The manner in which the ‘Offering’ has
been generally noticed in this country has not, to
my thinking, been altogether in accordance with good
taste or self-respect. It is hardly excusable
for men, who, whatever may be their present position,
have, in common with all of us, brothers, sisters,
or other relations busy in workshop and dairy, and
who have scarcely washed from their own professional
hands the soil of labor, to make very marked demonstrations
of astonishment at the appearance of a magazine whose
papers are written by factory girls. As if the
compatibility of mental cultivation with bodily labor
and the equality and brotherhood of the human family
were still open questions, depending for their decision
very much on the production of positive proof that
essays may be written and carpets woven by the same
set of fingers!
The truth is, our democracy lacks calmness and solidity,
the repose and self-reliance which come of long habitude
and settled conviction. We have not yet learned
to wear its simple truths with the graceful ease and
quiet air of unsolicitous assurance with which the
titled European does his social fictions. As
a people, we do not feel and live out our great Declaration.
We lack faith in man,—confidence in simple
humanity, apart from its environments.
“The age shows, to my
thinking, more infidels to Adam,
Than directly, by profession, simple infidels
to God.”
Elizabeth
B. Browning.
TAKING COMFORT.
For the last few days the fine weather has lured me
away from books and papers and the close air of dwellings
into the open fields, and under the soft, warm sunshine,
and the softer light of a full moon. The loveliest
season of the whole year—that transient
but delightful interval between the storms of the
“wild equinox, with all their wet,” and
the dark, short, dismal days which precede the rigor
of winter—is now with us. The sun
rises through a soft and hazy atmosphere; the light
mist-clouds melt gradually away before him; and his
noontide light rests warm and clear on still woods,
tranquil waters, and grasses green with the late autumnal
rains. The rough-wooded slopes of Dracut, overlooking
the falls of the river; Fort Hill, across the Concord,
where the red man made his last stand, and where may
still be seen the trench which he dug around his rude
fortress; the beautiful woodlands on the Lowell and
Tewksbury shores of the Concord; the cemetery; the
Patucket Falls,—all within the reach of
a moderate walk,—offer at this season their
latest and loveliest attractions.
One fine morning, not long ago, I strolled down the
Merrimac, on the Tewksbury shore. I know of
no walk in the vicinity of Lowell so inviting as that
along the margin of the river for nearly a mile from
the village of Belvidere. The path winds, green
and flower-skirted, among beeches and oaks, through
whose boughs you catch glimpses of waters sparkling
and dashing below. Rocks, huge and picturesque,
jut out into the stream, affording beautiful views
of the river and the distant city.
