"One, two, three, four,--this makes the fifth accident on the Fourth of
July, in the two papers I have just read," said Jenny.
"A very moderate allowance," said Theophilus Thoro, "if you consider the
Fourth as a great national saturnalia, in which every boy in the land
has the privilege of doing whatever is right in his own eyes."
"The poor boys!" said Mrs. Crowfield. "All the troubles of the world are
laid at their door."
"Well," said Jenny, "they did burn the city of Portland, it appears. The
fire arose from fire-crackers, thrown by boys among the shavings of a
carpenter's shop,--so says the paper."
"And," said Rudolph, "we surgeons expect a harvest of business from the
Fourth, as surely as from a battle. Certain to be woundings, fractures,
possibly amputations, following the proceedings of our glorious
festival."
"Why cannot we Americans learn to amuse ourselves peaceably, like other
nations?" said Bob Stephens. "In France and Italy, the greatest national
festivals pass off without fatal accident, or danger to any one. The
fact is, in our country we have not learned _how to be amused_.
Amusement has been made of so small account in our philosophy of life,
that we are raw and unpractised in being amused. Our diversions,
compared with those of the politer nations of Europe, are coarse and
savage,--and consist mainly in making disagreeable noises and disturbing
the peace of the community by rude uproar. The only idea an American boy
associates with the Fourth of July is that of gunpowder in some form,
and a wild liberty to fire off pistols in all miscellaneous directions,
and to throw fire-crackers under the heels of horses, and into crowds of
women and children, for the fun of seeing the stir and commotion thus
produced. Now take a young Parisian boy and give him a fete, and he
conducts himself with greater gentleness and good breeding, because he
is part of a community in which the art of amusement has been refined
and perfected, so that he has a thousand resources beyond the very
obvious one of making a great banging and disturbance.
"Yes," continued Bob Stephens, "the fact is, that our grim old Puritan
fathers set their feet down resolutely on all forms of amusement; they
would have stopped the lambs from wagging their tails, and shot the
birds for singing, if they could have had their way; and in consequence
of it, what a barren, cold, flowerless life is our New England
existence! Life is all, as Mantalini said, one 'demd horrid grind.'
'Nothing here but working and going to church,' said the German
emigrants,--and they were about right. A French traveller, in the year
1837, says that attending the Thursday-evening lectures and church
prayer-meetings was the only recreation of the young people of Boston;
and we can remember the time when this really was no exaggeration. Think
of that, with all the seriousness of our Boston east winds to give it
force, and fancy the provision for amusement in our society! The
consequence is, that boys who have the longing for amusement strongest
within them, and plenty of combativeness to back it, are the standing
terror of good society, and our Fourth of July is a day of fear to all
invalids and persons of delicate nervous organization, and of real,
appreciable danger of life and limb to every one."
"Well, Robert," said my wife, "though I agree with you as to the actual
state of society in this respect, I must enter my protest against your
slur on the memory of our Pilgrim fathers."
"Yes," said Theophilus Thoro, "the New-Englanders are the only people, I
believe, who take delight in vilifying their ancestry. Every young
hopeful in our day makes a target of his grandfather's gravestone, and
fires away, with great self-applause. People in general seem to like to
show that they are well-born, and come of good stock; but the young
New-Englanders, many of them, appear to take pleasure in insisting that
they came of a race of narrow-minded, persecuting bigots.
"It is true, that our Puritan fathers saw not everything. They made a
state where there were no amusements, but where people could go to bed
and leave their house doors wide open all night, without a shadow of
fear or danger, as was for years the custom in all our country villages.
The fact is, that the simple early New England life, before we began to
import foreigners, realized a state of society in whose possibility
Europe would scarcely believe. If our fathers had few amusements, they
needed few. Life was too really and solidly comfortable and happy to
need much amusement.
"Look over the countries where people are most sedulously amused by
their rulers and governors. Are they not the countries where the people
are most oppressed, most unhappy in their circumstances, and therefore
in greatest need of amusement? It is the slave who dances and sings, and
why? Because he owns nothing, and _can_ own nothing, and may as well
dance and forget the fact. But give the slave a farm of his own, a wife
of his own, and children of his own, with a school-house and a vote, and
ten to one he dances no more. He needs no _amusement_, because he is
_happy_.
"The legislators of Europe wished nothing more than to bring up a people
who would be content with amusements, and not ask after their rights or
think too closely how they were governed. 'Gild the dome of the
Invalides,' was Napoleon's scornful prescription, when he heard the
Parisian population were discontented. They gilded it, and the people
forgot to talk about anything else. They were a childish race, educated
from the cradle on spectacle and show, and by the sight of their eyes
could they be governed. The people of Boston, in 1776, could not have
been managed in this way, chiefly because they were brought up in the
strict schools of the fathers."
"But don't you think," said Jenny, "that something might be added and
amended in the state of society our fathers established here in New
England? Without becoming frivolous, there might be more attention paid
to rational amusement."
"Certainly," said my wife, "the State and the Church both might take a
lesson from the providence of foreign governments, and make liberty, to
say the least, as attractive as despotism. It is a very unwise mother
that does not provide her children with play-things."
"And yet," said Bob, "the only thing that the Church has yet done is to
forbid and to frown. We have abundance of tracts against dancing,
whist-playing, ninepins, billiards, operas, theatres,--in short,
anything that young people would be apt to like. The General Assembly of
the Presbyterian Church refused to testify against slavery, because of
political diffidence, but made up for it by ordering a more stringent
crusade against dancing. The theatre and opera grow up and exist among
us like plants on the windy side of a hill, blown all awry by a constant
blast of conscientious rebuke. There is really no amusement young people
are fond of, which they do not pursue, in a sort of defiance of the
frown of the peculiarly religious world. With all the telling of what
the young shall _not_ do, there has been very little telling what they
shall do.
"The whole department of amusements--certainly one of the most important
in education--has been by the Church made a sort of outlaws' ground, to
be taken possession of and held by all sorts of spiritual ragamuffins;
and then the faults and short-comings resulting from this arrangement
have been held up and insisted on as reasons why no Christian should
ever venture into it.
"If the Church would set herself to amuse her young folks, instead of
discussing doctrines and metaphysical hair-splitting, she would prove
herself a true mother, and not a hard-visaged step-dame. Let her keep
this department, so powerful and so difficult to manage, in what are
morally the strongest hands, instead of giving it up to the weakest.
"I think, if the different churches of a city, for example, would rent a
building where there should be a billiard-table, one or two
ninepin-alleys, a reading-room, a garden and grounds for ball-playing or
innocent lounging, that they would do more to keep their young people
from the ways of sin than a Sunday school could. Nay, more: I would go
further. I would have a portion of the building fitted up with scenery
and a stage, for the getting up of tableaux or dramatic performances,
and thus give scope for the exercise of that histrionic talent of which
there is so much lying unemployed in society.
"Young people do not like amusements any better for the wickedness
connected with them. The spectacle of a sweet little child singing
hymns, and repeating prayers, of a pious old Uncle Tom dying for his
religion, has filled theatres night after night, and proved that there
really is no need of indecent or improper plays to draw full houses.
"The things that draw young people to places of amusement are not at
first gross things. Take the most notorious public place in Paris,--the
Jardin Mabille, for instance,--and the things which give it its first
charm are all innocent and artistic. Exquisite beds of lilies, roses,
gillyflowers, lighted with jets of gas so artfully as to make every
flower translucent as a gem; fountains where the gas-light streams out
from behind misty wreaths of falling water and calla-blossoms; sofas of
velvet turf, canopied with fragrant honeysuckle; dim bowers overarched
with lilacs and roses; a dancing ground under trees whose branches bend
with a fruitage of many-colored lamps; enchanting music and graceful
motion; in all these there is not only no sin, but they are really
beautiful and desirable; and if they were only used on the side and in
the service of virtue and religion, if they were contrived and kept up
by the guardians and instructors of youth, instead of by those whose
interest it is to demoralize and destroy, young people would have no
temptation to stray into the haunts of vice.
"In Prussia, under the reign of Frederick William II., when one good,
hard-handed man governed the whole country like a strict schoolmaster,
the public amusements for the people were made such as to present a
model for all states. The theatres were strictly supervised, and actors
obliged to conform to the rules of decorum and morality. The plays and
performances were under the immediate supervision of men of grave
morals, who allowed nothing corrupting to appear; and the effect of this
administration and restraint is to be seen in Berlin even to this day.
The public gardens are full of charming little resorts, where, every
afternoon, for a very moderate sum, one can have either a concert of
good music, or a very fair dramatic or operatic performance. Here whole
families may be seen enjoying together a wholesome and refreshing
entertainment,--the mother and aunts with their knitting, the baby, the
children of all ages, and the father,--their faces radiant with that
mild German light of contentment and good-will which one feels to be
characteristic of the nation. When I saw these things, and thought of
our own outcast, unprovided boys and young men, haunting the streets
and alleys of cities, in places far from the companionship of mothers
and sisters, I felt as if it would be better for a nation to be brought
up by a good strict schoolmaster king than to try to be a republic."
"Yes," said I, "but the difficulty is to _get_ the good schoolmaster
king. For one good shepherd, there are twenty who use the sheep only for
their flesh and their wool. Republics can do all that kings
can,--witness our late army and Sanitary Commission. Once fix the idea
thoroughly in the public mind that there ought to be as regular and
careful provision for public amusement as there is for going to church
and Sunday school, and it will be done. Central Park in New York is a
beginning in the right direction, and Brooklyn is following the example
of her sister city. There is, moreover, an indication of the proper
spirit in the increased efforts that are made to beautify Sunday-school
rooms, and make them interesting, and to have Sunday-school fetes and
picnics,--the most harmless and commendable way of celebrating the
Fourth of July. Why should saloons and bar-rooms be made attractive by
fine paintings, choice music, flowers, and fountains, and Sunday-school
rooms be four bare walls? There are churches whose broad aisles
represent ten and twenty millions of dollars, and whose sons and
daughters are daily drawn to circuses, operas, theatres, because they
have tastes and feelings, in themselves perfectly laudable and innocent,
for the gratification of which no provision is made in any other place."
"I know one church," said Rudolph, "whose Sunday-school room is as
beautifully adorned as any haunt of sin. There is a fountain in the
centre, which plays into a basin surrounded with shells and flowers; it
has a small organ to lead the children's voices, and the walls are hung
with oil-paintings and engravings from the best masters. The festivals
of the Sabbath school, which are from time to time held in this place,
educate the taste of the children, as well as amuse them; and, above
all, they have through life the advantage of associating with their
early religious education all those ideas of taste, elegance, and
artistic culture which too often come through polluted channels.
"When the _amusement_ of the young shall become the care of the
experienced and the wise, and the floods of wealth that are now rolling
over and over, in silent investments, shall be put into the form of
innocent and refined pleasures for the children and youth of the state,
our national festivals may become days to be desired, and not dreaded.
"On the Fourth of July, our city fathers do in a certain dim wise
perceive that the public owes some attempt at amusement to its children,
and they vote large sums, principally expended in bell-ringing, cannons,
and fireworks. The sidewalks are witness to the number who fall victims
to the temptations held out by grog-shops and saloons; and the papers,
for weeks after, are crowded with accounts of accidents. Now, a yearly
sum expended to keep up, and keep pure, places of amusement which hold
out no temptation to vice, but which excel all vicious places in real
beauty and attractiveness, would greatly lessen the sum needed to be
expended on any one particular day, and would refine and prepare our
people to keep holidays and festivals appropriately."
"For my part," said Mrs. Crowfield, "I am grieved at the opprobrium
which falls on the race of _boys_. Why should the most critical era in
the life of those who are to be men, and to _govern_ society, be passed
in a sort of outlawry,--a rude warfare with all existing institutions?
The years between ten and twenty are full of the nervous excitability
which marks the growth and maturing of the manly nature. The boy feels
wild impulses, which ought to be vented in legitimate and healthful
exercise. He wants to run, shout, wrestle, ride, row, skate; and all
these together are often not sufficient to relieve the need he feels of
throwing off the excitability that burns within.
"For the wants of this period what safe provision is made by the Church,
or by the State, or any of the boy's lawful educators? In all the
Prussian schools amusements are as much a part of the regular
school-system as grammar or geography. The teacher is with the boys on
the play-ground, and plays as heartily as any of them. The boy has his
physical wants anticipated. He is not left to fight his way, blindly
stumbling, against society, but goes forward in a safe path, which his
elders and betters have marked out for him.
"In our country, the boy's career is often a series of skirmishes with
society. He wants to skate, and contrives ingeniously to dam the course
of a brook, and flood a meadow which makes a splendid skating-ground.
Great is the joy for a season, and great the skating. But the water
floods the neighboring cellars. The boys are cursed through all the
moods and tenses,--boys are such a plague! The dam is torn down with
emphasis and execration. The boys, however, lie in wait some cold night,
between twelve and one, and build it up again; and thus goes on the
battle. The boys care not whose cellar they flood, because nobody cares
for their amusement. They understand themselves to be outlaws, and take
an outlaw's advantage.
"Again, the boys have their sleds; and sliding down hill is splendid
fun. But they trip up some grave citizen, who sprains his shoulder. What
is the result? Not the provision of a safe, good place, where boys _may_
slide down hill without danger to any one, but an edict forbidding all
sliding, under penalty of fine.
"Boys want to swim: it is best they should swim; and if city fathers,
foreseeing and caring for this want, should think it worth while to mark
off some good place, and have it under such police surveillance as to
enforce decency of language and demeanor, they would prevent a great
deal that now is disagreeable in the unguided efforts of boys to enjoy
this luxury.
"It would be _cheaper_ in the end, even if one had to build
sliding-piles, as they do in Russia, or to build skating-rinks, as they
do in Montreal,--it would be cheaper for every city, town, and village
to provide legitimate amusement for boys, under proper superintendence,
than to leave them, as they are now left, to fight their way against
society.
"In the boys' academies of our country, what provision is made for
amusement? There are stringent rules, and any number of them, to prevent
boys making any noise that may disturb the neighbors; and generally the
teacher thinks that, if he keeps the boys _still_, and sees that they
get their lessons, his duty is done. But a hundred boys ought not to be
kept still. There ought to be noise and motion among them, in order that
they may healthily survive the great changes which Nature is working
within them. If they become silent, averse to movement, fond of indoor
lounging and warm rooms, they are going in far worse ways than any
amount of outward lawlessness could bring them to.
"Smoking and yellow-covered novels are worse than any amount of
hullabaloo; and the quietest boy is often a poor, ignorant victim, whose
life is being drained out of him before it is well begun. If mothers
could only see the _series of books_ that are sold behind counters to
boarding-school boys, whom nobody warns and nobody cares for,--if they
could see the poison, going from pillow to pillow, in books pretending
to make clear the great, sacred mysteries of our nature, but trailing
them over with the filth of utter corruption! These horrible works are
the inward and secret channel of hell, into which a boy is thrust by the
pressure of strict outward rules, forbidding that physical and
out-of-door exercise and motion to which he ought rather to be
encouraged, and even driven.
"It is melancholy to see that, while parents, teachers, and churches
make no provision for boys in the way of amusement, the world, the
flesh, and the Devil are incessantly busy and active in giving it to
them. There are ninepin-alleys, with cigars and a bar. There are
billiard-saloons, with a bar, and, alas! with the occasional company of
girls who are still beautiful, but who have lost the innocence of
womanhood, while yet retaining many of its charms. There are theatres,
with a bar, and with the society of lost women. The boy comes to one and
all of these places, seeking only what is natural and proper he should
have,--what should be given him under the eye and by the care of the
Church, the school. He comes for exercise and amusement,--he gets these,
and a ticket to destruction besides,--and whose fault is it?"
"These are the aspects of public life," said I, "which make me feel that
we never shall have a perfect state till women vote and bear rule
equally with men. State housekeeping has been, hitherto, like what any
housekeeping would be, conducted by the voice and knowledge of man
alone.
"If women had an equal voice in the management of our public money, I
have faith to believe that thousands which are now wasted in mere
political charlatanism would go to provide for the rearing of the
children of the state, male and female. My wife has spoken for the boys;
I speak for the girls also. What is provided for their physical
development and amusement? Hot, gas-lighted theatric and operatic
performances, beginning at eight, and ending at midnight; hot, crowded
parties and balls; dancing with dresses tightly laced over the laboring
lungs,--these are almost the whole story. I bless the advent of croquet
and skating. And yet the latter exercise, pursued as it generally is, is
a most terrible exposure. There is no kindly parental provision for the
poor, thoughtless, delicate young creature,--not even the shelter of a
dressing-room with a fire, at which she may warm her numb fingers and
put on her skates when she arrives on the ground, and to which she may
retreat in intervals of fatigue; so she catches cold, and perhaps sows
the seed which with air-tight stoves and other appliances of hot-house
culture may ripen into consumption.
"What provision is there for the amusement of all the shop girls,
seamstresses, factory girls, that crowd our cities? What for the
thousands of young clerks and operatives? Not long since, in a
respectable old town in New England, the body of a beautiful girl was
drawn from the river in which she had drowned herself,--a young girl
only fifteen, who came to the city, far from home and parents, and fell
a victim to the temptation which brought her to shame and desperation.
Many thus fall every year who are never counted. They fall into the
ranks of those whom the world abandons as irreclaimable.
"Let those who have homes and every appliance to make life pass
agreeably, and who yet yawn over an unoccupied evening, fancy a lively
young girl all day cooped up at sewing in a close, ill-ventilated room.
Evening comes, and she has three times the desire for amusement and
three times the need of it that her fashionable sister has. And where
can she go? To the theatre, perhaps, with some young man as thoughtless
as herself, and more depraved; then to the bar for a glass of wine, and
another; and then, with a head swimming and turning, who shall say where
else she may be led? Past midnight and no one to look after her,--and
one night ruins her utterly and for life, and she as yet only a child!
"John Newton had a very wise saying: 'Here is a man trying to fill a
bushel with chaff. Now if I fill it with wheat first, it is better than
to fight him.' This apothegm contains in it the whole of what I would
say on the subject of amusements."