In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, I
suppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropical
seas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a great
woodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritable
New England winter raging outside. In order to get the highest
enjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mere
recipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to a brisk
walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influences minister
to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves. There are,
for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a delicacy of color
on distant hills which are wanting in summer, and which convey to one
rightly organized the keenest delight, and a refinement of enjoyment
that is scarcely sensuous, not at all sentimental, and almost passing
the intellectual line into the spiritual.
I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I was drawing
it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations of pleasure in
being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked to breast a north
wind, and that there was a certain inspiration in sharp outlines and
in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, with stripped trees, and, as it
were, scudding through the season under bare poles; but that he must say
that he preferred the weather in which he could sit on the fence by
the wood-lot, with the spring sun on his back, and hear the stir of the
leaves and the birds beginning their housekeeping.
A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to have
private thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likes the
robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little suspicious to
hear him express the hope that we shall have an early spring.
I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the glory and
inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too, not only
on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosy color, which
has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing in it, but on dull
days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon, full of threats of
storm and the terrors of the gathering night. We are very busy with
our own affairs, but there is always something going on out-doors worth
looking at; and there is seldom an hour before sunset that has not some
special attraction. And, besides, it puts one in the mood for the cheer
and comfort of the open fire at home.
Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on their
weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter. Almost
no one speaks well of winter. And this suggests the idea that most
people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not know what is
best for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be any better satisfied,
or would turn out as well, in the tropics. Everybody knows our
virtues,--at least if they believe half we tell them,--and for delicate
beauty, that rare plant, I should look among the girls of the New
England hills as confidently as anywhere, and I have traveled as far
south as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee Valley. Indeed, it would be
easy to show that the parents of the pretty girls in the West emigrated
from New England. And yet--such is the mystery of Providence--no one
would expect that one of the sweetest and most delicate flowers that
blooms, the trailing arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable
climate, and peep forth from the edge of a snowbank at that.
It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousands
of people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a more
congenial one--or stop grumbling. The world is so small, and all parts
of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate, that one
could surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is it worth while to
waste our one short life in the midst of unpleasant surroundings and in
a constant friction with that which is disagreeable? One would suppose
that people set down on this little globe would seek places on it most
agreeable to themselves. It must be that they are much more content with
the climate and country upon which they happen, by the accident of their
birth, than they pretend to be.