From the Easy Chair, Volume 3

by George William Curtis

As for the logic of such an invitation, Yale is doubtless indifferent. She invites women to study not with her under-graduates, but with her post-graduates. Probably she recoils with instinctive conservatism from the vision of a possible Hypatia seated among her faculty in a professorial chair. That might do in Alexandria in the fifth century. But in New Haven in the nineteenth, or even the twentieth—? She recoils still further from the prospect of covoting. Elizabeth Tudor was a creditable head of a kingdom and a fellow-counsellor of state with Burleigh and Walsingham. But does it follow that a Connecticut woman possessed of great estates should have a voice in the disposition of her property? Probably Yale would agree that when all such amply endowed women unite in asking for such a voice, it might be worth while to consider. Meanwhile she opens the hospitable doors of her post-graduate intellectual treasury, and every woman who will may enter and share the riches.

Oliver asked for more, but not until he had consumed his portion. The comely maid of the omnibus smiles as she sees those treasury doors hospitably opening. She seems perhaps to see the stream of logic at once vanishing and reappearing. If a woman may mingle wisely with post-graduates, why not with under—but no. Something, she would say with womanly good sense, may be left to time and the inevitable sequence of events. Shall all be done at once, and the sound seed be spurned because it must be planted and grow and ripen before there is a harvest? In this Columbian year shall we think that nothing was gained when Columbus reached San Salvador, as we used to be taught, or Watling Island, or Grand Turk, or Samana, among which bewildered knowledge now doubtfully gropes—because he had not reached the continent, and because he believed it to be the old and not a new India?

That comely damsel, with her face towards the morning, says, quietly, with Durandarte, "Patience, and shuffle the cards." One glance at the woman in the Athens of Pericles and at woman in the New Haven of President Dwight answers the question which the nimble elderly wit eluded.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE GREAT EASTERN.

SAW the Great Eastern sail away. The afternoon was exquisite—one of the cool, clear, perfect days that followed the storm in the middle of August; and it seemed to hang over the great ship like a cordial smile. But it was the only smile the poor Leviathan received. There was a Christian resignation in her departure. The big ship, like Falstaff, "'a made a finer end and went away, an it had been any christom child: 'a parted even just between" four and five, "ev'n at turning o' the tide." But as when a prince is born, and the bells are rung, and the cannon fired, and the city is illuminated, and with music and shouting the people swarm the streets—and when the same prince, grown to be a bad king and tyrant, dies, outcast and contemned, with never a tear to fall nor a bell to toll for him—even such was the coming and the going of the Great Eastern.

I remember also the June afternoon when she arrived, and at the same hour. The city was excited as London used to be by the news of a famous victory. It was reported early in the morning that she was below, and public expectation, which had been feeding upon print and picture of her, was despatching the population to the Battery, to the wharves, to the excursion boats, and wherever she could be seen. At four o'clock you could see, off Staten Island, a pyramid of towering masts above all other masts. She looked a mighty admiral; and as she came up the bay, attended by the little boats—for all other craft are little beside her—you could easily remember the approach of Columbus to the shore and the canoes of curious savages that darted and swarmed around his ship. Her very size gave her a kind of superiority: the silence of her progress was full of majesty.

The shores teemed with people. The heights of Staten Island twinkled and fluttered with the gay toilets of the spectators that covered them. The Jersey shores were alive. The Battery looked white with human faces. The piers upon the river, the decks of vessels in the stream, and the windows and roofs of the buildings that commanded the water, were crowded with eager watchers. But the prettiest sight was the convoy of every kind that attended the surprising guest. Yachts, sloops, schooners, steamers, and tow-boats, large and small, moved down towards her, came out from the shore, sailed round her, sailed beside her, crossed her bows, followed her, so that the bay was bewitched with excitement. Cannon roared, bells rang, flags waved, and the crowd huzzaed welcome.

Through all the great ship glided majestically on. In response to each fresh salute of steam-whistle the bell was touched upon the deck—it was the quiet nod or smile of a prince in reply to the noisy complimenting of a Common Council. There was an air of dignity and of grandeur in the size and movement of the ship; and as the public was not disappointed in her size, but found that she really looked as large as she had been described and represented; and as every circumstance of her arrival was propitious, so that she slipped quietly into her dock, like a ferry-boat—it may fairly be claimed that the Great Eastern had already won the hearty regard of the New York public.

How she lost it—is it not all related in indignant reports and letters and caricatures? How she dared to charge a dollar for admission—how hapless sailors lost their lives—how she went to Cape May—and there black night rushes down upon the tale. After a visit of forty-nine days, in which she had unhappily, but too surely, worn out her welcome, she prepares to depart. But at the last moment petty suits almost detain her. She shakes them off, however, and with them the cables that bound her to our shore. She slips into the stream. She promptly points her head down the bay. It is a lovely afternoon—it is the same river full of craft—there are the wharves, the windows, the roofs—but where, oh! where are the people? She fires her departing gun. A few loiterers, whom chance or business has called to the water-side, look up for a moment as she goes by. Idle boys upon the wharves joke and jeer at her. Where are the wolves, naughty boys? How dare you cry bald-head? Everything in the river and the city slouches in the every-day costume of habit. There are no gala garments, no fluttering flags, and merry bells, and booming guns, and cheering crowds. The Great Eastern is going away—who cares? She will never come back—so much the better! Alas! the poor old King of yesterday is dying, and there is no one to close his eyes. No; the courtiers are booted and spurred to dash away the moment the breath is out of his body and salute the young Prince, the next Sensation, who shall rule the realm for a day.