Main line

“ Together with the loss of skill and knowledge in the home, the supply of ready-mades from outside increases with leaps and bounds, and huge drapery-businesses, carried on in palatial premises, now line all our leading thoroughfares in a practically unbroken frontage. ”

“ The rising progression from front to rear was a matter of course, but how about the progression at right angles to it; from building to building, that is, of these three so nearly alike in size and dignity? To the passer-by along their Main Street front—the admiring passer-by, as we hope—should there be no augmentation of charm in the direction of his steps? And if there should be, then where and how ought it to [Pg 104] show forth so as to avoid an anticlimax to one passing along the same front from the opposite direction? ”

“ My desire is to act as a guide to those who would look beneath the surface of life in the world's great capital, who would wander about its highways and by-ways and see with me that which lies hidden from the casual observer. ”

“ Along these, huddled in the corners of the hills and the sea line, lie the cities and the larger towns. A great majority of mankind, swarming in these little spots, or scuttling to and fro along the valleys on those slender lines, fondly dream they are acquainted with the land in which they live. ”

“ To these one might well repeat the ancient line: "Though broad and well known is the highway, you choose a narrow and obscure path."
For ourselves, we hold fast to the old and the established; and we study, we point out the way, and we set forth examples—often, so I hope and trust, to some useful purpose. ”

“ She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street. ”

“ Between the straight, broad avenues of conduct, well lighted and well defined, there lay apparently whole regions of byways, in which those who could not easily do right could wander vaguely, without precisely doing wrong, following a line that might be termed permissible. ”

“ What is that mass which looms on beyond, where cloud-combing office buildings scallop the sky and bridges leap in far-flung spans from shore to shore? That's her—all right—the high picketed gateway of the nation. ”

“ The Table Line originates with the Line of Life at the wrist, and runs through the hollow of the hand towards the middle finger. If broad and fair without being broken, it is a sure sign of a happy and comfortable life; if narrow and contracted, it is a sign of poverty and crosses in the world. ”

“ If two great shops could stand side by side on the Main Street of the World, and all the vices could be put in the show window of one of them and all the virtues in the show windows the other, and all the people could go by all day, all night, and see the windowful of virtues as they were, and the windowful of vices as they were, all the world would be good in the morning. ”

“ No one instituted a campaign to locate the business center of a city at precisely such a square or corner. Things aggregate, and the point to which they tend is their center; they make it, it does not make them. ”

“ The chief, for instance, will imprint five spots on the sand, and round them trace an interminable line which just misses each spot in turn. The five spots signify the vain ambitions of man, and the line is man’s vain effort ever to reach them. ”

“ To me the types in a London omnibus or a suburban train are more absorbing as a study than a group of generals or a party of statesmen, and I like to discover the lives of the world's nobodies, their way of thought and their outlook on the world, by the character in their faces and their little social habits. ”

“ A line, or the equivalent of a line, parting the quantities of the effects, must exist in nature, though not visible to the eye of the philosopher, and we are at liberty to reason respecting the quantities placed on each side of this line in the same manner as if its position were actually ascertained. ”

“ Avenues greater in number, wider in extent, easier of access than ever before existed, stand open to the sober, frugal, energetic and able mechanic, to the educated youth, to the office boy and to the clerk—avenues through which they can reap greater successes than ever before within the reach of these classes in the history of the world. ”

“ If you will lie down on the ground and take the profile of a great city, and see how hill, steeple, dome, tower, the roof of the tall house, gain on the sky, and then come whole streets of warehouses and shops, then common dwellings, then cheap, low tenements, you will have a good profile of man's march to gain new conquests in science, art, morals, religion, and general development. ”

“ Every improvement in the navigation of a river, every construction of a railroad, has added another link to the chain which encircles us, another facility for interchange and new achievements, whether it has been in arts or in science, in war or in manufactures, in commerce or agriculture, success, unexampled success has constituted for us a common and proud memory, and has offered to us new sentiments of nationality. ”

“ The path the iron worker daily treads at the edge of the sandy platform, that narrow path that lies between running streams of fire on the one hand and a sheer drop on the other, is but an emblem of the Road of Life along which he must walk. ”

“ EXERCISE To discover the best arrangement, and to get the utmost experience in line and space composition, the landscape should be set into several boundaries of differing proportions, as in Chapter V, and as shown in the examples, keeping the essential lines of the subject, but varying them to fit the boundary. ”

“ Whatever is above ground, whatever can be seen from a distance, whatever makes a great display receives the cordial support of the average Westerner, but when you look for a fine country road, free of toll gates, or a good, deep well, or a nice cool cellar, or anything, no matter how much it might add to the personal comfort of the possessor, but which is below the surface or unseen from the surrounding country, [59] you may look in vain for these evidences of a moderately high state of civilization. ”

“ Having cleared its path so far, society went back to its work, and threw itself on that which stood first:—its roads. The field was vast; altogether beyond its power to control off-hand; and society dropped every thought of dealing with anything more than the single fraction called a railway-system. ”

“ We close the book of abstracts of the early statutes, as the six men would close the city gate, knowing that we have but to open it again to stand in the midst of the flow of the quaint, earnest, picturesque life of the middle ages. ”

“ Without this magic circle, all bustles with the cosmopolitan clamour which we fondly designate twentieth-century progress and profess to like: automobiles, phonographs, type-writing machines, railway trains, great hotels, cafés and restaurants, always the same wherever found. ”

“ THE cities of America stand with arms of railroads reaching toward one another, and hands linked, and, swaying with life, they sing and whisper to one another over the wires and through the mail-bags. ”

“ You see in that one city, open to the constant changes arising from the innumerable relations of travel and commerce, two worlds of men: one busy, fitful, gay, and splendidly modern; the other silent, immovable, almost scornful, and in dwelling and dress, in manner and language, just the same as you might have observed them ages ago. ”

“ It was an ever changing panorama of human life, an endless procession labouring towards an unknown goal, for in the seventeenth century the nation was to be studied rather on the roads than in the cities, and for commerce, for travel, and for news, the roads were all that the railways and telegraphs are to us, and more. ”

“ In any circle, the nearer the points of the circumference are to the centre, the closer they will necessarily be to one another. As we draw nearer, each for himself, to our Centre, we shall feel that we have approximated to all those who stand round the same centre, and draw from it the same life. ”

“ Here, amid the splendid highways of the city, one may find a continual occupation for both eye and mind in the ever-shifting and gorgeous colouring, and in all the movements of the colossal game of life. ”

“ But a railway train is not a house, because it is a house on wheels. And a flat is not a house, because it is a house on stilts. An idea of earthy contact and foundation, as well as an idea of separation and independence, is a part of this instructive human picture. ”

“ The "prime-way" then seems to be an abbreviated form of a long phrase "prime-signed man's way," and the phrase "Pack and Prime Way," an abbreviation of "Packman and Prime-signed man's Way." The popular speech abhors long phrases, and seeks to express its thoughts in the fewest words. ”

“ And just as if there were some extensive city receiving all comers by different entrances, all will not congregate at any particular place, but some will go to the market, some to the houses, others to the churches, or the streets, or lanes, or the theatres, each according to his own inclination,—some such city of our mind I seem to discern established in us, which the different entrances through the senses keep filling, while the mind, distinguishing and examining each of the things that enters, ranks them in their proper departments of knowledge. ”

“ You may have spent an hour in the building, and leave it thinking that you have seen all, and you wander through the quaint, narrow, twisted streets, gazing at the little shops, which are only travesties of business places; at the women, who are working ceaselessly, especially at the wells, drawing water; at the men and boys who mingle, [Pg 75] and contrast the present with the passing, the student and the peasant. ”

“ One is the region of ultimate aims; the constituent elements of the highest realizable ideal of human life. The other is that of the immediately useful and practically attainable. In both these departments, I have acquired more from her teaching, than from all other sources taken together. ”

“ Thus, gentlemen, have we taken a railway sketch of one of the principal fields, and looked over into one or two others among the many rich and fertile ones that are open to you, and in which there is ample room for the display of talents of the first order. ”

“ The thoroughfares, formerly either silent as death, or crossed by some affrighted and solitary passenger with quick steps, and eyes that searched every corner,—or resounding with the roar of a pauper rabble, or the open feuds of savage nobles, now exhibited the regular, and wholesome, and mingled streams of civilized life, whether bound to pleasure or to commerce. ”

“ I believe that, to-morrow, the light of day will be spread over England; that the tide will ebb and flow at London-bridge; that men, and houses, and waggons, and carriages, will be seen in the streets of this metropolis; that ships will sail, and coaches arrive; that shops will be opened for their customers, manufactories for their workmen, and that the Exchange will, at a certain hour, be crowded with merchants. ”

“ Let us go out together and preach the Master in the Highways and Hedges. Your example shall be as a shining light to guide the feet of those who are snared by riches. Come! The world has called you on one side and the Master on the other, and you have hesitated ”

“ Each time that the straight line makes a complete revolution round we consider it to have described four right angles, taken with the positive or negative sign according to the direction in which it has revolved ”

“ At length a circle on a more extensive scale was formed by a gentleman of this city, and a plan conceived of bringing before the world the productions of inexperienced females; of showing that intellect [100] and intelligence might be found even among factory operatives. ”

“ A house or a store on the corner always attracts the most attention and gets the most notice paid to it and that is why your father’s people founded these Corners and you have to be a Corners person—people just naturally pay you attention or you know why ... and I’m a Corners person, too. ”

“ If one should take his stand for an hour upon London Bridge, perhaps the busiest bit of street in the world, and cast his eyes around intelligently to see what he can see, and begin also to classify the things coming under his vision, what might he report to himself and to others? ”

“ From such an eminence, which is their proper station, their keen, far-sighted glance, supported by a thousand executive heads and hands, strengthened by their own inward poetic eye, will reach further than that of more everyday natures. ”

“ In groups and companies, in and out of the porticoes, on the steps of the temples, and about the booths and stalls of the market, a multitude grows day by day, from the town and from the country, and of all the various races which town and country contain. ”

“ That is the front door to America.
Once the new-comer is through that door he can go anywhere he likes, in our broad land, to live and work. Some days five thousand emigrants go through that door, and every year a million or more. ”

“ As the country was growing by the expansive drive of which the frontier was the cutting edge, it was also growing up, both behind and on the frontier. The process of maturing is as significant as that of expanding. ”

“ In the country you get under a hedge or behind a wall. In the town you run into a shop, and if you do this at once, so as to show respect to the master, very few will say anything to you, though they see you as clearly as possible, and know perfectly well who you are. ”

“ In like manner, in preparing the psychological map of the events and sentiments belonging to a certain human civilization, we find at the start five or six well determined provinces—religion, art, philosophy, the state, the family, and industries; next, in each of these provinces, natural departments, and then finally, in each of these departments, still smaller territories [Pg 19] until we arrive at those countless details of life which we observe daily in ourselves and around us. ”