Turn we now from these preliminaries to the characteristics of the Town life and the Country life, each in its own most perfect English form. Let us see first what is to be said for each, and then strike our balance. Very briefly we may dismiss the commonly recognized external features of both, and pass as rapidly as possible to the more subtle ones, which have scarcely perhaps been noted as carefully as their importance as items in the sum of happiness will warrant.
Town Mouse loquitur.
“I confess I love London. It is a confession, of course, for everybody who lives in the country seems to think there is a particular virtue in doing so, resembling the cognate merit of early rising. Even that charming town poet, Mr. Locker, practically admits the same when he says,—
‘I hope I’m fond of much that’s good,
As well as much that’s gay;
I’d like the country if I could,
I like the Park in May.’
“The truth is that one wants to live, not to vegetate; to do as much good, either to ourselves or other people, as time permits; to receive and give impressions; to feel, to act, to be as much as possible in the few brief years of mortal existence; and this concentrated Life can be lived in London as nowhere else. If a man have any ambition, here it may best be pursued. If he desire to contend for any truth or any justice, here is his proper battle-field. If he love pleasure, here are fifty enjoyments at his disposal for one which he can obtain in the country. The mere sense of forming part of this grand and complicated machine, whereof four millions of men and women work the wheels, makes my pulse beat faster, and gives me a sense as if I were marching to the sound of trumpets. Then the finish and completeness of London life is delightful to the thoroughly civilized mind. It is only the half-reclaimed savage who is content with unpaved and unlighted roads, ill-trained servants, slovenly equipages, and badly cooked, badly attended dinners. Like my little nibbling prototype who served his feast ‘sur un tapis de Turquie,’ I like everything, down to the little card on which my menu is written, to be perfect about me. The less I am reminded by disagreeable sensations of my animal part, the more room is left for the exercise of my higher intellectual functions. The ascetic who lives on locusts and wild honey, and catches the locusts, has far less leisure to think about better things than the alderman who sits down every day to ten courses, served by a well-trained staff of London servants. The sense of order, of ease, of dignity and courtesy, is continually fostered and flattered in the great Imperial City, which, notwithstanding its petty faults of local government, is still the freest and noblest town the globe has ever borne. People talk of the ‘freedom’ of the country, and my quondam host, the Country Mouse, is perpetually boasting of his ‘crust of bread and liberty.’ But, except the not very valuable license to wear shabby old clothes, I am at a loss to discover wherein the special freedom of rural life consists. You are certainly watched, and your actions, looks, and behavior commented on fifty times more by your idle neighbors in the country, gasping for gossip, than by your busy neighbors in town, who never trouble themselves to turn their heads when you pass them in the street, or even to find out your name if you live next door. In the country, you have generally the option of going on either of three or four roads. In London, you have the choice of as many thousand streets. In the country, you may ‘kill something’ whenever you take your walks abroad, if that special privilege of the British gentleman be dear to your soul, and you care to shoot, hunt, or fish. Or, if you belong to the softer sex or sort, you may amuse yourself in your garden or shrubbery, play tennis, teach in the village school, or pay a visit to some country neighbor who will bore you to extinction. In London, you have ten times as large a choice of occupations, and five hundred times as pleasant people to visit; seeing that in the country even clever men and women grow dull, and in town the most stupid get frotté with other people’s ideas and humor.
“Again,—and this is a most important consideration in favor of London,—when a man has no particular bodily pain or mental affliction, and is not in want of money, the worst evil which he has to dread is ennui. To be bored is the ‘one great grief of life’ to people who have no other grief. But can there be any question whether ennui is better avoided in London or in the country? Even in the month of August, as somebody has remarked, ‘when London is “empty,” there are always more people in it than anywhere else’; and where there are people there must be the endless play of human interests and sympathies. Nay, for my part, I find a special gratification in the cordiality wherewith my acquaintances, left stranded like myself by chance in the dead season, hail me when we meet in Pall Mall like shipwrecked mariners on a rock; and in the respectful enthusiasm wherewith I am greeted in the half-deserted shops, where in July I made my modest purchases, unnoticed and unknown. In the country, on the contrary, Ennui stalks abroad all the year round; and the puerile ceremonies wherewith the ignorant natives strive to conjure away the demon—the dismal tea and tennis parties, the deplorable archery meetings, and, above all, the really frightful antediluvian institution, called ‘Spending a Day’—only place us more helplessly at his mercy. We conjugate the reflective verb ‘to be Bored,’ in all moods and tenses; not in the light and airy way of townsfolk, when they trivially observe they were ‘bored at such a party last night,’ or decline to be ‘bored by going to hear such a preacher on Sunday morning,’ but sadly and in sober earnest, as men who recognize that boredom is a chronic disease from which they have no hope of permanent relief. There is, in short, the same difference between ennui in the country and ennui in town as between thirst in the midst of Sahara and thirst in one’s home, where one may ring the bell at any moment and call for soda water.”
So speaks the modern Town Mouse, describing the more superficial and obvious advantages of his abode over those of his friend in the country. And (equally on the surface of things) straightway replies—