



Produced by Chuck Greif, Broward County Libraries and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







[Illustration: frontispiece]




FROM THE
EASY CHAIR

BY

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

SECOND SERIES

[Illustration: colophon]

NEW YORK

HARPER AND BROTHERS

MDCCCXCIV

Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._




CONTENTS.


                                             PAGE

  THE NEW YEAR                                  1
  THE PUBLIC SCOLD                             10
  NATIONAL NOMINATING CONVENTION               16
  BRYANT'S COUNTRY                             23
  _The Game of Newport_                        31
  THE LECTURE LYCEUM                           39
  TWEED                                        47
  COMMENCEMENT                                 60
  THE STREETS OF NEW YORK                      69
  THE MORALITY OF DANCING                      76
  THE HOG FAMILY                               81
  THE ENLIGHTENED OBSERVER                     88
  RALPH WALDO EMERSON                          94
  HENRY WARD BEECHER                          110
  THE GOLDEN AGE                              119
  SPRING PICTURES                             126
  PROPER AND IMPROPER                         130
  BELINDA AND THE VULGAR                      137
  DECAYED GENTILITY                           142
  THE PHARISEE                                149
  LADY MAVOURNEEN ON HER TRAVELS              155
  GENERAL SHERMAN                             162
  THE AMERICAN GIRL                           166
  ANNUS MIRABILIS                             174
  STATUES IN CENTRAL PARK                     186
  THE GRAND TOUR                              193
  "EASY DOES IT, GUVNER"                      203
  SISTE, VIATOR                               208
  CHRISTENDOM _vs._ CHRISTIANITY              216
  FRANCIS GEORGE SHAW                         222




THE NEW YEAR.


IN Germany on _Sylvesterabend_--the eve of Saint Sylvester, the last
night of the year--you shall wake and hear a chorus of voices singing
hymns, like the English waits at Christmas or the Italian _pifferari_.
In the deep silence, and to one awakening, the music has a penetrating
and indefinable pathos, the pathos that Richter remarked in all music,
and which our own Parsons has hinted delicately--

    "Strange was the music that over me stole,
    For 'twas born of old sadness that lives in my
    soul."

There is something of the same feeling in the melody of college songs
heard at a little distance on awakening in the night before
Commencement. The songs are familiar, but they have an appealing
melancholy unknown before. Their dying cadences murmur like a muffled
peal heralding the visionary procession that is passing out of the
enchanted realm of youth forever. So the voices of Sylvester's Eve chant
the requiem of the year that is dead. So much more of life, of
opportunity, of achievement, passed; so much nearer age, decline, the
mystery of the end. The music swells in rich and lingering strains. It
is a moment of exaltation, of purification. The chords are dying; the
hymn is ending; it ends. The voices are stilled. It is the benediction
of Saint Sylvester:

    "She died and left to me...
    The memory of what has been,
    And nevermore will be."

But this is the midnight refrain--The King is dead! With the earliest
ray of daylight the exulting strain begins--Live the King! The bells are
ringing; the children are shouting; there are gifts and greetings, good
wishes and gladness. "Happy New Year! happy New Year!" It is the day of
hope and a fresh beginning. Old debts shall be forgiven; old feuds
forgotten; old friendships revived. To-day shall be better than
yesterday. The good vows shall be kept. A blessing shall be wrung from
the fleet angel Opportunity. There shall be more patience, more courage,
more faith; the dream shall become life; to-day shall wear the glamour
of to-morrow. Ring out the old, ring in the new!

Charles Lamb says that no one ever regarded the first of January with
indifference; no one, that is to say, of the new style. But a
fellow-pilgrim of the old style, before Pope Gregory retrenched those
ten days in October, three hundred years ago, or the British Parliament
those eleven days in September, a hundred and thirty