Strolling through the Public Garden and the famous Boston Common, the
untutored savage from the raw and unpolished West is awed and his wild
spirit tamed by the magnificent harmony of nature and art. Everywhere the
eye rests upon all that is beautiful in nature, while art has heightened
the pleasing effect without having introduced the artistic jim-jams of a
lost and undone world.
It is a delightful place through which to stroll in the gray morning while
the early worm is getting his just desserts. There, in the midst of a
great city, with the hum of industry and the low rumble of the throbbing
Boston brain dimly heard in the distance, nature asserts herself, and the
weary, sad-eyed stranger may ramble for hours and keep off the grass to
his heart's content.
Nearly every foot of Boston Common is hallowed by some historical
incident. It is filled with reminiscences of a time when liberty was not
overdone in this new world, and the tyrant's heel was resting calmly on
the neck of our forefathers.
In the winter of 1775-6, over 110 years ago, as the ready mathematician
will perceive, 1,700 redcoats swarmed over Boston Common. Later on the
local antipathy to these tourists became so great that they went away.
They are still fled. A few of their descendants were there when I visited
the Common, but they seemed amicable and did not wear red coats. Their
coats this season are made of a large check, with sleeves in it. Their
wardrobe generally stands a larger check than their bank account.
The fountains in the Common and the Public Garden attract the eye of the
stranger, some of them being very beautiful. The Brewer fountain on
Flagstaff hill, presented to the city by the late Gardner Brewer, is very
handsome. It was cast in Paris, and is a bronze copy of a fountain
designed by Lienard of that city. At the base there are figures
representing Neptune with his fabled pickerel stabber, life size; also
Amphitrite, Acis and Galatea. Surviving relatives of these parties may
well feel pleased and gratified over the life-like expression which, the
sculptor has so faithfully reproduced.
But the Coggswell fountain is probably the most eccentric squirt, and one
which at once rivets the eye of the beholder. I do not know who designed
it, but am told that it was modeled by a young man who attended the
codfish autopsy at the market daytimes and gave his nights to art.
The fountain proper consists of two metallic bullheads rampart. They stand
on their bosoms, with their tails tied together at the top. Their mouths
are abnormally distended, and the water gushes forth from their tonsils in
a beautiful stream.
The pose of these classical codfish or bullheads is sublime. In the
spirited Graeco-Roman tussle which they seem to be having, with their
tails abnormally elevated in their artistic catch-as-catch-can or can-can
scuffle, the designer has certainly hit upon a unique and beautiful
impossibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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