The Hillsborough Recorder

From Blackwood's Magazine.

Man is naturally the most awkward animal that inhales the breath of life. Behold that individual on a horse! See with what persevering alacrity he hobbles up and down from the croupe to the pommel, while his horse goes quietly at an amble of from four to five miles in the hour. See how his knees, flying like a weaver's shuttle, from one extremity of the saddle to another, destroy, in a pleasure ride from Edinburgh to Roslin, the good grey kerseymeres, which were a day or two ago in Snuffy & Willis's shop. The horse begins to gallop—bless our soul! the gentleman will decidedly roll off. The reins were never intended to be pulled like a peal of Bob Majors; your head, my friend, ought to be on your own shoulders, and not poking out between your charger's ears; and your horse ought to use its exertions to move on, and not you. It is a very cold day, you have cantered your two miles, and now you are wiping your brows, as if you had run the distance in half the time on foot.

We go to a ball. Mercy on us! is this what you call dancing? A man of thirty years of age, and with as little grace as a gate post, stands up in the middle of the room and gapes, and fumbles with his gloves, looking all the time as if he was burying his grandmother. At a given signal, the ungainly animal puts himself in motion: he throws out his arms, crouches on his haunches, and, without moving a muscle of his face, kicks out his legs, to the manifest risk of the bystanders, and goes back to his place, puffing and blowing like an otter, after a half hour's burst. Maiden, with the roses lying among the twinnings of thy long red hair! think not that the art of dancing consists merely in activity and strength. Thy limbs, which are none of the worst, were not intended to be the rivals of a pavior's hammer: the artificer, who trimmed thy locks, had no idea that his labors were to be lifted six feet higher than thy natural height from the ground; spare thyself such dreadful exertion, we beseech thee, sir, and consider that thine ankles, though strong and thick as St. George's pillars, may still be broken or sprained with such salutations.

Men are decidedly more awkward than all-commanding woman, everywhere, except on the road. A newly married couple are invited to a wedding-dinner. Though the lady, perhaps, has run off with a person below her in rank and station, see when they enter the room, how differently they behave. How gracefully she waves her head in the fine revere from the withdrawing courtesy, and beautifully extends her hand in the bald-pated individual grinning to her on the rug? While the poor spouse, her husband, looks on, with the white of his eye turned up as if he were sea-sick, and his hands dangle on his thighs as if he were trying to lift his own legs. See how he ducks to the lady of the house, and stumped across the fire place to his wife, who, by this time, is giving a minute-spirited account of the state of the roads, and the civility of the postillions near the Borders.

Is a man little? Let him always, if possible, stoop. We are sometimes tempted to lay sprawling in the mud ourselves, as we see those from five feet to five feet six inches strut, who carry the back of their hat on the extreme summit of their back bone, and gape up to Heaven, as if they scorned the very ground. If a little man wear iron heels. If a man tall? Let him never wear a hat; it is the most unnatural, and, for the most awkward donation it was invented. On a little man, it appears like a cossack trooper on a stick leg; if it be buttoned, it makes his leanness and lankness still more appalling and absurd; if it be open, it appears to be no part of his costume, and leads us to suppose that some elongated habit maker is giving us a specimen of that rare bird, the flying tailor.

We go on a visit to the country for a few days, and the neighborhood is famous for its beautiful prospects. On these occasions how infinitely superior the female is to the male part of the species! The ladies, in a quarter of an hour after the proposal of the play, appear all in readiness to start, each with her walking shoes and parasol, with a smart reticule dangling from her wrist.—The gentlemen, on the other hand, set off with their great heavy Wellingtons, which, after walking half a mile, pinch them at the toe, and make the pleasure excursion confine them to the house for weeks. Then some fool, the first gate or stile we come to, is sure to show off his vaulting, and upsets himself in the ditch on the opposite side, instead of going quietly over and helping the damsels across.

We hold that every man behaves with awkwardness when he is in love, and the want of the one is a presumption of the absence of the other. When people are fairly engaged, there is perhaps less of this directly to the object, but there is still as much of it in her presence; but it is wonderful how soon the most nervous become easy when marriage has concluded all their hopes.—Delicate girl! just budding into womanly loveliness, whose heart, for the last ten minutes, has been trembling behind the snowy wall of thy fair and beautiful bosom, hast thou never remarked and laughed at a tall and much-whiskered young man for the mauvaise honte with which he hands to thee thy cup of half-watered souchong? Laugh not at him again, for he will assuredly be thy husband. Yes! he will! tremble for a few months more as he stands beside thy music stool, and join no others in the heartless mockery of their praise; but when every voice which has commended thy song is hushed, and every note which thou hast clothed in ethereal music is forgotten by all besides, to him it will be a theme to dream upon in his loneliness, and every look which thine eye vouchsafe to him will be laid up as a sacred and holy thing in the innermost sanctuary of his soul. Thou wilt see in a short time that the tremulousness of his nerves is only observable when his tongue is faltering in its address to thee; pity will enter into thy gentle heart, and thyself will sometimes turn the wrong page in thy book of songs, and strike the wrong note on thy double grand piano, when thou knowest that his ears are drinking in thy voice, and his eyes following thy minutest action.

In a few months more—we see with prospective clearness—thou art sitting at the same piano in a large and newly furnished room, snuffing thy candles every now and then thyself, and turning with thine own hands the leaves of the National Melodies, while—O, fie!—he is stretched along one of St. Trotter's finest ottomans, fast asleep!—Love, when successful, is well enough, and perhaps it has treasures of its own to compensate for its inconveniences: but a more miserable situation than that of an unhappy individual before the altar, it is not in the heart of man to conceive. First of all, you are marched with a solitary male companion up the long aisle, which on this occasion appears absolutely interminable; then you meet your future partner dressed out in satin and white ribbands, whom you are to meet in gingham gowns or calico prints every morning of your life ever after. There she is, supported by her old father, decked out in his old-fashioned brown coat, with a wig of the same color, beautifully relieving the burning redness of his hog's projecting ears; and the mother, puffed up like an overgrown bolster, encouraging the trembling girl, and joining her maiden aunts of full fifty years in telling her to take courage, for it is what they must all come to. Bride's maids and mutual friends make up the company; and there, standing out before this assemblage, you assent to every thing the curate, or, if you are rich enough, the rector, or even the dean, may say, showing your knock knees in the naked deformity of white kerseymeres, to an admirable bevy of the servants of both families, laughing and tittering from the squire's pew in the gallery. Then the parting! The mother's injunctions to the juvenile bride to guard herself from the cold, and to write within the week. The maiden aunts' inquiries, of "My dear, have you forgot nothing?"—the shaking of hands, the wiping and winking of eyes! The lady all this time seems not half so awkward. She has her gown to keep from creasing, her vinaigrette to play with: besides, that all nervousness is interesting and feminine, and is laid to the score of delicacy and reserve.