_Zion-hymns_, whom they ever failed to move to the foundations when
heard? The feet moving on unholy errands linger on their way past the
church door, as the melody floats out upon the air. That man--who has
wasted life, and energy, and talent, which might have blessed mankind,
to reap only the whirlwind--he is back again with his little head upon
his mother's lap, while she sings that same hymn, which will never grow
old, about "the beautiful river." His eyes moisten as he thinks how
pained she would be, were she living, to know him now. The hymn ceases,
and the low benediction follows, and as the worshippers emerge, he
recollects himself, and with an impatient pshaw! passes on. What, _he_
moved at a "conventicle hymn"? _He_, who for years has never crossed the
threshold of a church! He? who believes neither in prayer nor priests,
Bible nor Sundays? He, who has "outgrown all that"? Ah! but he hasn't.
He _can't_ outgrow it. It is _there_. It _will_ come, whether he desires
it or no. Come in spite of all his efforts to laugh or reason it away.
Come, though he lives in open derision and mockery of that religion
whose divine precepts he cannot efface from his mind. Come, as it did
to John Randolph, who, after years of atheism and worldliness and
ambition, left on record, "that the only men he ever knew well and
approached closely, whom he did not discover to be unhappy, were sincere
believers of the Gospel, who conformed their lives, as far as the nature
of man can permit, to its precepts." "Often," he says, "the religious
teachings of his childhood were banished wholly by business or pleasure;
but after a while they came more frequently, and stayed longer, until at
last they were his first thoughts on waking and his last before going to
sleep." Said he, "I could not banish them if I would."
"Now and then I like to go into a church," said a young man
apologetically to a companion who was deriding the idea. "Priestcraft!
priestcraft!" exclaimed his companion. "Tell me what possible good can
it do you?" "Well," said the young man, "somehow, when I hear those
hymns it is like hearing the pleading voice of my mother as I left home
to become the graceless fellow I am now. I cannot tell you how they move
me, or how they make me wish I were better. If I ever do become better,
it will be because I cannot separate them from all that seems, in my
better moments, worth embodying in the word 'home.'" Walter Scott said
to his son-in-law, when he was on his death-bed, "Be a _good_ man,
Lockhart--be a good man; nothing else will give you any comfort when you
come to lie here." It were easy to multiply instances where earth's
gifted and greatest have borne similar testimony, after having tested
all that the world had to offer, as an equivalent for "that peace which
passeth all understanding."
Parents sometimes say with tears, my boy has forgotten all my teachings.
You don't _know_ that. You can't _say_ that till the grave closes over
him. Said a good mother I knew, who kept on singing those hymns, and
whose faith never faltered through long years, when her only son
disgraced the family by intemperance, "John will come right by and by.
He _must_." And day after day, when he was brought home helpless, the
mere wreck and libel of manhood, she smilingly repeated to all
cavillers: "John will come right. I _know_ it. Every day I ask God to
_give him back to himself_, and I _know_ He will do it."
And John _did_ come right. Out of that horrible pit of degradation he
emerged "clothed and in his right mind." He is now in good business
standing, owns the house he lives in, is the comfort and pride of the
patient wife who, with his mother, waited woman-like, _Christ-like_, all
those weary years for his return. I myself have seen him in church, when
the Sacramental wine was passed to him, bow his head reverently and
humbly over the cup without raising it to his lips.
Never despair of a child who strays away from _those hymns_. Somewhere
between the cradle and the tomb be sure those hymns will find him out.
Only he to whom heaven is a reality, can possibly preserve his self
poise in the jarring conflict of life. How can man, constantly
disheartened and disappointed as he is, by the _apparent_ triumph of
wrong over right, by the poverty of those of whom the world is not
worthy, in contrast with the gilded, full fed, honored wickedness which
seems to give the lie to everything to which our better natures cling,
how can man, under such circumstances, walk hopefully in the narrow
path, if beyond and through the mists of the valley he discerns not the
serene mountain-tops? No--only the Christian can say in view of earthly
loss and disappointments: "It is well--let _Him_ do what seemeth to Him
good." Only the Christian--nor need he be--nor is he--_of necessity_ a
"church member,"--can say--"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."
* * * * *
LADIES, DON'T DO IT.--Every modest woman should set her face against any
fashion which could for a moment identify her with those women who have
no claim to modesty, no matter how "stylish" that fashion may be termed.
This word "stylish" has much to answer for in this regard. Dr. Johnson's
rule was a good one: "Dress so that no person can possibly remember what
you have on." Unfortunately, the reverse of this rule is that which is
generally aimed at, even by women who in other matters command respect.
_A STRANGER IN GOTHAM._
This unfortunate is easily recognized in New York, by its frantic
bewilderment in attempting to cross Broadway; now standing still, now
leaping forward, now running back, in that agony of indecision which is
the best and surest recipe for a broken neck. Also by walking with its
mates three abreast, in that crowded thoroughfare, as if room was as
plenty there as in its native Frogtown. Another sure sign of its origin
is in its continuous and demonstrative waving of the handkerchief,
umbrella, parasol, basket, or any other weapon handy, at a desired
omnibus driver, who of course knows a native at once by the quiet
uplifted forefinger. Once inside the omnibus, the stranger may be known,
by ferreting anxiously in all his pockets for a five-dollar bill,
instead of handing up the ready sixpence with which the native avoids
eternal self-reproach and the maledictions of hurried fellow-passengers.
Also, the stranger may be known by his extreme and stunning toggery at
places of public amusement, where fashion chooses to sit in quiet
raiment.
If the stranger is a Bostonian, he may at once be recognized by
wearing--without regard to his profession--a sepulchral suit of solemn
black, with immaculately polished boots and bosom, and a
stand-aside-I-am-holier-than-thou air, intended to crush the sons of
Belial who behold it. Let it not be supposed, however, by the
uninitiated, that this, by any means, precludes him from joining any gay
or festive scene which New York holds out as a reward of merit, to any
inflated Pharisee, for a prolonged and painful spell of good behavior.
The stranger within the gate is sometimes the angel unawares; in which
case she may be seen innocently and promiscuously distributing pennies,
here and there, among bogus "objects of charity," and feeling good, as
she takes a last pitiful look at the painted ulcer on the l--imb as
sound as her own. Or she may be seen, verdantly buying one of those huge
cabbage bouquets, in alternate mutton-chop streaks of white and red, got
up for the delectation of strangers, and pensively applying it to her
gratified nose, when her head is not spinning a teetotum after some new
freak of fashion, as displayed in a new arrangement of passing feather,
ribbon, or bow.
As if the equilibrium of a New Yorker could be disturbed by any such
trifles! No. Omnibus horses may rise and fall, like the waves of the
sea. "Extra" boys may yell themselves black in the face. Regiments in
all the hues of the _reign-beau_, may come and go; but unless somebody
knocks the well-beloved cigar from his jaded lip, Satan may claim him
for his own, for aught he would move a muscle.
_MY JOURNEY TO QUEBEC AND BACK AGAIN._
If there is a feeling akin to Heaven, it is to reach home after a long
journey. And this I take to be quite consistent with great enjoyment of
all the beautiful things and places one has seen in one's absence--aye,
and people, too. To sit down in your own dear old chair, and kick your
slippers across the room; to talk without being overheard; to eat with
only those whom you love about you--for this promiscuous hotel-feeding
is repulsive to me beyond the power of expression. I think I am peculiar
on this point, but it seems to me as great an individual profanation as
to admit the same number of people to see you perform your toilette for
dinner. That there are people to whom it is one of the delights of
travel to sit down to such hecatombs of food with such a menagerie of
human beings, I am well aware. I am not one of them.
The first place we visited was Saratoga; don't be frightened. I leave
"New York correspondents" of newspapers all over the country to give
fabulous accounts of fabulous belles, and the number of their lovers,
which will very generally be found to correspond with the number of
their trunks. I am not going to venture on so hackneyed a theme, hotel
life being the same at Saratoga as anywhere else--simply one eternal
dress and eat. The _place itself_ was what I went to see--the
springs--the grounds--not the peacocks that were in them. The ornamental
grounds attached to the springs are very lovely and attractive, as well
as faultlessly kept, affording abundant opportunities to sighing lovers
and bread-and-butter maidens. Contrary to my expectations, I found the
waters very palatable, though, were I compelled by fashion to wash down
my morning orisons with ten or twelve tumblers full, I might change my
mind. It is curious how long they have bubbled up there, as freely as
now, the Indians having partaken of them a fabulous time back. The
fountain might be made more attractive, did some pretty girl do the
tumbler-dipping for visitors, instead of the matter-of-fact jacket and
trousers who handed it to us--I merely throw this in as a suggestion. We
stepped into a shop opposite the springs, to see the operation of
bottling and corking the waters performed by machinery; the celerity
with which this was accomplished was very gratifying to my Yankee
chain-lightning notion of things, and being a Yankee, of course it was
not out of my line to think what a very nice piece of property it must
be to hold, for this and other palpable reasons. I trust all the
sentimental Misses who have had "offers" over those tumblers of water
will forgive me.
Stepping into one or two shops in the village, to hunt up some
nick-nacks for a dear little girl at home, I encountered some familiar
New York shop faces. One woman told me that she hired a shop there every
year during the "season," and that many other New-Yorkers did the same,
retreating again when the tide of fashion set cityward. They calculate
rightly--the shopping mania never will be burned out of women while
there is a timber left of her; and were there nothing but an old
horse-blanket in the village, she would buy it, if she had to throw it
away the next minute. I wish it to be understood that I do not share
this furore of my sex, as I never enter a shop of my own free will,
until my clothes show signs of dropping off my back unless replaced.
The lady visitors at Saratoga get themselves up most stunningly, to walk
through the streets to the springs, with their white embroidered
petticoats peeping from beneath their rainbow-colored silk
morning-dresses, and black-lace veils thrown Spanish fashion over their
heads, making unhandsome faces, if only refined, look picturesque. This
annual wave of folly, said I, must send its ripples farther than the
circumference of this village. I had hardly made the remark, before two
barrel-shaped country lasses passed, with tawdry, cheap imitations in
delaine of the Saratoga silk morning-dress, and with coarse black veils
thrown round their sunburnt faces. It was a capital burlesque, though, I
assure you, the maidens themselves were far from regarding it in that
light.
The private cottages on the grounds of the hotel, for families and
parties who choose to live by themselves, are nice little cosey affairs.
This is a much pleasanter, and, to my mind, a much more civilized
arrangement than living at the public hotel; but, as the execrable
organ-grinder wouldn't stop playing for sixpence, so the landlord,
knowing well the value of peace and quietness, charges accordingly.
From Saratoga we went the usual route to Lake George, performing the
last miles by stage coach. That's nice, thought I,--a change of
conveyance wonderfully eases the limbs--_i.e._, if they are not past
easing. I was hasty;--a heavy rain set in, and came driving first into
the windows, through which, at the risk of dislocating our elbows, we
spread our umbrellas for spouts. Then the roof began to leak, and
gentlemen shrugged the shoulders of their linen travelling coats, and
whispered, "Rheumatism;" and ladies benevolently offered the corners of
their travelling cloaks and shawls to the victims; and temporary plugs
were made for the roof, of "The New York Times," which we found "would
not hold water;" and night came on, and the rain grew more persistent,
and we got accustomed to sitting in a puddle; and the wheels sank in the
mud, and the old coach "tetered"--as the children say--now this side,
now that, and the most inveterate joker of the party had long been dumb;
when the coachman, who had been jogging on in a helpless, despairing
way, gave his whip the professional crack, which sent our noses up to
the roof for a last final rub, and the wet, draggled, muddy, hungry,
dead-and-alive crew were dragged out piecemeal over the wheels of the
coach, on to the piazza of the "Fort William Henry Hotel," where were a
swarm of colored waiters, where was a band of music on the piazza, where
was a sumptuous parlor of interminable length--mirror, tete-a-tete, and
piano. But, unfortunately, none of all those could we eat or drink.
Woman wants but little here below, but I'll tell all you landlords what
she does want. After sitting in a puddle, beside enduring a shower-bath
at the same time through the roof of the coach, a _hot_ cup of tea it
_might_ not be unreasonable for her to expect. It is very well for men
to "pooh!"--they can afford to be philosophical--they who run to the
bar-room and get "set up," as they call it, on their arrival, or console
themselves for cold tea, sour berries, and tough beefsteak, with the
infallible cigar.
The question is how their philosophy would hold out if there were _no_
cigars to be had, and _no_ bar-room, and they were shaking in an ague of
cold? I hate a fussy woman who is always digging down to the bottom of
hotel salt-cellars, and microscopically inspecting potatoes; but I will
say, that when every thread of a woman's raiment is dripping, it takes a
more angelic being than I am to go shivering to bed on a cup of cold
tea, past an army of darkies whom you are too vexed with their employer
to bribe.
The next morning it still rained, and as there was no inducement
in-doors to remain, our breakfast being worse than our tea of the night
before, we made our escape into the little steamer "Minnehaha" to see
Lake George; and lovely it was, spite of fog, and mist, and rain, as we
glided away between its green shores, and past its fairy islands,
startling out the little birds from their leafy nests into short, swift
circles over our heads, then back again, where never perhaps, since the
creation, man's foot has trod.
Lake George is a little gem, though we saw it only through a vale of
mist, the sun absolutely refusing to brighten it up for one brief
moment. "Such a pity. It must be surpassingly lovely on a fine day," we
all kept saying to one another, as we anxiously watched the gray clouds.
Everybody seemed to be in good spirits, however, and some ladies, more
romantic than wise, took their stations on the upper deck, spite of the
slanting rain and mist, giving their gentlemen friends constant
employment in tucking shawls round their feet and shoulders, till they
looked like bandaged mummies. After a while they came down, and I saw
certain mysterious-looking flasks drawn from the aforementioned
gentlemen's pockets, and held to their blue lips, by which token I
concluded that brandy sometimes does for a woman what sentiment will
not.
And now again the old lumbering stage-coach is in requisition for a
seven-mile jog, and trot, and plough through the mud, and we pack in,
like layers of herring, and there is plenty of joking and laughing, for
many of the party are young and merry, and it was blessed to listen to
their ringing laughter, and look upon their bright eyes. Many a good
thing was said, though had it not been half as good, we were all
prepared to laugh upon the slightest provocation, for our legs and arms
were bundled up in such a way, as rendered "dignity" quite out of the
question, and gravity an impossibility. At last we arrived (I declare I
believe they called the thing a "hotel") at the foot of Lake Champlain,
where we were to dine. "Be advised by me," said one of the lady
passengers to me, "and don't go in to dinner. I did it once, and since,
when I stop here, I bring my own sandwiches." It is sometimes fun to sit
down to a two-pronged-fork dinner, and the rest of us were in the humor
for whatsoever the gods sent, so in we went. The staple commodities of
the table were soft huckleberries and fried fish. Two girls--daughters,
I suppose, of our host--waited upon table; that is to say, they rotated
in a certain ghostly fashion, with their arms hanging by their sides,
and their eyes fixed upon the floor, and were about as much use as two
statues on castors, as it was impossible to catch either their eyes or
attention. "What on earth is a fellow to call them?" asked one hungry
man. "Waiter!"--that didn't appeal to them. "Girl!" it was no use. "You,
there!" in a tone of impatience. The rock of Gibraltar couldn't have
stood it better.
Now, if this was a preconcerted bashfulness, it worked admirably, for we
could get nothing that was not immediately before us, unless some
philanthropic fellow-sufferer, in pity, sent a pie spinning a la Ravel,
down the table. Well, at any rate we had our money's worth of fun, and
could bear it much better than if the parlor had been resplendent with
mirrors, sofas, tete-a-tetes, and "grand pianos," which so often pave
the way for a terrible disappointment as to everything else. We expected
little, and got less; but those imperturbable, ghostly girls cost me,
many a time and oft during the rest of my journey, a button or a hook
and eye, as the picture came up before me.
Talk of Lake George. It is to Lake Champlain what a pretty, little,
simpering, pink-and-white doll of a girl is to a magnificent woman, the
royal sweep of whose robe about her faultless limbs as she moves, sets
all the pulses wild. In mercy to us the clouds parted, and the bright
sun broke through at last. You should have seen it then--the queenly
Lake Champlain--with the bold, dark islands that seemed to float upon
its silvery smoothness, with the heavy rain-clouds gathering up their
forces, and gliding majestically away in the distance, leaving a sky as
soft and blue as ever arched over Eden. On one side the broad, green,
cultivated fields, stretched away fair in the sunlight; on the other,
pile upon pile, were the huge, dark mountains, up whose steep sides the
soft mist was wreathing itself in a thousand fantastic, graceful shapes.
It was a moment such as all of us have sometimes known, when pleasure is
so intense as to become almost pain; when language fails; when the eye
fills, and there seems more "Bible" between the blue covers of sea and
sky than you ever looked upon, or listened to before, and everywhere you
turned, a voice--"the still small voice"--seemed saying, all this I made
for _you_--for _you_. Now you might thunder the "terrors of the law" in
my ears ten months, and it would not move me; but I feel like the
veriest wretch alive, when I so intensely enjoy that for which my daily
life is so paltry a return.
The boat in which we performed this trip was a Yankee boat, called "The
America," and it was enough to rouse one's patriotism to go through it;
the shining neatness of its decks and cabins; its efficient and
well-mannered stewardess, always on hand, yet never in the way,
understanding, as if by intuition, what everybody wanted; the nice, hot,
orderly supper, with waiters that had ears, and knew how to use their
feet. I was glad it was named "The America." I was as proud of the
beautiful boat as if I had laid her keel. But all pleasures must have an
end; and our destination being Montreal, we were soon to leave thrifty,
go-ahead Yankee-land and all its peculiarities behind. As we passed the
pretty town of Burlington, the residence of the poet "Saxe," we all
waved him our most cordial good wishes, which we trust the winds bore
him safely.
Upon leaving the boat for the cars, which were to take us to
Montreal--Imprimis, a hideous, cavernous looking depot, with one poor,
miserable lamp to help us break our necks by--a great talk of
"custom-house officers examining trunks," and "smuggling," etc. What a
jabbering of French when we took our seat in the cars! and what
exorbitant fares for travelling through such a gloomy, God-forsaken,
pine-stump, log-cabin looking country! Sleep came to my relief on a safe
shoulder, after I had relieved myself by the above speech. At last we
reached the funny, foreign, forlorn, cushionless ferry-boat that was to
land us in Montreal, and as true as preaching, in got that woman with
the _seven babies_, who had traveled with us all day, calm as an oyster
in its shell, though the whole seven were screeching alternately and
eternally, poor little toads, and still _continued_ screeching, with
some real or imaginary pain under their aprons. I did hope the poor
things were going to bed somewhere; but no, there they sat, bolt upright
in the ferry-boat, all in a row--those miserable seven--with their
mouths wide open, sending forth the discordant-est cries, and that
prolific female never even perspired! but sat with her fat hands folded
over her belt, calmly accepting her conjugal destiny! And this is
Montreal, said I, as they stood me up on the pier with the trunks, and
half deafened with the French jabber about me, I essayed to climb up
into a thing (a cross between a New York omnibus and a "Black Maria")
that was waiting to convey us to the hotel. And this is Montreal. Well,
I shouldn't care if it was Sodom and Gomorrah, if there's only a bed in
it. When I mention that our destination was "The Donegana House," every
traveller will understand that to be but another name for sumptuous fare
and the most assiduous attention at the hands of the handsome landlord
and his well-disciplined corps of servants.
In all honesty, I cannot say that I like Montreal. It may be a very
substantially built town--I believe that is what they say of it--but one
likes beauty as well as strength, and my eye ached for something
ornamental in the way of flower-gardens, or, in fact, in any other way.
Red coats there were in plenty, but they did not supply the deficiency.
Then the never-ceasing bell-ringing, from early dawn to sunset, would
soon drive me as mad as our "glorious Fourth" does every year, when
gunpowder and bells and cannon have it all their own way, till one is
tempted to wish one never had any "forefathers."