Part 8 (2/2)
As I read this over, to send it to the printer, I recollect that, in one of the nicest sets of girls I ever knew, they called the thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians the ”society chapter.”
Read it over, and see how well it fits, the next time Maud has been disagreeable, or you have been provoked yourself in the ”German.”
”The gentleman is quiet,” says Mr. Emerson, whose essay on society you will read with profit, ”the lady is serene.” Bearing this in mind, you will not really expect, when you go to the dance at Mrs. Pollexfen's, that while you are standing in the library explaining to Mr. Sumner what he does not understand about the Alabama Claims, watching at the same time with jealous eye the fair form of Sybil as she is waltzing in that hated Clifford's arms,--you will not, I say, really expect that her light dress will be wafted into the gas-light over her head, she be surrounded with a lambent flame, Clifford basely abandon her, while she cries, ”O Ferdinand, Ferdinand!”--nor that you, leaving Mr. Sumner, seizing Mrs.
General Grant's camel's hair shawl, rus.h.i.+ng down the ball-room, will wrap it around Sybil's uninjured form, and receive then and there the thanks of her father and mother, and their pressing request for your immediate union in marriage. Such things do not happen outside the Sat.u.r.day newspapers, and it is a great deal better that they do not. ”The gentleman is quiet and the lady is serene.” In my own private judgment, the best thing you can do at any party is the particular thing which your host or hostess expected you to do when she made the party. If it is a whist party, you had better play whist, if you can. If it is a dancing party, you had better dance, if you can. If it is a music party, you had better play or sing, if you can. If it is a croquet party, join in the croquet, if you can. When at Mrs. Thorndike's grand party, Mrs. Colonel Goffe, at seventy-seven, told old Rufus Putnam, who was five years her senior, that her dancing days were over, he said to her, ”Well, it seems to be the amus.e.m.e.nt provided for the occasion.” I think there is a good deal in that. At all events, do not separate yourself from the rest as if you were too old or too young, too wise or too foolish, or had not been enough introduced, or were in any sort of different clay from the rest of the pottery.
And now I will not undertake any specific directions for behavior. You know I hate them all. I will only repeat to you the advice which my father, who was my best friend, gave me after the first evening call I ever made. The call was on a gentleman whom both I and my father greatly loved. I knew he would be pleased to hear that I had made the visit, and, with some pride, I told him, being, as I calculate, thirteen years five months and nineteen days old. He was pleased, very much pleased, and he said so. ”I am glad you made the call, it was a proper attention to Mr.
Palfrey, who is one of your true friends and mine. And now that you begin to make calls, let me give you one piece of advice. Make them short. The people who see you may be very glad to see you. But it is certain they were occupied with something when you came, and it is certain, therefore, that you have interrupted them.”
I was a little dashed in the enthusiasm with which I had told of my first visit. But the advice has been worth I cannot tell how much to me,--years of life, and hundreds of friends.
Pelham's rule for a visit is, ”Stay till you have made an agreeable impression, and then leave immediately.” A plausible rule, but dangerous.
What if one should not make an agreeable impression after all? Did not Belch stay till near three in the morning? And when he went, because I had dropped asleep, did I not think him more disagreeable than ever?
For all I can say, or anybody else can say, it will be the manner of some people to give up meeting other people socially. I am very sorry for them, but I cannot help it. All I can say is that they will be sorry before they are done. I wish they would read Aesop's fable about the old man and his sons and the bundle of rods. I wish they would find out definitely why G.o.d gave them tongues and lips and ears. I wish they would take to heart the folly of this constant struggle in which they live, against the whole law of the being of a gregarious animal like man. What is it that Westerly writes me, whose note comes to me from the mail just as I finish this paper? ”I do not look for much advance in the world until we can get people out of their own self.” And what do you hear me quoting to you all the time,--which you can never deny,--but that ”the human race is the individual of which men and women are so many different members ”? You may kick against this law, but it is true.
It is the truth around which, like a crystal round its nucleus, all modern civilization has taken order.
Chapter VIII.
How To Travel.
First, as to manner. You may travel on foot, on horseback, in a carriage with horses, in a carriage with steam, or in a steamboat or s.h.i.+p, and also in many other ways.
Of these, so far as mere outside circ.u.mstance goes, it is probable that the travelling with horses in a ca.n.a.l-boat is the pleasantest of all, granting that there is no crowd of pa.s.sengers, and that the weather is agreeable. But there are so few parts of the world where this is now practicable, that we need not say much of it. The school-girls of this generation may well long for those old halcyon days of Miss Portia Lesley's School. In that ideal establishment the girls went to Was.h.i.+ngton to study political economy in the winter. They went to Saratoga in July and August to study the a.n.a.lytical processes of chemistry. There was also a course there on the history of the Revolution. They went to Newport alternate years in the same months, to study the Norse literature and swimming. They went to the White Sulphur Springs and to Bath, to study the history of chivalry as ill.u.s.trated in the annual tournaments. They went to Paris to study French, to Rome to study Latin, to Athens to study Greek.
In all parts of the world where they could travel by ca.n.a.ls they did so.
While on the journeys they studied their arithmetic and other useful matters, which had been pa.s.sed by at the capitals. And while they were on the ca.n.a.ls they washed and ironed their clothes, so as to be ready for the next stopping-place. You can do anything you choose on a ca.n.a.l.
Next to ca.n.a.l travelling, a journey on horseback is the pleasantest. It is feasible for girls as well as boys, if they have proper escort and superintendence. You see the country; you know every leaf and twig; you are tired enough, and not too tired, when the day is done. When you are at the end of each day's journey you find you have, all the way along, been laying up a store of pleasant memories. You have a good appet.i.te for supper, and you sleep in one nap for the nine hours between nine at night and six in the morning.
You might try this, Phillis,--you and Robert. I do not think your little pony would do, but your uncle will lend you Throg for a fortnight. There is nothing your uncle will not do for you, if you ask him the right way.
When Robert's next vacation comes, after he has been at home a week, he will be glad enough to start. You had better go now and see your Aunt f.a.n.n.y about it. She is always up to anything. She and your Uncle John will be only too glad of the excuse to do this thing again. They have not done it since they and I and P. came down through the Dixville Notch all four on a hand gallop, with the rain running in sheets off our waterproofs. Get them to say they will go, and then hold them up to it.
For dress, you, Phillis, will want a regular bloomer to use when you are scrambling over the mountains on foot. Indeed, on the White Mountains now, the ladies best equipped ride up those steep pulls on men's saddles. For that work this is much the safest. Have a simple skirt to b.u.t.ton round your waist while you are riding. It should be of waterproof,--the English is the best. Besides this, have a short waterproof sack with a hood, which you can put on easily if a shower comes. Be careful that it has a hood.
Any crevice between the head cover and the back cover which admits air or wet to the neck is misery, if not fatal, in such showers as you are going to ride through.
You want another skirt for the evening, and this and your tooth-brush and linen must be put up tight and snug in two little bags. The old-fas.h.i.+oned saddle-bags will do nicely, if you can find a pair in the garret. The waterproof sack must be in another roll outside.
As for Robert, I shall tell him nothing about his dress. ”A true gentleman is always so dressed that he can mount and ride for his life.” That was the rule three hundred years ago, and I think it holds true now.
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