The Blithedale Romance - Page 134/170

As it was already the epoch of annihilated space, I might in the time I

was away from Blithedale have snatched a glimpse at England, and been

back again. But my wanderings were confined within a very limited

sphere. I hopped and fluttered, like a bird with a string about its

leg, gyrating round a small circumference, and keeping up a restless

activity to no purpose. Thus it was still in our familiar

Massachusetts--in one of its white country villages--that I must next

particularize an incident.

The scene was one of those lyceum halls, of which almost every village

has now its own, dedicated to that sober and pallid, or rather

drab-colored, mode of winter-evening entertainment, the lecture. Of

late years this has come strangely into vogue, when the natural

tendency of things would seem to be to substitute lettered for oral

methods of addressing the public. But, in halls like this, besides the

winter course of lectures, there is a rich and varied series of other

exhibitions.

Hither comes the ventriloquist, with all his mysterious

tongues; the thaumaturgist, too, with his miraculous transformations of

plates, doves, and rings, his pancakes smoking in your hat, and his

cellar of choice liquors represented in one small bottle. Here, also,

the itinerant professor instructs separate classes of ladies and

gentlemen in physiology, and demonstrates his lessons by the aid of

real skeletons, and manikins in wax, from Paris. Here is to be heard

the choir of Ethiopian melodists, and to be seen the diorama of Moscow

or Bunker Hill, or the moving panorama of the Chinese wall. Here is

displayed the museum of wax figures, illustrating the wide catholicism

of earthly renown, by mixing up heroes and statesmen, the pope and the

Mormon prophet, kings, queens, murderers, and beautiful ladies; every

sort of person, in short, except authors, of whom I never beheld even

the most famous done in wax. And here, in this many-purposed hall

(unless the selectmen of the village chance to have more than their

share of the Puritanism, which, however diversified with later

patchwork, still gives its prevailing tint to New England

character),--here the company of strolling players sets up its little

stage, and claims patronage for the legitimate drama.

But, on the autumnal evening which I speak of, a number of printed

handbills--stuck up in the bar-room, and on the sign-post of the hotel,

and on the meeting-house porch, and distributed largely through the

village--had promised the inhabitants an interview with that celebrated

and hitherto inexplicable phenomenon, the Veiled Lady!

The hall was fitted up with an amphitheatrical descent of seats towards

a platform, on which stood a desk, two lights, a stool, and a capacious

antique chair. The audience was of a generally decent and respectable

character: old farmers, in their Sunday black coats, with shrewd, hard,

sun-dried faces, and a cynical humor, oftener than any other

expression, in their eyes; pretty girls, in many-colored attire; pretty

young men,--the schoolmaster, the lawyer, or student at law, the

shop-keeper,--all looking rather suburban than rural. In these days,

there is absolutely no rusticity, except when the actual labor of the

soil leaves its earth-mould on the person.