Part 7 (2/2)
We like the men and women of Boston. They have opinions about everything--some of them adverse to your own, but even in that case so well expressed that, in admiration for the rhetoric, you excuse the divergence of sentiment. We never found a half-and-half character in Boston. The people do not wait till they see which way the smoke of their neighbors'
chimneys blows before they make up their own minds.
The most conspicuous book on the parlor table of the hotels of other cities is a book of engravings or a copy of the Bible. In some of the Boston hotels, the prominent book on the parlor table is ”Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.” You may be left in doubt about the Bostonian's character, but need not doubt his capacity to pa.r.s.e a sentence, or spell without any resemblance of blunder the word ”idiosyncrasy.”
Boston, having made up its mind, sticks to it. Many years ago it decided that the religious societies ought to hold a public anniversary in June, and it never wavers. New York is tired of these annual demonstrations, and goes elsewhere; but in the early part of every June, Boston puts its umbrella under its arm and starts for Tremont Temple, or Music Hall, determined to find an anniversary, and finds it. You see on the stage the same spectacles that shone on the speakers ten years ago, and the same bald heads, for the solid men of Boston got in the way of wearing their hair thin in front a quarter of a century ago, and all the solid men of Boston will, for the next century, wear their hair thin in front.
There are fewer dandies in Boston than in most cities. Clothes, as a general thing, do not make fun of the people they sit on. The humps on the ladies' backs are not within two feet of being as high as in some of the other cities, and a dromedary could look at them without thinking itself caricatured. You see more of the outlandishness of fas.h.i.+on in one day on Broadway than in a week on any one street of Boston. Doubtless, Boston is just as proud as New York, but her pride is that of brains, and those, from the necessities of the case, are hidden.
Go out on the fas.h.i.+onable drive of Boston, and you find that the horses are round limbed, and look as well satisfied as their owners. A restless man always has a thin horse. He does not give the creature time to eat, wears out on him so many whip lashes, and keeps jerking perpetually at the reins.
Boston horses are, for the most part, fat, feel their oats, and know that the eyes of the world are upon them. You see, we think it no dishonor to a minister to admire good horses, provided he does not trade too often, and impose a case of glanders and bots on his unsophisticated neighbor. We think that, as a minister is set up for an example to his flock, he ought to have the best horse in the congregation. A minister is no more sacred when riding behind a spavined and ringboned nag than when whirling along after a horse that can swallow a mile in 2.30.
The anniversary week in Boston closed by a display of flowers and fruits in Horticultural Hall. It was appropriate that philanthropists and Christians, hot from discussions of moral and religious topics, should go in and take a bath of rose leaves and geraniums. Indeed, I think the sweetest anniversary of the week was that of these flowers. A large rhododendron presided.
Azaleas and verbenas took part in the meeting. The Chinese honeysuckle and clematis joined in the doxology. A magnolia p.r.o.nounced the benediction. And we went home praying for the time when the lily of the valley shall be planted in every heart, and the desert shall blossom as the rose.
CHAPTER XXIV.
JONAH VERSUS THE WHALE.
Unbelievers have often told us that the story of the prophet swallowed by a great fish was an absurdity. They say that, so long in the stomach of the monster, the minister would have been digested. We have no difficulty in this matter. Jonah, was a most unwilling guest of the whale. He wanted to get out. However much he may have liked fish, he did not want it three times a day and all the time. So he kept up a fidget, and a struggle, and a turning over, and he gave the whale no time to a.s.similate him. The man knew that if he was ever to get out he must be in perpetual motion. We know men that are so lethargic they would have given the matter up, and lain down so quietly that in a few hours they would have gone into flukes and fish bones, blow-holes and blubber.
Now we see men all around us who have been swallowed by monstrous misfortunes. Some of them sit down on a piece of whalebone and give up.
They say: ”No use! I will never get back my money, or restore my good name, or recover my health.” They float out to sea and are never again heard of.
Others, the moment they go down the throat of some great trouble, begin immediately to plan for egress. They make rapid estimate of the length of the vertebrate, and come to the conclusion how far they are in. They dig up enough spermaceti out of the darkness to make a light, and keep turning this way and that, till the first you know they are out. Determination to get well has much to do with recovered invalidism. Firm will to defeat bankruptcy decides financial deliverance. Never surrender to misfortune or discouragement. You can, if you are spry enough, make it as uncomfortable for the whale as the whale can make it uncomfortable for you. There will be some place where you can brace your foot against his ribs, and some long upper tooth around which you may take hold, and he will be as glad to get rid of you for tenant as you are to get rid of him for landlord. There is a way, if you are determined to find it. All our sympathies are with the plaintiff in the suit of Jonah versus Leviathan.
CHAPTER XXV.
SOMETHING UNDER THE SOFA.
Not more than twenty-five miles from New York city, and not more than two years ago, there stood a church in which occurred a novelty. We promised not to tell; but as we omit all names, we think ourselves warranted in writing the sketch. The sacred edifice had stood more than a hundred years, until the doors were rickety, and often stood open during the secular week.
The window gla.s.s in many places had been broken out. The s.h.i.+ngles were off and the snow drifted in, and the congregation during a shower frequently sat under the droppings of the sanctuary. All of which would have been a matter for sympathy, had it not been for the fact that the people of the neighborhood were nearly all wealthy, and lived in large and comfortable farm houses, making the appearance of their church a fit subject for satire.
The pulpit was giving way with the general wreck, was unpainted, and the upholstery on book-board and sofa seemed calling out with Jew's voice, ”Any old clo'? Any old clo'?” One Sabbath, the minister felt some uneasiness under the sofa while the congregation were singing, and could not imagine the cause; but found out the next day that a maternal cat had made her nest there with her group of offspring, who had entered upon mortal life amid these honorable surroundings.
Highly-favored kittens! If they do not turn out well, it will not be the fault of their mother, who took them so early under good influences. In the temple of old the swallow found a nest for herself where she might lay her young; but this is the first time we ever knew of the conference of such honors on the Felis domestica. It could not have been anything mercenary that took the old cat into the pulpit, for ”poor as a church mouse” has become proverbial. Nothing but lofty aspirations could have taken her there, and a desire that her young should have advantages of high birth. If in the ”Historical Society” there are mummied cats two thousand years old, much more will post-mortem honors be due this ecclesiastical p.u.s.s.y.
We see many churches in city as well as town that need rehabilitation and reconstruction. People of a neighborhood have no right to live in houses better constructed than their church. Better touch up the fresco, and put on a new roof, and tear out the old pews which ignore the shape of a man's back, and supersede the smoky lamps by clarified kerosene or cheap gas brackets. Lower you high pulpit that your preacher may come down from the Mont Blanc of his isolation and solitariness into the same climate of sympathy with his audience. Tear away the old sofa, ragged and spring-broken, on which the pastors of forty years have been obliged to sit, and see whether there are any cats in your antediluvian pulpit.
Would it not be well for us all to look under our church sofas and see if there be anything lurking there that we do not suspect? A cat, in all languages, has been the symbol of deceit and spitefulness, and she is more fit for an ash barrel than a pulpit. Since we heard that story of feline nativity, whenever we see a minister of religion, on some question of Christian reform, skulking behind a barrier, and crawling away into some half-and-half position on the subject of temperance or oppression, and daring not to speak out, instead of making his pulpit a height from which to hurl the truth against the enemies of G.o.d, turning it into a cowardly hiding place, we say, ”Another cat in the pulpit.”
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