IV

Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates

the idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions.

Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some

forest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees

all winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants,

cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of

a dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its

dazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost

in the distant darkling spaces.

If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon gets

an impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothing

else so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothing

makes one feel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent cat

will quit the fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching the

falling snow with a serious and contented air. His thoughts are his

own, but he is in accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; on

such a day he is charged with enough electricity to run a telegraphic

battery, if it could be utilized. The connection between thought and

electricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentally

very alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. Feasting his

eyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to the

slightest noise in the wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content,

but not stupidity, to all the rest of the household.

I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging his

long arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with,

"Well, I declare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer's

tract on the philosophy of style but he loses much time in looking at

the Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her

lap,--one of her everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlasting

friends. She is one of the female patriots who save the post-office

department from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is

thinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, which

legislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, to

write letters on her lap and a man on a table,--a distinction which

is commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.

The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the

room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the picture-

frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and is

thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the

thermometer is 15deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift

across the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house

looks as if it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all.

There were only ten persons at the conference meeting last night, and

seven of those were women; he wonders how many weather-proof

Christians there are in the parish, anyhow.

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but

it is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about

eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears the

Mistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a

lecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says that

it is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, and

asks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate.

Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no better

fun, but it wouldn't look well for a visitor to do it. The

Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on

writing his wife's name.

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the

soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a

present of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on

Christmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat her

gruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six little

children and three dogs; and he did n't believe that any of them had

known what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, the

woman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep the

dogs alive.

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with

provisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought in

a new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had been

sitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.

MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice

how extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like

the sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?

THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?

MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is never

interested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has by

nature that calmness and indifference which your people of culture

have acquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he would

scalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would

do nothing else.

THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of

the highest breeding?

MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm.

THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may have

malice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "little

digs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire to

them.

HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a red

man into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or

into a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he is

apparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people,--

and by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in the

country, for everything is mixed in these days,--some of the best

people in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the

Indian would.

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I should

say you were snobbish.

HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak of

anything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful

it may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of

etiquette. They are like the countryman who confessed afterwards

that he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill's

entertainments,

THE YOUNG LADY. Do you remember those English people at our house in

Flushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparent

delight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored the

rooms and looked at everything, and were so interested? I suppose

that Herbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city,

would have thought it very ill-bred.

MANDEVILLE. It's just as I said. The English, the best of them,

have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech and

action, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.

THE PARSON. I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he had

stayed at home. It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness

will do for a man's judgment and cultivation. He is prepared to

pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is more

nonsense talked about culture than about anything else.

HERBERT. The Parson reminds me of an American country minister I

once met walking through the Vatican. You could n't impose upon him

with any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his native

place, and there was little that could bear the test. He had the sly

air of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with his

mouth in a pucker of incredulity. There is nothing so placid as

rustic conceit. There was something very enjoyable about his calm

superiority to all the treasures of art.

MANDEVILLE. And the Parson reminds me of another American minister,

a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to have

a thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind.

Ministers seem to think that is their business. They serve it in

such small pieces in order to make it go round.

THE PARSON. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, let's have some music;

nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time.

THE MISTRESS. What shall it be?

THE PARSON. Give us the larghetto from Beethoven's second symphony.

The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. Herbert looks at the young

lady. The Parson composes himself for critical purposes. Mandeville

settles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly into

the fire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him.

After the piece is finished, lunch is announced. It is still

snowing.