DANIEL WEBSTER'S HOME
IT was not as a mere relic-hunter, that I crossed the threshold of Daniel Webster's home in Marshfield. As a Bostonian, long years ago, I had been spell-bound by those wondrous eyes, and that irresistible eloquence which so seldom failed to magnetize. As to the mistaken words which, had he lived till now, I firmly believe he would have grievingly wished unsaid, and which have palsied many hands that would have been raised over that roof in blessing, I have nothing to say now. As far as the East is from the West, so far do I differ with him on that point. But all these thoughts vanished, and the old Boston magnetism moved me, as I stood in that beautiful library, which, more than any other room of that lovely home, his presence seemed to fill and pervade. The beautiful sunlight streamed in upon the favorite books he loved so well, upon the favorite chair and table, upon the thousand and one tributes of love and admiration from across the sea, and from nearer home, which are still carefully treasured. There only, after all these years, could I really "make him dead." My last sight of him was on a public occasion in Boston, sitting in a barouche, with that grand massive head uncovered, in recognition of the applause about him. And I am not ashamed, at this distance, to say that when he kissed the forehead of my little girl – now a woman grown – as he took from her hand the flowers I sent him, that I looked upon it as a sort of baptism.
Now, all about his home in Marshfield, are family pictures of the little children he tenderly loved. And what beautiful children they are! or were, for many of their names are now recorded on marble beside his own. And above the picture of him – as if such a head as his could ever be faithfully reproduced! – were his hat and stick. I stood looking at them, and wondering if, when he used to sit there he ever thought of that– if when resting in that peaceful spot, with bloom and brightness about him, weary with the ceaseless strife, and with the din of life, shut out, for a time at least, he ever longed to lay them aside for ever – thus!
In every house, the individuality of it is that which interests us most. These household gods all had their little story; all, too, spoke of taste and refinement and culture, and love of the beautiful in form, color, and arrangement. It almost seemed an impertinence to move about from room to room, and gaze at them; and, I think, had it not been that one of the family recognized and welcomed me as a remembered Bostonian, I should have felt very much like an inexcusable intruder there.
All honor to Daniel Webster for having had painted, and hung up in a conspicuous place in his house, the portrait of his black cook. It is the most unique object in it; and the feeling which prompted this public recognition of faithful service was most honorable to him. Alas! had he always been as true to his better instincts!
The simple majesty of Daniel Webster's tomb is very impressive. It is fit that it should be there, at Marshfield, within sound of the restless sea – restless as his spirit. For inscription – only the name and date, and those memorable words of his on Immortality. There are no mysteries to him now.
Some men – can anybody tell us why? – always gravitate downward in their male friendships. Their boon-companion is sure to be one destitute of everything that would seem to constitute an equality. Now what can be the reason of this? Is it because such persons need to have their self-respect constantly bolstered up by the flattery of parasites? Whatever the motive may be, the result is certain deterioration. Not, on the other hand, that it is not best to meet with, and know all sorts of persons; but invariably to choose inferiority, for a bosom-friend, argues a flaw, and a serious one, somewhere.
A TRIP TO RICHMOND
BEAUTIFUL BALTIMORE! I kiss my hand to beautiful Baltimore! Passing through it only on my way to Washington in days gone by, I had only flying, and muddy, and back-street reminiscences of it. Now it seems to me the most elegant of cities. Dear to my New England eyes, above all, are its polished windows, immaculate and spacious front-door steps, cleanly gutters, and sidewalks free from defilement of ashes and garbage. The sweet, wholesome air of the place, with no taint to offend the most fastidious nose, contrasted pleasantly with our large New York residences; many of whose occupants, having begun life in tenement houses, still retain their fondness for tenement-house odors and dirty sidewalks. I passed through street after street, without seeing an ash-barrel or box, or anything repulsive to neatness; and that, not only where the wealthy reside, but where were houses of very moderate rents and dimensions, yet all shining and clean, and sweet, as a child's face when newly washed, and framed in its best Sunday bonnet. Beautiful Baltimore! I came well-nigh forgetting, as I strolled along, that you ever stood on one side the political fence, and I on the other; but we wont rake up old grievances, or new ones either. Instead, I will say that your new "Druid Hill Park" is a gem, and a big one; and if you don't make the most of it, it will not be because nature has not fashioned its undulating surface, and grown giant trees there ready to your hand with a grace and a profusion which leave you little to do in the way of art. Now, our "Central Park" was fashioned in the face and teeth of every disadvantage; and yet see what a joy and beauty and delight it is to us all. So, shame to you, Baltimore, if you don't far outstrip us! Sure I am, that the occupants of those tasteful and magnificent private dwellings can need no hint from me to contribute liberally toward it.
Elegant stores, too, has Baltimore; and in them all the little last new feminine dodges in the way of adornment, so that no Baltimore husband need heed his wife's prayer to go to New York to see what is the last new fashion in gloves, boots, silks, laces, bonnets, or – hair. Baltimore wives may not thank me for this, but I am not afraid; for I can truly say that their faces were so bright that sunny day, as they nodded smilingly to one another, that I trembled for the wide-spread fame of New York beauties. Little loves of children too, I saw, with their sable nurses; oh! how I like the sable nurses. No French caps shamming it over Celtic faces; but instead, the jolly African physiognomy, framed in its gay turban; and, best of all – forgive me, fair Baltimore! —receiving as well as earning a nurse's wages.
I always feel as if a coroner's inquest would be held over me, when I cross a steamboat gangway, even though there may be blue sky overhead, and sunshine about me.
Judge, then, of my consternation, as the Baltimore boat pushed off for Norfolk, Va., and I discovered directly beneath my state-room window about a dozen barrels of kerosene. In vain did the philosopher try to bamboozle me into the belief that "it was lard." After fifteen years conjugal acquaintance with my nose, it was a stupidity of which only a man could be guilty.
"Lard!" I exclaimed; "it is kerosene! and a military company on board too." Now I don't "love the military." I had one fearful experience with them, on board the ill-fated Lady Elgin, when, in the midst of a howling tempest, with thunder and lightning thrown in, their tipsy howls made a perfect pandemonium.
Military companies smoke too; and there is always fire where there is smoke, says the old proverb; and sparks and kerosene are things better divorced. So I didn't undress that night, and had plenty of time to consider a question which for the first time I asked myself, – whether a steamboat ought not, in a case like this, to forfeit its insurance. That part of my education having been neglected at boarding-school, I was unable to solve it; so I shudderingly recognized the fact, that men on the upper deck were smoking pipes, and knocking ashes and sparks from the railing with a verdant innocence and stupidity quite astounding.
But the "angel aloft," wafted away the sparks from the kerosene; and a friendly rain coming on, my perturbed spirit had a great calm. So we got to Norfolk whole and alive – no thanks to that steamboat or its owners. It was lucky I had my excitement going there, for a more stagnant, sleepy place – outside of the Dead Sea – never announced itself. Still, there were peach-trees in blossom, and tulip-trees, and the pretty blue periwinkle peeped from the hedges and gardens, and the grass was green, and – so was everything else there! One day sufficed me, although it was pleasant to sit with open windows. Our coachman dragged us up and down through the narrow, dilapidated looking streets, over pavements that forced to our lips the letter O oftener than any other in the alphabet, while "showing us the city." As the streets were all alike, we cut short his little fun by requesting to be set down at our hotel, while one bone remained undislocated.
The grave-yard was, after all, the pleasantest spot through which we drove in Norfolk. Whole graves there were covered with the blue flowers of the running myrtle; they were even peeping up under the little patches of snow. "Five dollars fine for picking a blossom." A good rule; but I was always unruly, and that blue myrtle is my favorite flower. Still I don't say I plucked one – of course not; how could I, inside a carriage?
Norfolk should be named "Sleepy Hollow." I can't conceive of keeping awake there, unless by help of their corduroy pavements. It was tame, after living in New York, where there is always "a dreadful lass of life," as the newsboys express it, or something that is pleasant happening.
Whoso essays to travel South, and having bade good-by to a certain hotel in Philadelphia, which don't begin with A or B, and which, if you have not, you ought to – C, leaves hope and comfort behind; having then left what, in my opinion, is the perfection of hotel-keeping, in all its myriad departments. Farewell to clean rooms, and genuine coffee, and well-cooked meats, and prompt attendance; and welcome drafts, and cooked poison, in every shape that the fiend of the gridiron and frying-pan could devise. Having exhausted Washington three or four different times from a luxurious standpoint, it only remained on this flying transit through it, for Washington to exhaust me, between the hours of eight in the evening and seven the following morning. In one of the principal hotels of the place, I give you, by way of curiosity, an inventory of the room into which we were ushered. Imprimis – a bed, with sheets still warm with the print of the last occupant; wash-bowls grimy with departed paws; dirty towels; and a broken window pane, through which the snow was sifting; two immense grease spots, each the size of a two-quart bowl, in the centre of the dingy carpet; matches scattered round ad libitum; a horror of a spitoon in the middle of the floor; dirty window-curtains, and closets full of old papers; bureau drawers saturated with grease; bedstead cracked across the foot-board, and so rickety, that it was suggestive of a discordant music-box. Sofa dingy, and placed with singular felicity immediately under the broken window; while the looking-glass was fastened to the top of a bureau, so high, that one need mount a stool to look in it, and located, as usual, in the darkest corner of the apartment; a woollen cloth on the centre-table, approachable only by a pair of tongs. Finally a chamber-maid was procured, and towels, sheets, and a fire followed, while we were at tea. Afterward my companion lay down to rest (?) on the music-box; while I, upon the dingy sofa, front of the fire, listened, laughing, to the squeaks produced on it, by his attempts to sleep.
My reflections were various. I didn't wonder that Congressmen lodging thus, should call naughty names, and tear each other's eyes out at the Capitol. And what disgraceful, broken-down saloon surroundings are about the Capitol building! I never look at its beautiful proportions without incendiary desires to make a clean sweep of the old shanties about it, and in their place introduce cleanliness and beauty. Who knows the Christianizing effect it might have on men and measures? I should like to see it tried.
Well, I went "on to Richmond;" and my first reflection upon getting into it was, Lord! what a place for two big armies to fight about! A cold, piercing, rasping wind blew through the dismal streets from the river – a wind that would have done credit to old Boston at its fiercest. As to hotels, the deterioration begins at Baltimore, and "after that the deluge." As the horror-struck man said, when the tail-board of his cart came out going up hill, and distributed his potatoes right and left, "No swearing could do justice to it!" Amid remains of former splendor, dilapidation and stagnation reign.
Two visits I shall never forget. The first was to Libby prison. I looked through its grated, cobwebbed windows, not with my eyes, but with the hopeless eyes of hundreds whose last earthly glimpse of the sunlight was through them. The walls having been whitewashed, we discovered no marks or writings. Only upon the wooden floor, as the dirt was cleared away for us, we saw a place chipped out, upon which the prisoners had played checkers. Not far off was Belle Isle, where, in just such a biting wind from the river, as excoriated our faces that day, brave men, without shelter, froze and starved to death!
Yes, I passed through Washington, and I didn't want office either. Had I, I think my patience would soon have oozed out, in the stifling atmosphere of that room in the White House, where clamorous lobbyists sat with distended eyes, watching the chance of their possible entrance to the President's presence – sat there, too, for weary hours, a spectacle to gods and men; of human beings willing to sacrifice self-respect and time, and what little money they had left in their purses, for the gambler's chance. Anything, everything, but the open and above-board, and sure and independent, and old-fashioned way of getting a living!
So I thought as the living stream poured in, and I went out, thankful that I desired nothing in the gift of the President of the United States of America. How any man living can wish to be President passes my solving, I said, as I stepped out into the clear, fresh, bracing air, and shook my shoulders, as if I had really dropped a burden of my own under that much-coveted roof. I can very well conceive that a pure patriot might wish the office, because he sincerely believed himself able to serve his country in it, and therefore accepted its crown of thorns; but lacking this motive, that a man in the meridian of life, or descending its down-hill path, and consequently with the full knowledge of this life's emptiness, should stretch out even one hand to grasp such a distracting position, I can never understand. The good dame "who went to sleep with six gallons of milk on her mind" every night, was a fool to do it. A step-mother's life under the harrow were paradise to it; only the life of a country clergyman who writes three sermons a week, and attends weddings at sixpence a piece, and hoes his own potatoes, and feeds the pigs, and is on hand for church and vestry meetings during the week, and keeps the run of all the new-born babies and their middle names, and is always, in a highly devotional frame of mind, is a parallel case.
I should like to have taken all those lobbyists I saw in the White House with me the afternoon of that day to "Arlington Heights," and bade them look there at the thousands of head-stones, gleaming white like the billows of the sea in the sunlight, far as the eye could reach, labelled "unknown," "unknown," telling the simple tragic story of our national struggle more effectually than any sculptured monument could have done. I would like to have shown them this, to see if for one moment it had power to paralyze those eager hands outstretched for bubbles.
"Unknown?" Not to him, in whose book every one of those names are written in letters of light! Not to him, in whose army of the faithful unto death, there are no "privates"!
My eyes were blind with tears, as I signed my name in the visitor's book at the desk of the Freedman's Bureau there, once General Lee's residence. All was "quiet on the Potomac," as its blue waters glittered in the sunlight before us. Yet the very air was thick with utterances. The place on which I stood is now indeed holy ground. And far off rose the white dome of the Capitol, crowded with men, some of them, thank God, not forgetting these white head-stones, in their efforts to keep inviolate what these brave fellows died for; and some, alas! willing to sell their glorious birthright for a "mess of pottage."
The sharp contrast of luxury and squalor, in Washington, even exceeding New York, – the carriages and their liveries, and the sumptuous dames inside; the pigs which run rooting round the streets; the tumble-down, shambling, rickety carts, with their bob-tailed, worn-out donkeys, so expressive of lazy unthrift, – must be regarded with the eye of a New Englander, trained to thoroughness and "faculty," to be properly appreciated. I avow myself, cursed or blessed, as you will, with the New England "bringing up," to which anything that "hangs by the eyelids" is simple crucifixion, whether it be in a cart or a statute-book, unhinged door, or a two or a four-legged dawdle.
"Oh, you'd come into it, and be as lazy as anybody," said my companion, "if you lived here a while."
Shade of the Pilgrim Fathers! – Assembly's Catechism! – baked beans – fish-balls – "riz" brown bread! Never!
I didn't see Vinnie Ream's statue of Lincoln. It was boxed for Italy, Congress having made the necessary appropriation. But I saw Vinnie. She has dimples. Senators like dimples. And in case the statue is not meritorious, why – I would like to ask, amid the crowd of lobbying men, whose paws are in the national basket, after the loaves and fishes – should not this little woman's cunning white hand have slily drawn some out?
THE COMING LANDLORD
IT is a marvel to me that country landlords do not better arrange their houses, with a view to keeping their guests later in the lovely autumnal days. The absence of gas, and the omnipresence of bad-smelling kerosene, are great drawbacks to enjoyment in the chilly evenings which follow these golden days. Fires which get low at the very moment they are most needed in the sitting-rooms, and a cold dining-hall, filled with kitchen-smoke, are not incentives to a prolonged stay; add to this, the utter impossibility of finding one's way of an evening through a village guiltless of lights and shrouded in trees, and it is no marvel that city people begin to think of cosey evenings by their own firesides where are both warmth and light, without which Paradise itself were a desert.
I think landlords who have an eye to business should take what may seem to them, perhaps, very uninfluential motives, under serious consideration. I am very sure that if their own houses were made comfortable for the autumn, enough lovers of the season would remain to reward them pecuniarily for any such foresight. Let the fashionists go – there are plenty left to rejoice in the crisp air, the falling bright-hued leaves, the glory of sunshine and shadow on the mountain-tops, and the keen sense of life at the full which comes of wandering among them.
I think I should understand engineering an hotel! I know just where the shoe pinches, at least, which is half the battle. In the first place, I wouldn't smoke a pipe, and then I should not be tempted to put those halcyon moments before the comfort and convenience of my guests, how imperative soever the occasion. Then my temper would be angelic, and I could understand how every lady in the house could "have her room cleared up" at one and the same moment, though the lady-guests numbered a full hundred! Then – I should see my way clear to let every little child on the premises dig deep holes in the gravel walk which leads to the front door, and fill them with water, for infantile amusement, and to further the laudable ambition of the nurses, in reading fourth-rate pamphlet novels. Then I should better understand my duty in riding ten miles to get a watermelon for one lady, eleven miles to get a quart of peaches for another, and six miles for grapes for a third; and, at the same time, be on the piazza, to be a walking Time-Table for strangers and others who wish information at short notice on railroad subjects. Were I a non-smoker, I should be consolable under the necessity of remaining out of my bed till the latest midnight reveller had gone to his, and up in the morning before daylight, to be sure that the eggs for the departing Grumble family were cooked neither too hard nor too soft. Also, I would have one pane of glass in each chamber-window in the house a looking-glass, immovably inserted, for the benefit of those ladies who prefer some light while combing their hair. Those who dreaded the light on that occasion might fall back upon the time-honored looking-glass which landlords are sure to locate in the darkest corner of the room. Then I could see my way clear to take files of all the city papers for the children in the house to make kites of, or for ladies to wrap parcels or curl their hair in. Also, I should provide compact and portable lanterns, with an accompanying servant, for the use of those ladies who fancy evening rambles through a dark village street.
You will see by this how inexhaustible is this subject, and how much remains to be done, which only a female mind could foresee, or suggest. I generously give these hints to unenlightened landlords, free of charge, and doubt not that my next summer's travels will attest not only their practicability, but their execution; meantime we are going home; to coffee, real coffee, praised be Allah for that! It is bad to leave the mountains, but chiccory is not palatable either.
It is hard to break up a pleasant summer party, at the close of the season, for we never can take it up again where we leave off. For some there will be weddings, for some there will be funerals – good-by, said so gaily, will surely be final to some of us who utter it. We shall take up the paper some day, and a well-known name will catch the eye in that dark list of bereavement. We shall recall its owner on that morning of the party to the "mountain," or the "lake," and the bright eye, and the flowing hair, and the voice of music – and then the world will close round us, and all will go on as before, till our turn comes, too, to be forgotten.
We never quite realize how dear any particular face is to us until we meet it in a crowd of strangers' faces. It is only then that we begin to know that we do not love it simply for its beauty; that there is something more in it to us than pure outline and sweet color, or whatever its particular charm may be. We have been hurrying on perhaps up Broadway – a stream of unknown people on the left, and another on the right. We have thought "how beautiful" of some, "how ugly" of others. Suddenly we think, "It is – ." We do not compare, we do not criticize. We may vaguely recognize the fact that it is the plainest or the prettiest face we have met; but that has nothing to do with it. There comes our friend, blotting out the strangers as though they were not. Even if we pass and do not speak, our hearts meet and soften; and we are happier throughout the whole long day, for having met a friend's face in a crowd.