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 15
deg., 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.