Atlantic Monthly

“ We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to forget the Old World and its institutions. ”

“ One of us took the Cornhill Magazine, because Thackeray was the editor; the Atlantic Monthly counted many readers among us; and a visiting young lady from New England, who screamed at sight of the periodical in one of our houses, "Why, have you got the Atlantic Monthly out here?" could be answered, with cold superiority, "There are several contributors to the Atlantic in Columbus." There were in fact two: my room-mate, who wrote Browning for it, while I wrote Heine and Longfellow. But I suppose two are as rightfully several as twenty are. ”

“ From the Northern wastes, where the hunter and the trapper pursue by force or guile the fur-bearing animals, to the ever-perfumed latitudes of the lemon and the myrtle, — from the stormy Atlantic, where the skiff of the fisherman rocks fearlessly under the menace of beetling crags amid the foam of angry breakers, to where the solemn surge of the Pacific pours itself around our Western continent, boon Nature has spread out fields which ask only the magic touch of Labor to wave with every harvest and blush with every fruitage. ”

“ As the investigation of the Pacific's meteorology is so important to America, the same system of observations applied to the Atlantic reaches to the roots of European meteorology. It is well known that the atmospheric conditions which shape European weather and climate are propagated over the French and British coasts from the Atlantic, so that every intelligent storm-warner and weather-forecaster in Europe casts a wistful eye to the western waters to catch some premonition of what is to befall his coasts. ”

“ At last, one morning, at daybreak, I went on deck, and saw the shores of England. Only a few days before, we had left America behind us, brown and leafless, just emerging from the long gloom of winter; and now the slopes of another world arose green and inviting in the flush of spring. There was a bracing breeze; the dingy waters of the Mersey rolled up in wreaths of beauty; the fleets of ships, steamers, sloops, lighters, pilot-boats, bounding over the waves, meeting, tacking, plunging, swaying gracefully under the full-swelling canvas, presented a picture of wonderful animation ”

“ One weather-report from the Atlantic, if only made a few hundred miles from the British coast, would be worth, for all practical purposes of storm-prediction, more than dozens of continental reports. If, indeed, the international system does not supply the needed ocean-reports in time for the European work of daily storm-warning, its daily charts show the conditions which usher in the various weather-changes upon the European coasts. ”

“ The winds waved and fluttered their garments, the waters uttered a voice breaking on the rocky shore, and rose mute upon the farther coast. The rain now began to fall from a morning cloud, and the travellers, for the first time, found shelter under a foreign roof.
All day they watched the sails approaching the headlands, or veering widely away and beating towards unseen harbors, as when a bird driven by fear abandons its nest, but drawn by love returns and hovers around it. Four days and nights had passed before the troubled waves ceased to hinder the craft of the fisherman. ”

“ He was a teacher, was employed in government offices, worked in the gold mines, and learned to be a compositor in a printing office. In 1868 he started the "Overland Monthly," and his original and characteristic poems and sketches soon made it a popular magazine. Mr. Harte has been a contributor to some of the leading periodicals of the country, but principally to the "Atlantic Monthly."
1. "The sky is clouded, the rocks are bare;
The spray of the tempest is white in air ”

“ November 1866 in The Atlantic Monthly: Chapters IV - V, featured in Volume 17, Number 99 of The Atlantic Monthly. (January 1866) Chapters VI - VIII, featured in Volume 17, Number 100 of The Atlantic Monthly. (February 1866) Chapters IX - XIV, featured in Volume 17, Number 101 of The Atlantic Monthly. (March 1866) Chapters XXVIII - XXXI, featured in Volume 18, Number 105 of The Atlantic Monthly. (July 1866) Chapters XXXII - XXXVIII, featured in Volume 18, Number 106 of The Atlantic Monthly. (August 1866) Chapters XXXIX - XL, featured in Volume 18, Number 107 of The Atlantic Monthly. ”

“ Sept. 18.—How the summer-time flits away, even while it seems to be loitering onward, arm in arm with autumn! Of late I have walked but little over the hills and through the woods, my leisure being chiefly occupied with my boat, which I have now learned to manage with tolerable skill. Yesterday afternoon I made a voyage alone up the North Branch of Concord River. ”

“ Handsome, well-dressed girls, with a few polygynic young men in the usual island proportion of the sexes, came out of the cottages, and stood in the lanes talking and laughing, or walked to the edge of the bluff to see the sun go down. We rubbed our eyes. Was this real, or were we looking into some showman's box? It seemed like the Petit Trianon adapted to an island in the Atlantic, with Louis XV. and his marquises playing at fishing instead of farming. ”

“ Beneath, the brilliant scarlet cardinal-flower begins to palisade the moist shores; and after its superb reflection has passed away from the waters, the grotesque witch-hazel flares out its narrow yellow petals amidst the October leaves, and so ends the floral year. There is not a week during all these months, when one cannot stand in the boat and wreathe garlands of blossoms from the shores. ”

“ The equatorial side of the northeast trade-wind belt in winter approaches very nearly to the equator, and may be located in January at least as far south as the latitude of 2° north.
The freshest trade-winds in the North Atlantic are generally found between the parallels of 10° and 25°, and by long-protracted experiment in seamanship they have been found to have an average propelling power, when the wind is taken just abaft the beam, of about six knots an hour. But, of course, the northern boundary of the south-east trade-wind likewise varies and vibrates with the seasons. ”

“ It is sad that Nature will so sport with us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her; and then, when we are entirely in her power, striking us to the heart. Our summer commences at the latter end of June, and terminates somewhere about the first of August. There are certainly not more than six weeks of the whole year when a frost may be deemed anything remarkable.
Friday, June 23.—Summer has come at last,—the longest days, with blazing sunshine, and fervid heat. Yesterday glowed like molten brass. ”

“ The great highway therefore, along which the chief atmospheric currents move and introduce on our continent the storm-controlling and weather-producing influences, begins on the Pacific coast and traverses the country from west to east. As the Atlantic dominates the weather of Europe lying on its eastern shores, so in the Pacific Ocean is the cyclopean workshop of the atmosphere, in which are produced and whence are sent forth the meteors that perpetually travel over North America, and substantially mold its climate and weather. ”

“ It is the most splendid domain that any man looks upon in these latitudes. Blue sea around it, and running up into its heart, so that the little boat slumbers like a baby in lap, while the tall ships are stripping naked to fight the hurricane outside, and storm-stay-sails banging and flying in ribbons. ”

“ The serene, strong life, reaching deep underground and high overhead, robed itself in April and disrobed itself in October when the Common was a cow-pasture, and observes the same seasons now that the old tree is belted with an iron girdle and finds its feet covered with flowers. ”

“ And now, in this month of September, this month of travelling, when men are hastening to the sea-side, or the mountains, or the lakes, this modest Maple, still without budging an inch, travels in its reputation,—runs up its scarlet flag on that hill-side, which shows that it has finished its summer's work before all other trees, and withdraws from the contest. ”

“ The sounds which the ocean makes must be very significant and interesting to those who live near it. When I was leaving the shore at this place the next summer, and had got a quarter of a mile distant, ascending a hill, I was startled by a sudden, loud sound from the sea, as if a large steamer were letting off steam by the shore, so that I caught my breath and felt my blood run cold for an instant, and I turned about, expecting to see one of the Atlantic steamers thus far out of her course ”

“ And poor indeed must be that New-England village's October which has not the Maple in its streets. This October festival costs no powder, nor ringing of bells, but every tree is a living liberty-pole on which a thousand bright flags are waving. ”

“ To do this, the surroundings must be such that none shall be conscious of restraint, but that every one, with homely ease, may act out his own peculiar nature. In short, you must make ready for them another Atlantic, in all things but breadth like its grand prototype. ”

“ One of these inlets bears the name of Conception Bay; and it is around the shores of this bay that the scene of this novel is laid. Everything in it suffers a sea-change; everything is set to the music of the winds and the waves. We find ourselves among a people with whom the sea is all, and the land only an appendage to the sea,—a place to dry fish, and mend nets, and haul up boats, and caulk ships. ”

“ While the scientific world is despairing of finding adequate mechanical means of mooring a floating weather-station in mid-Atlantic to cable its reports to land, the necessity for such a station is being gradually superseded by the development of researches which if studied will supply adequate rules for weather-forecasting without mid-Atlantic reports. The immediate value of every means which offers any approximation to correct storm-warnings for the British and French coasts—frequented by the navies and merchant marines of every flag—is beyond calculation in dollars and cents. ”

“ On the liquid expanse of the stormy North Atlantic, crowded with the steamers and sailing-ships of all nations, there exists the finest field for this investigation to be found on the globe. When these vessels become "floating observatories," rendering up accounts of their daily simultaneous weather experience, it will be comparatively an easy matter to set for ever at rest the yet disputed questions of the phenomena of cyclones, and to formulate rules for maneuvering ships so as to elude their crushing forces. ”

“ It was as when you lift a wreck from the tranquil sea and let it fall again to the depths, useless to wave or shore; the black and ghastly hulk is covered; it is seen no more; but the water palpitates with circling rings, trembles above the grave, dashes quick and apprehensive billows upon the sand, and is long in regaining its quiet surface.
"I wonder if there ever was a perfect man," said Jo, at length, drawing a deep sigh. ”

“ No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the Elms. ”

“ Where is the girl so angelic as not to feel a slight curiosity to know how she shall look in a new and strange costume? Mary bent over the rock, where a little pool of water lay in a brown hollow above the fluctuations of the tide, dark and still, like a mirror,—and saw a fair face, with a white shell above the forehead and drooping wreaths of green seaweed in the silken hair; and a faint blush and smile rose on the cheek, giving the last finish to the picture. ”

“ And men have multiplied under conditions thus auspicious to life, until they swarm on the Atlantic slope, are fast filling up the great valley of the Mississippi, and gradually flow over upon the descent towards the Pacific. ”

“ The bars along the coast shift with every storm, and in many places there is occasionally none at all. We ourselves observed the effect of a single storm with a high tide in the night, in July, 1855. It moved the sand on the beach opposite the light-house to the depth of six feet, and three rods in width as far as we could see north and south, and carried it bodily off no one knows exactly where, laying bare in one place a large rock five feet high which was invisible before, and narrowing the beach to that extent. ”

“ Days even in the middle of winter, and sometimes weeks, descend as it were from heaven to fill the soul with delight; and a lovely day in Rome is lovelier than under any other sky on earth. But just when foreigners go away in crowds, the weather is settling into the perfection of spring, and then it is that Rome is most charming. The rains are over, the sun is a daily blessing, all Nature is bursting into leaf and flower, and one may spend days on the Campagna without fear of colds and fever. Stay in Rome during May, if you wish to feel its beauty. ”

“ The wit which sparkles and flashes in a Bavarian beer-house may be as much less boisterous, or rather as much more quiet, than that which explodes over the distilled spirits of our bar-rooms, as the stimulant itself is less exciting, but is for this very reason the more genuine. Like the myriads of fire-flies on a warm summer evening amid the rising fog of a marshy ground, so gleams this wit in its smoky atmosphere ”