The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1873-07-27
SIMMER Gods and satxrs.

Summer Gods and satyrs.
Why is it impossible for man of decent
digestion to enjoy his beefsteak and mutton
chop in the city during the Summer? Why
does he find himself longing after green
fields But no. your average man never longs
after green fields, pure and simple. What he
yearns after is the society of his fellow man or
fellow woman under different conditions from
those in which he enjoys it in town. There
are poets who tell us all sorts of pretty ira
ditions about the harmonies of nature and the
beauty of communion with her. But the COM
munion WITH nature, like the communion OF
the Church, is o sacrament that most Of us,
it is to be feared, think too little about.
Do we go into the country to enjoy
the verdure of the fields and the
azure of the sky? How many Of
us lie in the grass and peer up into the in
finite, even if we are not afraid of rheumatism
and set lumbago at defiance? How many OF
us yearn to penetrate the inscr9table, and re-
pair to the open vasitudes Of The country to
question the blue vaults, studded with golden
drops, or to hold the ocean of spirit within us
in communication with the ocean of expanse
w,,.hout? Not many. Intercourse with nature,
high living At q watering place, the transferral
of metropolitan eQnviviality to some kingdom
by the sch. st. Paul died daily; we try to
doubly live. Does Mr.. PTattle Commonplace
when he takes his month vScation, experience
pleasure in the painless woods Or own the
rapture by the lonely shore?" Do we eve
hear of his wandering like Shelley for
whole day at o time subsisting
on . handful Of bread and cup
of milk, but spiritually fed with every violet
Mosaic mamma from on high? All, no These
days Of inspiration are given to exceptional
souls alone. It is in vain that poet and
preacher remind us of the angels food that
awaits the spiritual heart in every nook where
wild flowers cluster and meek dews sleep.
Plain, practical men have not the spiritual
heart; to them this divine hunger is unknown.
Give the plain man, therefore, his full free,
bounteous and busy life. Give him his fish
ing bank and set of boon companions. Feast
him with bass and tautog and blue fish. Do
not deny him his bottle and his friends
So long as his use of them does not swell to the
acme of abuse. Give him his sailing parties,
his billiards. his races and all those other
pleasurable pursuits which seem to dovetail
with the average virile organization. But do
not fatter yourself or him that, though Sara
toga or Newport or Baden be the scene, he is
thereby approaching one whit nearer to
nature, or to that God which the poet tells us
is to be seen through her. Nature is not
piece of plate glass through which the Gre
ator is to be spied by everybody, like goods in
o shop window. What Shall the man who
looks forward to his soup and his celery
detect the impress of the Infinite in the aroma
of the ocean and the gigantic sighings of the
surf-swept shore? Shall he to whom Sum-
mer saunterings would be little worth without
lobster salad and clam chowder remark the
measureless mystery of the SEQ shell and find
o mournful human music in its minute
imprisoned voiceP To sensual men sensual
pleasures not wholly and alto
gether wrong; wrong only in their excess and
We cannot transmute the satyr
into the god. Let us rejoice that in all ages
the world has held enough earnest spiritual
natures to leaven little the general lump
and not blame the general lump too much for
not being immeasurably better than it is.