At Afton in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There now, sit still, I am not
going to commence about "lifting their eternal heads;" indeed I am
not. Did it ever strike you, though, how different a man talks when
he gets a pen in his hand; how impossible it is for a man to keep his
feet on the ground and use a reasonably plain English without absurd
adjectives, when he is writing descriptions of scenery. It is a
miserable piece of affectation, you know; and they know you know, but
they do it all the same. It comes, I presume, from a desire to assert
the possession of imagination. The vulgar name for it is "flowery" and
I am not certain that it is not a good name, for the chief business
of flowers is to please the senses. You will find it popular with three
classes of orators--commencement orators, political orators, and pulpit
orators. The first use it because they know no better; the second,
from the belief that it will catch those who know no better; and third
because they find that a bright coat of paint to a religious sign post
is particularly attractive to the female members of the congregation.
With the first class, it is ignorance; with the second, business, and
with the third, a mild, but well defined form of insincerity. You will
find, too, that, with few exceptions, flowery ministers are--little
else. I do not mean a forcibly drawn picture; that is a wholly different
thing; I mean gaudy, flowery word painting. I remember at Trinity
church in Staunton once, a description by a minister named Tucker, of
a sacrifice made by the Jews at Jerusalem. Do you know, though that
was years ago, I can see to-day the scene the man drew standing out
in memory. It was powerful, but there was not a particle of prismatic
coloring about it. It was a bas-relief cut on granite--full of power,
enduring, and with a touch of eternity about it. Such picture-drawing
is not flowery and does not wither.
I know that the popular subjects of interest in the mountains are
sunrise and sunset, but for something really worth writing about, and
much more rare, give me a fog spread out at the feet like a white
carpet. Ah! that is something worth seeing. The valley, a mile below,
is hidden in the gauzy sea, and the tops of mountain spurs here and
there peep out like little islands. The white, silent sea is spread
for miles and miles. Underneath it is life, an invisible wagon rumbles,
a horse neighs, a man calls to his neighbor, but the surface is calm,
still, level. You would not be surprised to see a steamer come puffing
from behind one of the islands. The wind presses the sea into billows
which shift to and fro as water would. Away down on a wagon road you
hear the tinkling of bells and a Hock of sheep emerge from a rift in
the mist and turning disappear in another cloud of it. The fog parts
again and a white top wagon, with four horses, is seen toiling slowly
along. The driver cracks his whip and the sea of mist slowly rolls
over him again. Another shifting, and a little farmhouse appears, with
a man riding from under the trees. He rides into the mist and the
farmhouse disappears. A railroad train rushes out of a bank of white
wool and into another, in complete silence. The white sea gets uneasy
under the wind, and the sun begins to brighten up the clouds above.
Then the woolen surface begins to move. A mountain spur makes its
appearance clear against the sky; the farm houses silently glide from
under the sea; a flock of sheep, whose shepherd dog's bark you have
heard from under the mist, is revealed. The sea is fast being blown
away. The sun comes out. The whole landscape is changed and the great
billows of mist that have covered it are now thin strips of white cloud
driven across the blue sky. Once more you see spread out at your feet
the valley, checkered with farms and orchards, and dotted with
farmhouses shining in the sun. The miracle of nature is over. Let the
enthusiasts have their sunrise and sunset; lovers their moonlight; but
as for me, give me a mountain fog.
* * * * *
I suppose you don't know Maria? You ought to. She was a great comfort
to me while I was at Hampton. Did I love her? Ah, most truly! I have
sat on the hotel porch and watched Maria in her front yard by the hour.
I suppose if I were to meet her to-day she would hardly recollect my
name, so inconsistent is her sex, but I left my heart with her. It is
true that she was not conventional, that her skirts hardly came to her
knees; that she could not write, and that her general air was not that
of a society woman, but to a sick man she was an inexpressible comfort.
I have written her name Maria, but she was also called Mar-i-a,
Mari-a-a-a, Mari-uh, and oh-h-h, M-a-r-i-a. These names she was called
from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof. I don't think
I have ever known a more versatile genius than Maria. At times she was
a steamboat, with loud blowing of the whistle; at other times she was
a bear and devoured other children with grunts and growls of great
ferocity; at other times, she was a horse of such high mettle and
spirit as could only find vent in chewing up the front gate and pawing
her mother's geraniums into the earth. But it was in her great and
realistic combat with dogs that I admired Maria most. Every day about
noon two setter dogs would come lounging about the yard with the most
innocent air in the world. It was Maria's lunch time and the little
thing would toddle in and bring out her lunch. No sooner would she
appear than the dogs would rush on her and roll her in the dirt. There
was a brief scuffle, an agonizing scream, the dirt flew, the dogs
rushed off, and Maria sat up in tears, dirt and hunger. The lunch was
gone. By the time quiet was restored, the dogs would come to see if
they had left any in their hurry, and the forgiving little one would
start in to play with them as if nothing had happened. I was there two
months, and if Maria got a whole lunch in that time, I didn't see it.
Sometimes the dogs had forgotten to look at their watches and would
be a couple of minutes behind time, but all the same they rushed on
her and took what there was. Often the screams would bring her mother
out, and Maria would go into a little explanation which, as she couldn't
talk, didn't make things very clear, consisting chiefly of "a-h-s" and
"o-h-s." Little as she was, she had a spice of shrewdness which
unfortunately didn't work well. She would commence her scream directly
she brought her lunch out, but as soon as she found it only served to
make the dogs more promptly on time, she gave it up. I have had a good
deal of amusement, one way or another, but Maria stands at the head
of the list in my memory.
* * * * *
I made the acquaintance of a married couple at Afton. I do not often
hold up the private life of my acquaintances to illustrate moral reason,
but I must make this an exception. I believe the gentleman was brought
to Afton for the protection of sheep, and to test the statement that
a goat with a flock of sheep would keep off the dogs. When I saw him
he was a moral wreck. He had become a professional lounger around the
depot where he chewed up old paper, straw, and such odd crumbs of lunch
as the passengers would throw out of the car windows. His hair was
full of burrs and he had gotten one of his legs broken by the cars.
His occupation was to wrestle with all the trifling fellows, white and
black, around the depot, butt them when he could, and be ridden by
them when he couldn't. He had long since lost his situation at the
sheep fold, having proved rather an attraction to dogs, who are fond
of low company, than a protection to sheep. Untidy, thriftless, a
loafer, kicked and cuffed about by the public and half starved, he
presented a pitiable contrast to his wife, neat little lady, who, after
her husband had lost his situation, left him and joined a respectable
circle of cows and spent her time with them, fat, sleek, eminently
respectable, and as regular as clockwork in taking them out to pasture
and bringing them home. The moral point that I wish to make is this--if
you give a woman half a chance she will be a lady; if you give a man
half a chance he will go to the dogs. It is in the sex of the animal.
* * * * *
I often hear it said of a man that he has "the manners of the old
school," by which is meant courteous, deferential manners. I don't
know that any particular "school," old or new, will give a man good
manners, but it is certainly true that age does ripen and mellow those
of both men and women. As we grow older we become aware that there are
a great many other people besides ourselves in the world, and that if
we want to go through it smoothly we must keep to the right and not
insist on keeping our elbows akimbo in a crowd. A rude young man may
reform, but a rude old man may be regarded as having been illy bred
early in life, and hopeless. Good manners are very like the catechism
lessons our mothers teach us when children. They don't count for a
great deal at the time, but the result comes up in life a long, long
time afterwards. I think I can tell you of the "old school" where
really good manners originated. The Teacher has long since gone, and
sometimes I have fear the old school itself has changed, but He left
the rule with us when He departed, and here it is: "Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." After the Teacher left, many new doctrines
were brought about, and much chop-logic was put into the text-books
by those who succeeded Him, but with all their human invention they
have never approached the perfection of the motto that He left behind
for the corner-stone of good manners. It is that, I think, that makes
old men have better manners; they have learned that there is a good
deal more in the people of the world to appeal to their affection and
kindly toleration than they thought for at the beginning of their
lives; that there is a great deal of good in every man and woman, and
that it won't do to pick out their faults to the exclusion of their
virtues; that a touch of kindly courtesy will often reveal to you a
wholly different man from the surly one who stood before you a minute
before; in short, our old man has learned more and more the lesson to
love his neighbor as himself. That is the true "old school" founded
eighteen hundred years ago.