Who, while we wait upon the Lord,
That blessings may distil,
For us, their sons, keep watch and ward
On yonder silent hill:
We (as did they) in pilgrimage
Lean on these Sabbath hours;
Theirs, in each past eventful stage,
O present God, be ours!
[THE TOP OF NEW-YORK.]
BY S. W. MANSFIELD.
Three frosts in succession; and now, with extra flannels, a day that was omitted last summer is dropped down here by mistake; and nerves that were braced up to a fine tone collapse to a broken fiddle. Men rush at the soda-shops, looking daggers at each other, and women go careless of corsets, and showing their natural color. Coal falls off again; ice-creams go up; Niblo has another 'crack night;' the beggars are happy, and so am I.
Do you remember your first julep? The gradual mounting to the brain, like the rush of joy to a sick heart that takes it doubtingly; the quick grouping and glancing of thought from your ideality; the uncorking of fancies bottled in your teens; and at last a sudden ballooning of the whole head, that brings out the stars, and the heavens opening, with angels passing to and fro, (Broadway always, after a julep,) and you forget the dun of the morning, and the girl that jilted you last night out of a week's passion. You forget her as such, but you remember, rather you repeat, the heart-flutterings of the first night; the hand gently withdrawn of the second; the delicious half-embrace (interrupted) of the third; and the fourth, body, soul, and lips, all melting innocently together, with pulses and Fahrenheit mounting the hundred! If after that she gave you the kiss coyly at the door, with ears up like an antelope's, and said it was very naughty, you remember that her dress was too airy to be disarranged; and ah! she's only timing you a little; and so God bless her forever!
Not that such things happen; never. But the julep makes you think so. Well, do you remember the charming confusion of that first julep; its beautiful bewilderment; (I premise, of course, that it surprised an unbrandied stomach;) and would you like to repeat the sensation, without breaking your late pledge? 'Juleps be hang'd!' says you. Very well, you are in trouble to-day. Your wife made you get up first, and the world rolls the wrong way with you; the sun rose in the west, you say. Exactly so. It rose to me, no'th-west and a point off, only yesterday. (Lobster salad for supper; ten devils and a young one for bed-fellows, and the universe knock'd into a cocked hat; saw it myself; every star went past my window; took an observation in the morning: sun in the north-west; the needle running round like a kitten after its tail, and the earth bound to the north star! Fact! Nobody knew it but me; but it's all right now.) Well, the sun rose in the west; your children teething, perhaps, and the nurse has a child of her own, just arrived; and you think it probable that your wife has eloped with her cousin, who urged you to marry her. Are any of these things so?—or, worst of all imaginings, have you breakfasted badly? Then, Sir, Come up to the top of New-York!
If you have strained your eyes, looking up, half a life-time, take the stair-case, the easiest way in the world of getting up in it, and look down, or overlook, as you like. We have a cream left, and a dash of curacoa that colors better than strawberries. Come up, Sir, and open your lungs to the original element; quick! or you'll be carried away with the rush. A dam across Broadway for half an hour would gather a Waterloo army.
Well, here you are; sit down, Sir, and don't shout, or you will have a park-full looking at you, and probably an alarm of fire. Let the people pass. We have been through the play, and found that the farce in real life is the only tragedy. Keep your heart fresh, my young boy, and away from shilling seductions. Pass on, children; we can't 'make believe' sufficiently to-day, and will just overlook you a little. Fix your eye, Sir, upon that baboon coming out of a flue, till your nerves steady a little, and think what a sweep of mind he must have after the confinement of a chimney. You observe, the world is neither before us nor behind, for we are atop of it. How the eye blunders about amid the sea of house-tops, and what variety of chimney architecture not meant for the eye! Now and then a spire points up, like the stray pines of a southern barren, and outside are the tops of the shipping, hedging in the city like bayonets. Farther on, the white sails dash about in all directions, sweeping past each other with the untouched precision of a street-walker, bowing gallantly with a touch of the beaver. The steam-ferries cross with the straight-forward bearing of a militaire, as though they took no pleasure whatever in the goings-on; and here and there, with sails all out, top-gallantly, a tall ship moves among the crowd, with the emphasis of royalty.