From the Easy Chair, Volume 2

by George William Curtis

ONE of his great contemporaries was universally beloved more than General Sherman, perhaps none so much. The rare happiness was his not only of becoming famous by taking a great part in a great historic achievement, but of the complete enjoyment of fame. His later years forecast the future. He saw not only that his name would be remembered, but remembered with personal affection. Very few men have been able to foresee this, and very few more clearly than Sherman. It is due not to achievement alone, but to personal quality blended with achievement.

In his last years he was wholly withdrawn from public affairs, and with extraordinary tact, although constantly in the public eye and mind, and although the sense of his historic personality, so to speak, was constant, he refrained from declarations upon pending public questions, and the remarks of his interviews were not devoted to subjects of general controversy. This was doubtless the result of his accurate apprehension of his relation to the country. He had been educated by it, and had served it as a soldier. He had strong convictions and was frank of speech, but he belonged to all. He could not well be a common partisan. He was apparently untouched by political ambition. If he had felt its spur at all, he was happily able to prefer the general permanent affectionate popular regard to the fierce enthusiasm of a political campaign and the passionate ardor of partisanship.

Whatever the reason, he held aloof. Perhaps at one moment, had he assented, his name might have been caught up in a vast and tumultuous political convention, and to a burning and skilful appeal to patriotism and the still glowing memories of the war a palpitating party might have responded, and made him its leader. But if others doubted and hesitated he did not. He comprehended the situation as in a comprehensive and far-extending military movement. He knew himself, and he refused. The opportunity for which the most illustrious and the most famous of Americans have longed and labored and pined offered itself to him, unsought, unwished, and he smiled it away.

Among the chief figures of the epoch of the war probably Lincoln and Sherman were the most individual and original. The most romantic and picturesque of the many renowned events of that time was the march to the sea. It has already a distinctive character, like that of the Greeks in Xenophon's story of the ten thousand. When the news of its successful issue reached this part of the country, it served to show the simple and honest patriotism of one of the more unfortunate of the Union generals. Burnside, after the explosion of the mine at Petersburg, had been relieved, and was staying with a company of friends at a country-house on Narragansett Bay. The company were all sitting one morning upon the spacious piazza, when a messenger rode up and announced Sherman's success. Burnside's delight was enthusiastic. All thought of himself vanished. The good cause only was in his mind and heart, and, running to his wife, he joyfully kissed her, saying, "I know that the company feels as I do, and will forgive me."

It was the feeling of a soldier as simple and true-hearted and patriotic, but not so fortunate, as Sherman; and it was the same candor and manly sweetness of nature that softened Sherman's voice whenever he spoke of the soldiers of the war to whom fate had seemed to be unkind. He is gone, the last of the old familiar figures, some of his old foes bearing him tenderly to the grave. And are not Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Porter, Seward, Chase, Stanton, Sumner, and their fellows, historic figures worthy to rank with the elder Revolutionary group dear to all Americans?

THE AMERICAN GIRL.

PLEASING and constant topic of English writers is the American girl. One of the later commentators says of her, "American girls have shown they can receive, travel, and live without chaperons, escorts, or husbands, and are fast developing a bright, clear, intelligent, self-reliant, courageous, and refreshing variety of the human race." And again, "Even if in future years the slender Yankee belle is hidden behind the ampler beauty of the English matron, we may still hear from her lips the wit and shrewdness, the acute accent, the intelligent question, and the rapid repartee that proclaim her original nationality." The "society" pictures in the papers and magazines represent the dismay of the British matron with marriageable daughters as she surveys the avatar of the American divinity and rival. The essential differences of society in the two countries are at once suggested, and the alarm of the watchful parent is justified.

The charm of Miss Austen's novels is their acknowledged fidelity of portraiture of the society with which they deal. They are miniatures, but the likeness is wrought with exquisite skill of detail, and as the American reader reflects he perceives that the great object of the game which they describe is eligible marriage. Indeed the motive of the novel in general is love and marriage. We open the book, we are at once introduced to Paul, and presently to Virginia, and we proceed over the pages until we hear the approaching beat of the Wedding March, which in fact we have heard from the first page, and we know that the end is at hand. But in the English novel of society, although the theme be marriage, it is not necessarily love. If that were essential, a host of rival fair ones with golden locks would bring no pang to the maternal bosom, because she would know that love will find out the one among the thousand.

The passages that we have quoted apparently describe by contrast, which is a fact which does not seem to have occurred to the writer. Doubtless at heart he is loyal to the English girl, and does not admit even in debate that her supremacy of maidenhood can be disputed. When he says that American girls have shown that they can receive, travel, and live without chaperons, escorts, or husbands, he seems to mean that they have shown this distinctively as compared with other girls. When he adds that they are fast developing a bright, clear, intelligent, self-reliant, courageous, and refreshing variety of the human race, can he mean that those words describe a new variety of girl, and that it is not perfectly familiar in England? So in the other passage, when, supposing the American girl transformed into the British matron, he remarks, with evident admiration, "we may still hear from her lips the wit and shrewdness, the acute accent, the intelligent question, and the rapid repartee that proclaim her original nationality," would he have us understand that these are not the characteristics of the British matron of to-day? Or does he intimate only that the coming of the Americans will but enlarge the number of these delightful ladies?