“Here it is that elocution is taught, and here all public speakers take lessons,” said Edgar; “you may readily imagine what an effect such an institution would have on those who intended to become actors. In your day, out of the whole theatrical corps of one city, not more than six or seven, perhaps, could tell the meaning of the words they used in speaking, to say nothing of the sense of the author. There is no more prejudice now against play-acting than there is against farming. The old Recorder states, that, before our revolution, the farmers were of a more inferior race, and went as little into polite society as the mechanics did. Even so far back as your time a farmer was something of a gentleman, and why an actor should not be a gentleman is to us incomprehensible. One of the principal causes of this change of personal feeling towards actors has arisen from our having expunged all the low and indelicate passages from the early plays. Shakspeare wrote as the times then were, but his works did not depend on a few coarse and vulgar passages for their popularity and immortality; they could bear to be taken out, as you will perceive, for the space they occupied is not now known; the adjoining sentence closed over them, as it were, and they are forgotten. There were but few erasures to be made in the writings of Sir Walter Scott; the times were beginning to loathe coarse and indelicate allusions in your day, and, indeed, we may thank the other sex for this great improvement. They never disgraced their pages with sentences and expressions which would excite a blush. Look at the purity of such writers as Miss Burney, Mrs. Radcliffe, Miss Edgeworth, Miss Austin, Madame Cotton, and others of their day in Europe,—it is to woman’s influence that we owe so much. See what is done by them now; why they have fairly routed and scouted out that vile, disgraceful, barbarous practice which was even prevalent in your time—that of beating and bruising the tender flesh of their children.”
“I am truly rejoiced at that,” said Hastings, “but I hope they extended their influence to the schools likewise—I mean the common schools; for, in my day in the grammar school of a college, a man who should bruise a child’s flesh by beating or whipping him would have been kicked out of society.”
“Why, I thought that boys were whipped in the grammar schools also. In the year 1836, it appears to me, that I remember to have read of the dismissal of some professor for injuring one of the boys by flogging him severely.”
“I do not recollect it; but you say 1836—alas! I was unconscious then. It was the remains of barbarism; how a teacher could get roused to such height of passion as to make him desire to bruise a child’s flesh, I cannot conceive—when the only crime of the poor little sufferer was either an unwillingness or an inability to recite his lessons. I can imagine that a man, when drunk, might bruise a child’s flesh in such a shocking manner as that the blood would settle under the skin, because liquor always brutalizes. Is drunkenness as prevalent now as formerly?”
“Oh no, none but the lowest of the people drink to excess now, and they have to get drunk on cider and wine, for spirituous liquors have been prohibited by law for upwards of two hundred years. A law was passed in the year 1901, granting a divorce to any woman whose husband was proved to be a drunkard. This had a good effect, for a drunkard knew that if he was abandoned by his wife he must perish; so it actually reclaimed many drunkards at the time, and had a salutary effect afterwards. Besides this punishment, if a single man, or a bachelor, as he is called, was found drunk three times, he was put in the workhouse and obliged to have his head shaved, and to work at some trade. It is a very rare thing to see a drunkard now. But what are you looking for?”
“I thought I might see a cigar box about—not that I ever smoke”—
“A what?—a cigar? Oh yes, I know—little things made of tobacco leaves; but you have to learn that there is not a tobacco plantation in the world now. That is one of the most extraordinary parts of your history: that well educated men could keep a pungent and bitter mass of leaves in their mouth for the pleasure of seeing a stream of yellow water running out of it, is the most incomprehensible mystery to me; and then, to push the dust of these leaves up their nostrils, which I find by the old Recorder that they did, for the mere pleasure of hearing the noise that was made by their noses! The old Recorder called their pocket handkerchiefs flags of abomination.”
Hastings thought it was not worth while to convince the young man that the disgusting practice was not adopted for such purposes as he mentioned. In fact his melancholy had greatly increased since their arrival in this city, and he determined to beg his young friend to return the next day to their home, and to remain quiet for another year, to see if time could reconcile him to his strange fate. He took pleasure in rambling through the city hall, and the park, which remained still of the same shape, and he was pleased likewise to see that many of the streets at right angles with Broadway were more than twice the width that they were in 1835. For instance, all the streets from Wall street up to the Park were as wide as Broadway, and they were opened on the other side quite down to the Hudson.
“Yes,” said Edgar, “it was the great fire of 1842 which made this salutary change; but here is a neat building—you had nothing of this kind in your time. This is a house where the daughters of the poor are taught to sew and cut out wearing apparel. I suppose you know that there are no men tailors now.”
“What, do women take measure?”