Home as Found: Sequel to "Homeward Bound"Cooper, James Fenimore
General
Home as Found: Sequel to "Homeward Bound"
Cooper, James Fenimore
United States -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
"But look at the hands and the feet, dear Mrs. Bloomfield. Those are
French gloves, too, or I am mistaken."
"I will not positively affirm that the French gloves actually belong
to the dairy-maids, though I have known even this prodigy; but, rely
on it, you see here the proper female counterparts of the men, and
singularly delicate and pretty females are they, for persons of their
class. This is what you call democratic coarseness and vulgarity,
Miss Effingham tells me, in England."
Sir George smiled, but, as what it is the fashion of me country to
call 'the exercises,' just then began, he made no other answer.
These exercises commenced with instrumental music, certainly the
weakest side of American civilization. That of the occasion of which
we write, had three essential faults, all of which are sufficiently
general to be termed characteristic, in a national point of view. In
the first place, the instruments themselves were bad; in the next
place, they were assorted without any regard to harmony; and, in the
last place, their owners did not know how to use them. As in certain
American _cities_--the word is well applied here--she is esteemed the
greatest belle who can contrive to utter her nursery sentiments in
the loudest voice, so in Templeton, was he considered the ablest
musician who could give the greatest _éclat_ to a false note. In a
word, clamour was the one thing needful, and as regards time, that
great regulator of all harmonies, Paul Powis whispered to the captain
that the air they had just been listening to, resembled what the
sailors call a 'round robin;' or a particular mode of signing
complaints practised by seamen, in which the nicest observer cannot
tell which is the beginning, or which the end.
It required all the Parisian breeding of Mademoiselle Viefville to
preserve her gravity during this overture, though she kept her bright
animated, French-looking eyes, roaming over the assembly, with an air
of delight that, as Mr. Bragg would say, made her very popular. No
one else in the party from the Wigwam, Captain Truck excepted, dared
look up, but each kept his or her eyes riveted on the floor, as if in
silent enjoyment of the harmonies. As for the honest old seaman,
there was as much melody in the howling of a gale to his
unsophisticated ears, as in any thing else, and he saw no difference
between this feat of the Templeton band and the sighings of old
Boreas; and, to say the truth, our nautical critic was not so much
out of the way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account