Editor's Easy Chair
New-Yorkers have a story to tell of the winter just now dying, that will seem, perhaps, to the children of another generation like a pretty bit of Munchausenism. Whoever has seen our Metropolitan City only under the balmy atmosphere of a soft May-day, or under the smoky sultriness of a tropic August—who has known our encompassing rivers only as green arms of sparkling water, laughing under the shadows of the banks, and of shipping—would never have known the Petersburg of a place into which our passing winter has transformed the whole.
Only fancy our green East River, that all the summer comes rocking up from the placid Sound, with a hoarse murmur through the rocks of Hell-Gate, and loitering, like a tranquil poem, under the shade of the willows of Astoria, all bridged with white and glistening ice! And the stanch little coasting-craft, that in summer-time spread their wings in companies, like flocks of swans, within the bays that make the vestibule to the waters of the city, have been caught in their courses, and moored to their places, by a broad anchor of sheeted silver.
The oyster-men, at the beacon of the Saddle-rock, have cut openings in the ice; and the eel-spearers have plied their pronged trade, with no boat save the frozen water.
In town, too, a carnival of sleighs and bells has wakened Broadway into such hilarity as was like to the festivals we read of upon the Neva. And if American character verged ever toward such coquetry of flowers and bon-bons as belongs to the Carnival at Rome, it would have made a pretty occasion for the show, when cheeks looked so tempting, and the streets and house-tops sparkled with smiles.
As for the country, meantime, our visitors tell us that it has been sleeping for a month and more under a glorious cloak of snow; and that the old days of winter-cheer and fun have stolen back to mock at the anthracite fires, and to woo the world again to the frolic of moonlight rides and to the flashing play of a generous hickory-flame.
Beside the weather, which has made the ballast of very much of the salon chat, city people have been measuring opinions of late in their hap-hazard and careless way, about a new and most unfortunate trial of divorce. It is sadly to be regretted that the criminations and recriminations between man and wife should play such part as they do, not only in the gossip, but in the papers of the day. Such reports as mark the progress of the Forrest trial (though we say it out of our Easy Chair) make very poor pabulum for the education of city children. And we throw out, in way of hint, both to legislators and editors, the question how this matter is to be mended.
As for the merits of the case, which have been so widely discussed, we—talking as we do in most kindly fashion of chit-chat—shall venture no opinion. At the same time, we can not forbear intimating our strong regret, that a lady, who by the finding of an impartial jury, was declared intact in character, and who possessed thereby a start-point for winning high estimation in those quiet domestic circles which her talents were fitted to adorn—should peril all this, by a sudden appeal to the sympathies of those who judge of character by scenic effects: and who, by the very necessity of her new position, will measure her worth by the glare of the foot-lights of a theatre!