The Charleston daily news. [volume] (Charleston, S.C.) 1865-1873, 1869-06-21

great chorus ..-s. -
Every type Of Down East is set in this chorrs-
book. The traditional yeoman Of the country
comes upon you at al times and all places, and
as you eye him with. cosmopolitan curiosity,
he drops upon you with provincial familiarity.
EVERYWHERE doubly multitudpous and alto
gether more noticeabie is that common-school
element, the thrifty amateurish. moral medl.
ocritv OF the great commonwealth. the impu-
dent. smart and loyal average Of Down East.
Its clerks, it's shopkeepers, its nascent lawyers,
who wiflput away their books in year or two
and become candidates; it's operatives, who
read the Atlantic Monthly; it's horny
handed deacons and serious selectmen /;
it's sicgins-masters; some o. G., them wear. yea.
of the, attempts of science and society to rub
it out; the choir girls, with, their faces
sharply out but finely tinted, coming from
all those whitewashed homes on the hills
where the syringa and guelder rose look in at
the windows and the hlacs bloom redolently in
the doorways Sweet innocents, that you meet
at every turn, with mesgre forms but vital
movement, who sing air and counter through
all the Sundays OF their placid year in cur
tanned galleries, without once suspeceng that
the gross outside world look upon them as
soprdni and contrdtti; who have had lovers
wounded IN Massachusetts, regiments; who
write for the Waverley Magazine; who run to
pink ribbons and sewing circles till they are
eighteen, and then wake up to the broad res
possibilities Of teaching school and peophpg
the great West. Wiry, saucy rustlcs, knowing
more in Q minute than battalion OF codjled
charmers could comprehend IN lifetime, and
prettier, withaI the flicker Of prudery is
In their manners, than any Vatican
shepherdess I ever saw; with good deal
Of the sllex Of their hard hills in their slender
bones, and something Of the clear, sharp at
mosphere in their voices. Ready al moments
notice, if the deacons, or town council, or the
newspapers and above all, if Boston call on
them to pour out sibilant psalms and hymns
and spiritual songs, and make melody in their
hearts, provided always that half-fare tickets
are issued and the exercises are opened with
prayer, but knowing and caring as much about
the 'ideal expanse OF spiritual ecstacles" as set
forth by the FESTIVAL 60 nmittee, as that lum-
herman who is surveying the Coliseum knows
and cares about the rhapsodies Of Ruskin. For
which love them collectively Notwithstanding
they chew gum and carry that abominable
Waverley sucking out or their reticules. am
particular in this specification that you may
know
7,l,-., THE CHARACTER OF THE CROWD.
One wonders, in surveying it. how many Nor:
woods have been depopuated by this oataplaHx
of Gilmore; or, if not depop1lated, bad all the
sap OF beauty and youth orswn of, and ere
now baking aridlysu the hills, beref OF pink
ribbons and. shrill deYologies. The lumber.
man, whose broadc 9th disgufae does, not hids
man. He came booming, at Gllmore's clarion
call, down Northern rivers from
Where the crystal Amhjjis
stretches broad and clear.
And Nilnokets pine-biank ridg:s
Hide the browsing deer
=. A lusty Nantucket beauty, lush with sea
nursing, very Neried at 70 raise nabobs, and
having two cousins hooked on her arm, with
their mouths sweetly puekered into an organic
"do. re, me- has Just asked me if didn't
want TO- tell her where the Cape Cod Harmonic
met. Obviously ! did. and morer but one finds
how ridiculously llmlted is his stock OF jnior-
nation in such cr1sis. From this you Will see
that New England is conspicuous. You might
feel, If you were here, that nothing less than
the shrewd tucking into the festival OF the
religious and patriotic bait, would have
sense OF Down East does not respond with
aIacrity to art. It has been preached elo-
quently to for month, remember; it has been
told that the national consummation Tor which
it both toiled and prayed, needed this final ra-
tlficatlon OF noise and numbers; it feels too
that the prestige Of Boston is at stake, and that
she expects every man to do his Laty to her
and his country. So the dominant part OF
the crowd come and do it with that rigid
alacrity which characterizes men who prac-
tice the good without the expecting any
thing Of the beautiful. Yon may distinguish
this part OF the influx by its resigned enthu-
siasm and by it's looking with amazement into
the restaurant windows, and then stepping
into uuobserved streets to qutff the innocu-
ous pop and muuch the frugal gingerbread. The
other and smaller part OF the crowd is one Of
open-mouthed sight-seers. Men OF taste and
culture, many OF them from all the great cities,
who seem to understand that the vast affl ir is
not q musical festival but stupendous jolli6.
cation-a big Yankee surprise; q municipal
beneft fashioned upon the model of our thcatri.
cal frlends with several transformations such
as the world never saw, and altogether intend
ed to be the biggest rather than the best thing
OF the kind eser'perpetrated &C. .operatiyely.