Yankee Gypsies(美国吉普赛人)

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2024-12-26 1 0 60.2KB 15 页 5.9玖币

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Yankee Gypsies

John Greenleaf Whittier

Yankee Gypsies

"Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering

train." BURNS.(1)

I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." (2) I

profess no indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman

known as the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the

behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the

church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero

if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and

unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear,

musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet on

glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like

a sultana's behind the folds of her *yashmak;*(3) schoolboys coasting

down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of oblique

sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow, or blazing

upon ice jewelry of tree and roof: there is nothing in all this to complain of.

A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its slow, upheaving

mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created

volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the

wild gales of the equinox have their varieties,--sounds of wind- shaken

woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs,

and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and

rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm

outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath

and above, reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third

Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz(4) administers his hydropathic

torment,--

"A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,-- The land it soaks is putrid;"

or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm

mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying

the efficacy of a Thomsonian steam-box(5) on a grand scale; no sounds

save the heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous,

melancholy drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of

waterducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-

colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one,

Yankee Gypsies

beyond which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the

ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot,--he who can

extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick of

alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.

(1) From the closing air in *The Jolly Beggars,* a cantata. (2) "A

breath thou art Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habitation,

where thou keep'st Hourly afflict." Shakespeare: *Measure for Measure,*

act III. scene 1. (3) "She turns and turns again, and carefully glances

around her on all sides, to see that she is safe from the eyes of

Mussulmans, and then suddenly withdrawing the yashmak she shines upon

your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty." Kinglake's

*Eothen,* chap. iii. In a note to *Yashmak* Kinglake explains that it is

not a mere semi- transparent veil, but thoroughly conceals all the features

except the eyes: it is withdrawn by being pulled down. (4) Vincenz

Priessnitz was the originator of the water-cure. After experimenting upon

himself and his neighbors he took up the profession of hydropathy and

established baths at his native place, Grafenberg in Silesia, in 1829. He

died in 1851. (5) Dr. Samuel Thomson, a New Hampshire physician,

advocated the use of the steam bath as a restorer of system when diseased.

He died in 1843 and left behind an autobiography (*Life and Medical

Discoveries*) which contains a record of the persecutions he underwent.

Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing

by attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the

keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves

through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of

the raindrops.

I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose- jointed figure;

a pinched, shrewd face, sun-brown and wind- dried; small, quick-winking

black eyes,--there he stands, the water dripping from his pulpy hat and

ragged elbows.

I speak to him; but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery,

quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read

what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to the

particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is,

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YankeeGypsies1YankeeGypsiesJohnGreenleafWhittierYankeeGypsies2"Here'stobudgets,packs,andwallets;Here'stoallthewanderingtrain."BURNS.(1)ICONFESSit,Iamkeenlysensitiveto"skyeyinfluences."(2)Iprofessnoindifferencetothemovementsofthatcapriciousoldgentlemanknownastheclerkoftheweather.Icannotconcealmyinter...

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