Saturday Night
HE read Reynolds in the art-gallery: we read Longfellow by the sea; we read Ik Marvel under the trees; we read the weekly paper on Saturday night. When the week is past, and we gather at the evening stand, with the world put off, and our slippers put on, give us a good family newspaper. It is the hardest thing in the world to make.
Family newspapers only a few years ago were dolorous things. The columns were full of accounts of boys and girls who always sat up straight, and kept their faces clean, and wiped their feet on the door - mat. The theology was cast-iron, and the story wooden, with a long moral, not growing out, but tagged on;
so that the children took the moral with a wry face for the sake of getting the story, just as they swallowed the calomel with the promise: “There now, you shall have a sugarplum!”
The world has learned that a thine is not necessarily good because it is dry. There is no religion in chips. We never could see any sanctity in husks. The donkey hath no hilarity In his voice, and no nonsense In the twitch of his ear. He never was known to dance — yet he never gfets hieher than his feed-box, while the robin and the lark, from the tip of bill to tip of claw, all life and joy and merriment, with their wings brush the door-latch of heaven. I will like it the more If the editpr dips his pen In the dew to tell me of the morning, and in roseate to describe the sunset, and Into the purple vats to suggest the vineyards; and If then he fasten his sheets together with a blue band, torn from the forehead of heaven. There is yet to be such a thing as holiness on the bells of the horses; and when Religion shall have completed the conquest of the earth, I expect to see all the diamonds of the universe flashing in the rim of her tiara.
The family newspaper must have a touch of l84 SATURDAY NIGHT.
romance! Alas! for this day of naked facts! We deplore this unromancing of everything. We have a rail - track to the top of Mount Washington. The trees under which Henry Clay walked are cut up into walking - sticks. Men have turned Passaic Falls into a mill-race. Be not surprised if Independence Hall gets to be an oyster-cellar. Dear old Santa Claus has been pushed off the top of the chimney and had his neck broken. Facts! Facts! Facts! Give us in our family newspaper a little romance. It will do no harm to hear of moonlight ramble, and sail on the lake with only two in the boat; and while you despise elopements as unwise and dangerous, do not fear to tell us of the father who wanted his daughter to marry some rich old Disagreeable, while the young man was ready with hard hands and loving heart to earn for her a home in the cottage. I am glad that the ladder did not break, and that Timothy Hardfist won the prize.
Give us more spice in our family newspaper. We meet in our daily walks so much that is depressing, give us in our family newspaper whole bundles of spice: jokes that you can understand without laborious explanation, conundrums, quips and quirks, harmless satire, caricatures of the world’s foibles, and looking-glasses In which to see our fallings. Yes, give place occasionally to the much -abused pun. Those only despise the pun who cannot make one. Take the quill, and after you have made the split In it, sharpen It down until the point is keen enough to puncture the toughest Inconsistency. Let the sheet be fresh and healthy, in It a smell of cedar and new-cut grass. Let us hear In the rhythm of some of the sentences the moan of an untravelled wood, and the sweep of the wing of a partridge. Instead of the artificial dye of stale Imagery, crush against the printed leaf a bunch of huckleberries and sumac. We are tired out with all this about the nightingale; for pity’s sake, catch for us a brown - thresher, and let us hear a hen cluck. Instead of riding Bucephalus to death, halter that sorrel colt. Talk not so much to us about frankincense, to the neglect of pennyroyal and brookmint. Get out with your commonplace remark about” solitary horseman coming over
the hill.” Instead of talking so much about l86 SATURDAY NIGHT.
the “Bulls of Bashan,” drive up Brindle and Durham.
This is a grand old world if you would only let us see it as It is. The book-worm who sits down to write, having learned only of trees, and mountains, and waters, from his library, knows nothing about them. You have to put on your high-top boots, and wade right out up to your waist to pluck a water-lily, If you would see it to the best advantage. I had been with many a picnic party to see “Buttermilk Falls,” but not until the other day when I went alone, and had a stolen Interview with that cascade, did I really see her perfect beauty, as, shoving aside her white veil of mist, and throwing back her ribbons of rainbow, she told me all about her tragical leap from the rocks.
On Saturday night, as we open the family paper, let us catch the odor of pine, and the glance of an autumnal leaf dropping like the spark from a forge. Let some geranium -leaf overpower the smell of printer’s Ink. Tell us of home. Let us know how wives ought to be attentive to their husbands, and how husbands — but never mind that. Come, O
SATURDAY NIGHT. iS/
weekly visitant! into the front door with a blessing. Our week’s work done, and notes paid, and accounts squared, and the hurry over, and the Sabbath near, speak you a cheerful word to the desponding, a chiding word to the wandering, a soothing word to the perplexed; and help the ten thousand of the weary and the foot - sore, and the hardly bestead, by the still camp - fires of life’s great battle - field, to thank God that the seven days’ march is over, and it is Saturday night. Before long our pens, and needles, and trowels, and yardsticks, and saws, and pickaxes will be still. With our hand in the hands of some loved one, we will be waiting for a brighter Sunday morning than earth saw ever. Others call that waiting — Death. I call it Saturday Night.