It was fairly droll, for instance, the quantity of vision that began topress during a wayside rest in a house of genial but discriminating hos-pitality that opened its doors just where the fiddle-string of associationuld most intensely vibrate, just where the sense of old New York, ofthe carlier stages of the picture now so violently overpainted, foundmost of its occasions--found them, to extravagance, within and without.The good easy Square, known in childhood, and as if the light were yel-lower there from that small acdident, bristled with reminders as vague asthey were sweet: within, especially, the place was a cool backwater, fortime as well as for space; out of the slightly dim depths of which, at theturn of staircases and from the walls of communicating rooms, portraitsand relics and records, faintly, quaintly 34thetic, in intention at least, anddiscreetly-yet bravely, too, and all so archaically and pathetic-Ily-Bohemian, laid traps, of a pleasantly primitive order, for memory,for sentiment, for relenting irony gross little devices, on the part of thecircumscribed past, which appealed with scarce more emphasis than somany tail-pieces of closed chapters. The whole impression had fairly arococo tone; and it was in this perceptibly golden afr, the air of oldempty New York afternoons of the waning summer-time, when the long,the perpendicular rattle, as of buckets, forever thirsty, in the bottomlessw'ell of fortune, almost dies out in the merciful cross-streets, that theample rearward loggia of the Club seemed serenely to hang the glazeddisglazed, gallery dedicated to the array of small spread tables for whichnk backs, right and left and oppowith the bold crimson of the New York house-painf2 uponthe chord of remembrance, all so absurdly, with the scarcely less simhow failed to treasure it up-that the rather pettifogging plan of the citthe fruit, on the spot, of an artless age, happened to leaveevenmargin as that for consoling chances. There were plenty of these-whichperhaps seem unduly to patronize in speaking of them as onlyconsoling -for many hours to come and while the easy wave thathave mentioned continued to float me: so abysmal are the resources ofthe foredoomed student of manners, or so helpless, at least, his casewhen once adrift in that tde
If in Gramercy Park already, three hours after his arrival, he had felthimself, this victim, up to his neck in what I have called his subject, thematter was quite beyond calculation by the time he had tumbled, in sucha glorified "four-wheeler, and with such an odd consciousness of rough-ness superimposed upon smoothness, far down-town again, and, on thedeck of a shining steamer bound for the Jersey shore, was taking all thebreeze of the Bay. The note of manners, the note that begins to sound,everywhere, for the spirit newly disembarked, with the first word exhanged, seemed, on the great clean deck, fairly to vociferate in thebreeze-and not at all, so far, as was pleasant to remark, to the harsher-ing of that clement. Nothing could have been more to the spectator'spurpose, moreover, than the fact he was ready to hall as the most charac-teristic in the world, the fact that what surrounded him was a rare collec-tion of young men of business returning, as the phrase is, and in thePride of their youth and their might, to their homes, and that, if treas-ures of ' type Were not here to be disengaged, the fault would be all hisown.It was perhaps this simple sense of treasure to be gathered in, it wasdoubtless this very confidence in the objective reality of impressions, sothat they could deliciously be left to ripen, like golden apples, on thetree-it was all this that gave a charm to one s sitting in the orchard, gavea strange and inordinate charm both to the prospect of the jersey shoreand to every inch of the entertainment, so divinely inexpensive, by theway. The immense liberality of the Bay, the noble amplitude of the boat,the great unlocked and tumbled-out city on one hand, and the low,ac-essible mystery of the opposite State on the other, watching any ap-Proach, to all appearance, with so gentle and patient an eye; the gaiety ofthe light, the gladness of the air, and, above all (for it most came back tothat), the unconscious affluence, the variety in identity, of the young menof business: these things somehow left speculation, left curiosity excitingyet kept it beguilingly safe. And what shall I say more of all thatpresently followed than that it sharpened to the last pleasantmess--quitedraining it of fears of fatuity'-that consciousness of strolling in the orch-ard that was all ones own to pluck, and counting, overhead, the applesof gold? I figure, I repeat, under this name those thick-growing items ofthe characteristic that were surely going to drop into one's hand, forvivid illustration, as soon as one could begin to hold it outHeavy with fruit, in particular, was the whole spreading bough thatrustled above me during an aftermoon, a very wonderful afternoon, that Ispent in being ever so wisely driven, driven further and further, into thearge lucidity of-well, of what else shall I call it but a New jerseycondition? That, no doubt, is a loose label for the picture; but impressions had to range themselves, for the hour, as they could. I had comeforth for a view of such parts of the condition as might peep out at thehour and on the spot, and it was clearly not going to be the restlessanalysts own fault if conditions in general, evervwhere, should strikehim as peculiarly, as almost affectingly, at the mercy of observation.Thev came out to meet us, in their actuality, in the soft afternoon; theystood, artless, unconscious, unshamed, at the very gates of Appearandthey might, verily, have been there, in their plenitude, at the call of someprocession of drums and banners--the principal facts of the case beincollected along our passage, to my fancy, quite as if they had been prin-cipal citizens. And then there was the further fact of the case, one s owridiculous property and sign--the romantic, if not the pathetic, circum-stance of ones having had to wait till now to read even such meagremeanings as this into a page at which one s geography might so casilyhave oft have threatened, for twentv minutes, to be almostcomplicating. but the truth was recorded: it was an adventure, uhmistak-ably, to have a revelation made so convenicnt-to be learning at last, inthe maturity of ones powers, what New Jersey might connote. Thiswas nearer than I had ever come to any such experience; and it was nowas if, all mv life, mv curiosity had been greater than I knew. Such, for anexcited sensibility, are the refinements of personal contact. These influthen were present, as a source of glamour, at every turn of ourdrive, and especially present, I imagined, during that longest perspectivewhen the road took no turn, but showed us, with a large, calm consistenav, the straight blue band of summer sea, between the sandy shore anthe reclaimed margin of which the chain of big villas was stretched tight,or at least kept straight, almost as for the close stringing of mmonstrous pearls. The association of the mus thrusts itself somehow into my retrospect, for al the decent humility of the low, quietcoast, where the shadows of the waning afternoon could lengthen attheir will and the chariots of Israel, on the wide and admirable roadcould advance, in the glittering eye of cach array of extraordinarily ex-posed windows, as through an harmonious golden haze
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