Home as Found Part 45

"_Monsieur votre pere----?_"

"_Monsieur mon pere_ 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, meme!_"

"_Se rejouissent en Americains._ 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 droles!_"

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 fete.

"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 fetes in Europe."

"_Certainement_" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "_c'est de rigueur, meme_"

"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 contrary, 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 not do for her to trust herself in the streets of a village 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 a.s.sociations, Mr. Powis, but simply to pa.s.s 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 contrary 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."

"_Voila, Mademoiselle Viefville, une fete 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 fete avec son pere!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville, in her imperfect English. "_Je desespere 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 b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sembly, 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 called to the bar, it being as much in rule for the legal 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, b.a.l.l.s, 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 a.s.sembled 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 fas.h.i.+on, or what was thought to be the latest fas.h.i.+on, 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 coa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sembly composed only of the _elite_?"

"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 s.e.x; there is too much delicacy of form and feature for the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s. This is what you call democratic coa.r.s.eness and vulgarity, Miss Effingham tells me, in England."

Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fas.h.i.+on of me 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 a.s.sorted 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 to utter her nursery sentiments in the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he considered the ablest musician who could give the greatest _eclat_ 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, French-looking eyes, roaming over the a.s.sembly, 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 felicitous, and made the largest investments in popularity. According to his account of the matter, no other people possessed a t.i.the 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 subst.i.tuting a little plain instruction on the real nature and obligations of the inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions, 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 inst.i.tutions are the results of time and accidents, _improvement_ is only obtained by _innovations_. Party invariably a.s.sails 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 subst.i.tute 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?"