Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My FancyWhitman, Walt
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Complete Prose Works: Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy
Whitman, Walt
American literature
Ten thousand vehicles careering through the Park this perfect afternoon.
Such a show! and I have seen all--watch'd it narrowly, and at
my leisure. Private barouches, cabs and coupés, some fine
horseflesh--lapdogs, footmen, fashions, foreigners, cockades on hats,
crests on panels--the full oceanic tide of New York's wealth and
"gentility." It was an impressive, rich, interminable circus on a grand
scale, full of action and color in the beauty of the day, under
the clear sun and moderate breeze. Family groups, couples, single
drivers--of course dresses generally elegant--much "style," (yet perhaps
little or nothing, even in that direction, that fully justified itself.)
Through the windows of two or three of the richest carriages I saw
faces almost corpse-like, so ashy and listless. Indeed the whole affair
exhibited less of sterling America, either in spirit or countenance,
than I had counted on from such a select mass-spectacle. I suppose, as
a proof of limitless wealth, leisure, and the aforesaid "gentility," it
was tremendous. Yet what I saw those hours (I took two other occasions,
two other afternoons to watch the same scene,) confirms a thought that
haunts me every additional glimpse I get of our top-loftical general or
rather exceptional phases of wealth and fashion in this country--namely,
that they are ill at ease, much too conscious, cased in too many
cerements, and far from happy--that there is nothing in them which
we who are poor and plain need at all envy, and that instead of the
perennial smell of the grass and woods and shores, their typical
redolence is of soaps and essences, very rare may be, but suggesting the
barber shop--something that turns stale and musty in a few hours anyhow.
Perhaps the show on the horseback road was prettiest. Many groups
(threes a favorite number,) some couples, some singly--many
ladies--frequently horses or parties dashing along on a full run--fine
riding the rule--a few really first-class animals. As the afternoon
waned, the wheel'd carriages grew less, but the saddle-riders seemed to
increase. They linger'd long--and I saw some charming forms and faces.
DEPARTING OF THE BIG STEAMERS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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