



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






[Illustration: George William Curtis]




FROM THE

EASY CHAIR

BY

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

_THIRD SERIES_

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

HARPER AND BROTHERS

MDCCCXCIV

Copyright, 1894, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

_All rights reserved._




CONTENTS

                                                                      PAGE

    HAWTHORNE AND BROOK FARM                                             1
    BEECHER IN HIS PULPIT AFTER THE DEATH OF LINCOLN                    20
    KILLING DEER                                                        28
    AUTUMN DAYS                                                         37
    FROM COMO TO MILAN DURING THE WAR OF 1848                           43
    HERBERT SPENCER ON THE YANKEE                                       56
    HONOR                                                               65
    JOSEPH WESLEY HARPER                                                72
    REVIEW OF UNION TROOPS, 1865                                        78
    APRIL, 1865                                                         88
    WASHINGTON IN 1867                                                  94
    RECEPTION TO THE JAPANESE AMBASSADORS AT THE WHITE HOUSE           102
    THE MAID AND THE WIT                                               112
    THE DEPARTURE OF THE _GREAT EASTERN_                               120
    CHURCH STREET                                                      127
    HISTORIC BUILDINGS                                                 140
    THE BOSTON MUSIC HALL                                              151
    PUBLIC BENEFACTORS                                                 162
    MR. TIBBINS'S NEW-YEAR'S CALL                                      169
    THE NEW ENGLAND SABBATH                                            178
    THE REUNION OF ANTISLAVERY VETERANS, 1884                          185
    REFORM CHARITY                                                     193
    BICYCLE RIDING FOR CHILDREN                                        204
    THE DEAD BIRD UPON CYRILLA'S HAT AN ENCOURAGEMENT OF "SLARTER"     210
    CHEAPENING HIS NAME                                                214
    CLERGYMEN'S SALARIES                                               221




HAWTHORNE AND BROOK FARM


In his preface to the _Marble Faun_, as before in that to _The
Blithedale Romance_, Hawthorne complained that there was no romantic
element in American life; or, as he expressed it, "There is as yet no
such Faery-land so like the real world that, in a suitable remoteness,
one cannot tell the difference, but with an atmosphere of strange
enchantment, beheld through which the inhabitants have a propriety of
their own." This he says in _The Blithedale_ preface, and then adds
that, to obviate this difficulty and supply a proper scene for his
figures, "the author has ventured to make free with his old and
affectionately remembered home at Brook Farm as being certainly the most
romantic episode of his own life, essentially a day-dream, and yet a
fact, and thus offering an available foothold between fiction and
reality." Probably a genuine Brook-Farmer doubts whether Hawthorne
remembered the place and his life there very affectionately, in the
usual sense of that word, and although in sending the book to one of
them, at least, he said that it was not to be considered a picture of
actual life or character. "Do not read it as if it had anything to do
with Brook Farm [which essentially it has not], but merely for its own
story and characters," yet it is plain that it is a very faithful
picture of the kind of impression that the enterprise made upon him.

Strangely enough, Hawthorne is likely to be the chief future authority
upon "the romantic episode" of Brook Farm. Those who had it at heart
more than he whose faith and hope and energy were all devoted to its
development, and many of whom have every ability to make a permanent
record, have never done so, and it is already so much of a thing of the
past that it will probably never be done. But the memory of the place
and of the time has been recently pleasantly refreshed by the lecture of
Mr. Emerson and the _Note-Book_ of Hawthorne. Mr. Emerson, whose mind
and heart are ever hospitable, was one of the chief, indeed the
chiefest, figure in this country of the famous intellectual
"Renaissance" of twenty-five years ago, which, as is generally the case,
is historically known by its nickname of "Transcendentalism," a
spiritual fermentation from which some of the best modern influences of
this country have proceeded.

In his late lecture upon the general subject, Mr. Emerson says that the
mental excitement began to take practical form nearly thirty years ago,
when Dr. Channing counselled with George Ripley upon the practicability
of bringing thoughtful and cultivated people together and forming a
society that should be satisfactory. "That good attempt," says Emerson,
with a sly smile, "ended in an oyster supper with excellent wines." But
a little later it was revived under better auspices, and as Brook Farm
made a name which will not be forgotten. Mr. Emerson was never a
resident, but he was sometimes a visitor and guest, and the more ardent
minds of the romantic colony were always much under his influence. With
his sensitively humorous eye he seizes upon some of the ludicrous
aspects of the scene and reports them with arch gravity. "The ladies
again," he says, "took cold on washing-days, and it was ordained that
the gentlemen shepherds should hang out the clothes, which they
punctually did; but a great anachronism followed in the evening, for
when they began to dance the clothes-pins dropped plentifully from their
pockets." And again: "One hears the frequent statement of the country
members that one man was ploughing all day and another was looking out
of the window all day--perhaps drawing his picture, and they both
received the same wages."

In Hawthorne's just published _Note-Book_ he records a great deal of his
daily experience at Brook Farm. But he was never truly at home there.
Hawthorne lived in the very centre of the Transcendental revival, and he
was the friend of many of its leaders, but he was never touched by its
spirit. He seems to have been as little affected by the great
intellectual influences of his time as Charles Lamb in England. The
Custom-house had become intolerable to him. He was obliged to do
something. The enterprise at Brook Farm seemed to him to promise
Arcadia. But he forgot that the kingdom of heaven is within you, and
when he went to the tranquil banks of the Charles he found himself in a
barn-yard shovelling manure, and not at all in Arcadia. "Before
breakfast I went out to the barn and began to chop hay for the cattle,
and with such 'righteous vehemence,' as Mr. Ripley says, did I labor,
that in the space of ten minutes I broke the machine. Then I brought
wood and replenished the fires, and finally went down to breakfast and
ate up a huge mound of buckwheat cakes. After breakfast Mr. Ripley put a
four-pronged instrument into my hands, which he gave me to understand
was called a pitchfork, and he and Mr. Farley being armed with similar
weapons, we all three commenced a gallant attack upon a heap of manure."

Hawthorne was a sturdy and resolute man, and any heap of manure that he
attacked must yield; but he had not come to Arcadia to sweat and blister
his hands, and his blank and amused disappointment is evident. He had a
subtle and pervasive humor, but no spirits. He sees the pleasantness of
the place and the beauty of the crops, having knowledge of them and a
new interest in them; and he has a quiet conscience because he feels
that he is really doing some of the manual work of the world; but he is
always a spectator, a critic. He went to Brook Farm as he might have
gone to an anchorite's cell; but the fervor that warms and adorns the
cold bare rock he does not have, and the mere consciousness of
well-doing is a chilly abstraction. "I do not believe that I should be
patient here if I were not engaged in a righteous and heaven-blessed way
of life. I fear it is time for me, sod-compelling as I am, to take the
field again. Even my Custom-house experience was not such a thraldom and
weariness; my mind and heart were free. Oh, labor is the curse of the
world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionally
brutified!" Very soon, of course, the pilgrim to Arcadia escapes from
the manure-yard, and declares as he runs that it was not he, it was a
spectre of him