You go before, with the bottle and bag,
And I'll come behind, on little Jack nag."
THE SEA.
"We sent him to school, we set him to learn a trade, we sent
him far back into the country; but it was of no use, he must
go to sea."-THE GRANDMOTHER'S STORY.
A child was ever haunted by a thought of mystery,
Of the dark, shoreless, desolate, heaving and moaning sea,
Which round about the cold, still earth goes drifting to and fro,
As a mother, holding her dead child, swayeth herself with woe.
In all the jar and bustle and hurrying of trade,
Through the hoarse, distracting din by rattling pavements made,
There sounded ever in his ear a low and solemn moan,
And his soul grew sick with listening to that deep undertone.
He wandered from the busy streets, he wandered far away,
To where the dim old forest stands, and in its shadows lay,
And listened to the song it sang; but its murmurs seemed to be
The whispered echo of the sad, sweet warbling of the sea.
His soul grew sick with longing, and shadowy and dim
Seemed all the beauty of the land, and all its joys, to him,-
Its mountains vast, its forests old. He only longed to be
Away upon the measureless, unfathomed, restless sea.
Thither he went. The foam-capped waves yet beat upon the strand,
With a low and solemn murmuring that none may understand;
And he lieth drifting to and fro, amid the ocean's roar,
With the drifting tide he loved to hear, but shall hear never more.
And thus we all are haunted,-there soundeth in our ear,
A low and restless moaning, that we struggle not to hear.
Yet still it soundeth, the faint cry of the dark deeps of the soul,-
Dark, barren, restless, as the sea which doth for ever roll
Hither and thither, bearing still some half-shaped form of good,
The flickering shadow of the moon upon the "moon-led flood."
And ever, 'mid all the joys and weary cares of life,
Through the dull sleep of sluggishness, and clangor of the strife,
We hear the low, deep murmuring of that Infinity
Which stretcheth round us dim and vast, as wraps the earth the sea.
And in the twilight dimness, in silence and alone,
The soul is almost startled by the power of its solemn tone.
When we view the fairest works of Nature and of Art,
They ever fill with longings, never satisfy, the heart;
But, like the lines of weed and shells that stretch along the beach,
And show how far the flowing tide and the high waters reach,
They seem like barriers to hold back, like weedy lines, to show
How far into this busy world the waves of beauty flow.
Yet when sweet strains of music rise about us, float, and play,
We almost dream these barriers of sense are broken away,
And that the beauty bound before is floating round us, free
As the bright, glancing waters of the ever-playing sea.
And for a little moment, the spirit seems to stand
With naked, wave-washed feet almost upon the strand.
But when she stoops to reach the wave, the waters glide away,
And whisper in an unknown tongue,-she hears not what they say.
FASHION.
Why is it that the introduction of a really graceful fashion is generally met with ridicule and opposition, while ugly modes are adopted with grave acquiescence and reverent submission?
"Seest thou not what a deformed thief this Fashion is?" "I know that Deformed; he goes up and down like a gentleman." Yes, we all know Deformed. When any of his family come to us, from England or France or any foreign country, we recognize the hideous brotherhood, and extend our welcoming hands; but Graceful must stay with us a long time to be greeted kindly, and her sisters from foreign parts are coldly looked upon, or dismissed at once.
To begin at the top,-"the very head and front of the offending." A gentleman goes into a fashionable hatter's, and the shopman, holding up for admiration a hat with a crown a foot high, of the genuine stove-pipe form, and a brim an inch wide, says, "This is the newest style, Sir." The gentleman walks home with the ugly thing on his head, but no one stares or laughs. 'Tis a new fashion, but all "take it easy." A year later, perhaps, the hatter shows him a thing with a brim a half an inch wider, but rolled up at the sides, and a crown of a much greater diameter at the top than where it joins the brim,-a specimen of the bell-crown. This is solemnly donned, and the wearer has the pleasure of knowing that the head-gear of all his friends is as hideous as his own. The inverted cone is worn with a sweet, Malvolio smile. And so "Deformed" has ruled the head of man for as many years as any of us can number, only ringing the changes, from one year to another, upon the three degrees of comparison of the word ugly.
But a change takes place; a light, graceful, low-crowned hat, with a brim wide enough for shelter or for shade, begins to appear as a fashion;-and how is it received? The clergyman thinks it would be very unclerical for him to wear it, though it may be as black, and is as modest, as the rest of his apparel. The young doctor timidly tries it on, and in his first walk meets the wealthy hypochondriac, his favorite patient, and the one who is trying to introduce him to practice, who seriously advises him, as a friend, not to wear that new-fangled thing,-if the poor hat had only been ugly, there would have been nothing bad in its new-fangled quality,-as all his respectable patients will leave him if he dresses so like a fool. The young lawyer gets one, because he heard an old lady speak of "those impudent-looking hats," and he is in hopes that impudence, which he understands is all-important in his profession, and which he is conscious of not possessing, may come with the hat. A lady goes out with her son, who is just old enough to have gained a coat, and is looking for his first hat. The mother has taste and judgment, and the youth has yet some unperverted affinity with graceful forms left, and so they choose and buy one of these comfortable and elegant chapeaux. Just before they reach home, they meet one of their best friends, a person whom the lady regards most kindly, and the young man admires and respects, and he greets him with, "Why, Tom! have you got one of those rowdy hats?" And so the stiff, stove-pipe monstrosity keeps its place, and the only pleasant, sensible, graceful, becoming hat that the nineteenth century has known, is called all sorts of bad names, and quiet gentlemen are afraid to wear it.
Has it not been the fate of the shawl, too, the most simple and elegant wrapper, and comfortable withal, that a man can throw around him, to be scouted and flouted?
Yes, Deformed! Come on next winter with a white surtout in your hand that must fit so tightly that your victims can but just screw themselves into it, with a stiff, square collar touching the ears, and seven capes, one over the other, "small by degrees and beautifully less," and all respectable gentlemen will accept it, and virtuously frown down, as dandies or rowdies, those who will not sacrifice their shawls to the ugly idol.
A GROWL.
I know it is generally considered decidedly boorish to utter complaints against the ladies. But I am for the present a bachelor, and in that capacity claim freedom of speech as my peculiar privilege. In virtue of my unhappy position, then, I proceed to utter the first of a series of savage growls, wishing the ladies to understand me as fully in earnest in this; that when I growl loud, I must be supposed to mean what I growl.
For a month past, single gentlemen of every description have suffered in common with other fancy stocks, and have remained hopelessly below par. Those nice, trim, poetical, and polite young beaux, who, when no great undertaking agitates the female mind, are treated with kindness, and sometimes with distinction, by young ladies of discretion, are now, as it were, ruthlessly thrust and bolted out of the pale of feminine society by an awful demon who reigns supreme,-the Genius of Dress-making. The other evening, I pulled sixteen different bell-handles, in a gentlemanly manner, without obtaining admission into any house for the purpose of making a call; and when I succeeded in making an entrance at the seventeenth door by falsely representing myself as the agent of a dry-goods dealer, with a large box of patterns under my arm, I found the ladies in close conference with three dress-makers, studying a fashion-plate with an assiduity worthy of a better cause. A friend of mine, who has hitherto enjoyed the privilege of dining every day with six ladies, and has derived from their society great pleasure and profit, informed me yesterday, with a tear in each eye, that he had left the house for ever, the conversation being always turned upon topics with which he is utterly unacquainted, and conducted in a language which is about as intelligible to him as the most abstruse Japanese or the most classic Law-Latin.