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- Herausgeber: Krill Press
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
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Seitenzahl: 184
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016
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FROM THE EASY CHAIR, VOLUME 3
George William Curtis
FIREWORK PRESS
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This book is a work of nonfiction and is intended to be factually accurate.
All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.
Copyright © 2016 by George William Curtis
Interior design by Pronoun
Distribution by Pronoun
TABLE OF CONTENTS
BEECHER IN HIS PULPIT AFTER THE DEATH OF LINCOLN
KILLING DEER
AUTUMN DAYS
FROM COMO TO MILAN DURING THE WAR OF 1848.
HERBERT SPENCER ON THE YANKEE
HONOR
JOSEPH WESLEY HARPER
REVIEW OF UNION TROOPS 1865
APRIL, 1865
WASHINGTON IN 1867
RECEPTION TO THE JAPANESE AMBASSADORS AT THE WHITE HOUSE
THE MAID AND THE WIT
THE DEPARTURE OF THE GREAT EASTERN.
CHURCH STREET
HISTORIC BUILDINGS
THE BOSTON MUSIC HALL
PUBLIC BENEFACTORS
MR. TIBBINS’S NEW-YEAR’S CALL
THE NEW ENGLAND SABBATH
THE REUNION OF ANTISLAVERY VETERANS. 1884
REFORM CHARITY
BICYCLE RIDING FOR CHILDREN
THE DEAD BIRD UPON CYRILLA’S HAT AN ENCOURAGEMENT OF “SLARTER”
CHEAPENING HIS NAME
CLERGYMEN’S SALARIES
From the Easy Chair, Volume 3
By
George William Curtis
From the Easy Chair, Volume 3
Published by Firework Press
New York City, NY
First published circa 1892
Copyright © Firework Press, 2015
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
About Firework Press
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BEECHER IN HIS PULPIT AFTER THE DEATH OF LINCOLN
CROSS THE FULTON FERRY AND follow the crowd” was the direction which was said to have been given humorously by Mr. Beecher himself to a pilgrim who asked how to find his church in Brooklyn. The Easy Chair remembered it on the Sunday morning after the return of the Fort Sumter party; and crossing at an early hour in the beautiful spring day, he stepped ashore and followed the crowd up the street. That at so early an hour the current would set strongly towards the church he did not believe. But he was mistaken. At the corner of Hicks Street the throng turned and pushed along with hurrying eagerness as if they were already too late, although it was but a little past nine o’clock. The street was disagreeable like a street upon the outskirts of a city, but the current turned from it again in two streams, one flowing to the rear and the other to the front of Plymouth Church. The Easy Chair drifted along with the first, and as he went around the corner observed just before him a low brick tower, below which was an iron gate.
The gate was open, and we all passed rapidly in, going through a low passage smoothly paved and echoing, with a fountain of water midway and a chained mug—a kind thought for the wayfarer—and that little cheap charity seemed already an indication of the humane spirit which irradiates the image of Plymouth Church. The low passage brought us all to the narrow walk by the side of the church, and to the back door of the building. The crowd was already tossing about all the doors. The street in front of the building was full, and occasionally squads of enterprising devotees darted out and hurried up to the back door to compare the chances of getting in.
The Easy Chair pushed forward, and was shown by a courteous usher to a convenient seat. The church is a large white building, with a gallery on both sides, two galleries in front, and an organ-loft and choir just behind the pulpit. It is spacious and very light, with four long windows on each side. The seats upon the floor converge towards the pulpit, which is a platform with a mahogany desk, and there are no columns. The view of the speaker is unobstructed from every part. The plain white walls and entire absence of architectural ornamentation inevitably suggest the bare cold barns of meeting-houses in early New England. But this house is of a very cheerful, comfortable, and substantial aspect.
There were already dense crowds wedged about all the doors upon the inside. The seats of the pew-holders were protected by the ushers, the habit being, as the Easy Chair understood, for the holders who do not mean to attend any service to notify the ushers that they may fill the seats. Upon the outside of the pews along the aisles there are chairs which can be turned down, enabling two persons to be seated side by side, yet with a space for passage between, so that the aisle is not wholly choked. On this Sunday the duties of the ushers were very difficult and delicate, for the pressure was extraordinary. There was still more than an hour before the beginning of the service, but the building was rapidly filling; and everybody who sank into a seat from which he was sure that he could not be removed wore an edifying expression of beaming contentment which must have been rather exasperating to those who were standing and struggling and dreadfully squeezed around the doors.
Presently the seats were all full. The multitude seemed to be solid above and below, but still the new-comers tried to press in. The platform was fringed by the legs of those who had been so lucky as to find seats there. There was loud talking and scuffling, and even occasionally a little cry at the doors. One boy struggled desperately in the crowd for his life, or breath. The ushers, courteous to the last, smiled pitifully upon their own efforts to put ten gallons into a pint pot. As the hour of service approached a small door under the choir and immediately behind the mahogany desk upon the platform opened quietly, and Mr. Beecher entered. He stood looking at the crowd for a little time, without taking off his outer coat, then advanced to the edge of the platform and gave some directions about seats. He indicated with his hands that the people should pack more closely. The ushers evidently pleaded for the pew-holders who had not arrived; but the preacher replied that they could not get in, and the seats should be filled that the service might proceed in silence. Then he removed his coat, sat down, and opened the Hymn-Book, while the organ played. The impatient people meantime had climbed up to the window-sills from the outside, and the great white church was like a hive, with the swarming bees hanging in clusters upon the outside.
The service began with an invocation. It was followed by a hymn, by the reading of a chapter in the Bible, and a prayer. The congregation joined in singing; and the organ, skilfully and firmly played, prevented the lagging which usually spoils congregational singing. The effect was imposing. The vast volume filled the building with solid sound. It poured out at the open windows and filled the still morning air of the city with solemn melody. Far upon every side those who sat at home in solitary chambers heard the great voice of praise. Then amid the hush of the vast multitude the preacher, overpowered by emotion, prayed fervently for the stricken family and the bereaved nation. There was more singing, before which Mr. Beecher appealed to those who were sitting to sit closer, and for once to be incommoded that some more of the crowd might get in; and as the wind blew freshly from the open windows, he reminded the audience that a handkerchief laid upon the head would prevent the sensitive from taking cold. Then opening the Bible he read the story of Moses going up to Pisgah, and took the verses for his text.
The sermon was written, and he read calmly from the manuscript. Yet at times, rising upon the flood of feeling, he shot out a solemn adjuration or asserted an opinion with a fiery emphasis that electrified the audience into applause. His action was intense but not dramatic; and the demeanor of the preacher was subdued and sorrowful. He did not attempt to speak in detail of the President’s character or career. He drew the bold outline in a few words, and leaving that task to a calmer and fitter moment, spoke of the lessons of the hour. The way of his death was not to be deplored; the crime itself revealed to the dullest the ghastly nature of slavery; it was a blow not at a man, but at the people and their government; it had utterly failed; and, finally, though dead the good man yet speaketh. The discourse was brief, fitting, forcible, and tender with emotion. It was a manly sorrow and sympathy that cast its spell upon the great audience, and it was good to be there. When words have a man behind them, says a wise man, they are eloquent. There was another hymn before the benediction, a peal of pious triumph, which poured out of the heart of the congregation, and seemed to lift us all up, up into the sparkling, serene, inscrutable heaven.
KILLING DEER
WHAT SHALL HE HAVE THAT kill’d the deer?” sang the foresters in Arden. If you are in the wild woods of the Adirondacks you lie behind a log or rock by which the animal is likely to pass; you scarcely breathe as you wait with your hand grasping your rifle. The slow hours drag by, and you are very wet, or the gnats and mosquitoes sting, or you are hungry, cramped, or generally uncomfortable—but hark! What’s that? A slight rustle! You are all alert. Your heart beats. Your hands tingle. Breathlessly you stare towards the sound. And then—nothing. A twig dropped.
Ah well! that’s nothing. Very cautiously you stretch the leg which has the most stitch in it lest you should alarm the deer. The position and the progress of affairs are a little monotonous; but if the day that counts one glorious nibble is a day well spent, how much more so that which gives you the chance of a deer! ‘St! A slight but decided crashing beyond the wood. A faint, startled, hurrying sound; and the next moment, erect, alive in every hair, the proud antlers quivering, the eye wild but soft, the form firm and exquisitely agile, the buck bounds into view. Crack you go, you poor miserable skulker behind a rotten log, and off he goes, the dappled noble of the forest!
Perhaps you hit him and kill him. You outwit him and murder him. Well, in Venice the bravos hid in dark doorways and stabbed the gallants hieing home from love and lady. Anybody can stab in the dark, or shoot from an ambush. To kill an animal for sport is wretched enough; but if you talk of manliness and use other fine words, be at least fair. Give him a chance. Put your two legs, your two arms, a knife, and your human wit against his four legs, greater strength, antlers, and want of brain. Then is the contest fair. You who seek his life for fun give him a chance at yours for self-defence. The sylvan shades approve the equal strife; and if you fall you are at least not disgraced.
If you are a deer-stalker you creep up stealthily to find them feeding, and if you can creep near enough, you blaze away. I hope that you have seen Doyle’s picture of you, a company of you, scrambling up the side of a hill hoping to catch the prey over the brow. But you will not do it. They are off, the blithe beauties, and you may get up from your stomachs as soon as you choose.
Or you may hunt in a deer preserve with drivers and hounds. You pass beyond the thicket in which they lurk, leaving the drivers to urge them forth. You emerge upon sunny open spaces waving with thin, long, dry grass, tufted with thick shrubs, and dotted with convenient mossy rocks. Here is a favorite path of the flying deer, and you post yourself expectant behind a rock. How calm and lovely the brilliant October day! How the mass of the foliage shines in the clear sunlight! How every prospect pleases, and only man is—hark, again! They are coming. Lie low. Still as death. Oh! the beauties! There they are! And one glorious chief of chiefs darts straight and swift towards your ambush. Just beyond is the covert. He believes that safety is there. The quiet sunny nooks in which he shall lie and feed, the pleasant shades at noon, the leafy lair—they are all there a hundred rods before. Press on! press on! oh delicate, swift feet! He is not man who does not follow you with human sympathy. Innocence, purity, helplessness, they skim the sunny space with you. Too late! A sharp, mean sound, the bounding falters, the panting racer falls. The dogs and men rush on. They slay the hapless victim. ‘Tis a noble sport! ‘Tis a manly business!
Lately I saw two deer, two stately bucks. It was a solitary, sunny opening upon which I suddenly came. They were lying at the edge of the wood, and rose with a startled spring, for an instant looked, and with one bound, as if they would leap over the tree tops, were lost in the thicket. The grace and charm they gave to the wood were indescribable. Into the remotest gloom they sent a flash of sunlight. Nothing fierce, or treacherous, or repulsive, consorts with the image of a deer, and when they vanished the whole wood was peopled with their lovely forms. If I had gone back to dinner dragging a mangled body along the wood road, or carrying the piteous burden in a wagon, how could that sunlit beech wood ever again be so sylvan sweet and Arcadian? The tranquil, secluded, happy scene would have been blood-stained. It would have been a fantastic remorse, but how could I have justified the killing of the deer?
No. I have not killed deer in the Adirondacks, nor moose at Moosehead. I do not quarrel with those who have; and I hope they are as satisfied as I am. One day I hope to reach those pleasant places, but I hope to see deer, not to kill them. I am content that other people should slay my venison as well as my beef; and I shall not pretend to find any sport in the shambles, whether in the outskirts of the city or in the mountain valleys. I do not insist upon killing the chickens that I eat, nor the partridges, nor the quail. The noble art of Venery is a fine term to describe the butcher’s business. A man who sees a heron streaming through the tranquil summer sky and only wishes for his gun, or who sees the beautiful bound of a deer in the woods with no other wish than that of killing it, I do not envy, as I do not envy the farmer slaughtering pigs. The bravest and most robust manhood is not necessarily developed nor proved either by sticking pins into grasshoppers or firing shot into deer.
“Ah yes! but you treat it too seriously,” says young Nimrod. “It is not a matter of reason, but of feeling and excitement. As you lie in your ambush and hear suddenly the shouting of the drivers, the barking of the dogs, the crackling and rustling of boughs and leaves, you cannot help the intense excitement. Your blood burns, your nerves tingle, your ears quiver, your eyes leap from your head, and, upon my honor, sir, when our best sportsman saw the deer near him last year in Maine, he fixed his eyes steadily upon him, but such was his nervous twitter that he pointed his rifle straight into the ground and fired. He wounded the ground severely, but the deer escaped. What is the use of talking to him about butchery? Nothing in the world interests or charms him so much as hunting. Besides, you get used to it. It is not pleasant, probably, for the tyro, who is a surgical student, to see men’s legs and arms cut off. You could not see it without shuddering, perhaps not without sickening and fainting. But there must be surgeons, and how long would it be before you would actually enjoy it?
“There. Hark! tally ho, tantivity! Is not the language rich with metaphors derived from the hunt? Does not literature ring with hunting songs and choruses and glees? Is it not all inwrought with romance and poetry? Waken, lords and ladies gay! The baying hound, the winding horn, the scarlet huntsman, the flying fox, the streaming, flashing dash across the country—they are of the very essence of the life and civilization from which we spring. They are the soul of the ‘Merrie England’ which is our chief tradition. Come, come! to the Adirondacks! to Moosehead!
“‘All nature smiles to usher in
The jocund Queen of morn,
And huntsmen with the day begin
To wind the mellow horn!’”
Yes, the horn winds far and sweet in story and song, until it becomes the horn of elf-land faintly blowing, and man is a carnivorous animal who feeds on flesh. But butchers and fishermen are provided to supply the market. Is the carnivorous formation of man a reason that boys should stone birds or men shoot deer, that we should bait dogs and fight cocks and kill scared pigeons, not for food, but for fun? Foxes may be a pest that should be exterminated, like bears in a frontier country. But when a country is so advanced in settlement and civilization that prosperous gentlemen dress themselves gayly in scarlet coats and buckskin breeches, and ride blooded horses, and follow costly packs of hounds across country hunting a frightened fox, the fox is no longer a pest, and the riders are not frontiersmen and honest settlers; they are butchers, not for a lawful purpose, but for pleasure. Yes; the law solemnly takes life, but the judge who should take life for sport—!
Nimrod, despite the winding horn, the human relation to domestic animals that serve us is still barbarous. No man can see what treatment a noble horse, straining and struggling to do his best, often receives from his owner, without wincing at the fate that abandons so fine a creature to so ignoble and cruel a tormentor. But the kindly hand of civilization has at last reached the animals. In Cincinnati there is a statue newly raised to their protector. They will never know him, but the American list of worthies is incomplete in which the name of Henry Bergh is not “writ large.”
AUTUMN DAYS
THE “SEASON OF MISTS AND mellow fruitfulness” comes long before the maples are crimson and the birches yellow. The splendor of the summer is very brief. If it be really hot, July is not over before you may see the leaves slightly shrivelling, and the woods have a half-crisp, curdled aspect. The intense heat of the year gives a sense of violent and rapid struggle, as if all the natural processes were wonderfully accelerated by an access of fever, and the long cool repose of convalescence follows in the clear, bright autumn days.
The enjoyment of these things is a kind of test of character. If a man found himself ceasing to take pleasure in the moon and flowers and children—if the red leaf of the fall gave him the same emotion as the green leaf of the spring—he might well feel that he was old and his heart worn out.
