The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1869-11-02
For tn" Register.


Mr.. EDITOR -
Every year the city ncars
us. Every year the city influence be-
comes more and more the ''law and the
gospel" and every year the tide of met
ropolitan refinement and luxury flows
back little further among our hills and
valleys. The railroad, the telegraph and
the steamboat are three important agents
in producing this effect. The man who,
a few years ago, made tourney to New
York." now "runs down to the city,"
He sits down to his tea table in his
snug home among the hills Of Vermont,
and reads the market reports and morn
ing gossip of the city. With this COM
parativety immediate communication with
the city, he feels almost like a dweller
therein, and sort of obligation to lead
its life, adhere to its customs, and indulge.
in its excesses So the young women and
men of this country are continually aping
the airs of the metropolis, and adopt
ing its fashions always seeming to choose
its most foolish and fantastical ones, as |
am told, a man in a strange country,
among people speaking foreign tongue,
always learns the profane and indecent or
slang words first. Paris pours its fash
ions, frivolities, absurdities and obsceni-
ties into New York, and from thence by
sort Of moral Tor immoraD endosmose,
they are disseminated throug ghout the
land. This diffusion is effected in great
measure by the annual throng of pleasure
seekers from thence. Every summer the
locomotive and the steamboat brings up
to the door of the countryman, the city,
with all its luxuries, refnements, and
follies, which the admiring rustics, male
and female, eagerly seek to adopt and i'm
itate. 1t was this laudable spirit of imi-
tation that led our women to assume that
unsightly loicer posterior protuberance,
denominated the "Grecian bend" and
that equally ridiculous upper posterior ex.
cresence yclept the waterfall 1t led them
to burn and frizzle their hair until they
looked like Hottentots; to expose theil
necks and bosoms to the public gaze, ol
button on boots so high that we are re-
minded of the picture of "puss in boots.
1t is this same desire to appear "cityfed,
that leads our "young man from the coun
try" to get himself into breechcs 50 tight
that he can seat himself only at the i'm
minent risk Of making the rear seam al
example in long division; to smoke ff
teen cent cigars, or Argentine meershaun
sir, and no chips" or to break his yalua
bic neck on the velocipede. But alas
Poeta nasctar non I'll, you know, and tn
: aspiring countryman finds that his cit.
: friend ndsctr non III, too. He canno
: acquire that easy gentility Of carriages
+. that indefnable air of good breeding, tina
a is the natural concomitant of metropoli
f tan lineage and familiarity with tn
n world. He cannot copy that innate re
f inement, he can only initiate and distol
c external appearance so instead of III
4 jolly and not ungraceful "Portland Far
h cy," or "Virginia Reel" he crop,
Il through the mazes of the German Coti
d lion or in the place of the old and d.
cidedly graceful "slide waltz" he kicl
: up his heels and dislocates his limbs
It the frantic deustemps. He minces in h
is gait is "full of strange oaths" and que
:, tionable slang, essays Partisan accen
e and now and then attempts a Fren'
II word, with rather uncertain success. /
Z, becomes neither the country-man, or h
N city gentleman, but lsughabls mean b