|TO the general public I may say that I violate no confidence in saying
that spring is the most joyful season of the year. But June is also a
good month. Well has the poet ejaculated, "And what is so rare as a day
in June?" though I have seen days in March that were so rare that they
were almost raw. This is not a weather report; however. I started out to
state that Central Park just now is looking its very best, and opens up
with the prospects of doing a good business this season. A ride through
the Park just now is a delight to one who loves to commune with nature,
especially human nature.
The nobility of New York now turns out to get the glorious air and
ventilate its crest. I saw several hundred crests and coats-of-arms the
other day in an hour's time, and it was rather a poor day, too, for a
great many of our best people are just changing from their spring to
their light, summer coats-of-arms.
One of the best crests I saw was a nice, large, red crest, about the
size of an adult rhubarb pie, with a two-year-old Durham unicorn above
it, bearing in his talons the unique maxim, "_Sans culottes, sans
snockemonthegob, sans ery sipelas est_."
And how true this is, too, in a great many cases.
Another very handsome crest on the carriage of the van Studentickels
consisted of a towel-rack penchant, with cockroach regardant, holding
in his beak a large red tape-worm on which was inscribed: "_Spirituous
frumenti, cum homo to-morrow_."
Many of the crests contained terse Latin mottoes, taken from the
inscriptions on peppermint conversation candies, and were quite cute.
A coat-of-arms, consisting of a small Limburger cheese couchant, above
which stood a large can of chloride of potash, on which was inscribed
the words, "Miss, may I see you home?" I thought very taking and just
mysterious enough to make it exciting.
Some day I am going to get myself a crest. I am only waiting for
something to put it on. It will consist of a monkey with his eye knocked
out and a bright green parrot with his tail pulled off, and over this
the simple remark: "We have had a high old time," or words to that
effect.
Not so many equestrians were out as usual on the day I visited the park,
but those who were out afforded the observer a beautiful view of the
park between their persons and the saddle. The equestriennes were more
numerous, and one or two especially were as beautiful as anything that
nature ever turned out. One young woman, in a neat-fitting plug hat,
looked to me like a peri. It has been a good while now since I saw a
peri, but I have always heard them very highly spoken of, and I hope she
will not be offended when she reads these lines and finds that I regard
her in that light.
Carriage-horses are dressing about as they did last season, except that
pon-pon tails are more worn, especially at the end. Neck-yokes are cut
low this year so as to show the shoulders of the wearer, and horses in
mourning wear their tails at half-mast.
The porous plastron is not in favor this year, but many horses who
interfere are wearing life-preservers over the fetlock, and sometimes a
small chest-protector of russet leather over the joint, according to the
taste of the wearer.
Polka-dot or half-mourning dogs are much affected by people who are
beginning to get the upper hand of their grief. Much taste is shown in
the selection of dogs for the coming season, and many owners chain their
coachman to the dog, so that if any one were to come and try to abduct
the dog the coachman could bite him and drive him away. A good coachman
to take care of a watch-dog is almost invaluable.
A custom of taking the butler along in the seat with the coachman
is growing in favor for two reasons: First, it shows that you have a
butler, and, second, you know that while he is out with you he is not
putting paste in the place of your diamonds at home. So I had almost
said that it paste to do this.
The automatic or jointless footman is still popular, and a young man who
has a good turning-lathe leg and an air of impenetrable gloom can get a
job most any time.
Many New York gentlemen who are fond of driving take their grooms out
to Central Park every afternoon for an airing. This is a wise provision,
for those who have associated much with grooms will agree with me that a
little airing now and then is just what they need.
There ought to be a book of park etiquette printed soon, however,
for the guidance of its patrons. In the first place, it should be
considered.
Autre for a gentleman to hire a coupe by the hour in order to recover
from alcoholic prostration, and then sleep up and down the drive with
his feet out the window. It is not respectful, and besides that the
blood is liable to all rush to his head.
Drunken cab-drivers, too, should not be permitted to drive in the park,
for only a little while ago one of them is said to have fallen from his
high perch and injured his crest.
A park policeman should be specially detailed as a breath tester to
stand at each entrance and smell the breath of all drivers and other
patrons of the park. Let us enforce the law.
But the most curious feature about the exhibition afternoon spin in the
Park is the great prevalence of mourning symbols. Almost, if not quite,
one-third of the carriages one meets is decorated with black in every
possible way, till sometimes it looks like a runaway funeral procession.
Why people should come to Central Park to advertise their woe by means
of long black mourning tassels at their horses' heads and a draped
driver with broad bands of bombazine concealing the russet tops of
his boots, sometimes dressed in black throughout, is more than I can
understand.
The honest, earnest and genuine affection of a good woman for a worthy
man, alive or dead, is too sacred to treat lightly and the love that
survives the wreck and ruin of gathering years has inspired more than
one man to deeds of daring whereby he has won everlasting renown, but
the woe that is divided up among the servants and shared in by the
horses is not in good taste, it is not in good order and there are flies
on it.
It is like saying to the world come and see how I suffer. It is parading
your sore toe in Central Park, where people with sore toes are not
supposed to congregate. It is like a widow wailing her woe through the
"Want" column of a healthy morning paper. It is, in effect, saying to
Christendom, come and hear me snort and see me paw up the ground in
my paroxysms of wild and uncontrollable anguish. My grief is of such a
penetrating nature and of that searching variety that it has broken
out at the barn, and even the horses that I bought two weeks after
the funeral, with a part of the life insurance money, have gone into
mourning, and the coachman who got here day before yesterday from
Liverpool has tied himself up in black bombazine and takes special
delight in advertising our sorrow.
I do not believe that it will always be popular to wear mourning for our
friends unless we feel a little doubtful about where they went.
Black is offensive to the eye, offensive to the nose, and it makes your
flesh crêpe to touch it. Will the proofreader please deal gently with
the above joke and I will do as much for him sometime.
Henry Ward Beecher had the right idea of the way to treat death, and
when at last it came his turn to die his home and his church both seemed
to say: "The great preacher is gone, but there is nothing about the
change that is sad."
There is something the matter with grief that works itself up into black
rosettes and long black banners that sweep the ground and shut out the
sky and look like despair and feel like the season-cracked back of a
warty dragon.
But wealth has its little eccentricities and we must bear with them. But
he alone is indeed rich who is content and who does not look under the
bed every night for an indictment. Look at poor old Mr. Sharp, with his
stock of Aldermen depreciating on his hands--men for whom he paid a big
price only a few years ago and who would not attract attention now on a
ten-cent counter, while he don't feel very well himself.
No, I would not swap places with J. Sharp and ride through Central Park
behind a pair of rip, snorting horses, with mourning rosettes on their
heads, and feel that I must hurry back to help select an unprejudiced
jury. I would rather hang on to the brow of a Broadway car till I got to
Fifty-second street, and then stroll over to the menagerie and feed red
pepper to the Sacred Cow and have a good, plain, quiet time than to wear
fine clothes and be wealthy and hate myself all the time. I believe that
I am happier in my untroubled, dreamless sleep on my quiet couch, which
draws a salary during the daytime as an upright piano; happier browsing
about at a different restaurant each day, so that the waiters will not
get well acquainted with me and expect me to give them the money that
I am saving up to go to Europe with; happier, I say, to be thus tossed
about on the bosom of the great, heaving human tide than to have forty
or fifty millions of dollars concealed about my person that I cannot
remember how I obtained.
I dislike notoriety, and nothing irritates me more than the coarse
curiosity of people who ride at night in the elevated trains and peer
idly into my room as I toil over my sewing or go gayly about humming a
simple air as I prepare the evening meal over my cute little portable
oil stove, and though I have not courted this interest on the part of
the people, and though I would prefer to live less in the eye of the
public, I feel that, occupying the position I do, I cannot expect to
wholly consult my own wishes in the matter, and I am content to live
quietly and enjoy good health rather than wear good clothes and feel
rocky all the time.