There will be joy in the household of the country editor what time the
rural mind shall no longer crave the unwholesome stimuli provided by
composing accounts of corpulent beetroots, bloated pumpkins, dropsical
melons, aspiring maize, and precocious cabbages. Then the bucolic
journalist shall have surcease of toil, and may go out upon the meads
to frisk with kindred lambs, frolic familiarly with loose-jointed colts
and exchange grave gambolings with solemn cows. Then shall the voice
of the press, no longer attuned to praise of the vegetable kingdom,
find a more humble but not less useful employment in calling the animal
kingdom to the evening meal beneath the sanctum window.
To the overworked editor life will have a fresh zest, a new and
quickening significance. The hills shall seem to hump more greenly up
to a bluer sky, the fields to blush with a tenderer sunshine. He will
go forth at dawn executing countless flip-flaps of gymnastic joy; and
when the white sun shall redden with the blood of dying day, and the
pigs shall set up a fine evening hymn of supplication to the Giver
of All Swill he will be jubilant in the editorial feet, blissfully
conscious that the editorial intellect is a-ripening for the morrow’s
work.
The rural newspaper! We sit with it in hand, running our fingers over
the big, staring letters, as over the black and white keys of a piano,
drumming out of them a mild melody of perfect repose. With what delight
one disports him in the deep void of its nothingness, as who should
swim in air! Here is nothing to startle, nothing to wound. The very
atmosphere is suffused and saturated with “the spirit of the rural
press;” and even one’s dog sits by, slowly dropping the lids over
its great eyes; then lifting them with a jerk, tries to look as if
it were not sleepy in the least degree. A fragrance of plowed fields
comes to one like a benediction. The tinkle of ghostly cowbells falls
drowsily upon the ear. Airy figures of prize esculents float before
the half-shut eyes and vanish before perfect vision can attain to
them. Above and about are the drone of bees and the muffled thunder of
milk-streams shooting into the foaming bucket. The gabble of distant
geese is faintly marked off by the barking of a distant dog. The city,
with all its noises, sinks away, as from one in a balloon, and our
senses swim in the “intense inane” of country languor. We slumber.
God bless the man who invented the country newspaper!—though Sancho
Panza blessed him long ago.
“TO ELEVATE THE STAGE”
The existence of a theatrical company, composed entirely of Cambridge
and Harvard _alumni_ who have been in jail strikes the imagination with
a peculiar force. In the theatrical world the ideal condition conceived
by certain social philosophers is being rapidly realized and reduced
to practice. “It does not matter,” say these superior persons, “what
one does; it is only important what one is.” The theater folk have long
been taking that view of things, as is amply attested by the histrionic
careers (for examples) of Mrs. Lily Langtry and Mr. John L. Sullivan.
Managers—and, we may add, the public—do not consider it of the least
importance what Mrs. Langtry _does_ on the stage, nor how she does
it, so long as she _is_ a former favorite of a Prince and a tolerably
fair counterpart of a Jersey cow. And who cares what Mr. Sullivan’s
pronunciation of the word “mother” may be, or what degree of sobriety
he may strive to simulate?—in seeing his performance we derive all our
delight from the consciousness of the great and godlike thing that he
has the goodness to _be_.
It is needless to recall other instances; every playgoer’s memory is
richly stored with them; but this troupe of convicted collegians is
the frankest application of the principle to which we have yet been
treated. At the same time, it opens up “vistas” of possibilities
extending far-and-away beyond what was but yesterday the longest
reach of conjecture. Why should we stop with a troupe of educated
felons? Let us recognize the principle to the full and apply it with
logical heroism, unstayed by considerations of taste and sense. Let us
have theater companies composed of reformed assassins who have been
preachers. A company of deaf mutes whose grandfathers were hanged,
would prove a magnetic “attraction” and play to good houses—that
is to say, they would _be_ to good houses. In a troupe of senators
with warts on their noses the pleasure-shoving public would find an
infinite gratification and delight. It might lack the allurement
of feminine charm, most senators being rather old women, but for
magnificent inaction it would bear the palm. Even better would be a
company of distinguished corpses supporting some such star inactor,
as the mummy of his late Majesty, Rameses II of Egypt. In them the
do-nothing-be-something principle would have its highest, ripest and
richest development. In the broad blaze of their histrionic glory Mrs.
Langtry would pale her uneffectual fire and Mr. Sullivan hide his
diminished head.
From the example of such a company streams of good would radiate in
every direction, with countless ramifications. Not only would it
accomplish the long desired “elevation of the stage” to such a plane
that even the pulpit need not be ashamed to work with it in elicitation
of the human snore, but it would spread the light over other arts and
industries, causing “the dawn of a new era” generally. Even with the
comparatively slow progress we are making now, it is not unreasonable
to hope that eventually Man will cease his fussy activity altogether
and do nothing whatever, each individual of the species becoming a
veritable monument of philosophical inaction, rapt in the contemplation
of his own abstract worth and perhaps taking root where he stands to
survey it.