NEW PUBLICATIONS.
DIXON'S NEW AMERICA.
NEW AMERICA .
By WILLIAM HEPWORTH DIXON.12mo.
pp. 496. J. B. Lippincott & Co.
The character of Mr. Hepworth Dixon's work on America is as unique as its title. It not only stands alone among English hooks of travel in this country, but presents a singular contrast to their prevailing tone and intention. Mr. Dixon, in viewing the novel aspects of life and society in a strange land, does not look at everything with English eyes and through the medium of English prejudices. No colored glasses, indeed, of any kind seem to have impaired the clearness and accuracy of his vision. His candor in the examination and the description of facts, that were always peculiar, and often grotesque, ludicrous, or repulsive, is almost without a parallel. Few traces of English soil cleave to his feet as he treads the virgin forests of our Western mountains. He forgets the associations of home, of artificial life, of conventional etiquette in view of new forms of our manifold humanity. He is not seduced by the lust of comparison. He is one of the few who can see what they never saw before without applying the old standard to another system of social weights and measures.
Nor does he deem it important to go over the same ground which has been described to satiety by previous travelers. He seldom touches the beaten track of foreign tourists in this country. His attention is directed in preference to whatever is out of the usual routine. His book might properly enough be called a treatise on the anomalies of civilization in American society. He seeks out with the greatest avidity those manifestations which are regarded as excrescences on the social body, portents of monstrous growth, facts of strange, perhaps of hideous import which are scarcely spoken of to ears polite, and usually vailed in the decencies of a discreet re-serve. In spite of their abnormal aspects, he does not permit his wonder to overcome his sense of his-torical fidelity. He evidently endeavors to see acc-urately and to represent justly. He reproduces the most extraordinary customs, the most astounding theories in his photographic camera, with as much coolness as if he were taking the likeness of an archbishop, or a chancellor of the exchequer. In view of practices which are at war with the very foundation of modern society, he does not moralize, does not shriek in the agonies of virtuous indigna-tion, utters no cry of warning against their contagion, has no word of reproach or wrath against their followers, does not even bewail their preva-lence; but sets himself down to the work of description with as imperturbable nonchalance as Agassiz would do in giving an account of an odd fish or a nondescript monkey in the Valley of the Amazon.
With such a field for the exercise of mirth and ridicule, Mr. Dixon maintains a remarkable self-restraint in making such infrequent appeals to the sense of the comic. There are few travelers who would not revel in explosions of laughter at the exhibition of scenes, which being so far out of the common course, are necessarily ludicrous to the thoughtless observer. The sounds of a strange language usually provoke a smile, and even the most solemn rites of religion are apt to be the subjects of vulgar wit, to those who see in them only a departure from the forms with which they are familiar. Mr. Dixon is entirely free from this narrow and frivolous spirit; or if the temptation is sometimes a little too strong for human nature, he never laughs very loud, but is content with a quiet and very rapid side thrust, his face preserving the demurest gravity, while the smile gently ripples through his sleeve almost without attracting notice. Instead of wasting his pen on satirical sketches, and pleasant caricatures, he tries to gain the point of view in which unusual phenomena may be seen in their true perspective, to comprehend the vital idea by which they have been quickened into their exceptional mode of existence. He strives to penetrate the secret of their foundation, not to paint ludicrous pictures of their surface.
Mr. Dixon impresses us with a constant respect for his mental integrity. He makes no attempt to disguise the convictions which have been forced upon him by the study of the novel conditions of American life. He certainly finds a more profound significance in the movements referred to, than is usual with observers who regard them either with indifference or contempt, and from whom their very familiarity conceals the magnitude of their proportions. Mormonism, Bible Communism, Shakerism, and other facts which are generally regarded as the vagaries of a distempered fancy, if not something worse, in his eyes become the subjects of curious study and philosophic exposition. He approaches them in the spirit of sin-cere research, not at the point of the bayonet, but lending an earnest and respectful ear to all the prophets of new dispensations, listening with sympathy, if not with approval, to the story of their pretensions, never wounding their self-love by untimely cavils, and treating their defects with the tenderness of a nurse, rather than with judicial austerity.
Few travelers have shown a wiser spirit of observation than Mr. Dixon. His perceptive faculties are acute and nimble. He knows what to look at, and how to see it. Without losing his kindliness of temper, he has a quick eye for the ludicrous, always dejects the point of a joke, and enters gaily into the fan of t h e comic situations which he describes, though he is not enticed into holding them up to ridicule. His powers of expression are fully equal to his talent for observation. His rapid sketches must necessarily have been thrown off at a heat, but they seldom "show either looseness of statement or negligence of diction. His style is crisp, juicy, aromatic, reminding one of the freshness and spicy flavor of some fragrant plant. For a writer whose vocation is literature, it is remarkably free from all scholastic forms, partaking more of the easy, off-hand familiarity of common life, than of the stately dignity of books. But it is time to relieve the impatience of our readers, and introduce them personally to the volume to which we have given such large commendation.
The following passage presents one of the prominent religious institutions of the Latter Day Saints in a light that may edify the frequenters of Wallack's and the Winter Garden.
THE MORMON THEATER.
The play-house has an office and a service in tins Mormon city, higher than the churches would allow to it in London, Paris, and New-York. Brigham Young is an original in many ways; lie is the high-priest of what claims to he a new dispensation ; yet he has got his theater into perfect order, before he has raised his Temple foundations above the ground.
That the drama had a religious origin, and that the stage has been called a school of manners, every one is aware. Young feels inclined to go back upon all first principles; in family life to those of Abraham, in social life to those of Thespis. Priests invented both the ancient and the modern stages; and if experience shows as strongly in Salt Lake City as in New-York, that people love to be light and merry—to laugh and glow—why should their teachers neglect the thousand opportunities offered by a play, of getting them to laugh in the right places, to glow at the proper things? Why should Young not preach moralities from the stage ? Why should he not train his actors and actresses to be models of good conduct, of correct pronunciation, and of taste in dress? Why should he not try to reconcile religious feel with with pleasure ?
Brigham Young may be either right or wrong in his Ideas of the uses to which a play-house may be turned in a city where they have no high schools and colleges as yet; but he is bent on trying his experiment to an issue; for this purpose he has built a model theater, and he is sow making an effort to train a model company.
Outside, his theater is a rough Doric edifice, in which the architect has contrived to produce a certain effect by very simple means; inside, it is light and airy, having no curtains and no boxes, save two in the proscenium, with light columns to divide the tiers, and having no other decoration than pure white paint and gold. The pit, rising sharply from the orchestra, so that every one seated on its benches can see and hear to advantage, is the choicest part of the house. All these benches are let to families; and here the principal elders and bishops may be seen every play-night, surrounded by their wives and children, laughing and clapping like boys at a pantomime. Yon rocking-chair, in the center of the pit, is Young's own seat; his place of pleasure, in the middle of his Saints. When he chooses to occupy his private box, one of his wives, perhaps Eliza the Poetess, Harriet the Pale, or Amelia the Magnificent, rocks herself in his chair while laughing at the play. Round about that chair, as the place of honor, cluster the benches of those who claim to stand nearest to their prophet: of Heber Kimball, first councilor; of Daniel Wells, second councilor and general-in-chief; of George A. Smith, apostle and historian of the church; of George Q. Cannon, apostle ; of Edward Hunter, presiding bishop; of Elder Stenhouse, editor of The Daily Telegraph; and of a host of less brilliant Mormon lights.
In the sides of the proscenium nestle two private boxes: one is reserved for the Prophet, when he pleases to be alone, or wishes to have a gossip with some friend; the other is given up to the girls who have to play during the night, but who are not engaged in the immediate business of the piece. As a rule, every one's pleasure is considered in this model play-house; and I can answer, on the part of Miss Adams, Miss Alexander, and other young artists, that this appropriation to their sole use of a private box, into which they can run at all times, in any dress, without being seen, is considered by them as a very great comfort.
Through the quick eye and careful hand of his man-ager, Hiram Clawson, the President may be congratulated on having made his play-house into something coming near to that which he conceives a play-house should be. Everything in front of the foot-lights is in keeping; peace and order reign in the midst of fun and frolic. Neither within the doors nor about them, do you find the riot of our own Lyceum and Drury Lane; no loose women, no pickpockets, no ragged boys and girls, no drunken and blaspheming men. As a Mormon never drinks spirits, and rarely smokes tobacco, the only dissipation in which you find these hundreds of hearty creatures indulging their appetites, is that of sucking a peach. Short plays are in vogue in this theater, just as short sermons are the rule in yon tabernacle. The curtain, which rises at eight, comes down about half-past ten; and as the Mormon fashion is for people to sup before going out, they retire to rest the moment they get home, never suffering their amusements to infringe on the labors of the coming day. Your bell rings for breakfast at six o’clock.
But the chief beauties of this model playhouse lie be-hind the scenes; in the ample space, the perfect light, the scrupulous cleanliness of every part. I am pretty well acquainted with green-rooms and side wings in Eu-rope; but I have never seen, not in Italian and Austrian theaters, so many delicate arrangements for the privacy and comfort of ladies and gentlemen as Salt Lake. The green-room is a real drawing-room. The scene-painters have their proper studios; the dressers and decorators have immense magazines. Every lady, however small her part in the play, has a dressing-room to herself.
Young understands that the true work of reform in a playhouse must begin behind the scenes; that you must elevate the actor before you can purify the stage. To this end, he not only builds dressing-rooms and a private box for the ladies who have to act, but he places his daughters on the stage as an example and encouragement to others. Three of these young sultanas, Alice, Emily, and Zina, are on the stage. With Alice, the youngest wife of Elder Clawson, I have had the honor to make an ac-quaintance, which might be called a friendship, and from her lips I have learned a good deal as to her father’s ideas about stage reform. “I am not myself very fond of play-ing,” she said to me one day as we sat at dinner—not in these words, perhaps, but to this effect—“but my father desires that my sisters and myself should act sometimes, as he does not think it right to ask any poor man’s child to do anything which his own children would object to do.” Her dislike to playing as she afterward told me, arose from a feeling that Nature had given her no abili-ties for acting well; she was fond of going to see a good piece, and seldom omitted being present when she had not to play. Brigham Young has to create, as well as to reform, the stage of Salt Lake City; and the chief trouble of a manager who is 700 miles from the next theater, must always be with his artists. Talent for the work does not grow in every field, like a sunflower and a peach-tree; it must be sought for in nooks and corners; now in a shoe-shop, anon in a dairy, then in a counting-house; but wherever the talent may be found, Young cannot think of asking any young girl to do a thing which it is sup-posed that a daughter of his own would scorn.
In New-York, in St. Louis, in Chicago, nobody would assert that the stage is a school of virtue, that acting is a profession which a sober man would like his daughter to adopt. Young does not bind himself to the fact that in claiming the theater as a school of morals, he has to fight against a social judgment. An odor of vice, as of a poi-sonous weed, infects the air of a playhouse everywhere; though nowhere less offensively than in American towns. Against this evil, much of it the consequence of bad tradi-tions, he offers up, as it were, a part of himself—his chil-dren; the only persons in Salt Lake City who could really do this cleansing work. In this way, Alice and Zina may be regarded as two priestly virgins who have been placed on the public stage to purify it by their presence from an ancient but unnecessary stain.
Young, and his agent Clawson, are bestowing much care upon the education of Miss Adams, a young lady who has everything to learn except the art of being lovely; also upon that of Miss Alexander, a girl who, besides being pretty and piquant, has genuine ability for her work. A story, which shows that Young has a feeling for humor, has been told me, of which Miss Alexander is the heroine. A starring actor from San Francisco fell into desperate love for her, and went up to the President’s house for leave to address her. “Ha! My good fellow,” said the Prophet; “I have seen you play ‘Hamlet’ very well, and ‘Julius Cæsar’ pretty well, but you must not aspire to Alexander!”
We saw Brigham Young for the first time in his private box. A large head, broad, fair face, with blue eyes, light-brown hair, good nose and merry mouth; a man plainly dressed, in black coat and pantaloons, white waistcoat and cravat. gold studs and sleeve-links, English in build and looks—but English of the middle class and of a pro-vincial town: such was the Mormon prophet, pope, and king, as we first saw him in the theater among his people. A lady, one of his wives, whom we afterward came to know was Amelia, sat with him in the box; she, too, was dressed in a quiet English style: and now and then she eyed the audience from behind her curtain, though an opera-glass, as English ladies are apt to do at home. She was pretty, and appeared to us then rather pensive and poetical.
The pit was almost filled with girls; on many benches sat a dozen damsels in a row; children of Kimball, Can-non, Smith, and Wells; in some places 20 or 30 girls were grouped together. Young, as he told me himself, has 48 living children, some of whom are grown up and married; and, since he sets the fashion of attending this theater among his people, it is only right that he should encourage his children to appear, both before the foot lights and be-hind them, Alice is the young lady married to Clawson. Zina, whom we have seen play Mrs. Musket in the farce of “My Husband’s Ghost,” is a lady-like girl, tall, full in figure, moon-faced (as the Orientals say), not much of an artist. Emily we have also seen; Elder Clawson is said to be courting her. I am told that the flame is mutual; and that Emily is not unlikely to be gathered home to her sister Alice. Gentle rumor—fond of toying with the do-mestic secrets of the President’s Family—says that Alice is not happy with her lord; but this is one of those Gen-tile rumors which I can almost swear is false. One day last week I had the pleasure of taking Sister Alice down to dinner, of talking with her for a long evening, and of seeing and romping with her four brave boys. A brighter, merrier woman I have rarely seen; and I noted, as a pe-culiarity in her, not a common in either eastern or western America, that she always addressed her husband by his baptismal name of Hiram. American ladies almost every-where speak to their husbands as Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith, not as William and George. The perils of a double alliance with the Mormon pope are said to be very great; envy among the Elders, collision with the Gentiles, jeal-ousy at Camp Douglas, hostility in Washington; but Elder Clawson is said to be ready to take his chance with Sister Emily, as he has done with Alice, answering as the Mor-mons put it, Washington theories by Deseret facts.
The first piece we saw was Charles the Twelfth. Where Adam Brock warns his daughter, Eudigo, against mili-tary sparks, the whole pit of young ladies crackled off into girlish laughter; the reference being taken to Camp Douglas and the United States officers stationed there, many of whom where in the house, and heartily enjoyed the fun. This play happens to be full of allusions to sol-diers and their amours, and every word of these allusions was appropriated and applied by the Saints to their local politics. The interference of these United States officers and soldiers with the Mormon women is a very sore point with the Saints, some of their wives having, it is said, been seduced and carried off. Young spoke to me with indignation of such proceedings, though he did not name the offenders as connected with the camp. “They cause us trouble,” he said; “they intrude into our affairs, and even into our families; we cannot stand such things; and when they are guilty, we make them bite the dust.” I though of all that I had ever heard about Porter Rock-well and his Danite band; but I only smiled and waited for the President to go on. He quickly added, “I never had any trouble of this sort in my own family.”
When Charles the Twelfth referred to the amours of his officers, it was good fun to see the Prophet rolling back in his chair, convulsed with merriment, while the more staid Amelia eyed the audience through her opera-glass.
The social effect of polygamy receives a practical illustration among the Mormons, which Mr. Dixon did not fail to notice. His remarks on this point are none the less instructive from the semi-humorous dress in which they are clothed.
WOMAN AT SALT LAKE.
And what, as regards the woman herself, is the visible issue of this strange experiment in social and family life?
During our fifteen days’ residence among the Saints, we have had many opportunities afforded us for forming a judgment on this question as has ever been given to Gentile travelers. We have seen the President and some of the apostles daily; we must have received into many Mormon houses. and introduced to nearly all the leading Saints; we have dined at their tables; we have chatted with their wives; we have romped and played with their children. The feelings which we have gained as to the effect of Mormon life on the character and position of woman, are the growth of care, of study, and experience; and our friends at Salt Lake, we hope, while they will differ from our views, will not refuse to credit us with candor and good faith.
If you listen to the elders only, you would fancy that the idea of plurality of wives excites in the female breast the wildest fanaticism. They tell you that a Mor-mon preacher, dwelling on the examples of Sarai and of Raehel. finds his most willing listeners on the female benches. They say that a ladies’ club was formed at Nauvoo to foster polygamy, and to make it the fashion; that mothers preach it to their daughters that poetesses praise it. They ask you to believe that the first wife, be-ing head of the harem, takes upon herself to seek out and court the prettiest girls; only too proud and happy when she can bring a new Hagar, a new Billah to her husband’s arms.
The male version of the facts is certainly supported by such female writers as Belinda Pratt.
In my opinion, Mormonism is not a religion for woman. I will not say that it degrades her, for the term degrada-tion is open to abuse; but it certainly lowers her, accord-ing to our Gentile ideas, in the social scale. In fact, woman is not in society here at all. The long blank walls, the embowered cottages, the empty windows, door-ways, and verandas, all suggest to an English eye some-thing of jealousy, the seclusion, the subordination of a Moslem harem, rather than the gayety and freedom of a Christian home. Men rarely see each other at home, still more raely in the company of their wives. Secul-sion seems to be a fashion wherever polygamy I s the law. Now, by itself, and apart from all doctrines and morali-ties, the habit of secluding women from society must tend to dim their sight and ull their hearing; for if conversa-tion quickens men, it still more quickens women; and we can roundly say, after experience in many households at Salt Lake, that these Mormon ladies have lost the prac-tice and the power of taking part even in such light talk as animates a dinner-table and drawing-room. We have met with only one exception to this rule, that of a lady who had been upon the stage. In some houses, the wives of our hosts, with babies in their arms ran about the rooms, fetching in champagne, drawing corks, carrying cake and fruit, lightening matches, iceing water, while the men were lolling in chairs, putting their feet out of win-dow smoking cigars, and tossing off beakers of wine. (N.B.—Abstinence from wine and tobacco is recom-mended by Young and taught in the Mormon schools; but we found cigars in many houses, and wine in all ex-cept the hotels!) The ladies, as a rule, are plainly, not to say poorly, dressed; with no bright colors, no gay flounces and furbelows. They are very quiet and sub-dued in manner, with what appeared to us an unnatural calm; as if all dash, all sportiveness, all life, had been preached out of them. They seldom smiled, except with a wan and wearied look; and though they are all of En-glish race, we have never heard them laugh with the bright merriment of our English girls.
They know very little, and feel an interest in very few things. I assume that they are all great a nursing, and I know that many of them are clever at drying and pre-serving fruit. But they are habitually shy and reserved, as though they were afraid lest your bold opinion on a sunset, on a watercourse, or a mountain-range, should be considered by the lords as a dangerous intrusion on the sanctities of domestic life. While you are in the house, they are brought into the public room as children are with us; they come in for a moment, curtsy and shake hands; then drop out again, as tough they felt themselves in company rather out of place. I have never seen this sort of shyness among grown women, except in a Syrian tent. Anything like the ease and bearing of an English lady is not to be found in Salt Lake, even among the households of the rich. Here, no woman reigns. Here, no woman hints by her manner that she is mistress of her own house. She does not always sit at table; and when she occupies a place beside her lord, it is not at the head, but on one of the lower seats. In fact, her life does not seem to lie in the parlor and the dining-room, so much as in the nursery, the kitchen, the laundry, and the fruit-shed.
The grace, the play, the freedom of a young English lady, are quiet unknown to her Mormon sister. Only when the subject of a plurality of wives has been under consideration between host and guest, have I ever seen a Mormon lady’s face grow bright, and then it was to look a sentiment, to hint an opinion, the reverse of those maintained by Belinda Pratt.
I am convinced that the practice of marrying a plurality of wives is not popular with the female Saints. Besides what I have seen and heard from Mormon wives,
themselves living in polygamous families, I have talked, alone and freely, with eight or nine different girls, all of whom have lived at Salt Lake for two or three years.
They are undoubted Mormons, who have made many sacrifices for their religion; but after seeing the family life of their fellow-Saints, they have one and all become
firmly hostile to polygamy. Two or three of these girls are pretty, and might have been married in a month. They have been courted very much, and one of them has
received no less than seven offers. Some of her lovers are old and rich, some young and poor, with their fortunes still to seek. The old fellows have already got their houses full of wives, and she will not fall into the train as either a fifth or a fifteenth spouse; the young men being true Saints,' Will not promise to confine themselves
forever to their earliest vows, and so she refuses to wed any of them. All these girls prefer to remain single—to live a life of labor and dependence—as servants, chambermaids, milliners, charwomen—to a life of comparative ease and leisure in the harem of a Mormon bishop.
It is a common belief, gathered in a great measure from the famous letter on plurality by Belinda Pratt, that the Mormon Sarai is willing to seek out, and eager to bestow, any number of Hagars on her lord. More than one Saint has told me that this is true, as a rule, though he admits there may be exceptions in so far as the Mormon Sarai falls short of her high calling. My experience lies among the exceptions solely. Some wives may be good enough to undertake this office. I have never found one who would own it, even in the presence of her husband, and when the occasion might have been held to warrant a little feminine fibbing. Every lady to whom I have put this question flushed into denial, though with that caged and broken courage which seems to characterize every Mormon wife. "Court a new wife for him !" said one lady; "no Woman could do that; and one woman would submit to be courted by a woman."
The process of taking either a second or a sixteenth wife is the same in all cases. "I will tell you," said a Mormon elder, "how we do these things in our order. For example, I have two wives living, and one wife dead. I am thinking of taking another, as I can well afford the expense, and a man is not much respected in the church who has less than three, wives. Well, I fix my mind on a young lady, and consider within myself whether it is tthe will of God that I should seek her. If I feel, in my own heart, that it would be right to try, I speak to my bishoop, who advises and approves, as he shall see fit; on whicch I go to the President, who will consider whether I aim a good man and a worthy husband, capable of ruling my little household, keeping peace among my wives, bringing up my children in the fear of God; and if I am found worthy in his sight, of the blessing, I shall obtain perr-mission to go on with the chase. Then I lay the wholes matter of my desire, my permission and my choice, before my first wife, as head of my house, and take her counsel as to the young lady's habits, character, and accomplishments. Perhaps I may speak with my second wife; perhaps not; since it is not so much her business as it is that of my first wife; beside which, my first wife is older in years, has seen more of life, and is much more of a friend to me than the second. An objection on the first wife’s part would have great weight with me; I should not care much for what the second either said or thought. Supposing all to go well, I should next have a talk wiith the young lady's father; and if he consented to my suiit, I should then address the young lady herself."
"But before, you take all these pains to get her,'" I asked, "would you not have tried to be sure of your ground with the lady herself ? Would you not lnuve courted her and won her good will before taking all these persons into your trust"
"No," answered the elder; "I should think that wrong. In our society we are strict. I should have seen the girl, in the theater, in the tabernacle, in the social hall; I should have talked with her, danced with her, walked about with her, and in these ways ascertained her merits and guessed her inclinations; but I should not have made love to her, in your sense of the word, got up an understanding with her, and entered into a private and personal engagement of the affections. These affairs are not of earth, but of heaven, and with us they must follow the order of God's kingdom and church."
This elder's two wives live in separate houses, and seldom see each other. While we have been at Salt Lake, a child of the second wife has fallen sick; there has been much trouble in the house; and we have heard the first wife, at whose cottage we were dining, say she would go and pay the second wife a visit. The elder would not hear of such a thing; and he was certainly right, as the sickness was supposed to be diphtheria, and she had a brood of little folks playing about her knees. Still the manner of her proposal told us that she was not in the habit of daily intercourse with her sister-wife.
It is an open question in Utah whether it is better for a plural household to be gathered under one roof or not. Young sets the example of unity, so far at least as his actual wives and children are concerned. A few old ladies, who have been sealed to him for heaven, whether in his own name or in that of Joseph, dwell in cottages apart; but the dozen women, who share his couch, who are the mothers of his children, live in one block close to another, dine at one table, and join in the family prayers. Taylor, the apostle, keeps his families in separate cottages and orchards; two of his wives only live in his principal house; the rest have tenements of their own. Every man is free to arrange his household as he likes; so long as he avoids contention, and promotes the public peace.
"How will you arrange your visits, when you have won and sealed your new wife?" I asked my friendly and communicative elder; "shall you adopt the Oriental custom of equal justice and attention to the ladies laid down by Moses and by Mohammed?"
"By heaven, Sir," he answered, with a flush of scorn, “no man shall tell me what to do, except—" giving the initials of his name.
"You mean you will do as you like ?"
"That's just it."
And such, I believe, is the universal habit of thought in this city and this church. Man is king, and woman has no rights. She has, in fact, no recognized place in creation, other than that of a servant and companion of her lord. Man is master, woman is slave. I cannot wonder that girls who remember their English homes should shrink from marriage in this strange community, even though they have accepted the doctrine of Young, that plurality is the law of heaven and of God. "I believe it's right," said to me a rosy English damsel, who has been three years in Utah, "and I think it is good for those who like it; but it is not good for me, and I will not have it."
"But if Young should command you ?"
"He won't!" said the girl with the toss of her golden curls; "and if he were to do so, I would not. A girl can please herself whether she marries or not; and I, for one, will never go into a house where there is another wife."
"Do the wives dislike it ?" "
Some don't, most do. They take it for their religion ; I can't say any woman likes it. Some women live very comfortably together; not many; most have their tiffs and quarrels, though their husbands may never know of them. No woman likes to see a new wife come into the house."
A Saint would tell yon that such a damsel as my rosy friend is only half a Mormon yet; he would probably ask you to reject such evidence as trumpery and temporary; and plead that you can have no fair means of judging such an institution as polygamy, until you are able to study its effects in the fourth and fifth generation.
Meanwhile, the judgment which we have formed about it from what we have seen and heard may be expressed in a few words. It finds a new place for woman, which is not the place she occupies in the society of England and the United States. It transfers her from the drawing-room to the kitchen, and when it finds her in the nursery it locks her in it. We may call such a change a degradation; the Mormons call it a reformation. We do not say that any of these Mormon ladies have been worse ill their moralities and their spiritualities by the change; probably they have not; but in everything that concerns their grace, order, rank, and representation in society, they are unquestionably lowered, according to our standards. Male Saints declare that in this city women have become more domestic, wifely, motherly, than they are among the Gentiles; and that what they have lost in show, in brilliancy, in accomplishment, they have gained in virtue and in service. To the, the very best women appear to be little more than domestic drudges, never rising into the rank of real friends and companions of their lords. Taylor's daughters waited on us at table; two pretty, elegant, English-looking girls. We should have preferred standing behind their chairs and helping them to dainties of fowl and cake; but the Mormon, like the Moslem, keeps a heavy hand on his female folks. Women at Salt Lake are made to keep their place. A girl must address her father as "Sir," and she would hardly presume to sit down in his presence until she had received his orders.
"Women," said Young to me, "will be more easily saved than men. They have not sense enough to go far wrong. Men have more knowledge and more power; therefore they can go more quickly and more certainly to hell."
The Mormon creed appears to be that woman is not worth damnation.
In the Mormon heaven, men, on account of their sins, may stop short in the stage of angels; but women, whatever their offenses, are all to become the wives of gods.
Mr. Dixon's visit to the Shaker settlement at New-Lebanon seems to have inspired him with a warm sympathy for the primitive and unpretending virtues of that remarkable people. He had the good luck to fall into t h e hands of Elder Frederick (known in the world as Frederick W. Evans), a man held in the highest esteem by all who share the pleasure of his acquaintance for the gentle courtesy of his manners, the transparent expression of his face in which shrewdness and sweetness are curiously blended, and the kindliness and sagacity of his conversation. To him, with the good Sister Antoinette, our traveler was indebted for many gracious hospitalities, which left a loving remembrance of, New-Lebanon as almost realizing the idea of Paradise Regained. We give one of his charming idyllic pictures of a life which to most outsiders presents a very unromantic aspect.
A SHAKER HOUSE.
During the days which I have been spending at North House, the guest of Frederick and Antoinette, I have had every opportunity given to me of seeing and judging for myself the virtues and failings of the Shaker brethren. I have been eating their food, lodging in their chambers, driving in their carriages, talking with their elders, strolling over their orchards; I have been with them of a morning in the field, at noon by the table, at night in their meeting-rooms; watching them at their work, at their play, at their prayers; in short, living their life, and trying to comprehend the spirit which inspires it.
My room is painfully bright and clean. No Haarlem vrouw ever scraped her floor into such perfect neatness as my floor; nor could the wood of which it is made, be matched in purity except in the heart of an uncut forest pine. A bed stands in the corner, with sheets and pillows of spotless white. A table on which lie an English Bible, some few Shaker tracts, an inkstand, a paper-knife; four cane chairs, arranged in angles; a piece of carpet by the bed-side; a spittoon in one corner, complete the furniture. A closet on one side of the room contains a second bed, a wash-stand, a jug of water, towels; and the whole apartment is light and airy, even for a frame house. The Shakers, who have no doctors among them, and smile at our Gentile ailments—headaches, fevers, colds, and what not—take a close and scientific care of their ventilation. Every building on Mount Lebanon—farm, granary, mill, and dwelling—is provided with shafts, fans, flappers, drafts, and vents. The stairway is built as a funnel, the vane as an exhauster. Stoves of a special pattern warm the rooms in winter, with an adjustment delicate enough to keep the temperature for weeks within one degree of warmth. Fresh air is the Shaker medicine. "We have only had one case of fever in thirty-six years," says Antoinette; "and we are very much ashamed of ourselves for having had it; it was wholly our fault."
North House, the dwelling of Elder Frederick's family, has the same whiteness and brightness, the same order, the same articles in every room. Antoinette lead me over it yesterday, from the fruit cellars to the roof, showing me the kitchens, the ladies' chambers, the laundries, the meeting-rooms, and the stoves. My friend, William Haywood (civil engineer to the City of London) and his wife, were with me; the engineer was no less smitten by surprise at the singular beauty and perfect success which the Shakers have attained in the art of ventilation, than the lady was charmed by the sweetness, purity, and brightness of the corridors and rooms. Males and females dwell apart as to their rooms, though they eat at a common table, and lodge under a common roof. "How do you treat a man who comes into union with his wife and children—that sometimes happens ?" Antoinette smiled, "Oh, yes! that happens pretty often; they fall into the order of brother and sister—and make very pretty Shakers." "But," said the lady, "they see each other ?" "That is so," answered Antoinette; "they live in the same family; they become brother and sister. They do not cease to be man and woman; in forsaking each other, they only cease to be husband and wife." Some of these ladies who live under Frederick's roof in North House, have husbands (as the world would call them) living close beside their rooms; but they would hold it to be a wickedness, perhaps a sin, to feel any personal happiness in each other's company. They live for God alone. The love that is in their hearts—so far as it is capable of bearing bounteous fruit—ought to be shed on each of the Saints alike, without preference on account of either quality or sex.
Is it always so? After this morning's early meal, Antoinette, who had come into my room, where Frederick and some of the Elders had already dropt in for a social chat in answer to some of my wondering worldly questions, told me, in the presence of four or five men, that she felt towards Frederick, her co-ruler of the house, a special and peculiar love, not as towards the man, and In the Gentile way; as she had heard of the world's doings in such matters, but as towards the child of grace and agent of the heavenly Father. She told me, also, that she had sweet and tender passages of love with many who were gone away out of sight—the beings whom we should call the dead—and that these passages of the spirit were of the same kind as those which she enjoyed with Frederick. The functions which these two persons exercise in the family, as male and female chiefs, give them the privilege of this close relation,—this wedlock of the soul, if I may use that phrase to express a sympathy which, not being of the world, has no worldly words to represent it.
The ladies usually sleep in pairs, two in a room; the men have separate rooms. One bed is made to slide beneath another, so that when the chamber is arranged for the day-time, there is ample space and a sense of air. Nothing in these apartments hints that the people who occupy them seek after an ascetic life. All the ladies have looking-glasses in their rooms, though they are sometimes told, in love, to guard their hearts against the abuse to which these vanities might lead. "Females," says Frederick, in his homely humor, "need to be steadied some." The dress of these ladies, though the rule is strict as to shape, is not confined to either a single color. On some of the pegs hang dresses of blue cotton, lawn stuff, white muslin; and even at church a. good many of the ladies appear in lilac gowns, a color which becomes them well. "We leave the individual taste rather free," says Frederick; "we find out by trial what is best; and when we have found a good thing, either in a dress or in anything else, we stick to it."
These Shakers dine in silence. Brothers and sisters sit in a common room, at tables ranged in a line, a few feet apart. They eat at six in the morning, at noon, at six in the evening; following in this respect a rule which is all but uniform in America, especially in the western parts of this Continent from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean. They rally to the sound of the bell; file into the eating-room in a single line, women going up to one end of the room, men to the other; when they drop on their knees, for a short and silent prayer; sit down, and eat, helping each other to the food. Not a word is spoken unless a brother need some help from a brother, a sister from a sister. A whisper serves. No one gossips with her neighbor; for every one is busy with her own affairs. Even the help that any one may need is given and taken without thanks; such forms of courtesy and politeness not being considered necessary in a family of saints. Elder Frederick sits at the end, not at the head, of one table. Eldress Antoinette at the other end. The food, though it is very good of its kind, and very well cooked, is simple; being wholly, or almost wholly, produce of the earth; tomatoes, roast apples, peaches, potatoes, squash, hominy, boiled corn, and the like. The grapes are excellent, reminding me of those of Bethlehem; and the eggs, hard eggs, boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, are delicious. The drink is water, milk, and tea. Then we have pies, tarts, candies, dried fruits, and syrups. For my own part, being a Gentile and a sinner, I have been indulged in cutlets, chickens, and home-made wine. "Good food and sweet air," says Frederick, "are our only medicines." The rosy flesh of his people, a tint but rarely seen in the United States, appears to answer very well for his assertion, that in such a place on other physic is required. These people say, they want no Cherokee medicines, no plantation bitters, no Bourbon cocktails, none of the thousand tonics by which the dyspeptic children of New-York whip up their flagging appetites, and cleanse their impure blood. Frederick has a fierce antipathy to doctors. "Is it not strange," says he, "that you wise people of the world keep a set of men, who lie in wait for you until by some mistake of habit you fall sick, and who then come in, and poison you with drugs?" How can I reply to him except by a little laugh?
No words being spoken during meals, about twenty minutes serves them amply for repast. One minute more, and table is swept bare of dishes; the plates, the knives and forks, the napkins, the glass, are cleaned and polished, every article is returned to its proper place, and the sweet, soft sense of order is restored.
A man has little inducement to dally with the cherry wine; and as no cigar has ever been allowed to profane the precincts of North House, I rise after a cup of black Coffee, and joining a knot of Brethren, stroll into the fields.
Dropping with Frederick into the schools, the barns, the workshops, I have learned that the Shaker estate on and around Mount Lebanon consists of nearly 10,000 acres of the best woodland and lowland in the State of New-York. For a long time, as lots fell into the market, the family has been buying land; but they have now got as much as they can cultivate; more, indeed, than they can cultivate by their own forces; and for some years past they have been compelled, by the extent of their family estates, to hire laborers from among the world's people in the villages about. As they are never angry, never peevish, never unjust (I have heard tills said elsewhere, by men who hate their principles and traduce their worship), Gentile laborers come to them very freely, and remain as long as they are allowed to stay. These smiths in the forge by the roadway, are World's people; that lad in the cart is a cottager's son; those fellows making hay in the meadow are Gentiles working on the Shaker lands. These laborers have come to Mount Lebanon to live and learn. They get a very fine schooling, and are paid for being at school. No other farming in America reaches the perfection that is here attained; and a clever young lad can hardly pass a season among these fields and farms without picking up good habits and useful hints.
But the chiefs of Mount Lebanon can see that this system of mixed labor, this, throwing of the Saint and sinner into a common society, for the sake of gain, is foreign to the genius of their order. Such a system, if it were to grow upon them, would be hostile to their first conception of celestial industry; it would, in fact, by the operation of a natural law, degenerate into a feudal and commercial business, in which the Saints would be the bankers and proprietors, the sinners would be the laborers and serfs. That is not an end for which they have denied themselves so much. Even their wish to do good among the Gentiles must not lead them into what is wrong; and they are now considering whether it may not be wiser for them to part with all their surplus lands.
I need not say that any estate, which has been for some years under Shaker plows and spades, will sell in the market at what would otherwise be considered as a fancy price.
Climbing up the hill-road from the pretty valley of New-Lebanon, I notice the fine rows of apple-trees growing in the hedges, after the English fashion in some counties. Elder Frederick, himself of English birth, is pleased to hear me speak of the old country. "Aye," says he; "this green lane, and these fruit-trees, carry me back to my old home." Americans of the higher class, when they are grave and tender, always speak of England by the name of Home. The trees in this lane are planted with care and skill; but I notice, not without curiosity, that in the midst of so much order, one apple-tree stands a little from the line. "How do you prevent the passers-by—the lane feeing a public highway—from snatching at the fruit and injuring your trees?" The Elder smiles; if the flush of light in his soft blue eyes can be called a smile. "Look at yon tree," says he, "a little in front of the rest; that is our sentinel; it bears a large, sweet apple, which ripens a fortnight before the others; and it is easy for every one to reach. Those who want an apple pluck one from its boughs, and leave the other trees untouched." Is it always true, that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light?
Every man among the brethren has a trade; some of them have two, even three or four trades. No one may be an idler, not even under the pretense of study, thought, and contemplation. Every one must take his part in the family business; it may be farming, building, gardening, smith-work, painting; every one must follow his occupation, however high his rank and calling in the church. Frederick is a gardener and an architect. We have been out this afternoon seeing an orchard of apple-trees which he has planted, the great barn which he has built, and I have good grounds for concluding that this orchard, this barn, are the finest works of their kind in the United States. The Shakers believe in variety of labor, for variety of occupation is a source of pleasure, and pleasure is the portion meted out by an indulgent Father to his Saints.
The ladies at Mount Lebanon—all these sisters are ladies in Speech, in manner, in garb—have no out-door work to perform; some are employed in the kitchen, some are waiting on others (duties which they take in turn a month for each course), some in weaving cloth, some in preserving fruit, some in distilling essences, some in making fans and knick-knacks. Maple syrup is an article for which they have a good demand; they make rose-water, cherry-water, peach-water; they sew, they sing, they teach children, and teach them very well. Their school is said to be one of the best for a good general education in New-York State.
Another phase of social experiment in America, probably less generally known to the public, than either Mormonism or Shakerism, and of more recent date, is that of the Oneida Community founded by Mr. John R. Noyes, of which Mr. Dixon gives a more complete account than has hitherto been furnished to the public. We must find room for a portion of his statements concerning this people which in fact forms a distinct religious sect.
ONEIDA CREEK.
On the opposite verge of thought to the systems of Mother Ann, of Elizabeth Denton, of Eliza Farnham, stands a body of reformers who call themselves, in their dogmatic aspect, Perfectionists, in their social aspect, Bible Communists. These people aver that they have discovered the only way; and have reduced to practice what their rivals in reform have only reduced into talk. They profess to base their theory of family life on the New Testament, most of all on the teachings of St. Paul.
What these Bible People (as they call themselves) have done in the sphere of life and thought has certainly been attempted in no faltering spirit. They have restored, as they say, the Divine government of the world; they have put the two sexes on an equal footing; they have declared marriage a fraud and property a theft; they have abolished for themselves all human laws; they have formally renounced their allegiance to the United States.
The founder of this school of reform—a school which boasts already of having its prophets, seminaries, periodi-cals, and communities—its schism—its revivals, its persecutions, its male and female martys—is John Humphrey Noyes; a tall, pale man, with sandy hair and beard, gray, dreamy eyes, good mouth, white temples, and a noble forehead. He is a little like Carlyle; and it is the fashion among his people to say that he closely resembles our Chelsea sage; a fiction which is evidently a pleasant delusion to the Saint himself. He has been in turn a graduate of Dartmouth College in Connecticut, a law clerk at Putney in Vermont, a theological student in Andover, Massachusetts, a preacher at Yale College, New-Haven, a se-ceder from the Congregational Church, an outcast, a heretic, an agitator, a dreamer, an experimentalizer: finally, he is now acknowledged by many people as a sect founder, a revelator, a prophet, enjoying light from heaven and personal intimacies with God.
I have been spending a few days at Oneida Creek, the chief seat of the three societies founded by Noyes—Oneida, Wallingford, and Brooklyn—as the guest of Brother Noyes. I have lived in his family; had a good deal of talk with him; had access to his books and papers, even those of a private nature; had many conversations with the brothers and sisters whom he has gathered into order, both in his presence and apart from him; had leave from him to copy such of the Family papers as I pleased. The account which follows of this extraordinary body of men has been written fresh from their own mouths, and from my own observation, on the spot which it describes.
"You will find," said Horace Greeley, as we parted in New-York, "that Oneida Communism is a trade success; the rest you will see and judge for yourself."
From Oneida, a young and busy town on the New-York Central Railway, a wide and dusty road, on either side of which, behind a line of frame-houses and their little gardens, the forest is still green and fresh, leads you to Oneida Creek; a part of that Indian reservation which was left-by a compassionate legislature to the Oneidas, one of the Six Nations famous in the early history of New-York for their honesty, their good faith, and their constant friendship for the whites. Twenty years ago the Creek ran through a virgin soil. Here and there a log house peeped from beneath the trees, in which some remnants of a great and unhappy tribe of hunters stood, as it were, at bay. The water yielded fish, the forest game. The only clearings had been made by fire; woods either burnt by chance or felled for Winter fuel. A patch of maize might be seen on some sunny slope; but the Oneida Indian is a very poor farmer at his best; and the district in which he dwelt with his squaw and his papoose, a tangle of brier and swamp and stones, was unbroken to the use of man. He sold his land to a pale-face, richer than himself, for a sum of money not equal in value to the maple and hickory woods upon it. From this second owner the Perfectionists bought the Creek, with its surrounding woods and open; and in twenty years the surface has been wholly changed. Roads have been cut through the forest; bridges have been built; the Creek has been trained and dammed; mills for slitting planks and for driving wheels have been erected; the bush has been cleared away; a great hall, offices and workshops have been raised; lawns have been laid out, shrubberies planted, and footways graveled; orchards and vineyards have been reared and fenced; manufactures have been set going—ironwork, satchel-making, fruit-preserving, silk-spinning; and the whole aspect of this wild forest land has been beautified into the likeness of a rich domain in Kent. Few corners in America can compete in loveliness with the swards and gardens lying about the home of the Oneida family, as these things arrest the eyes of a stranger coming upon them from the rough fields even of the settled region of New-York. The home, which stands on a rising knoll commanding some pretty views, is remarkable without and within; for among the laws which the Bible Communists have put behind them are the seven orders of architecture. The builder of this pile is James Hamilton, once a New-England farmer, carpenter, what not, as a New-Englander is apt to be; a man of sense and tact, not much of a scholar, not at all an orator, but a person of some natural gifts, which fit him to be a ruler and contriver in the midst of inferior men. He is the head of this Oneida family, just as Noyes is the head of all the Perfectionist families; being master of the house, so to speak, he is also builder of the house; though he claims that everything in it, from the position of a fireplace to the furnishing of a library, is the result of a special sign from heaven. I may add, without offense, that Brother Hamilton was open to new lights, even when they flashed from a Gentile brain; most of all to those of my fellow-traveler, William Haywood, architect and engineer.
In the center of the pile, approached by a wide passage and a flight of stairs, is the great hall; a chapel, a theater, a concert room, a casino, a working-place, all in one; being supplied with benches, lounging-chairs, work-tables, a reading-desk, a stage, a gallery, a piano-forte. In this hall the sisters play and sew, the elders preach, the librarian (Brother Pitt) reads the news, the young men and maidens make love—so far as such a Gentile art is allowed to live in this curious place. Near the great hall is the drawing-room, properly the ladies' room; and around this chamber stand the sleeping-apartments of the family and its guests. Beneath this floor, on either side of the wide passage, are the offices, together with a reception room, a library, a place of business. Kitchen, refectory, fruit-cellar, laundry, are in separate buildings. The store is in front of the home, divided from it by a lawn: and farther away, peeping prettily through the green trees, stand the mills, farms, stables, cow-sheds, presses, and general workshops. The estate is about six hundred acres in extent; the Family gathered under one roof number about three hundred. Everything at Oneida Creek suggests taste, repose, and wealth; and the account-books prove that during the past seven or eight years the Family have been making a good deal of money, which they have usefully laid out, either in the erection of new mills, or in draining and enriching the soil.
The men affect no particular garb; though the loose coat, the wide-awake, and peg-top breeches, common in every part of rural America, make up their ordinary wear. They have no dress for Sundays and holidays; having abolished Sundays and holidays along with every other human institution. But they are open to new lights on dress, saying that the last thing has not yet been done in the way of hats and boots. At one of their evening meetings, I heard Brother Pitt, a well-read man, deliver his testimony in favor of peg-tops. The ladies wear a dress which is peculiar, and to my eyes becoming. It may be made of any material and of any color; though brown and blue for out-door wear, white for evening ill the meeting-room, are the prevailing tints. Muslin, cotton, and a coarse silk supply the materials. The hair is cut short, and parted down the center. No stays, no crinolines, are worn. A tunic falling to the knee, loose trousers of the same material, a vest buttoning high to ward the throat, short hanging sleeves, and a straw hat; these simple articles make up a dress in which a plain woman escapes much notice, and a pretty girls looks bewitching. I am told that it is no part of Noyes' design that the young ladies of his family should look bewitching; for such is not his theory of a modest and moral woman's life; but for my own poor self, being only a Gentile and a sinner, I could not help seeing that many of his young disciples have been gifted with rare beauty, and that two of the singing girls, Alice Ackley and Harriet Worden, have a grace and suppleness of form, as well as loveliness of face and hand, to warm a painter's heart. So much for the Oneida Community you may see in a few hours, if you simply wander about the place, with Brother Bolls, a gentleman who for twenty-five years has been a Baptist preacher in Massachusetts, and who is now a Perfectionist brother in Oneida, with this special duty of receiving ordinary strangers. You see a fine house, a noble lawn, a green shrubbery, orchards shining with apple-trees, pear-trees, plum-trees, cherry-trees, prolific vineyards, excellent farms, busy workshops, grazing cattle, whizzing mills, and grinding saws-peace, order, beauty, and material wealth; and these are what the picnic visitors, who come in thousands to stare in wonder, to hear good music, to eat squash and pastry, always see. They are something; signs of life, but not the life itself. The secrets of this strange success, the foundations on which this community rests, the social features which sustain it, are of deeper interest than the fact itself; and these mysteries of the Society are not explained to picnic parties by Brother Bolls.
Mr. Dixon intersperses his lively narrative with occasional speculations which strike us as being rather ingenious than solid. They do not, however, enter so deeply into the substance of his composition as to impair the general impression which it gives of discrimination and good sense. He suggests, for instance, that the Mormons have found their type of domestic life in the Indian's wigwam rather than in the Patriarch's tent, whose example they profess to have adopted as a rule. A still more extraordinary specimen of historical genesis is the tracing of the Confederacy of the colonies to the confederacy of the Five Nations, and the doctrine of State Rights to the invention of the Iroquois. The disproportion between the sexes which prevails in this country is also extravagantly pressed as an explanation of the cause of much of the social unrest and love of change which he thinks are salient features in American society. To use the language of political econony, the supply of women is not equal to the demand. By the last census, there were 730,000 more white males that white females in the United States. This fact has no fellow in Europe, except in the Papal States. In every other Christian country, the females are in large excess of the males. In France there are 200,000 women more than men; in England, 365,000. In America, only eight out of fifty-two organized States and territories exhibit the ordinary rule of European countries. Mr. Dixon affirms (though we cannot vouch for the correctness of his figures) that in California, there are three men for every woman; in Washington, four men to every woman; in Nevada, eight men to every woman; and in Colorado, twenty men to every woman. Throughout the country more males are born than females. In the whole mass of whites, the disproportion is five in the hundred ; so that one man in every twenty males born in the United States can never expect to have a wife of his own. But admitting these formidable facts, Mr. Dixon can hardly be called successful in showing their connection with the debates about woman's rights and woman's mission, with the cry for greater freedom in the relation of the sexes and other "wild disturbances of the female mind." His argument is fallacious, since the portions of the country where such movements are most prevalent, namely, New-England and New-York, are among the older settlements in which, on his own showing, the disparity in question does not exist.
Nor can we any more implicitly trust Mr. Dixon's rather subtle reasonings on the subject of national manners. He assumes t h a t manners grow worse and worse throughout the world as you follow "the course of empire," or in other words take your way toward the West. The rough Missouri "boss," whom a fine lady would not have touched with her fan, in whose company Mr. Dixon traveled twenty hours in Ohio, he argues would have been a capitalist in London, and an effendi in Cairo; in one city, he would have had the beating of a gentleman, in the other the aspect of a prince. According to our traveler's philosophy, among Gothic nations the graceful softness of demeanor which makes a man lovely and acceptable in the eyes of his fellows is the result of cul-tivation while in the Latin, the Greek, and the Arab, it is of spontaneous growth. An Italian rustic, he says, has often a finer manner than an English earl. But the Italian, with all his elegance of bearing, cannot stand in comparison with the more supply Greek. A native-of-Athens, Smyrna, or Rhodes, wilt fleece you with a grace that more than half inclines you to forgive him for the cheat. But even he must yield the palm to the Arab, each of whose gestures is a lesson in the highest of social arts. All the Orientals have this nameless beauty and charm of manner. A Syrian peasant welcomes you to his stone hut with an ease and dignity which a caliph could not mend. Mr. Dixon sums up his argument in an evidently premature generalization. The gift of seeming soft and gracious which we call manner inclines in a regular order from East to West; in Europe, it is bests in Stamboul, worst in London ; in the world, it is best in Cairo, worst at Denver and Salt Lake. The rule holds good for all t h e links between the extremities of this great chain. The finer courtesies of life, according to the experience of Mr. Dixon, are more apparent in St. Louis than Salt Lake; in New-York than in St. Louis; in London than in New-York ; in Paris than in London; in Rome than in Paris; in Athens than in Rome; in Stamboul than in Athens in Cairo and Damascus than Stamboul; and if ever he goes westward to California, he will expect to find worse manners in San Francisco than at St. Louis and Salt Lake.
We do not fully admit the fact that Mr. Dixon, urges with such stress of eloquence; still less do we admit the theory which he sets forth for its explanation. Nations, he asserts, fall off in manners with the advance of freedom and prosperity. In society, as in arts and letters, manner means mediocrity. Men who show great force of character cannot show a fine manner which implies polish smoothness and conformity. Hence, men of the highest genius are called eccentrics and originals. In this way Mr. Dixon undertakes to account for the want of courteous manners in the United States. It is the result of a general law, namely, that manner is but a note and sign of long submission to the will of a master. Hence we must not be surprised that the Americans have exchanged the graces of demeanor for solid and fruitful liberties. The habits of self-help make them insensible to the little courtesies which form the polish and charm of social life. Doubtless there is a foundation for such a droll picture as the following ; but to represent it as the prevalent fashion in the United States would show that the writer was more greedy of information than choice in his company. "Perhaps, the liberty which is more than any other likely to amuse a traveler in this country, is the freedom with which every one helps himself to anything he may want. In a railway-car, anybody who likes it will sit down in your place, push away your satchel, seize upon your book. Thought of asking your leave in the matter may not occur to him ion hours. I lent a book to a man in the car at St. Louis; he kept it two days and nights; and then asked me if I was reading it myself. On my saying yes, he simply answered, 'It is amusing; you will have good time.' On the Pennsylvania Central line, a lady entered into my State-room, on pretense of looking out upon a river; she kept my seat, for which I had paid an extra fare, until her journey ended. If you ask for any dish at dinner, your neighbor, should the fancy take him, will snatch a portion of it from beneath your nose. When I was leaving Salt Lake City, Sister Alice, the daughter of Brigham Young, put up some very fine apples in a box for me to eat by the way; at a station on the Plains I found that a lady, a fellow-passenger in the wagon, had been opening my box, and helping herself to the fruit; and when she; saw me looking at her, with some surprise perhaps visible on my face, she merely said, 'I am trying whether your apples are better than mine.' In the Western country, a man will fire off your pistols, try on your gauntlets. Any one thinks himself at liberty to clean his clothes with your brushes, run his hair through your comb, and warm himself in your greatcoat. These things are not meant to be offensive. A. fellow gives and takes; lends you a buffalo-hide on a frosty night; helps himself to your drinking-cup aft the morning well. The manner is not fine, but the heartiness is pleasant, and you would be unintelligible if you made complaint. Every one you meet has the way which in Europe would be called original."'
Men of genius, and men of uncommon force of character, are no doubt often eccentric in this conn" try as well as elsewhere; but an acquaintance with, the cultivated classes of American society might show that it is no worse in that respect than in the same classes in Europe. Our most energetic President, Andrew Jackson, was a model of suavity in private life; our greatest statesmen, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, were as remarkable for the fascination of their manner as for the splendor of their eloquence; and among the living, whom propriety does not allow us to name, our two most renowned poets are as much distinguished respectively for their dignity and sweetness in social intercourse as for the same qualities in their writings, while our most original essayist teaches the beauty of fine manners as a branch of the fine arts, and shows in his own person a rare example of their successful cultivation.
