"No! ne'er was mingled such a draught
In palace, hall, or arbor,
As freemen brewed and tyrants quaffed
That night in Boston Harbor."
* * * * *
Boston has a remarkable art gallery and museum, notable for its ancient
Chinese paintings, its collection of Japanese prints--one of the best
in the world, I believe--and a dazzling wall of water-colours by Mr.
Sargent. It was here that I saw my first Winslow Homers--two or three
rapid sketches of fishermen in full excitement--and was conquered by his
verve and actuality. In the Metropolitan Museum in New York I found him
again in oils and my admiration increased. Surely no one ever can have
painted the sea with more vividness, power and truth! We have no example
of his work in any public gallery in London; nor have we anything by
W. M. Chase, Arthur B. Davies, Swain Gifford, J. W. Alexander, George
Inness, or De Forest Brush. It is more than time for another American
Exhibition. As it is, the only modern American artists of whom there is
any general knowledge in England are Mr. Sargent, Mr. Epstein and Mr.
Pennell, and the late E. A. Abbey, G. H. Boughton, and Whistler. Other
Americans painting in our midst are Mr. Mark Fisher, R.A., Mr. J. J.
Shannon, R.A., Mr. J. McLure Hamilton, and Mr. G. Wetherbee.
The Boston Gallery is the proud possessor of the rough and unfinished
but "speaking" likeness of George Washington by his predestined limner
Gilbert Stuart, and also a companion presentment of Washington's wife.
Looking upon this lady's countenance and watching a party of school
girls who were making the tour of the rooms, not uncomforted on their
arduous adventure by chocolate and other confections, it occurred to me
that if America increases her present love of eating sweets, due, I
am told, not a little to Prohibition, George Washington will gradually
disappear into the background and Martha Washington, who has already
given her name to a very popular brand of candy, will be venerated
instead, as the Sweet Mother of her Country.
An American correspondent sends me the following poem in order to
explain to me the deviousness of Boston's principal thoroughfare. The
poet is Mr. Sam Walter Foss:--
One day through the primeval wood
A calf walked home, as good calves should;
But made a trail all bent askew,
A crooked trail, as all calves do.
Since then two hundred years have fled,
And, I infer, the calf is dead.
But still he left behind his trail,
And thereby hangs my moral tale.
The trail was taken up next day
By a lone dog that passed that way;
And then a wise bell-wether sheep
Pursued the trail o'er vale and steep,
And drew the flock behind him too,
As good bell-wethers always do.
And from that day o'er hill and glade
Through those old woods a path was made,
And many men wound in and out,
And dodged and turned and bent about,
And uttered words of righteous wrath
Because 'twas such a crooked path;
But still they followed--do not laugh--
The first migrations of that calf,
And through this winding wood-way stalked
Because he wabbled when he walked.
The forest path became a lane
That bent and turned and turned again;
This crooked lane became a road,
Where many a poor horse with his load
Toiled on beneath the burning sun,
And travelled some three miles in one.
And thus a century and a half
They trod the footsteps of that calf.
The years passed on in swiftness fleet,
The road became a village street,
And then before men were aware,
A city's crowded thoroughfare,
And soon the central street was this
Of a renowned metropolis.
And men two centuries and a half
Trod in the footsteps of that calf.
Each day a hundred thousand rout
Followed the zigzag calf about;
And o'er his crooked journey went
The traffic of a continent.
A hundred thousand men were led
By one calf near three centuries dead.
They followed still his crooked way
And lost one hundred years a day;
For thus such reverence is lent
To well-established precedent.
A moral lesson this might teach,
Were I ordained and called to preach.
For men are prone to go it blind
Along the calf-paths of the mind,
And work away from sun to sun
To do what other men have done.
They follow in the beaten track,
And out and in and forth and back
And still their devious course pursue,
To keep the paths that others do.
But how the wise old wood-gods laugh
Who saw the first primeval calf!
Ah, many things this tale might teach--But
I am not ordained to preach.