Morning journal and courier., 1885-08-22
SCENERY.
Charles Dudley Warner Views of the
 Subject.

Charles Dudley Warner, Views of the Subject.
 [From Harper's Magazine for Septemberl
 This has been, on the whole, a very good season for Scenery" It has varied in price from two dollars and half day for quiet article of five dollars for the broadest and best A resort with "a full line of scenery is, of course, expensive; that is, one that combines mountains, valleys, water, ham, lets, rocks, cascades, islands, waterfalls. It is difficult to define exactly what scenery is in the popular mind, but all are agreed that it is an article one must go away from home to get. It seems to be the general notion that it is view, and with many the word means wide and distant prospect. The commercial gentleman who was looking off from the platform of the Kaaterskil1 House, and remarked that it was the best place for scenery he knew, came very close to a good popular definition. With him it was large prospect. The idle traveller is often asked whether he is found of scenery. And the question is an embarrassing one. He may never have thought of it in that light He is fond of beefsteak; perhaps he does not like to confess his love for things 8sthetic. The Drawer met a charming girl in the Cats kills who said that she was very fond of scenery, and she liked nature, too. Both scenery and nature she would go great ways to see, and the inference was that they couldn't be had at home. Perhaps scenery in her mind was associated with hotel, and a number of young gentlemen in fancy walking costume. And, whatever scenery is, there is no doubt that it is vastly improved by the presence of young ladies in gay toilets. In fact, you may take an ordl- nary landscape, common brook with a yaT,tx five oaT1Ix rfa11 it costs quarter of dollar to turn on-or piece of open woods with sunlight flicker ing on the ground and on the boles of the trees, or tree-encircled lake with rowboats, and introduce the female figure, groups of girls in those engaging attitudes that nature teaches them, or pairs of lovers in the pretty self-consciouspess of young affection, and you have what is probably the best article of scenery in the world. And yet this sort of thing is not that usually recognized as scenery.
 The effect of scenery upon different per sons is worth the students attention. Let him take his seat before some recognized piece of scenery" like that from the Cats kill height just spoken of, and watch the effect of it upon those who come to look at it. He removes his hat and mops his forehead, and looks about with an expression of delight in the vastness of the prospect. His eye roves at once all over the States of the
 
 in his mind for its size, but he wastes no time on it. He remarks that that is the scenery for him, and then abandons it in search of cooling drink. Then comes the dominic schoolmaster in 1ong-skirted broadcloth coat, severe man, with half dozen of his scholars He waves his hand over the whole view with the air of impart- ing information to the young; that is the Hudson river, that is Connecticut, that is Massachusetts, that is Vermont, we are in New York-it is a gigantic lesson in geogra- phy, and they have learned it. There, again, is rather battered looking middle-aged man reclining on the edge of the cliff-what does he sees A panorama of his lifea Probably not Few people are given to musing on their past. He enjoys the repose of the landscape the faint rattle of wagons, or the clang of railway train coming up from four or five miles away, the shadows on the immense plain, which is marked off in ir- regular plots of meadow and grain and woods, the gleam of the rivera monotonous picture full of variety too far removed to make distinct impression-the sort of view that requires nothing but lazy mind. And these two young girls in muslin, arms around each others waists-no, not exactly young, | but young for schoolmarms, too shy for ab solute youth sauntering along the edge ot the precipice, expressing genuine rapture | over the prospect. It must be confessed that l their figures insiIhouette against the sky have | an artistic value. Nobody can tell how | much they really see, but doubtless nor, than another couple who have just stepped l out across the platform, and stand in an at | titude of observation. Pretty soon, how ever, they are looking at each other, and i