第61章

There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a delicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, and which convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and a refinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at all sentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into the spiritual.

I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I was drawing it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations of pleasure in being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked to breast a north wind, and that there was a certain inspiration in sharp outlines and in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, with stripped trees, and, as it were, scudding through the season under bare poles; but that he must say that he preferred the weather in which he could sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring sun on his back, and hear the stir of the leaves and the birds beginning their housekeeping.

A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to have private thoughts about the Young Lady.Mandeville naturally likes the robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little suspicious to hear him express the hope that we shall have an early spring.

I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the glory and inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too, not only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosy color, which has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing in it, but on dull days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon, full of threats of storm and the terrors of the gathering night.We are very busy with our own affairs, but there is always something going on out-doors worth looking at; and there is seldom an hour before sunset that has not some special attraction.And, besides, it puts one in the mood for the cheer and comfort of the open fire at home.

Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on their weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter.

Almost no one speaks well of winter.And this suggests the idea that most people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not know what is best for them.I doubt if these grumblers would be any better satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics.

Everybody knows our virtues,--at least if they believe half we tell them,--and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look among the girls of the New England hills as confidently as anywhere, and Ihave traveled as far south as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee Valley.Indeed, it would be easy to show that the parents of the pretty girls in the West emigrated from New England.And yet--such is the mystery of Providence--no one would expect that one of the sweetest and most delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing.

arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable climate, and peep forth from the edge of a snowbank at that.

It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousands of people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a more congenial one--or stop grumbling.The world is so small, and all parts of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate, that one could surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is it worth while to waste our one short life in the midst of unpleasant surroundings and in a constant friction with that which is disagreeable? One would suppose that people set down on this little globe would seek places on it most agreeable to themselves.It must be that they are much more content with the climate and country upon which they happen, by the accident of their birth, than they pretend to be.

III

Home sympathies and charities are most active in the winter.Coming in from my late walk,--in fact driven in by a hurrying north wind that would brook no delay,--a wind that brought snow that did not seem to fall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown from polar fields,--I find the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow of philanthropic excitement.

There has been a meeting of a woman's association for Ameliorating the Condition of somebody here at home.Any one can belong to it by paying a dollar, and for twenty dollars one can become a life Ameliorator,--a sort of life assurance.The Mistress, at the meeting, I believe, "seconded the motion" several times, and is one of the Vice-Presidents; and this family honor makes me feel almost as if I were a president of something myself.These little distinctions are among the sweetest things in life, and to see one's name officially printed stimulates his charity, and is almost as satisfactory as being the chairman of a committee or the mover of a resolution.It is, I think, fortunate, and not at all discreditable, that our little vanity, which is reckoned among our weaknesses, is thus made to contribute to the activity of our nobler powers.

Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinction; and probably there is no more subtle flattery than that conveyed in the whisper, "That's he," "That's she."There used to be a society for ameliorating the condition of the Jews; but they were found to be so much more adept than other people in ameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up.

Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many people who get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busy in society, or to earn a little something in a good cause.They seem to think that the world owes them a living because they are philanthropists.In this Mandeville does not speak with his usual charity.It is evident that there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whose condition needs ameliorating, and if very little is really accomplished in the effort for them, it always remains true that the charitable reap a benefit to themselves.It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himselfOUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR.Why is it that almost all philanthropists and reformers are disagreeable?