I
I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New England winter.
Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. But skepticism
comes in with the south wind. When that begins to blow, one feels the
foundations of his belief breaking up. This is only another way of
saying that it is more difficult, if it be not impossible, to freeze out
orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is to thaw it out; though it is
a mere fancy to suppose that this is the reason why the martyrs, of all
creeds, were burned at the stake. There is said to be a great relaxation
in New England of the ancient strictness in the direction of toleration
of opinion, called by some a lowering of the standard, and by others a
raising of the banner of liberality; it might be an interesting inquiry
how much this change is due to another change,--the softening of the New
England winter and the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the fashion
nowadays to refer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint is
a gratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics.
The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New England
winter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind. It
is a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralize society
than any other. It is not necessary to remember that it filled the
silken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over New England every few
days, and is in some portions of it the prevailing wind. That it brings
the soft clouds, and sometimes continues long enough to almost deceive
the expectant buds of the fruit trees, and to tempt the robin from the
secluded evergreen copses, may be nothing; but it takes the tone out of
the mind, and engenders discontent, making one long for the tropics; it
feeds the weakened imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we
know it we become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden
change to sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from
the plunge. It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we are
braced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter.
Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only a
fancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is not altogether a
matter of temperature, although the good old deacon used to say, in his
humble, simple way, that his third wife was a very good woman, but her
"temperature was very different from that of the other two." The north
wind is full of courage, and puts the stamina of endurance into a
man, and it probably would into a woman too if there were a series of
resolutions passed to that effect. The west wind is hopeful; it has
promise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagers
America-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind is
peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up in
the chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokes
when the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longing
and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we
might say of modern poetry,--at any rate, modern poetry needs a change
of air. I am not sure but the south is the most powerful of the winds,
because of its sweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the blood in
spring, when it comes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men
"longen to gon on pilgrimages."
I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to do
in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying With
Us, beginning,--
"Out of a drifting southern cloud
My soul heard the night-bird cry,"
but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it was
exceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not only
rhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody can
write first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so many
poems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with a
south-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very fortunate
when there is not wind enough to finish them. This emotional poem, if
I may so call it, was begun after Herbert went away. I liked it,
and thought it was what is called "suggestive;" although I did not
understand it, especially what the night-bird was; and I am afraid I
hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she meant Herbert by the
"night-bird,"--a very absurd suggestion about two unsentimental people.
She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwards told the Mistress that there
were emotions that one could never put into words without the danger
of being ridiculous; a profound truth. And yet I should not like to say
that there is not a tender lonesomeness in love that can get comfort out
of a night-bird in a cloud, if there be such a thing. Analysis is the
death of sentiment.
But to return to the winds. Certain people impress us as the winds do.
Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor and
healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in his
wholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, was the
east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is only a
querulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistress herself, full
of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of blue in a cloudy
sky. It would not be just to apply what I have said of the south wind to
any of our visitors, but it did blow a little while Herbert was here.