George William Curtis

“ Certainly there is no country in which the guest upon reaching his hotel is treated with such laughable condescension as in this. A wretched hole of a room, shabbily furnished, the dirty walls and a suspicious bed, with a quart of water and a pocket-handkerchief of a towel, for which he is to pay four or five dollars or more daily, is awarded to the humbly expectant visitor as a high favor. A great American hotel is a penitentiary for travellers, and the gentlemen at the office are the lofty turnkeys and lord high-constables. A self-respecting man will travel here as little as possible. ”

“ Hawthorne was a sturdy and resolute man, and any heap of manure that he attacked must yield; but he had not come to Arcadia to sweat and blister his hands, and his blank and amused disappointment is evident. He had a subtle and pervasive humor, but no spirits. He sees the pleasantness of the place and the beauty of the crops, having knowledge of them and a new interest in them; and he has a quiet conscience because he feels that he is really doing some of the manual work of the world; but he is always a spectator, a critic. He went to Brook Farm as he might have gone to an anchorite's cell ”

“ If we paid the minister adequately, why should we abuse the language by "donating" the necessaries of life to the parsonage? Some kind soul knows that we starve our shepherd, that he is pinched and cramped in his household, that his wife is thinly clad and his children shabby, and that the man of whom we demand that he should be a model of all the cardinal virtues is torn with anxious doubts for his family; and that generous soul proposes that we should club our sugar and butter and help him out. ”

“ It is always the obstruction of advancing humanity, always the contempt of generous and courageous minds.
It is true, undoubtedly, that every forward step is not wisely taken, and that there are the most absurd parodies of philanthropy, as well as a great deal of pseudo philanthropy, which is merely the mask of knavery. We have taken great pleasure in these very columns in stripping off sundry masks of such philanthropy which is pursued by impostors of both sexes in this city. Common-sense, careful scrutiny, and intelligence, are indispensable in every form of charity and beneficence. ”

“ That, indeed, was very much the attitude of Hawthorne himself towards Brook Farm and many other aspects of human life.
But beneath all the glancing colors, the lights and shadows of its surface, it was a simple, honest, practical effort for wiser forms of life than those in which we find ourselves. The criticism of science, the sneer of literature, the complaint of experience is that man is a miserably half-developed being, the proof of which is the condition of human society, in which the few enjoy and the many toil. ”

“ It is nine o'clock, and the meeting-house bell, with a bold voice of authority, as if it had the sole right to disturb the silence and to speak out, warns the village and the outlying farms that it is the Sabbath, and everybody must prepare to come to meeting; and the little children hear the bell with awe as if it were a living voice, and sacred as a part of the Sabbath, and to be heeded under unknown penalties. ”

“ Church Street does not, indeed, seem at the first mention to be a promising domain of romance, nor a fond haunt of the Muses. Indeed, it must not be denied that it has an unsavory name; and when the city loiterer recalls Wapping, or a May morning on the Seine quais, he will smile at Church Street as a field of romance, and the Easy Chair grants him absolution. London, perhaps, does not strike the American imagination, or, let us more truly say, the imagination of the travelling American, as a romantic city. That citizen of the world reserves for himself Venice, Constantinople, Grand Cairo. ”

“ That man, he says, born to a fortune, or having by faithful industry and sagacity early amassed it, is now master of his life. He commands time and money, the two levers which are so powerful in heaving the world forward. He has but to devise how he can be of service to others, and obey the leading of his generous soul. Think of the hearths and the hearts that he cheers! Think of the knowledge that he acquires, the studies that he pursues, for the enlightenment of legislation and the practical advantage of government! ”

“ It is merely a matter of association. It is in human nature; the Easy Chair did not put it there. The mysterious delight in the most ancient and inarticulate remains of human skill is the recognition by the soul of man of its identity and endless continuation; and when you descend from that Cyclopean work in the foundation of the wall of the temple at Jerusalem to the knotted handkerchief and the yellow bud, you have only come, O Bugle, to the individual delight in one's own experience, to the unsealing of sweet fountains forgotten, and the quickening of sanitary emotions. ”

“ THE NEW ENGLAND SABBATH HERE are still villages among the hills of New England—we cannot call them remote hills, because the locomotive darts up every valley and fills the woods upon the highest hill-side with the shrill, eager cry of hurrying life and bustling human society, but even where the steam is heard, softened and far away, there are yet villages nestling in the hills in which also the old New England Sabbath lingers and nestles. The village street, broad and arched with thick-foliaged sugar-maples, is always still. ”

“ A man's honor, in the sense that we may attribute to the lines of Lovelace, is his most precious possession. But it is something which is wholly in his own keeping, and is not at the mercy or whim of another. He can soil it, but except himself the whole world cannot smirch it. If a man had told Dr. Channing that he lied, or had dashed a glass of wine in his face, the honor of Dr. Channing would still have remained unsullied, not because he was a minister, but because of a reason which is equally applicable to all other men—because of his moral rectitude and courage. ”

“ But wise men and wise women everywhere are now, and for some years have been, earnestly engaged in studying how to save society from the curse of pauperism, while taking care that all helpless and innocent suffering shall be relieved. This is what Elia and his amiable, thoughtless friends denounce as "machine charity." But their amiability is only selfishness. How many of those who decry "machine charity" ever went home with a single street beggar to whom they gave, or ever ascertained or cared whether his story was true, or told for any other purpose than to get the price of a dram? ”

“ Those who lead the van of reforms are so much in earnest that they must sometimes offend, sometimes mistake, or nothing would ever be done. Emerson says that if Providence is resolved to achieve a result it over-loads the tendency. This produces enthusiasm and fanaticism, and also the indomitable devotion and energy which cannot be defeated. It is when the new way to the Indies becomes his one idea that Columbus discovers America. It is when Luther defies all the opposing devils, although they are as many as the tiles upon the roofs, that he establishes Protestantism. ”

“ And so, as the Easy Chair strolled along, bumped and hustled and severely looked upon by the eager throng in the narrow street, more radically reconstructed than any doubtful State, it could not help feeling that London with Her Majesty's Tower, and Paris with her deserted Place Louis Quinze, are not the only romantic cities in the world, and that a city of such rapid and incessant change as New York offers even some poetic aspects which its elder sisters want. ”

“ But if there be this subtle and over-powering influence in association with a place, although it is earth and trees and grass and stone, is there not the same charm and power in association with a building, a tree, a stream? And while Marathon has not saved Greece from decline, has it not been one of the natural influences that have pleaded against national decay? And could Marathon and Salamis and Platæa have been swept out of mind, would not the decline have been a thousandfold hastened? Are we not stronger and braver for Bunker Hill and Saratoga, for the sunken Alabama and the Wilderness? ”

“ So wail and roar the storm-swept autumn woods. In the late October nights you may awaken, when the world is lost in the mystery of darkness, and hear that appealing cry. Time and civilization have slain the dryads and sweet sylvan populace, as Herod slew the innocents. But although common-sense has buried them, the imagination will not let them die. They survive in other forms, and with other voices they speak to us—not as the spirits of the trees, but as their conscious life, they yet whisper, and our hearts listen. ”

“ Its one truly magnificent building, the Capitol, seems to have absorbed everything else. Like a huge wen, it has apparently sucked up all the life of the other buildings. Feeble, shapeless, ineffective, they huddle along the sides of the vast avenues, and, however closely they stand, give nothing but the impression of a straggling and clumsy village. Then there is the eternal absurdity of the plan. It is not only a straggling and clumsy village, but it is utterly dislocated. Washington is laid out upon the plan of cart-wheels within cart-wheels. The stranger is always going wrong. ”

“ Compared with other efforts upon which time and money and industry are lavished, measured by Colorado and Nevada speculations, by California gold-washing, by oil-boring, and by the Stock Exchange, Brook Farm was certainly a very reasonable and practical enterprise, worthy of the hope and aid of generous men and women. The friendships that were formed there were enduring. The devotion to noble endeavor, the sympathy with what is most useful to men, the kind patience and constant charity that were fostered there, have been no more lost than grain dropped upon the field. ”

“ What does the nurse in the nursery think of us, or the porter in the store, or the butcher-boy? If a man's children confide in him, if all whom he employs at home or in his business feel that he is full of thought and sympathy for them as for brethren, if those who meet him perceive the charm of his urbanity, and as they draw nearer and know him better, honor and love him more and more, we can be very sure that he has the noblest human qualities, whose influence will be a possession to us forever. ”

“ As you lie in your ambush and hear suddenly the shouting of the drivers, the barking of the dogs, the crackling and rustling of boughs and leaves, you cannot help the intense excitement. Your blood burns, your nerves tingle, your ears quiver, your eyes leap from your head, and, upon my honor, sir, when our best sportsman saw the deer near him last year in Maine, he fixed his eyes steadily upon him, but such was his nervous twitter that he pointed his rifle straight into the ground and fired. He wounded the ground severely, but the deer escaped. ”

“ We may say that a morally greater man would nevertheless have dared to refuse it, but we must also consider that Hamilton knew the popular estimate of his own standard of life, and would naturally test his conduct by that standard. He was a soldier and a man of the world of the eighteenth century. Dr. Nott, the echoes of whose famous sermon on Hamilton's death still linger in tradition, might have declined to fight and been justified. He was a clergyman, and popular feeling excused him from resorting to the field of honor. But it is very doubtful if it would have excused Hamilton. ”

“ It swept the scale of emotion. From the height of joy triumphant it sank to the very depths of sorrow, from confidence and pride in a military leader it passed to humiliating amazement, yet not for a moment paused in its work or shook in its purpose, and was never so calm, so strong, so grand, as in that tumult of emotion.
Every man who has been proud of his country hitherto has now profounder cause for pride. Our system has been tried in every way; it rises purified from the fire. No one man is essential to her, however deeply beloved, however generously trusted. ”

“ Like every remarkable occurrence in these remarkable days of ours, the disbanding of the armies of the East and West, and their quiet absorption into the mass of the people, is a spectacle which has another illustration to the extreme practicability of a popular government. Usually the return of the victorious army is dreaded by its country somewhat as its advance is by the enemy, and government provides other wars to employ it. But our men are citizens who have been defending their own rights. It is their own government they have been maintaining. ”

“ He cannot give a great deal of money for educational and charitable and æsthetic purposes—not a very great deal—but he can always give time, and he can always make a speech, and draw the resolutions, and direct generally.
He is, in fact, the town pound, to which everybody may commit the truant fancies that nobody else will tolerate upon the pastures and lawns of his attention. He is the town pump, at which everybody may fill himself with advice. He is the town bell, to summon everybody to every common enterprise. He is the town beast of burden, to carry everybody's pack. ”

“ The pretence of your giving is Christian charity and humanity; the real cause is indolent self-indulgence and saving yourself trouble.
The charity that is beautiful in the old stories is actual charity. It is the friendly feeding of those who are really hungry, and the clothing of those who shiver with the cold. The Elia's charity is only a refined selfishness, a whim of humor. He rewarded the deceit, he did not relieve the suffering. ”