THE DAISY; OR, THREE
VISITS
TO NEWPORT. BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.
It was twenty years ago when I visited New York for the first time. As the sloop threaded her way among the green islands in the harbor and approached the landing, I was struck with the air of desertion that prevailed. No ship-ping lay at anchor. The capacious red, or unpainted, warehouses seemed unused. No rival hackmen rent the air with obtrusive clamor; no nimble porters strove for my trunk. Boatbuilders laid down their tools to see the rare phenomenon of an arrival, and hatless children clustered around “the stranger.”
After helping to bestow my baggage upon a wheelbarrow, trundled by a barefooted boy who had volunteered to serve me as a guide, I walked up Long Wharf. On my way, the old clock in the State House solemnly struck the hour of noon, but midnight itself could not have made Washington Square more silent. A sleepy horse was hitched to one of the cannons that marked its western limit; a permitted estray was drinking from the moss-grown tub at the fountain; robins were flitting among the poplars in “the mall," and nests of the orioles hung swaying from the drooping boughs of the elms.
Reaching the then-solitary public house, I was soon summoned to dinner, the meal being served at one, that being the fashionable hour when there was no fashion. A long afternoon thus gained, I bespoke the only hack in the place and spent some hours visiting the notabilities of the vicinity. I entered the chamber whence the daring Barton hurried the astounded Prescott, and I listened to the gurgling of the brook that then flowed in greater volume along the ravine by which they gained the shore. I trod the secluded Whitehall, where dwelt the great-hearted Berkeley, and rested beneath the Hanging Rocks, those “permanent crags,” in whose shade he wrote his “Minute Philosopher." I crossed the beaches whose grey sands had so often been imprinted by the feet of Malbone and of Alston, now unmarked save by the sea bird. I stood on the brink of purgatory.
To me, the precincts of the town had a peculiar charm. The quiet streets, the dusky shops, the aristocratic mansions, the English aspect of the inhabitants, and the deep, broad stamp of conscious respectability were full of interest.
After breakfast the next morning, I sauntered forth again. The site of the Ocean House was a grain field, and the Atlantic House was a potato patch. I bent my steps, at last, toward the Red Wood Library. The air around it was soft with vapors from the misty Atlantic and redolent of clover, elder, and honeysuckle; the air of primitive Eden could not have been more "deli¬cate." The only sounds that broke the stillness were the twittering of the busy swallows and the whir of the grasshoppers startled by my feet.
Just then a bell of singular sweetness rang out, and following its melodious guidance, I came to that venerable structure, Trinity Church. It was St. Bartholomew’s Day, and the congregation, three-fourths of whom were women, were assembling for worship. Passing through the graveyard, overgrown with tall grass, clover, and hemp, I entered the open door. Soon after, the reverend rector, in gown and bands, passed up the middle aisle and entered the vestry room, from which he almost immediately emerged again in the surplice and took his place at the reading desk. As he turned the leaves of the big, red Bible and prayer book, marking the pages for the morning’s service, his mild, blue eye wan¬ dered over his little flock, as if to note the pre¬ sent and the absent. He might well do that, for his people were indeed his people—the days of shifting crowds and indistinguishable masses had not come. There was a baptism, and one of the recipients was a little girl about four years old. She was exceedingly beautiful. Her large, lustrous eyes contrasted strongly with the whiteness of her smooth brow, while slender curls of silken amber drooped over her fair neck. I did not wonder that her pastor smiled so benignly upon her, nor that he held her very tenderly in his fatherly embrace as she twined her tiny fingers amid his gray locks and rested her sunny head against his bosom. When the baptismal service was over and the Benedictus pealed from the Berkeleyan organ, I joined in the exultant hymn, giving praise in my heart for the child now born again as well as for the human birth of the holy son of Mary. When we came out,
