and not sometimes
to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely
teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s
providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas,
and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should
not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I
think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as
messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in
my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable
furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular
allowance?—that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s,
in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At
present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good
housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not
leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora
and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s _morning work_ in this
world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified
to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my
mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in
disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit
in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has
broken ground.
It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd
so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so
called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a
Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he
would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car
we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience,
and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a
modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and
a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us,
invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the
Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names
of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be
crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart
with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an
excursion train and breathe a _malaria_ all the way.
The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages
imply this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner
in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated
his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and
was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing
the mountain tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is
become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a
housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled
down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely
as an improved method of _agri_-culture. We have built for this world a
family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art
are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this
condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state
comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no
place in this village for a work of _fine_ art, if any had come down to
us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper
pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf
to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our
houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal
economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give
way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the
mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and
honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so
called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on
in the enjoyment of the _fine_ arts which adorn it, my attention being
wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine
leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain
wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level
ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again
beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to
the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you
one of the ninety-seven who fail, or of the three who succeed? Answer
me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and
find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful
nor
