66
��Easy Chair.
��with chance visitors, as keeps us in- formed of the drift of the towntalk, while it reheves greatly the monotony of our office hours." Here is the well re- membered flavor of the " Reveries of a Bachelor " and " Dream - Life " !
A year or so afterward, George Wil- liam Curtis became a co-writer of a part of the articles for this department, and soon after he became the sole occu- pant of the now famous " Easy Chair ;" and each month, as regularly as the ap- pearance of the magazine itself, these very interesting, most readable, and in- structive notelets upon the current topics of the time have appeared. Their pure style, graceful and delicate humor, and the vast range of culture and observation, give them a distinct- ively personal characteristic. He would have made one of our first novelists ; but he has chosen to give the strength of his powers to journalism, and the study of political affairs.
It is safe to say that each number of the magazine has had an average of at least five pages of " Easy Chair," making very nearly or quite two thou- sand ( 2,000 ) pages in all ; or a quan- tity more than sufficient to fill two and a half volumes of the sixty nine ( 69 ) thus far issued, each volume containing eight hundred and sixty four ( 864 ) pages. Before beginning to write these delectable tid-bits, he had published "Nile notes of a Howadji," The How- adji in Syria," and " Lotus Eating ; " soon after appeared " Potiphar Papers," "Prue and I," and "Trumps." For twenty years he was constantly on the lecture platform ; and for twenty one years he has been the political editor of "Harper's Weekly." Although offered missions to the courts of England and Germany, and other positions of trust and honor, he never accepted ; his near- est approach to the holding of any po-
��litical office was the accepting of an appointment, for a while, of the chair- manship of the " Civil Service Advisory Board," As has been well said by George Parsons Lathrop, "The idea often occurs to one that he, more than anj one else, continues the example which Washington Irving set : an exam- ple of kindliness and good nature blended with indestructible dignity, and a delicately imaginative mind consecra- ting much of its energy to public service."
As for the " Easy Chair," with me, its leaves are first cut in each fresh number ; and while enjoying the last one, I won- dered why some deft hand had not culled some of the choicest specimens, and that the Harpers had not given them to the world in a volume by them- selves. They are most certainly worthy of it. A few passages taken here and there, from these rich fields, will prove this assertion. The subjects treated in the whole " Easy Chair" number nearly or quite twenty-five hundred (2,500), — reminiscences of Emerson and Long- fellow — first presentation of a new Oratorios — a celebrated painting — the visit of a Lord Chief Justice of Eng- land, — a vast range of topics. Consult the nine closely printed octavo pages of their titles in the "Index to the first Sixty Volumes " — from " Abbott, Com- modore, xiii. 271," to "Zurich, Univer- sity of, xlviii. 443," and one will be amazed at the great number and variety of themes upon which the " Easy Chair" has had its say. And it would seem that its occupant has had some similar thoughts to these, for, in a recent num- ber there is a retrospective glance — a wondering as to what future generations may have to say, and wish to know re- garding matters and things of this gen- eration about which it has discoursed .
�� �
