple device of the willow hedges, which, if +planted, sometimes refused to grow, but often came of themselves and kept +the torrent from the loose, unfathomable soil of the banks, otherwise +crumbling helplessly into it. + +The rafts were very well, and the house-boats and the traders' boats, but +the most majestic feature of the riverlife was the tow of coal-barges +which, going or coming, the 'Avonek' met every few miles. Whether going +or coming they were pushed, not pulled, by the powerful steamer which +gathered them in tens and twenties before her, and rode the mid-current +with them, when they were full, or kept the slower water near shore when +they were empty. They claimed the river where they passed, and the +'Avonek' bowed to an unwritten law in giving them the full right of way, +from the time when their low bulk first rose in sight, with the chimneys +of their steamer towering above them and her gay contours gradually +making themselves seen, till she receded from the encounter, with the +wheel at her stern pouring a cataract of yellow water from its blades. +It was insurpassably picturesque always, and not the tapering masts or +the swelling sails of any sea-going craft could match it. + + + + +V. + +So at least the travellers thought who were here revisiting the earliest +scenes of childhood, and who perhaps found them unduly endeared. They +perused them mostly from an easy seat at the bow of the hurricane-deck, +and, whenever the weather favored them, spent the idle time in selecting +shelters for their declining years among the farmsteads that offered +themselves to their choice up and down the shores. The weather commonly +favored them, and there was at least one whole day on the lower river +when the weather was divinely flattering. The soft, dull air lulled +their nerves while it buffeted their faces, and the sun, that looked +through veils of mist and smoke, gently warmed their aging frames and +found itself again in their hearts. Perhaps it was there that the water- +elms and watermaples chiefly budded, and the red-birds sang, and the +drifting flocks of blackbirds called and clattered; but surely these also +spread their gray and pink against the sky and filled it with their +voices. There were meadow-larks and robins without as well as within, +and it was no subjective plough that turned the earliest furrows in those +opulent fields. + +When they were tired of sitting there, they climbed, invited or +uninvited, but always welcomed, to the pilothouse, where either pilot of +the two who were always on watch poured out in an unstinted stream the +lore of the river on which all their days had been passed. They knew +from indelible association every ever-changing line of the constant +hills; every dwelling by the low banks; every aspect of the smoky towns; +every caprice of the river; every-tree, every stump; probably every bud +and bird in the sky. They talked only of the river; they cared for +nothing else. The Cuban cumber and the Philippine folly were equally far +from them; the German prince was not only as if he had never been here, +but as if he never had been; no public question concerned them but that +of abandoning the canals which the Ohio legislature was then foolishly +debating. Were not the canals water-ways, too, like the river, and if +the State unnaturally abandoned them would not it be for the behoof of +those railroads which the rivermen had always fought, and which would +have made a solitude of the river if they could? + +But they could not, and there was nothing more surprising and delightful +in this blissful voyage than the evident fact that the old river traffic +had strongly survived, and seemed to be more strongly reviving. Perhaps +it was not; perhaps the fondness of those Ohio-river-born passengers was +abused by an illusion (as subjective as that of the buds and birds) of a +vivid variety of business and pleasure on the beloved stream. But again, +perhaps not. They were seldom out of sight of the substantial proofs of +both in the through or way packets they encountered, or the nondescript +steam craft that swarmed about the mouths of the contributory rivers, and +climbed their shallowing courses into the recesses of their remotest +hills, to the last lurking-places of their oil and coal. + + + + +VI. + +The Avonek was always stopping to put off or take on merchandise or men. +She would stop for a single passenger, plaited in the mud with his +telescope valise or gripsack under the edge of a lonely cornfield, or to +gather upon her decks the few or many casks or bales that a farmer wished +to ship. She lay long hours by the wharf-boats of busy towns, exchanging +one cargo for another, in that anarchic fetching and carrying which we +call commerce, and which we drolly suppose to be governed by laws. But +wherever she paused or parted, she tested the pilot's marvellous skill; +for no landing, no matter how often she landed in the same place, could +be twice the same. At each return the varying stream and shore must be +studied, and every caprice of either divined. It was always a triumph, +a miracle, whether by day or by night, a constant wonder how under the +pilot's inspired touch she glided softly to her moorings, and without a +jar slipped from them again and went on her course. + +But the landings by night were of course the finest. Then the wide fan +of the search-light was unfurled upon the point to be attained and the +heavy staging lowered from the bow to the brink, perhaps crushing the +willow hedges in it's fall, and scarcely touching the land before a +black, ragged deck-hand had run out through the splendor and made a line +fast to the trunk of the nearest tree. Then the work of lading or +unlading rapidly began in the witching play of the light that set into +radiant relief the black, eager faces and the black, eager figures of the +deck-hands struggling up or down the staging under boxes of heavy wares, +or kegs of nails, or bales of straw, or blocks of stone, steadily mocked +or cursed at in their shapeless effort, till the last of them reeled back +to the deck down the steep of the lifting stage, and dropped to his +broken sleep wherever he could coil himself, doglike, down among the +heaps of freight. + +No dog, indeed, leads such a hapless life as theirs; and ah! and ah! why +should their sable shadows intrude in a picture that was meant to be all +so gay and glad? But ah! and ah! where, in what business of this hard +world, is not prosperity built upon the struggle of toiling men, who +still endeavor their poor best, and writhe and writhe under the burden of +their brothers above, till they lie still under the lighter load of their +mother earth? + + + + +PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + + + Absence of distinction + Advertising + Aim at nothing higher than the amusement of your readers + Anise-seed bag + Any man's country could get on without him + Begun to fight with want from their cradles + Blasts of frigid wind swept the streets + Clemens is said to have said of bicycling + Could not, as the saying is, find a stone to throw at a dog + Disbeliever in punishments of all sorts + Do not want to know about such squalid lives + Early self-helpfulness of children is very remarkable + Encounter of old friends after the lapse of years + Even a day's rest is more than most people can bear + Eyes fixed steadfastly upon the future + Face that expresses care, even to the point of anxiety + For most people choice is a curse + General worsening of things, familiar after middle life + Happy in the indifference which ignorance breeds in us + Hard to think up anything new + Heart of youth aching for their stoical sorrows + Heighten our suffering by anticipation + If one were poor, one ought to be deserving + Lascivious and immodest as possible + Literary spirit is the true world-citizen + Look of challenge, of interrogation, almost of reproof + Malevolent agitators + Meet here to the purpose of a common ostentation + Neatness that brings despair + Noble uselessness + Openly depraved by shows of wealth + People have never had ideals, but only moods and fashions + People might oftener trust themselves to Providence + People of wealth and fashion always dissemble their joy + Plagiarism carries inevitable detection with it + Pure accident and by its own contributory negligence + Refused to see us as we see ourselves + Should be very sorry to do good, as people called it + So many millionaires and so many tramps + So touching that it brought the lump into my own throat + Solution of the problem how and where to spend the summer + Some of it's good, and most of it isn't + Some of us may be toys and playthings without reproach + Superiority one likes to feel towards the rich and great + Take our pleasures ungraciously + The old and ugly are fastidious as to the looks of others + They are so many and I am so few + Those who decide their fate are always rebelling against it + Those who work too much and those who rest too much + Unfailing American kindness + Visitors of the more inquisitive sex + We cannot all be hard-working donkeys + We who have neither youth nor beauty should always expect it + Whatever choice you make, you are pretty sure to regret it + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Short Stories and Essays, by William Dean Howells + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SHORT STORIES AND ESSAYS *** + +***** This file should be named 3379.txt or 3379.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/3/7/3379/ + +Produced by David Widger + +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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