Volume 1

Life and letters of Peter and Susan Lesley / edited by their daughter, Mary Lesley Ames.

Date:
[1909], ©1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Life and letters of Peter and Susan Lesley / edited by their daughter, Mary Lesley Ames. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    country spoils all,—^lumber—coal—oil. A universal demoral- ity pervades the atmosphere; in cars, in depots, in bar-rooms, in the street. A race, originally well derived,—in fact several races, mingling, have been spoiled by intermixture, spoiled by the mUee into which this grand battle of the forces of man with the forces of nature has developed itself. If a population lives too long stationary, it spoils like water kept in casks; but if it moves all the time, it never ripens, like wine always disturbed. Ideal society is the product of two tendencies, the conservative and the progressive. We need home associations, beautified by the arts and enlightened by travel. But there ought to be a plus of quietness, and sober staying at home, to grow—and a minus of excitement. Think of lions, and braman cows, in a travelling menagerie—and you will have my conception of what people become—who live the lives of Americans. Every trait changes from nature. All distinctions disappear. The lion and the cow are equally tame, and equally sick and cross. The gentle- man and the churl jostle each other into one common degrada- tion, and make common cause for a compromise of self-indul- gence; the gentleman brutalized by the churl, and the churl taught presumption by the gentleman. I am all the time pictur- ing to myself a paradise, in which singing will take the place of swearing, and courteous conversation of obscure and horrid gossip. But where will it be found? It wearies me of exist- ence,—this ubiquitous debased democracy, without culture ex- cept from newspapers, without aspirations except for some inde- finable political elevation, which is in its very nature subversive of all fine sentiment, which is retrograde and downward towards the infernal. Can we save our children from this awful abyss of American- ism ? Surely the church must be the refuge of those who see and wathe [sic^ the world,—as it always has been. We may despise cant and dread hypocrisy as much as we can, yet there is an un- speakable elevation above common life, even in the lowest of all the many courts of the House of the Lord on the Holy Hill of Zion. I fled from the tavern last Wednesday evening to the church in Huntingdon, and found it a heaven upon earth. I followed the church bells—blessed bells. There was reading of the Scriptures, two or three halting prayers, two or three hymns and that was all; but it was enough to calm the perturbed spirit and give it a chance to hear the still small voice of the Spirit speaking better things than all the science and business of the XIX century.