Various

“ Genuine laughter must spring from a pure and undefiled source. It may not always be of tuneful quality, but it must at least contain the note of sincerity. I have in mind the outbursts of deep-chested sound with which another friend evinces his appreciation of a humorous remark or incident, a laugh which many fastidious people would pronounce too hard and rough by half, bending their heads and darting from under, as if suddenly assailed by some rude nor'wester. ”

“ The rich quarto is sumptuously bound, and, altogether, as a holiday gift-book the work has every element of beauty and appropriateness.
"Pepper and Salt" is one of those brilliantly clever books for little people which rouse a wonder as to whether the juvenile mind keeps pace with the highly stimulated imaginative powers of modern artists and finds solid entertainment in the richly-seasoned feast prepared for it. There is plenty of humor and whim in this volume, in which many old apologues appear in new shapes; wit, too, is to be found, and a sprinkling of wisdom. ”

“ Now and then, for the sake of the river, a rustic cot is taken for a few weeks by a party of boating-people. Then the quaint, old-fashioned gardens blossom with a sudden luxuriance of striped tents and flaming umbrellas, while bright women in many-hued boating-costumes flit among cabbages and onions like curious tropical birds and butterflies. As a rule, however, the Dean is abandoned to its usual rustic population and to artists, numbers of the latter remaining all winter in the haunts whence the majority of their kind have flown. ”

“ This was the beginning of a procession of all the monks who had ever been in the monastery. From time to time one particularly old and gaunt left the line and came and sat down by the bedside, until there were eight, four on each side of it. After a while Fra Lorenzo came walking with the others. He looked at her with his melancholy eyes and made a motion to stop, but the friar behind gave him a push and forced him forward. His low voice came to her as he was passing through the door: "I would sprinkle you with the holy water if I could, signora: but you see I must obey my superiors." ”

“ To gain a fair idea of the popularity of the library one should spend a mid-winter Saturday afternoon and evening with the librarian and his busy assistants. Early in the afternoon numbers of young ladies leave the shopping and fashionable thoroughfares up-town and throng the library-room. The attendants, all young men, work with increased animation under the stimulus. Books fly from counter to alcoves and return, messenger-boys dart hither and thither, the fair patrons thumb the catalogues and chatter in sad defiance of the rules. ”

“ The gabled and ivy-wreathed Elizabethan manor-house which is the summer home of the maidens stands but a few rods from the river's bank. Here, amidst decorous shrubbery, upon smooth shaven and rolled turf, where marble vases overflow with gorgeous flowers, sit Pater and Mater among their dozens of guests. Some of the gentlemen are in correct morning dress, some in boating-costumes, and some in that last stage of unclothedness or first of clothedness which is the English bathing-dress. ”

“ The old flint tower is grave and grim, but softened by a wonderful centuries old ivy in a veil of living green. A pathetic interest to artists hallows the venerable church-yard. Here sleeps Frederick Walker, a genius cut off before his meridian, and resting now amid his kindred in a lowly grave, over which the Thames waters surge every spring, leaving the grave all the rest of the year the sadder for its cold soddenness and for the humid mildew and decay eating already into the headstone, as yet but twelve years old. ”

“ Susan. Well, sir, you were rather in a hurry about it, I must say.
Nokes. Hurry! I was in nothing of the sort. We were in the same boat together for hours. We suffered agonies in company. And, besides, I had only three weeks at farthest to waste in making love to anybody. And now I've only one week,—all because this woman did not know her own mind.
Susan. How so, sir?
Nokes. Why, it seems she loves somebody else better. Her brother tells me—confound his impudence!—that this is only natural. ”

“ It is a craving that the race is never going to outlive, and that will afford occupation and subsistence to a considerable class of its most intelligent and respectable members until the year one million, as it has done since the year one. The great mass of us like to see the absolute reign of reason tempered by the incomprehensible, and are ever ready to lend a kindly ear to men and things that humor that liking.
Where do all the birds, myriads in number and scores in species, go when they leave the North in the winter? ”

“ With many people laughter seems to be an appetite, which grows by what it feeds on, until all power of discrimination between the finer and the more vulgar forms of wit is lost. Certain it is that the habit of laughter is as easy to fall into as it is dangerous to all social dignity. The muscles of the mouth have a natural upward curve,—a fact which speaks well for the disposition of Mother Nature who made us, and may also be held to signify that there are more things in the world deserving our approval than our condemnation. ”

“ Whether or not that hearse-like craft has sacred associations in the minds of the twelve maidens all in a row, or whether its grimness and want of swiftness seem out of place amid the carnival brilliancy of Sunday afternoon, it is certain that it is never used except for church-going, and the maidens appear later in the day each in her own swift little canoe, or two or three sisters together in a larger one, darting to and fro, hither and yon, with almost incredible swiftness, almost more like winged thoughts than like even swallows on the wing. ”

“ Thus one realizes that the decorative borders—which one looks at over and over again in this volume, and which actually satisfy the eye—do not represent the artist's own actual dreams, but are founded instead upon the ecstatic visions of Fra Angelico and others as they bent over their work in their silent cells; but they are beautiful nevertheless, far transcend what is merely decorative, and are full of imagination and feeling. ”

“ The most jovial operation of the year to the hands is the wheat-harvest in June; but the introduction of the mechanical reaper has taken away something of its peculiar character. Much of the grain, however, is still cut down with the cradle. The strongest negro always leads the dozen or more mowers, and thus incites his fellows to keep closely in his wake. As they move along, they sing, and the sound, sonorous and not unmelodious, is echoed far and wide among the hills. Behind them follows a band of men and women, who gather the grain into shocks or tie it in bundles. ”

“ It is, of course, a modern performance, and nothing is more characteristic of most modern art than that it does consciously, from reminiscence and with a reaching after certain effects, what was once done simply, intuitively, and from the urgency of poetic feeling. A great difference must naturally exist not only in the outward mode but in the spirit of a group of modern artists who set to work to illuminate a sacred text, and that in which the task was undertaken by cloistered monks in whose gray lives a longing for beauty, for color, found expression only here. ”

“ A special endowment of this immediate locality is a large and permanent sheet of water, three or four miles by one, which bears, and deserves, the name of Eagle Lake. For, though overhung by no cliffs or lofty pines, it is far more the haunt of eagles, of both the bald and the gray species, than most tarns possessing those appendages of the romantic. Its dense fringe of fine trees, among them live-oaks a single one of which would make the fortune of an average city park, can well spare the Conifers. ”

“ The brick fire-place is so wide and open that the fire not only warms the room, but lights it up so well that no candle or lamp is needed. The negroes are always kept supplied with wood, and they use it with extravagance on cold nights, when they often stretch themselves at full length on the hearth-stone and sleep as calmly in the fierce glare as in the summer shade, or nap and nod in their chairs until day, only rising from time to time to throw on another log to revive the declining flames. ”

“ A young woman's laugh is apt to begin at the highest note, and, running down the scale, to end in a sigh of mingled relief and exhaustion an octave or so lower down. This particular girl, however, takes the other way, and, running her chromatic neatly up from about middle C, pauses for a breath, and then astonishes her audience by striking off two perfectly attuned notes several degrees higher up, hitting her mark with the ease and deftness of a prima donna. ”

“ But where, tell me where, are not artists in England? And where, tell me where, do artists gather in squads that Ethel Cottages do not spring up like the tents of an army with banners? For even painters must eat and be lodged, the aboriginal habitations are not of elastic capacity, the inns are of feeble digestion, and the third summer of an artistic invasion is sure to find "Ethels" and "Mabels" in red brick and stunning whitewash, and, like our row of laborers' cottages, cursed by artists, but inhabited by them. ”

“ The only bit of color is where a cluster of low red-washed houses have found room for their scanty foundations on a knot of rock where several chasms converge. Where the sides of the chasms slope gently enough to admit of being terraced, vineyards are planted, which yield famous wines, the red Aleatico and the white Vino Santo, rivalling in quality the Monte Pulciano, which grows only a short distance away. Farther down in the depths thickets of scrub oak and wild vines form oases that are invisible unless one is standing on the brink. ”

“ But the hideous spectacle presented in the contorted visage of Hugo's great character contains a wholesome warning even for us of a later age; for there is a social tyranny, almost as potent as the kingly despotism which ruled the world centuries ago, that would fain shape the features of its victims after one artificial pattern. We laugh too much, from which it necessarily follows that we often laugh at the wrong things, a fault which betrays intellectual weakness as well as moral cupidity. ”

“ Opposite our windows a certain painter spent no inconsiderable time in the peak-roofed tent upon the grass-plot. There the young foreign-looking wife, in scarlet birette and jaunty petticoats just touching high boot-tops, with long, flowing hair, as bright and effective as any pictured vivandière, made tea and coffee over a petroleum-stove, laid the table, sat at her sewing, posed for her husband, received her callers, as charming a gypsy picture as ever brightened canvas. ”

“ The different Italian cities on the hill-sides, the vistas down the long streets, with palaces and churches on either side, half-open missals, Biblical musical instruments, rolls of manuscript music, birds in gay plumage, all perfectly represented in minute pieces of wood, excite the wonder of every one whose privilege it is to examine them at leisure. ”

“ Boats are furiously in demand, every picnic nook is pre-empted from earliest morning, the river-side tea-gardens are thronged, the inns are depleted of men and women in yachting-costumes, and the locks are jammed as full as they can be of highly-draped boats, gayly-dressed women, and circus-costumed men, the whole scene gayer, brighter, more fantastic than any Venetian carnival since the days of the most sumptuous of the Adriatic doges. ”

“ I, who know my friend so well, should find in this peculiarly happy laugh of his the sign and test of that type of high, sincere manhood which he represents; but it is a dangerous business, this attempting to define the character and disposition of people by the turn of an eyelid, the curve of a lip, or a particular vocal shade and inflection. Not only has Art learned to imitate Nature very closely, but Nature herself plays many a trick upon our credulity in matters of this kind. ”

“ Fly-catchers flit back and forth, barn-swallows and sand-martins skim the lake, and an occasional splash or ripple at our feet shows that humbler life is getting astir. The highest life, or what modest man calls such, we have all to ourselves. Yet not quite; for there is visible yonder, beneath the outer tip of a live-oak which we have found to stretch and droop twenty-four paces from the seven-foot trunk, a little fleet of canoes. ”

“ No law protects them, but they do not need it. They are too useful not to command that popular sympathy which is the higher law. The flocks and herds upon a thousand plains are theirs. Every norther that freezes and every drought that starves some of the wandering cattle and sheep brings to them provision. The railroads also, not less than the winds of heaven, are their friends, the fatal cow-catcher being an ever-busy caterer. The buzzards are, of course, under such circumstances, warm advocates of internal improvement and welcome the opening of every new railway. ”

“ Leaving the typographical treasures of the library, we ascend the broad marble stairway to the floor above, for a brief glance at the paintings and statuary. In the hall devoted to sculpture are many noble and beautiful works of art in marble, the most noticeable perhaps being Powers's "Il Penseroso," the bust of Washington and the "Babes in the Wood" by Crawford, and the statue of Lincoln by Ball. In the picture-gallery on the east are a hundred and fifty subjects. On the south wall hangs a canvas which is at once recognized as the masterpiece. ”

“ From certain points of the "Dean" the distances are dreamy and wide, with high horizon-lines touching wooded hills and shutting the Thames into a middle distance toward which a hundred little hills either descend abruptly or decline gently upon broad green meadows. Nature here smiles, not with pure pagan blitheness, but with a tenderer grace, as of a soul grown human and fraught with countless memories of man's smiles and tears, his hard, bitter labor, his sins, sorrows, and longings. ”