CHAPTER XL.
Easter Sunday in New York.
New York, April 6 (Easter Sunday.)
| A BELLOWING SOPRANO. |
This morning I went to Dr. Newton’s church in Forty-eighth Street. He has the reputation of being one of the best preachers in New York, and the choir enjoys an equally great reputation. The church was literally packed until the sermon began, and then some of the strollers who had come to hear the anthems moved on. Dr. Newton’s voice and delivery were not at all to my taste, so I did not sit out his sermon either. He has a big, unctuous voice, with the intonations and inflections of a showman at the fair. He has not the flow of ideas that struck me so forcibly when I heard the late Henry Ward Beecher in London; he has not the histrionic powers of Dr. Talmage, either. There was more show than beauty about the music, too. A bellowing, shrieking soprano overpowered all the other voices in the choir, including that of a really beautiful tenor that deserved to be heard.
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New York blossoms like the rose on Easter Day. Every woman has a new bonnet and walks abroad to show it.
SOME EASTER BONNETS.
There are grades in millinery as there are in society. The imported bonnet takes the proudest rank; it is the aristocrat in the world of headgear. It does not always come with the conqueror (in one of her numerous trunks), but it always comes to conquer, and a proud, though ephemeral triumph it enjoys, perched on the dainty head of a New York belle, and supplemented by a frock from Felix’s or Redfern’s.
It is a unique sight, Fifth Avenue on Easter Sunday, when all the up-town churches have emptied themselves of their gayly garbed worshipers.
KEEPING LENT.
The “four hundred” have been keeping Lent in polite, if not rigorous, fashion. Who shall say what it has cost them in self-sacrifice to limit themselves to the sober, modest violet for table and bonnet decoration during six whole weeks? These things cannot be lightly judged by the profane. I have even heard of sweet, devout New York girls who limited themselves to one pound of marrons glacés a week during Lent. Such feminine heroism deserves mention.
A CLUB WINDOW.
And have they not been sewing flannel for the poor, once a week, instead of directing the manipulation of silk and gauze for their own fair forms, all the week long? Who shall gauge the self-control necessary for fasting such as this? But now Dorcas meetings are over, and dances begin again to-morrow. The Easter anthem has been sung, and the imported bonnet takes a turn on Fifth Avenue to salute and to hob-nob with Broadway imitations during the hour between church and lunch. To New Yorkers this Easter Church parade is as much of an institution in its way as those of Hyde Park during the season are to the Londoners. It was plain that the people sauntering leisurely on the broad sidewalks, the feminine portion at least, had not come out solely for religious exercise in church, but had every intention to see and to be seen, especially the latter. On my way down, I saw some folks who had not been to church, and only wanted to see, so stood with faces glued to the windows of the big clubs, looking out at the kaleidoscopic procession: old bachelors, I daresay, who hold the opinion that spring bonnets, whether imported or home-grown, ought to be labeled “dangerous.” At all events they were gazing as one might gaze at some coveted but out-of-reach fruit, and looking as if they dared not face their fascinating young townswomen in all the splendor of their new war paint. A few, perhaps, were married men, and this was their quiet protest against fifty-dollar hats and five-hundred-dollar gowns.
The sight was beautiful and one not to be forgotten.
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In the evening I dined with Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll and the members of his family. I noticed something which struck me as novel, but as perfectly charming. Each man was placed at table by the side of his wife, including the host and hostess. This custom in the colonel’s family circle (I was the only guest not belonging to it) is another proof that his theories are put into practice in his house. Dinner and time vanished with rapidity in that house, where everything breathes love and happiness.