A Gossipy August Article

image 1image 2image 3image 4cropped image 1

A GOSSIPY AUGUST ARTICLE.

Well, here we are, pretty well toward the end of the summer months—looking out, as we write this article upon the clear August sunshine, and penning down whatever happens to flow from the point of our pen. Take notice, therefore, that we may perhaps gossip from theme to theme—and that we do not promise whether we shall write any thing very profound or not. Perhaps the better for you reader. For, after all, a little lazy and indolent reading is not to be despised. Have you not observed that those fellows, companions or authors, who are forever so sensible and solid, we sometimes feel it a huge relief to escape from?

Yes, the summer will now soon draw to a close. The inclinations are unmistakableunmistakeable​ . The days are an hour and a half shorter than they were, when at the longest. People begin more generally to say, Have you been in the country? While the future tense, their interrogatories on the subject, has become disused for the season.

At the same time, let us remark, as our private opinion, that there is no preferable period for jaunting off into the rural regions, than these forthcoming and cooler weeks of later summer, and all the time of autumn. Surely it is far ahead of the burning June and July. You don’t go into the country to be baked, do you? Then give us the latter days, when we can count on fresh air by rising early, and when the cool evenings begin to smell of ripening apples, and the corn is full-grown in the fields, and water-melons are ripe in the patch, (with alas! often irresistible invitations to be purloined and stealthily eaten, in the shade of some hedge-bushes or covert wood.) Give us, we say again, the latter days, in preference to the former days; for what is there in your June and July in the country? Now we can have new ripe potatoes, and all the varieties of “garden sass.” Now Nature, in her beauty and bounty, bestows herself upon us, not like a captious and undeveloped girl, (always a torment, though sometimes extremely fascinating)—but like a woman of ripe growth, reliable, full-sized, and “worth something.”

But is it indispensable that one should go into the country in order to see the beauties of nature, or have a good time? By no means. There are plenty of spots around Brooklyn and New York, within walking distance, that afford a healthful and inspiriting recreation to all who wish. Few, we think, realize how magnificently Brooklyn is situated, with all the diversity of hills, fine walks and roads, and a superb shore and water prospect.

The shores of Greenpoint, the walks through Bushwick, the hills in the neighborhood of Ridgewood Reservoir, the green streets of Bedford, the Clove Road, Prospect Hill, South Brooklyn, the Heights—how many persons there are that probably often give their thoughts to some distant and far inferior spots, and read exaggerated descriptions of them, while of these Brooklyn localities we have just named, though abounding in points of interest, they never visit them, and perhaps even know nothing about them.

How few, for example, know by their own experience that we have here in Brooklyn one of the finest public grounds in the world; we allude to Washington Park.—Of a fine morning or evening, it affords a promenade which, from features peculiar to the spot, can no where else be surpassed. From its elevated position, you stretch your eye over a vast expanse of land and water; you see the city of New York, the distant grey buildings of Blackwell’s Island, the heights of Weehawken, Greenwood Cemetery, the ships sailing down the Narrows to the South, and the boats on the East River to the North;—while Brooklyn itself lies spread out like a huge map in all directions about you.

Nor do we believe that there are anywhere in the Old World or New, any grounds comparable, in romantic beauty, variety, and with finer natural advantages than our celebrated cemeteries, Greenwood, Evergreens and Cypress Hills. While travelers are expiating in their letters over some famed places abroad, it is forgotten that we have, in our own borders, these noble public grounds we have mentioned. Such as they, if one is disposed for a day’s enjoyment in solitude and out of the din of the streets, possess advantages which we would like to see our citizens make a commoner habit of availing themselves of.