| | 1 | Author: | Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 | Add | | | Title: | Main-Street  | | | | Published: | 2000 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | A respectable-looking individual makes his bow, and
addresses the public. In my daily walks along the principal street of my
native town, it has often occurred to me, that, if its growth from infancy
upward, and the vicissitude of characteristic scenes that have passed along
this thoroughfare, during the more than two centuries of its existence, could
be presented to the eye in a shifting panorama, it would be an exceedingly
effective method of illustrating the march of time. Acting on this idea, I
have contrived a certain pictorial exhibition, somewhat in the nature of a
puppet-show, by means of which I propose to call up the multiform and
many-colored Past before the spectator, and show him the ghosts of his
forefathers, amid a succession of historic incidents, with no greater trouble
than the turning of a crank. Be pleased, therefore, my indulgent patrons, to
walk into the show-room, and take your seats before yonder mysterious curtain.
The little wheels and springs of my machinery have been well oiled; a
multitude of puppets are dressed in character, representing all varieties of
fashion, from the Puritan cloak and jerkin to the latest Oak Hall coat; the
lamps are trimmed, and shall brighten into noontide sunshine, or fade away in
moonlight, or muffle their brilliancy in a November cloud, as the nature of
the scene may require; and, in short, the exhibition is just ready to
commence. Unless something should go wrong, — as, for instance, the misplacing
of a picture, whereby the people and events of one century might be thrust
into the middle of another, or the breaking of a wire, which would bring the
course of time to a sudden period, — barring, I say, the casualties to which
such a complicated piece of mechanism is liable, I flatter myself, ladies and
gentlemen, that the performance will elicit your generous approbation. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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