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7. CHAPTER VII.
“This day, no man thinks
He has business at his house.”
King Henry VIII.
The warm weather, which was always a little behind
that of the lower counties, had now set in among
the mountains, and the season had advanced into the
first week in July. “Independence Day,” as the fourth
of that month is termed by the Americans, arrived;
and the wits of Templeton were taxed, as usual, in
order that the festival might be celebrated with the
customary intellectual and moral treat. The morning
commenced with a parade of the two or three uniformed
companies of the vicinity, much gingerbread
and spruce-beer were consumed in the streets, no light
potations of whiskey were swallowed in the groceries,
and a great variety of drinks, some of which bore
very ambitious names, shared the same fate in the
taverns.
Mademoiselle Viefville had been told that this was
the great American fête; the festival of the nation; and
she appeared that morning in gay ribands, and with
her bright, animated face, covered with smiles for the
occasion. To her surprise, however, no one seemed
to respond to her feelings; and as the party rose from
the breakfast-table, she took an opportunity to ask an
explanation of Eve, in a little `aside.'
“Est-ce que je me suis trompée, ma chere?” demanded
the lively Frenchwoman. “Is not this la célebration
de votre indépendance?”
“You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle
Viefville, and great preparations are made to do it
honour. I understand there is to be a military parade,
an oration, a dinner, and fire-works.”
“Monsieur votre père—?”
“Monsieur mon père is not much given to rejoicings,
and he takes this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian
takes his morning draught.”
“Et Monsieur Jean Effingham—?”
“Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics
from him.”
“Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur
Dodge, et Monsieur Powis, même!”
“Se réjouissent en Américains. I presume you are
aware that Mr. Powis has declared himself to be an
American?”
Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets,
along which divers tall, sombre-looking countrymen,
with faces more lugubrious than those of the mutes
of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate air of
enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she
muttered to herself, “que ces Americains sont drôles!”
At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father,
and indeed most of the Americans of the party, by
proposing that the ladies should walk out into the
street, and witness the fête.
“My child, this is a strange proposition to come
from a young lady of twenty,” said her father.
“Why strange, dear sir?—We always mingled in
the village fêtes in Europe.”
“Certainement,” cried the delighted Mademoiselle
Viefville; “c'est de rigueur, même.”
“And it is de rigueur, here, Mademoiselle, for
young ladies to keep out of them,” put in John Effingham.
“I should be very sorry to see either of you
three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day.”
“Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear
from the rudeness of our countrymen? I have always
understood, on the countrary, that in no other part of
the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect
and kindness, as in this very republic of ours; and
yet, by all these ominous faces, I perceive that it will
on a festa.”
“You are not altogether wrong, in what you now
say, Miss Effingham, nor are you wholly right. Woman,
as a whole, is well treated in America; and yet
it will not do for a lady to mingle in scenes like these,
as ladies may and do mingle with them in Europe.”
“I have heard this difference accounted for,” said
Paul Powis, “by the fact that women have no legal
rank in this country. In those nations where the station
of a lady is protected by legal ordinances, it is
said she may descend with impunity; but, in this,
where all are equal before the law, so many misunderstand
the real merits of their position, that she is obliged
to keep aloof from any collisions with those who might
be disposed to mistake their own claims.”
“But I wish for no collisions, no associations, Mr.
Powis, but simply to pass through the streets, with my
cousin and Mademoiselle Viefville, to enjoy the sight
of the rustic sports, as one would do in France, or
Italy, or even in republican Switzerland, if you insist
on a republican example.”
“Rustic sports!” repeated Aristabulus with a frightened
look—“the people will not bear to hear their
sports called rustic, Miss Effingham.”
“Surely, sir,”—Eve never spoke to Mr. Bragg, now,
without using a repelling politeness—“surely, sir, the
people of these mountains will hardly pretend that
their sports are those of a capital.”
“I merely mean, ma'am, that the term would be
monstrously unpopular; nor do I see why the sports
in a city”—Aristabulus was much too peculiar in his
notions, to call any place that had a mayor and aldermen
a town,—“should not be just as rustic as those
of a village. The countrary supposition violates the
principle of equality.”
“And do you decide against us, dear sir?” Eve added,
looking at Mr. Effingham.
“Without stopping to examine causes, my child, I
shall say that I think you had better all remain at
home.”
“Voilà, Mademoiselle Viefville, une fête Americaine!”
A shrug of the shoulders was the significant reply.
“Nay, my daughter, you are not entirely excluded
from the festivities; all gallantry has not quite deserted
the land.”
“A young lady shall walk alone with a young gentleman—shall
ride alone with him—shall drive out
alone with him—shall not move without him, dans le
monde, mais, she shall not walk in the crowd, to look
at une fête avec son père!” exclaimed Mademoiselle
Viefville, in her imperfect English. “Je désespère,
vraiment, to understand some habitudes Americaines!”
“Well, Mademoiselle, that you may not think us altogether
barbarians, you shall, at least, have the benefit
of the oration.”
“You may well call it the oration, Ned; for, I believe
one, or, certainly one skeleton, has served some thousand
orators annually, any time these sixty years.”
“Of this skeleton, then, the ladies shall have the
benefit. The procession is about to form, I hear; and
by getting ready immediately, we shall be just in time
to obtain good seats.”
Mademoiselle Viefville was delighted; for, after trying
the theatres, the churches, sundry balls, the opera,
and all the admirable gaieties of New-York, she had
reluctantly come to the conclusion that America was a
very good country pour s'ennuyer, and for very little
else; but here was the promise of a novelty. The
ladies completed their preparations, and, accordingly,
attended by all the gentlemen, made their appearance
in the assembly, at the appointed hour.
The orator, who, as usual, was a lawyer, was already
in possession of the pulpit, for one of the village
churches had been selected as the scene of the ceremonies.
He was a young man, who had recently been
tyro to take off the wire-edge of his wit in a Fourth
of July oration, as it was formerly for a Mousquetaire
to prove his spirit in a duel. The academy which,
formerly, was a servant of all work to the public, being
equally used for education, balls, preaching, town-meetings,
and caucuses, had shared the fate of most
American edifices in wood, having lived its hour and
been burned; and the collection of people, whom we
have formerly had occasion to describe, appeared to
have also vanished from the earth, for nothing could
be less alike in exterior, at least, than those who had
assembled under the ministry of Mr. Grant, and their
successors, who were now collected to listen to the
wisdom of Mr. Writ. Such a thing as a coat of two
generations was no longer to be seen; the latest fashion,
or what was thought to be the latest fashion, being
as rigidly respected by the young farmer, or the
young mechanic, as by the more admitted bucks, the
law student, and the village shop-boy. All the red
cloaks had long since been laid aside to give place to
imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of unusual moderation
and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced
her eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets
of gay colours and flowers, and dresses of French
chintzes, where fifty years ago would have been seen
even men's woollen hats, and homely English calicoes.
It is true that the change among the men was not quite
as striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but
the black stock had superseded the check handkerchief
and the bandanna; gloves had taken the places of mittens;
and the coarse and clownish shoe of “cow-hide”
was supplanted by the calf-skin boot.
“Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk
and dairy maids—the people, in short”—whispered Sir
George Templemore to Mrs. Bloomfield, as they took
their seats; “or is this occasion thought to be too intellectual
for them, and the present assembly composed
only of the élite?”
“These are the people, and a pretty fair sample, too,
of their appearance and deportment. Most of these men
are what you in England would call operatives, and
the women are their wives, daughters, and sisters.”
The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat
looking around him with a curious eye for some time,
when he again addressed his companion.
“I see the truth of what you say, as regards the
men, for a critical eye can discover the proofs of their
occupations; but, surely, you must be mistaken as respects
your own sex; there is too much delicacy of
form and feature for the class you mean.”
“Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth.”
“But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield.
Those are French gloves, too, or I am mistaken.”
“I will not positively affirm that the French gloves
actually belong to the dairy-maids, though I have
known even this prodigy; but, rely on it, you see here
the proper female counterparts of the men, and singularly
delicate and pretty females are they, for persons
of their class. This is what you call democratic
coarseness and vulgarity, Miss Effingham tells me, in
England.”
Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of
the country to call `the exercises,' just then began, he
made no other answer.
These exercises commenced with instrumental music,
certainly the weakest side of American civilization.
That of the occasion of which we write, had
three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently general
to be termed characteristic, in a national point of
view. In the first place, the instruments themselves
were bad; in the next place, they were assorted without
any regard to harmony; and, in the last place,
their owners did not know how to use them. As in
certain American cities—the word is well applied here
—she is esteemed the greatest belle who can contrive
in Templeton, was he considered the ablest musician
who could give the greatest éclat to a false note. In
a word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as
regards time, that great regulator of all harmonies,
Paul Powis whispered to the captain that the air they
had just been listening to, resembled what the sailors
call a `round robin;' or a particular mode of signing
complaints practised by seamen, in which the nicest
observer cannot tell which is the beginning, or which
the end.
It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle
Viefville to preserve her gravity during this overture,
though she kept her bright animated, Frenchlooking
eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air
of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her
very popular. No one else in the party from the Wigwam,
Captain Truck excepted, dared look up, but each
kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in silent
enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old
seaman, there was as much melody in the howling of
a gale to his unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else,
and he saw no difference between this feat of the Templeton
band and the sighings of old Boreas; and, to say
the truth, our nautical critic was not so much out of
the way.
Of the oration it is scarcely necessary to say much,
for if human nature is the same in all ages, and under
all circumstances, so is a fourth of July oration. There
were the usual allusions to Greece and Rome, between
the republics of which and that of this country there
exists some such affinity as is to be found between a
horse-chestnut and a chestnut-horse; or that of mere
words; and a long catalogue of national glories that
might very well have sufficed for all the republics, both
of antiquity and of our own time. But when the orator
came to speak of the American character, and particularly
of the intelligence of the nation, he was most
According to his account of the matter, no
other people possessed a tithe of the knowledge, or a
hundredth part of the honesty and virtue of the very
community he was addressing; and after labouring for
ten minutes to convince his hearers that they already
knew every thing, he wasted several more in trying to
persuade them to undertake further acquisitions of the
same nature.
“How much better all this might be made,” said
Paul Powis, as the party returned towards the Wigwam,
when the `exercises' were ended, “by substituting
a little plain instruction on the real nature and
obligations of the institutions, for so much unmeaning
rhapsody. Nothing has struck me with more surprise
and pain, than to find how far, or it might be better to
say, how high, ignorance reaches on such subjects,
and how few men, in a country where all depends on
the institutions, have clear notions concerning their
own condition.”
“Certainly this is not the opinion we usually entertain
of ourselves,” observed John Effingham. “And
yet it ought to be. I am far from underrating
the ordinary information of the country, which, as an
average information, is superior to that of almost
every other people; nor am I one of those who, according
to the popular European notion, fancy the
Americans less gifted than common in intellect; there
can be but one truth in any thing, however, and it falls
to the lot of very few, any where, to master it. The
Americans, moreover, are a people of facts and practices,
paying but little attention to principles, and
giving themselves the very minimum of time for investigations
that lie beyond the reach of the common
mind; and it follows that they know little of that which
does not present itself in their every-day transactions.
As regards the practice of the institutions, it is
regulated here, as elsewhere, by party, and party is
never an honest or a disinterested expounder.”
“Are you, then, more than in the common dilemma,”
asked Sir George, “or worse off than your
neighbours?”
“We are worse off than our neighbours, for the
simple reason that it is the intention of the American
system, which has been deliberately framed, and which
is moreover the result of a bargain, to carry out its
theory in practice; whereas, in countries where the
institutions are the results of time and accidents, improvement
is only obtained by innovations. Party
invariably assails and weakens power. When power
is the possession of a few, the many gain by party;
but when power is the legal right of the many, the
few gain by party. Now, as party has no ally as
strong as ignorance and prejudice, a right understanding
of the principles of a government is of far more
importance in a popular government, than in any
other. In place of the eternal eulogies on facts, that
one hears on all public occasions in this country, I
would substitute some plain and clear expositions of
principles; or, indeed, I might say, of facts as they
are connected with principles.”
“Mais, la musique, Monsieur,” interrupted Mademoiselle
Viefville, in a way so droll as to raise a general
smile, “qu'en pensez-vous?”
“That it is music, my dear Mademoiselle, in neither
fact nor principle.”
“It only proves that a people can be free, Mademoiselle,”
observed Mrs. Bloomfield, “and enjoy fourth
of July orations, without having very correct notions
of harmony or time. But do our rejoicings end here,
Miss Effingham?”
“Not at all—there is still something in reserve for
the day, and all who honour it. I am told the evening,
which promises to be sufficiently sombre, is to
terminate with a fête that is peculiar to Templeton,
and which is called `The Fun of Fire.' ”
“It is an ominous name, and ought to be a brilliant
ceremony.”
As this was uttered, the whole party entered the
Wigwam.
“The Fun of Fire” took place, as a matter of course,
at a later hour. When night had set in, every body
appeared in the main street of the village, a part of
which, from its width and form, was particularly
adapted to the sports of the evening. The females
were mostly at the windows, or on such elevated stands
as favoured their view, and the party from the Wigwam
occupied a large balcony that topped the piazza of one
of the principal inns of the place.
The sports of the night commenced with rockets, of
which a few, that did as much credit to the climate as
to the state of the pyrotechnics of the village, were
thrown up, as soon as the darkness had become sufficiently
dense to lend them brilliancy. Then followed
wheels, crackers and serpents, all of the most primitive
kind, if, indeed, there be any thing primitive in such
amusements. The “Fun of Fire” was to close the
rejoicings, and it was certainly worth all the other
sports of that day, united, the gingerbread and spruce
beer included.
A blazing ball cast from a shop-door, was the signal
for the commencement of the Fun. It was merely a
ball of rope-yarn, or of some other similar material,
saturated with turpentine, and it burned with a bright,
fierce flame until consumed. As the first of these fiery
meteors sailed into the street, a common shout from the
boys, apprentices, and young men, proclaimed that the
fun was at hand. It was followed by several more,
and in a few minutes the entire area was gleaming
with glancing light. The whole of the amusement
consisted in tossing the fire-balls with boldness,
and in avoiding them with dexterity, something
like competition soon entering into the business of the
scene.
The effect was singularly beautiful. Groups of dark
of the throng might be seen beneath a brightness like
that produced by a bonfire, while all the back-ground
of persons and faces were gliding about in a darkness
that almost swallowed up a human figure. Suddenly
all this would be changed; the brightness would pass
away, and a ball alighting in a spot that had seemed
abandoned to gloom, it would be found peopled with
merry countenances, and active forms. The constant
changes from brightness to deep darkness, with all the
varying gleams of light and shadow, made the beauty
of the scene, which soon extorted admiration from all
in the balcony.
“Mais, c'est charmant!” exclaimed Mademoiselle
Viefville, who was enchanted at discovering something
like gaiety and pleasure among the “tristes Amêricains,”
and who had never even suspected them of being
capable of so much apparent enjoyment.
“These are the prettiest village sports I have ever
witnessed,” said Eve, “though a little dangerous, one
would think. There is something refreshing, as the
magazine writers term it, to find one of these miniature
towns of ours condescending to be gay and happy in
a village fashion. If I were to bring my strongest
objection to American country life, it would be its ambitious
desire to ape the towns, converting the ease
and abandon of a village, into the formality and stiffness
that render children in the clothes of grown people
so absurdly ludicrous.”
“What!” exclaimed John Effingham; “do you
fancy it possible to reduce a free-man so low, as to
deprive him of his stilts! No, no, young lady; you
are now in a country where if you have two rows of
flounces on your frock, your maid will make it a point
to have three, by way of maintaining the equilibrium.
This is the noble ambition of liberty.”
“Annette's foible is a love of flounces, cousin Jack,
and you have drawn that image from your eye, instead
American ambition, if ambition it be.”
“Let it be drawn whence it may, it is true. Have
you not remarked, Sir George Templemore, that the
Americans will not even bear the ascendency of a
capital? Formerly, Philadelphia, then the largest town
in the country, was the political capital; but it was too
much for any one community to enjoy the united consideration
that belongs to extent and politics; and so
the honest public went to work to make a capital, that
should have nothing else in its favour, but the naked
fact that it was the seat of government, and I think it
will be generally allowed, that they have succeeded to
admiration. I fancy Mr. Dodge will admit that it
would be quite intolerable, that country should not be
town, and town country.”
“This is a land of equal rights, Mr. John Effingham,
and I confess that I see no claims that New-York
possesses, which does not equally belong to Templeton.”
“Do you hold, sir,” inquired Captain Truck, “that
a ship is a brig, and a brig a ship.”
“The case is different; Templeton is a town, is it
not, Mr. John Effingham?”
“A town, Mr. Dodge, but not town. The difference
is essential.”
“I do not see it, sir. Now, New-York, to my
notion is not a town, but a city.”
“Ah! This is the critical acumen of the editor!
But you should be indulgent, Mr. Dodge, to us laymen,
who pick up our phrases by merely wandering about
the world; or in the nursery perhaps, while you, of the
favoured few, by living in the condensation of a province,
obtain a precision and accuracy to which we
can lay no claim.”
The darkness prevented the editor of the Active Inquirer
from detecting the general smile, and he remained
in happy ignorance of the feeling that produced
it. To say the truth, not the smallest of the besetting
education, and in provincial notions; the invariable
tendency of both being to persuade their subject that
he is always right, while all opposed to him in opinion
are wrong. That well-known line of Pope, in which
the poet asks, “what can we reason, but from what
we know?” contains the principle of half our foibles
and faults, and perhaps explains fully that proportion
of those of Mr. Dodge, to say nothing of those of no
small number of his countrymen. There are limits to
the knowledge, and tastes, and habits of every man,
and, as each is regulated by the opportunities of the
individual, it follows of necessity, that no one can have
a standard much above his own experience. That
an isolated and remote people should be a provincial
people, or, in other words, a people of narrow and
peculiar practices and opinions, is as unavoidable as
that study should make a scholar; though in the case
of America, the great motive for surprise is to be found
in the fact that causes so very obvious should produce
so little effect. When compared with the bulk of
other nations, the Americans, though so remote and
insulated, are scarcely provincial, for it is only when
the highest standard of this nation is compared with
the highest standard of other nations, that we detect
the great deficiency that actually exists. That a moral
foundation so broad should uphold a moral superstructure
so narrow, is owing to the circumstance that the
popular sentiment rules, and as every thing is referred
to a body of judges that, in the nature of things, must
be of very limited and superficial attainments, it cannot
be a matter of wonder to the reflecting, that the
decision shares in the qualities of the tribunal. In
America, the gross mistake has been made of supposing,
that, because the mass rules in a political sense,
it has a right to be listened to and obeyed in all other
matters, a practical deduction that can only lead, under
the most favourable exercise of power, to a very humble
greater concentration of taste, liberality, and knowledge
than can well distinguish a young and scattered
population, will repair this evil, and that our children
will reap the harvest of the broad fields of intelligence
that have been sowed by ourselves. In the mean
time, the present generation must endure that which
cannot easily be cured; and, among its other evils, it
will have to submit to a great deal of very questionable
information, not a few false principles, and an unpleasant
degree of intolerant and narrow bigotry,
that are propagated by such apostles of liberty and
learning as Steadfast Dodge, Esquire.
We have written in vain, if it now be necessary to
point out a multitude of things in which that professed
instructor and Mentor of the public, the editor of the
Active Inquirer, had made a false estimate of himself,
as well as of his fellow-creatures. That such a man
should be ignorant, is to be expected, as he had never
been instructed; that he was self-sufficient was owing
to his ignorance, which oftener induces vanity than
modesty; that he was intolerant and bigoted, follows
as a legitimate effect of his provincial and contracted
habits; that he was a hypocrite, came from his homage
of the people; and that one thus constituted,
should be permitted, periodically, to pour out his vapidity,
folly, malice, envy, and ignorance, on his fellow-creatures,
in the columns of a newspaper, was owing
to a state of society in which the truth of the wholesome
adage “that what is every man's business is nobody's
business,” is exemplified not only daily, but
hourly, in a hundred other interests of equal magnitude,
as well as to a capital mistake, that leads the
community to fancy that whatever is done in their
name, is done for their good.
As the “Fun of Fire” had, by this time, exhibited
most of its beauties, the party belonging to the Wigwam
left the balcony, and, the evening proving mild,
they naturally broke into groups, conversing on the
incidents of the day, or of such other matters as came
uppermost. Occasionally, gleams of light were thrown
across them from a fire-ball; or a rocket's starry train
was still seen drawn in the air, resembling the wake
of a ship at night, as it wades through the ocean.
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