Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70

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* * * * *

When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began.
The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became

"Embrouded ... as it were a mede
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"--

"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare
charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without
angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the
scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of
Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many
well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame
fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The
distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual
beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women,
perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual
ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly
plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could
have the full effect of costumes,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery,
impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely
needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a
dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the
beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured
activity,--

"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks."

Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the
Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet
bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.

Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the
green. Youth and gayety and beauty--and in summer we are all young and
gay and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and
velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and
Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy
summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil
their faces there.

Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming
exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of
drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous
movements, the fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of
lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,--the sublime, the
evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, without aim, except its own
overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it
reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which
has been or may be free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two
Sticks." In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character
of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an
angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the
"full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the
"Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,--which is all I allege
against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding,
swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute
angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements
are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly
outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than this
dancing, well portrayed in the contraband melody of

"Old Joe," etc.

The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine
absence of drapery reveals processes and thereby destroys results.

Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a
country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of
concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry
young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a
dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad,
a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in
his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head
with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the
facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a
party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,--and I don't blame
him,--he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how
better than they did!" It was a rather different _casus belli_ from that
which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it
"meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged
against dancing. I would have women dance, because it is the most
beautiful thing in the world. I would have men dance, if it is
necessary, in order to "set off" women, and to keep themselves out of
mischief; but in point of grace, or elegance, or attractiveness, I
should beg men to hold their peace--and their pumps.

From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or
other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like
going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all
the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and
down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like
bouquets of rare tropical flowers,--from the green, rainbowed in vivid
splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the
flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,--from the green, sanctified
already by the pale faces of sick and wounded and maimed soldiers who
had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the
sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth,
the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep
forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing
is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the plough of its
material prosperity into the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,--from
suggestions and fancies and dreamy musing and "phantasms sweet," into
the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of
fine, penetrating dust, and for lightly trooping fairies a jam of heated
human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the
press; and when you have, with difficulty and many contortions and much
apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of
fans,--what? An inclosure, but no more illusion.

Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. Always. When it is prosecuted
in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer
day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time.
The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the
salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl
that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in
through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the
whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this
most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very _pose_ of the dance is
profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate
emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and
justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of
unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly
assumed by people who have but a casual and partial
society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most
culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy.

That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does
not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A
good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as
you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not
cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.

There were, besides, peculiar _desagrements_ on this occasion. How can
people,--I could not help saying to myself,--how can people endure such
proximity in such a sweltering heat? For, as I said, there was no
illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and
Apollos. The boys were boys, appallingly young, full of healthful
promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at
ease in their situation,--indeed, very much _not_ at ease,--unmistakably
warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I
dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with
soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in
her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but Venus
herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as
they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,--puff-balls revolving
through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human
couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than
Spartan fortitude.

It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the
difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns
seemed to have changed hearts,--perhaps they had. It was the boys that
were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic.
They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were
visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment
and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that.
The girls threw themselves into it _pugnis et calcibus_,--unshrinking,
indefatigable.

There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to
consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as
objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French
ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these
girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops
make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public
waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who
understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding
an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only
flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight,
it is not. Do I shock ears polite? I trust so. If the saying of shocking
things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well
content. And is it an unpardonable sin for me to sit alone in my own
room and write about what you go into a great hall, before hundreds of
strange men and women, and do?

I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have
compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. I
respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing
the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the
shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of speech
towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as a
fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic. They are at
least honest; and may it not be that the first fresh impressions of an
unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and
correct views as those which are the result of many afterthoughts, long
use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the
original producing cause? My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no
harm; the penalty will rest alone on me: while, if they are right, they
may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.

The funny part of Class-Day comes last,--not so very funny to tell, but
amazingly funny to see,--only a wreath of bouquets fastened around the
trunk of an old tree, perhaps eight or ten feet from the ground, and
then the four classes range themselves around it in four circles with
their hands fast locked together, the Freshman Class on the outside, the
Senior Class within, grotesquely tricked out in vile old coats and
"shocking bad hats." Then the two alternate classes go one way around
the tree and the two others the opposite, pell-mell, harum-scarum,
pushing and pulling, down and up again, only keeping fast hold of hands,
singing, shouting, cheering _ad libitum_, _ad throatum_, (theirs,) _ad
earsum_, (ours,) and going all the time in that din and yell and crowd
and crash dear to the hearts of boys. At a given signal there is a
pause, and the Senior Class make sudden charge upon the bouquets,
huddling and hustling and crowding and jumping at the foot of the old
tree; bubbling up on each other's shoulders into momentary prominence
and prospect of success, and immediately disappearing ignominiously;
making frantic grasps and clutches with a hundred long arms and eager
outstretched hands, and finally succeeding, by shoulders and fists, in
bringing the wreath away piecemeal; and then they give themselves up to
mutual embraces, groans, laments, and all the enginery of pathetic
affection in the last gasping throes of separation,--to the doleful
tearing of hair and the rending of their fantastic garments. It is the
personification of legalized rowdyism; and if young men would but
confine themselves to such rowdyism as may be looked at and laughed at
by their mothers and sisters, they would find life just as amusing and a
thousand times more pure and profitable.

* * * * *

It occurs to me here that there is one subject on which I desire to
"give my views," though it is quite unconnected with Class-Day. But it
is probable that in the whole course of my natural life it will never
again happen to me to be writing about colleges, so I desire to say in
this paper everything I have to say on the subject. I refer to the
practice of "hazing," which is an abomination. If we should find it
among hinds, a remnant of the barbarisms of the Dark Ages, blindly
handed down by such slow-growing people as go to mill with their meal on
one side of the saddle and a stone on the other to balance, as their
fathers did, because it never occurred to their loggerheads to divide
the meal into two parcels and make it balance itself, we should not be
surprised; but hazing occurs among boys who have been accustomed to the
circulation of ideas, boys old enough and intelligent enough to
understand the difference between brutality and frolic, old enough to
know what honor and courage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how
they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies
honor, and whose brutality has not a single redeeming feature. It has
neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely
the mirth of boyish frolic. A narrow range of stale practical jokes,
lighted up by no gleam of originality, is transmitted from year to year
with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude
allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its
platitude, its one overpowering and fatal characteristic is its intense
and essential cowardice. Cowardice is its head and front and bones and
blood. One boy does not single out another boy of his own weight, and
take his chances in a fair stand-up fight. But a party of Sophomores
club together in such numbers as to render opposition useless, and
pounce upon their victim unawares, as Brooks and his minions pounced
upon Sumner, and as the Southern chivalry is given to doing. For sweet
pity's sake, let this mode of warfare be monopolized by the Southern
chivalry.

The lame excuse is offered, that it does the Freshmen good,--takes the
conceit out of them. But if there is any class in college so divested of
conceit as to be justified in throwing stones, it is surely not the
Sophomore Class. Moreover, whatever good it may do the sufferers, it
does harm, and only harm, to the perpetrators; and neither the law nor
the gospel requires a man to improve other people's characters at the
expense of his own. Nobody can do a wrong without injuring himself; and
no young man can do a mean, cowardly wrong like this without suffering
severest injury. It is the very spirit of the slaveholder, a dastardly
and detestable, a tyrannical and cruel spirit. If young men are so
blinded by custom and habit that a meanness is not to them a meanness
because it has been practised for years, so much the worse for the young
men, and so much the worse for our country, whose sweat of blood attests
the bale and blast which this evil spirit has wrought. If uprightness,
if courage, if humanity and rectitude and the mind conscious to itself
of right, are anything more than a name. Let the young men who mean to
make time minister to life scorn and scotch and kill this debasing and
stupid practice.

And why is not some legitimate and wholesome safety-valve provided by
authority to let off superabundant vitality, that boys may not, by the
mere occasions of their own natures, be driven into wickedness?
Class-Day is very well, but it comes only once a year, and what is
needed is an opportunity for daily ebullition, so that each night may
square its own account and forestall explosion. Why should there not be,
for instance, a military department to every college, as well as a
mathematical department? Why might not every college be a military
normal school? The exuberance and riot of animal spirits, the young,
adventurous strength and joy in being, would not only be kept from
striking out as now in illegitimate, unworthy, and hurtful directions,
but it would become the very basis and groundwork of useful purposes.
Such exercise would be so promotive of health and discipline, it would
so train and harmonize and _limber_ the physical powers, that the
superior quality of study would, I doubt not, more than atone for
whatever deficiency in quantity might result. And even suppose a little
less attention should be given to Euclid and Homer, which is of the
greater importance nowadays, an ear that can detect a false quantity in
a Greek verse, or an eye that can sight a Rebel nine hundred yards off,
and a hand that can pull a trigger and shoot him? Knowledge is power;
but knowledge must sharpen its edges and polish its points, if it would
be greatliest available in days like these. The knowledge that can plant
batteries and plan campaigns, that is fertile in expedients and wise to
baffle the foe, is just now the strongest power. Diagrams and
first-aorists are good, and they who have fed on such meat have grown
great, and done the State service in their generation; but these times
demand new measures and new men. It is conceded that we shall probably
be for many years a military nation. At least a generation of vigilance
shall be the price of our liberty. And even of peace we can have no
stronger assurance than a wise and wieldy readiness for war. Now the
education of our unwarlike days is not adequate to the emergencies of
this martial hour. We must be seasoned with something stronger than
Attic salt, or we shall be cast out and trodden under foot of men. True,
all education is worthy. Everything that exercises the mind fits it for
its work; but professional education is indispensable to professional
men. And the profession, _par excellence_, of every man of this
generation is war. Country overrides all personal considerations.
Lawyer, minister, what not, a man's first duty is the salvation of his
country. When she calls, he must go; and before she calls, let him, if
possible, prepare himself to serve her in the best manner. As things are
now, college-boys are scarcely better than cow-boys for the army. Their
costly education runs greatly to waste. It gives them no direct
advantage over the clod who stumbles against a trisyllable. So far as it
makes them better men, of course they are better soldiers; but for all
of military education which their college gives them, they are fit only
for privates, whose sole duty is to obey. They know nothing of military
drill or tactics or strategy. The State cannot afford this waste. She
cannot afford to lose the fruits of mental toil and discipline. She
needs trained mind even more than trained muscle. It is harder to find
brains than to find hands. The average mental endowment may be no higher
in college than out; but granting it to be as high, the culture which it
receives gives it immense advantage. The fruits of that culture,
readiness, resources, comprehensiveness, should all be held in the
service of the State. Military knowledge and practice should be imparted
and enforced to utilize ability, and make it the instrument, not only of
personal, but of national welfare. That education which gives men the
advantage over others in the race of life should be so directed as to
convey that advantage to country, when she stands in need. Every college
might and should be made a nursery of athletes in mind and body,
clear-eyed, stout-hearted, strong-limbed, cool-brained,--a nursery of
soldiers, quick, self-possessed, brave and cautious and wary, ready in
invention, skilful to command men and evolve from a mob an army,--a
nursery of gentlemen, reminiscent of no lawless revels, midnight orgies,
brutal outrages, launching out already attainted into an attainting
world, but with many a memory of adventure, wild, it may be, and not
over-wise, yet pure as a breeze from the hills,--banded and sworn

"To serve as model for the mighty world,
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words.
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man."

* * * * *

LOVE'S CHALLENGE.

I picked this trifle from the floor,
Unknowing from whose tender hand
It fell,--but now would fain restore
A thing which hath my heart unmanned.

I say unmanned, for 't is not now
A manly mood to dream of Love,
When each bold champion knits his brow,
And for War's gauntlet doffs his glove.

But we're exempt, and have no heart
Of wreak within us for the fray;
And therefore teach our souls the art
With life and life's concerns to play.

Yet, lady, trust me, 't is not all
In play that I proclaim intent,
When next thou lett'st thy gauntlet fall,
To take it as a challenge meant.

REPLY.

SIR CARPET-KNIGHT, who canst not fight,
Thy gallantries are not for me;
The man whom I with love requite
Must sing in a more martial key.

I have two brothers on the field,
And one beneath it,--none knows where;
And I shall keep my spirit steeled
To any save a soldier's prayer.

If thou have music in thy soul,
Yet hast no sinew for the strife,
Go teach thyself the war-drum's roll,
And woo me better with a fife!

* * * * *

POLITICAL PROBLEMS, AND CONDITIONS OF PEACE.

The relations existing between the Federal Government and the several
States, and the reciprocal rights and powers of each, have never been
settled, except in part. Upon matters of taxation and commerce, and the
diversified questions that arise in times of peace, the decisions of the
Supreme Court have marked the boundary-lines of State and Federal power
with considerable clearness and precision. But all these questions are
superficial and trivial, when compared with those which are coming up
for decision out of the great struggle in which we are now engaged. The
Southern Rebellion, greater than any recorded in history since the world
began, must necessarily call for the exercise of all the powers with
which the Government is clothed. And we need not be surprised, if, in
resorting to the new measures which the great exigency of the new
condition seems to require, it shall be found, after the storm has
ceased and the clouds have rolled away, that in some things the
Government has transcended its legitimate powers, while in others it has
suffered, because fearing to use those which it really possesses. It is
dependent in many things upon the States; and yet it is supreme over
them all. There can be no Senate, as a branch either of the executive or
of the legislative department, without the action of the States; and yet
the Government emanates directly from the people. In defending itself
against an armed rebellion of nearly half the States themselves,
struggling for self-preservation, it may rightfully, as in other wars,
grasp all the means within its reach. War makes its own methods, for all
of which necessity is a sufficient plea. But when the defence shall have
been made, when the attack is repelled, and the Rebellion shall have
been fully suppressed, then will come the questions, What are the best
means of restoration? and, How shall a recurrence of the evil be
prevented?

Though the Federal Government is one of limited powers, _the people_
possess _all governmental powers_; and these are spoken of as powers
_delegated_ and powers _reserved_. So far as these are reserved to _the
people_, they may be exercised either through the _Federal Government_
or the _State_. And the Federal Government, though limited in its
powers, is restricted in _the subjects upon which it can act_, rather
than in the _quantum_ of power it can exercise over those matters within
its jurisdiction. Over those interests which are committed to its care
it has all the powers incident to any other government in the
world,--powers necessary by implication to accomplish the purpose
intended. The construction of the grant in the Constitution is not to be
critical and stringent, as if the people, by its adoption, were
_selling_ power to a _stranger_,--but liberal, considering that they
were enabling _their own agents_ to achieve a noble work for them.

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