The Great Lone Land. Sir William Francis ButlerЧитать онлайн книгу.
him to place the treacherous billows of the Atlantic between him and the person of that bosom's partner. It was drawing near the end of the voyage when an event occurred which, though in itself of a most trivial nature, had for some time a disturbing effect upon our party. The priest's sister, an elderly maiden lady of placidly weak intellect, announced one morning at breakfast that the sea-captain from Maine had on the previous day addressed her in terms of endearment, and had, in fact, called her his "little duck." This announcement, which was made generally to the table, and which was received in dead silence by every member of the community, had by no means a pleasurable effect upon the countenance of the person most closely concerned. Indeed, amidst the silence which succeeded the revelation, a half-smothered sentence, more forcible than polite, was audible from the lips of the democrat, in which those accustomed to the vernacular of America could plainly distinguish "darned old fool." Meantime, in spite of political discussions, or amorous revelations, or prophetic disaster, in spite of mid-ocean storm and misty-fog-bank, our gigantic screw, unceasing as the whirl of life itself, had wound its way into the waters which wash the rugged shores of New England. To those whose lives are spent in ceaseless movement over the world, who wander from continent to continent, from island to island, who dwell in many cities but are the citizens of no city, who sail away and come back again, whose home is the broad earth itself, to such as these the coming in sight of land is no unusual occurrence, and yet the man has grown old at his trade of wandering who can look utterly uninterested upon the first glimpse of land rising out of the waste of ocean: small as that glimpse may be, only a rock, a cape, a mountain crest, it has the power of localizing an idea, the very vastness Of which prevents its realization on shore. From the deck of an outward-bound vessel one sees rising, faint and blue, a rocky headland or a mountain summit-one does not ask if the mountain be of Maine, or of Mexico, or the Cape be St. Ann's or Hatteras, one only sees America. Behind that strip of blue coast lies a world, and that world the new one. Far away inland lie scattered many landscapes glorious with mountain, lake, river, and forest, all unseen, all unknown to the wanderer who for the first time seeks the American shore; yet instinctively their presence is felt in that faint outline of sea-lapped coast which lifts itself above the ocean; and even if in after-time it becomes the lot of the wanderer, as it became my lot, to look again upon these mountain summits, these immense inland seas; these mighty rivers whose waters seek their mother ocean through 3000 miles of meadow, in none of these glorious parts, vast though they be, will the sense of the still vaster whole be realized as strongly as in that first glimpse of land showing dimly over the western horizon of the Atlantic.
The sunset of a very beautiful evening in May was making bright the shores of Massachusetts as the "Samaria," under her fullest head of steam, ran up the entrance to Plymouth Sound. To save daylight into port was an object of moment to the Captain, for the approach to Boston harbour is as intricate as shoal, sunken rock, and fort-crowned island can make it. If ever that much talked-of conflict between the two great branches of the Anglo-Saxon race is destined to quit the realms of fancy for those of fact, Boston, at least, will rest as safe from the destructive engines of British iron-clads as the city of Omaha on the Missouri River. It was only natural that the Massachusetts man should have been in a fever of excitement at finding himself once more within sight of home; and for once human nature exhibited the unusual spectacle of rejoicing over the falsity of its own predictions. As every revolution of the screw brought out some new feature into prominence, he skipped gleefully about; and, recognizing in my person the stranger element in the assembly, he took particular pains to point out the lions of the landscape. "There, serais Fort Warren, where we kept our rebel prisoners during the war. In a few minutes more, sir, we will be in sight of Bunker's Hill;" and then, in a frenzy of excitement, he skipped away to some post of vantage upon the forecastle.
Night had come down over the harbour, and Boston had lighted all her lamps, before the "Samaria," swinging round in the fast-running tide, lay, with quiet screw and smokeless funnel, alongside the wharf of New England's oldest city.
"Real mean of that darned Baptist pointing you out Bunker's Hill," said the sea-captain from Maine; "just like the ill-mannered republican cuss!" It was useless to tell him that I had felt really obliged for the information given me by his political opponent. "Never mind," he said, "to-morrow I'll show you how these moral Bostonians break their darned liquor law in every hotel in their city."
Boston has a clean, English look about it, peculiar to it alone of all the cities in the United States. Its streets, running in curious curves, as though they had not the least idea where they were going, are full of prettily dressed pretty girls, who look as though they had a very fair idea of where they were going to. Atlantic fogs and French fashions have combined to make Boston belles pink, pretty,-and piquante; while the western states, by drawing fully half their male population from New England, make the preponderance of the female element apparent at a glance. The ladies, thus left at home, have not been idle: their colleges, their clubs, their reading-classes are numerous; like the man in "Hudibras,"
"'Tis known they can speak Greek as naturally as pigs squeak;"
and it is probable that no city in the world can boast so high a standard of female education as Boston: nevertheless, it must be regretted that this standard of mental excellence attributable to the ladies of Boston should not have been found capable of association with the duties of domestic life. Without going deeper into topics which are better understood in America than in England, and which have undergone most eloquent elucidation at the hands of Mr. Hepworth Dixon, but which are nevertheless dlightly nauseating, it may safely be observed, that the inculcation at ladies colleges of that somewhat rude but forcible home truth, enunciated by the first Napoleon in reply to the most illustrious Frenchwoman of her day, when questioned Upon the subject of female excellence, should not be forgotten.
There exists a very generally received idea that strangers are more likely to notice and complain of the short-comings of a social habit or system than are residents who have grown old under that infliction; but I cannot help thinking that there exists a considerable amount of error in this opinion. A stranger will frequently submit to extortion, to insolence, or to inconvenience, because, being a stranger, he believes that extortion, insolence, and inconvenience are the habitual characteristics of the new place in which he finds himself: they do not strike him as things to be objected to, or even wondered at; they are simply to be submitted to and endured. If he were at home, he would die sooner than yield that extra half-dollar; he would leave the house at once in which he was told to get up at an unearthly hour in the morning; but, being in another country, he submits, without even a thought of resistance. In no other way can we account for the strange silence on the part of English writers upon the tyrannical disposition of American social life. A nation everlastingly boasting itself the freest on the earth submits unhesitatingly to more social tyranny than any people in the world. In the United States one is marshalled to every event of the day. Whether you like it or not, you must get up, breakfast, dine, sup, and go to bed at fixed hours. Attached upon the inside of your bedroom-door is a printed document which informs you of all the things you are not to do in the hotel-a list in which, like Mr. J. S. Mill's definition of Christian doctrine, the shall-nots predominate over the shalls. In the event of your disobeying any of the numerous mandates set forth in this document-such as not getting up very early-you will not be sent to the penitentiary or put in the pillory, for that process of punishment would imply a necessity for trouble and exertion on the part of the richly-apparelled gentleman who does you the honour of receiving your petitions and grossly overcharging you at the office-no, you have simply to go without food until dinner-time, or to go to bed by the light of a jet of gas for which you will be charged an exorbitant price in your bill. As in the days of Roman despotism we know that the slaves were occasionally permitted to indulge in the grossest excesses, so, under the rigorous system of the hotel-keeper, the guest is allowed to expectorate profusely over every thing; over the marble with which the hall is paved, over the Brussels carpet which covers the drawing-room, over the bed-room, and over the lobby. Expectoration is apparently the one saving clause which American liberty demands as the price of its submission to the prevailing tyranny of the hotel. Do not imagine-you, who have never yet tasted the sweets of a transatlantic transaction-that this tyranny is confined to the hotel: every person to whom you pay money in the ordinary travelling transactions of life-your omnibus-man, your railway-conductor, your steamboat-clerk-takes your money, it is true, but takes it in a