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Dublin Core
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Title
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1838
Document
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Text
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To Mr. T. W. WHITE,
Editor of Southern Literary Messenger.
My Dear Sir.-—Being at present much occupied with domestic duties, and never in the habit of writing for more dignified periodicals than souvenirs, and having nothing better to send you than the following passages, I should have foreborne, but that I wished to express to you my desire to comply with your request, and my very grateful sense of your repeated attentions in sending your valuable Journal to me, and that during this hot season I imagine quantity may sometimes be desirable to you (as filling up) Independent of quality.
Believe me, my dear sir,
Very respectfully and gratefully, yours,
C. M. SEDGWICK.
Stockbridge, Mass. July 20, 1838.
If there is any time at which the love of nature is felt to be an universal passion—a love to which all other loves should be sacrificed—it is at the coming on of Spring, when Nature is to our senses a manifestation of the Creator—a realization of that belief of ancient philosophy, that in nature the Almighty Spirit lived and moved and had it's being. Even the poor pent-up denizen of the city, cabined, cribbed, confined as he is, at this season, when nature visibly begins her beautiful processes—makes some demonstrations that the love of her is not dead within him : the trees he has planted, (God's witnesses amidst brick walls) the birds (albeit stolen from their natural habitations in the green wood) in their cages, and the carefully tended plants at the open windows are signs of this love.
Those who have passed their childhood where Nature's choicest temples are fixed—who may be said, in some humble sort, to have served at her altars, are most impatient at the actual discomforts as well as privations of a summer city life. I do not know that I ever experienced a more delightful sensation than that produced a few days since by a change from New York to Rockaway—from frying in the city, to the life-giving breezes of this magnificent sea-shore. Perhaps neither heat nor cold should be positive evils to those in tolerable health; but who is stoical enough to be independent of them? No topic, not morals, politics, nor even religion, is, from the beginning to the end of life, so often and so thoroughly discussed as the weather. It is the breath of life to old and young, to rich and poor, and when it comes so fiercely hot as during the last week, we suffer—and suffering there are few that do not complain. Besides, is it not a positive evil during the month of June, when the summer is in the freshness and beauty of her youth, the only month that in our northern region shadows forth a poet's spring, is it not an evil to be imprisoned in a city, to have your senses deprived of the nutriment prepared by Heaven to restore them to their natural ministry to the mind; for, do not the odors and the music of June (to say nothing of the strawberries!) awaken the dullest imagination?
A week in the city, in June, is then always a loss, but a week like the last, when the mercury, in our coolest apartments, stood at 80°, and in the warmest at a point that would not have seemed enviable to the wretches in the hottest circle of Dante's Inferno: after such a week's experience in town, the change to Rockaway makes one feel, as Dives might have felt if the gulph had not been impassable that divided him from Lazarus. For the last seven days not a drop of rain had fallen, the air was thick and heavy with impalpable dust, the very leaves on the trees seemed to feel it too hot to move—and the poor little caged birds that had been singing themselves and us into forgetfulness of our exile from Nature, were withdrawn from their airings, and were silently languishing in darkened apartments. We had cast off every garment that could be dispensed with; our flannels were forgotten friends. I was suddenly summoned here to join a very dear invalid friend, and I set off to do the most agreeable thing in the world with the delightful self-complacency resulting from the performance of a duty. The golden cup given to the miser in Parnell's apologue is an illustration of the profuseness, with which Providence throws golden pleasures into the scale of our duties. My companion was a charming school-girl, who enjoyed with a school-girl's relish the unexpected transition from her tasks to our excursion. As we hurried down Broadway to lake the four o'clock rail-car at Brooklyn, the heat was intense. In the ferry-boat we felt the life-restoring sea-breeze that came sweeping up the bay; and when the cars began their flight, we were cooled down to the temperate point. At Jamaica, where we were transferred to Mott's waggon and entered on the pretty country road that leads to the beach, the wind was so cool that we wrapped our blanket shawls close around us, and here we have found them sitting with the windows down, and we feel as if we had jumped from a hot bath into a snow-bank.
And here before my window is the "great and wide sea." What an image of eternity it is at this moment shrouded in mist! You hear it's mighty voice—you know it's reality, and that "therein are things innumerable ;" but beyond the line where human feet tread, you see nothing—There where the breakers fall, as upon the borders of human life, is all the din and uproar. Beyond, through that immeasurable distance, all seems repose; and seems so only because it is like eternity, hidden from our vision.
Monday, P. M.—I went alone to walk on the beach. There had been a storm, and the clouds that were wildly scudding over the heavens here and there, broke away, and the sunbeams poured from the bright world abate them and kindled in the east a rainbow that dropped its column of colored light into the ocean. I would commend any one afflicted with self-exaggeration to a solitary walk on a sea-beach. All selfism is lost in an overpowering sentiment of reverence. I had an almost painful feeling of illimitable power, but as I turned from the surf which was breaking magnificently, a sweet breath from the landward clover-fields met me, and filled my eyes with tears and my heart with sensations like those that answer the voices of kindred, or are called forth by the little beam that greets us from the candle in our own home, when we return from a stranger's dwelling.
Monday evening brought me three letters. Where do letters not come except, as Johnson lamented, not to the grave? Chance could hardly throw together the productions of three more remarkable women than my correspondents—the least of them in the world's eye is the greatest, perhaps in the kingdom of heaven. has many high faculties, some almost preternatural powers that does not approach; clearer moral perceptions and loftier aspirations no one has. They are not unlike in that quality that, like a pure atmosphere gives vigor and effect to all others—naturalness. Neither has the varied and enriching experience, the glowing imagination and the almost unlimited acquisitions of Mrs.__ but she has a healthier and therefore a happier spirit. She has the spontaneous richness and goodness that are God's gifts, and as superior to any acquired talents or results of virtuous efforts as sunlight to lamplight, or the gracious showers from the clouds to the pourings from a watering-pot. Her mind seems, without an effort (for you see no fluttering of the wings) to rise to the highest altitude: and, kind and patient, without any apparent stooping, to come down to the least duty. While poor ___ is beating her golden feathers off against every limit as if limits were prison walls, ___ is singing on every bough, feathering every nest as well as her own, and feeding every chance bird.
Tuesday.—The gay season for watering-places has not yet come, and beside the untiring and ever-exciting view of the sea, there is little to vary life here; there are drives oh the beach, and when the tide is up, round the pretty rural lanes of the interior, past the farmhouses, where you see plenty of pig-nurseries and hencoops, where generations are preparing for the all devouring jaws of the New York market. Then we have those three great daily events of all watering-places, breakfast, dinner and tea, diversified by the liberality of Messrs. Blake & Mead, and the ingenuity of French cooks. And we have arrivals and departures. At this moment there is standing before the piazza a carriage built upon the model of an English mail-coach with four grey horses, their master sealed on the box with a friend; the coachman and footman in frock coats, shorts, and white top boots in the dickey, and the lady, her nurses and children, inside. The coach and harness are blazoned with stags' heads and other heraldic devices. Some impertinent whispers asking from which side of the house these anti-republican emblems are derived, are suppressed from respect to the unpretending lady, who, with her pretty children, the picture of an American matron, is courteously and bowing her adieux. The sarcasm is changed to a regret at the bad taste of appropriating unmeaning emblems.
Wednesday morning.—Would that some one who had Charles Lamb's art of putting les petits morales in picturesque lights, would write an essay upon the moralities of a watering-place! Essays have been written demonstrating that the most common extravagance consisted in the thoughtless expenditure of hours and shillings. Is there not a similar waste from carelessness of those lesser moralities, which make up the sum of most people's virtues? There are few (certainly few women,) born to "point a moral or adorn a tale"—few Charlotte Cordays or Elisabeth Frys; but all, by economising small but abundant opportunities of producing, not great good, but agreeable sensations, may add materially to the sum of human happiness. At a watering-place, for example, if a gentleman, instead of casting a doubtful or sarcastic glance at a newly arrived stranger, bestow some trifling courtesy—if it be but a bow or a word of kind greeting, enough to express "we are fellow-beings"—especially if the new comer happen to be not fashionable, not comme il faut, and the saluter be so—it will be seen that a sunbeam has fallen across the stranger's path: and who can estimate the value of a sunbeam, a moral sunbeam?
All the world are purveyors of pleasure for the fashionable and beautiful; but there are at all watering-places, unknown, unattractive and solitary beings, who are cheered by a slight courtesy expressing the courtesy of the heart. An invalid may be relieved of weary moments by a patient listener to his complaints: this is perhaps weakness, but never mind; let the weak profit by the strength of the strong, and an easy obedience will be rendered to the great precept, "Bear ye one another's burdens." An old man may be gratified (at small expense,) by the offer of precedence at table, or a privileged seat on a sofa.
I have known ladies, long disused to such courtesies, brightened for half an hour by a courteous picking up of a dropped pocket-handkerchief. There are small sins of commission, as well as of omission, thoughtlessly enacted. For instance, a wretched dyspeptic complained to me this morning that he lost his two hours' sleep (all the fiend allows him,) by reason of one of his neighbors taking a fancy to walk the gallery half the night in creaking boots. And at this moment half a dozen lawless children are shouting and screaming in the gallery adjoining the room of an invalid who is vainly trying to sleep. Are not these violations of the laws of humanity? and should creaking boots be worn by any but the confessed enemies of their race? and is it not enough to make a misanthrope of a Burchell, to have the music of children's footsteps converted into such an annoyance?
Ah when shall we see the principle of brotherhood, that informs the great operations of philanthropists, brought to bear upon the common charities of life— upon the social relations in these summer resorts, where people "most do congregate?"—How it would annihilate distances between man and man, bring down the loftiness of the lofty, and exalt the depressed!—How it would kindle up the evening horizon of the aged, and disperse the mists from the dawn of the young!
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
"Passages From a Journal at Rockaway"
Subject
The topic of the resource
The beauty and pleasure of nature.
Description
An account of the resource
A sketch that contrasts June in New York City with Rockaway Beach.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine M.
Miss Sedgwick
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<em>Southern Literary Messenger</em>, [edited by T. H. White], (September 1838): 573-575.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1838
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
J. Robinson, D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Reprinted in: <em>New-Yorker</em> (8 September 1838): 386-387
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
Beach
Charles Lamb
Charlotte Corday
City
Dante's Inferno
Dr. Samuel Johnson
Elizabeth Fry
God
Nature
New York
Rev. Thomas Parnell
Southern Literary Messenger
Spring
Summer
watering-places
William John Burchell
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7b42a8f9439faae7885b1b5b0da2134e
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
1842
Subject
The topic of the resource
Stories published in 1842.
Document
A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text.
Text
Any textual data included in the document.
A VISION.
BY MISS C.M. SEDGWICK.
[p. 97]
I WALKED out on a bright morning early in May, when nature was unsealing her fountains of life and beauty. The rivers, brooks, all the water-courses down to the tiniest rill were filled to the brim by the flowing Spring rains. Their voices, from the gushing torrent to the little silver thread of a stream that softly stole through the meadow, sung their release from their winter prison. The violet was opening its blue eye, the anemone starring the fresh herbage, and all the early flowers, like chary maidens, were timidly unfolding their beauties. The willows along the river side were already in full leaf and tasseled, and the shrubs were fragrant with out-budding life. On the hill side the young leaves of the beech and maple, mingling with the dark foliage of the firs which had braved and outlasted winter, looked like youth gracefully sporting about maturity. And in beautiful harmony with this was the bright green of the winter grain contrasted with the sombre brown of the newly ploughed earth dotted with the potato crops, and just perforated by the sun-loving Indian corn. Cattle were keenly feeding on the fresh grass of the lowlands, and sheep nibbling on the hill side. The birds had come to their summer home, and pleasant tasks. The males were singing, wooing, and roving at their own wild will, while the females, good wives and household dames, were providing for the future lords of their aerial creation. The air was filled with the sound of young life: with the dissonant cries of the domestic birds, and the flutter and hum of millions of insects. The sky was bright and clear save where a breezy cloud sailed over it, so light that it dissolved while my eye followed it.
I sat down on a fallen trunk of a tree under a curtain of budding grape-leaves. I felt satisfied with the mere pleasure of existence. I wondered at those who staid at home, and drudged over household tasks when nature was proclaiming a holiday that might waken to joyous life and call forth the dullest human snail housed in its winter's shell.
By degrees the monotonous music of the brook lulled me into forgetfulness. I fell into a drowsy reverie and from reverie to sleep; but not sleep of an ordinary kind. My senses preserved their power unshackled by gross mortal elements and unlimited in their action by time or space. I seemed suddenly endowed with the clairvoyance of the Mesmerites, but with this remarkable advantage over them, that I am permitted to show to those who will but open their eyes what was revealed to my closed senses; and that while they ask faith in startling novelties I only impart self-evident truths. I was not conscious of any change in the vividness of my sensations. The scene was as distinctly before me as while I was awake; the only difference was an indefinite extension of power. As I gazed two lovely forms appeared before me, as if the air had become incorporate; and so fresh with youth and beauty that they seemed like an impersonation of the spring time. The one was a Hebe in form and expression; her garments were light and flowing in no sort constraining, impeding, or encumbering her. She gathered the sweet violets at her feet, and the anemones from the moist margin of the brook, and wove them together in a circlet for her brow which no care had ever touched, Her companion wore an amaranth wreath as a symbol of immortality. She had not quite the plumpness and freshness of her sister; for sisters they were; but there was a spirituality in her expression that indicated a celestial destiny. Her's was the beauty of reflection; something that welled up from a living fountain in the soul, the result of a felicitous animal condition. I asked their names. "Our names," replied the elder, "are implied in our offices. Observe the one, and you will know the other."
I did observe them, and as I said before, without limit of time or space; and I soon learned that their mission was to bless the human race, but that powerful as they were, nothing could be effected without the co-operation of those to whom they were sent.
Strange to say, they were most praised when absent. Every one theoretically acknowledged their worth, and agreed in admiring their beauty, but few cherished them; some seemed stupidly unconscious of their presence, and many grossly abused them to their faces, but the moment their backs were turned they were regretted and praised. Nothing was enjoyed without them; they were sought by sacrifice and pilgrimage, and if their favour was irrecoverable, life was one long complaint, made up of suffering days and sleepless nights.
She of the amaranth wreath did sometimes linger with those her sister had abandoned. She could not remove but she sanctified their sufferings and shed an attractive light over them, that drew their friends around them even more than while they were the favourites of her beautiful sister. This I marked, she only staid at the bidding of Religion. No inferior power could detain her after her sister was gone.
There was no habitable place on the globe which the sisters did not visit, but as I naturally felt most interested in their movements in my own country, I here most narrowly observed them. One sad con-
[p. 98]
fession truth compels me to make. I saw fewer signs of their friendship among my own country-people than elsewhere. Their intimates could never be mistaken; there was a certain clearness in their eyes, brightness on their cheeks, elasticity in their movements and animation in their voices that infallibly betokened the proximity and favour of the sisters.
"Why," I asked with some impatience, "why this partiality? why do you so soon forsake my people, when I see you abroad with English men and women in parks, gardens, and pleasure grounds, maintaining with them a hearty friendship through the seven stages of life; you follow too, the poor Swiss mountaineers and dwell with them under the shadow of their icy mountains, faring hard and working hard for a hundred years: and you sit down on the sunny side of a street with the lean and hungry Italian beggar, who shouts and laughs cheerily at your side, till the old pilgrim drops from your bosom into the grave."
"We are not capricious," they replied, with dignity; "we are the ordained companions of your race, and by a law superior to us we cling to them till driven away by ignorance, neglect, or misuse. Listen, and learn some of the reasons that weaken our friendship with your people, and so often expel us from their society; for it is they, and not we, that break the compact nature has made between us.
"We love their children and bid them forth into the open air where the sun can send its vital heat through their expanding frames, and where the fresh breath of Heaven may light their eyes, and colour their cheeks. You will hear our voices merrily ringing wherever they are found coursing down the icy hills in winter, and loudest and blithest are we among the skaters on the moonlit lake. When the ball-playing time comes we are on the village green with the first, and we linger with the last. They must follow us to the woodlands, brush off the dew with their early footsteps, welcome abroad the bright frosty morning, and bravely face the winter's wind. Nor do we desert the city if rightly welcomed there, if treated to early hours and temperate meals. But the children must trundle their hoops through the parks with us. We are stifled in close nurseries. We cannot sit by them while their heads are drooping over lessons in unventilated school-rooms for six consecutive hours. We cannot breathe in dormitories with forty pairs of lungs inhaling over and over again an exhausted atmosphere. Our hearts would die within us if condemned to walk in the funereal processions of boarding-school girls. Our lives are in the open air. Those who would have our constant presence, our heartiest love, must follow us a-field. One of your poets has said,
'God made the country, and man made the
town;'
and we say, God ordained the out-door life, and man the in-door.
"We pity those who are condemned by conventional life, or the artificial condition of society, to violate some of our laws; but while they respect and cherish us we do not utterly desert them. We have been driven away from the hard-tasked and ill-fed operatives in the old world, but we are on very good terms with the buxom, light-hearted (because lightly-tasked) girls in your manufactories. Tell them a secret for us; if they will come oftener abroad to meet us, we will send them back to their labour with fresher spirits and prettier looks. Beauty cannot endure without us, after youth. Your very young women are beautiful, but with their youth and freshness their beauty vanishes. Virtuous, through all the stages of life, we acknowledge them to be, but without us their very goodness is often a toil and weariness. Were they but true to us their smiles would be spontaneous, and their well-doings an enjoyment.
You see we never desert those who live in the open air, whether they browse on coarse edibles, or fare sumptuously every day; whether they be clothed in fine linen or in rags; and yet you expect us to house ourselves with you in rooms heated to a degree that sears your skins, inflames your eyes, and dries away the very fountains of life. Pardon our frankness," they continued, pointing to some shallow vessels for personal purification; "look at the broad reservoirs of water, and deep fonts in our temples; we cannot abide these things. You reproach us, but our alienation from your people is not our fault. All classes and conditions among you reject us. We offer to give gladness to the days of your students, and refreshment to their nights, but they refuse the conditions of our friendship, and languish and stupify over their books. Your sedentary men are deaf to our warnings and invitations, and before half the term of life is spent they are weary and wasted, and disappear, leaving half their tasks undone. Your merchants, knowing we hate the whole brood of care, heap anxiety on anxiety, and toil on toil, till, bending under an accumulation of riches or poverty, it matters little which, they turn to seek our favour, and find an impassable gulf between us. We never return to those who gray their hair and furrow their cheeks with sordid care.
"We seek rural life, and trudge a-field with your farmer; but alas! we have complaints to make of him. We have again and again declared our antipathy to fresh bread and hot cakes, and yet he asks us to breakfast on them. We repair to his meridian meal, and he offers us hard salted meat and fried messes; and when we join the pleasant gathering round the tea-table we are compelled to fly for our lives from poisonous sweetcakes and sweetmeats."
"But surely," said I, "you have devoted friends among our people. There are colleges endowed to train your ministers, and every paper we read is filled with promises to restore to your society and friendship all who, by any accident, misfortune, or fault, have lost them. Every town has innumerable arsenals. Every village has its store-
[p. 99]
house, filled with philtres and charms which these, your ministers, profess so to compound and administer as to restore your gladdening presence to every mortal that seeks you."
A sad smile passed over the sisters' faces, and the elder, drawing near to me, said in a subdued voice, "Save us from our friends; wisdom, skill, and virtue some of them possess; but they work in the dark, and though they now and then make some fortunate guesses, they have made few discoveries. They have been well compared to a watchmaker who should attempt to repair a watch of which he could not see the machinery. Besides, among these our professed friends are a mass of ignorant pretenders, and in their hands these charms and philtres are deadly poisons, and those to whom they are given stumble and blunder on after us with stiffened joints, weak and withering limbs, sunken cheeks, loosened teeth, aching jaws, and all the pains and aches which flesh is heir to.
"But," she concluded, the light shadow that had fallen on her joyous face passing from it, "the condition of your race here and elsewhere is improving, and these evils will vanish before the progress of experience, knowledge, and virtue. The time is coming when we shall have a league of friendship with you from the breezy hills of the north, to the orange groves of the south; then will we give life to life, and make it the happy and profitable service God intended it to be."
Who were these sisters? All ye of the blooming cheek and strong heart answer from your own happy consciousness, "Health and Cheerfulness."
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
A Vision
Subject
The topic of the resource
Healthy vs. unhealthy modes of living
Description
An account of the resource
The narrator has a vision of two female spirits that represent the ideal of a natural and healthy life.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Sedgwick, Catharine Maria
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Godey's Lady's Book [edited by Sarah Josepha Hale] (August 1842) pp. 97-99.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1842
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
D. Gussman
Relation
A related resource
Collected in Catharine Sedgwick, Tales and Sketches, Second Series, 321-30, New York: Harper & Bros., 1844; collected in Catharine Sedgwick, The Irish Girl and Other Tales, 129-38, London: Kent & Richards, and Edinburgh: J. Menzies, 1850.
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Document
1842
cheerfulness
convention
farmers
Godey's Lady's Book
health
manufacturing
Mesmerism
Nature
rural life
Spring
Tales and Sketches - Second Series
The Task -- Book I: The Sofa
urban life
vision
William Cowper