Discord Versus Harmony

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

ABOUT thirty years ago, following in the steps of my ancestors, I rediscovered a discovery of theirs, in the form of a region previously unknown to me, lying within a hundred miles of a New England metropolis, yet as far from it in appearance and character as if it were at the antipodes ; and I shall try to describe the place as it used to be, premising that it has no grand or striking features, but all the more, perhaps, is good for human nature’s daily food.

It is a land of flowers, a sort of Lotus Land, consisting of a large peninsula of uneven moor or heath, and oak and pine woods, varied by low hills and many clear ponds, and containing numerous beaches and shallow harbors. The kindly Gulf Stream mollifies not only the sea, but the air, the temperature of which is the despair of any active New England thermometer.

Southward lies a sheltered sound, three to live miles wide, a shining expanse of water, through which streams an endless procession of white sails ; among them, now and then, a dark hull with a long trail of smoke behind it. In the distance is to be seen the blue form of a far-stretching island of picturesque outlines. Midway between the sound and a body of woods toward the north, which serves as a wind-break, is our village, straggling for a couple of miles along the main street like the beads of a time-worn necklace, with side streets, or roads, depending from it like so many loose strands. At one end this street widens into a snug little common, surrounded by graceful elms which send flickering shadows across the grass.

Around it were gathered the best people of the place : the minister; the lawyer, with his little detached office ; the doctor; the bank cashier ; the squire; a few retired ship captains ; and as many faded maids and widows, poor derelicts of the sea. Their houses, mostly of the simplest post-Revolutionarv type, were square, with porches ; hospitable front doors topped by fan-lights ; smallish windows, containing generally sixteen panes ; and a large chimney, or four lesser ones. The fronts were covered with honest white lead prosperously grayed by wind and weather ; the dim green blinds were darkened by time ; and near by stood the favorite old growths, — hollyhocks and phlox, marigolds and Canterbury bells, climbing roses and honeysuckle ; making in all, together with the little meeting-house, a picture of modest completeness, of Quaker-like harmonics, such as sensible folk who do not strain too high may sometimes attain to.

The poorer sort of people were distinguished from the others principally by the size of their dwellings and the number of columnar appendages. In the absence of painting, these houses were adopted by Nature herself, who colored them to match her own boulders. Nearly all were shaded by trees and framed with flowering shrubs, and the well and wellsweep were in frequent use.

The bank, a low, long building of a single story, was unique among the shrines of Plutus. Connected with the cashier’s house by a private door, with a leafy veranda stretching its whole length, it served as a restingplace and Exchange for the village solidities, who, seated in wide armchairs, could easily talk with their townsmen whose horses were being watered at the town pump. It would hardly have surprised one to discover the venerable cashier brushing cobwebs from his eyes, or counting out mouldy Spanish dollars within his vine-covered bower.

A characteristic feature of this country was the windmills, of the old English sort to be found upon the margin of the sea, their vast sails sluggishly turning in the breeze, as well as the labyrinth of wood roads, often bordered with a wild growth of vines and flowers.

Turning to the inhabitants, it may be said that the very spirit of rest, together with an insuperable philosophy, possessed them. They all seemed to say, “There is no joy but calm,” and the universal refrain was, “I guess it ’ll do to-morrer.” From the worthy minister — who, from being a fisher of men, became intermediately a simple bluefisher — to the village losel who sat by the blacksmith’s fire or lolled in the sun on the lee side of something, there was no exception. There were, indeed, Sybarites like “ Cap’n ” Cottle, who, not satisfied with his natural blessings, inclosed his roomy porch with old sails, fixing his hammock between, and, pipe in mouth, might be found any summer afternoon enjoying “the trades,” as he called the daily southwest breeze from the sound. And in truth, the flapping and creaking of the canvas straining at its rope-fastenings, and the sweep of the wind through the trees, mimicking the rush of water in a vessel’s wake, half persuaded the crippled old salt, as he swung with eyes partly closed, that he was bowling across the Pacific, and not “tied to er hitchin’-post. ”

From beside this post — that is to say, the pillar of his porch — I have often watched the suu set in gold and amber behind the village snugly nestled among the trees, showing a dark gray roof here and there, and the low tower of the Academy among willows ; the slender meeting-house spire being bathed in splendor, while nearer fields and hollows lay darkly suffused with a thousand ineffable lines of green, and some shadow-bordered pond reflected the pale violet of the zenith in its still mirror, — a perfect harmony without a discordant note.

But, unfortunately, the spirit of discord lay dormant in the hearts of my fellowmetropolitans who enjoy with me the privileges of this happy land. One of these, having bought a house in the village street, undertook to modernize it by the addition of a veranda, and an L which had no affinity with anything, painting it a ghastly white, and the roofs bright red ; the whole screaming defiance to the neighborhood, to which it yet imparted a shabby air, so that the thriftiest householders were goaded into painting their good gray homesteads, adding, as a matter of course, dazzling green blinds. Thus fell the first blow upon the old-time harmony of our village ; the contagion of new paint quickly extending even to the common.

Another man from the metropolis, having possessed himself of the roomy house of a deceased sea captain, at first kept his bauds from it, but presently must put up a huge barn and outbuildings, by way of playing farmer; and, like his fellow-Philistine, instead of conforming the new to the old, built them with no sort of reference to anything he had found, coloring them a dirty chocolate, possibly with an eye to “ not showing dirt.”

Another little rift within our lute was the few tiny cottages, like cardboard boxes, planted on the edge of a bluff commanding a wide sweep of ocean. These were experiments of exotic excursionists and amateur fishermen to provide themselves with shelters at the smallest outlay of money and trouble, but, unhappily, not without an ambition for what is called ornament, taking in this ease the form of a sawed fringe along gables, and windows with pointed tops. Today, this toadstool growth, fallen into other hands, enlarged but not beautified, litters the water’s edge like a trumpery toy village left to itself by a child of some giant race tired of play ; its whimsical absurdities of color suggesting his deranged and dirty paint-box.

It might have been hoped that people with more money and education, who, following some of the first-comers, indulged in architecture, would have done much better than they. But no. Having generally elected to build on the bare, windy level between the main street and the sound, in quest of a prospect, they have had no regard to the effect of their houses in relation to each other or the surroundings, or to the disastrous result of opposed styles and forms seen behind or against one another in various combinations. Neither has any attempt been made by tree-planting to prevent or soften these strange groupings. High houses, low houses, short and long, white and yellow houses, black houses and red, stand staring at each other and at the beholder, as if asking how they came where they are, and why, their conditions and purpose being alike, they should be made to masquerade in such diverse and harlequin attire. Each householder has followed his own whims, just as in the case of the toy village, neither thinking nor earing that the ugliness of one bouse is the injury of all, and that a neighboring exterior concerns one as much or more than one’s own. A rampant individuality and a deficient sense of harmony must have much to do with this.

We have yet another small class of rich persons who own a tract of slopes and hills somewhat apart from the village. They assume something of manorial dignity, and their influence, wisely used, might have been most effective for good. What have they done beside incidentally raising the cost of living, giving the town the benefit of their taxes, and encouraging shopkeepers who have added carpenter’s disfigurements to the others which encumber the main street ? Alas ! they have shown no more taste than their neighbors, though greatly befriended by adjacent woods and elevated sites. They have made the roads dusty with drags and wagonettes, and marred the delicate profiles of the hills with clumsy water-tanks and rattling skeleton windmills of Western invention ; and these eyesores are multiplying everywhere, while the mill of the early days has gone to rack and ruin. Finally, by way of climax, these rich people have caused two churches to be built : one so crude and barbaricthat its very stones seem to cry out against it ; the other, near the common, so out of place with its smug reproduction of Fnglisli Pointed architecture that, considering its surroundings, one is greatly tempted either to demolish the church or burn the village.

It is now beginning to be said that “ a real live town ” such as ours promises to be should have an electric road, “ to make it handier to git reound.” If it is to come, it would be handiest to carry it across the common, under the shadow of the two spires. Possibly a dummy engine attached to a car, and expected to take its water from the town pump, might prove profitable to investors.

For myself, I had thought of organizing an Anti-Village-Extinction Association before our paradise should be altogether lost ; but being told that the local Village Improvement Society, under the auspices of our wealthy residents, has succeeded only in planting a few trees, and in debating the question of buying a new watering-cart without practical results, I am led to think it might not be a success.