Gala-Days [75]
seemed to say or do anything with a view to the impression it would make, or even to suspect that they should make an impression. They were just fond enough of dress to array themselves with neatness, freshness, a pretty little touch of youthful ornament, and a very nice sense of fitness. But they were never occupied with their dress, and they had only as much as was necessary,--though that may have been a mother's care,--and what of them was not the result of wise parental care? They did not talk about GENTLEMEN. They had evidently been brought up in familiar contact with the thing, so that no glamour hung about the word. They talked of places, people, books, flowers, all simple things, in a simple way. They were interested in music, in pictures, in what they saw and what they did. They sang and played with fresh, natural grace, to the delight and applause of all, and stopped soon enough to make us wish for more, but not soon enough to seem capricious or disobliging or pert.
But my pen fails to picture them to you as I saw them,--the one with her grave, sweet, artless dignity, a perfect Honoria, crowned with the soft glory of a dawning womanhood; but the other docile and sprightly, careless, but not thoughtless. The beauty of their characters lay in the perfect balance. Their qualities were set off against each other, and symmetry was the result. They combined opposites into a fascinating harmony. They had all the ease and unconcern of refined association, without the smallest admixture of forwardness. They were neither bold nor bashful. They neither pampered nor neglected themselves,--neither fawned upon nor insulted others. They were everything that they ought to be, and nothing that they ought not to be, and I wished I could put them in a cage, and carry them through the country, and say: "Look, girls, this is what I mean. This is what I wish you to be."
We wound around the mountains, and wandered back and forth through the defiles like the Israelites in the wilderness, seeing everything that was to be seen, and a good deal more. We alighted incessantly, and struck into little wood-paths after cascades and falls, and got them to, sometimes. Of course we penetrated into the dripping Flume, and paddled on the Pool, or the Basin,--I have forgotten which they call it,-- for a pool is but a big basin, and a basin a small pool. Of course we sailed and shouted on Echo Lake, and did obeisance to the Old Man of the Mountains and his numerous and nondescript progeny; for he has played pranks up there, and infected the whole surrounding country with a furor of personality. The Old Man himself I acknowledged. That great stone face is clearly and calmly profiled against the sky. His knee, too, is susceptible of proof, for I climbed it. A white horse in the vicinity of Conway is visible to the imaginative eye, and, by a little forcing of vision and conscience, one can make out a turtle, all but the head and legs. But there is a limit to all things, and when Halicarnassus held up both hands in astonishment and admiration, and declared that he saw a kangaroo, and then, in short and rapid succession, a rhinoceros, an armadillo, and a crocodile, I felt, in the words of General Banks, "We have now reached that limit," and shut down the gates upon credulity.
At a little village among the mountains we met our friends, and stopped a week or two, loath to leave the charmed spot. "Where?" Never mind. A place where the sun shines, and lavender-hued clouds whirl in craggy, defiant, thunderous masses around imperturbable mountain-tops; and vapors, pearly and amber-tinted, have not forgotten to float softly among the valleys; and evening skies fling out their pink and purple banner; and stars throb, and glow, and flash, with a radiant life that is not of the earth;--where great rivers have not yet put on the majesty of manhood, but trill over pebbles, curl around rocks, ripple against banks, waltz little eddies, spread dainty pools for gay little trout, dash up saucy spray into the eyes of bending ferns, mock the
But my pen fails to picture them to you as I saw them,--the one with her grave, sweet, artless dignity, a perfect Honoria, crowned with the soft glory of a dawning womanhood; but the other docile and sprightly, careless, but not thoughtless. The beauty of their characters lay in the perfect balance. Their qualities were set off against each other, and symmetry was the result. They combined opposites into a fascinating harmony. They had all the ease and unconcern of refined association, without the smallest admixture of forwardness. They were neither bold nor bashful. They neither pampered nor neglected themselves,--neither fawned upon nor insulted others. They were everything that they ought to be, and nothing that they ought not to be, and I wished I could put them in a cage, and carry them through the country, and say: "Look, girls, this is what I mean. This is what I wish you to be."
We wound around the mountains, and wandered back and forth through the defiles like the Israelites in the wilderness, seeing everything that was to be seen, and a good deal more. We alighted incessantly, and struck into little wood-paths after cascades and falls, and got them to, sometimes. Of course we penetrated into the dripping Flume, and paddled on the Pool, or the Basin,--I have forgotten which they call it,-- for a pool is but a big basin, and a basin a small pool. Of course we sailed and shouted on Echo Lake, and did obeisance to the Old Man of the Mountains and his numerous and nondescript progeny; for he has played pranks up there, and infected the whole surrounding country with a furor of personality. The Old Man himself I acknowledged. That great stone face is clearly and calmly profiled against the sky. His knee, too, is susceptible of proof, for I climbed it. A white horse in the vicinity of Conway is visible to the imaginative eye, and, by a little forcing of vision and conscience, one can make out a turtle, all but the head and legs. But there is a limit to all things, and when Halicarnassus held up both hands in astonishment and admiration, and declared that he saw a kangaroo, and then, in short and rapid succession, a rhinoceros, an armadillo, and a crocodile, I felt, in the words of General Banks, "We have now reached that limit," and shut down the gates upon credulity.
At a little village among the mountains we met our friends, and stopped a week or two, loath to leave the charmed spot. "Where?" Never mind. A place where the sun shines, and lavender-hued clouds whirl in craggy, defiant, thunderous masses around imperturbable mountain-tops; and vapors, pearly and amber-tinted, have not forgotten to float softly among the valleys; and evening skies fling out their pink and purple banner; and stars throb, and glow, and flash, with a radiant life that is not of the earth;--where great rivers have not yet put on the majesty of manhood, but trill over pebbles, curl around rocks, ripple against banks, waltz little eddies, spread dainty pools for gay little trout, dash up saucy spray into the eyes of bending ferns, mock the