Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1892-09-15
NOT EXACTLY NEWS.
A Few General Remarks and Familiar
Reflections.

| a correspondent VINO uOeS not ike Tile
prevalent fashion of trailing skirts sends
US the following quotation from DIR
Holmes Professor at the Breakfast Ia
bic:
"0ur landlady's daughter is young
lady of some pretentions to gentility.
She wears her trains very long,
as the great ladies do in Europe. To be
sure, their dresses are so made only to
sweep the tapestried floors of chateaux
and palaces; as those Odious aristocrats
of the other side do not 60 dragging
through the mud in silks and satins, but,
forsooth, must ride in coaches when they
aYe in full dress. 1t is true that, consid-
ering various habits of the American
people, also the little accidents which the
best-kept sidewalks are liable to, a lady
who has swept a mile of them is not ex-
actly in such condition that one would
care to be her neighbOr. Why,
there isn't a beast or bird that would
drag its tail through the dirt in the way
these creatures do their dresses. Because
queen or duchess wears long robes on
great occasions. maid of all work OF a
factory girl thinks she must make her
self nuisance by trailing through the
street, picking up and carrying about
with her-pahI That's what | call get
ting vulgarity into your bones and mar
row. If any man can walk be-
hind one of these women and see what
she rakes up as she goes, and not feel
squeamish, he has got tough stomach.
l would not let one of 'em into my room
without serving her as David served Saul
at the cave in the wilderness off his
skirts, sir cut off his skirtsI'
81 suggested that had seen some pret-
ty stylish ladies who offended in the way
he condemned.
stylish women, l don't doubt" said
the little gentleman. Don't tell me that
true lady ever sacrifices the duty of
keeping all about her sweet and clean to
the wish of making vulgar show =
There are some things that no fashion
has any right to touch, and cleanliness is
one of these things"
The last decade numbers among its
victims from American poets Longfel-
low, Emerson, Lowell and Whittier-the
last the oldest of them all. 1t is well to
remember of Whittier that he is the most
distinctiyely American of our poets His
oua limo ic A olo
He lived a difficult boyhood and youth
on barren New England farm, with few
books. He was long in obtaining recog-
milton as a poet, and longer as an artist,
for he wrote much only against slavery
that was neither poetry nor art, and yet,
which was perhaps better than either
Remember, too, that "Snow Bound" is
his greatest poem. 1t is to Americans
what "The Gotter's Saturday Night" of
Burns is to Scots. 1t is national, per-
sonal, sweet, simple and natural. 1t, and
not the Anti Slavery Poems" should be
read to understand Whittier What
place Whittier will occupy among Amer
ican poets, whether first, second, third or
fourth, must be left to posterity. 1t is
impossible to place poet by the testi-
mony of his contemporaries. But for deep
sincerity in tenderness and righteous
ness, and whatever else is best in the hu
man heart, Whittier is first.
Whitman early in life determined to
s1oaf and invite his soul" He made
great thing of it too, and the world has
reason to thank him for developing from
lazy carpenter into an immortal lOafer.
Then Carlyle said that the moments
spent in loafing were the most precious
of life. They seemed to him the times
of the minds most untrammeled actiyi-
ty, when it worked to its own high ends,
freed from the short-sightedness of hui
man purpose. But with the ordinary
being mental energy is not possible ex-
cept through the promptings of the will.
The cerebral mechanism is not fitted up
with the hidden spring of genius. AS
with Hugo's hero, revery and loafing are
the voluptuous pleasures of the mind and
the man who goes out daily to Invite his
soul" to her own action, will one day re-
turn to discomfort and bitterness. 1t is
consoling to imagine that loafing and
revery are only phases of unconscious
action, but for most men they are mere
ly waste, rot, and sere decay of every
power of life and soul.