Home as Found by James Fenimore Cooper (diy ebook reader txt) 📕

KING HENRY VIII.

The warm weather, which was always a little behind that of the lower

counties, had now set in among the mountains, and the season had

advanced into the first week in July. "Independence Day," as the

fourth of that month is termed by the Americans, arrived; and the

wits of Templeton were taxed, as usual, in order that the festival

might be celebrated with the customary intellectual and moral treat.

The morning commenced with a parade of the two or three uniformed

companies of the vicinity, much gingerbread and spruce-beer were

consumed in the streets, no light potations of whiskey were swallowed

in the groceries, and a great variety of drinks, some of which bore

very ambitious names, shared the same fate in the taverns.

Mademoiselle Viefville had been told that this was the great American

_fete_; the festival of the nation; and she appeared that morning in

gay ribands, and with her bright, animated face, covered with smiles

for the occasion. To her surprise, however, no one seemed to respond

to her feelings; and as the party rose from the breakfast-table, she

took an opportunity to ask an explanation of Eve, in a little

'aside.'

"_Est-ce que je me suis trompee, ma chere_?" demanded the lively

Frenchwoman. "Is not this _la celebration de votre independance_?"

"You are not mistaken, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville, and great

preparations are made to do it honour. I understand there is to be a

military parade, an oration, a dinner, and fire-works."

"_Monsieur votre pere----?_"

"_Monsieur mon pere_ is not much given to rejoicings, and he takes

this annual joy, much as a valetudinarian takes his morning draught."

"_Et Monsieur Jean Effingham----?_"

"Is always a philosopher; you are to expect no antics from him."

"_Mais ces jeunes gens, Monsieur Bragg, Monsieur Dodge, et Monsieur

Powis, meme!_"

"_Se rejouissent en Americains._ I presume you are aware that Mr.

Powis has declared himself to be an American?"

Mademoiselle Viefville looked towards the streets, along which divers

tall, sombre-looking countrymen, with faces more lugubrious than

those of the mutes of a funeral, were sauntering, with a desperate

air of enjoyment; and she shrugged her shoulders, as she muttered to

herself, "_que ces Americains sont droles!_"

At a later hour, however, Eve surprised her father, and indeed most

of the Americans of the party, by proposing that the ladies should

walk out into the street, and witness the fete.

"My child, this is a strange proposition to come from a young lady of

twenty," said her father.

"Why strange, dear sir?--We always mingled in the village fetes in

Europe."

"_Certainement_" cried the delighted Mademoiselle Viefville; "_c'est

de rigueur, meme_"

"And it is _de rigueur_, here, Mademoiselle, for young ladies to keep

out of them," put in John Effingham. "I should be very sorry to see

either of you three ladies in the streets of Templeton to-day."

Why so, cousin Jack? Have we any thing to fear from the rudeness of

our countrymen? I have always understood, on the contrary, that in no

other part of the world is woman so uniformly treated with respect

and kindness, as in this very republic of ours; and yet, by all these

ominous faces, I perceive that it will not do for her to trust

herself in the streets of a village on a _festa_"

"You are not altogether wrong, in what you now say, Miss Effingham,

nor are you wholly right. Woman, as a whole, is well treated in

America; and yet it will not do for a _lady_ to mingle in scenes like

these, as ladies may and do mingle with them in Europe."

"I have heard this difference accounted for," said Paul Powis, "by

the fact that women have no legal rank in this country. In those

nations where the station of a lady is protected by legal ordinances,

it is said she may descend with impunity; but, in this, where all are

equal before the law, so many misunderstand the real merits of their

position, that she is obliged to keep aloof from any collisions with

those who might be disposed to mistake their own claims."

"But I wish for no collisions, no associations, Mr. Powis, but simply

to pass through the streets, with my cousin and Mademoiselle

Viefville, to enjoy the sight of the rustic sports, as one would do

in France, or Italy, or even in republican Switzerland, if you insist

on a republican example."

"Rustic sports!" repeated Aristabulus with a frightened look--"the

people will not bear to hear their sports called rustic, Miss

Effingham."

"Surely, sir,"--Eve never spoke to Mr. Bragg, now, without using a

repelling politeness--"surely, sir, the people of these mountains

will hardly pretend that their sports are those of a capital."

"I merely mean, ma'am, that the _term_ would be monstrously

unpopular; nor do I see why the sports in a city"--Aristabulus was

much too peculiar in his notions, to call any place that had a mayor

and aldermen a town,--"should not be just as rustic as those of a

village. The contrary supposition violates the principle of

equality."

"And do _you_ decide against us, dear sir?" Eve added looking at Mr.

Effingham.

"Without stopping to examine causes, my child. I shall say that I

think you had better all remain at home."

"_Voila, Mademoiselle Viefville, une fete Americaine!"_

A shrug of the shoulders was the significant reply.

"Nay, my daughter, you are not entirely excluded from the

festivities; all gallantry has not quite deserted the land."

"A young lady shall walk _alone_ with a young gentleman--shall ride

alone with him--shall drive out alone with him--shall not move

_without_ him, _dans le monde, mais_, she shall not walk in the

crowd, to look at _une fete avec son pere!_" exclaimed Mademoiselle

Viefville, in her imperfect English. "_Je desespere vraiment_, to

understand some _habitudes Americaines!_"

"Well, Mademoiselle, that you may not think us altogether barbarians,

you shall, at least, have the benefit of the oration."

"You may well call it _the_ oration, Ned; for, I believe one, or,

certainly one skeleton, has served some thousand orators annually,

any time these sixty years."

"Of this skeleton, then, the ladies shall have the benefit. The

procession is about to form, I hear; and by getting ready

immediately, we shall be just in time to obtain good seats."

Mademoiselle Viefville was delighted; for, after trying the theatres,

the churches, sundry balls, the opera, and all the admirable gaieties

of New-York, she had reluctantly come to the conclusion that America

was a very good country _pour s'ennuyer_, and for very little else;

but here was the promise of a novelty. The ladies completed their

preparations, and, accordingly, attended by all the gentlemen, made

their appearance in the assembly, at the appointed hour.

The orator, who, as usual, was a lawyer, was already in possession of

the pulpit, for one of the village churches had been selected as the

scene of the ceremonies. He was a young man, who had recently been

called to the bar, it being as much in rule for the legal tyro to

take off the wire-edge of his wit in a Fourth of July oration, as it

was formerly for a Mousquetaire to prove his spirit in a duel. The

academy which, formerly, was a servant of all work to the public,

being equally used for education, balls, preaching, town-meetings,

and caucuses, had shared the fate of most American edifices in wood,

having lived its hour and been burned; and the collection of people,

whom we have formerly had occasion to describe, appeared to have also

vanished from the earth, for nothing could be less alike in exterior,

at least, than those who had assembled under the ministry of Mr.

Grant, and their successors, who were now collected to listen to the

wisdom of Mr. Writ. Such a thing as a coat of two generations was no

longer to be seen; the latest fashion, or what was thought to be the

latest fashion, being as rigidly respected by the young farmer, or

the young mechanic, as by the more admitted bucks, the law student,

and the village shop-boy. All the red cloaks had long since been laid

aside to give place to imitation merino shawls, or, in cases of

unusual moderation and sobriety, to mantles of silk. As Eve glanced

her eye around her, she perceived Tuscan hats, bonnets of gay colours

and flowers, and dresses of French chintzes, where fifty years ago

would have been seen even men's woollen hats, and homely English

calicoes. It is true that the change among the men was not quite as

striking, for their attire admits of less variety; but the black

stock had superseded the check handkerchief and the bandanna; gloves

had taken the places of mittens; and the coarse and clownish shoe of

"cow-hide" was supplanted by the calf-skin boot.

"Where are your peasants, your rustics, your milk and dairy

maids--_the people_, in short"--whispered Sir George Templemore to

Mrs. Bloomfield, as they took their seats; "or is this occasion

thought to be too intellectual for them, and the present assembly

composed only of the _elite_?"

"These _are_ the people, and a pretty fair sample, too, of their

appearance and deportment. Most of these men are what you in England

would call operatives, and the women are their wives, daughters, and

sisters."

The baronet said nothing at the moment, but he sat looking around him

with a curious eye for some time, when he again addressed his

companion.

"I see the truth of what you say, as regards the men, for a critical

eye can discover the proofs of their occupations; but, surely, you

must be mistaken as respects your own sex; there is too much delicacy

of form and feature for the class you mean."

"Nevertheless, I have said naught but truth."

"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are

French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."

"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong

to the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely

on it, you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and

singularly delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their

class. This is what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity,

Miss Effingham tells me, in England."

Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to

call 'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.

These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the

weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which

we write, had three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently

general to be termed characteristic, in a national point of view. In

the first place, the instruments themselves were bad; in the next

place, they were assorted without any regard to harmony; and, in the

last place, their owners did not know how to use them. As in certain

American _cities_--the word is well applied here--she is esteemed the

greatest belle who can contrive to utter her nursery sentiments in

the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he considered the ablest

musician who could give the greatest _eclat_ to a false note. In a

word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as regards time, that

great regulator of all harmonies, Paul Powis whispered to the captain

that the air they had just been listening to, resembled what the

sailors call a 'round robin;' or a particular mode of signing

complaints practised by seamen, in which the nicest observer cannot

tell which is the beginning, or which the end.

It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to

preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright

animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air

of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No

one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared

look up, but each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in

silent enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman,

there was as much melody in the howling of a gale to his

unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else, and he saw no difference

between this feat of the Templeton band and the sighings of old

Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was not so much

out of the way.

Of the oration it is scarcely necessary to say much, for if human

nature is the same in all ages, and under all circumstances, so