NEW ENGLAND CHARACTERISTICS.
BY LIZZIE M. WHITTLESEY.
“We constantly,” as Ruskin affirms, “recognize things by their least important attributes, and by help of very few of these. We recognize our books by their bindings, our friends by the mere accidents of the body, the sport of climate, and food, and time.”
Applying this principle to New England, we unconsciously recognize her first by her mere outward, incidental properties.
By the waving of her hair in the “Pine-Tree State,” by the frown of her massive brows in the “Granite” and “Green Mountain,” by the glancing brightness of her smile in the “Old Bay,” by her lithe grace of limb in “Little Rhoda,” and her firm step and erect carriage in the “Land of Steady Habits;” while to all alike belong—
“Her clear, warm heaven at noon, the mist that shrouds
Her twilight hills, her cool and starry eves,
The glorious splendor of her sunset clouds,
The rainbow beauty of her forest leaves.”
Next to the physical traits of a friend we are attracted by those of a social nature; and, still keeping the analogy, the same is true of a people, and preëminently so of New England.
The characteristics of our four Northern cities have been thus distinctively classified and labelled:—
Washington stops between the polka and the waltz to ask, “Can you dance?” New York shows us her silks and laces, and politely whispers, “What are you worth?”
Philadelphia traces back our genealogy, and questions, “Who was your grandfather?” While Boston lifts her eye-glass, and, surveying our mental cranium, inquires, “What do you know?”
The social traits of New England proper are so combined with her business character that they are with difficulty separated, and both are best defined by foreign visitors.
It was an Englishman who said, “Go ahead is the grand doctrine of New England;” and we see that this principle, plainly enforced and practically carried out, builds her cities, founds her public libraries, carries on her immense commerce, and increases public traffic.
Without this quality, coupled with her independence and disregard for romantic associations, the Yankee would never make pilgrimages to the Old World for the sole and evident purpose of placarding the pyramids, and introducing his invention for removing stains at some half-ruined cathedral whose famous “spot of blood” is cherished with reverent care.
“New England excels,” according to an English cousin, “in an openness to ideas, an aptness for intuitions, and sometimes a seemingly positive preference for the bird in the bush,” which latter may account for that skilful Yankee versatility so perfectly exemplified in the chaplain, poet, editor, merchant, speculator, politician, historian, and minister, Barlow.
It is this quiet independence, indomitable will, and never-ceasing purpose to “get on,” which is a characteristic of the New England women, and which may be summed up in the expressive adjective “capable.” Armed with this power, she cheerfully teaches school, makes dresses, binds books, or “keeps house,” considering no honest work degrading, and proving herself equally efficient in each.
Here is found that shrewd, stirring common-sense which is New England’s strong point. Here is hinted, also, that philosophic humor which is the one ray lightening her intense realism.
As indefinable as it is delightful, it comes with a lightning flash of wit into the dry, theological conversation of the preacher, relieves with its sharp hits the spread-eagle speech of the country orator, brightens with its apt allusions the more refined periods of the lecturer, flits charmingly in and out of the sympathetic essays of Holmes, keeps us in a perpetual chuckle over the mirthful pages of Irving, and embodies itself in the quaint good-nature of an indolent, contemplative Sam Lawson.
For nowhere is this genial quality found in such purity as among the true, rustic Yankees, whose clear-cut, homely phrases and sharp localisms are not as entirely extinct as is supposed. Country life has a way all its own of preserving the best traits of a people, and in more than one old-fashioned farm-house, and among the haymakers in more than one sunny meadow, may be heard the witty expressions and strong metaphors which led Dickens to say, “In shrewdness of remark and a certain cast-iron quaintness the Yankee people unquestionably take the lead.”
In the country, too, as if growing and blossoming under the influence of the warm, unobstructed sunshine, is the sturdy growth of genuineness, hearty, coöperative sympathy, and cheery hospitality, the latter having its highest exponent in New England’s distinctive festival, Thanksgiving. The dear old holiday may well be called the cradle of New England graces, for it bears much the same relation to the development of her social traits that the old Greek and Roman games bore in developing characteristics of strength and bravery.
To return to the criticism of foreigners. The absence of historic records and relics in New England has often been a matter of contempt, and an amusing story is told by J. T. Fields of a stiff, conventional Englishman who called on the poet Longfellow at one of his busiest hours, and scanning him closely, gravely remarked: “We were doing the sights, sir, and as there are no ruins in New England, we decided to come and see you!”
We smile at the strange idea, but is there not in it a tacit admission that New England’s men and women of letters are her best characteristics? Is it not to her glory that hers is not a country of ruins but one of noble, earnest, living men and women?—men like Dr. Hale, instilling by the quiet weapon of the pen strong, true lessons of benevolence and truth; men like Longfellow, singing, pure, earnest songs of high endeavor and noble attainment; men like Whittier, whose simple, touching strains move so grandly on the side of right and justice.
Women like Mrs. Stowe, who, in her great strength of mind and character, wrote that wonderful book, which, inspired by zeal, and fired by a terrible earnestness, filled New England once with something of her own noble enthusiasm. She could do the grand work then, because her country needed it, thus illustrating that strong New England trait, latent power, a power of which we know nothing till it is called out by some mighty need. There have been earnest purpose, determined will, pure motive, and unselfish heroism in New England; but their depth and strength have never been “guessed” till manifested in some great crisis.
Her contests are those of heart and intellect; and her weapons, hard study and earnest thought.
In spite of popular philippics her traits do not change much from the summary of them made fifty years ago, “Impatience with wrong, quarrel with precedent, love of education, and faith in God.”
Ah! now we touch the true characteristics of New England, lying in the deep ocean of her history, unmoved by the lighter traits sparkling upon the surface.
That is a true boast of Jonathan to John:—
“We aint so weak and poor, John,
With twenty million people,
And close to every door, John,
A school-house and a steeple.”
And this is but the outgrowth of that short formula of the brave founders of school and church: “Faith in God, faith in man, faith in work;” so that New England’s present traits are directly traceable to Puritan influence.
Our educational institutions had substantial foundation-stones of self-sacrifice and far-seeing purpose, nobly laid by that score of sturdy men, dedicating, for the first academy, a peck of corn, or a shilling in cash, or a few treasured volumes.
The Sabbath has been called the “poem of New England,” and it is that always, whether rung out by the city’s chiming bells or whispered in the sacred repose of the country church. But it was never so truly a poem as on that first New England Sabbath, when the church was a weather-beaten ship, its support the lashing waves, and the worshippers “a handful of sad, stern men and women kneeling in their spray-stiffened garments to thank God for freedom to worship him.”
New England’s best traits, then, are but her rightful inheritance; traits “lineally descended” from her founders, softened and purified in the transmitting many times, as in the case of their sectional loyalty. “They seemed to shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other road than that which their fathers travelled, lest they should miss them at their journey’s end.”
And in these days, thank God! religious toleration is creeping over the forbidding rock of New England theology, much as the delicate vines of the May-flower crept over and beautified the hard, unyielding soil.
Thus New England stands, in her freedom, love of education, and all those homely domestic traits which make her the comfortable, clever, strong, and tender mother she is, while under and through and over all her traits runs, like a strain of restful music, her great, all powerful, far-reaching faith.