302 
THK AMERICAN GARPE^N- 
December, 
Rural Life. 
OOUUTET LIFE. 
ITS SUBTLE CHARMS. 
I have found my rural felicity not a little 
heightened, not only in summer but iu wm 
ter, by picturing to myself what people are 
doing iu the city at any given time. For in¬ 
stance, it is .about five o’clock of a December 
day. My possible self is hurrying up-town 
.after a day of office-work, for the purpose 
of donning a neck-tie and a flowing shirt- 
fi’ont and screwing myself into a dress co.at, 
prep.aratory to a dinner-party, whei’e I shall 
be cornered for hours between mental in¬ 
sipidity and physical dyspepsia. Or, 1 sally 
foi’th from my own comfortable board .and 
fire-place to pay my soci.al debts in a round 
of utterly b.arren calls. Or I figure on the 
platform of some decorous and drearj- pub¬ 
lic meeting, or sit like an owl on a commit¬ 
tee or Board, or respond to some card of in¬ 
vitation to look at Solomon Smart’s last 
achievement. Wliereas now, apart from the 
whirl alike of W.all Street .and the Avenue, 
the banquet .and the bore, the gilded apedom 
of the reception and tinsel of the play, I 
watch the sunset kindle on the mountains 
.and tinge the snow of the lawn into a rose- 
eolor. And when the shadows have closed 
about me, I reaive dear old Cowper's pic¬ 
ture with2fineteenth Centm-y improvements: 
“Xow stir the fire and close the shutters fast, 
Let fall the curtains, wheel the sola round. 
So lotus welcome peaceful evening in. 
And all the comforts that the lowly roof 
Of imdistnrhed retirement and the honre 
Of long, uninterrupted evening know.” 
One can really read, or better still be read 
to, on a winter evening in the country. Our 
literary range is not all cram and newspaper. 
Books which are books can be assimilated. 
“Classics ’-come to mean something more to 
us than a row of bibliothecal fetiches upon 
our shelves. “Beading aloud," though seem¬ 
ingly a .slow process, is really a time-saving 
as well as labor-sfiving device, since each 
hour thus .spent is to be multiplied by .as 
many as the household group contains. 
Happy the man who has been fortunate 
enough, e.speeially after a somewhat storm- 
tossed or sun-burnt life,to drift into some such 
eddy, ringed around with quiet mountains 
and green shores, where he can lie with 
furled sails and slowly drijqung oars and see 
the white caps and hear the dull reverbci-;^ 
tion of the world's ro.ar beyond. It is (to 
vary the metaphor) like standing under a 
porch on a rainy day, or in .a Club-window 
when a procession ]>asses. 
IT.S .STERN REAJ.n'fE.S. 
I have a wholesome and insj>iring sen.se of 
re-ality in the country. I feel myself “close 
to Xature'/heart.” I have the “patterns In 
the mount,” the .antitypes of those things 
which m.akethe grace and granrieur of cities. 
They have pietui-cs, I have the landsc.ape. 
My woods and rocks furnish the originals of 
their Gothic arches and Corinthian jull.ars, 
their st.ately arcades and colonnades anil vis¬ 
tas. What are their fi-eseoes and artistic 
decorations .alongside of my skies and au¬ 
tumn foliageV All the stillness and softness 
and color and song which they contrive and 
create, whicli they fence oil' and hollow out 
from noisy streets and in the cavivllke cen¬ 
ter of stony and staring houses,—what is it 
all but the attempt to reproduce what comes 
to me unbidden on the most unstinted scale, 
poured over all my life, without money and 
without price? 
And yet here comes in one of my stern re¬ 
alities. Country people are apt to be the is 
last to understand that the beauty of the 
country is in its naturalness,—its sincerity, 
so to speak. Therefore the most thrifty re¬ 
gion is not necessarily the most picturesque. 
There is rather a disposition to be ashamed 
of poor, wild nature with its rustic, bare¬ 
foot, sunburnt charm. There is a mania to 
“slick up.” Paiut must take the place of 
the soft, rich pigments of lichen and weath¬ 
er-stain. Bight angles must strike their dis¬ 
cord into the gentle ciu-ves and tangled 
diversities of native form. A Vandal archi¬ 
tecture drives out the Gothic. A man is 
famous as he lifts his .axe upon the thiek 
trees. Even the spired or trailing evergreens 
must be trimmed into grotesque and vulgar 
shapes. We need to learn the art of letting 
alone. The “smart” epoch of civilization is 
more savage than the barbarous. The first 
impulse of art is to destroj’- nature, to ere.ate 
a desert and call it culture. Later stages 
consist of eflbrts to get back to nature,—or 
r.ather, to revive its semblance. And that 
art which most nearly restores the old de¬ 
spised and crucified truth of nature comes 
to be recognized as the truest art. 
The unhealthiness, if not the unconscious 
charlatanry, of Thoreau is well illustr.ated in 
his remark, “I love nature partly because 
she is not man.” On the contrary, I love 
nature because it is man; or rather, because 
all nature becomes hum.au as soon as m.au 
gets where he can see his face iu it. >foth- 
marks the fineness of the Greek mind 
more than this detecting of a personal .and 
spiritual element in the natural world, and 
its vital and mystic identification with man. 
Their personification of the oieinents.aud ob¬ 
jects of the out-door world was no mere fan¬ 
cied resemblance or poetical conceit. It was 
the result of the highest imagin.ative insight, 
and of the most delicate and even religious 
feeling. As so charmingly expressed in the 
beautiful lines of Horatio Nelson Powers 
they heard the ’ 
“Ecstatic rhapsodies that run 
Along the bark tliat feels the sun. 
The laugh with wlilch the buds unfold; 
Tlio passion in the pollen’s gold. 
They hoard the faint, delleloiis beat 
In liearts of Roses, converse sweet 
in airs that toy at twilight’s hour 
WitI) Ai)plo-blootn and Orange.llowor, 
The amorous whlsiiers of tlie grass 
As skylarks brood and llrellies i.ass, 
Tlie dew’s desire, and griefs tlial, nuiko 
Tlie thunder’s fiery heart-st rings break. 
'To tlieni wore told tlie dreams tliatlle 
Deep in tbe J.ily’s languid eye. 
Legends that ferns and corals store, 
III books ofi'oek and ocean’s Iloor, ' 
The jirayers that out ()f jiastures cry 
Wlien scorcl)ed benejitli a brazen sky 
Htrange syllables that from the grou'n’d 
Hpeak like the naked soul of sound, 
And all tliat blnls In love relate 
01 liapi)y lllglit and temlor male. 
And what the tidbes of Insects tell 
Of their Inccsssant miracle.” 
SUMMINO Ilf, 
'I'ho Hubtle chiii-m of living hi the cmintry 
may be Hummed iij) in n word or l;wo. It i’h 
the revival In our “cinberH” of Homethln-r 
“that nature Htlll reinoinl)erH,”~or a wllif 
open-air, jiriinltlve c.viBtence when nuiii wim 
on a footing, both as friend and foe, with 
the animal tribes, and rooted like the plants 
in his mother earth. Wc are twin-births, 
every one of us. A red and hirsute Esau con¬ 
tends with the smooth Jacob of civilization. 
He Is sure to get worsted in the end; but his 
is not dead, and will over and anon muster his 
Bedouin forces for .an onslaught upon the 
household gods and the sleek prosperity of his 
rival. Evolution at times has to give way 
to revolution. Hence the town is ever over¬ 
flowing its dykes, and spreading itself over 
the fields. The child’s vacation at grand¬ 
father’s farm, the weary clerk’s week or 
fortnight out of the store or office, the emp¬ 
tying of all the brown-stone fronts in sum¬ 
mer, the tribulations of “country board,” 
the concourse around a bit of grass or a 
spouting fountain iu a city square, even the 
rowdy excursion on a Sunday steamboat, are 
all for.ays of the gentle or ungentle savage 
within us in search of the hunting-grounds 
of a dimly remembered past. We are al¬ 
ways coasting along a primal continent of 
Palms and p.ainted Indians, whose wafted 
odors we faintly catch and whose drifted 
blossoms cross our path till the crew, un¬ 
mindful of worldly-wise old Ulysses, are 
crazy to go ashore. 
Aud so we go into the country. And if 
we be truly inspired with the “primal sym¬ 
pathy,” we shall find iu every sight and 
sound and smell a soothing and a suggestion, 
which meet a deeper need than that of the 
senses. In the green pastures and beside 
the still waters He restoreth my soul.— Dr, 
F. N. Zabriskie in Ghrislian Intelligencer. 
HEALTHY HOUSES. 
Houses and cottages in the country as well 
as iu towns are frequently so ill constructed, 
s.ays Dr. J. Sinclair in Laws of Life, th.at in¬ 
stead of being healthy .abodes they are really 
traps for catching disease. 
Among the sanitary arrangements whioh 
should be attended to, the follo\viug are of 
vital importanceT’hat the surroundings of 
the house are free from anything likely to 
give rise to bad smells. That there is a hall 
01 poich, so that the door of the sitting-room 
does not open directly to the weather oul^ 
side. The want of this protection is for 
half the year a certain cause of injurious 
draughts and absence of comfort. 'That the 
windows of every room open at the top. 
Ihat there are drains for conveying away 
slop-w.ater. 't'hese should be trapped out 
side. If there is a sink pipe inside, this 
should never bo continuous with the drain, 
but open some inches above the outside trap. 
Ibis mterruiition prevents sewer gases en¬ 
tering the house through the sink pipe. 
Privies with cessfiools, on the. old-fashion¬ 
ed plan, are always a nuisance, aud arc only 
to be tolerated when well away from the 
Iiou.se, the ee.sspool small, and used only as 
aii a.shplt. All dry refuse should daily bo 
tliiown in, and the contents kept dry' A 
valuable manure can he thus formed. Vvhore 
iig the laboring classes, the privy cess- 
1 <>(> slmnld be done away with as a ludsimce 
■ 1 iqiurious to liea Ith. I f It is notoxpedient 
lu h b? T" Wrtem 
a 'nils e,s- ■ 
Di’oiieri '' •'*yrtenis can only be 
l>' ‘>l'oHy carried out by the local authorities. 
