  My Dear Jeremy.—I presume you are shaking the spray from your locks, and are over head and ears in love with salt water, while I am among the weeping willows in these days of hydrophobia, when water—that we cannot get at—provokes a feeling of madness. You glory in a proprietorship over which your plough passes, turning up soil that is all your own, while the nodding grain, golden and pulpy, ripens in your absence for your abundant granaries, while I cultivate this, my small patch, “a tenant at will,” whose harvest of gleaning would be blown to the winds without a painstaking care and watchfulness. You are the lord of acres, while I wander around forbidden enclosures, and look upon many a Castle of Indolence longing but for a yard of ground all my own, upon which to plant a firm foot, to sound the challenge and cry—war! The very utterness of poverty is grandeur and riches, compared to the feeling of having the pent-up energies which have found a full outlet in enterprise, growing fiery in inaction, and panting for room, continually battling at the heart, and knocking in vain for freedom and exercise. But if you have ever felt the utter insignificance of wealth and high advantage combined with indolence and inactivity, and forever do-nothingness, before the godlike attributes of persevering energy and indomitable will, you have felt the pride of manhood in its full force and power. You have reaped in anticipation the rewards of high courage, of manly resolve, of personal industry and victory. You have enjoyed in your day-dreams the full fruition of assured success—and awoke to hope on, to resolve and to conquer. Consider me, my dear Jeremy, as winding myself up for the next seven years, after having run down—as having stopped, if you please, to blow; and while you are luxuriating in the surf, and shaking the briny water from your shoulders, as throwing off surfdom, with a defiant air, and a determined purpose of taking a few strides forward, to meet that “good time a coming.” Who does not love the sound of the breakers at Cape May, who has once listened to their wild melody? What a chance for love-making is the evening stroll upon the beach. On the one side the rugged bank, on which the white houses sit like a flock of wild-birds suddenly alighted, and the faint twinkle of rush-like lights dancing like fire-flies in the night air; on the other, the wild waters—sad emblem of the wild unrest of the human heart—their huge waves reflecting from their sides the quiet light of the moon, It was my good fortune to see both Cape May and the Falls of Niagara, for the first time, by moonlight, and whether the hush of evening naturally associated in the mind with twilight, deepened the impressions of awe and wonder with which I gazed upon them, or to the greatness of the novelty was added through the misty twilight, a dim religious sanctity to the impression, I know not, but they have never since charmed me so much in the broad glare of day, as in the evening, with a quiet moon looking placidly down upon the flashing foam, seemingly rebuking the uproar. The bathers, too, at mid-day, screaming like sea-birds amid the surf, with their many-colored garments dancing amid the foam—beauty floating upon the breakers as calmly as if reposing upon the virgin snow of her own pillows. Manhood breasting the billow, and riding securely far out where the huge porpoise rolls lazily along, while tiny feet go patting, and tiny hands go clapping along the shore, the very idleness and luxury of the sport impressing upon the beholder a sense of enjoyment, a feeling of relief from the work-day world, a consciousness of manhood and freedom above the value of dollars—a heart eased of the oppressiveness of brick and mortar, and open to a sense most acute of the very luxury of being idle. If Philadelphians had made half as much of Cape May as the New Yorkers have of Saratoga, or the Yankees have of Newport, its visiters from all parts of the country would number tens of thousands; but I question whether its present character of being Philadelphia in holyday dress, let loose for a romp, does not add much to its charms. The relief from absurd ceremony, where every face is familiar. The easy, unrestrained life, the freedom of remark and retort, and the exuberant gayety of the whole company, add to the enjoyment of the place, and make it a home in a family circle greatly enlarged and full of good humor. But, my dear Jeremy, you must have observed that at Cape May we got along comfortably, without the towering and overshadowing influence of the “upper ten thousand,” which stands up to be worshiped by the people without money or brains. It might be a serious question, how long a man may exist, with great self-complacency, without heart, or intellect, yet with a purse well lined with gold—regarding the world of men and of matter as especially made for him—the lord paramount of the soil, and of the sinews, which of right belong to his betters. Cannot some one curious in nature and philosophy, analyze one of this genus, and tell the world how the appearance of humanity can be preserved without a single attribute of it, existing life-like and active in his breast. The whole effort of this air-drawn animal appears to be to rise, to get up in society, to overlook the pigmies who toil and sweat for bread—to loose his identity in the upper circle, that he may forget his grandfather, the soap-boiler, upon whose bubbles he has been shot upward—as we expel a pea from an air-gun. Prick the bubble, and the thing vanishes into air, without leaving behind him a trace of existence of the value of a pepper-corn, and so, ——“Grows dim and dies All that this world is proud of.” The gifts of God are equal. He sheds upon us all the same glorious sunlight, and gives us the same heritage of dew and showers. The air has no monopolist, but its balmy odors as kindly kiss as well the beggar as the king. The mountain stream and the mountain flower acknowledge no master but the hand that formed them. The very beast that roams over the boundless prairies, and tosses his wild mane to the breeze, snuffs in an atmosphere sanctified by its freeness. God, over all his own works sheds the benignant light of universal benevolence and goodwill. The hues of a heaven-tinted charity blend kindly together the world over—the laws of a love undistinguishing are impressed upon all nature. It is man—but a handful of his mother earth—that wrongs her kind bosom, and says to his brother, stand aside, the heritage is mine—we are not equals in birth-right. I claim by pre-emption a supremacy which makes me thy master. The very purple I wear, when contrasted with the faded russet of thy poor garb, makes me thy lord. The jeweled rings of these fingers clasp thy neck, and make thee bondsman. Thou shalt go at my bidding and come at my call. Thou shalt toil until thy weary bones crack, to pamper to my luxurious desires! Thou shalt not even think but at thy peril! By the high authority of what is called LAW, thou art enslaved! By this right of law, how many wrongs are done, which the cold eye of day gazes on in silence, whilst hearts wrung with anguish weep on unpitied. This strong arm, when its fist clutches dollars, how terrible is it in its willingness to crush and overwhelm the unsheltered, the unbefriended, the poor, unpitied victim. But if a breast sparkling with diamonds interposes, how palsied and feeble becomes the blow—the justice, the equity of the law, how considerate and kind! Yet law, according to the lawgiver, “is the perfection of reason,” which must account, I suppose, for the difficulty which the learned counsel experiences in expounding it to an “intelligent jury.” The poor thief therefore remains in profound ignorance of the equity of the decision, by which he is consigned to three years of penitence is solitary confinement, while his gayer brother in crime dashes through the streets with his carriage and scarlet housings, basking in the worship of wondering and approving eyes, his penalty for having started a bank, and stopped it, by which thousands of poor men lost the dollars which paid for the equipage, and furnished the viands for his pampered appetite, the meanest of which would have driven starvation from their doors. He is beyond the law. Let an hundred operatives agree in thinking that the wretched pittance for their daily labor will not suffice to feed the mouths of a half dozen famishing children, the law has its kind and protecting eye upon them at once—and if they dare express so infamous a sentiment, it immediately takes care of them as conspirators. But the masters of an hundred mills may openly avow their determination to close their doors and send starvation into a whole village, the law instantly closes its watchful eye, and dozes over the scene, deeming it right and proper that capital should be indulged in its absurdities. Should John, upon the box of a gentleman’s carriage, come in contact with the hub of the humble cab of Jehu, and thereby disfigure the carriage and irritate the temper of the great owner, his honor, who may have had dealings with him, deals with Jehu, who is glad to get off for his five dollars, and thinks it a kindness that he is not imprisoned for the intolerable crime of John not giving an inch of the road to a vulgar cabman. When diamonds are trumps, take care of knaves. It is a fiction of law—for even “perfect reason” has her fictions, it seems—that people who are standing at a distance in a riot, are as culpable as those who are throwing Great names, which provoke a riot, or lack the nerve and manliness to suppress it, have an overshadowing influence, which awes even the majesty of the law—it would be indecorous in the law to meddle with greatness, even when it is impertinent. “La-w me!” exclaims an old lady, who has upset the contents of her frying-pan into the fire. But the poor soul little knows the calamity she invokes. It is doubtful whether fire and frying-pan would not follow, if her request were complied with. The law being at times both expensive and speedy. “So wags the world along.” But, my dear Jeremy, I have rambled somewhat in this letter, so without more ado, I’ll CUT this. G. R. G. “THE UPPER TEN” AND “THE LOWER FIGURE.” |
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