CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICAN AMUSEMENTS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4298, 30 December 1874, Page 3

CHARACTERISTICS OF AMERICAN AMUSEMENTS.

(From the New York Herald, Sept. 13.) The passionate interest the American people I take in their amusements is kindred to the ! prodigious energy with which they perform their work. Their earnestness is deeply rooted, and while one branch of their tree of life is bright and beautiful with blossoms the other is laden with perennial fruit richer than the golden apples of the Hesperides. - A people who work so hard are entitled to corresponding rest, but Americans have not yet learned the secret of recreation and pleasme. The Italian dolce far niente is almost unknown in this country, and the poet, Thomas Buchanan Read, could never have written his charming poem of "Drifting" on the Hudson, on the Bay of New York, or even on the silvery tides of his own soft flowing Schuylkill. It was only on the waters of the Bay of Naples, with the far smoke of Vesuvius waving above his boat its outstretched hands and the sapphire gates of Capri inviting to her mysteries, that he could have timed his verse to the rise and fall of the waves and colored it -with the living azure of the sky. All American poetry is tinted with a sober earnestness, reflecting the nature of the people. There is the solemnity of Bryant's landscapes, as in " Thanatopsis," where " rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound save his own dashings ;" the frozen simplicity of Whittier's New England pictures ; the melancholy beauty of Longfellow's autumnal woods and stormy seas. Even Poe, the greatest of all our poets, unsurpassed in imagination by any man of the age, yields to this subjective influence, and kindles his splendors upon abackground of darkness, as when the mystical planet of love rises over the dim lake of Auber, and shines upon " the misty, wild -woodlands of Wier." Our poets cannot write with the freedom and pure delight in nature that Shelley and Keats possessed. The yellow primrose which Wordsworth found by the river's brim, and the lily cup of Shelley, out of which " a fire fly shakes his light, under a cypress in a starless night," are not flowers to be gathered in American forests. They are alien blossoms like the fabled asphodel. Too practical is our life and too serious, therefore, in their verse are our poets ; it is only now and then that they escape from their bondage, and, like birds liberated from the cage, rise above the earth and sing only because they joy in their own singing. If this serious purpose is found in poetry, which ought to be and is the highest altitude of intellectual freedom,we must expect it to exist more powerfully iu thepursuits which are p»arer to the commonplaces of earth. The Americans make their amusements too much of a business and have not yet discovered the fundamental principles of idleness. Laziness is a philosophy which it is hard for us to fully comprehend. We try to understand it, but generally fail. There is Mr. Weston, who amuses himself and entertains thousands of others by his surprising performances as a pedestrian. No doubt this gentleman would be surprised if he should be told that he is actually working when he undertakes to walk five hundred miles in six days. We presume he thinks this performance really an amusement, though there are many men who would consider it a labor to walk from the Battery to Central Park. The earnestness of Mr. Weston transforms his pedestrianism from a recreation to a business. The man with the steam leg, of whom we have read; could not be more thoroughly the slave of necessity than Mr. Weston, and it is probable that his ideal of earthly bliss is perpetual motion. Heaven he imagines to be one vast treadmill. Then there are the base-ball players, the most of whom have long ago changed the game from an amusement to a trade. The average base-ball player works almost as hard as a street car conductor, and when he goes into the contest takes a risk like that of a soldier in battle. It is much the same-with horse racing, skating, fishing, gunning and many other outdoor sports. The delight and excitement of physical exercise is often converted into an insatiable passion, which makes even the pursuit of pleasure a monotony. The billiard amateur too often becomes the slave of his pastime, and has no amusement except when he emulates with his cue the brilliant strokes of a Gamier or a Dion. The theatre-goer goes year after year to see plays for which he does not really care, because habit is stronger with him than enterprise, and the j boy who attended the circus every evening for no better reason than that he could not afford to waste the opportunities a season ticket conferred was not more foolish in his views. The whist-player conceives of no higher recreation than to lead trumps when he holds five in his hand, to establish his long suit, or to win the odd trick when honors are easy. The backgammon player will throw sixes and aces for hours, repeating the same moves, making the samo bar point with endless zeal. The chessplayer, especially, becomes absorbed in his gambits till he ceases to care for weariness or hunger. Life becomes to him little more than the movements of pawns and queens. He forgets the third term in thinking of his lung ; spends his Sundays away from church with irreligious bishops, and occupies all his days with knights. There is no end to this perpetual performance of the same thing again and again, like the toils of the architect Pisani,. who in his dreams always saw his own figure ascending infinite flights of steps, spiral over spiral, in some vast cathedral, which he was ever building, but was forbidden ever to fiinish. But an amusement should not be a stone of Sisyphus, to be eternally pushed up the hill, down which it is destined to roll. It is our fault that we devote ourselves to one recreation to the exclusion of all the others. As in business, so is it iu sports ; no man can excel in everything, yet we should make these passing pleasures of life tributary to its permanent content. This cannot be if any favorite pursuit is allowed to rule the mind which it should obey, and to become to us the shell of the tortoise instead of the wings of the bird. The wise man will seek to multiply the sources of his enjoyment, like the banyan tree, which has the faculty of making its bending branches take root in the earth, and, in their turn, become sustaining trunks. He will remember that tho pleasures of life occupy much of its duration, and ought to be directed as prudently as the affairs of the counting house or the details of a profession. Contrast and variety are essential elements. The chess-player should be a pedesthe athlete who delights in. his vigorous health should cultivate a taste for the analynis of games which are purely mental in their nature. Our lives ought to bo made larger and happier by our amusements, and tho earnestness we rightly cherish in serious duties becomes an evil when it causes one pastime to annihilate a taste for a multitude of others.