The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 302 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 302 pages of information about The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866.
wares.  And blent with this pervading language of colors are the local associations which the articles of merchandise hint.  Consider how extensive is their scope,—­Persian carpets, Lyons silks, Genoa velvets, ribbons from Coventry and laces from Brussels, the furs of the Northwest, glass of Bohemia, ware of China, nuts from Brazil, silver of Nevada mines, Sicily lemons, Turkey figs, metallic coffins and fresh violets, Arabian dates, French chocolate, pine-apples from the West Indies, venison from the Adirondacs, brilliant chemicals, gilded frames, Manchester cloth, Sheffield cutlery, Irish linens, ruddy fruit, salmon from the Thousand Isles, sables from Russia, watches from Geneva, carvings from Switzerland, caricatures and India-rubber garments, saccharine temples, books in tinted covers, toys, wines, perfumes, drugs, dainties, art, luxury, science, all lavishing their products to allure the throng,—­phenomena common, indeed, to all streets devoted to trade, but here uniquely combined with a fashionable promenade, and affording the still-life of a variegated moving panorama.  It is characteristic, also, that the only palatial buildings along the crowded avenue are stores and hotels.  Architecture thus glorifies the gregarious extravagance of the people.  The effect of the whole is indefinitely prolonged, to an imaginative mind, by the vistas at the lower extremity, which reveal the river, and, at sunset, the dark tracery of the shipping against the far and flushed horizon; while, if one lifts his eye to the telegraph wire, or lowers it to some excavation which betrays the Croton pipes, a sublime consciousness is awakened of the relation of this swift and populous eddy of life’s great ocean to its distant rural streams, and the ebb and flow of humanity’s eternal tide.  Consider, too, the representative economics and delectations around, available to taste, necessity, and cash,—­how wonderful their contrast!  Not long since, an Egyptian museum, with relics dating from the Pharaohs, was accessible to the Broadway philosopher, and a Turkish khan to the sybarite; one has but to mount a staircase, and find himself in the presence of authentic effigies of all the prominent men of the nation, sun-painted for the million.  This pharmacist will exorcise his pain-demon; that electrician place him en rapport with kindred hundreds of miles away, or fortify his jaded nerves.  Down this street he may enjoy a Russian or Turkish bath; down that, a water-cure.  Here, with skill undreamed of by civilized antiquity, fine gold can be made to replace the decayed segment of a tooth; there, he has but to stretch out his foot, and a chiropodist removes the throbbing bunion, or a boy kneels to polish his boots.  A hackman is at hand to drive him to the Park, a telescope to show him the stars; he has but to pause at a corner and buy a journal which will place him au courant with the events of the world, or listen to an organ-grinder, and think himself at the opera.  This temple is
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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.