The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-09-15
WASHINGTON, d. C.
AUGUST 90, ls5!


long enough anywhere to make it worth while.
But it happened to me in the course of my
i5urneyings, as it happens to most people, to
End myself in New York; for you probably
know that if you start from anywhere and 60
straight along for an indefinite length of time,
Won will presently reach New York. Now, l
never have been in that city enough to feel &C
ouainted with it. know that the Fifth Avenue
: fashionable, and Stewards is an enormous
shop. and the Battery isn't the Bowery, though
Iean't always tell which is which, and few such
general facts but have never acquired that
delightful familiarity which chats of Twenty
ninth street and the Astor House, and knows
where they are, and what streets lead to them,
and what cars to get into to go there, and
which shops arc the best, and where to find
everything and everybody, from shoe-string
to a Raphael's Madonna. This familiarity has
always commanded my especial reverence. If
there is anything | admire, it is blase people
people, as Curtis expresses it, who have pump
ed life dry, and the pump only wheezes-peo-
ple who don't feel interested in anything
people who have gone through the whole round
Of sensations, and have the satisfactory con-
sciousness Of having nothing more to feel. |
would give almost anything to be so myself,
bat ! can't. | admire, and am astonished. |
like to look in at shop windows, to see q mon
KEY eapering to hand-organ, to buy fruit of
old women crouching on the corners of streets.
When | get into an omnibus, / never can re-
member to get out again, and once | rode from
Boston to Cambridge three times before / re-
membered to pull the strap at the place where
wanted to be left. like to be in a crowd, if
| am not in hurry, in carriage-I shouldn't
ike to be on foot, and have all sorts of people
knocking against me, and see the feathers and
silks trying to get on, and Garland men ell
bowling through by the skin of their teeth, and
truckmen shouting, and wheels interlocking,
and horses paving, and timid people looking
scared-that sounds rather malignant, but it
isn't. / would not scare them myself for the
sake of the fan; but as they are scared indie
pendently of any effort of mine, l enjoy it sim
ply as part Of the pantomime. Besides,
don't see any use in being frightened in such
a case. / don't expect a coachman to have
any especial regard for my individual bones,
but ] do expect him to have regard for his
Own reputation coachman and for his
pocket both of which demand that he should
not upset his coach and injure his passenger,
unless circumstances absolutely require it. /
take il for granted, also, that he understands
has business great deal better than do and
he doesn't fret about my writing letters TO
the Era, ! won't fret about his driving me
through a crowd. | also like, in passing
through streets, to count the windows, and
see how many stories the shops have. like
TO talk with news boys, and rag-pickers, and
thesittle beggar-girls, and with all sorts of out
otthe-way people. II seems to take you into
another world. / am always awed in the pres
ence of milliners and dress-mskers. If l have
opinion before i go in, it presents itself to
them in the form of the meekest and timidest
suggestion, and melts away and evaporates be-
fore their slightest objection. There is some
thing in their art perfectly incomprehensible to
me. / can understand how locomotive engine
or a sewing-machine can be made. | think
could make one myself, if | were educated to
It. and had the proper tools. For ponderous
machine cuts out your work by rule, and you
put it together, one engine Just like another.
But a milliner must have creative power.
She must conceive an idea of every bonnet
separately, and then, from wilderness of silk,
and straw, and lace, and flowers, she must
evoke the perfect bonnet, every one separately,
and every one adapted to the figure, complex.
ion, and character, of every separate wearer-
and this for months and years continuously.
What power does this argue in the tasteful
milliner
Well, you see am necessarily in a chronic
admiration, and find it extremely difficult to
assume still more to maintain, that air of sub
lime Indifference to mundane matters which so
tacinates me in others. Consequently confess,
wlth tears of modification, that when am in
New York, / tire out successive series Of at
tendaRts with my indomitable passion for sight
seeing, and cover them with shame by my un-
mistakabe display Of country bred ignorance.
had heard great deal of the Academy of
Music. The Academy of Music is not a the
atre. / never went to either but once in my
lie, and | don't quite understand the difference
between them only, in the theatre you do catch
word here and there, and in the Academy of
Iusic you don't; and in the theatre the big
drum played only little while at once, and in
the Academy of Music it was banging all the
time; but there is great difference between
them, if you can only find it out. The building
itself was a marvel of white paint, and red cloth,
and gliding, with semi-circular graded tiers of
seats, and astonishing little Cupids, without any
and three or four rows Of galleries, and the
brightest Of gas; and there were great many
women who thought they looked pretty, and
did; and great many more who thought they
did, and didn't and some wore bonnets, and
some wore anything but bonnets, and many
Germans and many Americans with hair on
their lips, and occasionally on their heads,
and white kid gloves on their hands, huttered
about here and there, and seemed to be trying
to make themselves agreeable, and perhaps
they did, | don't know; and after a while a
man down by the stage whsked his stick, and
the big drum struck up, and the curtain rose,
and there was wood, and twenty or thir-
tymen marched into it, and none of their stock
lngs came up to their knees, and none of their
irocks came down, and not tronser among the
whole company, and everything they said was
IN Italian and they did not say anything at all
but sung it, and they fourished while, and
then went off, and couple of women came on,
dressed in some outlandish costume, and one
seemed to be in great distress, and the other,
with an arm like sledge-hammer, was con.
unually picking her up when she tainted, which
was no easy matter, for she kept up a steady
iaintlng and looping all the time, and chartered
Ike nagpie in all the intervals; and then a
man came and the sledge-hammer went off
and the collapser bounced into the mans arms
and the man bounced into her arms, and then
they rebounced and bounced back again, like
The Pith balls in electric experiments, till that
scene was over; and then thirty or forty men
and women came on, and one was supposed to
De prince, and he wore white embroidered
pantalets great deal too short, and ankle
tie shoes, and Gght-blue thing where his
coat ought to have been, that looked like a
yoke nightgown with the skirt cut off, and he
wanted to marry the fainting woman, and she
Ild not want to marry him, and her old bunch
lacked father, or uncle, or somebody, said she
should, and she said she wouldn't and swore
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