Want and fine lines come together to supply! In less than a week we
heard from Aunt Kate. It had been a fairly prosperous year at
Flowerfield. Major Dallas, Aunt Kate, John, and Miriam were going to
the Centennial--and they wanted me to go with them. Uncle John would
give me the trip. We were going in two weeks. We might be away a
month, even longer. We would stop in Washington on the way to
Philadelphia. There was a possibility of New York beyond
Philadelphia. There was--there was--just a possibility of Niagara
Falls.
How slowly went by those two weeks!
They passed. I went to Flowerfield; we started from there. I see us
now, at the railroad station, in the county town. Look at 1876
pictures to see the type of clothes we wore, we who would not be too
far behind Fashion, but who certainly walked in her rear. But Major
Dallas would have rested, no matter what he wore, a big, magnetic
man, able, and very kind. Aunt Kate had a slight, small body, but a
big--oh! a big--nature. John and Miriam and I stood in a brown study
waiting for the train to come. I remember how the day was sunny, but
not heated. John was fifteen. Miriam a little under, I a little
over, fourteen.
The train came--we were aboard with our ancient satchels, our
unfashionable umbrellas and baskets. Began our wonder-trip to the
Centennial Exhibition.
Virginia scenery was good, was desirable, but the love of our life,
for Miriam, John, and me, was getting out of Virginia. We had never
been out of Virginia. The long miles, the quite a number of hours
that must be overpassed before we entered the District of Columbia,
rather appalled us. But then the journey, even through Virginia,
grew interesting. John and I sat together, Miriam had the seat
across the aisle. The train that day was not filled; we could move
about, exchange. Uncle John and Aunt Kate were lovely persons with
whom to travel. When the boy came through with fruit we had fruit.
When he brought magazines Uncle John bought our choice for each of
us. We were traveling finely, _comme il faut_, with the bloom on the
event.
Miriam wore a blue-green poplin, with an embroidered tie at the
throat. She had a small round hat of straw, colored like the dress,
with a wreath of cornflowers. She was dark and slight and straight,
with strange, deep eyes, and a smile that was like a different dawn
each time it came.
In the late afternoon we approached the confines of Virginia. At
Alexandria we began to thrill. Now the Potomac River, great and
wide, with some little boats upon it. Now the Virginia shore behind
us. Now before us Washington.... "Look, children! There's the dome
of the Capitol!"
Ours was an old hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue, where we had three
rooms, and outside the long windows a narrow, ironwork balcony.
Standing here we saw, we felt, a sycamore-tree, a languorous, summer
air, warmer than in our part of Virginia where we lived well above
the sea, a pearly twilight, and out of it the gas street-lights
springing--then, with a white flash, an arc-light. That was an
amazement to more than us that summer! Electric light! I remember
first reading this year a phrase that was beginning to come in like a
star in bright twilight, seen and not seen and then again seen, "The
Age of Electricity." ... We young folk leaned upon the balcony rail.
How wide was Pennsylvania Avenue--much wider than Richmond
streets--and how long and how straight! We might also have said, in
1876, what strange, shabby buildings line much of it!
But we are in glamour. The All of it was all right. All right is,
presently, the hotel dinner instead of the supper familiar to us.
All right is the walk before bedtime that we take with Uncle John and
Aunt Kate. We walk to the Capitol. By the happiest circumstance
there hangs in the sky a full, a golden moon. With that and with the
street-lights we might see the faces of the pedestrians whom we
passed or overtook or accompanied. We liked the sound of the many
feet upon the pavement. Some seemed to say, "We live in this happy
place." Some said, "We are travelers like you; we are going to the
Centennial!"
Now we saw the Capitol. We were in its grounds. We stood still, we
travelers from Virginia, and gazed and gazed upon the moonlighted,
white mountain with the rounded crest. It swam upon us in a beauty
that was pain. Oh, all ye symbols, belting us like a Zodiac, three
dimensional mother-language, thick with visions....
We found a bench and sat down. Major Dallas spoke. "I don't suppose
that there have been many periods more politically corrupt than the
one we're in. Financially corrupt, too. There's rottenness. The
sign of hope is that we smell it, we see it, and are beginning to be
ashamed of it. I think we'll have a house-cleaning. But it's going
to be hard to get the especial stain off these years.... Well! And
still, Kate, there's the White Capitol!"
It seemed lambent there before us. It grew more and more beautiful.
I heard Miriam sigh with delight.
We went back to the hotel. Oh, the compounded taste, the long,
twisted romance and adventure of the hostel, inn, tavern, hotel!
Miriam, John, and I, I know, _contacted_ many an inn beside this one
on Pennsylvania Avenue.
We slept and woke to strong enchantment still. We stayed in
Washington four days. And here we went and there we went, and we
returned thrice to the Capitol. We went, upon a river boat, down to
Mount Vernon. "Now I feel at home!" said Aunt Kate, and laughed.
"That is, I feel more at home."
But Miriam and John and I were where the novel was to us home.... We
loved the Capitol, and we loved the balcony before our rooms at that
hotel.... Four days, and we went to the great Centennial Exhibition.
I have seen world's fairs since, but beside them always comes up 1876
in Philadelphia, so small in comparison, but to the child-country so
full of taste, so vivid, so sonorous, so remarkable! We from
Virginia had a new pleasant tavern to dwell in and a new city to see.
We stood in Independence Hall before the cracked bell. "Shut your
eyes!" said Miriam. "Close the crack---lift the bell. Now it's up
in the steeple! It's whole--it's ringing--ringing!"
We see Philadelphia. We see the great Exposition of the country and
its products, of other nations and their products. All is so
novel--and yet is it so? Or is it familiarity in perspective that
makes it so rich, so entertaining? Old fairs, great markets,
medieval, ancient, further-than-ancient, seem involved in, floating
in, the present. Always nation and product have gathered to look at,
value, exchange with, nation and product.... The Chinese and
Japanese greatly please us; the Swiss, the Italians. Look at the
glass-blowers! The iridescent shapes form, drop from the blower's
pipe.
Alike the Occident and the Orient please us.
We went to see the great machinery in which the West, and especially
our own country, excelled. I do not remember in what factory, nor to
any nicety for what purpose the machine was devised--but I remember
Leviathan before which--before whom--we stood. And again Miriam and
I seemed to open like two windows upon one garden. In and out,
stilly, mightily, with ease, with grace, rhythmically, incredibly
swiftly, went a mighty piston. Beneath it giant wheels turned,
according. There were lesser wheels and lesser, and between the
wheels ran swiftly flowing bands. There were rods and cogs and what
not, and all important, all upholding all. The air vibrated. Up and
down, and in and out, and to and fro, and here and there, and now and
then, and around and around, and--without a word coined to express
it--in the atmosphere of purpose, end, performance--acted the
machine. Time and space and mass were caught at work. We partook
of--we were--that complex-simple motion.
Of all the shows in the Centennial Show, I most liked this Machine.
It began to spin for me trains of ideas.
We saw and heard at work the newly invented telephone. There was a
marvel, due to expand, like the Genie out of the Bottle in the
_Arabian Nights_!
We saw much at the great exhibition. Paintings, for instance, and
models of many things upon the face of the earth. And the people and
the people and the people, the American people, who went in and out
at gates! The clusters, the groups, the relationships within
relationship, the dramas within drama! Habit, manner, clothes,
gesture, voices, eyes, hands--what a variorum under summer light and
warmth, what rainbow molecules astir in a guessed-at form!
We spent a week in Philadelphia, and went each day to the Great
Exhibition. Then we traveled on to New York.
We stayed at a hotel, much used in those days by Southerners.... And
out of New York I pick now the journeying forth from New York to see
the ocean. That happened on the seventh day of our visit. We had
seen the eight-story (I forget whether eight or ten-story) building,
the child skyscraper. We had been to Wall Street and the Stock
Exchange and old Trinity. We had seen the Bowery and Newspaper Row
and the City Hall and A. T. Stewart's store. The horse-cars carried
us from sight to sight. We had walked upon Fifth Avenue. We knew
Union Square and Madison Square, and far, far up-town, Central Park,
named Central when it seemed to us Outlying, gave us a green welcome.
We went over to the banks of the Hudson and looked across to the
Palisades. General Grant was in the White House, there was no
pillared white mausoleum as now. We saw churches within and without,
and we visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Major Dallas, relatively speaking, knew New York. Affairs had
brought him here three or four times in late years. He was our
pilot. It was the wrong season for a number of things. Old
acquaintances, Southerners now living here, were away for the heated
months. And the theaters offered very light entertainment. On the
other hand, it was prime out-of-door weather, and there was so much
to be seen from out-of-doors! We crossed to Brooklyn by the ferry.
We walked on the Battery and visited Castle Garden. We rose early
one morning and went to see an ocean liner depart for England. It
was the Scythia, a Cunarder.... Again, for a moment, Madam Black
seemed to be with us. Floating houses, moving bridges, devices to
bring into one mind Here and There....
Then, one day, we ourselves board a small boat and go to see the main
ocean. We go to Coney Island.
The air is fresh and drenched with light, the salt is in our
nostrils. We are going to view the sea that we think--Miriam and
John and I--that we have never seen. True, the harbor is filled from
the sea, but we dream of surf and thunder and land so far away that
the world seems water. In the mean time there is delight in the
boats in the harbor and the various shore. There is as yet no Statue
of Liberty. We pass Bedloe Island, but the giant woman does not rise
above it. We are in the America of years and years ago.
We saw the ocean. We landed from our boat. Coney Island was not
then the flaming, clamant amusement park it was to become. But there
was a beginning. We landed at a pier; we saw a hotel and tents and
booths; some kind of music was playing; persons moved about in a
moderate throng. But we had come to see the ocean. We went upon the
beach, we walked until we were alone. Here stretched the gleaming,
solitary sand, here moved and sounded the waves, here dwelt Ocean.
We sat down in the shadow of a dune, the five of us.
At sunset, returning to the city, Miriam and John and I kept to the
stern of the boat. Major Dallas and Aunt Kate were forward, talking
with some chance-met acquaintance. We three sat, arms upon rail,
keeping Ocean still with us. The boat left a wake of dark green,
foam streaked and edged, but tapering at last into sunset-colored
water beneath the sunset sky. There was aboard a band of four or
five pieces. It played "Suwanee River."
The last note died. Said Miriam: "Rivers and ocean and cities.... I
am going to travel and travel and travel! Travel--come home--love
that and love travel. Travel, come home, travel--"
"You'll have to go on your own wings," said John. "Travel like that
takes money."
"Well, I'll grow the wings then--or make the money then. Make the
honest money--grow the honest wings." She rested her cheek upon her
arms, folded upon the rail. Her eyes looked to where met sea and
air. She began to sing under her breath.
"Hear--taste--see.
Taste--see--hear.--
Power behind you--
Go!"
The band was playing airs from "Norma." Uncle John summoned us to
look at the light upon the approaching city.
A day or two after this we said farewell to New York. We went to
Niagara. We stayed at the Cataract House. We saw the young moon
above the earth-shaking, long plunge of the waters.
Then, after two days, we turned back to Virginia, to Restwell and
Flowerfield.