From the Easy Chair, Volume 3

by George William Curtis

"The first wood-chopper of fame, and the first President," replied the brother quill.

Mercury gazed at the house earnestly for a little while and then warmly demanded, "Why don't they keep his old sign-board up to let folks know?"

Bugle of Freedom! out of the mouths of babes and sucklings the truth proceeds. It was the same instinct that caused the Easy Chair to exclaim a year ago, as it contemplated the prospect of changing the old and famous State-house, "Why take the old sign down?"

THE BOSTON MUSIC HALL

T is not, of course, possible that New York feels any chagrin that Boston has given the most colossal concert ever known upon the continent; but it is observable that, as wind and fire finally levelled the last timbers of the Boston Coliseum in the dust, the first step taken was taken towards the Beethoven Centennial Celebration, in New York. The project is not yet matured; but a vision of something very large indeed, something "metropolitan," begins to allure expectation; and Boston, having scored handsomely in the game, sits upon the ruins of her Coliseum and the profits of her Jubilee to see what New York will do.

If New York will build a proper hall for music and other public purposes, she will do well, and the Beethoven Centennial will not be in vain. The Cooper Institute hall is large enough for political meetings, and Steinway Hall is good for many purposes; but it is not a beautiful nor imposing room, as a great hall should be. The most impressive hall in the country is still the Boston Music Hall, where the great height and the two galleries, one above the other, with the organ and imposing statue of Beethoven, give a feeling of dignity. But the Music Hall lacks one of the chief characteristics of a noble room for the purposes to which it is devoted, and that is brilliancy. It is too dark. There is no smiling splendor of effect, which is always so enlivening. The darkness of the hall may be agreeable to weak eyes, it may even be described as "very much better than a glare of light," but brilliancy remains an indispensable quality of a great hall devoted to popular enjoyment.

Yet, whether dark or light, how much has been enjoyed in that stately room! What memorable figures have passed across that platform! What exquisite strains of music, sung, played, or spoken, have died along those walls! No one who is familiar with our history for the last twenty years will sit in the hall for any purpose but suddenly he sees it crowded with a silent and attentive throng; sees a reading-desk with vases of flowers, and a man[A] of sturdy figure standing behind it, whose voice is deep and penetrating and sincere; whose words are things; who has a certain rustic shyness of movement; but whose sentences roll and flash like volleys of trained soldiery, and who stands in the warmth of his own emotion and the sympathy of his audience, an indomitable gladiator, compelling the admiration even of his enemies as he fights with the Ephesian beasts. Against him, as he stands there every Sunday preaching to that vast multitude what seems to him the truth, and breaking to them what he believes to be the very bread of life, other men are preaching and praying, and the excommunications of the Vatican against Luther, shorn of their thunder and lightning, are hurled. Who is he that judges motives and sincerity? We do not know in this world what is believed, but only what is said and done.

[A] Theodore Parker.

This man, with bald head set low upon high square shoulders, who looks firmly at the great audience through spectacles, and speaks in a low half-nasal tone, visits the widows and fatherless, and keeps himself unspotted from the world. What he believes, others may question. What he is, every aspiring soul must admire. Although almost every one of them would have theologically cast him out and have recoiled from him with dismay, yet he preserves more than any other the traditional power and individualism of the old New England clergy. He applies the eternal truth and the moral law as he feels it to the life and times around him. They are heated white, and his words are blows of a sledge-hammer to mould them into noble form. That dauntless mien is the true symbol of his mental aspect as he confronts the menacing principalities and powers, and the man whose voice has so often charmed the crowded hall is one of the few who distinctly see and foretell the terrible war.