The River Falls journal. (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1857-1861, 1859-05-25
THE NOISELESS FINISH
NATURE GIVES.

The Hammer is the emblem Of mans
creations. About his rore<t works you
will fad it; hidden in a corner, resting
on column, lying behind a statue; it is
Somewhere. Heap about the pedestal
whereon stands the Greek Slave the chips
and the chisels, the gravers and the ham
mers, and how is the mage of the mar
bic diminished or destroyed! 1t is no
longer being walked from the sleep Of
creation, throwing Gifts Parian shroud,
and only waiting the whisper of Omnpo-
tence to breathe, but stone, blasted, and
pried, and tugg d, and lifted from some
body quarry; perforated, and clipped,
and hewn; modelled in clay by a man in
an apron, and wrought out by the hard
est by rnacaroni-eating barbarians in
short jackets and blue caps. The dead
waking, the dumb eloquent, the silent
thought shaping out and indweling the
marble, all vanish, like the baseless fab
ric of vision,' at the sight efa hammer.
The Yankee sees into it, and 'guesses' a
lathe could be made 'to turn tho thing
out in half the time, and is sure as
preceding he was born to make it. He
wonders if it couldn't Re run in mould !;
if plaster wouldn't do as well; whether
the least itch of red paint wouldn't make
her lips kinder human, and a pink skirt
more like n Christian? He cant see why
it should cost such tornal sight;' and
where are the beauty and the poetry Of
the Greek Slave? Ask, Where are the
birds that sung an hundred years ago, as
well.
In tie construction ofthis great Tenn
pie of the World, find, if you cana mould
ing, cornice, an architrave, with a riv-
ct in it; any puttying of nails, or hiding
of seams, or painting of patches. Every
thing is finished, DO matter where, no
matter how you find it. All the blue
masouary of Night was done without
trowel or b miner. No quick clip Of
scissors scalloping the leaves of ten thous-
and flowers: nc ring from the mighty
anvil, whence seintilate, nightly, the
sparks of starry time no brushes, or pen
ellis, or patterns, lying al out rose-trees or
woodbines; no staging discovered round
the oak as it goes up; no mortisug ma
chimes nor maliets beneath it, though the
greet arms are securely swinging aloft.
We have common phrase expressive
of Yankee force-'going at it hammer
and tongs'-illustrating the vulgar error
that noise is somehow all exponent Of
energy; that the effective argument rush
es over large words, like Drawing
stream along rocky channel; and this
despite our warning proverbs about the
empty Wagons and the deep waters. A
noisy metaphysician and creaking ma
chine tells the same story too much fric-
ton and sad waste of force.
Noise, indeed, is the weakest thing in
the world. AS Robert Nude pithily says:
Sin the discharging of firearms, it is the
r port which frlgh.ens both men and an
male, and not the bullet, though the re-
port is limo nj, and the bullet car
ries wounds and death on its wings.
Lightning, too, is not only much more
sublime than thunder, but its power lie in
some instances, tremendous; so thai we
cannot set bounds to its effects; and yet it
is the harmless din of the thunder which
terrifies. The motion of the air which
produces sound seems to be quite differ
ent in kind from that which overcomes re-
sistance, and affects the skin and the mus
cles. The ear will catch the tones of a
bell at the distance of eight or ten miles
on still evening, though the vibration OF
the bell does not at that distance produce
motion of the air that viii bend the spi-
der's most slender thread; and yet the
same ear gives no notce of tho approach
of a bulle. by which it may be the next
instant dashed to pieces; and the first no.
tice given, vile her the bullet strikes, or
passes near, is a muscular impression, and
the wind of "a bullet is a wind that blows,
not wind that sings. 1t is much the
same with noisy things as with noisy peo-
pie: they are always less effective in pro-
portion as the noise is louder. A deeply
honey combed ball, which whistles as it
flies, goes less f1eetly and directly to its
mark, and does less execution than one
which speeds on in silence: and, in blast
ing rocks with gunpowder, it is the stifled
slnouldering sho.s that do the execution.
Thus it would seem, even in inanimate
things, that sound is the wall of weak
ness, the crying, the childishness of the
creation, as it were.'
Who ever set up late enough at night,
or rose long enough before the sun in the