Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water. Ethel Gwendoline Vincent
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Название: Forty Thousand Miles Over Land and Water
Автор: Ethel Gwendoline Vincent
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4057664575357
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The colleges of Harvard University are clustered together, forming an irregular quadrangle. There was a delightfully quiet and studious look about the dull red-brick buildings, low latticed windows, and ivy-covered walls,—a look of antiquity unusual to America. In this comparatively newly-risen continent so much is thought of age, that Harvard College, the oldest of the fifteen of which the University consists, is prized most highly for its foundation dating from 1636.
Chief amongst the colleges for beauty is the Gothic tower of Memorial Hall, erected by the alumni in memory of the students who perished in the War of Secession. It contains the great dining-hall with carved screens and galleries, busts and portraits of the founders of the college, and has stained-glass windows bearing the college and State arms. A theatre, library, museum, scientific school, and chapel are in different parts of the irregularly laid-out square, which is sacred to the University buildings.
It was vacation time, and the place was utterly deserted, save by a few straggling church-goers, their footsteps resounding on the narrow paved walk, and lingering amongst the tenantless walls. It must be a different scene in term, when 1300 students and forty-seven professors gather under the classic shades of a university already numbering among its former students such men as John Adams the second President of the United States, Edward Everett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Lathrop Motley, J. Russell Lowell, and Wendell Phillips. The University course extends over four years. It may be interesting to know, in face of the recent agitation at our own universities on the subject, that women are not as yet admitted to the University lectures, though allowed to matriculate and pass the different examinations.
Quite near the University is a battered elm-tree, whose shattered branches are sustained by iron stanchions, and which marks the place where General Washington took command of the rebellious colonists. Further on we passed a plain, square, wooden house, with pointed roof, and a small garden, surrounded by a high laurel hedge, a gravel path, and little white gate leading to the verandah and entrance. There was nothing particular to mark a house, homely enough in its exterior. But yet it was here that in 1775 Washington established his headquarters, when it was the scene of many warlike preparations and much enthusiasm. Later it has been hallowed by the quiet presence of the great poet Longfellow.
"The old house by the Lindens
Stood silent in the shade,
And on the gravell'd pathway
The light and shadow play'd."
And it was in this quiet retreat that he passed away in 1882.
We followed the winding road, almost an avenue of willow-trees, to Mount Auburn Cemetery, and with great difficulty found his last resting-place. We were terribly disillusioned. Not a garden of flowers, tended by loving hands; not a simple marble monument with short inscription, prompted by a knowledge of the gentle, retiring, nature; but we found a great, ugly block of sandstone, a huge sarcophagus, with a name and date on one side, and an ingenious pattern on the other, taking X as a centre letter, and forming a senseless device, and utterly inappropriate to the memory of the great poet.
No more beautiful garden than this cemetery could be conceived: grassy slopes, planted with waving palms and the choicest plants; bright flower-beds interspersed among the white marble crosses and memorials of the dead; an air of quiet beauty and repose, mingling with the many signs of respectful care on the different graves, such as bunches of newly-cut flowers. Those who have served their country had a miniature flag of the stars and stripes waving over their heads. The mortuary chapel stands on the high ground, and opposite to it there is a magnificent marble sphinx with this soul-stirring inscription,—
"American Union Preserved,
African Slavery Destroyed,
By the Uprising of a Great People,
By the Blood of Fallen Heroes."
Throughout the length and breadth of America this intense respect to the dead may be seen in regard to their last resting-place. In strange contrast is the irreverence shown in the removal of bodies. Several times we saw coffins, travelling at first-class fares, placed in the luggage-vans, piled under Saratoga trunks, and with the party of mourners in the same train.
In returning from the cemetery we passed Mr. Russell Lowell's country-house, standing in grounds fairly hidden by surrounding trees.
Boston is the great literary and scientific centre of America. The saying goes that at Boston they ask you "what you know," in New York "what you have," and at Philadelphia "who you are."
Fostered by its close neighbourhood to Harvard, Boston boasts more literary institutions than any other town in America; whether in its remarkably fine Public Library, its Atheneum (which corresponds to our Royal Institution), its two museums, or the English High and Latin School, the first public school in the States.
One of the celebrated steamers of the Fall River Line took us that evening to Newport.
What fascination the word exercises over "the aristocracy" of America! Filled throughout the summer months with society—select and fashionable, hospitable to foreigners, but difficult of access to new-comers, and closed to those who do not belong to the upper circle of finance. The gay butterfly life is carried on in "cottages," or villas, as we should call them—small houses, unattractive outside, standing in gardens adjoining the road, too public and suburban for English taste. So also is the life, entirely without privacy; morning calls are customary; and beginning society thus early, does not prevent its being carried on at high pressure for the remainder of the day.
There is a well-known and accommodating Frenchman, who undertakes not only to supply a "cottage," but all the elaborate necessaries, servants, linen, plate, &c., for a stay at Newport. The Ocean Drive and Bellevue Avenue are daily crowded with joyous equipages and neat phætons, driven by their fair owners, and equestrians.
The toilettes are very elaborate, and of unceasing variety. The cost must be enormous, seeing that prices are double, if not treble those of London and Paris. The profusion of lace and jewels is unending; but a feeling is gaining ground that elaborate costumes and diamonds are a little out of place in the morning. A coloured maid observed to her mistress, in response to a rebuke, that she had been accustomed to live with "people of quality." Pressed as to what she understood by people of quality, she promptly replied, "they were those who dressed simply and wore no jewels by day."
We had wretched weather; a sea fog which penetrated everything, and succeeded in damping even the bright life of Newport. Polo and yachting are very favourite amusements here. A dance was given at the Casino in the evening, in honour of the yachts which managed to come round in the course of the day from New Brighton, despite the thick fog, and to which we went. These Casino dances take place two nights СКАЧАТЬ