Part 6

Again: inordinate fashion is incompatible with happiness. Those who depend for their comfort upon the admiration of others are subject to frequent disappointment. Somebody will criticise their appearance, or surpass them in brilliancy, or will receive more attention. Oh! the jealousy, and detraction, and heart-burnings of those who move in this bewildered maze!

The clock strikes one, and the company begins to disperse. The host has done everything to make all his guests happy; but now that they are on the street, hear their criticisms of everybody and everything. "Did you see her in such and such apparel?" "Wasn't she a perfect fright!" "What a pity that such an one is so awkward and uncouth!" "Well, really,--I would rather never be spoken to than be seen with such a man as that!"

Poor butterflies! Bright wings do not always bring happiness. "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." The revelations of high life that come to the challenge and the fight are only the occasional croppings out of disquietudes that are, underneath, like the stars of heaven for multitude, but like the demons of the pit for hate. The misery that to-night in the cellar cuddles up in the straw is not so utter as the princely disquietude which stalks through splendid drawing-rooms, brooding over the slights and offences of high life. The bitterness of trouble seems not so unfitting, when drunk out of a pewter mug, as when it pours from the chased lips of a golden chalice. In the sharp crack of the voluptuary's pistol, putting an end to his earthly misery, I hear the confirmation that in a hollow, fastidious life there is no peace.

Again: Excessive devotion to fashion is productive of physical disease, mental imbecility, and spiritual withering.

Apparel insufficient to keep out the cold and the rain, or so fitted upon the person that the functions of life are restrained; late hours, filled with excitement and feasting; free draughts of wine, that make one not beastly intoxicated, but only fashionably drunk; and luxurious indolence--are the instruments by which this unreal life pushes its disciples into valetudinarianism and the grave. Along the walks of high life Death goes a mowing--and such harvests as are reaped! Materia medica has been exhausted to find curatives for these physiological devastations. Dropsies, cancers, consumptions, gout, and almost every infirmity in all the realm of pathology, have been the penalty paid. To counteract the damage, pharmacy has gone forth with medicament, panacea, elixir, embrocation, salve, and cataplasm.

To-night, with swollen feet, upon cushioned ottoman, and groaning with aches innumerable, is the votary of luxurious living, not half so happy as his groom or coal-heaver.

Fashion is the world's undertaker, and drives thousands of hearses to Laurel Hill and Greenwood.

But, worse than that, this folly is an intellectual depletion. This endless study of proprieties and etiquette, patterns and styles, is bedwarfing to the intellect. I never knew a man or a woman of extreme fashion that knew much. How belittling the study of the cut of a coat, or the tie of a cravat, or the wrinkle in a shoe, or the color of a ribbon! How they are worried if something gets untied, or hangs awry, or is not nicely adjusted! With a mind capable of measuring the height and depth of great subjects; able to unravel mysteries; to walk through the universe; to soar up into the infinity of God's attributes,--hovering perpetually over a new style of mantilla! I have known men, reckless as to their character, and regardless of interests momentous and eternal, exasperated by the shape of a vest-button!

What is the matter with that woman--wrought up into the agony of despair? O, her muff is out of fashion!

Worse than all--this folly is not satisfied until it has extirpated every moral sentiment, and blasted the soul. A wardrobe is the rock upon which many a soul has been riven. The excitement of a luxurious life has been the vortex that has swallowed up more souls than the Maelstrom off Norway ever devoured ships. What room for elevating themes in a heart filled with the trivial and unreal? Who can wonder that in this haste for sun-gilded bawbles and winged thistle-down, men should tumble into ruin? The travellers to destruction are not all clothed in rags. On that road chariot jostles against chariot; and behind steeds in harness golden-plated and glittering, they go down, coach and four, herald and postilion, racketing on the hot pavements of hell. Clear the track! Bazaars hang out their colors over the road; and trees of tropical fruitfulness overbranch the way. No sound of woe disturbs the air; but all is light and song, and wine and gorgeousness. The world comes out to greet the dazzling procession with Hurrah! and Hurrah! But, suddenly, there is a halt and an outcry of dismay, and an overthrow worse than the Red Sea tumbling upon the Egyptians. Shadow of grave-stones upon finest silk! Wormwood squeezed into impearled goblets! Death, with one cold breath, withering the leaves and freezing the fountains.

In the wild tumult of the last day--the mountains falling, the heavens flying, the thrones uprising, the universe assembling; amid the boom of the last great thunder-peal, and under the crackling of a burning world--what will become of the fop and the dandy?

He who is genuinely refined will be useful and happy. There is no gate that a gentleman's hand cannot open. During his last sickness there will be a timid knock at the basement door by those who have come to see how he is.

But watch the career of one thoroughly artificial. Through inheritance, or perhaps his own skill, having obtained enough for purposes of display, he feels himself thoroughly established. He sits aloof from the common herd, and looks out of his window upon the poor man, and says--"Put that dirty wretch off my steps immediately!" On Sabbath days he finds the church, but mourns the fact that he must worship with so many of the inelegant, and says, "They are perfectly awful!" "That man that you put in my pew had a coat on his back that did not cost five dollars." He struts through life unsympathetic with trouble, and says, "I cannot be bothered." Is delighted with some doubtful story of Parisian life, but thinks that there are some very indecent things in the Bible. Walks arm in arm with a millionnaire, but does not know his own brother. Loves to be praised for his splendid house; and when told that he looks younger than ten years ago, says--"Well, really; do you think so!"

But the brief strut of his life is about over. Up-stairs--he dies. No angel wings hovering about him. No gospel promises kindling up the darkness;--but exquisite embroidery, elegant pictures, and a bust of Shakespeare on the mantel. The pulses stop. The minister comes in to read of the Resurrection, that day when the dead shall come up--both he that died on the floor, and he that expired under princely upholstery. He is carried out to burial. Only a few mourners, but a great array of carriages. Not one common man at the funeral. No befriended orphan to weep a tear upon his grave. No child of want pressing through the ranks of the weeping, saying--"He is the last friend I have; and I must see him."

What now? He was a great man: Shall not chariots of salvation come down to the other side of the Jordan, and escort him up to the palace? Shall not the angels exclaim--"Turn out! a prince is coming." Will the bells chime? Will there be harpers with their harps, and trumpeters with their trumpets?

No! No! No! There will be a shudder, as though a calamity had happened. Standing on heaven's battlement, a watchman will see something shoot past, with fiery downfall, and shriek: "Wandering star--for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever!"

With the funeral pageant the brilliant career terminated. There was a great array of carriages.

AFTER MIDNIGHT.

When night came down on Babylon, Nineveh, and Jerusalem, they needed careful watching, otherwise the incendiary's torch might have been thrust into the very heart of the metropolitan splendor; or enemies, marching from the hills, might have forced the gates. All night long, on top of the wall and in front of the gates, might be heard the measured step of the watchman on his solitary beat; silence hung in air, save as some passer-by raised the question: "Watchman, what of the night?"

It is to me a deeply suggestive and solemn thing to see a man standing guard by night. It thrilled through me, as at the gate of an arsenal in Charleston, the question once smote me, "Who comes there?" followed by the sharp command: "Advance and give the countersign." Every moral teacher stands on picket, or patrols the wall as watchman. His work is to sound the alarm; and whether it be in the first watch, in the second watch, in the third watch, or in the fourth watch, to be vigilant until the daybreak flings its "morning glories" of blooming cloud across the arching trellis of the sky.

The ancients divided their night into four parts--the first watch, from six to nine; the second, from nine to twelve; the third, from twelve to three; and the fourth, from three to six.

I speak now of the city in the third watch, or from twelve to three o'clock.

I never weary of looking upon the life and brilliancy of the city in the first watch. That is the hour when the stores are closing. The laboring men, having quitted the scaffolding and the shop, are on their way home. It rejoices me to give them my seat in the city car. They have stood and hammered away all day. Their feet are weary. They are exhausted with the tug of work. They are mostly cheerful. With appetites sharpened on the swift turner's wheel and the carpenter's whetstone, they seek the evening meal. The clerks, too, have broken away from the counter, and with brain weary of the long line of figures, and the whims of those who go a-shopping, seek the face of mother, or wife and child. The merchants are unharnessing themselves from their anxieties, on their way up the street. The boys that lock up are heaving away at the shutters, shoving the heavy bolts, and taking a last look at the fire to see that all is safe. The streets are thronged with young men, setting out from the great centres of bargain-making.

Let idlers clear the street, and give right of way to the besweated artisans and merchants! They have earned their bread, and are now on their way home to get it.

The lights in full jet hang over ten thousand evening repasts--the parents at either end of the table, the children between. Thank God! "who setteth the solitary in families!"

A few hours later, and all the places of amusement, good and bad, are in full tide. Lovers of art, catalogue in hand, stroll through the galleries and discuss the pictures. The ball-room is resplendent with the rich apparel of those who, on either side of the white, glistening boards, await the signal from the orchestra. The footlights of the theatre flash up; the bell rings, and the curtain rises; and out from the gorgeous scenery glide the actors, greeted with the vociferation of the expectant multitudes. Concert-halls are lifted into enchantment with the warble of one songstress, or swept out on a sea of tumultuous feeling by the blast of brazen instruments. Drawing-rooms are filled with all gracefulness of apparel, with all sweetness of sound, with all splendor of manner; mirrors are catching up and multiplying the scene, until it seems as if in infinite corridors there were garlanded groups advancing and retreating.

The out-door air rings with laughter, and with the moving to and fro of thousands on the great promenades. The dashing span, adrip with the foam of the long country ride, rushes past as you halt at the curb-stone.

Mirth, revelry, beauty, fashion, magnificence mingle in the great metropolitan picture, until the thinking man goes home to think more seriously, and the praying man to pray more earnestly.