USA > Connecticut > Litchfield County > Litchfield > More chronicles of a pioneer school, from 1792 to 1833, being added history on the Litchfield Female Academy kept by Miss Sarah Pierce and her nephew, John Pierce Brace > Part 21
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JOHN P. BRACE'S EDITORIAL - 1854
Construction of Houses:
Many persons are now beginning to make the preparations necessary for building and thus securing to themselves a permanent home. A few hints to them will not be amiss.
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The first thing to be attended to is the situation - In cities, we cannot all have our choice of those locations that would enjoy a beau- tiful prospect. He who builds in the country can make such a selec- tion. He who has a good distant prospect from his lot should place his house with reference to it. He who has not, must consult other circumstances in the location. But the first thing to be thought of in the site of the house is health. This is of more importance than beauty. The questions here asked must be, what is the nature of the neighbor- hood? Are there any sources of disease lurking in the sunken soil? Are there probable miasmatic impurities about to arise from the very character of the population? Are there any natural or artificial drains to carry off these impurities either above or below the soil? Is there a good ventilation? can the air of heaven have free access to all parts of the house? Is the soil around it warm and dry? - Health in the choice of a location is of the first necessity. A cheap lot often becomes dear, enormously dear, from the expenses it brings for medical aid, and from the time consumed by its occupants in sickness.
So in the architecture of the house, health and comfort are to be first thought of, before considerations of mere beauty or ornament. In the construction of a house, too many persons plan it with reference to the reception of company. This is mere folly. The most pleasantly situated rooms should be selected for the benefit of the family. It is for that purpose that it is built. Let them have the enjoyment of its beauties. In the construction of a small house, it is too often the case that the pleasantest rooms with the most delightful adjuncts are selected for the parlor and the spare bed room, which are frequently not opened for company ten times a year and then more generally in the evening when their beauties of external prospect cannot be appreciated. This is a false idea of comfort.
Take care of ventilation. Construct fire places in as many chambers as you can. They add but little to the expense in the erection of a house, and if they never are used for fire, they are the best ventilators.
See to it that the ordinary sleeping apartments of yourself and your children have the sunny side of the house, that they may have the advantages of the light. Your spare bed rooms, and your fixed up parlors occupied only a few times in the year, had better have the northern exposure The cooking and washing rooms should be, where it is practicable, separated from the common eating rooms.
The construction of a cellar is of great importance. Many writers advise none, as being more conducive to health. It is doubtful whether the necessity of a cellar will not always cause one to be built. But, in most sites, there will be no necessity of having this cellar so much underground as it ordinarily is. The gradual decay of the vegetables kept in a cellar cannot but be prejudicial to health. Where a cellar is
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constructed, it should be made perfectly dry if possible. As this dryness must be procured by a cemented stone floor, it ought to be swept to preserve it from impurity. Health is to be regarded before labor or even convenience.
Novel Reading:
We do not think that the tendency of the age is now so much towards novel reading as it was some twenty years ago. Thanks to our enter- prising publishers, good books on other subjects are now within the reach of every one, and the current rather sets towards the excitable in truth, than towards the romantic in fiction. Still there are many novels eagerly devoured, and the "yellow covered literature" is as fashionable and operative among certain classes as it ever was.
The evils however of this species of reading upon the minds of the young - its actual contaminations and its allurements to a wrong state of feeling - are just as powerful as ever. The current sweeps on as strongly as ever and the bewildered swimmer needs some faith- ful hand to reach forward and snatch him from its certain ruin.
The evils of Novel Reading have generally been classed under those of the waste of time - the wrong impressions given of real life - and the enfeeblement of character. These are great evils, and they convey more than their words would warrant or a superficial observer suppose.
Under the waste of time, there must be enumerated something be- sides the mere hours devoted to this pursuit which might be and ought to be occupied more profitably. Every human being needs relaxa- tion - of mind as well as body- the pleasant fiction of a quiet novel may give this relaxation, without any injury to the intellect or heart. But like every other relaxation or amusement, it must occupy only its rational time, and its memory cease with the hour devoted to its en- joyment. Here is the evil - The novel reader not only devotes the time allowed for mental relaxation to his favorite pursuit but carries its recollection with him into his ordinary labors and trials, which require the whole faculties of a vigorous mind, and is occupied with thoughts and visions beyond his employment, evidently unfitting him for it. Here is the great sin against time. Where a person can take up a novel and enjoy it, when his mind needs that kind of relaxa- tion, and then relinquish all thoughts of it, as he re-commences his efforts in the great struggle of life's labors, the reading can do him no more harm than the eating of an orange. But such is not generally the case and the waste of time in reading is frequently not so great or so deleterious as the subsequent waste of thought and consequent destruction of mental vigor.
Under this topic of waste of time may be included the habit of castle-building, generated on an imaginative mind by novels. Here
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much valuable time is wasted and much thought spent which might have been employed for the benefit of mankind or the improvement and culture of the individual. What a curious spectacle would the world present, if all these visionary trains of thought produced by a diseased imagination, which run through almost every mind, should be uttered aloud! How many absurd, ridiculous, romantic plans would meet the ear! How many imaginings of a better and brighter condi- tion than the world ever saw would be found to be permanently and habitually occupying the mind. This bad habit is cherished by the romance of novel reading.
To the young, novel reading gives very wrong impressions of real life. Young ladies are particularly subject to this deception. The perusal of romantic novels, in which the passion of love is made the whole object of existence, produces very false ideas of the realities of domestic life. It makes no provision for the cares and duties that must arise. It furnishes no preparation for the troubles that beset every pathway, nor tells with what spirit they can be encountered and subdued. To young men, likewise, the perusal of the Ainsworth school of novels has been peculiarly deleterious. More bad habits have been formed and wrong notions acquired by the perusal of these exciting exhibitions of the success of vice, than the world is aware of.
How far the peculiar excitable character of our countrymen has been produced by the indiscriminate devouring of all the trash the press issues, we cannot undertake to say. The national character has certainly altered within fifty years. Every old man, who is anything of an observer of changes, will perceive it. In the same period, the whole character of our literature has changed, and the excitable only is now relished. The character of the age, is not so easily seen. All that the moralist can now do is to direct the excitability upon proper objects and to regulate the literature so as to produce the least harming effects.
Fashion has a wonderful effect upon the character of the novels read. It sometimes directs to the historical; sometimes, to the senti- mental At present, fashion leads to the exhibition of low life, strug- gling through all difficulties to raise its condition. No heroine is so acceptable as one that has risen from poverty, rags and filth. To ameliorate the condition of the children of the poor is a great object at present with the philanthropist. Hence the novel writer, to be read, follows in his wake, and describes the sufferings and the innocency of the same children. No novel can be successful now without the affecting death of one of these poor little girls, who have been kept pure and holy in the very gutters of some filthy city. All this is very well, and serves to show the tendency of the age, and the influence which the character of the age and its literature have mutually upon each other.
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T
$ 78
PICTURE DONE ON WHITE SATIN IN WATER COLORS AND EMBROIDERY
It was probably made at Miss Pierce's School, as it has in gold letters on the glass, "Malvina 1808", and came from the families of Taylor, or Masters, of New Milford, Connecticut
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Trees ! Trees! - 1855
Our City Papas seem to have a spite against the trees in our streets, and are every year ordering them destroyed - as if the perfect grade of a side walk could in any way compensate for the loss of these orna- mental and useful articles. They forget that a tree takes scores of years to grow and cannot be replaced in our generation, while the grade of the side walk is subject to the caprice of every new Common Council and may be raised or lowered once a year. This wholesale destruction of these ornaments to any street is an item in our Anglo- Saxon character that is more in keeping with the Vandal. Who wants our streets to have the naked, glaring aspect of a New York thoroughfare?
The Song of Hiawatha.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Boston: published by Ticknor & Fields.
This new poem of Longfellow's will produce much excitement; will be universally read, and savagely criticized. It is based on an Indian Legend. Hiawatha is a being raised up by some superior power for the purpose of teaching the arts of civilization to the Indians. He accomplishes his work and dies. It is a work full of the most interest- ing prettinesses. There are very many beautiful passages well worth noting and remembering in it, and much that is touching, refining and gentle. But there is little that can be called grand or elevating in the conception or construction of the poem. The diction is very smooth, flowing and simple. It will pall some on the ear from its monotony. Only think, of a long poem of three hundred pages in the trochaic measure, and without rhyme! It never was attempted before in the English language! The measure consists of four troches, but a great attention to harmonious rhythm exists which will compensate for the monotony.
Is ridicule a test of truth? If so, what shall we say of the following burlesque, from the New York Mirror:
HIAWATHA
Have you read the misty poem Of the mystic Hiawatha - Read about the wild Dakatos, And the brave Humbugawampams, In the vales of Hifaluten, In the vales of Wishy Washy, In the vales of Skimmy Dishy?
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No sir, E, Sir, that I have not,
And I would not for a hundred Dollars paid in silver or in Gold by the inflated teller Of a bank called the Manhattan. I looked in the book a moment,
And my spine is really aching At the hard words Mr. Longfel-
Low puts in his learned verses.
Rumor says that Mr. Riply, Critic of the N. Y. Tribune, Hired by a snob called Greeley,
Labors with an awful lock-jaw, Got in reading Hiawatha, Guess he got a-foul of this word: -
Obejaywayascalola !!!!! For sale by Geer & Hurlburt.
Ladies' League - 1855
A league has been proposed by the ladies of Boston that they will, so far as practicable, use only articles of American manufacture. Their object in forming this engagement is an eminently patriotic one. It is to encourage American industry and enterprise and to thus retain at home the money which is flowing abroad in such a continual stream. The agreement does not require any lady that signs it to altogether deny herself the use of European productions, but to give a preference to American manufacturers, when they are equally as good. Her own judgment and taste are to decide in this matter.
The organization is already completed in Boston and a General Committee appointed to superintend the spread of the League in other cities and towns. One lady from every State that enters the League will be selected as a member of this General Committee. There is no intention on the part of these ladies to connect their organization with any of the sectional disputes or with any of the political parties of the day. They simply desire to manifest their patriotism by an effort on their part to check the growing extravagance of the age in the purchase of expensive foreign productions.
Hiawatha
Notwithstanding the adverse criticisms, this new work of Longfellow's has a constant and steady sale, which has already reached to ten thousand - It is felt by all who read it to be an American poem, written about an American subject and descriptive of American scen- ery. Its nationality makes it popular, while its beauty ought to satisfy the fastidious.
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JOHN P. BRACE'S EDITORIALS - 1856
Love !
A young milkman of Hoboken, N. Y., felt so deeply the disappoint- ment of the refusal of a young girl to marry him, that he selected a halter and proceeded to hang himself on a lamp post, in full sight of his Dulcinea's windows. He had forgotten quaint, old Sir John Suck- ling's rhyme:
"Quit, quit, for shame! this will not move her; This cannot take her; If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her - The Devil take her."
Fortunately he was cut down "ere the vital spark was extinguished," and still more fortunately, his ladie-love was so convinced of the sin- cerity of his affection, that she married him! He thus exchanged the halter for the altar, or, rather, one noose for another. May he through life not find his milk watered!
Attention, Beautiful Women!
It appears, by an advertisement from Barnum's Museum, that prizes to the amount of $20,000 are to be given to the handsomest women in America. Their likenesses are to be taken and sent to the Museum. A committee will decide upon the most beautiful, and prizes be given, according to our advertisement. One hundred are to be painted in oil, and the ten most beautiful to be engraved for the Paris Book of Beauty. It is announced that our Daguerreotypists will take the portraits of our "beautiful women," gratis, to send on to the Museum. So walk up, ladies! ye, that are beautiful in your own or your lovers' eyes, and enter your names for the prize. There is no need of any false delicacy or affected modesty on the occasion. Every genuine "beautiful woman" must be in readiness to comply with one of Barnum's humbugs! It is a plan peculiarly Yankee! Be in haste then to crowd the rooms of the artists and compete for the prize of Beauty !
1857
There is one thing in which the Yankee character is very deficient, and that is in the possession of a Cultivated Taste. The other intel- lectual faculties are well developed in our educational processes - The practical and the useful are abundantly taught our children. But neither in school or in college, and, we had almost said, rarely at home, are the rising minds of our youth enbued with a knowledge of the
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beautiful in Art & Nature. Whatever love of Nature exists, springs up as a spontaneous feeling, but it is never cultivated, regulated and guided into its proper channels. As to the beauty of Art, there is no distinct appreciation of it visible any where among our youth, unless travel has educated them for it.
There is a necessity for a change in this particular. A love of beauty is as essential to the perfect character, as any mental endowment. Everything that increases our rational happiness is of importance to us, and should form a part of our educational processes. Were the children of New England families taught when young to value beauty whether that of Nature or of Art, there would spring up a refinement of character among them that would prove a guard against many gross and material habits which are now somewhat our characteristics. Enlarging, thus, the circle of pleasures of a mental character, would prevent to a great extent the influence over the mind of meaner and lower enjoyments, and create sources of happiness of a higher, purer and more ennobling character.
A Cultivated Taste not only secures the soul from low pursuits - it not only opens sources of more exalted enjoyments- it not only enables the young to occupy their time and their thoughts in a pleasant and valuable manner - but it leads directly in its in- fluences to virtue and to the contemplation of the Great Being who has covered the earth with beauty and endowed man with the faculty of ap- preciating it, and with the power of creating it himself in the works of Art. Yes: the world is full of beauty The mild green of the fields, the lovely blue of the quiet heavens, the bubbling brook sparkling under the kisses of the sunbeams, the bright flowers variegating nature's carpet, the motion of the thousand leaves of the forests, the melan- choly moan of the pine trees as the breeze sighs through their tops, the still glassy mirror of the silent lake, the long stretch of the busy river spotted with the white sails of commerce - all, all, and a thou- sand like them, are the results of God's love of the beautiful and his desire that men should enjoy the happiness of its influence.
But how shall we secure this desired object? - How shall we create this educated taste in children? We have only space at present to throw out a few hints on this topic. Parents can commence the life of their children by ornamenting and beautifying their grounds. They can thus surround the children from their earliest years with the beauties of trees and flowers and tasteful scenery, and a well planned building. The attractions of home will thus be increased ten fold and we all know what a powerful influence over the moral character of a boy, an attractive home will create. The mere beauty of home may save him from the early corruptions of vicious companions, and form in him habits of steadfast virtue. The parent can likewise adorn his rooms
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with pictures and vases, and statuettes, and other ornaments of the best art, and accustom his children to look upon the finest works of man's creation. To enable him to meet the expense of beautiful prints and other accessories of an educated taste, he must endeavor to spread his table as simple as possible. Economy in food and drink will be better for his own and his children's health. As a general thing, the Yankee eats too much, and brings up his children to value too highly the luxuries of the table. Let him relinquish these and he will have enough to spare to enable him to spread the beauties of Art before his children, and thus to educate their taste.
As the warmth of the weather increases, people begin to think of summer relaxations and of the places of summer resort. The ultra fashionable those who delight in dress and display - crowd to Sara- toga or Newport or to some other expensive watering place, where the comfort is always in the inverse ratio to the cost. We believe the rule adopted among the frivolous of the softer sex, is, never, at these places of amusement, to wear a dress more than one day. Of course, the lady takes her forty trunks, and stays till every dress is displayed; then goes to some other similar place. The summer period of relaxation is devoted, then, by the members of the Flora McFlimsey tribe, to exhibiting their dresses; not in recruiting health after the useful labors of one season, and in preparing strength for the employments of another.
But all women are not Flora McFlimseys; and all men are not the Jemmy Jessamies of fashion. To some the performance of the duties of life, require the relaxation of a summer's resting place. To such, our own sea coast furnishes many attractions and many houses of good repute. Saybrook, Madison, Guilford, New London, Stoning- ton, Milford etc present excellent places for resort to those who desire sea air, sea food, and salt water bathing. Long Island too has its fine hotels where these comforts can be obtained by those who need them. To others who pine for the mountain air, the strengthening forest wind, and the beauty of land scenery, the White Hills, Lake George, Brattleboro and Bellows Falls present their attractions.
What every one needs is Change of Air. There is therefore no in- consistency in the citizens journey to the calm cool country; or, in the countrymans desire to feel the sea breeze. Health is recruited in both cases, simply because the nature of the atmosphere breathed is changed. The citizens of New York and Brooklyn and Boston, who have been breathing the salt air for nine months in the year, are in- vigorated by that change of atmosphere which the mountain scen- ery of New Hampshire and Vermont affords. While the inhabitants of the interior recruit their health by mixing the pure oxygen which they have been inspiring with the salt and the moisture of the ocean air.
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There is something in mere change of scenes and objects, but the great objects of health and renewed strength are the most surely ob- tained by an entire change of the mass of the atmosphere we are breathing. In Hartford we have neither sea air nor mountain air, but the air of a dry hot valley, all changes therefore from the air will be beneficial. It therefore equally accomplishes the great object of summer relaxation, or, we may say, of summer duty, whether we turn our steps to the sea shore and play awhile in the waves of old Ocean or whether we ascend the mountains and court the cool northern breezes.
1858
There is one defect in American education or rather in American character, and that is, our young people do not learn to converse well. They think - they act - when roused, they are eloquent - but they seldom converse well. The boy is taught to declaim - to store his mind with those ideas that will instruct and even move the multitude - but very rarely to converse with ease and elegance - The girl is disciplined to sing and play and dance and sit gracefully. She is even prepared for those womanly duties she must perform in after life - duties of the nursery and the household. Her moral powers are culti- vated likewise in this country, so that she becomes a useful, benevolent, amiable being, But she is not taught to converse.
"She can talk enough", says the crusty old bachelor, "pray do not teach her, to any greater degree, the use of her tongue". Talking is not conversing. There is no deficiency in the former with our girls. To talk, and to talk well, are very different. The latter requires ease, tact, self-confidence, good sense, a well conducted education, a desire to please and an amiable temper.
In neither sex should conversation be high flown, declamatory, or above the condition of the hearers. The voice should be modulated to the subject, and never raised to an oratorical pitch. The style should be easy, natural, playful, if the occasion require it, with no strained and far-fetched attempts at wit or glitter.
There are occasions when the very essence of entertaining and suc- cessful conversation consists in being a good listener, and in drawing out others upon those topics about which you know they can furnish information. We have said before that the great secret of pleasing consists in making others pleased with themselves. It is so in con- versation. To be a good listener, is one of the secrets of a conversa- tional power. It is said that Daniel Webster remarked that he never was in any sensible man's company a quarter of an hour, but what he learnt something. He had the tact of drawing them out on subjects with which they were familiar, and in this way, gained information himself, and made others pleased with him.
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When girls think too much of their beauty, they are very apt to forget that the powers of conversation are needed to please. Beauty may strike a severe blow on the heart, but it requires conversational powers to follow up the blow and render it effective. A plain woman who converses well will soon cause the want of beauty to be forgotten by her powers of entertainment. Madam De Stael Holstein was an exceedingly plain woman but such were her conversational talents, that Byron declared she could talk down her face in a quarter of an hour, and be felt to be positively beautiful.
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