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It is a good thing to have children in the country.
Children in the country are regular old-fashioned
boys and girls, not pocket editions of men and
women as they are in town. In the metropolis
there is no representation of our species in the tadpole
state. The word “lad” has become obsolete.
Fast young men and fast young women repudiate
the existence of that respectable, antique institution,
childhood. It is different in the country. My
eldest does not call me “Governor,” but simply
“Father;” and although in his ninth year, still
treats his mother with some show of respect.

Our next boy (turned seven) has prematurely
given up smoking ratan; and our four-year-old
girl is destitute both of affectation and dyspesia.
As for the present baby, his character is not yet

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fully developed, but having observed no symptoms
of incipient depravity in him up to this time, we
begin to believe the country is a good place for
children. One thing about it is certain, children
in the country get an immense deal of open-air-training
that is utterly impracticable in town. A
boy or girl, brought up “under glass” (to use a
horticultural phrase) is apt to “blow” prematurely;
but, although it is rather rough culture, still I
think the influence of rocks, rivers, leaves, trees,
buds, blossoms, birds, fresh air, and blue sky, better,
for the undeveloped mind of a child, than
that of a French nurse, no matter how experienced
she may be. I think so, and so does Mrs. Sparrowgrass.

There is one thing, however, that is mortifying
about it. When our friends come up from town
with their young ones, our boys and girl look so fat
and gross beside them, that we have to blush at the
visible contrast. Mrs. Peppergrass, our respected
relative, brought up her little girl the other day, a
perfect French rainbow so far as dress went, and
there they sat—the petite, pale Parisienne of four
years, and the broad chested, chubby, red-cheeked
rustic of the same age, with a frock only diversified

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by the holes scratched in it, and a clean dimity
apron just put on, with a gorget of fruit marks on
the breast that spoke plainly of last summer—there
they sat, side by side, cousins both, and who would
have known it. “My dear,” said I, to Mrs. Sparrowgrass,
after our respected relative had departed,
“did you observe the difference between those children?
one was a perfect little lady, and the other”—
“Yes,” interrupted Mrs. Sparrowgrass, “I did;
and if I had had a child behave in that way, I
would be ashamed to go anywhere. That child did
nothing but fret, and tease her mother for cake,
from the time she came into the house till she went
out of it. Yes, indeed, our Louise was, as you say,
a real little lady beside her.”

Finding I had been misunderstood, I kept silent.
I do not know anything so sure to prevent controversy
as silence—especially in the country.

“Speech is silver, silence is golden.”

There is one institution, which, in a child's-eye
point of view, possesses a majesty and beauty in
the country altogether unappreciable in a large
city. I allude to the Menagerie! For weeks,

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juvenile curiosity has been stimulated by pictorial
representations at the Dépôt and Post-office. There
is the likeness of the man who goes into the cage
with the wild beasts, holding out two immense
lions at arms' length. There is the giraffe with his
neck reaching above a lofty palm tree, and the boa
constrictor with a yawning tiger in his convoluted
embrace. If you observe the countenances of the
small fry collected in front of a bill of this description
in the rural districts, you will see in each and
all, a remarkable enlargement of the eye, expressive
of wonder.

“Conjecture, expectation, and surmise,”

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camels; then other wagons all mystery and red
panels; then pie-bald horses and ponies, and then
the rear-guard of the caravan drags its slow length
along. “My dear,” said Mrs. Sparrowgrass, “we
must take the children and go to the menagerie.”
This seemed a reasonable request, and of course we
went. When we approached the big tent we heard
the music of wind instruments, the sound of a gong,
and the roaring of lions. This divided our juvenile
party at once, one half wanted to go in, and the
other half wanted to keep out; Mrs. Sparrowgrass
joined the seceders, and in consequence, we separated
at the entrance of the canvas edifice. When
we got in we heard that the lion-tamer had finished
his performance, and that the elephant had been
around, but there was a great deal of sport going
on in the ring—the monkey was riding on his pony.
At this announcement the young ones were immensely
excited, and tried to get a peep at it, but,
although I held them up at arms' length, they
could see neither monkey nor pony. Then I tried
to work a passage for them to the front, but the
ring being invested with a border of country people
thirteen deep, this was out of the question. So I
concluded to wait until the crowd dispersed, and to

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keep the young Sparrowgrasses in good humor, I
held them up and let them read the signs on the
tops of the cages. “Royal Bengal Tiger”—
“Black Lion from Nubia”—“Yellow Asiatic
Lion”—“The Gnu”—“White Polar Bear,” &c.,
&c. By and by the clapping of hands announced
the close of the performance in the ring, and the
dense mass of people became detached, so we made
our way through the crowd towards the elephant.
All of a sudden we saw a general rush of the crowd
in our direction, and we heard somebody say that
“something had broke loose!” Not being of an inquisitive
turn of mind, I did not ask what it was, but
at once retired under a wagon load of pelicans, and
put the young Sparrowgrasses though a door which
I made in the side of the tent with my pruning-knife.
The people poured out of the big door and from
under the edges of the tent, but they had not run far
before they stopped, and proceeded to make inquiries.
Some said it was the polar bear, whereupon
several respectable looking men suddenly climbed
over a fence; others said it was a monkey, at which
all the boys set up a shout. The intrepid conduct of
the cash-taker had much to do with restoring confidence.
He stood there, at the entrance of the tent,

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smoking a cigar with imperturbable firmness. So
we all concluded to go back again and see the rest
of the show. When we got to the door we found
the entrance fee was twenty-five cents. We represented
that we had been in before. “That may be,”
replied the cash-taker, “but we don't sell season
tickets at this establishment.”

Finding the discussion was likely to be violent
upon this point, I retired, with some suspicions of
having been slightly swindled. When I got home,
Mrs. S. asked me “if we had seen the elephant?” I
told her the whole story. “Well,” said she, “that's
just the way I thought it would be. I'm glad I
did not go in.”

It seems to me the country is marvellously beautiful
in winter time. The number of bright days
and moonlight nights is surprising. The sky is not
less blue in January than in June, nor is a winter
landscape without its charms. The lost verdure of
the woods is compensated by the fine frost-work
woven in the delicate tracery of the trees. To see
a noble forest wreathed in icy gems, is one of the
transcendental glories of creation. You look through
long arcades of iridescent light, and the vision has
an awful majesty, compared with which the most

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brilliant cathedral windows pale their ineffectual
fires. It is the crystal palace of Jehovah! Within
its sounding aisles a thought even of the city seems
irreverent. We begin to love the country more
and more.

Here you begin to apprehend the wonderful order
of creation, the lengthening days after the winter
solstice; all the phenomena of meteoric machinery,
every change in the wind, every change in the temperature;
in the leafless trees you see a surprising
variety of forms. The maple, the oak, the chestnut,
the hickory, the beech, have each an architecture
as distinct as those of the five orders. Then
the spring is tardy in town, but if you have a hot-bed
in the country, you see its young green firstlings
bursting from the rich mould long before the
city has shaken off the thraldom of winter.

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One day in the month of March, I heard there
was to be some sport on the Nepperhan in the way
of fishing, so I took my young ones to see it. The
Nepperhan is an historical river—the Tiber of
Yonkers. It runs in a straight line for about forty
yards from the Hudson, then proudly turns to the
right, then curves to the left, and in fact exhibits all
the peculiarities of the Mississippi without its turbulence
and monotony. It was a cold day in
spring, the air was chill, the sky grey, the Palisades
still ribbed with snow. As we approached
the stream we saw that a crowd had collected on
the deck of a wrecked coal-barge moored close to
the bank, and on the side of the bank opposite to
the barge, a man was standing, with one foot in
the water, holding up the end of a net stretched
across the tide. The other end of the net was fastened
to the barge, and the bight, as the sailors say,
was in the water. In the middle of the crowd
there stood upright a fair, portly-looking man of
good presence. His face looked like a weather-beated,
sign-board portrait of General Washington
with white whiskers. He was looking up the
stream, which from this point made a rush for the
south for about one hundred feet, then gave it up,

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and turned off due east, around a clump of bushes.
What particular animosity General Washington
had to this part of the stream I could not imagine,
but he was damning that clump of bushes with a
zeal worthy of a better cause. I never heard such
imprecations. The oaths flew from his lips, up
stream, as the sparks fly from an express locomotive
at midnight. Dr. Slop's remarks concerning the
knots in the string of the green bag of surgical instruments,
beside them, was like tender pity. Such
ill-natured, uncharitable, unamiable, mordacious,
malignant, pitiless, ruthless, fell, cruel, ferocious,
proscriptive, sanguinary, unkind execrations were
never fulminated against a clump of bushes before.
By-and-by a flat-boat, filled with men, turned the
corner and came broadside down stream. The men
were splashing the water on every side of the flat-boat
to drive the fish towards the net! They had
oars, sticks, boards, boughs, and branches. Then
I understood General Washington. He had been
offended because the flat-boat was behind time.

Now it was all right: I saw a placid expression
spreading over his weather-beaten countenance, as
a drop of oil will spread over rough water, and
mollify its turbulent features. The flat-boat, or

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scow, was long enough to stretch almost from shore
to shore. The shouts and splashes were frightening
the fish, and below us, in the water, we could
occasionally see a spectral sucker darting hither
and thither. I looked again at General Washington.
He had untied the end of the net, and was
holding it in his hand. His face expressed intense
inward satisfaction—deep—not vain-glorious.
Near and nearer swept the broadside of the boat,
down stream was the net, between both were the
accumulating fish. General Washington's hand
trembled—he was getting excited. Here it comes,
close upon us, and then—by the whiskers of the
Great Mogul! one end of the scow grounded on
the opposite bank, the bow rounded to, and cat-fish,
perch, bull-head, and sucker, darted through the
gap, and made tracks for the most secluded parts
of the Nepperhan! But he who held the net
was equal to the emergency—he cursed the boat
out at right angles in an instant—a small minority
of the fish still remained, and these were driven
into the net. General Washington, with an impulse
like that of a Titan rooting up an oak, pulled up
his end of the net—the fish were fairly above the
water—a smile gleamed out of his weather-beaten

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face like a flash from a cannon—and then—then
it was—just then—the treacherous mesh split! and
like a thread of silver fire, the finny prey disappeared
through the rent, and made a bee-line for
the Hudson.

“Nary fish!” said an innocent bystander. General
Washington turned an eye upon him that was
like a Drummond light, dropped the net, took off
his hat, and then proceeded to give that individual
such an account of his birth, parentage and family
connections, from the earliest settlement of Westchester
county to the present time, that a parental
regard for the ears of the young Sparrowgrassii,
induced me to hurry them off the coal-barge in the
quickest kind of time. But long after the scene
was out of sight, I could hear, rolling along the face
of the rocky Palisades, the reverberations of the
big oaths, the resonant shadows of the huge anathemas,
that had been the running accompaniments
to the sucker fishing on the Nepperhan!

p529-073

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