The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860. Various
its keystone was lost in the stooping cloud above? Art is good, as well as long; but time is also fleeting, and, not being millionnaires, with the luxury of a run across the Atlantic at command, let us make what we can out of what we have. It is very probable that architecture, too, is a sore subject to aspiring Young America, who turns discontentedly from the stucco and pine-plank tracery of the new cathedral of St. Aërian. But let Young America go out to the meadows, and discover for himself a group of young elms. There is one I know of, not unattainable by very moderate pedestrianism from the same seaport before alluded to, where a most exquisite arrangement of arches and tracery can be seen. Six or eight elms, their long bending boughs clothed with thick, clinging leafage, mingle their tops, forming a sort of vaulted roof, such as at the intersection of nave and transepts occurs in every Gothic church which has no central tower. More exquisite curves, better studies for a healthy-minded and original architect, could hardly be found. The interlacing branches are suggestive of tracery-patterns, not to be outdone even in the flamboyant windows of York and Rouen. There is no excuse for the squat, ugly, and stupid arches one sees in almost every attempt at pointed architecture, when the elm-tree springs by every riverside in the land.
But it is time to conclude our desultory rambles. It would be pleasant to me to recall many another of my old haunts, spots which, perhaps, were never called beautiful before now, and may not be again for many a day. For they all lie in a very tame and prosaic country, nearly level, the utmost elevation getting hardly a couple of hundred feet above tidewater mark; a country with less natural beauty than belongs to most New England towns,—bare, bleak, rocky, with stunted vegetation and ungenial soil. Yet within its limits there are brooks and marshes and copses and woodlands,—rocks over which the wild columbine hangs its fuchsia-like pendants, and dells where nestle the earliest and sweetest of the wood-flowerets.
And now to come back to the miserable sinner. As schoolboy, as bank-clerk, as teacher, as worker in many ways, he has unemployed leisure in the hours of daylight,—not so many as he should have, perhaps, but still many hours in the course of the month. Shall he go to the livery-stable, the bowling-alley, or the billiard-saloon? Not being a saint, of course he can plead no high-toned sense of need of physical culture, to warrant these indulgences. He goes because he likes it, gets enjoyment, exercise, rest for a mind tasked to the full with the day's work. This he ought to have; and if butting little ivory balls about or propelling big wooden ones will give it him, let him have it, if so be that it cannot be got otherwise. There is no contamination in the cue or the ten-pin; but there is in the habits and associations of the places where they are found. Let us not be maw-wormish about it, but tell the truth as it is. The quasi-gambling principle upon which all such places are conducted stimulates the love of hazard and makes way for the betting propensity to become full-blown. Of course, one can bet, if one have money; two lumps of sugar and a few flies will enable a man to lose the fortune of the Rothschilds, if he will. That is not the question. The billiard-saloons do educate men for the gambling-house, simply because they cannot go to them without either losing their money or winning their games. Beside that, the gaseous, dusty, confined, and tobacco-scented air of those places is not to be compared with our free, open, out-doors hills and meadows, for any hygienic purposes.
But, argument apart, there is a sad New England story, so often repeated as to be almost wearisome, were it not so sad. It is of the fresh, frank, honest-hearted boy, who may be seen behind many a bank-counter. At first, so active, trustworthy, and trusted,—yet with the constant temptation of unemployed time and energies demanding supply of action. Little by little these are supplied,—supplied by the billiard-table and its concomitants. It is the same story,—first, rumors, then equivocation, then exposure. Perhaps a petty sum is all; but, to the austere justice of banking, this is as bad, nay, worse than millions. And then a brief paragraph in the newspaper, and one more ruined young man, sulking beside the family-hearthstone, his father's shame, his mother's unextinguishable sorrow,—a candidate for crime, if he have power of mind and spirit to feel, or an imbecile dependant, if he have not.
Now preaching, whether lay or clerical, will not do much to prevent this, especially if it be pitched (as it commonly is) upon too high a key. Preventing means, or used to mean, when words had a meaning, getting beforehand with anything. And if young Homespun have from the outset something he likes better, he will not take to the ivory balls in pleasant weather, and in rainy weather will be apt to prefer even quite a stupid book to the board of green cloth. Therefore, boys, go,—and girls, too, for that matter,—on flower and moss hunts!—and ye, dear middle-aged people, send them, and go also upon the same! Find something that will tempt you into the woods,—something neither berries nor sassafras,—something which cannot be eaten or sold, but which will simply give you a sense and a love of beauty. These pages have been written to show that it lies at your very doors,—that nothing but stout boots, an old coat or jacket, and an observant eye, is needed. When you come to be saints, or even to be men, there will be plenty of active work to do, if so be that you will only do it. Then, in careful regard to your bodies, you may have hard-trotting (not fast-trotting) horses, pickerel-backed boats, and a billiard-room over the stable,—if your canonization seem to require it. But the saint, if he be true saint, needs no such care. He will get work enough, hard, physical work, if only in trotting up and down the steep stairs of tenant-houses, to keep his digestion in tolerable order. It is only your pseudo-saint, who cuddles himself for the pulpit and the platform, and keeps the safety-valve down with midnight sittings while "rosining up" the furnaces with strong coffee, that will come to grief by collapse of flues. If a man, whether sinner or saint, will run races for the honor of being the fastest boat in the river of popular favor, he must take the consequences.
But for the poor, benighted, heathen sinner, desiring enjoyment that shall be honest, cheap, satisfying, and attainable, I say, in the full faith of the creed of Nemophily,—Get into the woods! No matter what you expect to find there,—go and see what you can find. Don't walk for "constitutionals," without an object at the end or on the way. Keep your feet well shod and your eyes open. Bring home all the flowers and pretty wood-growths you can, and you may find that you have been entertaining angels unawares. Find out about them all you can yourself, and then (in spite of a previous tirade against botany, be it said) go to BIGELOW'S "PLANTS OF BOSTON" and learn more.
SUBSTANCE AND SHADOW
A fatiguing journey up six long, winding flights of smoothly-waxed stairs carried me to the door of the room I occupied in the Place –. But no matter for the name of the Place; no one, I am confident, will visit Paris for the express purpose of satisfying himself that I am to be depended upon, and that there is a house of so many stones in the Place Maubert. Here I lived, au premier au dessous du soleil, in the enjoyment of no end of fresh air, especially in winter, and a brilliant prospect up and down the street and over the roofs of the houses across the way, which reached from the Pantheon on the one side, to the peaked roofs and factory-like chimneys of the Tuileries on the other, the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides occupying the centre of the picture. I was studying painting at that time,—learning to paint the much-admired landscapes and figure-pieces which I produce with so much ease now and dispose of with so little,—and, as a general thing, was busy, (though I had my fits of abstraction, like other men of genius, during which I did nothing but lie on my bed and smoke pipes over French novels, or join parties of pleasure into the country or within the barriers,) through the day, and often till late in the evening, in the atelier of one or another of the most renowned artists of the city.
At the head of the last flight of stairs in this house was a narrow passage-way in which I was always obliged to stop and recover my breath, after finishing the one hundred and thirty-nine steps that led to my paradise, before I could get my key into its lock; and into this passage-way opened two doors, one of which, of course, belonged to my room, and the other to some one's else. But who this some one else was I was unable to find out. Was it—and how convenient a word is ça in such a case!—male or female? I was persuaded it must be a woman, and as a woman I always used to think of her and speak of her, to myself,—and I thought and spoke of her often enough. Of course, I could have settled the question at once by knocking at her door and asking for a match, but I scorned resorting to such weak subterfuges. But how quiet she was! Occasionally, when, contrary to my usual custom, I took another nap after waking in the morning, instead of going out for exercise and a glimpse of early Paris street-life,—occasionally