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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
AT LONG AND 
 SHORT RANGE 
 
This Edition is limited to Five Hundred Copies. 
 
T LONG AND 
 SHORT RANGE 
 
 BY WILLIAM 
 /RMSTRONG 
 JCOLLINS£B© 
 
 PHILADELPHIA & LON- 
 DON: J.B.LIPPINCOTT 
 COMPANY: MDCCCXCIII 
 
 
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 Copyright, 1893, 
 
 BY 
 
 J. B. Lippincott Company. 
 
 Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia. 
 
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 HERE is a fashion in pipes as 
 well as in bonnets. There 
 are men who take unalloyed 
 pleasure in a corn-cob bowl 
 with an Indian-reed or bam- 
 boo stem, who would feel a sense of moral 
 degradation in smoking the ordinary Ger- 
 man china bowl, and a sense of foppery 
 in the meerschaum. There is no arguing 
 about such matters. It belongs to a cer- 
 tain subtle line of thought and conduct 
 which fairly marks one's individuality, 
 and you might as well try and make the 
 corn-cob smoker wear a conspicuous dia- 
 mond breastpin as alter his foibles in the 
 affair of a pipe. The simplicity, purity, 
 and wholesomeness of his smoking ar- 
 rangements are very apt to be the precise 
 qualities which he prizes in other con- 
 cerns, and it will not uncommonly be 
 
6 At Long and 
 
 found that his taste is sober in depart- 
 ments where taste is involved, and that 
 in matters of business fidelity he is apt 
 to fulfil his engagements without osten- 
 tation and without default. Such a man 
 could not be hired to smoke a huge cigar, 
 deeming it absolutely vulgar; and his 
 entertainments, if he is a family man, will 
 be characterized by old-fashioned candor 
 and hospitality. That corn-cob pipe means 
 more than appears on the surface. It is 
 one of the things which do not all end in 
 smoke. 
 
 TF one inclines to Carlyle's overestimate 
 of Goethe, let him take De Quincey's 
 underestimate and strike an average. In 
 this instance the middle way is the safest. 
 
 T N the silent watches of the night you are 
 suddenly and strangely sensible of an 
 uninvited Presence in your bedchamber. 
 You know full well that no sound, how- 
 ever slight, revealed the opening of the 
 
Short Range. 7 
 
 door leading to the outer world, and that 
 feet shod with down would betray to the 
 sentinel ear some alarum which neither 
 mind nor ear can now detect. There is a 
 figure of mist in the apartment whose out- 
 line becomes distinct as the seconds of 
 time keep rhythm with trooping thoughts 
 and arabesque fancies. A face of spiritual 
 beauty fixes the gaze, and you are con- 
 scious that eyes of dark blue and full of 
 portent rest upon you with an unchanging 
 constancy that seems to hush all specula- 
 tion and subdue every passion to the 
 atmosphere of a land of dreams. The 
 pale glory of the face does not so stir 
 the soul as its brooding calm and awful 
 though infinitely tender serenity. This is 
 the spectre upon which you have so often 
 meditated, and lo ! the apparition is here 
 unbeckoned and unannounced. By what 
 swift and fruitful intuition do you realize 
 that you are expected to go upon a jour- 
 ney, and that you will have strange but 
 royal escort ? How tenaciously, after all, 
 we cling to the familiar and the known ! 
 You shrink from the weird imagination of 
 1* 
 
8 At Long and 
 
 routes that are not upon the maps, and 
 look with mute appeal upon the sapphire 
 eyes that seem to clothe themselves with 
 dread sovereignty as they rest upon you 
 in their unchanging loveliness. You would 
 fain crave some courteous postponement, 
 if but to write deferred letters, or it may 
 be to seek reconciliation with the once 
 loved and now estranged. With fantastic 
 reluctance you brood upon the lateness of 
 the hour, perhaps the inclemency of the 
 weather; you even quibble with inward 
 folly about the deficiencies of your toilet, 
 and with morbid delirium of thick-crowd- 
 ing fancies try to find some plea or reason 
 why it shall be next week or to-morrow — 
 any time save now — on which you shall set 
 out in the night with One who sent up no 
 card, and who does not even so much as 
 move one white finger to break the un- 
 utterable and fateful splendor of the hour. 
 Ah ! foolish soul, be calm. This is no 
 time for rebellion or debate. Thy sleep- 
 ing-chamber is at last glorified beyond the 
 courts of kings, and thy vigil honored by 
 the Incarnation of Beauty which the poets 
 
Short Range. 9 
 
 have worshipped from immemorial time. 
 No sinister menace attends this delicate 
 tracery of figure, which in frost lines pos- 
 sesses the space on which you look with 
 such forlorn eyes, and the face which 
 haunts you with its unspeakable beauty, 
 and already wins your irresolute spirit on, 
 will see that no harm betide you in the 
 quest you are now to make. Be of good 
 cheer. A fairer comrade you have never 
 had, and the world's jangle and jars shall 
 henceforth vex you nevermore. 
 
 C EX traits open up a curious study. Men 
 are influenced by opinions of their 
 own and of the other sex. Women are 
 largely indifferent to the views of men, 
 and are sensitive to the last degree about 
 their own kind. They are willing that men 
 should admire their beauty, and they will 
 marry on occasion ; but here the deference 
 to masculine sentiment pretty much ceases. 
 The opinion of half a dozen women on a 
 moot point weighs more with a woman 
 than the judgment of a whole community 
 
io At Long and 
 
 of men. Women dress for each other, 
 suit their manners for each other, copy 
 each other, and yet distrust each other, 
 whilst they have confidence in and respect 
 for the very men whose desires and views 
 they substantially ignore. 
 
 It is a singular phenomenon. It shows 
 how much more fully rounded the mental 
 life of a man is, since he takes in both 
 sexes, whilst woman mainly confines her- 
 self to one, — viz., her own. 
 
 A woman has one great advantage in her 
 dealings with a man. She understands a 
 man; but no man ever understands a 
 woman. The knowledge is all on one 
 side. 
 
 The amusing part of the social relations 
 between the sexes is, that men are oblivious 
 of the fact that women are always adroitly 
 playing a part ; whilst men — good, stupid ; 
 souls — are clumsily honest and in earnest. 
 If they were permitted to listen to the 
 comments of the women on them, they 
 would be disagreeably enlightened. 
 
 Man, too, emancipates himself often 
 from slavish deference to the opinion of 
 
Short Range. * n 
 
 his own kind ; but woman never frees her- 
 self from slavery to her own sisterhood. 
 They rule men and make one another 
 everlastingly uncomfortable. It is a com- 
 edy of errors. 
 
 A man can talk all around a woman 
 about the fundamental principles of taste, 
 and the slouchiest sort of man who is of a 
 scholarly turn can descant by the hour 
 on the essential qualities of the beautiful. 
 But give a man a new room, and a woman 
 one, and see which really has the instinct 
 and the knack for elegance. The man's 
 boots and tobacco-pipe will likely be the 
 most conspicuous ornaments on entering 
 his apartment ; the woman will with deft 
 art embellish the meanest-looking chamber. 
 She will adorn the walls, have pretty trifles 
 on the dressing-case, flowers in season, and 
 infuse an atmosphere of pleasing domes- 
 ticity in the little retreat. Her delicate 
 fingers add grace wherever they rove ; 
 whilst the great clumsy man in the midst 
 of barbarous confusion will talk with en- 
 chanting composure about Plato, and 
 define with mathematical precision the 
 
12 At Long and 
 
 boundaries of aesthetic refinement. Is it 
 any wonder that woman, with all her fine 
 wit, is amazed at him ? The real wonder 
 is how she manages to tolerate him. 
 
 A N essay signed and mailed is not a 
 
 letter, and the fairly readable and 
 
 pleasing epistle, by the necessary laws of 
 
 its own being, makes the most modest and 
 
 self-abnegating person seem like an egotist. 
 
 'T'HE young woman's first successful at- 
 tempt at cooking a dinner is a prime 
 event in her life ; perhaps, next to an en- 
 gagement to be married, the affair in- 
 volving the most serious emotion. She 
 has approached this great achievement by 
 gradations. Furtive observations in the 
 kitchen, experiments with candy-making, 
 an occasional trial at boiling an egg or 
 preparing a cup of tea, stealthy perusal of 
 cook-books, and confidential talks with 
 young friends who have passed the Rubi- 
 con and actually got up a whole repast, — 
 
Short Range. 13 
 
 these have been the preludes to the mo- 
 mentous day when she announces to her 
 mamma that she intends to cook the din- 
 ner, and every fifteen minutes thereafter 
 comes to the said mamma for counsel as 
 to the details. However, the dinner is 
 cooked, and let us suppose it is a success, 
 — soups, meats, vegetables, pastry. The 
 young conqueror's face is flushed with 
 the caress of the stove and the glow of 
 triumph. She expects and she receives 
 rich largess of compliments. She notes 
 with solicitous eye that the viands are 
 appreciated. She expands with a sense of 
 maturity, and in fancy presides over a 
 household of her own. She has taken a 
 fresh degree in the university of life, and 
 will with mild and affectionate patronage 
 tell the artless of her own sex who have 
 never tried conclusions with the larder 
 and the kitchen how easy, after all, it is to 
 one who has the nerve and the knowledge, 
 — the last word in italics. Happy maiden 
 and thrice happy household who share her 
 victory and toast her Queen of the Board, 
 worthy daughter of a worthy and loving 
 
14 At Long and 
 
 mother! This is a festival for garlands, 
 and the charmed graces might hold it an 
 honor to scatter them. 
 
 ''FHE world graciously consents that one 
 may be sad in private for the loss of 
 money, health, or kindred, and takes its 
 revenge by sneering at every other form 
 of sorrow. 
 
 TT must be both flattering and amusing 
 to the young lady between the ages 
 of eighteen and twenty-five to find that 
 the poet and the novelist discover so much 
 that is interesting in her. In actual life 
 men usually find married ladies who have 
 reached the age of thirty more entertain- 
 ing in an intellectual sense than mere chits 
 of girls, who are not commonly gifted with 
 wisdom of any kind, and who rarely have 
 discrimination concerning men. More 
 than half the novels, however, deal with 
 these young creatures and surround them 
 with a halo that flows from the fancy of 
 
Short Range. 15 
 
 the writers rather than attaches to the 
 young damsels themselves. There has 
 been so much of this imaginative business 
 going on in poems and in fiction, not to 
 speak of the work of the painter, that the 
 young women must at times be a little 
 puzzled to know if they really are what 
 they are depicted to be. Youth and 
 beauty and innocence and grace have 
 charms which will always appeal to the 
 soul, but the novelist is not content to 
 celebrate these. He makes his heroine 
 have thoughts that fit her for another 
 sphere than the one she lives in, and en- 
 dows her with longings that she is not apt 
 to disclose to associates of her own sex. 
 The novelist does not pause long on her 
 fondness for dress and caramels. 
 
 Sentimental novelist. Eccentric poet. 
 
 TN time of "storm and stress" we dis- 
 trusted as a will-o'-the-wisp that fine 
 audacity of spirit which we feared might 
 guide us to some fresh bog or quagmire. 
 In time of ease we often sigh for the lam- 
 
1 6 At Long and 
 
 bent flame, and would gladly follow it 
 again along tortuous roads and under 
 gathering clouds. 
 
 T^HE gross utilitarian spirit unwittingly 
 compliments those whom it intends 
 to annihilate with a word, when it chooses 
 that winged fairy of the air and meadow, 
 the emancipated, the innocent, the beauti- 
 ful, the happy butterfly, as a symbol for 
 scorn. 
 
 The Greeks were not so clumsy. 
 
 "VTO one is in doubt when the sun has 
 announced that it is seated on the 
 throne, and no one needs any argument or 
 persuasion to realize the spell of a com- 
 manding personality when such appears 
 either in the arena of actual life or upon 
 the phantom boards where life's panorama, 
 with all its incidents and emotions, is 
 marshalled to view. The ring of the true 
 metal is known to the gallery as well as to 
 the dress-circle, and the dramatic reviewer 
 
Short Range. 17 
 
 has only the pleasing task of ratifying the 
 verdict of the street. 
 
 *T*HE happiest man, after all, is, perhaps, 
 the one whose soul's delight is in the 
 pleasures of the table. The frescos of 
 Raphael and the symphonies of Beethoven 
 are as naught to him compared with boiled 
 bass flavored with anchovy sauce, venison 
 with currant jelly, olives and Cheddar 
 cheese. Give him a chicken fricassee, and 
 you may establish any government and 
 religion. Milton's " Lycidas" has no 
 charms for him, but his spirit expands with 
 tranquil rapture over a fillet of beef flanked 
 with macaroni baked a V Italienne. He 
 wastes no thought over dry discussions of 
 tariff and currency, his imagination being 
 occupied with sugar-cured ham, and he 
 lingers long and lovingly over the nuts and 
 wine. It is not every one who is equal to 
 such felicities. A man must have native 
 capacity and adequate training to make a 
 superb feeder. When one has reached the 
 stage where clam chowder and shrimp salad 
 
1 8 At Long and 
 
 can inspire the whole man with delicate 
 ecstasy like a faint perfume from distant 
 orange-groves, there is little more to be 
 said or done ; that man will never repine 
 until his stomach or cash gives out. The 
 table is to him a temple of all joys, and 
 the clatter of the waiters more melodious 
 than brooks that whisper through the 
 woods and meadows at nightfall. His face 
 beams with benevolent satisfaction. His 
 nose has the generous tint of a boiled lob- 
 ster. His hands are as velvet, and his eyes 
 have an Oriental film of dreams over them 
 like the haze of balmy Indian summer. 
 Poor Csesar might have had a happier end- 
 ing if he had let the Gauls alone and de- 
 voted himself to oysters and ortolans. 
 The genial gourmand is the true sage, the 
 real philosopher. He finds the colors of 
 Titian in celery and cranberries, and 
 wonders why Malloch could be so absurd 
 as to inquire if life were worth the living, 
 seeing that the beef- tongue is as it should 
 be, and the gherkins and chow-chow up to 
 the standard. The melancholy thinkers 
 can solve all their dismal doubts by drop- 
 
Short Range. 19 
 
 ping in at the nearest hotel at the fashion- 
 able dining hour. There they will find 
 rubicund potentates who disprove Burns' s 
 notion that man was made to mourn. 
 "Sir John," said the chief-justice, "your 
 age should be seasoned with gravity." 
 " Nay, my lord, with gravy !" Your good 
 feeder is the true master of the earth. 
 
 r^ERTAIN sounds, such as a deep-toned 
 bell or the discharge of a cannon, 
 sensibly affect the imagination, and that 
 not by the mere volume of sound, as we 
 discover when we come to think of the 
 matter. 
 
 T N many well-regulated families they have 
 what is called a getting-up or " rising" 
 bell, and after that the breakfast-bell. The 
 crying grievance of the good-wife and 
 mother, presiding mistress of the house, is, 
 that the family will not respond to the first 
 summons, and often not even to the second. 
 It frequently takes four or five bells to get 
 2* 
 
20 At Long and 
 
 the laggards down, and meanwhile the 
 worthy housewife and the cook are in a 
 state of nervous irritation. The various 
 delinquents of the family ranch urge in 
 extenuation that they do not hear the bells, 
 and the good-wife threatens to get a bell 
 as big as an old-fashioned tavern one, which 
 will cause a protest from the entire neigh- 
 borhood. This awful threat is rarely car- 
 ried out. Why is it, anyway, that one 
 hates to honor the draft of the first bell? 
 A person who has been restless for hours, 
 and waiting for daylight for an excuse to 
 get up, will become drowsy as soon as the 
 warning bell sounds its imperative demand. 
 A man or woman troubled with insomnia 
 so strong as to defy potassium, chloral, and 
 hypodermic injections of morphine, will 
 sleep like a lamb as soon as the rising-bell 
 begins to tintinnabulate. No sermon, how- 
 ever lulling, can close the eyelids and sub- 
 due the senses to seraphic calm like the 
 voluble cadence of the little rising-bell. 
 As soon as its first faint note reaches the 
 sleeping-apartment, the troubled spirit for- 
 gets all its cares and composes itself for 
 
Short Range. 21 
 
 pleasant dreams. The housewife and cook 
 below may fret and fume, but the happy 
 sleepers above are in a fresh heaven of 
 perfectly angelic repose. A rising-bell 
 would cause a man to forget his debts and 
 a woman to let even the thought of skirts 
 and flounces melt into azure nothingness. 
 Now, between the rising-bell and the final 
 completion of the toilet there is an inter- 
 val. Any one who improves that enchanted 
 space has stolen a march on time. Therein 
 lies the secret of the matter. It is the old 
 story, — stolen fruit is sweet. The sailor 
 enjoys his hour on shore. The soldier 
 lingers in the embrace of his sweetheart. 
 The whole world drinks fragrant wine of 
 purloined delight when it can disobey the 
 rising-bell and for a poor little while rest 
 in peace. 
 
 TV/TORE light, if less longevity of candle, 
 was the controlling thought of many 
 a poet, painter, musician, and orator long 
 dead, in the physically rash enterprise of 
 burning the candle at both ends, and post- 
 
22 At Long and 
 
 humous beneficiaries are quite well content 
 that it was so. 
 
 TVTO. It is not the most beautiful woman 
 or the most accomplished one, or even 
 the most industrious one, who ranks first 
 in the scale. The truly exemplary woman, 
 the noblest of her sex, is the one who can 
 take a joke. She is a jewel in society 
 and a treasure in the household. Such a 
 woman, if married and a mother, will make 
 her boys capable and her girls agreeable. 
 Her husband will prefer home to the 
 clubs, and he will not dream of a pleasure- 
 trip without his wife. She will sweeten 
 his coffee with a judicious insinuation and 
 reconcile him to a failure in the steak by 
 pertinent jocosity. Her temper will be 
 better than the angelic, for the angels — 
 poor souls ! — are not up to the delights 
 of humor. This bewitching woman will 
 even encourage her husband in the most 
 distressing puns, and there is no stroke of 
 fortune which she will not turn aside with 
 the pretty shield of a disposition bright 
 
Short Range. 23 
 
 with perennial frolic and amiable grace. 
 If you really meditate matrimony, don't 
 bother about the young damsel's eyes, her 
 fortune, her skill on the piano, or her 
 facility in water-colors. See if she can 
 take a joke. If she stands that test, her 
 mind and heart are A No. 1, and you are 
 destined to an enormous share of domestic 
 felicity. Such a delightful woman will 
 fish you out of the water if you fall over- 
 board and make you think half-drowning 
 a godsend and wet clothes a beatitude. 
 Her very jokes are caressing and her 
 subtle wit has caught its sunny tints from 
 heaven. There is a world of peace at 
 the heart of these beguilements. 
 
 HTHE satin slipper and the brogan are 
 biographical, too. 
 
 'T'HE first pair of spectacles marks more 
 
 than a mile-stone. It implies a long 
 
 journey, and that the boundary line of a 
 
 new territory is reached. You may as 
 
24 At Long and 
 
 well hunt up your passport and take out 
 your pocket-dictionary for a strange vo- 
 cabulary. The flying skirts of youth van- 
 ish in the purple distance, and the russet 
 hues of middle age stealthily color the 
 whole landscape. It makes no difference 
 that they are unbidden ; they have come 
 to stay, and they will not take livelier tints 
 as the sands run out of the hour-glass. 
 
 'T'HERE being a great deal of mystifica- 
 tion and no little positive misrepre- 
 sentation concerning the feminine sphinx, 
 we suggest a clue to the entire riddte, — 
 viz., if you wish to know the genuine 
 excellence of the feminine nature, make a 
 study of old ladies. These were in their 
 time the "giddy girls" about whom men 
 prate so condescendingly. See what they 
 now are in all their ripened wisdom and 
 goodness ; what safe counsellors and stanch 
 friends ; how they serve as social centres 
 where all reputable things naturally clus- 
 ter; what mellow grace, resignation, gen- 
 tleness, constancy, sympathy, tact, pru- 
 
Short Range. 25 
 
 dence, and candor. You doubtless know 
 many cynical and utterly selfish old men. 
 How many old ladies of this kind do you 
 know? If men are naturally better and 
 wiser than women, why do they not show 
 it when they become old ? There is a 
 test that can readily be applied. Look 
 around at the frivolous or profane or 
 avaricious or sensual old men, and then 
 compare these men with the dignified and 
 gracious and kindly old ladies who are 
 the delight of the young and the safe 
 advisers of the middle-aged, who give 
 real character to homes and make life 
 itself noble. Why this incessant prattle 
 about the innocent gayety of girls and 
 young women during the fleeting period 
 between eighteen and twenty-five ? Even 
 then they might safely compare notes with 
 the masculine youth ; but if you desire to 
 determine what was and is in these young 
 lassies whom you think only fit to dress 
 and talk about dress, follow their career 
 until their souls are ripened, and then say 
 whether they did not always have more 
 purity, goodness, and nobility than the 
 
26 At Long and 
 
 vainglorious sex which sits in censorship 
 upon them. 
 
 "\X7"E strongly sympathize with Charles 
 Lamb's notion, that Shakespeare's 
 masterpieces are so pre-eminently mind- 
 studies that they are fitter for the closet 
 than the stage. Still, we are bound to 
 remember that they were written for the 
 stage. They can be acted, if not up to 
 their mighty measure, and we are glad we 
 have seen Forrest's "Lear," Cushman's 
 "Lady Macbeth," Booth's "Hamlet," 
 Hackett's " Falstaff," Neilson's "Rosa- 
 lind," and Salvini's "Othello." 
 
 "\A/"HAT becomes of the gold-headed 
 canes? A certain number of them 
 are every year presented by affectionate 
 employ6s to those over them in authority, 
 and in other days doctors, bankers, and 
 well-to-do fat men, without regard to vo- 
 cation, used to carry such highly respect- 
 able sticks. Nowadays one hardly ever 
 
 
Short Range. 27 
 
 encounters a gold-headed cane. It has 
 vanished with ruffled shirts, Addisonian 
 speech, and Grand isonian manners. There 
 was something eminently solid and de- 
 corous and dignified about those canes. 
 It is true it required peculiar conditions 
 to suit the cane. A short, stout man 
 could carry one; but not a short, lean 
 man. The cane harmonized well with a 
 florid complexion and iron-gray whiskers. 
 It was adapted to a deliberate gait and 
 a well-kept bearer. It could be safely 
 presumed that the possessor of the cane 
 would have turkey in season, and that 
 he would carve with judgment. Such 
 a cane always fitted in with meetings of 
 bank directors, and gave tone to funerals. 
 It was not unbecoming in church, and it 
 added weight to the family circle. It is 
 not at all likely that any dog, save the 
 shabbiest cur, ever attacked a man carrying 
 a gold-headed cane, or even barked at him. 
 The disappearance of the gold-headed cane 
 may be taken as an evidence of the spread 
 of democracy, not to speak of rank com- 
 munism. This consequential stick is not 
 3 
 
28 At Long and 
 
 found in farm-houses, and sea-captains only 
 carry it when off duty. It is a wonder that 
 justices of the peace do not revive the gold- 
 headed cane. As there are no beadles to 
 make a move towards the restoration of the 
 cane, the magistrates ought to bring it in 
 fashion again. It looks fine on a day when 
 the sun is shining, and gives an air to all 
 things sublunary. 
 
 HPHE politeness of assent, in matters that 
 are indifferent, is the most innocent 
 and justifiable hypocrisy which the social 
 world has devised. 
 
 '"THE world is full of sermons. The thief 
 cannot escape their cadences, nor the 
 red-handed assassin. 
 
 Abolish every church, and these sermons 
 go on. They cut surer and deeper than 
 the surgeon's knife. Their impressive and 
 often appalling tones are heard when most 
 of the world is wrapped in slumber. 
 
 They have no set hour or need of ex- 
 
Short Range. 29 
 
 traneous aids to give them weight. They 
 are more than words. They are forces 
 which come to avenge. They seize the 
 body and the mind and the soul. They 
 apportion justice, and mercy can come 
 later on. 
 
 Every jail and almshouse and hospital 
 and court-room and squalid tenement- 
 house is haunted by the drear suggestions 
 of one of these sermons, and there are 
 thousands of haggard men and women who 
 have them inscribed in their faces and 
 carved in their hearts. 
 
 l\ '"THERE is some strong sympathetic 
 bond between two human beings who 
 can be cheerfully silent when together for 
 the period of one half-hour. 
 
 'THIRTY-SIX years ago I surveyed from 
 a commanding eminence at Round 
 Top, Texas, an imperial prairie exhibi- 
 tion, — billows upon billows of grass, clumps 
 of trees, flashing little rivulets, and an un- 
 
3<3 At Long and 
 
 utterable zone of horizon. In later years 
 I witnessed at Big Lake George, Florida, 
 the milk-white apparition of day at her 
 first toilet, and still later I saw, in pass- 
 ing from the main hall of a steamship 
 ploughing its way from Savannah to New 
 York, the sun going down on one side of 
 the vessel in a conflagration of color, and 
 on the other side the moon — 
 
 " Sweet regent of the sky" — 
 
 reporting for its appointed ministry. And 
 somehow these bits of recollection confuse 
 the calendar and troop together as if there 
 were no dates for them or me. 
 
 T^HE world still genially prizes the genial 
 traits of Burns and Lamb, and has 
 not yet forgiven Byron's cynicism. 
 
 TF any one of mature years, who has 
 
 sincerely and with present militant 
 
 fervor conceived and appropriated the 
 
 Christ idea, could "wind up" with life 
 
 Mtt*a«BgjjgjHa 
 
Short Range. 31 
 
 and all its concerns in a week or, at most, 
 a month, that particular mortal might 
 hope to remain of the same frame of mind 
 and behavior ; but the years, with the in- 
 surrections of the flesh and the worse 
 impingements of human mind and tide, 
 do play havoc with the high vision and 
 the glorified resolve. 
 
 ''THAT a certain pensiveness should creep 
 into the literature of nations as they 
 grow old seems as inevitable as the like 
 mood with individuals. Is it in each case 
 a forewarning presage of decay and death ? 
 
 TS the intellect so icy cold ? How about 
 the chess devotee ? The lover does not 
 excel him in ardor. He, like the lover in 
 his fine frenzy, is alternately in the highest 
 heaven or deepest deep. He has patience, 
 anxiety, hope, wonder, depression, and 
 delight. Time is obliterated while he 
 ponders over wooden or ivory knights, 
 rooks, pawns, etc., and hunger and thirst 
 3* 
 
32 At Long and 
 
 fail to assail him. And all for a puzzle 
 that addresses only certain faculties of the 
 mind ! 
 
 TV/TAGNIFY that toy drum, and presto ! 
 the hidden eye discerns the gleam 
 of bayonets and the ear notes the sombre 
 boom / boom ! ! like the angry breakers of 
 the sea. 
 
 AITE can accept Caesar or Socrates (being 
 mere men, though very great ones) 
 as historical personages without calling in 
 the imagination to re-enforce our ideas of 
 the soldier or the sage ; but the imagination 
 will prove a most helpful ally when we en- 
 deavor to realize the Christ sinlessly human 
 and eternally divine. It might be brought 
 to white heat, and would be engaged in its 
 highest and holiest work. 
 
 The Catholic Church has appreciated 
 this, and by images and paintings tried to 
 convey to the torpid mind an idea of how 
 Christ appeared at different stages of His 
 
Short Range. 33 
 
 career on earth ; but the aroused and con- 
 centrated imagination will not be satisfied 
 with a vision of Christ teaching His dis- 
 ciples in parables, or expiring on the cross. 
 It will marshal its energy to realize, if 
 possible, the very nature of this human- 
 divine Being, so that all our faculties may 
 cluster about Him, and perchance, with 
 grace, seek to conform to His image. 
 
 HPHERE is a certain quality of laugh that 
 is no mean barometer of health and 
 happiness. 
 
 ANY honest looking-glass reflects and 
 reveals the sort of cage in which the 
 human spirit just now dwells ; but the 
 spirit must fashion its own mirror in order 
 to get some ghost-image of itself and 
 disclose its form and lineaments to any 
 friendly eye. 
 
 And so, after much travail with the animal 
 nature, its clamor and its needs, and after 
 those orderly social provisions in charge of 
 
34 At Long and 
 
 the sagacious intellect, this still unrecog- 
 nized spirit, without mirror or photograph, 
 deftly, cunningly, perseveringly, begins 
 at its own portrait — labor of love, pain, 
 wonder, and hope — in statuary, architect- 
 ure, painting, musical structures of sound 
 with keys, strings, tubes, and words, deco- 
 rative touches manifold and minute in the 
 public and private world, and in occasional 
 deeds outside the domain of mere utility 
 or in some curious felicities of dealing 
 with the commonplace, so as to put it, too, 
 in touch with the riddle of the beautiful. 
 And this is the secret industry under the 
 advertised activities which proclaim their 
 purpose, the ever quest of the spirit, which 
 knows too well its cage, at last to get some 
 glimpse of itself. Too restless to wait for 
 the grave, it still moulds and clothes the 
 ever-changing ghost, and has not yet the 
 hardihood to declare, " Eureka ! It is I." 
 
 QOMPUTED by the law standards of 
 
 men, the bad are a decided minority, 
 
 — a mere fraction. Tried by the Divine 
 
Short Range. 35 
 
 standards, they are a vast majority. Man's 
 laws deal only with acts. God's laws with 
 moods, thoughts, and conditions of spirit 
 as well as with acts. 
 
 n^HAT magnificent bird technically 
 known by ornithologists as Bonasa 
 umbellus, and familiarly, but wrongly, 
 styled pheasant by rural people in the 
 West and partridge by the New England 
 people, is now ready for the sportsman. 
 The leaves have fallen early this fall, and 
 the foliage will not embarrass the lover 
 of field- and wood- sports who has energy 
 enough to climb the hills and invade the 
 hemlock thickets where our finest game- 
 bird makes his abode. There is no sport 
 in the way of small game which will com- 
 pare with it. The tremendous velocity of 
 the bird's flight, its cunning in placing 
 itself behind trees in the line of its flight, 
 the densely-wooded haunts which suddenly 
 secrete it, the beauty of its plumage, and 
 the startling whir of its uprising, louder 
 than that of a whole covey of quail on the 
 
36 At Long and 
 
 wing, make the sport absolutely enchanting 
 to the practised gunner whose nerves are 
 cool enough for such a pastime. Snipe, 
 duck, woodcock, quail, plover, curlew, and 
 the pinnated grouse (our prairie-chicken) 
 present abundant attractions. There is a 
 singular pleasure in being poled through 
 the marshes of the Kankakee and thrilled 
 by the surprise of mallards in their aquatic 
 home, and the joys of autumn woodcock- 
 shooting have been told by many a winter's 
 fireside ; but none of these compare with 
 the exhilaration of ruffed-grouse-shooting. 
 What a glory to be in the hills, to as- 
 cend and descend precipitous places, cross 
 tangled ravines, and plunge into dark-green 
 thickets, — thickets of evergreens, — and, 
 when least you expect it, have this glorious 
 bird rise with a sound of mild thunder and 
 flash like a thing of beauty upon the vision ! 
 This puts the keen sportsman to the test. 
 There is no time to deliberate. What he 
 does must be done quickly and done well. 
 Then to rest at noonday with your gun 
 leaning upon some old log, your faithful 
 setter sharing your lunch, and away below 
 
Short Range. 37 
 
 you some little rivulet telling its old sweet 
 legends as it gurgles along, with just a bit 
 of blue sky smiling through the roof of the 
 forest, is a memory to last as long as life 
 lasts. The sportsman takes out the shin- 
 ing spoils of his foray and looks with rare 
 pleasure upon the radiant bird, with its 
 black ruff and its mottled feathers, — a pleas- 
 ure which the Wilson snipe, the Virginia 
 quail, and the charming wood-duck can 
 never give. There is a difference in hunt- 
 ing in the hills and the stubble-fields. 
 Every real lover of nature has felt it. 
 Sometimes the sportsman on the hills 
 reaches an altitude which commands a fine 
 panorama of picturesque scenery, and the 
 air blows fresh and cool and bracing upon 
 him. He then descends into gorges and 
 is lost in the mazes of the woods. This 
 alternation of light and shade gives a weird 
 and romantic flavor to ruffed-grouse-shoot- 
 ing. Quail-shooting is usually done in 
 company, and there is wanting the inex- 
 pressible charm of solitude which the hill 
 gunner has. Next to grouse-shooting we 
 would certainly place water-sports, includ- 
 
38 At Long and 
 
 ing boating in such streams as the Kan- 
 kakee, or in the lakes that are shallow and 
 overgrown with vegetation. Mountain 
 grouse-shooting is not to be recommended. 
 It is unnecessarily laborious. The best 
 spots for this sport that we at present recall 
 are in the lower end of Alleghany County, 
 Pennsylvania, and in parts of Beaver and 
 the contiguous counties in the same State. 
 Go off the lines of railroad, hire a wagon 
 to take you miles back in the almost in- 
 accessible regions, make what accommo- 
 dations you can with any one living in such 
 secluded spots ; then get your gun and dog 
 in order, and prepare to work and enjoy 
 life as you never did over the wine-cup, or 
 at shows, or in society, or with books, or 
 with the choicest meditations of your soul 
 in its happiest moments. Take our word 
 for it, if ever you spend a couple of weeks 
 in successful ruffed-grouse-shooting, the 
 zigzag snipe, the swift and pretty quail, the 
 prairie-chicken, and we might almost say 
 the whistling teal and superb woodcock 
 will be relatively tame to you ever after- 
 wards. 
 
Short Range. 39 
 
 "DIRRELL'S essay on Gibbon and Low- 
 ell's on Landor are happy specimens 
 of playfully judicial criticism, criticism that 
 is at once friendly and discriminating. 
 
 HTHE wild-goose is the greatest traveller 
 extant, but he is only a goose after 
 all. When Jefferson was in Europe he not 
 only seized upon ideas which were to form 
 a part of the American Constitution, but 
 he brought back valuable seeds to enrich 
 our agriculture. Great natural powers or 
 fine training are requisite to make travel 
 fruitful. 
 
 *T*HE capacity for downright, hearty ad- 
 miration or liking for something or 
 somebody is not wholly extinct even in the 
 literature of this material age, as we dis- 
 cover in Augustine Birrell's animated essays 
 on Cardinal Newman, Matthew Arnold, 
 Hazlitt, and Lamb. There is a colloquial 
 freshness and zest in the handling of these 
 names, with all they signify, as if the former 
 4 
 
40 At Long and 
 
 owners of the names were in no sense dead, 
 but most abundantly alive. 
 
 TN the lighter critical essays it does not 
 behoove the writer to obtrude too 
 much scholarship. The professor to his 
 own habitat. 
 
 ■LJUMANITARIANISM, a lovingly sym- 
 pathetic attitude towards Nature 
 (pointed out by Humboldt in his " Cos- 
 mos"), and music, which rivals if it does 
 not surpass the other arts, as distinctively 
 separate the modern from the antique 
 world as does the wonderful aptitude for 
 the physical sciences. 
 
 'HPHE landscape-painters who have es- 
 sayed by brilliant color effects to 
 transfer Nature to their canvas have not 
 fared so well as those artists who, with 
 sobriety of spirit, have endeavored by the 
 management of light and shade to repro- 
 
Short Range. 41 
 
 duce what they have not only seen, but 
 deeply felt, by cliff, forest, and stream, in 
 velvet meadows and haunted dells. 
 
 '"FHE book-reading and the non-book- 
 reading world employ a few words 
 which they hold in common, for the com- 
 munication of rudimentary wants, and 
 there all conference or intellectual com- 
 munity ends. They might almost as well 
 belong to different species. 
 
 A FFECTATION is the most treacherous 
 of all forms of archery. It never hits 
 the mark, and at last it disables the hand 
 that wields the bow. 
 
 T HAVE a friend, an Ohio lawyer, who 
 once told me that, having sadly realized 
 that he could not be a very talented or 
 gifted man, he consoled himself with the 
 thought that there was nothing to prevent 
 him being a good man, and that he found 
 
42 At Long and 
 
 this, on trial, to be by all odds the hardest 
 thing he had ever attempted. 
 
 'T'HE world is getting old enough for 
 the French and German peoples to 
 discard their enmities and make such ex- 
 changes of the traits, qualities, and arts in 
 which each excels as will help to make a 
 more rounded and admirable Frenchman 
 and German. 
 
 HPHESE newspaper men do love to di- 
 late on the pleasures or pangs of the 
 noose, — the noose nuptial and the sheriff's 
 noose. 
 
 C)UR newspaper press makes us alto- 
 gether too well acquainted with one 
 another. The most sensitive and shrinking 
 personality can find no screen these days, 
 not even one of honeysuckles and morning- 
 glories, behind which it can escape ruth- 
 less inspection. 
 
Short Range. 43 
 
 HPHE development of the Roman Cath- 
 olic Church in the United States 
 may have some police relation, yet, to the 
 labor and capital conflicts which periodi- 
 cally threaten the public peace. 
 
 "\A7"E recall a picture yet unframed, and 
 smile with a sadness 
 
 " That only resembles sorrow 
 As the mist resembles the rain," — 
 
 a water-brook with many a bright cascade, 
 clustering hills, a fishing-rod leaning mo- 
 tionless over the limpid stream, a siesta 
 on the rocks. That is all. 
 
 A PART from these things to which we 
 set ourselves, there is the life of mere 
 animal sensation to reckon with. What 
 does it profit one to do this or that with 
 expertness, and drag a ball and chain the 
 next unmortgaged hour ? We hear of the 
 " Corpus Juris." There is also a " Corpus 
 Hominis." 
 
 4* 
 
44 -At Long and 
 
 ■\X7"E trust the little minnows are quite 
 as happy as they seem to be, dart- 
 ing through the clear waters or assembled, 
 as sometimes happens, at love-feast, since 
 the great fish pursue them and the most 
 contemplative angler knows them only as 
 "bait." 
 
 THHERE it is again, — a phantom ship 
 that looms for a moment against the 
 far horizon, its spectral masts and sails of 
 mist just visible, and then the clouds shut 
 it from sight and the waves which roll 
 upon the land bring no tidings. This is 
 the enchanted vessel which wistful-eyed 
 children who crave beautiful gifts and 
 wan-cheeked women who long for sur- 
 cease of care have dreamed of, — the 
 ship that comes over the sea. In a 
 thousand homes the pathetic petition of 
 little ones and the sigh of older hearts are 
 again and again quieted by those magic 
 words, "Wait until our ship comes over 
 the sea!" Ah! blessed compensation for 
 so many carking griefs and anxieties, that 
 
Short Range. 45 
 
 the fancy can still descry across the waste 
 of waters the fairy craft, its sails full set, 
 and almost hear the boatswain's whistle 
 and the song of seamen rejoicing that 
 they are coming into port. No matter 
 how often the apparition has melted away, 
 leaving naught for the eye to rest upon 
 but the chafing seas and the restless gulls 
 that mock at the chains and dungeons of 
 the dull land, the vision, so often de- 
 ceiving, will repeat its fond delusions, and 
 the toil-worn father at his meagrely-spread 
 table will promise all a feast of good and 
 kindly things when our ship comes over 
 the sea. The aching mother will lull the 
 importunities of childhood with these fond 
 charmed words, and, trusting in God's 
 tender care, the household will retire to 
 rest dreaming of the spectral ship whose 
 prow is turned landward and whose hull 
 is laden with caskets of rare and precious 
 store. It is a strange craft, this phantom 
 one of the mists; its owners are legion, 
 and no underwriter has insured it. The 
 young bride who has ventured all for love 
 has a share in it ; so have the disappointed 
 
46 At Long and 
 
 ones to whom life has been harsh ; all ages 
 and all sexes and all conditions are inter- 
 ested in the vessel and its cargo. That 
 pensive lass with the sweet and thoughtful 
 face, who sits at yonder window gazing 
 into vacancy, sees far over the great surges 
 the filmy spars and cordage of the deliver- 
 ing vessel that is to bring to her feet the 
 prince of her heart, handsome, rich, and 
 all devotion ; her widowed mother, patient 
 and chastened by many a trial, is dream- 
 ing, too ; a brother or an uncle is in the 
 gracious bark, and soon all cares of pov- 
 erty will be over, and plenty and peace 
 will illuminate their home. 
 
 Dream on, ye children of the earth. 
 The phantom ship does come into the 
 harbor, and the spices, stuffs, and jewels 
 are unladen, though not in the shape ye 
 wist; the hope that has encouraged and 
 sustained is the ship itself, and the fond 
 imaginings that have cheated time of his 
 wrinkles and given days and nights the 
 wine of courage and gladness have done 
 their perfect work. Who shall ever de- 
 spair whilst that far-off ship glows a while 
 
Short Range. 47 
 
 in the rays of the setting sun ? Nay, let 
 us follow it to the last. Sweet odors come 
 from distant lands, and this ghost-craft 
 with moonbeam spars and spider-web can- 
 vas is sailing straight on to the myrtles of 
 Paradise. 
 
 A CERTAIN proportion of mental 
 
 narrowness, vigorous physique, and 
 
 lively interest in mundane things makes 
 
 a man who can be most usefully employed 
 
 in a variety of affairs. 
 
 A NAP is a graceful symphony; it is 
 not an entire composition ; it is a 
 novelette and not a novel ; it bears the 
 same relation to sleep that sleep bears to 
 a prolonged trance, that a kiss does to the 
 sum total of a courtship ; its brevity and 
 its happening whilst the sun illuminates 
 a noisy world add to its sweetness ; to let 
 this delicious bit of petty larceny per- 
 petrated on old Father Time be vulgar- 
 ized into a great exhausting and snoring 
 
48 At Long and 
 
 slumber would be a rank transgression. 
 Take your little nap, — if it is only for five 
 minutes, — and be grateful that you are not 
 a street-car mule or engaged in getting 
 out an afternoon paper. You need not 
 keep a carriage if you have time for this 
 nap. You are reasonably rich and should 
 be contented. 
 
 HTHERE is a gentle nerve excitation 
 (tremulousness) which is favorable to 
 imaginative thought, delicate emotional 
 writing, and such speaking to juries as 
 involves any appeal to the feelings. 
 
 QOETHE was called the "many-sided" 
 and Shakespeare the "myriad- 
 minded." If an angel were given the 
 histories of the race, largely taken up 
 with exploitation of deeds of carnage, he 
 would say, "These are demons calling 
 themselves by turns barbarous or civil- 
 ized." If he were then given the records 
 which the race has preserved of its phi- 
 
Short Range. 49 
 
 losophy, science, art, and benevolence, he 
 would say "These people are many-sided 
 and myriad-minded." 
 
 'T'HERE is an affair in which there is 
 no sex, — the lonesome interim be- 
 tween the putting away of a disillusioned 
 toy and the finding of a new one. 
 
 TT is not pleasant to one who meditates 
 the pen to find that what he counted 
 on as a well or spring turns out to be a 
 cistern dependent on occasional rains. In 
 time of drought — poor fellow ! — he feels 
 like one whose draft is returned from 
 bank marked "no funds." Still, he can 
 compile, and it may prove more lucrative. 
 
 CONSIDERING the age in which he 
 wrote, the manners of his fellow- 
 dramatists, who were also his personal 
 friends, and the necessity for coarse and 
 obscene allusions to conciliate the audi- 
 
50 At Long and 
 
 ences of that day, Shakespeare's general 
 delicacy, purity, and soaring elevation of 
 art-essence and mode strike one now as 
 monumentally separating him from all the 
 forceful men of that prodigious era in 
 British literature. 
 
 I" DEFY any one to be " sentimental" in 
 the crisp air of a fine winter morning. 
 
 '"THE ingenious youth of our time does 
 not need to order a new suit to make 
 an impression ; he puts on a fresh scarf, 
 and the deed is done. He can, by fre- 
 quently changing this little article, foster 
 the illusion of a very varied toilet, and if 
 he have taste can express his individuality 
 more decisively in his cravat than in all 
 the rest of his habiliments. 
 
 T^HERE are expressive words which 
 
 are substantially meaningless to one 
 
 until they are invested with meaning by 
 
Short Range. 51 
 
 some special experience : such words as 
 love, faith, poverty, friendlessness, re- 
 morse, despair. 
 
 C)NE clue to our fondness for nature, 
 save its compelling beauty, is, that 
 under the skies and amidst the hills and 
 pastures and running waters there is the 
 blessedness of conscious spirit repose, as 
 sweet as the unconscious repose which 
 slumber gives; nay, sweeter, since it is a 
 gift in the broad light of day. 
 
 HPHE planets have been named, but not 
 being within "speaking distance," it 
 is no intentional rudeness on the part of 
 the multitudes, who only know them as 
 glow-worms of the sky. 
 
 ANY book which repeats our thought 
 not only gives us a pleasing surprise, 
 but wins our friendship at once. In com- 
 plimenting such a book we adroitly com- 
 5 
 
52 At Long and 
 
 pliment ourselves, though we do not even 
 so much as whisper to our inmost selves 
 that part of the transaction. 
 
 TT was not of the Parliament of Letters 
 and Art that Sir Robert Walpole 
 affirmed, "Every man has his price." The 
 constraining desire which invades and 
 takes possession of certain souls for some 
 form, however slight, of creative and 
 artistic achievement, does not have its 
 genesis in any greed of pelf, place, or even 
 renown. It is the passionate yearning to 
 
 " Live a being more intense, . . . 
 . . . Gaining as we give, the life we image." 
 
 '"PHERE is a subtle pathos in the occa- 
 sional effort of some very rich man 
 to establish a social tie with the poor in 
 purse but proud in spirit, by affecting some 
 taste that will awaken a responsive chord. 
 And there is a still deeper pathos when the 
 man of millions, for his own sake, en- 
 
Short Range. 53 
 
 deavors at times to escape the despotism 
 of his dollars. 
 
 Jay Gould had a surpassing fine collec- 
 tion of orchids. 
 
 HTHE rattlesnake has compelled the re- 
 spect of man. There is nothing of 
 the sneak about this snake. 
 
 ''PHIS old earth of ours does quake or 
 erupt every now and then ; but come, 
 now ! doesn't the old lady behave herself 
 in the main with more discretion, as she 
 takes her annual tour around the sun, than 
 the bipeds she carries along with her ? 
 
 '"THERE are habiliments suited to pros- 
 perous men of business, judges, states- 
 men, and clergymen, into which some 
 member of the amusing fraternity — writers, 
 artists, and the like — sometimes inconti- 
 nently plunges, and struts around in a semi- 
 shamefaced travesty of the air of respect- 
 
54 At Long and 
 
 able opulence. Those of his own craft 
 muse thoughtfully over this transmogrified 
 being ; but he is transparent to the calm 
 eye of the veteran hotel waiter, and when 
 he puts aside his raiment he feels as if he 
 had been journeying in strange lands and 
 lost his own identity. Sea-captains are 
 privileged to do such things on their wed- 
 ding-day. 
 
 CUPERABUNDANT animal health is 
 such an "embarrassment of riches" 
 that the possessor turns spendthrift forth- 
 with. 
 
 / T*HE preachers have a way in their dis- 
 courses of reassuring the mourners by 
 contrasting the icy shroud of winter with 
 the reawakened bloom of spring, the leaf- 
 less trees putting on new foliage, etc. It 
 is a misleading analogy. Girdle the tree 
 and actually kill it, and it will not put forth 
 foliage again. The conviction that we live 
 again is not found in what we see in the 
 
Short Range. 55 
 
 outer world. We find it in our own bosoms. 
 We did not put it there, and we cannot 
 destroy it if we would. 
 
 "LJ OPE gives her little wings a flutter at 
 
 daybreak ; but is it the pleasure of 
 
 retrospect or the grateful relief at escape 
 
 that makes the twilight hour so agreeable ? 
 
 TV/TY friendly brier is prolific of idle 
 fancies this 8 a.m., — e.g., would the 
 Greeks who fought at Marathon have con- 
 quered at Cheronea, the Persians of Cyrus 
 have disquieted Alexander at Arbela, and 
 the legions of the Caesar have made short 
 work of the festive Hun ? 
 
 TF one wishes to know how many Edens 
 there are in this blessed land of politics 
 and politicians, let him not go to the art 
 galleries or the professed poets to find out, 
 but rather equip himself with a score of 
 dazzling railroad prose poems, and revel 
 5* 
 
56 At Long and 
 
 by the hour in visions of entrancing 
 loveliness. Gould, Vanderbilt, Garrett, 
 Huntington, and their confreres are the 
 bards who sing the glories of the fair land 
 stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 
 Who has not sighed for the perennial de- 
 lights of Kansas, and longed to die in the 
 Bayou Teche ? There was a time when 
 Duiuth was a more musical name than 
 Damascus, and the swamps of Arkansas 
 have in their day rivalled the Vale of 
 Shiraz. Why deplore the loss of that art 
 of coloring which Titian carried away 
 with him when he quit the world ? The 
 railroad poets make words eclipse the hues 
 of Titian and transform barren wastes into 
 oases of beauty. The age of iron is the 
 age of fancy. 
 
 T£TT NORTH said, " The most delicious 
 sensation in life is the first tug of a 
 salmon." I beg leave to add that it has a 
 rival in the first whir of a grouse, — our 
 American "ruffed grouse" of the woods, 
 miscalled pheasant. 
 
Short Range. 57 
 
 HTHE tiniest drop of the sparkle of 
 twenty would intoxicate like ether 
 at fifty. 
 
 "pXPLAIN it as one may, no one ever 
 felt the tender home-like feeling for a 
 dwelling-house without grounds and trees 
 that he does for a house even if it have 
 but a little grass-plot and a few rose-bushes 
 and other shrubbery. Let the house be 
 ever so grand, its apartments ever so com- 
 fortable, it does not take abiding posses- 
 sion of the heart like a home in a green- 
 sward and sheltered by noble forest trees. 
 The old well in a grassy yard contains 
 more delightful associations than the most 
 elegant drawing-room, and children re- 
 member their romps in pastures and their 
 swings under a paternal oak when they 
 have forgotten all about big stairways and 
 imposing parlors. / The love of nature is 
 strong in us all. Man was originally a 
 hunter, and the old instinct for the woods 
 constantly breaks through the veneer of 
 the civilization he has imposed upon him- 
 
58 At Long and 
 
 self. If you wish your family to have a 
 life-long memory of a dear and precious 
 home, make an endeavor to have some 
 pretty suburban spot, with verdure and a 
 visible sky to haunt the fancy with sug- 
 gestions of the beautiful. Mere bricks 
 and mortar have no perennial claim upon 
 the mind. A stately tree in front of home 
 gives gracious welcome ere you reach the 
 threshold, and it is a singularly pleasing 
 sight to witness the blue smoke from the 
 roof-top toying with the air. 
 
 '"PHE solemn way in which certain clocks 
 announce the hours would make even 
 Lamb break off in the middle of a pun. 
 
 HTHERE is no quality more relished and 
 less adequately prized than humor. 
 The compact sense that underlies it and 
 interpenetrates it is not properly recog- 
 nized. It was this fact which led Tom 
 Corwin, of Ohio, a man of the rarest gifts, 
 to warn young men against the exercise of 
 
Short Range. 59 
 
 wit. He said people laughed at the clown 
 and respected the ring-master. 
 
 T7INE wit or humor is often covert sense 
 
 masquerading as overt nonsense. It 
 
 is a playful trick and a pretty effective one. 
 
 /^\UR disappointments and desponden- 
 cies over shattered ideals or melting 
 illusions count for nothing with a surround- 
 ing world preoccupied with its own affairs. 
 How grateful to turn to a well-written 
 novel and find that such phases of life are 
 thought of enough interest to portray ! 
 Many a time one finds a sympathetic echo 
 in a novel ; rarely in a world which does 
 its best or worst to make one fear that there 
 are only two substantial things, — to wit, 
 digestion and cash. 
 
 TT is the fashion to consider the poet as 
 
 one who expresses himself in rhyme or 
 
 blank verse. If he be a poet he knows that 
 
60 At Long and 
 
 these are fetters, and that he has never 
 uttered that which is within him; only 
 stammered in impeding verse. 
 
 TF the person who takes the part of king 
 on the stage suffers a sense of humili- 
 ating transition when his royal robes are 
 laid aside and he is compelled to higgle 
 with his landlady and supplicate with his 
 washerwoman, what must be the feeling of 
 the drum-major of a brass band when he 
 hangs up his enormous fur shako, hides 
 away his baton, and melts into the ranks 
 of private life ? He who has been accus- 
 tomed to march at the head of resounding 
 music, with the plaudits of a host of chil- 
 dren and the gaping admiration of a pro- 
 miscuous throng, must find it hard to be. 
 shorn of his dimensions and sink into the 
 commonplace. He will always be the 
 most wondrous being on earth to his own 
 family. No wife or little ones could ever 
 be indifferent to the drum-major when he 
 sallies forth in all the pomp and panoply 
 of his profession, and the youngest of his 
 
Short Range. 61 
 
 flock deem him a veritable ruler of the 
 universe. How much show can be effected 
 by a huge hat, a great staff, and some glit- 
 tering tinsel ! There is a large family of 
 drum-majors who do not march at the 
 head of brass bands; their consequence 
 has as little to support it, and impartial 
 time at last discloses them even to them- 
 selves, the most cruel stroke of all. 
 
 "JV/T ANY a poor little ugly dog has secured 
 life-long food, shelter, and care by 
 simply wagging his tail and giving a quick, 
 glad bark when his master comes. A good 
 deal could be said about this, but we for- 
 bear. 
 
 TT sometimes happens, in a city, that a 
 man, by proffering a dollar, or at most 
 three half-dollars, at a ticket-office, can 
 enter a building and have a number of 
 people, who have devoted years to ac- 
 quiring the art, amuse and entertain him 
 for a whole evening. Happy dog, not to 
 
62 At I :■ s 
 
 have reached the stage when he cannot be 
 amused even by an outlay of one dollar 
 and a half! 
 
 TF one will think for a moment of the 
 fond participial adjectives ending in 
 "ing" that have been applied to little 
 brooks, he will perceive how much more 
 pleasure they have given than lakes., rivers. 
 or the mighty sea. 
 
 '"PHE busy days, one by one, superimpose 
 their colors on the old precious can- 
 vas ', but a few chords of the music of 
 Prospero's island will cause these colors to 
 melt away, and lo ! there are the virginal 
 pictures and the lark still soaring at 
 heaven's srate. 
 
 TF it be even partly true that conversa- 
 tion is one of the "lost arts," cards 
 will flourish with rank luxuriance. Ken- 
 nan, in his dismal stories about Russia, 
 
Short Range. 63 
 
 states that card-playing is nearly universal 
 in that despotic land, because it is dan- 
 gerous to talk : spies are everywhere. 
 
 COME one, whose name we have for- 
 gotten, defined fame as "postponed 
 oblivion." 
 
 "M"0, my good German friend in English 
 dress, we cannot 
 
 " Clothe the palpable and the familiar 
 With golden exhalations of the dawn." 
 
 We consciously, and without narcotics, 
 provide for so many hours of obli/ion 
 (sleep), and have achieved the feat so 
 often that it has lost its impressiveness. 
 There may be a "nine days' wonder," 
 but it will be desperately stale at the close. 
 
 TT is the contour and grand repose of the 
 mountain, the movement and color of 
 the sea. And yet, when we have said this, 
 6 
 
64 At Long and 
 
 how much we seem to have left unsaid ! 
 The unexpressed part fills volumes in the 
 mind and heart, — an unpublished library. 
 
 '"PHE emphasis with which Christ referred 
 to little children in relation to the 
 kingdom of heaven implies not only a 
 state of being in which there is no con- 
 scious sinfulness, but also a state in which 
 there is no deliberated thought. 
 
 In this aspect, thinking may be regarded 
 as one of the necessary pangs of earth and 
 penalties of hell. 
 
 Was it Schopenhauer who said, " Con- 
 sciousness is the malady of human nature' ' ? 
 
 TT is not the love of money that is the 
 root of all evil. It is the love of self. 
 
 A FEW years ago the newspapers and 
 
 several magazines were discussing 
 
 the query, " Is marriage a failure ?' ' Since 
 
 then there have been divers crashes, col- 
 
Short Range. 65 
 
 lapses, in mercantile, banking, railroad, 
 and manufacturing enterprises. It is now 
 about time to introduce the sapient in- 
 quiry, "Is business a failure?" 
 
 TF the furred and feathered denizens of 
 some sylvan retreat could know the 
 portent of the first resounding axe in 
 those solitary haunts, their hearts would 
 answer in beats like funeral drums. 
 
 'TWO words have become obnoxious for 
 what they represent, or are supposed 
 
 to represent, to classes not at all affiliated. 
 The words are " Society," " Fashion." 
 The classes may be numbered, — 
 
 1. Christians of a Puritanicil or Quaker 
 type. 
 
 2. The masses of working-people. 
 
 3. Contemplative, scholarly people. 
 
 4. Ignorant, brutal people. 
 
 The attitude of feeling in which each class 
 stands to the things for which the words 
 specified stand may be put under their 
 
66 At Long and 
 
 respective numbers as above tabulated, 
 thus : 
 
 i. Morbid distrust of worldly gayety. 
 
 2. Sharp and unwelcome sense of con- 
 trast with modicum of envy. 
 
 3. Distaste for social gregariousness and 
 for forms and fripperies. 
 
 4. Natural hatred for anything elegant 
 and comely. 
 
 TTHE old " back log" still stoutly holds 
 its own, amidst all the mutations in 
 stone. It antedated Homer, and may sur- 
 vive him. 
 
 A POT of flowers, some homely work in 
 worsted, wax, or shells, and thereby 
 hangs a tale. The appealing eye of dumb 
 animals that have no gift of articulate 
 speech ofttimes arrests the thoughtful mind. 
 Let us take passing and gentle heed to 
 these men and women about us who have 
 no craft of pen, pencil, brush, chisel, or 
 lyre ; hardly a voice, indeed ; only some- 
 
Short Range. 67 
 
 what weary hands and feet, and hearts 
 piteously weary at intervals because they 
 have no voice. 
 
 T^HE express-messenger at Christmas- 
 time loses his official look and wears 
 a half-bashful and pleased expression. 
 
 HTHE charm of the night is in the release, 
 partial or total, from the inquisition 
 and attrition of the day. 
 
 It is a soft fancy that there may yet be 
 days of light which never wound like the 
 teeth of a saw, or fret like a swarm of in- 
 sects. "We are such stuff as dreams are 
 made of," — and this also maybe a dream. 
 
 I7VEN Dean Swift never said so cruel 
 a thing of his kind as the ancient 
 Roman who said, "Homo est, per quod 
 stomachum est," — i.e., a man is what he is 
 through his stomach. Is the world a huge 
 hash-house ? 
 
 6* 
 
68 At Long and 
 
 HTHAT pendulum of the ludicrous, the 
 owl, is quite as comical as the 
 monkey. 
 
 "V^OUTH and age are as far apart as 
 
 " Flora and the country green, 
 Dance and Provencal mirth," 
 
 from the bleakest polar region, and yet 
 along the telegraphic wire of love they 
 may and do exchange messages that are 
 understood. 
 
 '"THE desperado, the malcontent, who 
 fancies after reading the daily jour- 
 nal that he is no worse than the rest of 
 the world, that he is simply in the fashion, 
 makes a foolish mistake. The world is 
 earning its bread by the sweat of its brow, 
 and the criminal who interferes with it is 
 doing a more grievous wrong than even 
 his own wicked heart contemplates. Every 
 cog in the great wheel that he puts out of 
 order for a single second injures thousands 
 
Short Range. 69 
 
 of human beings. He must not complain 
 if outraged society avenges and protects 
 itself. It must do so. False sentiment 
 may whine as it will, but the honest effort 
 of men and women cannot be interrupted 
 even by the angels, much less by depraved 
 men. 
 
 '"THE freemasonry of the angle is not 
 so robust as that of the gun, but it 
 is a trifle more engaging. 
 
 '"THE only thing possible for persons 
 constitutionally out of tune with the 
 people and scenes amidst which they have 
 their being is to cultivate, so far as it can 
 be done, a partially sympathetic spirit with 
 the thoughts and activities of others, and 
 extract from those silent sessions which 
 Shakespeare had consulted such balm as 
 they can afford. The solitary men need 
 neither affirm nor deny the superior wis- 
 dom of the majority. All they need do is 
 to recognize their own constitutional es- 
 
70 At Long and 
 
 trangement and make it as little offensive 
 to others and as little a source of discomfort 
 to themselves as good sense, good breed- 
 ing, and temperate philosophy will permit. 
 
 "\7U r RITERS sometimes deplore the short 
 tenure of life which even capitally 
 good books have. But where is the me- 
 morial of all the wit, wisdom, and witchery 
 which lawyers of high genius have dis- 
 played in a thousand court-rooms ? 
 
 HTHE discriminating use of adjectives im- 
 parts a distinctive and fine quality 
 alike to colloquial speech and set writing. 
 The better poets are notably fastidious 
 in this behalf, and may be most profitably 
 consulted by students of style, — e.g., in 
 Campbell's " The Soldier's Dream,"— 
 
 " And the sentinel stars set their watch in the sky." 
 
 In common conversational exchanges, 
 the repeated employment of a few stereo- 
 typed adjectives would imply great poverty 
 
Short Range. 71 
 
 and feebleness of taste. This would be a 
 hasty and often unjust judgment. This 
 little stock of well-worn and hard-worked 
 adjectives is kept on hand for instant con- 
 venience in the sudden and rapid inter- 
 changes of passing intercourse, where aca- 
 demic precision is not exacted or expected. 
 Persons of good ability and abundant re- 
 sources on occasion have this small change 
 to throw away in the general comedy of 
 small talk. It is a Bohemian protest against 
 everlasting critical exactitude. 
 
 "\17"E hear of misanthropy, but who of 
 us is personally acquainted with a 
 genuine out-and-out misanthrope ? 
 
 AS the physical world and every atom 
 of it is in a perpetual whirl, Nature 
 imposes the desire and necessity iox physi- 
 cal movement upon her human children, 
 else why the skipping-rope, riding, walk- 
 ing and skating, athletic games, dancing, 
 pleasure of the chase, etc. ? If the mind 
 
72 At Long and 
 
 rebels against a dead calm, so does the 
 body. 
 
 'T'HE barking dog seems to harmonize, 
 if the expression may be allowed, 
 with the hills and pastures of the country ; 
 he provokes wrath among the denizens of 
 the city. 
 
 ''THE feminine passion for dress and per- 
 sonal adornment is the theme of 
 many who find, or think they find, coun- 
 tenance in rare Ben Jonson's celebrated 
 verse : 
 
 " Give me a look, give me a face 
 That makes simplicity a grace ; 
 Robes loosely flowing, hair as free, 
 Such sweet neglect more taketh me 
 Than all the adulteries of art 
 That strike mine eyes but not mine heart." 
 
 Ah ! Benjamin, bricklayer, soldier, and 
 poet, the sweet neglect which captivated 
 your fancy was the perfection of the art 
 which conceals art; there was not a de- 
 
Short Range. 73 
 
 tail of the seeming freedom of mien and 
 drapery which the nymph who inflamed 
 your muse had not with subtle prevision 
 and unerring witchcraft of taste perpended 
 and arranged for conquest. The care 
 which the gentler sex bestows upon ex- 
 ternals can no more be successfully im- 
 peached than that innate aspiration for the 
 beautiful which expresses itself in a thou- 
 sand attractive forms, in bronze and mar- 
 ble and wood-work, upon canvas, in the 
 symphonies of the musician, and in the 
 melodious syllables of the poet. It is a 
 feeling which pervades all classes, which 
 puts the pot of flowers upon the window- 
 sill of the humblest home, as well as the 
 engravings and paintings and plaques 
 upon the walls of palaces. Take this 
 hunger and thirst for beauty of outline, 
 charm of color, and melody of sound out 
 of the human soul, and all its ideals would 
 perish and the dream of Paradise fade 
 into darkness forever. It is not an acci- 
 dent that the sex which illustrates in its 
 own distinctive grace and loveliness of 
 form, feature, and motion the living idea 
 
74 At Long and 
 
 of human beauty, so that the glory of the 
 physical universe shall not make us all 
 pantheists, should, in its wise attention to 
 all exterior aids, preserve the refinements 
 of civilization and save men from relapsing 
 into semi-barbarism. 
 
 '"THE modern man is not easily discon- 
 certed. He still wears the stove- 
 pipe hat. 
 
 '"THE peculiar claims of the Old Testa- 
 ment as a book of religion have 
 overshadowed its exceptional value as a 
 narrative of early ages and peoples. It is 
 so interpenetrated with the theocratic 
 idea that it does not permit us to read it 
 as we would Herodotus or Livy. 
 
 TT sometimes happens, in amusing mood, 
 
 that one wonders whether uncles and 
 
 aunts are not in the habit of doing more 
 
 kind things, with less animated recogni- 
 
Short Range. 75 
 
 tion thereof, than any other kin, mothers 
 excepted. 
 
 "P\0 those folk who assail Sir Walter 
 Scott, because he delivered no " Mes- 
 sage," get into a controversy with a cool- 
 ing draught from a mountain spring or with 
 the tonic breeze that has journeyed over 
 the ocean, or with all things that simply 
 cheer, refresh, and exhilarate? Old Dr. 
 Sam. J. and T. Carlyle, Esq., did not pre- 
 empt the whole fair earth. 
 
 HTHE horn of the hunter is heard in the 
 hills, and really as well as allitera- 
 tively, hut the guitar of the balcony and 
 the banjo of the lowly hut have found 
 their way into the drawing-room. 
 
 ''THERE are a good many elaborate 
 
 articles published nowadays on 
 
 house architecture, and a few notable 
 
 magazine articles have been wholly taken 
 
 7 
 
76 At Long and 
 
 up with the exterior of houses. Grant- 
 ing all that is so well said about doors 
 and windows and projecting cornices 
 and chimneys, and all that is said about 
 the interior decorations of houses by an- 
 other class of writers, we believe that 
 most men find their chief comfort in a 
 cosey snuggery answering the purpose of 
 a library and smoking-room, and in some 
 retired porch where in warm weather they 
 can take their ease. The richly-furnished 
 parlor is the last place the average man 
 looks for enjoyment, and he never victim- 
 izes his bosom friends by installing them 
 in that apartment. He is willing to con- 
 cede all that is claimed for wall-paper, 
 and frescos, and curtains, and china, 
 and antique furniture, and pictures, and 
 other odds and ends bearing the seal of 
 fashion, but when he seeks pleasure he 
 retreats to his own den. There are doubt- 
 less a few choice engravings there; they 
 are for delight, and not for show. There 
 may possibly be a good breech-loader in 
 the corner and a jointed rod suspended 
 on the wall, and pipes and slippers and 
 
 ■.-'„■ 
 
Short Range. 77 
 
 hunting-jacket and dog-collar and fine old 
 books that have a companionable look, 
 and, in short, there is an atmosphere about 
 the room that warns off pedants and 
 prudes. This is a place which asks noth- 
 ing of architects and sesthetes. It does 
 not even crave any admiration from the 
 delicate perceptions of the gentler sex. 
 The awful genius of inexorable order 
 does not preside here, and the maid with 
 the broom stays no longer in it than she 
 would in a haunted chamber. It is, how- 
 ever, a retreat in which one can relish 
 Shakespeare and Milton and Lamb, Kit 
 North and Frank Forrester and Emerson, 
 and the Turf Register can here keep com- 
 pany without violating the fitness of things. 
 The curly head who invades this free 
 realm cracks his walnuts on the hearth 
 without fear of Nemesis, and this is 
 one spot where a man can receive his 
 cronies without sprucing up or any for- 
 mality of manner or speech. The fancy 
 gentlemen who write for the magazines 
 would tell us how this delightful den, too, 
 should be built and furnished, but they 
 
78 At Long and 
 
 may spare their pains ; they may stay out- 
 side the house and dictate the front, or 
 they may arrange drawing-room, hall, bed- 
 rooms, dining-room, but there is a spot 
 which is determined to be as natural and 
 unconventional as Downing wishes land- 
 scapes to be, and the master of it don't 
 intend to have any Prussian martinetism 
 show its presence there; that charming 
 Bohemia of the house, welcome to dogs 
 and men if they be of the right strain 
 and breeding, will hold its own free ways 
 so long as man has any sense and gentle 
 woman is wise enough to humor what she 
 may deem the amiable vestiges of sav- 
 agery. Give the good fellow this liberty 
 hall and a cosey back porch, and let the 
 upholsterers take the rest and be hanged 
 to them. 
 
 (~*OLERIDGE during the closing ten 
 years of his life at Dr. Gillman's did 
 little else but talk. Lymphatic persons, 
 even when endowed with imagination, 
 seem to dislike the drudgery of the pen. 
 
Short Range. 79 
 
 T^HERE are people who travel many 
 furlongs of country, on the plea of 
 business, health, or recreation, who do 
 not show any willingness to confess even 
 to themselves that they are in quest of a 
 sympathetic listener. 
 
 '"PHE writer not long since stood on a 
 gentle eminence at Marietta, Geor- 
 gia, from which could be seen near at 
 hand Stone Mountain, Pine Mountain, 
 Sweet Mountain, and the historic Kene- 
 saw, charged by Wood's division of Sher- 
 man's army. The Confederate General 
 Cleburne said it was the most brilliant 
 charge he had ever witnessed. Ah ! there 
 is a memorial of it and of Resaca in the 
 eleven thousand bodies reposing in that 
 Marietta cemetery. The marble head- 
 stones bear the names of those who are 
 known. There are Swedish names among 
 the dead men hailing from Wisconsin. 
 They came from abroad to till the North- 
 west, and here they sleep in this Southern 
 valley, the flag of the republic for which 
 
80 At Long and 
 
 they fought streaming above them. This 
 cemetery was established in 1S66. The 
 gate-way is of Stone Mountain granite, 
 and cost ten thousand dollars. The 
 names on the marble tablets were graven 
 by the new sand-blast process. A hand- 
 some avenue runs to this honored burial- 
 ground, and the spot itself is kept in 
 perfect order. Johnston held the interior 
 lines here. Now the Union dead hold 
 them, whilst the small cotton planter of 
 Bibb County drives his cart in to sell to 
 the local broker. It is a lovely region, 
 and Sherman's men were enthusiastic when 
 they camped in its fine oak-groves. Mari- 
 etta has about two thousand five hundred 
 people, and is about twenty miles distant 
 from Atlanta. It was a sanatorium before 
 the war, and is still so, the low-country peo- 
 ple corning there in summer and Northern 
 invalids in winter. There are many pretty 
 cottages and yards ; the air is very pure 
 and the freestone water cool and pleasant. 
 The one feature here, however, which in- 
 terests the casual tourist is the congrega- 
 tion of dead soldiers on yonder gentle 
 
Short Range. 81 
 
 hill, and as the writer paused before a 
 stone bearing the name of a Pennsylva- 
 nian, he thought of a gallant soul from 
 Alleghany County who fell at Chancellors- 
 ville, and whose resting-place, if marked 
 at all, bears the forlorn inscription " Un- 
 known." In all that charming landscape 
 this army of motionless men who came 
 down there in the uniform of the nation 
 still rules the heart with a potent sceptre 
 and affects one with thoughts "that lie 
 too deep for tears." 
 
 TF lions and tigers only had a literature, 
 how many "Eddas" and "Sagas" we 
 might have, rivalling in ferocious hilarity 
 the songs and tales of the old Norsemen ! 
 
 '"THE modern mind can more readily 
 sympathize with certain vague but 
 imposing trance chimeras of the Arhats of 
 India than with the mediaeval depictions 
 of Dante or Milton, for all the nervous 
 imagery wherewith they are attired. 
 
82 At Long and 
 
 A VIGOROUS scold in literature is as 
 sure of attention as the enter- 
 prising small boy who pokes up a hor- 
 net's nest. 
 
 '"PHERE are two types of men who fur- 
 nish a curious and somewhat amusing 
 contrast. The one always has handy the 
 things that he is apt to need on occasion. 
 He is sure to have a pocket-knife, a port- 
 able little comb, postage-stamps, even a 
 postal-card. He carries small change for 
 convenience. Sometimes he carries a 
 pocket-flask, but he doesn't abuse it. He 
 is never without an umbrella in falling 
 weather. He will have overshoes when 
 the slush is ankle deep. This man can 
 produce a lead-pencil if it is wanted, per- 
 haps a stylographic pen. He is apt to 
 have a blank memorandum-book for casual 
 notes. He may be relied on for a lucifer- 
 match in extremity, and his tobacco-pouch 
 is not empty if he is a smoker. If he is 
 travelling, he is fully posted as to all the 
 connections. His berth in the sleeper is 
 
Short Range. 83 
 
 sure to be well located, and his gripsack 
 may be counted on for a luncheon if that 
 is exigent. Such a man is ever equipped. 
 His mind is full of precision, and he is 
 never taken unawares. In time of fire 
 he would never throw a looking-glass out 
 of the window and try to lug a stove into 
 the street. In a shipwreck he would be 
 sure to have a shutter to float on. If he 
 is engaged to be married he will not disap- 
 point the bride expectant, and he will 
 promptly meet his paper in bank. He 
 never scatters his clothes around the room 
 on retiring at night, and we advise the 
 enterprising burglar that an individual of 
 this stamp will be certain to have a re- 
 volver when needed. He never lets his 
 watch run down, and he shaves as regularly 
 as the planets pursue their journeys in the 
 sky. He is a man of precision, definite- 
 ness of purpose, and unswerving method. 
 He is never confused as to dates, and he 
 never blots the paper he writes on. He 
 never gives any one the wrong address, and 
 he never fails through absence of mind 
 to recognize an acquaintance. No living 
 
84 At Long and 
 
 stable-keeper can put a runaway horse on 
 him, and when he comes to die, his affairs 
 will be found tabulated, and his death-bed 
 directions will be as precise as if he were 
 ordering a breakfast at a restaurant, — 
 speaking of which, he is the very man who 
 knows what to order at an eating-house, 
 and his diet is as choice as his toilet. 
 
 The other man is the opposite in every- 
 thing and in all things. He bores people 
 begging for a knife, a match, a postage- 
 stamp, a comb, — for all manner of simple 
 articles of use. He is a helpless and 
 troublesome creature who needs a nurse to 
 watch over him. He never has anything 
 at the right time, nor does anything at the 
 right time. He can't look ahead of his 
 nose, and no embarrassments ever teach 
 him anything. All the money you could 
 give him would evaporate, and his mind is 
 mere mush without any consistency. If 
 he should marry a woman of will, she 
 would treat him with affectionate contempt, 
 and his children would wink at each other 
 whenever he enunciated any proposition or 
 plan. He is sure to get out of all troubles, 
 
 ij)r«JHi 
 
Short Range. 85 
 
 to be taken care of by somebody, and to 
 experience as much happiness as the average 
 pet white rabbit in a warren. The benev- 
 olent little goblins watch over this man. 
 He gets the knife, match, postage-stamp, 
 or comb. He is always mildly foraging, 
 and always tolerated with more or less 
 patience ; but tolerated all the same. As 
 a grown-up infant, he invites and receives 
 friendly solicitude. 
 
 ^\NE who keeps on good terms with 
 hopelessly commonplace people, and 
 disguises all signs of fatigue, need not 
 despair of attaining a few of the Christian 
 graces, if so inclined. 
 
 YyHATEVER ma y betide, men have 
 good cause to rejoice that they bear 
 no part in that crowning bore of all bores 
 known as the "formal call." That is a 
 feminine institution. It is the invention 
 of the sex, and the sex groans under its 
 yoke. Man smokes his Durham in beatific 
 
86 At Long and 
 
 peace, whilst the wife and daughters pay 
 tribute to the formal call. He hears the 
 sotto voce prayer that parties will be out and 
 that the matter can be despatched with a 
 card. He quietly notes the sigh of relief 
 when the exhausted women return after 
 hours of social distress. He observes the 
 tax of dress incident to the affair, the bad 
 temper it invokes, and the hypocrisy and 
 the total absence of any equivalent in the 
 way of pleasure for all this slavish ad- 
 herence to custom, and then dimly realizes 
 the miraculous felicity of his own escape 
 from such thraldom, and it may be takes 
 comfort in the thought that the whole 
 business falls totally on those who have 
 made him pay the piper for countless other 
 freaks and whims of fashion and caprice. 
 The elasticity of conscience with which the 
 gentle creatures endeavor to mitigate the 
 infliction of the formal call by convenient 
 fibs furnishes the masculine monster some 
 amusing food for study, and it may be 
 doubted whether he would budge an inch 
 to abolish the formal call. It is diamond 
 cut diamond ; women annoying women. 
 
 ■■■■Ml 
 
Short Range. 87 
 
 In such a transaction the wise man holds 
 aloof and lets the dainty belligerents mas- 
 querading as friends manage the hollow 
 and artificial show as suits themselves. It 
 is not often that he has an opportunity of 
 keeping out of a game in which women 
 array their wits against one another in- 
 stead of against the common tyrant, man. 
 He is at liberty to be judiciously silent and 
 hear the fair prattlers discuss each other in 
 a style utterly unlike the fancy pictures of 
 novelists and poets, and if he doesn't get 
 some wholesome enlightenment he is hope- 
 lessly stupid. The formal call is an eye- 
 opener. In its inception, progress, and 
 sequel it illuminates the dull brain of man 
 as to the infinite variety, versatility, and 
 elasticity of that delightful compound of 
 puffs, powder, and passion known as 
 woman. 
 
 A NY persevering lament over the death 
 of the very young or very old implies 
 more praise of the felicities of this life than 
 the facts warrant. 
 
88 At Long and 
 
 T HARDLY know why I am puzzled in 
 remembering that Emerson married 
 twice and left a moderately good estate. 
 
 pURNISHING a drawing-room to order, 
 so to speak, is like making a library 
 from a publisher's catalogue. Take your 
 time, and get only those paintings, plaques, 
 bronzes, engravings, statuettes, books, and 
 articles of vertu which fairly satisfy your 
 deliberate taste and truly please the inner 
 sense of the sterling and the beautiful, and 
 you will make a room that will deservedly 
 be gratifying to a disciplined vision. It 
 is not merely in the shops where art things 
 are sold that you can accumulate your 
 munitions; you must learn where the 
 skilled craftsmen do their work, and culti- 
 vate the faculty of recognizing admirable 
 creations. Paintings cannot be bought by 
 the yard, or ornamental articles by mere 
 shop values. There are many conscien- 
 tious artists in this country who have little 
 wide-spread distinction, who are doing 
 work that will stand the most critical 
 
Short Range. 89 
 
 tests. . You should hunt these men up in 
 their workshops and secure their treasures 
 at first hand. 
 
 T KNOW very little of mechanics, but 
 there is a class of masons I sometimes 
 think about with an interest that is not 
 wholly languid. I mean the coral-reef 
 builders. 
 
 TZPVEN those whose judgment is tempo- 
 rarily affected by a tumult of sound 
 reconsider in moments of calm. The 
 loud-mouthed dogmatist and vocal bully 
 may talk down reason for a while, but 
 can never slay it. The operations of the 
 mind itself are in secret and in silence, 
 and when all the fuss and fury of sound 
 are over, whether of drums, cannon, or 
 throats, the truths that have been ascer- 
 tained by patient thought will vindicate 
 their immortal vitality and compel men 
 and mobs to be still and listen. Let no 
 one resign an iota of intellectual freedom 
 
90 At Long and 
 
 on account of any clamor. The stars 
 shine calm and eternal amidst all the 
 contention of warring winds, and what- 
 ever is inherently true and right will shine 
 in the spiritual firmament when untold 
 multitudes of noise-making mortals have 
 passed to rest. The conviction of this 
 fact is the inspiration of all ages. 
 
 "\XTE have seen winter landscapes of daz- 
 zling magnificence, to which poor 
 man has humbly brought his little contri- 
 bution : smoke from a cabin chimney, an 
 old stone barn, or something of that sort. 
 
 "DIRDS afford an interesting study for any 
 one having leisure and inclination to 
 indulge it. Take the domestic pigeon. 
 This pretty bird seems to be as natural a 
 companion of men and women as are dogs 
 and cats, and yet it is not petted. It perches 
 on the roof-tops ; it picks its food in the 
 streets of crowded cities with fearless con- 
 
Short Range. 91 
 
 fidence that it will not be disturbed ; it is 
 found in haunts of civilization and avoids 
 woods. In Dutch pictures the pigeon is 
 nearly always employed to emphasize the 
 idea of home. The bird is associated with 
 pastoral scenes and with peace ; never with 
 war, like the eagle. The rich colors of its 
 neck and wings, the graceful poise of its 
 head, its indolent and happy habits, are 
 familiar everywhere, and it is rarely mo- 
 lested even by those energetic guerillas, 
 the boys, who attack everything not under 
 the protection of the laws. The ' ' squabs, ' ' 
 or young pigeons, are a favorite article of 
 food, but the pigeon is not preserved for 
 edible purposes. It is recognized as an 
 adjunct to houses, fields, and streets, and, 
 without being caressed like a pet cat, dog, 
 or squirrel, is affectionately tolerated as a 
 pleasing feature of civilized life. What 
 market town is there which does not have 
 its groups of beautifully-colored pigeons 
 picking after the passing wain, and what 
 old country farm-house around whose 
 chimneys the pigeons do not swoop with 
 lazy flight before they settle securely and 
 8* 
 
92 At Long and 
 
 tranquilly upon the eaves ? There might 
 as well be no blue smoke floating through 
 the trees of a rural home as no flock of 
 pigeons descending in the near barn-yard. 
 There, too, are the martin and the swal- 
 low. They have old prerogatives, and 
 sunset in the country without the swallow 
 describing its fine curves in the enchanted 
 air would be no sunset at all. Whoso 
 sits upon some ancestral porch and looks 
 over the valleys to distant hills regards 
 with satisfied vision the swift -winged swal- 
 lows as they rejoice in the pure serene, 
 giving life to a landscape bathed with the 
 hues of dying day. The bluebird and the 
 robin are indissolubly associated with 
 spring, the woodpecker breaks in upon the 
 stillness of summer forests, and the cardi- 
 nal grosbeak, with its red plumage, gives 
 color to the white splendor of winter. 
 The birds mark the seasons and connect 
 themselves with fruitful associations. A 
 distinct picture instantly emerges with the 
 names of the snipe, quail, ruffed grouse, 
 woodcock, mallard duck, plover, wild- 
 goose, sand-hill crane, curlew, wild-turkey, 
 
Short Range. 93 
 
 and sage-hen. All scenes of hill, stubble- 
 field, forest, swamp, lake, river, ocean, 
 thicket, and marsh, and all seasons from 
 January to December, roll along in pano- 
 ramic succession as the simple words are 
 announced, and the sportsman in fancy 
 charges his fowling-piece with shot ranging 
 from the size of a two-grain quinine pill to 
 mustard-seed, and cries out ''Steady !" to 
 his spotted setters in the ragweed, or with 
 gun in hand watches intently whilst his boat 
 is poled through wild-rice marshes and tor- 
 tuous bayous, or shoots across some open 
 sheet of water where 
 
 "The ducks' black squadron 
 Anchored lay." 
 
 Such is the potency of names, and such 
 the responsiveness of the kindled imagina- 
 tion. Those who have watched the fish- 
 hawk secure his shining prey, and then 
 noted the old feudal robber, the bald eagle, 
 swooping down to dispute the prize, have 
 added a fresh delight to their memory of 
 birds. The mocking-bird defending its 
 nest, and the mother quail imitating the 
 
94 At Long and 
 
 actions of a crippled bird to allure the 
 hunter away from its young, are interesting 
 studies, and the cowardly flight of the 
 crow from some small bird that pursues it, 
 striking at the eye, is abundantly suggestive. 
 Speaking of the crow, that ancient free- 
 booter deserves a special recital, but space 
 forbids. It takes a fifteen-year-old boy 
 with his first single-barrelled shot-gun to do 
 justice to the crow and his vigilant habits. 
 The boy experiences many a prime emo- 
 tion of disgust before he succeeds in bag- 
 ging one of the black villains, but a boy 
 is as patient as Mazeppa, and the crow 
 stands in need of all his craft and circum- 
 spection. A boy creeping for half a mile 
 along a cornfield fence to shoot a crow 
 perched on a stake is a refreshing sight. 
 The crow enjoys the business. He lets his 
 adversary come within a hundred yards' 
 range, and then, with a " caw ! caw !" after 
 the manner of a stage Mephistopheles, he 
 takes himself slowly off. It is then that 
 the young American rustic — future Presi- 
 dent, perhaps — practises his first lesson in 
 profanity. 
 
Short Range. 95 
 
 gURKE, Coleridge, and De Quincey 
 excite a faint suspicion at times that 
 fecundity can annoy as well as sterility. 
 
 /^HEERY and high-spirited old men who 
 rejoice in life and stimulate to en- 
 terprise are fine company; they temper 
 your quick spirit with wise restraints, but 
 do not chill your generous flame. These 
 men have lived to purpose and can be of 
 service; but the musty, fusty, rusty old 
 cynics who can only doubt or cavil or 
 sneer are no fit associates for one just en- 
 tering upon the stage of action. Better a 
 thousand times be with the turbulent of 
 your own age, who at least have desires, 
 beliefs, hopes, and some kindling ardor 
 that can be turned to good as well as to 
 mischief. There are old men who set up 
 for philosophers and often impose their 
 pretentious wisdom upon the credulous 
 young. Their philosophy consists in du- 
 bious shaking of the head when any enter- 
 prise is broached, imbecile carping at any 
 eloquent aspiration, sneers at humanitarian 
 
g6 At Long and 
 
 ideas and impulses, and an implied assump- 
 tion that everything is tinctured with sham, 
 and that the sensible man is the one who 
 keeps aloof from the stirring drama of life 
 and passes comments on it as he would a 
 show. What profit are such old moss- 
 backs to anybody? They would make a 
 young man suspicious of the affection of 
 his own grandmother. Give these veteran 
 fungi a wide berth. 
 
 TVTO door is quite ready yet to admit that 
 august visitor, Truth ; but a third or 
 fourth cousin of the goddess will be pas- 
 sably welcome. 
 
 TT may fairly be claimed for this century 
 that in decorum and outward observ- 
 ance of morals and the social proprieties 
 it is vastly ahead of the centuries which 
 immediately preceded it. No potentate 
 in any country pretending to be civilized 
 could openly carry on the disgusting 
 amours in which George I. and George 
 
 j-r:- 
 
Short Range. 97 
 
 II. of England indulged without provoking 
 a revolution, and it is impossible to con- 
 ceive in this day of such letters as the 
 second George wrote from Hanover to 
 his wife, complaining of the infidelity of 
 his mistress, Walmoden. 
 
 " pAITH CURE" for physical disorders 
 is impotent, but mind cure for mind 
 ailments is not. The mind can be both 
 patient and physician. 
 
 AH! if at Easter-time there could be a 
 resurrection of youth for those who 
 sigh with Wordsworth that the things 
 which they have seen they now can see 
 no more. All things are possible to youth. 
 There joy and faith and hope hold court. 
 Not alone the laughing eye, the red lip, and 
 the step of an antelope are craved again, 
 but the swift motion of the spirit, the re- 
 joicing sense of ardor and aspiration, the 
 welcome which the soul yet untamed and 
 unsaddened gives to delight in all its 
 
98 At Long and 
 
 shapes. Could youth reappear, how bright 
 and beautiful the teeming and wonderful 
 universe would be again ! Apollo would 
 illuminate all things with immortal splen- 
 dor, and the sweet pipings of Pan would 
 rebuke the roar of locomotives and facto- 
 ries. May it not be that in the hereafter 
 there is that delicious possibility of the 
 soul escaping from its heavy memories and 
 distempered dreams, like a swift-winged 
 bird, into a boundless realm of dewy light ? 
 Why not this resurrection for the decrepit 
 and half-revengeful spirit of man, weary 
 beyond all forms of utterance of the 
 slights that have been put upon it and the 
 habiliments of care which it has been 
 forced to endure? Surely it must be so. 
 The physical world wakes again like a 
 happy child from sleep. There is a 
 charmed perfume in the moist woods, the 
 wine of color suffuses the stems of shrubs, 
 the clouds begin to erect fairy pavilions, 
 and the faithful song of sea-going waters 
 resounds like silver bells in scarp and 
 counterscarp of mountain citadels. The 
 world — the ever lovely, the ever loving — is 
 
Short Range. 99 
 
 young again. Be of fond cheer, ye jaded 
 mortals. For thee, too, there is youth 
 again when the spectres of custom and sin 
 are gone and the released soul breaks its 
 cruel prison-bars. 
 
 "\AfHEN a scientific writer relaxes into a 
 little touch of poetic imagery, the 
 effect is as winning as the smile of Napoleon 
 is reported to have been. 
 
 A/TARRIED people who sustain a polite 
 relation without any affection on 
 either side do not quarrel, whilst those 
 who have the most fervent regard for each 
 other often indulge in the most exaggerated 
 outbreaks of passion, and accuse each other 
 of manifold shortcomings. The polite 
 people to whom reference has been made 
 take a cool measure of each other's faults 
 and graces, but with frigid and prudential 
 philosophy restrain any expression, and 
 pass muster as the happiest folks in the 
 world, although their relation is simply 
 9 
 
ioo At Long and 
 
 one of convenience and a mere matter of 
 tolerance on both sides. The demon- 
 strative couples who so often come within 
 an ace of separation by virtue of their 
 honest but passing ebullitions frequently 
 resolve to subdue their intercourse to a 
 sober and business-like standard, in imita- 
 tion of their philosophic neighbors; but 
 nature usually proves too strong for this 
 decorous programme, and they go on 
 loving and occasionally squabbling to the 
 end, saying hard things and unsaying 
 them, and deploring the fact that they are 
 sensitive to each other's opinions and ab- 
 solutely dependent on each other for any 
 genuine happiness. 
 
 T^NNUI is as inevitable as death. Even 
 Daniel Boone must have succumbed 
 to it when deer and bear were scarce. 
 
 HTO one casually sojourning by some bay 
 
 or estuary of the sea the changeful 
 
 and lovely aspects of water and sky, the 
 
Short Range. ioi 
 
 picturesque colors of the coast-line where 
 there are marsh meadows, and the bewitch- 
 ing apparition of sail-boats, schooners, 
 and other craft afford a delight unique 
 in quality and one that does not soon 
 fatigue. It may be doubted whether there 
 is anything in mountain scenery or in 
 billowy plains of grass dotted with clumps 
 of trees and browsing herds that gives so 
 constant and deep a satisfaction as these 
 ever-varying and ever-beautiful sea-views. 
 The water never presents the same coun- 
 tenance. Its hues are ever blending into 
 new and delicious combinations of light 
 and shade, and then there is a freshness 
 and life-suggesting property about it that 
 quickens the spirit and animates the most 
 jaded senses. To gaze upon the great 
 living sea, to feel its swift inspiring winds, 
 to watch the gulls and fish-eagles disport 
 and the huge porpoise gambol, to see 
 snowy sails stand against the horizon or 
 at even-tide come stealing along the shores 
 like spectres of the deep, to watch the 
 waters glow beneath the full moon or 
 gleam like Damascene armor when the 
 
102 At Long and 
 
 sun bursts upon the coast, — these are joys 
 that poets and painters love to speak of, 
 and that the plain, untutored fisherman 
 feels, although he has no voice to tell his 
 thoughts. What music there is by the 
 sea ! The creaking of the cordage as sails 
 are raised and lowered at the docks, the 
 splash of the tide against the wharves, the 
 dip of oars, the shrill cry of passing 
 plover, the commotion of a sudden shark, 
 the cadence of salt airs that beat upon 
 the land, songs of boatmen, and number- 
 less other sounds that belong nowhere else, 
 that harmonize with the waves and sky 
 and land, and enter into one's mind and 
 make images there forever. Who that 
 has ever left the sea and gone inland 
 does not repine to see again the red- 
 shirted sailors cheerily at work, and the 
 fisherman casting his net upon the blue 
 waters ; to see again the breakers come 
 in like Murat's cavalry upon a charge ; to 
 see the magical interfusion of colors upon 
 the tranquil expanse, or witness it grand 
 and turbulent, when the bassoon of thun- 
 der sounds, and the little boats hasten 
 
Short Range. 103 
 
 into port ? To wander by the sea. What 
 health, what satisfying pleasure, what feast 
 of vision, what wealth of fancy, what sense 
 of glory all about you, in that one thought ! 
 There is nothing vulgar about the sea. 
 The meanest little village that ever hid 
 behind the cliffs or stood square to a bay 
 is glorified by being near the sea. It has 
 entombed vessels and men, but it gave 
 them royal sepulchre. There is no "pot- 
 ter's field" in this great meadow of 
 waters. It is a tomb for kings and true 
 men. No stakes define its boundaries. 
 No surveyor puts his chain upon it. No 
 man or class dares to assert claim of 
 ownership to it. It is always sublime. 
 The voice of God is here heard audibly, 
 and the soul amidst these heaving wonders 
 casts off at times its "muddy vesture of 
 decay" and throbs with a sense of its 
 immortality. 
 
 (CHILDREN have kept Christmas alive, 
 and may do so when savants are dis- 
 puting whether the Pyramids ever existed. 
 
104 At Long and 
 
 A SMALL town tells its whole story, and 
 
 then repeats it year after year. A 
 
 big city owes something of the interest it 
 
 contrives to keep alive in the mere fact that 
 
 it is too big to be exhaustively catechised. 
 
 HPOBACCO is a greater civilizer and 
 humanizer than wine. It promotes 
 social interchanges that do not volatilize 
 and fade away with the short-lived ameni- 
 ties of the banquet-table. The smoker 
 on the railroad has a clear head and is 
 responsible for his utterances. The likings 
 he forms on the journey are not under 
 transient excitement, and there is a cer- 
 tain business precision about the confabs 
 in this sanctum of the cigar and pipe. 
 Men on such journeys make acquaintances 
 who may prove useful to them afterwards, 
 and they often receive valuable hints upon 
 which they act in matters of conduct. 
 The barber-shop used to be the gossip 
 and news centre. The Pullman smoking 
 section is a more dignified entrepot of 
 talk, and a gentleman can certainly acquit 
 
Short Range. 105 
 
 himself better there in the way of casual 
 deliverance than with lather on his face 
 and an impassive barber holding him 
 down in a chair. The traveller who (not 
 smoking) fails to visit this cosey and so- 
 cial department of a train misses the most 
 entertaining and often the most profitable 
 part of the whole journey. The smokers 
 are masters of the situation. 
 
 A N accomplished Frenchman said, " The 
 style is the man," and the modistes 
 say, "The style is the woman." 
 
 'T'O those who sigh for a new pleasure 
 the companionship of young chil- 
 dren may be commended as a source of 
 purest satisfaction, if it has never been 
 tried by the jaded and sated man or 
 woman of the world. Little girls of ages 
 ranging from four to twelve, before they 
 get spoiled by vanity, infected with affec- 
 tations, and absorbed with ideas of beaux 
 and dress, and boys up to the age of 
 
106 At Long and 
 
 fifteen, when they still love simple pas- 
 times, are thoroughly enjoyable to one 
 who will enter into the moods and tastes 
 and fancies of these lassies and lads. The 
 boys, of course, are more like young bears 
 in their gambols, but there is much that 
 is lovable and captivating in a simple- 
 minded, romantic boy of twelve, with his 
 appetite for the marvellous, his passion for 
 roaming over the hills and woods, his mar- 
 bles and tops and kites and jack-knife. 
 The ardor, the honesty, and the very 
 combativeness of one of these youngsters 
 have peculiar charms to mature people, 
 and awaken delicious memories of their 
 own youth, its school-days, its frolics, 
 its friendships, and its prismatic-tinted 
 dreams. The sweet little girl of eight or 
 ten years is perhaps the most winning 
 creature in the whole universe, and the 
 man who has never, as at a pure fountain, 
 found happiness in the society of such a 
 fairy has missed the happiest offering of 
 life. All parents know that their children 
 gave them the most joy when young. The 
 fondness of old people (the grandma and 
 
Short Range. 107 
 
 grandpa) for the little folks is quite ex- 
 plicable. When the girl ripens into a 
 "young lady" and the boy turns out his 
 first moustache, the delicate and subtle 
 charms of elfin-land fade away and the 
 golden and purple mists dissolve into the 
 common light of every day. Men feel a 
 pang as their children grow up into man- 
 hood and womanhood and the delicious 
 confidences of an earlier date cease for- 
 ever. To the denizen of a large city there 
 is always pleasure in watching the children 
 in the public parks, and often the most 
 agreeable intimacies are established with 
 these glad and frolicsome little folks. An 
 old bachelor tired of club-life and the 
 humdrum intercourse of fusty veterans 
 like himself might often renew his youth 
 by social forays among the "blue-eyed 
 bandits," taking with him peace-offerings 
 from the candy-stores, — not like Greek 
 gifts, to betray, but Christmas souvenirs 
 of benignant fellowship, to win grace there- 
 with. To subjugate these fresh, pure na- 
 tures and seduce them to display their 
 fairy wares of mind and heart is a fine 
 
108 At Long and 
 
 conquest for a June or October morning 
 in a public pleasure resort ; it is a better 
 investment than billiards, cards, or wine. 
 And what are winter nights without chil- 
 dren? No pictures, plaques, rich rugs, 
 upholstery, books, or bric-a-brac can, by 
 all their ingenious splendor, lend such 
 lustre to the ample sitting-room as the 
 bright faces and artless chat of these royal 
 little potentates, — kings and queens of the 
 home circle. Ye who have missed some- 
 thing in philosophy or in action, seek it in 
 the charmed zone of innocent children; 
 there the right heart can for a while bask 
 in Arcadian meadows and hear for a brief 
 while the faint, far flute-notes of the earli- 
 est shepherds who piped in haunted dells 
 and glades. Children preserve the glory 
 of the world in its purest and happiest 
 estate. The devil and all his legions can- 
 not prevail against them. 
 
 'T'HERE is a phase of " women's rights" 
 which seems to escape the considera- 
 tion it deserves, and that is the right of 
 
Short Range. 109 
 
 a young woman to remain single if she 
 desires to do so. The men do not chal- 
 lenge this right. It is her own sex which, 
 urged by a variety of very subtle reasons, 
 conspire to put a sort of stigma on women 
 who have no inclination to matrimony, 
 and by the opprobrious epithet of "old 
 maids" force discerning and fastidious 
 women into unsuitable and unhappy mar- 
 riages. 
 
 'T'AINE, in his notes on the forest of 
 Fontainebleau, says, " I think I love 
 a tree more than anything else on earth." 
 It does not require an artist to sympathize 
 with this enthusiasm. How a clump of 
 trees in a plain rejoices the weary eye ! 
 What beauty in a single graceful tree over- 
 hanging a placid pool of clear water ! 
 Who has not felt pleasure at the picture 
 of a trim and pretty cottage sheltered by 
 some huge oak that seems to stretch out 
 its broad arms like a benignant giant to 
 guard and protect all within? Children 
 harmonize best with the landscape when 
 
no At Long and 
 
 they are grouped on the sward beneath 
 some noble tree. 
 
 There is a striking individuality about 
 trees. The elm, with its irregular branches 
 and small leaves so well adapted to fleck 
 the grass with pictures of light and shade, 
 the sugar-maple in its autumnal bla- 
 zonry of crimson and gold, the stately 
 poplar, the pine, full of musical murmurs, 
 the drooping willow, the birch, and the 
 gum, — all have a suggestive speech of their 
 own. How the boys love the chestnut 
 and the shell-bark hickory, and what do- 
 mestic pleasures are associated with cool 
 apple-orchards in which some well minis- 
 ters in the hot days and the young colts 
 run at large ! Trees in groups on a hill- 
 side, trees that skirt running brooks in 
 which cattle stand knee-deep at mid-day, 
 trees that cast their airy lines along some 
 distant blue horizon, trees that greet the 
 sailor approaching land, trees that invite 
 the antelope on far savannas to rest in 
 the grateful shade, — are they not all a boon 
 and a benediction ? How could you com- 
 pute in dollars and cents the value of a 
 
Short Range. in 
 
 great forest tree near your dwelling, and 
 what work of art could give such peren- 
 nial satisfaction ? The birds come to it 
 as a welcome fortress, the winds make 
 music in its boughs, the evening star shines 
 through it like an eye of love. The man 
 who would put his profane axe to such a 
 tree deserves to work in the mines of Si- 
 beria. Trees bear companionship; they 
 grow upon acquaintance. You begin to 
 feel the grace, the benignity, the nobility 
 of their presence. Stirred by a passing gale, 
 they toss their manes like lions, but what 
 a divine calm they wear in tranquil weather ! 
 There is an air of majestic repose about 
 them which soothes the spirit and rebukes 
 all passion. The poets have delighted to 
 celebrate them, and history has consecrated 
 trees that are associated with noted events 
 and personages, — the Charter Oak; the tree 
 in which Charles II. secreted himself. 
 Memorable men have loved to plant trees, 
 and these tokens of their fondness are 
 pointed out to-day. The delight which 
 one takes in a tree he has watched from a 
 mere twig is a singularly pure and con- 
 10 
 
ii2 At Long and 
 
 stant one. The Germans have a wise 
 custom of planting fruit-stones along the 
 highways, and in consequence their roads 
 are shaded and the traveller finds abun- 
 dance of fruit to cheer him as he plods 
 along. Governments are taking fresh in- 
 terest in the preservation of forests and 
 learning their intimate connection with 
 the rainfall and the preservation of streams, 
 scientific societies are assiduous in point- 
 ing out the relations of large tracts of 
 woodland to health and to the fertility of 
 the soil, and in the chief cities of the 
 world parks are now regarded as the lungs 
 of the town, to be kept as breathing-spots 
 for the people and eternal pleasure resorts. 
 A city without a park would be the by- 
 word and scoff of the times. In Iowa, 
 the man who plants a certain number of 
 trees is exempt from taxation for five years. 
 Everywhere the utility of the woods is 
 being recognized, and the national au- 
 thorities have interested themselves to pro- 
 tect the great trees of the far West from 
 vandal hands simply for the beauty and 
 grandeur of these specimens. So it will 
 
Short Range. 113 
 
 ever be. The world will never outgrow 
 its passion for trees. As civilization be- 
 comes more elaborate and artificial the 
 necessity for trees and the joy in them 
 will grow, and the artist, the tired mer- 
 chant, the rosy-cheeked child, and the 
 wandering and vagabond gypsy can at last 
 meet in common under the green-wood 
 tree, and share one pleasure that will defy 
 all the mutations of fashion and the vaga- 
 ries of human caprice. God bless the 
 trees ! Cast aside your cares, man, like a 
 soiled garment and refresh yourself under 
 the mighty and glorious elm; the ground- 
 squirrel will keep you company, and 
 through the green foliage the steadfast sky 
 holds tender watch upon you. 
 
 HTHE fond lover who is shortly to be 
 married flatters himself that the bride 
 who is to be is engrossed with pleasing 
 thoughts of himself. It is an amusing de- 
 lusion. It is not of him (verdant creat- 
 ure !) that the lovely maiden is dreaming. 
 Her blue, brown, or hazel eyes are suffused 
 
ii4 -At Long and 
 
 with the light of happy meditation, but it 
 is all about clothes, raiment, wardrobe, — 
 her trousseau. The word is French, and it is 
 talismanic with the feminine heart. From 
 the date fixed for the eventful ceremony 
 until it is consummated at the altar the 
 nine-lettered word of such magical import 
 will occupy the young damsel's soul with 
 visions of ruffs, cuffs, and flounces, gloves, 
 shoes, and kerchiefs, all manner of per- 
 sonal toggery, adornment, and embellish- 
 ment, from a bit of lace to a perfume- 
 bottle, so that the enamoured calf who is 
 to be blessed with such a combination of 
 nature and art is only in the thoughts of 
 the bride expectant as a pretext and provo- 
 cation for all this pretty pomp and prepa- 
 ration. The man sentenced to be hanged 
 called out from his cell window to the 
 eager crowds going to the scaffold, "You 
 needn't be in such a splutter; there'll be 
 no fun until I get there." The bride- 
 groom may console himself with such a 
 vain reflection, but he is fooling himself 
 with a shadow. The woman who has once 
 enjoyed the intoxicating rapture of a trous- 
 
Short Range. 115 
 
 seau would hardly suffer a pang if the hus- 
 band were in default. Her cups of bliss 
 have been full and running over, and the 
 marriage may happen or not without her 
 gentle spirit suffering any agitation. The 
 chief thought of her existence has been 
 clothes, and has she not realized the 
 crowning glory and apotheosis of clothes 
 once and for all in that enchanting hour 
 when she spreads out her treasures for the 
 admiration (?) of some bosom friend ? 
 What can fate ever do to blunt the keen 
 felicity of this signal moment ? All roads 
 lead to Rome, and all the paths and by- 
 paths of her life have led up to this radiant 
 goal. The inventor who has perfected his 
 idea, the warrior who sees that the battle 
 is won, the poet or painter who puts in 
 words or colors the vision that has en- 
 tranced him, may fancy it is a supreme 
 moment of joy, but these emotions are 
 tame compared with that sovereign peace 
 which broods like a dove over the bosom 
 of the seraphic young female contem- 
 plating her marriage outfit and satisfied 
 that it is as rounded and harmonious as a 
 10* 
 
n6 At Long and 
 
 globe of pearl, — not even a hair-pin want- 
 ing. If men could ever undergo such 
 divine transports as that, they would abjure 
 tobacco and beer and crown the mantua- 
 maker as Goddess of Reason. Man is 
 essentially a stupid animal, and never did 
 recognize the untold felicities of dress. 
 Let him find an equivalent for a trous- 
 seau, and he may be happy yet. 
 
 TN my "salad days" we were forced to 
 say good-by to Tell and his apple. But 
 the mousing owls left Cinderella's pretty, 
 petite, glass slipper unharmed. 
 
 ALL things are possible to work, and 
 happiness is among them. The will- 
 ing hand and contented heart are in alli- 
 ance. No one ever realizes the supreme 
 felicity of well-paid employment so keenly 
 as the one who by chance or miscon- 
 duct has lost it and wanders around a 
 suitor and a mendicant. Then the vision 
 of past labors comes clad in angelic robes, 
 
Short Range. 117 
 
 and the sore and wounded spirit craves 
 only one boon, that of a fresh opportunity 
 and the sweet, proud privilege of recog- 
 nized and remunerated toil. How pleasant 
 it is to earn one's own money ! How gall- 
 ing to be dependent on the bounty of 
 others ! Who of an independent mind 
 would not make the sacrifice of useless 
 tastes and needless luxuries so as to be 
 forehanded and free from penury and the 
 shame of constant supplication ? A man 
 who gets into the chronic habit of asking 
 for help is gone. He loses aim, snap, grit, 
 and hope. His faith in his own powers 
 is destroyed, and it is but a step to the 
 kitchen door, hat in hand, asking alms. 
 It is work — all-glorious, all-potential, all- 
 saving work — which lifts men out of this 
 slough of degradation, puts new light in 
 their eyes, gives firm cadence to their step, 
 and enables them to meet their fellows on 
 terms of equal footing and dignity. It is 
 respectable even when poorly paid. It 
 lends lustre to wealth when it is richly 
 paid. It is at all times the one grand, 
 wholesome thing in the universe. It is 
 
n8 At Long and 
 
 sanitary. It is creative. It conserves. 
 It is the parent of all the physical things 
 admired of men. It replaces what fire 
 and water have destroyed. It helps save 
 men and women from vice, and its broad 
 arms aid those who have fallen by the 
 way. Ye who have work verily have hope. 
 Work and despair do not travel together. 
 
 A DEAD affection is the most mournful 
 thing in the category of mortal ills, 
 and no flowers are ever cast upon its for- 
 lorn srrave. 
 
 HTHERE is one person who does not 
 figure in the society columns of the 
 newspapers during the heated term as en- 
 joying the salt air on the coast of the At- 
 lantic or the coolness of deep mountain 
 glens. That person is the good plodding 
 housewife, who has been patiently prepar- 
 ing fruit-preserves in a hot kitchen, care- 
 fully labelling the jars and taking homely 
 comfort in the thought of how her chil- 
 
Short Range. 119 
 
 dren and friends will enjoy the sweet- 
 meats in due season. Her Newport and 
 Cape May are in her heart. There may 
 be found the pulsations of an ocean of 
 love and kindly solicitude only to be 
 stilled by death. She is one of a great 
 army of faithful toilers whose lives are de- 
 voted to providing for the comfort and 
 pleasure of others, and it makes little odds 
 what season rules, whether it be the volupt- 
 uous spring, the regnant summer, autumn's 
 blazonry, or winter's glittering coat of 
 mail, her willing hands and feet are ever 
 busy at some office of domestic care, and 
 too often only the all- seeing eye of the 
 Great Master returns any loving recogni- 
 tion for a life worn and wasted in behalf 
 of others. 
 
 C\$ all the forms of mental disease, the 
 one which needs most sharp-sighted 
 watching is that which settles down into a 
 dreary conviction of the emptiness of all 
 things. The man in whom this malady 
 becomes chronic has no future and no 
 
120 At Long and 
 
 hope. It is an ailment which enlarges 
 itself like a cancer and eats out all the 
 springs of cheerfulness and vigor. It be- 
 gins with repudiating the value of every 
 human aim and pursuit, and ends with re- 
 jecting the thought of God's care for His 
 creatures. 
 
 >r ~PHE wandering organ-grinder invades 
 the suburban villages and delights 
 the young rural folk. His instrument is 
 of a primitive pattern, and his repertoire 
 is not select, but the plaintive and ear- 
 crucifying discords meet with the unquali- 
 fied approbation of wide-eyed juveniles, 
 and the shabby and resigned-looking mu- 
 sician touches the sympathies of the little 
 people. He, too, regards these small per- 
 sons as his peculiar friends and patrons, 
 the constituency which he seeks in many 
 a weary tramp, and on which he depends 
 for his daily bread. Reviled by all the 
 rest of the world, and perhaps conscious 
 that his music is calculated to provoke the 
 wrath of a sensitive ear, his dull, sad eye 
 
Short Range. 121 
 
 is ever on the watch for the untutored 
 children to whom this forlorn and wan- 
 dering minstrel is interesting as a gypsy- 
 tale, and whose doleful strains stir many 
 vague fancies that only the child bosom 
 knows. After all, there is something 
 touching in the relation which this poor 
 roaming vagabond with his rude instru- 
 ment sustains with the little folks the wide 
 world over. Under the stars he has no 
 friends but these, and save for them — 
 dear innocents ! — the dismal wretch would 
 perish by the way-side. He and his organ 
 have a following that kings might envy, a 
 clientage without guile and yet unspoiled 
 by time. Who shall say that his lines 
 have not fallen in pleasant places ? 
 
 ''THERE is no doubt that men absurdly 
 plume themselves on indifferent 
 achievements. The athlete is swollen 
 with importance over a leap which a 
 mountain lion could easily excel, and 
 even the savant takes on airs over a pro- 
 posed discovery which only illuminates 
 
122 At Long and 
 
 a faint spot and leaves boundless realms 
 unexplored. 
 
 '"THERE are persons who have no more 
 business with poetry than with opium 
 or liquor. Their true wisdom is in plain 
 work and plain speech. 
 
 HPHERE is something radically defective 
 about the individual who does not 
 relish an old-fashioned almanac ; who does 
 not refresh himself with its pithy sayings, 
 its homely anecdotes, its recipes, its revela- 
 tions about the stars ; who does not find a 
 subtle pleasure in its quaint pictures, and 
 somehow associate this popular vehicle of 
 odds and ends of lore with cider and 
 hickory-nuts, spinning-wheels, household 
 aprons, old clocks, and simple virtues. 
 In the family room of the house have a 
 Bible, a Worcester's "Unabridged," and 
 a good old almanac. Let a few things 
 remain to revive the memories of the early 
 days ere the aesthetic craze had come to 
 
Short Range. 123 
 
 transmogrify every apartment. The re- 
 turn to solid old furniture was a reaction 
 against veneer, and scattered amidst the 
 fancy articles which now challenge the 
 eye in every house of any pretension there 
 ought to be a few things charged with an- 
 cient memories and connecting the present 
 with the past. What grown-up American 
 can pick up a "Peter Parley" without a 
 certain emotion? and the genuine old al- 
 manac always suggests patriarchal tastes 
 and lives which have not altogether been 
 invaded by the spirit of the modern icono- 
 clast. 
 
 1LTORACE WALPOLE must be credited 
 with one pungent saying: "Life is 
 a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to 
 those who feel." 
 
 HP HERE are men and women who have 
 
 an established reputation of being 
 
 silly who are usually found to be very 
 
 obliging, and who sometimes show gleams 
 
124 At Long and 
 
 of native shrewdness that puzzle those 
 who plume themselves on their judg- 
 ment. It would be a queer thing if it 
 could be demonstrated unanswerably that 
 the silly people make as few mistakes in 
 the long run as the people of admitted 
 ability. The errors of the head are so 
 often compensated for by goodness of dis- 
 position and heart that the sum total of 
 their blunders does not, after all, make 
 up such a terrible record. Finally, those 
 who are reported to be rather silly are not 
 always so silly as they seem. Which 
 could be most easily spared, Goldsmith 
 or Dr. Johnson ? 
 
 T_JAS it ever occurred to any one to 
 note the time in which he really 
 began to take a deep and tender interest 
 in humanity, so that the commonest la- 
 borer would suggest more than all the 
 splendors of the physical universe ? Men 
 pass through epochs of psychological re- 
 lation to one another. The young per- 
 son rarely discriminates ; he accepts all as 
 
Short Range. 125 
 
 they appear; he believes and trusts. 
 Then there comes a time when ambition 
 sets in, and men and women are con- 
 sidered only as they subserve it. There 
 are periods of indifference or distrust or 
 downright antipathy. At last the time 
 comes when the feeling of kinship and the 
 profound thought of a common destiny be- 
 gin to excite a sympathetic interest towards 
 the masses of human beings about us. 
 Then observation and study of character 
 follow in earnest, and even the passionate 
 lover of nature finds that his mind and 
 heart are more moved by the checkered 
 fortunes of his fellow-mortals than by the 
 beauty of the earth and the glory of the 
 stars. He ponders upon the struggles and 
 sufferings of his kind. He is touched 
 with admiration for the brave exploits of 
 genius or heroism. He meditates on the 
 persevering efforts through all these thou- 
 sands of years, on the part of these men 
 and women, to reach after and to express 
 some noble and fair ideal. He begins to 
 feel in his inmost soul that there must be 
 some divine spark in this picturesque 
 
126 At Long and 
 
 humanity. He throbs with a mysterious 
 sense of brotherhood, and in rating at a 
 higher estimate the mortals who surround 
 him, he sets at a better value the impor- 
 tance and dignity of his own individuality, 
 ennobles life, and more vividly grasps the 
 idea of immortality. With the deep- 
 lodged sympathy for others comes the real 
 conception of the inherent worth of the 
 race, its deserts under all infirmities, and 
 its bright possibilities. As the centuries 
 roll on, the sympathy of man for man 
 develops and tells in legislation, in cus- 
 toms, and in all the offices of humanity 
 which distinguish Christian civilization. 
 Men are no longer mere moving phan- 
 toms to the recluse, or mere food for 
 gunpowder to the aggressive statesman ; 
 they are steadily indicating the good that 
 is within them and becoming bound to- 
 gether by the ties of common struggle, 
 experience, interest, and affection. To 
 promote the common welfare is becoming 
 the avowed object of liberal govern- 
 ments, and to help each other a current 
 maxim and practice among individuals. 
 
Short Range. 127 
 
 Friendly guilds are formed to give organ- 
 ized direction to humane sentiments, and 
 the awakened tenderness of the times pene- 
 trates even to the convict's cell to mitigate 
 the horrors of penal degradation and, if 
 possible, to work reform. It may be truly 
 said that in the classic ages of the Greeks 
 and Romans the interchanging spirit of 
 cordial humanity which is now visible did 
 not obtain, and among the features of 
 modern progress which deserve to be es- 
 teemed, none rank higher than this dis- 
 position to acknowledge the intrinsic 
 worth of manhood and womanhood, and 
 the high obligation to help all reach a 
 nobler plane of humanity. It is the 
 crown jewel of our times, and the Lapidary 
 has not yet finished His work. 
 
 ■\X7"HY is it that people are invested with 
 more importance while in a Pull- 
 man coach than when they reach their 
 journey's end and are turned loose into 
 the streets? The retail grocer from a 
 little town is outwardly as impressive as 
 11* 
 
128 At Long and 
 
 a United States Senator or a great rail- 
 way magnate whilst on the road. As soon 
 as the train reaches his depot and he steps 
 upon the platform his greatness disappears 
 like an exhalation of the mist, and he is 
 only a small grocer again, one of the gen- 
 eral and undistinguished mob. Is it the 
 circumstance that the Pullman coach im- 
 plies the possession of money, habits of 
 luxurious leisure, or somewhat fastidious 
 taste that invests its temporary occupants 
 with factitious dignity ? It is certain that 
 the other cars on the train do not magnify 
 personality in like manner. It is a little 
 odd, too, that people whom you survey 
 with interest in one of these parlor coaches 
 you regard with total indifference when 
 you meet them afterwards on the street. 
 They become common as soon as they are 
 severed from the moving drawing-room, 
 just as a circus rider is vulgar when de- 
 tached from his horse and the blazonry of 
 the ring. Another feature of travel that 
 is a little interesting is the factitious dig- 
 nity of the reserved guests of the Pullman 
 coach. So long as these silent habitants 
 
Short Range. 129 
 
 of the car preserve silence they are studied 
 with speculative ardor. When they break 
 the enchantment by commonplace inqui- 
 ries or suggestions, they fall at once into 
 the ranks. These remarks apply only to 
 the men. The women, especially if they 
 are young and pretty and agreeable, have 
 no mystery about them, and do not lose 
 their charm when the final station is 
 reached. Perhaps this fact may excite the 
 surmise that there is more humbug about 
 men than about women. 
 
 Invalid ladies on the cars are always 
 objects of tender interest, and persons in 
 mourning awaken a train of reflection. 
 Children are the especial pets of the Pull- 
 man coach travellers if they are engaging 
 in their appearance and behavior, and 
 little girls on their first journey are nota- 
 bly winning and become bosom friends of 
 the whole coach. There is a fine field of 
 study in the various porters on the cars, 
 and there are functionaries in this line who 
 surpass the traditional hotel clerk in con- 
 sequential airs and freezing demeanor. 
 As a rule, however, the porters relax, and 
 
130 At Long and 
 
 become bland and attentive towards the 
 terminus of the trip, when settlement time 
 approaches, and the matter is yet undeter- 
 mined whether it shall be a quarter- or a 
 half-dollar that will fall into the extended 
 palm. Porters complain that the ladies 
 forget the parting remuneration. The 
 commercial traveller reveals his individu- 
 ality no matter what coach he occupies. 
 He is at home everywhere and deserves to 
 be. He is the avant-courier of progress, 
 and is as free and easy on a raft as in a 
 palace steamer, ever indefatigable and use- 
 ful, and entitled to better recognition than 
 he gets from the churlish corporations 
 which tax him for the privilege of widening 
 the boundaries of trade and making civili- 
 zation the common property of cities and 
 the frontier. He at least is enshrouded 
 in no mystery, and typifies the energy 
 and genius of the age and people. 
 
 '"FHE little bit of lace which has cost 
 
 enough to buy a carriage and span 
 
 of horses is what troubles several young 
 
Short Range. 131 
 
 women and several elderly women. Every 
 other article of wardrobe speaks for itself. 
 The dresses, cloaks, furs, bonnets, gloves, 
 diamonds, etc., can rapidly be summa- 
 rized by the feminine eyes inspecting 
 them. They tell their own story, and shed 
 envy and grief and admiration, as the case 
 may be, as they are duly paraded ; but this 
 dainty and most costly lace which looks 
 no better than a cheaper article, how, oh, 
 how shall its value in dollars and dimes be 
 announced to a stupid and despairing 
 world ? This is the thought which causes 
 that gentle bosom to palpitate and those 
 dove-like eyes to undergo so many change- 
 ful expressions. When will the ecstatic 
 moment come when, without ill-breeding, 
 the exact financial figure can with sweet 
 and shrinking modesty be told ? How, in 
 lisping accents and in an involuntary way, 
 shall the dear seraph tell her dearest friend 
 the price of this single piece of personal 
 furniture, and make her sigh for a secluded 
 apartment where she can relieve herself in 
 a flood of rainbow tears ? This is the dis- 
 tressing puzzle, the agonizing conundrum. 
 
132 At Long and 
 
 But for that bit of lace, the walking in- 
 ventory of goods would have recognition 
 and voucher as full and mellow as the 
 harvest moon. It alone impedes that am- 
 ple concession from all surrounding women 
 which shall fill the goblet of triumph brim- 
 ful and overflowing. Why does not 
 fashion permit the price to be worked in 
 embroidery, so as to save all these agita- 
 tions and illuminate the situation at once ? 
 How easy it would be to grade the fair 
 creatures from a sublimated moneyed point 
 of view if they floated around with tabs 
 indicating what gold, silver, or bank-bills 
 they carry in robes, pearls, or gossamer ! 
 It might so happen that a single woman 
 with a rose-bud on her breast would attract 
 the fantastic homage of some poetic fool, 
 but the aggregate feminine worship would 
 gravitate by the scale of tabulated prices, 
 and the gazelle with the miraculous lace 
 would sip the nectar of applause. The 
 women's convention really ought to take 
 this matter in hand. They are fooling 
 away their time on much fustier affairs. 
 In the name of the Graces, why should our 
 
Short Range. 133 
 
 charming maiden or supreme dame wear 
 that enchanted bit of divine linen, not 
 cotton mixed, and have its fiscal rank un- 
 known ? 
 
 HTHE hardest thing on this globe to pros- 
 titute, yea, even in a London dance- 
 hall, is music. There is always a floating 
 perfume of the supernal about it. 
 
 T^HE small towns in the United States 
 — towns of from four thousand to 
 ten thousand people — present interesting 
 phases of economic and social life to an 
 attentive observer. These places have 
 their town hall for travelling shows, their 
 bustling hotel with its omnibuses, their 
 showy residence of the richest man, their 
 bevies of pretty girls and keen-witted, 
 dashing young men, and a general city 
 air in miniature. The honest farmer who 
 comes into them is impressed with their 
 importance, and the country lass who 
 visits her friends in them is as elated as 
 
134 -At Long and 
 
 any maiden of Gotham on her first trip 
 to Paris. In these towns personal quali- 
 ties tell, and everybody knows everybody. 
 
 TF the benighted Greeks and Romans had 
 known of the pipe and solacing weed, 
 they would have erected a statue to " My 
 Lady Nicotine." 
 
 "POPULATION in civilized countries is, 
 within limits, a measure of wealth 
 and strength, but there is a disposition 
 nowadays to overestimate the importance 
 of numbers. The England of Queen Anne 
 did not have over seven million people, 
 according to Edward Morris's sketch of 
 that reign, and the Athens of Pericles had 
 fewer people than Dayton, Ohio. This 
 tendency to boast of population is akin to 
 the exaggerated value attached to great 
 riches. It is no longer fashionable to 
 speak of any one worth fifty thousand 
 dollars as a rich man, and there is a faint 
 flavor of contempt mingled with any allu- 
 
Short Range. 135 
 
 sion to the size of the armies engaged in 
 the war of the American Revolution and 
 in the Mexican War. Bulk and numbers 
 now enlist admiration. We delight to 
 point out with each successive census how 
 big our population is becoming, and there 
 are occasional intimations that our terri- 
 torial area ought to be enlarged. Perhaps 
 we may end by valuing quantity above 
 quality, and reject the idea of a state em- 
 bodied in the noble ode of Sir William 
 Jones. So curiously rooted is this over- 
 appreciation of numbers that the habitant 
 of a town of three hundred thousand peo- 
 ple flatters himself that he is in some way 
 more important than the unfortunate man 
 doomed to live in a town of one hundred 
 thousand people. We are not sure that 
 we have not already given a shock to the 
 lover of size and numbers by our reference 
 to the census of Athens, and may thereby 
 blight some budding Hellenic taste that 
 would have relished Plato if he had only 
 lived in a larger town. Everything must 
 be Brobdingnagian to attract. The size of 
 the roses has been increased by culture 
 12 
 
 '■■■•■ 
 
136 At Long and 
 
 until there are a few stunning specimens 
 that might be mistaken for red cabbages. 
 Big houses, big ships, big cannon, big 
 railroads, big everything but men, intel- 
 lectually and morally. They are found, 
 when found at all, without reference to 
 the census. Cincinnatus at the plough 
 and Daniel Boone in the Kentucky forests 
 owed none of their greatness to swarming 
 multitudes. 
 
 ''THE silent consideration which is shown 
 a human corpse is a more eloquent 
 sermon than any divine, however eloquent, 
 has ever preached. 
 
 TT is fortunate that the imagination is so 
 dulled that we do not suffer more from 
 the calamities of life that are not presently 
 visible, but it can hardly be esteemed fortu- 
 nate that we lose the keen perception of the 
 beautiful in nature and art by allowing the 
 fancy to wither from disuse. The man or 
 woman who can take no quickened delight 
 
Short Range. 137 
 
 from lofty mountain-ranges, shining lakes, 
 water-falls, enamelled pastures, the solemn 
 splendor of the stars, paintings, statuary, 
 noble architecture, and graceful articles of 
 ornament, because he or she has become 
 wholly dedicated to utilitarian ideas and 
 lost the sense of the beautiful, leads a dry 
 and juiceless spiritual life. A certain exer- 
 cise of the imaginative faculty sheds joy 
 even upon the home circle. It makes the 
 inmates of home understand each other, 
 and is an ally of generous sympathy, a 
 promoter of rational affections. It is not 
 altogether out of place in the business 
 world. Kept within bounds, it liberalizes 
 business transactions and imparts dignity 
 and a high sense of honor to practical 
 affairs. It is useful in statesmanship when 
 it is restrained from sentimental vagaries, 
 and it seems vitally essential to religious 
 development. Without it how are men 
 to have faith ? That was a pregnant say- 
 ing of Mr. Beecher : "The true man builds 
 in air." To keep this subtle quality from 
 dying of inanition, cultivate the poets and 
 all artists, and surrender yourself with 
 
138 At Long and 
 
 child-like affection to the loveliness of the 
 physical universe. 
 
 "\XTHY speak of Paradise, — those of us 
 who give a mere passing glance and 
 conventional compliment to a freshly- 
 plucked rose, lightning charged with 
 beauty ? 
 
 TN this aesthetic age the old family por- 
 traits are apt to fare badly. If they 
 are not positively consigned to the lumber- 
 room, they are assigned some obscure and 
 dark corner of the house where they 
 may not look down reproachfully upon 
 modern bric-a-brac and decorative gew- 
 gaws. These venerable pictures are occa- 
 sionally dusted and refurbished, and the 
 junior members of the household are re- 
 minded of the merits of their worthy and 
 dead ancestors, but this spasm of fidelity 
 to the grandfathers and grandmothers 
 soon passes away and the old faces are 
 hidden in the gloom just as they have 
 
Short Range. 139 
 
 long been accustomed to in the deep 
 shadow of the tomb. It goes without 
 saying that the "counterfeit present- 
 ment" of a living patriarch whose rent- 
 roll is large and whose expected will is a 
 precious and pregnant piece of literature 
 does not share this neglect. It may be 
 counted on to hold the place of honor 
 amidst all the tapestry, the plaques and 
 the paintings and the ormolu. If the old 
 gentleman or lady of ample estate happens 
 to drop in, he or she may feel a grateful 
 throb at the sight of their own weather- 
 beaten but kindly countenance on the 
 walls, but let them not hug the flattering 
 delusion to their bosoms that they are to 
 hold permanent possession there. Old 
 lace and an ugly old table or chair stand 
 a better show in the modern drawing- 
 room than the picture of any old aunt or 
 uncle who has been decently buried and 
 can do no further good or harm in this 
 mortal sphere. It is a rapid age and one 
 not given to reminiscence. Pride in a 
 worthy stock no longer counts for as much 
 as it did in the earlier days of the re- 
 12* 
 
140 At Long and 
 
 public. The old folks, long interred, are 
 mildly conceded to have been good 
 enough in their day and generation, but 
 the fond preservation of their memories 
 once characteristic in good families in 
 civilized countries has given way to an 
 iconodastic spirit which hacks down the 
 idols of the heart just as it sweeps away 
 old creeds, old fashions, and old cus- 
 toms. Show us a family which still holds 
 the ancient portraits in solid reverence, 
 and you will have shown us one proof 
 against the seductions of shoddy, and 
 with convictions in various right chan- 
 nels immutable amidst all the changing 
 tastes and opinions of an age that is in a 
 fiery state of transition, cutting loose from 
 the old and not yet established on new 
 foundations. The dead must still live 
 with us if they represented anything of 
 eternal sound report. 
 
 '"THERE are felicities unknown to the 
 
 masculine mind. Who can compute 
 
 the delightful emotions that agitate the 
 
Short Range. 141 
 
 young lady who is about to go away from 
 home on a visit under auspices which prom- 
 ise to make her the cynosure of some ad- 
 miring circle ? No young man ever makes 
 a social foray with like excitement and 
 such rose-colored fancies. The prepara- 
 tion of her toilet is attended with number- 
 less charming conceits. She indulges in 
 a host of sweet vagaries about the distant 
 realm in which she is shortly to figure as 
 a new attraction. And it may be, per- 
 haps is, that in the midst of these varie- 
 gated waves of feeling an image comes 
 of the yet unseen and unknown person 
 whom fate has willed shall offer her a 
 devotion dearer than all other gifts of 
 love or friendship that may signalize this 
 epoch in her life. This romantic thought 
 is not revealed to the winds, lest they 
 betray the secret, and the maiden half 
 shrinks in timid sensibility from its con- 
 templation. There is about this hidden 
 fancy a delicate rose perfume, and it 
 lives in a chamber of virginal inno- 
 cence guarded with all the modest craft 
 of the sex from all inquest or confession. 
 
142 At Long and 
 
 What mind is so hardened in the world's 
 prosaic strife as not to recognize some- 
 thing exquisitely pretty and pleasing in 
 this young person's artless excitement 
 over such a campaign ? How free it is 
 from anything sordid or coarse or cruel ! 
 What grace hovers about all the bustle 
 and stir ! What child-like rapture breaks 
 forth at times in spite of all efforts at 
 restraint ! Who would annihilate the years 
 ahead and replace this fair picture with 
 some dark vision of disappointed hopes, 
 of sorrow and care ? 
 
 " Gather ye rose-buds while ye may ; 
 Old Time is still a-flying." 
 
 And so brief is the period of a young 
 woman's peculiar triumphs in the only 
 field which man's ambition has allotted 
 her, that even the angels in their high 
 estate must wish her radiant favors while 
 youth and grace still go joyously with 
 her. This is a period in a life whose 
 crystal depths no poet's plummet has ever 
 sounded, and the blunt mind of man may 
 
Short Range. 143 
 
 well hold it too beautiful and sacred for 
 profane regard. 
 
 X-TAPPILY, there are no children and 
 few women who are cynics, and the 
 vast multitudes of those who labor hon- 
 estly are free from this evil disposition. 
 Cynicism does no good whatever in this 
 world. 
 
 A CONVENIENT way, outside of sta- 
 tistics, to ascertain whether a nation 
 is stationary or positively retrograding is 
 to note what eminent men it is producing. 
 Tried by such a standard, Spain, Portu- 
 gal, the South American states, and a 
 large part of Asia do not figure respect- 
 ably. Japan, within twenty years, has de- 
 veloped many able statesmen who have 
 engineered important reforms. No dec- 
 ade goes by in our own land without 
 adding to the roll of illustrious names 
 which serves to keep alive a generous flame 
 among our people. We do well to build 
 
144 At Long and 
 
 monuments in honor of those who have 
 served the republic notably. These com- 
 memorative symbols in stone or bronze 
 teach and inspire. Rome was strong 
 whilst she was faithful to the memory of 
 her noblest citizens. 
 
 HTHE man who laughs furnished a text 
 for Hugo. The man who whistles 
 must occasionally furnish a theme for by- 
 standers. Boys, of course, are expected 
 to whistle ; indeed, all things are expected 
 of boys ; they are bound by no laws. It 
 is allowable, too, to whistle in passing a 
 graveyard at night, and there is a single, 
 long-drawn whistle expressive of other- 
 wise speechless incredulity. But when a 
 grown-up and rather elderly man enters a 
 tavern and, seating himself, begins de- 
 liberately and in extenso to whistle a set 
 tune, the case calls for cogitation. The 
 early history of such a man would be 
 interesting, and the course of life which 
 has enabled him to whistle when he has 
 passed middle age. It would be a curious 
 
Short Range. 145 
 
 matter to ascertain if he have a family, and 
 how they treat him 3 whether he is a mem- 
 ber of any church denomination ; what 
 political party he belongs to \ whether he 
 has an independent income, and other facts 
 shedding light upon his character, train- 
 ing, and career. Such a man might be 
 expected to rise solemnly from a dinner- 
 table and execute a jig. 
 
 "\17HY is it that printed speech carries 
 so much more weight than oral 
 utterance ? The ablest men in social in- 
 tercourse do not sway your judgment like 
 the silent types. A Jewish rabbi en- 
 deavored to find a key to this curious 
 problem in the fact that the printed Bible 
 was one of the earliest books read by the 
 masses. They received its deliverances 
 as authoritative, and part of this sanctity 
 has unconsciously been transferred to all 
 printed matter. This is at least an in- 
 genious suggestion. Perhaps there is an 
 additional reason worth entertaining, — viz., 
 that what is in print purports to be the 
 
146 At Long and 
 
 ultimate expression on any given subject, 
 and impresses you by its mute and in- 
 flexible dogmatism, whilst conversational 
 utterances are modified, qualified, or well- 
 nigh retracted as free talk goes on, so that 
 they fail to command absolute assent. It 
 is even true that you do not attach as 
 much value to a book written by a man 
 you intimately know as to one written by 
 a stranger; you know your friend's weak- 
 nesses and infirmities, and judge the book 
 accordingly. 
 
 vy HEREVER kini:il y words and deeds 
 
 are spoken and done, there the 
 unseen flowers are shedding their fairy 
 fragrance, and there the spirit of the 
 beautiful is keeping everlasting watch and 
 ward. He says a most foolish thing who 
 disparages the children of song. They 
 are children after all, for they do not cry 
 out that Diana of the Ephesians is great, 
 and they refuse to bow down to false 
 idols. They have the simplicity to be- 
 lieve that man cannot live by bread alone, 
 
Short Range. 147 
 
 and they have the courage to love and 
 suffer and hope and to cheer up the muddy 
 senses of the worldlings and inspire them 
 with visions from on high. It is health 
 and not disease to keep alive within us 
 the assenting condition upon which we 
 may entertain angels unawares. 
 
 '"THERE is a little article of feminine 
 attire which does not cut an exten- 
 sive figure in the fashion-plates, rarely 
 taxes the genius of the modistes, and is 
 not celebrated in toast or song, which, 
 nevertheless, is as full of pleasing domestic 
 associations as any habiliment connected 
 with the sex; that article is the apron. 
 It does not belong to the street or the 
 drawing-room. It is, therefore, essentially 
 a home piece of personal furniture, and 
 when clean and neat and pretty, as it is 
 always with careful housewives and their 
 daughters, gives more pleasure to husband, 
 father, and children than all the silks and 
 satins, the flounces and furbelows, that 
 speak of the shop and the mantua-maker. 
 13 
 
148 At Long and 
 
 A comely housewife with her spotless 
 apron attending to home duties is then 
 in her glory; she is mistress and queen. 
 Change the scene, and let her adorn her- 
 self for the parlor or the street, and she 
 takes place with the rest of the world ; 
 but moving to and fro from kitchen and 
 dining-room and through the sleeping- 
 apartments, supervising with gentle so- 
 licitude the details of home, she rules 
 supreme, the loving and lovable arbitress 
 of all those little comforts that make the 
 tired workman glad to cross his own 
 threshold, and children remember with 
 quiet joy in after-years the sweet liberties 
 and privileges that followed like a trail of 
 light the dear little woman with the apron. 
 The young lover may have fond thoughts 
 of some opera-cloak rich in color, but as 
 the years roll by he will have a tenderer 
 feeling for the white apron and the willing 
 feet and hands going with it than ever the 
 daintiest festal robe inspired. There are 
 things that belong to the general world, 
 and these things never convey lasting mes- 
 sages to the heart ; and there are things 
 
Short Range. 149 
 
 deeply baptized with the very precious 
 dew of home itself and saturated with sug- 
 gestions of its inner life, and the modest 
 apron is one of these eloquent things, 
 around which smiles of happiness or tears 
 of ever-loving sorrow may gather. All 
 this world over and in all the ages of time 
 the simple things are the expressive ones. 
 The simple Saxon words are the strongest. 
 The simple rose or honeysuckle, or the 
 familiar lilac, gives most soul pleasure. 
 Simple old-fashioned manners and virtues 
 wear best. And so it is with even the 
 dress of men and women. The sailor's 
 jacket tells more than the fop's "Prince 
 Albert," and the straw hat which that 
 young girl wears in her garden is more 
 beautiful than any head-gear she will 
 ever import from Paris. No amount of 
 talk can ever add emphasis to this fact, 
 and none can alter or defeat it. There 
 are times and occasions for all kinds of 
 speech, manner, and wardrobe, but so 
 long as the word home stands for any- 
 thing in the affections of human beings 
 the apron and its open secrets will hold 
 
150 At Long and 
 
 first place in our hearts as a household 
 symbol rich with unspeakable treasures of 
 love. 
 
 (^)N the whole, things are so distributed 
 that every one may have a little taste 
 of distinction. The teamster in a battle 
 is as elated as the commander-in-chief. 
 The ordinances of nature are not unkind. 
 
 A MERICAN families, as a rule, have one 
 failing that deserves to be pointed 
 out, and that is their practical indifference 
 to the preservation of family souvenirs, 
 heirlooms, and mementos. Our people 
 are migratory, and suffer these articles, full 
 as they are of special interest and tender 
 or proud associations, to be scattered and 
 lost. The younger members of the house- 
 hold attach little or no value to family 
 portraits, old letters, and furniture that 
 have a personal history. We knew a lit- 
 erary man to complain with much feeling 
 that neither his wife, daughters, nor sons 
 
Short Range. 151 
 
 thought enough of any of his writings 
 (even those which embodied his person- 
 ality) to save anything in print or manu- 
 script which he had written. It fares so 
 with pictures, ancient jewelry or silver, 
 tresses of hair, articles of wardrobe that 
 ought to have touching claims to safe- 
 keeping. The boys go right and left over 
 the broad land and follow their own am- 
 bitions, leaving the past behind, and the 
 girls marry and contract new ties. No 
 one expects ancestral estates to remain in 
 the family, but one might hope for the 
 preservation of a few mementos of kin- 
 dred. This is a defect in our social and 
 domestic habits which means more than 
 superficially appears. It indicates a sort 
 of implied contempt for anything save 
 present events and current belongings. 
 It casts lightly aside all the mellow sug- 
 gestions of by-gone years, and even the 
 reproachful images of "the old familiar 
 faces," and vaunts its belief only in the 
 creeds and tastes and pleasures and oppor- 
 tunities of the fleeting day, treating all 
 that has gone before as fossiliferous or 
 13* 
 
152 At Long and 
 
 mouldy. Happy that soul which can re- 
 joice in the glow and stir of the modern 
 time without forgetting the beautiful and 
 tender memories of an earlier period and 
 the figures that then so eloquently ap- 
 pealed from the living canvas ! Such a 
 soul lives in an atmosphere that is tinted 
 with the effulgence of lovable seasons 
 gone, as well as the fresh bright radiance 
 of the "new-born day." It unites the 
 past and the present with a fairy bridge 
 over which thoughts and fancies which 
 belong to intervals of time long separated 
 troop together and blend in natural con- 
 fraternity. The present is fitly sounded 
 by preserving its relations with the past. 
 We cannot forget our fathers and mothers, 
 our grandparents, our aunts and cousins, 
 our old homes and recollections that are 
 handed down to us by grateful tradition, 
 without inflicting a scar upon ourselves. 
 Such a habit vulgarizes. It is unwise to 
 rob life, the world, and the mind of poetry 
 and of love. There are "unconsidered 
 trifles" in every reputable household that, 
 considered with a piercing and loyal vision 
 
Short Range. 153 
 
 and a noble heart, are as fruitful of value 
 to you, if you will only know it, as the 
 Black Hills or the Texas savannas which 
 you are now pondering, map in hand. 
 How much preaching shall it take to make 
 these people of both sexes and of all ages 
 suspect the enduring loveliness and impor- 
 tance of spiritual things? 
 
 "PROLONGED absence, unaccompanied 
 by letters, is apt to dim the recol- 
 lected image of any one, however loved. 
 
 A GOOD deal of English, German, and 
 French humor, in text or in pictorial 
 shape, exists for the fun pure and simple. 
 It will be found, on scrutiny, that much 
 of the humor current in the United States 
 is intended to expose some sham, rebuke 
 some folly, or enforce the dictates of 
 common sense. The burlesque sketches of 
 the Houston Post ridicule the boisterous 
 affectations of ruffianism. The Detroit 
 Free Press makes " Bijah" bring into dis- 
 
154 At Long and 
 
 repute the hypocrisies that have often de- 
 feated justice in police courts. The in- 
 imitable Chicago Tribune satires on gush 
 and sentimental rhodomontade have al- 
 most laughed the yellow-backed novels out 
 of market. The D anbury News man has 
 put domestic relations on a cheerful foot- 
 ing by his lively pictures of certain femi- 
 nine absurdities, and so on through the 
 whole category. The most extravagant 
 wit that finds its way here usually " means 
 business" in puncturing some humbug or 
 sending its incisive shaft straight through 
 the backbone of intrenched falsehood. It 
 is within bounds to say that the exquisite 
 essence of American good sense is in the 
 incessant, varied, and omnipresent humor 
 that even invades the pulpit as well as all 
 other channels. Look at this frolicsome 
 business in its many masks and guises, and 
 note that it does not attack any real gen- 
 uine thing, but deals with the counterfeit 
 article. When Artemus Ward said the 
 war should go on if he had to sacrifice his 
 forty-second cousin, no one was in doubt 
 as to whose bare shoulders felt the lash, 
 
Short Range. 155 
 
 and Bret Harte's "Heathen Chinee" 
 made many a demagogue wince. Wit is 
 a potent weapon and a useful one on this 
 side of the water ; it ranks, indeed, first 
 among the reformatory agencies. 
 
 TT used to be quite a puzzle as to where 
 the Indians procured the material for 
 their flint implements, and a still greater 
 puzzle as to how they made their arrow- 
 heads, spears, knives, etc., from such un- 
 manageable material. The discovery of 
 flint-quarries solved the first mystery, and 
 the researches of geological explorers have 
 shown the interesting fact that the Indians 
 had discovered that flints fresh from their 
 natural beds in the earth could be split 
 with precision. The savages opened deep 
 trenches to the unexposed beds to secure 
 such specimens as might be "chipped into 
 useful shapes by the dexterous hands of 
 the professional arrow-maker." In the 
 reports of the Geological Survey of Indi- 
 ana by the State Geologist, Cox, assisted 
 by Professor Vollett and Dr. Levette, pub- 
 
156 At Long and 
 
 lished in 1879, there is an interesting 
 chapter on the flints in Harrison County ; 
 they are found in abundance on Indian 
 and Buck Creeks, in that county, and 
 there the trenches are found from four to 
 ten feet deep and from one-quarter to 
 one-half mile in extent, which the patient 
 Indian dug in search of the right kind of 
 flints for his use. These geologists dis- 
 covered that flint balls taken fresh from 
 the quarry and tested with a smart blow 
 from a hammer would break away in level 
 cleavage, first from top to bottom, then 
 with some practice this flattened section 
 of a sphere could be cleft in straight 
 lines perpendicular to the plane of depo- 
 sition. The miners had been governed 
 by these facts. Select materials were car- 
 ried to their village homes in the shape of 
 sectional blocks and cones, to be wrought 
 into implements. As the material could 
 only be worked successfully when fresh 
 from the quarry, and while it retained an 
 excess of water, the blocks and cones were 
 buried in damp earth to prevent the escape 
 of moisture until the workmen were ready 
 
 
Short Range. 157 
 
 to chip them into the desired shapes. 
 Blocks of limestone were used as anvils 
 and granite boulders as hammers. Speak- 
 ing of the quarry-pits in Harrison County, 
 the reports from which we obtain these 
 facts say that flints enough to satisfy the 
 wants of the savage hunters and warriors 
 of the interior of the continent for a cen- 
 tury had evidently been mined there. 
 Chips and splinters by the wagon-load are 
 found there. The writer found that in 
 Wyandotte Cave, in Crawford County, In- 
 diana, there were unmistakable evidences 
 that the Indians resorted to this cavern to 
 obtain flints, which are in great abundance 
 in the cave. 
 
 HPHERE is a virgin field not yet fairly 
 entered by the American novelist 
 and student of novel types of character 
 and peculiar social aspects. We refer to 
 the Minorcan community settled in St. Au- 
 gustine, Florida. Whilst Lowell, Holmes, 
 and others have depicted the typical Yan- 
 kee, Strother the Virginian, Bret Harte 
 
158 At Long and 
 
 the Californian, Cable the Creole, Bald- 
 win and the author of the " Dukesborough 
 Sketches" the Georgian, Craddock the 
 native of the Tennessee mountains, and 
 Gilbert Parker the Hudson's Bay people, 
 the descendants of the colonists whom Dr. 
 Turnbull took to the Halifax River (Flor- 
 ida) in the last century, and who revolted 
 against his tyranny and marched up the 
 coast to St. Augustine, have not yet been 
 treated as Albert Rhodes did the French 
 at home. They have special festivities, 
 special dishes, peculiar superstitions, and 
 marked moral and intellectual character- 
 istics which invite inspection. 
 
 AS the summer approaches, there are 
 delights in the hills for those who 
 seek them with a willing mind. Now the 
 woods begin to be peopled with the hum 
 of innumerable insects, and blended with 
 the drowsy sound is the soft rippling mur- 
 mur of the breeze through the young 
 leaves. The bee is already surfeiting 
 itself in the dandelions in the pasture 
 
Short Range. 159 
 
 that gleams below the wooded heights. 
 This bewitching little water-fall, hidden in 
 a secreted alcove, is lovelier than rivers. 
 Its spray falls upon ledges green with 
 moss, and the red-bird and yellow-bird 
 take their baths in its rock basins. One 
 can listen by the hour to the liquid gurgle 
 of this delicious fountain, and it will re- 
 pay you to follow its shining waters down 
 the leafy ravine through which they sing 
 their way to the great sea. Now you can 
 find the red haw and the wild plum-tree, 
 inspect the grape-vines, and note whether 
 the beech and hickory promise a fine 
 yield. Late flowers and many aromatic 
 plants will invite regard, and you may do 
 a little geologizing if you are of an ener- 
 getic mood. Mosses and ferns solicit a 
 passing glance, and if you are making a 
 bouquet, we counsel you to include the 
 May-apple of the woods. Its tropical- 
 looking leaves, spreading like a canopy 
 over the great white flower with yellow 
 petals, is a beautiful crown to the flowers 
 you group under it. When you descend 
 from the lofty hills into the meadows at 
 
160 At Long and 
 
 sunset, you may look out for spearmint, 
 and close the day with a pensive recol- 
 lection of the julep you took with a friend 
 of school-day memory long years ago. 
 This suggestion is of course addressed to 
 the sterner sex. 
 
 A CERTAIN credulity belongs to a 
 frank and honest and hearty nature, 
 and when it is totally extinct there is no 
 fire of zeal left for any good cause. The 
 "man of the world," as he is conceived, 
 and as he sometimes actually is, has 
 brought himself to such a barren state 
 intellectually and morally that, if not 
 downright wicked, he is indubitably stupid, 
 though such a charge would provoke more 
 indignation in his placid bosom than any 
 other that could be made. The one who 
 has fallen into the chronic habit of doubt- 
 ing and cavilling never originates a gener- 
 ous idea, never communicates a generous 
 glow to any person or enterprise, is utterly 
 unfruitful and nugatory. Instead of life 
 leading on to such an end, it properly 
 
Short Range. 161 
 
 leads on to an enlargement of faith, a 
 quickening of sympathies, a keener reali- 
 zation of how much there is to admire 
 and to believe in, and those who have 
 profited most by contact with men and 
 women and their affairs come out of all 
 this multiform and many-colored experi- 
 ence hopeful, trustful, and full of sweet 
 charities of mind and manners. The 
 typical "man of the world" is a sad fail- 
 ure, — the saddest of all except one wholly 
 abandoned to vice. 
 
 T T is doubtful whether those vast extended 
 landscapes so much vaunted and to 
 which tourists go at whatever cost furnish 
 as much abiding pleasure as certain scenes 
 on a more miniature scale. After a while 
 the panoramic views visible from moun- 
 tain-top are not found to have that subtle 
 and enduring charm that attaches to a 
 single mountain-stream, a deep pool of 
 pellucid water, a notable picturesque tree 
 in a favorable situation, certain glorified 
 meadows, a serpentine path through noble 
 
1 62 At Long and 
 
 woods flanked by wild ravines, or even 
 swamps and marshes at certain seasons and 
 under special lights and shadows. These 
 are little pictures that are full of sweetness. 
 An old farm-house, with ancient well and 
 orchard, can touch the heart more per- 
 suasively than miles of hill and valley, 
 and to a loving eye the evening star in 
 some pastoral spot often gives balm and 
 joy. After the first ejaculations of won- 
 der are over, the tourists rarely linger 
 long, even to admire the variegated land- 
 scape stretching away from the heights at 
 Lake Lucerne, but a sympathetic eye will 
 single out some herdsman's hut, and the 
 responsive fancy will do the rest. A true 
 lover of nature individualizes. The con- 
 ventional "views" are not the ones which 
 sink deepest into the soul. 
 
 HTHE immortal boy longs for the days 
 when vacation will set him free 
 to have illimitable marbles, mumble-peg, 
 shinny, swims in country brooks, raids 
 in orchard or melon-patch, and arch- 
 
Short Range. 163 
 
 ery practice on cat-birds. He puts his 
 hands deep in his pockets and indulges 
 in frequent reveries. His face is as inno- 
 cent as a seraph's, but it will be prudent to 
 keep the cakes and jelly-jar under lock and 
 key. This cherub has long been chafing 
 under the double restraint paternal and 
 pedagogical, and when school breaks up 
 and he spreads his pinions you will hear 
 from him. It is a pity to confine him to 
 a town. He ought to be let loose in the 
 wide pastures and shaggy hills. He needs 
 plenty of room for his varied talents, and 
 in an ample form he will display a versa- 
 tility for extracting all the cream that 
 there is in the rural cocoa-nut, that is the 
 wonder and the despair of jaded people 
 and a great source of admiration for the 
 rustic folks. He will make it uncomfort- 
 able for snakes and ground-hogs, and his 
 sling-shot will give the glazier plenty of 
 work ere the summer is over. The bees 
 know the energetic stripling, and have no 
 love for him, but in the end he will come 
 out conqueror. In fact, the immortal boy 
 is the one living creature who can eat cu- 
 14* 
 
164 At Long and 
 
 cumbers and laugh at cholera, and an army 
 of him would overrun Afghanistan in no 
 time if he should happen in that distracted 
 quarter of the globe. When this redoubt- 
 able individual is preparing for the com- 
 ing holiday, he ought to have cast-iron 
 trousers if his mother wishes any surcease 
 from patching. 
 
 / ~PHE man with the flute will often prove 
 to be an entertaining person. It 
 must not be rashly inferred from the pre- 
 vailing melancholy tone of his selections 
 that he is of a sombre disposition. On 
 the contrary, he is eminently social, and 
 nothing gives him greater pleasure than 
 to carry his instrument with him to small 
 social parties and blow away at pathetic 
 Scotch airs. If you are intimate with him, 
 he will tell you many artless narratives 
 of conquests he has made with his flute, 
 of distress he has soothed with its soft 
 and tender notes, and of serenades in 
 which it has cut an interesting figure. 
 The man and the flute become almost in- 
 
Short Range. 165 
 
 separable. It will often supply the place 
 of a sweetheart or wife. It is a relaxation 
 from business cares. It answers instead of 
 action or meditation. It is proof against 
 rainy days and dismal nights. It invests 
 an attic room with comfort and it reduces 
 the quantity of cigars consumed, as one 
 cannot play and smoke at the same time. 
 For an instrument hardly intended to set 
 up on its own hook, it makes its way with 
 an astonishingly successful pretension. 
 The enamoured flutist has no idea of ac- 
 knowledging that his instrument is only 
 an adjunct to violin, guitar, or piano. He 
 quietly assumes that they are adjuncts to 
 his flute. Set him playing in appreciative 
 company, and he will play all night. For 
 happy complacency, commend us to the 
 man with the flute. The great Frederick 
 found balm in it, and so did Richard 
 Swiveller. It is a handy instrument. 
 There is no breaking of strings and eter- 
 nal tuning. It is portable. It has an 
 aristocratic air. It has made many a land- 
 lady wait on her dilatory lodger for ar- 
 rears. It has lessened the horror of prison 
 
1 66 At Long and 
 
 walls. It was the comrade of Goldsmith 
 on his travels. An unseen flutist always 
 excites curiosity. Hear him in some hotel 
 room, and you will discover in yourself a 
 certain desire to know what manner of 
 looking individual he is, — whether he re- 
 sembles Hamlet or some daintier type of 
 man. That he retreats to his quarters to 
 play his flute instead of pushing billiard- 
 balls or quaffing in the bar-room provokes 
 an ingenious concern in him. The cham- 
 bermaid in the hall stops a moment to 
 listen, and the sentimental young lady 
 next door drops " Ouida" to drink in the 
 peaceful airs. The flutist decidedly in a 
 gentle way makes an impression as he goes 
 along. He may at times be doleful, but 
 his notes do not torture like a screaking 
 fiddle or drive to madness like a blatant 
 horn, and the general idea that this par- 
 ticular musician conveys is one of almost 
 pastoral simplicity and peace. So we bid 
 him good-speed, and trust he may drive 
 away all carking cares with his stops and 
 keys. So long as he remains loyal to the 
 flute, he will do no serious harm to the 
 
Short Range. 167 
 
 world, and if he make indifferent music, it 
 is not of that resounding and penetrating 
 quality which leads a sufferer to make in- 
 stant search for his revolver. No flutist 
 was ever mobbed. He is the one lamb 
 who is not molested. 
 
 TT is not ambition or a distaste for domes- 
 ticity that induces so many men who 
 could be at ease in the bosom of their 
 families to go out into the wide world. 
 The cause of their wanderings is the house- 
 maid. This damsel, with her broom and 
 dust-pan, sweeps the despairing house- 
 holder into the street, and compels him to 
 hunt new quarters. If he crawled up the 
 chimney she would find him there, and in 
 inclement weather he cannot perch upon 
 the roof. She swoops down on him whilst 
 he is reading the morning paper, and with 
 bland ferocity and smiling implacableness 
 raises a cloud of dust about his chair, puts 
 his eyes out, and makes him burn his mouth 
 with his cigar. He can have no pleasing 
 revery but this dreadful young person 
 
1 68 At Long and 
 
 appears on the scene, armed and equipped 
 to invade his day-dreams and make life a 
 burden. He may secrete himself in any 
 chamber of the house, and she will find 
 him. He has no use for slippers or dressing- 
 gown until he can be sure this assiduous 
 female with a morbid mania for cleanliness 
 is asleep and locked up in her own dor- 
 mitory. Day brings her with the morning 
 sun, and she cruises around with an alarm- 
 ing vivacity that gives no hope of peace in 
 any nook or corner. He may sigh for the 
 tranquil delights of bachelordom, when 
 his boots and pipes could ornament mantel 
 or table; but it's no use to think over 
 by-gone joys ; he is the victim of his en- 
 vironments. Get out, my good man ; you 
 are decidedly in the way. At nightfall 
 you may slink in ; your arch enemy is 
 invisible. 
 
 "pVEN those who refuse to accept the 
 sacred and inspiring legend of Easter, 
 and consider this bright phase of the Chris- 
 tian story a hopeful myth devised to save 
 
Short Range. 169 
 
 man from total despair, cannot divest 
 themselves of the conception of Deity 
 which came in with the Christ, — a Being 
 full of love for His creatures, instead of an 
 implacable God, stern and pitiless. The 
 opening spring-time is associated with 
 the thought of a kindly Providence. The 
 beauty of the visible world suggests an 
 infinite loveliness, of which it is a faint 
 symbol and prelude. Men at last have 
 hope. They may hesitate over creeds, or 
 fancy that they have done with them ; but 
 the Christian hope, once in the air and in 
 the heart, will not die. There is a new 
 God — not Jehovah or Jupiter — and a new 
 hope. The enlightened world celebrates 
 an Easter willingly or unwillingly. It sees 
 benignity where it once saw hidden and 
 dreadful power. It finds in its own throb- 
 bing bosom hints of compassion. 
 
 TV/TEN are hardly as conscious as they 
 might be, on a little earnest reflec- 
 tion, as to how absolutely identified the 
 word home is with the feminine component 
 
170 At Long and 
 
 of it. The wife, mother, and daughters 
 mainly make up what is most tenderly 
 conveyed by the word home. Marriage 
 and death demonstrate the fact with potent 
 emphasis. Let the daughters marry and 
 the wife and mother die, and where then 
 is the home ? What usually takes place ? 
 The home is broken up. The boys, if old 
 enough, engage in business. The bereaved 
 man finds a boarding-place and is isolated. 
 Then he learns what his wife and daughters 
 were to him, and what grace and joy have 
 vanished forever. He will find no equiv- 
 alent in the world, no substitute in new 
 associations. Time may heal the scar, but 
 it cannot give back the home which rested 
 on the faces, the forms, the hearts of a few 
 women. He is a rash man who would 
 expedite by a day the loss from his house- 
 hold of one of its feminine members by 
 marriage, and he is blind and foolish 
 beyond compare who does not watch over 
 the health of his wife as a treasure to be 
 guarded more than all earthly possessions. 
 Men are not wanting in feeling, but they 
 are careless in concerns of this nature. 
 
Short Range. 171 
 
 They seem to take it for granted that what 
 is will always be. They undervalue the 
 blessings which encompass them in their 
 domestic life and which use has made 
 familiar, and it is only when the revolving 
 years bring them face to face with deso- 
 lation that they realize what they had and 
 can have no more. 
 
 C~}NE of the laments of age is that no 
 new friendships are formed. It is a 
 rather mournful fact that most persons who 
 pass fifty years lose the gift of pleasing. 
 The sparkling eye, the merry laugh, the 
 hearty speech, the sympathetic manner, 
 are all gone, and in place of these are a 
 guarded bearing and a sober habit of 
 thought and judgment. Good-looking 
 young people, with their pleasant faces 
 and enthusiasm, win friends off-hand ; but 
 the saddened and mature man becomes 
 more and more isolated. Those of his own 
 kind give only what they receive, and 
 the young shrink from him. He has lost 
 the glow and the conquering vivacity of 
 
172 At Long and 
 
 youth. He estimates the pursuit of life 
 with frigid scepticism, and those who still 
 delight to collect the dust in the race- 
 course are offended at him. He may be 
 ever so just and kind, but his exterior 
 bears the scars of pain, and the average 
 man or woman instinctively draws away 
 from an invalid. If he be wise he will 
 fall back upon books and a fishing-rod in 
 season, and make friends in heaven, for 
 his chance of making any down here is 
 decidedly slender. Good tobacco and a 
 clean brier-root pipe will also be found an 
 excellent substitute for human affections. 
 
 AMONG a man's personal belongings 
 the pocket-knife holds an intimate 
 and valued place. A veteran friend of 
 this kind becomes the nucleus of many 
 associations. It acquires a familiar and 
 affectionate physiognomy. One learns to 
 play with it in a caressing way as with 
 something sentient. Even if there were 
 no immediate practical use for it, its ab- 
 sence would be felt. Sometimes it is in- 
 
Short Range. 173 
 
 vested with a double interest by being a 
 gift from relative or acquaintance. A 
 knife kept through many years seems in 
 some subtle way to become identified with 
 one, to acquire a kind of silent kinship, to 
 be a token that things are well. Its preser- 
 vation suggests stability, continuity, per- 
 manence. One certainly hates to part 
 with this faithful companion, and when it 
 is retired from wear and tear, its successor 
 seems like an intruder and a stranger. 
 
 '"PHE sound of falling water is always 
 pleasing to the ear. It soothes and 
 tranquillizes. It gently provokes to revery. 
 In some lovely glen where a mountain- 
 brook finds its musical way with liquid 
 and voluble accents over successive ledges, 
 falling into rock basins with a faint tinkling 
 sound, or with a full, rounded, and articu- 
 late note, or with a soft, hoarse murmur as 
 if there were caverns beneath, the atten- 
 tive ear gladly detects what a variety of 
 melodies there are in its passage, and that 
 its voice is not a monotone after all. 
 
174 At Long and 
 
 Those who during summer retreat from the 
 fashionable world, and in leafy ravines, 
 where mosses glisten on the rocks, listen 
 to the sweet syllables of the flowing water 
 and let their spirits yield to the spell of 
 perfect peace, will return to cities with a 
 new secret of joy imparted to them at 
 altars not built with human hands. Thrice 
 blessed are they to whom this charmed 
 message has been given in nature's fond 
 sanctuary. 
 
 /"\NE of the landmarks, if we may em- 
 ploy the figure, of a certain period 
 of life when men begin to settle down to 
 tranquil habits and moderate ambition is 
 the early cup of coffee. The young would 
 look with smiling disdain upon this feature 
 as counting for much in the matter of 
 physical enjoyment, but after fifty, with 
 the average American, the morning hour 
 and the coffee ahead of breakfast-time are 
 the sweetest incidents of the day. The 
 grateful beverage blunts the fatigue of 
 travel, mollifies the temper, disposes one 
 
Short Range. 175 
 
 to serenity, and ushers in the day with 
 orderly and amiable mood. The well- 
 disciplined mortal who can add a few puffs 
 of mild tobacco without detriment has 
 little to ask of fortune. He imbibes phi- 
 losophy with his Java and his Durham, and 
 does not covet Stanley's restless energy or 
 Vanderbilt's bonds. He has gone far to 
 solve the problem of happiness without 
 aid from metaphysicians or moralists, and 
 whether in town or country, he extracts 
 from the fresh hours of the dawning day 
 more substantial, though subdued, satisfac- 
 tion than people get from feasts and junk- 
 etings, try how they will. That antecedent 
 cup of coffee leaves a fragrant and sanitary 
 flavor along the path marked by the clock 
 which "old stagers" recognize as the 
 charmed secret, the genuine comfort and 
 solace of age. 
 
 'T'HE blunt old lady who speaks her mind, 
 but is kindly withal, sometimes occa- 
 sions a commotion in social circles by her 
 very frank utterances. But she is usually 
 15* 
 
176 At Long and 
 
 respected, and she can be depended on to 
 rectify a good deal of the nonsense with 
 which common conversation is liberally 
 garnished. She is very useful in keeping 
 young women from being as silly as they 
 are capable of being when they fairly set 
 out to outdo themselves in that line, and 
 she is the proper terror of solemn bores 
 who endeavor to make wise looks and sen- 
 tentious platitudes pass muster for better 
 things. This old lady is usually endowed 
 with a good share of hard sense, keen 
 observation, and despatch in the trans- 
 action of such matters as fall to her 
 charge. She is called eccentric by com- 
 monplace people ; but her eccentricity is 
 merely an independent way of thinking 
 and acting, without anything vulgar or 
 needlessly offensive about it. She will be 
 found to be just as warm-hearted as she is 
 sensible and shrewd, and if you will con- 
 descend to talk and to act to the point 
 without flummery or affectation, you will 
 find her reasonably acquiescent and by no 
 means as dogmatic as you might suppose on 
 first acquaintance. This old lady is fortu- 
 
Short Range. 177 
 
 nately solid in the matter of income, and is 
 neither extravagant nor stingy. She de- 
 serves her worldly possessions, and it may 
 be depended on she does plenty of kind 
 deeds without ever referring to them. She 
 is always an interesting study. 
 
 'T'HE old family horse is eminently re- 
 spectable, but he will bear watching. 
 After years of circumspect behavior he 
 takes it into his head at times to be a little 
 gay and festive, and has been known to 
 spill out a carriageful of people and look 
 on with sedate complacency, as if he had 
 done a praiseworthy act. He is given to 
 solemn cogitation, and doubtless deliber- 
 ates some giddy performance as a relief 
 from the bore of unvarying good conduct. 
 He has been known to take a nip at the 
 arm of the hostler, to plant his ancient 
 hoof in the abdomen of a visitor to his 
 stall, to stray away like a veritable vaga- 
 bond, and, after facing a locomotive with 
 the composure of a Turk, cut up the most 
 deplorable shindies over an upraised um- 
 
178 At Long and 
 
 brella. He is a trifle spoiled by women 
 and children, who drive him with a loose 
 rein, and he is notoriously addicted to the 
 sulks when things don't go to suit him. 
 That he has grown gray in faithful service 
 must be freely admitted, but it is indubi- 
 tably true that as he waxes in years he be- 
 comes possessed with moods and vagaries 
 that must not be overlooked. Like the 
 antique sinner who said he had been try- 
 ing to please the Lord for thirty years 
 and had now concluded to please himself 
 a while, the family horse may be counted 
 on to indulge in some grotesque and dan- 
 gerous pastimes if he is not observantly 
 watched. He is by no means as sober 
 and conservative as his benevolent visage 
 indicates. 
 
 HTHERE is a subtle element entering 
 into the relations of the sexes which 
 men rarely perceive. It is somewhat diffi- 
 cult to describe, but in a rough way may 
 be stated thus : Women have an entity 
 of their own involving distinctive ideas, 
 
Short Range. 179 
 
 tastes, feelings, and even a programme of 
 life; they recognize it among themselves, 
 value it, and respect it. Men so little take 
 this into account that even the most 
 chivalrous, consciously or unconsciously, 
 regard woman as a sort of "annex" to a 
 man, graceful and lovable it may be, but 
 still chiefly important as identified with 
 man, his comforts, passions, or ambitions. 
 It is a survival of the times when woman 
 was universally considered an inferior 
 being. In certain lands she was even de- 
 nied the possession of a soul. The modern 
 man has recovered from this brutal idiocy, 
 but he has things yet to learn, and one 
 of them is that the emancipated sex has a 
 mental and moral life of its own which 
 may and does blend with that of men, 
 but which has its own special "form and 
 pressure," and which women, both in 
 private communings and in their social 
 relations with their own sex, esteem of as 
 much value as the thoughts, aims, and 
 activities of their masculine compeers. 
 When a man gets an insight of this phase 
 of woman's mind and career, and treats 
 
180 At Long and 
 
 it with sense and consideration, he will 
 find woman nearer and dearer to him than 
 ever and he will be greatly improved him- 
 self. It will open up a new field of intel- 
 lectual experience and aid him in mind, 
 manners, and the pursuit of happiness. 
 
 T_T OW much more concerned people are 
 about their faces, about the looking 
 and the seeming, than about the real in- 
 ternal facts ! This shows that to impress 
 others is considered of more consequence 
 than one's own genuine self-respect or the 
 desire to walk 
 
 " As ever in the great Taskmaster's eye." 
 
 Yet it is rare that the face-mask long 
 deceives. There is the voice likewise to 
 train, and speech will often betray where 
 the face is successful in some imposture. 
 The face, too, cannot always be relied on, 
 and the mouth is a notorious traitor. Far 
 better to be than to seem and not to be. 
 Far better to have a jaded or stupid face, 
 if the inward spirit burn truly and brightly. 
 
Short Range. 181 
 
 Far better to have honest wrinkles born 
 of noble cares than a smooth visage kept 
 placid by invincible selfishness. 
 
 How long will the human masquerade 
 go on ere people grow weary of its falsity 
 and strive after real things? This ever- 
 lasting thought about outward appear- 
 ances and indifference about the inward 
 constitution is the cancer of the age. 
 When it is cured, and men and women 
 become genuine, all faces will become 
 beautiful, and the photographers will put 
 away their cameras. 
 
 "pEW persons anticipate that in becom- 
 ing "cultivated" they are likewise 
 becoming isolated. The finely-educated 
 musical ear can no longer get pleasure 
 from the fiddle at the rural dance. The 
 critical literary taste is excluded from a 
 large part of current reading matter which 
 interests others. The mind conversant 
 with science has no relish for loose con- 
 versation on subjects within the province 
 of science. Persons socially fastidious 
 
1 82 At Long and 
 
 have few friends and no employment in 
 general society. The woman who is sensi- 
 tive and educated in affairs of the toilet 
 is constantly shocked, and if her income 
 and her tastes do not correspond, suffers 
 more than she can tell, or could tell with- 
 out incurring derision. So, too, those 
 who have a high ideal, an exalted standard 
 of thought and conduct, find themselves 
 lonely in the crowd and saddened. The 
 cost of superiority is alienation from those 
 who are mediocre and satisfied. All who 
 aspire and toil to attain uncommon excel- 
 lence must pay this penalty. The world 
 may admire them, but the world has a 
 happiness of its own which it cannot give 
 them and which they have disqualified 
 themselves evermore from enjoying. This 
 is an old story, but it always seems to be 
 a fruitful source of wonder and pain. 
 
 I '"THERE are delights in the hills for 
 
 those who are willing to enjoy simple 
 
 pleasures. The sunsets mark a distinct 
 
 experience for city people, who rarely ob- 
 
Short Range. 183 
 
 serve the sky and take their knowledge of 
 the beauty of the physical world by hear- 
 say. The lazy strolls through pastures and 
 woods, the picnics along pleasant brooks, 
 the cosey seat in some sylvan spot, the 
 glass of fresh milk at a farm-house where 
 honeysuckles run over the porch, the an- 
 gling for chubs, the rides in the early 
 morning, the swims for the young folks, 
 the berries gathered from the bush and 
 apples from the tree, the games (croquet, 
 tennis, quoits), the sound sleep and keen 
 appetite, — surely these are all good for 
 body and mind and prepare one for the 
 fall campaign of business or pleasure. 
 They will compare favorably with the 
 costly recreations of the fashionable places 
 of resort, and they preserve one from a 
 hasty conclusion that all is emptiness and 
 vanity. The escape from the bore of 
 dressing several times a day ought to be 
 grateful to many women, and tired house- 
 keepers certainly would enjoy a rural re- 
 treat where they have no servants to look 
 after and no daily round of other care to 
 see to. All things considered, those who 
 16 
 
1 84 At Long and 
 
 select the pretty and relatively quiet places 
 in the hills for ease in the summer have 
 the best of the bargain. 
 
 AMIDST all the respectful ceremony 
 with which the closing hours of 
 those whom the world honors are in- 
 vested, there is commonly one figure — that 
 of the faithful wife shortly to be left deso- 
 late — about whom centres the sincerest 
 and deepest human interest, more touch- 
 ing and more significant to the universal 
 heart than all the bulletins and condo- 
 lences and lowered flags and resolutions 
 and memorials of whatever kind. There 
 is a glimpse of this one figure before she 
 disappears from public notice, but all the 
 world knows that her love is infinitely 
 more precious than every worldly honor, 
 and one whisper from her lips worth 
 all the blare of Fame's trumpet. Death 
 is a leveller, but its vaunted power can- 
 not touch the love which a true and faith- 
 ful heart cherishes, and which survives 
 when the noisy world has ceased to utter 
 
Short Range. 185 
 
 its laudations and has forgotten. Napo- 
 leon was never forgiven for discarding 
 Josephine. Andrew Jackson would have 
 defended her against the globe in arms. 
 What a thrill of responsive feeling affected 
 every American when the stricken Gar- 
 field, recovering consciousness, murmured, 
 "Send for my wife" ! The spoils of suc- 
 cessful ambition are mere dirt and. rags 
 compared with the divine pearl of beauty, 
 the deathless love of a good, pure woman. 
 
 'T'HE "gentleman of the old school" 
 bids fair to disappear. His stately 
 and somewhat ceremonious courtesies, his 
 measured and mellifluous speech, his fas- 
 tidious toilet, his deliberate and conserva- 
 tive methods of despatching affairs, — these 
 appear to belong to the past. Nowadays 
 the spirit of energy and rapidity pervades 
 all things. Manners are kindly but ab- 
 rupt. Merchants, manufacturers, bankers, 
 judges, are substantially as plain, direct, 
 and careless of conventional forms as 
 people in humbler walks of life. The 
 
1 86 At Long and 
 
 man intrusted with matters of moment 
 who would pause to orate after the fashion 
 of the old-school gentleman would be re- 
 garded as a sort of Polonius ; a respecta- 
 ble wind-bag. The plain and decisive 
 style of the press has even communicated 
 itself to literature proper. Social inter- 
 course has abundant agreeable qualities, 
 but dignity is not a conspicuous feature. 
 Compare the epistolary correspondence of 
 the day with the grave and high-flown 
 letters of our grandfathers and grand- 
 mothers. Assuredly the age of the loco- 
 motive, the telegraph, and the telephone 
 has apparently little use for the old-school 
 gentleman. A few specimens, however, 
 are still to be found in Pennsylvania, part 
 of New England, and Virginia, and they 
 are delightful, even if a trifle pompous and 
 slow. 
 
 TN the matter of mental perturbations, 
 the real estate speculator perhaps un- 
 dergoes as many pangs of pleasure and of 
 pain as any other gambler. He has as 
 
Short Range. 187 
 
 many dreams as a lover or a poet. He is 
 exalted by trifles and depressed by them. 
 He chafes at time as an element in his 
 rose- colored calculations of the apprecia- 
 tion of what he has bought, and yet it is 
 only through the potent changes brought 
 about by years that his sanguine hopes can 
 possibly be realized. He grieves over 
 chances lost and ponders the maps for 
 chances still attainable. He has at his 
 tongue's end the history of given tracts 
 of land and what befell them and their 
 owners. He can gaze at a vacant corner 
 lot in a wilderness and people all the space 
 about it with palaces, and he can make 
 solitude vocal with the hum of multifarious 
 industry. He follows rivers in search of 
 harbors, and railroads to their termini, 
 and jumps over a score of years in im- 
 agining what is to take place in the way of 
 settlement. The genuine real estate specu- 
 lator is endowed with a fervid and fecund 
 imagination. He is useful in any town, as 
 he inspires all the citizens with hope for 
 the future of their place. He will fill up 
 ravines, pave streets, erect great marts of 
 16* 
 
1 88 At Long and 
 
 trade in his glowing fancy, and make a 
 small village expand in the magical per- 
 spective until the mind tires in the very 
 thought of its avenues, vehicles, and re- 
 sounding roar of activity. Such a man 
 does not need liquor or hasheesh. He 
 walks about in a world peopled with his 
 own restless creations. He sees blocks of 
 five-story stone buildings where the present 
 gray squirrel frolics at ease and the rural 
 damsel picks her little tin bucket of black- 
 berries. He lives in a sphere of strange 
 and fruitful metamorphoses in which the 
 soil is constantly undergoing fluctuations 
 in value, and is interesting solely as it 
 verifies his predictions. What good such 
 a man gets as he strolls through a growing 
 city ! With what a Napoleonic eye he 
 seizes on the vantage-ground here, there, 
 everywhere ! He imparts his warmth to 
 whoever shares his discourse, and there be 
 many who will never be able to under- 
 stand how so ardent and poetical a nature, 
 so gifted with divination and so pregnant 
 with generous statistics, should at last die 
 poor and perchance not even own the little 
 
Short Range. 189 
 
 spot of earth in which he sleeps. Put a 
 surveyor's chain and a magnifying-glass in 
 his coffin with him ; he will rest easier in 
 such good company. 
 
 HHHOSE who are resolutely determined 
 to be candid and honest will find 
 that ''Mrs. Grundy" is not so formidable 
 after all. 
 
 She is a mighty potentate for people 
 who are at once shallow, time-serving, 
 cowardly, and constitutionally inclined to 
 the counterfeit rather than the genuine. 
 She leads such people into tortuous paths 
 full of affectations, roles foreign to their 
 natures, subterfuges, falsehoods, and petty 
 meannesses. 
 
 Those who will at all hazards preserve 
 their sincerity are fearless as eagles. Mrs. 
 Grundy has no terrors for them. In fact, 
 Mrs. Grundy secretly admires them and is 
 also afraid of them. 
 
 Nothing in the long run wins like ve- 
 racity. It is the secret of healthy and 
 brave living. The tricky do unwilling 
 
190 At Long and 
 
 homage to it. The uncertain rank and 
 file know there is leadership in it. It is 
 of the essence of beauty itself. It makes 
 plain faces beautiful. 
 
 Mrs. Grundy may give temporary eclat 
 to innumerable forms of deceit and hum- 
 bug, but the solid mass of the world always 
 does honor in the end to the real and the 
 true. The honest man or woman is king 
 and queen. When kindly sympathies are 
 united with habitual candor, there is a 
 magnetism that wins respect even from 
 depraved people, and excites enthusiastic 
 affection on the part of those who are open 
 and straightforward. 
 
 Poor Mrs. Grundy cannot affect this fair 
 territory with her decrees. When she en- 
 ters here, she must come as a suppliant 
 and not as a sovereign. 
 
 HPHERE is a certain charm about a rainy 
 day in the spring and in the country. 
 The hills and valleys appeal to the fancy 
 through the mist ; old barns gather new 
 poetic coloring in such an atmosphere ; the 
 
Short Range. 191 
 
 trees assume quaint tracery, and the inevi- 
 table crow, winging his slow flight athwart 
 the landscape, adds to the pensive interest 
 of the scene. But the true field for pic- 
 torial enjoyment of a rainy day in spring 
 is at some small harbor on the sea coast. 
 The artist's eye can here surfeit with calm 
 satisfaction. There will be a schooner or 
 brig opportunely showing the weird outline 
 of its masts and sails; a little steam-tug 
 will manifest itself through the drapery 
 of the fogs, the fine lines of an island 
 here and there will disclose themselves at 
 intervals, and sea-birds will dimly start up 
 from the clouds like things suddenly born 
 in the womb of the deep ; there is a skiff 
 urged rapidly to the wharf, and an old tar 
 stands motionless, watching it; there are 
 mere spectral visions of yachts on the 
 horizon, and ever and anon the mighty 
 ocean seems to lift itself out of the driving 
 showers and show for an instant the azure 
 complexion with which it has during so 
 many centuries enchanted the sons and 
 daughters of men. How the rain and 
 clouds envelop that stately light-house ! and 
 
192 At Long and 
 
 as the day darkens primal chaos seems to 
 have resumed its presidency of the world. 
 Wait a while. The sun has brought its 
 shining and glorious artillery to bear upon 
 this waste of mists and shadows. A hun- 
 dred craft now sit gracefully in clear view, 
 the tall light-house is in steadfast relief, 
 the gulls rejoice everywhere with quick- 
 ened delight, the foam-crested waves of 
 the generous sea sparkle merrily and free, 
 and the sky and ocean rival each other in 
 cerulean splendor. The coming and going 
 of the rain should be witnessed on the 
 coast of the sea. 
 
 TS physiognomy a guide? It is largely 
 taken to be such. 
 
 " ' My face is my fortune, sir,' she said." 
 
 The face may in the main certify to dis- 
 position, but hardly to character. That 
 is to say, a jovial person usually looks so, 
 likewise an amiable person ; but a smiling 
 countenance may go with a scamp, as 
 Shakespeare noted, and a face of perfect 
 
Short Range. 193 
 
 Greek outline may go with a nature shal- 
 low and without true refinement. 
 
 There are downcast-looking people who 
 are as courageous as lions, and bold-look- 
 ing individuals who have brazen impu- 
 dence, but, put to the test, are arrant 
 cowards. 
 
 To a very keen-witted and observant 
 person a speech of a half-hour with a new 
 acquaintance will reveal more than the 
 face, although Byron and Poe made a 
 study of the mouth as the real witness of 
 what is passing within. 
 
 There are kindly-looking faces which 
 do not accompany deep and abiding sym- 
 pathies, and there are passive and nearly 
 expressionless faces which give not the 
 slightest hint of the warm, sterling hearts 
 that the owners of these jaded counte- 
 nances indubitably possess. 
 
 On the whole, we should say that the 
 face is no reliable index of character, and 
 that King Duncan was right in remarking, 
 "There is no art to find the mind's con- 
 struction in the face." 
 
 Still, it is an immense advantage in the 
 
194 -At Long and 
 
 game of life to have a noble and attrac- 
 tive face. The world accepts it and rarely 
 looks deeper. 
 
 'T V HE trout-fisher combines the pleasures 
 of the sportsman of the field and the 
 angler. He is in constant motion as he 
 fishes down the tumultuous stream, and he 
 can enjoy the superb scenery of the rocky 
 fastnesses about him whilst his glittering 
 fly sparkles on the rushing current. What 
 variety of crag, water, and forest vegeta- 
 tion environs him ! Now he is in a gorge 
 where great fortresses frown down on him, 
 with hemlocks in massive ranks, the sol- 
 diery of the everlasting hills; then he 
 passes into a shallow where the beaming 
 waters sift placidly over golden sands and 
 the dragon-fly pursues its tiny prey; then 
 he descends some steep, insecure of foot- 
 ing, where the roar of a miniature cataract 
 salutes the ear ; at its foot a long stretch 
 of smooth and shining water rolls evenly 
 on like a gentle river under willows and 
 skirted by green pastures ; and then, again, 
 
Short Range. 195 
 
 he enters some solid gate-way of noble 
 rock, whilst his line becomes taut, and in 
 an instant the daintiest and loveliest fish 
 that ever cleft pure waters flashes in the 
 air with a beauty that no opal ever rivalled. 
 All about him aromatic odors are distilled, 
 a recluse bird of adjacent thicket pipes out 
 a few clear notes of welcome, and high up 
 amidst lofty pines the sad and constant 
 beauty of the haunting sky strikes down 
 into the shades below and envelops his 
 soul for a passing moment with thoughts 
 that transcend all speech. 
 
 f SOMETIMES furtively visit a little 
 private gallery in which a few pict- 
 ures still hang which do not appear to 
 have gathered dust and show no scars. 
 It is true, I seem to see them through a 
 fi'm of mellowy haze; but that is not the 
 fault of the pictures. They are dewy fresh 
 as the dawn. It is I who grope about in 
 a mantle of mist. 
 
 There is the ancient apple-orchard in 
 which I once wandered with vagrant but 
 17 
 
196 At Long and 
 
 happy thoughts. Yonder the immemorial 
 valley with its grain ripe for the sickle, 
 glistening beneath the harvest moon. 
 There the ellipse of hills. And there, 
 oh ! there (your rod, please, Brother 
 Walton !) is the palpitating " Horse 
 Shoe," sweetest of all the pastoral streams 
 which the voracious sea has ever en- 
 gulfed, — musical, magical "Horse Shoe." 
 I do not often tell my most intimate 
 friends of this little gallery. 
 
 TF, as science maintains, all sound-waves 
 are still on their journey, it is per- 
 missible to believe that in remote parts of 
 the universe certain privileged beings are 
 at this present moment enjoying for the 
 first time sonatas of Beethoven and sym- 
 phonies of Mozart. 
 
 f" ET no one despise these busy valises 
 
 that fly over the broad realm of our 
 
 country, or misunderstand them. They are 
 
 identified with the fruitful action which 
 
Short Range. 197 
 
 has subjugated forest and plain. It is the 
 trunks which are at war with thrift. 
 
 TZEARY'S fascinating book on Norway 
 makes one date hold the thought in 
 its embrace for a while. About a.d. 840 
 "the high-prowed, square-sailed viking 
 ships" began to appear in numbers at the 
 mouths of the great rivers of Western 
 Europe. 
 
 T^HE future bridegroom is a mere cipher, 
 but the future bride is a potentiality. 
 Her trunks are eloquent. Her bureau and 
 chairs and bed hold treasures that speak 
 of the coming ceremony. She walks, 
 talks, and breathes in an atmosphere made 
 up of dreams and realities. Letters pour 
 in that are only half read, and her fare- 
 well receptions are held in a mental mist, 
 in which figures of persons and happy ex- 
 changes of speech are alike phantasmal. 
 In the horizon she sees the minister and 
 the chosen man, and after a while the car- 
 
198 At Long and Short Range. 
 
 riage-wheels will make a mystical tattoo as 
 they rattle Graciosa and Percinet to Fairy- 
 land, — i.e., Philadelphia, New York, or 
 the regions beyond the sea. An old, dried- 
 up, and fossilized bachelor must have very 
 curious emotions in watching this pleasant 
 comedy, as he of course regards it, played 
 out until the curtain drops. He may even 
 heave a sigh; but there will be sundry 
 arithmetical cogitations to comfort the 
 poor wretch. He takes a sad, grim satis- 
 faction in reflecting that Graciosa and 
 Percinet must some day step down from 
 their cattche and do a little ciphering like 
 the rest of the world. Bismillah ! 
 
 THE END. 
 
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