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Title: Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote
Author: Various
Language: English
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LITERATURE ***
Library of the Best American Literature
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Illustration: REPRESENTATIVES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.
LIBRARY
OF THE
Best American Literature
CONTAINING
The Lives of our Authors in Story Form
Their PORTRAITS, their HOMES, and their PERSONAL TRAITS
How they Worked and What they Wrote
Choice Selections from Eminent Writers
EMBRACING
GREAT AMERICAN POETS AND
NOVELISTS, FOREMOST WOMEN IN AMERICAN LETTERS,
DISTINGUISHED CRITICS AND ESSAYISTS, OUR NATIONAL HUMORISTS,
NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS, POPULAR
WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, GREAT ORATORS
AND PUBLIC LECTURERS
ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED WITH HALF TONE PORTRAITS
AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF AUTHORS’ HOMES, TOGETHER WITH
MANY OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
MONARCH BOOK COMPANY,
Successors to and formerly L. P. MILLER & CO.,
CHICAGO, ILL. PHILADELPHIA, PA.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1897, by
W. E. SCULL,
in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
_All rights reserved._
ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED NOT TO INFRINGE UPON OUR COPYRIGHT
BY USING EITHER THE MATTER OR THE PICTURES IN THIS VOLUME.
LITERATURE OF AMERICA.
PART 1. GREAT POETS OF AMERICA
2. OUR MOST NOTED NOVELISTS
3. FAMOUS WOMEN NOVELISTS
4. REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN POETS OF AMERICA
5. WELL-KNOWN ESSAYISTS, CRITICS AND SKETCH WRITERS
6. GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS
7. OUR NATIONAL HUMORISTS
8. POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
9. NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS
10. GREAT ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS
11. FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS
12. MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES AND CHOICE GEMS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.
_Our obligation_ to the following publishers is respectfully and
gratefully acknowledged, since, without the courtesies and assistance
of these publishers and a number of the living authors, it would have
been impossible to issue this volume.
Copyright selections from the following authors are used by the
permission of and special arrangement with _MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN
& CO._, their authorized publishers:――Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry W.
Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, Bayard Taylor,
Maurice Thompson, Colonel John Hay, Bret Harte, William Dean Howells,
Edward Bellamy, Charles Egbert Craddock (Miss Murfree), Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps (Ward), Octave Thanet (Miss French), Alice Cary, Phœbe
Cary, Charles Dudley Warner, E. C. Stedman, James Parton, John Fiske
and Sarah Jane Lippincott.
_TO THE CENTURY CO._, we are indebted for selections from Richard
Watson Gilder, James Whitcomb Riley and Francis Richard Stockton.
_TO CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS_, for extracts from Eugene Field.
_TO HARPER & BROTHERS_, for selections from Will Carleton, General Lew
Wallace, W. D. Howells, Thomas Nelson Page, John L. Motley, Charles
Follen Adams and Lyman Abbott.
_TO ROBERTS BROTHERS_, for selections from Edward Everett Hale, Helen
Hunt Jackson, Louise Chandler Moulton and Louisa M. Alcott.
_TO ORANGE, JUDD & CO._, for extracts from Edward Eggleston.
_TO DODD, MEAD & CO._, for selections from E. P. Roe, Marion Harland
(Mrs. Terhune), Amelia E. Barr and Martha Finley.
_TO D. APPLETON & CO._, for Wm. Cullen Bryant and John Bach McMaster.
_TO MACMILLAN & CO._, for F. Marion Crawford.
_TO HORACE L. TRAUBEL_, Executor, for Walt Whitman.
_TO ESTES & LAURIAT_, for Gail Hamilton (Mary Abigail Dodge).
_TO LITTLE, BROWN & CO._, for Francis Parkman.
_TO FUNK & WAGNALLS_, for Josiah Allen’s Wife (Miss Holley).
_TO LEE & SHEPARD_, for Yawcob Strauss (Charles Follen Adams), Oliver
Optic (William T. Adams) and Mary A. Livermore.
_TO J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO._, for Bill Nye (Edgar Wilson Nye).
_TO GEORGE ROUTLEDGE & SONS_, for Uncle Remus (Joel C. Harris).
_TO TICKNOR & CO._, for Julian Hawthorne.
_TO PORTER & COATES_, for Edward Ellis and Horatio Alger.
_TO WILLIAM F. GILL & CO._, for Whitelaw Reid.
_TO C. H. HUDGINS & CO._, for Henry W. Grady.
_TO THE “COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE,”_ for Julian Hawthorne.
_TO T. B. PETERSON & BROS._, for Frances Hodgson Burnett.
_TO JAS. R. OSGOOD & CO._, for Jane Goodwin Austin.
_TO GEO. R. SHEPARD_, for Thomas Wentworth Higginson.
_TO J. LEWIS STACKPOLE_, for John L. Motley.
Besides the above, we are under special obligation to a number of
authors who kindly furnished, in answer to our request, selections
which they considered representative of their writings.
Illustration: American Authors
Hawthorne • Cooper • H. B. Stowe • Prescott • Irving
INTRODUCTION.
“THE ink of a Nation’s Scholars is more sacred than the blood of its
martyrs,”――declares Mohammed. It is with this sentence in mind, and
a desire to impress upon our fellow countrymen the excellence, scope
and volume of American literature, and the dignity and personality
of American authorship, that this work has been prepared and is now
offered to the public.
The volume is distinctly American, and, as such it naturally appeals
to the patriotism of Americans. Every selection which it contains
was written by an American. Its perusal, we feel confident, will
both entertain the reader and quicken the pride of every lover of his
country in the accomplishments of her authors.
European nations had already the best of their literature before
ours began. It is less than three hundred years since the landing
of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock, and the planting of a colony at
Jamestown, marked the first permanent settlements on these shores. Two
hundred years were almost entirely consumed in the foundation work of
exploring the country, settling new colonies, in conflicts with the
Indians, and in contentions with the mother country. Finally――after
two centuries――open war with England served the purpose of bringing
the jealous colonists together, throwing off our allegiance to Europe,
and, under an independent constitution, of introducing the united
colonists――now the _United States of America_――into the sisterhood of
nations.
Thus, it was not until the twilight of the eighteenth century that
we had an organized nationality, and it was not until the dawn of
the nineteenth that we began to have a literature. Prior to this we
looked abroad for everything except the products of our soil. Neither
manufacturing nor literature sought to raise its head among us. The
former was largely prohibited by our generous mother, who wanted
to make our clothes and furnish us with all manufactured articles;
literature was frowned upon with the old interrogation, “Who reads
an American book?” But simultaneously with the advent of liberty upon
our shores was born the spirit of progress――at once enthroned and
established as the guardian saint of American energy and enterprise.
She touched the mechanic and the hum of his machinery was heard
and the smoke of his factory arose as an incense to her, while our
exhaustless stores of raw materials were transformed into things of
use and beauty; she touched the merchant and the wings of commerce
were spread over our seas; she touched the scholar and the few
institutions of learning along the Atlantic seaboard took on new life
and colleges and universities multiplied and followed rapidly the
course of civilization across the mountains and plains of the West.
But the spirit of progress did not stop here. Long before that time
Dr. Johnson had declared, “The chief glory of every people arises from
its authors,” and our people had begun to realize the force of the
truth, which Carlyle afterwards expressed, that “A country which has
no national literature, or a literature too insignificant to force
its way abroad, must always be to its neighbors, at least in every
important spiritual respect, an unknown and unesteemed country.” The
infant nation had now begun its independent history. Should it also
have an independent literature; and if so, what were the bases for
it? The few writers who had dared to venture into print had dealt with
European themes, and laid their scenes and published their books in
foreign lands. What had America, to inspire their genius?
The answer to this question was of vital importance. Upon it depended
our destiny in literature. It came clear and strong. To go elsewhere
were to imitate the discontented and foolish farmer who became
possessed of a passion for hunting diamonds, and, selling his farm for
a song, spent his days in wandering over the earth in search of them.
The man who bought this farm found diamonds in the yard around the
house, and developed that farm into _the famous Golconda mines_. The
poor man who wandered away had acres of diamonds at home. They were
his if he had but been wise enough to gather them.
So was America a rich field for her authors. Nature nowhere else
offered such inspiration to the poet, the descriptive and the
scientific writer as was found in America. Its mountains were the
grandest; its plains the broadest; its rivers the longest; its lakes
were inland seas; its water-falls were the most sublime; its caves
were the largest and most wonderful in the world; its forests bore
every variety of vegetable life and stretched themselves from ocean to
ocean; it had a soil and a climate diversified and varied beyond that
of any other nation; birds sang for us whose notes were heard on no
other shores; we had a fauna and a flora of our own. For the historian
there was the aboriginal red man, with his unwritten past preserved
only in tradition awaiting the pen of the faithful chronicler; the
Colonial period was a study fraught with American life and tradition
and no foreigner could gather its true story from the musty tomes
of a European library; the Revolutionary period must be recorded by
an American historian. For the novelist and the sketch writer our
magnificent land had a rich legendary lore, and a peculiarity of
manners and customs possessed by no other continent. The story of its
frontier, with a peculiar type of life found nowhere else, was all its
own.
It was to this magnificent prospect, with its inspiring possibilities
that Progress,――the first child of liberty――stood and pointed as she
awoke the slumbering genius of independent American Authorship, and,
placing the pen in her hand bade her write what she would. Thus the
youngest aspirant in literature stood forth with the freest hand, in a
country with its treasures of the past unused, and a prospective view
of the most magnificent future of the nations of earth.
What a field for literature! What an opportunity it offered! How well
it has been occupied, how attractive the personality, how high the
aims, and how admirable the methods of those who have done so, it is
the province of this volume to demonstrate. With this end in view, the
volume has been prepared. It has been inspired by a patriotic pride
in the wonderful achievement of our men and women in literature, in
making America, at the beginning of her second century as a nation,
the fair and powerful rival of England and Continental Europe in the
field of letters.
Wonderful have been the achievements of Americans as inventors,
mechanics, merchants――indeed, in every field in which they have
contended――but we are prepared to agree with Dr. Johnson that “The
chief glory of a nation is its authors;” and, with Carlyle, that they
entitle us to our greatest respect among other nations. The reading
of the biographies and extracts herein contained should impress
the reader with the debt of gratitude we as a people owe to those
illustrious men and women, who, while wreathing their own brows with
chaplets of fame, have written the name, “_America_,” high up on the
literary roll of honor among the greatest nations of the world.
Illustration: THE POETS OF NEW ENGLAND
THE DISTINCTIVE PURPOSE AND PLAN OF THIS VOLUME.
THIS work has been designed and prepared with a view to presenting an
outline of American literature in such a manner as to stimulate a love
for good reading and especially to encourage the study of the lives
and writings of our American authors. The plan of this work is unique
and original, and possesses certain helpful and interesting features,
which――so far as we are aware――have been contemplated by no other
single volume.
The first and main purpose of the work is to present to our American
homes a mass of wholesome, varied and well-selected reading matter.
In this respect it is substantially a volume for the family. America
is pre-eminently a country of homes. These homes are the schools of
citizenship, and――next to the Bible, which is the foundation of our
morals and laws――we need those books which at once entertain and
instruct, and, at the same time, stimulate patriotism and pride for
our native land.
This book seeks to meet this demand. Four-fifths of our space is
devoted exclusively to American literature. Nearly all other volumes
of selections are made up chiefly from foreign authors. The reason for
this is obvious. Foreign publications until within the last few years
have been free of copyright restrictions. Anything might be chosen
and copied from them while American authors were protected by law
from such outrages. Consequently, American material under forty-two
years of age could not be used without the consent of the owner of
the copyright. The expense and the difficulty of obtaining these
permissions were too great to warrant compilers and publishers in
using American material. The constantly growing demand, however, for
a work of this class has encouraged the publishers of this volume
to undertake the task. The publishers of the works from which these
selections are made and many living authors represented have been
corresponded with, and it is only through the joint courtesy and
co-operation of these many publishers and authors that the production
of this volume has been made possible. Due acknowledgment will be
found elsewhere. In a number of instances the selections have been
made by the authors themselves, who have also rendered other valuable
assistance in supplying data and photographs.
The second distinctive point of merit in the plan of the work is the
_biographical feature_, which gives the story of each author’s life
separately, treating them both personally and as writers. Longfellow
remarked in “Hyperion”――“If you once understand the character of
an author the comprehension of his writings becomes easy.” He might
have gone further and stated that when we have once read the life of
an author his writings become the more interesting. Goethe assures
us that “Every author portrays himself in his works even though it
be against his will.” The patriarch in the Scriptures had the same
thought in his mind when he exclaimed “Oh! that mine enemy had written
a book.” Human nature remains the same. Any book takes on a new phase
of value and interest to us the moment we know the story of the writer,
whether we agree with his statements and theories or not. These
biographical sketches, which in every case are placed immediately
before the selections from an author, give, in addition to the story
of his life, a list of the principal books he has written, and the
dates of publication, together with comments on his literary style
and in many instances reviews of his best known works. This, with the
selections which follow, established that necessary bond of sympathy
and relationship which should exist in the mind of the reader between
every author and his writings. Furthermore, under this arrangement the
biography of each author and the selections from his works compose a
complete and independent chapter in the volume, so that the writer may
be taken up and studied or read alone, or in connection with others in
the particular class to which he belongs.
This brings us to the third point of _classification_. Other volumes
of selections――where they have been classified at all――have usually
placed selections of similar character together under the various
heads of Narrative and Descriptive, Moral and Religious, Historical,
etc. On the contrary, it has appeared to us the better plan in the
construction of this volume to classify the authors, rather than, by
dividing their selections, scatter the children of one parent in many
different quarters. There has been no small difficulty in doing this
in the cases of some of our versatile writers. Emerson, for instance,
with his poetry, philosophy and essays, and Holmes, with his wit and
humor, his essays, his novels and his poetry. Where should they be
placed? Summing them up, we find their writings――whether written in
stanzas of metred lines or all the way across the page, and whether
they talked philosophy or indulged in humor――were predominated by
the spirit of poetry. Therefore, with their varied brood, Emerson
and Holmes were taken off to the “Poet’s Corner,” which is made all
the richer and more enjoyable by the variety of their gems of prose.
Hence our classifications and groupings are as _Poets_, _Novelists_,
_Historians_, _Journalists_, _Humorists_, _Essayists_, _Critics_,
_Orators_, etc., placing each author in the department to which he
most belongs, enabling the reader to read and compare him in his best
element with others of the same class.
_Part I., “Great Poets of America,”_ comprises twenty of our most
famous and popular writers of verse. The work necessarily begins with
that immortal “Seven Stars” of poesy in the galaxy of our literary
heavens――Bryant, Poe, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes and Lowell.
Succeeding these are those of lesser magnitude, many of whom are
still living and some who have won fame in other fields of literature
which divides honors with their poetry. Among these are Bayard Taylor,
the noted traveler and poet; N. P. Willis, the most accomplished
magazinist of his day; R. H. Stoddard, the critic; Walt Whitman;
Maurice Thompson, the scientist; Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Richard
Watson Gilder, editors, and Colonel John Hay, politician and statesman.
The list closes with that notable group of well-known Western poets,
James Whitcomb Riley, Bret Harte, Eugene Field, Will Carleton, and
Joaquin Miller.
The remaining nine parts of the book treat in similar manner
about seventy-five additional authors, embracing noted novelists,
representative women poets of America; essayists, critics and sketch
writers; great American historians and biographers; our national
humorists; popular writers for young people; noted journalists and
magazine contributors; great orators and popular lecturers. Thus, it
will be seen that in this volume the whole field of American letters
has been gleaned to make the work the best and most representative of
our literature possible within the scope of a single volume.
In making a list of authors in whom the public were sufficiently
interested to entitle them to a place in a work like this, naturally
they were found to be entirely too numerous to be all included in one
book. The absence of many good names from the volume is, therefore,
explained by the fact that the editor has been driven to the necessity
of selecting, first, those whom he deemed pre-eminently prominent, and,
after that, making room for those who best represent a certain class
or particular phase of our literature.
To those authors who have so kindly responded to our requests for
courtesies, and whose names do not appear, the above explanation
is offered. The omission was imperative in order that those treated
might be allowed sufficient space to make the work as complete and
representative as might be reasonably expected.
Special attention has been given to _illustrations_. We have inserted
portraits of all the authors whose photographs we could obtain, and
have, also, given views of the homes and studies of many. A large
number of special drawings have also been made to illustrate the text
of selections. The whole number of portraits and other illustrations
amount to nearly one hundred and fifty, all of which are strictly
illustrative of the authors or their writings. None are put in as mere
ornaments. We have, furthermore, taken particular care to arrange a
number of special groups, placing those authors which belong in one
class or division of a class together on a page. One group on a page
represents our greatest poets; another, well-known western poets;
another, famous historians; another, writers for young people; another,
American humorists, etc. These groups are all arranged by artists
in various designs of ornamental setting. In many cases we have also
had special designs made by artists for commemorative and historic
pictures of famous authors. These drawings set forth in a pictorial
form leading scenes in the life and labors of the author represented.
Illustration: THE NEW CONGRESSIONAL LIBRARY, WASHINGTON, D. C.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
⭘ An Author at Fourteen
⭘ The Influence of his Father
⭘ Bryant’s Best Known Poems
⭘ Personal Appearance
⭘ A Long and Useful Life
⭘ ‘Thanatopsis’
⭘ ‘Waiting By the Gate
⭘ ‘Blessed are They That Mourn’
⭘ ‘Antiquity of Freedom’
⭘ ‘To a Water Fowl’
⭘ ‘Robert of Lincoln’
⭘ ‘Drought’
⭘ ‘The Past’
⭘ ‘The Murdered Traveler’
⭘ ‘The Battle-Field’
⭘ ‘The Crowded Street’
⭘ ‘Fitz Greene Halleck (Notice of)’
⭘ ‘A Corn-Shucking in South Carolina’
EDGAR ALLEN POE.
⭘ Comparison with Other American Poets
⭘ Place of Birth and Ancestry
⭘ Career as a Student
⭘ The Sadness of his Life and Its Influence Upon his Literature
⭘ Conflicting Statements of his Biographers
⭘ Great as a Story Writer and as a Poet
⭘ His Literary Labors and Productions
⭘ ‘The City in the Sea’
⭘ ‘Annabel Lee’
⭘ ‘To Helen’
⭘ ‘Israfel’
⭘ ‘To One in Paradise’
⭘ ‘Lenore’
⭘ ‘The Bells’
⭘ ‘The Raven’
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.
⭘ His Place in Literature
⭘ Comparison With American and English Poets
⭘ His Education, Collegemates and Home
⭘ His Domestic Life. His Poems
⭘ Prose Works and Translations
⭘ The Wayside Inn (A view of)
⭘ His Critics, Poe, Margaret Fuller, ♦Duyckinck
♦ ‘Duyckink’ replaced with ‘Duyckinck’
⭘ Longfellow’s Genius
⭘ ‘The Psalm of Life’
⭘ ‘The Village Blacksmith’
⭘ ‘The Bridge’
⭘ ‘Resignation’
⭘ ‘God’s Acre’
⭘ ‘Excelsior’
⭘ ‘The Rainy Day’
⭘ ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’
⭘ ‘The Old Clock On the Stairs’
⭘ ‘The Skeleton in Armour’
⭘ ‘King Witlaf’s Drinking Horn’
⭘ ‘Evangeline On the Prairie’
⭘ ‘Literary Fame (Prose)’
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
⭘ The Difficulty of Classifying Emerson
⭘ The Liberator of American Letters
⭘ A Master of Language
⭘ Emerson and Franklin
⭘ Birth, Education, Early Life
⭘ Home at Concord, Brook-Farm Enterprise
⭘ Influence on Other Writers
⭘ Modern Communism and the New Theology
⭘ ‘Hymn Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument (1836)’
⭘ ‘The Rhodora’
⭘ ‘A True Hero’
⭘ ‘Mountain and Squirrel’
⭘ ‘The Snow-Storm’
⭘ ‘The Problem’
⭘ ‘Traveling’
⭘ ‘The Compensation of Calamity’
⭘ ‘Self Reliance’
⭘ ‘Nature’
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
⭘ Whittier’s Humble Birth, Ancestry, Education
⭘ Poet of the Abolitionists
⭘ His Poems and His Prose
⭘ New England’s History Embalmed in Verse
⭘ Our Most Distinctively American Poet
⭘ ‘My Playmate’
⭘ ‘The Changeling’
⭘ ‘The ♦Worship of Nature’
♦ ‘Workskip’ replaced with ‘Worship’
⭘ ‘The Bare-foot Boy’
⭘ ‘Maud Muller’
⭘ ‘Memories’
⭘ ‘In Prison For Debt’
⭘ ‘The Storm’ (From ‘Snow Bound’)
⭘ ‘Ichabod’
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
⭘ Admired by the English-speaking World
⭘ His Education and Popularity
⭘ Early Poems
⭘ Autocrat and Professor at the Breakfast Table
⭘ Holmes’ Genial and Lovable Nature
⭘ ‘Bill and Joe’
⭘ ‘Union and Liberty’
⭘ ‘Old Ironsides’
⭘ ‘My Aunt’
⭘ ‘The Height of the Ridiculous’
⭘ ‘The Chambered Nautilus’
⭘ ‘Old Age and the Professor’ (Prose)
⭘ ‘The Brain’ (Prose)
⭘ ‘My Last Walk with the School Mistress’
⭘ ‘A Random Conversation on Old Maxims, Boston and other Towns’
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
⭘ Profoundest of American Poets
⭘ Early Life and Beginning in Literature
⭘ Marriage, and the Influence of his Wife
⭘ Home at Cambridge (view of)
⭘ Humorous Poems and Prose Writings
⭘ Longfellow’s Poem on Mrs. Lowell’s Death
⭘ Public Career of the Author
⭘ How Lowell is Regarded by Scholars
⭘ ‘The Gothic Genius’ (From ‘The Cathedral’)
⭘ ‘The Rose’
⭘ ‘The Heritage’
⭘ ‘Act For Truth’
⭘ ‘The First Snow-Fall’
⭘ ‘Fourth-of-July Ode’
⭘ ‘The Dandelion’
⭘ ‘The Alpine Sheep’ (by Mrs. Lowell)
BAYARD TAYLOR.
⭘ Life as a Farmer Boy
⭘ Education
⭘ His First Book
⭘ Encouragement from Horace Greeley
⭘ A Two Years’ Tramp Through Europe
⭘ A Most Delightful Book of Travel
⭘ An Inveterate Nomad
⭘ Public Career of the Author
⭘ ‘The Bison Track’
⭘ ‘The Song of the Camp’
⭘ ‘Bedouin Song’
⭘ ‘The Arab to the Palm’
⭘ ‘Life on the Nile’
NATHANIEL P. WILLIS.
⭘ A Devotee of Fashion
⭘ Birth and Ancestors
⭘ Educational Facilities
⭘ His First Poems
⭘ A Four Years’ Tour in Europe
⭘ Marriage and Home
⭘ A Second Journey to England
⭘ Death
⭘ An Untiring Worker
⭘ ‘David’s Lament for Absalom’
⭘ ‘The Dying Alchemist’
⭘ ‘The Belfry Pigeon’
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
⭘ His Humble Origin and Early Struggles
⭘ Introduction into Literature
⭘ Stoddard’s Style
⭘ Literary Dinner in His Honor (1892)
⭘ Ik Marvel’s Letter and Whitcomb Riley’s Poem
⭘ ‘A Curtain Call’
⭘ ‘Hymn to the Beautiful’
⭘ ‘A Dirge’
⭘ ‘The Shadow of the Hand’
⭘ ‘A Serenade’
WALTER WHITMAN (WALT).
⭘ The Estimates of Critics
⭘ Charms of Whitman’s Poetry
⭘ Life and Works of the Poet
⭘ Biographies of the Poet
⭘ ‘Darest Thou Now, O Soul’
⭘ ‘O Captain! My Captain’
⭘ ‘In All, Myself’
⭘ ‘Old Ireland’
⭘ ‘Pæan of Joy’
JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ A Thorough Southerner
⭘ Man of Letters and Scientist
⭘ Chief of the State Geological Survey
⭘ Works of the Author
⭘ ‘Ceres’
⭘ ‘Diana’
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
⭘ At the Head of Modern Lyrical Writers
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Mercantile Career
⭘ War Correspondent
⭘ Life in Boston
⭘ Works
⭘ Visit to England
⭘ ‘Alec Yeaton’s Son’
⭘ ‘On Lynn Terrace’
⭘ ‘Sargent’s Portrait of Edwin Booth at “The Players.”’
RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
⭘ Purity of Sentiment and Delicacy of Expression
⭘ Education and Early Life
⭘ Journalist
⭘ Editor of “Hours at Home”
⭘ Politician and Reformer
⭘ A Staunch Friend of our Colleges
⭘ A Man of Exalted Ideals
⭘ ‘Sonnet (After the Italian)’
⭘ ‘The Life Mask of Abraham Lincoln’
⭘ ‘Sheridan’
⭘ ‘Sunset From the Train’
⭘ ‘O Silver River Flowing to the Sea’
⭘ ‘There is Nothing New Under the Sun’
⭘ ‘Memorial Day’
⭘ ‘A Woman’s Thought’
JOHN HAY.
⭘ His Western Birth and Education
⭘ Service to President Lincoln
⭘ Military Career
⭘ Appointed Ambassador to Great Britain
⭘ A List of His Books
⭘ How He Came to Write “Little Breeches”
⭘ ‘Little Breeches’
⭘ ‘Jim Bludso’
⭘ ‘How it Happened’
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
⭘ Great Popularity with the Masses
⭘ A Poet of the Country People
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ First Occupation
⭘ Congratulated by Longfellow
⭘ Mr. Riley’s Methods of Work
⭘ The Poet’s Home
⭘ Constantly “on the Wing”
⭘ ‘A Boy’s Mother’
⭘ ‘Thoughts on the Late War’
⭘ ‘Our Hired Girl’
⭘ ‘The Raggedy Man’
BRET HARTE.
⭘ The Poet of the Mining Camp
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Emigrated to California
⭘ Schoolteacher and Miner
⭘ Position on a Frontier Paper
⭘ Editorial Position on the “Golden Era”
⭘ Secretary of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco
⭘ In Chicago and Boston
⭘ U. S. Consul to Crefield and Glasgow
⭘ A List of his Works
⭘ ‘The Society Upon the Stanislaus’
⭘ ‘Dickens in Camp’
EUGENE FIELD.
⭘ The “Poet of Child Life”
⭘ Troups of Children for his Friends
⭘ Peace-maker Among the Small Ones
⭘ A Feast with his Little Friends
⭘ A Devoted Husband
⭘ Congenial Association with his Fellow-workers
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ His Works
⭘ ‘Our Two Opinions’
⭘ ‘Lullaby’
⭘ ‘A Dutch Lullaby’
⭘ ‘A Norse Lullaby’
WILL CARLETON.
⭘ His Poems Favorites for Recitation
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Teacher, Farmhand and College Graduate
⭘ Journalist and Lecturer
⭘ A List of his Works
⭘ ‘Betsy and I Are Out’
⭘ ‘Gone With a Handsomer Man’
CINCINNATUS HINER MILLER (JOAQUIN).
⭘ Removal from Indiana to Oregon
⭘ Experiences in Mining and Filibustering
⭘ Marries and Becomes Editor and Lawyer
⭘ Visit to London to Seek a Publisher
⭘ ‘Thoughts of My Western Home’
⭘ ‘Mount Shasta’
⭘ ‘Kit Carson’s Ride’
⭘ ‘J. Miller’s Alaska Letter’
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
⭘ First American Novelist
⭘ Birth and Childhood
⭘ The Wilderness his Teacher
⭘ Sailor Life
⭘ Marriage and Home
⭘ “The Spy”
⭘ Plaudits From Both Sides of the Atlantic
⭘ The First Genuine Salt-water Novel
⭘ Removal to New York
⭘ A Six Years’ Visit to Europe
⭘ His Remaining Nineteen Years
⭘ ‘Encounter With a Panther’
⭘ ‘The Capture of a Whale’
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
⭘ The Greatest of American Romancers
⭘ Birth, Ancestors, and Childhood
⭘ Twelve Years of Solitary Existence
⭘ His First Book
⭘ “Twice Told Tales”
⭘ A Staunch Democrat
⭘ Marriage and the “Old Manse”
⭘ The Masterpiece in American Fiction
⭘ Books Written by Hawthorne
⭘ Death and Funeral
⭘ ‘Emerson and the Emersonites’
⭘ ‘Pearl’
⭘ ‘Sights From a Steeple’
⭘ ‘A Reminiscence of Early Life’
EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
⭘ Among the Best Known American Authors
⭘ A Noted Lecturer
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Career as a Clergyman
⭘ Newspaper and Magazine Work
⭘ A Prominent Short-Story-teller
⭘ An Historical Writer of Great Prominence
⭘ Patriotic Interest in Public Affairs
⭘ ‘Lost’
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.
⭘ One of the Greatest of Modern American Novelists
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Editor of the “Ohio State Journal”
⭘ His First Volume of Verse
⭘ His “Life of Abraham Lincoln”
⭘ Consul to Venice
⭘ Mr. Howells’ Works
⭘ Editor of the “Atlantic Monthly”
⭘ ‘The First Boarder’
⭘ ‘Impressions on Visiting Pompeii’
⭘ ‘Venetian Vagabonds’
GENERAL LEW WALLACE.
⭘ Began His Literary Career Late in Life
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Lawyer and Soldier
⭘ Governor of Utah
⭘ Appointed Minister to Turkey
⭘ His Most Popular Book
⭘ Enormous Circulation
⭘ ‘Description of Christ’
⭘ ‘The Prince of India Teaches Re-incarnation’
⭘ ‘The Prayer of the Wandering Jew’
⭘ ‘Death of Montezuma’
⭘ ‘Description of Virgin Mary’
EDWARD EGGLESTON.
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ A Man of Self-culture
⭘ His Early Training
⭘ Religious Devotion and Sacrifice
⭘ Beginning of his Literary Career
⭘ What Distinguishes his Novels
⭘ List of his Chief Novels and Stories
⭘ ‘Spelling down the Master’
THOMAS NELSON PAGE.
⭘ Birth and Earliest Recollections
⭘ Childhood, Ancestors, and Education
⭘ His First Literary Success
⭘ “In Ole Virginia” and other stories
⭘ Prominent Journalist and Lecturer
⭘ A Tour Abroad
⭘ ‘Old Sue’
EDWARD PAYSON ROE.
⭘ Great Popularity Among the Masses
⭘ The Character of his Novels
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Served as Chaplain During the Civil War
⭘ List of His Works
⭘ ‘Christine, Awake For Your Life’
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.
⭘ “The Most Versatile of Modern Novelists”
⭘ Birth, Ancestors, and Early Life
⭘ Editor on the “Allahabad Herald”
⭘ Varied Experiences
⭘ How he Came to Write “Mr. Isaacs”
⭘ His Most Popular Novels
⭘ A Novel Written in Twenty-four ♦Days
♦ ‘Hours’ replaced with ‘Days’
⭘ His Other Chief Works
⭘ ‘Horace Bellingham’
⭘ ‘In the Himalayas’
FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.
⭘ A Prolific and Popular Author
⭘ Birth and Educational Training
⭘ Engraver and Designer
⭘ One New Book Almost Every Year
⭘ Some of his Best Known Books
⭘ ‘The End of a Career’
EDWARD BELLAMY.
⭘ A Most Remarkable Sensation
⭘ 100,000 Copies Per Year
⭘ Mr. ♦Bellamy’s Ideal
♦ ‘Belamy’s’ replaced with ‘Bellamy’s’
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ His Books
⭘ An Ideal Home
⭘ ‘Music in the Year 2000’
GEORGE W. CABLE.
⭘ “Circumstances Make the Man”
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Service in the Confederate Army
⭘ Errand Boy in a Store
⭘ On the “New Orleans Picayune”
⭘ Devotes his Life to Literature
⭘ His Most Prominent Works
⭘ ‘The Doctor’
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
⭘ Ancestors, Birth, and Girlhood
⭘ Removal to Cincinnati
⭘ A Trip Across the River
⭘ Marriage
⭘ Severe Trials
⭘ A Memorable Year
⭘ “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
⭘ Her Pen Never Idle
⭘ Removal to Hartford, Conn.
⭘ Her Death
⭘ ‘The Little Evangelist’
⭘ ‘The Other World’
M. VIRGINIA TERHUNE (MARION HARLAND).
⭘ Wide Variety of Talent
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Marriage and Home
⭘ Her Most Prominent Works
⭘ ‘A Manly Hero’
MARY ABIGAIL DODGE (GAIL HAMILTON).
⭘ Essayist, Critic and Novelist
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Career as a Writer
⭘ Her Published Volumes
⭘ The Only Authorized Life of J. G. Blaine
⭘ ‘Fishing’
HELEN HUNT JACKSON.
⭘ Helen Hunt’s Cabin
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Marriage and Removal to Newport, R. I.
⭘ Her First Poems
⭘ Great Distinction as a Writer
⭘ Removal to Colorado
⭘ At the Foot of Pike’s Peak
⭘ List of her Most Prominent Works
⭘ Death and Burial Place
⭘ ‘Christmas Night at St. Peter’s’
⭘ ‘Choice of Colors’
FRANCES H. BURNETT.
⭘ Pluck, Energy and Perseverance
⭘ Her First Story
⭘ Marriage and Tour in Europe
⭘ Her Children Stories
⭘ A Frequent Contributor to Periodicals
⭘ ‘Pretty Polly P.’
MARY N. MURFREE (CHAS. EGBERT CRADDOCK).
⭘ An Amusing Story
⭘ Birth, Ancestry and Misfortunes
⭘ A Student of Humanity
⭘ Her Style Bold and Full of Humor
⭘ ‘The Confession’
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD.
⭘ Favorable Reception of “Gates Ajar!”
⭘ An Early Writer
⭘ A Long Series of Books
⭘ Marriage and Home
⭘ Her Purpose Always High
⭘ ‘The Hands at Hayle and Kelso’s’
AMELIA E. BARR.
⭘ Popularity of her Works
⭘ Her Sorrows and Hardships
⭘ Birth and Early Education
⭘ Marriage and Travels
⭘ Death of her Husband and Four Sons
⭘ An Instantly Successful Book
⭘ ‘Little Jan’s Triumph’
⭘ ‘The Old Piano’
ALICE FRENCH (OCTAVE THANET).
⭘ A Genuine Yankee Woman
⭘ Her Puritan Ancestry
⭘ Education and First Manuscript
⭘ Her First Book
⭘ Her Most Prominent Publications
⭘ Her nom-de-plume
⭘ Philosopher, Artist, and Novelist
⭘ An Assiduous Student of her Subjects
⭘ ‘Two Lost and Found’
JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN.
⭘ A Famous Daughter of the “Pilgrims”
⭘ Birth and Parents
⭘ A List of her Best Books
⭘ Her Personality
⭘ ‘An Afternoon in Nantucket’
LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.
⭘ The Most Prolific of American Women Writers
⭘ Critical Estimate of her Works
⭘ Birth and Educational Advantages
⭘ Her First Book
⭘ Some of her Other Works
⭘ A Tour of Europe
⭘ Death
⭘ ‘Columbus’
⭘ ‘The Alpine Flowers’
⭘ ‘Niagara’
⭘ ‘Death of an Infant’
⭘ ‘A Butterfly on a Child’s Grave’
ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
⭘ Ancestors and Birth
⭘ A Liberal Contributor to Periodicals
⭘ Her Published Works
⭘ ‘The Step-mother’
⭘ ‘Guardian Angels’
⭘ ‘The Brook’
⭘ ‘The April Rain’
⭘ ‘Flowers’
⭘ ‘Eros and Anteros’
LUCY LARCOM.
⭘ Operative in a Cotton Factory
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Her First Literary Production
⭘ Some of her Best Works
⭘ The Working Woman’s Friend
⭘ ‘Hannah Binding Shoes’
ALICE AND PHŒBE CARY.
⭘ Their Birth and Early Lot
⭘ Encouragement From Editors
⭘ Their First Volume
⭘ Some of their Prominent Works
⭘ A Comparison Between the Two Sisters
⭘ One in Spirit through Life
⭘ United in Death
⭘ ‘Pictures of Memory’
⭘ ‘Nobility’
⭘ ‘The Gray Swan’
⭘ ‘To the Evening Zephyr’
⭘ ‘Death Scene’
⭘ ‘Memories’
⭘ ‘Equal to Either Fortune’
⭘ ‘Light’
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Her First Book at Nineteen Years
⭘ Her Following Publications
⭘ Residence in Boston and Trips Abroad
⭘ A Systematic Worker
⭘ Personal Friendship
⭘ ‘If There Were Dreams to Sell’
⭘ ‘Wife to Husband’
⭘ ‘The Last Good-Bye’
⭘ ‘Next Year’
⭘ ‘My Mother’s Picture’
WASHINGTON IRVING.
⭘ The First Great Pioneer in American Letters
⭘ Birth and Ancestors
⭘ Named After George Washington
⭘ Early Success as a Journalist
⭘ A Two Years’ Trip in Europe
⭘ A Shrewd Advertisement
⭘ Seventeen Years Abroad
⭘ The Winning Character of his Genius
⭘ ‘The Organ of Westminster Abbey’
⭘ ‘Baltus Van Tassel’s Farm’
⭘ ‘Columbus at Barcelona’
⭘ ‘The Galloping Hessian’
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
⭘ The Meditative School in American Literature
⭘ Birth, Ancestry and Education
⭘ Early Life
⭘ In “The Brotherhood of Authors”
⭘ His First Literary Work
⭘ A Few of his Other Publications
⭘ ‘The Moral Quality of Vegetables’
DONALD G. MITCHELL.
⭘ Characteristics of the Author
⭘ A Disciple of Washington Irving
⭘ Birth, Education, and Early Life
⭘ Home and Marriage
⭘ U. S. Consul to Venice
⭘ Semi-public Positions
⭘ His Most Prominent Books
⭘ ‘Washington Irving’
⭘ ‘Glimpses of “Dream Life”’
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
⭘ A Noble Part in the Battles for Freedom
⭘ Activity in the Anti-Slavery Agitation
⭘ His Contributions to Literature
⭘ A Popular Historian
⭘ ‘A Puritan Sunday Morning’
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
⭘ Birth, Family, and Education
⭘ Familiar with the Classics
⭘ On the Staff of the “Christian Union”
⭘ Profound Study of the Problems of Life
⭘ A Declaration Typical of all his Thought
⭘ ‘Country Sights and Sounds’
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
⭘ Two Sensational Poems
⭘ Birth, Ancestry, and Early Life
⭘ Journalist at Twenty-one
⭘ On the New York “Tribune”
⭘ Editor of the “World”
⭘ A Remarkable War Letter
⭘ A List of his Prominent Works
⭘ Poet and Man of Business
⭘ An Ideal Home Life
⭘ ‘Betrothed Anew’
⭘ ‘The Door-Step’
GEORGE H. BANCROFT.
⭘ The First Among American Historians
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Extensive Studies in Europe
⭘ Appointed to the Chair of Greek in Harvard College
⭘ A School of High Classical Character
⭘ Official Service
⭘ Removal to New York
⭘ Minister to Russia and to Germany
⭘ His “History of the United States” and other Works
⭘ A Long and Useful Life
⭘ ‘Character of Roger Williams’
⭘ ‘Destruction of the Tea in Boston Harbor’
⭘ ‘Chivalry and Puritanism’
⭘ ‘The Position of the Puritans’
JAMES PARTON.
⭘ Ancestry, Birth, and Education
⭘ A Very Successful Teacher
⭘ His Career as a Literary Man
⭘ On the Staff of “The New York Ledger”
⭘ His Most Prominent Works
⭘ ‘Old Virginia’
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
⭘ Birth, Education, and Visit Abroad
⭘ A Summer With the ♦Dacotah Indians
♦ ‘Dakotah’ replaced with ‘Dacotah’
⭘ Compelled to Suspend Intellectual Work
⭘ An Interesting Example of his Persistency
⭘ His Interest in Horticulture
⭘ ‘The New England Colonies’
⭘ ‘The Heights of Abraham’
WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT.
⭘ A Popular Historian
⭘ Birth, Parentage and Early Life
⭘ A Thorough Preparation
⭘ Marriage and Happy Home
⭘ His Method of Composition
⭘ Successful as a Writer from the First
⭘ A List of his Works
⭘ Many Engaging Qualities
⭘ ‘The Golden Age of Tezcuco’
⭘ ‘The Banquet of the Dead’
JOHN L. MOTLEY.
⭘ Birth, Boyhood, and Early Associates
⭘ Intimate Friend of Prince Bismarck
⭘ Member of Massachusetts’ Legislature
⭘ “History of Holland”
⭘ Minister to Austria, 1861; to England, 1869
⭘ Patriot, Scholar, Historian
⭘ ‘Bismarck’
⭘ ‘The Siege of Leyden’
⭘ ‘Assassination of William of Orange’
JOHN FISKE.
⭘ Precocious Ability
⭘ Birth, Education and Early Life
⭘ His Literary Work and Most Noted Books
⭘ His Principal Historical Works
⭘ His School-books
⭘ ‘Land Discovered’
⭘ ‘The Federal Convention’
JOHN B. McMASTER.
⭘ Excelling in Different Fields
⭘ Parentage, Birth and Early Life
⭘ Professor of American History
⭘ His View of History
⭘ Instructor of the Young
⭘ ‘The American Workman in 1784’
⭘ ‘The Minister in New England’
FRANCES M. WHITCHER (THE WIDOW BEDOTT).
⭘ Her nom-de-plume
⭘ Richness of Humor
⭘ Birth, Childhood and Education
⭘ Marriage and Literary Fame
⭘ Removal from Elmira, N. Y.
⭘ ‘Widow Bedott to Elder Sniffles’
⭘ ‘The Widow’s Poetry and her Comments on the Same About Hezekiah’
CHARLES F. BROWN (ARTEMUS WARD).
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ On the “Commercial,” Toledo, Ohio
⭘ Local Editor of the “Plain Dealer”
⭘ Successful Lecturer in England
⭘ Death at Southampton
⭘ His Works
⭘ ‘Artemus Ward Visits the Shakers’
⭘ ‘At the Tomb of Shakespeare’
HENRY W. SHAW (JOSH BILLINGS).
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ His Early Life of Adventure
⭘ Entered the Lecture Field
⭘ Contributor to “The New York Weekly”
⭘ His Published Books
♦⭘ ‘Josh Billing’s Advertisement’
♦ added work omitted from the TOC
⭘ ‘Manifest Destiny’
⭘ ‘Letters to Farmers’
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN).
⭘ A World-wide Reputation
⭘ Birth, Boyhood and Education
⭘ His Pilot Life
⭘ Editor of the Virginia City “Enterprise”
⭘ Journalist and Gold Digger
⭘ A Trip to Hawaii
⭘ Innocents Abroad
⭘ Some of his Other Works
⭘ A Lecturing Trip Around the World
⭘ ‘Jim Smiley’s Frog’
⭘ ‘Uncle Dan’l’s Apparition and Prayer’
⭘ ‘The Babies’
MARIETTA HOLLEY (JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE).
⭘ A Writer at an Early Age
⭘ Birth and Ancestors
⭘ Rise and Increase of Her Fame
⭘ Some of her Prominent Works
⭘ A Quarter Million Copies Sold
⭘ Characteristics of her Books
⭘ ‘Josiah Allen’s Wife Calls on the President’
CHARLES F. ADAMS (YAWCOB STRAUSS).
⭘ A Not-Soon-to-be-Forgotten Author
⭘ Birth, Education and Early Life
⭘ Service in Many Hard-fought Battles
⭘ Prominent Business Man
⭘ A Contributor to Prominent Journals
⭘ A Genial and Companionable Man
⭘ ‘Der Drummer’
⭘ ‘Hans and Fritz’
⭘ ‘Yawcob Strauss’
⭘ ‘Mine Moder-in-Law’
⭘ ‘Yawcob’s Dribulations’
⭘ ‘The Puzzled Dutchman’
⭘ ‘Der Oak and Der Vine’
EDGAR WILSON NYE (BILL NYE).
⭘ A Man of Genuine Wit
⭘ Birth and Early Surroundings
⭘ Studied Law, Admitted to the Bar
⭘ Organized the Nye Trust
⭘ Famous Letters from Buck’s Shoals, N. C.
⭘ “History of the United States”
⭘ His Death
⭘ ‘The Wild Cow’
⭘ ‘Mr. Whisk’s True Love’
⭘ ‘The Discovery of New York’
JOEL C. HARRIS (UNCLE REMUS).
⭘ “An Accidental Author”
⭘ Birth and Humble Circumstances
⭘ In the Office of the “Countryman”
⭘ Beginning of his Literary Career
⭘ Studied and Practiced Law
⭘ Co-editor of the Atlanta “Constitution”
⭘ His Works
⭘ ‘Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Buzzard’
ROBERT J. BURDETTE.
⭘ A Prominent Place Among “Funny Men”
⭘ Birth and Early Education
⭘ Fought in the Civil War
⭘ Journalist, Lecturer and Baptist Minister
⭘ Contributor to “Ladies’ Home Journal”
⭘ His Other Works
⭘ ‘The Movement Cure for Rheumatism’
LOUISA M. ALCOTT.
⭘ Architect of her Own Fortune
⭘ Her Father’s Misfortunes
⭘ Her Early Writings
⭘ Her Letters in the Government Hospitals
⭘ Young People’s True Friend
⭘ Her Books
⭘ An Admirer of Emerson
⭘ A Victim of Over-Work
⭘ ‘How Jo Made Friends’
WILLIAM T. ADAMS (OLIVER OPTIC).
⭘ Writer for the Young
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ Teacher in Public Schools of Boston
⭘ His Editorials and Books
⭘ His Style and Influence
⭘ ‘The Sloop That Went to the Bottom’
SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT (GRACE GREENWOOD).
⭘ Favorite Writer for Little Children
⭘ Birth and Childhood
⭘ Her Marriage
⭘ Contributions to Journals and Magazines
⭘ Her Numerous Books
⭘ Life Abroad
⭘ ‘The Baby in the Bath Tub’
HORATIO ALGER.
⭘ A Wholesome Author for Young People
⭘ His First Book, Great Success
⭘ A New Field
⭘ Birth, Education and Early Life
⭘ Residence in New York
⭘ Some of his Most Prominent Books
⭘ ‘How Dick Began the Day’
EDWARD ELLIS.
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ His Historical Text-Books
⭘ His Contributions to Children’s Papers
⭘ ‘The Signal Fire’
MARTHA FINLEY.
⭘ Birth, Ancestry and Early Life
⭘ Beginning of her Literary Career
⭘ Struggle Against Adversity
⭘ Great Exertions
⭘ ‘Elsie Series,’ Great Popularity
⭘ ‘Elsie’s Disappointment’
MARY MAPES DODGE.
⭘ Writer of Stories for Children
⭘ Birth and Parentage
⭘ Married William Dodge
⭘ Contributor to “Hearth and Home”
⭘ Success of her Works
⭘ Editor of “St. Nicholas Magazine”
⭘ Her Home in New York
⭘ ‘Too Much of a Good Thing’
HORACE GREELEY.
⭘ Birth and Early Taste for Literature
⭘ On the “Northern Spectator”
⭘ Tries his Fortune in New York
⭘ Part Owner of the “New Yorker”
⭘ The “Log Cabin” and the N. Y. “Tribune”
⭘ Elected to Congress
⭘ His Works
⭘ Nominated for Presidency
⭘ His Last Resting Place
⭘ ‘A Debtor’s Slavery’
⭘ ‘The Press’
CHARLES A. DANA.
⭘ One of Our Foremost Men
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ A Remarkable Life
⭘ His Education and College Career
⭘ Joining the “Brook Farm” Men
⭘ His First Journalistic Experience
⭘ On the New York “Tribune”
⭘ Busy Years
⭘ Difference Between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana
⭘ Assistant Secretary of War
⭘ One Year in Chicago
⭘ Manager of the New York “Sun”
⭘ ‘Roscoe Conkling’
LYMAN ABBOTT.
⭘ Ancestors, Birth and Education
⭘ Ordained a Minister
⭘ Secretary to the American Freedmen’s Commission
⭘ Work as a Journalist
⭘ Successor of Henry Ward Beecher
⭘ Prolific Publisher
⭘ Successful Pulpit Speaker
⭘ ‘The Jesuits’
⭘ ‘The Destruction of the Cities of the Plain’
HENRY W. WATTERSON.
⭘ Influential Modern Journalist
⭘ Birth and Education
⭘ Editor of the “Republican Banner”
⭘ Service in the Confederate Army
⭘ The “Courier-Journal,” Louisville, Ky.
⭘ Prominent Part in Politics
⭘ ‘The New South’
MURAT HALSTEAD.
⭘ One of the Greatest Living Journalists
⭘ Nativity, Early Life and Education
⭘ Editor of “The Commercial,” Cincinnati, Ohio
⭘ A Continued Success
⭘ Correspondent During the Franco-Prussian War, 1870
⭘ In Washington and New York
⭘ Home and Family Life
⭘ ‘The Young Man at the Door’
WHITELAW REID.
⭘ “Fortune Favors the Brave”
⭘ Birth and Early Training
⭘ War Correspondent to the “Cincinnati Gazette”
⭘ An Important Work
⭘ Editorial Writer Upon N. Y. “Tribune”
⭘ His Most Prominent Works
⭘ His Palatial Home and Family Life
⭘ ‘Pictures of a Louisiana Plantation’
ALBERT SHAW.
⭘ Birth, Education and Personal Characteristics
⭘ Residence in Baltimore
⭘ On the Minneapolis Daily “Tribune”
⭘ Extensive Studies Abroad
⭘ Editor of the “Review of Reviews”
⭘ Great Success
⭘ ‘Recent Development of the West’
JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
⭘ His Imaginative Power, Vivid Statement
⭘ Parentage, Birth and Travels Abroad
⭘ College Life and Early Training
⭘ Long Sojourn Abroad
⭘ Some of his Most Prominent Works
⭘ Expedition to India
⭘ ‘The Wayside and the War’
⭘ ‘First Months in England’
⭘ ‘The Horrors of the Plague in India’
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
⭘ Marvelous Skill in Seeing the World
⭘ A Clever Newspaper Reporter
⭘ Birth and Hereditary Bent for Letters
⭘ Interesting Career as a Journalist
⭘ The Book that Made Him Famous
⭘ Some of His Other Works
⭘ ‘The Greek Defence of Velestino’
PATRICK HENRY.
⭘ His Talents as a Popular Orator
⭘ Parentage and Education
⭘ Marriage and Early Life
⭘ A Prominent Lawyer
⭘ Bold Principles
⭘ The Leader of his Colony
⭘ The First Governor of Virginia
⭘ His Death
⭘ ‘Resistance to British Aggression’
⭘ ‘The War Inevitable’
HENRY CLAY.
⭘ The “Great Pacificator”
⭘ Birth, Early Hardships, Toil and Poverty
⭘ Removal to Kentucky and Success
⭘ Marriage and Home
⭘ In the Senate of the United States
⭘ Member of the House of Representatives
⭘ Elected Speaker
⭘ Secretary of State
⭘ The Conflict of 1818
⭘ The Disappointment of His Life
⭘ The “Compromise” of 1850
⭘ The Leading Object of His Life
⭘ ‘Defence of Jefferson,’ 1813
⭘ ‘Reply to John Randolph’
⭘ ‘On Recognizing the Independence of Greece’
DANIEL WEBSTER.
⭘ First among the “Makers of the Nation”
⭘ Birth, Ancestors and Early Life
⭘ The “Webster’s Boy”
⭘ Extraordinary Memory
⭘ Majestic Appearance
⭘ Lawyer, Orator and Statesman
⭘ A Famous Case
⭘ His Most Famous Speeches
⭘ Secretary of State
⭘ Home and Home Life
⭘ Death and Funeral
⭘ ‘South Carolina and Massachusetts’
⭘ ‘Liberty and Union’
⭘ ‘The Eloquence of Action’
⭘ ‘The Twenty-second of February’
⭘ ‘America’s Gift to Europe’
EDWARD EVERETT.
⭘ The Great Charm of His Orations
⭘ Birth, Education and Early Life
⭘ Professor of Greek at Harvard College
⭘ Editor of the “North American Review”
⭘ Member of Congress
⭘ Minister to England
⭘ President of Harvard College
⭘ Secretary of State
⭘ His Lectures and Orations
⭘ Death
⭘ ‘Twenty-five Years of Peace’
⭘ ‘The Father of the Republic’
⭘ ‘The Land of Our Forefathers’
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
⭘ “The Silvery-tongued Orator”
⭘ How He came into Prominence
⭘ A Memorable Speech
⭘ Birth, Parents and Education
⭘ A Popular Lecturer
⭘ His Most Celebrated Addresses
⭘ ‘Political Agitation’
⭘ ‘Toussaint L’Ouverture’
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
⭘ No Superior as Pulpit Orator
⭘ Parentage, Birth and Childhood
⭘ Education and Conversion
⭘ His Marriage and First Pastorate
⭘ Pastor of Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, N. Y.
⭘ A Bold Abolitionist
⭘ Ever the Champion of the Right
⭘ His Death and Funeral
⭘ ‘Public Dishonesty’
⭘ ‘Eulogy on General Grant’
⭘ ‘From “The Sparks of Nature”’
JOHN B. GOUGH.
⭘ A Great National Orator
⭘ Birth and Early Life
⭘ A Life of Hopeless Dissipation
⭘ Public Confession and Reformation
⭘ A Popular Lecturer
⭘ Called to England
⭘ A Happy Life
⭘ His Published Works
⭘ ‘Water and Rum’
⭘ ‘The Power of Habit’
⭘ ‘What is a Minority?’
CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW.
⭘ Great Versatility
⭘ Birth, Ancestors and Boyhood
⭘ A Close Student of Politics
⭘ A Highly Successful Lawyer
⭘ A Giant in Politics
⭘ Member of Congress
⭘ Secretary of State
⭘ Minister to Japan
⭘ His Career as a Railway Man
⭘ ‘The Pilgrims’
HENRY W. GRADY.
⭘ Devoid of Sectional Animosities
⭘ The Union His Pride
⭘ Eloquent, Logical and Aggressive
⭘ His Principal Speeches
⭘ Birth, Parentage and Education
⭘ Marriage and Struggle for Existence
⭘ “A Friend in Need”
⭘ Success at Last
⭘ Premature Death
⭘ ‘The New South’
⭘ ‘Regard for the Negro Race’
⭘ ‘Appeal for Temperance’
JULIA WARD HOWE.
⭘ Her Home a Meeting Place for Great Men
⭘ Birth, Parentage and Education
⭘ Marriage and Tour Abroad
⭘ Her First Book
⭘ Interest in the Anti-Slavery Question
⭘ Her Famous “Battle Hymn”
⭘ Visit to England
⭘ A New Journey Abroad
⭘ ‘The Battle Hymn of the ♦Republic’
♦ ‘Rebublic’ replaced with ‘Republic’
⭘ ‘Our Country’
⭘ ‘The Unspeakable Pang’
MARY A. LIVERMORE.
⭘ Her Early Experience
⭘ Birth, Parentage and Education
⭘ Teacher of Latin and French
⭘ In the South
⭘ Marriage
⭘ An Active Temperance Worker
⭘ Her Literary Work
⭘ War Service
⭘ An Ardent Woman-Suffragist
⭘ Her Pen Never Idle
⭘ ‘Useful Women’
BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD.
⭘ One of the Greatest Benefactors of Her Sex
⭘ Birth, Education and Early Life
⭘ Professor at Lockport Academy
⭘ Admission to the Supreme Court of the U. S.
⭘ A Remarkable Nomination
⭘ Great Popularity
⭘ Several Times Delegate to International Congresses of Peace
⭘ Assistant Editor to the “Peacemaker”
⭘ ‘Address before the Committee of the House of Delegates,
Washington, in Support of Woman Suffrage’
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
⭘ Early Life and Education
⭘ How She Became an Abolitionist, Woman-Suffragist and Temperance
Worker
⭘ Arrested, Tried and Fined for Voting
⭘ Speeches and Lectures
⭘ Celebration of Her Seventieth Birthday
⭘ ‘Woman’s Right to Suffrage’
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
⭘ Forceful, Logical and Eloquent Orator
⭘ Primarily a Woman-Suffragist
⭘ Birth, Childhood and Education
⭘ How She Became a Woman’s Rights Believer
⭘ How She Became an Abolitionist
⭘ The First Woman’s Rights Convention
⭘ Her Addresses and Speeches
⭘ Her Literary Works
⭘ A Thoroughly Domestic Woman
⭘ ‘A Plea for Equal Rights’
⭘ ‘Address to the Legislature of New York’
FRANCES E. WILLARD.
⭘ Birth, Childhood and Early Life
⭘ Teacher and President of Evanston College
⭘ The Women’s “Crusade against Rum Shops”
⭘ Joining in the Crusade
⭘ The Result of Her Work
⭘ ‘Home Protection’
LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
⭘ Activity against the “Fugitive Slave Law”
⭘ Birth, Education and Early Life
⭘ Her First Book a Success
⭘ Marriage and Anti-Slavery Work
⭘ The First Anti-Slavery Book in America
⭘ ‘A Little Waif’
⭘ ‘To Whittier on His Seventieth Birthday’
⭘ ‘Politeness’
⭘ ‘Flowers’
⭘ ‘Unselfishness’
ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.
⭘ A Fearless Girl
⭘ Birth, Childhood and Education
⭘ Her Debut Before the Public
⭘ Cast Upon the World
⭘ How She was Named “The Girl Orator”
⭘ The Mistake of Her Life
⭘ Misfortunes and Difficulties
⭘ Rare Eloquence and Dramatic Fervor
⭘ ‘Why Colored Men Should Enlist in the Army’
MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES.
⭘ ‘Home, Sweet Home’
⭘ ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’
⭘ ‘The American Flag’
⭘ ‘Blind Man and the Elephant’
⭘ ‘Hail, Columbia!’
⭘ ‘Betty and the Bear’
⭘ ‘Visit of St. Nicholas’
⭘ ‘Woodman, Spare that Tree’
⭘ ‘Sanctity of Treaties, 1796’
⭘ ‘The Bloom was on the Alder and the Tassel on the Corn’
⭘ ‘The Declaration of Independence’
⭘ ‘Washington’s Address to His Soldiers, 1776’
⭘ ‘The General Government and the States’
⭘ ‘What Saved the Union’
⭘ ‘The Birthday of Washington’
⭘ ‘Oh! Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?’
⭘ ‘Columbus in Chains’
⭘ ‘The Bivouac of the Dead’
⭘ ‘Address at the Dedication of Gettysburg Cemetery’
⭘ ‘Memory’
⭘ ‘All Quiet Along the Potomac’
⭘ ‘A Life on the Ocean Wave’
⭘ ‘The Blue and the Gray’
⭘ ‘Roll-call’
⭘ ‘Theology in the Quarters’
⭘ ‘Ruin Wrought by Rum’
⭘ ‘To a Skeleton’
⭘ ‘Pledge with Wine’
⭘ ‘Spartacus to the Gladiators at Capua’
⭘ ‘The Crabbed Man’
⭘ ‘Putting up O’ the Stove’
⭘ ‘The Poor Indian!’
⭘ ‘Jenkins Goes to a Picnic’
⭘ ‘Sewing on a Button’
⭘ ‘Casey at the Bat’
⭘ ‘The Magical Isle’
⭘ ‘Stray Bits of Character’
FAMOUS AMERICAN AUTHORS.
WHOSE WRITINGS, BIOGRAPHIES AND PORTRAITS APPEAR IN THIS VOLUME.
Abbott, Lyman.
Adams, Charles Follen, (_Yawcob Strauss_).
Adams, Wm. T., (_Oliver Optic_).
Alcott, Louisa May.
Aldrich, Thomas Bailey.
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Anthony, Susan B.
Artemus Ward, (_Charles F. Browne_).
Austin, Jane Goodwin.
Bancroft, George H.
Barr, Amelia E.
Beecher, Henry Ward.
Bellamy, Edward.
Bill Nye (_Edgar Wilson Nye_).
Browne, Charles F., (_Artemus Ward_).¹
Bryant, William Cullen.
♦Burdette, Robert J.
♦ ‘Burdett’ replaced with ‘Burdette’
Burnett, Frances Hodgson.
Cable, George W.
Carleton, Will.
Cary, Alice.
Cary, Phoebe.
Child, Lydia Maria.¹
Clay, Henry.
Clemens, Samuel L., (_Mark Twain_).
Cooper, James Fenimore.
Craddock, Charles Egbert, (_Mary N. Murfree_).
Crawford, Francis Marion.
Dana, Charles A.
Davis, Richard Harding.
Depew, Chauncey M.
Dickinson, Anna Elizabeth.
Dodge, Mary Abigail, (_Gail Hamilton_).¹
Dodge, Mary Mapes.¹
Eggleston, Edward.
Ellis, Edward.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo.
Everett, Edward.
Field, Eugene.
Finley, Martha.
Fiske, John.¹
French, Alice, (_Octave Thanet_).
Gail Hamilton, (_Mary Abigail Dodge_).¹
Gilder, Richard Watson.
Gough, John B.
Grady, Henry W.
Greeley, Horace.
Grace Greenwood, (_Sarah J. Lippincott_).
Hale, Edward Everett.
Halstead, Murat.
Harris, Joel Chandler, (_Uncle Remus_).
Harte, Bret.
Hawthorne, Julian.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel.
Hay, John.
Henry, Patrick.
Higginson, Thomas Wentworth.
Holley, Marietta, (_Josiah Allen’s Wife_).¹
Holmes, Oliver Wendell.
Howe, Julia Ward.
Howells, William Dean.
Ik Marvel, (_Donald G. Mitchell_).
Irving, Washington.
Jackson, Helen Hunt.
Joaquin Miller (_Cincinnatus Heine Miller_).
Josiah Allen’s Wife, (_Marietta Holly_).¹
Josh Billings, (_Henry W. Shaw_).¹
Larcom, Lucy.
Lippincott, Sarah Jane, (_Grace Greenwood_).
Livermore, Mary A.
Lockwood, Belva Ann.
Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth.
Lowell, James Russell.
Mabie, Hamilton W.
Mark Twain, (_Samuel L. Clemens_).
Marion Harland, (_Mary V. Terhune_).
McMaster, John B.
Miller, Cincinnatus Heine, (_Joaquin_).
Mitchell, Donald Grant (_Ik Marvel_).
Motley, John L.
Moulton, Louise Chandler.
Murfree, Mary N., (_Chas. Egbert Craddock_).
Nye, Edgar Wilson, (_Bill Nye_).
Oliver Optic, (_William T. Adams_).
Octave Thanet, (_Alice French_).
Page, Thomas Nelson.
Parkman, Francis.¹
Parton, James.
Phillips, Wendell.
Poe, Edgar Allen.¹
Prescott, William.
Reid, Whitelaw.
Riley, James Whitcomb.
Roe, Edward Payson.
Shaw, Albert.
Shaw, Henry W., (_Josh Billings_).
Sigourney, Lydia H.
Smith, Elizabeth Oakes.
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady.
Stedman, Edmund Clarence.
Stockton, Frank.
Stoddard, Richard Henry.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher.
Taylor, Bayard.¹
Terhune, Mary Virginia.
Thompson, Maurice.¹
Wallace, General Lew.¹
Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.
Warner, Charles Dudley.
Watterson, Henry.
Webster, Daniel.
Whitman, Walt.
Whittier, John Greenleaf.
Willard, Frances E.
Willis, Nathaniel Parker.
Whitcher, Mrs. (_The Widow Bedott_).¹
¹ No Portrait.
Illustration: “UNDER A SPREADING CHESTNUT TREE
THE VILLAGE SMITHY STANDS.”
_Longfellow._
GREAT POETS OF AMERICA.
Illustration: WELL KNOWN AMERICAN POETS
N. P. WILLIS
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH • WALT WHITMAN
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
RICHARD WATSON GILDER • COL. JOHN HAY
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.
THE POET OF NATURE.
IT is said that “genius always manifests itself before its possessor
reaches manhood.” Perhaps in no case is this more true than in that
of the poet, and William Cullen Bryant was no exception to the general
rule. The poetical fancy was early displayed in him. He began to write
verses at nine, and at ten composed a little poem to be spoken at
a public school, which was published in a newspaper. At fourteen a
collection of his poems was published in 12 mo. form by E. G. House
of Boston. Strange to say the longest one of these, entitled “The
Embargo” was political in its character setting forth his reflections
on the Anti-Jeffersonian Federalism prevalent in New England at that
time. But it is said that never after that effort did the poet employ
his muse upon the politics of the day, though the general topics
of liberty and independence have given occasion to some of his
finest efforts. Bryant was a great lover of nature. In the Juvenile
Collection above referred to were published an “Ode to Connecticut
River” and also the lines entitled “Drought” which show the
characteristic observation as well as the style in which his youthful
muse found expression. It was written July, 1807, when the author
was thirteen years of age, and will be found among the succeeding
selections.
“Thanatopsis,” one of his most popular poems, (though he himself
marked it low) was written when the poet was but little more than
eighteen years of age. This production is called the beginning of
American poetry.
William Cullen Bryant was born at Cummington, Hampshire Co., Mass.,
November 3rd, 1784. His father was a physician, and a man of literary
culture who encouraged his son’s early ability, and taught him the
value of correctness and compression, and enabled him to distinguish
between true poetic enthusiasm and the bombast into which young poets
are apt to fall. The feeling and reverence with which Bryant cherished
the memory of his father whose life was
“Marked with some act of goodness every day,”
is touchingly alluded to in several of his poems and directly spoken
of with pathetic eloquence in the “Hymn to Death” written in 1825:
Alas! I little thought that the stern power
Whose fearful praise I sung, would try me thus
Before the strain was ended. It must cease――
For he is in his grave who taught my youth
The art of verse, and in the bud of life
Offered me to the Muses. Oh, cut off
Untimely! when thy reason in its strength,
Ripened by years of toil and studious search
And watch of Nature’s silent lessons, taught
Thy hand to practise best the lenient art
To which thou gavest thy laborious days,
And, last, thy life. And, therefore, when the earth
Received thee, tears were in unyielding eyes,
And on hard cheeks, and they who deemed thy skill
Delayed their death-hour, shuddered and turned pale
When thou wert gone. This faltering verse, which thou
Shalt not, as wont, o’erlook, is all I have
To offer at thy grave――this――and the hope
To copy thy example.
Bryant was educated at Williams College, but left with an honorable
discharge before graduation to take up the study of law, which he
practiced one year at Plainfield and nine years at Great Barrington,
but in 1825 he abandoned law for literature, and removed to New York
where in 1826 he began to edit the “Evening Post,” which position he
continued to occupy from that time until the day of his death. William
Cullen Bryant and the “Evening Post” were almost as conspicuous and
permanent features of the city as the Battery and Trinity Church.
In 1821 Mr. Bryant married Frances Fairchild, the loveliness of whose
character is hinted in some of his sweetest productions. The one
beginning
“O fairest of the rural maids,”
was written some years before their marriage; and “The Future Life,”
one of the noblest and most pathetic of his poems, is addressed to
her:――
“In meadows fanned by Heaven’s life-breathing wind,
In the resplendence of that glorious sphere
And larger movements of the unfettered mind,
Wilt thou forget the love that joined us here?
“Will not thy own meek heart demand me there,――
That heart whose fondest throbs to me were given?
My name on earth was ever in thy prayer,
And wilt thou never utter it in heaven?”
Among his best-known poems are “A Forest Hymn,” “The Death of the
Flowers,” “Lines to a Waterfowl,” and “The Planting of the Apple-Tree.”
One of the greatest of his works, though not among the most popular,
is his translation of Homer, which he completed when seventy-seven
years of age.
Bryant had a marvellous memory. His familiarity with the English poets
was such that when at sea, where he was always too ill to read much,
he would beguile the time by reciting page after page from favorite
authors. However long the voyage, he never exhausted his resources.
“I once proposed,” says a friend, “to send for a copy of a magazine
in which a new poem of his was announced to appear. ‘You need not send
for it,’ said he, ‘I can give it to you.’ ‘Then you have a copy with
you?’ said I. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘but I can recall it,’ and thereupon
proceeded immediately to write it out. I congratulated him upon having
such a faithful memory. ‘If allowed a little time,’ he replied, ‘I
could recall every line of poetry I have ever written.’”
His tenderness of the feelings of others, and his earnest desire
always to avoid the giving of unnecessary pain, were very marked.
“Soon after I began to do the duties of literary editor,” writes an
associate, “Mr. Bryant, who was reading a review of a little book
of wretchedly halting verse, said to me: ‘I wish you would deal very
gently with poets, especially the weaker ones.’”
Bryant was a man of very striking appearance, especially in age.
“It is a fine sight,” says one writer, “to see a man full of years,
clear in mind, sober in judgment, refined in taste, and handsome in
person.... I remember once to have been at a lecture where Mr. Bryant
sat several seats in front of me, and his finely-sized head was
especially noticeable.... The observer of Bryant’s capacious skull
and most refined expression of face cannot fail to read therein the
history of a noble manhood.”
The grand old veteran of verse died in New York in 1878 at the age of
eighty-four, universally known and honored. He was in his sixth year
when George Washington died, and lived under the administration of
twenty presidents and had seen his own writings in print for seventy
years. During this long life――though editor for fifty years of a
political daily paper, and continually before the public――he had kept
his reputation unspotted from the world, as if he had, throughout the
decades, continually before his mind the admonition of the closing
lines of “Thanatopsis” written by himself seventy years before.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
* * * * *
THANATOPSIS.¹
The following production is called the beginning of American
poetry.
That a young man not yet 19 should have produced a poem so
lofty in conception, so full of chaste language and delicate
and striking imagery, and, above all, so pervaded by a noble
and cheerful religious philosophy, may well be regarded as one
of the most remarkable examples of early maturity in literary
history.
¹ The following copyrighted selections from Wm. Cullen
Bryant are inserted by permission of D. Appleton & Co.,
the publishers of his works.
TO him who, in the love of Nature, holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart;――
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature’s teachings, while from all around――
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air――
Comes a still voice.――Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid, with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourish’d thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again;
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix forever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.
Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone,――nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world,――with kings,
The powerful of the earth――the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribb’d and ancient as the sun,――the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods,――rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, pour’d round all,
Old ocean’s gray and melancholy waste,――
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom. Take the wings
Of morning, traverse Barca’s desert sands,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound
Save its own dashings,――yet――the dead are there,
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep,――the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest; and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one, as before, will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men――
The youth in life’s green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
And the sweet babe, and the gray-headed man――
Shall, one by one, be gather’d to thy side,
By those who in their turn shall follow them.
So live that, when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustain’d and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.
* * * * *
WAITING BY THE GATE.
BESIDES the massive gateway built up in years gone by,
Upon whose top the clouds in eternal shadow lie,
While streams the evening sunshine on the quiet wood and lea,
I stand and calmly wait until the hinges turn for me.
The tree tops faintly rustle beneath the breeze’s flight,
A soft soothing sound, yet it whispers of the night;
I hear the woodthrush piping one mellow descant more,
And scent the flowers that blow when the heat of day is o’er.
Behold the portals open and o’er the threshold, now,
There steps a wearied one with pale and furrowed brow;
His count of years is full, his ♦allotted task is wrought;
He passes to his rest from a place that needs him not.
In sadness, then, I ponder how quickly fleets the hour
Of human strength and action, man’s courage and his power.
I muse while still the woodthrush sings down the golden day,
And as I look and listen the sadness wears away.
Again the hinges turn, and a youth, departing throws
A look of longing backward, and sorrowfully goes;
A blooming maid, unbinding the roses from her hair,
Moves wonderfully away from amid the young and fair.
Oh, glory of our race that so suddenly decays!
Oh, crimson flush of morning, that darkens as we gaze!
Oh, breath of summer blossoms that on the restless air
Scatters a moment’s sweetness and flies we know not where.
I grieve for life’s bright promise, just shown and then
withdrawn;
But still the sun shines round me; the evening birds sing on;
And I again am soothed, and beside the ancient gate,
In this soft evening sunlight, I calmly stand and wait.
Once more the gates are opened, an infant group go out,
The sweet smile quenched forever, and stilled the sprightly
shout.
Oh, frail, frail tree of life, that upon the greensward strews
Its fair young buds unopened, with every wind that blows!
So from every region, so enter side by side,
The strong and faint of spirit, the meek and men of pride,
Steps of earth’s greatest, mightiest, between those pillars
gray,
And prints of little feet, that mark the dust away.
And some approach the threshold whose looks are blank with
fear,
And some whose temples brighten with joy are drawing near,
As if they saw dear faces, and caught the gracious eye
Of Him, the Sinless Teacher, who came for us to die.
I mark the joy, the terrors; yet these, within my heart,
Can neither wake the dread nor the longing to depart;
And, in the sunshine streaming of quiet wood and lea,
I stand and calmly wait until the hinges turn for me.
♦ ‘alloted’ replaced with ‘allotted’
* * * * *
“BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN.”
O DEEM not they are blest alone
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep;
The Power who pities man has shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.
The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears;
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.
There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night;
And grief may bide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.
And thou, who, o’er thy friend’s low bier,
Sheddest the bitter drops like rain,
Hope that a brighter, happier sphere
Will give him to thy arms again.
Nor let the good man’s trust depart,
Though life its common gifts deny,――
Though with a pierced and bleeding heart,
And spurned of men, he goes to die.
For God hath marked each sorrowing day,
And numbered every secret tear,
And heaven’s long age of bliss shall pay
For all his children suffer here.
* * * * *
THE ANTIQUITY OF FREEDOM.
HERE are old trees, tall oaks, and gnarled pines,
That stream with gray-green mosses; here the ground
Was never touch’d by spade, and flowers spring up
Unsown, and die ungather’d. It is sweet
To linger here, among the flitting birds
And leaping squirrels, wandering brooks and winds
That shake the leaves, and scatter as they pass
A fragrance from the cedars thickly set
With pale blue berries. In these peaceful shades――
Peaceful, unpruned, immeasurably old――
My thoughts go up the long dim path of years,
Back to the earliest days of Liberty.
O FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crown’d his slave,
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Arm’d to the teeth, art thou: one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarr’d
With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
Are strong and struggling. Power at thee has launch’d
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven.
Merciless Power has dug thy dungeon deep,
And his swart armorers, by a thousand fires,
Have forged thy chain; yet while he deems thee bound,
The links are shiver’d, and the prison walls
Fall outward; terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile,
And shoutest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.
Thy birth-right was not given by human hands:
Thou wert twin-born with man. In pleasant fields,
While yet our race was few, thou sat’st with him,
To tend the quiet flock and watch the stars,
And teach the reed to utter simple airs.
Thou by his side, amid the tangled wood,
Didst war upon the panther and the wolf,
His only foes: and thou with him didst draw
The earliest furrows on the mountain side,
Soft with the Deluge. Tyranny himself,
The enemy, although of reverend look,
Hoary with many years, and far obey’d,
Is later born than thou; and as he meets
The grave defiance of thine elder eye,
The usurper trembles in his fastnesses.
Thou shalt wax stronger with the lapse of years,
But he shall fade into a feebler age;
Feebler, yet subtler; he shall weave his snares,
And spring them on thy careless steps, and clap
His wither’d hands, and from their ambush call
His hordes to fall upon thee. He shall send
Quaint maskers, forms of fair and gallant mien,
To catch thy gaze, and uttering graceful words
To charm thy ear; while his sly imps, by stealth,
Twine round thee threads of steel, light thread on thread,
That grow to fetters; or bind down thy arms
With chains conceal’d in chaplets. Oh! not yet
Mayst thou unbrace thy corslet, nor lay by
Thy sword, nor yet, O Freedom! close thy lids
In slumber; for thine enemy never sleeps.
And thou must watch and combat, till the day
Of the new Earth and Heaven. But wouldst thou rest
Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men,
These old and friendly solitudes invite
Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees
Were young upon the unviolated earth,
And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new,
Beheld thy glorious childhood, and rejoiced.
* * * * *
TO A WATERFOWL.
WHITHER, ’midst falling dew,
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day,
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue
Thy solitary way?
Vainly the fowler’s eye
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,
As, darkly limn’d upon the crimson sky,
Thy figure floats along.
Seek’st thou the plashy brink
Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,
Or where the rocking billows rise and sink
On the chafed ocean side?
There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,――
The desert and illimitable air,――
Lone wandering, but not lost.
All day thy wings have fann’d,
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere,
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,
Though the dark night is near.
And soon that toil shall end;
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest,
And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend,
Soon, o’er thy shelter’d nest.
Thou’rt gone; the abyss of heaven
Hath swallow’d up thy form; yet on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
And shall not soon depart.
He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright.
* * * * *
ROBERT OF LINCOLN.
MERRILY swinging on brier and weed,
Near to the nest of his little dame,
Over the mountain-side or mead,
Robert of Lincoln is telling his name:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Snug and safe is that nest of ours,
Hidden among the summer flowers.
Chee, chee, chee.
Robert of Lincoln is gayly dressed,
Wearing a bright black wedding coat;
White are his shoulders and white his crest,
Hear him call in his merry note:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Look what a nice new coat is mine,
Sure there was never a bird so fine.
Chee, chee, chee.
Robert of Lincoln’s Quaker wife,
Pretty and quiet, with plain brown wings,
Passing at home a patient life,
Broods in the grass while her husband sings,
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Brood, kind creature; you need not fear
Thieves and robbers, while I am here.
Chee, chee, chee.
Modest and shy as a nun is she,
One weak chirp is her only note,
Braggart and prince of braggarts is he,
Pouring boasts from his little throat:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Never was I afraid of man;
Catch me, cowardly knaves if you can.
Chee, chee, chee.
Six white eggs on a bed of hay,
Flecked with purple, a pretty sight
There as the mother sits all day,
Robert is singing with all his might:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nice good wife, that never goes out,
Keeping house while I frolic about.
Chee, chee, chee.
Soon as the little ones chip the shell
Six wide mouths are open for food;
Robert of Lincoln bestirs him well,
Gathering seed for the hungry brood.
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
This new life is likely to be
Hard for a gay young fellow like me.
Chee, chee, chee.
Robert of Lincoln at length is made
Sober with work and silent with care;
Off is his holiday garment laid,
Half-forgotten that merry air,
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
Nobody knows but my mate and I
Where our nest and our nestlings lie.
Chee, chee, chee.
Summer wanes; the children are grown;
Fun and frolic no more he knows;
Robert of Lincoln’s a humdrum crone;
Off he flies, and we sing as he goes:
Bob-o’-link, bob-o’-link,
Spink, spank, spink;
When you can pipe that merry old strain,
Robert of Lincoln, come back again.
Chee, chee, chee.
* * * * *
DROUGHT.
PLUNGED amid the limpid waters,
Or the cooling shade beneath,
Let me fly the scorching sunbeams,
And the southwind’s sickly breath!
Sirius burns the parching meadows,
Flames upon the embrowning hill,
Dries the foliage of the forest,
And evaporates the rill.
Scarce is seen the lonely floweret,
Save amid the embowering wood;
O’er the prospect dim and dreary,
Drought presides in sullen mood!
Murky vapours hung in ether,
Wrap in gloom, the sky serene;
Nature pants distressful――silence
Reigns o’er all the sultry scene.
Then amid the limpid waters,
Or beneath the cooling shade,
Let me shun the scorching sunbeams
And the sickly breeze evade.
* * * * *
THE PAST.
No poet, perhaps, in the world is so exquisite in rhythm, or
classically pure and accurate in language, so appropriate in
diction, phrase or metaphor as Bryant.
He dips his pen in words as an inspired painter his pencil
in colors. The following poem is a fair specimen of his deep
vein in his chosen serious themes. Pathos is pre-eminently
his endowment but the tinge of melancholy in his treatment is
always pleasing.
THOU unrelenting Past!
Strong are the barriers round thy dark domain,
And fetters, sure and fast,
Hold all that enter thy unbreathing reign.
Far in thy realm withdrawn
Old empires sit in sullenness and gloom,
And glorious ages gone
Lie deep within the shadow of thy womb.
Childhood, with all its mirth,
Youth, Manhood, Age that draws us to the ground,
And, last, Man’s Life on earth,
Glide to thy dim dominions, and are bound.
Thou hast my better years,
Thou hast my earlier friends――the good――the kind,
Yielded to thee with tears,――
The venerable form――the exalted mind.
My spirit yearns to bring
The lost ones back;――yearns with desire intense,
And struggles hard to wring
Thy bolts apart, and pluck thy captives thence.
In vain:――thy gates deny
All passage save to those who hence depart;
Nor to the streaming eye
Thou giv’st them back,――nor to the broken heart.
In thy abysses hide
Beauty and excellence unknown;――to thee
Earth’s wonder and her pride
Are gather’d, as the waters to the sea;
Labors of good to man,
Unpublish’d charity, unbroken faith,――
Love, that midst grief began,
And grew with years, and falter’d not in death.
Full many a mighty name
Lurks in thy depths, unutter’d, unrevered;
With thee are silent fame,
Forgotten arts, and wisdom disappear’d.
Thine for a space are they:――
Yet shalt thou yield thy treasures up at last;
Thy gates shall yet give way,
Thy bolts shall fall, inexorable Past!
All that of good and fair
Has gone into thy womb from earliest time,
Shall then come forth, to wear
The glory and the beauty of its prime.
They have not perish’d――no!
Kind words, remember’d voices once so sweet,
Smiles, radiant long ago,
And features, the great soul’s apparent seat,
All shall come back; each tie
Of pure affection shall be knit again;
Alone shall Evil die,
And Sorrow dwell a prisoner in thy reign.
And then shall I behold
Him by whose kind paternal side I sprung,
And her who, still and cold,
Fills the next grave,――the beautiful and young.
* * * * *
THE MURDERED TRAVELER.
WHEN spring, to woods and wastes around,
Brought bloom and joy again;
The murdered traveler’s bones were found,
Far down a narrow glen.
The fragrant birch, above him, hung
Her tassels in the sky;
And many a vernal blossom sprung,
And nodded careless by.
The red bird warbled, as he wrought
His hanging nest o’erhead;
And fearless, near the fatal spot,
Her young the partridge led.
But there was weeping far away,
And gentle eyes, for him,
With watching many an anxious day,
Were sorrowful and dim.
They little knew, who loved him so,
The fearful death he met,
When shouting o’er the desert snow,
Unarmed and hard beset;
Nor how, when round the frosty pole,
The northern dawn was red,
The mountain-wolf and wild-cat stole
To banquet on the dead;
Nor how, when strangers found his bones,
They dressed the hasty bier,
And marked his grave with nameless stones,
Unmoistened by a tear.
But long they looked, and feared, and wept,
Within his distant home;
And dreamed, and started as they slept,
For joy that he was come.
Long, long they looked――but never spied
His welcome step again.
Nor knew the fearful death he died
Far down that narrow glen.
* * * * *
THE BATTLEFIELD.
Soon after the following poem was written, an English critic,
referring to the stanza ♦beginning――“Truth crushed to earth
shall rise again,”――said: “Mr. Bryant has certainly a rare
merit for having written a stanza which will bear comparison
with any four lines as one of the noblest in the English
language. The thought is complete, the expression perfect.
A poem of a dozen such verses would be like a row of pearls,
each beyond a king’s ransom.”
♦ ‘begining’ replaced with ‘beginning’
ONCE this soft turf, this rivulet’s sands,
Were trampled by a hurrying crowd,
And fiery hearts and armed hands
Encounter’d in the battle-cloud.
Ah! never shall the land forget
How gush’d the life-blood of her brave,――
Gush’d, warm with hope and courage yet,
Upon the soil they fought to save.
Now all is calm, and fresh, and still,
Alone the chirp of flitting bird,
And talk of children on the hill,
And bell of wandering kine, are heard.
No solemn host goes trailing by
The black-mouth’d gun and staggering wain;
Men start not at the battle-cry:
Oh, be it never heard again!
Soon rested those who fought; but thou
Who minglest in the harder strife
For truths which men receive not now,
Thy warfare only ends with life.
A friendless warfare! lingering long
Through weary day and weary year;
A wild and many-weapon’d throng
Hang on thy front, and flank, and rear.
Yet nerve thy spirit to the proof,
And blench not at thy chosen lot;
The timid good may stand aloof,
The sage may frown――yet faint thou not,
Nor heed the shaft too surely cast,
The foul and hissing bolt of scorn;
For with thy side shall dwell, at last,
The victory of endurance born.
Truth, crush’d to earth, shall rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers.
Yea, though thou lie upon the dust,
When they who help’d thee flee in fear,
Die full of hope and manly trust,
Like those who fell in battle here.
Another hand thy sword shall wield,
Another hand the standard wave,
Till from the trumpet’s mouth is peal’d
The blast of triumph o’er thy grave.
* * * * *
THE CROWDED STREETS.
LET me move slowly through the street,
Filled with an ever-shifting train,
Amid the sound of steps that beat
The murmuring walks like autumn rain.
How fast the flitting figures come;
The mild, the fierce, the stony face――
Some bright, with thoughtless smiles, and some
Where secret tears have left their trace.
They pass to toil, to strife, to rest――
To halls in which the feast is spread――
To chambers where the funeral guest
In silence sits beside the bed.
And some to happy homes repair,
Where children pressing cheek to cheek,
With mute caresses shall declare
The tenderness they cannot speak.
And some who walk in calmness here,
Shall shudder as they reach the door
Where one who made their dwelling dear,
Its flower, its light, is seen no more.
Youth, with pale cheek and tender frame,
And dreams of greatness in thine eye,
Go’st thou to build an early name,
Or early in the task to die?
Keen son of trade, with eager brow,
Who is now fluttering in thy snare,
Thy golden fortunes tower they now,
Or melt the glittering spires in air?
Who of this crowd to-night shall tread
The dance till daylight gleams again?
To sorrow o’er the untimely dead?
Who writhe in throes of mortal pain?
Some, famine struck, shall think how long
The cold, dark hours, how slow the light;
And some, who flaunt amid the throng,
Shall hide in dens of shame to night.
Each where his tasks or pleasure call,
They pass and heed each other not;
There is one who heeds, who holds them all
In His large love and boundless thought.
These struggling tides of life that seem
In wayward, aimless course to tend,
Are eddies of the mighty stream
That rolls to its appointed end.
* * * * *
NOTICE OF FITZ-GREEN HALLECK.
As a specimen of Mr. Bryant’s prose, of which he wrote much,
and also as a sample of his criticism, we reprint the following
extract from a Commemorative Address which he delivered
before the New York Historical Society in February 1869. This
selection is also valuable as a character sketch and a literary
estimate of Mr. Halleck.
“WHEN I look back upon Halleck’s literary life, I cannot help thinking
that if his death had happened forty years earlier, his life would
have been regarded as a bright morning prematurely overcast. Yet
Halleck’s literary career may be said to have ended then. All that
will hand down his name to future years had already been produced. Who
shall say to what cause his subsequent literary inaction was owing? It
was not the decline of his powers; his brilliant conversation showed
that it was not. Was it then indifference to fame? Was it because he
put an humble estimate on what he had written, and therefore resolved
to write no more? Was it because he feared lest what he might write
would be unworthy of the reputation he had been so fortunate as to
acquire?
“I have my own way of accounting for his literary silence in the
latter half of his life. One of the resemblances which he bore to
Horace consisted in the length of time for which he kept his poems
by him, that he might give them the last and happiest touches. Having
composed his poems without committing them to paper, and retaining
them in his faithful memory, he revised them in the same manner,
murmuring them to himself in his solitary moments, recovering the
enthusiasm with which they were first conceived, and in this state of
mind heightening the beauty of the thought or of the expression....
“In this way I suppose Halleck to have attained the gracefulness
of his diction, and the airy melody of his numbers. In this way I
believe that he wrought up his verses to that transparent clearness
of expression which causes the thought to be seen through them without
any interposing dimness, so that the thought and the phrase seem
one, and the thought enters the mind like a beam of light. I suppose
that Halleck’s time being taken up by the tasks of his vocation, he
naturally lost by degrees the habit of composing in this manner, and
that he found it so necessary to the perfection of what he wrote that
he adopted no other in its place.”
* * * * *
A CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
_From “The Letters of a Traveler.”_
In 1843, during Mr. Bryant’s visit to the South, he had
the pleasure of witnessing one of those antebellum southern
institutions known as a Corn-Shucking――one of the ideal
occasions of the colored man’s life, to which both men and
women were invited. They were free to tell all the jokes, sing
all the songs and have all the fun they desired as they rapidly
shucked the corn. Two leaders were usually chosen and the
company divided into two parties which competed for a prize
awarded to the first party which finished shucking the allotted
pile of corn. Mr. Bryant thus graphically describes one of
these novel occasions:
BARNWELL DISTRICT,
South Carolina, March 29, 1843.
BUT you must hear of the corn-shucking. The one at which I was present
was given on purpose that I might witness the humors of the Carolina
negroes. A huge fire of _light-wood_ was made near the corn-house.
Light-wood is the wood of the long-leaved pine, and is so called, not
because it is light, for it is almost the heaviest wood in the world,
but because it gives more light than any other fuel.
The light-wood-fire was made, and the negroes dropped in from the
neighboring plantations, singing as they came. The driver of the
plantation, a colored man, brought out baskets of corn in the husk,
and piled it in a heap; and the negroes began to strip the husks from
the ears, singing with great glee as they worked, keeping time to the
music, and now and then throwing in a joke and an extravagant burst
of laughter. The songs were generally of a comic character; but one of
them was set to a singularly wild and plaintive air, which some of our
musicians would do well to reduce to notation. These are the words:
Johnny come down de hollow.
Oh hollow!
Johnny come down de hollow.
Oh hollow!
De nigger-trader got me.
Oh hollow!
De speculator bought me.
Oh hollow!
I’m sold for silver dollars.
Oh hollow!
Boys, go catch the pony.
Oh hollow!
Bring him round the corner.
Oh hollow!
I’m goin’ away to Georgia.
Oh hollow!
Boys, good-by forever!
Oh hollow!
The song of “Jenny gone away,” was also given, and another, called the
monkey-song, probably of African origin, in which the principal singer
personated a monkey, with all sorts of odd gesticulations, and the
other negroes bore part in the chorus, “Dan, dan, who’s the dandy?”
One of the songs commonly sung on these occasions, represents the
various animals of the woods as belonging to some profession or trade.
For example――
De cooter is de boatman――
The cooter is the terrapin, and a very expert boatman he is.
De cooter is de boatman.
John John Crow.
De red-bird de soger.
John John Crow.
De mocking-bird de lawyer.
John John Crow.
De alligator sawyer.
John John Crow.
The alligator’s back is furnished with a toothed ridge, like the edge
of a saw, which explains the last line.
When the work of the evening was over the negroes adjourned to a
spacious kitchen. One of them took his place as musician, whistling,
and beating time with two sticks upon the floor. Several of the men
came forward and executed various dances, capering, prancing, and
drumming with heel and toe upon the floor, with astonishing agility
and perseverance, though all of them had performed their daily tasks
and had worked all the evening, and some had walked from four to seven
miles to attend the corn-shucking. From the dances a transition was
made to a mock military parade, a sort of burlesque of our militia
trainings, in which the words of command and the evolutions were
extremely ludicrous. It became necessary for the commander to make a
speech, and confessing his incapacity for public speaking, he called
upon a huge black man named Toby to address the company in his stead.
Toby, a man of powerful frame, six feet high, his face ornamented
with a beard of fashionable cut, had hitherto stood leaning against
the wall, looking upon the frolic with an air of superiority. He
consented, came forward, demanded a bit of paper to hold in his hand,
and harangued the soldiery. It was evident that Toby had listened to
stump-speeches in his day. He spoke of “de majority of Sous Carolina,”
“de interests of de state,” “de honor of ole Ba’nwell district,” and
these phrases he connected by various expletives, and sounds of which
we could make nothing. At length he began to falter, when the captain
with admirable presence of mind came to his relief, and interrupted
and closed the harangue with an hurrah from the company. Toby was
allowed by all the spectators, black and white, to have made an
excellent speech.
Illustration: CORN-SHUCKING IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDGAR ALLEN POE.
THE WEIRD AND MYSTERIOUS GENIUS.
EDGAR Allen Poe, the author of “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “The
Haunted Palace,” “To One in Paradise,” “Israfel” and “Lenore,” was
in his peculiar sphere, the most brilliant writer, perhaps, who ever
lived. His writings, however, belong to a different world of thought
from that in which Bryant, Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier and Lowell
lived and labored. Theirs was the realm of nature, of light, of human
joy, of happiness, ease, hope and cheer. Poe spoke from the dungeon of
depression. He was in a constant struggle with poverty. His whole life
was a tragedy in which sombre shades played an unceasing role, and
yet from out these weird depths came forth things so beautiful that
their very sadness is charming and holds us in a spell of bewitching
enchantment. Edgar Fawcett says of him:――
“He loved all shadowy spots, all seasons drear;
All ways of darkness lured his ghastly whim;
Strange fellowships he held with goblins grim,
At whose demoniac eyes he felt no fear.
By desolate paths of dream where fancy’s owl
Sent long lugubrious hoots through sombre air,
Amid thought’s gloomiest caves he went to prowl
And met delirium in her awful lair.”
Edgar Poe was born in Boston February 19th, 1809. His father was
a Marylander, as was also his grandfather, who was a distinguished
Revolutionary soldier and a friend of General Lafayette. The parents
of Poe were both actors who toured the country in the ordinary manner,
and this perhaps accounts for his birth in Boston. Their home was in
Baltimore, Maryland.
When Poe was only a few years old both parents died, within two weeks,
in Richmond, Virginia. Their three children, two daughters, one older
and one younger than the subject of this sketch, were all adopted
by friends of the family. Mr. John Allen, a rich tobacco merchant
of Richmond, Virginia, adopted Edgar (who was henceforth called
Edgar Allen Poe), and had him carefully educated, first in England,
afterwards at the Richmond Academy and the University of Virginia,
and subsequently at West Point. He always distinguished himself in his
studies, but from West Point he was dismissed after one year, it is
said because he refused to submit to the discipline of the institution.
In common with the custom in the University of Virginia at that time,
Poe acquired the habits of drinking and gambling, and the gambling
debts which he contracted incensed Mr. Allen, who refused to pay
them. This brought on the beginning of a series of quarrels which
finally led to Poe’s disinheritance and permanent separation from
his benefactor. Thus turned out upon the cold, unsympathetic world,
without business training, without friends, without money, knowing
not how to make money――yet, with a proud, imperious, aristocratic
nature,――we have the beginning of the saddest story of any life in
literature――struggling for nearly twenty years in gloom and poverty,
with here and there a ray of sunshine, and closing with delirium
tremens in Baltimore, October 7th, 1849, at forty years of age.
To those who know the full details of the sad story of Poe’s life it
is little wonder that his sensitive, passionate nature sought surcease
from disappointment in the nepenthe of the intoxicating cup. It was
but natural for a man of his nervous temperament and delicacy of
feeling to fall into that melancholy moroseness which would chide even
the angels for taking away his beautiful “Annabel Lee;” or that he
should wail over the “Lost Lenore,” or declare that his soul should
“nevermore” be lifted from the shadow of the “Raven” upon the floor.
These poems and others are but the expressions of disappointment
and despair of a soul alienated from happy human relations. While we
admire their power and beauty, we should remember at what cost of pain
and suffering and disappointment they were produced. They are powerful
illustrations of the prodigal expense of human strength, of broken
hopes and bitter experiences through which rare specimens of our
literature are often grown.
To treat the life of Edgar Allen Poe, with its lessons, fully, would
require the scope of a volume. Both as a man and an author there is
a sad fascination which belongs to no other writer, perhaps, in the
world. His personal character has been represented as pronouncedly
double. It is said that Stevenson, who was a great admirer of Poe,
received the inspiration for his novel, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” from
the contemplation of his double character. Paul Hamilton Hayne has
also written a poem entitled, “Poe,” which presents in a double shape
the angel and demon in one body. The first two stanzas of which we
quote:――
“Two mighty spirits dwelt in him:
One, a wild demon, weird and dim,
The darkness of whose ebon wings
Did shroud unutterable things:
One, a fair angel, in the skies
Of whose serene, unshadowed eyes
Were seen the lights of Paradise.
To these, in turn, he gave the whole
Vast empire of his brooding soul;
Now, filled with strains of heavenly swell,
Now thrilled with awful tones of hell:
Wide were his being’s strange extremes,
’Twixt nether glooms, and Eden gleams
Of tender, or majestic dreams.”
It must be said in justice to Poe’s memory, however, that the above
idea of his being both demon and angel became prevalent through
the first biography published of him, by Dr. Rufus Griswold, who no
doubt sought to avenge himself on the dead poet for the severe but
unanswerable criticisms which the latter had passed upon his and other
contemporaneous authors’ writings. Later biographies, notably those
of J. H. Ingram and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman, as well as published
statements from his business associates, have disproved many of
Griswold’s damaging statements, and placed the private character
of Poe in a far more favorable light before the world. He left off
gambling in his youth, and the appetite for drink, which followed him
to the close of his life, was no doubt inherited from his father who,
before him, was a drunkard.
It is natural for admirers of Poe’s genius to contemplate with regret
akin to sorrow those circumstances and characteristics which made
him so unhappy, and yet the serious question arises, was not that
character and his unhappy life necessary to the productions of his
marvelous pen? Let us suppose it was, and in charity draw the mantle
of forgetfulness over his misguided ways, covering the sad picture
of his personal life from view, and hang in its place the matchless
portrait of his splendid genius, before which, with true American
pride, we may summon all the world to stand with uncovered heads.
As a writer of short stories Poe had no equal in America. He is said
to have been the originator of the modern detective story. The artful
ingenuity with which he works up the details of his plot, and minute
attention to the smallest illustrative particular, give his tales a
vivid interest from which no reader can escape. His skill in analysis
is as marked as his power of word painting. The scenes of gloom and
terror which he loves to depict, the forms of horror to which he gives
almost actual life, render his mastery over the reader most exciting
and absorbing.
As a poet Poe ranks among the most original in the world. He is
pre-eminently a poet of the imagination. It is useless to seek in his
verses for philosophy or preaching. He brings into his poetry all the
weirdness, subtlety, artistic detail and facility in coloring which
give the charm to his prose stories, and to these he adds a musical
flow of language which has never been equalled. To him poetry was
music, and there was no poetry that was not musical. For poetic
harmony he has had no equal certainly in America, if, indeed, in the
world. Admirers of his poems are almost sure to read them over and
over again, each time finding new forms of beauty or charm in them,
and the reader abandons himself to a current of melodious fancy that
soothes and charms like distant music at night, or the rippling of
a nearby, but unseen, brook. The images which he creates are vague
and illusive. As one of his biographers has written, “He heard in his
dreams the tinkling footfalls of angels and seraphim and subordinated
everything in his verse to the delicious effect of musical sound.”
As a literary critic Poe’s capacities were of the greatest. “In that
large part of the critic’s perceptions,” says Duyckinck, “in knowledge
of the mechanism of composition, he has been unsurpassed by any writer
in America.”
Poe was also a fine reader and elocutionist. A writer who attended
a lecture by him in Richmond says: “I never heard a voice so musical
as his. It was full of the sweetest melody. No one who heard his
recitation of the ‘Raven’ will ever forget the beauty and pathos with
which this recitation was rendered. The audience was still as death,
and as his weird, musical voice filled the hall its effect was simply
indescribable. It seems to me that I can yet hear that long, plaintive
‘nevermore.’”
Among the labors of Poe, aside from his published volumes and
contributions to miscellaneous magazines, should be mentioned his
various positions from 1834 to 1848 as critic and editor on the
“Literary Messenger” of Richmond, Virginia, the “Gentleman’s Magazine”
of Philadelphia, “Graham’s Magazine” of Philadelphia, the “Evening
Mirror” of New York, and the “Broadway Journal” of New York, which
positions he successively held. The last he gave up in 1848 with
the idea of starting a literary magazine of his own, but the project
failed, perhaps on account of his death, which occurred the next year.
His first volume of poems was published in 1829. In 1833 he won two
prizes, one for prose and one for poetic composition, offered by the
Baltimore “Saturday Visitor,” his “Manuscript Found in a Bottle” being
awarded the prize for prose and the poem “The Coliseum” for poetry.
The latter, however, he did not ♦receive because the judges found the
same author had won them both. In 1838 Harper Brothers published his
ingenious fiction, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.”
In 1840 “Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque” were issued in
Philadelphia. In 1844 he took up his residence at Fordham, New York,
where his wife died in 1847, and where he continued to reside for
the balance of his life. His famous poem the “Raven” was published in
1845, and during 1848 and 1849 he published “Eureka” and “Elalume,”
the former being a prose poem. It is the crowning work of his life, to
which he devoted the last and most matured energies of his wonderful
intellect. To those who desire a further insight into the character
of the man and his labors we would recommend the reading of J. H.
Ingram’s “Memoir” and Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman’s “Edgar Poe and His
Critics,” the latter published in 1863.
♦ ‘recieve’ replaced with ‘receive’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
* * * * *
Illustration: THE CITY IN THE SEA.
THE CITY IN THE SEA.
LO! Death has rear’d himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim west,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.
There shrines, and palaces, and towers,
(Time-eaten towers that tremble not!)
Resemble nothing that is ours.
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
No rays from the holy heaven come down
On the long night-time of that town;
But light from out the lurid sea
Streams up the turrets silently――
Gleams up the pinnacles far and free――
Up domes――up spires――up kingly halls――
Up fanes――up Babylon-like walls――
Up shadowy, long-forgotten bowers
Of sculptured ivy and stone flowers――
Up many and many a marvellous shrine
Whose wreathed friezes intertwine
The viol, the violet, and the vine.
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie.
So blend the turrets and shadows there
That all seem pendulous in air,
While from a proud tower in the town
Death looks gigantically down.
There open fanes and gaping graves
Yawn level with the luminous waves;
But not the riches there that lie
In each idol’s diamond eye――
Not the gayly-jewell’d dead
Tempt the waters from their bed;
For no ripples curl, alas!
Along that wilderness of glass――
No swellings tell that winds may be
Upon some far-off happier sea――
No heavings hint that winds have been
On seas less hideously serene.
But lo, a stir is in the air!
The wave――there is a movement there!
As if the towers had thrust aside,
In slightly sinking, the dull tide――
As if their tops had feebly given
A void within the filmy heaven.
The waves have now a redder glow――
The hours are breathing faint and low――
And when, amid no earthly moans,
Down, down that town shall settle hence,
Hell, rising from a thousand thrones,
Shall do it reverence.
* * * * *
ANNABEL LEE.
IT was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
_I_ was a child and _she_ was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love――
I and my ANNABEL LEE――
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre,
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me――
Yes!――that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea),
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my ANNABEL LEE.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we――
Of many far wiser than we――
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful ANNABEL LEE:
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling――my darling――my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea――
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
* * * * *
TO HELEN.
The following poem was published first “To ――――,” afterwards
the title was changed, “To Helen.” It seems to have been
written by Poe to Mrs. Sarah Ellen Whitman whom many years
afterwards he was engaged to marry. The engagement was,
however, broken off. The poem was no doubt written before
his acquaintance with the lady; even before his marriage or
engagement to his wife, and at a time perhaps when he did not
expect to be recognized as a suitor by the unknown woman who
had completely captured his heart, in the chance meeting which
he here so beautifully describes.
I SAW thee once――once only――years ago:
I must not say how many――but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitant pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe――
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That gave out, in return for the love-light,
Their odorous souls in an ecstatic death――
Fell on the upturned faces of these roses
That smiled and died in this parterre, enchanted
By thee and by the poetry of thy presence.
Illustration: CLAD ALL IN WHITE, UPON A VIOLET BANK
I SAW THEE HALF RECLINING; WHILE THE MOON
FELL ON THE UPTURNED FACES OF THE ROSES,
AND ON THINE OWN, UPTURNED――ALAS! IN SORROW.
Was it not Fate that, on this July midnight――
Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)
That bade me pause before that garden-gate
To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?
No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,
Save only thee and me. I paused――I looked――
And in an instant all things disappeared.
(Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted!)
The pearly lustre of the moon went out:
The mossy banks and the meandering paths,
The happy flowers and the repining trees,
Were seen no more: the very roses’ odors
Died in the arms of the adoring airs.
All, all expired save thee――save less than thou:
Save only the divine light in thine eyes――
Save but the soul in thine uplifted eyes.
I saw but them――they were the world to me.
I saw but them――saw only them for hours――
Saw only them until the moon went down.
What wild heart-histories seemed to lie enwritten
Upon those crystalline, celestial spheres!
How dark a wo, yet how sublime a hope!
How silently serene a sea of pride!
How daring an ambition! yet how deep――
How fathomless a capacity for love!
But now, at length, dear Dian sank from sight
Into a western couch of thunder-cloud,
And thou, a ghost, amid the entombing trees
Didst glide away. Only thine eyes remained.
They would not go――they never yet have gone.
Lighting my lonely pathway home that night,
They have not left me (as my hopes have) since.
They follow me, they lead me through the years;
They are my ministers――yet I their slave.
Their office is to illumine and enkindle――
My duty, to be saved by their bright light,
And purified in their electric fire――
And sanctified in their elysian fire.
They fill my soul with beauty (which is hope),
And are far up in heaven, the stars I kneel to
In the sad, silent watches of my night;
While even in the meridian glare of day
I see them still――two sweetly scintillant
Venuses, unextinguished by the sun!
* * * * *
ISRAFEL.¹
¹ “And the angel ISRAFEL, whose heart-strings are a lute,
and who has the sweetest voice of all God’s creatures.”
――KORAN.
IN heaven a spirit doth dwell
“Whose heart-strings are a lute;”
None sing so wildly well
As the angel ISRAFEL,
And the giddy stars (so legends tell)
Ceasing their hymns, attend the spell
Of his voice, all mute.
Tottering above
In her highest noon,
The enamour’d moon
Blushes with love,
While, to listen, the red levin
(With the rapid Pleiads, even,
Which were seven)
Pauses in heaven.
And they say (the starry choir
And the other listening things)
That ISRAFELI’S fire
Is owing to that lyre
By which he sits and sings――
The trembling living wire
Of those unusual strings.
But the skies that angel trod,
Where deep thoughts are a duty――
Where Love’s a grown-up god――
Where the Houri glances are
Imbued with all the beauty
Which we worship in a star.
Therefore, thou art not wrong,
ISRAFELI, who despisest
An unimpassion’d song;
To thee the laurels belong,
Best bard, because the wisest!
Merrily live, and long!
The ecstasies above
With thy burning measures suit――
Thy grief, thy joy, thy hate, thy love,
With the fervor of thy lute――
Well may the stars be mute!
Yes, heaven is thine; but this
Is a world of sweets and sours;
Our flowers are merely――flowers,
And the shadow of thy perfect bliss
Is the sunshine of ours.
If I could dwell
Where ISRAFEL
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
* * * * *
TO ONE IN PARADISE.
THOU wast all that to me, love,
For which my soul did pine――
A green isle in the sea, love,
A fountain and a shrine,
All wreath’d with fairy fruits and flowers,
And all the flowers were mine.
Ah, dream too bright to last!
Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise
But to be overcast!
A voice from out the Future cries,
“On! on!”――but o’er the Past
(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies
Mute, motionless, aghast!
For, alas! alas! with me
The light of life is o’er!
No more――no more――no more――
(Such language holds the solemn sea
To the sands upon the shore)
Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,
Or the stricken eagle soar!
And all my days are trances,
And all my nightly dreams
Are where thy dark eye glances,
And where thy footstep gleams――
In what ethereal dances,
By what eternal streams.
* * * * *
LENORE.
Mrs. Whitman, in her reminiscences of Poe, tells us the
following incident which gave rise to the writing of these
touching lines. While Poe was in the Academy at Richmond,
Virginia,――as yet a boy of about sixteen years,――he was invited
by a friend to visit his home. The mother of this friend was a
singularly beautiful and withal a most kindly and sympathetic
woman. Having learned that Poe was an orphan she greeted him
with the motherly tenderness and affection shown toward her
own son. The boy was so overcome that it is said he stood for
a ♦minute unable to speak and finally with tears he declared
he had never before known his loss in the love of a true and
devoted mother. From that time forward he was frequently a
visitor, and the attachment between him and this kind-hearted
woman continued to grow. On Poe’s return from Europe when he
was about twenty years of age, he learned that she had died
a few days before his arrival, and was so overcome with grief
that he went nightly to her grave, even when it was dark and
rainy, spending hours in fancied communion with her spirit.
Later he idealized in his musings the embodiment of such a
spirit in a young and beautiful woman, whom he made his lover
and whose untimely death he imagined and used as the
inspiration of this poem.
♦ ‘miuute’ replaced with ‘minute’
AH, broken is the golden bowl,
The spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!
A saintly soul
Floats on the Stygian river;
And, GUY DE VERE,
Hast _thou_ no tear?
Weep now or never more!
See, on yon drear
And rigid bier
Low lies thy love, LENORE!
Come, let the burial-rite be read――
The funeral-song be sung!――
An anthem for the queenliest dead
That ever died so young――
A dirge for her the doubly dead,
In that she died so young!
“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth,
And hated her for her pride;
And when she fell in feeble health,
Ye bless’d her――that she died!
How _shall_ the ritual, then, be read?
The requiem how be sung
By you――by yours, the evil eye――
By yours the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence
That died, and died so young?”
_Peccavimus_;
But rave not thus!
And let a sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly, the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet LENORE
Hath “gone before,”
With Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild
For the dear child
That should have been thy bride――
For her, the fair
And _debonair_,
That now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair
But not within her eyes――
The life still there,
Upon her hair――
The death upon her eyes.
“Avaunt! to-night
My heart is light.
No dirge will I upraise,
But waft the angel on her flight
With a pæan of old days!
Let _no_ bell toll!――
Lest her sweet soul,
Amid its hallow’d mirth,
Should catch the note,
As it doth float――
Up from the damned earth.
To friends above, from fiends below,
The indignant ghost is riven――
From hell unto a high estate
Far up within the heaven――
From grief and groan,
To a golden throne,
Beside the King of Heaven.”
* * * * *
THE BELLS.
This selection is a favorite with reciters. It is an excellent
piece for voice culture. The musical flow of the metre and
happy selection of the words make it possible for the skilled
speaker to closely imitate the sounds of the ringing bells.
HEAR the sledges with the bells――
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells――
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
Hear the mellow wedding bells――
Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
Through the balmy air of night
How they ring out their delight!
From the molten-golden notes,
And all in tune,
What a liquid ditty floats
To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
On the moon!
Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
How it swells!
How it dwells.
On the future! how it tells
Of the rapture that impels
To the swinging and the ringing
Of the bells, bells, bells,――
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells――
To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
Hear the loud alarum bells――
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek,
Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire
Leaping higher, higher, higher,
With a desperate desire,
And a resolute endeavor,
Now――now to sit or never,
By the side of the pale-faced moon.
Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
What a tale their terror tells
Of despair!
How they clang, and clash, and roar!
What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
Yet the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging,
And the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows;
Yet the ear distinctly tells,
In the jangling
And the wrangling,
How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells――
Of the bells――
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells――
In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
Hear the tolling of the bells――
Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright,
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people――ah, the people――
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone――
They are neither man nor woman――
They are neither brute nor human――
They are ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls, rolls,
A pæan from the bells!
And his merry bosom swells
With the pæan of the bells!
And he dances and he yells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the pæan of the bells――
Of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the throbbing of the bells――
Of the bells, bells, bells,
To the sobbing of the bells;
Keeping time, time, time.
As he knells, knells, knells,
In a happy Runic rhyme,
To the rolling of the bells,――
Of the bells, bells, bells,――
To the tolling of the bells,
Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,――
Bells, bells, bells,――
To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
* * * * *
THE RAVEN.
This poem is generally allowed to be one of the most remarkable
examples of a harmony of sentiment with rhythmical expression
to be found in any language. While the poet sits musing in his
study, endeavoring to win from books “surcease of sorrow for
the lost Lenore,” a raven――the symbol of despair――enters the
room and perches upon a bust of Pallas. A colloquy follows
between the poet and the bird of ill omen with its haunting
croak of “Nevermore.”
Illustration: THE RAVEN.
ONCE upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of ♦forgotten lore,――
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber-door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I mutter’d, “tapping at my chamber-door――
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow――sorrow for the lost Lenore,――
For the rare and ♣radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,――
Nameless here forevermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain,
Thrilled me,――filled me with fantastic terrors never felt
before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood
repeating,
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door,――
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber-door;
That it is, and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger: hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is, I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber-door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”――here I opened wide the
door:
Darkness there, and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering,
fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream
before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word,
“Lenore!”
This _I_ whispered, and an echo murmured back the word,
“LENORE!”
Merely this, and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my
window-lattice;
Let me see then what thereat is and this mystery explore,――
Let my heart be still a moment, and this mystery explore;――
’Tis the wind, and nothing more.”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and
flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or
stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my
chamber-door,――
Perched upon a bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door――
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art
sure no craven;
Ghastly, grim, and ancient raven, wandering from the nightly
shore,
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the night’s Plutonian
shore?”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so
plainly,
Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber-door,
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber-door
With such name as “Nevermore!”
But the raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered; not a feather then he
fluttered――
Till I scarcely more than muttered, “Other friends have flown
before,
On the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said, “Nevermore!”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and
store,
Caught from some unhappy master, whom unmerciful disaster
Follow’d fast and follow’d faster, till his songs one burden
bore,
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore,
Of――‘Never――nevermore!’”
But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust
and door,
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore――
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of
yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore!”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated
o’er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating
o’er
She shall press――ah! nevermore!
Then methought the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen
censer
Swung by seraphim, whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted
floor,
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee,――by these angels
he hath sent thee
Respite――respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh, quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget the lost
Lenore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
“Prophet!” cried I, “thing of evil!――prophet still, if bird or
devil!
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here
ashore,
Desolate, yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted――
On this home by horror haunted――tell me truly, I implore,――
Is there――is there balm in Gilead?――tell me――tell me, I
implore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
“Prophet!” cried I, “thing of evil!――prophet still, if bird or
devil!
By that heaven that bends above us, by that God we both adore,
Tell this soul, with sorrow laden, if within the distant
Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore;
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels name Lenore!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked,
upstarting,――
“Get thee back into the tempest and the night’s Plutonian
shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath
spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!――quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my
door!”
Quoth the raven, “Nevermore!”
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is
sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber-door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is
dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the
floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the
floor
Shall be lifted――nevermore!
♦ ‘forgotton’ replaced with ‘forgotten’
♣ ‘raidant’ replaced with ‘radiant’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.
THE POET OF THE PEOPLE.
_“He who sung to one clear harp in divers tones.”_
“IN an old square wooden house upon the edge of the sea” the most
famous and most widely read of all American poets was born in Portland,
Maine, February 7th, 1807.
In his personality, his wide range of themes, his learning and his
wonderful power of telling stories in song, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
stood in his day and still stands easily in front of all other poets
who have enriched American literature. Admitting that he was not
rugged and elemental like Bryant and did not possess the latter’s
feelings for the colossal features of wild scenery, that he was not
profoundly thoughtful and transcendental like Emerson, that he was not
so earnestly and passionately sympathetic as Whittier, nevertheless he
was our first artist in poetry. Bryant, Emerson and Whittier commanded
but a few stops of the grand instrument upon which they played;
Longfellow understood perfectly all its capabilities. Critics also
say that “he had not the high ideality or dramatic power of Tennyson
or Browning.” But does he not hold something else which to the world
at large is perhaps more valuable? Certainly these two great poets
are inferior to him in the power to sweep the chords of daily human
experiences and call forth the sweetness and beauty in common-place
every day human life. It is on these themes that he tuned his
harp without ever a false tone, and sang with a harmony so well
nigh perfect that the universal heart responded to his music. This
common-place song has found a lodgement in every household in America,
“swaying the hearts of men and women whose sorrows have been soothed
and whose lives raised by his gentle verse.”
“Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.”
Longfellow’s life from the very beginning moved on even lines. Both
he and William Cullen Bryant were descendants of John Alden, whom
Longfellow has made famous in “The Courtship of Miles Standish.”
The Longfellows were a family in comfortable circumstances, peaceful
and honest, for many generations back. The poet went to school with
Nathaniel P. Willis and other boys who at an early age were thinking
more of verse making than of pleasure. He graduated at Bowdoin College
in 1825 with Nathaniel Hawthorne, John S. C. Abbott, and others who
afterwards attained to fame. Almost immediately after his graduation
he was requested to take the chair of Modern Languages and Literature
in his _alma mater_, which he accepted; but before entering upon
his duties spent three years in Germany, France, Spain and Italy
to further perfect himself in the languages and literature of those
nations. At Bowdoin College Longfellow remained as Professor of
Modern Languages and Literature until 1835, when he accepted a similar
position in Harvard University, which he continued to occupy until
1854, when he resigned, devoting the remainder of his life to literary
work and to the enjoyment of the association of such friends as
Charles Sumner the statesman, Hawthorne the romancer, Louis Agassiz
the great naturalist, and James Russell Lowell, the brother poet who
succeeded to the chair of Longfellow in Harvard University on the
latter’s resignation.
The home of Longfellow was not only a delightful place to visit on
account of the cordial welcome extended by the companionable poet, but
for its historic associations as well; for it was none other than the
old “Cragie House” which had been Washington’s headquarters during the
Revolutionary War, the past tradition and recent hospitality of which
have been well told by G. W. Curtis in his “Homes of American Authors.”
It was here that Longfellow surrounded himself with a magnificent
library, and within these walls he composed all of his famous
productions from 1839 until his death, which occurred there in 1882 at
the age of seventy-five. The poet was twice married and was one of the
most domestic of men. His first wife died suddenly in Europe during
their sojourn in that country while Longfellow was pursuing his post
graduate course of study before taking the chair in Bowdoin College.
In 1843 he married Miss Frances Appleton, whom he had met in Europe
and who figures in the pages of his romance “Hyperion.” In 1861 she
met a most tragic death by stepping on a match which set fire to her
clothing, causing injuries from which she died. She was buried on the
19th anniversary of their marriage. By Longfellow’s own direction she
was crowned with a wreath of orange blossoms commemorative of the day.
The poet was so stricken with grief that for a year afterwards he did
practically no work, and it is said neither in conversation nor in
writing to his most intimate friends could he bear to refer to the sad
event.
Longfellow was one of the most bookish men in our literature. His
knowledge of others’ thoughts and writings was so great that he became,
instead of a creator in his poems, a painter of things already created.
It is said that he never even owned a style of his own like Bryant
and Poe, but assimilated what he saw or heard or read from books,
reclothing it and sending it out again. This does not intimate that he
was a plagiarist, but that he wrote out of the accumulated knowledge
of others. “Evangeline,” for instance, was given him by Hawthorne,
who had heard of the young people of Acadia and kept them in mind,
intending to weave them into a romance. The forcible deportation of
18,000 French people touched Hawthorne as it perhaps never could have
touched Longfellow except in literature, and also as it certainly
never would have touched the world had not Longfellow woven the woof
of the story in the threads of his song.
“Evangeline” was brought out the same year with Tennyson’s “Princess”
(1847), and divided honors with the latter even in England. In this
poem, and in “The Courtship of Miles Standish” and other poems, the
pictures of the new world are brought out with charming simplicity.
Though Longfellow never visited Acadia or Louisiana, it is the real
French village of Grand Pré and the real Louisiana, not a poetic dream
that are described in this poem. So vivid were his descriptions that
artists in Europe painted the scenes true to nature and vied with
each other in painting the portrait of Evangeline, among several of
which there is said to be so striking a resemblance as to suggest
the idea that one had served as a copy for the others. The poem took
such a hold upon the public, that both the poor man and the rich knew
Longfellow as they knew not Tennyson their own poet. It was doubtless
because he, though one of the most scholarly of men, always spoke so
the plainest reader could understand.
Illustration: THE WAYSIDE INN.
Scene of Longfellow’s Famous “_Tales of the Wayside Inn_.”
In “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” (1863), the characters were not
fictions, but real persons. The _musician_ was none other than the
famous violinist, Ole Bull; Professor Luigi Monte, a close friend
who dined every Sunday with Longfellow, was the _Sicilian_; Dr. Henry
Wales was the _youth_; the _poet_ was Thomas W. Parsons, and the
_theologian_ was his brother, Rev. S. W. Longfellow. This poem shows
Longfellow at his best as a story teller, while the stories which are
put into the mouth of these actual characters perhaps could have been
written by no other living man, for they are from the literature of
all countries, with which Longfellow was so familiar.
Thus, both “The Tales of a Wayside Inn” and “Evangeline”――as many
other of Longfellow’s poems――may be called compilations or rewritten
stories, rather than creations, and it was these characteristics of
his writings which Poe and Margaret Fuller, and others, who considered
the realm of poetry to belong purely to the imagination rather than
the real world, so bitterly criticised. While they did not deny to
Longfellow a poetic genius, they thought he was prostituting it by
forcing it to drudge in the province of prosaic subjects; and for this
reason Poe predicted that he would not live in literature.
It was but natural that Longfellow should write as he did. For
thirty-five years he was an instructor in institutions of learning,
and as such believed that poetry should be a thing of use as well as
beauty. He could not agree with Poe that poetry was like music, only
a pleasurable art. He had the triple object of stimulating to research
and study, of impressing the mind with history or moral truths, and
at the same time to touch and warm the heart of humanity. In all three
directions he succeeded to such an extent that he has probably been
read by more people than any other poet except the sacred Psalmist;
and despite the predictions of his distinguished critics to the
contrary, such poems as “The Psalm of Life,” (which Chas. Sumner
allowed, to his knowledge, had saved one man from suicide), “The
Children’s Hour,” and many others touching the every day experiences
of the multitude, will find a glad echo in the souls of humanity as
long as men shall read.
* * * * *
THE PSALM OF LIFE.
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST.
This poem has gained wide celebrity as one of Mr. Longfellow’s most
popular pieces, as has also the poem “Excelsior,” (hereafter quoted).
They strike a popular chord and do some clever preaching and it is
in this their chief merit consists. They are by no means among the
author’s best poetic productions from a critical standpoint. Both
these poems were written in early life.
TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,――act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwreck’d brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.
* * * * *
THE VILLAGE BLACKSMITH.
UNDER a spreading chestnut tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat;
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell
When the evening sun is low.
Illustration: THEY LOVE TO SEE THE FLAMING FORGE,
AND HEAR THE BELLOWS ROAR,
AND CATCH THE BURNING SPARKS THAT FLY
LIKE CHAFF FROM THE THRESHING FLOOR.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling――rejoicing――sorrowing――
Onward through life he goes:
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted――something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of Life
Our fortunes must be wrought,
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
* * * * *
THE BRIDGE.
A favorite haunt of Longfellow’s was the bridge between Boston
and Cambridge, over which he had to pass, almost daily. “I
always stop on the bridge,” he writes in his journal. “Tide
waters are beautiful,” and again, “We leaned for a while on the
wooden rails and enjoyed the silvery reflections of the sea,
making sundry comparisons.” Among other thoughts, we have these
cheering ones, that “The old sea was flashing with its heavenly
light, though we saw it only in a single track; the dark waves
are dark provinces of God; illuminous though not to us.”
The following poem was the result of one of Longfellow’s
reflections, while standing on this bridge at midnight.
I STOOD on the bridge at midnight,
As the clocks were striking the hour,
And the moon rose o’er the city,
Behind the dark church tower;
And like the waters rushing
Among the wooden piers,
A flood of thought came o’er me,
That filled my eyes with tears.
How often, O how often,
In the days that had gone by,
I had stood on that bridge at midnight,
And gazed on that wave and sky!
How often, O how often,
I had wished that the ebbing tide
Would bear me away on its bosom
O’er the ocean wild and wide!
For my heart was hot and restless,
And my life was full of care,
And the burden laid upon me,
Seemed greater than I could bear.
But now it has fallen from me,
It is buried in the sea;
And only the sorrow of others
Throws its shadow over me.
Yet whenever I cross the river
On its bridge with wooden piers,
Like the odor of brine from the ocean
Comes the thought of other years.
And I think how many thousands
Of care-encumbered men,
Each having his burden of sorrow,
Have crossed the bridge since then.
I see the long procession
Still passing to and fro,
The young heart hot and restless,
And the old, subdued and slow!
And forever and forever,
As long as the river flows,
As long as the heart has passions,
As long as life has woes;
The moon and its broken reflection
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.
* * * * *
RESIGNATION.
THERE is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!
There is no fireside, howsoe’r defended,
But has one vacant chair!
The air is full of farewells to the dying
And mournings for the dead;
The heart of Rachel, for her children crying,
Will not be comforted!
Let us be patient! These severe afflictions
Not from the ground arise,
But oftentimes celestial benedictions
Assume this dark disguise.
We see but dimly through the mists and vapors;
Amid these earthly damps
What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers
May be heaven’s distant lamps.
There is no Death! What seems so is transition:
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
She is not dead,――the child of our affection,――
But gone unto that school
Where she no longer needs our poor protection,
And Christ himself doth rule.
In that great cloister’s ♦stillness and seclusion,
By guardian angels led,
Safe from temptation, safe from sin’s pollution,
She lives whom we call dead.
Day after day we think what she is doing
In those bright realms of air;
Year after year, her tender steps pursuing,
Behold her grown more fair.
Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken
The bond which nature gives,
Thinking that our remembrance, though unspoken,
May reach her where she lives.
Not as a child shall we again behold her;
For when with raptures wild
In our embraces we again enfold her,
She will not be a child:
But a fair maiden, in her Father’s mansion,
Clothed with celestial grace;
And beautiful with all the soul’s expansion
Shall we behold her face.
And though, at times, impetuous with emotion
And anguish long suppressed,
The swelling heart heaves moaning like the ocean
That cannot be at rest,――
We will be patient, and assuage the feeling
We may not wholly stay;
By silence sanctifying, not concealing
The grief that must have way.
♦ ‘stillnes’ replaced with ‘stillness’
* * * * *
GOD’S ACRE.
I LIKE that ancient Saxon phrase which calls
The burial-ground God’s acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o’er the sleeping dust.
God’s Acre! Yes, that blessed name imparts
Comfort to those who in the grave have sown
The seed that they had garnered in their hearts,
Their bread of life, alas! no more their own.
Into its furrows shall we all be cast,
In the sure faith that we shall rise again
At the great harvest, when the archangel’s blast
Shall winnow, like a fan the chaff and grain.
Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom,
In the fair gardens of that second birth;
And each bright blossom mingle its perfume
With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth.
With thy rude ploughshare, Death, turn up the sod,
And spread the furrow for the seed we sow;
This is the field and Acre of our God!
This is the place where human harvests grow!
* * * * *
EXCELSIOR.
THE shades of night were falling fast,
As through an Alpine village passed
A youth, who bore, ’mid snow and ice,
A banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
His brow was sad; his eye beneath,
Flashed like a falchion from its sheath,
And like a silver clarion rung
The accents of that unknown tongue,
Excelsior!
In happy homes he saw the light
Of household fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the spectral glaciers shone,
And from his lips escaped a groan,
Excelsior!
“Try not to Pass!” the old man said;
“Dark lowers the tempest overhead,
The roaring torrent is deep and wide!”
And loud that clarion voice replied,
Excelsior!
“O, stay,” the maiden said, “and rest
Thy weary head upon this breast!”
A tear stood in his bright blue eye,
But still he answered, with a sigh,
Excelsior!
“Beware the pine-tree’s withered branch!
Beware the awful avalanche!”
This was the peasant’s last Good-night;
A voice replied, far up the height,
Excelsior!
At break of day, as heavenward
The pious monks of Saint Bernard
Uttered the oft-repeated prayer,
A voice cried through the startled air,
Excelsior!
A traveler, by the faithful hound,
Half-buried in the snow was found,
Still grasping in his hand of ice
That banner with the strange device,
Excelsior!
There, in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!
* * * * *
THE RAINY DAY.
THE day is cold, and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark dreary.
* * * * *
THE WRECK OF THE HESPERUS.
The writing of the following poem, “The Wreck of the Hesperus,”
was occasioned by the news of a ship-wreck on the coast near
Gloucester, and by the name of a reef――“Norman’s Woe”――where
many disasters occurred. It was written one night between
twelve and three o’clock, and cost the poet, it is said, hardly
an effort.
IT was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.
Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,
And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds
That ope in the month of May.
The skipper he stood beside the helm,
His pipe was in his mouth,
And watched how the veering flaw did blow
The smoke now west, now south.
Then up and spake an old sailor,
Had sailed the Spanish main:
“I pray thee put into yonder port,
For I fear a hurricane.
“Last night the moon had a golden ring,
And to-night no moon we see!”
The skipper he blew a whiff from his pipe,
And a scornful laugh laughed he.
Colder and colder blew the wind,
A gale from the north-east;
The snow fell hissing in the brine,
And the billows frothed like yeast.
Down came the storm and smote amain
The vessel in its strength;
She shuddered and paused, like a frighted steed,
Then leaped her cable’s length.
“Come hither! come hither! my little daughter,
And do not tremble so,
For I can weather the roughest gale
That ever wind did blow.”
He wrapped her warm in his seaman’s coat,
Against the stinging blast;
He cut a rope from a broken spar,
And bound her to the mast.
“Oh father! I hear the church-bells ring,
Oh say what may it be?”
“’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast;”
And he steered for the open sea.
“Oh father! I hear the sound of guns,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
“Some ship in distress, that cannot live
In such an angry sea.”
“O father! I see a gleaming light,
Oh, say, what may it be?”
But the father answered never a word――
A frozen corpse was he.
Lashed to the helm, all stiff and stark,
With his face to the skies,
The lantern gleamed, through the gleaming snow,
On his fixed and glassy eyes.
Then the maiden clasped her hands, and prayed
That saved she might be;
And she thought of Christ, who stilled the waves
On the lake of Galilee.
And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost, the vessel swept,
Towards the reef of Norman’s Woe.
And ever, the fitful gusts between,
A sound came from the land;
It was the sound of the trampling surf
On the rocks and hard sea-sand.
The breakers were right beneath her bows,
She drifted a dreary wreck,
And a whooping billow swept the crew
Like icicles from her deck.
She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks, they gored her side
Like the horns of an angry bull.
Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts, went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass she stove and sank――
Ho! ho! the breakers roared.
At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed,
On the billows fall and rise.
Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow;
Christ save us all from a death like this,
On the reef of Norman’s Woe
* * * * *
THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.
SOMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country seat;
Across its antique portico
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw;
And, from its station in the hall,
An ancient timepiece says to all,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
Half-way up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands,
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep’s fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say at each chamber door,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude
Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;
His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
There groups of merry children played;
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
Oh, precious hours! oh, golden prime
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told,――
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night;
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay, in his shroud of snow;
And, in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,――
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
All are scattered now, and fled,――
Some are married, some are dead:
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
“Ah!” when shall they all meet again?
As in the days long since gone by,
The ancient timepiece makes reply,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care
And death, and time shall disappear,――
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,
“Forever――never!
Never――forever!”
* * * * *
THE SKELETON IN ARMOR.
The writing of this famous ballad was suggested to Mr.
Longfellow by the digging up of a mail-clad skeleton at
Fall-River, Massachusetts――a circumstance which the poet linked
with the traditions about the Round Tower at Newport, thus
giving to it the spirit of a Norse Viking song of war and of
the sea. It is written in the swift leaping meter employed by
Drayton in his “Ode to the Cambro Britons on their Harp.”
SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretch’d, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?”
Then, from those cavernous eyes
Pale flashes seemed to rise,
As when the Northern skies
Gleam in December;
And, like the water’s flow
Under December’s snow,
Came a dull voice of woe
From the heart’s chamber.
“I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
Take heed, that in thy verse
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man’s curse!
For this I sought thee.
“Far in the Northern Land,
By the wild Baltic’s strand,
I, with my childish hand,
Tamed the ger-falcon;
And, with my skates fast-bound,
Skimm’d the half-frozen Sound,
That the poor whimpering hound
Trembled to walk on.
“Oft to his frozen lair
Track’d I the grizzly bear,
While from my path the hare
Fled like a shadow;
Oft through the forest dark
Followed the were-wolf’s bark,
Until the soaring lark
Sang from the meadow.
“But when I older grew,
Joining a corsair’s crew,
O’er the dark sea I flew
With the marauders.
Wild was the life we led;
Many the souls that sped,
Many the hearts that bled,
By our stern orders.
“Many a wassail-bout
Wore the long winter out;
Often our midnight shout
Set the cocks crowing,
As we the Berserk’s tale
Measured in cups of ale,
Draining the oaken pail,
Fill’d to o’erflowing.
“Once as I told in glee
Tales of the stormy sea,
Soft eyes did gaze on me,
Burning out tender;
And as the white stars shine
On the dark Norway pine,
On that dark heart of mine
Fell their soft splendor.
“I woo’d the blue-eyed maid,
Yielding, yet half afraid,
And in the forest’s shade
Our vows were plighted.
Under its loosen’d vest
Flutter’d her little breast,
Like birds within their nest
By the hawk frighted.
“Bright in her father’s hall
Shields gleam’d upon the wall,
Loud sang the minstrels all,
Chanting his glory;
When of old Hildebrand
I ask’d his daughter’s hand,
Mute did the minstrel stand
To hear my story.
“While the brown ale he quaff’d
Loud then the champion laugh’d,
And as the wind-gusts waft
The sea-foam brightly,
So the loud laugh of scorn,
Out of those lips unshorn,
From the deep drinking-horn
Blew the foam lightly.
“She was a Prince’s child,
I but a Viking wild,
And though she blush’d and smiled,
I was discarded!
Should not the dove so white
Follow the sea-mew’s flight,
Why did they leave that night
Her nest unguarded?
“Scarce had I put to sea,
Bearing the maid with me,――
Fairest of all was she
Among the Norsemen!――
When on the white sea-strand,
Waving his armed hand,
Saw we old Hildebrand,
With twenty horsemen.
“Then launch’d they to the blast,
Bent like a reed each mast,
Yet we were gaining fast,
When the wind fail’d us;
And with a sudden flaw
Came round the gusty Skaw,
So that our foe we saw
Laugh as he hail’d us.
“And as to catch the gale
Round veer’d the flapping sail,
Death! was the helmsman’s hail,
Death without quarter!
Mid-ships with iron keel
Struck we her ribs of steel;
Down her black hulk did reel
Through the black water.
“As with his wings aslant,
Sails the fierce cormorant,
Seeking some rocky haunt,
With his prey laden.
So toward the open main,
Beating to sea again,
Through the wild hurricane,
Bore I the maiden.
“Three weeks we westward bore,
And when the storm was o’er,
Cloud-like we saw the shore
Stretching to lee-ward;
There for my lady’s bower
Built I the lofty tower,
Which, to this very hour,
Stands looking sea-ward.
“There lived we many years;
Time dried the maiden’s tears;
She had forgot her fears,
She was a mother;
Death closed her mild blue eyes,
Under that tower she lies;
Ne’er shall the sun arise
On such another!
“Still grew my bosom then,
Still as a stagnant fen!
Hateful to me were men,
The sun-light hateful!
In the vast forest here,
Clad in my warlike gear,
Fell I upon my spear,
O, death was grateful!
“Thus, seam’d with many scars
Bursting these prison bars,
Up to its native stars
My soul ascended!
There from the flowing bowl
Deep drinks the warrior’s soul,
_Skål!_ to the Northland! _skål!_”¹
――Thus the tale ended.
¹ Skål! is the Swedish expression for “Your Health.”
* * * * *
KING WITLAF’S DRINKING-HORN.
WITLAF, a king of the Saxons,
Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed,――
That, whenever they sat at their revels,
And drank from the golden bowl,
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;
In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached his holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.
And the reader droned from the pulpit,
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac
And Saint Basil’s homilies;
Till the great bells of the convent,
From their prison in the tower,
Guthlac and Bartholomæus,
Proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered,
But the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
He clutched the golden bowl,
In which, like a pearl dissolving,
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
The jovial monks forbore,
For they cried, “Fill high the goblet!
We must drink to one Saint more!”
* * * * *
EVANGELINE ON THE PRAIRIE.
BEAUTIFUL was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest,
Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river
Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam of
the moonlight,
Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious
spirit.
Nearer and round about her, the manifold flowers of the garden
Poured out their souls in odors, that were their prayers and
confessions
Unto the night, as it went its way, like a silent Carthusian.
Fuller of fragrance than they, and as heavy with shadows and
night dews,
Hung the heart of the maiden. The calm and the magical
moonlight
Seemed to inundate her soul with indefinable longings,
As, through the garden gate, and beneath the shade of the
oak-trees,
Passed she along the path to the edge of the measureless
prairie.
Silent it lay, with a silvery haze upon it, and fire-flies
Gleaming and floating away in mingled and infinite numbers.
Over her head the stars, the thoughts of God in the heavens,
Shone on the eyes of man, who had ceased to marvel and worship,
Save when a blazing comet was seen on the walls of that temple,
As if a hand had appeared and written upon them, “Upharsin.”
And the soul of the maiden, between the stars and the
fire-flies,
Wandered alone, and she cried, “O Gabriel! O my beloved!
Art thou so near unto me, and yet I cannot behold thee?
Art thou so near unto me, and yet thy voice does not reach me?
Ah! how often thy feet have trod this path to the prairie!
Ah! how often thine eyes have looked on the woodlands around
me!
Ah! how often beneath this oak, returning from labor,
Thou hast lain down to rest, and to dream of me in thy
slumbers.
When shall these eyes behold, these arms be folded about thee?”
Loud and sudden and near the note of a whippoorwill sounded
Like a flute in the woods; and anon, through the neighboring
thickets,
Farther and farther away it floated and dropped into silence.
“Patience!” whispered the oaks from oracular caverns of
darkness;
And, from the moonlit meadow, a sigh responded, “To-morrow!”
* * * * *
LITERARY FAME.
As a specimen of Mr. Longfellow’s prose style we present the
following extract from his “_Hyperion_,” written when the poet
was comparatively a young man.
TIME has a Doomsday-Book, upon whose pages he is continually recording
illustrious names. But, as often as a new name is written there, an
old one disappears. Only a few stand in illuminated characters never
to be effaced. These are the high nobility of Nature,――Lords of the
Public Domain of Thought. Posterity shall never question their titles.
But those, whose fame lives only in the indiscreet opinion of unwise
men, must soon be as well forgotten as if they had never been. To
this great oblivion must most men come. It is better, therefore, that
they should soon make up their minds to this: well knowing that, as
their bodies must ere long be resolved into dust again, and their
graves tell no tales of them, so must their names likewise be utterly
forgotten, and their most cherished thoughts, purposes, and opinions
have no longer an individual being among men; but be resolved and
incorporated into the universe of thought.
Yes, it is better that men should soon make up their minds to be
forgotten, and look about them, or within them, for some higher motive,
in what they do, than the approbation of men, which is Fame; namely,
their duty; that they should be constantly and quietly at work, each
in his sphere, regardless of effects, and leaving their fame to take
care of itself. Difficult must this indeed be, in our imperfection;
impossible, perhaps, to achieve it wholly. Yet the resolute, the
indomitable will of man can achieve much,――at times even this victory
over himself; being persuaded that fame comes only when deserved, and
then is as inevitable as destiny, for it is destiny.
It has become a common saying, that men of genius are always in
advance of their age; which is true. There is something equally true,
yet not so common; namely, that, of these men of genius, the best and
bravest are in advance not only of their own age, but of every age. As
the German prose-poet says, every possible future is behind them. We
cannot suppose that a period of time will ever arrive, when the world,
or any considerable portion of it, shall have come up abreast with
these great minds, so as fully to comprehend them.
And, oh! how majestically they walk in history! some like the sun,
“with all his traveling glories round him;” others wrapped in gloom,
yet glorious as a night with stars. Through the else silent darkness
of the past, the spirit hears their slow and solemn footsteps. Onward
they pass, like those hoary elders seen in the sublime vision of an
earthly paradise, attendant angels bearing golden lights before them,
and, above and behind, the whole air painted with seven listed colors,
as from the trail of pencils!
And yet, on earth, these men were not happy,――not all happy, in the
outward circumstance of their lives. They were in want, and in pain,
and familiar with prison-bars, and the damp, weeping walls of dungeons.
Oh, I have looked with wonder upon those who, in sorrow and privation,
and bodily discomfort, and sickness, which is the shadow of death,
have worked right on to the accomplishment of their great purposes;
toiling much, enduring much, fulfilling much;――and then, with
shattered nerves, and sinews all unstrung, have laid themselves down
in the grave, and slept the sleep of death,――and the world talks of
them, while they sleep!
It would seem, indeed, as if all their sufferings had but sanctified
them! As if the death-angel, in passing, had touched them with the
hem of his garment, and made them holy! As if the hand of disease had
been stretched out over them only to make the sign of the cross upon
their souls! And as in the sun’s eclipse we can behold the great stars
shining in the heavens, so in this life-eclipse have these men beheld
the lights of the great eternity, burning solemnly and forever!
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF LONGFELLOW
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
RALPH WALDO EMERSON.
THE LIBERATOR OF AMERICAN LITERATURE.
TO classify Emerson is a matter of no small difficulty. He was a
philosopher, he was an essayist, he was a poet――all three so eminently
that scarcely two of his friends would agree to which class he most
belonged. Oliver Wendell Holmes asks:
“Where in the realm of thought whose air is song
Does he the Buddha of the west belong?
He seems a winged Franklin sweetly wise,
Born to unlock the secret of the skies.”
But whatever he did was done with a poetic touch. Philosophy, essay
or song, it was all pregnant with the spirit of poetry. Whatever else
he was, Emerson was pre-eminently a poet. It was with this golden
key that he unlocked the chambers of original thought, that liberated
American letters.
Until Emerson came, American authors had little independence. James
Russell Lowell declares, “We were socially and intellectually bound to
English thought, until Emerson cut the cable and gave us a chance at
the dangers and glories of blue waters. He was our first optimistic
writer. Before his day, Puritan theology had seen in man only a vile
nature and considered his instincts for beauty and pleasure, proofs of
his total depravity.” Under such conditions as these, the imagination
was fettered and wholesome literature was impossible. As a reaction
against this Puritan austerity came Unitarianism, which aimed to
establish the dignity of man, and out of this came the further growth
of the idealism or transcendentalism of Emerson. It was this idea and
these aspirations of the new theology that Emerson converted into
literature. The indirect influence of his example on the writings of
Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Lowell, and its direct influence on
Thoreau, Hawthorne, Chas. A. Dana, Margaret Fuller, G. W. Curtis and
others, formed the very foundation for the beautiful structure of our
representative American literature.
Emerson was profoundly a thinker who pondered the relation of man to
God and to the universe. He conceived and taught the noblest ideals of
virtue and a spiritual life. The profound study which Emerson devoted
to his themes and his philosophic cast of mind made him a writer for
scholars. He was a prophet who, without argument, announced truths
which, by intuition, he seems to have perceived; but the thought is
often so shadowy that the ordinary reader fails to catch it. For this
reason he will never be like Longfellow or Whittier, a favorite with
the masses. Let it not be understood, however, that all of Emerson’s
writings are heavy or shadowy or difficult to understand. On the
contrary, some of his poems are of a popular character and are easy
of comprehension. For instance, “The Hymn,” sung at the completion
of the Concord Monument in 1836, was on every one’s lips at the time
of the Centennial celebration, in 1876. His optimistic spirit is also
beautifully and clearly expressed in the following stanza of his
“Voluntaries:”
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When duty whispers low, “Thou must,”
The youth replies, “I can.”
These are but two instances of many that may be cited. No author is,
perhaps, more enjoyed by those who understand him. He was a master
of language. He never used the wrong word. His sentences are models.
But he was not a logical or methodical writer. Every sentence stands
by itself. His paragraphs might be arranged almost at random without
essential loss to the essays. His philosophy consists largely in an
array of golden sayings full of vital suggestions to help men make the
best and most of themselves. He had no compact system of philosophy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston, May 25, 1803, within “A
kite-string of the birth place of Benjamin Franklin” with whom he is
frequently compared. The likeness, however, consists only in the fact
that they were both decidedly representative Americans of a decidedly
different type. Franklin was prose, Emerson poetry; Franklin common
sense, real; Emerson imaginative, ideal. In these opposite respects
they both were equally representative of the highest type. Both were
hopeful, kindly and shrewd. Both equally powerful in making, training
and guiding the American people.
In his eighth year young Emerson was sent to a grammar school, where
he made such rapid progress, that he was soon able to enter a higher
department known as a Latin school. His first attempts at writing were
not the dull efforts of a school boy; but original poems which he read
with real taste and feeling. He completed his course and graduated
from Harvard College at eighteen. It is said that he was dull in
mathematics and not above the average in his class in general standing;
but he was widely read in literature, which put him far in advance,
perhaps, of any young man of his age. After graduating, he taught
school for five years in connection with his brother; but in 1825,
gave it up for the ministry. For a time he was pastor of a Unitarian
Congregation in Boston; but his independent views were not in
accordance with the doctrine of his church, therefore, he resigned in
1835, and retired to Concord, where he purchased a home near the spot
on which the first battle of the Revolution was fought in 1775, which
he commemorated in his own verse:――
“There first the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
In this city, Emerson resided until the day of his death, which
occurred in Concord, April 27, 1882, in the seventy-eighth year of
his age.
Illustration: HOME OF RALPH WALDO EMERSON, CONCORD, MASS.
It was in Concord that the poet and essayist, as the prophet of the
advanced thought of his age, gathered around him those leading spirits
who were dissatisfied with the selfishness and shallowness of existing
society, and, who had been led by him to dream of an ideal condition
in which all should live as one family. Out of this grew the famous
“Brook Farm Community.” This was not an original idea of Emerson’s,
however. Coleridge and Southey, of England, had thought of founding
such a society in Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Emerson
regarded this community of interests as the clear teachings of Jesus
Christ; and, to put into practical operation this idea, a farm of
about two hundred acres was bought at Roxbury, Mass., and a stock
company was formed under the title of “The Brook Farm Institution
of Agriculture and Education.” About seventy members joined in the
enterprise. The principle of the organization was coöperative, the
members sharing the profits. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the greatest of
romancers, Chas. A. Dana, of the New York Tribune, Geo. W. Curtis, of
Harper’s Monthly, Henry D. Thoreau, the poet naturalist, Amos Bronson
Alcott, the transcendental dreamer and writer of strange shadowy
sayings, and Margaret Fuller, the most learned woman of her age, were
prominent members who removed to live on the farm. It is said that
Emerson, himself, never really lived there; but was a member and
frequent visitor, as were other prominent scholars of the same school.
The project was a failure. After five years of experience, some of
the houses were destroyed by fire, the enterprise given up, and the
membership scattered.
But the Brook Farm served its purpose in literature by bringing
together some of the best intellects in America, engaging them for
five years in a common course of study, and stimulating a commerce
of ideas. The breaking up of the community was better, perhaps, than
its success would have been. It dispersed and scattered abroad the
advanced thoughts of Emerson, and the doctrine of the society into
every profession. Instead of being confined to the little paper,
“The Dial,” (which was the organ of the society) its literature was
transferred into a number of widely circulated national mediums.
Thus, it will be seen how Emerson, the “Sage of Concord,” gathered
around him and dominated, by his charming personality, his powerful
mind, and his wholesome influence, some of the brightest minds that
have figured in American literature; and how, through them, as well as
his own writings, he has done so much, not only to lay the foundation
of a new literature, but to mould and shape leading minds for
generations to come. The Brook Farm idea was the uppermost thought in
Edward Bellamy’s famous novel, “Looking Backward,” which created such
a sensation in the reading world a few years since. The progressive
thought of Emerson was father to the so-called “New Theology,” or
“Higher Criticism,” of modern scholars and theologians. It is, perhaps,
for the influence which Emerson has exerted, rather than his own works,
that the literature of America is mostly indebted to him. It was
through his efforts that the village of Concord has been made more
famous in American letters than the city of New York.
The charm of Emerson’s personality has already been referred to,――and
it is not strange that it should have been so great. His manhood, no
less than his genius was worthy of admiration and of reverence. His
life corresponded with his brave, cheerful and steadfast teachings. He
“practiced what he preached.” His manners were so gentle, his nature
so transparent, and his life so singularly pure and happy, that he
was called, while he lived, “the good and great Emerson;” and, since
his death, the memory of his life and manly example are among the
cherished possessions of our literature.
The reverence of his literary associates was little less than worship.
Amos Bronson Alcott,――father of the authoress, Louisa M. Alcott,――one
of the Brook Farm members, though himself a profound scholar and
several years Emerson’s senior, declared that it would have been his
great misfortune to have lived without knowing Emerson, whom he styled,
“The magic minstrel and speaker! whose rhetoric, voiced as by organ
stops, delivers the sentiment from his breast in cadences peculiar to
himself; now hurling it forth on the ear, echoing them; then,――as his
mood and matter invite it――dying like
Music of mild lutes
Or silver coated flutes.
... such is the rhapsodist’s cunning in its structure and delivery.”
Referring to his association with Emerson, the same writer
acknowledges in a poem, written after the sage’s death:
Thy fellowship was my culture, noble friend:
By the hand thou took’st me, and did’st condescend
To bring me straightway into thy fair guild;
And life-long hath it been high compliment
By that to have been known, and thy friend styled,
Given to rare thought and to good learning bent;
Whilst in my straits an angel on me smiled.
Permit me, then, thus honored, still to be
A scholar in thy university.
* * * * *
HYMN SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT, 1836.
BY the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.
The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.
On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to day a votive stone,
That memory may their deed redeem
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit that made those heroes dare
To die or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.
* * * * *
THE RHODORA.
IN May, when sea-winds pierced our solitudes,
I found the fresh Rhodora in the woods,
Spreading its leafless blooms in a damp nook,
To please the desert and the sluggish brook;
The purple petals fallen in the pool
Made the black waters with their beauty gay;
Young RAPHAEL might covet such a school;
The lively show beguiled me from my way.
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the marsh and sky,
Dear tell them, that if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for being.
Why, thou wert there, O, rival of the rose!
I never thought to ask, I never knew,
But in my simple ignorance suppose
The selfsame Power that brought me there, brought you.
* * * * *
THE TRUE HERO.
AN EXTRACT FROM “VOLUNTARIES.”
The following story is told of the manner in which the poem,
“Voluntaries,” obtained its title. In 1863, Mr. Emerson came
to Boston and took a room in the Parker House, bringing with
him the unfinished sketch of a few verses which he wished
Mr. Fields, his publisher, to hear. He drew a small table to
the centre of the room and read aloud the lines he proposed
giving to the press. They were written on separate slips of
paper which were flying loosely about the room. (Mr. Emerson
frequently wrote in such independent paragraphs, that many of
his poems and essays might be rearranged without doing them
serious violence.) The question arose as to title of the verses
read, when Mr. Fields suggested ♦“Voluntaries,” which was
cordially accepted by Mr. Emerson.
O WELL for the fortunate soul
Which Music’s wings unfold,
Stealing away the memory
Of sorrows new and old!
Yet happier he whose inward sight,
Stayed on his subtle thought,
Shuts his sense on toys of time,
To vacant bosoms brought;
But best befriended of the God
He who, in evil times,
Warned by an inward voice,
Heeds not the darkness and the dread,
Biding by his rule and choice,
Telling only the fiery thread,
Leading over heroic ground
Walled with immortal terror round,
To the aim which him allures,
And the sweet heaven his deed secures.
Peril around all else appalling,
Cannon in front and leaden rain,
Him duty through the clarion calling
To the van called not in vain.
Stainless soldier on the walls,
Knowing this,――and knows no more,――
Whoever fights, whoever falls,
Justice conquers evermore,
Justice after as before;――
And he who battles on her side,
God, though he were ten times slain,
Crowns him victor glorified,
Victor over death and pain
Forever: but his erring foe,
Self-assured that he prevails,
Looks from his victim lying low,
And sees aloft the red right arm
Redress the eternal scales.
He, the poor for whom angels foil,
Blind with pride and fooled by hate,
Writhes within the dragon coil,
Reserved to a speechless fate.
♦ ‘Voluntaires’ replaced with ‘Voluntaries’
* * * * *
MOUNTAIN AND SQUIRREL.
THE mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter “Little Prig.”
Bun replied:
“You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together,
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it no disgrace
To occupy my place.
If I’m not so large as you,
You are not so small as I,
And not half so spry.
I’ll not deny you make
A very pretty squirrel track;
Talents differ; all is well and wisely put;
If I cannot carry forests on my back,
Neither can you crack a nut.”
* * * * *
THE SNOW STORM.
ANNOUNCED by all the trumpets of the sky
Arrives the snow, and driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopp’d, the courier’s feet
Delay’d, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fire-place, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.
Come see the north-wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnish’d with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs, and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are number’d, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonish’d Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.
* * * * *
THE PROBLEM.
I LIKE a church, I like a cowl,
I love a prophet of the soul,
And on my heart monastic aisles
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles,
Yet not for all his faith can see
Would I that cowled churchman be.
Why should the vest on him allure,
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell
The thrilling Delphic oracle;
Out from the heart of nature roll’d
The burdens of the Bible old;
The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano’s tongue of flame,
Up from the burning core below,――
The canticles of love and wo.
The hand that rounded Peter’s dome,
And groin’d the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity.
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew,
The conscious stone to beauty grew.
Know’st thou what wove yon wood-bird’s nest
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast;
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell;
Or how the sacred pine tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O’er England’s Abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought’s interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air,
And nature gladly gave them place,
Adopted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.
These temples grew as grows the grass,
Art might obey but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast Soul that o’er him plann’d,
And the same power that rear’d the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.
Ever the fiery Pentacost
Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.
The word unto the prophet spoken,
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sybils told
In groves of oak or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.
One accent of the Holy Ghost
The heedless world hath never lost
I know what say the Fathers wise,――
The book itself before me lies,――
Old _Chrysostom_, best Augustine,
And he who blent both in his line,
The younger _Golden Lips_ or mines,
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines;
His words are music in my ear,
I see his cowled portrait dear.
And yet, for all his faith could see,
I would not the good bishop be.
* * * * *
TRAVELING.
I HAVE no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe,
for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man
is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding
somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get
somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows
old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will
and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to
ruins.
Traveling is a fool’s paradise. We owe to our first journeys the
discovery that place is nothing. At home I dream that at Naples, at
Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty and lose my sadness. I pack
my trunk, embrace my friends, and embark on the sea, and at last wake
up at Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self,
unrelenting, identical that I fled from. I seek the Vatican and the
palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions; but I
am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.
But the rage of traveling is itself only a symptom of a deeper
unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is
vagabond, and the universal system of education fosters restlessness.
Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We
imitate; and what is imitation but the traveling of the mind? Our
houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with
foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our whole minds, lean to
and follow the past and the distant as the eyes of a maid follow her
mistress. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished.
It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was
an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the
conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the
Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought and quaint
expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist
will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him,
considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants
of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create
a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and
sentiment will be satisfied also.
* * * * *
THE COMPENSATION OF CALAMITY.
WE cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do
not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are
idolaters of the old. We do not believe in the riches of the soul,
in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We do not believe there is
any force in to-day to rival or recreate that beautiful yesterday.
We linger in the ruins of the old tent, where once we had bread and
shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can feed, cover and
nerve us again. We cannot find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful.
But we sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty saith, “Up and
onward for evermore!” We cannot stay amid the ruins, neither will we
rely on the new; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like those
monsters who look backwards.
And yet the compensations of calamity are made apparent to the
understanding also, after long intervals of time. A fever, a
mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of
friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure
years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts. The
death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing
but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius;
for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates
an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed; breaks
up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows
the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.
It permits or constrains the formation of new acquaintances, and the
reception of new influences that prove of the first importance to
the next years; and the man or woman who would have remained a sunny
garden-flower, with no room for its roots and too much sunshine for
its head, by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener,
is made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit to wide
neighborhoods of men.
* * * * *
SELF-RELIANCE.
INSIST on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every
moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but
of the adopted talent of another you have only an extemporaneous,
half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can
teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has
exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare?
Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington,
or Bacon or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of
Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. If anybody will
tell me whom the great man imitates in the original crisis when he
performs a great act, I will tell him who else than himself can teach
him. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that
which is assigned thee, and thou canst not hope too much or dare too
much.
* * * * *
FROM “NATURE.”
TO go into solitude a man needs to retire as much from his chamber as
from society. I am not solitary whilst I read and write, though nobody
is with me. But if a man would be alone, let him look at the stars.
The rays that come from those heavenly worlds will separate between
him and vulgar things. One might think the atmosphere was made
transparent with this design, to give man, in the heavenly bodies,
the perpetual presence of the sublime. Seen in the streets of cities,
how great they are!
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how
would men believe and adore and preserve for many generations the
remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night
come out these preachers of beauty and light the universe with their
admonishing smile.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because, always present,
they are always inaccessible; but all natural objects make kindred
impression when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never
wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort all her
secrets and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection.
Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals,
the mountains reflected all the wisdom of his best hour as much as
they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.
When we speak of Nature in this manner, we have a distinct but most
poetical sense in the mind. We mean the integrity of impression made
by manifold Nature objects. It is this which distinguishes the stick
of timber of the wood-cutter from the tree of the poet. The charming
landscape which I saw this morning is indubitably made up of some
twenty or thirty farms. Miller owns this field, Locke that, and
Manning the woodland beyond. But none of them owns the landscape.
There is a property in the horizon which no man has but he whose eye
can integrate all the parts――that is, the poet. This is the best part
of these men’s farms, yet to this their land-deeds give them no title.
To speak truly, few adult persons can see Nature. Most persons do not
see the sun. At least they have a very superficial seeing. The sun
illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the
heart of the child. The lover of Nature is he whose inward and outward
senses are still truly adjusted to each other――who has retained the
spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with
heaven and earth becomes part of his daily food. In the presence of
Nature a wild delight runs through the man in spite of real sorrows.
Nature says, He is my creature, and, maugre all his impertinent griefs,
he shall be glad with me. Not the sun nor the summer alone, but every
hour and season, yields its tribute of delight; for every hour and
change corresponds to and authorizes a different state of the mind,
from breathless noon to grimmest midnight. Nature is a setting that
fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health the
air is a cordial of incredible virtue. Crossing a bare common in
snow-puddles at twilight under a clouded sky, without having in my
thoughts any occurrence of special good-fortune, I have enjoyed a
perfect exhilaration. Almost I fear to think how glad I am. In the
woods, too, a man casts off his years as the snake his slough, and
at what period soever of his life is always a child. In the woods
is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and
sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees
not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we
return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me
in life――no disgrace, no calamity (leaving me my eyes)――which Nature
cannot repair.
* * * * *
The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the
suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am
not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me and I to them. The waving
of the boughs in the storm is new to me and old.
It takes me by surprise, and yet is not unknown. Its effect is like
that of a higher thought or a better emotion coming over me when I
deemed I was thinking justly or doing right.
Yet it is certain that the power to produce this delight does not
reside in Nature, but in man or in a harmony of both. It is necessary
to use these pleasures with great temperance. For Nature is not always
tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed
perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs is overspread
with melancholy to-day. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.
To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness
in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him
who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it
shuts down over less worth in the population.
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF EMERSON
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER.
“THE POET OF FREEDOM.”
IN a solitary farm house near Haverhill, Massachusetts, in the valley
of the Merrimac, on the 17th day of December, 1807, John Greenleaf
Whittier was born. Within the same town, and Amesbury, nearby, this
kind and gentle man, whom all the world delights to honor for his
simple and beautiful heart-songs, spent most of his life, dying at
the ripe old age of nearly eighty-five, in Danvers, Massachusetts,
September 7th, 1892. The only distinguishing features about his
ancestors were that Thos. Whittier settled at Haverhill in 1647,
and brought with him from Newberry the first hive of bees in the
settlement, that they were all sturdy Quakers, lived simply, were
friendly and freedom loving. The early surroundings of the farmer boy
were simple and frugal. He has pictured them for us in his masterpiece,
“Snowbound.” Poverty, the necessity of laboring upon the farm, the
influence of Quaker traditions, his busy life, all conspired against
his liberal education and literary culture. This limitation of
knowledge is, however, at once to the masses his charm, and, to
scholars, his one defect. It has led him to write, as no other poet
could, upon the dear simplicity of New England farm life. He has
written from the heart and not from the head; he has composed popular
pastorals, not hymns of culture. Only such training as the district
schools afforded, with a couple of years at Haverhill Academy
comprised his advantages in education.
In referring to this _alma mater_ in after years, under the spell of
his muse, the poet thus writes:――
“Still sits the school house by the road,
A ragged beggar sunning;
Around it still the sumachs grow
And black-berry vines are running.
Within, the master’s desk is seen,
Deep-scarred by raps official;
The warping floor, the battered seats,
The jack-knife carved initial.”
It was natural for Whittier to become the poet of that combination of
which Garrison was the apostle, and Phillips and Sumner the orators.
His early poems were published by Garrison in his paper, “The Free
Press,” the first one when Whittier was nineteen years of age and
Garrison himself little more than a boy. The farmer lad was elated
when he found the verses which he had so timidly submitted in print
with a friendly comment from the editor and a request for more.
Garrison even visited Whittier’s parents and urged the importance of
giving him a finished education. Thus he fell early under the spell
of the great abolitionist and threw himself with all the ardor of his
nature into the movement. His poems against slavery and disunion have
a ringing zeal worthy of a Cromwell. “They are,” declares one writer,
“like the sound of the trumpets blown before the walls of Jericho.”
As a Quaker Whittier could not have been otherwise than an
abolitionist, for that denomination had long since abolished slavery
within its own communion. Most prominent among his poems of freedom
are “The Voice of Freedom,” published in 1849, “The Panorama and
Other Poems,” in 1856, “In War Times,” in 1863, and “Ichabod,” a
pathetically kind yet severely stinging rebuke to Daniel Webster for
his support of the Fugitive Slave Law. Webster was right from the
standpoint of law and the Constitution, but Whittier argued from the
standpoint of human right and liberty. “Barbara Frietchie,”――while it
is pronounced purely a fiction, as is also his poem about John Brown
kissing the Negro baby on his way to the gallows,――is perhaps the most
widely quoted of his famous war poems.
Whittier also wrote extensively on subjects relating to New England
history, witchcraft and colonial traditions. This group includes many
of his best ballads, which have done in verse for colonial romance
what Hawthorne did in prose in his “Twice-Told Tales” and “Scarlet
Letter.” It is these poems that have entitled Whittier to be called
“the greatest of American ballad writers.” Among them are to be found
“Mabel Martin,” “The Witch of Wenham,” “Marguerite” and “Skipper
Ireson’s Ride.” But it is perhaps in the third department of his
writings, namely, rural tales and idyls, that the poet is most widely
known. These pastoral poems contain the very heart and soul of New
England. They are faithful and loving pictures of humble life, simple
and peaceful in their subject and in their style. The masterpieces of
this class are “Snowbound,” “Maud Muller,” “The Barefoot Boy,” “Among
the Hills,” “Telling the Bees,” etc. The relation of these simple
experiences of homely character has carried him to the hearts of the
people and made him, next to Longfellow, the most popular of American
poets. There is a pleasure and a satisfaction in the freshness of
Whittier’s homely words and homespun phrases, which we seek in vain
in the polished art of cultivated masters. As a poet of nature he
has painted the landscapes of New England as Bryant has the larger
features of the continent.
Whittier was never married and aside from a few exquisite verses he
has given the public no clew to the romance of his youth. His home was
presided over for many years by his sister Elizabeth, a most lovely
and talented woman, for whom he cherished the deepest affection, and
he has written nothing more touching than his tribute to her memory
in “Snowbound.” The poet was shy and diffident among strangers and in
formal society, but among his friends genial and delightful, with a
fund of gentle and delicate humor which gave his conversation a great
charm.
Aside from his work as a poet Whittier wrote considerable prose.
His first volume was “Legends of New England,” published in 1831,
consisting of prose and verse. Subsequent prose publications consisted
of contributions to the slave controversy, biographical sketches of
English and American reformers, studies of scenery and folk-lore of
the Merrimac valley. Those of greatest literary interest were the
“Supernaturalisms of New England,” (1847,) and “Literary Recreations
and Miscellanies,” (1852.)
In 1836 Whittier became secretary of the American Anti-Slavery Society,
and he was all his life interested in public affairs, and wrote
much for newspapers and periodicals. In 1838 he began to edit the
“Pennsylvania Freeman” in Philadelphia, but in the following year his
press was destroyed and his office burned by a pro-slavery mob, and he
returned to New England, devoting the larger part of his life, aside
from his anti-slavery political writings, to embalming its history
and legends in his literature, and so completely has it been done by
him it has been declared: “If every other record of the early history
and life of New England were lost the story could be constructed
again from the pages of Whittier. Traits, habits, facts, traditions,
incidents――he holds a torch to the dark places and illumines them
every one.”
Mr. Whittier, perhaps, is the most peculiarly American poet of any
that our country has produced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant
belong as much to one land as another; and all the rest of our
singers――Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren――with the
single exception of Joaquin Miller, might as well have been born in
the land of Shakespeare, Milton and Byron as their own. But Whittier
is entirely a poet of his own soil. All through his verse we see the
elements that created it, and it is interesting to trace his simple
life, throughout, in his verses from the time, when like that urchin
with whom he asserts brotherhood, and who has won all affections, he
ate his
* * * “milk and bread,
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone gray and rude.
O’er me, like a regal tent,
Cloudy-ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple curtains fringed with gold
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;”
and, when a little older his fancy dwelt upon the adventures of
Chalkley――as
“Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shore
His simple record I have pondered o’er
With deep and quiet joy.”
In these reveries, “The Barefoot Boy” and others, thousands of his
countrymen have lived over their lives again. Every thing he wrote,
to the New Englander has a sweet, warm familiar life about it. To
them his writings are familiar photographs, but they are also treasury
houses of facts over which the future antiquarian will pour and gather
all the close details of the phase of civilization that they give.
The old Whittier homestead at Amesbury is now in charge of Mrs.
Pickard, a ♦niece of the poet. She has recently made certain changes
in the house; but this has been done so wisely and cautiously that
if the place some day becomes a shrine――as it doubtless will――the
restoration of the old estate will be a simple matter. The library is
left quite undisturbed, just as it was when Whittier died.
♦ ‘neice’ replaced with ‘niece’
* * * * *
MY PLAYMATE.
THE pines were dark on Ramoth Hill,
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.
The blossoms drifted at our feet,
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seemed of all the year,
For more to me than birds or flowers,
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.
She kissed the lips of kith and kin,
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s kine?
She left us in the bloom of May:
The constant years told o’er
The seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.
I walk with noiseless feet the round
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and o’er I sow the Spring
And reap the Autumn ears.
She lives where all the golden year
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
There haply with her jeweled hands
She smooths her silken gown,――
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.
The wild grapes wait us by the brook,
The brown nuts on the hill,
And still the May-day flowers make sweet
The woods of Follymill.
The lilies blossom in the pond,
The birds build in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth Hill
The slow song of the sea.
I wonder if she thinks of them,
And how the old time seems,――
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.
I see her face, I hear her voice;
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father’s kine?
What cares she that the orioles build
For other eyes than ours,――
That other hands with nuts are filled,
And other laps with flowers?
O playmate in the golden time!
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o’er it lean.
The winds so sweet with birch and fern
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
And still the pines of Ramoth wood
Are moaning like the sea,――
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!
* * * * *
THE CHANGELING.
FOR the fairest maid in Hampton
They needed not to search,
Who saw young Anna Favor
Come walking into church,――
Or bringing from the meadows,
At set of harvest-day,
The frolic of the blackbirds,
The sweetness of the hay.
Now the weariest of all mothers,
The saddest two-years bride,
She scowls in the face of her husband,
And spurns her child aside.
“Rake out the red coals, goodman,
For there the child shall lie,
Till the black witch comes to fetch her,
And both up chimney fly.
“It’s never my own little daughter,
It’s never my own,” she said;
“The witches have stolen my Anna,
And left me an imp instead.
“O, fair and sweet was my baby,
Blue eyes, and ringlets of gold;
But this is ugly and wrinkled,
Cross, and cunning, and old.
“I hate the touch of her fingers,
I hate the feel of her skin;
It’s not the milk from my bosom,
But my blood, that she sucks in.
“My face grows sharp with the torment;
Look! my arms are skin and bone!――
Rake open the red coals, goodman,
And the witch shall have her own.
“She’ll come when she hears it crying,
In the shape of an owl or bat,
And she’ll bring us our darling Anna
In place of her screeching brat.”
Then the goodman, Ezra Dalton,
Laid his hand upon her head:
“Thy sorrow is great, O woman!
I sorrow with thee,” he said.
“The paths to trouble are many,
And never but one sure way
Leads out to the light beyond it:
My poor wife, let us pray.”
Then he said to the great All-Father,
“Thy daughter is weak and blind;
Let her sight come back, and clothe her
Once more in her right mind.
“Lead her out of this evil shadow,
Out of these fancies wild;
Let the holy love of the mother,
Turn again to her child.
“Make her lips like the lips of Mary,
Kissing her blessed Son;
Let her hands, like the hands of Jesus,
Rest on her little one.
“Comfort the soul of thy handmaid,
Open her prison door,
And thine shall be all the glory
And praise forevermore.”
Then into the face of its mother,
The baby looked up and smiled;
And the cloud of her soul was lifted,
And she knew her little child.
A beam of slant west sunshine
Made the wan face almost fair,
Lit the blue eyes’ patient wonder
And the rings of pale gold hair.
She kissed it on lip and forehead,
She kissed it on cheek and chin;
And she bared her snow-white bosom
To the lips so pale and thin.
O, fair on her bridal morning
Was the maid who blushed and smiled
But fairer to Ezra Dalton
Looked the mother of his child.
With more than a lover’s fondness
He stooped to her worn young face
And the nursing child and the mother
He folded in one embrace.
“Now mount and ride, my goodman
As lovest thine own soul!
Woe’s me if my wicked fancies
Be the death of Goody Cole!”
His horse he saddled and bridled,
And into the night rode he,――
Now through the great black woodland;
Now by the white-beached sea.
He rode through the silent clearings,
He came to the ferry wide,
And thrice he called to the boatman
Asleep on the other side.
He set his horse to the river,
He swam to Newburg town,
And he called up Justice Sewall
In his nightcap and his gown.
And the grave and worshipful justice,
Upon whose soul be peace!
Set his name to the jailer’s warrant
For Goody Cole’s release.
Then through the night the hoof-beats
Went sounding like a flail:
And Goody Cole at cock crow
Came forth from Ipswich jail.
* * * * *
THE WORSHIP OF NATURE.
THE ocean looketh up to heaven,
As ’twere a living thing;
The homage of its waves is given
In ceaseless worshiping.
They kneel upon the sloping sand,
As bends the human knee,
A beautiful and tireless band,
The priesthood of the sea!
They pour the glittering treasures out
Which in the deep have birth,
And chant their awful hymns about
The watching hills of earth.
The green earth sends its incense up
From every mountain-shrine,
From every flower and dewy cup
That greeteth the sunshine.
The mists are lifted from the rills,
Like the white wing of prayer;
They lean above the ancient hills,
As doing homage there.
The forest-tops are lowly cast
O’er breezy hill and glen,
As if a prayerful spirit pass’d
On nature as on men.
The clouds weep o’er the fallen world,
E’en as repentant love;
Ere, to the blessed breeze unfurl’d,
They fade in light above.
The sky is as a temple’s arch,
The blue and wavy air
Is glorious with the spirit-march
Of messengers at prayer.
The gentle moon, the kindling sun,
The many stars are given,
As shrines to burn earth’s incense on
The altar-fires of Heaven!
* * * * *
THE BAREFOOT BOY.
BLESSINGS on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill;
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim’s jaunty grace!
From my heart I give thee joy;
I was once a barefoot boy.
Prince thou art――the grown-up man,
Only is republican.
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy,
In the reach of ear and eye:
Outward sunshine, inward joy,
Blessings on the barefoot boy.
O! for boyhood’s painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor’s rules,
Knowledge never learned of schools:
Of the wild bee’s morning chase,
Of the wild flower’s time and place,
Flight of fowl, and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood;
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground-mole sinks his well;
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole’s nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground-nut trails its vine,
Where the wood-grape’s clusters shine;
Of the black wasp’s cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks;
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Part and parcel of her joy,
Blessings on the barefoot boy.
O for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for!
I was rich in flowers and trees,
Humming-birds and honey-bees;
For my sport the squirrel played,
Plied the snouted mole his spade;
For my taste the blackberry cone
Purpled over hedge and stone;
Laughed the brook for my delight,
Through the day, and through the night:
Whispering at the garden wall,
Talked with me from fall to fall;
Mine the sand-rimmed pickerel pond,
Mine the walnut slopes beyond,
Mine, on bending orchard trees,
Apples of Hesperides!
Still, as my horizon grew,
Larger grew my riches too,
All the world I saw or knew
Seemed a complex Chinese toy,
Fashioned for a barefoot boy!
O, for festal dainties spread,
Like my bowl of milk and bread,
Pewter spoon and bowl of wood,
On the door-stone, gray and rude!
O’er me like a regal tent,
Cloudy ribbed, the sunset bent,
Purple-curtained, fringed with gold,
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;
While for music came the play
Of the pied frogs’ orchestra;
And, to light the noisy choir,
Lit the fly his lamp of fire.
I was monarch; pomp and joy
Waited on the barefoot boy!
Cheerily, then, my little man!
Live and laugh as boyhood can;
Though the flinty slopes be hard,
Stubble-speared the new-mown sward,
Every morn shall lead thee through
Fresh baptisms of the dew;
Every evening from thy feet
Shall the cool wind kiss the heat;
All too soon these feet must hide
In the prison cells of pride,
Lose the freedom of the sod,
Like a colt’s for work be shod,
Made to tread the mills of toil,
Up and down in ceaseless moil,
Happy if their track be found
Never on forbidden ground;
Happy if they sink not in
Quick and treacherous sands of sin.
Ah! that thou couldst know thy joy,
Ere it passes, barefoot boy!
* * * * *
MAUD MULLER.
MAUD MULLER, on a summer’s day,
Raked the meadow sweet with hay.
Beneath her torn hat glowed the wealth
Of simple beauty and rustic health.
Singing, she wrought, and her merry glee
The mock-bird echoed from his tree.
But, when she glanced to the far off town,
White from its hill-slope looking down,
The sweet song died, and a vague unrest
And a nameless longing filled her breast――
A wish, that she hardly dared to own,
For something better than she had known.
The Judge rode slowly down the lane,
Smoothing his horse’s chestnut mane.
He drew his bridle in the shade
Of the apple-trees, to greet the maid.
And ask a draught from the spring that flowed
Through the meadow across the road.
She stooped where the cool spring bubbled up,
And filled for him her small tin cup,
And blushed as she gave it, looking down
On her feet so bare, and her tattered gown.
“Thanks!” said the Judge, “a sweeter draught
From a fairer hand was never quaffed.”
He spoke of the grass and flowers and trees,
Of the singing birds and the humming bees;
Then talked of the haying, and wondered whether
The cloud in the west would bring foul weather.
And Maud forgot her briar-torn gown,
And her graceful ankles bare and brown;
And listened, while a pleased surprise
Looked from her long-lashed hazel eyes.
At last, like one who for delay
Seeks a vain excuse, he rode away.
Maud Muller looked and sighed: “Ah me!
That I the Judge’s bride might be!
“He would dress me up in silks so fine,
And praise and toast me at his wine.
“My father should wear a broadcloth coat;
My brother should sail a painted boat.
“I’d dress my mother so grand and gay,
And the baby should have a new toy each day.
“And I’d feed the hungry and clothe the poor,
And all should bless me who left our door.”
The Judge looked back as he climbed the hill,
And saw Maud Muller standing still.
“A form more fair, a face more sweet,
Ne’er hath it been my lot to meet.
“And her modest answer and graceful air
Show her wise and good as she is fair.
“Would she were mine, and I to-day,
Like her, a harvester of hay:
“No doubtful balance of rights and wrongs,
Nor weary lawyers with endless tongues,
“But low of cattle, and song of birds,
And health, and quiet, and loving words.”
But he thought of his sisters, proud and cold,
And his mother, vain of her rank and gold.
So, closing his heart, the Judge rode on,
And Maud was left in the field alone.
But the lawyers smiled that afternoon,
When he hummed in court an old love-tune;
And the young girl mused beside the well,
Till the rain on the unraked clover fell.
He wedded a wife of richest dower,
Who lived for fashion, as he for power.
Yet oft, in his marble hearth’s bright glow,
He watched a picture come and go;
And sweet Maud Muller’s hazel eyes
Looked out in their innocent surprise.
Oft when the wine in his glass was red,
He longed for the wayside well instead;
And closed his eyes on his garnished rooms,
To dream of meadows and clover-blooms.
And the proud man sighed, with a secret pain,
“Ah, that I were free again!
“Free as when I rode that day,
Where the barefoot maiden raked her hay.”
She wedded a man unlearned and poor,
And many children played round her door.
But care and sorrow, and child-birth pain,
Left their traces on heart and brain.
And oft, when the summer sun shone hot
On the new mown hay in the meadow lot,
And she heard the little spring brook fall
Over the roadside, through the wall,
In the shade of the apple-tree again
She saw a rider draw his rein,
And gazing down with timid grace,
She felt his pleased eyes read her face.
Sometimes her narrow kitchen walls
Stretched away into stately halls;
The weary wheel to a spinnet turned,
The tallow candle an astral burned;
And for him who sat by the chimney lug,
Dozing and grumbling o’er pipe and mug,
A manly form at her side she saw,
And joy was duty and love was law.
Then she took up her burden of life again,
Saying only, “It might have been.”
Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: “It might have been!”
Ah, well! for us all some sweet hope lies
Deeply buried from human eyes;
And, in the hereafter, angels may
Roll the stone from its grave away!
* * * * *
MEMORIES.
A BEAUTIFUL and happy girl
With step as soft as summer air,
And fresh young lip and brow of pearl
Shadow’d by many a careless curl
Of unconfined and flowing hair:
A seeming child in every thing
Save thoughtful brow, and ripening charms,
As nature wears the smile of spring
When sinking into summer’s arms.
A mind rejoicing in the light
Which melted through its graceful bower,
Leaf after leaf serenely bright
And stainless in its holy white
Unfolding like a morning flower:
A heart, which, like a fine-toned lute
With every breath of feeling woke,
And, even when the tongue was mute,
From eye and lip in music spoke.
How thrills once more the lengthening chain
Of memory at the thought of thee!――
Old hopes which long in dust have lain,
Old dreams come thronging back again,
And boyhood lives again in me;
I feel its glow upon my cheek,
Its fulness of the heart is mine,
As when I lean’d to hear thee speak,
Or raised my doubtful eye to thine.
I hear again thy low replies,
I feel thy arm within my own,
And timidly again uprise
The fringed lids of hazel eyes
With soft brown tresses overblown.
Ah! memories of sweet summer eves,
Of moonlit wave and willowy way,
Of stars and flowers and dewy leaves,
And smiles and tones more dear than they!
Ere this thy quiet eye hath smiled
My picture of thy youth to see,
When half a woman, half a child,
Thy very artlessness beguiled,
And folly’s self seem’d wise in thee.
I too can smile, when o’er that hour
The lights of memory backward stream,
Yet feel the while that manhood’s power
Is vainer than my boyhood’s dream.
Years have pass’d on, and left their trace
Of graver care and deeper thought;
And unto me the calm, cold face
Of manhood, and to thee the grace
Of woman’s pensive beauty brought,
On life’s rough blasts for blame or praise
The schoolboy’s name has widely flown;
Thine in the green and quiet ways
Of unobtrusive goodness known.
And wider yet in thought and deed
Our still diverging thoughts incline,
Thine the Genevan’s sternest creed,
While answers to my spirit’s need
The Yorkshire peasant’s simple line.
For thee the priestly rite and prayer,
And holy day and solemn psalm,
For me the silent reverence where
My brethren gather, slow and calm.
Yet hath thy spirit left on me
An impress time has not worn out,
And something of myself in thee,
A shadow from the past, I see
Lingering even yet thy way about;
Not wholly can the heart unlearn
That lesson of its better hours,
Not yet has Time’s dull footstep worn
To common dust that path of flowers.
Thus, while at times before our eye
The clouds about the present part,
And, smiling through them, round us lie
Soft hues of memory’s morning sky――
The Indian summer of the heart,
In secret sympathies of mind,
In founts of feeling which retain
Their pure, fresh flow, we yet may find
Our early dreams not wholly vain!
* * * * *
THE PRISONER FOR DEBT.
LOOK on him――through his dungeon-grate,
Feebly and cold, the morning light
Comes stealing round him, dim and late,
As if it loathed the sight.
Reclining on his strawy bed,
His hand upholds his drooping head――
His bloodless cheek is seam’d and hard,
Unshorn his gray, neglected beard;
And o’er his bony fingers flow
His long, dishevell’d locks of snow.
No grateful fire before him glows,――
And yet the winter’s breath is chill:
And o’er his half-clad person goes
The frequent ague-thrill!
Silent――save ever and anon,
A sound, half-murmur and half-groan,
Forces apart the painful grip
Of the old sufferer’s bearded lip:
O, sad and crushing is the fate
Of old age chain’d and desolate!
Just GOD! why lies that old man there?
A murderer shares his prison-bed,
Whose eyeballs, through his horrid hair,
Gleam on him fierce and red;
And the rude oath and heartless jeer
Fall ever on his loathing ear,
And, or in wakefulness or sleep
Nerve, flesh, and fibre thrill and creep,
Whene’er that ruffian’s tossing limb,
Crimson’d with murder, touches him!
What has the gray-hair’d prisoner done?
Has murder stain’d his hands with gore?
Not so: his crime’s a fouler one:
_God made the old man poor!_
For this he shares a felon’s cell――
The fittest earthly type of hell!
For this――the boon for which he pour’d
His young blood on the invader’s sword,
And counted light the fearful cost――
His blood-gain’d liberty is lost!
And so, for such a place of rest,
Old prisoner, pour’d thy blood as rain
On Concord’s field, and Bunker’s crest,
And Saratoga’s plain?
Look forth, thou man of many scars,
Through thy dim dungeon’s iron bars!
It must be joy, in sooth, to see
Yon monument uprear’d to thee――
Piled granite and a prison cell――
The land repays thy service well!
Go, ring the bells and fire the guns,
And fling the starry banner out;
Shout “Freedom!” till your lisping ones
Give back their cradle-shout:
Let boasted eloquence declaim
Of honor, liberty, and fame;
Still let the poet’s strain be heard,
With “glory” for each second word,
And everything with breath agree
To praise, “our glorious liberty!”
And when the patriot cannon jars
That prison’s cold and gloomy wall,
And through its grates the stripes and stars
Rise on the wind, and fall――
Think ye that prisoner’s aged ear
Rejoices in the general cheer!
Think ye his dim and failing eye
Is kindled at your pageantry?
Sorrowing of soul, and chain’d of limb,
What is your carnival to him?
Down with the law that binds him thus!
Unworthy freemen, let it find
No refuge from the withering curse
Of GOD and human kind!
Open the prisoner’s living tomb,
And usher from its brooding gloom
The victims of your savage code,
To the free sun and air of GOD!
No longer dare as crime to brand,
The chastening of the Almighty’s hand!
* * * * *
THE STORM.
FROM “SNOW-BOUND.”
Snow-bound is regarded as Whittier’s master-piece, as a
descriptive and reminiscent poem. It is a New England Fireside
Idyl, which in its faithfulness recalls, “The Winter Evening,”
of Cowper, and Burns’ “Cotter’s Saturday Night”; but in
sweetness and animation, it is superior to either of these.
Snow-bound is a faithful description of a winter scene,
familiar in the country surrounding Whittier’s home in
Connecticut. The complete poem is published in illustrated form
by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., by whose ♦permission this
extract is here inserted.
♦ ‘permisssion’ replaced with ‘permission’
UNWARNED by any sunset light
The gray day darkened into night,
A night made hoary with the swarm
And whirl-dance of the blinding storm,
As zigzag wavering to and fro
Crossed and recrossed the winged snow;
And ere the early bedtime came
The white drift piled the window-frame,
And through the glass the clothes-line posts
Looked in like tall and sheeted ghosts.
So all night long the storm roared on:
The morning broke without a sun;
In tiny spherule traced with lines
Of Nature’s geometric signs,
In starry flake, and pellicle,
All day the hoary meteor fell;
And, when the second morning shone,
We looked upon a world unknown,
On nothing we could call our own.
Around the glistening wonder bent
The blue walls of the firmament,
No cloud above, no earth below,――
A universe of sky and snow!
The old familiar sight of ours
Took marvelous shapes; strange domes and towers
Rose up where sty or corn-crib stood,
Or garden wall, or belt of wood;
A smooth white mound the brush-pile showed,
A fenceless drift what once was road;
The bridle-post an old man sat
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat;
The well-curb had a Chinese roof;
And even the long sweep, high aloof,
In its slant splendor, seemed to tell
Of Pisa’s leaning miracle.
A prompt, decisive man, no breath
Our father wasted: “Boys, a path!”
Well pleased, (for when did farmer boy
Count such a summons less than joy?)
Our buskins on our feet we drew;
With mittened hands, and caps drawn low,
To guard our necks and ears from snow,
We cut the solid whiteness through,
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnel walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal: we had read
Of rare Aladdin’s wondrous cave,
And to our own his name we gave,
With many a wish the luck were ours
To test his lamp’s supernal powers.
* * * * *
ICHABOD.
The following poem was written on hearing of Daniel Webster’s
course in supporting the “Compromise Measure,” including the
“Fugitive Slave Law”. This speech was delivered in the United
States Senate on the 7th of March, 1850, and greatly incensed
the Abolitionists. Mr. Whittier, in common with many New
Englanders, regarded it as the certain downfall of Mr. Webster.
The lines are full of tender regret, deep grief and touching
pathos.
SO fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn
Which once he wore!
The glory from his gray hairs gone
For evermore!
Revile him not,――the Tempter hath
A snare for all!
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath,
Befit his fall.
Oh! dumb be passion’s stormy rage,
When he who might
Have lighted up and led his age
Falls back in night.
Scorn! would the angels laugh to mark
A bright soul driven,
Fiend-goaded, down the endless dark,
From hope and heaven?
Let not the land, once proud of him,
Insult him now,
Nor brand with deeper shame his dim
Dishonor’d brow.
But let its humbled sons, instead,
From sea to lake,
A long lament, as for the dead,
In sadness make.
Of all we loved and honor’d, nought
Save power remains,――
A fallen angel’s pride of thought
Still strong in chains.
All else is gone; from those great eyes
The soul has fled:
When faith is lost, when honor dies,
The man is dead!
Then pay the reverence of old days
To his dead fame;
Walk backward with averted gaze,
And hide the shame!
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF WHITTIER
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.
POET, ESSAYIST AND HUMORIST.
THIS distinguished author, known and admired throughout the English
speaking world for the rich vein of philosophy, good fellowship and
pungent humor that runs through his poetry and prose, was born in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 29th, 1809, and died in Boston,
October 27th, 1894, at the ripe old age of eighty-five――the “last
leaf on the tree” of that famous group, Whittier, Longfellow, Lowell,
Emerson, Bryant, Poe, Willis, Hawthorne, Richard Henry Dana, Thoreau,
Margaret Fuller and others who laid the foundation of our national
literature, and with all of whom he was on intimate terms as a
co-laborer at one time or another.
Holmes graduated at Harvard College in 1829. His genial disposition
made him a favorite with his fellows, to whom some of his best early
poems are dedicated. One of his classmates said of him:――“He made you
feel like you were the best fellow in the world and he was the next
best.” Benjamin Pierce, the astronomer, and Rev. Samuel F. Smith,
the author of our National Hymn, were his class-mates and have been
wittily described in his poem “The Boys.” Dr. Holmes once humorously
said that he supposed “the three people whose poems were best known
were himself, one Smith and one Brown. As for himself, everybody knew
who he was; the one Brown was author of ‘I love to Steal a While Away,’
and the one Smith was author of ‘My Country ’Tis of Thee.’”
After graduation Holmes studied medicine in the schools of Europe,
but returned to finish his course and take his degree at Harvard. For
nine years he was Professor of Physiology and Anatomy at Dartmouth
College, and in 1847 he accepted a similar position in Harvard
University, to which his subsequent professional labors were devoted.
He also published several works on medicine, the last being a volume
of medical essays, issued in 1883.
Holmes’ first poetic publication was a small volume published in 1836,
including three poems which still remain favorites, namely, “My Aunt,”
“The height of the Ridiculous” and “The Last Leaf on the Tree.” Other
volumes of his poems were issued in 1846, 1850, 1861, 1875 and 1880.
Dr. Holmes is popularly known as the poet of society, this title
attaching because most of his productions were called forth by
special occasions. About one hundred of them were prepared for his
Harvard class re-unions and his fraternity (Phi Beta Kappa) social
and anniversary entertainments. The poems which will preserve his
fame, however, are those of a general interest, like “The Deacon’s
Masterpiece,” in which the Yankee spirit speaks out, “The Voiceless,”
“The Living Temple,” “The Chambered Nautilus,” in which we find a
truly exalted treatment of a lofty theme; “The Last Leaf on the Tree,”
which is a remarkable combination of pathos and humor; “The Spectre
Pig” and “The Ballad of an Oysterman,” showing to what extent he
can play in real fun. In fact, Dr. Holmes was a many-sided man, and
equally presentable on all sides. It has been truthfully said of him,
“No other American versifier has rhymed so easily and so gracefully.”
We might further add, no other in his personality, has been more
universally esteemed and beloved by those who knew him.
As a prose writer Holmes was equally famous. His “Autocrat at the
Breakfast Table,” “Professor at the Breakfast Table” and “Poet at
the Breakfast Table,” published respectively in 1858, 1859 and 1873,
are everywhere known, and not to have read them is to have neglected
something important in literature. The “Autocrat” is especially a
masterpiece. An American boarding house with its typical characters
forms the scene. The Autocrat is the hero, or rather leader, of the
sparkling conversations which make up the threads of the book. Humor,
satire and scholarship are skilfully mingled in its graceful literary
formation. In this work will also be found “The Wonderful One Horse
Shay” and “The Chambered Nautilus,” two of the author’s best poems.
Holmes wrote two novels, “Elsie Venner” and “The Guardian Angel,”
which in their romance rival the weirdness of Hawthorne and show his
genius in this line of literature. “Mechanism in Thought and Morals”
(1871), is a scholarly essay on the function of the brain. As a
biographer Dr. Holmes has also given us excellent memoirs of John
Lothrop Motley, the historian, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Among his
later products may be mentioned “A Mortal Antipathy,” which appeared
in 1885, and “One Hundred Days in Europe” (1887).
Holmes was one of the projectors of “The Atlantic Monthly,” which was
started in 1857, in conjunction with Longfellow, Lowell and Emerson,
Lowell being its editor. It was to this periodical that the “Autocrat”
and “The Professor at the Breakfast Table” were contributed. These
papers did much to secure the permanent fame of this magazine. It is
said that its name was suggested by Holmes, and he is also credited
with first attributing to Boston the distinction of being the “Hub of
the solar system,” which he, with a mingling of humor and local pride,
declared was “located exactly at the Boston State House.”
Unlike other authors, the subject of this sketch was very much himself
at all times and under all conditions. Holmes the man, Holmes the
professor of physiology, the poet, philosopher, and essayist, were all
one and the same genial soul. His was the most companionable of men,
whose warm flow of fellowship and good cheer the winters of four score
years and five could not chill,――“The last Leaf on the Tree,” whose
greenness the frost could not destroy. He passed away at the age of
eighty-five still verdantly young in spirit, and the world will smile
for many generations good naturedly because he lived. Such lives are
a benediction to the race.
Finally, to know Holmes’ writings well, is to be made acquainted
with a singularly lovable nature. The charms of his personality
are irresistible. Among the poor, among the literary, and among
the society notables, he was ever the most welcome of guests. His
geniality, humor, frank, hearty manliness, generosity and readiness
to amuse and be amused, together with an endless store of anecdotes,
his tact and union of sympathy and originality, make him the best of
companions for an hour or for a lifetime. His friendship is generous
and enduring. All of these qualities of mind and heart are felt as
the reader runs through his poems or his prose writings. We feel that
Holmes has lived widely and found life good. It is precisely for this
reason that the reading of his writings is a good tonic. It sends the
blood more courageously through the veins. After reading Holmes, we
feel that life is easier and simpler and a finer affair altogether and
more worth living for than we had been wont to regard it.
The following paragraph published in a current periodical shortly
after the death of Mr. Holmes throws further light upon the
personality of this distinguished author:
“Holmes himself must have harked back to forgotten ancestors for his
brightness. His father was a dry as dust Congregational preacher, of
whom some one said that he fed his people sawdust out of a spoon. But
from his childhood Holmes was bright and popular. One of his college
friends said of him at Harvard, that ‘he made you think you were the
best fellow in the world, and he was the next best.’”
Dr. Holmes was first and foremost a conversationalist. He talked
even on paper. There was never the dullness of the written word. His
sentences whether in prose or verse were so full of color that they
bore the charm of speech.
One of his most quoted poems “Dorothy Q,” is full of this sparkle, and
carries a suggestion of his favorite theme:
Grandmother’s mother: her age I guess
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair;
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.
* * * * *
What if a hundred years ago
Those close shut lips had answered No,
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that looked so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom’s thrill?
Should I be I, or would it be
One tenth another to nine tenths me?
* * * * *
BILL AND JOE.
COME, dear old comrade, you and I
Will steal an hour from days gone by――
The shining days when life was new,
And all was bright as morning dew,
The lusty days of long ago,
When you were Bill and I was Joe.
Your name may flaunt a titled trail,
Proud as a cockerel’s rainbow tail:
And mine as brief appendix wear
As Tam O’Shanter’s luckless mare;
To-day, old friend, remember still
That I am Joe and you are Bill.
You’ve won the great world’s envied prize,
And grand you look in people’s eyes,
With HON. and LL.D.,
In big brave letters, fair to see――
Your fist, old fellow! off they go!――
How are you, Bill? How are you, Joe?
You’ve worn the judge’s ermined robe;
You’ve taught your name to half the globe;
You’ve sung mankind a deathless strain;
You’ve made the dead past live again;
The world may call you what it will,
But you and I are Joe and Bill.
The chaffing young folks stare and say,
“See those old buffers, bent and gray;
They talk like fellows in their teens!
Mad, poor old boys! That’s what it means”――
And shake their heads; they little know
The throbbing hearts of Bill and Joe――
How Bill forgets his hour of pride,
While Joe sits smiling at his side;
How Joe, in spite of time’s disguise,
Finds the old schoolmate in his eyes――
Those calm, stern eyes that melt and fill
As Joe looks fondly up at Bill.
Ah, pensive scholar! what is fame?
A fitful tongue of leaping flame;
A giddy whirlwind’s fickle gust,
That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;
A few swift years, and who can show
Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?
The weary idol takes his stand,
Holds out his bruised and aching hand,
While gaping thousands come and go――
How vain it seems, this empty show――
Till all at once his pulses thrill:
’Tis poor old Joe’s “God bless you, Bill!”
And shall we breathe in happier spheres
The names that pleased our mortal ears,――
In some sweet lull of harp and song,
For earth-born spirits none too long,
Just whispering of the world below,
Where this was Bill, and that was Joe?
No matter; while our home is here
No sounding name is half so dear;
When fades at length our lingering day,
Who cares what pompous tombstones say?
Read on the hearts that love us still
_Hic jacet_ Joe. _Hic jacet_ Bill.
* * * * *
UNION AND LIBERTY.
FLAG of the heroes who left us their glory,
Borne through their battle-fields’ thunder and flame,
Blazoned in song and illuminated in story,
Wave o’er us all who inherit their fame.
Up with our banner bright,
Sprinkled with starry light,
Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky
Loud rings the Nation’s cry――
UNION AND LIBERTY! ONE EVERMORE!
Light of our firmament, guide of our Nation,
Pride of her children, and honored afar,
Let the wide beams of thy full constellation
Scatter each cloud that would darken a star!
Empire unsceptred! What foe shall assail thee
Bearing the standard of Liberty’s van?
Think not the God of thy fathers shall fail thee,
Striving with men for the birthright of man!
Yet if, by madness and treachery blighted,
Dawns the dark hour when the sword thou must draw,
Then with the arms to thy million united,
Smite the bold traitors to Freedom and Law!
Lord of the universe! shield us and guide us,
Trusting Thee always, through shadow and sun!
Thou hast united us, who shall divide us?
Keep us, O keep us the MANY IN ONE!
Up with our banner bright,
Sprinkled with starry light,
Spread its fair emblems from mountain to shore,
While through the sounding sky
Loud rings the Nation’s cry――
Union and Liberty! One Evermore!
* * * * *
OLD IRON SIDES.
The following poem has become a National Lyric. It was first
printed in the “Boston Daily Advertiser,” when the Frigate
“Constitution” lay in the navy-yard at Charlestown. The
department had resolved upon breaking her up; but she was
preserved from this fate by the following verses, which ran
through the newspapers with universal applause; and, according
to “Benjamin’s American Monthly Magazine,” of January, 1837,
it was printed in the form of hand-bills, and circulated in the
city of Washington.
AY, tear her tatter’d ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle-shout,
And burst the cannon’s roar;
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more!
Her deck, once red with heroes’ blood,
Where knelt the vanquish’d foe,
When winds were hurrying o’er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor’s tread,
Or know the conquer’d knee;
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
O, better that her shatter’d hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,――
The lightning and the gale!
* * * * *
MY AUNT.
MY aunt! my dear unmarried aunt!
Long years have o’er her flown;
Yet still she strains the aching clasp
That binds her virgin zone;
I know it hurts her,――though she looks
As cheerful as she can:
Her waist is ampler than her life,
For life is but a span.
My aunt, my poor deluded aunt!
Her hair is almost gray;
Why will she train that winter curl
In such a spring-like way?
How can she lay her glasses down,
And say she reads as well,
When, through a double convex lens,
She just makes out to spell?
Her father――grandpapa! forgive
This erring lip its smiles――
Vow’d she would make the finest girl
Within a hundred miles.
He sent her to a stylish school;
’Twas in her thirteenth June;
And with her, as the rules required,
“Two towels and a spoon.”
They braced my aunt against a board,
To make her straight and tall;
They laced her up, they starved her down,
To make her light and small;
They pinch’d her feet, they singed her hair,
They screw’d it up with pins,――
Oh, never mortal suffer’d more
In penance for her sins.
So, when my precious aunt was done,
My grandsire brought her back
(By daylight, lest some rabid youth
Might follow on the track);
“Ah!” said my grandsire, as he shook
Some powder in his pan,
“What could this lovely creature do
Against a desperate man!”
Alas! nor chariot, nor barouche,
Nor bandit cavalcade
Tore from the trembling father’s arms
His all-accomplish’d maid.
For her how happy had it been!
And Heaven had spared to me
To see one sad, ungather’d rose
On my ancestral tree.
* * * * *
THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS.
I WROTE some lines once on a time
In wondrous merry mood,
And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.
They were so queer, so very queer,
I laugh’d as I would die;
Albeit, in the general way,
A sober man am I.
I call’d my servant, and he came:
How kind it was of him,
To mind a slender man like me,
He of the mighty limb!
“These to the printer,” I exclaim’d,
And, in my humorous way,
I added (as a trifling jest),
“There’ll be the devil to pay.”
He took the paper, and I watch’d,
And saw him peep within;
At the first line he read, his face
Was all upon the grin.
He read the next; the grin grew broad,
And shot from ear to ear;
He read the third; a chuckling noise
I now began to hear.
The fourth; he broke into a roar;
The fifth, his waistband split;
The sixth, he burst five buttons off,
And tumbled in a fit.
Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watch’d that wretched man,
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.
* * * * *
THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS.
THIS is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadow’d main,――
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair.
Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wreck’d is the ship of pearl!
And every chamber’d cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies reveal’d,――
Its iris’d ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unseal’d!
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretch’d in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.
Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings:――
Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!
* * * * *
OLD AGE AND THE PROFESSOR.
Mr. Holmes is as famous for his prose as for his poetry. The
following sketches are characteristic of his happy and varied
style.
OLD AGE, this is Mr. Professor; Mr. Professor, this is Old Age.
_Old Age._――Mr. Professor, I hope to see you well. I have known you
for some time, though I think you did not know me. Shall we walk down
the street together?
_Professor_ (drawing back a little).――We can talk more quietly,
perhaps, in my study. Will you tell me how it is you seem to be
acquainted with everybody you are introduced to, though he evidently
considers you an entire stranger?
_Old Age._――I make it a rule never to force myself upon a person’s
recognition until I have known him at least _five years_.
_Professor._――Do you mean to say that you have known me so long as
that?
_Old Age._――I do. I left my card on you longer ago than that, but I am
afraid you never read it; yet I see you have it with you.
_Professor._――Where?
_Old Age._――There, between your eyebrows,――three straight lines
running up and down; all the probate courts know that token,――“Old Age,
his mark.” Put your forefinger on the inner end of one eyebrow, and
your middle finger on the inner end of the other eyebrow; now separate
the fingers, and you will smooth out my sign manual; that’s the way
you used to look before I left my card on you.
_Professor._――What message do people generally send back when you
first call on them?
_Old Age._――_Not at home._ Then I leave a card and go. Next year I
call; get the same answer; leave another card. So for five or
six――sometimes ten――years or more. At last, if they don’t let me in, I
break in through the front door or the windows.
We talked together in this way some time. Then Old Age said
again,――Come, let us walk down the street together,――and offered me
a cane,――an eye-glass, a tippet, and a pair of overshoes.――No, much
obliged to you, said I. I don’t want those things, and I had a little
rather talk with you here, privately, in my study. So I dressed myself
up in a jaunty way and walked out alone;――got a fall, caught a cold,
was laid up with a lumbago, and had time to think over this whole
matter.
* * * * *
THE BRAIN.
OUR brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them up
once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the hands
of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop
them; they cannot stop themselves; sleep cannot still them; madness
only makes them go faster; death alone can break into the case, and,
seizing the ever-swinging pendulum, which we call the heart, silence
at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so
long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
* * * * *
MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOL-MISTRESS.
I CAN’T say just how many walks she and I had taken before this one.
I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable
on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just
marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when
she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the schoolhouse steps.
* * * * *
The schoolmistress had tried life. Once in a while one meets with a
single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before
it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin
fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are
meek, slight women who have weighed all which this planetary life can
offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands.
This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her;
the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city-life
were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually
regaining a cheerfulness which was often sprightly, as she became
interested in the various matters we talked about and places we
visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made
for love,――unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the
cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the
reward of nothing less than the Great Passion.
It was on the Common that we were walking. The _mall_, or boulevard
of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in
different directions. One of these runs downward from opposite Joy
Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston
Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it.
I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as
we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I
tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At
last I got out the question,――Will you take the long path with me?
Certainly,――said the schoolmistress,――with much pleasure. Think,――I
said,――before you answer: if you take the long path with me now, I
shall interpret it that we are to part no more! The schoolmistress
stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her.
One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,――the one
you may still see close by the Gingko-tree. Pray, sit down,――I said.
No, no,――she answered softly,――I will walk the _long path_ with you!
The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about
the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly,――“Good-morning,
my dears!”
* * * * *
A RANDOM CONVERSATION
ON OLD MAXIMS, BOSTON AND OTHER TOWNS.
(_From “The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.”_)
SIN has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
I think Sir,――said the divinity student,――you must intend that for one
of the sayings of the Seven Wise men of Boston you were speaking of
the other day.
I thank you, my young friend,――was the reply,――but I must say
something better than that, before I could pretend to fill out the
number.
The schoolmistress wanted to know how many of these sayings there were
on record, and what, and by whom said.
Why, let us see,――there is that one of Benjamin Franklin, “the great
Bostonian,” after whom this land was named. To be sure, he said
a great many wise things,――and I don’t feel sure he didn’t borrow
this,――he speaks as if it were old. But then he applied it so neatly!――
“He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you
another than he whom you yourself have obliged.”
Then there is that glorious Epicurean paradox, uttered by my friend,
the Historian, in one of his flashing moments:――
“Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its
necessaries.”
To these must certainly be added that other saying of one of the
wittiest of men:――
“Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”
The divinity student looked grave at her, but said nothing.
The schoolmistress spoke out, and said she didn’t think the wit
meant any irreverence. It was only another way of saying, Paris is
a heavenly place after New York or Boston.
A jaunty looking person, who had come in with the young fellow they
call John,――evidently a stranger,――said there was one more wise man’s
saying that he had heard; it was about our place, but he didn’t know
who said it.――A civil curiosity was manifested by the company to hear
the fourth wise saying. I heard him distinctly whispering to the young
fellow who brought him to dinner, _Shall I tell it?_ To which the
answer was, _Go ahead!_――Well,――he said,――this was what I heard:――
“Boston State-House is the hub of the solar system. You couldn’t
pry that out of a Boston man, if you had the tire of all creation
straightened out for a crow-bar.”
Sir,――said I,――I am gratified with your remark. It expresses with
pleasing vivacity that which I have sometimes heard uttered with
malignant dullness. The satire of the remark is essentially true of
Boston,――and of all other considerable――and inconsiderable――places
with which I have had the privilege of being acquainted. Cockneys
think London is the only place in the world. Frenchmen――you remember
the line about Paris, the Court, the World, etc.――I recollect well,
by the way, a sign in that city which ran thus: “Hotel de l’Univers
et des États Unis;” and as Paris _is_ the universe to a Frenchman, of
course the United States are outside of it. “See Naples and then die.”
It is quite as bad with smaller places. I have been about lecturing,
you know, and have found the following propositions to hold true of
all of them.
1. The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each
and every town or city.
2. If more than fifty years have passed since its foundation, it is
affectionately styled by the inhabitants the “_good old_ town of ――――”
(whatever its name may happen to be).
3. Every collection of its inhabitants that comes together to listen
to a stranger is invariably declared to be a “remarkably intelligent
audience.”
4. The climate of the place is particularly favorable to longevity.
5. It contains several persons of vast talent little known to the
world. (One or two of them, you may perhaps chance to remember,
sent short pieces to the “Pactolian” some time since, which were
“respectfully declined.”)
Boston is just like other places of its size――only, perhaps,
considering its excellent fish-market, paid fire department, superior
monthly publications, and correct habit of spelling the English
language, it has some right to look down on the mob of cities. I’ll
tell you, though, if you want to know it, what is the real offense
of Boston. It drains a large water-shed of its intellect, and will
not itself be drained. If it would only send away its first-rate
men instead of its second-rate ones (no offense to the well-known
exceptions, of which we are always proud), we should be spared such
epigrammatic remarks as that the gentleman has quoted. There can never
be a real metropolis in this country until the biggest centre can
drain the lesser ones of their talent and wealth. I have observed,
by the way, that the people who really live in two great cities are
by no means so jealous of each other, as are those of smaller cities
situated within the intellectual basin, or _suction_ range, of one
large one, of the pretensions of any other. Don’t you see why? Because
their promising young author and rising lawyer and large capitalist
have been drained off to the neighboring big city,――their prettiest
girls have exported to the same market; all their ambition points
there, and all their thin gilding of glory comes from there. I hate
little, toad-eating cities.
Would I be so good as to specify any particular example?――Oh,――an
example? Did you ever see a bear trap? Never? Well, shouldn’t you
like to see me put my foot into one? With sentiments of the highest
consideration I must beg leave to be excused.
Besides, some of the smaller cities are charming. If they have an
old church or two, a few stately mansions of former grandees, here
and there an old dwelling with the second story projecting (for the
convenience of shooting the Indians knocking at the front-door with
their tomahawks)――if they have, scattered about, those mighty square
houses built something more than half a century ago, and standing
like architectural boulders dropped by the former diluvium of wealth,
whose refluent wave has left them as its monument,――if they have
gardens with elbowed apple-trees that push their branches over the
high board-fence and drop their fruit on the sidewalk,――if they have
a little grass in their side-streets, enough to betoken quiet without
proclaiming decay,――I think I could go to pieces, after my life’s
tranquil places, as sweetly as in any cradle that an old man may be
rocked to sleep in. I visit such spots always with infinite delight.
My friend, the Poet, says, that rapidly growing towns are most
unfavorable to the imaginative and reflective faculties. Let a man
live in one of these old quiet places, he says, and the wine of his
soul, which is kept thick and turbid by the rattle of busy streets,
settles, and as you hold it up, you may see the sun through it by day
and the stars by night.
Do I think that the little villages have the conceit of the great
towns? I don’t believe there is much difference. You know how they
read Pope’s line in the smallest town in our State of Massachusetts?
Well, they read it,――
“All are but parts of one stupendous _Hull_!”
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF HOLMES
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.
POET, CRITIC, AND ESSAYIST.
WHILE the popularity of Lowell has not been so great as that of
Whittier, Longfellow or Holmes, his poetry expresses a deeper thought
and a truer culture than that of any one of these; or, indeed, of
any other American poet, unless the exception be the “transcendental
philosopher,” Emerson. As an anti-slavery poet, he was second only to
Whittier.
James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1819,
and died in the same city on August 12, 1891, in the seventy-third
year of his age. He was the youngest son of the Rev. Charles Lowell,
an eminent Congregational clergyman, and was descended from the
English settlers of 1639. He entered Harvard in his seventeenth
year and graduated in 1838, before he was twenty. He began to write
verses early. In his junior year in college he wrote the anniversary
poem, and, in his senior year, was editor of the college magazine.
Subsequently, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1840; but,
it seems, never entered upon the practice of his profession. If he
did it is doubtful if he ever had even that _first client_ whom he
afterwards described in a humorous sketch.
His first appearance in literature was the publication, in 1839, of
the class poem which he had written, but was not permitted to recite
on account of his temporary suspension from College for neglect of
certain studies in the curriculum for which he had a distaste. In this
poem he satirized the Abolitionists, and the transcendental school of
writers, of which Emerson was the prophet and leader. This poem, while
faulty, contained much sharp wit and an occasional burst of feeling
which portended future prominence for its author.
Two years later, in 1841, the first volume of Lowell’s verse appeared,
entitled “A Year’s Life.” This production was so different from that
referred to above that critics would have regarded it as emanating
from an entirely different mind had not the same name been attached to
both. It illustrated entirely different feelings, thoughts and habits,
evinced a complete change of heart and an entire revolution in his
mode of thinking. His observing and suggestive imagination had caught
the tone and spirit of the new and mystical philosophy, which his
first publication had ridiculed. Henceforth, he aimed to make Nature
the representative and minister of his feelings and desires. Lowell
was not alone, however, in showing how capricious a young author’s
character may be. A notable parallel is found in the great Englishman,
Carlyle whose “Life of Schiller” and his “Sator Resartus,” are
equally as unlike himself as were Lowell’s first two publications.
In 1844, came another volume of poems, manifesting a still further
mark of advancement. The longest in this collection――“The Legend of
Brittany”――is, in imagination and artistic finish, one of his best and
secured the first general consent for the author’s admission into the
company of men of genius.
During this same year (1844) Mr. Lowell married the poetess, Maria
White, an ardent Abolitionist, whose anti-slavery convictions
influenced his after career. Two of Mrs. Lowell’s poems, “The Alpine
Sheep” and the “Morning Glory” are especially popular. Lowell was
devotedly attached to his singularly beautiful and sympathetic poet
wife and made her the subject of some of his most exquisite verses.
They were both contributors to the “Liberty Bell” and “Anti-slavery
Standard,” thus enjoying companionship in their labors.
Illustration: HOME OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.
In 1845, appeared Lowell’s “Conversation on Some Old Poets,”
consisting of a series of criticisms, and discussions which evince
a careful and delicate study. This was the beginning of the critical
work in which he afterward became so famous, that he was styled “The
First Critic of America.”
Lowell was also a humorist by nature. His irrepressible perception
of the comical and the funny find expression everywhere, both in his
poetry and prose. His “Fable for Critics” was a delight to those whom
he both satirized and criticised in a good-natured manner. Bryant, Poe,
Hawthorne and Whittier, each are made to pass in procession for their
share of criticism――which is as excellent as amusing――and Carlyle
and Emerson are contrasted admirably. This poem, however, is faulty
in execution and does not do its author justice. His masterpiece in
humor is the famous “Biglow Papers.” These have been issued in two
parts; the first being inspired by the Mexican War, and the latter
by the Civil War between the states. Hosea Biglow, the country Yankee
philosopher and supposed author of the papers, and the Rev. Homer
Wilber, his learned commentator and pastor of the first church at
Jaalem, reproduce the Yankee dialect, and portray the Yankee character
as faithfully as they are amusing and funny to the reader.
In 1853, Mrs. Lowell died, on the same night in which a daughter was
born to the poet Longfellow, who was a neighbor and a close friend to
Lowell. The coincident inspired Longfellow to write a beautiful poem,
“The Two Angels,” which he sent to Mr. Lowell with his expression of
sympathy:
“’Twas at thy door, O friend, and not at mine
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine
Uttered a word that had a sound like death.
“Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,
A ♦shaddow on those features fair and thin,
And slowly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
“Angels of life and death alike are His;
Without His leave, they pass no threshold o’er:
Who then would wish, or dare, believing this,
Against His messengers to shut the door?”
♦ spelling not corrected: artifact of poem
Quite in contrast with Lowell, the humorist, is Lowell, the serious
and dignified author. His patriotic poems display a courage and
manliness in adhering to the right and cover a wide range in history.
But it is in his descriptions of nature that his imagination manifests
its greatest range of subtilty and power. “The Vision of Sir Launfal”
is, perhaps, more remarkable for its descriptions of the months of
June and December than for the beautiful story it tells of the search
for the “Holy Grail” (the cup) which held the wine which Christ and
the Apostles drank at the last supper.
Lowell’s prose writings consist of his contributions to magazines,
which were afterwards gathered in book form, and his public addresses
and his political essays. He was naturally a poet, and his prose
writings were the outgrowth of his daily labors, rather than a work
of choice. As a professor of modern languages in Harvard College (in
which position he succeeded the poet Longfellow); as editor of the
“Atlantic Monthly,” on which duty he entered at the beginning of that
magazine, in 1857, his editorial work on the “North American Review”
from 1863 to 1872, together with his political ministry in Spain and
England, gave him, he says, “quite enough prosaic work to do.”
It was to magazines that he first contributed “Fireside Travels,”
“Among My Books,” and “My Study Window,” which have been since
published in book form. These publications cover a wide field of
literature and impress the reader with a spirit of inspiration and
enthusiasm. Lowell, like Emerson and Longfellow, was an optimist of
the most pronounced type. In none of his writing does he express a
syllable of discontent or despair. His “Pictures from Appledore” and
“Under the Willows” are not more sympathetic and spontaneous than his
faith in mankind, his healthful nature, and his rosy and joyful hope
of the future.
In 1877, Mr. Lowell was appointed minister to Spain by President Hayes,
and, in 1880, was transferred, in the same capacity to London. This
position he resigned in 1885 and returned to America to resume his
lectures in Harvard University. While in England, Mr. Lowell was
lionized as no other minister at that time had been and was in great
demand as a public lecturer and speaker. Oliver Wendell Holmes thus
writes of his popularity with the “British Cousins:”
By what enchantment, what alluring arts,
Our truthful James led captive British hearts,――
* * * * *
Like honest Yankees we can simply guess;
But that he did it, all must needs confess.
He delivered a memorial address at the unveiling of the bust of the
poet Coleridge in Westminster Abbey. On his return to America, this
oration was included with others in his volume entitled “Democracy and
Other Addresses.” (1887).
As a public man, a representative of the United States Government, in
foreign ports, he upheld the noblest ideals of the republic. He taught
the purest lessons of patriotism――ever preferring his country to his
party――and has criticised, with energy, and indignation, political
evils and selfishness in public service, regarding these as the most
dangerous elements threatening the dignity and honor of American
citizenship.
Among scholars, Lowell, next to Emerson, is regarded the profoundest
of American poets; and, as the public becomes more generally educated,
it is certain that he will grow in popular favor. To those who
understand and catch the spirit of the man, noticeable characteristics
of his writings are its richness and variety. He is at once, a
humorist, a philosopher, and a dialectic verse writer, an essayist, a
critic, and a masterful singer of songs of freedom as well as of the
most majestic memorial odes.
Unlike Longfellow and Holmes, Lowell never wrote a novel; but his
insight into character and ability to delineate it would have made
it entirely possible for him to assay, successfully, this branch of
literature. This power is seen especially in his “Biglow Papers” as
well as in other of his character sketches. The last of Lowell’s works
published was “Latest Literary Essays and Addresses,” issued in 1892,
after his death.
* * * * *
THE GOTHIC GENIUS.
FROM “THE CATHEDRAL.”
I SEEM to have heard it said by learned folk,
Who drench you with æsthetics till you feel
As if all beauty were a ghastly bore,
The faucet to let loose a wash of words,
That Gothic is not Grecian, therefore worse;
But, being convinced by much experiment
How little inventiveness there is in man,
Grave copier of copies, I give thanks
For a new relish, careless to inquire
My pleasure’s pedigree, if so it please――
Nobly I mean, nor renegade to art.
The Grecian gluts me with its perfectness,
Unanswerable as Euclid, self-contained,
The one thing finished in this hasty world――
For ever finished, though the barbarous pit,
Fanatical on hearsay, stamp and shout
As if a miracle could be encored.
But ah! this other, this that never ends,
Still climbing, luring Fancy still to climb,
As full of morals half divined as life,
Graceful, grotesque, with ever-new surprise
Of hazardous caprices sure to please;
Heavy as nightmare, airy-light as fern,
Imagination’s very self in stone!
With one long sigh of infinite release
From pedantries past, present, or to come,
I looked, and owned myself a happy Goth.
Your blood is mine, ye architects of dream,
Builders of aspiration incomplete,
So more consummate, souls self-confident,
Who felt your own thought worthy of record
In monumental pomp! No Grecian drop
Rebukes these veins that leap with kindred thrill,
After long exile, to the mother tongue.
* * * * *
THE ROSE.
I.
IN his tower sat the poet
Gazing on the roaring sea,
“Take this rose,” he sighed, “and throw it
Where there’s none that loveth me.
On the rock the billow bursteth,
And sinks back into the seas,
But in vain my spirit thirsteth
So to burst and be at ease.
Take, O sea! the tender blossom
That hath lain against my breast;
On thy black and angry bosom
It will find a surer rest,
Life is vain, and love is hollow,
Ugly death stands there behind,
Hate, and scorn, and hunger follow
Him that toileth for his kind.”
Forth into the night he hurled it,
And with bitter smile did mark
How the surly tempest whirled it
Swift into the hungry dark.
Foam and spray drive back to leeward,
And the gale, with dreary moan,
Drifts the helpless blossom seaward,
Through the breaking, all alone.
II.
Stands a maiden, on the morrow,
Musing by the wave-beat strand,
Half in hope, and half in sorrow
Tracing words upon the sand:
“Shall I ever then behold him
Who hath been my life so long,――
Ever to this sick heart fold him,――
Be the spirit of his song?
“Touch not, sea, the blessed letters
I have traced upon thy shore,
Spare his name whose spirit fetters
Mine with love forever more!”
Swells the tide and overflows it,
But with omen pure and meet,
Brings a little rose and throws it
Humbly at the maiden’s feet.
Full of bliss she takes the token,
And, upon her snowy breast,
Soothes the ruffled petals broken
With the ocean’s fierce unrest.
“Love is thine, O heart! and surely
Peace shall also be thine own,
For the heart that trusteth purely
Never long can pine alone.”
III.
In his tower sits the poet,
Blisses new, and strange to him
Fill his heart and overflow it
With a wonder sweet and dim.
Up the beach the ocean slideth
With a whisper of delight,
And the moon in silence glideth
Through the peaceful blue of night.
Rippling o’er the poet’s shoulder
Flows a maiden’s golden hair,
Maiden lips, with love grown bolder,
Kiss his moonlit forehead bare.
“Life is joy, and love is power,
Death all fetters doth unbind,
Strength and wisdom only flower
When we toil for all our kind.
Hope is truth, the future giveth
More than present takes away,
And the soul forever liveth
Nearer God from day to day.”
Not a word the maiden muttered,
Fullest hearts are slow to speak,
But a withered rose-leaf fluttered
Down upon the poet’s cheek.
* * * * *
THE HERITAGE.
THE rich man’s son inherits lands,
And piles of brick, and stone, and gold,
And he inherits soft white hands,
And tender flesh that fears the cold,
Nor dares to wear a garment old;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.
The rich man’s son inherits cares;
The bank may break, the factory burn,
A breath may burst his bubble shares,
And soft, white hands could hardly earn
A living that would serve his turn;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.
The rich man’s son inherits wants.
His stomach craves for dainty fare;
With sated heart he hears the pants
Of toiling hinds with brown arms bare,
And wearies in his easy chair;
A heritage, it seems to me,
One scarce would wish to hold in fee.
What doth the poor man’s son inherit?
Stout muscles and a sinewy heart,
A hardy frame, a hardier spirit;
King of two hands, he does his part
In every useful toil and art;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
What doth the poor man’s son inherit?
Wishes o’erjoy’d with humble things,
A rank adjudged by toil-worn merit,
Content that from employment springs,
A heart that in his labor sings;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
What doth the poor man’s son inherit?
A patience learn’d of being poor,
Courage, if sorrow come, to bear it,
A fellow-feeling that is sure
To make the outcast bless his door;
A heritage, it seems to me,
A king might wish to hold in fee.
O rich man’s son! there is a toil,
That with all others level stands;
Large charity doth never soil,
But only whiten, soft, white hands,――
This is the best crop from thy lands;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being rich to hold in fee.
O poor man’s son! scorn not thy state;
There is worse weariness than thine,
In merely being rich and great;
Toil only gives the soul to shine,
And makes rest fragrant and benign;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Worth being poor to hold in fee.
Both, heirs to some six feet of sod,
Are equal in the earth at last;
Both, children of the same dear God,
Prove title to your heirship vast
By record of a well-fill’d past;
A heritage, it seems to me,
Well worth a life to hold in fee.
* * * * *
ACT FOR TRUTH.
THE busy world shoves angrily aside
The man who stands with arms akimbo set,
Until occasion tells him what to do;
And he who waits to have his task mark’d out
Shall die and leave his errand unfulfill’d.
Our time is one that calls for earnest deeds;
Reason and Government, like two broad seas,
Yearn for each other with outstretched arms
Across this narrow isthmus of the throne,
And roll their white surf higher every day.
One age moves onward, and the next builds up
Cities and gorgeous palaces, where stood
The rude log huts of those who tamed the wild,
Rearing from out the forests they had fell’d
The goodly framework of a fairer state;
The builder’s trowel and the settler’s axe
Are seldom wielded by the selfsame hand;
Ours is the harder task, yet not the less
Shall we receive the blessing for our toil
From the choice spirits of the after-time.
The field lies wide before us, where to reap
The easy harvest of a deathless name,
Though with no better sickles than our swords.
My soul is not a palace of the past,
Where outworn creeds, like Rome’s gray senate, quake,
Hearing afar the Vandal’s trumpet hoarse,
That shakes old systems with a thunder-fit.
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe, for change;
Then let it come: I have no dread of what
Is call’d for by the instinct of mankind;
Nor think I that God’s world will fall apart
Because we tear a parchment more or less.
Truth is eternal, but her effluence,
With endless change, is fitted to the hour:
Her mirror is turn’d forward, to reflect
The promise of the future, not the past.
He who would win the name of truly great
Must understand his own age and the next,
And make the present ready to fulfil
Its prophecy, and with the future merge
Gently and peacefully, as wave with wave.
The future works out great men’s destinies;
The present is enough for common souls,
Who, never looking forward, are indeed
Mere clay wherein the footprints of their age
Are petrified forever: better those
Who lead the blind old giant by the hand
From out the pathless desert where he gropes,
And set him onward in his darksome way.
I do not fear to follow out the truth,
Albeit along the precipice’s edge.
Let us speak plain: there is more force in names
Than most men dream of; and a lie may keep
Its throne a whole age longer if it skulk
Behind the shield of some fair-seeming name.
Let us all call tyrants _tyrants_, and maintain
That only freedom comes by grace of God,
And all that comes not by His grace must fall;
For men in earnest have no time to waste
In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth.
* * * * *
THE FIRST SNOW-FALL.
THE snow had begun in the gloaming,
And busily all the night
Had been heaping field and highway
With a silence deep and white.
Every pine and fir and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the poorest twig on the elm-tree
Was ridged inch deep with pearl.
From sheds new-roofed with Carrara
Came Chanticleer’s muffled crow,
The stiff rails were softened to swan’s down,
And still fluttered down the snow.
I stood and watched by the window
The noiseless work of the sky,
And the sudden flurries of snow-birds,
Like brown leaves whirling by.
I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn
Where a little headstone stood;
How the flakes were folding it gently,
As did robins the babes in the wood.
Up spoke our own little Mabel,
Saying, “Father, who makes it snow?”
And I told of the good All-father
Who cares for us here below.
Again I looked at the snow-fall
And thought of the leaden sky
That arched o’er our first great sorrow,
When that mound was heaped so high.
I remembered the gradual patience
That fell from that cloud like snow,
Flake by flake, healing and hiding
The scar of our deep-plunged woe.
And again to the child I whispered,
“The snow that husheth all,
Darling, the merciful Father
Alone can make it fall!”
Then, with eyes that saw not, I kissed her;
And she, kissing back, could not know
That _my_ kiss was given to her sister,
Folded close under deepening snow.
* * * * *
FOURTH OF JULY ODE.
I.
OUR fathers fought for liberty,
They struggled long and well,
History of their deeds can tell――
But did they leave us free?
II.
Are we free from vanity,
Free from pride, and free from self,
Free from love of power and pelf,
From everything that’s beggarly?
III.
Are we free from stubborn will,
From low hate and malice small,
From opinion’s tyrant thrall?
Are none of us our own slaves still?
IV.
Are we free to speak our thought,
To be happy, and be poor,
Free to enter Heaven’s door,
To live and labor as we ought?
V.
Are we then made free at last
From the fear of what men say,
Free to reverence To-day,
Free from the slavery of the Past?
VI.
Our fathers fought for liberty,
They struggled long and well,
History of their deeds can tell――
But _ourselves_ must set us free.
* * * * *
THE DANDELION.
DEAR common flower, that grow’st beside the way,
Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold,
First pledge of blithesome May,
Which children pluck, and, full of pride, uphold,
High-hearted buccaneers, o’erjoyed that they
An Eldorado in the grass have found,
Which not the rich earth’s ample round
May match in wealth――thou art more dear to me
Than all the prouder summer-blooms may be.
Gold such as thine ne’er drew the Spanish prow
Through the primeval hush of Indian seas,
Nor wrinkled the lean brow
Of age, to rob the lover’s heart of ease;
’Tis the Spring’s largess, which she scatters now
To rich and poor alike, with lavish hand,
Though most hearts never understand
To take it at GOD’s value, but pass by
The offer’d wealth with unrewarded eye.
Thou art my trophies and mine Italy;
To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime;
The eyes thou givest me
Are in the heart, and heed not space or time;
Not in mid June the golden-cuirass’d bee
Feels a more summer-like, warm ravishment
In the white lily’s breezy tint,
His conquer’d Sybaris, than I, when first
From the dark green thy yellow circles burst.
Then think I of deep shadows on the grass――
Of meadows where in sun the cattle graze,
Where, as the breezes pass,
The gleaming rushes lean a thousand ways――
Of leaves that slumber in a cloudy mass,
Or whiten in the wind――of waters blue
That from the distance sparkle through
Some woodland gap――and of a sky above,
Where one white cloud like a stray lamb doth move.
My childhood’s earliest thoughts are link’d with thee;
The sight of thee calls back the robin’s song,
Who, from the dark old tree
Beside the door, sang clearly all day long,
And I, secure in childish piety,
Listen’d as if I heard an angel sing
With news from heaven, which he did bring
Fresh every day to my untainted ears,
When birds and flowers and I were happy peers.
How like a prodigal doth Nature seem,
When thou, for all thy gold, so common art!
Thou teachest me to deem
More sacredly of every human heart,
Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam
Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show,
Did we but pay the love we owe,
And with a child’s undoubting wisdom look
On all these living pages of GOD’s book.
* * * * *
THE ALPINE SHEEP.
It is proper, in connection with the writings of Lowell, to
insert the following poem by his wife, Maria White Lowell, a
singularly accomplished and beautiful woman, born July 8, 1821,
married to the poet Lowell in 1844, died on the 22d of October,
1853. In 1855 her husband had a volume of her poetry privately
printed, the character of which may be judged from the
following touching lines addressed to a friend after the loss
of a child.
WHEN on my ear your loss was knell’d,
And tender sympathy upburst,
A little spring from memory well’d,
Which once had quench’d my bitter thirst,
And I was fain to bear to you
A portion of its mild relief,
That it might be a healing dew,
To steal some fever from your grief.
After our child’s untroubled breath
Up to the Father took its way,
And on our home the shade of Death
Like a long twilight haunting lay,
And friends came round, with us to weep
Her little spirit’s swift remove,
The story of the Alpine sheep
Was told to us by one we love.
They, in the valley’s sheltering care,
Soon crop the meadow’s tender prime,
And when the sod grows brown and bare,
The shepherd strives to make them climb
To airy shelves of pasture green,
That hang along the mountain’s side,
Where grass and flowers together lean,
And down through mists the sunbeams slide.
But naught can tempt the timid things
The steep and rugged path to try,
Though sweet the shepherds calls and sings,
And sear’d below the pastures lie,
Till in his arms his lambs he takes,
Along the dizzy verge to go:
Then, heedless of the rifts and breaks,
They follow on o’er rock and snow.
And in these pastures, lifted fair,
More dewy-soft than lowland mead,
The shepherd drops his tender care,
And sheep and lambs together feed.
This parable, by Nature breathed,
Blew on me as the south wind free
O’er frozen brooks that flow unsheathed
From icy thraldom to the sea.
A blissful vision through the night
Would all my happy senses sway
Of the Good Shepherd on the height,
Or climbing up the starry way,
Holding our little lamb asleep,
While, like the murmur of the sea,
Sounded that voice along the deep,
Saying, “Arise and follow me.”
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF LOWELL
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
BAYARD TAYLOR.
RENOWNED POET, TRAVELER AND JOURNALIST.
THE subject of this sketch ♦began life as a farmer boy. He was born in
Chester county, Pennsylvania, January 11th, 1825. After a few years
study in country schools he was apprenticed to a West Chester printer,
with whom he remained until he learned that trade. In his boyhood
he wrote verses, and before he was twenty years of age published his
first book entitled, “Ximena and other Poems.” Through this book he
formed the acquaintance of Dr. Griswold, editor of “Graham’s Magazine,”
Philadelphia, who gave him letters of recommendation to New York,
where he received encouragement from N. P. Willis and Horace Greeley,
the latter agreeing to publish his letters from abroad in the event of
his making a journey, contemplated, to the old world.
♦ “begun” replaced with “began”
Thus encouraged he set out to make a tour of Europe, having less than
one hundred and fifty dollars to defray expenses. He was absent two
years, during which time he traveled over Europe on foot, supporting
himself entirely by stopping now and then in Germany to work at the
printer’s trade and by his literary correspondence, for which he
received only $500.00. He was fully repaid for this hardship, however,
by the proceeds of his book (which he published on his return in
1846), “Views Afoot, or Europe as Seen with Knapsack and Staff.” This
was regarded as one of the most delightful books of travel that had
appeared up to that time, and six editions of it were sold within
one year. It is still one of the most popular of the series of eleven
books of travel written during the course of his life. In 1848 he
further immortalized this journey and added to his fame by publishing
“Rhymes of Travel,” a volume of verse.
Taylor was an insatiable nomad, visiting in his travels the remotest
regions. “His wandering feet pressed the soil of all the continents,
and his observing eyes saw the strange and beautiful things of the
world from the equator to the frozen North and South;” and wherever
he went the world saw through his eyes and heard through his ears the
things he saw and heard. Europe, India, Japan, Central Africa, the
Soudan, Egypt, Palestine, Iceland and California contributed their
quota to the ready pen of this incessant traveler and rapid worker. He
was a man of buoyant nature with an eager appetite for new experiences,
a remarkable memory, and a talent for learning languages. His poetry
is full of glow and picturesqueness, in style suggestive of both
Tennyson and Shelly. His famous “Bedouin Song” is strongly imitative
of Shelly’s “Lines to an Indian Air.” He was an admirable parodist
and translator. His translation of “Faust” so closely adheres to
Goethe’s original metre that it is considered one of the proudest
accomplishments in American letters. Taylor is generally considered
first among our poets succeeding the generation of Poe, Longfellow and
Lowell.
The novels of the traveler, of which he wrote only four, the scenes
being laid in Pennsylvania and New York, possess the same eloquent
profusion manifest in his verse, and give the reader the impression
of having been written with the ease and dash which characterize
his stories of travel. In fact, his busy life was too much hurried
to allow the spending of much time on anything. His literary life
occupied only thirty-four years and in that time he wrote thirty-seven
volumes. He entered almost every department of literature and always
displayed high literary ability. Besides his volumes of travel and the
four novels referred to he was a constant newspaper correspondent, and
then came the greatest labor of all, poetry. This he regarded as his
realm, and it was his hope of fame. Voluminous as were the works of
travel and fiction and herculean the efforts necessary to do the prose
writing he turned off, it was, after all, but the antechamber to his
real labors. It was to poetry that he devoted most thought and most
time.
In 1877 Bayard Taylor was appointed minister to Berlin by President
Hayes, and died December 19th, 1878, while serving his country in that
capacity.
* * * * *
THE BISON-TRACK.
STRIKE the tent! the sun has risen; not a cloud has ribb’d the
dawn,
And the frosted prairie brightens to the westward, far and wan;
Prime afresh the trusty rifle――sharpen well the hunting-spear――
For the frozen sod is trembling, and a noise of hoofs I hear!
Fiercely stamp the tether’d horses, as they snuff the
morning’s fire,
And their flashing heads are tossing, with a neigh of keen
desire;
Strike the tent――the saddles wait us! let the bridle-reins be
slack,
For the prairie’s distant thunder has betray’d the bison’s
track!
See! a dusky line approaches; hark! the onward-surging roar,
Like the din of wintry breakers on a sounding wall of shore!
Dust and sand behind them whirling, snort the foremost of the
van,
And the stubborn horns are striking, through the crowded
caravan.
Now the storm is down upon us――let the madden’d horses go!
We shall ride the living whirlwind, though a hundred leagues
it blow!
Though the surgy manes should thicken, and the red eyes’ angry
glare
Lighten round us as we gallop through the sand and rushing air!
Myriad hoofs will scar the prairie, in our wild, resistless
race,
And a sound, like mighty waters, thunder down the desert space:
Yet the rein may not be tighten’d, nor the rider’s eye look
back――
Death to him whose speed should slacken on the madden’d
bison’s track!
Now the trampling herds are threaded, and the chase is close
and warm
For the giant bull that gallops in the edges of the storm:
Hurl your lassoes swift and fearless――swing your rifles as we
run!
Ha! the dust is red behind him; shout, my brothers, he is won!
Look not on him as he staggers――’tis the last shot he will
need;
More shall fall, among his fellows, ere we run the bold
stampede――
Ere we stem the swarthy breakers――while the wolves, a hungry
pack,
Howl around each grim-eyed carcass, on the bloody bison-track!
* * * * *
THE SONG OF THE CAMP.
“GIVE us a song!” the soldiers cried,
The outer trenches guarding,
When the heated guns of the camps allied
Grew weary of bombarding.
The dark Redan, in silent scoff,
Lay, grim and threatening, under;
And the tawny mound of the Malakoff
No longer belched its thunder.
There was a pause. A guardsman said,
“We storm the forts to-morrow,
Sing while we may, another day
Will bring enough of sorrow.”
There lay along the battery’s side,
Below the smoking cannon,
Brave hearts, from Severn and from Clyde,
And from the banks of Shannon.
They sang of love, and not of fame;
Forgot was Britain’s glory;
Each heart recalled a different name
But all sang “Annie Lawrie.”
Voice after voice caught up the song,
Until its tender passion
Rose like an anthem, rich and strong,――
Their battle-eve confession.
Dear girl, her name he dared not speak,
But, as the song grew louder,
Something on the soldier’s cheek
Washed off the stains of powder.
Beyond the darkening ocean burned
The bloody sunset’s embers,
While the Crimean valleys learned
How English love remembers.
And once again a fire of hell
Rained on the Russian quarters,
With scream of shot, and burst of shell,
And bellowing of the mortars!
And Irish Nora’s eyes are dim
For a singer, dumb and gory;
And English Mary mourns for him
Who sang of “Annie Lawrie.”
Sleep, soldier! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing;
The bravest are the tenderest,――
The loving are the daring.
* * * * *
BEDOUIN SONG.
FROM the Desert I come to thee
On a stallion shod with fire;
And the winds are left behind
In the speed of my desire.
Under thy window I stand,
And the midnight hears my cry:
I love thee, I love but thee,
With a love that shall not die
_Till the sun grows cold,_
_And the stars are old,_
_And the leaves of the Judgment_
_Book unfold!_
Look from thy window and see
My passion and my pain;
I lie on the sands below,
And I faint in thy disdain.
Let the night-winds touch thy brow
With the heat of my burning sigh,
And melt thee to hear the vow
Of a love that shall not die
_Till the sun grows cold,_
_And the stars are old,_
_And the leaves of the Judgment_
_Book unfold!_
My steps are nightly driven,
By the fever in my breast,
To hear from thy lattice breathed
The word that shall give me rest.
Open the door of thy heart,
And open thy chamber door,
And my kisses shall teach thy lips
The love that shall fade no more
_Till the sun grows cold,_
_And the stars are old,_
_And the leaves of the Judgment_
_Book unfold!_
* * * * *
THE ARAB TO THE PALM.
NEXT to thee, O fair gazelle,
O Beddowee girl, beloved so well;
Next to the fearless Nedjidee,
Whose fleetness shall bear me again to thee;
Next to ye both I love the Palm,
With his leaves of beauty, his fruit of balm;
Next to ye both I love the Tree
Whose fluttering shadow wraps us three
With love, and silence, and mystery!
Our tribe is many, our poets vie
With any under the Arab sky;
Yet none can sing of the Palm but I.
The marble minarets that begem
Cairo’s citadel-diadem
Are not so light as his slender stem.
He lifts his leaves in the sunbeam’s glance
As the Almehs lift their arms in dance――
A slumberous motion, a passionate sign,
That works in the cells of the blood like wine.
Full of passion and sorrow is he,
Dreaming where the beloved may be.
And when the warm south-winds arise,
He breathes his longing in fervid sighs――
Quickening odors, kisses of balm,
That drop in the lap of his chosen palm.
The sun may flame and the sands may stir,
But the breath of his passion reaches her.
O Tree of Love, by that love of thine,
Teach me how I shall soften mine!
Give me the secret of the sun,
Whereby the wooed is ever won!
If I were a King, O stately Tree,
A likeness, glorious as might be,
In the court of my palace I’d build for thee!
With a shaft of silver, burnished bright,
And leaves of beryl and malachite.
With spikes of golden bloom a-blaze,
And fruits of topaz and chrysoprase:
And there the poets, in thy praise,
Should night and morning frame new lays――
New measures sung to tunes divine;
But none, O Palm, should equal mine!
* * * * *
LIFE ON THE NILE.
――――“The life thou seek’st
Thou’lt find beside the eternal Nile.”
――_Moore’s Alciphron._
THE Nile is the Paradise of travel. I thought I had already fathomed
all the depths of enjoyment which the traveler’s restless life
could reach――enjoyment more varied and exciting, but far less serene
and enduring, than that of a quiet home; but here I have reached
a fountain too pure and powerful to be exhausted. I never before
experienced such a thorough deliverance from all the petty annoyances
of travel in other lands, such perfect contentment of spirit, such
entire abandonment to the best influences of nature. Every day opens
with a _jubilate_, and closes with a thanksgiving. If such a balm and
blessing as this life has been to me, thus far, can be felt twice in
one’s existence, there must be another Nile somewhere in the world.
Other travelers undoubtedly make other experiences and take away
other impressions. I can even conceive circumstances which would
almost destroy the pleasure of the journey. The same exquisitely
sensitive temperament, which in our case has not been disturbed by a
single untoward incident, might easily be kept in a state of constant
derangement by an unsympathetic companion, a cheating dragoman,
or a fractious crew. There are also many trifling _desagrémens_,
inseparable from life in Egypt, which some would consider a source
of annoyance; but, as we find fewer than we were prepared to meet, we
are not troubled thereby.
* * * * *
Our manner of life is simple, and might even be called monotonous;
but we have never found the greatest variety of landscape and
incident so thoroughly enjoyable. The scenery of the Nile, thus far,
scarcely changes from day to day, in its forms and colors, but only
in their disposition with regard to each other. The shores are either
palm-groves, fields of cane and dourra, young wheat, or patches of
bare sand blown out from the desert. The villages are all the same
agglomerations of mud walls, the tombs of the Moslem saints are the
same white ovens, and every individual camel and buffalo resembles its
neighbor in picturesque ugliness. The Arabian and Libyan Mountains,
now sweeping so far into the foreground that their yellow cliffs
overhang the Nile, now receding into the violet haze of the horizon,
exhibit little difference of height, hue, or geological formation.
Every new scene is the turn of a kaleidoscope, in which the same
objects are grouped in other relations, yet always characterized by
the most perfect harmony. These slight yet ever-renewing changes are
to us a source of endless delight. Either from the pure atmosphere,
the healthy life we lead, or the accordant tone of our spirits, we
find ourselves unusually sensitive to all the slightest touches,
the most minute rays, of that grace and harmony which bathes every
landscape in cloudless sunshine. The various groupings of the
palms, the shifting of the blue evening shadows on the rose-hued
mountain-walls, the green of the wheat and sugar-cane, the windings
of the great river, the alternations of wind and calm,――each of these
is enough to content us, and to give every day a different charm from
that which went before. We meet contrary winds, calms, and sand-banks,
without losing our patience; and even our excitement in the swiftness
and grace with which our vessel scuds before the north wind, is
mingled with a regret that our journey is drawing so much the more
swiftly to its close. A portion of the old Egyptian repose seems to be
infused into our natures; and lately, when I saw my face in a mirror,
I thought I perceived in its features something of the patience and
resignation of the sphinx.
* * * * *
My friend, the Howadji, in whose “Nile Notes” the Egyptian atmosphere
is so perfectly reproduced, says that “conscience falls asleep on the
Nile.” If by this he means that artificial quality which bigots and
sectarians call conscience, I quite agree with him, and do not blame
the Nile for its soporific powers. But that simple faculty of the soul,
native to all men, which acts best when it acts unconsciously, and
leads our passions and desires into right paths without seeming to
lead them, is vastly strengthened by this quiet and healthy life.
There is a cathedral-like solemnity in the air of Egypt; one feels
the presence of the altar, and is a better man without his will. To
those rendered misanthropic by disappointed ambition, mistrustful by
betrayed confidence, despairing by unassuageable sorrow, let me repeat
the motto which heads this chapter.
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS.
POET, AND THE MOST NOTED MAGAZINIST OF HIS DAY.
IT is perhaps unfortunate for Willis that he was such a devotee of
fashion and form as to attain a reputation for “foppishness.” Almost
all men of genius have some habit or besetting sin which renders them
personally more or less unpopular and sometimes even odious to the
public eye. The noted poet, Coleridge, of England, had the opium habit,
and many people who know this cannot divest their minds of a certain
loathing for the man when they come to read his poems. The drink
habit of Edgar Allen Poe and other unfortunate facts in his personal
life have created a popular prejudice also against this brilliant but
erratic genius. A like prejudice exists against the poet naturalist,
Thoreau, whose isolation from men and attempt to live on a mere
pittance has prejudiced many minds against the reading of his
profitable productions; for it has been said that no man ever lived
closer to the heart of nature than did this friend of the birds, the
insects, animals, flowers, mountains and rivers. It is doubtful if any
man in literature has lived a purer life or possessed in his sphere
a more exalted genius, given us so close an insight into nature, or
awakened a more enthusiastic study of the subject.
Therefore let us look with a deserving charity upon the personal
pride, or “foppishness,” if we may call it such, of the poet, Willis.
He certainly deserves more general reputation as a poet than modern
critics are disposed to accord him. Many of his pieces are of an
extraordinary grade of merit, signifying a most analytical and poetic
mind, and evincing a marked talent and facility for versification and
prose writing executed in a style of peculiar grace and beauty.
Nathaniel Parker Willis was born in Portland, January 20th 1806. The
family traces its ancestry back to the fifteenth century in England,
and for more than two hundred years prior to his birth both his
paternal and maternal ancestors had lived in New England. The poet’s
father was for several years publisher and editor of the Easton
“Argus,” a political paper established at Portland, Maine, in 1803.
He founded a religious paper, the Boston “Recorder,” in 1816, which he
conducted for twenty years, and he was also the founder of the first
child’s newspaper in the world, which is the now famous and widely
circulated “Youth’s Companion.” Willis was six years old when his
father removed to Boston. He had the best educational facilities
from private tutors and select schools, completing his course at Yale
College, where he graduated in 1827. While in college he published
several religious poems ♦under the signature of “Roy,” gaining in
one instance a prize of fifty dollars for the best poem. After his
graduation Willis became the editor of a series of volumes published
by S. G. Goodrich, entitled “The Legendary.” He next established the
“American Monthly Magazine” which he merged after two years into the
New York “Mirror,” to which paper his “Pencilings by the Way” were
contributed during a four year’s tour in Europe, on which journey he
was attached to the American legation at Paris, and with a diplomatic
passport visited the various capitals of Europe and the East. During
this sojourn, in 1835, he married Miss Mary Stace, daughter of a
Waterloo officer.
♦ ‘unter’ replaced with ‘under’
After his marriage Mr. Willis returned to this country with his wife
and established a home on the Susquehanna River, which he called
Glenmary, the latter part of the word being in honor of his wife. Here
he hoped to spend the remainder of his days quietly in such literary
work as pleased his taste, but the resources from which his support
came were swept away in a financial disaster and he was forced to
return to active life. He disposed of his country seat, removed to New
York, and in connection with Dr. Porter established the “Corsair,” a
weekly journal. In the interest of this publication Mr. Willis made a
second journey to England, engaging Mr. Thackeray and other well-known
writers as contributors. While absent he published a miscellany of his
magazine stories with the title of “Loiterings of Travel” and also two
of his plays. On returning to New York he found that Dr. Porter had
suddenly abandoned their project in discouragement and he formed a new
connection with the “Evening Mirror.” Soon after this the death of his
wife occurred, his own health failed, and he went abroad determining
to spend his life in Germany. On reaching Berlin he was attached to
the American legation, but went away on a leave of absence to place
his daughter in school in England. In the meantime his health grew so
precarious that instead of returning to Berlin he sailed for America,
where he spent the remainder of his life in contributing to various
magazines. He established a home, “Idlewild,” in the highlands of the
Hudson beyond West Point, where he died in 1867 on his sixty-first
birthday.
Throughout his life Mr. Willis was an untiring worker and his days
were no doubt ended much earlier than if he had taken proper rest.
“The poetry of Mr. Willis,” says Duyckinck, “is musical and original.
His religious poems belong to a class of composition which critics
might object to did not experience show them to be pleasing and
profitable interpreters to many minds. The versification of these
poems is of remarkable smoothness. Indeed they have gained the
author’s reputation where his nicer poems would have failed to be
appreciated. On the other hand his novel in rhyme, ‘Lady Jane,’ is
one of the very choicest of the numerous poems cast in the model
of ‘Don Juan;’ while his dramas are delicate creations of sentiment
and passion with a relic of the old poetic Elizabethan stage.” As a
traveler Mr. Willis has no superior in representing the humors and
experiences of the world. He is sympathetic, witty, observant, and at
the same time inventive. That his labors were pursued through broken
health with unremitting diligence is another claim to consideration
which the public should be prompt to acknowledge.
* * * * *
DAVID’S LAMENT FOR ABSALOM.
THE waters slept. Night’s silvery veil hung low
On Jordan’s bosom, and the eddies curled
Their glassy rings beneath it, like the still,
Unbroken beating of the sleeper’s pulse.
The reeds bent down the stream: the willow leaves
With a soft cheek upon the lulling tide,
Forgot the lifting winds; and the long stems
Whose flowers the water, like a gentle nurse
Bears on its bosom, quietly gave way,
And leaned, in graceful attitude, to rest.
How strikingly the course of nature tells
By its light heed of human suffering,
That it was fashioned for a happier world.
King David’s limbs were weary. He had fled
From far Jerusalem: and now he stood
With his faint people, for a little space,
Upon the shore of Jordan. The light wind
Of morn was stirring, and he bared his brow,
To its refreshing breath; for he had worn
The mourner’s covering, and had not felt
That he could see his people until now.
They gathered round him on the fresh green bank
And spoke their kindly words: and as the sun
Rose up in heaven, he knelt among them there,
And bowed his head upon his hands to pray.
Oh! when the heart is full,――when bitter thoughts
Come crowding thickly up for utterance,
And the poor common words of courtesy,
Are such a very mockery――how much
The bursting heart may pour itself in prayer!
He prayed for Israel: and his voice went up
Strongly and fervently. He prayed for those,
Whose love had been his shield: and his deep tones
Grew tremulous. But, oh! for Absalom,――
For his estranged, misguided Absalom.――
The proud bright being who had burst away
In all his princely beauty, to defy
The heart that cherished him――for him he poured
In agony that would not be controlled
Strong supplication, and forgave him there,
Before his God, for his deep sinfulness.
* * * * *
The pall was settled. He who slept beneath
Was straightened for the grave: and as the folds
Sank to the still proportions, they betrayed
The matchless symmetry of Absalom.
His hair was yet unshorn, and silken curls
Were floating round the tassels as they swayed
To the admitted air, as glossy now
As when in hours of gentle dalliance, bathing
The snowy fingers of Judea’s girls.
His helm was at his feet: his banner soiled
With trailing through Jerusalem, was laid,
Reversed, beside him; and the jeweled hilt
Whose diamonds lit the passage of his blade,
Rested like mockery on his covered brow.
The soldiers of the king trod to and fro,
Clad in the garb of battle; and their chief,
The mighty Joab, stood beside the bier,
And gazed upon the dark pall steadfastly,
As if he feared the slumberer might stir.
A slow step startled him. He grasped his blade
As if a trumpet rang: but the bent form
Of David entered, and he gave command
In a low tone to his few followers,
And left him with his dead. The King stood still
Till the last echo died: then, throwing off
The sackcloth from his brow, and laying back
The pall from the still features of his child,
He bowed his head upon him, and broke forth
In the resistless eloquence of woe:
“Alas! my noble boy! that thou should’st die,――
Thou who wert made so beautifully fair!
That death should settle in thy glorious eye,
And leave his stillness in this clustering hair――
How could he mark thee for the silent tomb;
My proud boy, Absalom!
“Cold is thy brow, my son! and I am chill
As to my bosom I have tried to press thee――
How was I wont to feel my pulses thrill,
Like a rich harp string, yearning to caress thee――
And hear thy sweet ‘_My father_,’ from these dumb
And cold lips, Absalom!
“The grave hath won thee. I shall hear the gush
Of music, and the voices of the young:
And life will pass me in the mantling blush,
And the dark tresses to the soft winds flung,――
But thou no more with thy sweet voice shall come
To meet me, Absalom!
“And, oh! when I am stricken, and my heart
Like a bruised reed, is waiting to be broken,
How will its love for thee, as I depart,
Yearn for thine ear to drink its last deep token!
It were so sweet, amid death’s gathering gloom,
To see thee, Absalom!
“And now farewell. ’Tis hard to give thee up,
With death so like a gentle slumber on thee;
And thy dark sin――oh! I could drink the cup
If from this woe its bitterness had won thee.
May God have called thee, like a wanderer, home,
My lost boy, Absalom!”
He covered up his face, and bowed himself
A moment on his child; then giving him
A look of melting tenderness, he clasped
His hands convulsively, as if in prayer:
And as if strength were given him of God,
He rose up calmly and composed the pall
Firmly and decently,――and left him there,
As if his rest had been a breathing sleep.
* * * * *
THE DYING ALCHEMIST.
THE night-wind with a desolate moan swept by,
And the old shutters of the turret swung
Creaking upon their hinges; and the moon,
As the torn edges of the clouds flew past,
Struggled aslant the stained and broken panes
So dimly, that the watchful eye of death
Scarcely was conscious when it went and came.
The fire beneath his crucible was low,
Yet still it burned: and ever, as his thoughts
Grew insupportable, he raised himself
Upon his wasted arm, and stirred the coals
With difficult energy; and when the rod
Fell from his nerveless fingers, and his eye
Felt faint within its socket, he shrank back
Upon his pallet, and, with unclosed lips,
Muttered a curse on death!
The silent room,
From its dim corners, mockingly gave back
His rattling breath; the humming in the fire
Had the distinctness of a knell; and when
Duly the antique horologe beat one,
He drew a phial from beneath his head,
And drank. And instantly his lips compressed,
And, with a shudder in his skeleton frame,
He rose with supernatural strength, and sat
Upright, and communed with himself:
“I did not think to die
Till I had finished what I had to do;
I thought to pierce th’ eternal secret through
With this my mortal eye;
I felt,――Oh, God! it seemeth even now――
This cannot be the death-dew on my brow;
Grant me another year,
God of my spirit!――but a day,――to win
Something to satisfy this thirst within!
I would _know_ something here!
Break for me but one seal that is unbroken!
Speak for me but one word that is unspoken!
“Vain,――vain,――my brain is turning
With a swift dizziness, and my heart grows sick,
And these hot temple-throbs come fast and thick,
And I am freezing,――burning,――
Dying! Oh, God! if I might only live!
My phial――――Ha! it thrills me,――I revive.
“Aye,――were not man to die,
He were too mighty for this narrow sphere!
Had he but time to brood on knowledge here,――
Could he but train his eye,――
Might he but wait the mystic word and hour,――
Only his Maker would transcend his power!
“This were indeed to feel
The soul-thirst slacken at the living stream,――
To live, Oh, God! that life is but a dream!
And death――――Aha! I reel,――
Dim,――dim,――I faint, darkness comes o’er my eye,――
Cover me! save me!――――God of heaven! I die!”
’Twas morning, and the old man lay alone.
No friend had closed his eyelids, and his lips,
Open and ashy pale, th’ expression wore
Of his death struggle. His long silvery hair
Lay on his hollow temples, thin and wild,
His frame was wasted, and his features wan
And haggard as with want, and in his palm
His nails were driven deep, as if the throe
Of the last agony had wrung him sore.
The storm was raging still. The shutter swung,
Creaking as harshly in the fitful wind,
And all without went on,――as aye it will,
Sunshine or tempest, reckless that a heart
Is breaking, or has broken, in its change.
The fire beneath the crucible was out.
The vessels of his mystic art lay round,
Useless and cold as the ambitious hand
That fashioned them, and the small rod,
Familiar to his touch for threescore years,
Lay on th’ alembic’s rim, as if it still
Might vex the elements at its master’s will.
And thus had passed from its unequal frame
A soul of fire,――a sun-bent eagle stricken.
From his high soaring, down,――an instrument
Broken with its own compass. Oh, how poor
Seems the rich gift of genius, when it lies,
Like the adventurous bird that hath outflown
His strength upon the sea, ambition wrecked,――
A thing the thrush might pity, as she sits
Brooding in quiet on her lowly nest.
* * * * *
THE BELFRY PIGEON.
ON the cross-beam under the Old South bell
The nest of a pigeon is builded well,
In summer and winter that bird is there,
Out and in with the morning air.
I love to see him track the street,
With his wary eye and active feet;
And I often watch him as he springs,
Circling the steeple with easy wings,
Till across the dial his shade has passed,
And the belfry edge is gained at last.
’Tis a bird I love, with its brooding note,
And the trembling throb in its mottled throat;
There’s a human look in its swelling breast.
And the gentle curve of its lowly crest;
And I often stop with the fear I feel,
He runs so close to the rapid wheel.
Whatever is rung on that noisy bell,
Chime of the hour or funeral knell,
The dove in the belfry must hear it well.
When the tongue swings out to the midnight moon,
When the sexton cheerily rings for noon,
When the clock strikes clear at morning light,
When the child is waked with “nine at night,”
When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air,
Filling the spirit with tones of prayer,
Whatever tale in the bell is heard,
He broods on his folded feet, unstirred,
Or, rising half in his rounded nest,
He takes the time to smooth his breast;
Then drops again, with filmed eyes,
And sleeps as the last vibration dies.
Sweet bird! I would that I could be
A hermit in the crowd like thee!
With wings to fly to wood and glen,
Thy lot, like mine, is cast with men;
And daily, with unwilling feet,
I tread, like thee, the crowded street;
But, unlike me, when day is o’er,
Thou canst dismiss the world, and soar;
Or, at a half-felt wish for rest,
Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast,
And drop, forgetful, to thy nest.
I would that in such wings of gold,
I could my weary heart up-fold;
I would I could look down unmoved,
(Unloving as I am unloved,)
And while the world throngs on beneath,
Smooth down my cares, and calmly breathe;
And never sad with others’ sadness,
And never glad with others’ gladness,
Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime,
And, lapped in quiet, bide my time.
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD.
POET AND JOURNALIST.
WITH no commanding antecedents to support him, Richard Henry Stoddard
has, step by step, fought his way to a position which is alike
creditable to his indomitable energy and his genius. Stoddard was born
July 2, 1825, at Hingham, Mass. His father was a sea-captain, who,
while the poet was yet in his early youth, sailed for Sweden. Tidings
of his vessel never came back,――this was in 1835. The mother removed,
the same year, with her son to New York, where he attended the public
schools of the city. Necessity compelled the widow, as soon as his age
permitted, to put young Stoddard to work, and he was placed in an iron
foundry to learn this trade. “Here he worked for some years,” says one
of his biographers, “dreaming in the intervals of his toil, and even
then moulding his thoughts into the symmetry of verse while he moulded
the moulten metal into shapes of grace.” At the same time he pursued a
course of private reading and study, and began to write poems and
sketches for his own pleasure.
It was in 1847 that the earliest blossoms of his genius appeared in
the “Union Magazine,” which gave evidence that his mind as well as his
body was toiling. In 1848 he issued a small volume of poems entitled,
“Footprints,” which contained some pieces of merit; but he afterwards
suppressed the entire edition. About this time his health failed and,
to recuperate, he gave up, temporarily, his mechanical vocation; but
literature took such possession of him that he never returned to the
foundry.
In 1852 he issued his second volume entitled, “Poems,” and became a
regular contributor to the magazines. In 1860 he was made literary
editor of the “New York World,” which position he retained until 1870,
and since 1880 he has held a similar position on the “New York Mail
and Express.” He, also, from 1853 to 1873 held a government position
in the Custom House of New York. During this time Mr. Stoddard also
edited a number of works with prefaces and introductions by himself,
among which may be mentioned the “Bric-a-Brac Series.” Prominent
titles of the author’s own books are “Songs of Summer,” which appeared
in 1856; “The King’s Bell,” a series of most delicate suggestive
pictures, (1862); “Abraham Lincoln, A Horatian Ode,” (1865); “The
Book of the East,” poems, (1871); a collective edition entitled,
“Poems,” (1880), and “The Lion’s Cub,” poems, (1890).
One of our most eminent literary critics declares: “Mr. Stoddard’s
mind is essentially poetical. All his works are stamped with
earnestness. His style is characterized by purity and grace of
expression. He is a master of rythmical melody and his mode of
treating a subject is sometimes exquisitely subtle. In his poems there
is no rude writing. All is finished and highly glazed. The coloring
is warm, the costumes harmonious, the grouping symmetrical. His poetry
always possesses a spiritual meaning. Every sound and sight in nature
is to him a symbol which strikes some spiritual chord. The trees that
wave at his window, and the moon that silvers his roof are to him
things that play an intimate part in his existence. Thus in all his
poems will be found an echo from an internal to an external nature,
the harmony resulting from the intimate union of both.”
Mrs. Elizabeth Stoddard, the wife of the author, has shared
heartily in the literary labors of her husband, assisting him in his
compilations, and is, herself, author of numerous contributions to the
magazines and a number of pleasing poems. She has also written several
novels.
A dinner was given to Mr. Stoddard by the Author’s Club at the Hotel
Savoy on March 25th, 1897, at which more than one hundred and fifty
persons gathered to do honor to the venerable poet. Mr. E. C. Stedman,
the poet, presided, and good talk abounded. It is impossible in this
space to give any extended note of the addresses. Letters of regret
were received from many friends of Mr. Stoddard who were unable to
be present, including Bishop Potter, Professor Charles Eliot Norton,
Dr. Andrew D. White, William Allen Butler, Donald G. Mitchell, James
Whitcomb Riley and others.
The admirable letter of Donald G. Mitchell (the famous Ik Marvel),
closed in these words:
“There is not one of you who has a truer relish for the charming ways
in which that favorite poet can twist our good mother-English into
resonant shapes of verse. I pray you to tell him so, and that only the
weakness of age――quickened by this wintry March――keeps me from putting
in an ‘Adsum,’ at the roll-call of your guests.”
The “Hoosier Poet” sent these lines to represent him:
O princely poet! kingly heir
Of gifts divinely sent――
Your own――nor envy anywhere,
Nor voice of discontent.
Though, of ourselves, all poor are we,
And frail and weak of wing,
Your height is ours――your ecstasy,
Your glory, where you sing.
Most favored of the gods and great
In gifts beyond our store,
We covet not your rich estate,
But prize our own the more.
The gods give as but gods may do;
We count our riches thus――
They gave their richest gifts to you,
And then gave you to us.
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
Mr. Stoddard responded to Mr. Riley and others in the poem quoted
below, which shows the vigor of mind and spirit enjoyed by this
venerable poet of three score years and ten and five, on whom the
snows of three-quarters of a century have fallen so lightly that they
seem but to have mellowed rather than weakened his powers.
* * * * *
A CURTAIN CALL.
GENTLEMEN: If I have any right
To come before you here to-night
It is conferred on me by you,
And more for what I tried to do
Than anything that I have done.
A start, perhaps, a race not won!
But ’tis not wholly lost, I see,
For you, at least, believe in me.
Comrades, nay, fellows, let me say,
Since life at most is but a play,
And we are players, one and all,
And this is but a curtain call,
If I were merely player here,
And this assumption of his part,
I might pretend to drop a tear,
And lay my hand upon my heart
And say I could not speak, because
I felt so deeply your applause!
I cannot do this, if I would;
I can but thank you, as I should,
And take the honors you bestow――
A largess, not a lawful claim;
My share thereof is small, I know,
But from your hands to-night is fame――
A precious crown in these pert days
Of purchased or of self-made bays;
You give it――I receive it, then,
Though rather for your sake than mine.
A long and honorable line
Is yours――the Peerage of the Pen,
Founded when this old world was young,
And need was to preserve for men
(Lost else) what had been said and sung,
Tales our forgotten fathers told,
Dimly remembered from of old,
Sonorous canticles and prayers,
Service of elder gods than theirs
Which they knew not; the epic strain
Wherein dead peoples lived again!
A long, unbroken line is ours;
It has outlived whole lines of kings,
Seen mighty empires rise and fall,
And nations pass away like flowers――
Ruin and darkness cover all!
Nothing withstands the stress and strain,
The endless ebb and flow of things,
The rush of Time’s resistless wings!
Nothing? One thing, and not in vain,
One thing remains: Letters remain!
Your art and mine, yours more than mine,
Good fellows of the lettered line,
To whom I owe this Curtain Call,
I thank you all, I greet you all.
Noblesse oblige! But while I may,
Another word, my last, maybe:
When this life-play of mine is ended,
And the black curtain has descended,
Think kindly as you can of me,
And say, for you may truly say,
“This dead player, living, loved his part,
And made it noble as he could,
Not for his own poor personal good,
But for the glory of his art!”
* * * * *
HYMN TO THE BEAUTIFUL.
MY heart is full of tenderness and tears,
And tears are in mine eyes, I know not why;
With all my grief, content to live for years,
Or even this hour to die.
My youth is gone, but that I heed not now;
My love is dead, or worse than dead can be;
My friends drop off like blossoms from a bough,
But nothing troubles me,
Only the golden flush of sunset lies
Within my heart like fire, like dew within my eyes!
Spirit of Beauty! whatsoe’er thou art,
I see thy skirts afar, and feel thy power;
It is thy presence fills this charméd hour,
And fills my charmed heart;
Nor mine alone, but myriads feel thee now,
That know not what they feel, nor why they bow;
Thou canst not be forgot,
For all men worship thee, and know it not;
Nor men alone, but babes with wondrous eyes,
New-comers on the earth, and strangers from the skies!
We hold the keys of Heaven within our hands,
The gift and heirloom of a former state,
And lie in infancy at Heaven’s gate,
Transfigured in the light that streams along the lands!
Around our pillows golden ladders rise,
And up and down the skies,
With winged sandals shod,
The angels come, and go, the messengers of God!
Nor do they, fading from us, e’er depart,――
It is the childish heart;
We walk as heretofore,
Adown their shining ranks, but see them nevermore!
Not Heaven is gone, but we are blind with tears,
Groping our way along the downward slope of years!
From earliest infancy my heart was thine;
With childish feet I trod thy temple aisle;
Not knowing tears, I worshipped thee with smiles,
Or if I ever wept, it was with joy divine!
By day, and night, on land, and sea, and air,――
I saw thee everywhere!
A voice of greeting from the wind was sent;
The mists enfolded me with soft white arms;
The birds did sing to lap me in content,
The rivers wove their charms,
And every little daisy in the grass
Did look up in my face, and smile to see me pass!
Not long can Nature satisfy the mind,
Nor outward fancies feed its inner flame;
We feel a growing want we cannot name,
And long for something sweet, but undefined;
The wants of Beauty other wants create,
Which overflow on others soon or late;
For all that worship thee must ease the heart,
By Love, or Song, or Art:
Divinest Melancholy walks with thee,
Her thin white cheek forever leaned on thine;
And Music leads her sister Poesy,
In exultation shouting songs divine!
But on thy breast Love lies,――immortal child!――
Begot of thine own longings, deep and wild:
The more we worship him, the more we grow
Into thy perfect image here below;
For here below, as in the spheres above,
All Love is Beauty, and all Beauty, Love!
Not from the things around us do we draw
Thy light within; within the light is born;
The growing rays of some forgotten morn,
And added canons of eternal law.
The painter’s picture, the rapt poet’s song,
The sculptor’s statue, never saw the Day;
Not shaped and moulded after aught of clay,
Whose crowning work still does its spirit wrong;
Hue after hue divinest pictures grow,
Line after line immortal songs arise,
And limb by limb, out-starting stern and slow,
The statue wakes with wonder in its eyes!
And in the master’s mind
Sound after sound is born, and dies like wind,
That echoes through a range of ocean caves,
And straight is gone to weave its spell upon the waves!
The mystery is thine,
For thine the more mysterious human heart,
The temple of all wisdom, Beauty’s shrine,
The oracle of Art!
Earth is thine outer court, and Life a breath;
Why should we fear to die, and leave the earth?
Not thine alone the lesser key of Birth,――
But all the keys of Death;
And all the worlds, with all that they contain
Of Life, and Death, and Time, are thine alone;
The universe is girdled with a chain,
And hung below the throne
Where Thou dost sit, the universe to bless,――
Thou sovereign smile of God, eternal loveliness!
* * * * *
A DIRGE.
A FEW frail summers had touched thee,
As they touch the fruit;
Not so bright as thy hair the sunshine,
Not so sweet as thy voice the lute.
Hushed the voice, shorn the hair, all is over:
An urn of white ashes remains;
Nothing else save the tears in our eyes,
And our bitterest, bitterest pains!
We garland the urn with white roses,
Burn incense and gums on the shrine,
Play old tunes with the saddest of closes,
Dear tunes that were thine!
But in vain, all in vain;
Thou art gone――we remain!
* * * * *
THE SHADOW OF THE HAND.
YOU were very charming, Madam,
In your silks and satins fine;
And you made your lovers drunken,
But it was not with your wine!
There were court gallants in dozens,
There were princes of the land,
And they would have perished for you
As they knelt and kissed your hand――
_For they saw no stain upon it,_
_It was such a snowy hand!_
But for me――I knew you better,
And, while you were flaunting there,
I remembered some one lying,
With the blood on his white hair!
He was pleading for you, Madam,
Where the shriven spirits stand;
But the Book of Life was darkened,
By the Shadow of a Hand!
_It was tracing your perdition,_
_For the blood upon your hand!_
* * * * *
A SERENADE.
THE moon is muffled in a cloud,
That folds the lover’s star,
But still beneath thy balcony
I touch my soft guitar.
If thou art waking, Lady dear,
The fairest in the land,
Unbar thy wreathed lattice now,
And wave thy snowy hand.
She hears me not; her spirit lies
In trances mute and deep;――
But Music turns the golden key
Within the gate of Sleep!
Then let her sleep, and if I fail
To set her spirit free!
My song shall mingle in her dream,
And she will dream of me!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WALT WHITMAN.
AUTHOR OF “LEAVES OF GRASS.”
PERHAPS the estimates of critics differ more widely respecting the
merits or demerits of Whitman’s verse than on that of any other
American or English poet. Certain European critics regard him as the
greatest of all modern poets. Others, both in this country and abroad,
declare that his so called poems are not poems at all, but simply
a bad variety of prose. One class characterizes him the “poet of
democracy; the spokesman of the future; full of brotherliness and hope,
loving the warm, gregarious pressure of the crowd and the touch of his
comrade’s elbow in the ranks.” The other side, with equal assurance,
assert that the Whitman _culte_ is the passing fad of a few literary
men, and especially of a number of foreign critics like Rosetti,
Swinburne and Buchanan, who were determined to find something
unmistakably American――that is, different from anything else――and
Whitman met this demand both in his personality and his verse. They
further declared that his poetry was superlatively egotistical, his
principal aim being always to laud himself. This criticism they prove
by one of his own poems entitled “Walt Whitman,” in which he boldly
preaches his claim to the love of the masses by declaring himself a
“typical average man” and therefore “not individual” but “universal.”
Perhaps it is better in the scope of this article to leave Walt
Whitman between the fires of his laudators on one side and of his
decriers on the other. Certainly the canons of poetic art will never
consent to the introduction of some things that he has written into
the treasure-house of the muses. For instance,――
“And (I) remember putting plasters on the galls of his neck
and ankles;
He stayed with me a week before he was recuperated and passed
North.”
These worse than prosaic lines do not require a critic to declare them
devoid of any element of poetry. But on the other hand, that Whitman
had genius is undeniable. His stalwart verse was often beautifully
rhythmic and the style which he employed was nobly grand. Time will
sift the wheat from the chaff, consuming the latter and preserving the
golden grains of true poetry to enrich the future garners of our great
American literature. No one of the many tributes to Lincoln, not even
Lowell’s noble eulogy, is more deeply charged with exalted feeling
than is Whitman’s dirge for Abraham Lincoln written after the death of
the President, in which the refrain “O Captain, my Captain,” is truly
beautiful. Whitman was no mean master in ordinary blank verse, to
which he often reverted in his most inspiring passages.
One of the chief charms of Whitman’s poetry consists in the fact that
the author seems to feel, himself, always happy and cheerful, and he
writes with an ease and abandon that is pleasant to follow. Like one
strolling about aimlessly amid pleasing surroundings, he lets his
fancy and his senses play and records just what they see or dictate.
This characteristic, perhaps, accounts for the fact that his single
expressions are often unsurpassed for descriptive beauty and truth,
such as the reference to the prairies, “where herds of buffalo make
a crawling spread of the square miles.” Whoever used a more original
and striking figure? Many of his poems strikingly remind one in their
constructions (but not in religious fervor) to the Psalms of David.
There is also often a depth of passion and an intoxication in his
rhythmic chant that is found perhaps in no other writer, as this
specimen, personifying night, will illustrate:
“Press close, bare-bosomed night! Press close, magnetic,
nourishing night!
Night of the South wind! Night of the few larger stars! still,
nodding night! Mad, naked, summer night!”
Again, Whitman was always hopeful. Like Emerson, he renounced all
allegiance to the past, and looked confidently to the future. And this
reminds us that Emerson wrote the introductory to the first edition
of “Leaves of Grass,” which suggests that that writer may have exerted
no small influence in forming Whitman’s style, for the vagueness of
his figures, his disconnected sentences, and occasionally his verbiage,
are not unlike those of the “Concord Prophet.” Again, the question
arises, did he not seek, like Emerson, to be the founder of a school
of authorship? His friendliness toward young authors and his treatment
of them indicate this, and the following he has raised up attests the
success he attained, whether sought or unsought. But the old adage,
“like king like people,” has a deal of truth in it; and as Whitman
was inferior to Emerson in the exaltation of his ideals, and the
unselfishness and sincerity of his nature, so his followers must fall
short of the accomplishments of those who sat at the feet of “the good
and great Emerson.”
Walt Whitman was born at West Hills, Long Island, May 31, 1819,
and was educated at the public schools of Brooklyn and New York.
Subsequently he followed various occupations, among which were those
of printer, teacher, carpenter, journalist, making in the meantime
extended tours in Canada and the United States. During the Civil War
he served as a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals, and at the close
was appointed as government clerk at Washington. In 1873 he had a
severe paralytic attack, which was followed by others, and he took
up his residence in Camden, New Jersey, where he died in 1892. He was
never married.
Mr. Whitman’s principal publications are “Leaves of Grass,” issued
first in 1855, but he continued to add to and revise it, the “finished
edition,” as he called it, appearing in 1881. Succeeding this came
“Drum Taps,” “Two Rivulets,” “Specimen Days and Collect,” “November
Boughs,” “Sands at Seventy.” “Democratic Vista” was a prose work
appearing in 1870. “Good-Bye, My Fancy,” was his last book, prepared
between 1890 and his death. His complete poems and prose have also
been collected in one volume.
Two recent biographies of the poet have been published: one by John
Burroughs, entitled “Walt Whitman, a Study;” the other, “Walt Whitman,
the Man,” by Thomas Donaldson. The titles indicate the difference in
the two treatments. Both biographers are great admirers of Whitman.
* * * * *
DAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL.
The following poems are from “Leaves of Grass” and are
published by special permission of Mr. Horace L. Trauble,
Mr. Whitman’s literary executor.
DAREST thou now, O soul,
Walk out with me toward the unknown region,
Where neither ground is for the feet nor any path to follow?
No map there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that
land.
I know it not, O soul,
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us,
All waits undream’d of in that region, that inaccessible land.
Till when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.
Then we burst forth, we float,
In Time and Space, O soul, prepared for them,
Equal, equipt at last, (O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil,
O soul.
* * * * *
O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up――for you the flag is flung――for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths――for you the shores
a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and
done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
* * * * *
IN ALL, MYSELF.
FROM “SONG OF MYSELF.”
The following lines have been commented upon as presenting a
strange and erratic combination of the most commonplace prose
with passionate and sublime poetic sentiment.
I AM the poet of the Body and I am the poet of the Soul,
The pleasures of heaven are with me and the pains of hell are
with me;
The first I graft and increase upon myself, the latter I
translate into a new tongue.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
I chant the chant of dilation or pride,
We have had ducking and deprecation about enough,
I show that size is only development.
Have you outstript the rest? are you the President?
It is a trifle, they will more than arrive there everyone, and
still pass on.
I am he that walks with the tender and growing night,
I call to the earth and sea, half-held by the night.
Press close bare-blossom’d night――press close magnetic
nourishing night!
Night of the South winds――night of the large few stars!
Still nodding night――mad naked summer night.
Smile, O voluptuous cool-breath’d earth!
Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees!
Earth of the departed sunset――earth of the mountain misty-topt!
Earth of the vitreous pour of the full moon just tinged with
blue!
Earth of the shine and dark mottling the tide of the river!
Earth of the limpid gray of clouds brighter and clearer for my
sake!
Far-swooping elbow’d earth――rich apple-blossom’d earth!
Smile, for your lover comes.
Prodigal, you have given me love――therefore I to you give love!
O unspeakable, passionate love.
* * * * *
OLD IRELAND.
FAR hence amid an isle of wondrous beauty,
Crouching over a grave an ancient sorrowful mother,
Once a queen, now lean and tatter’d seated on the ground,
Her old white hair drooping dishevel’d round her shoulders,
At her feet fallen an unused royal harp,
Long silent, she too long silent, mourning her shrouded hope
and heir,
Of all the earth her heart most full of sorrow because most
full of love.
Yet a word, ancient mother,
You need crouch there no longer on the cold ground with
forehead between your knees;
O you need not sit there veil’d in your old white hair so
dishevel’d,
For know you the one you mourn is not in that grave;
It was an illusion, the son you love was not really dead;
The Lord is not dead, he is risen again, young and strong,
in another country,
Even while you wept there by your fallen harp by the grave,
What you wept for was translated, pass’d from the grave;
The winds favor’d and the sea sail’d it;
And now, with rosy and new blood,
Moves to-day in a new country.
* * * * *
PÆAN OF JOY.
FROM “THE MYSTIC TRUMPETER.”
Reference has been made to the similarity in style manifested
in some of Whitman’s poems to the style of the Psalmist.
Certain parts of the two selections following justify the
criticism.
NOW trumpeter for thy close,
Vouchsafe a higher strain than any yet,
Sing to my soul, renew its languishing faith and hope,
Rouse up my slow belief, give me some vision of the future,
Give me for once its prophecy and joy.
O glad, exulting, culminating song!
A vigor more than earth’s is in thy notes,
Marches of victory――man disenthral’d――the conqueror at last,
Hymns to the universal God from universal man――all joy!
A reborn race appears――a perfect world, all joy!
Women and men in wisdom, innocence and health――all joy!
Riotous, laughing bacchanals fill’d with joy!
War, sorrow, suffering gone――the rank earth purged――nothing
but joy left!
The ocean fill’d with joy――the atmosphere all joy!
Joy! joy! in freedom, worship, love! joy in the ecstasy of
life!
Enough to merely be! enough to breathe!
Joy! joy! all over joy!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
POET AND SCIENTIST.
DURING the past forty years Indiana has been prolific in producing
prominent men. General Lew Wallace, James Whitcomb Riley, Joaquin
Miller and Maurice Thompson are among the prominent men of letters who
are natives of the “Hoosier State.”
Maurice Thompson is claimed as belonging to both the North and South,
and his record, perhaps, justifies this double claim. He was born at
Fairfield, Indiana, September 9th, 1844, but his parents removed to
Kentucky during his childhood and subsequently to Northern Georgia.
He grew up in the latter state, and was so thoroughly Southern in
sentiment that he enlisted and fought in the Confederate Army. At the
end of the war, however, he returned to Indiana, where he engaged with
a Railway Surveying Party in which he proved himself so efficient that
he was raised from a subordinate to the head position in that work,
which he followed for some years. After a course of study in law,
he began his practice in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the same town in
which General Lew Wallace lived. It was from this section that he was
elected to the legislature in 1879.
Maurice Thompson is not only a man of letters, but is a scientist of
considerable ability. In 1885, he was appointed chief of the State
Geological Survey. He was also a Naturalist devoting much attention to
ornithology. Many of his poems and most delightful prose sketches are
descriptive of bird life.
Mr. Thompson has traveled much in the United States, and his writings
in various periodicals as well as his books have attracted wide
attention for their original observation and extensive information
while they are excelled by few modern writers for poetic richness and
diction.
The first book published by this author was entitled “Hoosier Mosaics”
which appeared in 1875. Since then he has issued quite a number of
volumes among which are “The Witchery of Archey;” “The Tallahassee
Girl;” “His Second Campaign;” “Songs of Fair Weather;” “At Loves
Extremes;” “By Ways and Bird Notes;” “The Boy’s Book of Sports;” “A
Banker of Bankersville;” “Sylvan Secrets;” “The Story of Louisiana;”
“A Fortnight of Folly.”
In 1890 Mr. Thompson published “Bankers of Boonville” and the same
year became a staff writer for the New York Independent.
* * * * *
CERES.¹
(THE GODDESS OF GRAIN.)
THE wheat was flowing ankle-deep
Across the field from side to side;
And dipping in the emerald waves,
The swallows flew in circles wide.
The sun, a moment flaring red,
Shot level rays athwart the world,
Then quenched his fire behind the hills,
With rosy vapors o’er him curled.
A sweet, insinuating calm,――
A calm just one remove from sleep,
Such as a tranquil watcher feels,
Seeing mild stars at midnight sweep
Through splendid purple deeps, and swing
Their old, ripe clusters down the west
To where, on undiscovered hills,
The gods have gathered them to rest,――
A calm like that hung over all
The dusky groves, and, filtered through
The thorny hedges, touched the wheat
Till every blade was bright with dew.
Was it a dream? We call things dreams
When we must needs do so, or own
Belief in old, exploded myths,
Whose very smoke has long since flown.
Was it a dream? Mine own eyes saw,
And Ceres came across the wheat
That, like bright water, dimpled round
The golden sandals of her feet.
¹ By permission of “Houghton, Mifflin & Co.”
* * * * *
DIANA.¹
(THE GODDESS OF THE CHASE.)
SHE had a bow of yellow horn
Like the old moon at early morn.
She had three arrows strong and good,
Steel set in feathered cornel wood.
Like purest pearl her left breast shone
Above her kirtle’s emerald zone;
Her right was bound in silk well-knit,
Lest her bow-string should sever it.
Ripe lips she had, and clear gray eyes,
And hair pure gold blown hoyden-wise.
Across her face like shining mist
That with dawn’s flush is faintly kissed.
Her limbs! how matched and round and fine!
How free like song! how strong like wine!
And, timed to music wild and sweet,
How swift her silver-sandalled feet!
Single of heart and strong of hand,
Wind-like she wandered through the land.
No man (or king or lord or churl)
Dared whisper love to that fair girl.
And woe to him who came upon
Her nude, at bath, like Acteon!
So dire his fate, that one who heard
The flutter of a bathing bird,
What time he crossed a breezy wood,
Felt sudden quickening of his blood;
Cast one swift look, then ran away
Far through the green, thick groves of May;
Afeard, lest down the wind of spring
He’d hear an arrow whispering!
¹ By permission of “Houghton, Mifflin & Co.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.
WITHOUT the rich imagination of Stoddard, or the versatility of
Stedman, Mr. Aldrich surpasses them both in delicate and artistic
skill. His jewelled lines, exquisitely pointed, express a single mood
or a dainty epigram with a pungent and tasteful beauty that places him
easily at the head of our modern lyrical writers.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich was born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November
11, 1836. In childhood he was taken to Louisiana, where he remained
a number of years, his father being a merchant at New Orleans. After
returning to Portsmouth, he was preparing for college when his father
suddenly died, making it necessary for him to relinquish this design,
to take a position of immediate remuneration, which he found in his
uncle’s counting house in New York. This pursuit he found so far
removed from the bent of his mind, however, that he gave it up after
three years to take a situation as a reader in a New York publishing
house. During his mercantile career he contributed to the current
press, and afterwards became attached to various periodicals as
contributor or in an editorial capacity. Among others, he worked on
N. P. Willis’ “Home Journal,” the “Illustrated News,” and the “New
York Evening Mirror.” During the Civil War he was for a time with the
Army of the Potomac, as a newspaper correspondent. In 1865, he married,
and removed to Boston, where he edited “The Weekly Journal” every
Saturday. He remained with this paper until 1874. In 1881 he succeeded
William Dean Howells as editor of the “Atlantic Monthly.” This
position he resigned in 1890 in order to devote himself to personal
literary work and travel. The degree of A. M. was conferred upon him
in 1883 by Yale, and in 1896 by Harvard University.
Mr. Aldrich had published one volume of verse, “The Bells” (1854),
a collection of juvenile verses, before the “Ballad of Baby Bell
and Other Poems” appeared in 1858, and made his reputation as a poet.
Other volumes of his poetry issued at the following dates are entitled:
“Pampinea and Other Poems” (1861), “Cloth of Gold and Other Poems”
(1873), “Flower and Thorn” (1876), “Friar Jerome’s Beautiful Book”
(1881), “Mercedes and Later Lyrics” (1883), “Wyndham Towers” (1889),
“Judith and Holofernes, a Poem” (1896).
Among the prose works of the author we mention “Out of His Head, a
Romance” (1862), “The Story of a Bad Boy” (1869),――which became at
once a favorite by its naturalness and purity of spirit,――“♦Marjorie
Daw and Other People” (1873), “Prudence Palfrey” (1874), “The Queen
of Sheba” (1877), “The Stillwater Tragedy” (1880), “From Ponkapog to
Pesth” (1883), “The Sisters Tragedy” (1890), “An Old Town by the Sea;”
and “Two Bites at a Cherry and other Tales” (1893), “Unguarded Gates”
(1895). “Complete Works,” in eight volumes, were published in 1897.
Mr. Aldrich is said to be a man of the world as well as a man of
letters and his personal popularity equals his literary reputation.
We cannot better illustrate his companionable nature and close this
sketch than by presenting the following pen picture of an incident,
clipped from a recent magazine:
♦ ‘Majorie’ replaced with ‘Marjorie’
During a visit to England, upon one occasion, Mr. Aldrich was the
guest of William Black, with a number of other well known people. An
English journalist of some distinction, who had no time to keep in
touch with the personality of poets, met Mr. Aldrich, and they became
excellent friends. They went on long shooting expeditions together,
and found each other more than good companions. The last night of
their stay came, and after dinner Mr. Black made a little speech,
in which he spoke of Mr. Aldrich’s poetry in a graceful fashion. The
London journalist gave a gasp, and looked at Mr. Aldrich, who rose to
make a response, as if he had never seen him before. As the poet sat
down he leaned over him, and said:――
“Say, Aldrich, are you the man who writes books?”
“Yes,” Mr. Aldrich said. “I am glad you don’t know, for I am sure you
liked me for myself.”
Illustration: THOMAS B. ALDRICH’S STUDY.
* * * * *
ALEC YEATON’S SON.¹
GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720.
THE wind it wailed, the wind it moaned,
And the white caps flecked the sea;
“An’ I would to God,” the skipper groaned,
“I had not my boy with me!”
Snug in the stern-sheets, little John
Laughed as the scud swept by;
But the skipper’s sunburnt cheek grew wan
As he watched the wicked sky.
“Would he were at his mother’s side!”
And the skipper’s eyes were dim.
“Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide,
What would become of him!
“For me――my muscles are as steel,
For me let hap what may:
I might make shift upon the keel
Until the break o’ day.
“But he, he is so weak and small,
So young, scarce learned to stand――
O pitying Father of us all,
I trust him in thy hand!
“For Thou, who markest from on high
A sparrow’s fall――each one!――
Surely, O Lord, thou’lt have an eye
On Alec Yeaton’s son!”
Then, steady, helm! Right straight he sailed
Towards the headland light:
The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed,
And black, black fell the night.
Then burst a storm to make one quail
Though housed from winds and waves――
They who could tell about that gale
Must rise from watery graves!
Sudden it came, as sudden went;
Ere half the night was sped,
The winds were hushed, the waves were spent,
And the stars shone overhead.
Now, as the morning mist grew thin,
The folk on Gloucester shore
Saw a little figure floating in
Secure, on a broken oar!
Up rose the cry, “A wreck! a wreck!
Pull, mates, and waste no breath!”――
They knew it, though ’t was but a speck
Upon the edge of death!
Long did they marvel in the town
At God His strange decree,
That let the stalwart skipper drown
And the little child go free!
¹ By special permission of the Author.
* * * * *
ON LYNN TERRACE.¹
ALL day to watch the blue wave curl and break,
All night to hear it plunging on the shore――
In this sea-dream such draughts of life I take,
I cannot ask for more.
Behind me lie the idle life and vain,
The task unfinished, and the weary hours;
That long wave softly bears me back to Spain
And the Alhambra’s towers!
Once more I halt in Andalusian Pass,
To list the mule-bells jingling on the height;
Below, against the dull esparto grass,
The almonds glimmer white.
Huge gateways, wrinkled, with rich grays and browns,
Invite my fancy, and I wander through
The gable-shadowed, zigzag streets of towns
The world’s first sailors knew.
Or, if I will, from out this thin sea-haze
Low-lying cliffs of lovely Calais rise;
Or yonder, with the pomp of olden days,
Venice salutes my eyes.
Or some gaunt castle lures me up its stair;
I see, far off, the red-tiled hamlets shine,
And catch, through slits of windows here and there,
Blue glimpses of the Rhine.
Again I pass Norwegian fjord and fjeld,
And through bleak wastes to where the sunset’s fires
Light up the white-walled Russian citadel,
The Kremlin’s domes and spires.
And now I linger in green English lanes,
By garden plots of rose and heliotrope;
And now I face the sudden pelting rains
On some lone Alpine slope.
Now at Tangier, among the packed bazars,
I saunter, and the merchants at the doors
Smile, and entice me: here are jewels like stars,
And curved knives of the Moors;
Cloths of Damascus, strings of amber dates;
What would Howadji――silver, gold, or stone?
Prone on the sun-scorched plain outside the gates
The camels make their moan.
All this is mine, as I lie dreaming here,
High on the windy terrace, day by day;
And mine the children’s laughter, sweet and clear,
Ringing across the bay.
For me the clouds; the ships sail by for me;
For me the petulant sea-gull takes its flight;
And mine the tender moonrise on the sea,
And hollow caves of night.
¹ By special permission of the Author.
* * * * *
SARGENT’S PORTRAIT OF EDWIN BOOTH AT “THE PLAYERS.”
By Permission of the Author.
WHAT face which no man ever saw
And from his memory banished quite,
With eyes in which are Hamlet’s awe
And Cardinal Richelieu’s subtle light
Looks from this frame. A master’s hand
Has set the master-player here,
In the fair temple¹ that he planned
Not for himself. To us most dear
This image of him! “It was thus
He looked; such pallor touched his cheek;
With that same grace he greeted us――
Nay, ’tis the man, could it but speak!”
Sad words that shall be said some day――
Far fall the day! O cruel Time,
Whose breath sweeps mortal things away,
Spare long this image of his prime,
That others standing in the place
Where, save as ghosts, we come no more,
May know what sweet majestic face
The gentle Prince of Players wore!
¹ The club-house in Gramercy Park, New York, was the gift
of Mr. Booth to the association founded by him and named
“The Players.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
RICHARD WATSON GILDER.
“POET, EDITOR AND REFORMER.”
AMONG the current poets of America, few, perhaps, deserve more
favorable mention than the subject of this sketch. His poetry is
notable for its purity of sentiment and delicacy of expression. The
story of his life also is one to stimulate the ambition of youth,
who, in this cultured age, have not enjoyed the benefits of that
college training which has come to be regarded as one of the necessary
preliminaries to literary aspiration. This perhaps is properly so,
that the public may not be too far imposed upon by incompetent writers.
And while it makes the way very hard for him who attempts to scale the
walls and force his passage into the world of letters――having not this
passport through the gateway――it is the more indicative of the “real
genius” that he should assay the task in an heroic effort; and, if he
succeeds in surmounting them, the honor is all the greater, and the
laurel wreath is placed with more genuine enthusiasm upon the victor’s
brow by an applauding public.
Richard Watson Gilder does not enjoy the distinction of being a
college graduate. He received his education principally in Bellevue
Seminary, Bordentown, New Jersey (where he was born February 8, 1844),
under the tutelage of his father, Rev. Wm. H. Gilder. Mr. Gilder’s
intention was to become a lawyer and began to study for that
profession in Philadelphia; but the death of his father, in 1864, made
it necessary for him to abandon law to take up something that would
bring immediate remuneration. This opportunity was found on the staff
of the Newark, New Jersey, “Daily Advertiser,” with which he remained
until 1868, when he resigned and founded the “Newark Morning Register,”
with Newton Crane as joint editor. The next year, Mr. Gilder, then
twenty-five years of age, was called to New York as editor of “Hours
at Home,” a monthly journal.
His editorials in “Hours at Home” attracted public attention, and
some of his poems were recognized as possessing superior merit. Dr. G.
Holland, editor of “Scribner’s Monthly,” was especially drawn to the
rising young poet and when, in 1870, it became the “Century Magazine,”
Dr. Holland chose Mr. Gilder as his associate editor. On the death
of Dr. Holland, in 1881, Mr. Gilder became editor-in-chief. Under
his able management of its columns the popularity of the “Century”
has steadily advanced, the contribution of his pen and especially his
occasional poems adding no small modicum to its high literary standing.
His poetic compositions have been issued from time to time in book
form and comprised several volumes of poems, among which are “The New
Day;” “The Poet and His Master’; “Lyrics;” and “The Celestial Passion.”
Aside from his literary works, Mr. Gilder has been, in a sense, a
politician and reformer. By the word politician we do not mean the
“spoils-hunting partisan class,” but, like Bryant, from patriotic
motives he has been an independent champion of those principles which
he regards to be the interest of his country and mankind at large. He
comes by his disposition to mix thus in public affairs honestly. His
father, before him, was an editor and writer as well as a clergyman.
Thus “he was born,” as the saying goes, “with printer’s ink in his
veins.” When sixteen years of age (1860) he set up and printed a
little paper in New Jersey, which became the organ of the Bell and
Everett party in that section. Since that date he has manifested a
lively interest in all public matters, where he considered the public
good at stake. It was this disposition which forced him to the front
in the movement for the betterment of the condition of tenement-houses
in New York. He was pressed into the presidency of the Tenement-House
Commission in 1894, and through his zeal a thorough inspection was
made――running over a period of eight months――vastly improving the
comfort and health of those who dwell in the crowded tenements of New
York City. The influence of the movement has done much good also in
other cities.
Mr. Gilder also takes a deep interest in education, and our colleges
have no stauncher friend than he. His address on “Public Opinion” has
been delivered by invitation before Yale, Harvard and Johns Hopkins
Universities. We quote a paragraph from this address which clearly
sets forth his conception of public duty as it should be taught by our
institutions of learning:――
“Who will lift high the standard of a disinterested and righteous
public opinion if it is not the institutions of learning, great and
small, private and public, that are scattered throughout our country?
They are the responsible press, and the unsensational but fearless
pulpit――it is these that must discriminate; that must set the standard
of good taste and good morals, personal and public. They together
must cultivate fearless leaders, and they must educate and inspire
the following that makes leadership effectual and saving.”
As appears from the above Mr. Gilder is a man of exalted ideals.
He despises sham, hypocrisy and all “wickedness in high places.”
He regards no man with so much scorn as he who uses his office or
position to defend or shield law-breakers and enemies of the public.
In his own words,――
“He, only, is the despicable one
Who lightly sells his honor as a shield
For fawning knaves, to hide them from the sun.
Too nice for crime yet, coward, he doth yield
For crime a shelter. Swift to Paradise
The contrite thief, not Judas with his price!”
* * * * *
SONNET.
(AFTER THE ITALIAN.)
_From the “Five Books of Song.” (1894.) The Century Co._
I KNOW not if I love her overmuch;
But this I know, that when unto her face
She lifts her hand, which rests there, still, a space,
Then slowly falls――’tis I who feel that touch.
And when she sudden shakes her head, with such
A look, I soon her secret meaning trace.
So when she runs I think ’tis I who race.
Like a poor cripple who has lost his crutch
I am if she is gone; and when she goes,
I know not why, for that is a strange art――
As if myself should from myself depart.
I know not if I love her more than those
Who long her light have known; but for the rose
She covers in her hair, I’d give my heart.
* * * * *
THE LIFE MASK OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
_From “For the Country.” (1897.) The Century Co._
THIS bronze doth keep the very form and mold
Of our great martyr’s face. Yes, this is he:
That brow all wisdom, all benignity;
That human, humorous mouth; those cheeks that hold
Like some harsh landscape all the summer’s gold;
That spirit fit for sorrow, as the sea
For storms to beat on; the lone agony
Those silent, patient lips too well foretold.
Yes, this is he who ruled a world of men
As might some prophet of the elder day――
Brooding above the tempest and the fray
With deep-eyed thought, and more than mortal ken.
A power was his beyond the touch of art
Or armed strength――his pure and mighty heart.
* * * * *
SHERIDAN.
_From “For the Country.” (1897.) The Century Co._
QUIETLY, like a child
That sinks in slumber mild,
No pain or troubled thought his well-earned peace to mar,
Sank into endless rest our thunder-bolt of war.
Though his the power to smite
Quick as the lightning’s light,――
His single arm an army, and his name a host,――
Not his the love of blood, the warrior’s cruel boast.
But in the battle’s flame
How glorious he came!――
Even like a white-combed wave that breaks and tears the shore,
While wreck lies strewn behind, and terror flies before.
’Twas he,――his voice, his might,――
Could stay the panic flight,
Alone shame back the headlong, many-leagued retreat,
And turn to evening triumph morning’s foul defeat.
He was our modern Mars;
Yet firm his faith that wars
Ere long would cease to vex the sad, ensanguined earth,
And peace forever reign, as at Christ’s holy birth.
Blest land, in whose dark hour
Arise to loftiest power
No dazzlers of the sword to play the tyrant’s part,
But patriot-soldiers, true and pure and high of heart!
Of such our chief of all;
And he who broke the wall
Of civil strife in twain, no more to build or mend;
And he who hath this day made Death his faithful friend.
And now above his tomb
From out the eternal gloom
“Welcome!” his ♦chieftain’s voice sounds o’er the cannon’s
knell;
And of the three one only stays to say “Farewell!”
♦ “chiftain’s” replaced with “chieftain’s”
* * * * *
SUNSET FROM THE TRAIN.¹
_From “Five Books of Song” (1894)._
BUT then the sunset smiled,
Smiled once and turned toward dark,
Above the distant, wavering line of trees that filed
Along the horizon’s edge;
Like hooded monks that hark
Through evening air
The call to prayer;――
Smiled once, and faded slow, slow, slow away;
When, like a changing dream, the long cloud-wedge,
Brown-gray,
Grew saffron underneath and, ere I knew,
The interspace, green-blue――
The whole, illimitable, western, skyey shore,
The tender, human, silent sunset smiled once more.
Thee, absent loved one, did I think on now,
Wondering if thy deep brow
In dreams of me were lifted to the skies,
Where, by our far sea-home, the sunlight dies;
If thou didst stand alone,
Watching the day pass slowly, slow, as here,
But closer and more dear,
Beyond the meadow and the long, familiar line
Of blackening pine;
When lo! that second smile;――dear heart, it was thine own.
¹ Copyright, The Century Co.
* * * * *
“O SILVER RIVER FLOWING TO THE SEA.”¹
_From “Five Books of Song” (1894)._
O SILVER river flowing to the sea,
Strong, calm, and solemn as thy mountains be!
Poets have sung thy ever-living power,
Thy wintry day, and summer sunset hour;
Have told how rich thou art, how broad, how deep,
What commerce thine, how many myriads reap
The harvest of thy waters. They have sung
Thy moony nights, when every shadow flung
From cliff or pine is peopled with dim ghosts
Of settlers, old-world fairies, or the hosts
Of savage warriors that once plowed thy waves――
Now hurrying to the dance from hidden graves;
The waving outline of thy wooded mountains,
Thy populous towns that stretch from forest fountains
On either side, far to the salty main,
Like golden coins alternate on a chain.
Thou pathway of the empire of the North,
Thy praises through the earth have traveled forth!
I hear thee praised as one who hears the shout
That follows when a hero from the rout
Of battle issues, “Lo, how brave is he,
How noble, proud, and beautiful!” But she
Who knows him best――“How tender!” So thou art
The river of love to me!
――Heart of my heart,
Dear love and bride――is it not so indeed?――
Among your treasures keep this new-plucked reed.
¹ Copyright, The Century Co.
* * * * *
“THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN.”¹
_From “Five Books of Song” (1894)._
THERE is nothing new under the sun;
There is no new hope or despair;
The agony just begun
Is as old as the earth and the air.
My secret soul of bliss
Is one with the singing stars,
And the ancient mountains miss
No hurt that my being mars.
I know as I know my life,
I know as I know my pain,
That there is no lonely strife,
That he is mad who would gain
A separate balm for his woe,
A single pity and cover;
The one great God I know
Hears the same prayer over and over.
I know it because at the portal
Of Heaven I bowed and cried,
And I said: “Was ever a mortal
Thus crowned and crucified!
My praise thou hast made my blame;
My best thou hast made my worst;
My good thou hast turned to shame;
My drink is a flaming thirst.”
But scarce my prayer was said
Ere from that place I turned;
I trembled, I hung my head,
My cheek, shame-smitten, burned;
For there where I bowed down
In my boastful agony,
I thought of thy cross and crown――
O Christ! I remembered thee.
¹ Copyright, The Century Co.
* * * * *
MEMORIAL DAY.¹
_From “Five Books of Song” (1894)._
SHE saw the bayonets flashing in the sun,
The flags that proudly waved; she heard the bugles calling;
She saw the tattered banners falling
About the broken staffs, as one by one
The remnant of the mighty army passed;
And at the last
Flowers for the graves of those whose fight was done.
She heard the tramping of ten thousand feet
As the long line swept round the crowded square;
She heard the incessant hum
That filled the warm and blossom-scented air――
The shrilling fife, the roll and throb of drum,
The happy laugh, the cheer. Oh glorious and meet
To honor thus the dead,
Who chose the better part,
Who for their country bled!
――The dead! Great God! she stood there in the street,
Living, yet dead in soul and mind and heart――
While far away
His grave was decked with flowers by strangers’ hands to-day.
¹ Copyright, The Century Co.
* * * * *
A WOMAN’S THOUGHT.¹
_From “Five Books of Song” (1894)._
I AM a woman――therefore I may not
Call him, cry to him,
Fly to him,
Bid him delay not!
And when he comes to me, I must sit quiet;
Still as a stone――
All silent and cold.
If my heart riot――
Crush and defy it!
Should I grow bold,
Say one dear thing to him,
All my life fling to him,
Cling to him――
What to atone
Is enough for my sinning!
This were the cost to me,
This were my winning――
That he were lost to me.
Not as a lover
At last if he part from me,
Tearing my heart from me,
Hurt beyond cure――
Calm and demure
Then must I hold me,
In myself fold me,
Lest he discover;
Showing no sign to him
By look of mine to him
What he has been to me――
How my heart turns to him,
Follows him, yearns to him,
Prays him to love me.
Pity me, lean to me,
Thou God above me!
¹ Copyright, The Century Co.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN HAY.
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE BREECHES.”
ASIDE from General Lew Wallace and Edmund Clarence Stedman few
business men or politicians have made a brighter mark in literature
than the subject of this sketch.
John Hay was born at Salem, Indiana, October 8th, 1838. He was
graduated at Brown’s University at the age of twenty, studied law and
began to practice at Springfield, Illinois, in 1861. Soon after this
he was made private secretary of President Lincoln, which position
he filled throughout the latter’s administration. He also acted as
Lincoln’s adjutant and aid-de-camp, and it was in consequence of this
that he was brevetted colonel. He also saw service under Generals
Hunter and Gilmore as major and assistant adjutant general. After the
close of the war Mr. Hay was appointed United States ♦Secretary of
Legation at Paris, serving in this capacity from 1865 to 1867, when
he was appointed _charge d’affaires_, where he served for two years,
being removed to take a position as Secretary of Legation at Madrid,
where he remained until 1870, at which time he returned to the United
States and accepted an editorial position on the “New York Tribune.”
This he resigned and removed to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1875, where he
entered politics, taking an active part in the presidential campaigns
of 1876, 1880 and 1884. Under President Hayes he was appointed as
first assistant Secretary of State, which position he filled for
nearly three years, and has made his home at Washington since that
date. On March 17th, Mr. Hay was appointed by President McKinley as
ambassador to Great ♣Britain, where he was accorded the usual hearty
welcome tendered by the British to American ambassadors, many of
whom during the past fifty years having been men of high literary
attainment. Shortly after Mr. Hay’s arrival he was called upon to
deliver an address at the unveiling of the Walter Scott monument, in
which he did his country credit and maintained his own reputation as
an orator and a man of letters.
♦ ‘Secrectary’ replaced with ‘Secretary’
♣ ‘Britian’ replaced with ‘Britain’
As an author Mr. Hay’s first published works were the “Pike County
Ballads and Other Pieces” (1871), “Castilian Days” (1871), “Poems”
(1890), and, (in conjunction with Mr. Nicolay), “Abraham Lincoln:
a History,” which is regarded as the authoritative biography of
Mr. Lincoln. This was first published in serial form in the “Century
Magazine” from 1887 to 1889. Colonel Hay has also been a frequent
contributor to high class periodicals, and to him has been ascribed
the authorship of the anonymous novel “The Bread Winners,” which
caused such agitation in labor circles a few years ago.
Like many authors, Mr. Hay came into popularity almost by accident.
Certainly he had no expectation of becoming prominent when he wrote
his poem “Little Breeches;” yet that poem caused him to be remembered
by a wider class of readers, perhaps, than anything else he has
contributed to literature. The following account of how this poem
came to be written was published after Mr. Hay’s appointment to the
Court of St. James in 1897. The statement is given as made by Mr. A. L.
Williams, an acquaintance of Mr. Hay, who lives in Topeka, Kansas,
and knows the circumstances. “The fact is,” says Mr. Williams, “the
poem ‘Little Breeches’ and its reception by the American people make
it one of the most humorous features of this day. It was written as
a burlesque, and for no other purpose. Bret Harte had inaugurated a
maudlin literature at a time when the ‘litery’ people of the United
States were affected with hysteria. Under the inspiration of his
genius, to be good was commonplace, to be virtuous was stupid――only
gamblers, murderers and women of ill fame were heroic. Crime had
reached its apotheosis. John Hay believed that ridicule would help
cure this hysteria, and thus believing, wrote the burlesque, ‘Little
Breeches.’ Wanting to make the burlesque so broad that the commonest
intellect could grasp it, he took for his hero an unspeakably wretched
brat whom no angel would touch unless to drop over the walls into
Tophet, and made him the object of a special angelic miracle.
“Well, John sprung his ‘Little Breeches’ and then sat back with
his mouth wide open to join in the laugh which he thought it would
evoke from his readers. To his intense astonishment, people took
it seriously, and instead of laughing Bret Harte out of the field,
immediately made John Hay a formidable rival to that gentleman.”
Next to “Little Breeches” the poem “Jim Bludso,” perhaps, contributed
most to Mr. Hay’s reputation. Both of these selections will be found
in the succeeding pages.
* * * * *
LITTLE BREECHES.
I DON’T go much on religion,
I never ain’t had no show;
But I’ve got a middlin’ tight grip, sir,
On the handful o’ things I know.
I don’t pan out on the prophets
And free-will, and that sort of thing――
But I b’lieve in God and the angels,
Ever sence one night last spring.
I come into town with some turnips,
And my little Gabe come along――
No four-year-old in the county
Could beat him for pretty and strong,
Peart and chipper and sassy,
Always ready to swear and fight――
And I’d learnt him to chaw terbacker
Jest to keep his milk-teeth white.
The snow come down like a blanket
As I passed by Taggart’s store;
I went in for a jug of molasses
And left the team at the door.
They scared at something and started――
I heard one little squall,
And hell-to-split over the prairie
Went team, Little Breeches and all.
Hell-to-split over the prairie;
I was almost froze with skeer;
But we rousted up some torches,
And searched for ’em far and near.
At last we struck hosses and wagon,
Snowed under a soft white mound,
Upsot――dead beat――but of little Gabe
No hide nor hair was found.
And here all hope soured on me,
Of my fellow-critters’ aid,
I jest flopped down on my marrowbones,
Crotch deep in the snow, and prayed.
* * * * *
By this, the torches was played out,
And me and Isrul Parr
Went off for some wood to a sheepfold
That he said was somewhar thar.
We found it at last, and a little shed
Where they shut up the lambs at night,
We looked in and seen them huddled thar,
So warm and sleepy and white;
And thar sot Little Breeches and chirped,
As peart as ever you see,
“I want a chaw of terbacker,
An’ that’s what’s the matter of me.”
How did he git thar? Angels.
He could never have walked in that storm;
They jest scooped down and toted him
To whar it was safe and warm.
And I think that saving a little child,
An’ fotching him to his own,
Is a derned sight better business
Than loafing around the Throne.
* * * * *
JIM BLUDSO.¹
OF “THE PRAIRIE BELLE.”
WALL, no; I can’t tell you whar he lives,
Because he don’t live, you see;
Leastways, he’s got out of the habit
Of livin’ like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven’t heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the Prairie Belle?
He weren’t no saint――them engineers
Is all pretty much alike――
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill,
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied――
I reckon he never knowed how.
And this was all the religion he had――
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot’s bell;
And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire――
A thousand times he swore,
He’d hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.
All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last――
The Movastar was a better boat,
But the Belle she wouldn’t be passed,
And so she come tearin’ along that night――
The oldest craft on the line――
With a nigger squat on her safety-valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.
A fire burst out as she cl’ared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.
There was runnin’, and cursin’, but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
“I’ll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot’s ashore.”
Through the hot black breath of the burnin’ boat
Jim Bludso’s voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word,
And, sure’s you’re born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell――
And Bludso’s ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the Prairie Belle.
He weren’t no saint; but at judgment
I’d run my chance with Jim,
’Longside some pious gentlemen
That wouldn’t shook hands with him.
He seen his duty――a dead-sure thing――
And went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain’t a-going to be too hard
On a man that died for men.
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
* * * * *
HOW IT HAPPENED.¹
I PRAY your pardon, Elsie,
And smile that frown away
That dims the light of your lovely face
As a thunder-cloud the day,
I really could not help it,――
Before I thought, it was done,――
And those great grey eyes flashed bright and cold,
Like an icicle in the sun.
I was thinking of the summers
When we were boys and girls,
And wandered in the blossoming woods,
And the gay wind romped with her curls.
And you seemed to me the same little girl
I kissed in the alder-path,
I kissed the little girl’s lips, and alas!
I have roused a woman’s wrath.
There is not so much to pardon,――
For why were your lips so red?
The blonde hair fell in a shower of gold
From the proud, provoking head.
And the beauty that flashed from the splendid eyes
And played round the tender mouth,
Rushed over my soul like a warm sweet wind
That blows from the fragrant South.
And where after all is the harm done?
I believe we were made to be gay,
And all of youth not given to love
Is vainly squandered away,
And strewn through life’s low labors,
Like gold in the desert sands,
Are love’s swift kisses and sighs and vows
And the clasp of clinging hands.
And when you are old and lonely,
In memory’s magic shrine
You will see on your thin and wasting hands,
Like gems, these kisses of mine.
And when you muse at evening
At the sound of some vanished name,
The ghost of my kisses shall touch your lips
And kindle your heart to flame.
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: WELL-KNOWN WESTERN POETS.
EUGENE FIELD • BRET HARTE
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY
JOAQUIN MILLER • WILL CARLETON
(CINCINNATUS HEINE)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY.
“THE HOOSIER POET.”
NO poet of the modern times has obtained a greater popularity with
the masses than the Indianian, James Whitcomb Riley, who has recently
obtained the rank of a National Poet, and whose temporary hold upon
the people equals, if it does not exceed, that of any living verse
writer. The productions of this author have crystallized certain
features of life that will grow in value as time goes by. In reading
“The Old Swimmin’ Hole,” one almost feels the cool refreshing water
touch the thirsty skin. And such poems as “Griggsby’s Station,”
“Airly Days,” “When the Frost is on the Punkin,” “That Old Sweetheart
of Mine,” and others, go straight to the heart of the reader with a
mixture of pleasant recollections, tenderness, humor, and sincerity,
that is most delightful in its effect.
Mr. Riley is particularly a poet of the country people. Though he
was not raised on a farm himself, he had so completely imbibed its
atmosphere that his readers would scarcely believe he was not the
veritable Benjamin F. Johnston, the simple-hearted Boone County farmer,
whom he honored with the authorship of his early poems. To every man
who has been a country boy and “played hookey” on the school-master
to go swimming or fishing or bird-nesting or stealing water-melons,
or simply to lie on the orchard grass, many of Riley’s poems come
as an echo from his own experiences, bringing a vivid and pleasingly
melodious retrospect of the past.
Mr. Riley’s “Child Verses” are equally as famous. There is an artless
catching sing-song in his verses, not unlike the jingle of the “Mother
Goose Melodies.” Especially fine in their faithfulness to child-life,
and in easy ♦rhythm, are the pieces describing “Little Orphant Allie”
and “The Ragged Man.”
♦ ‘rythm’ replaced with ‘rhythm’
An’ Little Orphant Allie says, when the blaze is blue,
An’ the lampwick sputters, an’ the wind goes woo-oo!
An’ you hear the crickets quit, an’ the moon is gray,
An’ the lightnin’-bug in dew is all squenched away,――
You better mind yer parents and yer teacher fond an’ dear,
An’ cherish them ’at loves you and dry the orphant’s tear,
An’ he’p the poor an’ needy ones ’at cluster all about,
Er the gobble-uns ’ll git you
Ef you――don’t――_watch_――out.
James Whitcomb Riley was born in Greenfield, Indiana, in 1853. His
father was a Quaker, and a leading attorney of that place, and desired
to make a lawyer of his son; but Mr. Riley tells us, “Whenever I
picked up ‘Blackstone’ or ‘Greenleaf,’ my wits went to wool-gathering,
and my father was soon convinced that his hopes of my achieving
greatness at the bar were doomed to disappointment.” Referring to his
education, the poet further says, “I never had much schooling, and
what I did get, I believe did me little good. I never could master
mathematics, and history was a dull and juiceless thing to me; but I
always was fond of reading in a random way, and took naturally to the
theatrical. I cannot remember when I was not a declaimer, and I began
to rhyme almost as soon as I could talk.”
Riley’s first occupation was as a sign painter for a patent-medicine
man, with whom he traveled for a year. On leaving this employment he
organized a company of sign painters, with whom he traveled over the
country giving musical entertainments and painting signs. In referring
to this he says, “All the members of the company were good musicians
as well as painters, and we used to drum up trade with our music. We
kept at it for three or four years, made plenty of money, had lots of
fun, and did no harm to ourselves or any one else. Of course, during
this sign painting period, I was writing verses all the time, and
finally after the Graphic Company’s last trip I secured a position
on the weekly paper at Anderson.” For many years Riley endeavored to
have his verses published in various magazines, “sending them from
one to another,” he says, “to get them promptly back again.” Finally,
he sent some verses to the poet Longfellow, who congratulated him
warmly, as did also Mr. Lowell, to whose “New England Dialectic
Poems” Mr. Riley’s “Hoosier Rhymes” bore a striking resemblance. From
this time forward his success was assured, and, instead of hunting
publishers, he has been kept more than busy in supplying their eager
demands upon his pen.
Mr. Riley’s methods of work are peculiar to himself. His poems are
composed as he travels or goes about the streets, and, once they are
thought out, he immediately stops and transfers them to paper. But he
must work as the mood or muse moves him. He cannot be driven. On this
point he says of himself, “It is almost impossible for me to do good
work on orders. If I have agreed to complete a poem at a certain time,
I cannot do it at all; but when I can write without considering the
future, I get along much better.” He further says, with reference to
writing dialect, that it is not his preference to do so. He prefers
the recognized poetic form; “but,” he adds, “dialectic verse is
natural and gains added charm from its very commonplaceness. If truth
and depiction of nature are wanted, and dialect is a touch of nature,
then it should not be disregarded. I follow nature as closely as I can,
and try to make my people think and speak as they do in real life, and
such success as I have achieved is due to this.”
The first published work of the author was “The Old Swimmin’ Hole”
and “’Leven More Poems,” which appeared in 1883. Since that date he
published a number of volumes. Among the most popular may be mentioned,
“Armazindy,” which contains some of his best dialect and serious
verses, including the famous Poe Poem, “Leonainie,” written and
published in early life as one of the lost poems of Poe, and on which
he deceived even Poe’s biographers, so accurate was he in mimicking
the style of the author of the “Raven;” “Neighborly Poems;” “Sketches
in Prose,” originally published as “The Boss Girl and Other Stories;”
“Afterwhiles,” comprising sixty-two poems and sonnets, serious,
pathetic, humorous and dialectic; “Pipes O’ Pan,” containing five
sketches and fifty poems; “Rhymes of Childhood;” “Flying Islands of
the Night,” a weird and grotesque drama in verse; “Green Fields and
Running Brooks,” comprising one hundred and two poems and sonnets,
dialectic, humorous and serious.
The poet has never married. He makes his home in Indianapolis, Indiana,
with his sister, where his surroundings are of the most pleasant
nature; and he is scarcely less a favorite with the children of the
neighborhood than was the renowned child poet, Eugene Field, at his
home. The devotion of Mr. Riley to his aged parents, whose last days
he made the happiest and brightest of their lives, has been repeatedly
commented upon in the current notices of the poet. Mr. Riley has
personally met more of the American people, perhaps, than any other
living poet. He is constantly “on the wing.” For about eight months
out of every twelve for the past several years he has been on the
lecture platform, and there are few of the more intelligent class
of people in the leading cities of America, who have not availed
themselves, at one time or another, to the treat of listening to
his inimitable recitation of his poems. His short vacation in the
summer――“his loafing days,” as he calls them――are spent with his
relatives, and it is on these occasions that the genial poet is found
at his best.
* * * * *
A BOY’S MOTHER.¹
FROM “POEMS HERE AT HOME.”
MY mother she’s so good to me,
Ef I wuz good as I could be,
I couldn’t be as good――no, _sir_!――
Can’t _any_ boy be good as _her_!
She loves me when I’m glad er sad;
She loves me when I’m good er bad;
An’, what’s a funniest thing, she says
She loves me when she punishes.
I don’t like her to punish me.――
_That_ don’t hurt,――but it hurts to see
Her cryin’.――Nen I cry; an’ nen
We _both_ cry an’ be good again.
She loves me when she cuts an’ sews
My little cloak an’ Sund’y clothes;
An’ when my Pa comes home to tea,
She loves him most as much as me.
She laughs an’ tells him all I said,
An’ grabs me an’ pats my head;
An’ I hug her, an’ hug my Pa,
An’ love him purt’-nigh much as Ma.
¹ By Permission of the Century Co.
* * * * *
THOUGHTS ON THE LATE WAR.¹
FROM “POEMS HERE AT HOME.”
I WAS for Union――you, ag’in’ it.
’Pears like, to me, each side was winner,
Lookin’ at now and all ’at ’s in it.
Le’ ’s go to dinner.
Le’ ’s kind o’ jes’ set down together
And do some pardnership forgittin’――
Talk, say, for instance, ’bout the weather,
Or somepin’ fittin’.
The war, you know, ’s all done and ended,
And ain’t changed no p’ints o’ the compass;
Both North and South the health’s jes’ splendid
As ’fore the rumpus.
The old farms and the old plantations
Still ockipies the’r old positions.
Le’ ’s git back to old situations
And old ambitions.
Le’ ’s let up on this blame’, infernal
Tongue-lashin’ and lap-jacket vauntin’
And git back home to the eternal
Ca’m we’re a-wantin’.
Peace kind o’ sort o’ suits my diet――
When women does my cookin’ for me,
Ther’ wasn’t overly much pie et
Durin’ the army.
¹ By Permission of the Century Co.
* * * * *
OUR HIRED GIRL.¹
FROM “POEMS HERE AT HOME.”
OUR hired girl, she’s ’Lizabuth Ann;
An’ she can cook best things to eat!
She ist puts dough in our pie-pan,
An’ pours in somepin’ ’at ’s good an’ sweet;
An’ nen she salts it all on top
With cinnamon; an’ nen she’ll stop
An’ stoop an’ slide it, ist as slow,
In th’ old cook-stove, so ’s ’t wont slop
An’ git all spilled; nen bakes it, so
It’s custard-pie, first thing you know!
An’ nen she’ll say,
“Clear out o’ my way!
They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!
Take yer dough, an’ run, child, run!
Er I cain’t git no cookin’ done!”
When our hired girl ’tends like she’s mad,
An’ says folks got to walk the chalk
When _she’s_ around, er wisht they had!
I play out on our porch an’ talk
To th’ Raggedy Man ’t mows our lawn;
An’ he says, “_Whew!_” an’ nen leans on
His old crook-scythe, and blinks his eyes,
An’ sniffs all ’round an’ says, “I swawn!
Ef my old nose don’t tell me lies,
It ’pears like I smell custard-pies!”
An’ nen _he’ll_ say,
“Clear out o’ my way!
They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!
Take yer dough, an’ run, child, run!
Er she cain’t git no cookin’ done!”
Wunst our hired girl, when she
Got the supper, an’ we all et,
An’ it wuz night, an’ Ma an’ me
An’ Pa went wher’ the “Social” met,――
An’ nen when we come home, an’ see
A light in the kitchen-door, an’ we
Heerd a maccordeun, Pa says, “Lan’-
O’-Gracious! who can _her_ beau be?”
An’ I marched in, an’ ’Lizabuth Ann
Wuz parchin’ corn fer the Raggedy Man!
_Better_ say,
“Clear out o’ the way!
They’s time fer work, an’ time fer play!
Take the hint, an’ run, child, run!
Er we cain’t git no courtin’ done!”
¹ By permission of The Century Co.
* * * * *
THE RAGGEDY MAN.¹
FROM “POEMS HERE AT HOME.”
O THE Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa;
An’ he’s the goodest man ever you saw!
He comes to our house every day,
An’ waters the horses, an’ feeds ’em hay;
An’ he opens the shed――an’ we all ist laugh
When he drives out our little old wobble-ly calf;
An’ nen――ef our hired girl says he can――
He milks the cow fer ’Lizabuth Ann.――
Ain’t he a’ awful good Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
W’y, the Raggedy Man――he ’s ist so good,
He splits the kindlin’ an’ chops the wood;
An’ nen he spades in our garden, too,
An’ does most things ’t _boys_ can’t do.――
He clumbed clean up in our big tree
An’ shooked a’ apple down fer me――
An’ ’nother ’n’, too, fer ’Lizabuth Ann――
An’ ’nother ’n’, too, fer the Raggedy Man.――
Ain’t he a’ awful kind Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
An’ the Raggedy Man, he knows most rhymes,
An’ tells ’em, ef I be good, sometimes:
Knows ’bout Giunts, an’ Griffuns, an’ Elves,
An’ the Squidgicum-Squees ’at swallers therselves!
An’, wite by the pump in our pasture-lot,
He showed me the hole ’at the Wunks is got,
’At lives ’way deep in the ground, an’ can
Turn into me, er ’Lizabuth Ann!
Ain’t he a funny old Raggedy Man?
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
The Raggedy Man――one time, when he
Wuz makin’ a little bow’-n’-orry fer me,
Says, “When you’re big like your Pa is,
Air _you_ go’ to keep a fine store like his――
An’ be a rich merchunt――an’ wear fine clothes?――
Er what _air_ you go’ to be, goodness knows?”
An’ nen he laughed at ’Lizabuth Ann,
An’ I says, “’M go’ to be a Raggedy Man!――
I’m ist go’ to be a nice Raggedy Man!”
Raggedy! Raggedy! Raggedy Man!
¹ By permission of The Century Co.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
FRANCIS BRET HARTE.
THE POET OF THE MINING CAMP AND THE WESTERN MOUNTAINS.
THE turbulent mining camps of California, with their vicious
hangers-on, have been embalmed for future generations by the unerring
genius of Bret Harte, who sought to reveal the remnants of honor
in man, and loveliness in woman, despite the sins and vices of the
mining towns of our Western frontier thirty or forty years ago. His
writings have been regarded with disfavor by a religious class of
readers because of the frequent occurrence of rough phrases and
even profanity which he employs in his descriptions. It should be
remembered, however, that a faithful portrait of the conditions and
people which he described could hardly have been presented in more
polite language than that employed.
Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, in 1839. His father was a
scholar of ripe culture, and a teacher in the Albany Female Seminary.
He died poor when Bret was quite young, consequently the education
of his son was confined to the common schools of the city. When
only seventeen years of age, young Harte, with his widowed mother,
emigrated to California. Arriving in San Francisco he walked to the
mines of Sonora and there opened a school which he taught for a short
time. Thus began his self-education in the mining life which furnished
the material for his early literature. After leaving his school he
became a miner, and at odd times learned to set type in the office
of one of the frontier papers. He wrote sketches of the strange life
around him, set them up in type himself, and offered the proofs to
the editor, believing that in this shape they would be more certain
of acceptance. His aptitude with his pen secured him a position on the
paper, and in the absence of the editor he once controlled the journal
and incurred popular wrath for censuring a little massacre of Indians
by the leading citizens of the locality, which came near bringing a
mob upon him.
The young adventurer,――for he was little else at this time,――also
served as mounted messenger of an express company and as express
agent in several mountain towns, which gave him a full knowledge of
the picturesque features of mining life. In 1857 he returned to San
Francisco and secured a position as compositor on a weekly literary
journal. Here again he repeated his former trick of setting up and
submitting several spirited sketches of mining life in type. These
were accepted and soon earned him an editorial position on the “Golden
Era.” After this he made many contributions to the daily papers and
his tales of Western life began to attract attention in the East. In
1858, he married, which put an end to his wanderings. He attempted to
publish a newspaper of his own, “The Californian,” which was bright
and worthy to live, but failed for want of proper business management.
In 1864 Mr. Harte was appointed Secretary of the United States Branch
Mint at San Francisco, and during his six years of service in this
position found leisure to write some of his popular poems, such as
“John Burns, of Gettysburg,” “How Are You, Sanitary?” and others,
which were generally printed in the daily newspapers. He also became
editor of the “Overland Monthly” when it was founded in 1868, and
soon made this magazine as great a favorite on the Atlantic as on
the Pacific Coast, by his contribution to its columns of a series
of sketches of California life which have won a permanent place in
literature. Among these sketches are “The Luck of Roaring Camp,”
telling how a baby came to rule the hearts of a rough, dissolute
gang of miners. It is said that this masterpiece, however, narrowly
escaped the waste-basket at the hands of the proofreader, a woman, who,
without noticing its origin, regarded it as utter trash. “The Outcast
of Poker Flat,” “Miggles,” “Tennessee’s Partner,” “An Idyl of Red
Gulch,” and many other stories which revealed the spark of humanity
remaining in brutalized men and women, followed in rapid succession.
Bret Harte was a man of the most humane nature, and sympathized deeply
with the Indian and the Chinaman in the rough treatment they received
at the hands of the early settlers, and his literature, no doubt, did
much to soften and mollify the actions of those who read them――and it
may be safely said that almost every one did, as he was about the only
author at that time on the Pacific Slope and very popular. His poem,
“The Heathen Chinee,” generally called “Plain Language from Truthful
James,” was a masterly satire against the hue and cry that the Chinese
were shiftless and weak-minded settlers. This poem appeared in 1870
and was wonderfully popular.
In the spring of 1871 the professorship of recent literature in the
University of California was offered to Mr. Harte, on his resignation
of the editorship of the “Overland Monthly,” but he declined the
proffer to try his literary fortunes in the more cultured East. He
endeavored to found a magazine in Chicago, but his efforts failed,
and he went to Boston to accept a position on the “Atlantic Monthly,”
since which time his pen has been constantly employed by an increasing
demand from various magazines and literary journals. Mr. Harte has
issued many volumes of prose and poetry, and it is difficult to say
in which field he has won greater distinction. Both as a prose writer
and as a poet he has treated similar subjects with equal facility. His
reputation was made, and his claim to fame rests upon his intuitive
insight into the heart of our common humanity. A number of his
sketches have been translated into French and German, and of late
years he has lived much abroad, where he is, if any difference, more
lionized than he was in his native country.
From 1878 to 1885 Mr. Harte was United States Consul successively
to Crefield and Glasgow. Ferdinand Freiligraph, one of his German
translators, and himself a poet, pays this tribute to his peculiar
excellence:
“Nevertheless he remains what he is――the Californian and the
gold-digger. But the gold for which he has dug, and which he found, is
not the gold in the bed of rivers――not the gold in veins of mountains;
it is the gold of love, of goodness, of fidelity, of humanity, which
even in rude and wild hearts――even under the rubbish of vices and
sins――remains forever uneradicated from the human heart. That he
there searched for this gold, that he found it there and triumphantly
exhibited it to the world――that is his greatness and his merit.”
His works as published from 1867 to 1890 include “Condensed Novels,”
“Poems,” “The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches,” “East and
West Poems,” “Poetical Works,” “Mrs. Skaggs’ Husbands,” “Echoes of
the Foothills,” “Tales of the Argonauts,” “Gabriel Conroy,” “Two Men
of Sandy Bar,” “Thankful Blossom,” “Story of a Mine,” “Drift from
Two Shores,” “The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories,” “In
the Carquinez Woods,” “On the Frontier,” “By Shore and Ledge,”
“Snowbound at Eagles,” “The Crusade of the Excelsior,” “A Phyllis of
the Sierras.” One of Mr. Harte’s most popular late novels, entitled
“Three Partners; or, The Big Strike on Heavy Tree Hill,” was published
as a serial in 1897. Though written while the author was in Europe,
the vividness of the description and the accurate delineations of the
miner character are as strikingly real as if it had been produced by
the author while residing in the mining country of his former Western
home.
* * * * *
SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS.
I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I’ll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first, I would remark, that it is not a proper plan
For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man,
And, if a member don’t agree with his peculiar whim,
To lay for that same member for to “put a head” on him.
Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see
Than the first six months’ proceedings of that same Society,
Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones
That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown, he read a paper, and he reconstructed there,
From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules,
Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost
mules.
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, an’ said he was at fault,
It seems he had been trespassing on Jones’s family vault;
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown,
And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now, I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent
To say another is an ass,――at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant
Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
Then Abner Dean, of Angel’s, raised a point of order, when
A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen;
And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the
floor,
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more;
For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage
In a warfare with the remnants of the palæozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils, in their anger, was a
sin,
’Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson
in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games,
For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I’ve told in simple language what I knew about the row
That broke up our society upon the Stanislow.
* * * * *
DICKENS IN CAMP.
ABOVE the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow.
The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form, that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth
’Till one arose, and from his pack’s scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew.
And then, while shadows ’round them gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of “Little Nell.”
Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy,――for the reader
Was the youngest of them all,――
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall.
The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with “Nell” on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.
And so, in mountain solitudes, o’ertaken
As by some spell divine,
Their cares drop from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire,
And he who wrought that spell;
Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vines’ incense, all the pensive glory
That thrills the Kentish hills;
And on that grave, where English oak and holly,
And laurel-wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,
This spray of Western pine!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EUGENE FIELD.
THE CHILDREN’S FRIEND AND POET.
ON the fourth day of November, 1895, there was many a sad home in
the city of Chicago and throughout America. It was on that day that
Eugene Field, the most congenial friend young children ever had among
the literary men of America, died at the early age of forty-five.
The expressions of regard and regret called out on all sides by this
untimely death, made it clear that the character in which the public
at large knew and loved Mr. Field best was that of the “Poet of Child
Life.” What gives his poems their unequaled hold on the popular heart
is their simplicity, warmth and genuineness. This quality they owe
to the fact that Mr. Field almost lived in the closest and fondest
intimacy with children. He had troops of them for his friends and it
is said he wrote his child-poems directly under their suggestions and
inspiration.
We might fill far more space than is at our command in this volume
relating incidents which go to show his fondness for little ones. It
is said that on the day of his marriage, he delayed the ceremony to
settle a quarrel between some urchins who were playing marbles in the
street. So long did he remain to argue the question with them that all
might be satisfied, the time for the wedding actually passed and when
sent for, he was found squatted down among them acting as peace-maker.
It is also said that on one occasion he was invited by the noted
divine, Dr. Gunsaulus, to visit his home. The children of the family
had been reading Field’s poems and looked forward with eagerness to
his coming. When he arrived, the first question he asked the children,
after being introduced to them, was, “Where is the kitchen?” and
expressed his desire to see it. Child-like, and to the embarrassment
of the mother, they led him straight to the cookery where he seized
upon the remains of a turkey which had been left from the meal,
carried it into the dining-room, seated himself and made a feast with
his little friends, telling them quaint stories all the while. After
this impromptu supper, he spent the remainder of the evening singing
them lullabies and reciting his verses. Naturally before he went away,
the children had given him their whole hearts and this was the way
with all children with whom he came into contact.
The devotion so unfailing in his relation to children would naturally
show itself in other relations. His devotion to his wife was most
pronounced. In all the world she was the only woman he loved and he
never wished to be away from her. Often she accompanied him on his
reading tours, the last journey they made together being in the summer
of ’95 to the home of Mrs. Field’s girlhood. While his wife was in
the company of her old associates, instead of joining them as they
expected, he took advantage of her temporary absence, hired a carriage
and visited all of the old scenes of their early associations during
the happy time of their love-making.
His association with his fellow-workers was equally congenial. No man
who had ever known him felt the slightest hesitancy in approaching him.
He had the happy faculty of making them always feel welcome. It was
a common happening in the Chicago newspaper office for some tramp of
a fellow, who had known him in the days gone by, to walk boldly in
and blurt out, as if confident in the power of the name he spoke――“Is
’Gene Field here? I knew ’Gene Field in Denver, or I worked with ’Gene
Field on the ‘Kansas City Times.’” These were sufficient passwords and
never failed to call forth the cheery voice from Field’s room――“That’s
all right, show him in here, he’s a friend of mine.”
One of Field’s peculiarities with his own children was to nickname
them. When his first daughter was born he called her “Trotty,” and,
although she is a grown-up woman now, her friends still call her
“Trotty.” The second daughter is called “Pinny” after the child opera
“Pinafore,” which was in vogue at the time she was born. Another, a
son, came into the world when everybody was singing “Oh My! Ain’t She
a Daisy.” Naturally this fellow still goes by the name of “Daisy.”
Two other of Mr. Field’s children are known as “Googhy” and “Posy.”
Eugene Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri, September 2, 1850.
Part of his early life was passed in Vermont and Massachusetts. He
was educated in a university in Missouri. From 1873 to 1883 he was
connected with various newspapers in Missouri and Colorado. He joined
the staff of the Chicago “Daily News” in 1883 and removed to Chicago,
where he continued to reside until his death, twelve years later. Of
Mr. Field’s books, “The Denver Tribune Primer” was issued in 1882;
“Culture Garden” (1887); “Little Book of Western Friends” (1889);
and “Little Book of Profitable Tales” (1889).
Mr. Field was not only a writer of child verses, but wrote some
first-class Western dialectic verse, did some translating, was an
excellent newspaper correspondent, and a critic of no mean ability;
but he was too kind-hearted and liberal to chastise a brother severely
who did not come up to the highest literary standard. He was a hard
worker, contributing daily, during his later years, from one to
three columns to the “Chicago News,” besides writing more or less
for the “Syndicate Press” and various periodicals. In addition to
this, he was frequently traveling, and lectured or read from his own
writings. Since his death, his oldest daughter, Miss Mary French Field
(“Trotty”), has visited the leading cities throughout the country,
delivering readings from her father’s works. The announcement of her
appearance to read selections from the writings of her genial father
is always liberally responded to by an appreciative public.
* * * * *
OUR TWO OPINIONS.¹
US two wuz boys when we fell out――
Nigh to the age uv my youngest now;
Don’t rec’lect what ’twuz about,
Some small diff’rence, I’ll allow,
Lived next neighbors twenty years,
A-hatin’ each other, me ’nd Jim――
He havin’ his opinyin uv me
’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him!
Grew up together, ’nd wouldn’t speak,
Courted sisters, and marr’d ’em, too
’Tended same meetin’ house oncet a week,
A-hatin’ each other, through ’nd through.
But when Abe Linkern asked the West
F’r soldiers, we answered――me ’nd Jim――
He havin’ his opinyin uv me
’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him!
Down in Tennessee one night,
Ther was sound uv firin’ fur away,
’Nd the sergeant allowed ther’d be a fight
With the Johnnie Rebs some time next day;
’Nd as I was thinkin’ of Lizzie ’nd home,
Jim stood afore me, long ’nd slim――
He havin’ his opinyin uv me
’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him!
Seemed like we knew there wuz goin’ to be
Serious trouble f’r me ’nd him――
Us two shuck hands, did Jim ’nd me,
But never a word from me or Jim!
He went his way, and I went mine,
’Nd into the battle’s roar went we――
I havin’ my opinyin uv Jim
’Nd he havin’ his opinyin uv me!
Jim never come back from the war again,
But I haint forgot that last, last night
When waitin’ f’r orders, us two men
Made up and shuck hands, afore the fight;
’Nd, after it all, it’s soothin’ to know
That here I be, ’nd yonder’s Jim――
He havin’ his opinyin uv me
’Nd I havin’ my opinyin uv him!
¹ From “A Little Book of Western Verse” (1889). Copyrighted
by Eugene Field, and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
* * * * *
LULLABY.¹
FAIR is the castle up on the hill――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
The night is fair and the waves are still,
And the wind is singing to you and me
In this lowly home beside the sea――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
On yonder hill is store of wealth――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
And revellers drink to a little one’s health;
But you and I bide night and day
For the other love that has sailed away――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
See not, dear eyes, the forms that creep
Ghostlike, O my own!
Out of the mists of the murmuring deep;
Oh, see them not and make no cry,
’Till the angels of death have passed us by――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
Ah, little they reck of you and me――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
In our lonely home beside the sea;
They seek the castle up on the hill,
And there they will do their ghostly will――
Hushaby, O my own!
Here by the sea, a mother croons
“Hushaby, sweet my own;”
In yonder castle a mother swoons
While the angels go down to the misty deep,
Bearing a little one fast asleep――
Hushaby, sweet my own!
¹ From “A Little Book of Western Verse” (1889). Copyrighted
by Eugene Field, and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
* * * * *
A DUTCH LULLABY.¹
WYNKEN, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe――
Sailed on a river of misty light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have to come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea:
Nets of silver and gold have we,”
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
The old moon laughed and sung a song,
And they rocked in the wooden shoe,
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful sea;
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish,
But never afeared are we”――
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
All night long their nets they threw
For the fish in the twinkling foam,
Then down from the sky came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home.
’Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folks thought ’twas a dream they’d dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea.
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea,
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three――
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
¹ From “A Little Book of Western Verse” (1889). Copyrighted
by Eugene Field, and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons.
* * * * *
THE NORSE LULLABY.¹
FROM “A LITTLE BOOK OF WESTERN VERSE” (1889).
THE sky is dark and the hills are white
As the storm-king speeds from the north to-night,
And this is the song the storm-king sings,
As over the world his cloak he flings:
“Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep!”
He rustles his wings and gruffly sings:
“Sleep, little one, sleep!”
On yonder mountain-side a vine
Clings at the foot of a mother pine;
The tree bends over the trembling thing
And only the vine can hear her sing:
“Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep――
What shall you fear when I am here?
Sleep, little one, sleep.”
The king may sing in his bitter flight,
The tree may croon to the vine to-night,
But the little snowflake at my breast
Liketh the song I sing the best:
“Sleep, sleep, little one, sleep;
Weary thou art, anext my heart,
Sleep, little one, sleep.”
¹ Copyright, Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WILL CARLETON.
AUTHOR OF “BETSY AND I ARE OUT.”
FEW writers of homely verse have been more esteemed than Will Carleton.
His poems are to be found in almost every book of selections for
popular reading. They are well adapted to recitation and are favorites
with general audiences. With few exceptions they are portraitures
of the humorous side of rural life and frontier scenes; but they are
executed with a vividness and truth to nature that does credit to the
author and insures their preservation as faithful portraits of social
conditions and frontier scenes and provincialisms which the advance of
education is fast relegating to the past.
Will Carleton was born in Hudson, Michigan, October 21, 1845. His
father was a pioneer settler who came from New Hampshire. Young
Carleton remained at home on the farm until he was sixteen years of
age, attending the district school in the winters and working on the
farm during the summers. At the age of sixteen he became a teacher in
a country school and for the next four years divided his time between
teaching, attending school and working as a farm-hand, during which
time he also contributed articles in both prose and verse to local
papers. In 1865 he entered Hillsdale College, Michigan, from which
he graduated in 1869. Since 1870 he has been engaged in journalistic
and literary work and has also lectured frequently in the West. It was
during his early experiences as a teacher in “boarding round” that he
doubtless gathered the incidents which are so graphically detailed in
his poems.
There is a homely pathos seldom equalled in the two selections “Betsy
and I Are Out” and “How Betsy and I Made Up” that have gained for them
a permanent place in the affections of the reading public. In other
of his poems, like “Makin’ an Editor Outen Him,” “A Lightning Rod
Dispenser,” “The Christmas Baby,” etc., there is a rich vein of humor
that has given them an enduring popularity. “The First Settler’s
Story” is a most graphic picture of pioneer life, portraying the
hardships which early settlers frequently endured and in which the
depressing homesickness often felt for the scenes of their childhood
and the far-away East is pathetically told.
Mr. Carleton’s first volume of poems appeared in 1871, and was
printed for private distribution. “Betsy and I Are Out” appeared
in 1872 in the “Toledo Blade.” It was copied in “Harper’s Weekly,”
and illustrated. This was really the author’s first recognition in
literary circles. In 1873 appeared a collection of his poems entitled
“Farm Ballads,” including the now famous selections, “Out of the
Old House, Nancy,” “Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,” “Gone With
a Handsomer Man,” and “How Betsy and I Made Up.” Other well-known
volumes by the same author are entitled “Farm Legends,” “Young Folk’s
Centennial Rhymes,” “Farm Festivals,” and “City Ballads.”
In his preface to the first volume of his poems Mr. Carleton modestly
apologizes for whatever imperfections they may possess in a manner
which gives us some insight into his literary methods. “These poems,”
he writes, “have been written under various, and in some cases
difficult, conditions: in the open air, with team afield; in the
student’s den, with ghosts of unfinished lessons hovering gloomily
about; amid the rush and roar of railroad travel, which trains of
thought are not prone to follow; and in the editor’s sanctum, where
the dainty feet of the muses do not often deign to tread.”
But Mr. Carleton does not need to apologize. He has the true poetic
instinct. His descriptions are vivid, and as a narrative versifier he
has been excelled by few, if indeed any depicter of Western farm life.
Will Carleton has also written considerable prose, which has been
collected and published in book form, but it is his poetical works
which have entitled him to public esteem, and it is for these that he
will be longest remembered in literature.
* * * * *
BETSY AND I ARE OUT.¹
DRAW up the papers, lawyer, and make ’em good and stout,
For things at home are cross-ways, and Betsy and I are out,――
We who have worked together so long as man and wife
Must pull in single harness the rest of our nat’ral life.
“What is the matter,” says you? I swan it’s hard to tell!
Most of the years behind us we’ve passed by very well;
I have no other woman――she has no other man;
Only we’ve lived together as long as ever we can.
So I have talked with Betsy, and Betsy has talked with me;
And we’ve agreed together that we can never agree;
Not that we’ve catched each other in any terrible crime;
We’ve been a gatherin’ this for years, a little at a time.
There was a stock of temper we both had for a start;
Although we ne’er suspected ’twould take us two apart;
I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone,
And Betsy, like all good women, had a temper of her own.
The first thing, I remember, whereon we disagreed,
Was somethin’ concerning heaven――a difference in our creed;
We arg’ed the thing at breakfast――we arg’ed the thing at tea――
And the more we arg’ed the question, the more we couldn’t
agree.
And the next that I remember was when we lost a cow;
She had kicked the bucket, for certain――the question was
only――How?
I held my opinion, and Betsy another had;
And when we were done a talkin’, we both of us was mad.
And the next that I remember, it started in a joke;
But for full a week it lasted and neither of us spoke.
And the next was when I fretted because she broke a bowl;
And she said I was mean and stingy, and hadn’t any soul.
And so the thing kept workin’, and all the self-same way;
Always somethin’ to ar’ge and something sharp to say,――
And down on us came the neighbors, a couple o’ dozen strong,
And lent their kindest sarvice to help the thing along.
And there have been days together――and many a weary week――
When both of us were cross and spunky, and both too proud to
speak;
And I have been thinkin’ and thinkin’, the whole of the summer
and fall,
If I can’t live kind with a woman, why, then I won’t at all.
And so I’ve talked with Betsy, and Betsy has talked with me;
And we have agreed together that we can never agree;
And what is hers shall be hers, and what is mine shall be mine;
And I’ll put it in the agreement, and take it to her to sign.
Write on the paper, lawyer――the very first paragraph――
Of all the farm and live stock, she shall have her half;
For she has helped to earn it through many a weary day,
And it’s nothin’ more than justice that Betsy has her pay.
Give her the house and homestead; a man can thrive and roam,
But women are wretched critters, unless they have a home.
And I have always determined, and never failed to say,
That Betsy never should want a home, if I was taken away.
There’s a little hard money besides, that’s drawin’ tol’rable
pay,
A couple of hundred dollars laid by for a rainy day,――
Safe in the hands of good men, and easy to get at;
Put in another clause there, and give her all of that.
I see that you are smiling, sir, at my givin’ her so much;
Yes, divorce is cheap, sir, but I take no stock in such;
True and fair I married her, when she was blythe and young,
And Betsy was always good to me exceptin’ with her tongue.
When I was young as you, sir, and not so smart, perhaps,
For me she mittened a lawyer, and several other chaps;
And all of ’em was flustered, and fairly taken down,
And for a time I was counted the luckiest man in town.
Once when I had a fever――I won’t forget it soon――
I was hot as a basted turkey and crazy as a loon――
Never an hour went by me when she was out of sight;
She nursed me true and tender, and stuck to me day and night.
And if ever a house was tidy, and ever a kitchen clean,
Her house and kitchen was tidy as any I ever seen,
And I don’t complain of Betsy or any of her acts,
Exceptin’ when we’ve quarreled, and told each other facts.
So draw up the paper, lawyer; and I’ll go home to-night,
And read the agreement to her, and see if it’s all right;
And then in the morning I’ll sell to a tradin’ man I know――
And kiss the child that was left to us, and out in the world
I’ll go.
And one thing put in the paper, that first to me didn’t occur;
That when I am dead at last she will bring me back to her,
And lay me under the maple we planted years ago,
When she and I was happy, before we quarreled so.
And when she dies, I wish that she would be laid by me;
And lyin’ together in silence, perhaps we’ll then agree;
And if ever we meet in heaven, I wouldn’t think it queer
If we loved each other the better because we’ve quarreled here.
¹ From “Farm Ballads.” Copyright 1873, 1882, by Harper &
Brothers.
* * * * *
GONE WITH A HANDSOMER MAN.¹
(FROM “FARM BALLADS.”)
JOHN.
I’VE worked in the field all day, a plowin’ the “stony streak;”
I’ve scolded my team till I’m hoarse; I’ve tramped till my
legs are weak;
I’ve choked a dozen swears, (so’s not to tell Jane fibs,)
When the plow-pint struck a stone, and the handles punched my
ribs.
I’ve put my team in the barn, and rubbed their sweaty coats;
I’ve fed ’em a heap of hay and half a bushel of oats;
And to see the way they eat makes me like eatin’ feel,
And Jane won’t say to-night that I don’t make out a meal.
Well said! the door is locked! out here she’s left the key,
Under the step, in a place known only to her and me;
I wonder who’s dyin’ or dead, that she’s hustled off pell-mell;
But here on the table’s a note, and probably this will tell.
Good God! my wife is gone! my wife is gone astray!
The letter it says, “Good-bye, for I’m a going away;
I’ve lived with you six months, John, and so far I’ve been
true;
But I’m going away to-day with a handsomer man than you.”
A han’somer man than me! Why, that ain’t much to say;
There’s han’somer men than me go past here every day.
There’s han’somer men than me――I ain’t of the han’some kind;
But a _loven’er_ man than I was, I guess she’ll never find.
Curse her! curse her! I say, and give my curses wings!
May the words of love I’ve spoken be changed to scorpion
stings!
Oh, she filled my heart with joy, she emptied my heart of
doubt,
And now, with a scratch of a pen, she lets my heart’s blood
out!
Curse her! curse her! say I, she’ll some time rue this day;
She’ll some time learn that hate is a game that two can play;
And long before she dies she’ll grieve she ever was born,
And I’ll plow her grave with hate, and seed it down to scorn.
As sure as the world goes on, there’ll come a time when she
Will read the devilish heart of that han’somer man than me;
And there’ll be a time when he will find, as others do,
That she who is false to one, can be the same with two.
And when her face grows pale, and when her eyes grow dim,
And when he is tired of her and she is tired of him,
She’ll do what she ought to have done, and coolly count the
cost;
And then she’ll see things clear, and know what she has lost.
And thoughts that are now asleep will wake up in her mind,
And she will mourn and cry for what she has left behind;
And maybe she’ll sometimes long for me――for me――but no!
I’ve blotted her out of my heart, and I will not have it so.
And yet in her girlish heart there was somethin’ or other she
had
That fastened a man to her, and wasn’t entirely bad;
And she loved me a little, I think, although it didn’t last;
But I mustn’t think of these things――I’ve buried ’em in the
past.
I’ll take my hard words back, nor make a bad matter worse;
She’ll have trouble enough; she shall not have my curse;
But I’ll live a life so square――and I well know that I can,――
That she always will sorry be that she went with that
han’somer man.
Ah, here is her kitchen dress! it makes my poor eyes blur;
It seems when I look at that, as if ’twas holdin’ her.
And here are her week-day shoes, and there is her week-day hat,
And yonder’s her weddin’ gown; I wonder she didn’t take that.
’Twas only this mornin’ she came and called me her “dearest
dear,”
And said I was makin’ for her a regular paradise here;
O God! if you want a man to sense the pains of hell,
Before you pitch him in just keep him in heaven a spell!
Good-bye! I wish that death had severed us two apart.
You’ve lost a worshiper here, you’ve crushed a lovin’ heart.
I’ll worship no woman again; but I guess I’ll learn to pray,
And kneel as _you_ used to kneel, before you run away.
And if I thought I could bring my words on Heaven to bear,
And if I thought I had some little influence there,
I would pray that I might be, if it only could be so,
As happy and gay as I was a half-hour ago.
JANE (_entering_).
Why, John, what a litter here! you’ve thrown things all around!
Come, what’s the matter now? and what have you lost or found?
And here’s my father here, a waiting for supper, too;
I’ve been a riding with him――he’s that “handsomer man than
you.”
Ha! ha! Pa, take a seat, while I put the kettle on,
And get things ready for tea, and kiss my dear old John.
Why, John, you look so strange! come, what has crossed your
track?
I was only a joking, you know; I’m willing to take it back.
JOHN (_aside_).
Well, now, if this _ain’t_ a joke, with rather a bitter cream!
It seems as if I’d woke from a mighty ticklish dream;
And I think she “smells a rat,” for she smiles at me so queer,
I hope she don’t; good gracious! I hope that they didn’t hear!
’Twas one of her practical drives――she thought I’d understand!
But I’ll never break sod again till I get the lay of the land.
But one thing’s settled with me――to appreciate heaven well,
’Tis good for a man to have some fifteen minutes of hell.
¹ Copyright, 1873, 1882, by Harper & Brothers.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOAQUIN MILLER.
“THE POET OF THE SIERRAS.”
IN the year 1851, a farmer moved from the Wabash district in Indiana
to the wilder regions of Oregon. In his family was a rude, untaught
boy of ten or twelve years, bearing the unusual name of Cincinnatus
Hiner Miller. This boy worked with his father on the farm until he was
about fifteen years of age, when he abandoned the family log-cabin in
the Willamette Valley of his Oregon home to try ♦his fortune as a gold
miner.
♦ ‘this’ replaced with ‘his’
A more daring attempt was seldom if ever undertaken by a fifteen year
old youth. It was during the most desperate period of Western history,
just after the report of the discovery of gold had caused the greatest
rush to the Pacific slope. A miscellaneous and turbulent population
swarmed over the country; and, “armed to the teeth” prospected
upon streams and mountains. The lawless, reckless life of these
gold-hunters――millionaires to-day and beggars to-morrow――deeming it
a virtue rather than a crime to have taken life in a brawl――was, at
once, novel, picturesque and dramatic.――Such conditions furnished
great possibilities for a poet or novelist.――It was an era as replete
with a reality of thrilling excitement as that furnished by the
history and mythology of ancient Greece to the earlier ♦Greek poets.
♦ ‘Greeks’ replaced with ‘Greek’
It was into this whirlpool that the young, untaught――but observant
and daring――farmer lad threw himself, and when its whirl was not
giddy and fast enough for him, or palled upon his more exacting taste
for excitement and daring adventure, he left it after a few months,
and sought deeper and more desperate wilds. With Walker he became a
filibuster and went into Nicaragua.――He became in turn an astrologer;
a Spanish _vaquero_, and, joining the wild Indians, was made a Sachem.
For five years he followed these adventurous wanderings; then as
suddenly as he had entered the life he deserted it, and, in 1860 the
prodigal returned home to his father’s cabin in Oregon. In his right
arm he carried a bullet, in his right thigh another, and on many
parts of his body were the scars left by Indian arrows. Shortly after
returning home he begun the study of law and was admitted to practice
within a few months in Lane County, Oregon; but the gold fever or
spirit of adventure took possession of him again and in 1861 we find
him in the gold mines of Idaho; but the yellow metal did not come into
his “Pan” sufficiently fast and he gave it up to become an express
messenger in the mining district. A few months later he was back in
Oregon where he started a Democratic Newspaper at Eugene City which
he ran long enough to get acquainted with a poetical contributor, Miss
Minnie Myrtle, whom he married in 1862――in his usual short-order way
of doing things――after an acquaintance of three days. Where “Joaquin”
Miller――for he was now called “Joaquin” after a Spanish brigand whom
he had defended――got his education is a mystery; but through the years
of wandering, even in boyhood, he was a rhymester and his verses now
began to come fast in the columns of his paper.
Illustration: JOAQUIN MILLER’S STUDY, OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA.
In 1862, after his marriage he resumed the practice of law, and, in
1866, at the age of twenty-five, was elected Judge of Grant County.
This position he held for four years during which time he wrote much
poetry. One day with his usual “suddenness” he abandoned his wife
and his country and sailed for London to seek a publisher. At first
he was unsuccessful, and had to print a small volume privately. This
introduced him to the friendship of English writers and his “Songs of
the Sierras” was issued in 1871. Naturally these poems were faulty in
style and called forth strong adverse criticism; but the tales they
told were glowing and passionate, and the wild and adventurous life
they described was a new revelation in the world of song, and, verily,
whatever the austere critic said, “The common people heard him gladly”
and his success became certain. Thus encouraged Miller returned to
California, visited the tropics and collected material for another
work which he published in London in 1873 entitled “Sunland Songs.”
Succeeding, the “Songs of the Desert” appeared in 1875; “Songs of
Italy” 1878; “Songs of the Mexican Seas” 1887. Later he has published
“With Walker in Nicaragua” and he is also author of a play called
“The Danites,” and of several prose works relating to life in the West
among which are “The Danites in the Sierras,” “Shadows of Shasta” and
’49, or “The Gold-seekers of the Sierras.”
The chief excellencies of Miller’s works are his gorgeous pictures
of the gigantic scenery of the Western mountains. In this sense he is
a true poet. As compared with Bret Harte, while Miller has the finer
poetic perception of the two, he does not possess the dramatic power
nor the literary skill of Harte; nor does he seem to recognize the
native generosity and noble qualities which lie hidden beneath the
vicious lives of outlaws, as the latter reveals it in his writings.
After all the question arises which is the nearer the truth? Harte is
about the same age as Miller, lived among the camps at about the same
time, but he was not, to use a rough expression, “one of the gang,”
was not so pronouncedly “on the inside” as was his brother poet. He
never dug in the mines, he was not a filibuster, nor an Indian Sachem.
All these and more Miller was, and perhaps he is nearer the plumb line
of truth in his delineations after all.
Mr. Miller’s home is on the bluffs overlooking the San Francisco Bay
in sight of the Golden Gate. In July, 1897, he joined the gold seekers
in the Klondike regions of Alaska.
* * * * *
THOUGHTS OF MY WESTERN HOME.
WRITTEN IN ATHENS.
SIERRAS, and eternal tents
Of snow that flashed o’er battlements
Of mountains! My land of the sun,
Am I not true? have I not done
All things for thine, for thee alone,
O sun-land, sea-land, thou mine own?
From other loves and other lands,
As true, perhaps, as strong of hands,
Have I not turned to thee and thine,
O sun-land of the palm and pine,
And sung thy scenes, surpassing skies,
Till Europe lifted up her face
And marveled at thy matchless grace,
With eager and inquiring eyes?
Be my reward some little place
To pitch my tent, some tree and vine
Where I may sit above the sea,
And drink the sun as drinking wine,
And dream, or sing some songs of thee;
Or days to climb to Shasta’s dome
Again, and be with gods at home,
Salute my mountains――clouded Hood,
Saint Helen’s in its sea of wood――
Where sweeps the Oregon, and where
White storms are in the feathered fir.
* * * * *
MOUNT SHASTA.
TO lord all Godland! lift the brow
Familiar to the noon,――to top
The universal world,――to prop
The hollow heavens up,――to vow
Stern constancy with stars,――to keep
Eternal ward while ♦eons sleep;
To tower calmly up and touch
God’s purple garment――hems that sweep
The cold blue north! Oh, this were much!
Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt
I knew thee in my glorious youth,
I loved thy vast face, white as truth,
I stood where thunderbolts were wont
To smite thy Titan-fashioned front,
And heard rent mountains rock and roll.
I saw thy lightning’s gleaming rod
Reach forth and write on heaven’s scroll
The awful autograph of God!
♦ ‘cons’ replaced with ‘eons’
* * * * *
KIT CARSON’S RIDE.
RUN? Now you bet you; I rather guess so.
But he’s blind as a badger. Whoa, Paché boy, whoa!
No, you wouldn’t think so to look at his eyes,
But he is badger blind, and it happened this wise;――
We lay low in the grass on the broad plain levels,
Old Revels and I, and my stolen brown bride.
“Forty full miles if a foot to ride,
Forty full miles if a foot and the devils
Of red Camanches are hot on the track
When once they strike it. Let the sun go down
Soon, very soon,” muttered bearded old Revels
As he peered at the sun, lying low on his back,
Holding fast to his lasso; then he jerked at his steed,
And sprang to his feet, and glanced swiftly around,
And then dropped, as if shot, with his ear to the ground,――
Then again to his feet and to me, to my bride,
While his eyes were like fire, his face like a shroud,
His form like a king, and his beard like a cloud,
And his voice loud and shrill, as if blown from a reed,――
“Pull, pull in your lassos, and bridle to steed,
And speed, if ever for life you would speed;
And ride for your lives, for your lives you must ride,
For the plain is aflame, the prairie on fire,
And feet of wild horses, hard flying before
I hear like a sea breaking hard on the shore;
While the buffalo come like the surge of the sea,
Driven far by the flame, driving fast on us three
As a hurricane comes, crushing palms in his ire.”
We drew in the lassos, seized saddle and rein,
Threw them on, sinched them on, sinched them over again,
And again drew the girth, cast aside the macheer,
Cut away tapidaros, loosed the sash from its fold,
Cast aside the catenas red and spangled with gold,
And gold-mounted Colts, true companions for years,
Cast the red silk serapes to the wind in a breath
And so bared to the skin sprang all haste to the horse.
Not a word, not a wail from a lip was let fall,
Not a kiss from my bride, not a look or low call
Of love-note or courage, but on o’er the plain
So steady and still, leaning low to the mane,
With the heel to the flank and the hand to the rein,
Rode we on, rode we three, rode we gray nose and nose,
Reaching long, breathing loud, like a creviced wind blows,
Yet we spoke not a whisper, we breathed not a prayer,
There was work to be done, there was death in the air,
And the chance was as one to a thousand for all.
Gray nose to gray nose and each steady mustang
Stretched neck and stretched nerve till the hollow earth rang
And the foam from the flank and the croup and the neck
Flew around like the spray on a storm-driven deck.
Twenty miles! thirty miles――a dim distant speck――
Then a long reaching line and the Brazos in sight.
And I rose in my seat with a shout of delight.
I stood in my stirrup and looked to my right,
But Revels was gone; I glanced by my shoulder
And saw his horse stagger; I saw his head drooping
Hard on his breast, and his naked breast stooping
Low down to the mane as so swifter and bolder
Ran reaching out for us the red-footed fire.
To right and to left the black buffalo came,
In miles and in millions, rolling on in despair,
With their beards to the dust and black tails in the air.
As a terrible surf on a red sea of flame
Rushing on in the rear, reaching high, reaching higher,
And he rode neck to neck to a buffalo bull,
The monarch of millions, with shaggy mane full
Of smoke and of dust, and it shook with desire
Of battle, with rage and with bellowings loud
And unearthly and up through its lowering cloud
Came the flash of his eyes like a half-hidden fire,
While his keen crooked horns through the storm of his mane
Like black lances lifted and lifted again;
And I looked but this once, for the fire licked through,
And he fell and was lost, as we rode two and two.
I looked to my left then, and nose, neck, and shoulder
Sank slowly, sank surely, till back to my thighs;
And up through the black blowing veil of her hair
Did beam full in mine her two marvelous eyes
With a longing and love, yet look of despair,
And a pity for me, as she felt the smoke fold her,
And flames reaching far for her glorious hair.
Her sinking steed faltered, his eager ears fell
To and fro and unsteady, and all the neck’s swell
Did subside and recede, and the nerves fell as dead.
Then she saw that my own steed still lorded his head
With a look of delight, for this Paché, you see,
Was her father’s and once at the South Santafee
Had won a whole herd, sweeping everything down
In a race where the world came to run for the crown;
And so when I won the true heart of my bride,――
My neighbor’s and deadliest enemy’s child,
And child of the kingly war-chief of his tribe,――
She brought me this steed to the border the night
She met Revels and me in her perilous flight,
From the lodge of the chief to the north Brazos side;
And said, so half guessing of ill as she smiled,
As if jesting, that I, and I only, should ride
The fleet-footed Paché, so if kin should pursue
I should surely escape without other ado
Than to ride, without blood, to the north Brazos side,
And await her,――and wait till the next hollow moon
Hung her horn in the palms, when surely and soon
And swift she would join me, and all would be well
Without bloodshed or word. And now as she fell
From the front, and went down in the ocean of fire,
The last that I saw was a look of delight
That I should escape,――a love,――a desire,――
Yet never a word, not a look of appeal.――
Lest I should reach hand, should stay hand or stay heel
One instant for her in my terrible flight.
Then the rushing of fire rose around me and under,
And the howling of beast like the sound of thunder,――
Beasts burning and blind and forced onward and over,
As the passionate flame reached around them and wove her
Hands in their hair, and kissed hot till they died,――
Till they died with a wild and a desolate moan,
As a sea heart-broken on the hard brown stone,
And into the Brazos I rode all alone――
All alone, save only a horse long-limbed,
And blind and bare and burnt to the skin.
Then just as the terrible sea came in
And tumbled its thousands hot into the tide,
Till the tide blocked up and the swift stream brimmed
In eddies, we struck on the opposite side.
“Sell Paché――blind Paché? Now, mister! look here!
You have slept in my tent and partook of my cheer
Many days, many days, on this rugged frontier,”
For the ways they were rough and Comanches were near;
“But you’d better pack up, sir! That tent is too small
For us two after this! Has an old mountaineer,
Do you book-men believe, get no tum-tum at all?
Sell Paché! You buy him! a bag full of gold!
You show him! Tell of him the tale I have told!
Why he bore me through fire, and is blind and is old!
... Now pack up your papers, and get up and spin
To them cities you tell of.... Blast you and your tin!”
* * * * *
JOAQUIN MILLER’S ALASKA LETTER.
As a specimen of this author’s prose writing and style, we
present the following extract from a syndicate letter clipped
from the “Philadelphia Inquirer.”
_Head of Lake Bennett, Alaska_, August 2, 1897.
I WRITE by the bank of what is already a big river, and at the
fountain head of the mighty Yukon, the second if not the first of
American rivers. We have crossed the summit, passed the terrible
Chilkoot Pass and Crater Lake and Long Lake and Lideman Lake, and now
I sit down to tell the story of the past, while the man who is to take
me up the river six hundred miles to the Klondike rows his big scow,
full of cattle, brought from Seattle.
* * * * *
THE BEAUTY AND GRANDEUR OF CHILKOOT PASS.
All the pictures that had been painted by word, all on easel, or even
in imagination of Napoleon and his men climbing up the Alps, are but
childish playthings in comparison with the grandeur of Chilkoot Pass.
Starting up the steep ascent, we raised a shout and it ran the long,
steep and tortuous line that reached from a bluff above us, and over
and up till it lost itself in the clouds. And down to us from the
clouds, the shout and cry of exultation of those brave conquerers
came back, and only died away when the distance made it possible to
be heard no longer. And now we began to ascend.
It was not so hard as it seemed. The stupendous granite mountain,
the home of the avalanche and the father of glaciers, melted away
before us as we ascended, and in a single hour of brisk climbing we
stood against the summit or rather between the big granite blocks that
marked the summit. As I said before, the path is not so formidable
as it looked, and it is not half so formidable as represented, but
mark you, it is no boy’s play, no man’s play. It is a man’s and a big
strong man’s honest work, and takes strength of body and nerve of soul.
Right in the path and within ten feet of a snow bank that has not
perished for a thousand years, I picked and ate a little strawberry,
and as I rested and roamed about a bit, looking down into the brightly
blue lake that made the head waters of the Yukon, I gathered a little
sun flower, a wild hyacinth and a wild tea blossom for my buttonhole.
OUR MOST NOTED NOVELISTS.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER.
THE WALTER SCOTT OF AMERICA.
OUR first American novelist, and to the present time perhaps the
only American novelist whose fame is permanently established among
foreigners, is James Fenimore Cooper. While Washington Irving, our
first writer of short stories, several years Cooper’s senior, was
so strikingly popular in England and America, Cooper’s “Spy” and
“Pilot” and the “Last of the Mohicans” went beyond the bounds of the
English language, and the Spaniard, the Frenchman, the German, the
Italian and others had placed him beside their own classics and were
dividing honors between him and Sir Walter Scott; and it was they who
first called him the Walter Scott of America. Nor was this judgment
altogether wrong. For six or seven years Scott’s Waverly Novels
had been appearing, and his “Ivanhoe,” which was first published in
1820――the first historical novel of the world――had given the clue to
Cooper for “The Spy,” which appeared in 1821, the first historical
novel of America. Both books were translated into foreign languages by
the same translators, and made for their respective authors quick and
lasting fame.
James Fenimore Cooper was born in Burlington, New Jersey, September 15,
1789――the same year that George Washington was inaugurated President
of the United States. His father owned many thousand acres of wild
land on the head waters of the Susquehanna River in New York, and
while James was an infant removed thither and built a stately mansion
on Otsego Lake, near the point where the little river issues forth
on its journey to the sea. Around Otsego Hall, as it was called,
the village of Cooperstown grew up. In this wilderness young Cooper
passed his childhood, a hundred miles beyond the advancing lines
of civilization. Along the shores of the beautiful lake, shut in by
untouched forests, or in the woods themselves, which rose and fell
unbroken――except here and there by a pioneer’s hut or a trapper’s
camp――he passed his boyhood days and slept at night among the solemn
silence of nature’s primeval grandeur. All the delicate arts of the
forest, the craft of the woodsman, the trick of the trapper, the
stratagem of the Indian fighter, the wiley shrewdness of the tawny
savage, the hardships and dangers of pioneer life were as familiar to
Cooper as were the legends of North Britain and the stirring ballads
of the highlands and the lowlands to Walter Scott. But for this
experience we should never have had the famous Leather Stocking Tales.
From this wilderness the boy was sent at the age of thirteen to Yale
College, where he remained three years, but was too restless and
adventurous to devote himself diligently to study and was dismissed
in disgrace at sixteen. For one year he shipped before the mast as
a common sailor and for the next five years served as a midshipman
in the United States Navy, making himself master of that knowledge
and detail of nautical life which he afterwards employed to so much
advantage in his romances of the sea.
In 1811 Cooper resigned his post as midshipman, and married Miss
Delancey, with whom he lived happily for forty years. The first
few years of his married life were spent in quiet retirement. For
some months he resided in Westchester County, the scene of his book
“The Spy.” Then he removed to his old home at Cooperstown and took
possession of the family mansion, to which he had fallen heir through
the death of his father. Here he prepared to spend his life as a
quiet country gentleman, and did so until a mere accident called him
into authorship. Up to that date he seems never to have touched a
pen or even thought of one except to write an ordinary letter. He
was, however, fond of reading, and often read aloud to his wife. One
day while reading a British novel he looked up and playfully said:
“I could write a better book than that myself.” “Suppose you try,”
replied his wife, and retiring to his library he wrote a chapter which
he read to Mrs. Cooper. She was pleased with it and suggested that he
continue, which he did, and published the book, under the title of
“Precaution,” in 1820.
No one at that time had thought of writing a novel with the scene laid
in America, and “Precaution,” which had an English setting, was so
thoroughly English that it was reviewed in London with no suspicion
of its American authorship. The success which it met, while not great,
impressed Cooper that as he had not failed with a novel describing
British life, of which he knew little, he might succeed with one on
American life, of which he knew much. It was a happy thought. Scott’s
“Ivanhoe” had just been read by him and it suggested an American
historical theme, and he wrote the story of “The Spy,” which he
published in 1821. It was a tale of the Revolution, in which the
central figure, Harvey Birch, the spy, is one of the most interesting
and effective characters in the realm of romantic literature. It
quickly followed Scott’s “Ivanhoe” into many languages.
Encouraged by the plaudits from both sides of the Atlantic Cooper
wrote another story, “The Pioneers” (1823), which was the first
attempt to put into fiction the life of the frontier and the character
of the backwoodsman. Here Cooper was in his element, on firm ground,
familiar to him from his infancy, but the book was a revelation
to the outside world. It is in this work that one of the greatest
characters in fiction, the old backwoodsman Natty Bumpo――the famous
Leather-Stocking――appeared and gave his name to a series of tales,
comprised, in five volumes, which was not finally completed for twenty
years. Strange to say, this famous series of books was not written in
regular order. To follow the story logically the reader is recommended
to read first the “Deerslayer,” next the “Last of the Mohicans,”
followed by “The Pathfinder,” then “The Pioneers,” and last “The
Prairie,” which ends with the death of Leather-Stocking.
The sea tales of Cooper were also suggested by Walter Scott, who
published the “Pirate” in 1821. This book was being discussed by
Cooper and some friends. The latter took the position that Scott could
not have been its author since he was a lawyer and therefore could
not have the knowledge of sea life which the book displayed. Cooper,
being himself a mariner, declared that it could not have been written
by a man familiar with the sea. He argued that it lacked that detail
of information which no mariner would have failed to exhibit. To prove
this point he determined to write a sea tale, and in 1823 his book
“The Pilot” appeared, which was the first genuine salt-water novel
ever written and to this day is one of the best. Tom Coffin, the hero
of this novel, is the only one of all Cooper’s characters worthy to
take a place beside Leather-Stocking, and the two books were published
within two years of each other. In 1829 appeared “The Red Rover,”
which is wholly a tale of the ocean, as “The Last of the Mohicans” is
wholly a tale of the forest. In all, Cooper wrote ten sea tales, which
with his land stories established the fact that he was equally at home
whether on the green billows or under the green trees.
In 1839 Cooper published his “History of the United States Navy,”
which is to this day the only authority on the subject for the period
of which it treats. He also wrote many other novels on American
subjects and some eight or ten like “Bravo,” “The Headsman” and others
on European themes; but it is by “The Spy,” the five Leather-Stocking
tales, and four or five of his sea tales that his fame has been
secured and will be maintained.
In 1822, after “The Spy” had made Cooper famous, he removed to New
York, where he lived for a period of four years, one of the most
popular men in the metropolis. His force of character, big-heartedness,
and genial, companionable nature――notwithstanding the fact that he was
contentious and frequently got into the most heated discussions――made
him unusually popular with those who knew him. He had many friends,
and his friends were the best citizens of New York. He founded the
“Bread and Cheese Lunch,” to which belonged Chancellor Kent, the
poets Fitz-Green Halleck and Wm. Cullen Bryant, Samuel Morse, the
inventor of the telegraph, and many other representatives of science,
literature, and the learned professions. In 1826 he sailed for Europe,
in various parts of which he resided for a period of six years. Before
his departure he was tendered a dinner in New York, which was attended
by many of the most prominent men of the nation. Washington Irving
had gone to the Old World eleven years before and traveled throughout
Great Britain and over the Continent, but Cooper’s works, though
it was but six years since his first volume was published, were at
this time more widely known than those of Irving; and with the author
of the “Sketchbook” he divided the honors which the Old World so
generously showered upon those two brilliant representatives of the
New.
Many pleasant pages might be filled with the records of Cooper’s six
years in Europe, during which time he enjoyed the association and
respect of the greatest literary personages of the Old World. It
would be interesting to tell how Sir Walter Scott sought him out in
Paris and renewed the acquaintance again in London; how he lived in
friendship and intimacy with General Lafayette at the French capital;
to tell of his associations with Wordsworth and Rogers in London; his
intimate friendship with the great Italian Greenough, and his fondness
for Italy, which country he preferred above all others outside of
America; of the delightful little villa where he lived in Florence,
where he said he could look out upon green leaves and write to the
music of the birds; to picture him settled for a summer in Naples;
living in Tasso’s villa at Sarento, writing his stories in the
same house in which the great Latin author had lived, with the same
glorious view of the sea and the bay, and the surf dashing almost
against its walls. But space forbids that we should indulge in
recounting these pleasant reminiscences. Let it be said that wherever
he was he was thoroughly and pronouncedly an American. He was much
annoyed by the ignorance and prejudice of the English in all that
related to his country. In France he vigorously defended the system
of American government in a public pamphlet which he issued in favor
of General Lafayette, upon whom the public press was making an attack.
He was equally in earnest in bringing forward the claims of our poets,
and was accustomed at literary meetings and dinner parties to carry
volumes of Bryant, Halleck, Drake and others, from which he read
quotations to prove his assertions of their merits. Almost every
prominent American who visited Europe during his seven years’ sojourn
abroad brought back pleasant recollections of his intercourse with the
great and patriotic novelist.
Cooper returned to America in 1833, the same year that Washington
Irving came back to his native land. He retired to his home at
Cooperstown, where he spent the remaining nineteen years of his
life, dying on the 14th day of September, 1852, one day before
the sixty-second anniversary of his birth. His palatial home at
Cooperstown, as were also his various places of residence in New
York and foreign lands, were always open to his deserving countrymen,
and many are the ambitious young aspirants in art, literature and
politics who have left his hospitable roof with higher ideals, loftier
ambitions and also with a more exalted patriotism.
A few days after his death a meeting of prominent men was held in New
York in honor of their distinguished countryman. ♦Washington Irving
presided and William Cullen Bryant delivered an oration paying fitting
tribute to the genius of the first great American novelist, who was
first to show how fit for fiction were the scenes, the characters, and
the history of his native land. Nearly fifty years have passed since
that day, but Cooper’s men of the sea and his men of the forest and
the plain still survive, because they deserve to live, because they
were true when they were written, and remain to-day the best of their
kind. Though other fashions in fiction have come and gone and other
novelists have a more finished art nowadays, no one of them all has
succeeded more completely in doing what he tried to do than did James
Fenimore Cooper.
♦ ‘Washingion’ replaced with ‘Washington’
If we should visit Cooperstown, New York, the most interesting spot
we should see would be the grave of America’s first great novelist;
and the one striking feature about it would be the marble statue of
Leather Stocking, with dog and gun, overlooking the last resting-place
of his great creator. Then we should visit the house and go into the
library and sit in the chair and lean over the table where he was
created. Then down to the beautiful Otsego Lake, and as the little
pleasure steamer comes into view we peer to catch the gilded name
painted on its side. Nearer it comes, and we read with delight “Natty
Bumpo,” the real name of Leather Stocking. Otsego Hall, the cemetery
and the lake alike, are a shrine to the memory of Cooper and this
greatest hero of American fiction. And we turn away determined to read
again the whole of the _Leather Stocking Tales._
* * * * *
ENCOUNTER WITH A PANTHER.
(FROM “THE PIONEERS.”)
BY this time they had gained the summit of the mountain, where they
left the highway, and pursued their course under the shade of the
stately trees that crowned the eminence. The day was becoming warm,
and the girls plunged more deeply into the forest, as they found
its invigorating coolness agreeably contrasted to the excessive heat
they had experienced in the ascent. The conversation, as if by mutual
consent, was entirely changed to the little incidents and scenes of
their walk, and every tall pine, and every shrub or flower called
forth some simple expression of admiration. In this manner they
proceeded along the margin of the precipice, catching occasional
glimpses of the placid Otsego, or pausing to listen to the rattling of
wheels and the sounds of hammers that rose from the valley, to mingle
the signs of men with the scenes of nature, when Elizabeth suddenly
started and exclaimed:
“Listen! There are the cries of a child on this mountain! Is there
a clearing near us, or can some little one have strayed from its
parents?”
“Such things frequently happen,” returned Louisa. “Let us follow the
sounds; it may be a wanderer starving on the hill.”
Urged by this consideration, the females pursued the low, mournful
sounds, that proceeded from the forest, with quick impatient steps.
More than once the ardent Elizabeth was on the point of announcing
that she saw the sufferer, when Louisa caught her by the arm, and
pointing behind them, cried, “Look at the dog!”
Brave had been their companion from the time the voice of his
young mistress lured him from his kennel, to the present moment.
His advanced age had long before deprived him of his activity; and
when his companions stopped to view the scenery, or to add to their
bouquets, the mastiff would lay his huge frame on the ground and await
their movements, with his eyes closed, and a listlessness in his air
that ill accorded with the character of a protector. But when, aroused
by this cry from Louisa, Miss Temple turned, she saw the dog with his
eyes keenly set on some distant object, his head bent near the ground,
and his hair actually rising on his body, through fright or anger. It
was most probably the latter, for he was growling in a low key, and
occasionally showing his teeth in a manner that would have terrified
his mistress, had she not so well known his good qualities.
“Brave!” she said, “be quiet, Brave! what do you see, fellow?”
At the sound of her voice, the rage of the mastiff, instead of being
at all diminished, was very sensibly increased. He stalked in front of
the ladies, and seated himself at the feet of his mistress, growling
louder than before, and occasionally giving vent to his ire by a short,
surly barking.
“What does he see?” said Elizabeth; “there must be some animal in
sight.”
Hearing no answer from her companion, Miss Temple turned her head, and
beheld Louisa, standing with her face whitened to the color of death,
and her finger pointing upward, with a sort of flickering, convulsed
motion. The quick eye of Elizabeth glanced in the direction indicated
by her friend, where she saw the fierce front and glaring eyes of a
female panther, fixed on them in horrid malignity, and threatening to
leap.
“Let us fly,” exclaimed Elizabeth, grasping the arm of Louisa, whose
form yielded like melting snow.
There was not a single feeling in the temperament of Elizabeth Temple
that could prompt her to desert a companion in such an extremity. She
fell on her knees, by the side of the inanimate Louisa, tearing from
the person of her friend, with instinctive readiness, such parts of
her dress as might obstruct her respiration, and encouraging their
only safeguard, the dog, at the same time, by the sounds of her voice.
“Courage, Brave!” she cried, her own tones beginning to tremble,
“courage, courage, good Brave!”
A quarter-grown cub, that had hitherto been unseen, now appeared,
dropping from the branches of a sapling that grew under the shade of
the beech which held its dam. This ignorant, but vicious creature,
approached the dog, imitating the actions and sounds of its parent,
but exhibiting a strange mixture of the playfulness of a kitten with
the ferocity of its race. Standing on its hind-legs, it would rend
the bark of a tree with its forepaws, and play the antics of a cat;
and then, by lashing itself with its tail, growling and scratching
the earth, it would attempt the manifestations of anger that rendered
its parent so terrific. All this time Brave stood firm and undaunted,
his short tail erect, his body drawn backward on its haunches, and
his eyes following the movements of both dam and cub. At every gambol
played by the latter, it approached nigher to the dog, the growling of
the three becoming more horrid at each moment, until the younger beast,
overleaping its intended bound, fell directly before the mastiff.
There was a moment of fearful cries and struggles, but they ended
almost as soon as commenced, by the cub appearing in the air, hurled
from the jaws of Brave, with a violence that sent it against a tree so
forcibly as to render it completely senseless.
Elizabeth witnessed the short struggle, and her blood was warming
with the triumph of the dog when she saw the form of the old panther
in the air, springing twenty feet from the branch of the beech to the
back of the mastiff. No words of ours can describe the fury of the
conflict that followed. It was a confused struggle on the dry leaves,
accompanied by loud and terrific cries. Miss Temple continued on her
knees, bending over the form of Louisa, her eyes fixed on the animals,
with an interest so horrid, and yet so intense, that she almost forgot
her own stake in the result. So rapid and vigorous were the bounds of
the inhabitant of the forest, that its active frame seemed constantly
in the air, while the dog nobly faced his foe at each successive leap.
When the panther lighted on the shoulders of the mastiff, which was
its constant aim, old Brave, though torn with her talons, and stained
with his own blood, that already flowed from a dozen wounds, would
shake off his furious foe like a feather, and rearing on his hind-legs,
rush to the fray again, with jaws distended and a dauntless eye. But
age, and his pampered life, greatly disqualified the noble mastiff
for such a struggle. In everything but courage he was only the vestige
of what he had once been. A higher bound than ever raised the wary
and furious beast far beyond the reach of the dog, who was making
a desperate but fruitless dash at her, from which she alighted in a
favorable position, on the back of her aged foe. For a single moment
only could the panther remain there, the great strength of the dog
returning with a convulsive effort. But Elizabeth saw, as Brave
fastened his teeth in the side of his enemy, that the collar of brass
around his neck, which had been glittering throughout the fray, was
of the color of blood, and directly, that his frame was sinking to
the earth, where it soon lay prostrate and helpless. Several mighty
efforts of the wild-cat to extricate herself from the jaws of the
dog followed, but they were fruitless, until the mastiff turned on
his back, his lips collapsed, and his teeth loosened, when the short
convulsions and stillness that succeeded announced the death of poor
Brave.
Elizabeth now lay wholly at the mercy of the beast. There is said to
be something in the front of the image of the Maker that daunts the
hearts of the inferior beings of his creation; and it would seem that
some such power in the present instance suspended the threatened blow.
The eyes of the monster and the kneeling maiden met for an instant,
when the former stooped to examine her fallen foe; next to scent her
luckless cub. From the latter examination it turned, however, with its
eyes apparently emitting flashes of fire, its tail lashing its sides
furiously, and its claws projecting inches from her broad feet.
Miss Temple did not or could not move. Her hands were clasped in the
attitude of prayer, but her eyes were still drawn to her terrible
enemy――her cheeks were blanched to the whiteness of marble, and her
lips were slightly separated with horror. The moment seemed now to
have arrived for the fatal termination, and the beautiful figure of
Elizabeth was bowing meekly to the stroke, when a rustling of leaves
behind seemed rather to mock the organs than to meet her ears.
“Hist! hist!” said a low voice, “stoop lower, gal! your bonnet hides
the creature’s head.”
It was rather the yielding of nature than a compliance with this
unexpected order, that caused the head of our heroine to sink on her
bosom; when she heard the report of the rifle, the whiz of the bullet,
and the enraged cries of the beast, who was rolling over on the earth,
biting its own flesh, and tearing the twigs and branches within its
reach. At the next instant the form of Leather-Stocking rushed by her,
and he called aloud:
“Come in, Hector, come in old fool; ’tis a hard-lived animal, and may
jump agin.”
Natty fearlessly maintained his position in front of the females,
notwithstanding the violent bounds and threatening aspect of the
wounded panther, which gave several indications of returning strength
and ferocity until his rifle was again loaded, when he stepped up to
the enraged animal, and, placing the muzzle close to its head, every
spark of life was extinguished by the discharge.
* * * * *
THE CAPTURE OF A WHALE.
“TOM,” cried Barnstable, starting, “there is the blow of a whale.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” returned the cockswain, with undisturbed composure;
“here is his spout, not half a mile to seaward; the easterly gale
has driven the creater to leeward, and he begins to find himself in
shoal water. He’s been sleeping, while he should have been working to
windward!”
“The fellow takes it coolly, too! he’s in no hurry to get an offing.”
“I rather conclude, sir,” said the cockswain, rolling over his tobacco
in his mouth very composedly, while his little sunken eyes began
to twinkle with pleasure at the sight, “the gentleman has lost his
reckoning, and don’t know which way to head, to take himself back into
blue water.”
“’Tis a fin back!” exclaimed the lieutenant; “he will soon make
headway, and be off.”
“No, sir; ’tis a right whale,” answered Tom; “I saw his spout; he
threw up a pair of as pretty rainbows as a Christian would wish to
look at. He’s a raal oil-butt, that fellow!”
Barnstable laughed, and exclaimed, in joyous tones――
“Give strong way, my hearties! There seems nothing better to be done;
let us have a stroke of a harpoon at that impudent rascal.”
The men shouted spontaneously, and the old cockswain suffered his
solemn visage to relax into a small laugh, while the whaleboat sprang
forward like a courser for the goal. During the few minutes they were
pulling towards their game, long Tom arose from his crouching attitude
in the stern sheets, and transferred his huge frame to the bows of
the boat, where he made such preparation to strike the whale as the
occasion required.
The tub, containing about half of a whale line, was placed at the feet
of Barnstable, who had been preparing an oar to steer with, in place
of the rudder, which was unshipped in order that, if necessary, the
boat might be whirled around when not advancing.
Their approach was utterly unnoticed by the monster of the deep, who
continued to amuse himself with throwing the water in two circular
spouts high into the air, occasionally flourishing the broad flukes
of his tail with graceful but terrific force, until the hardy seamen
were within a few hundred feet of him, when he suddenly cast his head
downwards, and, without apparent effort, reared his immense body for
many feet above the water, waving his tail violently, and producing a
whizzing noise, that sounded like the rushing of winds. The cockswain
stood erect, poising his harpoon, ready for the blow; but, when he
beheld the creature assuming his formidable attitude, he waved his
hand to his commander, who instantly signed to his men to cease rowing.
In this situation the sportsmen rested a few moments, while the whale
struck several blows on the water in rapid succession, the noise of
which re-echoed along the cliffs like the hollow reports of so many
cannon. After the wanton exhibition of his terrible strength, the
monster sunk again into his native element, and slowly disappeared
from the eyes of his pursuers.
“Which way did he head, Tom?” cried Barnstable, the moment the whale
was out of sight.
“Pretty much up and down, sir,” returned the cockswain, whose eye was
gradually brightening with the excitement of the sport; “he’ll soon
run his nose against the bottom, if he stands long on that course, and
will be glad enough to get another snuff of pure air; send her a few
fathoms to starboard, sir, and I promise we shall not be out of his
track.”
The conjecture of the experienced old seaman proved true, for in a
few minutes the water broke near them, and another spout was cast into
the air, when the huge animal rushed for half his length in the same
direction, and fell on the sea with a turbulence and foam equal to
that which is produced by the launching of a vessel, for the first
time, into its proper element. After the evolution, the whale rolled
heavily, and seemed to rest from further efforts.
His slightest movements were closely watched by Barnstable and his
cockswain, and, when he was in a state of comparative rest, the former
gave a signal to his crew to ply their oars once more. A few long and
vigorous strokes sent the boat directly up to the broadside of the
whale, with its bows pointing toward one of the fins, which was, at
times, as the animal yielded sluggishly to the action of the waves,
exposed to view.
The cockswain poised his harpoon with much precision and then darted
it from him with a violence that buried the iron in the body of their
foe. The instant the blow was made, long Tom shouted, with singular
earnestness,――
“Starn all!”
“Stern all!”, echoed Barnstable; when the obedient seamen, by united
efforts, forced the boat in a backward direction, beyond the reach of
any blow from their formidable antagonist. The alarmed animal, however,
meditated no such resistance; ignorant of his own power, and of the
insignificance of his enemies, he sought refuge in flight. One moment
of stupid surprise succeeded the entrance of the iron, when he cast
his huge tail into the air with a violence that threw the sea around
him into increased commotion, and then disappeared, with the quickness
of lightning, amid a cloud of foam.
“Snub him!” shouted Barnstable; “hold on, Tom; he rises already.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the composed cockswain, seizing the line,
which was running out of the boat with a velocity that rendered such
a manœuvre rather hazardous.
The boat was dragged violently in his wake, and cut through the
billows with a terrific rapidity, that at moments appeared to bury the
slight fabric in the ocean. When long Tom beheld his victim throwing
his spouts on high again, he pointed with exultation to the jetting
fluid, which was streaked with the deep red of blood, and cried,――
“Ay, I’ve touched the fellow’s life! It must be more than two foot of
blubber that stops my iron from reaching the life of any whale that
ever sculled the ocean.”
“I believe you have saved yourself the trouble of using the bayonet
you have rigged for a lance,” said his commander, who entered into the
sport with all the ardor of one whose youth had been chiefly passed in
such pursuits; “feel your line, Master Coffin; can we haul alongside
of our enemy? I like not the course he is steering, as he tows us from
the schooner.”
“’Tis the creater’s way, sir,” said the cockswain; “you know they need
the air in their nostrils when they run, the same as a man; but lay
hold, boys, and let us haul up to him.”
The seaman now seized their whale-line, and slowly drew their boat
to within a few feet of the tail of the fish, whose progress became
sensibly less rapid as he grew weak with the loss of blood. In a few
minutes he stopped running, and appeared to roll uneasily on the water,
as if suffering the agony of death.
“Shall we pull in and finish him, Tom?” cried Barnstable; “a few sets
from your bayonet would do it.”
The cockswain stood examining his game with cool discretion, and
replied to this interrogatory,――
“No, sir, no; he’s going into his flurry; there’s no occasion for
disgracing ourselves by using a soldier’s weapon in taking a whale.
Starn off, sir, starn off! the creater’s in his flurry.”
The warning of the prudent cockswain was promptly obeyed, and the
boat cautiously drew off to a distance, leaving to the animal a clear
space while under its dying agonies. From a state of perfect rest,
the terrible monster threw its tail on high as when in sport, but
its blows were trebled in rapidity and violence, till all was hid
from view by a pyramid of foam, that was deeply dyed with blood. The
roarings of the fish were like the bellowings of a herd of bulls, and,
to one who was ignorant of the fact, it would have appeared as if a
thousand monsters were engaged in deadly combat behind the bloody mist
that obstructed the view. Gradually these efforts subsided, and, when
the discolored water again settled down to the long and regular swell
of the ocean, the fish was seen exhausted, and yielding passively to
its fate. As life departed, the enormous black mass rolled to one side;
and when the white and glistening skin of the belly became apparent,
the seamen well knew that their victory was achieved.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
“THE GREATEST OF AMERICAN ROMANCERS.”
NO black knight in Sir Walter Scott’s novels, nor the red Indians of
Cooper, nor his famous pioneer, Leather Stocking of the forest, nor
his long Tom of the ocean, ever seemed more truly romantic than do
Hawthorne’s stern and gloomy Calvinists of “The Scarlet Letter,” and
“The House of Seven Gables,” or his Italian hero of “The Marble Faun.”
We have characterized Hawthorne as the greatest of American romancers.
We might have omitted the word _American_, for he has no equal in
romance perhaps in the world of letters. An eminent critic declares:
“His genius was greater than that of the idealist, Emerson. In all
his mysticism his style was always clear and exceedingly graceful,
while in those delicate, varied and permanent effects which are gained
by a happy arrangement of words in their sentences, together with
that unerring directness and unswerving force which characterize
his writings, no author in modern times has equalled him. To the
rhetorician, his style is a study; to the lay reader, a delight that
eludes analysis. He is the most eminent representative of the American
spirit in literature.”
It was in the old town of Salem, Massachusetts――where his Puritan
ancestors had lived for nearly two hundred years――with its haunted
memories of witches and strange sea tales; its stories of Endicott
and the Indians, and the sombre traditions of witchcraft and Puritan
persecution that Nathaniel Hawthorne was born July 4, 1804. And it was
in this grim, ancient city by the sea that the life of the renowned
romancer was greatly bound up. In his childhood the town was already
falling to decay, and his lonely surroundings filled his young
imagination with a ♦weirdness that found expression in the books
of his later life, and impressed upon his character a seriousness
that clung to him ever after. His father was a sea-captain,――but a
most melancholy and silent man,――who died when Nathaniel was four
years old. His mother lived a sad and secluded life, and the boy
thus early learned to exist in a strange and imaginative world of his
own creation. So fond of seclusion did he become that even after his
graduation from college in 1825, he returned to his old haunt at Salem
and resumed his solitary, dreamy existence. For twelve years, from
1825 to 1837, he went nowhere, he saw no one; he worked in his room
by day, reading and writing; at twilight he wandered out along the
shore, or through the darkened streets of the town. Certainly this
was no attractive life to most young men; but for Hawthorne it had
its fascination and during this time he was storing his mind, forming
his style, training his imagination and preparing for the splendid
literary fame of his later years.
♦ ‘wierdness’ replaced with ‘weirdness’
Illustration: “THE OLD MANSE,” CONCORD, MASS.
Built for Emerson’s grandfather. In this house Ralph Waldo
Emerson dwelt for ten years, and, here, in the same room
where Emerson wrote “Nature” and other philosophic essays,
Hawthorne prepared his “Twice Told Tales,” and “Mosses from
an Old Manse.” He declares the four years (1842–1846) spent
in this house were the happiest of his life.
Hawthorne received his early education in Salem, partly at the school
of Joseph E. Worcester, the author of “Worcester’s Dictionary.” He
entered Bowdoin College in 1821. The poet, Longfellow, and John S. C.
Abbott were his classmates; and Franklin Pierce――one class in advance
of him――was his close friend. He graduated in 1825 without any special
distinction. His first book, “Fanshawe,” a novel, was issued in 1826,
but so poor was its success that he suppressed its further publication.
Subsequently he placed the manuscript of a collection of stories in
the hands of his publisher, but timidly withdrew and destroyed them.
His first practical encouragement was received from Samuel G. Goodrich,
who published four stories in the “Token,” one of the annuals of
that time, in 1831. Mr. Goodrich also engaged Hawthorne as editor
of the “American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge,”
which position he occupied from 1836 to 1838. About this time he also
contributed some of his best stories to the “New England Magazine,”
“The Knickerbocker,” and the “Democratic Review.” It was a part of
these magazine stories which he collected and published in 1837 in
the volume entitled, “Twice Told Tales,” embodying the fruits of his
twelve years’ labor.
This book stamped the author as a man of stronger imagination and
deeper insight into human nature than Washington Irving evinced in
his famous sketches of the Hudson or Cooper in his frontier stories,
for delightful as was Irving’s writings and vivid as were Cooper’s
pictures, it was plain to be seen that Hawthorne had a richer
style and a firmer grasp of the art of fiction than either of them.
Longfellow, the poet, reviewed the book with hearty commendation, and
Poe predicted a brilliant future for the writer if he would abandon
allegory. Thus encouraged, Hawthorne came out from his seclusion into
the world again, and mixed once more with his fellow-men. His friend,
the historian, Bancroft, secured him a position in the Custom House
at Salem, in 1839, which he held for two years. This position he
lost through political jobbery on a trumped-up charge. For a few
months he then joined in the Brook Farm settlement, though he was
never in sympathy with the movement; nor was he a believer in the
transcendental notions of Emerson and his school. He remained a
staunch Democrat in the midst of the Abolitionists. His note-books
were full of his discontent with the life at the Brook Farm. His
observations of this enterprise took shape in the “Blythedale Romance”
which is the only literary memorial of the association. The heroine of
this novel was Margaret Fuller, under the name of “Zenobia,” and the
description of the drowning of Zenobia――a fate which Margaret Fuller
had met――is the most tragic passage in all the writings of the author.
In 1842 Hawthorne married Miss Sophia Peabody――a most fortunate and
happy marriage――and the young couple moved to Concord where they
lived in the house known as the “Old Manse,” which had been built for
Emerson’s grandfather, and in which Emerson himself dwelt ten years.
He chose for his study the same room in which the philosopher had
written his famous book “Nature.” Hawthorne declares that the happiest
period of his life were the four years spent in the “Old Manse.”
While living there he collected another lot of miscellaneous stories
and published them in 1845 as a second volume of “Twice-Told Tales,”
and the next year came his “Mosses from an Old Manse,” being also a
collection from his published writings. In 1846 a depleted income and
larger demands of a growing family made it necessary for him to seek
a business engagement. Through a friend he received an appointment as
Surveyor of Customs at Salem, and again removed to the old town where
he was born forty-two years before. It was during his engagement here,
from 1846 to 1849, that he planned and wrote his famous book “The
Scarlet Letter,” which was published in 1850.
A broader experience is needed to compose a full-grown novel than to
sketch a short tale. Scott was more than fifty when he published
“Waverly.” Cooper wrote the “Spy” when thirty-three. Thackeray, the
author of “Vanity Fair,” was almost forty when he finished that work.
“Adam Bede” appeared when George Elliot was in her fortieth year;
and the “Scarlet Letter,” greater than them all, did not appear until
1850, when its author was in his forty-seventh year. All critics
readily agree that this romance is the masterpiece in American fiction.
The only novel in the United States that can be compared with it
is Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and, as a study of a type of
life――Puritan life in New England――“The Scarlet Letter” is superior to
Mrs. Stowe’s immortal work. One-half a century has passed since “The
Scarlet Letter” was written; but it stands to-day more popular than
ever before.
Enumerated briefly, the books written by Hawthorne in the order
of their publication are as follows: “Fanshawe,” a novel (1826),
suppressed by the author; “Twice-Told Tales” (1837), a collection of
magazine stories; “Twice-Told Tales” (second volume, 1845) “Mosses
from an Old Manse” (1846), written while he lived at the “Old Manse”;
“The Scarlet Letter” (1850), his greatest book; “The House of Seven
Gables” (1851), written while he lived at Lenox, Massachusetts; “The
Wonder Book” (1851), a volume of classic stories for children; “The
Blythedale Romance” (1852); “Life of Franklin Pierce” (1852), which
was written to assist his friend Pierce, who was running for President
of the United States; “Tanglewood Tales” (1853), another work for
children, continuing the classic legends of his “Wonder Book,”
reciting the adventures of those who went forth to seek the “Golden
Fleece,” to explore the labyrinth of the “Minotaur” and sow the
“Dragon’s Teeth.” Pierce was elected President in 1853 and rewarded
Hawthorne by appointing him Consul to Liverpool. This position he
filled for four years and afterwards spent three years in traveling on
the Continent, during which time he gathered material for the greatest
of his books――next to “The Scarlet Letter”――entitled “The Marble
Faun,” which was brought out in England in 1860, and the same year
Mr. Hawthorne returned to America and spent the remainder of his life
at “The Wayside” in Concord. During his residence here he wrote for
the “Atlantic Monthly” the papers which were collected and published
in 1863 under the title of “Our Old Home.” After Mr. Hawthorne’s
death, his unpublished manuscripts, “The Dolliver Romance,” “Septimius
Felton” and “Dr. Grimshawe’s Secret,” were published. Mrs. Hawthorne,
also, edited and published her husband’s “American and English
Note-Books” and his “French and Italian Note-Books” in 1869. The
best life of the author is perhaps that written by his son, Julian
Hawthorne, which appeared in 1885, entitled “Nathaniel Hawthorne and
His Wife; a Biography.”
A new and complete edition of Hawthorne’s works has been lately issued
in twenty volumes; also a compact and illustrated library edition in
seven volumes.
Nathaniel Hawthorne died May 18, 1864, while traveling with his friend
and college-mate, Ex-President Pierce, in the White Mountains, and was
buried near where Emerson and Thoreau were later placed in Concord
Cemetery. Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell and Whittier were at the funeral.
His publisher, Mr. Field, was also there and wrote: “We carried him
through the blossoming orchards of Concord and laid him down in a
group of pines on the hillside, the unfinished romance which had
cost him such anxiety laid upon his coffin.” Mr. Longfellow, in an
exquisite poem describes the scene, and referring to the uncompleted
romance in the closing lines says:
“Ah, who shall lift that wand of magic power,
And the lost clue regain?
The unfinished window in Alladin’s tower
Unfinished must remain.”
The noble wife, who had been the inspiration and practical stimulus
of the great romancer, survived her distinguished husband nearly
seven years. She died in London, aged sixty, February 26, 1871, and
was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, near the grave of Leigh Hunt.
* * * * *
EMERSON AND THE EMERSONITES.
(FROM “MOSSES FROM AN OLD MANSE.”)
THERE were circumstances around me which made it difficult to view
the world precisely as it exists; for severe and sober as was the Old
Manse, it was necessary to go but a little way beyond its threshold
before meeting with stranger moral shapes of men than might have
been encountered elsewhere in a circuit of a thousand miles. These
hobgoblins of flesh and blood were attracted thither by the wide
spreading influence of a great original thinker who had his earthly
abode at the opposite extremity of our village. His mind acted upon
other minds of a certain constitution with wonderful magnetism, and
drew many men upon long pilgrimages to speak with him face to face.
Young visionaries, to whom just so much of insight had been imparted
as to make life all a labyrinth around them, came to seek the clew
which should guide them out of their self-involved bewilderment.
Gray-headed theorists, whose systems――at first air――had finally
imprisoned them in a fiery framework, traveled painfully to his door,
not to ask deliverance, but to invite the free spirit into their own
thralldom. People that had lighted upon a new thought――or thought
they had fancied new――came to Emerson as a finder of a glittering gem
hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value. Uncertain,
troubled, earnest wanderers through the midnight of the moral world
beheld his intellectual fire as a beacon burning upon a hill-top,
and climbing the difficult ascent, looked forth into the surrounding
obscurity more hopefully than hitherto. The light revealed objects
unseen before:――mountains, gleaming lakes, glimpses of creation
among the chaos: but also, as was unavoidable, it attracted bats and
owls and the whole host of night-birds, which flapped their dusty
wings against the gazer’s eyes, and sometimes were mistaken for
fowls of angelic feather. Such delusions always hover nigh whenever
a beacon-fire of truth is kindled.
For myself there had been epochs of my life when I too might have
asked of this prophet the master-word that should solve me the riddle
of the universe; but now, being happy, I felt as if there were no
question to be put; and therefore admired Emerson as a poet of deep
beauty and austere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a
philosopher. It was good, nevertheless, to meet him in the wood-paths,
or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused
about his presence, like the garment of a shining one; and he so quiet,
so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alive as if
expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the
heart of many a man had, perchance, inscriptions which he could not
read. But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling
more or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in
the brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness――new truth
being as heady as new wine.
Never was a poor country village infected with such a variety of queer,
strangely-dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon
themselves to be important agents of this world’s destiny, yet were
simply bores of the first water. Such, I imagine, is the invariable
character of persons who crowd so closely about an original thinker as
to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus become imbued with a false
originality. This triteness of noveltry is enough to make any man of
common sense blaspheme at all ideas of less than a century’s standing,
and pray that the world may be petrified and rendered immovable in
precisely the worst moral and physical state that it ever yet arrived
at, rather than be benefitted by such schemes of such philosophers.
* * * * *
PEARL.
(THE SCARLET LETTER. A ROMANCE. 1850.)
WE have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature,
whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of
Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance
of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as
she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more
brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over
the tiny features of this child! Her Pearl!――For so had Hester called
her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of
the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by
the comparison. But she named the infant “Pearl,” as being of great
price,――purchased with all she had,――her mother’s only treasure! How
strange, indeed! Men had marked this woman’s sin by a scarlet letter,
which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy
could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct
consequence of the sin which was thus punished, had given her a lovely
child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her
parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally
a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Hester Prynne
less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil;
she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good.
Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature,
ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should
correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.
Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its
vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs,
the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to
have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the
world’s first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace
which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire,
however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very
garb that precisely became it best. But little Pearl was not clad in
rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better
understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be
procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the
arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore before
the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed,
and such was the splendor of Pearl’s own proper beauty, shining
through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler
loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her,
on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled
with the child’s rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect.
Pearl’s aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this
one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope
between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp,
in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was
a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and
if, in any of her changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would
have ceased to be herself,――it would have been no longer Pearl!
One peculiarity of the child’s deportment remains yet to be told. The
very first thing which she had noticed, in her life, was――what?――not
the mother’s smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that
faint embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully
afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a
smile. By no means! But that first object of which Pearl seemed to
become aware was――shall we say it?――the scarlet letter on Hester’s
bosom! One day, as the mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s
eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about
the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it,
smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face
the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester
Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it
away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch
of Pearl’s baby-hand. Again, as if her mother’s agonized gesture were
meant only to make sport of her, did little Pearl look into her eyes,
and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester
had never felt a moment’s safety; not a moment’s calm enjoyment of her.
Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Pearl’s gaze
might never once be fixed upon the scarlet letter; but then, again, it
would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always
with that peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes.
* * * * *
SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE.
HOW various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs
beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment
befalling them! The new-born, the aged, the dying, the strong in
life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions.
The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell
together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over
which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that
are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue――guilt is on the
very edge of commission, and the impending deed might be averted;
guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There
are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to give
them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo! the
rain-drops are descending.
The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky,
hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon
the earth. At intervals the lightning flashes from their brooding
hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, traveling
slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls
through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to
rebel against the approaching storm. All people hurry homeward――all
that have a home; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on
desperately, at their leisure.
And now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwelling I perceive
the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding
the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick, fiery glare.
The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise
again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the
air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pavement, whirl
their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates.
Thus did Arethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst
of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue
lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first
awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let me give another
glance to the sea, where the foam breaks in long white lines upon a
broad expanse of blackness, or boils up in far-distant points, like
snowy mountain-tops in the eddies of a flood; and let me look once
more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which
the giant of the storm is riding in robes of mist, and at the town,
whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead;
and turning a single moment to the sky, now gloomy as an author’s
prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay! A
little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens; the sunbeams
find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest; and on yonder
darkest cloud, born, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another
world, and the trouble and tears of this, brightens forth the Rainbow!
* * * * *
A REMINISCENCE OF EARLY LIFE.
(FROM AMERICAN NOTE BOOKS.)
SALEM, Oct. 4th.
_Union Street, [Family Mansion.]_
... Here I sit in my old accustomed chamber, where I used to sit in
days gone by.... Here I have written many tales,――many that have been
burned to ashes, many that doubtless deserved the same fate. This
claims to be called a haunted chamber, for thousands upon thousands
of visions have appeared to me in it; and some few of them have become
visible to the world. If ever I should have a biographer, he ought to
make great mention of this chamber in my memoirs, because so much of
my lonely youth was wasted here, and here my mind and character were
formed; and here I have been glad and hopeful, and here I have been
despondent. And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for
the world to know me, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me
sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,――at least, till I
were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the
grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener
I was happy,――at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was
aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out
in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,――not, indeed, with a loud
roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,――and forth
I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to
my old solitude till now.... And now I begin to understand why I was
imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never
break through the viewless bolts and bars; for if I had sooner made
my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been
covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by
rude encounters with the multitude.... But living in solitude till
the fulness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth, and
the freshness of my heart.... I used to think that I could imagine
all passions, all feelings, and states of the heart and mind; but how
little did I know!... Indeed, we are but shadows; we are not endowed
with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the
thinnest substance of a dream,――till the heart be touched. That touch
creates us,――then we begin to be,――thereby we are beings of reality
and inheritors of eternity....
When we shall be endowed with our spiritual bodies, I think that they
will be so constituted that we may send thoughts and feelings any
distance in no time at all, and transfuse them, warm and fresh, into
the consciousness of those whom we love.... But, after all, perhaps it
is not wise to intermix fantastic ideas with the reality of affection.
Let us content ourselves to be earthly creatures, and hold communion
of spirit in such modes as are ordained to us.
Illustration: SOUVENIR OF HAWTHORNE
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDWARD EVERETT HALE.
“THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF AMERICA.”
EDWARD EVERETT HALE is to-day one of the best known and most beloved
of American authors. He is also a lecturer of note. He has probably
addressed as many audiences as any man in America. His work as a
preacher, as a historian and as a story-teller, entitles him to
fame; but his life has also been largely devoted to the formation of
organizations to better the moral, social and educational conditions
of the young people of his own and other lands. Recently he has been
deeply interested in the great Chatauqua movement, which he has done
much to develop.
His name is a household word in American homes, and the keynote of his
useful life may be expressed by the motto of one of his most popular
books, “Ten Times One is Ten:”――“Look up and not down! Look forward
and not backward! Look out and not in! Lend a hand!”
Edward Everett Hale was born in Boston, Massachusetts, April 3, 1822.
He graduated at Harvard University in 1839, at the age of seventeen
years. He took a post graduate course for two years in a Latin school
and read theology and church history. It was in 1842 that he was
licensed to preach by the Boston Association of Congregational
Ministers. During the winter of 1844–45 he served a church in
Washington, but removed the next year to Worcester, Massachusetts,
where he remained for ten years. In 1856 he was called to the South
Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston, which he has served for
more than three decades.
When a boy young Hale learned to set type in his father’s printing
office, and afterwards served on the “Daily Advertiser,” it is said,
in every capacity from reporter up to editor-in-chief. Before he was
twenty-one years old he wrote a large part of the “Monthly Chronicle”
and “Boston Miscellany,” and from that time to the present has done an
immense amount of newspaper and magazine work. He at one time edited
the “Christian Examiner” and also the “Sunday School Gazette.” He
founded a magazine entitled “The Old and the New” in 1869, which was
afterwards merged into “Scribner’s Monthly.” In 1866 he began the
publication of “Lend a Hand, a Record of Progress and Journal of
Organized Charity.”
As a writer of short stories, no man of modern times, perhaps, is his
superior, if indeed he has any equals. “My Double and How He Undid
Me,” published in 1859, was the first of his works to strike strongly
the popular fancy; but it was “The Man Without a Country,” issued in
1863, which entitled its author to a prominent place among the classic
short story-tellers of America, and produced a deep impression on
the public mind. His “Skeleton in a Closet” followed in 1866; and,
since that time his prolific pen has sent forth in the form of books
and magazine articles, a continuous stream of the most entertaining
literature in our language. He has the faculty of De Foe in giving to
his stories the appearance of reality, and thus has gained for himself
the title of “The Robinson Crusoe of America.”
Mr. Hale is also an historical writer and a student of great
attainment, and has contributed many papers of rare value to the
historical and antiquarian societies of both Europe and America. He is,
perhaps, the greatest of all living authorities on Spanish-American
affairs. He is the editor of “Original Documents from the State Paper
Office, London, and the British Museum; illustrating the History of
Sir Walter Raleigh’s First American Colony at Jamestown,” and other
historical works.
Throughout his life, Mr. Hale has always taken a patriotic interest
in public affairs for the general good of the nation. While he dearly
loves his native New England hills, his patriotism is bounded by no
narrow limits; it is as wide as his country. His voice is always the
foremost among those raised in praise or in defence of our national
institutions and our liberties. His influence has always been exerted
to make men and women better citizens and better Americans.
* * * * *
LOST.¹
(FROM “PHILIP NOLAN’S FRIENDS.”)
¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.
BUT as she ran, the path confused her. Could she have passed that
flaming sassafras without so much as noticing it? Any way she should
recognize the great mass of bays where she had last noticed the
panther’s tracks. She had seen them as she ran on, and as she came up.
She hurried on; but she certainly had returned much farther than she
went, when she came out on a strange log flung up in some freshet,
which she knew she had not seen before. And there was no clump of bays.
Was this being lost? Was she lost? Why, Inez had to confess to herself
that she was lost just a little bit, but nothing to be afraid of; but
still lost enough to talk about afterwards she certainly was.
Yet, as she said to herself again and again, she could not be a
quarter of a mile, nor half a quarter of a mile from camp. As soon as
they missed her――and by this time they had missed her――they would be
out to look for her. How provoking that she, of all the party, should
make so much bother to the rest! They would watch her now like so many
cats all the rest of the way. What a fool she was ever to leave the
knoll! So Inez stopped again, shouted again, and listened and listened,
to hear nothing but a swamp-owl.
If the sky had been clear, she would have had no cause for anxiety. In
that case they would have light enough to find her in. She would have
had the sunset glow to steer by; and she would have had no difficulty
in finding them. But with this horrid gray over everything she dared
not turn round, without fearing that she might lose the direction
in which the theory of the moment told her she ought to be faring.
And these openings which she had called trails――which were probably
broken by wild horses and wild oxen as they came down to the bayou to
drink――would not go in one direction for ten paces. They bent right
and left, this way and that; so that without some sure token of sun
or star, it was impossible, as Inez felt, to know which way she was
walking.
And at last this perplexity increased. She was conscious that the
sun must have set, and that the twilight, never long, was now fairly
upon her. All the time there was this fearful silence, only broken
by her own voice and that hateful owl. Was she wise to keep on in her
theories of this way or that way? She had never yet come back, either
upon the fallen cottonwood tree, or upon the bunch of bays which was
her landmark; and it was doubtless her wisest determination to stay
where she was. The chances that the larger party would find her were
much greater than that she alone would find them; but by this time
she was sure that, if she kept on in any direction, there was an even
chance that she was going farther and farther wrong.
But it was too cold for her to sit down, wrap herself never so closely
in her shawl. The poor girl tried this. She must keep in motion.
Back and forth she walked, fixing her march by signs which she could
not mistake even in the gathering darkness. How fast that darkness
gathered! The wind seemed to rise, too, as the night came on, and a
fine rain, that seemed as cold as snow to her, came to give the last
drop to her wretchedness. If she were tempted for a moment to abandon
her sentry-beat, and try this wild experiment or that, to the right
or left, some odious fallen trunk, wet with moss and decay, lay just
where she pressed into the shrubbery, as if placed there to reveal to
her her absolute powerlessness. She was dead with cold, and even in
all her wretchedness knew that she was hungry. How stupid to be hungry
when she had so much else to trouble her! But at least she would make
a system of her march. She would walk fifty times this way, to the
stump, and fifty times that way; then she would stop and cry out and
sound her war-whoop; then she would take up her sentry-march again.
And so she did. This way, at least, time would not pass without her
knowing whether it was midnight or no.
“Hark! God be praised, there is a gun! and there is another! and there
is another! They have come on the right track, and I am safe!” So she
shouted again, and sounded her war-whoop again, and listened,――and
then again, and listened again. One more gun! but then no more! Poor
Inez! Certainly they were all on one side of her. If only it was not
so piteously dark! If she could only walk half the distance in that
direction which her fifty sentry-beats made put together! But when
she struggled that way through the tangle, and over one wet log and
another, it was only to find her poor wet feet sinking down into mud
and water! She did not dare keep on. All that was left for her was to
find her tramping-ground again, and this she did.
“Good God, take care of me! My poor dear father――what would he say
if he knew his child was dying close to her friends? Dear mamma, keep
watch over your little girl!”――
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WM. DEAN HOWELLS.
(THE REALISTIC NOVELIST OF AMERICA.)
THE West has contributed many notable men to our nation within the
last half of the present century. There seems to be something in the
spirit of that developing section to stimulate the aspirations and
ambitions of those who grow up in its atmosphere. Progress, Enterprise,
“Excelsior” are the three words written upon its banner as the motto
for the sons of the middle West. It is there we go for many of our
leading statesmen. Thence we draw our presidents more largely than
from any other section, and the world of modern literature is also
seeking and finding its chiefest leaders among the sons and daughters
of that region. True they are generally transplanted to the Eastern
centres of publication and commercial life, but they were born and
grew up in the West.
Notably among the examples which might be cited, we mention William
Dean Howells, one of the greatest of modern American novelists, who
was born at Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, March 1st, 1837. Mr. Howells did
not enjoy the advantage of a collegiate education. At twelve years
of age he began to set type in his father’s printing office, which he
followed until he reached manhood, employing his odd time in writing
articles and verses for the newspapers, and while quite young did
editorial work for a leading daily in Cincinnati. At the age of
twenty-one, in 1858, he became the editor of the “Ohio State Journal”
at Columbus. Two years later he published in connection with John
James Piatt a small volume of verse entitled “Poems of two Friends.”
These youthful effusions were marked by that crystal like clearness of
thought, grace and artistic elegance of expression which characterize
his later writings. Mr. Howells came prominently before the public
in 1860 by publishing a carefully written and most excellent “Life of
Abraham Lincoln” which was extensively sold and read during that most
exciting presidential campaign, and no doubt contributed much to the
success of the candidate. Mr. Lincoln, in furnishing data for this
work, became well acquainted with the young author of twenty-three
and was so impressed with his ability in grasping and discussing state
affairs, and good sense generally, that he appointed him as ♦consul
to Venice.
♦ ‘cousul’ replaced with ‘consul’
During four years’ residence in that city Mr. Howells, in addition
to his official duties, learned the Italian language and studied
its literature. He also here gathered, the material for two
books, “Venitian Life” and “Italian Journeys.” He arranged for the
publication of the former in London as he passed through that city
in 1865 on his way home. The latter was brought out in America on
his return, appearing in 1867. Neither of these works are novels.
“Venetian Life” is a delightful description of the manners and
customs of real life in Venice. “Italian Journeys” is a charming
portrayal――almost a kinetoscopic view――of his journey from Venice
to Rome by the roundabout way of Genoa and Naples, with a visit to
Pompeii and Herculaneum, including artistic etchings of notable scenes.
The first attempt of Mr. Howells at story-telling, “Their Wedding
Journey,” appeared in 1871. This, while ranking as a novel, was really
a description of an actual bridal tour across New York. “A Chance
Acquaintance” (1873) was a more complete novel, but evidently it was
a venture of the imagination upon ground that had proven fruitful in
real life. It was modeled after “The Wedding Journey,” but described a
holiday season spent in journeying up the St. Lawrence River, stopping
at Quebec and Saguenay.
Since 1874 Mr. Howells has published one or more novels annually,
among which are the following: “A Foregone Conclusion” (1874), “A
Counterfeit Presentment” (1877), “The Lady of the Aroostook” (1878),
“The Undiscovered Country” (1880), “A Fearful Responsibility” (1882),
“A Modern Instance” and “Dr. Breen’s Practice” (1883), “A Woman’s
Reason” (1884), “Tuscan Cities” and “The Rise of Silas Lapham” (1885),
“The Minister’s Charge” and “Indian Summer” (1886), “April Hopes”
(1887), “Annie Kilburn” (1888), “Hazard of New Fortune” (1889). Since
1890 Mr. Howells has continued his literary activity with increased,
rather than abating, energy. Among his noted later novels are “A
Traveler from Altruria” and “The Landlord at Lion’s Head” (the latter
issued in 1897). Other notable books of his are “Stops at Various
Quills,” “My Literary Passion,” “Library of Universal Adventure,”
“Modern Italian Poets,” “Christmas Every Day” and “A Boy’s Town,” the
two last mentioned being for juvenile readers, with illustrations.
Mr. Howells’ accurate attention to details gives to his stories a
most realistic flavor, making his books seem rather photographic than
artistic. He shuns imposing characters and thrilling incidents, and
makes much of interesting people and ordinary events in our social
life. A broad grasp of our national characteristics and an intimate
acquaintance with our institutions gives him a facility in producing
minute studies of certain aspects of society and types of character,
which no other writer in America has approached. For instance, his
“Undiscovered Country” was an exhaustive study and presentation of
spiritualism, as it is witnessed and taught in New England. And those
who admire Mr. Howells’ writings will find in “The Landlord at Lion’s
Head” a clear-cut statement of the important sociological problem yet
to be solved, upon the other; which problem is also characteristic of
other of his books. Thoughtful readers of Mr. Howells’ novels gain
much information on vital questions of society and government, which
broaden the mind and cannot fail to be of permanent benefit.
From 1872 to 1881 Mr. Howells was editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,”
and since 1886 he has conducted the department known as the “Editor’s
Study” in “Harper’s Magazine,” contributing much to other periodicals
at the same time. He is also well known as a poet, but has so
overshadowed this side of himself by his greater power as a novelist,
that he is placed with that class of writers. In 1873 a collection
of his poems was published. While in Venice he wrote “No Love Lost;
a Romance of Travel,” which was published in 1869, and stamped him as
a poet of ability.
* * * * *
THE FIRST BOARDER.
(FROM “THE LANDLORD AT LION’S HEAD.” 1897.)
_By Permission of Messrs. Harper & Brothers, Publishers._
THE table was set for him alone, and it affected him as if the
family had been hurried away from it that he might have it to himself.
Everything was very simple; the iron forks had two prongs; the knives
bone handles; the dull glass was pressed; the heavy plates and cups
were white, but so was the cloth, and all were clean. The woman
brought in a good boiled dinner of corned beef, potatoes, turnips
and carrots, from the kitchen, and a teapot, and said something about
having kept them hot on the stove for him; she brought him a plate of
biscuit fresh from the oven; then she said to the boy, “You come out
and have your dinner with me, Jeff,” and left the guest to make his
meal unmolested.
The room was square, with two north windows that looked down the lane
he had climbed to the house. An open door led into the kitchen in
an ell, and a closed door opposite probably gave access to a parlor
or a ground-floor chamber. The windows were darkened down to the
lower sash by green paper shades; the walls were papered in a pattern
of brown roses; over the chimney hung a large picture, a life-size
pencil-drawing of two little girls, one slightly older and slightly
larger than the other, each with round eyes and precise ringlets, and
with her hand clasped in the other’s hand.
The guest seemed helpless to take his gaze from it, and he sat fallen
back in his chair gazing at it, when the woman came in with a pie.
“Thank you, I believe I don’t want any dessert,” he said. “The fact is,
the dinner was so good that I haven’t left any room for pie. Are those
your children?”
“Yes,” said the woman, looking up at the picture with the pie in her
hand. “They’re the last two I lost.”
“Oh, excuse me!” the guest began.
“It’s the way they appear in the spirit life. It’s a spirit picture.”
“Oh! I thought there was something strange about it.”
“Well, it’s a good deal like the photographs we had taken about a year
before they died. It’s a good likeness. They say they don’t change a
great deal, at first.”
She seemed to refer the point to him for his judgment; but he answered
wide of it:
“I came up here to paint your mountain, if you don’t mind, Mrs.
Durgin――Lion’s Head, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. Well I don’t know as we could stop you, if you wanted to
take it away.” A spare glimmer lighted up her face.
The painter rejoined in kind. “The town might have something to say,
I suppose.”
“Not if you was to leave a good piece of intervale in place of it.
We’ve got mountains to spare.”
“Well, then, that’s arranged. What about a week’s board?”
“I guess you can stay, if you’re satisfied.”
“I’ll be satisfied if I can stay. How much do you want?”
The woman looked down, probably with an inward anxiety between the
fear of asking too much and the folly of asking too little. She said,
tentatively, “Some of the folks that come over from the hotels say
they pay as much as twenty dollars a week.”
“But you don’t expect hotel prices?”
“I don’t know as I do. We’ve never had any body before.”
The stranger relaxed the frown he had put on at the greed of her
suggestion; it might have come from ignorance or mere innocence, “I’m
in the habit of paying five dollars for farm board, where I stayed
several weeks. What do you say to seven for a single week?”
“I guess that’ll do,” said the woman, and she went out with the pie,
which she had kept in her hand.
* * * * *
IMPRESSIONS ON VISITING POMPEII.¹
FROM “ITALIAN JOURNEYS.” 1867.
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE cotton whitens over two-thirds of Pompeii yet interred: happy the
generation that lives to learn the wondrous secrets of that sepulchre!
For, when you have once been at Pompeii, this phantasm of the past
takes deeper hold on your imagination than any living city, and
becomes and is the metropolis of your dream-land forever. O marvellous
city! who shall reveal the cunning of your spell? Something not
death, something not life,――something that is the one when you turn
to determine its essence as the other! What is it comes to me at
this distance of that which I saw in Pompeii? The narrow and curving,
but not crooked streets, with the blazing sun of that Neapolitan
November falling into them, or clouding their wheel-worn lava with
the black, black shadows of the many-tinted walls; the houses, and
the gay columns of white, yellow, and red; the delicate pavements of
mosaic; the skeletons of dusty cisterns and dead fountains; inanimate
garden-spaces with pygmy statues suited to their littleness; suites of
fairy bed-chambers, painted with exquisite frescos; dining-halls with
joyous scenes of hunt and banquet on their walls; the ruinous sites
of temples; the melancholy emptiness of booths and shops and jolly
drinking-houses; the lonesome tragic theatre, with a modern Pompeian
drawing water from a well there; the baths with their roofs perfect
yet, and the stucco bass-reliefs all but unharmed; around the whole,
the city wall crowned with slender poplars; outside the gates, the
long avenue of tombs, and the Appian Way stretching on to Stabiæ;
and, in the distance, Vesuvius, brown and bare, with his fiery breath
scarce visible against the cloudless heaven; these are the things that
float before my fancy as I turn back to look at myself walking those
enchanted streets, and to wonder if I could ever have been so blest.
For there is nothing on the earth, or under it, like Pompeii....
THE HOUSES OF POMPEII AND THEIR PAINTED WALLS.
_From “Italian Journeys.”_
The plans of nearly all the houses in the city are alike: the
entrance-room next the door; the parlor or drawing-room next that;
then the _impluvium_, or unroofed space in the middle of the house,
where the rains were caught and drained into the cistern, and where
the household used to come to wash itself, primitively, as at a pump;
the little garden, with its painted columns, behind the _impluvium_,
and, at last, the dining-room.
* * * * *
After referring to the frescos on the walls that have remained for
nearly two thousand years and the wonder of the art by which they were
produced, Mr. Howells thus continues:
Of course the houses of the rich were adorned by men of talent; but it
is surprising to see the community of thought and feeling in all this
work, whether it be from cunninger or clumsier hands. The subjects
are nearly always chosen from the fables of the gods, and they are
in illustration of the poets, Homer and the rest. To suit that soft,
luxurious life which people led in Pompeii, the themes are commonly
amorous, and sometimes not too chaste: there is much of Bacchus and
Ariadne, much of Venus and Adonis, and Diana bathes a good deal with
her nymphs,――not to mention frequent representations of the toilet of
that beautiful monster which the lascivious art of the time loved to
depict. One of the most pleasing of all the scenes is that in one of
the houses, of the Judgment of Paris, in which the shepherd sits upon
a bank in an attitude of ineffable and flattered importance, with
one leg carelessly crossing the other, and both hands resting lightly
on his shepherd’s crook, while the goddesses before him await his
sentence. Naturally, the painter has done his best for the victress
in this rivalry, and you see
“Idalian Aphrodite beautiful,”
as she should be, but with a warm and piquant spice of girlish
resentment in her attitude, that Paris should pause for an instant,
which is altogether delicious.
“And I beheld great Here’s angry eyes.”
Awful eyes! How did the painter make them? The wonder of all these
pagan frescos is the mystery of the eyes,――still, beautiful, unhuman.
You cannot believe that it is wrong for those tranquil-eyed men and
women to do evil, they look so calm and so unconscious in it all; and
in the presence of the celestials, as they bend upon you those eternal
orbs, in whose regard you are but a part of space, you feel that here
art has achieved the unearthly. I know of no words in literature which
give a _sense_ (nothing gives the idea) of the _stare_ of these gods,
except that magnificent line of Kingsley’s, describing the advance
over the sea toward Andromeda of the oblivious and unsympathizing
Nereids. They floated slowly up and their eyes
“Stared on her, silent and still, like the eyes in the house
of the idols.”
* * * * *
VENETIAN VAGABONDS.¹
(FROM “VENETIAN LIFE.” 1867.)
¹ By special permission of the author and of Houghton,
Mifflin & Co.
THE lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can be a loafer, without
the admixture of ruffianism, which blemishes lost loafers of northern
race. He may be quite worthless, and even impertinent, but he cannot
be a rowdy――that pleasing blossom on the nose of our fast, high-fed,
thick-blooded civilization. In Venice he must not be confounded
with other loiterers at the café; not with the natty people who talk
politics interminably over little cups of black coffee; not with those
old habitués, who sit forever under the Procuratie, their hands folded
upon the top of their sticks, and stare at the ladies who pass with a
curious steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in
the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness
to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces
comically anglicized by leg-of-mutton whiskers. The truth is, the
lasagnone does not flourish in the best café; he comes to perfection
in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich.
It often happens that a glass of water, flavored with a little
anisette, is the order over which he sits a whole evening. He knows
the waiter intimately, and does not call him “Shop!” (Bottéga) as
less familiar people do, but Gigi, or Beppi, as the waiter is pretty
sure to be named. “Behold!” he says, when the servant places his
modest drink before him, “who is that loveliest blonde there?” Or
to his fellow-lasagnone: “She regards me! I have broken her heart!”
This is his sole business and mission, the cruel lasagnone――to break
the ladies’ hearts. He spares no condition――neither rank nor wealth
is any defence against him. I often wonder what is in that note he
continually shows to his friend. The confession of some broken heart,
I think. When he has folded it and put it away, he chuckles, “Ah,
cara!” and sucks at his long, slender Virginia cigar. It is unlighted,
for fire consumes cigars. I never see him read the papers――neither
the Italian papers nor the Parisian journals, though if he can
get “Galignani” he is glad, and he likes to pretend to a knowledge
of English, uttering upon the occasion, with great relish, such
distinctively English words as “Yes” and “Not,” and to the waiter,
“A-little-fire-if-you-please.” He sits very late in the café, he
touches his hat――his curly French hat――to the company as he goes out
with a mild swagger, his cane held lightly in his left hand, his coat
cut snugly to show his hips, and genteely swaying with the motion
of his body. He is a dandy, of course――all Italians are dandies――but
his vanity is perfectly harmless, and his heart is not bad. He would
go half an hour to put you in the direction of the Piazza. A little
thing can make him happy――to stand in the pit at the opera, and gaze
at the ladies in the lower boxes――to attend the Marionette or the
Malibran Theatre, and imperil the peace of pretty seamstresses and
contadinas――to stand at the church doors and ogle the fair saints
as they pass out. Go, harmless lasagnone, to thy lodging in some
mysterious height, and break hearts if thou wilt. They are quickly
mended.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
GENERAL LEWIS WALLACE.
AUTHOR OF “BEN HUR.”
THERE is an old adage which declares “without fame or fortune at forty,
without fame or fortune always.” This, however is not invariably true.
Hawthorne became famous when he wrote “Scarlet Letter” at forty-six,
Sir Walter Scott produced the first Waverly Novel after he was forty;
and we find another exception in the case of the soldier author who
is made the subject of this sketch. Perhaps no writer of modern times
has gained so wide a reputation on so few books or began his literary
career so late in life as the author of “The Fair God;” “Ben Hur” and
“The Prince of India.” It was not until the year 1873 that General
Lewis Wallace at the age of forty-six became known to literature.
Prior to this he had filled the double position of lawyer and soldier,
and it was his observations and experiences in the Mexican War, no
doubt, which inspired him to write “The Fair God,” his first book,
which was a story of the conquest of that country.
Lew. Wallace was horn at Brookville, Indiana, in 1827. After receiving
a common school education, he began the study of law; but on the
breaking out of the Mexican War, he volunteered in the army as a
lieutenant in an Indiana company. On his return from the war, in 1848,
he took up the practice of his profession in his native state and
also served in the legislature. Near the beginning of the Civil War
he became colonel of a volunteer regiment. His military service was of
such a character that he received special mention from General Grant
for meritorious conduct and was made major-general in March, 1862. He
was mustered out of service when the war closed in 1865 and resumed
his practice of law at his old home in Crawfordsville. In 1873, as
stated above, his first book, “The Fair God,” was published; but it
met with only moderate success. In 1878, General Wallace was made
Territorial Governor of Utah and in 1880, “Ben Hur; a Tale of The
Christ” appeared. The scene was laid in the East and displayed such a
knowledge of the manners and customs of that country and people that
General Garfield――that year elected President――considered its author
a fitting person for the Turkish Ministry, and accordingly, in 1881,
he was appointed to that position. It is said that when President
Garfield gave General Wallace his appointment, he wrote the words
“Ben Hur” across the corner of the document, and, as Wallace was
coming away from his visit of acknowledgement at the White House, the
President put his arm over his friend’s shoulder and said, “I expect
another book out of you. Your duties will not be too onerous to allow
you to write it. Locate the scene in Constantinople.” This suggestion
was, no doubt, General Wallace’s reason for writing “The Prince of
India,” which was published in 1890 and is the last book issued by its
author. He had in the mean time, however, published “The Boyhood of
Christ” (1888).
None of the other books of the author have been so popular or
reached the great success attained by “Ben Hur,” which has had the
enormous sale of nearly one-half million copies without at any time
being forced upon the market in the form of a cheap edition. It is
remarkable also to state that the early circulation of “Ben Hur,”
while it was appreciated by a certain class, was too small to warrant
the author in anticipating the fortune which he afterwards harvested
from this book. Before General Wallace was made Minister to Turkey,
the book-sellers bought it in quantities of two, three or a dozen at
a time, and it was not until President Garfield had honored the author
with this ♦significant portfolio that the trade commenced to call for
it in thousand lots.
♦ ‘significent’ replaced with ‘significant’
* * * * *
DESCRIPTION OF CHRIST.¹
(FROM “BEN HUR.” 1880.)
¹ Selections printed here are by special permission of the
author. Harper Brothers, Publishers.
THE head was open to the cloudless light, except as it was draped with
long hair and slightly waved, and parted in the middle, and auburn in
tint, with a tendency to reddish golden where most strongly touched by
the sun. Under a broad, low forehead, under black well-arched brows,
beamed eyes dark blue and large, and softened to exceeding tenderness
by lashes of great length sometimes seen on children, but seldom, if
ever, on men. As to the other features, it would have been difficult
to decide whether they were Greek or Jewish. The delicacy of the
nostrils and mouth was unusually to the latter type, and when it was
taken into account with the gentleness of the eyes, the pallor of the
complexion, the fine texture of the hair and the softness of the beard,
which fell in waves over His throat to His breast, never a soldier
but would have laughed at Him in encounter, never a woman who would
not have confided in Him at sight, never a child that would not, with
quick instinct, have given Him its hand and whole artless trust, nor
might any one have said He was not beautiful.
The features, it should be further said, were ruled by a certain
expression which, as the viewer chose, might with equal correctness
have been called the effect of intelligence, love, pity or sorrow,
though, in better speech, it was a blending of them all――a look
easy to fancy as a mark of a sinless soul doomed to the sight and
understanding of the utter sinfulness of those among whom it was
passing; yet withal no one could have observed the face with a thought
of weakness in the man; so, at least, would not they who know that
the qualities mentioned――love, sorrow, pity――are the results of a
consciousness of strength to bear suffering oftener than strength to
do; such has been the might of martyrs and devotees and the myriads
written down in saintly calendars; and such, indeed, was the air of
this one.
* * * * *
THE PRINCE OF INDIA TEACHES REINCARNATION.¹
(FROM THE “PRINCE OF INDIA.” 1890.)
¹ Selections printed here are by special permission of the
author. Harper Brothers, Publishers.
“THE Holy Father of Light and Life,” the speaker went on, after a
pause referable to his consummate knowledge of men, “has sent His
Spirit down to the world, not once, merely, or unto one people, but
repeatedly, in ages sometimes near together, sometimes wide apart, and
to races diverse, yet in every instance remarkable for genius.”
There was a murmur at this, but he gave it no time.
“Ask you now how I could identify the ♦Spirit so as to be able to
declare to you solemnly, as I do in fear of God, that in several
repeated appearances of which I speak it was the very same Spirit? How
do you know the man you met at set of sun yesterday was the man you
saluted and had salute from this morning? Well, I tell you the Father
has given the Spirit features by which it may be known――features
distinct as those of the neighbors nearest you there at your right and
left hands. Wherever in my reading Holy Books, like these, I hear of
a man, himself a shining example of righteousness, teaching God and
the way to God; by those signs I say to my soul: ‘Oh, the Spirit, the
Spirit! Blessed ♠is the man appointed to carry it about!’”
♦ ‘Spiritt’ replaced with ‘Spirit’
♠ ‘in’ replaced with ‘is’
Again the murmur, but again he passed on.
“The Spirit dwelt in the Holy of Holies set apart for it in the
Tabernacle; yet no man ever saw it here, a thing of sight. The soul is
not to be seen; still less is the Spirit of the Most High; or if one
did see it, its brightness would kill him. In great mercy, therefore,
it has come and done its good works in the world veiled; now in one
form, now in another; at one time, a voice in the air; at another, a
vision in sleep; at another, a burning bush; at another, an angel; at
another, a descending dove”――
“Bethabara!” shouted a cowled brother, tossing both hands up.
“Be quiet!” the Patriarch ordered.
“Thus always when its errand was of quick despatch,” the Prince
continued. “But if its coming were for residence on earth, then its
habit has been to adopt a man for its outward form, and enter into
him, and speak by him; such was Moses, such Elijah, such were all
the Prophets, and such”――he paused, then exclaimed shrilly――“such was
Jesus Christ!”
* * * * *
THE PRAYER OF THE WANDERING JEW.¹
(FROM THE “PRINCE OF INDIA.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
“GOD of Israel――my God!” he said, in a tone hardly more than speaking
to himself. “These about me, my fellow-creatures, pray thee in the
hope of life, I pray thee in the hope of death. I have come up from
the sea, and the end was not there; now I will go into the Desert in
search of it. Or if I must live, Lord, give me the happiness there is
in serving thee.
“Thou hast need of instruments of good: let me henceforth be one of
them, that by working for thy honor, I may at last enjoy the peace of
the blessed――Amen.”
* * * * *
DEATH OF MONTEZUMA.¹
(FROM “THE FAIR GOD.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
THE king turned his pale face and fixed his gazing eyes upon the
conqueror; and such power was there in the look that the latter added,
with softening manner, “What I can do for thee I will do. I have
always been thy true friend.”
“O Malinche, I hear you, and your words make dying easy,” answered
Montezuma, smiling faintly.
With an effort he sought Cortes’ hand, and looking at Acatlan and
Tecalco, continued:
“Let me intrust these women and their children to you and your
lord. Of all that which was mine but now is yours――lands, people,
empire,――enough to save them from want and shame were small indeed.
Promise me; in the hearing of all these, promise, Malinche.”
Taint of anger was there no longer on the soul of the great Spaniard.
“Rest thee, good king!” he said, with feeling. “Thy queens and their
children shall be my wards. In the hearing of all these, I so swear.”
The listener smiled again; his eyes closed, his hand fell down; and so
still was he that they began to think him dead. Suddenly he stirred,
and said faintly, but distinctly,――
“Nearer, uncles, nearer.” The old men bent over him, listening.
“A message to Guatamozin,――to whom I give my last thought, as king.
Say to him, that this lingering in death is no fault of his; the aim
was true, but the arrow splintered upon leaving the bow. And lest the
world hold him to account for my blood, hear me say, all of you, that
I bade him do what he did.
“And in sign that I love him, take my sceptre, and give it to him――”
His voice fell away, yet the lips moved; lower the accents stooped,――
“Tula and the empire go with the sceptre,” he murmured, and they were
his last words,――his will. A wail from the women pronounced him dead.
* * * * *
DESCRIPTION OF VIRGIN MARY.¹
(FROM “BEN HUR.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
SHE was not more than fifteen. Her form, voice and manner belonged to
the period of transition from girlhood. Her face was perfectly oval,
her complexion more pale than fair. The nose was faultless; the lips,
slightly parted, were full and ripe, giving to the lines of the mouth
warmth, tenderness and trust; the eyes were blue and large, and shaded
by drooping lids and long lashes, and, in harmony with all, a flood of
golden hair, in the style permitted to Jewish brides, fell unconfined
down her back to the pillion on which she sat. The throat and neck
had the downy softness sometimes seen which leaves the artist in
doubt whether it is an effect of contour or color. To these charms
of feature and person were added others more indefinable――an air of
purity which only the soul can impart, and of abstraction natural to
such as think much of things impalpable. Often, with trembling lips,
she raised her eyes to heaven, itself not more deeply blue; often she
crossed her hands upon her breast, as in adoration and prayer; often
she raised her head like one listening eagerly for a calling voice.
Now and then, midst his slow utterances, Joseph turned to look at her,
and, catching the expression kindling her face as with light, forgot
his theme, and with bowed head, wondering, plodded on.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDWARD EGGLESTON.
“THE HOOSIER SCHOOL-BOY.”
HERDER says with truth that “one’s whole life is but the
interpretation of the oracles of his childhood,” and those who are
familiar with the writings of Edward Eggleston see in his pictures of
country life in the Hoosier State the interpretation and illustration
of his own life with its peculiar environment in “the great interior
valley” nearly a half-century ago. The writers who have interpreted
for us and for future generations the life and the characteristic
manners which prevailed in the days when our country was new and the
forests were yielding to give place to growing cities and expanding
farms have done a rare and peculiar service, and those sections which
have found expression through the genius and gifts of novelist or poet
are highly favored above all others.
Edward Eggleston has always counted it a piece of good-fortune to
have been born in a small village of Southern Indiana, for he believes
that the formative influences of such an environment, the intimate
knowledge of simple human nature, the close acquaintance with nature
in woods and field and stream, and the sincere and earnest tone of
the religious atmosphere which he breathed all through his youth, are
better elements of culture than a city life could have furnished.
He was born in 1837 in Vevay, Indiana, and his early life was spent
amid the “noble scenery” on the banks of the Ohio River. His father
died while he was a young boy, and he himself was too delicate to
spend much time at school, so that he is a shining example of those
who move up the inclined plane of self-culture and self-improvement.
As he himself has forcefully said, through his whole life two men have
struggled within him for the ascendency, the religious devotee and
the literary man. His early training was “after the straitest sect
of his religion”――the fervid Methodism of fifty years ago, and he was
almost morbidly scrupulous as a boy, not even allowing himself to read
a novel, though from this early period he always felt in himself a
future literary career, and the teacher who corrected his compositions
naively said to him: “I have marked your composition very severely
because you are destined to become an author.”
At first the religious element in his nature decidedly held sway
and he devoted himself to the ministry, mounting a horse and going
forth with his saddle-bags as a circuit preacher in a circuit of ten
preaching places. This was followed by a still harder experience in
the border country of Minnesota, where in moccasins he tramped from
town to town preaching to lumbermen and living on a meagre pittance,
eating crackers and cheese, often in broken health and expecting an
early death.
But even this earnest life of religious devotion and sacrifice was
interspersed with attempts at literary work and he wrote a critical
essay on “Beranger and his Songs” while he was trying to evangelize
the red-shirted lumbermen of St. Croix. It was in such life and amid
such experiences that Eggleston gained his keen knowledge of human
nature which has been the delight and charm of his books.
He began his literary career as associate editor of the “Little
Corporal” at Evanston, Illinois, in 1866, and in 1870 he rose to the
position of literary editor of the New York “Independent,” of which
he was for a time superintending editor. For five years, from 1874 to
1879, he was pastor of the Church of Christian Endeavor in Brooklyn,
but failing health compelled him to retire, and he made his home at
“Owl’s Nest,” on Lake George, where he has since devoted himself to
literary work.
His novels depict the rural life of Southern Indiana, and his
own judgment upon them is as follows: “I should say that what
distinguishes my novels from other works of fiction is the prominence
which they give to social conditions; that the individual characters
are here treated to a greater degree than elsewhere as parts of
a study of a society, as in some sense the logical result of the
environment. Whatever may be the rank assigned to these stories
as works of literary art, they will always have a certain value as
materials for the student of social history.”
His chief novels and stories are the following: “Mr. Blake’s Walking
Stick” (Chicago, 1869); “The Hoosier School-master” (New York, 1871);
“End of the World” (1872); “The Mystery of Metropolisville” (1873);
“The Circuit Rider” (1874); “School-master’s Stories for Boys and
Girls” (1874); and “The Hoosier School-boy” (1883). He has written
in connection with his daughter an interesting series of biographical
tales of famous American Indians, and during these later years of his
life he has largely devoted himself to historical work which has had
an attraction for him all his life.
In his historical work as in his novels he is especially occupied with
the evolution of society. His interest runs in the line of unfolding
the history of life and development rather than in giving mere facts
of political history.
His chief works in this department are: “Household History of the
United States and its People” (New York, 1893); and “The Beginners of
a Nation” (New York, 1897).
Though possessed of a weak and ailing body and always on the verge of
invalidism, he has done the work of a strong man. He has always
preserved his deep and earnest religious and moral tone, but he has
woven with it a joyous and genuine humor which has warmed the hearts
of his many readers.
* * * * *
SPELLING DOWN THE MASTER.¹
(FROM “THE HOOSIER SCHOOLMASTER.”)
(ORANGE JUDD CO., PUBLISHERS.)
¹ Copyright, Orange Judd Co.
EVERY family furnished a candle. There were yellow dips and white
dips, burning, smoking, and flaring. There was laughing, and talking,
and giggling, and simpering, and ogling, and flirting, and courting.
What a dress party is to Fifth Avenue, a spelling-school is to
Hoophole County. It is an occasion which is metaphorically inscribed
with this legend, “Choose your partners.” Spelling is only a blind
in Hoophole County, as is dancing on Fifth Avenue. But as there are
some in society who love dancing for its own sake, so in Flat Creek
district there were those who loved spelling for its own sake, and
who, smelling the battle from afar, had come to try their skill in
this tournament, hoping to freshen the laurels they had won in their
school-days.
“I ’low,” said Mr. Means, speaking as the principal school trustee,
“I ’low our friend the Square is jest the man to boss this ere consarn
to-night. Ef nobody objects, I’ll appint him. Come, Square, don’t be
bashful. Walk up to the trough, fodder or no fodder, as the man said
to his donkey.”
There was a general giggle at this, and many of the young swains took
occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose
of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of
nudging.
The squire came to the front.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began, shoving up his spectacles, and
sucking his lips over his white teeth to keep them in place, “ladies
and gentlemen, young men and maidens, raley I’m obleeged to Mr. Means
fer this honor,” and the Squire took both hands and turned the top
of his head round several inches. Then he adjusted his spectacles.
Whether he was obliged to Mr. Means for the honor of being compared
to a donkey, was not clear. “I feel in the inmost compartments of my
animal spirits a most happyfying sense of the success and futility of
all my endeavors to sarve the people of Flat Creek deestrick, and the
people of Tomkins township, in my weak way and manner.” This burst of
eloquence was delivered with a constrained air and an apparent sense
of danger that he, Squire Hawkins, might fall to pieces in his weak
way and manner, and of the success and futility (especially the latter)
of all attempts at reconstruction. For by this time the ghastly pupil
of the left eye, which was black, was looking away round to the left
while the little blue one on the right twinkled cheerfully toward the
front. The front teeth would drop down so that the Squire’s mouth was
kept nearly closed, and his words whistled through.
“I feel as if I could be grandiloquent on this interesting occasion,”
twisting his scalp round, “but raley I must forego any such exertions.
It is spelling you want. Spelling is the corner-stone, the grand,
underlying subterfuge of a good eddication. I put the spellin’-book
prepared by the great Daniel Webster alongside the Bible. I do raley.
The man who got up, who compounded this little work of inextricable
valoo was a benufactor to the whole human race or any other.” Here
the spectacles fell off. The Squire replaced them in some confusion,
gave the top of his head another twist, and felt for his glass eye,
while poor Shocky stared in wonder, and Betsy Short rolled from side
to side at the point of death from the effort to suppress her giggle.
Mrs. Means and the other old ladies looked the applause they could not
speak.
“I appint Larkin Lanham and Jeems Buchanan fer captings,” said the
Squire. And the two young men thus named took a stick and tossed it
from hand to hand to decide who should have the “first chice.” One
tossed the stick to the other, who held it fast just where he happened
to catch it. Then the first placed his hand above the second, and so
the hands were alternately changed to the top. The one who held the
stick last without room for the other to take hold had gained the
lot. This was tried three times. As Larkin held the stick twice out
of three times, he had the choice. He hesitated a moment. Everybody
looked toward tall Jim Phillips. But Larkin was fond of a venture on
unknown seas, and so he said, “I take the master,” while a buzz of
surprise ran round the room, and the captain of the other side, as if
afraid his opponent would withdraw the choice, retorted quickly, and
with a little smack of exultation and defiance in his voice: “And _I_
take Jeems Phillips.”
And soon all present, except a few of the old folks, found themselves
ranged in opposing hosts, the poor spellers lagging in, with what
grace they could at the foot of the two divisions. The Squire opened
his spelling-book and began to give out the words to the two captains,
who stood up and spelled against each other. It was not long before
Larkin spelled “really” with one _l_, and had to sit down in confusion,
while a murmur of satisfaction ran through the ranks of the opposing
forces. His own side bit their lips. The slender figure of the young
teacher took the place of the fallen leader, and the excitement made
the house very quiet. Ralph dreaded the loss of influence he would
suffer if he should be easily spelled down. And at the moment of
rising he saw in the darkest corner the figure of a well-dressed
young man sitting in the shadow. It made him tremble. Why should his
evil genius haunt him? But by a strong effort he turned his attention
away from Dr. Small, and listened carefully to the words which the
Squire did not pronounce very distinctly, spelling them with extreme
deliberation. This gave him an air of hesitation which disappointed
those on his own side. They wanted him to spell with a dashing
assurance. But he did not begin a word until he had mentally felt
his way through it. After ten minutes of spelling hard words, Jeems
Buchanan, the captain of the other side, spelled “atrocious” with
an _s_ instead of a _c_, and subsided, his first choice, Jeems
Phillips, coming up against the teacher. This brought the excitement
to fever-heat. For though Ralph was chosen first, it was entirely on
trust, and most of the company were disappointed. The champion who now
stood up against the school-master was a famous speller.
Jim Phillips was a tall, lank, stoop-shouldered fellow, who had never
distinguished himself in any other pursuit than spelling. Except in
this one art of spelling he was of no account. He could neither catch
a ball well nor bat well. He could not throw well enough to make his
mark in that famous Western game of Bull-pen. He did not succeed well
in any study but that of Webster’s Elementary. But in that――to use the
usual Flat Creek locution――he was “a hoss.” The genius for spelling is
in some people a sixth sense, a matter of intuition. Some spellers are
born and not made, and their facility reminds one of the mathematical
prodigies that crop out every now and then to bewilder the world. Bud
Means, foreseeing that Ralph would be pitted against Jim Phillips, had
warned his friend that Jim could spell “like thunder and lightning,”
and that it “took a powerful smart speller” to beat him, for he knew
“a heap of spelling-book.” To have “spelled down the master” is next
thing to having whipped the biggest bully in Hoophole County, and Jim
had “spelled down” the last three masters. He divided the hero-worship
of the district with Bud Means.
For half an hour the Squire gave out hard words. What a blessed
thing our crooked orthography is. Without it there could be no
spelling-schools. As Ralph discovered his opponent’s mettle he became
more and more cautious. He was now satisfied that Jim would eventually
beat him. The fellow evidently knew more about the spelling-book than
old Noah Webster himself. As he stood there, with his dull face and
long sharp nose, his hands behind his back, and his voice spelling
infallibly, it seemed to Hartsook that his superiority must lie in his
nose. Ralph’s cautiousness answered a double purpose; it enabled him
to tread surely, and it was mistaken by Jim for weakness. Phillips
was now confident that he should carry off the scalp of the fourth
school-master before the evening was over. He spelled eagerly,
confidently, brilliantly. Stoop-shouldered as he was, he began to
straighten up. In the minds of all the company the odds were in his
favor. He saw this, and became ambitious to distinguish himself by
spelling without giving the matter any thought.
Ralph always believed that he would have been speedily defeated
by Phillips had it not been for two thoughts which braced him. The
sinister shadow of young Dr. Small sitting in the dark corner by the
water-bucket nerved him. A victory over Phillips was a defeat to one
who wished only ill to the young school-master. The other thought that
kept his pluck alive was the recollection of Bull. He approached a
word as Bull approached the raccoon. He did not take hold until he
was sure of his game. When he took hold, it was with a quiet assurance
of success. As Ralph spelled in this dogged way for half an hour the
hardest words the Squire could find, the excitement steadily rose in
all parts of the house, and Ralph’s friends even ventured to whisper
that “maybe Jim had cotched his match after all!”
But Phillips never doubted of his success.
“Theodolite,” said the Squire.
“T-h-e, the, o-d, od, theod, o, theodo, l-y-t-e, theodolite,” spelled
the champion.
“Next,” said the Squire, nearly losing his teeth in his excitement.
Ralph spelled the word slowly and correctly, and the conquered
champion sat down in confusion. The excitement was so great for some
minutes that the spelling was suspended. Everybody in the house had
shown sympathy with one or other of the combatants, except the silent
shadow in the corner. _It_ had not moved during the contest, and did
not show any interest now in the result.
“Gewhilliky crickets! Thunder and lightning! Licked him all to smash!”
said Bud, rubbing his hands on his knees. “That beats my time all
holler!”
And Betsy Short giggled until her tuck-comb fell out, though she was
on the defeated side.
Shocky got up and danced with pleasure.
But one suffocating look from the aqueous eyes of Mirandy destroyed
the last spark of Ralph’s pleasure in his triumph, and sent that awful
below-zero feeling all through him.
“He’s powerful smart is the master,” said old Jack to Mr. Pete Jones.
“He’ll beat the whole kit and tuck of ’em afore he’s through. I know’d
he was smart. That’s the reason I tuck him,” proceeded Mr. Means.
“Yaas, but he don’t lick enough. Not nigh,” answered Pete Jones. “No
lickin’, no larnin’, says I.”
It was now not so hard. The other spellers on the opposite side
went down quickly under the hard words which the Squire gave out.
The master had mowed down all but a few, his opponents had given
up the battle, and all had lost their keen interest in a contest
to which there could be but one conclusion, for there were only the
poor spellers left. But Ralph Hartsook ran against a stump where
he was least expecting it. It was the Squire’s custom, when one of
the smaller scholars or poorer spellers rose to spell against the
master, to give out eight or ten easy words that they might have some
breathing spell before being slaughtered, and then to give a poser or
two which soon settled them. He let them run a little, as a cat does a
doomed mouse. There was now but one person left on the opposite side,
and as she rose in her blue calico dress, Ralph recognized Hannah,
the bound girl at old Jack Means’s. She had not attended school in
the district, and had never spelled in spelling-school before, and was
chosen last as an uncertain quantity. The Squire began with easy words
of two syllables, from that page of Webster, so well-known to all
who ever thumbed it, as “Baker,” from the word that stands at the top
of the page. She spelled these words in an absent and uninterested
manner. As everybody knew that she would have to go down as soon as
this preliminary skirmishing was over, everybody began to get ready to
go home, and already there was a buzz of preparation. Young men were
timidly asking girls if they could “see them safe home,” which is the
approved formula, and were trembling in mortal fear of “the mitten.”
Presently the Squire, thinking it time to close the contest, pulled
his scalp forward, adjusted his glass eye, which had been examining
his nose long enough, and turned over the leaves of the book to the
great words at the place known to spellers as “Incomprehensibility,”
and began to give out those “words of eight syllables with the accent
on the sixth.” Listless scholars now turned round, and ceased to
whisper, in order to be in the master’s final triumph. But to their
surprise, “ole Miss Meanses’ white nigger,” as some of them called her,
in allusion to her slavish life, spelled these great words with as
perfect ease as the master. Still, not doubting the result, the Squire
turned from place to place and selected all the hard words he could
find. The school became utterly quiet, the excitement was too great
for the ordinary buzz. Would “Meanses’ Hanner” beat the master? Beat
the master that had laid out Jim Phillips? Everybody’s sympathy was
now turned to Hannah. Ralph noticed that even Shocky had deserted him,
and that his face grew brilliant every time Hannah spelled a word. In
fact, Ralph deserted himself. If he had not felt that a victory given
would insult her, he would have missed intentionally.
“Daguerreotype,” sniffled the Squire. It was Ralph’s turn.
“D-a-u, dau――――”
“Next.”
And Hannah spelled it right.
Illustration: POPULAR AMERICAN NOVELISTS.
_EDWD. BELLAMY._
_F. MARION CRAWFORD._ • _GEO. W. CABLE._ • _E. P. ROE._
_THOS. NELSON PAGE._ • _FRANK STOCKTON._
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
THOMAS NELSON PAGE.
AUTHOR OF “IN OLE VIRGINIA.”
AN old adage declares it “an ill wind that blows nobody good;” and
certainly the world may take whatever consolation it can find out of
the fact that the long and bloody war between the North and South has
at least afforded the opportunity for certain literary men and women
to rise upon the ruins which it wrought, and win fame to themselves as
well as put money in their purses by embalming in literature the story
of times and social conditions that now exist only in the history of
the past.
Thomas Nelson Page was born in Oakland, Hanover county, Virginia,
on the twenty-third day of April, 1853, consequently, he was only
eight years old when Fort Sumter was fired upon, and, during the
imaginative period of the next few years, he lived in proximity to the
battle fields of the most fiercely contested struggles of the war. His
earliest recollections were of the happiest phases of life on the old
slave plantations. That he thoroughly understands the bright side of
such a life, as well as the Negro character and dialect, is abundantly
established by the charming books which he has given to the world.
His childhood was passed on the estate which was a part of the
original grant of his maternal ancestor, General Thomas Nelson, a
signer of the Declaration of Independence, for whom he was named.
His early education was received in the neighborhood “subscription”
schools (there were no free public schools in the South at that time),
and at the hand of a gentle old aunt of whom Mr. Page tells in one of
his stories. The war interfered with his regular studies but filled
his mind with a knowledge schools cannot give, and, as stated above,
it was out of this knowledge that his stories have grown. After the
war, young Page entered the Washington and Lee University and later
studied law, taking his degree in this branch from the University of
Virginia, in 1874, and after graduating, practiced his profession in
Richmond, Virginia, until 1884, when his first story of Virginia life
“Marse Chan,” a tale of the Civil War, was printed in the “Century
Magazine.” He had previously written dialectic poetry, but the above
story was his first decided success, and attracted such wide attention
that he forsook law for literature. In 1887, a volume of his stories
was brought out under the title “In Ole Virginia,” which was followed
in 1888 by “Befo’ de War; Echoes in Negro Dialect,” which was written
in ♦collaboration with Mr. A. C. Gordon. The next year a story
for boys entitled, “Two Little Confederates,” appeared in the “St.
Nicholas Magazine,” and was afterward published in book form. A
companion volume to this is “Among the Camps or Young People’s Stories
of the War.”
♦ ‘colaboration’ replaced with ‘collaboration’
Mr. Page has been a frequent contributor to the current magazines for
many years, and has also lectured extensively throughout the country.
In 1897 he went abroad for a tour of England and the Continent of
Europe. It is announced that on his return he will issue a new novel
which we understand, he has been engaged upon for some time and
expects to make the most pretentious work of his life up to this date.
* * * * *
OLD SUE.¹
(FROM “PASTIME STORIES.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
JUST on the other side of Ninth Street, outside of my office window,
was the stand of Old Sue, the “tug-mule” that pulled the green car
around the curve from Main Street to Ninth and up the hill to Broad.
Between her and the young bow-legged negro that hitched her on,
drove her up, and brought her back down the hill for the next car,
there always existed a peculiar friendship. He used to hold long
conversations with her, generally upbraiding her in that complaining
tone with opprobrious terms which the negroes employ, which she used
to take meekly. At times he petted her with his arm around her neck,
or teased her, punching her in the ribs and walking about around her
quarters, ostentatiously disregardful of her switching stump of a tail,
backed ears, and uplifted foot, and threatening her with all sorts of
direful punishment if she “jis dyarred to tetch” him.
“Kick me――heah, kick me; I jis dyah you to lay you’ foot ’g’inst me,”
he would say, standing defiantly against her as she appeared about to
let fly at him. Then he would seize her with a guffaw. Or at times,
coming down the hill, he would “hall off” and hit her, and “take out”
with her at his heels her long furry ears backed, and her mouth wide
open as if she would tear him to pieces; and just as she nearly caught
him he would come to a stand and wheel around, and she would stop dead,
and then walk on by him as sedately as if she were in a harrow. In
all the years of their association she never failed him; and she never
failed to fling herself on the collar, rounding the sharp curve at
Ninth, and to get the car up the difficult turn.
Last fall, however, the road passed into new hands, and the management
changed the old mules on the line, and put on a lot of new and green
horses. It happened to be a dreary, rainy day in November when the
first new team was put in. They came along about three o’clock. Old
Sue had been standing out in the pouring rain all day with her head
bowed, and her stubby tail tucked in, and her black back dripping.
She had never failed nor faltered. The tug-boy in an old rubber suit
and battered tarpauling hat, had been out also, his coat shining with
the wet. He and old Sue appeared to mind it astonishingly little. The
gutters were running brimming full, and the cobble-stones were wet and
slippery. The street cars were crowded inside and out, the wretched
people on the platforms vainly trying to shield themselves with
umbrellas held sideways. It was late in the afternoon when I first
observed that there was trouble at the corner. I thought at first that
there was an accident, but soon found that it was due to a pair of
new, balking horses in a car. Old Sue was hitched to the tug, and was
doing her part faithfully; finally she threw her weight on the collar,
and by sheer strength bodily dragged the car, horses and all, around
the curve and on up the straight track, until the horses, finding
themselves moving, went off with a rush, I saw the tug-boy shake his
head with pride, and heard him give a whoop of triumph. The next car
went up all right; but the next had a new team, and the same thing
occurred. The streets were like glass; the new horses got to slipping
and balking, and old Sue had to drag them up as she did before. From
this time it went from bad to worse: the rain changed to sleet, and
the curve at Ninth became a stalling-place for every car. Finally,
just at dark, there was a block there, and the cars piled up. I
intended to have taken a car on my way home, but finding it stalled,
I stepped into my friend Polk Miller’s drug-store, just on the corner,
to get a cigar and to keep warm. I could see through the blurred
glass of the door the commotion going on just outside, and could
hear the shouts of the driver and of the tug-boy mingled with the
clatter of horses’ feet as they reared and jumped, and the cracks of
the tug-boy’s whip as he called to Sue, “Git up, Sue, git up, Sue.”
Presently, I heard a shout, and then the tones changed, and things
got quiet.
A minute afterwards the door slowly opened, and the tug-boy came in
limping, his old hat pushed back on his head, and one leg of his wet
trousers rolled up to his knee, showing about four inches of black,
ashy skin, which he leaned over and rubbed as he walked. His wet face
wore a scowl, half pain, half anger. “Mist’ Miller, kin I use you’
telephone?” he asked, surlily. (The company had the privilege of using
it by courtesy.)
“Yes; there ’tis.”
He limped up, and still rubbing his leg with one hand, took the ’phone
off the hook with the other and put it to his ear.
“Hello, central――hello! Please gimme fo’ hund’ an’ sebenty-three on
three sixt’-fo’――fo’ hund’ an’ sebent’-three on three sixt’-fo’.
“Hello! Suh? Yas, suh; fo’ hund’ an’ sebent’-three on three sixt’-fo’.
_Street-car stables_ on three sixt’-fo’. Hello! Hello! Hello! Dat you,
streetcar stables? Hello! Yas. Who dat? Oh! Dat you, Mist’ Mellerdin?
Yas, suh; yes, suh; Jim; _Jim_; dis Jim. G-i-m, Jim. Yas, suh;
whar drive Ole Sue, in Mist’ Polk Miller’ drug-sto’――. Yas, suh.
‘Matter’?――Ole Sue――she done tu’n fool; done gone ’stracted. I can’t
do nuttin’ ’tall wid her. She ain’ got no sense. She oon pull a poun’.
Suh? Yas, suh. Nor, suh. Yas, suh. Nor, suh; I done try ev’ything. I
done beg her, done cuss her, done whup her mos’ to death. She ain’
got no reasonment. She oon do nuttin’. She done haul off, an’ leetle
mo’ knock my brains out; she done kick me right ’pon meh laig――’pon my
right laig.” (He stooped over and rubbed it again at the reflection.)
“Done bark it all up. Suh? Yas, suh. Tell nine o’clock? Yas,
suh; reckon so; ’ll try it leetle longer. Yas, suh; yas, suh.
Good-night――good-bye!”
He hung the ’phone back on the hook, stooped and rolled down the leg
of his breeches. “Thankee, Mist’ Miller! Good-night.”
He walked to the door, and opened it. As he passed slowly out, without
turning his head, he said, as if to himself, but to be heard by us,
“I wish I had a hundred an’ twenty-five dollars. I boun’ I’d buy dat
durned ole mule, an’ cut her dog-goned th’oat.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDWARD PAYSON ROE.
AUTHOR OF “BARRIERS BURNED AWAY.”
MR. ROE is not considered as one of the strongest of American
novelists; but that he was one of the most popular among the masses
of the people, from 1875 to the time of his death, goes without
saying. His novels were of a religious character, and while they were
doubtless lacking in the higher arts of the fictionist, he invariably
told an interesting story and pointed a healthy moral. “Barriers
Burned Away” is, perhaps, his best novel, and it has been declared
by certain critics to be at once one of the most vivid portrayals and
correct pictures of the great Chicago fire that occurred in 1871 which
has up to this time been written.
Edward Payson Roe was born at New Windsor, New York, in 1838, and died,
when fifty years of age, at Cornwall, the same State, in 1888. He was
being educated at Williams College, but had to leave before graduating
owing to an affection of the eyes. In consequence of his literary
work, however, the college in after years gave him the degree of
A. B. In 1862, he volunteered his services in the army and served as
chaplain throughout the Civil War. From 1865 to 1874 he was pastor
of the Presbyterian Church at Highland Falls, New York. In 1874 he
resigned his pastorate, and, to the time of his death, gave himself
to literature and to the cultivation of a small fruit farm.
Other works of this author, after “Barriers Burned Away,” are “Play
and Profit in my Garden” (1873); “What Can She Do?” (1873); “Opening
a Chestnut Burr” (1874); “From Jest to Earnest” (1875); “Near to
Nature’s Heart” (1876); “A Knight of the Nineteenth Century” (1877);
“A Face Illumined” (1878); “A Day of Fate” (1880); “Success with Small
Fruits” (1880); “Without a Home” (1880); “His Sombre Rivals” (1883);
“A Young Girl’s Wooing” (1884); “Nature’s Serial Story” (1884); “An
Original Belle” (1885); “Driven Back to Eden” (1885); “He Fell in
Love with His Wife” (1886); “The Earth Trembled” (1887); “Miss Lou”
(1888); “The Home Acre” (1889) and “Taken Alive” (1889), the two last
mentioned being published after the death of the author.
* * * * *
CHRISTINE, AWAKE FOR YOUR LIFE!¹
¹ Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.
FOR a block or more Dennis was passively borne along by the rushing
mob. Suddenly a voice seemed to shout almost in his ear, “The north
side is burning!” and he started as from a dream. The thought of
Christine flashed upon him, perishing, perhaps, in the flames. He
remembered that now she had no protector, and that he for the moment
had forgotten her; though in truth he had never imagined that she
could be imperiled by the burning of the north side.
In an agony of fear and anxiety he put forth every effort of which he
was capable, and tore through the crowd as if mad. There was no way of
getting across the river now save by the La Salle street tunnel. Into
this dark passage he plunged with multitudes of others. It was indeed
as near Pandemonium as any earthly condition could be. Driven forward
by the swiftly pursuing flames, hemmed in on every side, a shrieking,
frenzied, terror-stricken throng rushed into the black cavern. Every
moral grade was represented there. Those who led abandoned lives were
plainly recognizable, their guilty consciences finding expression in
their livid faces. These jostled the refined and delicate lady, who,
in the awful democracy of the hour, brushed against thief and harlot.
Little children wailed for their lost parents, and many were trampled
underfoot. Parents cried for their children, women shrieked for their
husbands, some praying, many cursing with oaths as hot as the flames
that crackled near. Multitudes were in no other costumes than those
in which they had sprung from their beds. Altogether it was a strange,
incongruous, writhing mass of humanity, such as the world had never
looked upon, pouring into what might seem, in its horrors, the mouth
of hell.
As Dennis entered the utter darkness, a confused roar smote his ear
that might have appalled the stoutest heart, but he was now oblivious
to everything save Christine’s danger. With set teeth he put his
shoulder against the living mass and pushed with the strongest till he
emerged into the glare of the north side. Here, escaping somewhat from
the throng, he made his way rapidly to the Ludolph mansion, which to
his joy he found was still considerably to the windward of the fire.
But he saw that from the southwest another line of flame was bearing
down upon it.
The front door was locked, and the house utterly dark. He rang the
bell furiously, but there was no response. He walked around under the
window and shouted, but the place remained as dark and silent as a
tomb. He pounded on the door, but its massive thickness scarcely
admitted of a reverberation.
“They must have escaped,” he said; “but merciful heaven! there must be
no uncertainty in this case. What shall I do?”
The windows of the lower story were all strongly guarded and
hopeless, but one opening on the balcony of Christine’s studio seemed
practicable, if it could be reached. A half-grown elm swayed its
graceful branches over the balcony, and Dennis knew the tough and
fibrous nature of this tree. In the New England woods of his early
home he had learned to climb for nuts like a squirrel, and so with no
great difficulty he mounted the trunk and dropped from an overhanging
branch to the point he sought. The window was down at the top, but
the lower sash was fastened. He could see the catch by the light
of the fire. He broke the pane of glass nearest it, hoping that the
crash might awaken Christine, if she were still there. But, after the
clatter died away, there was no sound. He then noisily raised the sash
and stepped in....
There was no time for sentiment. He called loudly: “Miss Ludolph,
awake! awake! for your life!”
There was no answer. “She must be gone,” he said. The front room,
facing toward the west, he knew to be her sleeping-apartment. Going
through the passage, he knocked loudly, and called again; but in the
silence that followed he heard his own watch tick, and his heart beat.
He pushed the door open with the feeling of one profaning a shrine,
and looked timidly in....
She lay with her face toward him. Her hair of gold, unconfined,
streamed over the pillow; one fair, round arm, from which her
night-robe had slipped back, was clasped around her head, and a
flickering ray of light, finding access at the window, played upon
her face and neck with the strangest and most weird effect.
So deep was her slumber that she seemed dead, and Dennis, in his
overwrought state, thought she was. For a moment his heart stood
still, and his tongue was paralyzed. A distant explosion aroused him.
Approaching softly he said, in an awed whisper (he seemed powerless to
speak louder), “Miss Ludolph!――Christine!”
But the light of the coming fire played and flickered over the still,
white face, that never before had seemed so strangely beautiful.
“Miss Ludolph!――O Christine, awake!” cried Dennis, louder.
To his wonder and unbounded perplexity, he saw the hitherto motionless
lips wreathe themselves into a lovely smile, but otherwise there was
no response....
A louder and nearer explosion, like a warning voice, made him wholly
desperate, and he roughly seized her hand.
Christine’s blue eyes opened wide with a bewildered stare; a look of
the wildest terror came into them, and she started up and shrieked,
“Father! father!”
Then, turning toward the as yet unknown invader, she cried piteously:
“Oh, spare my life! Take everything; I will give you anything you ask,
only spare my life!”
She evidently thought herself addressing a ruthless robber.
Dennis retreated towards the door the moment she awakened; and this
somewhat reassured her.
In the firm, quiet tone that always calms excitement, he replied, “I
only ask you to give me your confidence, Miss Ludolph, and to join
with me, Dennis Fleet, in my effort to save your life.”
“Dennis Fleet! Dennis Fleet! save my life! O ye gods, what does it all
mean?” and she passed her hand in bewilderment across her brow, as if
to brush away the wild fancies of a dream.
“Miss Ludolph, as you love your life, arouse yourself and escape! The
city is burning!”
When Dennis returned, he found Christine panting helplessly on a chair.
“Oh, dress! dress!” he cried. “We have not a moment to spare.”
The sparks and cinders were falling about the house, a perfect storm
of fire. The roof was already blazing, and smoke was pouring down the
stairs.
At his suggestion she had at first laid out a heavy woolen dress and
Scotch plaid shawl. She nervously sought to put on the dress, but her
trembling fingers could not fasten it over her wildly throbbing bosom.
Dennis saw that in the terrible emergency he must act the part of a
brother or husband, and, springing forward, he assisted her with the
dexterity he had learned in childhood.
Just then a blazing piece of roof, borne on the wings of the gale,
crashed through the window, and in a moment the apartment, that had
seemed like a beautiful casket for a still more exquisite jewel, was
in flames.
Hastily wrapping Christine in the blanket shawl, he snatched her,
crying and wringing her hands, into the street.
Holding his hand she ran two or three blocks with all the speed her
wild terror prompted; then her strength began to fail, and she
pantingly cried that she could run no longer. But this rapid rush
carried them out of immediate peril, and brought them into the flying
throng pressing their way northward and westward.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
FRANCIS MARION CRAWFORD.
(OUR MOST COSMOPOLITAN NOVELIST.)
ANDREW Lang has pronounced Marion Crawford “the most versatile of
modern novelists.” It may also be truly said that he is the most
cosmopolitan of all our American authors. One feels after reading his
stories of life and society in India, Italy, England and America that
the author does not belong anywhere in particular, but is rather a
citizen of the world in general.
He drew from nearly every country of culture for his education, and
the result is clearly apparent in his voluminous and varied works.
He is one of the rare and favored few who have stumbled almost by
accident upon fame and who have increased their early fame by later
labors.
Marion Crawford was born in Italy in 1854. His father was a native
of Ireland, a sculptor of repute, and his mother was an American, a
sister of Julia Ward Howe. His father died when he was three years old,
and he was put with relatives on a farm in Bordentown, N. J., where
he had a French governess. At a suitable age he was sent to St. Paul’s
School in New Hampshire, and later he studied with a country clergyman
in England. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, where he showed an
aptitude for mathematics.
After studying in the Universities of Heidelberg, Carlesruhe and Rome,
he went to India to make a thorough study of Sanscrit. Here his funds
gave out and left him nearly stranded with no prospects of improvement.
Just as he was on the point of joining the Anglo-Indian army, he
was offered the position of editor on the “Allahabad Herald,” in an
unhealthy town a thousand miles from Bombay. The work was extremely
difficult and absorbing for one who had never had previous connection
with a newspaper, requiring sixteen hours of daily work in a climate
of excessive heat.
After resigning this position he returned to Italy and took passage
on a “tramp” steamer for America. He was wrecked, after a six
weeks’ voyage, and thrown on the coast of Bermuda. With these varied
experiences he had stored up in a fertile memory material for his
numerous novels. It was his first intention to continue his Sanscrit
studies at Harvard, but a circumstance of the simplest nature revealed
to him and to the world his remarkable powers as a story-teller.
He has himself told how he came to write “Mr. Isaacs,” his first novel.
“On May 5, 1882, Uncle Sam (Samuel Ward) asked me to dine with him at
the New York Club, which was then in the building on Madison Square
now called the Madison Square bank building. We had dined rather early
and were sitting in the smoking-room, while it was still light. As
was natural we began to exchange stories while smoking, and I told him
with a good deal of detail my recollections of an interesting man whom
I had met in Sinila. When I finished he said to me, ‘That is a good
two-part magazine story, and you must write it out immediately.’ He
took me round to his apartments, and that night I began to write the
story of ‘Mr. Isaacs.’ I kept at it from day to day, getting more and
more interested in the work as I proceeded. I was so amused with the
writing of it that it occurred to me that I might as well make Mr.
Isaacs fall in love with an English girl, and then I kept on writing
to see what would happen. By and by I remembered a mysterious Buddhist
whom I had once met, so I introduced him to still further complicate
matters.”
He was in Canada working on “Dr. Claudius” when “Mr. Isaacs” was
issued by the publisher. When he reached Boston on his return he
found the news-stands covered with posters announcing the famous story
of “Mr. Isaacs,” and he himself was “interviewed,” and solicited by
magazine publishers to give them a new story at once. “Dr. Claudius,”
was soon ready and though less romantic found a host of readers. His
constructive powers increased as he devoted himself to his art and
books came from his pen in rapid succession. In 1883 he went to Italy
and in the following year he married the daughter of General Berdan
and established himself in a lovely villa at Sorrento where he has
since lived, writing either in his villa or on board his yacht.
His third book, a tragic tale of Roman society, is called “To Leeward.”
His most popular novels is the trilogy, describing the fortunes of a
noble Italian family, woven in with the history of Modern Rome, from
1865 to 1887. They are in their order “Saracinesca,” “Sant’ Ilario”
and “Don Orsino.” This historical trilogy depicts with much power the
last struggle of the papacy for temporal power.
In 1885 he issued “Zoroaster,” a story of ancient Persia, with King
Darius and the prophet Daniel for characters.
“Marzio’s Crucifix” (1887) was written in ten days. Marion Crawford
had studied silver carving with a skilful workman and the idea
suggested itself to him to write a story of an atheist who should put
his life and soul into the carving of a crucifix.
“The Lonely Parish” was written in twenty-four days. The author had
promised a novel at a certain date and the imperious publisher held
him to his promise. He had studied with a clergyman in the little
English village of Hatfield Regis, and to make his story he simply
lifted that little village bodily out of his memory and put it into
his novel, even to the extent of certain real names and localities.
His other chief works are: “Witch of Prague” (1892), “Greifenstein,”
“Paul Patoff” (1887), “The Three Fates,” “Katherine Lauterdale,” “The
Ralstones,” and “Pietro Ghisleri.”
* * * * *
HORACE BELLINGHAM.¹
(FROM “DR. CLAUDIUS.”)
¹ Copyright, MacMillan & Co.
AY, but he was a sight to do good to the souls of the hungry and
thirsty, and of the poor and in misery!...
There are some people who turn gray, but who do not grow hoary, whose
faces are furrowed but not wrinkled, whose hearts are sore wounded in
many places, but are not dead. There is a youth that bids defiance to
age, and there is a kindness which laughs at the world’s rough usage.
These are they who have returned good for evil, not having learned it
as a lesson of righteousness, but because they have no evil in them
to return upon others. Whom the gods love die young because they never
grow old. The poet, who, at the verge of death, said this, said it of
and to this very man.
* * * * *
IN THE HIMALAYAS.¹
(FROM “MR. ISAACS.”)
¹ Copyright, MacMillan & Co.
THE lower Himalayas are at first extremely disappointing. The scenery
is enormous but not grand, and at first hardly seems large. The lower
parts are at first sight a series of gently undulating hills and
wooded dells; in some places it looks as if one might almost hunt the
country. It is long before you realize that it is all on a gigantic
scale; that the quick-set hedges are belts of rhododendrons of full
growth, the water-jumps rivers, and the stone walls mountain-ridges;
that to hunt a country like that you would have to ride a horse at
least two hundred feet high. You cannot see at first, or even for
some time, that the gentle-looking hill is a mountain of five or
six thousand feet above the level of the Rhigi Kulm in Switzerland.
Persons who are familiar with the aspect of the Rocky Mountains are
aware of the singular lack of dignity in those enormous elevations.
They are merely big, without any superior beauty until you come to the
favored spots of nature’s art, where some great contrast throws into
appalling relief the gulf between the high and the low. It is so in
the Himalayas. You may travel for hours and days amidst vast forests
and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of
admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to
the dizzy brink of an awful precipice――a sheer fall, so exaggerated
in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the
Jungfrau, and the hideous arête of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague
insignificance. The gulf that divides you from the distant mountain
seems like a huge bite taken bodily out of the world by some voracious
god; far away rise snow-peaks such as were not dreamt of in your Swiss
tour; the bottomless valley at your feet is misty and gloomy with
blackness, streaked with mist, while the peaks above shoot gladly to
the sun and catch his broadside rays like majestic white standards.
Between you, as you stand leaning cautiously against the hill behind
you, and the wonderful background far away in front, floats a strange
vision, scarcely moving, but yet not still. A great golden shield
sails steadily in vast circles, sending back the sunlight in every
tint of burnished glow. The golden eagle of the Himalayas hangs in
mid-air, a sheet of polished metal to the eye, pausing sometimes in
the full blaze of reflection, as ages ago the sun and the moon stood
still in the valley of the Ajalon; too magnificent for description,
as he is too dazzling to look at. The whole scene, if no greater name
can be given to it, is on a scale so Titanic in its massive length
and breadth and depth, that you stand utterly trembling and weak
and foolish as you look for the first time. You have never seen such
masses of the world before.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
FRANCIS RICHARD STOCKTON.
POPULAR among the writers of lighter fiction in modern times, who
have delighted the multitudes from the realms of childhood to almost
every walk of life, few authors have been more prolific and generally
popular than the illustrator of “Vanity Fair” and the author of “The
Lady or the Tiger.”
Frank Stockton (for with the masses he is plain “Frank”) was born
in Philadelphia, Pa., April 5, 1834. He had the benefit of only
such educational training as the public schools and the Central High
School of that city afforded. Originally, his ambition was to be an
engraver, and he devoted a number of years to that calling,――engraving
and designing on wood for the comic paper published in New York
City, before the war, under the title of “Vanity Fair.” He also made
pictures for other illustrated periodicals; and at the same time
he also did literary and journalistic work, his first connection
being with the Philadelphia “Post.” In 1872 he abandoned his
engraving altogether to accept an editorial position on the New York
“Hearthstone,” and later he joined the staff of “Scribner’s Monthly,”
which has since been converted into the “Century Magazine.” He was
also made assistant editor of “St. Nicholas Magazine,” when it was
established in 1873, in connection with Mary Mapes Dodge, the famous
child writer. In 1880 Mr. Stockton resigned his editorial position to
devote himself to purely literary work. Since that time he has been
before the world as a contributor to magazines on special topics and
as a writer of books.
Few authors have been more industrious than Frank Stockton. During
the last thirty years his fertile imagination and busy pen have
contributed at least one new book almost every year, frequently two
volumes and sometimes three coming out in the course of twelve months.
His first published volume was a collection of stories for children
issued in 1869 under the title of “Ting-a-Ling Stories.” Then came
“Round About Rambles;” “What Might Have Been Expected;” “Tales Out
of School;” “A Jolly Fellowship;” “The Floating Prince;” “The Story
of Viteau;” and “Personally Conducted.” The above are all for young
people and were issued between 1869 and 1889. Many now grown-up men
and women look back with pleasant recollections to the happy hours
spent with these books when they were boys and girls.
Of the many other volumes of novels and short stories which Mr.
Stockton has written, the following are, perhaps, the best known:
“Rudder Grange” (1879); “Lady or the Tiger and Other Stories” (1884);
“The Late Mrs. Mull” (1886); “The Christmas Wreck and Other Tales”
(1887); “The Great War Syndicates” (1889); “Stories of Three Burglars”
(1890); “The Merry Chanter” (1890); and following this came “Ardis
♦Claverden,” and since that several other serial novels have been
published in the magazines.
♦ ‘Cloverden’ replaced with ‘Claverden’
Mr. Stockton has also written some poetry; but he is pre-eminently a
story-teller, and it is to his prose writings that he is indebted for
the popularity which he enjoys. His stories are direct and clear in
method and style, while their humor is quiet, picturesque and quaint.
* * * * *
THE END OF A CAREER.¹
(FROM “THE MERRY CHANTER.”)
¹ The Century Co., New York. Copyright, Frank R. Stockton.
FOR two years Doris and I had been engaged to be married. The first of
these years appeared to us about as long as any ordinary year, but the
second seemed to stretch itself out to the length of fifteen or even
eighteen months. There had been many delays and disappointments in
that year.
We were both young enough to wait and both old enough to know we ought
to wait; and so we waited. But, as we frequently admitted to ourselves,
there was nothing particularly jolly in this condition of things.
Every young man should have sufficient respect for himself to make him
hesitate before entering into a matrimonial alliance in which he would
have to be supported by his wife. This would have been the case had
♦Doris and I married within those two years.
♦ ‘Dorris’ replaced with ‘Doris’
I am by profession an analyzer of lava. Having been from my boyhood
an enthusiastic student of mineralogy and geology, I gradually became
convinced that there was no reason why precious metals and precious
stones should not be found at spots on the earth where nature herself
attended to the working of her own mines. That is to say, that I can
see no reason why a volcano should not exist at a spot where there
were valuable mineral deposits; and this being the case, there is no
reason why those deposits should not be thrown out during eruptions
in a melted form, or unmelted and mixed with the ordinary lava.
Hoping to find proof of the correctness of my theory, I have analyzed
lava from a great many volcanoes. I have not been able to afford to
travel much, but specimens have been sent to me from various parts of
the world. My attention was particularly turned to extinct volcanoes;
for should I find traces of precious deposits in the lava of one of
these, not only could its old lava beds be worked, but by artificial
means eruptions of a minor order might be produced, and fresher and
possibly richer material might be thrown out.
But I had not yet received any specimen of lava which encouraged me to
begin workings in the vicinity in which it was found.
My theories met with little favor from other scientists, but this did
not discourage me. Should success come it would be very great.
Doris had expectations which she sometimes thought might reasonably be
considered great ones, but her actual income was small. She had now no
immediate family, and for some years lived with what she called “law
kin.” She was of a most independent turn of mind, and being of age
could do what she pleased with her own whenever it should come to her.
My own income was extremely limited, and what my actual necessities
allowed me to spare from it was devoted to the collection of the
specimens on the study of which I based the hopes of my fortunes.
In regard to our future alliance, Doris depended mainly upon her
expectations, and she did not hesitate, upon occasion, frankly and
plainly to tell me so. Naturally I objected to such dependence, and
anxiously looked forward to the day when a little lump of lava might
open before me a golden future which I might honorably ask any woman
to share. But I do not believe that anything I said upon this subject
influenced the ideas of Doris.
The lady of my love was a handsome girl, quick and active of mind and
body, nearly always of a lively mood, and sometimes decidedly gay. She
had seen a good deal of the world and the people in it, and was “up,”
as she put it, in a great many things. Moreover, she declared that she
had “a heart for any fate.” It has sometimes occurred to me that this
remark would better be deferred until the heart and the fate had had
an opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other.
We lived not far apart in a New England town, and calling upon her one
evening I was surprised to find the lively Doris in tears. Her tears
were not violent, however, and she quickly dried them; and, without
waiting for any inquiries on my part, she informed me of the cause of
her trouble.
“The _Merry Chanter_ has come in,” she said.
“Come in!” I ejaculated.
“Yes,” she answered, “and that is not the worst of it; it has been in
a long time.”
I knew all about the _Merry Chanter_. This was a ship. It was her ship
which was to come in. Years ago this ship had been freighted with the
ventures of her family, and had sailed for far-off seas. The results
of those ventures, together with the ship itself, now belonged to
Doris. They were her expectations.
“But why does this grieve you?” I asked. “Why do you say that the
coming of the ship, to which you have been looking forward with so
much ardor, is not the worst of it?”
“Because it isn’t,” she answered. “The rest is a great deal worse. The
whole affair is a doleful failure. I had a letter to-day from Mooseley,
a little town on the sea-coast. The _Merry Chanter_ came back there
three years ago with nothing in it. What has become of what it carried
out, or what it ought to have brought back, nobody seems to know. The
captain and the crew left it the day after its arrival at Mooseley.
Why they went away, or what they took with them, I have not heard,
but a man named Asa Cantling writes me that the _Merry Chanter_ has
been lying at his wharf for three years; that he wants to be paid the
wharfage that is due him; and that for a long time he has been trying
to find out to whom the ship belongs. At last he has discovered that
I am the sole owner, and he sends to me his bill for wharfage, stating
that he believes it now amounts to more than the vessel is worth.”
“Absurd!” I cried. “Any vessel must be worth more than its wharfage
rates for three years. This man must be imposing upon you.”
Doris did not answer. She was looking drearily out of the window at
the moonlighted landscape. Her heart and her fate had come together,
and they did not appear to suit each other.
I sat silent, also, reflecting. I looked at the bill which she had
handed to me, and then I reflected again, gazing out of the window at
the moonlighted landscape.
It so happened that I then had on hand a sum of money equal to the
amount of this bill, which amount was made up not only of wharfage
rates, but of other expenses connected with the long stay of the
vessel at Asa Cantling’s wharf.
My little store of money was the result of months of savings and a
good deal of personal self-denial. Every cent of it had its mission
in one part of the world or another. It was intended solely to carry
on the work of my life, my battle for fortune. It was to show me, in
a wider and more thorough manner than had ever been possible before,
what chance there was for my finding the key which should unlock for
me the treasures in the storehouse of the earth.
I thought for a few minutes longer, and then I said, “Doris, if you
should pay this bill and redeem the vessel, what good would you gain?”
She turned quickly towards me. “I should gain a great deal of good,”
she said. “In the first place I should be relieved of a soul-chilling
debt. Isn’t that a good? And of a debt, too, which grows heavier every
day. Mr. Cantling writes that it will be difficult to sell the ship,
for it is not the sort that the people thereabout want. And if he
breaks it up he will not get half the amount of his bill. And so there
it must stay, piling wharfage on wharfage, and all sorts of other
expenses on those that have gone before, until I become the leading
woman bankrupt of the world.”
“But if you paid the money and took the ship,” I asked, “what would
you do with it?”
“I know exactly what I would do with it,” said Doris. “It is my
inheritance, and I would take that ship and make our fortunes. I would
begin in a humble way just as people begin in other businesses. I
would carry hay, codfish, ice, anything, from one port to another.
And when I had made a little money in this way I would sail away to
the Orient and come back loaded with rich stuffs and spices.”
“Did the people who sailed the ship before do that?” I asked.
“I have not the slightest doubt of it,” she answered; “and they ran
away with the proceeds. I do not know that you can feel as I do,”
she continued. “The _Merry Chanter_ is mine. It is my all. For years
I have looked forward to what it might bring me. It has brought me
nothing but a debt, but I feel that it can be made to do better than
that, and my soul is on fire to make it do better.”
It is not difficult to agree with a girl who looks as this one looked
and who speaks as this one spoke.
“Doris,” I exclaimed, “if you go into that sort of thing I go with you.
I will set the _Merry Chanter_ free.”
“How can you do it?” she cried.
“Doris,” I said, “hear me. Let us be cool and practical.”
“I think neither of us is very cool,” she said, “and perhaps not very
practical. But go on.”
“I can pay this bill,” I said, “but in doing it I shall abandon all
hope of continuing what I have chosen as my life work; the career
which I have marked out for myself will be ended. Would you advise
me to do this? And if I did it would you marry me now with nothing
to rely upon but our little incomes and what we could make from your
ship? Now, do not be hasty. Think seriously, and tell me what you
would advise me to do.”
She answered instantly, “Take me, and the _Merry Chanter_.”
I gave up my career.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDWARD BELLAMY.
THE AUTHOR OF “LOOKING BACKWARD.”
THE most remarkable sensation created by any recent American author
was perhaps awakened by Edward Bellamy’s famous book, “Looking
Backward,” of which over a half million copies have been sold in this
country alone, and more than as many more on the other side of the
Atlantic. This book was issued from the press in 1887, and maintained
for several years an average sale of 100,000 copies per year in
America alone. In 1897 a demand for sociological literature in England
called for the printing of a quarter of a million copies in that
country within the space of a few months, and the work has been
translated into the languages of almost every civilized country on
the earth. Its entire sale throughout the world is probably beyond
two million copies.
Mr. Bellamy’s ideal as expressed in this book is pure communism, and
the work is no doubt the outgrowth of the influence of Emersonian
teaching, originally illustrated in the Brook Farm experiment. As
for Mr. Bellamy’s dream, it can never be realized until man’s heart
is entirely reformed and the promised millennium shall dawn upon the
earth; but that such an ideal state is ♦pleasant to contemplate is
evinced by the great popularity and enormous sale of his book. In
order to give his theory a touch of human sympathy and to present the
matter in a manner every way appropriate, Mr. Bellamy causes his hero
to go to sleep, at the hands of a mesmerist, in an underground vault
and to awake, undecayed, in the perfect vigor of youth, one hundred
years later, to find if not a new heaven, at least a new earth so far
as its former social conditions were concerned. Selfishness was all
gone from man, universal peace and ♠happiness reigned over the earth,
and all things were owned in common. The story is well constructed and
well written, and captivates the reader’s imagination.
♦ ‘pleasent’ replaced with ‘pleasant’
♠ ‘happines’ replaced with ‘happiness’
Edward Bellamy was born in Boston, ♦Massachusetts, on March 26th,
1850. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. After studying
in Germany he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1871 and has
since practiced his profession, at the same time doing journalistic
and literary work. For several years he was assistant editor of the
“Springfield (Mass.) Union” and an editorial writer for the New York
“Evening Post.” He has also contributed a number of articles to the
magazines. His books are “Six to One, a Nantucket Idyl” (1877); “Dr.
Heidenhoff’s Process” (1879); “Miss ♠Ludington’s Sister: a romance of
Immortality” (1884); “Looking Backward” (1887); “Equality: a Romance
of the future” (1897). The last named is a continuation of the same
theme as “Looking Backward,” being more argumentative and entering
into the recent conditions of society and new phases of politics and
industrial questions. It is a larger book and a deeper study than its
predecessor. The work was issued simultaneously in the United States,
Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and other
countries. Owing to the recent interest in sociological literature
it is believed by Mr. Bellamy and his publishers that this book
will attain as wide a popularity as his other work on the subject.
Mr. Bellamy’s writings have caused the founding of nationalist and
communistic clubs throughout the United States, and his influence for
the last few years has been powerfully felt in European countries.
If this movement should continue to grow there is little doubt but
Mr. Bellamy will be honored in the future for the impetus his books
have given to communistic doctrines.
♦ ‘Massachsetts’ replaced with ‘Massachusetts’
♠ “Luddington’s” replaced with “Ludington’s”
The home of this author, near Boston, is said to be an ideal one,
presided over by a most amiable wife, who is in hearty sympathy
with her literary husband, both in his ideals and in his work. They
have several bright children, and their home has been pointed out
by reviewers as a remarkably happy one, constituting within itself
something of a miniature illustration of the ideal community which his
theory portrays, if, indeed, it may not be said to heartily advocate.
* * * * *
MUSIC IN THE YEAR 2000.
(FROM “LOOKING BACKWARD.”)
_By Permission of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co._
WHEN we arrived home, Dr. Leete had not yet returned, and Mrs. Leete
was not visible. “Are you fond of music, Mr. West?” Edith asked.
I assured her that it was half of life, according to my notion. “I
ought to apologize for inquiring,” she said. “It is not a question we
ask one another nowadays; but I have read that in your day, even among
the cultured class, there were some who did not care for music.”
“You must remember, in excuse,” I said, “that we had some rather
absurd kinds of music.”
“Yes,” she said, “I know that; I am afraid I should not have fancied
it all myself. Would you like to hear some of ours now, Mr. West?”
“Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you,” I said.
“To me!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Did you think I was going to play
or sing to you?”
“I hoped so, certainly,” I replied.
Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her merriment and
explained. “Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course
in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for
their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander
and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded
when we wish to hear it, that we don’t think of calling our singing or
playing music at all. All the really fine singers and players are in
the musical service, and the rest of us hold our peace for the main
part. But would you really like to hear some music?”
I assured her once more that I would.
“Come, then, into the music-room,” she said, and I followed her into
an apartment finished, without hangings, in wood, with a floor of
polished wood. I was prepared for new devices in musical instruments,
but I saw nothing in the room which by any stretch of imagination
could be conceived as such. It was evident that my puzzled appearance
was affording intense amusement to Edith.
“Please look at to-day’s music,” she said, handing me a card, “and
tell me what you would prefer. It is now five o’clock, you will
remember.”
The card bore the date “September 12, 2000,” and contained the longest
programme of music I had ever seen. It was as various as it was long,
including a most extraordinary range of vocal and instrumental solos,
duets, quartettes, and various orchestral combinations. I remained
bewildered by the prodigious list until Edith’s pink finger-tip
indicated a peculiar section of it, where several selections were
bracketed, with the words “5 P. M.” against them; then I observed that
this prodigious programme was an all-day one, divided into twenty-four
sections answering to the hours. There were but a few pieces of
music in the “5 P. M.” section, and I indicated an organ piece as my
preference.
“I am so glad you like the organ,” said she.
“I think there is scarcely any music that suits my mood oftener.”
She made me sit down comfortably, and, crossing the room, so far as I
could see, merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was
filled with the music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded,
for, by some means, the volume of melody had been perfectly graduated
to the size of the department. I listened, scarcely breathing, to the
close. Such music, so perfectly rendered, I had never expected to hear.
“Grand!” I cried, as the last great wave of the sound broke and ebbed
away into silence. “Bach must be at the keys of that organ; but where
is the organ?”
“Wait a moment, please,” said Edith; “I want to have you listen to
this waltz before you ask any questions. I think it is perfectly
charming;” and as she spoke the sound of violins filled the room
with the witchery of a summer night. When this also ceased, she said:
“There is nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you
seem to imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good,
honest, and exceedingly clever good hands. We have simply carried
the idea of labor-saving by co-operation into our musical service as
into everything else. There are a number of music rooms in the city,
perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These
halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city
whose people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be
sure, who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so
large that, although no individual performer, or group of performers,
has more than a brief part, each day’s programme lasts through the
twenty-four hours. There are on that card for to-day, as you will see
if you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of these concerts,
each of a different order of music from the others, being now
simultaneously performed, and any one of the four pieces now going
on that you prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button which
will connect your house-wire with the hall where it is being rendered.
The programmes are so co-ordinated that the pieces at any one time
simultaneously proceeding in the different halls usually offer a
choice, not only between instrumental and vocal, and between different
sorts of instruments; but also between different motives from grave to
gay, so that all tastes and moods can be suited.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
GEORGE W. CABLE.
“THE DEPICTOR OF CREOLE LIFE IN THE SOUTH.”
IT is said “Circumstances make the man;” and, again, “Seeming
misfortunes are often blessings in disguise.” Whether this is
generally true or not, at least in the case of George W. Cable, it
has so turned out; for it was poverty and necessity that drove him
through a vicissitude of circumstances which stored his mind with
observations and facts that enabled him to open a new field of fiction,
introducing to the outside world a phase of American life hitherto
unsuspected save by those who have seen it. His rendering of the
Creole dialect with its French and Spanish variations and mixtures is
full of originality. He has depicted the social life of the Louisiana
lowlands, with its Creole and negro population, so vividly that many
whose portraits he has drawn have taken serious offence at his books.
But it is no doubt _the truth that hurts_, and if so, it should be
borne for the sake of history, and it is to the credit of Mr. Cable’s
integrity as an author that he has not sacrificed the truth to please
his friends. His books have also been the means of effecting wholesome
changes in the contract system of convict labor in several Southern
States.
George W. Cable was born October 12, 1844, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
His father was a Virginian and his mother a New Englander. They
removed to New Orleans in 1837. In 1859 Mr. Cable failed in business
and died soon after, leaving the family in a straightened condition,
and the son――then fifteen years of age――was compelled to leave school
and take a clerkship in a store. This he retained until, at the age
of nineteen, he volunteered in the service of the Confederate Army,
joining the Fourth Mississippi Cavalry, and followed the fortunes
of the Southern cause until it was lost. He was said to have been a
gallant soldier, was once wounded and narrowly escaped with his life.
All his spare moments in camp were given to study.
After the surrender of General Lee, Cable――a young man of
twenty-one――returned to New Orleans, penniless, and took employment
as an errand boy in a store. From there he drifted to Kosciusko,
Mississippi, where he studied civil engineering, and joined a
surveying party on bayous Têche and Atchafalaya――the native heath
of the Creole――and it was here that his keen observation gathered
the material which has since done him so much service.
Cable first began writing to the “New Orleans Picayune” under the
_nom-de-plume_ of “Drop Shot,” and his articles evinced a power which
soon opened the way to a regular place on the editorial staff of
the paper. This position he retained until he was asked to write a
theatrical criticism. Cable had rigid religious scruples――piety being
one of his marked characteristics――always avoided attendance of the
theatre, and he now refused to go, and resigned his position rather
than violate his conscience.
Leaving the editorial rooms of the “Picayune,” Cable secured a
position as accountant in a cotton-dealer’s office, which he retained
until 1879, when the death of his employer threw him out of position.
Meantime his sketches of Creole life had been appearing in “Scribner’s
Monthly,” and were received with so much favor that he determined
to leave business and devote his life to literature. Accordingly, in
1885, he removed North, living at Simsbury, Connecticut, Northampton,
Massachusetts, and New York, which he has since made his headquarters,
with a continual growing popularity, his books bringing him an ample
competency.
Among the published works of this author we mention as the most
prominent: “Old Creole Days” (1879–1883); “The Grandissimes” (1880);
“Madame Delphine” (1881); “Dr. Sevier” (1883); “The Creoles of
Louisiana” (1884); “The Silent South” (1885); “Bonaventure” (1888);
“Strange True Stories of Louisiana” (1889); “The Negro Question” and
“Life of William Gilmore Sims” (1890); “John March Southerner,” and
some later works which the author continues to add at the rate of one
book a year.
Mr. Cable has also successfully entered the lecture field, in common
with other modern authors, and never fails to interest Northern
audiences with his readings or recitations, from his writings or the
strange wild melodies and peculiar habits of life current among the
French speaking negroes of the lower Mississippi.
* * * * *
THE DOCTOR.¹
(FROM “DR. SEVIER.”)
¹ Copyright, George W. Cable.
THE main road to wealth in New Orleans has long been Carondelet Street.
There you see the most alert faces; noses――it seems to one――with
more and sharper edge, and eyes smaller and brighter and with less
distance between them than one notices in other streets. It is there
that the stock and bond brokers hurry to and fro and run together
promiscuously――the cunning and the simple, the headlong and the
wary――at the four clanging strokes of the Stock Exchange gong. There
rises the tall façade of the Cotton Exchange. Looking in from the
sidewalk as you pass, you see its main hall, thronged but decorous,
the quiet engine-room of the surrounding city’s most far-reaching
occupation, and at the hall’s farther end you descry the “Future
Room,” and hear the unearthly ramping and bellowing of the bulls and
bears. Up and down the street, on either hand, are the ship-brokers
and insurers, and in the upper stories foreign consuls among a
multitude of lawyers and notaries.
In 1856 this street was just assuming its present character. The
cotton merchants were making it their favorite place of commercial
domicile. The open thoroughfare served in lieu of the present
exchanges; men made fortunes standing on the curbstone, and during
bank hours the sidewalks were perpetually crowded with cotton factors,
buyers, brokers, weighers, reweighers, classers, pickers, pressers,
and samplers, and the air was laden with cotton quotations and
prognostications.
Number 3½, second floor, front, was the office of Dr. Sevier. This
office was convenient to everything. Immediately under its windows lay
the sidewalks where congregated the men who, of all in New Orleans,
could best afford to pay for being sick, and least desired to die.
Canal Street, the city’s leading artery, was just below, at the near
left-hand corner. Beyond it lay the older town, not yet impoverished
in those days,――the French quarter. A single square and a half off
at the right, and in plain view from the front windows, shone the
dazzling white walls of the St. Charles Hotel, where the nabobs of
the river plantations came and dwelt with their fair-handed wives
in seasons of peculiar anticipation, when it is well to be near the
highest medical skill. In the opposite direction a three minutes’
quick drive around the upper corner and down Common Street carried the
Doctor to his ward in the great Charity Hospital, and to the school of
medicine, where he filled the chair set apart to the holy ailments of
maternity. Thus, as it were, he laid his left hand on the rich and his
right on the poor; and he was not left-handed.
Not that his usual attitude was one of benediction. He stood straight
up in his austere pure-mindedness, tall, slender, pale, sharp of voice,
keen of glance, stern in judgment, aggressive in debate, and fixedly
untender everywhere, except――but always except――in the sick chamber.
His inner heart was all of flesh; but his demands for the rectitude of
mankind pointed out like the muzzles of cannon through the embrasures
of his virtues. To demolish evil!――that seemed the finest of aims;
and even as a physician, that was, most likely, his motive until later
years and a better self-knowledge had taught him that to do good was
still finer and better. He waged war――against malady. To fight; to
stifle; to cut down; to uproot; to overwhelm,――these were his springs
of action. That their results were good proved that his sentiment
of benevolence was strong and high; but it was well-nigh shut out of
sight by that impatience of evil which is very fine and knightly in
youngest manhood, but which we like to see give way to kindlier moods
as the earlier heat of the blood begins to pass.
He changed in later years; this was in 1856. To “resist not evil”
seemed to him then only a rather feeble sort of knavery. To face
it in its nakedness, and to inveigh against it in high places and
low, seemed the consummation of all manliness; and manliness was the
key-note of his creed. There was no other necessity in this life.
“But a man must live,” said one of his kindred, to whom, truth to tell,
he had refused assistance.
“No, sir; that is just what he can’t do. A man must die! So, while he
lives, let him be a man!”
How inharmonious a setting, then, for Dr. Sevier, was 3½ Carondelet
Street! As he drove each morning, down to that point, he had to pass
through long, irregular files of fellow-beings thronging either
sidewalk――a sadly unchivalric grouping of men whose daily and yearly
life was subordinated only and entirely to the getting of wealth, and
whose every eager motion was a repetition of the sinister old maxim
that “Time is money.”
“It’s a great deal more, sir, it’s life!” the Doctor always retorted.
Among these groups, moreover, were many who were all too well famed
for illegitimate fortune. Many occupations connected with the handling
of cotton yielded big harvests in perquisites. At every jog of the
Doctor’s horse, men came to view whose riches were the outcome of
semi-respectable larceny. It was a day of reckless operation; much of
the commerce that came to New Orleans was simply, as one might say,
beached in Carondelet Street. The sight used to keep the long, thin,
keen-eyed doctor in perpetual indignation.
“Look at the wreckers!” he would say.
It was breakfast at eight, indignation at nine, dyspepsia at ten.
So his setting was not merely inharmonious; it was damaging. He grew
sore on the whole matter of money-getting.
“Yes, I have money. But I don’t go after it. It comes to me, because
I seek and render service for the service’s sake. It will come to
anybody else the same way; and why should it come any other way?”
He not only had a low regard for the motives of most seekers of wealth,
he went further, and fell into much disbelief of poor men’s needs.
For instance, he looked upon a man’s inability to find employment, or
upon a poor fellow’s run of bad luck, as upon the placarded woes of a
hurdy-gurdy beggar.
“If he wants work he will find it. As for begging, it ought to be
easier for any true man to starve than to beg.”
The sentiment was ungentle, but it came from the bottom of his belief
concerning himself, and a longing for moral greatness in all men.
“However,” he would add, thrusting his hand into his pocket and
bringing out his purse, “I’ll help any man to make himself useful.
And the sick――well, the sick, as a matter of course. Only I must know
what I’m doing.”
Have some of us known want? To have known her――though to love her
was impossible――is “a liberal education.” The Doctor was learned; but
this acquaintanceship, this education, he had never got. Hence his
untenderness. Shall we condemn the fault? Yes. And the man? We have
not the face. To be _just_, which he never knowingly failed to be,
and at the same time to feel tenderly for the unworthy, to deal kindly
with the erring――it is a double grace that hangs not always in easy
reach even of the tallest. The Doctor attained to it――but in later
years; meantime, this story――which, I believe, had he ever been poor
would never have been written.
He had barely disposed of the three or four waiting messengers that
arose from their chairs against the corridor wall, and was still
reading the anxious lines left in various handwritings on his slate,
when the young man entered. He was of fair height, slenderly built,
with soft auburn hair, a little untrimmed, neat dress, and a diffident,
yet expectant and courageous, face.
“Dr. Sevier?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doctor, my wife is very ill; can I get you to come at once and see
her?”
“Who is her physician?”
“I have not called any; but we must have one now.”
“I don’t know about going at once. This is my hour for being in the
office. How far is it, and what’s the trouble?”
“We are only three squares away, just here in Custom-house Street.”
The speaker began to add a faltering enumeration of some very grave
symptoms. The Doctor noticed that he was slightly deaf; he uttered his
words as though he did not hear them.
“Yes,” interrupted Dr. Sevier, speaking half to himself as he turned
around to a standing case of cruel-looking silver-plated things
on shelves; “that’s a small part of the penalty women pay for the
doubtful honor of being our mothers. I’ll go. What is your number? But
you had better drive back with me if you can.” He drew back from the
glass case, shut the door, and took his hat.
“Narcisse!”
On the side of the office nearest the corridor a door let into a
hall-room that afforded merely good space for the furniture needed by
a single accountant. The Doctor had other interests besides those of
his profession, and, taking them altogether, found it necessary, or
at least convenient, to employ continuously the services of a person
to keep his accounts and collect his bills. Through the open door the
bookkeeper could be seen sitting on a high stool at a still higher
desk――a young man of handsome profile and well-knit form. At the
call of his name he unwound his legs from the rounds of the stool and
leaped into the Doctor’s presence with a superlatively highbred bow.
“I shall be back in fifteen minutes,” said the Doctor. “Come,
Mr. ――――,” and went out with the stranger.
Narcisse had intended to speak. He stood a moment, then lifted the
last half inch of a cigarette to his lips, took a long, meditative
inhalation, turned half round on his heel, dashed the remnant with
fierce emphasis into a spittoon, ejected two long streams of smoke
from his nostrils, and, extending his fist toward the door by which
the Doctor had gone out, said:――
“All right, ole hoss!” No, not that way. It is hard to give his
pronunciation by letter. In the word “right” he substituted an a for
the r, sounding it almost in the same instant with the i, yet distinct
from it: “All a-ight, ole hoss!”
Then he walked slowly back to his desk, with that feeling of relief
which some men find in the renewal of a promissory note, twined his
legs again among those of the stool, and, adding not a word, resumed
his pen.
FAMOUS WOMEN NOVELISTS.
Illustration: NOTED WOMEN NOVELISTS.
OCTAVE THANET • AMELIA E. BARR • ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS (WARD)
JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN • HARRIET BEECHER STOWE • CHAS. EGBERT CRADDOCK
MARION HARLAND • FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT • HELEN HUNT JACKSON
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
AUTHOR OF “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.”
FEW names are more indelibly written upon our country’s history than
that of Harriet Beecher Stowe. “No book,” says George William Curtis,
“was ever more a historical event than ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ ... It
was the great happiness of Mrs. Stowe not only to have written many
delightful books, but to have written one book which will always be
famous not only as the most vivid picture of an extinct evil system,
but as one of the most powerful influences in overthrowing it....
If all whom she has charmed and quickened should unite to sing her
praises, the birds of summer would be outdone.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe was the sixth child of Reverend Lyman
Beecher,――the great head of that great family which has left so deep
an impress upon the heart and mind of the American people. She was
born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in June, 1811,――just two years before
her next younger brother, Henry Ward Beecher. Her father was pastor of
the Congregational Church in Litchfield, and her girlhood was passed
there and at Hartford, where she attended the excellent seminary kept
by her elder sister, Catharine E. Beecher. In 1832 her father accepted
a call to the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary, at Cincinnati,
and moved thither with his family. Catharine Beecher went also, and
established there a new school, under the name of the Western Female
Institute, in which Harriet assisted.
In 1833 Mrs. Stowe first had the subject of slavery brought to her
personal notice by taking a trip across the river from Cincinnati into
Kentucky in company with Miss Dutton, one of the associate teachers in
the Western Institute. They visited the estate that afterward figured
as that of Mr. Shelby, in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and here the young
authoress first came into personal contact with the slaves of the
South.
Among the professors in Lane Seminary was Calvin E. Stowe, whose wife,
a dear friend of Miss Beecher, died soon after Dr. Beecher’s removal
to Cincinnati. In 1836 Professor Stowe and Harriet Beecher were
married. They were admirably suited to each other. Professor Stowe was
a typical man of letters,――a learned, amiable, unpractical philosopher,
whose philosophy was like that described by Shakespeare as “an
excellent horse in the stable, but an arrant jade on a journey.” Her
practical ability and cheerful, inspiring courage were the unfailing
support of her husband.
The years from 1845 to 1850 were a time of severe trial to Mrs. Stowe.
She and her husband both suffered from ill health, and the family
was separated. Professor Stowe was struggling with poverty, and
endeavoring at the same time to lift the Theological Seminary out
of financial difficulties. In 1849, while Professor Stowe was ill at
a water-cure establishment in Vermont, their youngest child died of
cholera, which was then raging in Cincinnati. In 1850 it was decided
to remove to Brunswick, Maine, the seat of Bowdoin College, where
Professor Stowe was offered a position.
Illustration: UNCLE TOM AND HIS BABY.
“’Ain’t she a peart young ’un?’”
The year 1850 is memorable in the history of the conflict with slavery.
It was the year of Clay’s compromise measures, as they were called,
which sought to satisfy the North by the admission of California as
a free State, and to propitiate the South by the notorious “Fugitive
Slave Law.” The slave power was at its height, and seemed to hold all
things under its feet; yet in truth it had entered upon the last stage
of its existence, and the forces were fast gathering for its final
overthrow. Professor Cairnes and others said truly, “The Fugitive
Slave Law has been to the slave power a questionable gain. Among its
first fruits was ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”
The story was begun as a serial in the _National Era_, June 5, 1851,
and was announced to run for about three months, but it was not
completed in that paper until April 1, 1852. It had been contemplated
as a mere magazine tale of perhaps a dozen chapters, but once begun it
could no more be controlled than the waters of the swollen Mississippi,
bursting through a crevasse in its levees. The intense interest
excited by the story, the demands made upon the author for more facts,
the unmeasured words of encouragement to keep on in her good work that
poured in from all sides, and, above all, the ever-growing conviction
that she had been intrusted with a great and holy mission, compelled
her to keep on until the humble tale had assumed the proportions of
a large volume. Mrs. Stowe repeatedly said, “I could not control the
story, it wrote itself;” and, “I the author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’?
No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest of
instruments in his hand. To him alone should be given all the praise.”
For the story as a serial the author received $300. In the meantime,
however, it had attracted the attention of Mr. John P. Jewett, a
Boston publisher, who promptly made overtures for its publication in
book form. He offered Mr. and Mrs. Stowe a half share in the profits,
provided they would share with him the expense of publication. This
was refused by the Professor, who said he was altogether too poor
to assume any such risk; and the agreement finally made was that the
author should receive a ten per cent. royalty upon all sales.
In the meantime the fears of the author as to whether or not her book
would be read were quickly dispelled. Three thousand copies were sold
the very first day, a second edition was issued the following week,
a third a few days later; and within a year one hundred and twenty
editions, or over three hundred thousand copies, of the book had been
issued and sold in this country. Almost in a day the poor professor’s
wife had become the most talked-of woman in the world; her influence
for good was spreading to its remotest corners, and henceforth she
was to be a public character, whose every movement would be watched
with interest, and whose every word would be quoted. The long, weary
struggle with poverty was to be hers no longer; for, in seeking to aid
the oppressed, she had also so aided herself that within four months
from the time her book was published it had yielded her $10,000 in
royalties.
In 1852 Professor Stowe received a call to the professorship of
Sacred Literature in Andover Theological Seminary, and the family
soon removed to their Massachusetts home. They were now relieved from
financial pressure; but Mrs. Stowe’s health was still delicate; and
in 1853 she went with her husband and brother to England, where she
received, much to her surprise, a universal welcome. She made many
friends among the most distinguished people in Great Britain, and
on the continent as well. On her return she wrote the “Key to Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,” and began “Dred, a Tale of the Dismal Swamp.” In fact,
her literary career was just beginning. With “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” her
powers seemed only to be fairly awakened. One work after another came
in quick succession. For nearly thirty years after the publication
of “Uncle Tom,” her pen was never idle. In 1854 she published “Sunny
Memories of Foreign Lands,” and then, in rapid succession, “The
Minister’s Wooing,” “The Pearl of Orr’s Island,” “Agnes of Sorrento,”
“House and Home Papers,” “Little Foxes,” and “Oldtown Folks.” These,
however, are but a small part of her works. Besides more than thirty
books, she has written magazine articles, short stories, and sketches
almost without number. She has entertained, instructed, and inspired
a generation born long after the last slave was made free, and to whom
the great question which once convulsed our country is only a name.
But her first great work has never been surpassed, and it will never
be forgotten.
Illustration: A SCENE IN UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.
_Little Eva._――“‘Oh, Uncle Tom! what
funny things you _are_ making there.’”
After the war which accomplished the abolition of slavery, Mrs. Stowe
lived in Hartford, Connecticut, in summer, and spent the winters in
Florida, where she bought a luxurious home. Her pen was hardly ever
idle; and the popularity of her works seemed to steadily increase.
She passed away on the 1st of July, 1896, amid the surroundings of her
quiet, pretty home at Hartford, Connecticut. The whole reading world
was moved at the news of her death, and many a chord vibrated at the
remembrance of her powerful, and we may even say successful, advocacy
of the cause of the slave. The good which “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” achieved
can never be estimated, and the noble efforts of its author have been
interwoven in the work of the world.
* * * * *
THE LITTLE EVANGELIST.
FROM “UNCLE TOM’S CABIN.”
IT was Sunday afternoon. St. Clare was stretched on a bamboo lounge
in the verandah, solacing himself with a cigar. Marie lay reclined
on a sofa, opposite the window opening on the verandah, closely
secluded under an awning of transparent gauze from the outrages of
the mosquitoes, and languidly holding in her hand an elegantly-bound
prayer-book. She was holding it because it was Sunday, and she
imagined she had been reading it――though, in fact, she had been only
taking a succession of short naps with it open in her hand.
Miss Ophelia, who, after some rumaging, had hunted up a small
Methodist meeting within riding distance, had gone out, with Tom
as driver, to attend it, and Eva accompanied them.
“I say, Augustine,” said Marie, after dozing awhile, “I must send to
the city after my old doctor, Posey; I’m sure I’ve got the complaint
of the heart.”
“Well; why need you send for him? This doctor that attends Eva seems
skillful.”
“I would not trust him in a critical case,” said Marie; “and I think
I may say mine is becoming so! I’ve been thinking of it these two
or three nights past; I have such distressing pains and such strange
feelings.”
“Oh, Marie, you are blue! I don’t believe it’s heart-complaint.”
“I daresay _you_ don’t,” said Marie; “I was prepared to expect _that_.
You can be alarmed enough if Eva coughs, or has the least thing the
matter with her; but you never think of me.”
“If it’s particularly agreeable to you to have heart-disease, why,
I’ll try and maintain you have it,” said St. Clare; “I didn’t know it
was.”
“Well, I only hope you won’t be sorry for this when it’s too late!”
said Marie. “But, believe it or not, my distress about Eva, and the
exertions I have made with that dear child, have developed what I have
long suspected.”
What the _exertions_ were which Marie referred to it would have been
difficult to state. St. Clare quietly made this commentary to himself,
and went on smoking, like a hard-hearted wretch of a man as he was,
till a carriage drove up before the verandah, and Eva and Miss Ophelia
alighted.
Miss Ophelia marched straight to her own chamber, to put away her
bonnet and shawl, as was always her manner, before she spoke a word
on any subject; while Eva came at St. Clare’s call, and was sitting
on his knee, giving him an account of the services they had heard.
They soon heard loud exclamations from Miss Ophelia’s room (which,
like the one in which they were sitting, opened to the verandah), and
violent reproof addressed to somebody.
“What new witchcraft has Tops been brewing?” asked St. Clare. “That
commotion is of her raising, I’ll be bound!”
And in a moment after, Miss Ophelia, in high indignation, came
dragging the culprit along.
“Come out here, now!” she said. “I _will_ tell your master!”
“What’s the case now?” asked Augustine.
“The case is, that I cannot be plagued with this child any longer!
It’s past all bearing; flesh and blood cannot endure it! Here, I
locked her up, and gave her a hymn to study and what does she do
but spy out where I put my key, and has gone to my bureau and got a
bonnet-trimming and cut it all to pieces to make dolls’ jackets! I
never saw anything like it in my life.”
Illustration: MISS OPHELIA AND TOPSY.
“I cannot be plagued with this child any longer!”
“I told you, cousin,” said Marie, “that you’d find out that these
creatures can’t be brought up without severity. If I had _my_ way,
now,” she said, looking reproachfully at St. Clare, “I’d send that
child out and have her thoroughly whipped; I’d have her whipped till
she couldn’t stand!”
“I don’t doubt it,” said St. Clare. “Tell me of the lovely rule of
woman! I never saw above a dozen women that wouldn’t half kill a horse,
or a servant either, if they had their own way with them――let alone a
man.”
“There is no use in this shilly-shally way of yours, St. Clare!” said
Marie. “Cousin is a woman of sense, and she sees it now as plain as I
do.”
Miss Ophelia had just the capability of indignation that belongs to
the thorough-paced housekeeper, and this had been pretty actively
roused by the artifice and wastefulness of the child; in fact, many
of my lady readers must own that they would have felt just so in her
circumstances; but Marie’s words went beyond her, and she felt less
heat.
“I wouldn’t have the child treated so for the world,” she said; “but
I am sure, Augustine, I don’t know what to do. I’ve taught and taught,
I’ve talked till I’m tired, I’ve whipped her, I’ve punished her in
every way I can think of; and still she’s just what she was at first.”
“Come here, Tops, you monkey!” said St. Clare, calling the child up to
him.
Topsy came up; her round, hard eyes glittering and blinking with a
mixture of apprehensiveness and their usual odd drollery.
“What makes you behave so?” said St. Clare who could not help being
amused with the child’s expression.
“’Spects it’s my wicked heart,” said Topsy, demurely; “Miss Feely says
so.”
“Don’t you see how much Miss Ophelia has done for you? She says, she
has done everything she can think of.”
“Lor, yes, mas’r! old missis used to say so, too. She whipped me a
heap harder, and used to pull my ha’r, and knock my head agin the door;
but it didn’t do me no good! I ’spects if they’s to pull every spear
o’ ha’r out o’ my head it wouldn’t do no good neither――I’s so wicked!
Laws! I’s nothin’ but a nigger, no ways!”
“Well, I shall have to give her up,” said Miss Ophelia; “I can’t have
that trouble any longer.”
“Well, I’d just like to ask one question,” said St. Clare.
“What is it?”
“Why, if your Gospel is not strong enough to save one heathen child,
that you can have at home here, all to yourself, what’s the use of
sending one or two poor missionaries off with it among thousands
of just such? I suppose this child is about a fair sample of what
thousands of your heathen are.”
Miss Ophelia did not make an immediate answer; and Eva, who had stood
a silent spectator of the scene thus far, made a silent sign to Topsy
to follow her. There was a little glass-room at the corner of the
verandah, which St. Clare used as a sort of reading-room; and Eva and
Topsy disappeared into this place.
“What’s Eva going about now?” said St. Clare; “I mean to see.”
And, advancing on tiptoe, he lifted up a curtain that covered the
glass-door, and looked in. In a moment, laying his finger on his
lips, he made a silent gesture to Miss Ophelia to come and look.
There sat the two children on the floor, with their side faces towards
them――Topsy with her usual air of careless drollery and unconcern; but,
opposite to her, Eva, her whole face fervent with feeling, and tears
in her large eyes.
“What does make you so bad, Topsy? Why won’t you try and be good?
Don’t you love _anybody_, Topsy?”
“Dun no nothin’ ’bout love; I loves candy and sich, that’s all,” said
Topsy.
“But you love your father and mother?”
“Never had none, ye know. I telled ye that, Miss Eva.”
“Oh, I know,” said Eva, sadly; “but hadn’t you any brother, or sister,
or aunt, or――――”
“No, none on ’em――never had nothing nor nobody.”
“But, Topsy, if you’d only try to be good, you might――――”
“Couldn’t never be nothin’ but a nigger, if I was ever so good,” said
Topsy. “If I could be skinned, and come white, I’d try then.”
“But people can love you, if you are black, Topsy. Miss Ophelia would
love you if you were good.”
Topsy gave the short, blunt laugh that was her common mode of
expressing incredulity.
“Don’t you think so?” said Eva.
“No; she can’t b’ar me, ’cause I’m a nigger!――she’d’s soon have a
toad touch her. There can’t nobody love niggers, and niggers can’t
do nothin’. I don’t care,” said Topsy, beginning to whistle.
“Oh, Topsy, poor child, _I_ love you!” said Eva, with a sudden
burst of feeling, and laying her little thin, white hand on Topsy’s
shoulder. “I love you because you haven’t had any father, or mother,
or friends――because you’ve been a poor, abused child! I love you, and
I want you to be good. I am very unwell, Topsy, and I think I sha’n’t
live a great while; and it really grieves me to have you be so naughty.
I wish you would try to be good for my sake; it’s only a little while
I shall be with you.”
The round, keen eyes of the black child were overcast with tears;
large, bright drops rolled heavily down, one by one, and fell on the
little white hand. Yes, in that moment a ray of real belief, a ray of
heavenly love, had penetrated the darkness of her heathen soul! She
laid her head down between her knees, and wept and sobbed; while the
beautiful child, bending over her, looked like the picture of some
bright angel stooping to reclaim a sinner.
“Poor Topsy!” said Eva, “don’t you know that Jesus loves all alike? He
is just as willing to love you as me. He loves you just as I do, only
more, because He is better. He will help you to be good, and you can
go to heaven at last, and be an angel for ever, just as much as if
you were white. Only think of it, Topsy, _you_ can be one of those
’spirits bright’ Uncle Tom sings about.”
“Oh, dear Miss Eva! dear Miss Eva!” said the child, “I will try! I
will try! I never did care nothin’ about it before.”
St. Clare at this moment dropped the curtain. “It puts me in mind of
mother,” he said to Miss Ophelia. “It is true what she told me: if we
want to give sight to the blind, we must be willing to do as Christ
did――call them to us and _put our hands on them_.”
“I’ve always had a prejudice against negroes,” said Miss Ophelia; “and
it’s a fact, I never could bear to have that child touch me; but I
didn’t think she knew it.”
“Trust any child to find that out,” said St. Clare: “there’s no
keeping it from them. But I believe that all the trying in the world
to benefit a child, and all the substantial favors you can do them,
will never excite one emotion of gratitude while that feeling of
repugnance remains in the heart; it’s a queer kind of fact, but so
it is.”
“I don’t know how I can help it,” said Miss Ophelia; “they _are_
disagreeable to me――this child in particular. How can I help feeling
so?”
“Eva does, it seems.”
“Well, she’s so loving! After all, though, she’s no more than
Christ-like,” said Miss Ophelia: “I wish I were like her. She might
teach me a lesson.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a little child had been used to
instruct an old disciple, if it _were_ so,” said St. Clare.
* * * * *
THE OTHER WORLD.
IT lies around us like a cloud,
The world we do not see;
Yet the sweet closing of an eye
May bring us there to be.
Its gentle breezes fan our cheek,
Amid our worldly cares;
Its gentle voices whisper love,
And mingle with our prayers.
Sweet hearts around us throb and beat,
Sweet helping hands are stirred;
And palpitates the veil between,
With breathings almost heard.
The silence, awful, sweet, and calm,
They have no power to break;
For mortal words are not for them
To utter or partake.
So thin, so soft, so sweet they glide,
So near to press they seem,
They lull us gently to our rest,
They melt into our dream.
And, in the hush of rest they bring,
’Tis easy now to see,
How lovely and how sweet to pass
The hour of death may be;――
To close the eye and close the ear,
Wrapped in a trance of bliss,
And, gently drawn in loving arms,
To swoon from that to this:――
Scarce knowing if we wake or sleep,
Scarce asking where we are,
To feel all evil sink away,
All sorrow and all care!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MARY VIRGINIA TERHUNE.
(MARION HARLAND.)
_Popular Novelist and Domestic Economist._
MARION HARLAND combines a wide variety of talent. She is probably
the first writer to excel in the line of fiction and also to be a
leader in the direction of domestic economy. She is one of the most
welcomed contributors to the periodicals, and her books on practical
housekeeping, common sense in the household, and several practical
cookery books have smoothed the way for many a young housekeeper and
probably promoted the cause of peace in numerous households.
Mary Virginia Hawes was the daughter of a native of Massachusetts who
was engaged in business in Richmond, Virginia. She was born in 1831,
and received a good education. She began in early childhood to display
her literary powers. She wrote for the magazines in her sixteenth year
and her first contribution, “Marrying Through Prudential Motives,”
was so widely read that it was published in nearly every journal in
England, was translated and published throughout France, found its way
back to England through a retranslation, and finally appeared in a new
form in the United States.
In 1856 she became the wife of Rev. Edward P. Terhune, afterwards
pastor of the Puritan Congregational Church in Brooklyn, where in
recent years they have lived. Mrs. Terhune has always been active in
charitable and church work, and has done an amount of writing equal
to that of the most prolific authors. She has been editor or conducted
departments of two or three different magazines and established
and successfully edited the “Home Maker.” Some of her most noted
stories are “The Hidden Path;” “True as Steel;” “Husbands and Homes;”
“Phemie’s Temptation;” “Ruby’s Husband;” “Handicap;” “Judith;” “A
Gallant Fight;” and “His Great Self.” Besides these books and a
number of others, she has written almost countless essays on household
and other topics. Her book, “Eve’s Daughters,” is a standard work
of counsel to girls and young women. She takes an active part in the
literary and philanthropic organizations of New York City, and has
been prominent in the Woman’s Councils held under the auspices of a
Chautauquan association. She was the first to call attention to the
dilapidated condition of the grave of Mary Washington and started a
movement to put the monument in proper condition. For the benefit of
this movement, she wrote and published “The Story of ♦Mary Washington.”
♦ Title truncated in text.
* * * * *
A MANLY HERO.¹
(FROM “A GALLANT FIGHT.”)
¹ Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.
AFTER donning velvet jacket and slippers he sat down, and, lighting
his cigar, leaned back to watch the fire and dream of Salome and their
real home.
Not until the weed was half consumed did he observe an envelope
on the table at his elbow. It was sealed and addressed to him in a
“back-hand” he did not recognize:
“_In the Library. Nine O’clock, P. M._
“MY OWN LOVE――You say in your letter (burned as soon as I had
committed the contents to memory) that I must never call you that
again. There is a higher law than that of man’s appointment, binding
our hearts together, stronger even than that of your sweet, wise lips.
Until you are actually married to the man whom you confess you do not
love, you will, according to that divine law, be my own Marion――”
With a violent start, the young man shook the sheet from his fingers
as he would a serpent.
This was what he had promised not to read, or so much as to touch!
The veins stood out high and dark on his forehead; he drew in the air
hissingly. Had a basilisk uncoiled from his bosom and thrust a forked
tongue in his face the shock would not have been greater. This was
“the letter written to Marion!” He had thrown away six of the best
years of his life upon the woman whom another man called his “own
love;” the man to whom she had confessed that she did not love her
betrothed husband! Who was he?
“If they are genuine, respect for the dead and mercy to the living
require that they should be suppressed and destroyed,” Mrs. Phelps
had said of “papers written _a little while_ before Marion’s death.”
His word was pledged. But what name would he see if he reversed the
sheet before destroying it? With a bound of the heart that would have
assured him, had proof been needed, what his bonnie living girl-love
was to him, he put away all tender memories of the dead, false
betrothed. He had worshipped and mourned the thinnest of shadows. He
might owe respect――abstractly――to the dead, but no reverence to a wild
dream from which he had been awakened. Who was the “living” to whom he
was entreated to show mercy? Where was the man who had first robbed
him, then let him play the sad-visaged dupe and fool, while the heyday
of youth slipped forever beyond his reach?
To learn that――to remember the name with execration――to despise with
the full force of a wronged and honest soul――perhaps to brand him as
a cur and blackguard, should he ever cross his path――would not break
his word. Was it not his right――the poor rag of compensation he might
claim for the incalculable, the damnable evil the traitor had wrought?
He would confess to Salome’s mother to-morrow――but this one thing he
would do.
He stooped for the letter.
“Peace! let him rest! God knoweth best!
And the flowing tide comes in!
And the flowing tide comes in!”
It was only his beloved stepmother on her nightly round of nursery
and Gerald’s chamber, singing to her guileless self in passing her
stepson’s door to prove her serenity of spirit; but Rex staggered back
into his seat, put his elbows on his knees and covered his face with
his hands.
He smelled the balsam-boughs slanting to the water, the trailing
arbutus Salome wore in her belt; heard the waves lapping the prow
and sides of the bounding boat. God’s glorious heaven was over them,
and the sun was rising, after a long, long night, in his heart. The
fresh, tender young voice told the tale of love and loss and patient
submission....
Aye, and could not he, affluent in heaven’s best blessings, loving
and beloved by the noble, true daughter of the Christian heroine who
expected her “son” to stand fast by his plighted word――the almost
husband of a pure, high-souled woman――afford to spare the miserable
wretch whose own mind and memory must be a continual hell?
He pitied, he almost forgave him, as he took up the sheets from the
floor, the scrap of paper from the table, and, averting his eyes lest
the signature might leap out at him from the twisting flame, laid them
under the forestick and did not look that way again until nothing was
left of them but cinder and ashes.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MARY ABIGAIL DODGE.
THE FAMOUS ESSAYIST, CRITIC, AND NOVELIST, “GAIL HAMILTON.”
AMONG the female writers of America, perhaps there is no one who has
covered a more diversified field and done her work more thoroughly,
in the several capacities of essayist, philosopher, political writer,
child-writer and novelist, than has Miss Mary Abigail Dodge, widely
known by her pen-name, “Gail Hamilton.” Miss Dodge commanded a terse,
vigorous and direct style; and with a courage manifested by few
contemporaneous authors, she cut right through shams and deceits with
an easy and convincing blow that left no room for doubt.
Mary Abigail Dodge was born in Hamilton, Massachusetts, in the year
1830. Her pen-name is composed of the last syllable of the word
“Abigail” and her native city, “Hamilton.” Her education was thorough,
and in 1857 she was made instructor of physical science in the
High School of Hartford, Connecticut. Some years after she became a
governess in the family of Doctor Bailey the editor of the “National
Era,” in Washington, D. C., and begun her career as a writer by
contributing to his journal. For two years, from 1865 to 1867, she
was one of the editors of “Our Young Folks,” and from that time to
the close of her life she was a constant contributor to prominent
magazines and newspapers――the name “Gail Hamilton” attached to an
essay was always a guarantee that it was full of wit and
aggressiveness.
The published volumes of this author in order of their publication
are as follows: “Country Living and Country Thinking” (1862);
“Gala-Days” (1863); “Stumbling Blocks” and “A New Atmosphere” (1864);
“Skirmishes and Sketches” (1865); “Summer Rest” and “Red-letter Days
in Applethorpe” (1866); “Wool Gathering,” (1867); “Woman’s Wrongs, a
Counter-Irritant” (1868); “Battle of the Books” (1870); “Woman’s Worth
and Worthlessness” (1871). For a period of three years Miss Dodge
devoted herself to the little folks, producing in 1872 “Little Folk
Life,” and the next year two other volumes, entitled “Child World.”
In the same year, 1873, came her humorous book, entitled “Twelve Miles
from a Lemon,” and in 1874 “Nursery Noonings,” another book for and
about children. In 1875 appeared two volumes very unlike, but both
of which attracted considerable attention. The first was entitled
“Sermons to the Clergy,” in which she gave some wholesome advice and
pointed out many of the shortcomings of ministers. The other book
was entitled “First Love Is Best.” In 1876 Miss Dodge’s mind seemed
to take on a more religious, moral and still more practical turn
as evinced by the title of the following books: “What Think Ye of
Christ?” (1876); “Our Common School System” (1880); “Divine Guidance”
(1881); “The Insuppressible Book” (1885); and “The Washington Bible
Class” (1891).
Miss Dodge was a cousin to the distinguished statesman, James G.
Blaine, of whom she was very fond. Much of her time during the last
few years of his life was spent with his family at Washington, and
when Mr. Blaine died in January, 1893, she undertook, in the interest
of the family, to write his life, which work she finished and the
book was published in 1894. It is the only authoritative life of
the statesman endorsed by the family. This was Miss Hamilton’s last
book. It was a congenial theme to which she devoted perhaps the most
painstaking and best work of her life. The last years of the busy
author were marked by failing health. She died at Washington in 1896.
* * * * *
FISHING.
(FROM “GALA DAYS.”)
SOME people have conscientious scruples about fishing. I respect
them. I had them myself. Wantonly to destroy, for mere sport, the
innocent life in lake or river, seemed to me a cruelty and a shame.
But people must fish. Now, then, how shall your theory and practice
be harmonized? Practice can’t yield. Plainly, theory must. A year ago
I went out on a rock in the Atlantic Ocean, held a line――just to see
how it seemed――and caught eight fishes; and every time a fish came up,
a scruple went down. * * * * Which facts will partially account for
the eagerness with which I, one morning, seconded a proposal to go
a-fishing in a river about fourteen miles away.
* * * * *
They go to the woods, I hang my prospective trout on my retrospective
♣rod and march riverward. Halicarnassus, according to the old saw,
“leaves this world and climbs a tree,” and, with ♦jackknife, cord and
perseverance, manufactures a fishing-rod, which he courteously offers
to me, which I succinctly decline, informing him in no ambiguous
phrase that I consider nothing beneath the best as good enough for me.
Halicarnassus is convinced by my logic, overpowered by my rhetoric,
and meekly yields up the best rod, though the natural man rebels. The
bank of the river is rocky, steep, shrubby, and difficult of ascent or
descent. Halicarnassus bids me tarry on the bridge, while he descends
to reconnoitre. I am acquiescent, and lean over the railing awaiting
the result of investigation. Halicarnassus picks his way over rocks,
sideways and zigzaggy along the bank, and down the river in search
of fish. I grow tired of playing leasa-bianca and steal behind the
bridge, and pick my way over the rocks sidewise and zigzaggy along
the bank and up the river, in search of “fun;” practice irregular and
indescribable gymnastics with variable success for half an hour or
so. Shout from the bridge. I look up. Too far off to hear the words,
but see Halicarnassus gesticulating furiously, and evidently laboring
under great excitement. Retrograde as rapidly as circumstances will
permit. Halicarnassus makes a speaking trumpet of his hands and roars,
“I’ve found――a fish! Left――him for――you――to catch! come quick!”――and
plunging headlong down the bank disappears. I am touched to the heart
by this sublime instance of self-denial and devotion, and scramble up
to the bridge, and plunge down after him. Heel of boot gets entangled
in hem of dress every third step――fishing-line in tree-top every
second; progress therefore not so rapid as could be desired. Reach
the water at last. Step cautiously from rock to rock to the middle of
the stream――balance on a pebble just large enough to plant both feet
on, and just firm enough to make it worth while to run the risk――drop
my line into the spot designated――a quiet, black little pool in the
rushing river――see no fish, but have faith in ♠Halicarnassus.
♣ ‘cod’ replaced with ‘rod’
♦ ‘jacknife’ replaced with ‘jackknife’
♠ ‘Harlicarnassus’ replaced with ‘Halicarnassus’
“Bite?” asks Halicarnassus eagerly.
“Not yet,” I answer sweetly. Breathless expectation. Lips compressed.
Eyes fixed. Five minutes gone.
“Bite?” calls Halicarnassus from down the river.
“Not yet,” hopefully.
“Lower your line a little. I’ll come in a minute.” Line is lowered.
Arms begin to ache. Rod suddenly bobs down. Snatch it up. Only an old
stick. Splash it off contemptuously.
“Bite?” calls Halicarnassus from afar.
“No,” faintly responds Marius, amid the ruins of Carthage.
“Perhaps he will by and by,” suggests Halicarnassus encouragingly.
Five minutes more. Arms breaking. Knees trembling. Pebble shaky. Brain
dizzy. Everything seems to be sailing down stream. Tempted to give it
up, but look at the empty basket, think of the expectant party, and
the eight cod-fish, and possess my soul in patience.
“Bite?” comes the distant voice of Halicarnassus, disappearing by a
bend in the river.
“No!” I moan, trying to stand on one foot to rest the other, and
ending by standing on neither; for the pebble quivers, convulses, and
finally rolls over and expires; and only a vigorous leap and a sudden
conversion of the fishing-rod into a balancing-pole save me from an
ignominious bath. Weary of the world, and lost to shame, I gather all
my remaining strength, wind the line about the rod, poise it on high,
hurl it out in the deepest and most unobstructed part of the stream,
* * * lie down upon the rock, pull my hat over my face, and dream, to
the furling of the river, the singing of the birds, and the music of
the wind in the trees, of another river, far, far, away.
* * * * *
“Hullo! how many?”
I start up wildly, and knock my hat off into the water. Jump after
it, at the imminent risk of going in myself, catch it by one of the
strings, and stare at Halicarnassus.
“Asleep, I fancy?” says Halicarnassus, interrogatively.
* * * * *
We walk silently towards the woods. We meet a small boy with a tin pan
and thirty-six fishes in it. We accost him.
“Are these fishes for sale?” asks Halicarnassus.
“Bet they be!” says small boy with energy.
Halicarnassus looks meaningly at me. I look meaningly at Halicarnassus,
and both look meaningly at our empty basket. “Won’t you tell?” says
Halicarnassus. “No; won’t you?” Halicarnassus whistles, the fishes are
transferred from pan to basket, and we walk away “chirp as a cricket,”
reach the sylvan party, and are speedily surrounded.
“O what beauties! Who caught them? How many are there?”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HELEN MARIA FISKE HUNT JACKSON.
“THE FRIEND OF THE RED MAN.”
ONE of the sights pointed out to a traveler in the West is Cheyenne
Canyon, a wild and weird pass in the Rocky Mountains a short distance
from Colorado Springs. Some years ago the writer, in company with
a party of tourists, drove as far as a vehicle could pass up the
mountain-road that wound along a little stream which came tumbling
down the narrow ravine splitting the mountain in twain. Soon we were
compelled to abandon the wagon, and on foot we climbed the rugged way,
first on one side and then on the other of the rushing rivulet where
the narrow path could find space enough to lay its crooked length
along. Suddenly a little log-cabin in a clump of trees burst on our
view. A boy with a Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder met us a
few rods from the door and requested a fee of twenty-five cents each
before permitting us to pass.
“What is it?” inquired one of the party pointing at the cabin. “This
is the house Helen Hunt lived in and away above there is where she is
buried,” answered the boy. We paid the fee, inspected the house, and
then, over more rocky steeps, we climbed to the spot indicated near a
falling cataract and stood beside a pile of stones thrown together by
hundreds of tourists who had preceded us. It was the lonely grave of
one of the great literary women of our age. We gathered some stones
and added them to the pile and left her alone by the singing cataract,
beneath the sighing branches of the firs and pines which stood like
towering sentinels around her on Mount Jackson――for this peak was
named in her honor. “What a monument!” said one, “more lasting than
hammered bronze!” “But not moreso,” said another, “than the good she
has done. Her influence will live while this mountain shall stand,
unless another dark age should sweep literature out of existence.”
“I wonder the Indians don’t convert this place into a shrine and come
here to worship,” ventured a third person. “Her ‘Romona,’ written in
their behalf, must have been produced under a divine inspiration. She
was among all American writers their greatest benefactor.”
Helen Maria Fiske was born in Amherst, Mass., October 18, 1831.
She was the daughter of Professor Nathan Fiske of Amherst College,
and was educated at ♦Ipswich (Mass.) Female Seminary. In 1852 she
married Captain Edward B. Hunt of the U. S. Navy, and lived with him
at various posts until 1863, when he died. After this she removed
to Newport, R. I., with her children, but one by one they died,
until 1872 she was left alone and desolate. In her girlhood she had
contributed some verses to a Boston paper which were printed. She
wrote nothing more until two years after the death of her husband,
when she sent a number of poems to New York papers which were signed
H. H. and they attracted wide and favorable criticism. These poems
were collected and published under the title of “Verses from H. H.”
(1870). After the death of her children she decided to devote herself
to literature, and from that time to the close of her life――twelve
years later――her books came in rapid succession and she gained wide
distinction as a writer of prose and verse. Both her poetry and prose
works are characterized by deep thoughtfulness and a rare grace and
beauty of diction.
♦ ‘Ipswick’ replaced with ‘Ipswich’
In 1873 Mrs. Hunt removed to Colorado for the benefit of her health,
and in 1875 became the wife of Wm. S. Jackson, a merchant of Colorado
Springs; and it was in this beautiful little city, nestling at the
foot of Pike’s Peak, with the perpetual snow on its summit always in
sight, that she made her home for the remainder of her life, though
she spent considerable time in traveling in New Mexico, California and
the Eastern States gathering material for her books.
Briefly catalogued, the works of Helen Hunt Jackson are: “Verses
by H. H.” (1870); “Bits of Travel” (1873); “Bits of Talk About Home
Matters” (1873); “Sonnets and Lyrics” (1876); “Mercy Philbrick’s
Choice” (1876); “Hettie’s Strange History” (1877); “A Century of
Dishonor” (1881); “Romona” (1884).
Besides the above, Mrs. Jackson wrote several juvenile books and two
novels in the “No Name” series; and that powerful series of stories,
published under the pen-name of “Saxe Holme,” has also been attributed
to her, although there is no absolute proof that she wrote them.
“A Century of Dishonor” made its author more famous than anything
she produced up to that time, but critics now generally agree that
“Romona,” her last book, is her most powerful work, both as a novel
and in its beneficent influence. It was the result of a most profound
and exhaustive study of the Indian problem, to which she devoted the
last and best years of her life. It was her most conscientious and
sympathetic work. It was through Helen Hunt Jackson’s influence that
the government instituted important reforms in the treatment of the
red men.
In June, 1884, Mrs. Jackson met with a painful accident, receiving
a bad fracture of her leg. She was taken to California while
convalescing and there contracted malaria, and at the same time
developed cancer. The complication of her ailments resulted in death,
which occurred August 12, 1885. Her remains were carried back to
Colorado, and, in accordance with her expressed wish, buried on the
peak looking down into the Cheyenne Canyon. The spot was dear to her.
The cabin below had been built for her as a quiet retreat, where, when
she so desired, she could retire with one or two friends, and write
undisturbed, alone with the primeval forest and the voices which
whispered through nature, and the pure, cool mountain-air.
* * * * *
CHRISTMAS NIGHT AT SAINT PETER’S.
LOW on the marble floor I lie:
I am alone:
Though friendly voices whisper nigh,
And foreign crowds are passing by,
I am alone.
Great hymns float through
The shadowed aisles. I hear a slow Refrain,
“Forgive them, for they know
Not what they do!”
With tender joy all others thrill;
I have but tears:
The false priest’s voices, high and shrill,
Reiterate the “Peace, good will;”
I have but tears.
I hear anew
The nails and scourge; then come the low
Sad words, “Forgive them, for they know
Not what they do!”
Close by my side the poor souls kneel;
I turn away;
Half-pitying looks at me they steal;
They think, because I do not feel,
I turn away;
Ah! if they knew,
How following them, where’er they go,
I hear, “Forgive them, for they know
Not what they do!”
Above the organ’s sweetest strains
I hear the groans
Of prisoners, who lie in chains,
So near and in such mortal pains,
I hear the groans.
But Christ walks through
The dungeon of St. Angelo,
And says, “Forgive them, for they know
Not what they do!”
And now the music sinks to sighs;
The lights grow dim:
The Pastorella’s melodies
In lingering echoes float and rise;
The lights grow dim;
More clear and true,
In this sweet silence, seem to flow
The words, “Forgive them, for they know
Not what they do!”
The dawn swings incense, silver gray;
The night is past;
Now comes, triumphant, God’s full day;
No priest, no church can bar its way:
The night is past:
How on this blue
Of God’s great banner, blaze and glow
The words, “Forgive them, for they know
Not what they do!”
* * * * *
CHOICE OF COLORS.
THE other day, as I was walking on one of the oldest and most
picturesque streets of the old and picturesque town of Newport, R. I.,
I saw a little girl standing before the window of a milliner’s shop.
It was a very rainy day. The pavement of the sidewalks on this street
is so sunken and irregular that in wet weather, unless one walks with
very great care, he steps continually into small wells of water. Up to
her ankles in one of these wells stood the little girl, apparently as
unconscious as if she were high and dry before a fire. It was a very
cold day too. I was hurrying along, wrapped in furs, and not quite
warm enough even so. The child was but thinly clothed. She wore an old
plaid shawl and a ragged knit hood of scarlet worsted. One little red
ear stood out unprotected by the hood, and drops of water trickled
down over it from her hair. She seemed to be pointing with her finger
at articles in the window, and talking to some one inside. I watched
her for several moments, and then crossed the street to see what it
all meant. I stole noiselessly up behind her, and she did not hear me.
The window was full of artificial flowers, of the cheapest sort, but
of very gay colors. Here and there a knot of ribbon or a bit of lace
had been tastefully added, and the whole effect was really remarkably
gay and pretty. Tap, tap, tap, went the small hand against the
window-pane; and with every tap the unconscious little creature
murmured, in a half-whispering, half-singing voice, “I choose _that_
color.” “I choose _that_ color.” “I choose _that_ color.”
I stood motionless. I could not see her face; but there was in her
whole attitude and tone the heartiest content and delight. I moved a
little to the right, hoping to see her face, without her seeing me;
but the slight movement caught her ear, and in a second she had sprung
aside and turned toward me. The spell was broken. She was no longer
the queen of an air-castle, decking herself in all the rainbow hues
which pleased her eye. She was a poor beggar child, out in the rain,
and a little frightened at the approach of a stranger. She did not
move away, however; but stood eyeing me irresolutely, with that
pathetic mixture of interrogation and defiance in her face which is
so often seen in the prematurely developed faces of poverty-stricken
children. “Aren’t the colors pretty?” I said. She brightened instantly.
“Yes’m. I’d like a goon av thit blue.”
“But you will take cold standing in the wet,” said I. “Won’t you come
under my umbrella?”
She looked down at her wet dress suddenly, as if it had not occurred
to her before that it was raining. Then she drew first one little
foot and then the other out of the muddy puddle in which she had been
standing, and, moving a little closer to the window, said, “I’m not
jist goin’ home, mem. I’d like to stop here a bit.”
So I left her. But, after I had gone a few blocks, the impulse seized
me to return by a cross street, and see if she were still there. Tears
sprang to my eyes as I first caught sight of the upright little figure,
standing in the same spot, still pointing with the rhythmic finger to
the blues and reds and yellows, and half chanting under her breath,
as before, “I choose _that_ color.” “I choose _that_ color.” “I choose
_that_ color.”
I went quietly on my way, without disturbing her again. But I said in
my heart, “Little Messenger, Interpreter, Teacher! I will remember you
all my life.”
Why should days ever be dark, life ever be colorless? There is
always sun; there are always blue and scarlet and yellow and purple.
We cannot reach them, perhaps, but we can see them, if it is only
“through a glass,” and “darkly,”――still we can see them. We can
“choose” our colors. It rains, perhaps; and we are standing in the
cold. Never mind. If we look earnestly enough at the brightness which
is on the other side of the glass, we shall forget the wet and not
feel the cold. And now and then a passer-by, who has rolled himself up
in furs to keep out the cold, but shivers nevertheless,――who has money
in his purse to buy many colors, if he likes, but, nevertheless, goes
grumbling because some colors are too dear for him,――such a passer-by,
chancing to hear our voice, and see the atmosphere of our content,
may learn a wondrous secret,――that pennilessness is not poverty, and
ownership is not possession; that to be without is not always to lack,
and to reach is not to attain; that sunlight is for all eyes that look
up, and color for those who “choose.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.
FAMOUS AUTHOR OF “LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.”
IF Mrs. Burnett were not a native of England, she might be called a
typical American woman. As all Americans, however, are descended at
very few removes from foreign ancestors, it may, nevertheless, be
said of the young English girl, who crossed the ocean with her widowed
mother at the age of sixteen, that she has shown all the pluck, energy
and perseverance usually thought of as belonging to Americans. She
settled with her mother and sisters on a Tennessee farm; but soon
began to write short stories, the first of which was published in a
Philadelphia magazine in 1867. Her first story to achieve popularity
was “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s,” published in “Scribner’s Magazine” in
1877. It is a story of a daughter of a miner, the father a vicious
character, whose neglect and abuse render all the more remarkable
the virtue and real refinement of the daughter. Mrs. Burnett delights
in heroes and heroines whose characters contrast strongly with their
circumstances, and in some of her stories, especially in “A Lady of
Quality,” published in 1895, she even verges on the sensational.
In 1873 Miss Hodgson was married to Doctor Burnett, of Knoxville,
Tennessee. After a two years’ tour in Europe, they took up their
residence in the city of Washington, where they have since lived.
Mrs. Burnett’s longest novel, “Through One Administration,” is
a story of the political and social life of the Capital. “Pretty
Polly Pemberton,” “Esmeralda,” “Louisiana,” “A Fair Barbarian,” and
“Haworth’s” are, after those already mentioned, her most popular
stories. “That Lass o’ Lowrie’s” has been dramatized. Mrs. Hodgson
is most widely known, however, by her Children Stories, the most
famous of which, “Little Lord Fauntleroy,” appeared as a serial in
“St. Nicholas” in 1886, and has since been dramatized and played in
both England and America.
Since 1885 her health has not permitted her to write so voluminously
as she had previously done, but she has, nevertheless, been a frequent
contributor to periodicals. Some of her articles have been of an
auto-biographical nature, and her story “The One I Knew Best of All”
is an account of her life. She is very fond of society and holds a
high place in the social world. Her alert imagination and her gift of
expression have enabled her to use her somewhat limited opportunity of
observation to the greatest advantage, as is shown in her successful
interpretation of the Lancashire dialect and the founding of the story
of Joan Lowrie on a casual glimpse, during a visit to a mining village,
of a beautiful young woman followed by a cursing and abusive father.
* * * * *
PRETTY POLLY P.¹
FROM “PRETTY POLLY PEMBERTON.”
¹ Copyright, T. B. Peterson & Bros.
“FRAMLEIGH,” ventured little Popham, “you haven’t spoken for half an
hour, by Jupiter!”
Framleigh――Captain Gaston Framleigh, of the Guards――did not move. He
had been sitting for some time before the window, in a position more
noticeable for ease than elegance, with his arms folded upon the back
of his chair; and he did not disturb himself, when he condescended to
reply to his youthful admirer and ally.
“Half an hour?” he said, with a tranquil half-drawl, which had a touch
of affectation in its coolness, and yet was scarcely pronounced enough
to be disagreeable, or even unpleasant. “Haven’t I?”
“No, you have not,” returned Popham, encouraged by the negative
amiability of his manner. “I am sure it is half an hour. What’s up?”
“Up?” still half-abstractedly. “Nothing! Fact is, I believe I have
been watching a girl!”
Little Popham sprang down, for he had been sitting on the table, and
advanced toward the window, hurriedly, holding his cigar in his hand.
“A girl!” he exclaimed. “Where? What sort of a girl?”
“As to sort,” returned Framleigh, “I don’t know the species. A sort of
girl I never saw before. But, if you wait, you may judge for yourself.
She will soon be out there in the garden again. She has been darting
in and out of the house for the last twenty minutes.”
“Out of the house?” said Popham, eagerly, “Do you mean the house
opposite?”
“Yes.”
“By Jupiter!” employing his usual mild expletive, “look here, old
fellow, had she a white dress on, and geranium-colored bows, and――”
“Yes,” said Framleigh. “And she is rather tall for such a girl; and
her hair is cut, on her round white forehead, Sir Peter Lely fashion
(they call it banging, I believe), and she gives you the impression,
at first, of being all eyes, great dark eyes, with――”
“Long, curly, black lashes,” interpolated Popham, with enthusiasm. “By
Jupiter! I thought so! It’s pretty Polly P.”
He was so evidently excited that Framleigh looked up with a touch of
interest, though he was scarcely a man of enthusiasm himself.
“Pretty Polly P.!” he repeated. “Rather familiar mode of speech, isn’t
it? Who is pretty Polly P.?”
Popham, a good-natured, sensitive little fellow, actually colored.
“Well,” he admitted, somewhat confusedly, “I dare say it does sound
rather odd, to people who don’t know her; but I can assure you,
Framleigh, though it is the name all our fellows seem to give her
with one accord, I am sure there is not one of them who means it to
appear disrespectful, or――or even cheeky,” resorting, in desperation,
to slang. “She is not the sort of a girl a fellow would ever be
disrespectful to, even though she is such a girl――so jolly and
innocent. For my part, you know, I’d face a good deal, and give up a
good deal any day, for pretty Polly P.; and I’m only one of a many.”
Framleigh half smiled, and then looked out of the window again, in the
direction of the house opposite.
“Daresay,” he commented, placidly. “And very laudably, too. But you
have not told me what the letter P. is intended to signify. ‘Pretty
Polly P.’ is agreeable and alliterative, but indefinite. It might mean
Pretty Polly Popham.”
“I wish it did, by Jupiter!” cordially, and with more color; “but it
does not. It means Pemberton?”
“Pemberton!” echoed Framleigh, with an intonation almost savoring of
disgust. “You don’t mean to say she is that Irish fellow’s daughter?”
“She is his niece,” was the answer, “and that amounts to the same
thing, in her case. She has lived with old Pemberton ever since she
was four years old, and she is as fond of him as if he was a woman,
and her mother; and he is as fond of her as if she was his daughter;
but he couldn’t help that. Every one is fond of her.”
“Ah!” said Framleigh. “I see. As you say, ‘She is the sort of girl.’”
“There she is, again!” exclaimed Popham, suddenly.
And there she was, surely enough, and they had a full view of her,
geranium-colored bows and all. She seemed to be a trifle partial
to the geranium-colored bows. Not too partial, however, for they
were very nicely put on. Here and there, down the front of her white
morning dress, one prettily adjusted on the side of her hair, one
on each trim, slim, black kid slipper. If they were a weakness of
hers, they were by no means an inartistic one. And as she came down
the garden-walk, with a little flower-pot in her hands――a little
earthen-pot, with some fresh gloss-leaved little plant in it――she
was pleasant to look at, pretty Polly P.――very pleasant; and Gaston
Framleigh was conscious of the fact.
It was only a small place, the house opposite and the garden was
the tiniest of gardens, being only a few yards of ground, surrounded
by iron railings. Indeed, it might have presented anything but an
attractive appearance, had pretty Polly P. not so crowded it with
bright blooms. Its miniature-beds were full of brilliantly-colored
flowers, blue-eyed lobelia, mignonette, scarlet geraniums, a thrifty
rose or so, and numerous nasturtiums, with ferns, and much pleasant,
humble greenery. There were narrow boxes of flowers upon every
window-ledge, a woodbine climbed round the door, and, altogether,
it was a very different place from what it might have been, under
different circumstances.
And down the graveled path, in the midst of all this flowery
brightness, came Polly with her plant to set out, looking not unlike a
flower herself. She was very busy in a few minutes, and she went about
her work almost like an artist, flourishing her little trowel, digging
a nest for her plant, and touching it, when she transplanted it, as
tenderly as if it had been a day-old baby. She was so earnest about it,
that, before very long, Framleigh was rather startled by hearing her
begin to whistle, softly to herself, and, seeing that the sound had
grated upon him, Popham colored and ♦laughed half-apologetically.
♦ ‘langhed’ replaced with ‘laughed’
“It is a habit of hers,” he said. “She hardly knows when she does it.
She often does things other girls would think strange. But she is not
like other girls.”
Framleigh made no reply. He remained silent, and simply looked at the
girl. He was not in the most communicative of moods, this morning;
he was feeling gloomy and depressed, and not a little irritable, as
he did, now and then. He had good reason, he thought, to give way to
these fits of gloom, occasionally; they were not so much an unamiable
habit as his enemies fancied; he had some ground for them, though he
was not prone to enter into particulars concerning it. Certainly he
never made innocent little Popham, “Lambkin Popham,” as one of his
fellow-officers had called him, in a brilliant moment, his confidant.
He liked the simple, affectionate little fellow, and found his
admiration soothing; but the time had not yet arrived, when the scales
not yet having fallen from his eyes, he could read such guileless,
almost insignificant problems as “Lambkin” Popham clearly.
So his companion, only dimly recognizing the outward element of
his mood, thought it signified a distaste for that soft, scarcely
unfeminine, little piping of pretty Polly’s, and felt bound to speak
a few words in her favor.
“She is not a masculine sort of a girl at all, Framleigh,” he said.
“You would be sure to like her. The company fairly idolize her.”
“Company!” echoed Framleigh. “What company?”
“Old Buxton’s company,” was the reply. “The theatrical lot at the
Prince’s, you know, where she acts.”
Framleigh had been bending forward, to watch Polly patting the mould
daintily, as she bent over her flower-bed; but he drew back at this,
conscious of experiencing a shock, far stronger and more disagreeable
than the whistling had caused him to feel.
“An actress!” he exclaimed, in an annoyed tone.
“Yes, and she works hard enough, too, to support herself, and help old
Pemberton,” gravely.
“The worse for her,” with impatience. “And the greater rascal old
Pemberton, for allowing it.”
It was just at this moment that Polly looked up. She raised her eyes
carelessly to their window, and doing so, caught sight of them both.
Young Popham blushed gloriously, after his usual sensitive fashion,
and she recognized him at once. She did not blush at all herself,
however; she just gave him an arch little nod, and a delightful smile,
which showed her pretty white teeth.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MARY NOAILLES MURFREE.
(CHARLES EGBERT CRADDOCK.)
_Author of the “Prophet of the Smoky Mountains.”_
THE pen name of Charles Egbert Craddock has become familiarly known
throughout the English-speaking world in connection with the graphic
delineations of character in the East Tennessee Mountains, to which
theme the writings of this talented author have been devoted. Until
long after the name had become famous the writer was supposed to be a
man, and the following amusing story is told of the way in which the
secret leaked out. Her works were published by a Boston editor, and
the heavy black handwriting, together with the masculine ring of her
stories, left no suspicion that their author was a delicate woman.
Thomas Baily Aldrich, who was editor of the “Atlantic Monthly,” to
which her writings came, used to say, after an interval had elapsed
subsequent to her last contribution, “I wonder if Craddock has taken
in his winter supply of ink and can let me have a serial.” One day a
card came to Mr. Aldrich bearing the well-known name in the well-known
writing, and the editor rushed out to greet his old contributor,
expecting to see a rugged Tennessee mountaineer. When the slight,
delicate little woman arose to answer his greeting it is said that
Mr. Aldrich put his hands to his face and simply spun round on his
heels without a word, absolutely bewildered with astonishment.
Miss Murfree was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1850, and is the
great-granddaughter of Colonel Hardy Murfree of Revolutionary fame,
for whom the city of Murfreesboro was named. Her father was a lawyer
and a literary man, and Mary was carefully educated. Unfortunately in
her childhood a stroke of paralysis made her lame for life. After the
close of the war, the family being left in destitute circumstances,
they moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and Miss Murfree contributed
largely to their pecuniary aid by her fruitful pen. Her volumes
include “In the Tennessee Mountains” (1884), “Where the Battle was
Fought” (1884), “Down the Ravine” (1885), “The Prophet of the Great
Smoky Mountains” (1885), “In the Clouds” (1886), “The Story of Keedon
Bluffs” (1887), “The Despot of Broomsedge Cove” (1888), all of which
works have proven their popularity by a long-continued sale, and her
subsequent works will no doubt achieve equal popularity. She has
contributed much matter to the leading magazines of the day. She is
a student of humanity and her portraitures of Tennessee mountaineers
have great historic value aside from the entertainment they furnish
to the careless reader. It is her delineation of mountain character
and her description of mountain scenery that have placed her works so
prominently to the front in this critical and prolific age of novels.
“Her style,” says a recent reviewer, “is bold, full of humor, yet as
delicate as a bit of lace, to which she adds great power of plot and
a keen wit, together with a homely philosophy bristling with sparkling
truths. For instance, “the little old woman who sits on the edge of
a chair” in one of her novels, and remarks “There ain’t nothin’ so
becomin’ to fools as a shet mouth,” has added quite an original store
to America’s already proverbial literature.
* * * * *
THE CONFESSION.¹
(FROM “THE PROPHET OF THE GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS.”)
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE congregation composed itself to listen to the sermon. There was
an expectant pause. Kelsey remembered ever after the tumult of emotion
with which he stepped forward to the table and opened the book. He
turned to the New Testament for his text,――and the leaves with a
familiar hand. Some ennobling phase of that wonderful story which
would touch the tender, true affinity of human nature for the higher
things,――from this he would preach to-day. And yet, at the same moment,
with a contrariety of feeling from which he shrank aghast, there
was sulking into his mind that gruesome company of doubts. In double
file they came: fate and free agency, free-will and fore-ordination,
infinite mercy and infinite justice, God’s loving kindness and man’s
intolerable misery, redemption and damnation. He had evolved them
all from his own unconscious logical faculty, and they pursued him
as if he had, in some spiritual necromancy, conjured up a devil――nay,
a legion of devils. Perhaps if he had known how they had assaulted
the hearts of men in times gone past; how they had been combated and
baffled, and yet have risen and pursued again; how in the scrutiny
of science and research men have passed before their awful presence,
analyzed them, philosophized about them, and found them interesting;
how others, in the levity of the world, having heard of them, grudged
the time to think upon them,――if he had known all this, he might have
felt some courage in numbers. As it was, there was no fight left in
him. He closed the book with a sudden impulse, “My frien’s,” he said,
“I stan’ not hyar ter preach ter day, but fur confession.”
There was a galvanic start among the congregation, then intense
silence.
“I hev los’ my faith!” he cried out, with a poignant despair. “God
ez’ gin it――ef thear is a God――he’s tuk it away. You-uns kin go
on. You-uns kin b’lieve. Yer paster b’lieves, an’ he’ll lead ye ter
grace,――leastwise ter a better life. But fur me thar’s the nethermost
depths of hell, ef”――how his faith and his unfaith now tried him!――“ef
thar be enny hell. Leastwise――Stop, brother,” he held up his hand in
deprecation, for Parson Tobin had risen at last, and with a white,
scared face. Nothing like this had ever been heard in all the length
and breadth of the Great Smoky Mountains. “Bear with me a little;
ye’ll see me hyar no more. Fur me thar is shame, ah! an’ trial, ah!
an’ doubt, ah! an’ despair, ah! The good things o’ heaven air denied.
My name is ter be er byword an’ a reproach ’mongst ye. Ye’ll grieve ez
ye hev ever learn the Word from me, ah! Ye’ll be held in derision! An’
I hev hed trials,――none like them es air comin’, comin’ down the wind.
I hev been a man marked fur sorrow, an’ now fur shame.” He stood erect;
he looked bold, youthful. The weight of his secret, lifted now, had
been heavier than he knew. In his eyes shone that strange light which
was frenzy or prophecy, or inspiration; in his voice rang a vibration
they had never before heard. “I will go forth from ’mongst ye,――I that
am not of ye. Another shall gird me an’ carry me where I would not.
Hell an’ the devil hev prevailed agin me. Pray fur me, brethren, ez I
cannot pray fur myself. Pray that God may yet speak ter me――speak from
out o’ the whirlwind.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD.
AUTHOR OF “GATES AJAR!”
THIS is said to be a practical age and there is much talk about
the materialistic tendencies of the time and the absorption of the
people in affairs of purely momentary and transient importance. It
is nevertheless true that the books which attract the most attention
are the most widely read, and best beloved are those which deal with
the great questions of life and of eternity. It was upon “The Gates
Ajar” that Elizabeth Stuart Phelps founded her reputation. It dealt
entirely with the questions of the future life treating them in a way
remarkably fresh and vigorous, not to say daring, and its reception
was so favorable that it went through twenty editions during its first
year.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was the daughter of a professor in the Andover
Theological Seminary. She had been christened with another name; but
on the death of her mother, in 1852, she took her name in full. She
had been publishing sketches and stories since her thirteenth year,
her writings being largely related to charitable, temperance and
other reform work. She has written a long series of books beginning
with “Ellen’s Idol” in 1864, and including a number of series――“The
Tiny Series,” “The Gypsy Series,” etc., intended for Sunday-school
libraries, and some fifteen or twenty stories and books of poems.
Besides these, she has written sketches, stories and poems in large
numbers for the current magazines.
In 1888 she became the wife of Rev. Herbert D. Ward. Their summer
home is at East Gloucester, Massachusetts, while in winter they live
at Newton Highlands. Thoughtfulness and elevation of spirit mark all
Mrs. Ward’s literary work. The philanthropic purpose is evident in
every one of them, and she contributes to the cause of humanity, not
only through her books, but in the time, labor and money which she
freely bestows. Mrs. Ward may be taken as a practical example of
that noble type of American women who combine literary skill, broad
intelligence, and love of mankind with a high degree of spirituality
and whose work for humanity is shown in the progress of our people.
Her purpose has always been high and the result of her work ennobling.
In her books the thought of man and the thought of God blend in a
harmony very significant of the spirit of the time, a spirit which she
has done much to awaken and to promote.
* * * * *
THE HANDS AT HAYLE AND KELSO’S.¹
(FROM “THE SILENT PARTNER.”)
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
IF you are one of the “hands,” then in Hayle and Kelso you have a
breakfast of bread and molasses probably; you are apt to eat it while
you dress. Somebody is heating the kettle, but you cannot wait for it.
Somebody tells you that you have forgotten your shawl; you throw it
over one shoulder and step out, before it is fastened, into the sudden
raw air. You left lamplight indoors, you find moonlight without. The
night seems to have overslept itself; you have a fancy for trying to
wake it――would like to shout at it or cry through it, but feel very
cold, and leave that for the bells to do by-and-by.
You and the bells are the only waking things in life. The great
brain of the world is in serene repose; the great heart of the world
lies warm to the core with dreams; the great hands of the world,
the patient, the perplexed――one almost fancies at times, just for
fancy――seeing you here by the morning moon, the dangerous hands alone
are stirring in the dark.
You hang up your shawl and your crinoline, and understand, as you
go shivering by gaslight to your looms, that you are chilled to
the heart, and that you were careless about your shawl, but do not
consider carefulness worth your while by nature or by habit; a little
less shawl means a few less winters in which to require shawling.
You are a godless little creature, but you cherish a stolid learning,
in those morning moons, towards making an experiment of death and a
wadded coffin.
By the time the gas is out, you cease perhaps――though you cannot
depend upon that――to shiver, and incline less and less to the wadded
coffin, and more to a chat with your neighbor in the alley. Your
neighbor is of either sex and any description as the case may be. In
any event――warming a little with the warming day――you incline more and
more to chat.
If you chance to be a cotton weaver, you are presently warm enough. It
is quite warm enough in the weaving-room. The engines respire into the
weaving-room; with every throb of their huge lungs you swallow their
breath. The weaving-room stifles with steam. The window-sills are
gutted to prevent the condensed ♦steam from running in streams along
the floor; sometimes they overflow, and the water stands under the
looms. The walls perspire profusely; on a damp day drops will fall
from the roof. The windows of the weaving-room are closed. They must
be closed; a stir in the air will break your threads. There is no air
to stir; you inhale for a substitute a motionless hot moisture. If you
chance to be a cotton weaver, it is not in March that you think most
about your coffin.
♦ ‘stream’ replaced with ‘steam’
Being a “hand” in Hayle and Kelso, you are used to eating cold
luncheon in the cold at noon; or you walk, for the sake of a cup of
soup or coffee, half-a-mile, three-quarters, a mile and a-half, and
back. You are allowed three-quarters of an hour to do this. You go and
come upon the jog-trot.
* * * * *
From swearing you take to singing; both perhaps, are equal
relief――active and diverting. There is something curious about that
singing of yours. The tune, the place, the singers, characterize it
sharply; the waning light, the rival din, the girls with tired faces.
You start some little thing with a refrain, and a ring to it. A hymn,
it is not unlikely; something of a River and of Waiting, and of Toil
and Rest, or Sleep, or Crowns, or Harps, or Home, or Green Fields, or
Flowers, or Sorrow, or Repose, or a dozen other things; but always, it
will be noticed, of simple spotless things, such as will surprise the
listener who caught you at your oath of five minutes past. You have
other songs, neither simple nor spotless, it may be; but you never
sing them at your work when the waning day is crawling out from spots
beneath your loom, and the girls lift up their tired faces to catch
and keep the chorus in the rival din.
* * * * *
You are singing when the bell strikes, and singing still when you
clatter down the stairs. Something of the simple spotlessness of the
little song is on your face when you dip into the wind and dusk.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
AMELIA E. BARR.
THE POPULAR NOVELIST.
PERHAPS no other writer in the United States commands so wide a
circle of readers, both at home and abroad, as does Mrs. Barr. She is,
however, personally, very little known, as her disposition is somewhat
shy and retiring, and most of her time is spent at her home on the
Storm King Mountain at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York.
Mrs. Barr’s life has been an eventful one, broken in upon by sorrow,
bereavement and hardship, and she has risen superior to her trials and
made her way through difficulties in a manner which is possible only
to an individual of the strongest character.
Amelia E. Huddleston was born at Ulverstone, in the northwest of
England, in 1832. She early became a thorough student, her studies
being directed by her father, who was an eloquent and learned preacher.
When she was seventeen, she went to a celebrated school in Scotland;
but her education was principally derived from the reading of books to
her father.
When about eighteen she was married to Robert Barr, and soon after
came to America, traveling in the West and South. They were in New
Orleans in 1856 and were driven out by the yellow fever, and settled
in Austin, Texas, where Mr. Barr received an appointment in the
comptroller’s office. Removing to Galveston after the Civil War,
Mr. Barr and his four sons died in 1876 of yellow fever. As soon as
she could safely do so, Mrs. Barr took her three daughters to New York,
where she obtained an appointment to assist in the education of the
three sons of a prominent merchant. When she had prepared these boys
for college, she looked about for other means of livelihood, and,
by the assistance of Henry Ward Beecher and Doctor Lyman Abbott, she
was enabled to get some contributions accepted by Messrs. Harper &
Brothers, for whose periodicals she wrote for a number of years. An
accident which happened to her in 1884 changed her life and conferred
upon the world a very great benefit. She was confined to her chair
for a considerable time, and, being compelled to abandon her usual
methods of work, she wrote her first novel, “Jan Vedder’s Wife.” It
was instantly successful, running through many editions, and has been
translated into one or two European languages. Since that time she
has published numerous stories. One of the most successful was “Friend
Olivia,” a study of Quaker character which recalls the closing years
of the Commonwealth in England, and which her girlhood’s home at
Ulverstone, the scene of the rise of Quakerism, gave her special
advantages in preparing. It is an unusually powerful story; and the
pictures of Cromwell and George Fox are not only refreshingly new
and bright but remarkably just and appreciative. Some of her other
stories are “Feet of Clay,” the scene of which is laid on the Isle of
Man; “The Bow of Orange Ribbon,” a study of Dutch life in New York;
“Remember the Alamo,” recalling the revolt of Texas; “She Loved a
Sailor,” which deals with sea life and which draws its scenes from the
days of slavery; “The Last of the MacAllisters;” “A Sister of Esau;”
and “A Rose of a Hundred Leaves.” Only a slight study of Mrs. Barr’s
books is necessary to show the wide range of her sympathies, her
quick and vivid imagination, and her wonderful literary power; and
her career has been an admirable illustration of the power of some
women to win success even under the stress of sorrow, disaster and
bereavement.
* * * * *
LITTLE JAN’S TRIUMPH.¹
(FROM ♦“JAN VEDDER’s WIFE.”)
¹ Copyright, Dodd, Mead & Co.
♦ ‘JANE’ replaced with ‘JAN’
AS she approached her house, she saw a crowd of boys, and little
Jan walking proudly in front of them. One was playing “Miss Flora
McDonald’s Reel” on a violin, and the gay strains were accompanied
by finger-snapping, whistling, and occasional shouts. “There is no
quiet to be found anywhere, this morning,” thought Margaret, but her
curiosity was aroused, and she went towards the children. They saw her
coming, and with an accession of clamor hastened to meet her. Little
Jan carried a faded, battered wreath of unrecognizable materials, and
he walked as proudly as Pompey may have walked in a Roman triumph.
When Margaret saw it, she knew well what had happened, and she opened
her arms, and held the boy to her heart, and kissed him over and over,
and cried out, “Oh, my brave little Jan, brave little Jan! How did it
happen then? Thou tell me quick.”
“Hal Ragner shall tell thee, my mother;” and Hal eagerly stepped
forward:
“It was last night, Mistress Vedder, we were all watching for the
‘Arctic Bounty;’ but she did not come, and this morning as we were
playing, the word was passed that she had reached Peter Fae’s pier.
Then we all ran, but thou knowest that thy Jan runs like a red deer,
and so he got far ahead, and leaped on board, and was climbing the
mast first of all. Then Bor Skade, he tried to climb over him, and
Nichol Sinclair, he tried to hold him back, but the sailors shouted,
‘Bravo, little Jan Vedder!’ and the skipper shouted ‘Bravo!’ and thy
father, he shouted higher than all the rest. And when Jan had cut
loose the prize, he was like to greet for joy, and he clapped his
hands, and kissed Jan, and he gave him five gold sovereigns,――see,
then, if he did not!” And little Jan proudly put his hand in his
pocket, and held them out in his small soiled palm.
The feat which little Jan had accomplished is one which means all
to the Shetland boy that his first buffalo means to the Indian youth.
When a whaler is in Arctic seas, the sailors on the first of May make
a garland of such bits of ribbons, love tokens, and keepsakes, as have
each a private history, and this they tie to the top of the mainmast.
There it swings, blow high or low, in sleet and hail, until the ship
reaches her home-port. Then it is the supreme emulation of every lad,
and especially of every sailor’s son, to be first on board and first
up the mast to cut it down, and the boy who does it is the hero of the
day, and has won his footing on every Shetland boat.
What wonder, then, that Margaret was proud and happy? What wonder
that in her glow of delight the thing she had been seeking was made
clear to her? How could she go better to Suneva than with this crowd
of happy boys? If the minister thought she ought to share one of her
blessings with Suneva, she would double her obedience, and ask her to
share the mother’s as well as the wife’s joy.
“One thing I wish, boys,” she said happily, “let us go straight to
Peter Fae’s house, for Hal Ragner must tell Suneva Fae the good news
also.” So, with a shout, the little company turned, and very soon
Suneva, who was busy salting some fish in the cellar of her house,
heard her name called by more than fifty shrill voices, in fifty
different keys.
She hurried upstairs, saying to herself, “It will be good news, or
great news, that has come to pass, no doubt; for when ill-luck has the
day, he does not call any one like that; he comes sneaking in.” Her
rosy face was full of smiles when she opened the door, but when she
saw Margaret and Jan standing first of all, she was for a moment too
amazed to speak.
Margaret pointed to the wreath: “Our Jan took it from the topmast of
the ‘Arctic Bounty,’” she said. “The boys brought him home to me, and
I have brought him to thee, Suneva. I thought thou would like it.”
“Our Jan!” In those two words Margaret cancelled everything remembered
against her. Suneva’s eyes filled, and she stretched out both her
hands to her step-daughter.
“Come in, Margaret! Come in, my brave, darling Jan! Come in, boys,
everyone of you! There is cake, and wheat bread, and preserved fruit
enough for you all; and I shall find a shilling for every boy here,
who has kept Jan’s triumph with him.”
* * * * *
THE OLD PIANO.
HOW still and dusky is the long-closed room!
What lingering shadows and what faint perfume
Of Eastern treasures!――sandal wood and scent
With nard and cassia and with roses blent.
Let in the sunshine.
Quaint cabinets are here, boxes and fans,
And hoarded letters full of hopes and plans.
I pass them by. I came once more to see
The old piano, dear to memory,
In past days mine.
Of all sad voices from forgotten years,
Its is the saddest; see what tender tears
Drop on the yellow keys as, soft and slow,
I play some melody of long ago.
How strange it seems!
The thin, weak notes that once were rich and strong
Give only now the shadow of a song――
The dying echo of the fuller strain
That I shall never, never hear again,
Unless in dreams.
What hands have touched it! Fingers small and white,
Since stiff and weary with life’s toil and fight;
Dear clinging hands that long have been at rest,
Folded serenely on a quiet breast.
Only to think,
O white sad notes, of all the pleasant days,
The happy songs, the hymns of holy praise,
The dreams of love and youth, that round you cling!
Do they not make each sighing, trembling string
A mighty link?
The old piano answers to my call,
And from my fingers lets the lost notes fall.
O soul! that I have loved, with heavenly birth
Wilt thou not keep the memory of earth,
Its smiles and sighs?
Shall wood and metal and white ivory
Answer the touch of love with melody,
And thou forget? Dear one, not so.
I move thee yet (though how I may not know)
Beyond the skies.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MISS ALICE FRENCH.
(_Octave Thanet_).
THE REPRESENTATIVE NOVELIST OF THE SOUTHWEST.
AS one of the most prominent among our modern women novelists stands
the name of Octave Thanet. The real owner of this widely known
pen-name is Miss Alice French. Though Miss French is recognized as
the representative novelist of Missouri, Arkansas, and the Southwest
generally, where she has lived for many years, she is by birth and
education a genuine Yankee woman, and on both sides a descendant from
old Puritan stock. Her ancestors came over in the Mayflower. They
count among them many Revolutionary heroes and not a few persecutors
of the witches one hundred and fifty and two hundred years ago,
and they, also, number to themselves some of the modern rulers and
prominent ministers of Massachusetts.
Mr. French, the father of the authoress, was during his life a loyal
Westerner, but it is said never lost his fondness for the East and
went there regularly every summer, and his daughter still maintains
the custom. While Mr. French was a thorough business man, he was,
moreover, an enthusiastic lover of books and the fine arts, and
instilled into Miss Alice during her early training a love for reading,
and encouraged her to write.
Shortly after her graduation at Abbott Academy, Andover, Massachusetts,
Miss French sent a manuscript for publication, but the editors to
whom she sent it advised her to wait until her judgment was more
mature and her reading more extensive. She accepted their advice and
remained silent for several years, and then sent her first book, “The
Communist’s Wife,” to a New York publisher, who declined it, whereupon
she forwarded it to other publishers, and it was finally brought out
by Lippincotts of Philadelphia, and made such a success that assured
easy access for her subsequent works, through any publisher to whom
she would send them, to the reading world. The royalty on her various
books now brings her a handsome and steady income.
Among the most prominent publications of Octave Thanet’s are “Knitters
in the Sun” (Boston, 1887); “Otto the Knight” (1888); “Expiated”
and “We All,” issued from New York in 1890. Since that date she has
written several other volumes of equal merit, each new book adding to
her well-established reputation and popularity. She has also edited
the best “Letters of Lady Montague.”
The pen-name of this writer was the result of chance. When in school
she had a room-mate, Octavia, who was familiarly known as Octave.
The word Thanet she saw by chance printed on a passing freight car.
It struck her fancy and she adopted it; hence the pseudonym “Octave
Thanet.” It is said that she regrets having adopted a _nom-de-plume_,
but since she has made her fame under that name she continues to use
it. Miss French is something of a philosopher and artist as well as
a novelist, and is deeply read in historical studies as well as the
English-German philosophers. She is one of the most domestic of women
and declares that she is a great deal better cook than a writer,
and that it is a positive delight to her to arrange a dinner. Most
prominent women have a fad, and that of Miss French is for collecting
china. She is also fond of outdoor sports and takes considerable
interest in politics. While not an advocate of woman’s suffrage, she
declares herself to be a moderate free-trade Democrat, and a firm
believer in honest money. Whether the latter term implies a single
gold standard or the free coinage of silver, the writer is unable to
ascertain.
The strength of Octave Thanet’s writing is largely due to the
fact that she studies her subjects assiduously, going to original
sources for her pictures of bygone times, and getting both facts and
impressions so far as possible from the fountain-head. She is regarded
not only as the best delineator of the life of the middle Western
States, but the most careful student of human nature, and, perhaps
the best storyteller among our modern short-story writers. She lives a
simple life on a farm and draws her characters from the people around
about her.
* * * * *
TWO LOST AND FOUND.¹
[FROM “KNITTERS IN THE SUN.”]
¹ By Permission ♦Houghton Mifflin & Co.
♦ ‘Hougton’ replaced with ‘Houghton’
THEY rode along, Ruffner furtively watching Bud, until finally the
elder man spoke with the directness of primitive natures and strong
excitement:
“Whut’s come ter ye, Bud Quinn? Ye seem all broke up ’beout this yere
losin’ yo’ little trick (child); yet ye didn’t useter set no gre’t
store by ’er――least, looked like――”
“I knaw,” answered Bud, lifting his heavy eyes, too numb himself with
weariness and misery to be surprised,――“I knaw, an’ ’t are curi’s ter
me too. I didn’t set no store by ’er w’en I had ’er. I taken a gredge
agin ’er kase she hadn’t got no good sense, an’ you all throwed it up
to me fur a jedgment. An’ knowin’ how I hadn’t done a thing to hurt
Zed, it looked cl’ar agin right an’ natur’ fur the Lord ter pester me
that a-way; so someways I taken the notion ’twar the devil, and that
he got inter Ma’ Bowlin’, an’ I mos’ cudn’t b’ar the sight ’er that
pore little critter. But the day she got lost kase ’er tryin’ ter meet
up with me, I ’lowed mabbe he tolled ’er off, an’ I sorter felt bad
fur ’er, an’ w’en I seen them little tracks ’er her’n, someways all
them mean feelin’s I got they jes broked off short insider me like a
string mought snap. They done so. An’ I wanted thet chile bader’n I
ever wanted anything.”
“Law me!” said Ruffner, quite puzzled. “But, say, Bud, ef ye want ’er
so bad ’s all thet, ye warn’t wanter mad the Lord by lyin’, kase He
are yo’ on’y show now. Bud Quinn, did ye hurt my boy?” He had pushed
his face close to Bud’s, and his mild eyes were glowing like live
coals.
“Naw, Mr. Ruffner,” answered Bud, quietly. “I never teched a ha’r ’er
’is head!”
Ruffner kept his eager and almost fierce scrutiny a moment, then he
drew a long gasping sigh, crying,
“Blame my skin ef I don’ b’lieve ye! I’ve ’lowed, fur a right smart,
we all used ye mighty rough.”
“’Tain’t no differ,” said Bud, dully. Nothing mattered now, the poor
fellow thought; Ma’ Bowlin’ was dead, and Sukey hated him.
Ruffner whistled slowly and dolefully; that was his way of expressing
sympathy; but the whistle died on his lips, for Bud smote his shoulder,
then pointed toward the trees.
“Look a-thar!” whispered Bud, with a ghastly face and dilating
eyeballs. “Oh, Lord A’mighty, thar’s her――an’ _him_!”
Ruffner saw a boat leisurely propelled by a long pole approaching from
the river-side, a black-haired young man in the bow with the pole, a
fair-haired little girl in the stern. The little girl jumped up, and
at the same instant a shower of water from light flying heels blinded
the young man.
“Paw! Paw!” screamed the little girl. “Maw tole Ma’ Bowlin’――meet
up――paw!”
* * * * *
Just as the big clock in the store struck the last stroke of six,
Sukey Quinn, who had been cowering on the platform steps, lifted her
head and put her hand to her ear. Then everybody heard it, the long
peal of a horn. The widow from Georgia ran quickly up to Sukey and
threw her arms about her shoulders. For a second the people held their
breath. It had been arranged that whoever found the lost child should
give the signal by blowing his horn, once if the searchers came too
late, three times if the child should be alive. Would the horn blow
again?
“It are Bud’s horn!” sobbed Sukey. “He’d never blow fur onst. Hark!
Thar’t goes agin! Three times! An’ me wouldn’t hev no truck with ’im,
but she set store by Ma’ Bowlin’ all the time.”
Horn after horn caught up the signal joyfully, and when the legitimate
blowing was over, two enterprising boys exhausted themselves on a
venerable horn which was so cracked that no one would take it. In
an incredibly short time every soul within hearing distance, not to
mention a herd of cattle and a large number of swine, had run to the
store, and when at last two horses’ heads appeared above the hill, and
the crowd could see a little pink sun-bonnet against Bud Quinn’s brown
jean, an immense clamor rolled out.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JANE GOODWIN AUSTIN.
THE STORY-TELLER OF THE PILGRIMS.
THIS famous daughter of the Pilgrims has become a specialist in their
behalf, and has pledged her remaining years to develop their story.
Every summer she visits Plymouth, where she constantly studies not
only the written records of the Pilgrim Fathers, but the crumbling
gravestones and the oral traditions which have come down among
their descendants. Her contribution to the literature of early New
England possesses a rare value, found, perhaps, in no other writer,
enriched from her intimate knowledge of the pioneers of the Eastern
Colonists gained from her long study, thorough reading, and a careful
investigation of their history and traditions.
Mrs. Austin was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1831. Her
parents were from Plymouth, and counted their lineage back to the
Mayflower Pilgrims in no less than eight distinct lines. She also
claims a descent from Francis le Baron; thus, believers in heredity
will recognize in this the root of Mrs. Austin’s remarkable devotion
to Pilgrim stories and traditions. Her father, Isaac Goodwin, was a
lawyer of considerable prominence, and had also devoted much study
to genealogy. Her brother, the Honorable John A. Goodwin, was the
author of “The Pilgrim Republic,” which is considered the best history
of the settlement of Plymouth. Her mother, besides being a poet and
song-writer, was also a lover of the traditions and anecdotes of her
native region, and many of the stories embodied in Mrs. Austin’s later
works she has heard as a child at her mother’s knee, especially those
relating to “The Nameless Nobleman,” “Francis le Baron and His Family.”
Among the best of Mrs. Austin’s Pilgrim story-books are “The Nameless
Nobleman” (1881); “Standish of Standish” (1889); “Doctor le Baron
and His Daughters” (1890); and “Betty Alden” (1891). These cover
the ground from the landing of the Pilgrims upon Plymouth Rock in
1620 to the days of the Revolution in 1775. Aside from these books,
Mrs. Austin has produced in addition to a number of magazine stories
and some poems, “Fairy Dream” (1859); “Dora Darling” (1865); “Outpost”
(1866); “Taylor Boy” (1867); “Cypher” (1869); “The Shadow of Moloch
Mountains” (1870); “Moon-Folk” (1874); “Mrs. Beauchamp Brown” (1880);
and “Nantucket Scraps” (1882). Since 1891 Mrs. Austin has added a
fifth volume to her “Pilgrim Stories,” completing the series. All of
her writings are in a finished style, remarkable alike for delicacy,
purity and clearness of expression, and her work is distinctly
American.
Personally Mrs. Austin is a charming woman, much beloved by those who
know her best. She has three children, and her home is with a married
daughter at Roxbury, Massachusetts; but she spends much of her time in
Boston.
* * * * *
AN AFTERNOON IN NANTUCKET.¹
FROM “NANTUCKET SCRAPS,” 1883.
¹ Copyright, Jas. R. Osgood.
THE drowsy hours of afternoon were devoted to the museum, collected
and exhibited by the public-spirited widow of a sea-captain named
McCleve. An upper room to her comfortable house is devoted to the
curios, although, like attar of roses, or some penetrating oils,
they seem to have saturated the entire mansion,――the good-natured
proprietress occasionally haling a favored guest away from the rest
to look at some quaint picture, piece of china, or bit of furniture in
her own private apartments. The party of twelve or fourteen collected
on this special afternoon were taken to the upper room and seated
around a small table, as if for a spiritual _séance_, the hostess
arranging precedence and proximity with an autocratic good-humor to
which everybody yielded except the señor, who, standing looking in at
the door, was presently accosted with――
“That gentleman at the door――why――I’ve seen that face before! Don’t
you tell me it’s Sam!”
“No, I won’t, Aunty McCleve, for you’d be sure to contradict me
if I did,” replied the señor, coolly; whereupon Aunty shook him
affectionately by the hand, assuring him he was the same “saucy boy”
he used to be, and dragged him most reluctantly to a seat in the
magical circle.
“At what period of the entertainment do we pay?” inquired one of the
persons one meets everywhere, and who may be called the whit-leather
of society. Mrs. McCleve looked at him with an appreciative eye for a
moment, and then quietly replied:
“Well, it isn’t often people bring it out quite so plain as that, but
I guess _you’d_ better pay now before you forget it.” Whit-leather
does not suffer from sarcasm, and the practical man, producing a
quarter of a dollar, held it tight while asking――
“Have you got ten cents change?”
“No, brother; but you can keep your quarter till I have,” replied
Aunty, with the quiet gleam still in her eye, and the business was
soon adjusted. This over, she placed upon the table a tray containing
some really exquisite carvings in whale’s-tooth ivory, comprising
a set of napkin-rings, thread-winders, spoons of various sizes,
knife-handles, and several specimens of a utensil peculiar to
Nantucket, called a jagging-knife, used for carving ornamental
patterns in pastry,――a species of embroidery for which Nantucket
housewives were once famous, although, “pity ’tis, ’tis true,” they
have now largely emancipated themselves from such arts.
As the guests examined these really wonderful products of talent
almost unaided by implements or training, one of the ladies naturally
inquired: “Who did these?” The hostess assumed a sibylline attitude
and tone: “Perhaps, my dear, you can tell us that; and if so, you’ll
be the first one I ever met that could.” This obscure intimation of
course awakened an interest far deeper than the carvings, in every
mind; and in reply to a shower of questioning the sibyl gave a long
and intricate narration, beginning with the presence on board of
her husband’s whale-ship of a mystic youth with the manners and
bearing of Porphyrogenitus, and the rating of a common sailor; the
delicate suggestion of a disguised lady was also dimly introduced.
What succeeds is yet more wonderful, as Scheherezade always said when
obliged to cut short the story that the Sultan might get up and say
his prayers; but we will not evade Mrs. McCleve’s copyright by telling
it, simply advising everyone to go and listen to it.
“Two, four, six, eight, ten――elev-en!” counted she at the end, picking
up the napkin-rings; “I don’t seem to see that twelfth ring!” and she
looked hard at the unfortunate that had acquired her dislike in the
first of the interview by an unfeeling allusion to money.
“Here it is, Aunty,” remarked the señor. “I wanted to hear you ask
after it.”
“Now, look at here, Sammy, you’re too old for such tricks,”
♦expostulated the dame, in precisely the tone one admonishes a child;
and then turning to the company generally she added confidentially:
♦ ‘exposulated’ replaced with ‘expostulated’
“I ain’t one of them that’s given to suspicion, and it ain’t a
Nantucket failing; but last summer there was a boy, one of those
half-grown critters, you know, neither beef nor veal, and I just saw
him pocket――well, it was that very knife-handle. I always kept an eye
on it since, thinking it might be off yet. So I waited till I saw he
actooally meant it, and was fixing to go off with it, and then says I:
“‘Well, sonny, going to unload before you start out on a new v’yge?’
So that’s all about the carvings; and these are shark’s teeth,――none
of your Wauwinet sand-sharks that would run away from a puppy-dog no
bigger than that, but a reg’lar man-eater off the West Indies; and
these very teeth took a man’s leg off.”
“Horrible!” cried one, while another, one of the persistent souls who
must finish A before they begin B, inquired: “But did the boy give up
the knife-handle?”
“Why, of course he did, my dear, since that’s it,” replied the
hostess compassionately; and then, with the inborn courtesy peculiar
to Nantucket folk, turned aside the laugh that followed by hastily
displaying some new marvel. The room was crowded with marine
curiosities, many of them brought home by the deceased captain, many
of them presented to his relict by his comrades or by her own friends;
they were mostly such as we have seen many times in many places, but
some few were _sui generis_, such as a marriage contract between a
Quaker bachelor and maid in the early days of the island, with the
signatures of half the settlers appended as witnesses, mutual consent
before others being the only ceremony required by the canon of these
Non-sacramentarians. Then there was Phœbe Ann’s comb, a wonderful
work of art in tortoise shell, anent which the possessor, Phœbe Ann’s
sister, delivered a short original poem, setting forth how ardently
Phœbe Ann had desired one of these immense combs, their price being
eight dollars each; and how, having engaged it, she set to work to
earn it by picking berries for sale; but before the pence had grown to
the pounds the big comb was out of fashion, and poor Phœbe Ann’s hair,
which had been wonderfully luxuriant, fell off through illness, and
what remained was cut short. Nantucket probity would not, however, be
off its bargain for such cause as this; and Phœbe Ann paid her money
and took her ornamental comb,――more useful in its present connection,
perhaps, than it could have been in any other. The crown and glory
of Mrs. McCleve’s museum, however, is a carved wooden vase, twelve or
fourteen inches in height, made from the top of one of the red-cedar
posts planted a century or two since by this lady’s ancestor, to
inclose a certain parcel of land belonging to him. Twenty or thirty
years ago the fence was to be renewed, and one of her cousins proposed
to her to drive out to the place and secure a relic of the original
island cedar now extinct. She accepted; and the section of the post,
sawed off with great exertion by the cousin, was turned and carved
into its present shape in “Cousin Reuben Macy’s shop on Orange Street.”
But all this set forth in an original poem delivered with much unction
by its author, who decisively refuses a copy to any and everybody, and
is even chary of letting any one listen to it more than once. It is
original――in fact, one may say, intensely original――and quite as well
worth listening to as the saga of a royal skald. It begins after this
fashion:
“This vase, of which we have in contemplation,
Merits, my friends, your careful observation.
* * * * *
Saturday, the busiest day of all,
From Cousin Thomas I received a call.”
Some lost couplets record the invitation to drive, and the demur on
account of pies then baking in the oven; but this being overruled by
masculine persuasiveness――
“Across the hall I gayly skipped,
And soon was for the cruise equipped.”
Then follows the drive, the arrival, and the attempt to cut the stern
old cedar trunk with a dull saw,――
“Cousin Thomas worked with desperation,
Until he was in a profuse perspiration,”
and finally secured the trophy here exhibited. But these stray
couplets give a very inadequate idea of the poem as delivered by its
author; and he who visits Nantucket and does not hear it has for the
rest of his life a lost opportunity to lament.
Just at the close of the recital the poetess fixed her eye steadily
upon a figure beside one of the windows, and sternly inquired:
“Is that woman sick? Why don’t somebody see to her?”
It was true that the culprit, overcome by the heat of the room,
the excitement of the narrative, and possibly certain ancient and
fish-like odors connected with the marine specimens, had fainted a
little; but was speedily recovered by the usual remedies, prominent
among which in those days is a disinclination to have one’s crimps
spoiled by the application of water; and the incident was made more
memorable by the valedictory of the hostess:
“Now, if any of you want to come in again while you stay on the island
you can, without paying anything; and if I don’t remember you, just
say, ‘I was here the day the woman fainted,’ and I shall know it’s all
right.” And we heard that the experiment was tried and succeeded.
As the party left the house the señor lingered to say: “We are going
up to the old windmill, Aunty. Didn’t it belong to your family once?”
“I should say it did, Sammy. They wanted a windmill and didn’t know
how to make one: and they got an off-islander, name of Wilbur, to
make it, and like fools gave him the money beforehand. He went back
to the continent for something――nails maybe, or maybe idees――and
carried the money with him; some pirate or other got wind of it, and
the first thing they knew down here, the man was robbed and murdered
there on Cape Cod. That didn’t put up the windmill though, and the
women had got almost tired grinding their samp and meal in those
old stone mortars, or even a handmill; so some of the folks spoke to
my grandfather, Elisha Macy, about it, and he thought it over, and
finally went to bed and dreamed just how to build it, and the next day
got up and built it. That’s the story of _that_, my dear.”
“A regular case of revelation, wasn’t it?” suggested the señor with a
twinkle in his eye; to which the hostess rather sharply replied:
“I don’t profess to know much about revealation, and I don’t surmise
you know much more, Sammy; but that’s how the windmill was built.”
History adds another anecdote of the windmill, worthy to be preserved
for its Nantucket flavor. Eighty-two years from its marvelous
inception, the mill had grown so old and infirm that its owners
concluded to sell it for lumber if need be. A meeting was called, and
Jared Gardner, the man who was supposed to be wisest in mills of any
on the island, was invited to attend, and succinctly asked by Sylvanus
Macy――
“Jared, what will thee give for the mill without the stones?”
“Not one penny, Sylvanus,” replied Jared as succinctly; and the
other――
“What will thee give for it as it stands, Jared?”
“I don’t feel to want it at any price, friend,” replied Jared
indifferently.
The mill-owners consulted, and presently returned to the charge with――
“Jared, thee must make us an offer.”
“Well, then, twenty dollars for firewood, Sylvanus.”
The offer was accepted immediately; the shrewd Jared did not burn his
mill, even to roast a suckling pig; but repaired and used it to his
own and his neighbor’s advantage, until the day of his death.
REPRESENTATIVE WOMEN POETS OF AMERICA.
Illustration: WOMEN POETS OF AMERICA
_PHOEBE CARY_ • _ALICE CARY_
_LUCY LARCOM_ • _LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON_
_LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY_ • _ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH_
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY.
PIONEER FEMALE POET OF AMERICA.
MRS. SIGOURNEY, was among the first, and is the most voluminous of
all the early female poets of America. In fact she has been, up to
this date, one of the most prolific of all the women writers of our
country, having published fifty-six volumes of poetry and prose, the
first appearing in 1815, and the last in 1863, ♦forty-eight years
later. Her most successful efforts are her occasional poems, which
abound in passages of earnest, well expressed thought, and exhibit
in their graver moods characteristics of a mind trained by exercise
in self-knowledge and self-control. Her writings possess energy
and variety, while her wide and earnest sympathy with all topics
of friendship and philanthropy was always at the service of those
interests. Mr. Edward H. Everett in a review of Mrs. Sigourney’s
works declared: “They express with great purity and evident sincerity
the tender affections which are so natural to the female heart and
the lofty aspirations after a higher and better state of being which
constitute the truly ennobling and elevating principles in art as well
as in nature. Love and religion are the unvarying elements of her song.
If her power of expression were equal to the purity and elevation of
her habits of thought and feeling, she would be a female Milton or a
Christian Pindar.” Continuing he says: “Though she does not inherit
‘The force and ample pinion that the Theban eagles bear,
Sailing with supreme dominion through the liquid vaults of
air,’
she nevertheless manages language with an ease and elegance and that
refined felicity of expression, which is the principal charm in poetry.
In blank verse she is very successful. The poems that she has written
in this measure have much of the manner of Wordsworth, and may be
nearly or quite as highly relished by his admirers.”
♦ ‘fifty-eight’ replaced with ‘forty-eight’
To the above eminent critical estimate of Mrs. Sigourney’s writings
it is unnecessary to add further comment. The justice of the praise
bestowed upon her is evinced by the fact that she has acquired a wider
and more pervading reputation than many of her more modern sisters in
the realm of poesy, but it is evident that, of late years, her poetry
has not enjoyed the popular favor which it had prior to 1860.
Lydia Huntley was the only child of her parents, and was born at
Norwich, Connecticut, September 1st, 1791. Her father was a man of
worth and benevolence and had served in the revolutionary struggle
which brought about the independence of America. Of the precocity
of the child Duyckinck says: “She could read fluently at the age of
three and composed simple verses at seven, smooth in rhythm and of
an invariable religious sentiment.” Her girlhood life was quiet and
uneventful. She received the best educational advantages which her
neighborhood and the society of Madam Lathrop, the widow of Dr. Daniel
Lathrop, of Hartford, could bestow. In 1814, when twenty-three years
of age, Miss Huntley was induced to take a select school at Hartford,
and removed to that city, where the next year, in 1815, her first book,
“Moral Pieces in Prose and Verse,” was published. The prose essays
are introduced by the remark: “They are addressed to a number of young
ladies under my care,” and the writer throughout the volume seems
to have had her vocation as a teacher in view. In the summer of 1819
Miss Huntley became the wife of Mr. Charles Sigourney, an educated
gentleman and a merchant of Hartford. In 1822 a historical poem in
five cantos, entitled “Traits of the Aborigines,” was published, and
about the same time a London publisher made a miscellaneous collection
of her verses and published them under the title of “Lays from
the West,” a compliment of no small moment to an American poetess.
Subsequent volumes came in rapid succession, among them being “Sketch
of Connecticut Forty Years Since,” “Letters to Young Ladies” and
“Letters to Mothers,” “Poetry for Children,” “Zinzendorf and Other
Poems,” the last named appearing in 1836. It introduces us to the
beautiful valley of Wyoming, paying an eloquent tribute to its scenery
and historic fame, and especially to the missionary Zinzendorf, a
noble self-sacrificing missionary among the Indians of the Wyoming
Valley. The picture is a very vivid one. The poem closes with the
departure of Zinzendorf from the then infant city of Philadelphia,
extols him for his missionary labor, and utters a stirring exhortation
to Christian union. In 1841 “Pocahontas and Other Poems” was issued
by a New York publisher. Pocahontas is one of her longest and most
successful productions, containing fifty-six stanzas of nine lines
each, opening with a picture of the vague and shadowy repose of nature
as her imagination conceived it in the condition of the new world
prior to its discovery. The landing at Jamestown and the subsequent
events that go to make up the thrilling story of Pocahontas follow in
detail. This is said to be the best of the many poetical compositions
of which the famous daughter of Powhatan has been the subject.
In 1840 Mrs. Sigourney made a tour of Europe, and on her return in
1842 published a volume of recollections in prose and poetry of famous
and picturesque scenes and hospitalities received. The title of the
book was “Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.” During her stay in
Europe there were also published two volumes of her works in London,
and tokens of kindness and esteem greeted the author from various
distinguished sources. Among others was a splendid diamond bracelet
from the Queen of France. Other volumes of her works appeared in 1846
and 1848. Prominent among the last works of her life was “The Faded
Hope,” a touching and beautiful memento of her severe ♦bereavement in
the death of her only son, which occurred in 1850. “Past Meridian” is
also a graceful volume of prose sketches.
♦ ‘bereavment’ replaced with ‘bereavement’
Mrs. Sigourney died at Hartford, Connecticut, June 10, 1865, when
seventy-three years of age.
* * * * *
COLUMBUS.
ST. STEPHEN’S cloistered hall was proud
In learning’s pomp that day,
For there a robed and stately crowd
Pressed on in long array.
A mariner with simple chart
Confronts that conclave high,
While strong ambition stirs his heart,
And burning thoughts of wonder part
From lips and sparkling eye.
What hath he said? With frowning face,
In whispered tones they speak,
And lines upon their tablets trace,
Which flush each ashen cheek;
The Inquisition’s mystic doom
Sits on their brows severe,
And bursting forth in visioned gloom,
Sad heresy from burning tomb
Groans on the startled ear.
Courage, thou Genoese! Old Time
Thy splendid dream shall crown,
Yon Western Hemisphere sublime,
Where unshorn forests frown,
The awful Andes’ cloud-wrapt brow,
The Indian hunter’s bow,
Bold streams untamed by helm or prow,
And rocks of gold and diamonds, thou
To thankless Spain shalt show.
Courage, World-finder! Thou hast need!
In Fates’ unfolding scroll,
Dark woes, and ingrate wrongs I read,
That rack the noble soul.
On! on! Creation’s secrets probe,
Then drink thy cup of scorn,
And wrapped in Cæsar’s robe,
Sleep like that master of the globe,
All glorious,――yet forlorn.
* * * * *
THE ALPINE FLOWERS.
Meek dwellers mid yon terror stricken cliffs!
With brows so pure, and incense breathing lips,
Whence are ye? Did some white winged messenger
On Mercy’s missions trust your timid germ
To the cold cradle of eternal snows?
Or, breathing on the callous icicles,
Did them with tear drops nurse ye?――
――Tree nor shrub
Dare that drear atmosphere; no polar pine
Uprears a veteran front; yet there ye stand,
Leaning your cheeks against the thick ribbed ice,
And looking up with brilliant eyes to Him
Who bids you bloom unblanched amid the waste
Of desolation. Man, who, panting, toils
O’er slippery steeps, or, trembling, treads the verge
Of yawning gulfs, o’er which the headlong plunge
Is to eternity, looks shuddering up,
And marks ye in your placid loveliness――
Fearless, yet frail――and, clasping his chill hands,
Blesses your pencilled beauty. Mid the pomp
Of mountain summits rushing on the sky,
And chaining the rapt soul in breathless awe,
He bows to bind you drooping to his breast,
Inhales your spirit from the frost winged gale
And freer dreams of heaven.
* * * * *
NIAGARA.
FLOW on, for ever, in thy glorious robe
Of terror and of beauty. Yea, flow on
Unfathomed and resistless. God hath set
His rainbow on thy forehead, and the cloud
Mantled around thy feet. And he doth give
Thy voice of thunder power to speak of him
Eternally――bidding the lip of man
Keep silence――and upon thy rocky altar pour
Incense of awe struck praise. Ah! who can dare
To lift the insect trump of earthly hope,
Or love, or sorrow, mid the peal sublime
Of thy tremendous hymn? Even Ocean shrink
Back from thy brotherhood: and all his waves
Retire abashed. For he doth sometimes seem
To sleep like a spent laborer, and recall
His wearied billows from their vexing play,
And lull them to a cradle calm: but thou,
With everlasting, undecaying tide,
Dost rest not, night or day. The morning stars,
When first they sang o’er young Creation’s birth,
Heard thy deep anthem; and those wrecking fires,
That wait the archangel’s signal to dissolve
This solid earth, shall find JEHOVAH’s name
Graven, as with a thousand diamond spears,
Of thine unending volume. Every leaf,
That lifts itself within thy wide domain,
Doth gather greenness from thy living spray,
Yet tremble at the baptism. Lo! yon birds
Do boldly venture near, and bathe their wing
Amid thy mist and foam. ’Tis meet for them
To touch thy garment’s hem, and lightly stir
The snowy leaflets of thy vapor wreath,
For they may sport unharmed amid the cloud,
Or listen at the echoing gate of heaven,
Without reproof. But as for us, it seems
Scarce lawful, with our broken tones, to speak
Familiarly of thee. Methinks, to tint
Thy glorious features with our pencil’s point,
Or woo thee to the tablet of a song,
Were profanation. Thou dost make the soul
A wondering witness of thy majesty,
But as it presses with delirious joy
To pierce thy vestibule, dost chain its step,
And tame its rapture, with the humbling view
Of its own nothingness, bidding it stand
In the dread presence of the Invisible,
As if to answer to its God through thee.
* * * * *
DEATH OF AN INFANT.
DEATH found strange beauty on that polished brow
And dashed it out. There was a tint of rose
On cheek and lip. He touched the veins with ice
And the rose faded. Forth from those blue eyes
There spake a wishful tenderness, a doubt
Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence
Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound
The silken fringes of those curtaining lids
Forever. There had been a murmuring sound
With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear,
Charming her even to tears. The Spoiler set
His seal of silence. But there beamed a smile
So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow,
Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal
The signet ring of heaven.
* * * * *
A BUTTERFLY ON A CHILD’S GRAVE.
A BUTTERFLY basked on a baby’s grave,
Where a lily had chanced to grow;
“Why art thou here, with thy gaudy dye,
When she of the blue and sparkling eye
Must sleep in the churchyard low?”
Then it lightly soared through the sunny air,
And spoke from its shining track:
“I was a worm till I won my wings,
And she whom thou mourn’st like a seraph sings,
Wouldst thou call the blest one back?”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH.
AUTHOR OF “THE SINLESS CHILD.”
IT was in the year 1841 that a poetic Romance of several episodes,
written in ballad style and entitled “The Sinless Child,” was
published in the Southern Literary Messenger and brought its author,
a woman of thirty-five years, into general prominence, and gained for
her an enviable position which she ever after maintained and fortified
with a series of the finest sonnets which the literature of our
country affords. “Her productions,” says Reade, “are characterized
rather by a passionate and lofty imagination, than by fancy, and a
subtle vein of philosophy more than sentiment, though in the latter
she is by no means deficient.”
The maiden name of this lady was Prince. She is descended from old
Puritan stock on both sides, and was born in Cumberland, near Portland,
Maine, on the twelfth day of August, 1806. At an early age Miss Prince
was married to Mr. Seba Smith, a newspaper editor whom she assisted
in his editorial work. Mr. Smith, himself, was a man of considerable
literary attainment, who, under the _nom de plume_ of “Jack Downing,”
obtained a national reputation. He is also the author of “Powhattan;
a metrical romance,” and several shorter poems which appeared in the
periodicals of the day. His magazine tales and essays were collected
in 1850 and published under the title of “Down East.”
Like most young women writers of that day, Mrs. Smith contributed
her early productions to various periodicals, anonymously. It was not
until her husband suffered business disaster that she commenced the
open profession of authorship as a means of support for her family.
Her first published work “Riches Without Wings” appeared in 1838;
“The Sinless Child and other poems” was collected and issued in book
form in New York, in 1841. In 1842, Mrs. Smith and her husband removed
to New York where they have afterwards resided and the same year she
published a novel entitled “The Western Captive” and also a fanciful
prose tale “The Salamander; a Legend for Christmas.”
Mrs. Smith is also the author of “The Roman Tribute, a tragedy in five
acts,” founded on the exemption of Constantinople from destruction by
a tribute paid by Theodosius to the conquering general, Attila. She
is also the author of a tragedy entitled “Jacob Leisler,” which is
founded upon a well known dramatic incident of the colonial history of
New York. Both of these plays enjoyed in their day popular favor upon
the stage. In 1847, she published “Woman and her needs,” and in 1852,
“Hints on Dress and Beauty.” Subsequent to these came “The Bald Eagle;
or the last of the Ramapaughs;” “The News Boy;” “Sagamor of Saco;”
“The Two Wives;” “Kitty Howard’s Journal,” and “Destiny, a Tragedy.”
Besides the above volumes, Mrs. Smith was the author of much fugitive
verse and was also a liberal contributor of the current magazines of
her day. The varied and peculiar merits of this author will appear to
the reader of her writings, who must be impressed that in the drama,
in the sonnet and in miscellaneous poems of imagination and fancy, she
has vindicated her right to a place among the first poets of her sex,
while her prose writings, though not largely read at this time, are
characterized by the same subtle insight, analysis and delicacy of
treatment which mark her poetry.
* * * * *
EXTRACTS FROM “THE SINLESS CHILD.”
It is difficult to select from a poem of which the parts make
one harmonious whole; but the history of “The Sinless Child” is
illustrated all through with panel pictures which are scarcely
less effective when separated from their series than when
combined, and the reader will be gratified with a few of those
which serve to exhibit the author’s graceful play of fancy,
and the pure vein of poetic sentiment as well as her manner and
style in treating this masterpiece of its author.
THE STEP-MOTHER.
(FROM “THE SINLESS CHILD.”)
YOU speak of Hobert’s second wife,
A lofty dame and bold:
I like not her forbidding air,
And forehead high and cold.
The orphans have no cause for grief,
She dare not give it now,
Though nothing but a ghostly fear
Her heart of pride could bow.
One night the boy his mother called:
They heard him weeping say――
“Sweet mother, kiss poor Eddy’s cheek,
And wipe his tears away!”
Red grew the lady’s brow with rage,
And yet she feels a strife
Of anger and of terror too,
At thought of that dead wife.
Wild roars the wind, the lights burn blue,
The watch-dog howls with fear;
Loud neighs the steed from out the stall:
What ♦form is gliding near?
No latch is raised, no step is heard,
But a phantom fills the space――
A sheeted spectre from the dead,
With cold and leaden face!
What boots it that no other eye
Beheld the shade appear?
The guilty lady’s guilty soul
Beheld it plain and clear!
It slowly glides within the room,
And sadly looks around――
And stooping, kissed her daughter’s cheek
With lips that gave no sound!
Then softly on the stepdame’s arm
She laid a death-cold hand,
Yet it hath scorched within the flesh
Like to a burning brand;
And gliding on with noiseless foot,
O’er winding stair and hall,
She nears the chamber where is heard
Her infant’s trembling call.
She smoothed the pillow where he lay,
She warmly tucked the bed,
She wiped his tears, and stroked the curls
That clustered round his head.
The child, caressed, unknowing fear,
Hath nestled him to rest;
The mother folds her wings beside――
The mother from the blest!
♦ ‘from’ replaced with ‘form’
* * * * *
GUARDIAN ANGELS.
(FROM “THE SINLESS CHILD.”)
WITH downy pinion they enfold
The heart surcharged with wo,
And fan with balmy wing the eye
Whence floods of sorrow flow;
They bear, in golden censers up,
That sacred gift a tear――
By which is registered the griefs
Hearts may have suffered here.
No inward pang, no yearning love
Is lost to human hearts――
No anguish that the spirit feels,
When bright-winged Hope departs.
Though in the mystery of life
Discordant powers prevail;
That life itself be weariness,
And sympathy may fail:
Yet all becomes a discipline,
To lure us to the sky;
And angels bear the good it brings
With fostering care on high.
Though human hearts may weary grow,
And sink to toil-spent sleep,
And we are left in solitude
And agony to weep:
Yet _they_ with ministering zeal
The cup of healing bring,
And bear our love and gratitude
Away, on heavenward wing;
And thus the inner life is wrought,
The blending earth and heaven――
The love more earnest in its glow
Where much has been forgiven!
* * * * *
THE BROOK.
WHITHER away, thou merry Brook,
Whither away so fast,
With dainty feet through the meadow green,
And a smile as you hurry past?”
The Brook leaped on in idle mirth,
And dimpled with saucy glee;
The daisy kissed in lovingness,
And made with the willow free.
I heard its laugh adown the glen,
And over the rocky steep,
Away where the old tree’s roots were bare
In the waters dark and deep;
The sunshine flashed upon its face,
And played with flickering leaf――
Well pleased to dally in its path,
Though the tarrying were brief.
“Now stay thy feet, oh restless one,
Where droops the spreading tree,
And let thy liquid voice reveal
Thy story unto me.”
The flashing pebbles lightly rung,
As the gushing music fell,
The chiming music of the brook,
From out the woody dell.
“My mountain home was bleak and high,
A rugged spot and drear,
With searching wind and raging storm,
And moonlight cold and clear.
I longed for a greeting cheery as mine,
For a fond and answering look
But none were in that solitude
To bless the little brook.
“The blended hum of pleasant sounds
Came up from the vale below,
And I wished that mine were a lowly lot,
To lapse, and sing as I go;
That gentle things, with loving eyes,
Along my path should glide,
And blossoms in their loveliness
Come nestling to my side.
“I leaped me down: my rainbow robe
Hung shivering to the sight,
And the thrill of freedom gave to me
New impulse of delight.
A joyous welcome the sunshine gave,
The bird and the swaying tree;
The spear-like grass and blossoms start
With joy at sight of me.
“The swallow comes with its bit of clay,
When the busy Spring is here.
And twittering bears the moistened gift
A nest on the eaves to rear;
The twinkling feet of flock and herd
Have trodden a path to me,
And the fox and the squirrel come to drink
In the shade of the alder-tree.
“The sunburnt child, with its rounded foot,
Comes hither with me to play,
And I feel the thrill of his lightsome heart
As he dashes the merry spray.
I turn the mill with answering glee,
As the merry spokes go round,
And the gray rock takes the echo up,
Rejoicing in the sound.
“The old man bathes his scattered locks,
And drops me a silent tear――
For he sees a wrinkled, careworn face
Look up from the waters clear.
Then I sing in his ear the very song
He heard in years gone by;
The old man’s heart is glad again,
And a joy lights up his eye.”
Enough, enough, thou homily brook!
I’ll treasure thy teachings well,
And I will yield a heartfelt tear
Thy crystal drops to swell;
Will bear like thee a kindly love
For the lowly things of earth,
Remembering still that high and pure
Is the home of the spirit’s birth.
* * * * *
THE APRIL RAIN.
THE April rain――the April rain――
I hear the pleasant sound;
Now soft and still, like little dew,
Now drenching all the ground.
Pray tell me why an April shower
Is pleasanter to see
Than falling drops of other rain?
I’m sure it is to me.
I wonder if ’tis really so――
Or only hope the while,
That tells of swelling buds and flowers,
And Summer’s coming smile.
Whate’er it is, the April shower
Makes me a child again;
I feel a rush of youthful blood
Come with the April rain.
And sure, were I a little bulb
Within the darksome ground,
I should love to hear the April rain
So gently falling round;
Or any tiny flower were I,
By Nature swaddled up,
How pleasantly the April shower
Would bathe my hidden cup!
The small brown seed, that rattled down
On the cold autumnal earth,
Is bursting from its cerements forth,
Rejoicing in its birth.
The slender spears of pale green grass
Are smiling in the light,
The clover opes its folded leaves
As if it felt delight.
The robin sings on the leafless tree,
And upward turns his eye,
As loving much to see the drops
Come filtering from the sky;
No doubt he longs the bright green leaves
About his home to see,
And feel the swaying summer winds
Play in the full-robed tree.
The cottage door is open wide,
And cheerful sounds are heard,
The young girl sings at the merry wheel
A song like the wilding bird;
The creeping child by the old, worn sill
Peers out with winking eye,
And his ringlets rubs with chubby hand,
As the drops come pattering by.
With bounding heart beneath the sky,
The truant boy is out,
And hoop and ball are darting by
With many a merry shout.
Ay, sport away, ye joyous throng――
For yours is the April day;
I love to see your spirits dance
In your pure and healthful play.
* * * * *
FLOWERS.
(FROM “THE SINLESS CHILD.”)
EACH tiny leaf became a scroll
Inscribed with holy truth,
A lesson that around the heart
Should keep the dew of youth;
Bright missals from angelic throngs
In every by-way left――
How were the earth of glory shorn,
Were it of flowers bereft!
They tremble on the Alpine height;
The fissured rock they press;
The desert wild, with heat and sand,
Shares, too, their blessedness:
And wheresoe’er the weary heart
Turns in its dim despair,
The meek-eyed blossom upward looks,
Inviting it to prayer.
* * * * *
EROS AND ANTEROS.
TIS said sweet Psyche gazed one night
On Cupid’s sleeping face――
Gazed in her fondness on the wight
In his unstudied grace:
But he, bewildered by the glare
Of light at such a time,
Fled from the side of Psyche there
As from a thing of crime.
Ay, weak the fable――false the ground――
Sweet Psyche veiled her face――
Well knowing Love, if ever found,
Will never leave his place.
Unfound as yet, and weary grown,
She had mistook another:
’Twas but Love’s semblance she had found――
Not Eros, but his brother!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
LUCY LARCOM.
AUTHOR OF “HANNAH BINDING SHOES.”
HAD we visited the cotton mills of Lowell, Massachusetts, sixty years
ago, we perhaps would not have noticed anything peculiar or different
from other girls in the busy little body known as Lucy Larcom. She had
left school in her early teens to help support the family by serving
as an ordinary operative in a cotton factory. Yet this is where
Lucy Larcom did her first work; and to the experiences she gained
there can be traced the foundation of the literature――both prose and
poetry――with which she has delighted and encouraged so many readers.
Lucy Larcom was born in Beverly, Massachusetts, in 1826. Her father,
a sea captain, died while she was a child, and her mother removed
with her several children to Lowell, Massachusetts. For a while Lucy
attended the public schools and at the age of ten years showed a
talent for writing verses. In the cotton mill, she tells us, her first
work was “doffing and replacing the bobbins in the machine. Next,” she
says, “I entered the spinning-room, then the dressing-room, where I
had a place beside pleasant windows looking toward the river. Later I
was promoted to the cloth-room, where I had fewer hours of confinement,
without the noisy machinery, and it was altogether neater.” The
last two years, of her eight years’ work in the mill, she served as
book-keeper, and, during her leisure hours, pursued her studies in
mathematics, grammar and English and German literature.
The female operatives in the Lowell mills published a little paper
entitled “Offering,” and it was to this that Miss Larcom contributed
her first literary production, which was in the shape of a poem
entitled “The River;” and many of her verses and essays, both grave
and gay, may be found in the old files of this paper. Her first volume,
“Similitudes,” was compiled from essays which appeared originally
in “Offering.” Since then her name has found an honored place among
the women writers of America. Among her early and best poems are
“Hannah Binding Shoes” and “The Rose Enthroned,” the latter being Miss
Larcom’s first contribution to the “Atlantic Monthly.” She did not
sign her name to the contribution and it was of such merit that one
of the reviewers attributed it to the poet Emerson. Both Mr. Lowell,
the editor of “The Atlantic Monthly,” and the poet, Whittier, to whose
papers she also contributed, praised her ability. Miss Larcom studied
at Monticello Female Seminary, Illinois, and afterwards taught in some
of the leading female schools in her native State. In 1859 appeared
her book entitled “Ships in the Mist and Other Stories,” and in 1866
was published “Breathings of a Better Life.” From 1866 to 1874 she
was editor of “Our Young Folks,” and in 1875 “An Idyl of Work, a Story
in Verse,” appeared. In 1880 “Wild Roses of Cape Ann and Other Poems”
was published, and in 1881 “Among Lowell Mill Girls” appeared. In
1885 her poetical works were gathered and published in one volume.
Of late, Miss Larcom’s writings have assumed deeply religious tones
in which the faith of her whole life finds ample expression. This
characteristic is strongly noticeable in “Beckonings” (1886), and
especially so in her last two books “As It Is In Heaven” (1891) and
“The Unseen Friend” (1892), both of which embody her maturest thought
on matters concerning the spiritual life.
One of the most admirable characteristics of Miss Larcom’s life and
her writings is the marked spirit of philanthropy pervading every
thing she did. She was in sentiment and practically the working
woman’s friend. She came from among them, had shared their toils,
and the burning and consuming impulse of her life was to better their
condition. In this, she imitated the spirit of Him, who, being lifted
up, would draw all men after Him.
* * * * *
HANNAH BINDING SHOES.
POOR lone Hannah,
Sitting at the window, binding shoes!
Faded, wrinkled,
Sitting stitching, in a mournful muse!
Bright-eyed beauty once was she,
When the bloom was on the tree:
Spring and winter
Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.
Not a neighbor
Passing nod or answer will refuse
To her whisper,
“Is there from the fishers any news?”
Oh, her heart’s adrift with one
On an endless voyage gone!
Night and morning
Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.
Fair young Hannah
Ben, the sunburnt fisher, gayly woos;
Hale and clever,
For a willing heart and hand he sues.
May-day skies are all aglow,
And the waves are laughing so!
For the wedding
Hannah leaves her window and her shoes.
May is passing:
Mid the apple-boughs a pigeon coos.
Hannah shudders,
For the mild south-wester mischief brews.
Round the rocks of Marblehead,
Outward bound, a schooner sped:
Silent, lonesome,
Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.
’Tis November.
Now no tears her wasted cheek bedews.
From Newfoundland
Not a sail returning will she lose,
Whispering hoarsely, “Fisherman,
Have you, have you heard of Ben?”
Old with watching,
Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.
Twenty winters
Bleach and tear the ragged shore she views.
Twenty seasons;――
Never has one brought her any news.
Still her dim eyes silently
Chase the white sail o’er the sea:
Hopeless, faithless,
Hannah’s at the window, binding shoes.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY.
“THE SISTER SPIRITS OF POESY.”
IT would be difficult to treat the two poetic Cary sisters separately.
Their work began, progressed through life and practically ended
together. Few persons have written under the circumstances which
at first appeared so disadvantageous. They had neither education
nor literary friends, nor was their early lot cast in a region of
literary culture――for they were reared in Cincinnati, Ohio, during
the formative period of that Western country. But surely in the wild
hills and valleys of their native West, they found
“Tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.”
Alice Cary was born in Mount Healthy, near Cincinnati, April 20, 1820,
and her sister Phoebe at the same place four years later. The two
sisters studied at home together and, when eighteen years old, Alice
began to write poems and sketches of rural life under the _nom de
plume_ of Patty Lee, which attracted considerable attention and
displayed an ability which elicited encouragement from the editors
of the periodicals to which she contributed. In the mean time, Phoebe
Cary, following her sister’s example, began to contribute, and,
in 1850, the two sisters published their first volume of poems in
Philadelphia. A volume of prose sketches entitled “Clover Nook, or
Recollections of our Neighborhood in the West,” by Alice Cary followed
in 1851. In 1852, the Cary sisters removed to New York city where
they chiefly resided during the remainder of their lives, returning
occasionally to their early farm home. For some years they held
weekly receptions in New York, which were attended by leading artistic
and literary people. They earned by their pens――pure and womanly
pens――sufficient to provide a competence for all their wants. They
gathered a library, rich in standard works, to gratify their refined
tastes and did much to relieve the needy with their charity. In 1853,
Alice Cary issued a second series of her “Clover Nook Papers” and a
third gleaning from the same field appeared in 1855, entitled “Clover
Nook Children,” for the benefit of her more youthful readers. During
the prolific years, from 1852 to 1855, she also published “Lyra and
other Poems,” followed by “Hagar, a Story of To-day,” “Married, Not
Mated,” and “Hollywood,” a collection of poems. In 1854, Phoebe Cary,
also, published “Poems and Parodies.” In 1859 appeared her “Pictures
of Country Life,” a series of tales, and “The Bishop’s Son,” a novel.
In 1867, appeared her “Snowberries,” a book for young folks. In 1866,
Alice also published a volume entitled “Ballads, Lyrics and Hymns,”
which is a standard selection of her poetry and contains some of the
sweetest minor poems in the language. Alice’s “The Lover’s Diary”
appeared in 1868. It begins with the poem “Dreamland” and ranges
with a series of exquisite lyrics of love through all the phases of
courtship to married life. This was the last of her works published
during her lifetime. During the same year (1868), Phoebe published
the “Poems of Faith, Hope and Love,” a worthy companion volume to her
sister’s works, and in 1869 she aided her pastor, Chas. F. Deems, in
editing “Hymns for All Christians.”
In comparing the two sisters, it is noticeable that the poems of Alice
are more thoughtful and more melodiously expressed. They are also
marked with a stronger originality and a more vivid imagination. In
disposition, Alice was pensive and tender, while Phoebe was witty
and gay. Alice was strong in energy and patience and bore the chief
responsibility of their household, allowing her sister, who was less
passive and feminine in temperament, to consult her moods in writing.
The disparity in the actual intellectual productions of the two
sisters in the same number of years is the result, not so much of the
mental equality as of the superior energy, industry, and patience of
the elder.
The considerate love and delicacy with which Alice and Phoebe Cary
treated each other plainly indicated that they were one in spirit
through life, and in death they were not long separated. Alice died at
her home in New York City, February 12, 1871, in her fifty-first year.
Phoebe, in sorrow over this bereavement, wrote the touching verses
entitled “Light,” and in confidence said to a friend: “Alice, when
she was here, always absorbed me, and she absorbs me still. I feel
her constantly drawing me.” And so it seemed in reality, for, on the
thirty-first day of July, six months after Alice Cary was laid to rest
in Greenwood Cemetery, New York, Phoebe died at Newport, Rhode Island,
whence her remains were removed and laid by her sister’s side.
The two kindred sisters, so long associated on earth, were re-united.
The influence they have left behind them, embalmed in their hymns of
praiseful worship, their songs of love and of noblest sentiment, and
their stories of happy childhood and innocent manhood and womanhood,
will long remain to bless the earth and constitute a continual incense
to their memory.
Besides the published works named above, both Alice and Phoebe left at
their death uncollected poems enough to give each name two added
volumes. Alice also left the manuscript of a completed novel.
* * * * *
PICTURES OF MEMORY.
(ALICE CARY.)
AMONG the beautiful pictures
That hang on Memory’s wall,
Is one of a dim old forest,
That seemeth best of all:
Not for its gnarled oaks olden,
Dark with the mistletoe;
Not for the violets golden
That sprinkle the vale below;
Not for the milk-white lilies,
That lead from the fragrant hedge,
Coqueting all day with the sunbeams,
And stealing their golden edge;
Not for the vines on the upland
Where the bright red berries rest,
Nor the pinks, nor the pale, sweet cowslip,
It seemed to me the best.
I once had a little brother,
With eyes that were dark and deep――
In the lap of that old dim forest
He lieth in peace asleep:
Light as the down of the thistle,
Free as the winds that blow,
We roved there the beautiful summers,
The summers of long ago;
But his feet on the hills grew weary,
And, one of the autumn eves,
I made for my little brother
A bed of the yellow leaves.
Sweetly his pale arms folded
My neck in a meek embrace,
As the light of immortal beauty
Silently covered his face:
And when the arrows of sunset
Lodged in the tree-tops bright,
He fell, in his saint-like beauty,
Asleep by the gates of light.
Therefore, of all the pictures
That hang on Memory’s wall,
The one of the dim old forest
Seemeth the best of all.
* * * * *
NOBILITY.
(ALICE CARY.)
HILDA is a lofty lady,
Very proud is she――
I am but a simple herdsman
Dwelling by the sea.
Hilda hath a spacious palace,
Broad, and white, and high;
Twenty good dogs guard the portal――
Never house had I.
Hilda hath a thousand meadows――
Boundless forest lands:
She hath men and maids for service――
I have but my hands.
The sweet summer’s ripest roses
Hilda’s cheeks outvie――
Queens have paled to see her beauty――
But my beard have I.
Hilda from her palace windows
Looketh down on me,
Keeping with my dove-brown oxen
By the silver sea.
When her dulcet harp she playeth,
Wild birds singing nigh,
Cluster, listening, by her white hands――
But my reed have I.
I am but a simple herdsman,
With nor house nor lands;
She hath men and maids for service――
I have but my hands.
And yet what are all her crimsons
To my sunset sky――
With my free hands and my manhood
Hilda’s peer am I.
* * * * *
THE GRAY SWAN.
(ALICE CARY.)
(_From the Poetical Works of Alice and Phœbe Cary, 1876._)
OH tell me, sailor, tell me true,
Is my little lad, my Elihu,
A-sailing with your ship?”
The sailor’s eyes were dim with dew,――
“Your little lad, your Elihu?”
He said with trembling lip,――
“What little lad? what ship?”
“What little lad! as if there could be
Another such an one as he!
What little lad, do you say?
Why, Elihu, that took to the sea
The moment I put him off my knee!
It was just the other day
The _Gray Swan_ sailed away.”
“The other day?” the sailor’s eyes
Stood open with a great surprise,――
“The other day? the _Swan_?”
His heart began in his throat to rise.
“Aye, aye, sir, here in the cupboard lies
The jacket he had on.”
“And so your lad is gone?”
“Gone with the _Swan_.” “And did she stand
With her anchor clutching hold of the sand,
For a month, and never stir?”
“Why, to be sure! I’ve seen from the land,
Like a lover kissing his lady’s hand,
The wild sea kissing her,――
A sight to remember, sir.”
“But, my good mother, do you know
All this was twenty years ago?
I stood on the _Gray Swan’s_ deck,
And to that lad I saw you throw,
Taking it off, as it might be, so!
The kerchief from your neck.”
“Aye, and he’ll bring it back!”
“And did the little lawless lad,
That has made you sick and made you sad,
Sail with the _Gray Swan’s_ crew?”
“Lawless! the man is going mad!
The best boy mother ever had,――
Be sure he sailed with the crew!
What would you have him do?”
“And he has never written a line,
Nor sent you word, nor made you sign
To say he was alive!”
“Hold! if ’twas wrong, the wrong is mine;
Besides, he may be in the brine,
And could he write from the grave?
Tut, man, what would you have?”
Gone twenty years――a long, long cruise,――
’Twas wicked thus your love to abuse;
But if the lad still live,
And come back home, think you can
Forgive him?” “Miserable man,
You’re mad as the sea,――you rave,――
What have I to forgive?”
The sailor twitched his shirt so blue,
And from within his bosom drew
The kerchief. She was wild.
“My God! my Father! is it true?
My little lad, my Elihu!
My blessed boy, my child!
My dead, my living child!”
* * * * *
TO THE EVENING ZEPHYR.¹
ALICE CARY.
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
I SIT where the wild-bee is humming,
And listen in vain for thy song;
I’ve waited before for thy coming,
But never, oh, never so long!
How oft with the blue sky above us,
And waves breaking light on the shore,
Thou, knowing they would not reprove us,
Hast kissed me a thousand times o’er!
Alone in the gathering shadows,
Still waiting, sweet Zephyr, for thee,
I look for the waves of the meadows,
And dimples to dot the blue sea.
The blossoms that waited to greet thee
With heat of the noontide oppressed,
Now flutter so light to meet thee,
Thou’rt coming, I know, from the west.
Alas! if thou findest me pouting,
’Tis only my love that alarms;
Forgive, then, I pray thee, my doubting,
And take me once more to thine arms!
* * * * *
DEATH SCENE.¹
(PHOEBE CARY.)
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
DYING, still slowly dying,
As the hours of night rode by,
She had lain since the light of sunset
Was red on the evening sky;
Till after the middle watches,
As we softly near her trod,
When her soul from its prison fetters
Was loosed by the hand of God.
One moment her pale lips trembled
With the triumph she might not tell,
As the sight of the life immortal
On her spirit’s vision fell;
Then the look of rapture faded,
And the beautiful smile was faint,
As that in some convent picture,
On the face of a dying saint.
And we felt in the lonesome midnight,
As we sat by the silent dead,
What a light on the path going downward
The feet of the righteous shed;
When we thought how with faith unshrinking
She came to the Jordan’s tide,
And taking the hand of the Saviour,
Went up on the heavenly side.
* * * * *
MEMORIES.¹
(PHOEBE CARY.)
“_She loved me, but she left me._”
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
MEMORIES on memories! to my soul again
There come such dreams of vanished love and bliss
That my wrung heart, though long inured to pain,
Sinks with the fulness of its wretchedness:
Thou, dearer far than all the world beside!
Thou, who didst listen to my love’s first vow――
Once I had fondly hoped to call thee bride:
Is the dream over? comes that awakening now?
And is this hour of wretchedness and tears
The only guerdon for my wasted years?
And I did love thee――when by stealth we met
In the sweet evenings of that summer time,
Whose pleasant memory lingers with me yet,
As the remembrance of a better clime
Might haunt a fallen angel. And oh, thou――
Thou who didst turn away and seek to bind
Thy heart from breaking――thou hast felt ere now
A heart like thine o’ermastereth the mind:
Affection’s power is stronger than thy will――
Ah, thou didst love me, and thou lovest me still.
My heart could never yet be taught to move
With the calm even pulses that it should:
Turning away from those that it should love,
And loving whom it should not, it hath wooed
Beauty forbidden――I may not forget;
And thou, oh thou canst never cease to feel;
But time, which hath not changed affection yet,
Hath taught at least one lesson――to conceal;
So none but thou, who see my smiles, shall know
The silent bleeding of the heart below.
* * * * *
“EQUAL TO EITHER FORTUNE.”¹
(PHOEBE CARY.)
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
EQUAL to either fortune!” This should be
The motto of the perfect man and true――
Striving to stem the billow fearlessly,
And keeping steadily the right in view,
Whether it be his lot in life to sail
Before an adverse or a prosperous gale.
Man fearlessly his voice for truth should raise,
When truth would force its way in deed or word;
Whether for him the popular voice of praise,
Or the cold sneer of unbelief is heard:
Like the First Martyr, when his voice arose
Distinct above the hisses of his foes.
“Equal to either fortune,” Heaven designs,
Whether his destiny be repose or toil――
Whether the sun upon his palace shines,
Or calls him forth to plant the furrowed soil:
So shall he find life’s blessings freely strewn
Around the peasant’s cottage as the throne.
Man should dare all things which he knows are right,
And fear to do no act save what is wrong;
But, guided safely by his inward light,
And with a permanent belief, and strong,
In Him who is our Father and our friend,
He should walk steadfastly unto the end.
Ready to live or die, even in that day
Which man from childhood has been taught to fear,
When, putting off its cumbrous weight of clay,
The spirit enters on a nobler sphere:
And he will be, whose life was rightly passed,
“Equal to either fortune” at the last.
* * * * *
LIGHT.¹
(PHOEBE CARY.)
This is one of the last poems. It was written after the death
of her sister Alice, in 1871.
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
WHILE I hid mine eyes, I feared;
The heavens in wrath seemed bowed;
I look, and the sun with a smile breaks forth,
And a rainbow spans the cloud.
I thought the winter was here,
That the earth was cold and bare,
But I feel the coming of birds and flowers,
And the spring-time in the air.
I said that all the lips
I ever had kissed were dumb;
That my dearest ones were dead and gone,
And never a friend would come.
But I hear a voice as sweet
As the fall of summer showers;
And the grave that yawned at my very feet
Is filled to the top with flowers!
As if ’t were the midnight hour,
I sat with gloom opprest;
When a light was breaking out of the east
And shining unto the west.
I heard the angels call
Across from the beautiful shore;
And I saw a look in my darling’s eyes,
That never was there before.
Transfigured, lost to me,
She had slipped from my embrace;
Now, lo! I hold her fast once more,
With the light of God on her face!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON.
NO modern poet among American women stands higher in the estimation
of her literary peers, or in the social scale than does the author
of “Bedtime Stories,” “Some Women’s Hearts,” and “In the Garden of
Dreams.” Mrs. Moulton enjoys the triple distinction of being a writer
of the most popular stories for children, of popular novels for grown
people, and of some of the best poetry which any woman has contributed
to our literature. In herself she presents the conscientious poet who
writes for the purpose of instructing and benefiting, and, at the same
time, one whose wares are marketable and popular. Not a few critics
have placed her sonnets at the head of their kind in America. Her
poetry has for its main characteristic a constant but not a rebellious
sorrow expressed with such consistent ease and melody that the reader
is led on with a most pleasurable sensation from stanza to stanza and
arises from the reading of her verses with a mellower and softer
sympathy for his fellow-beings.
Louise Chandler was born at Pomfret, Connecticut, April 5, 1835, and
her education was received in that vicinity. Her first book entitled
“This, That and Other Poems” appeared when she was nineteen years of
age. It was a girlish miscellany and sold remarkably well. After its
publication, she passed one year in Miss Willard’s Seminary at Troy,
New York, and it was during her first vacation from this school that
she met and married the well-known Boston journalist, William Moulton.
The next year was published “Juno Clifford,” a novel, without her name
attached. Her next publication, issued in 1859, was a collection of
stories under the title of “My Third Book.” Neither of these made a
great success, and she published nothing more until 1873, when her now
famous “Bedtime Stories for Children” was issued and attracted much
attention. She has written five volumes of bright tales for children.
In 1874 appeared “Some Women’s Hearts” and “Miss Eyre from Boston.”
After this Mrs. Moulton visited Europe, and out of the memories of her
foreign travel, she issued in 1881 a book entitled “Random Rambles,”
and six years later came “Ours and Our Neighbors,” a book of essays
on social subjects, and the same year she issued two volumes of poems.
In 1889 she published simultaneously, in England and America, her most
popular work, entitled “In the Garden of Dreams,” which has passed
through many editions with increased popularity. Mrs. Moulton has also
edited three volumes of the poems of Philip Burke Marseton.
Mrs. Moulton’s residence has been in Boston since 1855, with the
exception of sixteen consecutive summers and autumns which she
passed in Europe. In London she is especially at home, where she
lives surrounded by friends and friendly critics, who value both her
winning personality and her literary art. She has been throughout her
life a systematic worker, devoting a part of each day to literary
labor. Aside from her books, she has done much writing for newspapers
and periodicals. From 1870 to 1876 she was the Boston literary
correspondent for the New York “Tribune,” and for nearly five years
she wrote a weekly letter reviewing new books and literary people for
the Boston “Sunday Herald,” the series of these letters closing in
December, 1891.
Mrs. Moulton, while not admitting herself to be a hero worshipper, is
full of appreciation of the great bygone names of honor, and enjoys
with a keen relish the memory of the personal friendship she had with
such immortals as Whittier, Longfellow and Lowell, on this side of the
Atlantic, and with Swinburne, Tennyson and others, in Europe.
* * * * *
“IF THERE WERE DREAMS TO SELL.”¹
“If there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?”――BEDDOES.
¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.
IF there were dreams to sell,
Do I not know full well
What I would buy?
Hope’s dear delusive spell,
Its happy tale to tell――
Joy’s fleeting sigh.
I would be young again――
Youth’s madding bliss and bane
I would recapture――
Though it were keen with pain,
All else seems void and vain
To that fine rapture.
I would be glad once more――
Slip through an open door
Into Life’s glory――
Keep what I spent of yore,
Find what I lost before――
Hear an old story.
As it of old befell,
Breaking Death’s frozen spell,
Love should draw nigh:――
If there were dreams to sell,
Do I not know too well
_What_ I would buy?
* * * * *
WIFE TO HUSBAND.¹
¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.
WHEN I am dust, and thou art quick and glad.
Bethink thee, sometimes, what good days we had,
What happy days, beside the shining seas,
Or by the twilight fire, in careless ease,
Reading the rhymes of some old poet lover,
Or whispering our own love-story over.
When thou hast mourned for me a seemly space,
And set another in my vacant place,
Charmed with her brightness, trusting in her truth,
Warmed to new life by her beguiling youth,
Be happy, dearest one, and surely know
I would not have thee thy life’s joys forego.
Yet think of me sometimes, where, cold and still,
I lie, who once was swift to do thy will,
Whose lips so often answered to thy kiss,
Who, dying, blessed thee for that bygone bliss:
I pray thee do not bar my presence quite
From thy new life, so full of new delight.
I would not vex thee, waiting by thy side;
My presence should not chill thy fair young bride;
Only bethink thee how alone I lie:
To die and be forgotten were to die
A double death; and I deserve of thee
Some grace of memory, fair howe’er _she_ be.
* * * * *
THE LAST GOOD-BYE.¹
¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.
HOW shall we know it is the last good-bye?
The skies will not be darkened in that hour,
No sudden light will fall on leaf or flower,
No single bird will hush its careless cry,
And you will hold my hands, and smile or sigh
Just as before. Perchance the sudden tears
In your dear eyes will answer to my fears;
But there will come no voice of prophecy:
No voice to whisper, “Now, and not again,
Space for last words, last kisses, and last prayer,
For all the wild, unmitigated pain
Of those who, parting clasp hands with despair.”
“Who knows?” we say, but doubt and fear remain,
Would any _choose_ to part thus unaware?
* * * * *
NEXT YEAR.
THE lark is singing gaily in the meadow, the sun is rising
o’er the dark blue hills;
But she is gone, the music of whose talking was sweeter than
the voice of summer rills.
Sometimes I see the bluebells of the forest, and think of her
blue eyes;
Sometimes I seem to hear the rustle of her garments: ’tis but
the wind’s low sighs.
I see the sunbeams trail along the orchard, and fall in
thought to tangling up her hair;
And sometimes round the sinless lips of childhood breaks
forth a smile, such as she used to wear;
But never any pleasant thing, around, above us, seems to me
like her love――
More lofty than the skies that bend and brighten o’er us, more
constant than the dove.
She walks no more beside me in the morning; she meets me not
on any summer eve;
But once at night I heard a low voice calling――“Oh, faithful
friend, thou hast not long to grieve!”
Next year, when larks are singing gaily in the meadow, I shall
not hear their tone;
But she in the dim, far-off country of the stranger, will walk
no more alone.
* * * * *
MY MOTHER’S PICTURE.
(FROM “IN THE GARDEN OF DREAMS.”)
HOW shall I here her placid picture paint
With touch that shall be delicate, yet sure?
Soft hair above a brow so high and pure
Years have not soiled it with an earthly taint,
Needing no aureole to prove her saint;
Firm mind that no temptation could allure;
Soul strong to do, heart stronger to endure;
And calm, sweet lips that uttered no complaint.
So have I seen her, in my darkest days
And when her own most sacred ties were riven,
Walk tranquilly in self-denying ways,
Asking for strength, and sure it would be given;
Filling her life with lowly prayer, high praise――
So shall I see her, if we meet in heaven.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WELL-KNOWN ESSAYISTS, CRITICS AND SKETCH WRITERS.
Illustration: DISTINGUISHED ESSAYISTS AND LITERARY CRITICS.
CHAS. DUDLEY WARNER
WASHINGTON IRVING • THOS. WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
HAMILTON W. MABIE
IK MARVEL • EDMUND C. STEDMAN
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WASHINGTON IRVING.
THE FIRST AMERICAN AUTHOR OF RENOWN.
“_The Cervantes of the New World._”
THE first American who openly adopted literature as a calling and
successfully relied upon his pen for support was Washington Irving,
and the abiding popularity of this author is the best guarantee of
his permanent place in the world of letters. Since 1802, when Irving
begun to write, empires have arisen and passed away; new arts have
been invented and adopted, and have pushed the old out of use; the
household economy of mankind has undergone a revolution; science
has learned a new dialect and forgotten the old; but the words of
this charming writer are still as bright and even more read by men
and women to-day than when they came fresh from his pen and their
brilliant author was not only the literary lion of America, but was
a shining light in the circles of the old World. The pages of Irving
are a striking illustration of the fact that the language of the
heart never becomes obsolete, that Truth, and Good, and Beauty,
the offspring of God, are not subject to the changes which beset
the empire of man, and we feel sure that Washington Irving, whose
works were the delight of our grandparents and parents, and are now
contributing to our own happiness, will also be read with the same
eager pleasure by those who come after us.
It was on the 3rd of April, 1783, when the British were in possession
of New York City and George Washington was exerting his forces to
drive them away, that young Irving was born. Like Benjamin Franklin,
he was the youngest of many sons. His father was a Scotchman and his
mother an Englishwoman, who emigrated to America soon after their
marriage and settled in New York about the year 1770. The Irvings were
staunch patriots and did what they could to relieve the sufferings
of American prisoners while the British held the city, and their son
was not christened until the English evacuated the town and George
Washington came in and took possession. In her exultation over this
event Mrs. Irving exclaimed: “Washington’s work is ended and this
child shall be named after him.” Six years later, in 1789, George
Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the
United States, in New York, which was then the capital of the country.
Shortly after this the Scotch servant girl with little Irving in
charge, seeing the President on the street called out: “Please,
your honor, here’s a bairn was named after you.” Washington bade her
bring the boy to him, and placing his hands on his head gave him his
blessing.
As a boy Irving was playful rather than studious. His delicate health
prevented his entering college, and the educational training which he
received was at sundry small schools, and this ceased at the age of
sixteen, at which time he began to study law. Irving’s opportunity
came in 1802, when his brother, Dr. Peter Irving, established a
daily paper, to which Washington, then only nineteen, contributed a
series of essays under the signature of “Jonathan Oldstyle.” They were
written in a humorous vein and met an instant success, being quoted
and copied as far and wide as the sayings of Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor
Richard” had been fifty years before.
In 1804 Irving’s failing health compelled him to abandon his legal
studies and he went abroad, spending two years in European travel,
and gathering a stock of material for his future writings. In 1806 he
returned to New York, took up again the study of law and was admitted
to the bar, but never practised the profession. The next year, with
his brother and James K. Paulding, he started the “Salmagundi; or,
Whim-Whams and Opinions of ♦Launcelot Langstaff, Esq.,” which was
published fortnightly and ran through twenty numbers. This humorous
magazine, intended by its authors only to “hit off” the gossip of that
day, has now become an amusing history of society events a century ago,
and is still widely read. The next two years were occupied in writing
his “Knickerbocker’s History of New York,” which was published in
December, 1809. This was to have been the joint work of Washington
Irving and his brother, Peter, but the latter was called away to
Europe, and Washington did it alone. To introduce this book, Irving,
with genuine Yankee shrewdness, advertised in the newspapers some
months in advance of its publication for an old gentleman by the name
of Knickerbocker, who had suddenly disappeared, leaving behind him
the manuscript of a book and his board bill unpaid. It was finally
announced that his landlord had decided to publish the book in the
hope of realizing enough profit to satisfy his claim for board against
the author. It proved to be the most readable book which had yet
appeared in America and was received with enthusiasm by the public.
Abroad it created almost as great a sensation. Sir Walter Scott read
it aloud to his family, and it first revealed to the critics of the
Old World that America was to have a literature of its own. This book
quickly brought its author both reputation and money, and with bright
hopes he entered the business firm of his brother as a silent partner.
♦ ‘Lancelot’ replaced with ‘Launcelot’
During the War of 1812 Irving was editorially connected with the
“Analectic Magazine” in Philadelphia, for which he wrote a number
of articles. He was stanchly patriotic throughout the war, though he
deplored its existence. In 1815, after peace was proclaimed, he made
a second voyage across the Atlantic, intending to remain only a short
while, but the failure of his brother’s firm blasted his business
hopes and necessitated his return to literature. He, therefore,
remained abroad for seventeen years, and it was in the Old Country
that he wrote his famous “Sketch Book,” published in parts in New
York in 1819, and in book form in London in 1820, the author receiving
for the copyright four hundred pounds (nearly $2,000). In 1822 he
published “Bracebridge Hall, or, The Humorist;” and in 1824 the “Tales
of the Traveler.” From 1826 to 1829 Irving spent much time in Spain,
where he gathered material for the “Life of Christopher Columbus”
(1828); “Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada,” and “The Alhambra,
or, The New Sketch Book,” which appeared in 1832.
Illustration: SUNNYSIDE, THE HOME OF WASHINGTON IRVING.
During the last two years of Irving’s stay abroad he was Secretary
of the United States Legation at London, and on his return to America
in 1832 was received with great public honor. His books now brought
him an adequate income, and he built for himself a handsome villa at
Irvington, New York――which he named “Sunnyside”――where he continued
to reside until his death, with the exception of four years (1842–46),
during which time he represented the United States at the Court
of Madrid. While residing at Sunnyside he wrote the “Tours of the
Prairies” (1835); “Astoria” (1836); “Adventures of Captain Bonneville”
(1837). After his return from the Court of Spain he edited a new
edition of his complete works, issued in 1850. He also published
in 1849 and 1850 “Oliver Goldsmith: a Biography,” and “Mahomet and
His Successors.” From 1850 to 1859 he published only two books,
namely, “♦Wolfert’s Roost and Other Papers” and the “Life of George
Washington;” the latter issued just before his death, which occurred
at Sunnyside, November 28, 1859. His nephew, P. H. Irving, afterwards
prepared the “Life and Letters of Washington Irving” (1863), and
also edited and published his “Spanish Papers and Other Miscellanies”
(1866.)
♦ “Wolfret’s” replaced with “Wolfert’s”
That Irving never married may be attributed to the fact that his
fiancé, Miss Matilda Hoffman, a charming and beautiful girl, to whom
he was devotedly attached, died suddenly soon after they were engaged.
Irving, then twenty-six, bore the blow like a man, but he carried the
scar through life.
The fame of Irving becomes the more resplendent when we remember
that he was the first great pioneer in American letters. Franklin
was the only man of any note who had preceded him, and his writings
were confined to a much smaller scope. It was while Bryon and Scott
were leaders of English letters that Irving, without the advantage
of a college education, went to England and met and associated with
the greatest of English authors, issued several of his books and
made good his own title to an honorable position in literature among
them, not only leaving his impress upon English society but he created
an illustrious following among her authors that any man should be
proud of; for it is from Irving’s “Sketch Book” that the revival of
Christmas feasts was inaugurated, which Dickens afterwards took up and
pursued to further lengths, making Irving his model in more ways than
is generally supposed. Sir Walter Scott and Thackeray were his friends
and admirers. The latter calls Irving the “first ambassador whom the
new world of letters sent to the old.” At home Irving’s influence was
even greater. His tales like “Rip Van Winkle” and its fellows became
the first fruits of an abundant harvest, rich in local flavor, which
later American story-tellers like Hawthorne, Poe, Bret Harte and Cable,
all in their own way, following in his footsteps, have gathered after
him.
The genius of Irving was not of that stalwart, rugged character which
conquered by admiration. It rather won its way softly and by the aid
of genial sentiment, human sympathy and pungent humor. His heart was
quick to catch the sentiment, and his imagination as quick to follow
the thread of an incident to its most charming conclusion. He it
was who peopled the green nooks of “Sleepy Hollow” and the rocky
crags of the Catskills, describing landscape and character with a
charm which no later American writer has surpassed; and it was his
delicate subtlety and keen insight which called into being in his
“Knickerbocker’s History” a civilization, giving to the legend the
substance of truth, and presenting a fiction so that it passed for
a fact. This is a feat which very few authors have accomplished.
That Irving might have been a successful historian is evinced by his
“Life of Columbus” and “Life of Washington,” in which his exhaustive
inquiry into details and his treatment of the same leave nothing
new in the lives of these great men to be told; but it is on his
descriptive essays, such as we find in his “Sketch Book,” “The
Alhambra” and “Knickerbocker’s History,” that his title to enduring
fame most securely rests.
The poet, Lowell, in his “Fable for Critics,” thus happily
characterizes Washington Irving:
“What! Irving? thrice welcome warm heart and fine brain,
You bring back the happiest spirit from Spain,
And the gravest sweet humor, that ever were there
Since Cervantes met death in his gentle despair;
Nay, don’t be embarrassed, nor look so beseeching,
I shan’t run directly against my own preaching,
And having just laughed at their Raphaels and Dantes,
Go to setting you up beside matchless Cervantes;
But allow me to speak what I honestly feel,
To a true poet-heart add the fun of Dick Steele,
Throw in all of Addison, minus the chill,
With the whole of that partnership’s stock and good-will,
Mix well, and while stirring, hum o’er, as a spell,
The ‘fine old English Gentleman,’ simmer it well,
Sweeten just to your own private liking, then strain,
That only the finest and clearest remain.
Let it stand out of doors till a soul it receives
From the warm lazy sun loitering down through green leaves,
And you’ll find a choice nature not wholly deserving
A name either English or Yankee――just Irving.”
* * * * *
THE ORGAN OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
FROM THE SKETCH BOOK.
THE sound of casual footsteps had ceased from the abbey. I could only
hear, now and then, the distant voice of the priest repeating the
evening service, and the faint responses of the choir; these paused
for a time, and all was hushed. The stillness, the desertion and
obscurity that were gradually prevailing around, gave a deeper and
more solemn interest to the place:
For in the silent grave no conversation,
No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers,
No careful father’s counsel――nothing’s heard,
For nothing is, but all oblivion,
Dust, and an endless darkness.
Suddenly the notes of the deep-laboring organ burst upon the ear,
falling with double and redoubled intensity, and rolling, as it were,
huge billows of sound. How well do their volume and grandeur accord
with this mighty building! With what pomp do they swell through its
vast vaults, and breathe their awful harmony through these caves
of death, and make the silent sepulchre vocal! And now they rise in
triumph and acclamation, heaving higher and higher their accordant
notes, and piling sound on sound. And now they pause, and the soft
voices of the choir break out into sweet gushes of melody; they soar
aloft, and warble along the roof, and seem to play about these lofty
vaults like the pure airs of heaven. Again the pealing organ heaves
its thrilling thunders, compressing air into music, and rolling it
forth upon the soul. What long-drawn cadences! What solemn sweeping
concords! It grows more and more dense and powerful――it fills the
vast pile, and seems to jar the very walls――the ear is stunned――the
senses are overwhelmed. And now it is winding up in full jubilee――it
is rising from the earth to heaven――The very soul seems rapt away and
floated upwards on this swelling tide of harmony!
I sat for some time lost in that kind of reverie which a strain of
music is apt sometimes to inspire: the shadows of evening were
gradually thickening round me; the monuments began to cast deeper and
deeper gloom; and the distant clock again gave token of the slowly
waning day.
* * * * *
BALTUS VAN TASSEL’S FARM.
ICHABOD Crane had a soft and foolish heart toward the sex; and it is
not to be wondered at, that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in
his eyes; more especially after he had visited her in her paternal
mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving,
contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either
his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but
within those everything was snug, happy, and well-conditioned. He was
satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself
upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived.
His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of
those green, sheltered, fertile nooks, in which the Dutch farmers are
so fond of nestling. A great elm-tree spread its branches over it,
at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest
water, in a little well formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling
away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that bubbled along
among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast
barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice
of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the
flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows
and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons,
some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with
their heads under their wings, or buried in their bosoms, and others
swelling and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the
sunshine on the roof. Sleek, unwielding porkers were grunting in the
repose and abundance of their pens; whence sallied forth, now and then,
troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of
snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets
of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard,
and guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives,
with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted
the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine
gentleman, clapping his burnished wings, and crowing in the pride and
gladness of his heart――sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet,
and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and
children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.
The pedagogue’s mouth watered, as he looked upon this sumptuous
promise of winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye, he pictured to
himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly
and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a
comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese
were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in
dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion
sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon
and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed
up, with its gizard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of
savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling
on his back, in a side-dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that
quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.
As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great
green eyes over the fat meadowlands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye,
of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy
fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart
yearned after the damsel, who was to inherit those domains, and his
imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned
into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land and
shingle palaces in the wilderness.
Nay, his busy ♦fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him
the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the
top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles
dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with
a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Lord
knows where.
♦ ‘fanciy’ replaced with ‘fancy’
* * * * *
COLUMBUS AT BARCELONA.
(FROM “LIFE OF COLUMBUS.”)
THE letter of Columbus to the Spanish monarchs had produced the
greatest sensation at court. The event he announced was considered
the most extraordinary of their prosperous reign, and, following so
close upon the conquest of Granada, was pronounced a signal mark of
divine favor for that triumph achieved in the cause of the true faith.
The sovereigns themselves were for a time dazzled by this sudden and
easy acquisition of a new empire, of indefinite extent and apparently
boundless wealth.
* * * * *
About the middle of April Columbus arrived at Barcelona, where
every preparation had been made to give him a solemn and magnificent
reception. The beauty and serenity of the weather in that genial
season and favored climate contributed to give splendor to this
memorable ceremony. As he drew near the place, many of the more
youthful courtiers and hidalgos, together with a vast concourse of
the populace, came forth to meet and welcome him. His entrance into
this noble city has been compared to one of those triumphs which the
Romans were accustomed to decree to conquerors. First were paraded the
Indians, painted according to their savage fashion, and decorated with
their national ornaments of gold; after these were borne various kinds
of live parrots, together with stuffed birds and animals of unknown
species, and rare plants supposed to be of precious qualities; while
great care was taken to make a conspicuous display of Indian coronets,
bracelets, and other decorations of gold, which might give an idea
of the wealth of the newly discovered regions. After this followed
Columbus on horseback, surrounded by a brilliant cavalcade of Spanish
chivalry. The streets were almost impassable from the countless
multitude; the windows and balconies were crowded with the fair; the
very roofs were covered with spectators. It seemed as if the public
eye could not be sated with gazing on these trophies of an unknown
world, or on the remarkable man by whom it had been discovered. There
was a sublimity in this event that mingled a solemn feeling with the
public joy. It was looked upon as a vast and signal dispensation of
Providence in reward for the piety of the monarchs; and the majestic
and venerable appearance of the discoverer, so different from the
youth and buoyancy generally expected from roving enterprise, seemed
in harmony with the grandeur and dignity of his achievement.
To receive him with suitable pomp and distinction, the sovereigns
had ordered their throne to be placed in public, under a rich canopy
of brocade of gold, in a vast and splendid saloon. Here the king
and queen awaited his arrival, seated in state, with the Prince Juan
beside them, and attended by the dignitaries of their court, and
the principal nobility of Castile, Valencia, Catalonia, and Aragon,
all impatient to behold the man who had conferred so incalculable
a benefit upon the nation. At length Columbus entered the hall,
surrounded by a brilliant crowd of cavaliers, among whom, says Las
Casas, he was conspicuous for his stately and commanding person, which,
with his countenance rendered venerable by his gray hairs, gave him
the august appearance of a senator of Rome. A modest smile lighted
up his features, showing that he enjoyed the state and glory in which
he came, and certainly nothing could be more deeply moving to a mind
inflamed by noble ambition, and conscious of having greatly deserved,
than these testimonials of the admiration and gratitude of a nation or
rather of a world. As Columbus approached, the sovereigns rose, as if
receiving a person of the highest rank. Bending his knees, he offered
to kiss their hands; but there was some hesitation on their part to
permit this act of homage. Raising him in the most gracious manner,
they ordered him to seat himself in their presence; a rare honor in
this proud and punctilious court.
At their request he now gave an account of the most striking events
of his voyage, and a description of the islands discovered. He
displayed specimens of unknown birds and other animals; of rare
plants of medicinal and aromatic virtues; of native gold in dust,
in crude masses, or labored into barbaric ornaments; and, above
all, the natives of these countries, who were objects of intense
and inexhaustible interest. All these he pronounced mere harbingers
of greater discoveries yet to be made, which would add realms of
incalculable wealth to the dominions of their majesties, and whole
nations of proselytes to the true faith.
When he had finished, the sovereigns sank on their knees, and, raising
their clasped hands to heaven, their eyes filled with tears of joy
and gratitude, poured forth thanks and praises to God for so great
a providence; all present followed their example; a deep and solemn
enthusiasm pervaded that splendid assembly, and prevented all common
acclamations of triumph. The anthem _Te Deum laudamus_, chanted by the
choir of the royal chapel, with the accompaniment of instruments, rose
in full body of sacred harmony, bearing up as it were the feelings and
thoughts of the auditors to heaven, “so that,” says the venerable Las
Casas, “it seemed as if in that hour they communicated with celestial
delights.” Such was the solemn and pious manner in which the brilliant
court of Spain celebrated this sublime event; offering up a grateful
tribute of melody and praise, and giving glory to God for the
discovery of another world.
* * * * *
THE GALLOPING HESSIAN.
THE revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together
their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling
along the hollow roads and over the distant hills. Some of the
damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their
light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed
along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter until they
gradually died away――and the late scene of noise and frolic was all
silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the
custom of country lovers, to have a _tête-à-tête_ with the heiress,
fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What
passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for, in fact,
I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong,
for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an
air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh these women! these women! Could
that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was
her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her
conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to
say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a
hen-roost, rather than a fair lady’s heart. Without looking to the
right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth on which he had
so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several
hearty cuffs and kicks, roused his steed most uncourteously from the
comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of
mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.
It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted
and crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of
the lofty hills which rise above Tarrytown, and which he had traversed
so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself.
Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusk and indistinct waste of
waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop riding quietly at
anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight he could even hear
the barking of the watch-dog from the opposite shore of the Hudson;
but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance
from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn
crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off,
from some farmhouse away among the hills――but it was like a dreaming
sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally
the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a
bullfrog, from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably, and
turning suddenly in his bed.
All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the
afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew
darker and darker, the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and
driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt
so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place
where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the
centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a
giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind
of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to
form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth and
rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story
of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was
universally known by the name of Major André’s tree. The common people
regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of
sympathy for the fate of its ill-starred namesake, and partly from the
tales of strange sights and doleful lamentations told concerning it.
As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle; he
thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast sweeping sharply
through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought
he saw something white hanging in the midst of the tree――he paused and
ceased whistling; but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was
a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white
wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan――his teeth chattered, and
his knees smote against the saddle; it was but the rubbing of one huge
bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed
the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.
About two hundred yards from the tree a small brook crossed the road,
and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by the name
of Wiley’s Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for
a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook
entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with
wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this
bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that
the unfortunate André was captured, and under the covert of those
chestnuts and vines were the sturdy ♦yeoman concealed who surprised
him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful
are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.
♦ ‘yoemen’ replaced with ‘yeoman’
As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump; he summoned up,
however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in
the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead
of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement,
and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased
with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily
with the contrary foot; it was all in vain; his steed started, it is
true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into
a thicket of brambles and alder-bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed
both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who
dashed forward, snuffing and snorting, but came to a stand just by
the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling
over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the
bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the
grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen,
black and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the
gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveler.
The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror.
What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and, besides,
what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was,
which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore,
a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents――“Who are you?”
He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated
voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides
of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with
involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of
alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at
once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal,
yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained.
He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a
black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or
sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on
the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and
waywardness.
Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and
bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping
Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind.
The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod
pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind――the other did
the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume
his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth,
and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and
dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and
appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising
ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveler in relief
against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod
was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!――but his horror
was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have
rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of the
saddle: his terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks
and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his
companion the slip――but the spectre started full jump with him. Away
then they dashed, through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks
flashing at every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the
air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head,
in the eagerness of his flight.
They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but
Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it,
made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong down the hill to the left.
This road leads through a sandy hollow, shaded by trees for about a
quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story,
and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed
church.
As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an
apparent advantage in the chase; but just as he had got half-way
through the hollow the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it
slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored
to hold it firm, but in vain; and he had just time to save himself
by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to
the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For
a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s wrath passed across his
mind――for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty
fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that
he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on
one side, sometimes on the other, and sometimes jolted on the high
ridge of his horse’s backbone, with a violence that he verily feared
would cleave him asunder.
An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church
bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the
bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls
of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the
place where Brom Bones’ ghostly competitor had disappeared. “If I can
but reach that bridge,” thought Ichabod, “I am safe.” Just then he
heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even
fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the
ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the
resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a
look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in
a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in
his stirrups and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod
endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered
his cranium with a tremendous crash――he was tumbled headlong into the
dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider passed by
like a whirlwind.
The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with
the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master’s
gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast――dinner-hour
came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled in the schoolhouse, and
strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans
Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor
Ichabod and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent
investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road
leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the
tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at
furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank
of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black,
was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a
shattered pumpkin.
The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be
discovered. Hans Van Ripper, as executor of his estate, examined the
bundle, which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two
shirts and a half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of worsted
stockings; an old pair of corduroy smallclothes; a rusty razor; a book
of psalm tunes, full of dog’s ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the
books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community,
excepting Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac,
and a book of dreams and fortune-telling: in which last was a sheet
of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts
to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These
magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the
flames by Hans Van Ripper; who from that time forward determined to
send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew
any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the
schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay but a
day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of
his disappearance.
The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the
following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in
the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and
pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole
budget of others, were called to mind; and when they had diligently
considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the
present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that
Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a
bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more
about him, the school was removed to a different part of the Hollow,
and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER.
HUMORIST AND JOURNALIST.
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER belongs to a class of writers which has been
aptly called the meditative school in American literature, but few
of the so-called meditative writers so sparkle with humor as does the
genial and humane author of “My Summer in a Garden,” and few writers
of any school have so succeeded in presenting wholesome truth and
lofty thought in the pleasing form of humorous conversation on such
common subjects as gardening, back-log fires, and the every-day life
of the farmer-boy.
He is one of our leading apostles of culture, and he is himself a
glowing example of the worth of culture, for he has steadily raised
himself from the flat levels of life to a lofty pinnacle of influence
and power simply because he possessed in high degree a keen insight,
a dainty lightness of touch, a delicacy of thought and style, a
kindly humor, and a racy scent for “human nature.” It was a long time
before he discovered his own powers and he labored at a distasteful
profession until his nature cried out for its true sphere, but his
early life in many respects was imperceptibly ministering to the man
that was to be.
He was born of English non-conformist stock, in the hill country of
Plainfield, Massachusetts, in 1829――a lineal descendent of a “Pilgrim
Father” and the son of a well-to-do farmer, of more than ordinary
mental parts. He had his period in the New England district school,
and in 1851 he was graduated from Hamilton College, New York, where
he had gained a college reputation as a writer.
Had he not been a “born writer” the next period of his life would
have made a literary career impossible for him. A winter in Michigan,
ending in dismal failure, two years of frontier life as a surveyor,
and then the pursuit of legal studies, followed by the practice of law
in Chicago seemed to have been hostages to fortune against the pursuit
of fame in the field of pure literature.
But he had the blood of the “Brahman caste” and it was certain to
assert itself. In 1860, his friend Hawley (now United States Senator
from Connecticut) invited him to accept the position of assistant
editor on the Hartford “Press,” and his talents for successful
journalism were at once apparent, from which he stepped quite
naturally into the narrower circle――“the brotherhood of authors.”
“My Summer in a Garden” (1870), his first literary work, was first
written as a series of weekly articles for the Hartford “Courant,”
and their reception at once made him a man of note.
This work is a delightful prose pastoral, in which the author
described his experiences with gardening and finds quaint and
subtle connections between “pusley” and “original sin,” while its
humorous touches of nature and human nature give it a peculiar charm.
“Saunterings,” a volume of reminiscences of European travel, was also
published the same year.
“Back-Log Studies” (1872), written in praise of the sweet and kindly
influences of the home fireside, appeared first as a series in
“Scribner’s Magazine” and added much to the author’s reputation, as
it marked a decided advance in style and elegance of diction.
His carefully prepared occasional addresses, on such subjects as
Education, Culture and Progress, show that he has deep convictions
and an earnestness of heart, as well as the delicate fancy and playful
humor which first made him a favorite author. If he is an apostle of
culture, he is no less the herald of the truth that “the scholar must
make his poetry and learning subserve the wants of the toiling and
aspiring multitude.”
“Baddeck, and That Sort of Thing” (1874) is a delightful sketch of
travels, a field of literature in which Warner is a master. “My Winter
on the Nile” (1876), “In the Levant” (1877), “In the Wilderness”
(1878), “Roundabout Journey” (1883), and “Their Pilgrimage” (1886)
are his other contributions to this department of literature.
In 1884 he became coeditor of “Harper’s Magazine,” to which he has
contributed a valuable series of papers on “Studies in the South,”
“Studies in the Great West,” and “Mexican Papers,” critically
discussing the educational, political, and social condition of these
states.
He is the author of “Captain John Smith,” and of “Washington Irving”
in the “Men of Letters Series” of which he is editor.
Nowhere is his humor more free and unrestrained than in “Being A Boy”
and in “How I Shot the Bear.”
His home is at Hartford, Conn.
* * * * *
THE MORAL QUALITY OF VEGETABLES.¹
FROM “MY SUMMER IN A GARDEN.”
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
I AM more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,
and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparative
philology――the science of comparative vegetable morality. We live in
an age of Protoplasm. And, if life matter is essentially the same in
all forms of life, I propose to begin early, and ascertain the nature
of the plants for which I am responsible. I will not associate with
any vegetable which is disreputable, or has not some quality which can
contribute to my moral growth....
Why do we respect some vegetables and despise others, when all of
them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table? The bean is a
graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never can put beans into
poetry nor into the highest sort of prose. There is no dignity in the
bean. Corn――which in my garden grows alongside the bean, and, so far
as I can see, with no affectation of superiority――is, however, the
child of song. It waves in all literature. But mix it with beans, and
its high tone is gone. Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The
bean is a vulgar vegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high
society among vegetables.
Then there is the cool cucumber――like so many people, good for nothing
when its ripe and the wildness has gone out of it. How inferior
to the melon, which grows upon a similar vine, is of a like watery
consistency, but is not half so valuable! The cucumber is a sort of
low comedian in a company where the melon is a minor gentleman. I
might also contrast the celery with the potato. The associations are
as opposite as the dining-room of the duchess and the cabin of the
peasant. I admire the potato both in vine and blossom; but it is not
aristocratic....
The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is like
conversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that you
scarcely notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is
however apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort which comes
to a head, and so remains――like a few people I know――growing more
solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiter at
the centre, and crisp in their maturity. Lettuce, like conversation,
requires a good deal of oil, to avoid friction, and keep the company
smooth; a pinch of Attic Salt, a dash of pepper, a quantity of mustard
and vinegar, by all means――but so mixed that you will notice no sharp
contrast――and a trifle of sugar. You can put anything――and the more
things the better――into salad, as into conversation; but everything
depends upon the skill in mixing. I feel that I am in the best society
when I am with lettuce. It is in the select circle of vegetables. The
tomato appears well on the table; but you do not want to ask its
origin. It is a most agreeable _parvenu_.
Of course, I have said nothing about the berries. They live in another
and more ideal region; except perhaps the currant. Here we see that
even among berries there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well
enough, clear as truth, and exquisite in color; but I ask you to
notice how far it is from the exclusive _hauteur_ of the aristocratic
strawberry, and the native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry.
* * * * *
Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle of
natural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run in
accordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a free
fight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,
and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should have
had a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion and
license and brutality. The “pusley” would have strangled the
strawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guilty
beating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries, would
have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; the snakegrass
would have left no place for the potatoes under ground; and the
tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With a firm hand
I have had to make my own “natural selection.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
DONALD GRANT MITCHELL.
AUTHOR OF “REVERIES OF A BACHELOR” AND “DREAM LIFE.”
UNDER the pen name of “Ik Marvel,” Donald G. Mitchell is among the
best known literary men of the world. His chief works consist of a
dozen volumes or more ranging back for fifty years; but readers who
know the “Reveries of a Bachelor” and “Dream Life,” possess a clear
comprehension of this author. In learning those books they have
learned him by heart. Except that he has mellowed with age there is
little change in his charming style from his first book issued in 1847
to his last――“American Land and Letters”――which appeared in 1897.
Washington Irving spoke of being drawn to Donald G. Mitchell, by the
qualities of head and heart which he found in his writings. No doubt
if Irving had named these qualities he would have agreed with the
general verdict that they consisted in a clearness of conception with
which he grasped his theme, the faithfulness with which his thought
pursued it, the sympathy with which he treated it and the quality of
modesty, grace, dignity and sweetness which characterized his style.
Says one of his critics: “Mitchell is a man who never stands in front
of his subject, and who never asks attention to himself.” Washington
Irving had the same characteristics and it was natural that they
should be drawn together. In early life, Mitchell seems to have been
much under Irving. “Dream Life” was dedicated to that veteran, and
some of the best sketches that can now be found of Irving are in
Mitchell’s written recollections of him. The disciple however, was
not an imitator. Mitchell’s papers on “The Squire” and “The Country
Church” are as characteristic as any thing in the “Sketch Book,” but
their writer’s style is his own.
Donald G. Mitchell was born in Norwich, Connecticut, April 12, 1822.
He graduated at Yale in 1841 and afterwards worked three years on his
grandfather’s farm, thus acquiring a taste for agriculture which has
clung to him through life, and which shows itself in his “Edgewood”
books. His first contributions were to the “Albany Cultivator,” a
farm journal. He begun the study of law in 1847, but abandoned it for
literature.
Mr. Mitchell has been several times abroad, always returning with
something refreshing for his American readers. He has also lectured
on literature at Yale College. In 1853, he was appointed United
States Consul to Venice by President Pierce, but resigned after a
few months. His home has been, since 1855, on his charming country
place, “Edgewood,” near New Haven, Connecticut, and nearly all his
books――except “English Lands and Letters” (1890), and “American Lands
and Letters” (1897)――are fragrant with the breath of the farm and
rural scenery.
Mr. Mitchell was married in 1853 to Miss Mary F. Pringle, of
Charleston, South Carolina, who accompanied him when he went as
Consul to Venice.
Mr. Mitchell filled a number of semi-public positions, and was one
of the first members of the council of the Yale Art School at its
establishment in 1865. He was also one of the judges of Industrial
Art at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876, and was United States
Commissioner at the Paris Exposition in 1878. His contributions to
“The Atlantic Monthly,” to “Harper’s Magazine,” and other periodicals,
his lectures and addresses on Literature and Agriculture have always
been well received.
Among his books not already mentioned are “The Seven Stories with
Basement and Attic,” a series of tales of travel; “A Single Novel;”
“Doctor Johns;” one juvenile story “About Old Story-Tellers,” and an
elaborate genealogy of his mother’s family entitled “The Woodbridge
Record.”
* * * * *
WASHINGTON IRVING.
(FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO “DREAM LIFE.”)
IN the summer of 1852 Mr. Irving made a stay of a few weeks at
Saratoga; and, by good fortune, I chanced to occupy a room upon the
same corridor of the hotel, within a few doors of his, and shared many
of his early morning walks to the “Spring.” What at once struck me
very forcibly in the course of these walks was the rare alertness and
minuteness of his observation. Not a fair young face could dash past
us in its drapery of muslin, but the eye of the old gentleman――he
was then almost seventy――drank in all its freshness and beauty, with
the keen appetite and the graceful admiration of a boy; not a dowager
brushed past us, bedizened with finery, but he fastened the apparition
in his memory with some piquant remark, as the pin of an entomologist
fastens a gaudy fly. No rheumatic old hero-invalid, battered in long
wars with the doctors, no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within
range, but I could see in the changeful expression of my companion the
admeasurements and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made
upon his sympathy or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a
country market man hoist upon his wagon of cabbage――all these by turns
caught and engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt
the flow of his talk.
He was utterly incapable of being “lionized.” Time and again, under
the trees in the court of the hotel, did I hear him enter upon some
pleasant story, lighted up with that rare turn of his eye and by his
deft expressions; when, as chance acquaintances grouped around him,
as is the way of watering-places, and eager listeners multiplied, his
hilarity and spirit took a chill from the increasing auditory, and
drawing abruptly to a close, he would sidle away with a friend, and
be gone....
I saw Mr. Irving afterwards repeatedly in New York, and passed two
delightful days at Sunnyside. I can never forget a drive with him
on a crisp autumn morning through Sleepy Hollow and all the notable
localities of his neighborhood, in the course of which he called my
attention, in the most unaffected and incidental way, to those which
had been specially illustrated by his pen, and with a rare humor
recounted to me some of his boyish adventures among the old Dutch
farmers of that region.
Most of all it is impossible for me to forget the rare kindliness of
his manner, his friendly suggestions, and the beaming expression of
his eye. I met it last at the little stile from which I strolled away
to the railway station. When I saw the kind face again, it was in the
coffin at the little church where he attended services. But the eyes
were closed, and the wonderful radiance of expression gone. It seemed
to me that death never took away more from a living face. It was but a
cold shadow lying there of the man who had taught a nation to love him.
* * * * *
GLIMPSES OF “DREAM-LIFE”
By Ik Marvel
_With original illustrations by Corwin K. Linson._
PSHAW!――said my Aunt Tabithy――have you not done with dreaming?
Illustration: “PSHAW! SAID MY AUNT TABITHY”
My Aunt Tabithy, though an excellent and most notable person, loves
occasionally a quiet bit of satire. And when I told her that I
was sharpening my pen for a new story of those dreamy fancies, and
half-experiences, which lie grouped along the journeying hours of my
solitary life, she smiled as if in derision.
It is very idle to get angry with a good-natured old lady: I did
better than this: I made her listen to me.
Exhausted, do you say, Aunt Tabithy? Is life then exhausted, is hope
gone out, is fancy dead?
No, no, Aunt Tabithy――this life of musing does not exhaust so easily.
It is like the springs on the farm-land, that are fed with all the
showers and the dews of the year, and that from the narrow fissures
of the rock send up streams continually. Dream-land will never
be exhausted until we enter on the land of dreams; and until, in
“shuffling off this mortal coil,” thought will become fact and all
facts will be only thought.
Illustration: “ISAAC, YOU ARE A SAD FELLOW”
It was warm weather, and my aunt was dozing. “What is this all to be
about?” said she, recovering her knitting-needle.
“About love, and toil, and duty, and sorrow,” said I.
My aunt finished the needle she was upon――smoothed the stocking-leg
over her knee, and went on to ask me in a very bantering way, if my
stock of youthful loves was not nearly exhausted.
A better man than myself――if he had only a fair share of vanity――would
have been nettled at this; and I replied somewhat tartly, that I
had never professed to write my experiences. Life after all is but a
bundle of hints, each suggesting actual and positive development, but
rarely reaching it. And as I recall these hints, and in fancy, trace
them to their issues, I am as truly dealing with life, as if my life
had dealt them all to me.
Illustration: “MY AUNT WAS DOZING”
This is what I would be doing in the present book;――I would catch
up here and there the shreds of feeling, which the brambles and
roughnesses of the world have left tangling on my heart, and weave
them out into those soft and perfect tissues, which――if the world had
been only a little less rough――might now perhaps enclose my heart
altogether.
“Ah,” said my Aunt Tabithy, as she smoothed the stocking-leg again,
with a sigh――“there is after all but one youth-time; and if you put
down its memories once, you can find no second growth.”
My Aunt Tabithy was wrong. There is as much growth in the thoughts
and feelings that run behind us, as in those that run before us. You
may make a rich, full picture of your childhood to-day; but let the
hour go by, and the darkness stoop to your pillow with its million
shapes of the past, and my word for it, you shall have some flash of
childhood lighten upon you that was unknown to your busiest thought of
the morning.
* * * * *
Illustration: “THE JUSTICE OF THE PEACE”
I know no nobler forage-ground for a romantic, venturesome,
mischievous boy, than the garret of an old family mansion on a day
of storm. It is a perfect field of chivalry. There is great fun in
groping through a tall barrel of books and pamphlets, on the look-out
for startling pictures; and there are chestnuts in the garret, drying,
which you have discovered on a ledge of the chimney; and you slide a
few into your pocket, and munch them quietly――giving now and then one
to Nelly, and begging her to keep silent;――for you have a great fear
of its being forbidden fruit.
Illustration: “A PERFECT FIELD OF CHIVALRY”
Old family garrets have their stock, as I said, of cast-away clothes,
of twenty years gone by; and it is rare sport to put them on;
buttoning in a pillow or two for the sake of good fulness; and then
to trick out Nelly in some strange-shaped headgear and old-fashioned
brocade petticoat caught up with pins; and in such guise, to steal
cautiously down stairs, and creep slyly into the sitting-room――half
afraid of a scolding, and very sure of good fun;――trying to look very
sober, and yet almost ready to die with the laugh that you know you
will make. And your mother tries to look harshly at little Nelly for
putting on her grandmother’s best bonnet; but Nelly’s laughing eyes
forbid it utterly, and the mother spoils all her scolding with a
perfect shower of kisses.
Illustration: “TRICKED OUT”
After this, you go marching, very stately, into the nursery; and
utterly amaze the old nurse; and make a deal of wonderment for the
staring, half-frightened baby, who drops his rattle, and makes a bob
at you, as if he would jump into your waistcoat pocket.
* * * * *
Illustration: “THERE IS AFTER ALL BUT ONE YOUTH-TIME”
You have looked admiringly many a day upon the tall fellows who play
at the door of Dr. Bidlow’s school; you have looked with reverence.
Dr. Bidlow seems to you to belong to a race of giants; and yet he is
a spare, thin man, with a hooked nose, a large, flat, gold watch-key,
a crack in his voice, a wig, and very dirty wristbands.
Illustration: “LONG, WEARY DAYS OF CONFINEMENT”
You, however, come very little under his control; you enter upon the
proud life in the small-boys’ department――under the dominion of the
English master. He is a different personage from Dr. Bidlow: he is
a dapper, little man, who twinkles his eye in a peculiar fashion,
and steps very springily around behind the benches, glancing now and
then at the books――cautioning one scholar about his dog’s ears, and
startling another from a doze by a very loud and odious snap of his
forefinger upon the boy’s head.
There are some tall trees that overshadow an angle of the schoolhouse;
and the larger scholars play surprising gymnastic tricks upon their
lower limbs.
Illustration: “OLD BID”
In time, however, you get to performing some modest experiments
yourself upon the very lowest limbs,――taking care to avoid the
observation of the larger boys, who else might laugh at you: you
especially avoid the notice of one stout fellow in pea-green breeches,
who is a sort of “bully” among the small boys.
One day you are well in the tops of the trees, and being dared by the
boys below, you venture higher――higher than any boy has gone before.
You feel very proud, so you advance cautiously out upon the limb: it
bends and sways fearfully with your weight: presently it cracks: you
try to return, but it is too late; then comes a sense of dizziness――a
succession of quick blows, and a dull, heavy crash!
Illustration: “STARTLING ANOTHER FROM A DOZE”
After this, come those long, weary days of confinement, when you lie
still, through all the hours of noon, looking out upon the cheerful
sunshine, only through the windows of your little room. Yet it seems
a grand thing to have the whole household attendant upon you; and when
you groan with pain, you are sure of meeting sad, sympathizing looks.
* * * * *
Illustration: “AND EAT A DINNER IN A TAVERN”
To visit, is a great thing in the boy-calendar:――to go away on a visit
in a coach, with a trunk, and a greatcoat, and an umbrella:――this is
large! As you journey on, after bidding your friends adieu, and as you
see fences and houses to which you have not been used, you think them
very odd indeed; but it occurs to you, that the geographies speak of
very various national characteristics, and you are greatly gratified
with this opportunity of verifying your study.
Illustration: “AWAY ON A VISIT IN A COACH”
Your old aunt, whom you visit, you think wears a very queer cap, being
altogether different from that of the old nurse, or of Mrs. Boyne,
――Madge’s mother. As for acquaintances, you fall in the very first day
with a tall boy next door, called Nat, which seems an extraordinary
name. Besides, he has traveled; and as he sits with you on the summer
nights under the linden trees, he tells you gorgeous stories of the
things he has seen. He has made the voyage to London; and he talks
about the ship (a real ship) and starboard and larboard, and the
spanker, in a way quite surprising; and he takes the stern oar in the
little skiff, when you row off in the cove abreast of the town, in a
most seaman-like way.
Illustration: “IT IS RATHER A PRETTY NAME TO WRITE”
Besides Nat, there is a girl lives over the opposite side of the way,
named Jenny, with an eye as black as a coal. She has any quantity
of toys, and she has an odd old uncle, who sometimes makes you stand
up together, and then marries you after his fashion,――much to the
amusement of a grown-up housemaid, whenever she gets a peep at the
performance. And it makes you somewhat proud to hear her called your
wife; and you wonder to yourself, dreamily, if it won’t be true some
day or other.
Jenny is romantic, and talks of Thaddeus of Warsaw in a very touching
manner, and promises to lend you the book. She folds billets in a
lover’s fashion, and practices love-knots upon her bonnet strings.
She looks out of the corners of her eyes very often, and sighs. She
is frequently by herself, and pulls flowers to pieces.
All this time, for you are making your visit a very long one,
so that autumn has come, and the nights are growing cool, and
Jenny and yourself are transferring your little coquetries to the
chimney-corner;――poor Charlie lies sick at home. Boyhood, thank Heaven,
does not suffer severely from sympathy when the object is remote.
Illustration: “THE DOCTOR LIFTS YOU IN HIS ARMS”
It is on a frosty, bleak evening, when you are playing with Nat, that
the letter reaches you which says Charlie is growing worse, and that
you must come to your home. It is quite dark when you reach home,
but you see the bright reflection of a fire within, and presently at
the open door Nelly clapping her hands for welcome. But there are sad
faces when you enter. Your mother folds you to her heart; but at your
first noisy outburst of joy, puts her finger on her lip, and whispers
poor Charlie’s name. The Doctor you see, too, slipping softly out
of the bed-room door with glasses in his hand; and――you hardly know
how――your spirits grow sad, and your heart gravitates to the heavy air
of all about you.
Illustration: “WHO SOMETIMES MAKES YOU STAND UP TOGETHER”
You drop to sleep after that day’s fatigue, with singular and
perplexed fancies haunting you; and when you wake up with a shudder
in the middle of the night, you get up stealthily and creep down
stairs; the bed-room door stands open, a little lamp is flickering
on the hearth, and the gaunt shadow of the bedstead lies dark upon
the ceiling. Your mother is in her chair, with her head upon her
hand――though it is long after midnight. The Doctor is standing with
his back toward you, and looks very solemn as he takes out his watch.
He is not counting Charlie’s pulse, for he has dropped his hand; and
it lies carelessly, but oh, how thin! over the edge of the bed.
He shakes his head mournfully at your mother; and she springs forward,
and lays her fingers upon the forehead of the boy, and passes her hand
over his mouth.
“Is he asleep, Doctor?” she says, in a tone you do not know.
“Dear Madam, he will never waken in this world.”
There is no cry――only a bowing down of your mother’s head upon the
body of poor, dead Charlie!――and only when you see her form shake and
quiver with the deep, smothered sobs, your crying bursts forth loud
and strong.
Illustration: “LISTENING ATTENTIVELY TO SOME GRIEVOUS COMPLAINT”
The Doctor lifts you in his arms, that you may see――that pale
head,――those blue eyes all sunken,――that flaxen hair gone,――those
white lips pinched and hard!――Never, never, will the boy forget his
first terrible sight of Death!
* * * * *
Illustration: “SOME OF BIDLOW’S BOYS”
Frank has a grandfather living in the country, a good specimen of the
old-fashioned New England farmer. He is a Justice of the Peace, and
many are the country courts that you peep upon, with Frank, from the
door of the great dining-room. You watch curiously the old gentleman,
sitting in his big arm-chair, with his spectacles in their silver
case at his elbow, and his snuff-box in hand, listening attentively
to some grievous complaint; you see him ponder deeply――with a pinch of
snuff to aid his judgment,――and you listen with intense admiration, as
he gives a loud, preparatory “Ahem,” and clears away the intricacies
of the case with a sweep of that strong practical sense which
distinguishes the New England farmer,――getting at the very hinge
of the matter, without any consciousness of his own precision,
and satisfying the defendant by the clearness of his talk, as much
as by the leniency of his judgment. He farms some fifteen hundred
acres,――“suitably divided,” as the old-school agriculturists say,
into “woodland, pasture, and tillage.” The farm-house, a large
irregularly built mansion of wood, stands upon a shelf of the hills
looking southward, and is shaded by century-old oaks. The barns and
outbuildings are grouped in a brown phalanx a little to the northward
of the dwelling. Between them a high timber gate opens upon the
scattered pasture-lands of the hills. Opposite to this, and across the
farmyard, which is the lounging-place of scores of red-necked turkeys,
and of matronly hens, clucking to their callow brood, another gate of
similar pretensions opens upon the wide meadow-land.
Illustration: “A SQUIRE”
So it is, that as you lie there upon the sunny greensward, at the old
Squire’s door, you muse upon the time when some rich-lying land, with
huge granaries and cozy old mansion sleeping under the trees, shall
be yours;――when the brooks shall water your meadows, and come laughing
down your pasture-lands;――when the clouds shall shed their spring
fragrance upon your lawns, and the daisies bless your paths.
Illustration: “SOME TIDY OLD LADY IN BLACK”
You will then be a Squire, with your cane, your lean-limbed hound,
your stocking-leg of specie, and your snuff-box. You will be the
happy and respected husband of some tidy old lady in black and
spectacles,――a little phthisicky, like Frank’s grandmother,――and an
accomplished cook of stewed pears, and Johnny-cakes!
* * * * *
Illustration: THE CHOIR
The country church is a square old building of wood, without paint or
decoration, and of that genuine, Puritanic stamp, which is now fast
giving way to Greek porticos, and to cockney towers. The unpainted
pews are ranged in square forms, and by age have gained the color of
those fragmentary wrecks of cigar-boxes, which you see upon the top
shelves in the bar-rooms of country taverns. The minister’s desk is
lofty, and has once been honored with a coating of paint;――as well
as the huge sounding-board, which, to your great amazement, protrudes
from the wall, at a very dangerous angle of inclination, over the
speaker’s head.
The singing has a charm for you. There is a long, thin-faced,
flax-haired man, who carries a tuning-fork in his waistcoat pocket,
and who leads the choir. His position is in the very front rank of
gallery benches, facing the desk; and by the time the old clergyman
has read two verses of the psalm, the country chorister turns around
to his little group of aids――consisting of the blacksmith, a carroty
headed school-master, two women in snuff-colored silks, and a girl in
a pink bonnet, somewhat inclined to frivolity,――to announce the tune.
Illustration: “FAT OLD LADIES IN IRON SPECTACLES”
This being done in an authoritative manner, he lifts his long
music-book,――glances again at his little company, clears his throat
by a powerful “Ahem,” followed by a powerful use of a bandanna
pocket-handkerchief,――draws out his tuning fork, and waits for
the parson to close his reading. He now reviews once more his
company,――throws a reproving glance at the young woman in the pink
hat, who at the moment is biting off a stout bunch of fennel,――lifts
his music-book, thumps upon the rail with his fork, listens keenly,
gives a slight “Ahem,” falls into the cadence,――swells into a strong
_crescendo_,――catches at the first word of the line, as if he were
afraid it might get away,――turns to his company,――lifts his music-book
with spirit,――gives it a powerful slap with the disengaged hand, and,
with a majestic toss of the head, soars away, with half the women
below straggling on in his wake, into some such brave old melody
as――LITCHFIELD!
Illustration: THE DEACON
Being a visitor, and in the Squire’s pew, you are naturally an object
of considerable attention to the girls about your age; as well as
to a great many fat old ladies in iron spectacles, who mortify you
excessively by patting you under the chin after church; and insist
upon mistaking you for Frank; and force upon you very dry cookies,
spiced with caraway seeds.
Illustration: “IN TONES OF TENDER ADMONITION”
Illustration: (‡ Prayer book)
The farmers you have a high respect for;――particularly for one
weazen-faced old gentleman in a brown surtout, who brings his whip
into church with him, who sings in a very strong voice, and who drives
a span of gray colts. Another townsman, who attracts your attention
is a stout deacon, who before entering always steps around the corner
of the church and puts his hat upon the ground to adjust his wig in
a quiet way. He then marches up the broad aisle in a stately manner,
and plants his hat, and a big pair of buckskin mittens, on the little
table under the desk. When he is fairly seated in his corner of the
pew, with his elbow upon the top-rail――almost the only man who can
comfortably reach it,――you observe that he spreads his brawny fingers
over his scalp, in an exceedingly cautious manner; and you innocently
think again, that it is very hypocritical in a deacon to be pretending
to lean upon his hand when he is only keeping his wig straight.
Illustration: “THE OLD MEN GATHER ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE BUILDING”
After the morning service, they have an “hour’s intermission,” as
the preacher calls it; during which the old men gather on a sunny
side of the building, and, after shaking hands all around, and asking
after the “folks” at home, they enjoy a quiet talk about the crops,
branching off, now and then, it may be, into politics.
Little does the boy know, as the tide of years drifts by, floating
him out insensibly from the harbor of his home upon the great sea of
life,――what joys, what opportunities, what affections, are slipping
from him.
Illustration: “THE FIRELIGHT GLIMMERS UPON THE WALLS OF YOUR HOME”
But _now_, you are there. The fire-light glimmers upon the walls of
your cherished home, like the Vestal fire of old upon the figures of
adoring virgins, or like the flame of Hebrew sacrifice, whose incense
bore hearts to heaven. The big chair of your father is drawn to
its wonted corner by the chimney-side; his head, just touched with
gray, lies back upon its oaken top. Little Nelly leans upon his knee,
looking up for some reply to her girlish questionings. Opposite, sits
your mother; her figure is thin, her look cheerful, yet subdued;――her
arm perhaps resting on your shoulder, as she talks to you in tones of
tender admonition, of the days that are to come.
Illustration: (‡ fireplace hearth)
The cat is purring on the hearth; the clock is ticking on the mantel.
The great table in the middle of the room, with its books and work,
waits only for the lighting of the evening lamp, to see a return to
its stores of embroidery, and of story.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.
PATRIOT AND MAN OF LETTERS.
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON is one of the group of men of whom their
countrymen should be most proud. He has taken a noble part in the
battles on behalf of freedom, which the last half-century has seen,
and everywhere has borne himself with a nobility, a devotion and a
courage worthy of all praise. The man who was driven from his church
because he preached the freedom of the slaves, who sat with Parker
and Phillips under indictment for murder for their part in attempting
to rescue a fugitive slave, who was colonel of the first regiment of
freed slaves mustered into the army of the United States, who bravely
fought and patiently suffered for the cause of the Union; surely this
man, if he had no other claims upon our respect and attention, should
hold a high place in the hearts of his fellows.
Colonel Higginson is a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in 1847,
when he was twenty-four years old, became pastor of a Congregational
Church in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Here his anti-slavery preaching
allowed him to remain but three years. From 1852 until 1858 he was
pastor of a free church in Worcester, after which he left the ministry
and devoted himself to literature. During all this time his activity
in the anti-slavery agitation was frequently getting him into trouble,
and, with his friends who participated in the attempted rescue of
Anthony Burns, he was discharged from custody only through a flaw
in the indictment. He took part in the organization of the bands of
free-state, emigrants to Kansas, and was personally acquainted with
John Brown. With his regiment of colored troops, he took possession
of Jacksonville, Florida; but was wounded in 1863 and was compelled
to resign from the army. He has been an earnest advocate of equal
suffrage for men and women and of the higher education for both sexes.
He has served in his State Legislature and as a member of the State
Board of Education.
Colonel Higginson’s contributions to literature consist largely of
volumes of essays that originally appeared in the “Atlantic Monthly”
or other periodicals, and historical and biographical work. Some of
his best known books are “Atlantic Essays;” “Young Folk’s History
of the United States;” “Young Folk’s Book of American Explorers;”
“Short Stories of American Authors;” “A Larger History of the United
States;” “The Monarch of Dreams;” and “Brief Biographies of European
Statesmen.” Besides these, he has translated his “Young Folk’s History
of the United States” into German and French for publication in those
languages, and has also published a number of English translations
of modern and ancient classics. Colonel Higginson is one of our most
popular writers, particularly upon American history, and his service
to the cause of American letters has been no less distinguished than
his share in the great victory which made our country in truth the
land of the free.
* * * * *
“A PURITAN SUNDAY MORNING.”¹
FROM “ATLANTIC ESSAYS.”
¹ Copyright, Geo. R. Shepard.
IT is nine o’clock upon a summer Sunday morning, in the year sixteen
hundred and something. The sun looks down brightly on a little
forest settlement, around whose expanding fields the great American
wilderness recedes each day, withdrawing its bears and wolves and
Indians into an ever remoter distance――not yet so far removed but
a stout wooden gate at the end of the village street indicates that
there is danger outside. It would look very busy and thriving in this
little place to-day but for the Sabbath stillness which broods over
everything with almost an excess of calm. Even the smoke ascends
more faintly than usual from the chimneys of the numerous log-huts
and these few framed houses, and since three o’clock yesterday
afternoon not a stroke of this world’s work has been done. Last night
a Preparatory Lecture was held, and now comes the consummation of the
whole week’s life, in the solemn act of worship. In which settlement
of the great Massachusetts Colony is the great ceremonial to pass
before our eyes? If it be Cambridge village, a drum is sounding
its peaceful summons to the congregation. If it be Salem village,
a bell is sounding its more ecclesiastic peal, and a red flag
is simultaneously hung forth from the meeting-house, like the
auction-flag of later periods. If it be Haverhill village, then
Abraham Tyler has been blowing his horn assiduously for half an
hour――a service for which Abraham, each year, receives a half pound
of pork from every family in town.
Be it drum, bell, or horn that gives the summons, we will draw near
to this important building, the centre of the village, the one public
edifice: meeting-house, town-house, schoolhouse, watch-house, all in
one. So important is it, that no one can legally dwell more than half
a mile from it. And yet the people ride to “meeting,” short though the
distance be, for at yonder oaken block a wife dismounts from behind
her husband; and has it not, moreover, been found needful to impose a
fine of forty shillings on fast trotting to and fro? All sins are not
modern ones, young gentlemen.
We approach nearer still, and come among the civic institutions. This
is the pillory, yonder are the stocks, and there is a large wooden
cage, a terror to evil-doers, but let us hope empty now. Round the
meeting-house is a high wooden paling, to which the law permits
citizens to tie their horses, provided it be not done too near the
passageway. For at that opening stands a sentry, clothed in a suit of
armor which is painted black, and cost the town twenty-four shillings
by the bill. He bears also a heavy match-lock musket; his rest, or
iron fork, is stuck in the ground, ready to support the weapon; and he
is girded with his bandolier, or broad leather belt, which sustains a
sword and a dozen tin cartridge-boxes.
* * * * *
O the silence of this place of worship, after the solemn service sets
in! “People do not sneeze or cough here in public assemblies,” says
one writer triumphantly, “so much as in England.” The warning caution,
“Be short,” which the minister has inscribed above his study-door,
claims no authority over his pulpit. He may pray his hour, unpausing,
and no one thinks it long; for, indeed, at prayer-meetings four
persons will sometimes pray an hour each――one with confession, one
with private petitions, a third with petitions for Church and Kingdom,
and a fourth with thanksgiving――each theme being conscientiously
treated by itself. Then he may preach his hour, and, turning his
hour-glass, may say――but that he cannot foresee the levity to be born
in a later century with Mather Byles――“Now, my hearers, we will take
another glass.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HAMILTON W. MABIE.
THE MODERN CRITIC.
IN the modern school of literary critics, whose best representatives
are Coleridge, Carlyle, Arnold, Lowell and Stedman, Hamilton W. Mabie
has a prominent place. His aim has been, as is the aim of all great
criticism, not only to give an estimate of a man’s work, but to show
the man’s soul. He was born at Cold Springs, on the banks of the
Hudson, of a family of culture. He was prepared for college under
a private tutor, and graduated at Williams College in the Class of
’67――a class which numbered many men of fame.
From boyhood ♦Mabie has been a great reader, and he is familiar
with the classics of all literatures, as well as a student of
contemporaneous literature.
♦ ‘Maybie’ replaced with ‘Mabie’
After a course of law at Columbia University his literary tendencies
drew him into his natural field and away from a profession uncongenial
to him. In 1879 he took a position on the staff of the “Christian
Union,” which under its new name, the “Outlook,” under the joint
editorship of Mabie and Lyman Abbott, has taken a prominent place
among the foremost religious journals of the world. “My Study Fire,”
which expresses our author’s ideas of the function of literature,
and the attitude and spirit of the literary man, first appeared as
a series of articles in this religious journal.
In the last few years Mr. Mabie has taken a prominent place on the
platform on literary and educational subjects, though he scrupulously
keeps his public speaking subordinate to his writing. His addresses
are marked with elegance, grace, and all the fruits of culture, and
they show a profound study of the problems of life and spirit. He has
a beautiful home at Summit, New Jersey, an enviable site for a writer,
with the multitudinous charms of nature without and the gathered
wisdom of the world’s great thinkers within.
He is a man of robust life, of clear, healthy mind and of high faith.
He has declared that “Skepticism is the root of all evil in us and in
our arts. We do not believe enough in God, in ourselves, and in the
divine laws under which we live. Great art involves great faith――a
clear, resolute, victorious insight into and grasp of things, a belief
real enough in
‘The mighty hopes which make us men’
to inspire and sustain heroic tasks,” a declaration quite typical of
all his thought.
* * * * *
COUNTRY SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
BY HAMILTON W. MABIE
_Illustrated from original photographs by Conrad Baer._
AT the end of February the observer begins to see the faint
forerunners of spring. The willow shows signs of renewing its
freshness, and the long stretch of cold, with brilliant or steely
skies, is interrupted by days full of an indescribable softness.
It is almost pathetic to note with what joy the spirit of man takes
cognizance of these first hints of the color, the bloom and the warmth
slowly creeping up to the southern horizon-line. For we are children
of the sun, and, much as we love our hearthstones, we are never quite
at home unless we have the freedom of the out-of-door world. Winter
finds its great charm in the ingathering of the memories of the summer
that is gone and in the anticipation of the summer that is at hand.
Half the cheer of the blazing log lies in the air of the woods which
it brings into the narrow room.
Illustration: ON THE FARM IN CANADA
To be out of doors is the normal condition of the natural man. At some
period of our ancestral life, so dim in our thought but so potential
in our temper, disposition and physique, we have all lived, so to
speak, in the open air; and although city-born and city-bred, we turn
to the country with an instinctive feeling that we belong there. There
are a few cockneys to whom the sound of Bow Bells is sweeter than
the note of the bluebird, the resonant clarion of chanticleer or
the far-off bleating of sheep; but to the immense majority of men
these noises are like sounds that were familiar in childhood. I have
sometimes thought that the deepest charm of the country lies in the
fact that it was the home and play-ground of the childhood of the
race, and, however long some of us have been departed from it, it
stirs within us rare memories and associations which are imperishable.
The lowing of cattle coming home at nightfall; the bleating of sheep
on the hillside pastures; the crowing of the cock, are older than any
human speech which now exists. They were ancient sounds before our
oldest histories were written. I know of nothing sweeter to the man
who comes out of the heat and noise and dust of the city in midsummer
than to be awakened on the first morning by that irregular tinkle of
bells which accompanies the early processions of the cows. One may
never have come nearer a farm than his great-grandfather, but that
sound makes him feel as if he were at home after some long and arduous
absence.
Illustration: THE OLD WELL-CURB
And one has but to put into his pocket a few of those clever
newspapers which satirize society people in spirited and well-drawn
lines, and carry them into the country, to discover that the
picturesque flees the city and loves the country; so far, that is,
as people are concerned. There is certainly something wrong with our
modern dress; it is impossible to discover anything suggestive or
poetic in it, or to make any thing artistic out of it. Well-dressed
individual men and women are often attractive to the eye; but when
this is true it is because the charm of the person survives the
monotonous uniformity of good clothes. Nothing can make the evening
dress in which man extinguishes his personality either significant
or artistic; but the man in overalls and shirt-sleeves is often a
strikingly picturesque figure. Country life as a whole is steeped
in the picturesque, in spite of the machines which so largely take
the place of the old-time hand labor. One must go to the fields to
find the poetry of human occupation; the man in the street is often
interesting but he rarely stirs the imagination; the man in the fields
constantly sets the imagination loose. What elemental strength and
meaning are expressed in those peasant-figures of Millet? They belong
to the world in which they toil; they disclose their identity with it;
they express something of its meaning in their vigorous or bent forms.
Illustration: IMMIGRANT WOMEN HOEING POTATOES
Illustration: WAITING FOR MILKING-TIME
The entire life of the field is poetic in the true sense; from the
hour when the last snow begins to melt to the hour when the last sheaf
of grain goes creaking through the bars. The sower, moving across the
open furrows, has a kind of antique picturesqueness; he seems to have
stepped out of that ancient frieze with which the earliest habits
encircled the oldest days. He expresses freedom, virility, personality
in every movement; the eye follows him with a deepening impression
that here is something native and original: a man in first-hand
relations with his world. The reaper who follows him when sun and
cloud have done their share, is not less striking and effective; and
when the sheaves lie in rows or piles on the freshly cut stubble, the
slow-moving, noisily creaking wagon, constantly pausing to take on its
ripe load, seems a fit accessory in the staging of this pastoral drama.
The fact that this poetry of motion is bound to toil so arduous and
exacting that it often becomes a kind of relentless drudgery, is
full of significance to those who believe that beauty is not esoteric,
but the affluence of universal life in its normal relations and
occupations.
Illustration: AFTER WORK
The sights and sounds of the farm are not only full of interest, but
that interest is deepened by their constant recurrence. The horses
at the trough; the sheep beside the stream as placid as themselves,
or on the green uplands; the cows stolidly biding the coming of
afternoon under the trees, or standing knee-deep in the cool brooks;
the clucking of hens and their bustling leisure; the going out of the
workers, with implements, seed, machines, wagons, and their return at
sunset; the stir of the morning, the hush of the evening; what a world
of homely, wholesome life is revealed in these old-time doings and
happenings of the seasons and the life on the farm.
Illustration: A WINTER EVENING ON THE FARM
But the farm is often only a unit of measurement, a term of individual
possession; there is something greater; there is the country. Beyond
the fields there is the landscape, and above them there is the sky;
and every farm fits into these wider relations and is part of the
larger whole. The woods, cool and silent; the spring hidden from the
sun by overhanging trees and from strange feet by moss-grown rocks;
the brook where it runs noiselessly in a shadow so deep at noon
that one bathes his eyes in it after the glare of the world; the old
mill, deserted by man but loyally served by the stream that flows
through the decaying sluice and over the wheel that turns no more;
the quiet hilltop, above which the whole country sleeps on summer
afternoons;――these are all simply extensions of the farm.
Illustration: SUNDAY AFTERNOON
The boys know them on holidays; the older people are drawn to them in
those infrequent hours when the pressure of work is lightened; the man
who is getting city sights and sounds out of head and heart knows and
loves them. The very thought of them brings refreshment and repose;
for they are, one and all, places of silence and solitude.
Illustration: A SUNNY PLAY-GROUND
The fever of this our life, and the tumult of it, vanish on the
invisible boundaries of these ancient sanctuaries of nature. It is
not difficult to understand the charm of these places for tired and
worn souls; for it is to such places that exhausted men and women
invariably turn. No one with a rich intellectual and spiritual nature,
can keep in perfect health without a good deal of solitude and silence.
Illustration: CHURNING IN THE BARN
We come to know ourselves and the world in the deeper ways only when
we are apart from the rush of things. It is only when traffic ceases
and the dust is laid that the landscape becomes clear and complete to
the pedestrian. The quiet of the woods, the cool note of the mountain
streams, the silence of the summits, represent, not the luxuries and
pleasures of a rich life, but its necessities. To the townsman these
outlying provinces of the farm are even more important than are the
well-tilled acres.
Illustration: THE OLD MILL
Some day some man or woman will write a luminous book on the education
of country life; the training of the eye, the ear, the hand, the
unconscious enrichment of the senses and of the mind which are
effected by its sights and sounds. There has never been in the long
history of education, a better school for the open-minded, imaginative
boy or girl than the farm. Every day sets its tasks, every task
teaches its lessons; and nature stands looking over the student’s
shoulder and quietly whispering some of her deepest secrets to her
fortunate child.
Illustration: AFTER A WET SNOW-STORM
For surely it is a great piece of good fortune to grow up in a
wise, generous home in the country; to be young with all manner of
four-footed beasts and fowls of the air, and grow up with them; to
stumble over the roots of trees when one is beginning to walk; to hear
the brooks chatter before one knows how to chatter himself; to awake
in the stir of the morning, when the whole world seems to be going to
work, and to fall asleep when the world comes trooping home, dusty and
tired.
Illustration: MAPLE-SUGAR TIME
To see and hear these outdoor sights and sounds is to be born
into vital relations with man’s natural background and to come
unconsciously into possession of some of the greatest truths which
life has to teach. It is also to be born on intimate terms with
bluebirds and cherries!
Illustration: THE BLACK SHEEP
“If you want to know where the biggest cherries are to be found,”
said Goethe, “consult the boys and the blackbirds.” There is a natural
affinity between the two, and the boy who does not grow up in natural
relationship with birds and trees suffers a loss of privilege which
can never be entirely made up. For it is a great deal easier to
make the acquaintance of nature in childhood than in those later
years which bring “the philosophic mind,” but which leave the senses
untrained for that instinctive observation which enables the boy to
see without knowing that he sees.
Illustration: THE MILL-POND
John Burroughs has given us a charming description of the joys of
boyhood on a farm, and has perhaps unconsciously betrayed the secret
of his own extraordinary familiarity with the out-of-doors world. No
knowledge is quite so much a part of ourselves as that which we gain
without conscious effort; which we breathe in with the morning air of
life.
Illustration: NOON IN THE SHEEP-LOT
The Hindoos have an idiomatic word or phrase for a walk before
breakfast, which may be translated, “eating the morning air.”
The boy on the farm sees nature before breakfast, when senses and
mind and heart are on the alert, when experience has not brought
sophistication with it, and when sensation still keeps its pristine
freshness.
Illustration: FEEDING THE CHICKENS
The healthy boy is one great appetite for sights and sounds, and
nothing escapes him. He knows every path through the woods, every
pool in the brook, every cavern in the hills, every sequestered hollow
where the noise of the world is softened into the silence of rustling
leaves and murmuring streams. One of the most erudite of American
scholars, whose large learning has not smothered the instincts of
his youth, declares that he is never entirely happy until he stands
barefooted in the old fields.
Illustration: PICKING DAISIES
Nature’s true lovers perceive this, and demand that the companion whom
he takes into the wilderness with him shall be of the right sort; one
who, as Burroughs says, will not “stand between you and that which you
seek.”
“I want for companion,” he continues, “a dog or a boy, or a person who
has the virtues of dogs and boys――transparency, good-nature, curiosity,
open sense, and a nameless quality that is akin to trees, and growths,
and the inarticulate forces of nature. With him you are alone and
yet you have company; you are free; you feel no disturbing element;
the influences of nature stream through and around him; he is a good
conductor of the subtle fluid.
“The quality or qualification I refer to belongs to most persons
who spend their lives in the open air――to soldiers, hunters, fishers,
laborers, and to artists and poets of the right sort.”
Illustration: MAKING FRIENDS
There is something incommunicable in such a fellowship with nature,
which dates back to the time when the boy found in her his chosen
playmate, and which still keeps up the old game of hide and seek even
when his methods have become scientific and the result of his search
is a contribution to knowledge.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.
POET AND CRITIC; AUTHOR OF “THE ♦VICTORIAN POETS.”
♦ ‘VICRTORIAN’ replaced with ‘VICTORIAN’
DURING the year 1859, two poems were published in the New York
_Tribune_ which made genuine sensations. They were so unlike in
subject and treatment that no one would have guessed they emanated
from the same brain and were penned by the same hand. The first,
entitled “The Diamond Wedding,” was a humorous thrust of ridicule at
the “parade” made in the papers over the lavish and expensive jewels
and other gifts presented by a wealthy Cuban to his bride――a young
lady of New York. This poem, when published, called forth a challenge
from the irate father of the lady; but, fortunately, a duel was
somehow averted.
The other poem, “How Old Brown Took Harper’s Ferry,” recounted the
incident of that stern old abolitionist boldly marching with a few
men into Virginia and capturing the town of Harper’s Ferry. There was
no American poet who might not have felt proud of this production.
Bayard Taylor was so pleased with the genius manifested in both these
poems that he sought the author’s acquaintance and introduced him
to R. H. Stoddard, who in turn, after examining a collection of his
verses, recommended them for publication to Charles Scribner, who
issued them the next year (1860) under the title of “Poems, Lyric and
Idylic.”――Thus was Mr. Stedman introduced into the literary world.
Edmund Clarence Stedman is a native of Connecticut. He was born in the
city of Hartford on the eighth day of October, 1833,――and comes of a
good family of some poetic reputation. Rev. Aaron Cleveland, one of
his ancestors, is said to have been a poet. Arthur Cleveland Cox, well
known as a religious writer of verse, was his cousin. His mother was
herself a poet, and also the author of the tragedy “Bianco Caprello.”
When Stedman was two years of age he was sent to live with his
grand-uncle, James Stedman, a jurist and scholar, who looked carefully
after the early education of his nephew. At the age of sixteen, he
was sent to Yale College, where he was among the foremost in English
composition and Greek. But it is said that for some disobedience
of the discipline of the institution, he fell under the censure of
the college management and left without graduating. The University
afterward, however, enrolled him among the alumni of 1853 with the
degree of Master of Arts.
Upon leaving Yale, at the age of nineteen, Stedman took the management
of a newspaper at Norwich, and the next year married a Connecticut
girl and became owner of the Winsted _Herald_, when he was only
twenty-one. Under his management, this paper soon rose to be one of
the most important of the political papers of the State. Three years
later we find him writing on the “New York Tribune,” where he obtained
a foot-hold in literature, as we have already indicated by the
publication of the two poems above mentioned.
When the “World” was started, in the winter of 1860, Mr. Stedman
engaged with that journal and was editor of it when the news came over
the wires that Fort Sumter had been fired upon. He wrote a poem on
the occasion which was, perhaps, the first poem inspired by the war
between the states. Soon after this Mr. Stedman went to Washington
as the army correspondent of the “World.” He was at the first battle
of Bull’s Run and published a long and graphic letter in the “World”
about the defeat of the Union troops which he witnessed. This letter
was the talk of the town for days and altogether has been pronounced
the best single letter written during the whole war.
Before the close of the war, Mr. Stedman resigned his position as
editor and entered the office of Attorney General Bates at Washington;
but in January, 1864, he returned with his family to New York and
published his second volume of poems entitled, “Alice of Monmouth, An
Idyl of the Great War, and Other Poems,” which may be described as a
little poetic novel. The opening scene is laid in Monmouth County, New
Jersey; the later ones on the battle fields of Virginia.
The titles and dates of Mr. Stedman’s other books are as follows: “The
Blameless Prince, and other Poems” (1869); “Poetical Works” (1873);
“Victorian Poets” (1875); “Hawthorne and Other Poems” (1877); “Lyrics
and Idyls, with Other Poems” (1879); the “Poems of Austin Dobson,”
with an introduction (1880); “Poets of America” (1886), and with
Ellen Mackay Hutchinson, he edited “A Library of American Literature”
(11 vols., 1888–1890).
Many people entertain the notion that a man cannot be at one and
the same time, a poet and a man of business. This is a mistake.
♦Fitz-Green Halleck was for many years a competent clerk of John Jacob
Astor; Charles Sprague was for forty years teller and cashier in a
Boston bank; Samuel Rodgers, the English poet, was all his life a
successful banker; Charles Follen Adams, the humorous and dialectic
poet, is a prosperous merchant in Boston; and Edmund Clarence Stedman
has been for many years the head of a firm of stock brokers with a
♣suite of offices in Exchange Place, New York, dealing in government
securities and railway stocks and bonds, and also petroleum, in
which fortunes were at one time made and lost with great rapidity.
Nevertheless, Mr. Stedman, the stock-broker and banker is still Mr.
Stedman, the poet. The most of his splendid verses have been produced
while he was depending for a living upon journalistic work or upon
some business for support. Mr. Stedman also illustrates the fact, as
Edgar Allen Poe had done before him, that a poet may be a practical
critic. And why not? If poets are not the best critics of poetry,
musicians are not the best critics of music, architects are not the
best critics of architecture and painters of painting. Mr. Stedman’s
“Victorian Poets” is, perhaps, the most important contribution of all
our American writers to the critical literature on the English Poets.
♦ ‘Fitz Green Hallack’ replaced with ‘Fitz-Green Halleck’
♣ ‘suit’ replaced with ‘suite’
The home-life of Mr. Stedman is described as being an ideally happy
one. One of his poems entitled “Laura, My Darling,” addressed to his
wife, gives us a delightful glimpse into the heart and home of the
poet.
* * * * *
BETROTHED ANEW.
“The sunshine of the outer world beautifully illustrates
the sunshine of the heart in the ‘Betrothed Anew’ of Edmund
Clarence Stedman.”――_Morris._
THE sunlight fills the trembling air,
And balmy days their guerdons bring;
The Earth again is young and fair,
And amorous with musky spring.
The golden nurslings of the May
In splendor strew the spangled green,
And hues of tender beauty play,
Entangled where the willows lean.
Mark how the rippled currents flow;
What lustres on the meadows lie!
And, hark! the songsters come and go,
And trill between the earth and sky.
Who told us that the years had fled,
Or borne afar our blissful youth?
Such joys are all about us spread,
We know the whisper was not truth.
The birds that break from grass and grove
Sing every carol that they sung
When first our veins were rich with love
And May her mantle round us flung.
O fresh-lit dawn! immortal life!
O Earth’s betrothal, sweet and true,
With whose delights our souls are rife!
And aye their vernal vows renew!
Then, darling, walk with me this morn;
Let your brown tresses drink its sheen;
These violets, within them worn,
Of floral fays shall make you queen.
What though there comes a time of pain
When autumn winds forebode decay?
The days of love are born again;
That fabled time is far away!
And never seemed the land so fair
As now, nor birds such notes to sing,
Since first within your shining hair
I wove the blossoms of the spring.
* * * * *
THE DOOR-STEP.
THE conference meeting through at last,
We boys around the vestry waited,
To see the girls come tripping past
Like snow-birds willing to be mated.
Not braver he that leaps the wall,
By level musket-flashes litten,
Than I, who stepped before them all
Who longed to see me get the mitten.
But no, she blushed and took my arm!
We let the old folks have the highway,
And started toward the Maple Farm,
Along a kind of lovers’ by-way.
I can’t remember what we said,
’Twas nothing worth a song or story,
Yet that rude path by which we sped
Seemed all transformed and in a glory.
The snow was crisp beneath our feet,
The moon was full, the fields were gleaming;
By hood and tippet sheltered sweet
Her face with youth and health was beaming.
The little hand outside her muff――
O sculptor, if you could but mould it!
So slightly touched my jacket-cuff,
To keep it warm I had to hold it.
To have her with me there alone,
’Twas love and fear and triumph blended:
At last we reached the foot-worn stone
Where that delicious journey ended.
She shook her ringlets from her hood,
And with a “Thank you Ned,” dissembled,
But yet I knew she understood
With what a daring wish I trembled.
A cloud passed kindly overhead,
The moon was slyly peeping through it,
Yet hid its face, as if it said,
“Come, now or never, do it, do it!”
My lips till then had only known
The kiss of mother and of sister,
But somehow full upon her own
Sweet, rosy, darling mouth――I kissed her!
Perhaps ’twas boyish love, yet still,
O listless woman! weary lover!
To feel once more that fresh wild thrill,
I’d give――But who can live youth over!
GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS.
Illustration: GREAT AMERICAN HISTORIANS AND BIOGRAPHERS
JOHN L. MOTLEY • WM. H. PRESCOTT
GEO. H. BANCROFT
JOHN B. McMASTER • JAMES PARTON
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
GEORGE BANCROFT.
“THE MOST FAMOUS AMERICAN HISTORIAN.”
THE chief historians who have added lustre to American literature
during the nineteenth century are Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, Parkman,
McMaster and John Fiske; and, when we add to these James Parton, the
American biographer, we present an array of talent and scholarship
on which any nation might look with patriotic pride. They have
been excelled by the historians of no other nation of our time, if,
indeed――taken from a national standpoint――they have not produced the
best historical literature of the present century.
Though Prescott is the oldest, George Bancroft, in the estimation
of the great majority, stands first, perhaps, among all the American
historians. This eminent writer was born at Worcester, Massachusetts,
in October, 1800, the same month and year in which ♦Macaulay, the
great English historian, first saw the light, and,――after living one
of the most laborious public and literary lives in the history of
the world,――died at the ripe old age of ninety-one years (1891).
His father, the Reverend Aaron Bancroft, was a minister of the
Congregational Church in Worcester for more than a half century and
had the highest reputation as a theologian of learning and piety.
♦ ‘Macauley’ replaced with ‘Macaulay’
At the early age of thirteen, George Bancroft entered Harvard College
from which he graduated at the age of seventeen with the highest
honors of his class. His first inclinations were to study theology;
but in 1818, he went to Germany where he spent two years in the study
of history and philology, and it was there that he obtained his degree
of Doctor of Philosophy. During the next two years, he visited in
succession, Berlin, Heidelberg, Rome, Paris, and London, returning
home in 1822, the most accomplished scholar for his age which our
country, at that time, had produced.
Soon after his return to the United States, Mr. Bancroft was appointed
to the chair of Greek in Harvard College and those who had the benefit
of his instruction spoke of his zeal, faithfulness and varied learning
as a teacher. He afterward established, in conjunction with Joseph
G. Cogswell, a school of high classical character at ♦Northampton,
Massachusetts. While engaged here, he prepared a number of Latin text
books for schools, which were far in advance of anything then used in
the country. In the meantime, he had given some attention to politics
and had been engaged for several years, incidentally, upon his
“History of the United States.”
♦ ‘Northhampton’ replaced with ‘Northampton’
In 1828 Mr. Bancroft joined the Democratic Party, having formerly
been a Whig, and began to take an active interest in politics, where
his great historic learning and broad statesmanship placed him quickly
on the high road to political preferment. He was elected to the
Massachusetts Legislature in 1830, but declined, as he was then so
much engaged upon his “History of the United States” that he was
unwilling to turn aside, at least until the first volume was issued,
which appeared in 1834. The first and second and third volumes of this
work, comprising the Colonial history of the country, were received
with great satisfaction by the public on both sides of the Atlantic,
being in brilliancy of style, picturesque sketches of character and
incidents, compass of learning and generally fair reasoning far in
advance of anything that had been written on the subject.
“Bancroft, the Historian,” was now the recognition he was accorded,
and his fame began to spread. He was made Collector of the Port
of Boston in 1838 by President Van Buren, which position he held
until 1841. In 1844 he ran as Democratic candidate for Governor of
Massachusetts, but was defeated. During 1845 and 1846 he served his
country as Secretary of the Navy under President Polk, and while in
this office he planned and established the Naval Academy at Annapolis
and issued the orders by which California was annexed to the United
States. In 1846 President Polk further honored the historian by
appointing him Minister-Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, where he
represented the United States until 1849. The first three volumes
of Mr. Bancroft’s histories had preceded him to England. “The London
Monthly Review” spoke in the highest terms of his quality as a
historian, praising the sustained accuracy and dignity of his style,
referring to him as a philosopher, a legislator, and a historian. He
was also honored with the degree of D. C. L., by Oxford University in
1849, and was enrolled as a member of many learned societies.
Thus laden with honors, he returned this same year to his country,
made New York his place of residence, and resumed, with renewed energy,
the prosecution of his historical labors. The fourth volume of his
“History of the United States” appeared in 1852, and the next year
the fifth volume was published, which was succeeded by the sixth and
seventh, the latter appearing in 1858, bringing the history of our
country down into the stirring scenes of the Revolution.
President Andrew Johnson made Mr. Bancroft United States Minister to
Russia in 1867, and he was our national representative at the North
German Confederation in 1868. General Grant appointed him as our
Minister to the German Empire from 1871 to 1874, during which time he
enjoyed the closest friendship of Prince Bismarck. Bismarck declares
that Bancroft was the foremost representative of American grit that
he had ever met. “Think,” said he to Minister Phelps many years
afterwards, “of a Secretary of the Navy, a literary man by profession,
taking it upon himself to issue orders for the occupation of a vast
foreign territory as Bancroft did in the case of California. Again
he caused the earliest seizure of Texas by the United States troops,
while temporarily holding the portfolio of Minister of War. Only a
really great man would undertake such responsibilities.”
Bancroft’s “History of the United States” was completed in 1874;
but the last and final revised edition of it was published in 1885,
fifty-one years after the first volume had been issued. This great
work comprises ten volumes and comes down only to the close of the
Revolution. It is a monumental work within itself――a fit monument to
the greatest of American historians. The patriotism and eloquence of
its author are manifest in nearly every page, and the work has been
criticised as a Fourth-of-July oration in ten volumes. It is generally
regarded as a standard history of America up to the time of the
Constitution.
Other works of Mr. Bancroft are “The Necessity, the Reality, and
the Promises of the Human Race” (1854); “Literary and Historical
Miscellanies” (1855), and “A Plea for the Constitution of the United
States of America, Wounded in the House of its Guardians” (1886),
written when the author was eighty-six years of age.
Mr. Bancroft was an orator as well as a historian and politician, one
of the best-known of his addresses being the famous oration on Lincoln,
delivered before Congress in 1866. During the latter part of his life
he had a winter home in Washington, where the national archives and
the Library of Congress were always at his hand, and a summer home at
Newport, where he had a wonderful garden of roses, which was a great
attraction. Rose-growing and horseback riding were his recreations,
and the erect and striking form of the historian, with his long gray
beard, mounted on a fine horse, was for years a familiar figure at
Newport and on the streets of Washington.
It is beautiful to contemplate so long and useful a life as that of
George Bancroft. When the old historian was nearly ninety years of
age, he journeyed all the way from his northern home to Nashville,
Tennessee, to make certain investigations, for historical data, among
the private papers of President Polk. The writer of this sketch had
the pleasure of witnessing the meeting between him and the venerable
wife of James K. Polk at the old mansion which stands near the Capitol.
It was a beautiful and impressive sight to see this grand old woman,
who had been the first lady of the land forty-five years before,
conducting this venerable historian, who had been her husband’s
Secretary of War, about the premises. President Polk’s library with
all the papers piled upon the table had remained just as he had left
it, and into its sacred precincts Mr. Bancroft was admitted, with
perfect liberty to select and take away whatever would be of service
in his historical labors. What he did with these papers is unknown to
the writer. Perhaps his death occurred too soon after to render them
of practical service; but that the old historian died in the harness
may well be supposed from the following extract taken from a letter
written when he was more than eighty years of age: “I was trained to
look upon life here as a season for labor. Being more than fourscore
years old, I know the time for my release will soon come. Conscious
of being near the shore of eternity, I wait without impatience and
without dread the beckoning of the hand which will summon me to rest.”
The beckoning hand appeared several years later――in 1891――and he
passed quietly “over the river,” only nine years in advance of the
death of the century with which he was born, having spent altogether
one of the busiest, one of the most honorable, one of the most
useful and _the very longest life of all the celebrities in American
literature_. His fame is secure. His works will live after him――a
proud and lasting monument.
* * * * *
CHARACTER OF ROGER WILLIAMS.
WHILE the State was thus connecting by the closest bonds the energy of
its faith with its form of government, there appeared in its midst one
of those clear minds which sometimes bless the world by their power
of receiving moral truth in its purest light, and of reducing the just
conclusions of their principles to a happy and consistent practice. In
February of the first year of the colony, but a few months after the
arrival of Winthrop, and before either Cotton or Hooker had embarked
for New England, there arrived at Nantasket, after a stormy passage of
sixty-six days, “a young minister, godly and zealous, having precious”
gifts. It was Roger Williams. He was then but a little more than
thirty years of age; but his mind had already matured a doctrine
which secures him an immortality of fame, as its application has
given religious peace to the American world. He was a Puritan, and
a fugitive from English persecution; but his wrongs had not clouded
his accurate understanding; in the capacious recesses of his mind he
had revolved the nature of intolerance, and he, and he alone, had
arrived at the great principle which is its sole effectual remedy. He
announced his discovery under the simple proposition of the sanctity
of conscience. The civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never
control opinion; should punish guilt, but never violate the freedom of
the soul. The doctrine contained within itself an entire reformation
of theological jurisprudence; it would blot from the statute-book the
felony of non-conformity; would quench the fires that persecution had
so long kept burning; would repeal every law compelling attendance on
public worship; would abolish tithes and all forced contributions to
the maintenance of religion; would give an equal protection to every
form of religious faith; and never suffer the authority of the civil
government to be enlisted against the mosque of the Mussulman or the
altar of the fire-worshipper, against the Jewish synagogue or the
Roman cathedral. It is wonderful with what distinctness Roger Williams
deduced these inferences from his great principle; the consistency
with which, like Pascal and Edwards,――those bold and profound
reasoners on other subjects,――he accepted every fair inference from
his doctrines; and the circumspection with which he repelled every
unjust imputation. In the unwavering assertion of his views he never
changed his position; the sanctity of conscience was the great tenet
which, with all its consequences, he defended, as he first trod the
shores of New England; and in his extreme old age it was the last
pulsation of his heart. But it placed the young emigrant in direct
opposition to the whole system on which Massachusetts was founded; and,
gentle and forgiving as was his temper, prompt as he was to concede
everything which honesty permitted, he always asserted his belief with
temperate firmness and unbending benevolence.
* * * * *
DESTRUCTION OF THE TEA IN BOSTON HARBOR.
On the 28th day of November, 1773, the ship Dartmouth appeared
in Boston Harbor, with one hundred and fourteen chests of
tea. The ship was owned by Mr. Rotch, a Quaker merchant. In a
few days after, two more tea-ships arrived. They were all put
under strict guard by the citizens, acting under the lead of
a committee of correspondence, of which Samuel Adams was the
controlling spirit. The people of the neighboring towns were
organized in a similar manner, and sustained the spirit of
Boston. The purpose of the citizens was to have the tea sent
back without being landed; but the collector and comptroller
refused to give the ships a clearance unless the teas were
landed, and Governor Hutchinson also refused his permit,
without which they could not pass the “Castle,” as the fort at
the entrance of Boston Harbor was called. The ships were also
liable to seizure if the teas were not landed on the twentieth
day after their arrival, and the 16th day of December was the
eighteenth day after.
THE morning of Thursday, the 16th of December, 1773, dawned upon
Boston,――a day by far the most momentous in its annals. Beware, little
town; count the cost, and know well if you dare defy the wrath of
Great Britain, and if you love exile, and poverty, and death, rather
than submission. At ten o’clock, the people of Boston, with at least
two thousand men from the country, assembled in the Old South. A
report was made that Rotch had been refused a clearance from the
collector. “Then,” said they to him, “protest immediately against the
custom-house, and apply to the Governor for his pass, so that your
vessel may this very day proceed on her voyage to London.”
The Governor had stolen away to his country-house at Milton. Bidding
Rotch make all haste, the meeting adjourned to three in the afternoon.
At that hour Rotch had not returned. It was incidentally voted, as
other towns had done, to abstain wholly from the use of tea; and
every town was advised to appoint its committee of inspection, to
prevent the detested tea from coming within any of them. Then, since
the governor might refuse his pass, the momentous question recurred,
whether it be the sense and determination of this body to abide by
their former resolutions with respect to not suffering the tea to
be landed. On this question, Samuel Adams and Young¹ addressed the
meeting, which was become far the most numerous ever held in Boston,
embracing seven thousand men. There was among them a patriot of
fervent feeling; passionately devoted to the liberty of his country;
still young, his eye bright, his cheek glowing with hectic fever. He
knew that his strength was ebbing. The work of vindicating American
freedom must be done soon, or he will be no party to the great
achievement. He rises, but it is to restrain; and, being truly brave
and truly resolved, he speaks the language of moderation: “Shouts
and hosannas will not terminate the trials of this day, nor popular
resolves, harangues, and acclamations vanquish our foes. We must be
grossly ignorant of the value of the prize for which we contend, of
the power combined against us, of the inveterate malice and insatiable
revenge which actuate our enemies, public and private, abroad and
in our bosom, if we hope that we shall end this controversy without
the sharpest conflicts. Let us consider the issue before we advance
to those measures which must bring on the most trying and terrible
struggle this country ever saw.” Thus spoke the younger Quincy.
“Now that the hand is to the plough,” said others, “there must be
no looking back;” and the whole assembly of seven thousand voted
unanimously that the tea should not be landed.
¹ Dr. Thomas Young, a physician, and afterwards an
army-surgeon, was a zealous patriot, and a leading
speaker and writer of the time.
It had been dark for more than an hour. The church in which they met
was dimly lighted; when, at a quarter before six, Rotch appeared, and
satisfied the people by relating that the governor had refused him
a pass, because his ship was not properly cleared. As soon as he
had finished his report, Samuel Adams rose and gave the word: “This
meeting can do nothing more to save the country.” On the instant, a
shout was heard at the porch; the war-whoop resounded; a body of men,
forty or fifty in number, disguised as Indians, passed by the door,
and, encouraged by Samuel Adams, Hancock, and others, repaired to
Griffin’s Wharf, posted guards to prevent the intrusion of spies, took
possession of the three tea-ships, and in about three hours, three
hundred and forty chests of tea――being the whole quantity that had
been imported――were emptied into the bay, without the least injury
to other property. “All things were conducted with great order,
decency, and perfect submission to government.” The people around,
as they looked on, were so still that the noise of breaking open the
tea-chests was distinctly heard. A delay of a few hours would have
placed the tea under the protection of the admiral at the Castle.
After the work was done, the town became as still and calm as if it
had been holy time. The men from the country that very night carried
back the great news to their villages.
* * * * *
CHIVALRY AND PURITANISM.
HISTORIANS have loved to eulogize the manners and virtues, the glory
and the benefits, of chivalry. Puritanism accomplished for mankind
far more. If it had the sectarian crime of intolerance, chivalry had
the vices of dissoluteness. The knights were brave from gallantry of
spirit; the Puritans, from the fear of God. The knights were proud of
loyalty; the Puritans, of liberty. The knights did homage to monarchs,
in whose smile they beheld honor, whose rebuke was the wound of
disgrace; the Puritans, disdaining ceremony, would not bow at the
name of Jesus, nor bend the knee to the King of kings. Chivalry
delighted in outward show, favored pleasure, multiplied amusement,
and degraded the human race by an exclusive respect for the privileged
classes; Puritanism bridled the passions, commanded the virtues of
self-denial, and rescued the name of man from dishonor. The former
valued courtesy; the latter, justice. The former adorned society
by graceful refinements; the latter founded national grandeur on
universal education. The institutions of chivalry were subverted
by the gradually increasing weight, and knowledge, and opulence of
the industrious classes; the Puritans, rallying upon those classes,
planted in their hearts the undying principles of democratic liberty.
* * * * *
THE POSITION OF THE PURITANS.
TO the colonists the maintenance of their unity seemed essential
to their cordial resistance to English attempts at oppression. And
why, said they, should we not insist upon this union? We have come
to the outside of the world for the privilege of living by ourselves:
why should we open our asylum to those in whom we can repose no
confidence? The world cannot call this persecution. We have been
banished to the wilderness: is it an injustice to exclude our
oppressors, and those whom we dread as their allies, from the place
which is to shelter us from their intolerance? Is it a great cruelty
to expel from our abode the enemies of our peace, or even the doubtful
friend? Will any man complain at being driven from among banished
men, with whom he has no fellowship? of being refused admittance
to a gloomy place of exile? The wide continent of America invited
colonization; they claimed their own narrow domains for “the
brethren.” Their religion was their life: they welcomed none but
its adherents; they could not tolerate the scoffer, the infidel, or
the dissenter; and the presence of the whole people was required in
their congregation. Such was the system inflexibly established and
regarded as the only adequate guarantee of the rising liberties of
Massachusetts.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JAMES PARTON.
WRITER OF BIOGRAPHY.
THERE can be no higher public service than that of the man who gives
to his fellows, and particularly to the rising generation, good
biographies of noble men. If this be true, then James Parton must be
ranked among those who have done most for Americans, for the series
of books which began many years ago with a life of Horace Greeley
and which ended, only two months before the author’s death with the
biography of Andrew Jackson, has made the heroes of American history
real live men for thousands of readers, has stirred the patriotism and
aroused the ambition of many a boyish student, and has won for himself
the respect and esteem which belong to literary achievements.
The ancestry of James Parton was French; his family having emigrated
to England after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.
He was born in Canterbury, England, in 1822, and could just remember
walking across the fields, in black clothes, at his father’s funeral.
The solemn memory which thus took a strong hold upon his mind, was,
perhaps, partly responsible for his dislike for ecclesiastical forms
and particularly for the practice of formal “mourning.” His mother
brought her little family to New York a year after her husband’s
death, and James was educated in the schools of that city and at White
Plains, New York. At the latter place he was in a boarding school
where so much attention was paid to religion that nearly every boy
who passed through it was a member of the church. He seems to have
found something repellent in the manner of presenting Christianity,
and although he became a teacher in the school and later held for some
years a similar position in Philadelphia, he sympathized less and less
with it until he came avowedly to give up all belief in supernatural
religion. He was a very successful teacher and took great delight in
his work and would probably have devoted his life to the schoolroom,
had he not found himself unable to continue the custom of opening
the sessions of school with prayer and on this account been compelled
to give up his position. Returning to New York he became associated
with N. P. Willis in conducting the “Home Journal” and thus began his
career as a literary man. While so employed he remarked one day to a
New York publisher, that a most interesting book could be made of the
career of Horace Greeley, then at the summit of his power and fame as
an editor.
The suggestion resulted in his being commissioned to prepare such a
biography, the publisher advancing the funds which enabled Mr. Parton
to spend several months in collecting materials among the people in
New Hampshire and Vermont, who had known Mr. Greeley in his early
life. The book made a great sensation and at once gave its author high
standing in the literary world. He began to contribute to a number
of leading periodicals on political and literary topics, and soon
appeared as a public lecturer and found himself one of the most
notable men of the day.
Mr. Parton was married in 1856 to Mrs. Sara Payson Willis Eldredge,
whose brother, the poet, N. P. Willis, was his former associate. Mrs.
Willis was a popular contributor to “The New York Ledger” and other
papers, under the pen-name of “Fanny Fern,” and Mr. Parton was soon
engaged in similar work, and later became a member of the editorial
staff of the “Ledger” and closely associated with Mr. Robert Bonner.
This was of the greatest advantage to him, as it furnished a steady
income, while allowing him leisure in which to devote himself to the
more serious works which were his real contribution to literature and
upon which his fame rests. His next book was “The Life and Times of
Aaron Burr,” which was prepared from original sources, and which made
Burr a somewhat less offensive character than he was at that time
generally thought to be. He next prepared a “Life of Andrew Jackson,”
which finally met with great success, but which, being published
at the beginning of the War of the Rebellion and being subscribed
for largely in the South, involved both author and publisher in
considerable immediate loss. For twenty years he labored upon a
“Life of Voltaire,” giving to the study of the great European Liberal
of the last century all the time and energy he could spare from the
contributions which he must regularly supply to the “Ledger” and “The
Youth’s Companion.” The “Life of Voltaire” was his only biography of
a European character, and while he thought it his best work, and while
it is a wonderful picture, not only of the life and character of the
great Frenchman, but of manners and morals in Europe in the eighteenth
century, the public interest in its subject was not so great, and its
success by no means so complete as that which greeted his American
biographies. He was greatly interested in the robust character of Gen.
Benjamin Butler, and his next book was the story of the administration
of the city of New Orleans, by him. He then offered to the public the
first comprehensive study of the “Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin”
that had appeared. This is, by many, thought to be his best book.
It was followed by a “Life of Jefferson,” and later by three books
drawn from his contributions to periodicals, “Famous Americans of
Recent Times,” “Noted Women of Europe and America,” and “Captains of
Industry.” His last work was a volume upon “Andrew Jackson” for the
“Great Commanders” series.
After the death of “Fanny Fern” Mr. Parton took up his residence in
Newburyport, Massachusetts, with Miss Eldredge, his wife’s daughter,
who was charged with the care of an orphaned niece. This child had
for several years been a member of his family, and had closely engaged
his affection. The relations thus established resulted presently in
the marriage of Mr. Parton to Miss Eldredge, a union, which, until his
death in 1892, filled his life with joy and happiness. Mr. Parton took
an active interest in the social life about him, joining frankly in
every village enterprise and gradually acquiring very great influence
in the community.
* * * * *
OLD VIRGINIA.
WHEN John Rolfe, not yet husband of Pocahontas, planted the first
tobacco seed in Jamestown, in 1612, good tobacco sold in London
docks at five shillings a pound, or two hundred and fifty pounds
sterling for a hogshead of a thousand pounds’ weight. Fatal facility
of money-making! It was this that diverted all labor, capital and
enterprise into one channel, and caused that first ship-load of
Negroes in the James to be so welcome. The planter could have but one
object,――to get more slaves in order to raise more tobacco. Hence the
price was ever on the decline, dropping first from shillings to pence,
and then going down the scale of pence, until it remained for some
years at an average of about two pence a pound in Virginia and three
pence in London. In Virginia it often fell below two pence; as, during
brief periods of scarcity, it would rise to six and seven pence.
Old Virginia is a pathetic chapter in political economy. OLD Virginia,
indeed! She reached decrepitude while contemporary communities were
enjoying the first vigor of youth; while New York was executing the
task which Virginia’s George Washington had suggested and foretold,
that of connecting the waters of the great West with the sea; while
New England was careering gayly over the ocean, following the whale
to his most distant retreat, and feeding belligerent nations with
her superabundance. One little century of seeming prosperity; three
generations of spendthrifts; then the lawyer and sheriff! Nothing was
invested, nothing saved for the future. There were no manufactures,
no commerce, no towns, no internal trade, no great middle class. As
fast as that virgin richness of soil could be converted into tobacco,
and sold in the London docks, the proceeds were spent in vast,
ugly mansions, heavy furniture, costly apparel, Madeira wine, fine
horses, huge coaches, and more slaves. The planters lived as though
virgin soil were revenue, not capital. They tried to maintain in
Virginia the lordly style of English grandees, WITHOUT any Birmingham,
♦Staffordshire, Sheffield or London docks to pay for it. Their
short-lived prosperity consisted of three elements,――virgin soil,
low-priced slaves, high-priced tobacco. The virgin soil was rapidly
exhausted; the price of negroes was always on the increase; and the
price of tobacco was always tending downward. Their sole chance of
founding a staple commonwealth was to invest the proceeds of their
tobacco in something that would absorb their labor and yield them
profit when the soil would no longer produce tobacco.
♦ ‘Stafordshire’ replaced with ‘Staffordshire’
But their laborers were ignorant slaves, the possession of whom
destroyed their energy, swelled their pride, and dulled their
understandings. Virginia’s case was hopeless from the day on which
that Dutch ship landed the first twenty slaves; and, when the time
of reckoning came, the people had nothing to show for their long
occupation of one of the finest estates in the world, except great
hordes of negroes, breeding with the rapidity of rabbits; upon whose
annual increase Virginia subsisted, until the most glorious and
beneficial of all wars set the white race free and gave Virginia her
second opportunity.
All this was nobody’s fault. It was a combination of circumstances
against which the unenlightened human nature of that period could not
possibly have made head.
Few men saw anything wrong in slavery. No man knew much about the laws
that control the prosperity of States. No man understood the science
of agriculture. Every one with whom those proud and thoughtless
planters dealt plundered them, and the mother country discouraged
every attempt of the colonists to manufacture their own supplies.
There were so many charges upon tobacco, in its course from the
planter’s packing-house to the consumer’s pipe, that it was no very
uncommon thing, in dull years, for the planter to receive from
his agent in London, in return for his hogsheads of tobacco, not
a pleasant sum of money, nor even a box of clothes, but a bill of
charges which the price of the tobacco had not covered. One of the
hardships of which the clergy complained was, that they did not “dare”
to send their tobacco to London, for fear of being brought into debt
by it, but had to sell it on the spot to speculators much below the
London price. The old Virginia laws and records so abound in tobacco
information that we can follow a hogshead of tobacco from its native
plantation on the James to the shop of the tobacconist in London.
In the absence of farm vehicles――many planters who kept a coach had
no wagon――each hogshead was attached to a pair of shafts with a horse
between them, and “rolled” to a shed on the bank of the stream. When
a ship arrived in the river from London, it anchored opposite each
plantation which it served, and set ashore the portion of the cargo
belonging to it, continuing its upward course until the hold was empty.
Then, descending the river, it stopped at the different plantations,
taking from each its hogsheads of tobacco, and the captain receiving
long lists of articles to be bought in London with the proceeds of
the tobacco. The rivers of Virginia, particularly the James and the
Potomac, are wide and shallow, with a deep channel far from either
shore, so that the transfer of the tobacco from the shore to the ship,
in the general absence of landings, was troublesome and costly. To
this day, as readers remember, the piers on the James present to the
wondering passenger from the North a stretch of pine planks from an
eighth to half a mile long. The ship is full at length, drops down
past Newport News, salutes the fort upon Old Point Comfort, and glides
out between the capes into the ocean.
* * * * *
How little the planters foresaw the desolation of their Province is
affectingly attested by many of the relics of their brief affluence.
They built their parish churches to last centuries, like the churches
to which they were accustomed “at home.” In neighborhoods where now
a congregation of fifty persons could not be collected, there are
ruins of churches that were evidently built for the accommodation
of numerous and wealthy communities; a forest, in some instances,
has grown up all around them, making it difficult to get near the
imperishable walls. Sometimes the wooden roof has fallen in, and one
huge tree, rooted among the monumental slabs of the middle aisle, has
filled all the interior. Other old churches long stood solitary in
old fields, the roof sound, but the door standing open, in which the
beasts found nightly shelter, and into which the passing horseman
rode and sat on his horse before the altar till the storm passed.
Others have been used by farmers as wagon-houses, by fishermen to hang
their seines in, by gatherers of turpentine as storehouses. One was a
distillery, and another was a barn. A poor drunken wretch reeled for
shelter into an abandoned church of Chesterfield County――the county
of the first Jeffersons――and he died in a drunken sleep at the foot
of the reading-desk, where he lay undiscovered until his face was
devoured by rats. An ancient font was found doing duty as a tavern
punch-bowl; and a tombstone, which served as the floor of an oven,
used to print memorial words upon loaves of bread. Fragments of
richly-colored altar-pieces, fine pulpit-cloths, and pieces of old
carving used to be preserved in farm-houses and shown to visitors.
When the late Bishop Meade began his rounds, forty years ago, elderly
people would bring to him sets of communion-plate and single vessels
which had once belonged to the parish church, long deserted, and beg
him to take charge of them.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
FRANCIS PARKMAN.
HISTORIAN OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN CONFLICT.
TO FRANCIS PARKMAN, as much as to any one man, we owe the revival of
interest in American history. His story of “The Pioneers of France
in the New World,” “The Jesuits in North America,” “La Salle and the
Discovery of the Great West,” “The Old Régime in Canada,” “Frontenac
and New France under Louis XIV.” “A Half-Century of Conflict,”
“Montcalm and Wolf,” and “The Conspiracy of Pontiac,” form a connected
account of the rise and fall of the French power in America. They
may well be described as one work, almost as one book. It was a
great design formed when he was still a Harvard student, and held so
tenaciously that no trials or disappointments could discourage him and
no mountain of labor be too great for his untiring powers.
He was born in Boston in 1823, and was so fortunate as to inherit
wealth which not only set him free to devote himself to his vocation,
but enabled him to command an amount and kind of assistance absolutely
essential to his peculiar work, and in his peculiar circumstances, and
which could be secured only by large expenditure. He had traveled a
year abroad before he graduated in 1844 and had made himself master of
the French language and familiar with French history and institutions.
By repeated summer journeys into the wilderness of northern New
England, he had acquainted himself with the conditions of pioneer life
and, to some extent of Indian warfare. He pursued the study of law
for two years, but it may well be supposed that these studies yielded
larger results in a knowledge of the history of Europe during the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the facts in that history
bearing upon the great conflict in the new world, than in any definite
grasp of the intricacies of the law itself.
In the spring of 1846, he joined his cousin, Quincy A. Shaw, in
the hazardous experiment of spending the summer with the Dacotah
Indians, then living in an entirely savage condition east of the Rocky
mountains. The two young men carried out their undertaking at the
continuous risk of their lives, but it supplied Parkman with a minute
knowledge of Indian thoughts and Indian ways which equipped him, as
probably no other man was ever equipped, for writing the history in
which Indians were among the chief actors. But the cost was very great.
While among the Indians he was attacked by serious illness and it
was one of the savage customs of his Indian companions that he who
confessed sickness was to be immediately tomahawked. There was nothing
for it, therefore, but to fight off his disease as best he could and
make what show was possible, of health and vigor. He succeeded, but
the strain was so great that it left him apparently disabled. His
physicians assured him that he could not live, and for three years
he was compelled to suspend all intellectual work and live a life
as absolutely quiet as was possible. The remainder of his life was
devoted to the books which we have named. For the greater portion
of this fifty years he could not use his eyes for more than five
continuous minutes, and he was compelled to exercise the greatest
care not to bring on final collapse by exceeding the few hours per
day which he could safely devote to mental labor. Every one of his
books was dictated to a relative, who cared for every detail of
its preparation for the press. In gathering the materials for his
histories he visited Europe seven times, and constantly employed
a number of experts in copying important documents for his use. He
very early became master of everything that had been printed which
bore upon his subject, and realized that his main dependence must
be upon manuscripts――private letters, public documents, official
reports――scattered through public and private libraries in Europe
and America, often unknown and frequently almost inaccessible. An
interesting example of his persistency is in his continuing to search
for fifteen years for a volume of letters from Montcalm in Canada,
which Montcalm had requested to have burned, but which Parkman
believed to exist, and which was finally discovered in a private
collection of manuscripts.
The Massachusetts Historical Society possesses an oaken cabinet in
which are stored some two hundred folio volumes of manuscript copies
of important documents, the gift of Mr. Parkman; to Harvard College he
gave a most interesting collection of fac-simile maps.
Mr. Parkman was not a recluse, but on the contrary delighted in
society, and indulged his liking as far as was possible with a due
regard to saving his strength for his beloved work. He took the most
lively interest in public affairs, and for a number of years was one
of the corporation of Harvard University.
An interesting side of Mr. Parkman’s life was his interest in
horticulture. He became the owner in 1854 of a property on the shore
of Jamaica Pond, and in this beautiful place devoted himself in the
intervals of literary labor, and during the several periods of two
or three years when he was absolutely compelled to abstain, to the
culture of flowers. He made long continued and careful experiments
in hybridizing lillies and other flowers and produced a number of new
varieties one of which, a magnificent lilly was given his name by the
English horticulturist who undertook to put the beautiful plant upon
the market. He published “The Book of Roses,” held a professorship in
the Bussey Institution, and was in 1886 president of the Massachusetts
Horticultural Society. But his principal workshop was a plain,
comfortable room at the top of his sister’s house on Beacon Hill,
in Boston, where with an open fire and convenient bookshelves and
the willing help of friends and relatives he completed his task in
1892. It was at his suburban home which had supplied occupation and
entertainment when driven from his work and whose beauties were so
largely his own creation, that, two years later, he passed away.
This, in brief, is the life of the man who has made La Salle and
Montcalm live again for delighted thousands of nineteenth century
readers. The study of our nation’s history is coming to take its
proper position in our colleges and schools, our libraries are
compelled to set apart more and more shelf-room for books which tell
the story of the making of America and of our national life. There is
no chapter in all this history more vivid, more full of action, more
crowded with the conflict between high and ignoble purpose, nor one
which bears a more important relation to our national development than
that which tells how the Frenchman came, how he made friends with the
Indian, how he contended for empire and was defeated. And no one of
these chapters has been written with more absolute fidelity to the
actual facts in their proper relation. It is written in a style whose
grace and elegance of diction, clearness and dignity of expression,
completeness and accuracy of statement bring back the Indian and
the Frenchman, the priest and the _voyageur_ and make them live and
move before our eyes. It was a field unoccupied, a period of history
interesting, inviting, and complete in itself. Few historians have
embraced such an opportunity, of still fewer can it be said that their
work is so well done that it need never be done again.
He was half a century at his work, untiringly; as has been well said,
“Nowhere can we find a better illustration of the French critic’s
definition of a great life――a thought conceived in youth and realized
in later years.”
* * * * *
THE NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.
THE four northern colonies were known collectively as New England;
Massachusetts may serve as a type of all. It was a mosaic of little
village republics, firmly cemented together, and formed into a single
body politic through representatives sent to the “General Court,”
at Boston. Its government, originally theocratic, now tended towards
democracy, ballasted as yet by strong traditions of respect for
established worth and ability, as well as by the influence of certain
families prominent in affairs for generations. Yet there were no
distinct class-lines, and popular power, like popular education, was
widely diffused.
Practically Massachusetts was almost independent of the Mother
Country. Its people were purely English, of good ♦yeoman stock,
with an abundant leaven drawn from the best of the Puritan gentry;
but their original character had been somewhat modified by changed
conditions of life. A harsh and exacting creed, with its stiff
formalism, and its prohibition of wholesome recreation; excess in the
pursuit of gain――the only resource left to energies robbed of their
natural play; the struggle for existence on a hard and barren soil;
and the isolation of a narrow village life――joined to produce in the
meaner sorts qualities which were unpleasant, and sometimes repulsive.
♦ ‘yoeman’ replaced with ‘yeoman’
Puritanism was not an unmixed blessing. Its view of human nature was
dark, and its attitude was one of repression. It strove to crush out
not only what is evil, but much that is innocent and salutary. Human
nature so treated will take its revenge, and for every vice that it
loses find another instead. Nevertheless, while New England Puritanism
bore its peculiar crop of faults, it also produced many sound and
good fruits. An uncommon vigor, joined to the hardy virtues of a
masculine race, marked the New England type. The sinews, it is true,
were hardened at the expense of blood and flesh――and this literally
as well as figuratively; but the staple of character was a sturdy
conscientiousness, an understanding courage, ♦patriotism, public
sagacity and a strong good sense.
♦ ‘partiotism’ replaced with ‘patriotism’
The New England Colonies abounded in high examples of public and
private virtue, though not always under prepossessing forms. There
were few New Englanders, however personally modest, who could
divest themselves of the notion that they belonged to a people
in an especial manner the object of divine approval; and thus
self-righteousness――along with certain other traits――failed to
commend the Puritan colonies to the favor of their fellows. Then, as
now, New England was best known to her neighbors by her worst side.
* * * * *
THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM.¹
(FROM MONTCALM AND WOLFE, 1884.)
¹ By Permission of Little, Brown & Co.
FOR full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current,
steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but
the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in
one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John
Robinson, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University
of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a
low voice, repeated Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Church-yard” to the
officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of
his thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon
to illustrate.――“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”
“Gentlemen,” he said, as his recital ended, “I would rather have
written those lines than take Quebec.” None were there to tell him
that the hero is greater than the poet.
* * * * *
Montcalm had passed a troubled night. Through all the evening the
cannon bellowed from the ships of Saunders, and the boats of the
fleet hovered in the dusk off Beauport shore, threatening every moment
to land. Troops lined the entrenchments till day, while the general
walked the field that adjoined his headquarters till one in the
morning, accompanied by the Chevalier Johnstone and Colonel Poulariez.
Johnstone says that he was in great agitation, and took no rest all
night. At daybreak he heard the sound of cannon above the town. It
was the battery at Samos firing on the English ships. He had sent
an officer to the headquarters of Vaudreuil, which was much nearer
Quebec, with orders to bring him word at once should anything unusual
happen. But no word came, and about six o’clock he mounted and rode
thither with Johnstone. As they advanced, the country behind the town
opened more and more upon their sight; till at length, when opposite
Vaudreuil’s house, they saw across the St. Charles, some two miles
away, the red ranks of British soldiers on the heights beyond.
“This is a serious business,” Montcalm said, and sent off Johnstone
at full gallop to bring up the troops from the centre and left of the
camp. Those on the right were in motion already, and doubtless by the
Governor’s order. Vaudreuil came out of the house. Montcalm stopped
for a few words with him; then set spurs to his horse, and rode over
the bridge of the St. Charles to the scene of danger. He rode with a
fixed look, uttering not a word.
* * * * *
Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had expected to see a
detachment, and he found an army. Full in sight before him stretched
the lines of Wolfe; the close ranks of English infantry, stretched
a silent wall of red, and the wild array of Highlanders, with their
waving tartans, and bagpipes screaming defiance. Vaudreuil had not
come; but not the less was felt the evil of divided authority and
the jealousy of the rival chiefs. Montcalm waited long for the forces
he had ordered to join him from the left wing of the army. He waited
in vain. It is said the Governor had detained them lest the English
should attack the Beauport shore. Even if they did so, and succeeded,
the French might defy them, could they but put Wolfe to route on the
Plains of Abraham. Neither did the garrison of Quebec come to the
aid of Montcalm. He sent to Ramesay, its commander, for twenty-five
field-pieces which were on the palace battery. Ramesay would give him
only three, saying that he wanted them for his own defence. There were
orders and counter-orders; misunderstandings, haste, delay, perplexity.
Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of war. It is said
that he and they alike were for immediate attack. His enemies declared
that he was afraid lest Vaudreuil should arrive and take command;
but the Governor was not the man to assume responsibility at such a
crisis. Others say his impetuosity overcame his better judgment; and
of this charge it is hard to acquit him. Bougainville was but a few
miles distant and some of his troops were much nearer; a messenger
sent by way of Old Lorette could have reached him in an hour and
a-half at most, and a combined attack in front and rear might have
been concerted with him. If, moreover, Montcalm could have come
to an understanding with Vaudreuil, his own forces might have been
strengthened by two or three thousand additional men from the town
and the camp of Beauport; but he felt that there was no time to lose,
for he imagined that Wolfe would soon be reinforced, which was no less
an error. He has been blamed not only for fighting too soon, but for
fighting at all. In this he could not choose. Fight he must, for Wolfe
was now in a position to cut off all his supplies. His men were full
of ardor, and he resolved to attack before their ardor cooled. He
spoke a few words to them in his keen, vehement way. “I remember very
well how he looked,” one of the Canadians, then a boy of eighteen,
used to say in his old age. “He rode a black or dark bay horse along
the front of our lines, brandishing his sword, as if to excite us to
do our duty. He wore a coat with wide sleeves, which fell back as he
raised his arm, and showed the white linen of the wristband.”
The English waited the result with a composure which, if not quite
real, was well feigned. The three field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied
them with canister-shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians
fusilladed them in front and flank.
Wolfe was everywhere. How cool he was, and why his followers loved
him is shown by the following incident that happened in the course
of the morning. One of his captains was shot through the lungs; and
on recovering consciousness he saw the general standing by his side.
Wolfe pressed his hand, told him not to despair, praised his services,
promised him early promotion, and sent an aide-de-camp to Monckton to
beg that officer to keep the promise if he himself should fall.
It was toward ten o’clock when, from the high ground on the right
of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was near. The French on the
ridge had formed themselves into three bodies, regulars in the centre,
regulars and Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, which
had been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on them with
grapeshot, and the troops, rising from the ground, prepared to receive
them. In a few moments more they were in motion. They came on rapidly,
uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within range.
Their ranks, ill-ordered at best, were further confused by a number
of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after
hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload. The British
advanced a few rods; then halted and stood still. When the French
were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of
musketry answered all along the line. The volley was delivered with
remarkable precision. In the battalions of the centre, which had
suffered least from the enemy’s bullets, the simultaneous explosion
was afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a
cannon-shot.
Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that
lasted but a minute or two. When the smoke rose, a miserable sight
was revealed: the ground cumbered with dead and wounded; the advancing
masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing,
gesticulating. The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose
the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan.
Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced
firing. The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and
swift as blood-hounds. At the English right, though the attacking
column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it
seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they
had lain for an hour or more. Here Wolfe himself led the charge at
the head of the Louisbourg Grenadiers. A shot shattered his wrist. He
wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him
and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered,
and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the Grenadiers, one
Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier,
aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in
their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so,
and asked if he would have a surgeon. “There’s no need,” he answered;
“it’s all over with me.” A moment after, one of them cried out: “They
run, see how they run!” “Who run?” Wolfe demanded, like a man roused
from sleep. “The enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!”
“Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton,” returned the dying man, “tell
him to march Webb’s Regiment down to Charles River to cut off their
retreat from the bridge.” Then, turning on his side, he murmured: “Now,
God be praised, I will die in peace!” and in a few moments his gallant
soul had fled.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.
HISTORIAN OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU.
IT MAY well be doubted whether any other historian was ever so
loved both by those who knew him personally and by those who counted
themselves fortunate in knowing him through his books as was William H.
Prescott. Indeed that love promises to be perennial, for “The Conquest
of Mexico” and “The Conquest of Peru” continue to be the delight of
the intelligent schoolboy and bid fair to maintain their hold upon
public interest in succeeding generations.
Prescott was a native of Salem, Massachusetts, having been born in
that city on the 4th of May, 1796. His father was a lawyer, and he
inherited from him literary tastes, love of learning and great mental
vigor. He was accidentally struck, while a Junior at Harvard, by a
piece of hard bread, thrown by a fellow student, and the blow deprived
him forever of the use of his left eye, gave him many months of
tedious suffering in darkened rooms, and resulted in such serious
damage to the other eye as to make it of little and constantly
decreasing use to him. He had intended to be a lawyer, but this
accident made another choice necessary. He deliberately resolved upon
a literary career and prepared himself for it in the most thorough and
painstaking way imaginable. A memorandum dated October, 1821, lays out
a course of study which one might think unnecessary for a graduate of
Harvard College, but which he undertook for the purpose of perfecting
his style, and with what degree of success the universal admiration of
his works well testifies. It was as follows:
“1. Principles of Grammar, correct writing, etc.
2. Compendious history of North America.
3. Fine prose-writers of English.
4. Latin classics one hour a day.”
This course, omitting the American history, he faithfully pursued
for about a year, when he took up the study of French and, later, of
German. His study of Spanish and consequently his choice of the topics
of his great works came about almost accidentally. He had found the
study of German very difficult, so much so that he was in despair. His
friend George Ticknor had delivered to the Senior Class at Harvard a
series of lectures on Spanish literature, and, to divert and entertain
him during a period of discouragement and of suffering from his eyes,
proposed to read the lectures to him. He was so delighted with the
subject that he immediately began the study of the language with the
result that the remainder of his life was devoted to Spanish subjects.
Prescott had married, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of a
cultivated and successful Boston merchant, and of the marriage he said,
near the close of his life, “contrary to the assertion of a French
philosopher who says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to
regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours,――I may truly
say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that
Providence has spared us to each other.” Mrs. Prescott was devoted to
her husband, and until his death in 1859, was his continual support,
adviser and assistant.
Illustration: MR. PRESCOTT’S HOUSE AT PEPPERETT, MASS.
The account of his method of composition is told in one of his letters:
“In the Christmas of 1837 my first work, ‘The History of Ferdinand and
Isabella,’ was given to the world. I obtained the services of a reader
who knew no language but his own, (English). I taught him to pronounce
Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, more to _my_ ear than to that
of a Spaniard, and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana’s
noble (Spanish) history. I cannot even now call to mind without a
smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my
country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages
which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light
came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible vocabulary.
But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by
the consciousness of my own improvement, and when we had toiled our
way through seven quartos, I found I could understand the book when
read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English. My reader’s office
required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him
in his labor. I now felt that the great difficulty could be overcome,
and I obtained the services of a reader whose acquaintance with modern
and ancient tongues supplied, as far as it could be supplied, the
deficiency of eyesight on my part. But though in this way I could
examine various authorities, it was not easy to arrange in my mind
the results of my reading drawn from different and often contradictory
accounts. To do this I dictated copious notes as I went along, and
when I had read enough for a chapter (from thirty to forty, and
sometimes fifty pages in length), I had a mass of memoranda in my own
language, which would easily bring before me in one view, the fruit
of my researches. These notes were carefully read to me, and while my
recent studies were fresh in my recollection, I ran over the whole of
any intended chapter in my mind. This process I repeated at least half
a dozen times, so that when I finally put my pen to paper it ran off
pretty glibly for it was an effort of memory rather than composition.
Writing presented me a difficulty even greater than reading. Thierry,
the famous blind historian of the Norman conquest, advised me to
cultivate dictation; but I usually preferred a substitute that I found
in a writing-case made for the blind which I procured in London, forty
years since. It consists of a frame of the size of a sheet of paper,
traversed by brass wires, as many as lines are wanted on the page,
and with a sheet of carbonated paper, such as is used for getting
duplicates, pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory or agate
stylus the writer traces his characters between the wires on the
carbonated sheet, making indelible marks, which he cannot see, on
the white page below. This treadmill operation has its defects; and
I have repeatedly supposed I had accomplished a good page, and was
proceeding in all the glow of composition to go ahead, when I found
I had forgotten to insert a sheet of writing-paper below, that my
labor had all been thrown away, and that the leaf looked as blank as
myself. Notwithstanding these and other whimsical distresses of the
kind, I have found my writing-case my best friend in my lonely hours,
and with it have written nearly all that I have sent into the world
the last forty years.”
Prescott’s writings were successful from the first. Translations of
the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella” appeared within a few years
in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian, and it is surely
no wonder that the author took up with a good heart the preparation
of a “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and then a “History of
the Conquest of Peru,” both of which were received with the same
appreciation that had rewarded his first published work.
He had spent some time abroad before his marriage, partly in the hope
of benefitting his eyesight. In 1850 he again visited England and
spent some time on the continent. He wrote a number of miscellaneous
articles for magazines and reviews, and published in 1855, two, and
in 1858 the third volume of his uncompleted “History of the Reign of
Philip II., King of Spain.” This, had he lived to complete it, would
doubtless have been his greatest work. It was received with such favor
that six months after the publication of the first two volumes, eight
thousand copies had been sold and the sales of his other works had
been so stimulated as to bring the total up to thirty thousand volumes
during that time, which yielded the author the substantial royalty of
seventeen thousand dollars.
A slight stroke of paralysis had already enfeebled him, and a second
terminated his life on the 28th of January, 1859. His wife, one
daughter, and two sons survived him.
Few men have combined so many engaging qualities. His blindness had
made no change in his appearance, and he was thought to be one of the
handsomest men of his time. His cheerfulness of disposition was so
great that at the time of his most intense suffering he addressed
those who cared for him with such brightness and consideration that
one might have thought their positions reversed. The personal friends
who were won by his grace of manner and by the sterling worth of his
character have nearly all passed away, but the hope that he early
expressed, “to produce something which posterity would not willingly
let die,” was most abundantly realized.
* * * * *
THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.
(FROM HISTORY OF CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 1843.)
THE first measure of Nezahualcoyotl, on returning to his dominions,
was a general amnesty. It was his maxim “that a monarch might punish,
but revenge was unworthy of him.” In the present instance he was
averse even to punish, and not only freely pardoned his rebel nobles,
but conferred on some, who had most deeply offended, posts of honor
and confidence. Such conduct was doubtless politic, especially as
their alienation was owing probably, much more to fear of the usurper
than to any disaffection towards himself. But there are some acts of
policy which a magnanimous spirit only can execute.
The restored monarch next set about repairing the damages sustained
under the late misrule, and reviving, or rather remodelling,
the various departments of government. He framed a concise, but
comprehensive, code of laws, so well suited, it was thought, to the
exigencies of the times, that it was adopted as their own by the two
other members of the triple alliance. It was written in blood, and
entitled the author to be called the Draco rather than “the Solon of
Anahuac,” as he is fondly styled by his admirers. Humanity is one of
the best fruits of refinement. It is only with increasing civilization
that the legislator studies to economize human suffering, even for the
guilty; to devise penalties not so much by way of punishment for the
past as of reformation for the future.
He divided the burden of the government among a number of departments,
as the council of war, the council of finance, the council of justice.
This last was a court of supreme authority, both in civil and criminal
matters, receiving appeals from the lower tribunals of the provinces,
which were obliged to make a full report, every four months, or eighty
days, of their own proceedings to this higher judicature. In all these
bodies, a certain number of citizens were allowed to have seats with
the nobles and professional dignitaries. There was, however, another
body, a council of state, for aiding the king in the dispatch of
business, and advising him in matters of importance, which was drawn
altogether from the highest order of chiefs. It consisted of fourteen
members; and they had seats provided for them at the royal table.
Lastly, there was an extraordinary tribunal, called the council of
music, but which differing from the import of its name, was devoted to
the encouragement of science and art. Works on astronomy, chronology,
history or any other science, were required to be submitted to its
judgment, before they could be made public. This censorial power was
of some moment, at least with regard to the historical department,
where the wilful perversion of truth was made a capital offence by the
bloody code of Nezahualcoyotl. Yet a Tezcucan author must have been
a bungler, who could not elude a conviction under the cloudy veil of
hieroglyphics. This body, which was drawn from the best instructed
persons in the kingdom, with little regard to rank, had supervision of
all the productions of art, and the nicer fabrics. It decided on the
qualifications of the professors in the various branches of science,
on the fidelity of their instructions to their pupils, the deficiency
of which was severely punished, and it instituted examinations of
these latter. In short, it was a general board of education for the
country. On stated days, historical compositions, and poems treating
of moral or traditional topics, were recited before it by their
authors. Seats were provided for the three crowned heads of the empire,
who deliberated with the other members on the respective merits of the
pieces, and distributed prizes of value to the successful competitors.
The influence of this academy must have been most propitious to
the capital, which became the nursery not only of such sciences as
could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various
useful and ornamental arts. Its historians, orators, and poets
were celebrated throughout the country. Its archives, for which
accommodations were provided in the royal palaces, were stored with
the records of primitive ages. Its idiom, more polished than the
Mexican, was, indeed, the purest of all the Nahuatlac dialects, and
continued, long after the Conquest, to be that in which the best
productions of the native races were composed. Tezcuco claimed the
glory of being the Athens of the Western world.
Among the most illustrious of her bards was the emperor himself,――for
the Tezcucan writers claim this title for their chief, as head of
the imperial alliance. He doubtless appeared as a competitor before
that very academy where he so often sat as a critic. Many of his odes
descended to a late generation, and are still preserved, perhaps,
in some of the dusty repositories of Mexico or Spain. The historian
Ixtlilxochitl has left a translation, in Castilian, of one of the
poems of his royal ancestor. It is not easy to render his version
into corresponding English rhyme, without the perfume of the original
escaping in this double filtration. They remind one of the rich
breathings of Spanish-Arab poetry, in which an ardent imagination
is tempered by a not unpleasing and moral melancholy. But, though
sufficiently florid in diction, they are generally free from the
meretricious ornaments and hyperbole with which the minstrelsy of
the East is usually tainted. They turn on the vanities and mutability
of human life,――a topic very natural for a monarch who had himself
experienced the strangest mutations of fortune. There is mingled in
the lament of the Tezcucan bard, however, an Epicurean philosophy,
which seeks relief from the fears of the future in the joys of the
present. “Banish care,” he says: “if there are bounds to pleasure,
the saddest of life must also have an end. Then weave the chaplet of
flowers, and sing thy songs in praise of the all-powerful God; for the
glory of this world soon fadeth away. Rejoice in the green freshness
of thy spring; for the day will come when thou shalt sigh for these
joys in vain; when the sceptre shall pass from thy hands, thy servants
shall wander desolate in thy courts, thy sons, and the sons of thy
nobles, shall drink the dregs of distress, and all the pomp of thy
victories and triumphs shall live only in their recollection. Yet the
remembrance of the just shall not pass away from the nations, and the
good thou hast done shall ever be held in honor. The goods of this
life, its glories and its riches, are but lent to us, its substance is
but an illusory shadow, and the things of to-day shall change on the
coming of the morrow. Then gather the fairest flowers from thy gardens,
to bind round thy brow, and seize the joys of the present ere they
perish.”
But the hours of the Tezcucan monarch were not all passed in idle
dalliance with the Muse, nor in the sober contemplations of philosophy,
as at a later period. In the freshness of youth and early manhood
he led the allied armies in their annual expeditions, which were
certain to result in a wider extent of territory to the empire. In
the intervals of peace he fostered those productive arts which are the
surest sources of public prosperity. He encouraged agriculture above
all; and there was scarcely a spot so rude, or a steep so inaccessible,
as not to confess the power of cultivation. The land was covered with
a busy population, and towns and cities sprang up in places since
deserted or dwindled into miserable villages.
* * * * *
THE BANQUET OF THE DEAD.
(FROM “HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU,” 1847.)
THE wealth displayed by the Peruvian princes was only that which each
had amassed individually for himself. He owed nothing to inheritance
from his predecessors. On the decease of an Inca, his palaces were
abandoned; all his treasures, except what were employed in his
obsequies, his furniture and apparel, were suffered to remain as he
had left them, and his mansions, save one, were closed up forever. The
new sovereign was to provide himself with everything new for his royal
state. The reason of this was the popular belief that the soul of the
departed monarch would return after a time to reanimate his body on
earth; and they wished that he should find everything to which he had
been used in life prepared for his reception.
When an Inca died, or, to use his own language, “was called home to
the mansions of his father, the Sun,” his obsequies were celebrated
with great pomp and solemnity. The bowels were taken from the body and
deposited in the temple of Tampu, about five leagues from the capital.
A quantity of his plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number
of his attendants and favorite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is
said, to a thousand, were immolated on his tomb. Some of them showed
the natural repugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by the
victims of a similar superstition in India. But these were probably
the menials and more humble attendants; since the women have been
known, in more than one instance, to lay violent hands on themselves,
when restrained from testifying their fidelity by this act of conjugal
martyrdom. This melancholy ceremony was followed by a general mourning
throughout the empire. At stated intervals, for a year, the people
assembled to renew the expressions of their sorrow; processions
were made, displaying the banner of the departed monarch; bards and
minstrels were appointed to chronicle his achievements, and their
songs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals in the presence
of the reigning monarch, thus stimulating the living by the glorious
example of the dead.
The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully embalmed, and removed to
the great temple of the Sun at Cuzco. There the Peruvian sovereign, on
entering the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of his royal
ancestors, ranged in opposite files, the men on the right, and their
queens on the left of the great luminary which blazed in refulgent
gold on the walls of the temple. The bodies, clothed in the princely
attire which they had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs
of gold, and sat with their heads inclined downward, their hands
placidly crossed over their bosoms, their countenances exhibiting
their natural dusky hue――less liable to change than the fresher
coloring of an European complexion――and their hair of raven black,
or silvered over with age, according to the period at which they died!
It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in devotion,
so true were the forms and lineaments to life. The Peruvians were as
successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate the
existence of the body beyond the limits assigned by nature.
They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which they
continued to pay to those insensible remains, as if they were instinct
with life. One of the houses belonging to the deceased Inca was kept
open and occupied by his guard and attendants with all the state
appropriate to royalty. On certain festivals the revered bodies of the
sovereigns were brought out with great ceremony into the public square
of the capital. Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of
the respective Incas to the different nobles and officers of the court;
and entertainments were provided in the names of their masters, which
displayed all the profuse magnificence of their treasures, and “such
a display,” says an ancient chronicler, “was there in the great square
of Cuzco, on this occasion, of gold and silverplate and jewels, as no
other city in the world ever witnessed.” The banquet was served by the
menials of the respective households, and the guests partook of the
melancholy cheer in the presence of the royal phantom with the same
attention to the forms of courtly etiquette as if the living monarch
had presided!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.
HISTORIAN AND DIPLOMATIST.
MOTLEY’S history of the “Rise of the Dutch Republic” is, in some
important respects, America’s greatest contribution to historical
literature. Its author was the son of a New England merchant of
literary tastes, and inherited through both parents some of the best
blood of New England. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, now a
part of Boston, April 15, 1814. He was a delicate boy, but vigorous,
vivacious, fond of outdoor sports and intellectual contests. He was
a boyish friend of Wendell Phillips, and was early associated with
many of that group of New England scholars who have done so much for
American literature during the past half-century. Motley was educated
at good schools near Boston, and entered Harvard at what would now
seem the ridiculously early age of thirteen. He cared too much for
general and voluminous reading to do thorough work in the prescribed
college course, but his wit, his brilliant mind and his impulsive
generosity made him a general favorite. After graduating from Harvard
he studied in Germany, becoming acquainted at Göttingen with Bismarck,
between whom and himself there sprang up an intimate friendship which
was renewed at every opportunity throughout his life. Bismarck said
of him that “The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate
appearance was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered
a drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the
ladies.” He was married in 1837 to Mary, sister of Park Benjamin, a
most attractive and beautiful woman, and two years later he published
an historical novel called “Morton’s Hope.” Neither this book nor
another called “Merry Mount” proved a success, and both Motley and
his friends were convinced that his real field of work was that of the
historian. His first attempt in this direction was an essay published
in the “North American Review” on the “Polity of the Puritans,” which
not only demonstrated his skill and ability but gave expression to his
intense love of liberty and to his lofty patriotism.
An interesting episode in Motley’s life was his election in 1849 to
the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He does not seem to have
been well adapted for a legislator and never sought a re-election.
The incident which he most vividly remembered in this connection was
his careful preparation of a report from the Committee on Education,
of which he was chairman, proposing measures which he had convinced
himself were for the best, and the apparent ease with which a country
member, Geo. S. Boutwell, who afterwards distinguished himself in the
field of national politics, demolished his arguments, and convinced
everybody, including the author of the report of the opposite view.
Mr. Motley began the collection of materials for his “History of
Holland” about 1846. He devoted ten years to its preparation, making
careful researches at Berlin, Dresden, the Hague and Brussels. When
finally he had brought it to a conclusion he did not find it easy to
make satisfactory arrangements for its publication. The leading house
in London declined it, and it was finally published at the expense of
the author. It was another and most marked example of the occasional
lack of insight on the part of the wisest and best trained publishers,
for the book which had gone begging to be printed was received
everywhere with acclamations. Guizot, perhaps the foremost historian
of modern times, personally supervised the translation into French,
and wrote the introduction. The book had a large sale on both sides
of the Atlantic, and Mr. Motley was at once recognized as a great
historian. Mr. Froude has very justly said that this history is as
“complete as industry and genius can make it,” and “one which will
take its place among the finest stories in this or any other language.”
Motley lived for the next two years in Boston, taking much interest
in the “Atlantic Monthly,” though he was too much engaged with
historical study to contribute very frequently to its columns. In
1858 he returned to England, where he lived for most of his remaining
life, visiting America only three times, and making on each occasion
a comparatively short stay. He found residence abroad more convenient
for historical research. His position in English society was an
enviable one, and his daughters were all married to Englishmen, one
of them to Sir William Vernon Harcourt. This residence in England,
however, did not wean his heart from America or its institutions or
make him any less an ardent patriot, and perhaps he never rendered
his country a more signal service than when, on finding that the
higher classes in England sympathized with the South, he addressed two
letters to the London “Times,” which did much to bring about a change
of sentiment, and which remained as monuments to his loyalty and to
his ability as an advocate.
Mr. Motley had been appointed Secretary of the American Legation
at St. Petersburg in 1841, but had found the climate too rigorous
and had continued at his post only a few months before tendering his
resignation. He was now to undertake a more serious task in diplomacy.
President Lincoln appointed him, in 1861, Minister to Austria. He was
so absorbed in the great struggle going on in his own country that he
gave up for the time the historical studies which made so large a part
of his ordinary life, and “lived only in the varying fortunes of the
day, his profound faith and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him
above the natural influence of a by no means sanguine temperament.”
He continued Minister to Austria, performing the difficult service
of that office with discretion and with credit until 1867, when,
in consequence of a letter received by President Johnson from some
obscure source, inquiries were made which Mr. Motley considered
insulting, and he at once tendered his resignation.
He had published in 1860 two volumes of his “History of the United
Netherlands,” and they had been received with all the favor that
had greeted his former great work. The American war had delayed the
completion of the book, but in 1868 he published the other two volumes.
An article from the “Edinburgh Review” discussing the first two
volumes says: “Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications
seldom found united――to a great capacity for historical research he
adds much power of pictorial representation.”
This is the secret of his great success. Men who excel in the use
of language are too often unwilling to undertake the drudgery which
research entails, while those who are able and willing to read
voluminous correspondence and con over numberless dispatches in order
to establish some historical fact, are frequently unable to clothe the
fact in words which will so illumine and illustrate the truth as to
make it really live in the mind of the reader. That Motley possessed
both of these abilities along with those others which made him to
a very wide circle in both Europe and America a much loved man, is
sufficient reason for the place that has been given him in the history
of men of letters.
Probably, at the request of Senator Sumner, Mr. Motley was in 1869
appointed Minister to England. The position was in many respects most
agreeable to him. It gave him a post of great influence in a society
in which he was known and admired, and opened possibilities of high
service to the country which he loved with an ardor that amounted
to enthusiasm. The Alabama claims were being urged upon the British
Government, and the difficulties and responsibilities were very great.
He was suddenly recalled in 1870 under circumstances that wounded
him so deeply that it may be said he never recovered from the cruel
surprise. The most probable explanation of President Grant’s course
seems to be that it was the outcome of his difficulty with Mr. Sumner
over his San Domingo policy, and that Mr. Motley’s tastes and the
pursuits to which he had devoted his life made him a man with whom
the President could not in any large measure sympathize. When,
therefore, the President found his favorite measure defeated largely
by the influence of Mr. Sumner, he ceased to have cause to retain
Mr. Sumner’s friend in so responsible a post. The whole matter looks,
at this distance, discreditable, but it was probably the system of
political favoritism then in vogue rather than either the President or
his Secretary of State that was to blame.
Mr. Motley had intended to devote his last years to a “History of the
Thirty Years’ War,” but before undertaking it he wrote “The Life and
Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a View of the
Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years’ War,” which has been
recognized as the most classical of his productions. It was his last
work. Even before the death of Mrs. Motley in 1874, he was in somewhat
feeble health, and while he did not abandon literary labor, he gave up
at this time any hope of being able to engage in protracted effort. He
spent a part of the year 1875 in Boston, returning to his daughter’s
residence in Devonshire, where he died in 1877. Dean Stanley spoke
of him as “one of the brightest lights of the Western Hemisphere,
the high-spirited patriot, the faithful friend of England’s best
and purest spirits; the brilliant, the indefatigable historian.” A
distinguished countryman of his own had once introduced him to an
audience as one “whose name belongs to no single country and to no
single age: as a statesman and diplomatist and patriot, ♦he belongs
to America; as a scholar, to the world of letters; as a historian, all
ages will claim him in the future.”
♦ ‘be’ replaced with ‘he’
* * * * *
BISMARCK.¹
GLIMPSES OF NOTED PEOPLE FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L. EDITED BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 1889.
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
WHEN I called, Bismarck was at dinner, so I left my card and said I
would come back in half an hour. As soon as my card had been carried
to him (as I learned afterwards) he sent a servant after me to the
hotel, but I had gone another way. When I came back I was received
with open arms. I can’t express to you how cordially he received me.
If I had been his brother, instead of an old friend, he could not have
shown more warmth and affectionate delight in seeing me. I find I like
him even better than I thought I did, and you know how high an opinion
I always expressed of his talents and disposition. He is a man of
very noble character and of very powerful mind. The prominent place
which he now occupies as a statesman sought _him_. He did not seek
it, or any other office. The stand which he took in the Assembly from
conviction, on the occasion of the outbreak of 1848, marked him at
once to all parties as one of the leading characters of Prussia. Of
course, I don’t now go into the rights and wrongs of the matter, but
I listened with great interest, as you may suppose, to his detailed
history of the revolutionary events of that year, and his share in
them, which he narrated to me in a long conversation which we had last
night. He wanted me to stay entirely in his house, but as he has his
wife’s father and mother with him, and as I saw that it was necessary
to put up a bed in a room where there was none, I decidedly begged off.
I breakfasted there this morning, and am to dine there, with a party,
to-day. To-morrow, I suppose, I shall dine there _en famille_. I am
only afraid that the landlord here will turn me into the streets for
being such a poor _consommateur_ for him, and all I can do is to order
vast quantities of seltzer water.
The principal change in Bismarck is that he has grown stouter, but,
being over six feet, this is an improvement. His voice and manner are
singularly unchanged. His wife I like very much indeed; very friendly,
intelligent and perfectly unaffected, and treats me like an old friend.
In short, I can’t better describe the couple than by saying that they
are as unlike M. and Mme. de ―――― as it is possible to be.
In the summer of 1851 he told me that the Minister, Manteuffel, asked
him one day abruptly if he would accept the post of Ambassador at
Frankfort, to which (although the proposition was as unexpected a one
to him as if I should hear by the next mail that I had been chosen
Governor of Massachusetts) he answered, after a moment’s deliberation,
yes, without another word. The King, the same day, sent for him, and
asked him if he would accept the place, to which he made the same
brief answer, “Ja.” His Majesty expressed a little surprise that he
made no queries or conditions, when Bismarck replied that anything
the King felt strong enough to propose to him he felt strong enough
to accept. I only write these details that you may have an idea of the
man. Strict integrity and courage of character, a high sense of honor,
a firm religious belief, united with remarkable talents, make up
necessarily a combination which cannot be found any day in any court,
and I have no doubt that he is destined to be Prime Minister, unless
his obstinate truthfulness, which is apt to be a stumbling-block for
politicians, stands in his way....
Well, he accepted the post, and wrote to his wife next day, who was
preparing for a summer’s residence in a small house on the sea-coast,
that he could not come because he was already Minister in Frankfort.
The result, as he said, was three days of tears on her part. He had
previously been leading the life of a plain country ’squire, with a
moderate income, had never held any position in the government or in
diplomacy, and had hardly ever been to court. He went into the office
with a holy horror of the mysterious nothings of diplomacy, but soon
found how little there was in the whole “galimatias.” Of course, my
politics are very different from his, although not so antipodal as
you might suppose, but I can talk with him as frankly as I could with
you, and I am glad of an opportunity of hearing the other side put by
a man whose talents and character I esteem, and who so well knows _le
dessous des cartes_.
* * * * *
THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN.¹
¹ Copyright, J. Lewis Stackpole.
MEANTIME, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers had
been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being aware that the
fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well the
thousand obstacles which it had to surmount. They had guessed its
progress by the illumination from the blazing villages; they had
heard its salvos of artillery on its arrival at North Aa; but since
then all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in sickening
alternation, distracting every breast. They knew that the wind
was unfavorable, and at the dawn of each day every eye was turned
wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the easterly breeze
prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and housetops,
that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus
patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery
endured at Harlem had not reached that depth and intensity of agony
to which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, malt-cake, horseflesh, had
entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats and other vermin were esteemed
luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their
milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day, and
distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life
among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around
the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for
any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran
along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily
devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching
gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed
fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped
from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food; but
these expedients could not avert starvation. The daily mortality was
frightful; infants starved to death on the maternal breasts which
famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets,
with their dead children in their arms. In many a house the watchmen,
in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses――father, mother,
children, side by side; for a disorder called the plague, naturally
engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to
abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday
through the city, and the doomed inhabitants, fell like grass beneath
its scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank
before this scourge alone; yet the people resolutely held out,――women
and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of
their foreign foe,――an evil more horrible than pest or famine.
Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however,
occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead
body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness
against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even
assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches
as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him as
he reached a triangular place in the centre of the town, into which
many of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side of
which stood the church of Saint Pancras. There stood the burgomaster,
a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and a tranquil but
commanding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and
then exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally preserved,
“What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do not break our
vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards?――a fate more horrible
than the agony which she now endures. I tell you I have made an oath
to hold the city; and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I
can die but once, whether by your hands, the enemy’s, or by the hand
of God. My own fate is indifferent to me; not so that of the city
intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved;
but starvation is preferable to the dishonored death which is the only
alternative. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal;
here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among
you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so
long as I remain alive.”...
On the 28th of September a dove flew into the city, bringing a letter
from Admiral Boisot. In this dispatch the position of the fleet at
North Aa was described in encouraging terms, and the inhabitants were
assured that, in a very few days at furthest, the long-expected relief
would enter their gates. The tempest came to their relief. A violent
equinoctial gale on the night of the 1st and 2d of October came
storming from the northwest, shifting after a few hours full eight
points, and then blowing still more violently from the southwest. The
waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern
coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean rising
over the earth and sweeping with unrestrained power across the ruined
dykes. In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa,
instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water.... On it
went, sweeping over the broad waters which lay between Zoeterwoude
and Zwieten; as they approached some shallows which led into the great
mere, the Zealanders dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength
shouldered every vessel through.... On again the fleet of Boisot still
went, and, overcoming every obstacle entered the city on the morning
of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved.
* * * * *
ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE.
(FROM “RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.”)
ON Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the
Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and
gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. William the
Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in
a very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved hat of dark felt, with a
silken cord round the crown, such as had been worn by the “Beggars”
in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck
from which also depended one of the Beggars’ medals with the motto,
“_Fidèle jusqu’ à la besace_;” while a loose surcoat of gray frieze
cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide-slashed underclothes,
completed his costume. Gérard presented himself at the doorway, and
demanded a passport, which the Prince directed his secretary to make
out for him....
At two o’clock the company rose from the table. The Prince led the way,
intending to pass to his private apartments above. The dining-room,
which was on the ground floor, opened into a little, square vestibule,
which communicated through an arched passage-way with the main
entrance into the courtyard. The vestibule was also directly at
the foot of the wooden staircase leading to the next floor, and was
scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left side, as one approached the
stairway, was an obscure arch sunk deep in the wall, and completely
in shadow of the door. Behind this arch a portal opened to the narrow
lane at the side of the house. The stairs themselves were completely
lighted by a large window half-way up the flight.
The Prince came from the dining-room, and began leisurely to ascend.
He had only reached the second stair, when a man emerged from the
sunken arch, and, standing within a foot or two of him, discharged a
pistol full at his heart. Three balls entered his body, one of which,
passing quite through him, struck with violence upon the wall beyond.
The Prince exclaimed in French, as he felt the wound: “O my God,
have mercy upon my soul! O my God, have mercy upon this poor people!”
These were the last words he ever spake, save that when his sister
immediately afterwards asked him if he commended his soul to Jesus
Christ, he faintly answered, “Yes.” His master-of-horse had caught him
in his arms as the fatal shot was fired.
The Prince was then placed on the stairs for an instant, when he
immediately began to swoon. He was afterwards laid upon a couch in the
dining-room, where in a few minutes he breathed his last in the arms
of his wife and sister.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN FISKE.
DISTINGUISHED LECTURER AND HISTORIAN.
IT may be doubted whether even Macaulay exhibited more precocious
ability than did the man who for thirty years has held a foremost
place among the philosophers and historians of our country. The
boy who read Cæsar and Rollin and Josephus at seven, who translated
Greek at twelve by the aid of a dictionary which gave only the Latin
equivalents of Greek words, who at seventeen had read the whole of
Virgil, Horace, Tacitus, Sallust, Suetonius, and much of Livy, Cicero,
Ovid, Catullus, and Juvenal, and at the same time knew his mathematics
up to and including much of the work of the sophomore year in college,
could read the Greek of Plato and Herodotus at sight, kept a diary
in Spanish, and read German, French, Italian and Portuguese easily,
surely this was one of the boys remarkable in the history of the
world. Not only was John Fiske able to work for twelve hours a day
and for twelve months in the year at his studies, but in spite of this
strenuous application he was able to maintain vigorous health and to
enter with enthusiasm into outdoor life.
Mr. Fiske was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1842. His original
name was Edmund Fiske Green, but when his widowed mother became
the wife of Edwin W. Stoughton, he took the name of one of his
maternal ancestors and was henceforth known as John Fiske. Until he
entered Harvard in 1860 he was an inmate of his grandmother’s home
in Middletown, Connecticut. But since that time he has lived almost
continuously in Cambridge. After being graduated from Harvard College
he spent two years in the law school and opened an office in Boston.
He never devoted much attention to the practice of law, however,
and used his office mainly as a convenient literary workshop. He had
been married while in the law school, and from the first his family
depended for support upon his diligence and success as a writer.
His literary work has taken two main directions, his most noted books
being studies in evolutionary philosophy and treatises upon special
features of American history. For a number of years he was connected
with the faculty at Harvard, as lecturer or instructor, and he was
for seven years Assistant Librarian, but since 1879 he has only been
associated with the University as a member of its Board of Overseers.
Thirty-five lectures on the Doctrine of Evolution, delivered at
Harvard in 1871, were afterwards expanded and published under the
title of “Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy.” Two of his most notable
papers are “The Destiny of Man” and “The Idea of God,” but Mr. Fiske
is best known for the fresh and vigorous delightful and philosophical
way in which he has written of American history. His principal books
in this department are “The Beginnings of New England;” “The American
Revolution;” “The Discovery of America,” and “The Critical Period of
American History.” He has written somewhat for young people, notably
“The War of Independence,” and perhaps has conferred no greater favor
on his youthful countrymen than in the preparation of two school books,
“Civil Government in the United States” and “A History of the United
States.” Certainly there could be no more delightful innovation than
the way in which he introduces his young student to the philosophy of
government. He tells a lively story of the siege and final surrender
of a mediæval town, and how the citizen delegated to make the
capitulation, a lean, lank, half-starved stuttering fellow, replied
to the question of why they had rebelled, with the significant phrase,
“Tut-tut-tut-too much taxes.”
The boy who reads this at the opening of his text-book is not likely
to imagine that his subject is a dry and uninteresting one, and
is ready to accept the author’s definition of government as the
power that lays taxes. These books of Mr. Fiske’s, with his numerous
contributions to periodicals and his lectures before large audiences
in many cities, have done more than perhaps is due to any other one
man to make the study of American history popular, and to spread
among our people sound ideas on the theory of our government. With
his vigorous health and wonderful activity it would seem that very
much more is still to be expected from a man who has already done so
much, and it is entirely safe to predict that the name of John Fiske
will stand in the literary history of this time as one of the most
remarkable, most fertile, and most useful men of his age.
* * * * *
LAND DISCOVERED.¹
FROM “THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.”
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
BY September 25th, the Admiral’s chief difficulty had come to be the
impatience of his crews at not finding land. On that day there was a
mirage, or some such illusion, which Columbus and all hands supposed
to be a coast in front of them, and hymns of praise were sung, but at
dawn next day they were cruelly undeceived. Flights of strange birds
and other signs of land kept raising hopes which were presently dashed
again, and the men passed through alternately hot and cold fits of
exultation and dejection. Such mockery seemed to show that they were
entering a realm of enchantment. Somebody, perhaps one of the released
jail-birds, hinted that if a stealthy thrust should happen some night
to push the Admiral overboard, it could be plausibly said that he had
slipped and fallen while star-gazing. His situation grew daily more
perilous, and the fact that he was an Italian commanding Spaniards
did not help him. Perhaps what saved him was their vague belief in his
superior knowledge; they may have felt that they should need him in
going back....
At daybreak the boats were lowered and Columbus, with a large part of
his company, went ashore. Upon every side were trees of unknown kinds,
and the landscape seemed exceedingly beautiful. Confident that they
must have attained the object for which they set sail, the crews were
wild with exultation. Their heads were dazed with fancies of princely
fortunes close at hand. The officers embraced Columbus or kissed his
hands, while the sailors threw themselves at his feet, craving pardon
and favor.
These proceedings were watched with unutterable amazement and awe by
a multitude of men, women and children of cinnamon hue, different from
any kind of people the Spaniards had ever seen. All were stark naked
and most of them were more or less greased and painted. They thought
that the ships were sea-monsters and the white men supernatural
creatures descended from the sky. At first they fled in terror as
these formidable beings came ashore, but presently, as they found
themselves unmolested, curiosity began to overcome fear, and they
slowly approached the Spaniards, stopping at every few paces to
prostrate themselves in adoration. After a time, as the Spaniards
received them with encouraging nods and smiles, they waxed bold
enough to come close to the visitors and pass their hands over them,
doubtless to make sure that all this marvel was reality and not a mere
vision. Experiences in Africa had revealed the eagerness of barbarians
to trade off their possessions for trinkets, and now the Spaniards
began exchanging glass beads and hawks’ bells for cotton yarn, tame
parrots, and small gold ornaments.
Some sort of conversation in dumb show went on, and Columbus naturally
interpreted everything in such wise as to fit his theories. Whether
the natives understood him or not when he asked them where they got
their gold, at any rate they pointed to the south, and thus confirmed
Columbus in his suspicion that he had come to some island a little to
the north of the opulent Cipango. He soon found that it was a small
island, and he understood the name of it to be Guanahani. He took
formal possession of it for Castile, just as the discoverers of the
Cape Verde islands and the Guinea coasts had taken possession of those
places for Portugal; and he gave it a Christian name, San Salvador.
* * * * *
THE FEDERAL CONVENTION.¹
FROM “THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF AMERICAN HISTORY.”
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
THE Federal Convention did wisely in withholding its debates from the
knowledge of the people. It was felt that discussion would be more
untrammeled, and that its result ought to go before the country as the
collective and unanimous voice of the convention.
There was likely to be wrangling enough among themselves; but should
their scheme be unfolded, bit by bit, before its parts could be viewed
in their mutual relations, popular excitement would become intense,
there might be riots, and an end would be put to that attitude of
mental repose so necessary for the constructive work that was to
be done. It was thought best that the scheme should be put forth as
a completed whole, and that for several years, even, until the new
system of government should have had a fair trial, the traces of the
individual theories and preferences concerned in its formation should
not be revealed.
For it was generally assumed that a system of government new in some
important respects would be proposed by the convention, and while the
people awaited the result the wildest speculations and rumors were
current. A few hoped, and many feared, that some scheme of monarchy
would be established. Such surmises found their way across the ocean,
and hopes were expressed in England that, should a king be chosen, it
might be a younger son of George III. It was even hinted, with alarm,
that, through gratitude to our recent allies, we might be persuaded
to offer the crown to some member of the royal family of France.
No such thoughts were entertained, however, by any person present
in the convention. Some of the delegates came with the design of
simply amending the articles of confederation by taking away from the
States the power of regulating commerce, and intrusting this power
to Congress. Others felt that if the work were not done thoroughly
now another chance might never be offered; and these men thought
it necessary to abolish the confederation and establish a federal
republic, in which the general government should act directly upon
the people. The difficult problem was how to frame a plan of this sort
which people could be made to understand and adopt. At the very outset
some of the delegates began to exhibit symptoms of that peculiar kind
of moral cowardice which is wont to afflict free governments, and of
which American history furnishes many instructive examples. It was
suggested that palliatives and half-measures would be far more likely
to find favor with the people than any thoroughgoing reform, when
Washington suddenly interposed with a brief but immortal speech, which
ought to be blazoned in letters of gold and posted on the wall of
every American assembly that shall meet to nominate a candidate, or
declare a policy, or pass a law, so long as the weakness of human
nature endures. Rising from his President’s chair, his tall figure
drawn up to its full height, he exclaimed in tones unwontedly solemn
with suppressed emotion: “It is too probable that no plan we propose
will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained.
If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how
can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the
wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.”
This outburst of noble eloquence carried conviction to every one,
and henceforth we do not hear that any attempt was avowedly made to
avoid the issues as they came up. It was a most wholesome tonic. It
braced up the convention to high resolves, and impressed upon all the
delegates that they were in a situation where faltering and trifling
were both wicked and dangerous. From that moment the mood in which
they worked caught something from the glorious spirit of Washington.
There was need of such high purpose, for two plans were presently
laid before the meeting, which, for a moment, brought out one of the
chief elements of antagonism existing between the States, and which at
first seemed irreconcilable. It was the happy compromise which united
and harmonized these two plans that smoothed the further work of the
convention, and made it possible for a stable and powerful government
to be constructed.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN BACH McMASTER.
HISTORIAN OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.
JOHN BACH McMASTER is one of the few men who excel in widely different
fields. To be a teacher of English grammar, a college instructor in
civil engineering, to do the work of a specialist in the United States
Coast Survey, to write a monumental history and to build up a great
department in a leading university, surely this is a sufficiently long
catalogue for a man forty-five years old. The father of Prof. McMaster
was, at the beginning of the Civil War, a banker and planter at New
Orleans. The son, however, grew up in the Northern metropolis, and was
graduated at the College of the City of New York at the age of twenty,
in 1872. After a year devoted to teaching grammar in that institution
he took up the study of civil engineering, and began, in the autumn of
1873, the work of preparing his “History of the People of the United
States from the Revolution to the Civil War.”
He was appointed, in 1877, Instructor in Civil Engineering at
Princeton, and became, in 1883, Professor of American History in the
University of Pennsylvania. Besides the four volumes of his “History”
already published, he has written a “Life of Benjamin Franklin” for
the “Men of Letters Series,” and has been a frequent contributor upon
historical topics to the leading periodicals. His “History” is not a
story of political intrigue, of the petty jealousies of neighboring
communities, of our quarrels with each other or with the Indians,
but tells in a clear and strikingly pictorial manner the story of the
people themselves, of how they lived and dressed, what they ate, what
were their pleasures, their social customs, how they worshipped, how
they grew to be a mighty nation and became the people that we are. It
is a wonderful story, and not only is every page filled with living
interest, but any chapter might well be a monument to the painstaking
accuracy, the devoted labor, the historical insight, and the literary
skill of the author. But if Prof. McMaster has been in love with his
work as a historian he has none the less been devoted to his office
as an instructor of youth. During the years in which he has filled
a chair in the University of Pennsylvania, the department of history
of the United States has assumed such proportions that it may fairly
claim to outrank any similar department in any other institution in
the country. In this way and as a lecturer before bodies of teachers,
Prof. McMaster has held a foremost place in the movement which has
demanded, and successfully demanded, that in the lower schools greater
attention shall be paid to the history and institutions of our own
country, and which is bringing about a more intelligent patriotism
and a widespread interest in the way in which we govern ourselves.
The boy who applies for admission to the University of Pennsylvania,
if he imagines that the history of his country consists of a list of
dates of explorations, battles, and of presidents, and of the names of
generals and politicians, will be astonished when he is asked to draw
a map showing how the United States obtained the various portions of
its territory, to tell what were the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions,
and to outline the relations between the President and the two houses
of Congress in our government. But the trembling applicant will find
his blundering answers leniently judged, and when he looks back from
the eminence of his graduation day upon this time of trial, he will
agree that the view of history taken by Prof. McMaster is the true one,
and that no man has done more than he to bring the intelligent people
of our time to that opinion.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN WORKMAN IN 1784.¹
(FROM “A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.”)
¹ Copyright, D. Appleton & Co.
THERE can, however, be no doubt that a wonderful amelioration has
taken place since that day in the condition of the poor. Their houses
were meaner, their food was coarser, their clothing was of commoner
stuff; their wages were, despite the depreciation that has gone
on in the value of money, lower by one-half than at present. A man
who performed what would be called unskilled labor, who sawed wood,
dug ditches, who mended roads, who mixed mortar, who carried boards
to the carpenter and bricks to the mason, or helped to cut hay in
harvest-time, usually received as the fruit of his daily toil two
shillings. Sometimes when the laborers were few he was paid more, and
became the envy of his fellows if at the end of a week he took home
to his family fifteen shillings, a sum now greatly exceeded by four
dollars. Yet all authorities agree that in 1784 the hire of workmen
was twice as great as in 1774.
On such a pittance it was only by the strictest economy that a
mechanic kept his children from starvation and himself from jail. In
the low and dingy rooms which he called his home were wanting many
articles of adornment and of use now to be found in the dwelling of
the poorest of his class. Sand sprinkled on the floor did duty as a
carpet. There was no glass on his table, there was no china in his
cupboard, there were no prints on his wall. What a stove was he did
not know, coal he had never seen, matches he had never heard of. Over
a fire of fragments of barrels and boxes, which he lit with the sparks
struck from a flint, or with live coals brought from a neighbor’s
hearth, his wife cooked up a rude meal and served it in pewter dishes.
He rarely tasted fresh meat as often as once in a week, and paid
for it a much higher price than his posterity. Everything, indeed,
which ranked as a staple of life was very costly. Corn stood at three
shillings the bushel, wheat at eight and six pence, an assize of
bread was four pence, a pound of salt pork was ten pence. Many other
commodities now to be seen on the tables of the poor were either quite
unknown or far beyond the reach of his scanty purse. Unenviable is
the lot of that man who cannot, in the height of the season, when the
wharfs and markets are heaped with baskets and crates of fruit, spare
three cents for a pound of grapes, or five cents for as many peaches,
or, when Sunday comes round, indulge his family with watermelons or
cantaloupes. One hundred years ago the wretched fox-grape was the only
kind that found its way to market, and was the luxury of the rich.
Among the fruits and vegetables of which no one had then even heard
are cantaloupes, many varieties of peaches and pears, tomatoes and
rhubarb, sweet corn, the cauliflower, the eggplant, head lettuce,
and okra. On the window benches of every tenement-house may be seen
growing geraniums and verbenas, flowers not known a century ago.
In truth, the best-kept gardens were then rank with hollyhocks and
sunflowers, roses and snowballs, lilacs, pinks, tulips, and, above all,
the Jerusalem cherry, a plant once much admired, but now scarcely seen.
If the food of an artisan would now be thought coarse, his clothes
would be thought abominable. A pair of yellow buckskin or leathern
breeches, a checked shirt, a red flannel jacket, a rusty felt hat
cocked up at the corners, shoes of neats-skin set off with huge
buckles of brass, and a leathern apron, comprised his scanty wardrobe.
The leather he smeared with grease to keep it soft and flexible. His
sons followed in his footsteps, and were apprenticed to neighboring
tradesmen. His daughter went out to service. She performed, indeed,
all the duties at present exacted from women of her class; but
with them were coupled many others rendered useless by the great
improvement that has taken place in the conveniences of life.
She mended the clothes, she did up the ruffs, she ran on errands from
one end of the town to the other, she milked the cows, made the butter,
walked ten blocks for a pail of water, spun flax for the family linen,
and, when the year was up, received ten pounds for her wages. Yet,
small as was her pay, she had, before bestowing herself in marriage
upon the footman or the gardener, laid away in her stocking enough
guineas and joes to buy a few chairs, a table, and a bed.
* * * * *
“THE MINISTER IN NEW ENGLAND.”¹
(FROM “A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.”)
¹ Copyright, D. Appleton & Co.
HIGH as the doctors stood in the good graces of their fellow-men, the
ministers formed a yet more respected class of New England society.
In no other section of the country had religion so firm a hold on the
affections of the people. Nowhere else were men so truly devout, and
the ministers held in such high esteem. It had, indeed, from the days
of the founders of the colony been the fashion among New Englanders to
look to the pastor with profound reverence, not unmingled with awe. He
was not to them as other men were. He was the just man made perfect;
the oracle of divine will; the sure guide to truth. The heedless one
who absented himself from the preaching on a Sabbath was hunted up by
the tithing-man, was admonished severely, and, if he still persisted
in his evil ways, was fined, exposed in the stocks, or imprisoned in
the cage. To sit patiently on the rough board seats while the preacher
turned his hour-glass for the third time, and with his voice husky
from shouting, and the sweat pouring in streams down his face, went
on for an hour more, was a delectable privilege. In such a community
the authority of the reverend man was almost supreme. To speak
disrespectfully concerning him, to jeer at his sermons, or to laugh
at his odd ways, was sure to bring down on the offender a heavy fine.
His advice was often sought on matters of State, nor did he hesitate
to give, unasked, his opinion on what he considered the arbitrary acts
of the high functionaries of the province. In the years immediately
preceding the war the power of the minister in matters of government
and politics had been greatly impaired by the rise of that class
of laymen in the foremost ranks of which stood Otis and Hancock and
Samuel Adams. Yet his ♦spiritual influence was as great as ever.
He was still a member of the most learned and respected class in a
community by no means ignorant. He was a divine, and came of a family
of divines. Not a few of the preachers who witnessed the Revolution
could trace descent through an unbroken line of ministers, stretching
back from son to father for three generations, to some canting,
psalm-singing Puritan who bore arms with distinction on the great day
at Naseby, or had prayed at the head of Oliver’s troops, and had, at
the restoration, when the old soldiers of the protector were turning
their swords into reaping-hooks and their pikes into pruning-knives,
come over to New England to seek that liberty of worship not to be
found at home. Such a man had usually received an education at Harvard
or at Yale, and would in these days be thought a scholar of high
attainments.
♦ ‘spiritunl’ replaced with ‘spiritual’
OUR NATIONAL HUMORISTS
Illustration: OUR NATIONAL HUMORISTS
ROBT. J. BURDETT • “JOSH BILLINGS”
“MARK TWAIN”
CHAS. FOLEN ADAMS • “BILL NYE”
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
FRANCES MIRIAM WHITCHER.
THE “WIDOW BEDOTT” AND “WIDOW SPRIGGINS.”
IT was back in the early forties in “Neal’s Gazette” that the “Widow
Bedott Table Talk” series of articles began to attract attention, and
the question arose, Who is the Widow Bedott? for no one knew at that
time that Mrs. Whitcher was the real author behind this _nom-de-plume_.
James Neal himself――the well-known author of “Charcoal Sketches” and
publisher of the magazine above referred to――was so struck with the
originality and clearness of the first of the series when submitted
that he sought a correspondence with the author, thinking it was
a man, and addressed her as “My dear Bedott.” Mrs. Whitcher often
insisted that she must cease to write, as her humorous sketches were
not relished by some of her neighbors whom they touched, but Mr. Neal
would not hear to it. In a letter of September 10, 1846, he wrote: “It
is a theory of mine that those gifted with truly humorous genius like
yourself are more useful as moralists, philosophers and teachers than
whole legions of the gravest preachers. They speak more effectually to
the general ear and heart, even though they who hear are not aware of
the fact that they are imbibing wisdom.” Further on he adds: ‘I would
add that Mr. Godey called on me to inquire as to the authorship of the
“Bedott Papers,” wishing evidently to obtain you for a correspondent
to the “Ladies’ Book.”’
For richness of humor and masterly handling of the Yankee dialect,
certainly, the “Widow Bedott” and the “Widow Spriggins” occupy a
unique space in humorous literature, and the influence she has
exercised on modern humorists is more in evidence than most readers
are aware of. Her husband, “Hezekiah Bedott,” is a character who will
live alongside of “Josiah Allen” as one of the prominent heroes of the
humorous literature of our country. In fact, no reader of both these
authors will fail to suspect that Miss Marietta Holley used “Hezekiah”
as a model for her “Josiah;” while the redoubtable widow herself was
enough ♦similar to “Samantha Allen” to have been her natural, as she,
perhaps, was her literary, grandmother. Nor was Miss Holley alone
in following her lead. Ever since the invention of “Hezekiah Bedott”
by Mrs. Whitcher, an imaginary person of some sort, behind whom the
author might conceal his own identity, has seemed to be a necessity
to our humorists, as witness the _noms-de-plume_ of “Artemus Ward,”
“Josh Billings,” “Mark Twain,” etc., under which our greatest American
humorists have written.
♦ ‘similiar’ replaced with ‘similar’
Mrs. Whitcher was the daughter of Mr. Lewis Berry, and was born
at Whitesboro, New York, 1811, and died there in 1852. As a child
she was unusually precocious. Before she learned her letters, even
before she was four years old, she was making little rhymes and funny
stories, some of which are preserved by her relatives. Her education
was obtained in the village school of Whitesboro, and she began to
contribute at an early age stories and little poems to the papers.
After she had won considerable literary fame she was married, in 1847,
to the Rev. Benjamin W. Whitcher, pastor of the Protestant Episcopal
Church at Elmira, New York, where she resided with her husband for a
period of three years, continuing to contribute her humorous papers
to the magazine, and taking as her models her acquaintances at Elmira,
as she had been accustomed to do at Whitesboro. The people of Elmira,
however, were not so ready to be victimized, and turned against her
such shafts of persecution and even insult for her ludicrous pictures
of them as to destroy her happiness and her husband’s usefulness as
a minister to an extent that they were compelled to leave Elmira, and
they removed to Whitesboro in 1850, where, as stated above, she died
two years later.
Mrs. Whitcher was something of an artist as well as a writer and
illustrated certain of her sketches with her own hands. During
her life none of her works were published except in magazines and
periodicals, but after her death these contributions were collected
and published in book form; the first entitled “The Widow Bedott
Papers,” appearing in 1855, with an introduction by Alice B. Neal. In
1857 came “The Widow Spriggins, Mary Allen and Other Sketches,” edited
by Mrs. M. L. Ward Whitcher with a memoir of the author. We publish in
connection with this sketch the poem “Widow Bedott to Elder Sniffles”
and also her own humorous comments on some of her poetry, about her
husband Hezekiah, which she wrote to a friend, pausing as the various
stanzas suggest, to throw in amusing side lights on neighborhood
character and gossip.
* * * * *
WIDOW BEDOTT TO ELDER SNIFFLES.
(FROM THE “WIDOW BEDOTT PAPERS.”)
O REVEREND sir, I do declare
It drives me most to frenzy,
To think of you a lying there
Down sick with influenzy.
A body’d thought it was enough
To mourn your wife’s departer,
Without sich trouble as this ere
To come a follerin’ arter.
But sickness and affliction, are
Sent by a wise creation,
And always ought to be underwent
By patience and resignation.
O I could to your bedside fly,
And wipe your weeping eyes,
And do my best to cheer you up,
If’t wouldn’t create surprise.
It’s a world of trouble we tarry in,
But, Elder, don’t despair;
That you may soon be movin’ again
Is constantly my prayer.
Both sick and well, you may depend
You’ll never be forgot
By your faithful and affectionate friend,
PRISCILLA POOL BEDOTT.
* * * * *
THE WIDOW’S POETRY ABOUT HEZEKIAH
AND HER COMMENTS ON THE SAME.
(FROM “WIDOW BEDOTT PAPERS.”)
YES,――he was one o’ the best men that ever trod shoe-leather, husband
was, though Miss Jenkins says (she ’twas Poll Bingham), _she_ says,
I never found it out till after he died, but that’s the consarndest
lie that ever was told, though it’s jest a piece with everything else
she says about me. I guess if everybody could see the poitry I writ
to his mem’ry, nobody wouldn’t think I dident set store by him. Want
to hear it? Well, I’ll see if I can say it; it ginerally affects me
wonderfully, seems to harrer up my feelin’s; but I’ll try. It begins
as follers:――
He never jawed in all his life,
He never was onkind,――
And (tho’ I say it that was his wife)
Such men you seldom find.
(That’s as true as the Scripturs; I never knowed him to say a harsh
word.)
I never changed my single lot,――
I thought ’twould be a sin――
(Though widder Jinkins says it’s because I never had a chance.) Now
’tain’t for me to say whether I ever had a numerous number o’ chances
or not, but there’s them livin’ that _might_ tell if they wos a mind
to; why, this poitry was writ on account of being joked about Major
Coon, three years after husband died. I guess the ginerality o’ folks
knows what was the nature o’ Majors Coon’s feelin’s towards me, tho’
his wife and Miss Jinkins _does_ say I tried to ketch him. The fact is,
Miss Coon feels wonderfully cut up ’cause she knows the Major took her
“Jack at a pinch,”――seein’ he couldent get such as he wanted, he took
such as he could get,――but I goes on to say――
I never changed my single lot,
I thought ’twould be a sin,――
For I thought so much o’ Deacon Bedott,
I never got married agin.
If ever a hasty word he spoke,
His anger dident last,
But vanished like tobacker smoke
Afore the wintry blast.
And since it was my lot to be
The wife of such a man,
Tell the men that’s after me
To ketch me if they can.
If I was sick a single jot,
He called the doctor in――
That’s a fact,――he used to be scairt to death if anything ailed me.
Now only jest think,――widder Jinkins told Sam Pendergrasses wife (she
’twas Sally Smith) that she guessed the deacon dident set no great
store by me, or he wouldent went off to confrence meetin’, when I was
down with the fever. The truth is, they couldent git along without him
no way. Parson Potter seldom went to confrence meetin’, and when _he_
wa’n’t there, who was ther’, pray tell, that knowed enough to take
the lead if husband dident do it? Deacon Kenipe hadent no gift, and
Deacon Crosby hadent no inclination, and so it all come onto Deacon
Bedott,――and he was always ready and willin’ to do his duty, you know;
as long as he was able to stand on his legs he continued to go to
confrence meetin’; why, I’ve knowed that man to go when he couldent
scarcely crawl on account o’ the pain in the spine of his back.
He had a wonderful gift, and he wa’n’t a man to keep his talents hid
up in a napkin,――so you see ’twas from a sense o’ duty he went when I
was sick, whatever Miss Jinkins may say to the contrary. But where was
I? Oh!――
If I was sick a single jot,
He called the doctor in――
I sot so much store by Deacon Bedott
I never got married agin.
A wonderful tender heart he had,
That felt for all mankind,――
It made him feel amazin’ bad
To see the world so blind.
Whiskey and rum he tasted not――
That’s as true as the Scripturs,――but if you’ll believe it, Betsy, Ann
Kenipe told my Melissy that Miss Jinkins said one day to their house
how’t she’d seen Deacon Bedott high, time and agin! did you ever!
Well, I’m glad nobody don’t pretend to mind anything _she_ says. I’ve
knowed Poll Bingham from a gal, and she never knowed how to speak the
truth――besides she always had a partikkeler spite against husband and
me, and between us tew I’ll tell you why if you won’t mention it, for
I make it a pint never to say nothin’ to injure nobody. Well, she was
a ravin’-distracted after my husband herself, but it’s a long story,
I’ll tell you about it some other time, and then you’ll know why
widder Jinkins is etarnally runnin’ me down. See,――where had I got to?
Oh, I remember now,――
Whisky and rum he tasted not,――
He thought it was a sin,――
I thought so much o’ Deacon Bedott
I never got married agin.
But now he’s dead! the thought is killin’,
My grief I can’t control――
He never left a single shillin’
His widder to console.
But that wa’n’t his fault――he was so out o’ health for a number o’
year afore he died, it ain’t to be wondered at he dident lay up
nothin’――however, it dident give him no great oneasiness,――he never
cared much for airthly riches, though Miss Pendergrass says she
heard Miss Jinkins say Deacon Bedott was as tight as the skin on his
back,――begrudged folks their vittals when they come to his house! did
you ever! why, he was the hull-souldest man I ever see in all my born
days. If I’d such a husband as Bill Jinkins was, I’d hold my tongue
about my neighbors’ husbands. He was a dretful mean man, used to git
drunk every day of his life, and he had an awful high temper,――used to
swear like all possest when he got mad,――and I’ve heard my husband say
(and he wa’n’t a man that ever said anything that wa’n’t true),――I’ve
heard _him_ say Bill Jinkins would cheat his own father out of
his eye teeth if he had a chance. Where was I? Oh! “His widder to
console,”――ther ain’t but one more verse, ’tain’t a very lengthy poim.
When Parson Potter read it, he says to me, says he,――“What did you
stop so soon for?”――but Miss Jinkins told the Crosby’s _she_ thought
I’d better a’ stopt afore I’d begun,――she’s a purty critter to talk so,
I must say. I’d like to see some poitry o’ hern,――I guess it would be
astonishin’ stuff; and mor’n all that, she said there wa’n’t a word o’
truth in the hull on’t,――said I never cared tuppence for the deacon.
What an everlastin’ lie! Why, when he died, I took it so hard I went
deranged, and took on so for a spell they was afraid they should have
to send me to a Lunatic Arsenal. But that’s a painful subject, I won’t
dwell on’t.
I conclude as follers:――
I’ll never change my single lot,――
I think ’twould be a sin,――
The inconsolable widder o’ Deacon Bedott
Don’t intend to git married agin.
Excuse my cryin’――my feelin’s always overcomes me so when I say that
poitry――O-o-o-o-o-o!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
CHARLES F. BROWNE.
(ARTEMUS WARD).
ARTEMUS WARD first revealed to the world that humor is a
characteristic trait of the Yankee, and he was the first to succeed
in producing a type of comic literature distinctively American, purely
the product of his original genius.
It is impossible to analyze his jokes or to tell why they are
irresistibly funny, but it would be generally admitted that his best
things are as much creations of genius as masterpieces of art are.
He was one of the kindest and most generous of men; he used his keen
wit to smite evil customs and to satirize immoral deeds, and he went
through his short life enjoying above everything to make people laugh
and to laugh himself, but with all his play of wit there was a tinge
of melancholy in his nature and a tendency to do the most unexpected
things, a tendency which he never tried to control. He was born in
Waterford, Maine, in 1834, and he came honestly by a view of humor
from his father’s side. He had only a most meagre school education,
and at fourteen he set himself to learn the printer’s trade, becoming
one of the best typesetters in the country.
He drifted from place to place and finally became one of the staff
of the “Commercial” at Toledo, Ohio, where he first displayed his
peculiar richness of humor in his news reports. In 1857 he became
local editor of the “Plain-Dealer” in Cleveland, and it was here his
sketches were first signed Artemus Ward, a name which he took from
a peculiar character who called on him once in his Cleveland office.
He is described at this time as being in striking degree gawky and
slouchy, with yellowish, straight hair, a loose swaggering gait, and
strangely ill-fitting clothes, though as his popularity and position
rose he took on more cultivated manners and grew very particular
regarding his dress.
His first attempts at lecturing were not marked with success and he
was forced to explain his jokes to his audiences to make the desired
laugh come, but he soon attracted attention and multitudes flocked
to hear the “grate showman,” with his “moral wax figgers.” In 1863 he
crossed the continent and on this trip he collected material for his
most humorous lectures and for the best of his chapters.
The Mormons furnished him with the material for his most telling
lecture, and it was a mark of his genius that he was irresistibly
drawn to Utah to study this peculiar type of American society.
He went to England in 1866, where, though in failing health, ending
in premature death, he created almost a sensation and had flattering
successes. The “Mormons” never failed to fill a hall and always
carried his audiences by storm.
Some of his most brilliant articles were written for “Punch,” and
the American humorist was recognized as a typical genius; but he
was a dying man while he was making his London audiences laugh at
his spontaneous wit, and his life came to an end at Southampton,
January 23, 1867.
He provided in his will for the establishment of an asylum for
printers and for the education of their orphan children, an action
which revealed, as many acts of his life had done, the kindly human
spirit of the humorist.
His published books, which owe much of their charm to his
characteristic spelling, are as follows: “Artemus Ward, His Book,”
and “Artemus Ward, His Travels” (1865), “Artemus Ward in London”
(1867), “Artemus Ward’s Lecture, as delivered in Egyptian Hall,
London,” edited by T. W. Robertson and E. P. Hingston (1869), and
“Artemus Ward, His Works Complete,” with biographical sketch by
Melville D. Landon (1875).
* * * * *
ARTEMUS WARD VISITS THE SHAKERS.
“MR. SHAKER,” sed I, “you see before you a Babe in the Woods, so to
speak, and he axes a shelter of you.”
“Yay,” said the Shaker, and he led the way into the house, another
bein’ sent to put my horse and wagon under kiver.
A solum female, lookin’ somewhat like a last year’s bean-pole stuck
into a long meal-bag, cum in and axed me was I athirst and did I
hunger? To which I asserted, “A few.” She went orf, and I endeavored
to open a conversation with the old man.
“Elder, I spect,” sed I.
“Yay,” he said.
“Health’s good, I reckon?”
“Yay.”
“What’s the wages of a Elder, when he understands his bizness――or do
you devote your sarvices gratooitous?”
“Yay.”
“Storm nigh, sir?”
“Yay.”
“If the storm continues there’ll be a mess underfoot, hay?”
“Yay.”
“If I may be so bold, kind sir, what’s the price of that pecooler kind
of wesket you wear, includin’ trimmin’s?”
“Yay.”
I pawsed a minit, and, thinkin’ I’d be faseshus with him and see how
that would go, I slapt him on the shoulder, burst into a hearty larf,
and told him that as a yayer he had no livin’ ekel.
He jumped up as if bilin’ water had been squirted into his ears,
groaned, rolled his eyes up tords the sealin’ and sed:
“You’re a man of sin!”
He then walked out of the room.
Directly thar cum in two young Shakeresses, as putty and slick lookin’
galls as I ever met. It is troo they was drest in meal-bags like the
old one I’d met previsly, and their shiny, silky hair was hid from
sight by long, white caps, such as I spose female gosts wear; but
their eyes sparkled like diamonds, their cheeks was like roses, and
they was charmin’ enuff to make a man throw stuns at his grandmother,
if they axed him to. They commenst clearing away the dishes, casting
shy glances at me all the time. I got excited. I forget Betsey Jane in
my rapter, and sez I:
“My pretty dears, how air you?”
“We air well,” they solumly sed.
“Where is the old man?” said I, in a soft voice.
“Of whom dost thou speak――Brother Uriah?”
“I mean that gay and festive cuss who calls me a man of sin. Shouldn’t
wonder if his name wasn’t Uriah.”
“He has retired.”
“Wall, my pretty dears,” sez I, “let’s have some fun. Let’s play puss
in the corner. What say?”
“Air you a ♦Shaker, sir?” they asked.
♦ ‘Skaker’ replaced with ‘Shaker’
“Wall, my pretty dears, I haven’t arrayed my proud form in a long
weskit yet, but if they wus all like you perhaps I’d jine ’em. As it
is, I am willing to be Shaker protemporary.”
They was full of fun. I seed that at fust, only they was a little
skeery. I tawt ’em puss in the corner, and sich like plase, and we had
a nice time, keepin’ quiet of course, so that the old man shouldn’t
hear. When we broke up, sez I:
“My pretty dears, ear I go, you have no objections have you? to a
innersent kiss at partin’?”
“Yay,” they said, and I――yayed.
* * * * *
ARTEMUS WARD AT THE TOMB OF SHAKESPEARE.
I’VE been lingerin’ by the tomb of the lamented Shakespeare.
It is a success.
I do not hes’tate to pronounce it as such.
You may make any use of this opinion that you see fit. If you think
its publication will subswerve the cause of literatoor, you may
publicate.
I told my wife Betsey, when I left home, that I should go to the
birthplace of the orthur of _Otheller_ and other Plays. She said
that as long as I kept out of Newgate she didn’t care where I went.
“But,” I said, “don’t you know he was the greatest Poit that ever
lived? Not one of these common poits, like that young idyit who writes
verses to our daughter, about the roses as groses, and the breezes as
blowses――but a Boss poit――also a philosopher, also a man who knew a
great deal about everything.”
Yes. I’ve been to Stratford onto the Avon, the Birth-place of
Shakespeare. Mr. S. is now no more. He’s been dead over three hundred
(300) years. The peple of his native town are justly proud of him.
They cherish his mem’ry, and them as sell picturs of his birth-place,
&c., make it prof’tible cherishin’ it. Almost everybody buys a pictur
to put into their Albiom.
“And this,” I said, as I stood in the old churchyard at Stratford,
beside a Tombstone, “this marks the spot where lies William W.
Shakespeare. Alars! and this is the spot where――”
“You’ve got the wrong grave,” said a man――a worthy villager;
“Shakespeare is buried inside the church.”
“Oh,” I said, “a boy told me this was it.” The boy larfed and put the
shillin’ I’d given him into his left eye in a inglorious manner, and
commenced moving backwards towards the street.
I pursood and captered him, and, after talking to him a spell in a
sarkastic stile, I let him went.
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford in 1564. All the
commentators, Shakesperian scholars, etsetry, are agreed on this,
which is about the only thing they are agreed on in regard to him,
except that his mantle hasn’t fallen onto any poet or dramatist hard
enough to hurt said poet or dramatist _much_. And there is no doubt if
these commentators and persons continner investigatin’ Shakespeare’s
career, we shall not in doo time, know anything about it at all. When
a mere lad little William attended the Grammar School, because, as he
said, the Grammar School wouldn’t attend him. This remarkable remark
coming from one so young and inexperunced, set peple to thinkin’ there
might be something in this lad. He subsequently wrote _Hamlet_ and
_George Barnwell_. When his kind teacher went to London to accept a
position in the offices of the Metropolitan Railway, little William
was chosen by his fellow-pupils to deliver a farewell address. “Go on,
sir,” he said, “in a glorous career. Be like a eagle, and soar, and
the soarer you get the more we shall be gratified! That’s so.”
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HENRY WHEELER SHAW.
(“JOSH BILLINGS.”)
IT is astonishing what effect is produced by peculiarities of form or
manner. It may be true that the writings of Thomas Carlyle owe much
of their force and vigor to his disregard for grammatical rules and
his peculiar arrangement of words and sentences; but one of the most
surprising instances of this kind is in the fact that the “Essay on
the Mule, by Josh Billings,” received no attention whatever, while
the same contribution transformed into the “Essa on the Muel, bi
Josh Billings,” was eagerly copied by almost every paper in the
country. Josh Billings once said that “Chaucer was a great poit, but
he couldn’t spel,” and apparently it was Mr. Shaw’s likeness, in this
respect, to the author of “Canterbury Tales” which won him much of his
fame.
He was the son of a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, born in
1818, and entered Hamilton College; but being captivated by stories of
Western life and adventure, abandoned college to seek his fortune in
the West. The fortune was slow in coming, and he worked as a laborer
on steamboats on the Ohio, and as a farmer, and finally drifted back
to Poughkeepsie, New York, as an auctioneer. Here he wrote his first
contribution to a periodical, “The Essa on the Muel,” which has been
above mentioned.
The popularity of the revised form of this classic of poor spelling
induced him to publish “Josh Billings’ Farmers’ Allminax,” which
continued for ten years, having during a part of the time a
circulation of one hundred and twenty-seven thousand copies per
annum. In 1863 Mr. Shaw entered the lecture-field. His lectures
being a series of pithy sayings without care or order, delivered
in an apparently awkward manner. The quaintness and drollery of
his discourse won very great popularity. For twenty years he was a
regular contributor of “The New York Weekly,” and it is said that the
articles which appeared in “The Century Magazine,” under the signature
of “Uncle Esek,” were his. His published books are “Josh Billings,
His Sayings;” “Josh Billings on Ice;” “Everybody’s Friend;” “Josh
Billings’ Complete Works,” and “Josh Billings’ Spice Box.”
Mr. Shaw died in Monterey, California, in 1885.
* * * * *
JOSH BILLING’S ADVERTISEMENT.
(FROM “JOSH BILLINGS, HIS WORKS.” 1876.)
I KAN sell for eighteen hundred and thirty-nine dollars a pallas,
a sweet and pensive retirement, lokated on the virgin banks ov the
Hudson, kontaining eighty-five acres. The land is luxuriously divided
by the hand of natur and art into pastor and tillage, into plain and
deklivity, into stern abruptness, and the dallianse ov moss-tufted
medder; streams ov sparkling gladness (thick with trout) danse
through this wilderness ov buty tew the low musik ov the kricket and
grasshopper. The evergreen sighs as the evening sephir flits through
its shadowy buzzum, and the aspen trembles like the luv-smitten harte
ov a damsell. Fruits ov the tropicks, in golden buty, melt on the bows,
and the bees go heavy and sweet from the fields to their garnering
hives. The manshun is ov Parian marble; the porch iz a single diamond,
set with rubiz and the mother ov pearl; the floors are ov rosewood,
and the ceilings are more butiful than the starry vault of heaven. Hot
and cold water bubbles and quirts in evry apartment, and nothing is
wanting that a poet could pra for, or art could portray. The stables
are worthy of the steeds ov Nimrod or the studs ov Akilles, and its
hennery waz bilt expressly for the birds of paradice; while sombre in
the distance, like the cave ov a hermit, glimpses are caught ov the
dorg-house. Here poets hav cum and warbled their laze――here skulptors
hav cut, here painters hav robbed the scene ov dreamy landscapes, and
here the philosopher diskovered the stun which made him the alkimist
ov natur. Next, northward ov this thing ov buty, sleeps the residence
and domain ov the Duke, John Smith, while southward, and nearer the
spice-breathing tropicks, may be seen the barronial villy ov Earl
Brown and the Duchess, Widder Betsy Stevens. Walls ov primitiff rock,
laid in Roman cement, bound the estate, while upward and downward the
eye catches the magesta and slow grander ov the Hudson. As the young
moon hangs like a cutting ov silver from the blue brest ov the ski, an
angel may be seen each night dansing with golden tiptoes on the green.
(N. B.――This angel goes with the place.)
* * * * *
MANIFEST DESTINY.
MANIFESS destiny iz the science ov going tew bust, or enny other place
before yu git thare. I may be rong in this centiment, but that iz
the way it strikes me; and i am so put together that when enny thing
strikes me i immejiately strike back. Manifess destiny mite perhaps be
blocked out agin as the condishun that man and things find themselfs
in with a ring in their nozes and sumboddy hold ov the ring. I may be
rong agin, but if i am, awl i have got tew sa iz i don’t kno it, and
what a man don’t kno ain’t no damage tew enny boddy else. The tru way
that manifess destiny had better be sot down iz the exact distance
that a frog kan jump down hill with a striped snake after him; i don’t
kno but i may be rong onst more, but if the frog don’t git ketched the
destiny iz jist what he iz a looking for.
When a man falls into the bottom ov a well and makes up hiz minde tew
stay thare, that ain’t manifess destiny enny more than having yure
hair cut short iz; but if he almost gits out and then falls down in
agin 16 foot deeper and brakes off hiz neck twice in the same plase
and dies and iz buried thare at low water, that iz manifess destiny
on the square. Standing behind a cow in fly time and gitting kicked
twice at one time must feel a good deal like manifess destiny. Being
about 10 seckunds tew late tew git an express train, and then chasing
the train with yure wife, and an umbreller in yure hands, in a hot
day, and not getting as near tew the train az you waz when started,
looks a leetle like manifess destiny on a rale rode trak. Going into a
tempranse house and calling for a leetle old Bourbon on ice, and being
told in a mild way that “the Bourbon iz jist out, but they hav got
sum gin that cost 72 cents a gallon in Paris,” sounds tew me like the
manifess destiny ov most tempranse houses.
Mi dear reader, don’t beleave in manifess destiny until yu see it.
Thare is such a thing az manifess destiny, but when it occurs it iz
like the number ov rings on the rakoon’s tale, ov no great consequense
onla for ornament. Man wan’t made for a machine, if he waz, it was a
locomotiff machine, and manifess destiny must git oph from the trak
when the bell rings or git knocked higher than the price ov gold.
Manifess destiny iz a disseaze, but it iz eazy tew heal; i have seen
it in its wust stages cured bi sawing a cord ov dri hickory wood. i
thought i had it onse; it broke out in the shape ov poetry; i sent a
speciment ov the disseaze tew a magazine; the magazine man wrote me
next day az follers:
“_Dear Sur_: You may be a phule, but you are no poeck. Yures, in
haste.”
* * * * *
LETTERS TO FARMERS.
BELOVED FARMERS: Agrikultur iz the mother ov farm produce; she is also
the step-mother ov gardin sass.
Rize at half-past 2 o’clock in the morning, bild up a big fire in the
kitchen, burn out two pounds ov kandles, and grease yure boots. Wait
pashuntly for dabrake. When day duz brake, then commence tew stir up
the geese and worry the hogs.
Too mutch sleep iz ruinous tew geese and tew hogs. Remember yu kant
git rich on a farm, unless yu rize at 2 o’clock in the morning, and
stir up the hogs and worry the geese.
The happyest man in the world iz the farmer; he rizes at 2 o’clock in
the morning, he watches for da lite tew brake, and when she duz brake,
he goes out and stirs up the geese and worrys the hogs.
What iz a lawyer!――What iz a merchant?――What iz a doktor?――What iz a
minister?――I answer, nothing!
A farmer is the nobless work ov God; he rizes at 2 o’clock in the
morning, and burns out a half a pound ov wood and two kords of kandles,
and then goes out tew worry the geese and stir up the hogs.
Beloved farmers, adew.
JOSH BILLINGS.
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.
(MARK TWAIN).
MARK TWAIN has a world wide reputation as the great American humorist,
a reputation which has been steadily growing at home and abroad since
the publication of “Innocents Abroad” in 1869, and he is undoubtedly
one of the most popular authors in the United States. The story of his
life is the record of a career which could have been possible in no
other country in the world.
He was born in Florida in 1835, though most of his boyhood was passed
at ♦Hannibal, Mo., where he attended the village school until he was
thirteen, which was his only opportunity for educational training.
At this early age he was apprenticed to a printer and worked at this
trade in St. Louis, ♠Cincinnati, Philadelphia and New York. During his
boyhood his great ambition, his one yearning, had been to become one
day a pilot on a Mississippi steamboat. He realized this ambition in
1851 and the experiences of this pilot life are told in his “Life on
the Mississippi.” His pen-name was suggested by the expression used in
Mississippi navigation where in sounding a depth of two fathoms, the
leadsman calls out, “Mark Twain!”
♦ ‘Hanibal’ replaced with ‘Hannibal’
♠ ‘Cincinnatti’ replaced with ‘Cincinnati’
After serving in 1861 in Nevada as private secretary to his brother
who was at this time secretary of the Territory, he became city editor
of the Virginia City “Enterprise,” and here his literary labors began,
and the pseudonym now so familiar was first used.
In 1865, he was reporter on the staff of the San Francisco “Morning
Call,” though his newspaper work was interspersed with unsuccessful
attempts at gold digging and a six months’ trip to Hawaii.
This was followed by a lecture trip through California and Nevada,
which gave unmistakable evidence that he had the “gift” of humor.
His fame, however, was really made by the publication of “Innocents
Abroad” (Hartford, 1869), 125,000 copies of which were sold in three
years. This book is a brilliant, humorous account of the travels,
experiences and opinions of a party of tourists to the Mediterranean,
Egypt, Palestine, France and Italy.
His next literary work of note was the publication of “Roughing It”
(Hartford, 1872), which shook the sides of readers all over the United
States. This contained inimitable sketches of the rough border life
and personal experiences in California, Nevada and Utah. In fact all
Mark Twain’s literary work which bears the stamp of permanent worth
and merit is personal and autobiographical. He is never so successful
in works that are purely of an imaginative character.
In 1873, in conjunction with Charles Dudley Warner, he produced a
story entitled the “Gilded Age” which was dramatized and had a marked
success on the stage. His other well-known works are: “Sketches Old
and New;” “Adventures of Tom Sawyer” (1876), a story of boy life in
Missouri and one of his best productions, “Punch, Brothers, Punch”
(1878); “A Tramp Abroad” (1880), containing some of his most humorous
and successful descriptions of personal experiences on a trip through
Germany and Switzerland; “The Stolen White Elephant” (1882); “Prince
and the Pauper” (1882); “Life on the Mississippi” (1883); “Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn” (1885), a sequel to “Tom Sawyer;” “A Yankee at
King Arthur’s Court” and “Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc”
(1896).
In 1884, he established in New York City the publishing house of
C. L. Webster & Co., which issued in the following year the “Memoirs”
of U. S. Grant, the profits from which publication to the amount
of $350,000 were paid to Mrs. Grant in accordance with an agreement
previously signed with General Grant.
By the unfortunate failure of this company in 1895, Mark Twain found
himself a poor man and morally, though not legally, responsible for
large sums due the creditors. Like Sir Walter Scott, he resolved
to wipe out the last dollar of the debt and at once entered upon a
lecturing trip around the world, which effort is proving financially
a success. He is also at work upon a new book soon to be published.
His home is at Hartford, Connecticut, where he has lived in delightful
friendship and intercourse with Charles Dudley Warner, Harriet Beecher
Stowe and other literary characters of that city. His writings have
been translated into German and they have met with large sales both in
England and on the continent.
* * * * *
JIM SMILEY’S FROG.
WELL, this yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken-cocks, and all
them kind of things, till you couldn’t rest, and you couldn’t fetch
nothing for him to bet on but he’d match you. He ketched a frog one
day, and took him home, and said he cal’klated to edercate him; and
so he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard
and learn that frog to jump. And you bet he _did_ learn him, too. He’d
give him a little punch behind, and the next minute you’d see that
frog whirling in the air like a doughnut,――see him turn one summerset,
or maybe a couple, if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed
and all right, like a cat. He got him up so in the matter of catching
flies, and kept him in practice so constant, that he’d nail a fly
every time as far as he could see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted
was education, and he could do most anything; and I believe him.
Why, I’ve seen him set Dan’l Webster down here on this floor,――Dan’l
Webster was the name of the frog,――and sing out, “Flies, Dan’l,
flies,” and quicker’n you could wink he’d spring straight up, and
snake a fly off’n the counter there, and flop down on the floor again,
as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of his head
with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn’t no idea he’d been
doing any more’n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
and straightfor’ard as he was, for all he was so gifted. And when it
came to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over
more ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when
it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a
red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for
fellers that had traveled and been everywhere, all said he laid over
any frog that ever _they_ see.
Well, Smiley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him down town sometimes, and lay for a bet. One day a feller,――a
stranger in the camp he was,――came across him with his box, and says:
“What might it be that you’ve got in the box?”
And Smiley says sorter indifferent like, “It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, may be, but it ain’t,――it’s only just a frog.”
And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, “H’m! so ’tis. Well, what’s _he_ good
for?”
“Well,” Smiley says, easy and careless, “he’s good enough for one
thing, I should judge――he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.”
The feller took the box again, and took another long particular look,
and gave it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, “Well, I don’t
see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
“May be you don’t,” Smiley says. “May be you understand frogs, and may
be you don’t understand ’em; may be you’ve had experience, and may be
you an’t only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I’ve got _my_ opinion,
and I’ll risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras
County.”
And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, “Well,
I’m only a stranger here, and I ain’t got no frog; but if I had a frog,
I’d bet you.”
And then Smiley says, “That’s all right, that’s all right; if you’ll
hold my box a minute, I’ll go and get you a frog.” And so the feller
took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley’s and set
down to wait. So he set there a good while, thinking and thinking to
hisself, and then he got the frog out and prized his mouth open, and
took a teaspoon and filled him full of quail shot,――filled him pretty
near up to his chin,――and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the
swamp, and slopped around in the mud for a long time, and finally he
ketched a frog, and fetched him in, and give him to this feller, and
says:
“Now, if you’re ready, set him alongside of Dan’l, with his
fore-paws just even with Dan’l, and I’ll give the word.” Then he says,
“One――two――three――jump;” and him and the feller touched up the frogs
from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan’l gave a heave and
hysted up his shoulders,――so,――like a Frenchman, but it wasn’t no
use,――he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he
couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good
deal surprised, and he was disgusted, too, but he didn’t have no idea
what the matter was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going
out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulders,――this
way,――at Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well, _I_ don’t see
no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long
time, and at last he says, “I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throwed off for; I wonder if there an’t something the matter with him,
he ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched Dan’l by the
nap of the neck, and lifted him up, and says, “Why, blame my cats, if
he don’t weigh five pound!” and turned him upside down, and he belched
out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was
the maddest man. He set the frog down, and took out after that feller,
but he never ketched him.
* * * * *
UNCLE DAN’L’S APPARITION AND PRAYER.
(FROM “THE GILDED AGE” OF CLEMENS AND WARNER.)
A DEEP coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape
that jutted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce
eye of fire shot out from behind the cape and sent a long brilliant
pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder
and louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared
wilder and still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the
gloom, and from its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke,
starred and spangled with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away
into the farther darkness. Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its
long sides began to glow with spots of light which mirrored themselves
in the river and attended the monster like a torchlight procession.
“What is it? Oh, what _is_ it, Uncle Dan’l!”
With deep solemnity the answer came:
“It’s de Almighty! Git down on yo’ knees!”
It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling in a
moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and
stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the
negro’s voice lifted up its supplications:
“O Lord, we’s ben mighty wicked, an’ we knows dat we ’zerve to go to
de bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, we ain’t ready yit, we ain’t
ready――let these po’ chil’en hab one mo’ chance, jes’ one mo’ chance.
Take de old niggah if you’s got to hab somebody. Good Lord, good deah
Lord, we don’t know whah you’s a gwine to, we don’t know who you’s
got yo’ eye on, but we knows by de way you’s a comin’, we knows by the
way you’s a tiltin’ along in yo’ charyot o’ fiah dat some po’ sinner’s
a gwine to ketch it. But, good Lord, dese chil’en don’ b’long heah,
dey’s f’m Obedstown whah dey don’t know nuffin, an’ yo’ knows, yo’ own
sef, dat dey ain’t ’sponsible. An’ deah Lord, good Lord, it ain’t like
yo’ mercy, it ain’t like yo’ pity, it ain’t like yo’ long-sufferin’
lovin’-kindness for to take dis kind o’ ’vantage o’ sich little
chil’en as dese is when dey’s so many onery grown folks chuck full o’
cussedness dat wants roastin’ down dah. O Lord, spah de little chil’en,
don’t tar de little chil’en away f’m dey frens, jes’ let ’em off dis
once, and take it out’n de ole niggah. HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De
ole niggah’s ready, Lord, de ole――――”
The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not
twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst
forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan’l snatched a
child under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the
pack at his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep
darkness and shouted (but rather feebly):
“Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!”
There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise
and comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had
gone by, for its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan’l headed
a cautious reconnoissance in the direction of the log. Sure enough
“the Lord” was just turning a point a short distance up the river, and
while they looked the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by
degrees and presently ceased altogether.
“H’wsh! Well, now, dey’s some folks says dey ain’t no ’ficiency in
prah. Dis chile would like to know whah we’d a ben _now_ if it warn’t
fo’ dat prah! Dat’s it. Dat’s it!”
“Uncle Dan’l, do you reckon it was the prayer that saved us?” said
Clay.
“Does I _reckon_? Don’t I _know_ it! Whah was yo’ eyes? Warn’t de Lord
jes’ a comin’ _chow!_ _chow!_ CHOW! an’ a goin’ on turrible――an’ do
de Lord carry on dat way ’dout dey’s sumfin don’t suit him? An’ warn’t
he a lookin’ right at dis gang heah, an’ warn’t he jes’ a reachin’ fer
’em? An’ d’you spec’ he gwine to let ’em off ’dout somebody ast him to
do it? No indeedy!”
“Do you reckon he saw us, Uncle Dan’l?”
“De law sakes, chile, didn’t I see him a lookin’ at us?”
“Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan’l?”
“_No_ sah! When a man is ’gaged in prah he ain’t ’fraid o’ nuffin――dey
can’t nuffin tech him.”
“Well, what did you run for?”
“Well, I――I――Mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit,
he do-no what he’s ’bout――no sah; dat man do-no what he’s ’bout.
You might take an’ tah de head off’n dat man an’ he wouldn’t scasely
fine it out. Dah’s de Hebrew chil’en dat went frough de fiah; dey was
burnt considable――ob coase dey was; but _dey_ did’nt know nuffin ’bout
it――heal right up agin; if dey’d been gals dey’d missed dey long haah
(hair), maybe, but dey wouldn’t felt de burn.”
“_I_ don’t know but what they _were_ girls. I think they were.”
“Now, Mars Clay, you knows better’n dat. Sometimes a body can’t tell
whedder you’s a sayin’ what you means or whedder you’s a saying what
you don’t mean, ’case you says ’em bofe de same way.”
“But how should _I_ know whether they were boys or girls?”
“Goodness sakes, Mars Clay, don’t de good book say? ’Sides don’t it
call ’em de _He_-brew chil’en? If dey was gals wouldn’t dey be de
she-brew chil’en? Some people dat kin read don’t ’pear to take no
notice when dey _do_ read.”
“Well, Uncle Dan’l, I think that―――― My! here comes another one up the
river! There can’t be _two_.”
“We gone dis time――we done gone dis time sho’! Dey ain’t, two, Mars
Clay, dat’s de same one. De Lord kin ’pear everywhah in a second.
Goodness, how de fiah an’ de smoke do belch up! Dat means business,
honey. He comin’ now like he forgot sumfin. Come ’long, chil’en, time
you’s gone to roos’. Go ’long wid you――ole Uncle Dan’l gwine out in de
woods to rastle in prah――de ole niggah gwine to do what he kin to sabe
you agin!”
He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted
himself if the Lord heard him when he went by.
* * * * *
THE BABIES.
From a speech of Mark Twain at the banquet given in honor of
Gen. Grant, by the Army of the Tennessee, at the Palmer House,
Chicago, Nov. 14, 1879.
TOAST:――“The Babies――As they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not
forget them in our festivities.”
I like that. We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies; we
haven’t all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast
works down to the babies, we stand on common ground, for we have
all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s
banquets have utterly ignored the baby――as if _he_ didn’t amount to
anything! If you gentlemen will stop and think a minute,――if you will
go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and
recontemplate your first baby, you will remember that he amounted to
a good deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that when
that little fellow arrived at family head-quarters you had to hand
in your resignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey,
his mere body-servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a
commander who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything
else. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not.
And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and
that was the double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence
and disrespect, and the bravest of you didn’t dare to say a word. You
could face the death-storm of Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back
blow for blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair,
and twisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war
were sounding in your ears, you set your faces toward the batteries
and advanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of
his war-whoop, you advanced in the other direction――and mighty glad
of the chance, too. When he called for soothing syrup, did you venture
to throw out any side remarks about certain services unbecoming an
officer and a gentleman? No,――you got up and got it. If he ordered his
bottle, and it wasn’t warm, did you talk back? Not you,――you went to
work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as
to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was
right,――three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify
the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccups.
I can taste that stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you
went along; sentimental young folks still took stock in that beautiful
old saying that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the
angels are whispering to him. Very pretty, but “too thin,”――simply
wind on the stomach, my friends! If the baby proposed to take a walk
at his usual hour, 2:30 in the morning, didn’t you rise up promptly
and remark――with a mental addition which wouldn’t improve a
Sunday-school book much――that that was the very thing you were about
to propose yourself! Oh, you were under good discipline! And as you
went fluttering up and down the room in your “undress uniform” you not
only prattled undignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial
voices and tried to sing “Rockaby baby in a tree-top,” for instance.
What a spectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction
for the neighbors, too,――for it isn’t everybody within a mile around
that likes military music at three in the morning. And when you
had been keeping this sort of thing up two or three hours, and your
little velvet-head intimated that nothing suited him like exercise
and noise,――“Go on!”――what did you do? You simply _went_ on, till you
disappeared in the last ditch.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MISS MARIETTA HOLLEY.
(“JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE.”)
THE poetic declaration that “genius unbidden rises to the top” is
fully verified in the now famous “Josiah Allen’s Wife.” Miss Holley
commenced to write at an early age both verses and sketches, but was
so timid that she jealously hid them away from every eye until she
had accumulated quite a collection of manuscript. This most famous
humorist among women was born in a country place near Adams, New York,
where she still lives, and where five generations of her ancestors
have resided. Her first appearance in print was in a newspaper
published in Adams. The editor of the paper, it is said, praised
her article, and she was also encouraged by Charles J. Peterson, for
whom she wrote later. She wrote also for “The Independent” and other
journals. Most of her early articles were poems, and were widely
copied both in America and Europe.
Miss Holley’s first pen-name was ♦“Jemyma.” It was not until she
wrote a dialectic sketch for “Peterson’s Magazine” that she began to
sign her name as “Josiah Allen’s Wife.” This sketch brought her into
prominence, and ♠Elijah Bliss, President of The American Publishing
Company, of Hartford, Connecticut, it is said, against the protests
of his company, published “Josiah Allen’s Wife” in book form, and
encouraged her to write another book, which he issued under the name
of “My Opinions and Betsy Bobbet’s” (1872). Since this Miss Holley’s
fame has steadily increased, and she has issued a book every few
years. “Samantha at the Centennial” appeared in 1877, describing
the experiences of herself and Josiah at that great international
exhibition. It is extremely humorous and added to her already great
fame. “My Wayward Pardner” appeared in 1880. In 1882 she published
“Miss Richards’ Boy,” a book of stories, but not written in dialect.
All of the above works were issued by her Hartford publisher, as was
also her illustrated poem entitled “The Mormon Wife.” In 1885 “Sweet
Cicely, or Josiah Allen’s Wife as a Politician,” appeared in New
York. In 1887 her famous book, “Samantha at Saratoga,” was issued
in Philadelphia, for the manuscript of which she was paid $10,000 in
cash, in addition to which sum she also received a considerable amount
from the “Ladies’ Home Journal” for parts of the work published in
serial form in that magazine. Nearly a quarter of a million copies
of her “Samantha at Saratoga” have already been sold. During the same
year she issued a book of poems in New York, and further popularized
her _nom-de-plume_ by “Samantha Among the Brethren” in 1891. In 1893
“Samantha on the Race Problem” created considerable amusement by the
mixture of grotesque humor and philosophy on this much discussed and
serious problem, the illustrations in the work adding no small quota
to its popularity. In 1894 appeared “Samantha at the World’s Fair”
in which the experiences of herself and her partner, Josiah, are even
more amusing than those at the Centennial in 1876.
♦ ‘Jemyme’ replaced with ‘Jemyma’
♠ ‘Elija’ replaced with ‘Elijah’
Through all of Miss Holley’s works there runs a vein of homely
philosophy and practical common sense. It is in a most delightfully
good-humored manner that she takes off the foibles and follies of
“racin’ after fashion.” Her humor is remarkably wholesome, and while
it is not remiss in laughter-provoking quality, is always clear, and
above all things pure. Her books have been widely circulated both
in America and in Europe, and some of them have been translated into
other languages.
* * * * *
JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE CALLS ON THE PRESIDENT.¹
Josiah Alien has a violent attack of political fever and his
wife being greatly exercised over it finally concludes to
visit Washington, and take the advice of the President on the
disturbing question. This interview with the President is a
fair example of the author’s style.
¹ From “Sweet Cicely.” Permission of Funk & Wagnalls.
AND so we wended our way down the broad, beautiful streets towards the
White House. Handsomer streets I never see. I had thought Jonesville
streets wus middlin’ handsome and roomy. Why, two double wagons
can go by each other with perfect safety, right in front of the
grocery-stores, where there is lots of boxes too; and wimmen can be
a-walkin’ there too at the same time, hefty ones.
But, good land! loads of hay could pass each other here, and droves
of dromedaries, and camels, and not touch each other, and then there
would be lots of room for men and wimmen, and for wagons to rumble,
and perioguers to float up and down――if perioguers could sail on dry
land.
Roomier, handsomer, well-shadeder streets I never want to see, nor
don’t expect to. Why Jonesville streets are like tape compared with
’em; and Loontown and Toad Holler, they are like thread, No. 50
(allegory).
Bub Smith wus well acquainted with the President’s hired man, so he
let us in without parlay.
I don’t believe in talkin’ big as a general thing. But think’es I,
Here I be, a-holdin’ up the dignity of Jonesville: and here I be, on
a deep, heart-searchin’ errent to the Nation. So I said, in words and
axents a good deal like them I have read of in “Children of the Abbey”
and “Charlotte Temple,”――
“Is the President of the United States within?”
He said he was, but said sunthin’ about his not receiving calls in the
mornings.
But I says in a very polite way,――for I like to put folks at their
ease, presidents or peddlers or anything,――
It hain’t no matter at all if he hain’t dressed up; of course he
wuzn’t expectin’ company. Josiah don’t dress up mornin’s.”
And then he says something about “he didn’t know but he was engaged.”
Says I, “That hain’t no news to me, nor the Nation. We have been
a-hearin’ that for three years, right along. And if he is engaged, it
hain’t no good reason why he shouldn’t speak to other wimmen,――good,
honorable married ones too.”
“Well,” says he, finally, “I will take up your card.”
“No, you won’t!” says I, firmly. “I am a Methodist! I guess I can
start off on a short tower without takin’ a pack of cards with me.
And if I had ’em right here in my pocket, or a set of dominoes, I
shouldn’t expect to take up the time of the President of the United
States a-playin’ games at this time of the day.” Says I, in deep tones,
“I am a-carrien’ errents to the President that the world knows not of.”
He blushed up red; he was ashamed; and he said, “he would see if I
could be admitted.”
* * * * *
I was jest a-thinkin’ this when the hired man came back, and said,――
“The President would receive me.”
“Wall,” says I, calmly, “I am ready to be received.”
So I follered him; and he led the way into a beautiful room,
kinder round, and red-colored, with lots of elegant pictures and
lookin’-glasses and books.
* * * * *
He then shook hands with me, and I with him. I, too, am a perfect lady.
And then he drawed up a chair for me with his own hands (hands that
grip holt of the same hellum that G. W. had gripped holt of. O soul!
be calm when I think on’t), and asked me to set down; and consequently
I sot.
I leaned my umberell in a easy, careless position against a adjacent
chair, adjusted my long green veil in long, graceful folds,――I hain’t
vain, but I like to look well,――and then I at once told him of my
errents. I told him――
“I had brought three errents to him from Jonesville,――one for myself,
and two for Dorlesky Burpy.”
He bowed, but didn’t say nothin’: he looked tired. Josiah always looks
tired in the mornin’ when he has got his milkin’ and barn-chores done,
so it didn’t surprise me. And havin’ calculated to tackle him on my
own errent first, consequently I tackled him.
I told him how deep my love and devotion to my pardner wuz.
And he said “he had heard of it.”
And I says, “I s’pose so. I s’pose such things will spread, bein’ a
sort of a rarity. I’d heard that it had got out, ’way beyend Loontown,
and all round.”
“Yes,” he said, “it was spoke of a good deal.”
“Wall,” says I, “the cast-iron love and devotion I feel for that man
don’t show off the brightest in hours of joy and peace. It towers up
strongest in dangers and troubles.” And then I went on to tell him how
Josiah wanted to come there as a senator, and what a dangerous place I
had always heard Washington wuz, and how I had felt it was impossible
for me to lay down on my goose-feather pillow at home, in peace and
safety, while my pardner was a-grapplin’ with dangers of which I
did not know the exact size and heft. Then, says I, solemnly, “I ask
you, not as a politician, but as a human bein’, would you dast to let
Josiah come?”
The President didn’t act surprised a mite. And finally he told me,
what I had always mistrusted, but never knew, that Josiah had wrote
to him all his political views and aspirations, and offered his help
to the government. And says he, “I think I know all about the man.”
“Then,” says I, “you see he is a good deal like other men.”
And he said, sort o’ dreamily, “that he was.”
And then again silence rained. He was a-thinkin’, I knew, on all the
deep dangers that hedged in Josiah Allen and America if he come. And
a-musin’ on all the probable dangers of the Plan. And a-thinkin’ it
over how to do jest right in the matter,――right by Josiah, right by
the nation, right by me.
Finally the suspense of the moment wore onto me too deep to bear, and
I says, in almost harrowin’ tones of anxiety and suspense,――
“Would it be safe for my pardner to come to Washington? Would it be
safe for Josiah, safe for the nation?” Says I, in deeper, mournfuller
tones,――
“Would you――would you dast to let him come?”
Pity and good feelin’ then seemed to overpower for a moment the
statesman and courteous diplomat.
And he said, in gentle, gracious tones, “If I tell you just what I
think, I would not like to say it officially, but would say it in
confidence, as from an Allen to an Allen.”
“Says I, “It shan’t go no further.”
And so I would warn everybody that it must not be told.
Then says he, “I will tell you. I wouldn’t dast.”
Says I, “That settles it. If human efforts can avail, Josiah Allen
will not be United States Senator.” And says I, “You have only
confirmed my fears. I knew, feelin’ as he felt, that it wuzn’t safe
for Josiah or the nation to have him come.”
Agin he reminded me that it was told to me in confidence, and agin I
want to say that it _must_ be kep’.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS.
AUTHOR OF “LEEDLE YAWCOB STRAUSS.”
THE humorous and dialectic literature of America owes more to Charles
Follen Adams perhaps than to any other contributor who has not made
literature a business or depended upon his pen for his livelihood.
There is not a pretentious book of humorous readings or popular
selections of late years which has not enriched its pages from this
pleasingly funny man who delineates the German-American character and
imitates its dialect with an art that is so true to nature as to be
well-nigh perfection. “The Puzzled Dutchman;” “Mine Vamily;” “Mine
Moder-in-Law;” “Der Vater Mill;” “Der Drummer,” and, above all, “Dot
Leedle Yawcob Strauss,” have become classics of their kind and will
not soon suffer their author to be forgotten.
Charles Follen Adams was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 21, 1842,
where he received a common school education, leaving school at fifteen
years of age to take a position in a business house in Boston. This
place he occupied until August, 1862, when he enlisted, at the age
of twenty, in the Thirteenth Massachusetts Regiment of Volunteers,
and saw service in a number of hard-fought battles. At Gettysburg,
in 1863, he was wounded and held a prisoner for three days until
the Union forces recaptured the town. After the close of the war he
resumed business, and succeeded in placing himself at the head of a
large business house in Boston, where he has continued to reside.
It was not until 1870 that Mr. Adams wrote his first poem, and it
was two years later that his first dialectic effort, “The Puzzled
Dutchman,” appeared and made his name known. From that time he begun
to contribute “as the spirit moved him” to the local papers, “Oliver
Optic’s Magazine,” and, now and then, to “Scribner’s.” In 1876 he
became a regular contributor to the “Detroit Free Press,” his “Leedle
Yawcob Strauss” being published in that paper in June, 1876. For many
years all his productions were published in that journal, and did much
to enhance its growing popularity as a humorous paper.
As a genial, companionable man in business and social circles, Mr.
Adams has as great distinction among his friends as he holds in the
literary world as a humorist. His house is one of marked hospitality
where the fortunate guest always finds a cordial welcome.
* * * * *
DER DRUMMER.¹
¹ Special Permission of the Author.
WHO puts oup at der pest hotel,
Und dakes his oysders on der schell,
Und mit der frauleins cuts a schwell?
Der drummer.
Who vas it gomes indo mine schtore,
Drows down his pundles on der vloor,
Und nefer schtops to shut der door?
Der drummer.
Who dakes me py der handt, und say,
“Hans Pfeiffer, how you vas to-day?”
Und goes vor peeseness righdt avay?
Der drummer.
Who shpreads his zamples in a trice,
Und dells me, “Look, und see how nice?”
Und says I get “der bottom price?”
Der drummer.
Who dells how sheap der goods vas bought,
Mooch less as vot I gould imbort,
But lets dem go as he vas “short?”
Der drummer.
Who says der tings vas eggstra vine,――
“Vrom Sharmany, ubon der Rhine,”――
Und sheats me den dimes oudt off nine?
Der drummer.
Who varrants all der goots to suit
Der gustomers ubon his _route_,
Und ven dey gomes dey vas no goot?
Der drummer.
Who gomes aroundt ven I been oudt,
Drinks oup mine bier, and eats mine kraut,
Und kiss Katrina in der mout’?
Der drummer.
Who, ven he gomes again dis vay,
Vill hear vot Pfeiffer has to say,
Und mit a plack eye goes avay?
Der drummer.
* * * * *
HANS AND FRITZ.¹
¹ Special Permission of the Author.
HANS and Fritz were two Deutschers who lived side by side,
Remote from the world, its deceit and its pride:
With their pretzels and beer the spare moments were spent,
And the fruits of their labor were peace and content.
Hans purchased a horse of a neighbor one day,
And, lacking a part of the _Geld_,――as they say,――
Made a call upon Fritz to solicit a loan
To help him to pay for his beautiful roan.
Fritz kindly consented the money to lend,
And gave the required amount to his friend;
Remarking,――his own simple language to quote,――
“Berhaps it vas bedder ve make us a note.”
The note was drawn up in their primitive way,――
“I, Hans, gets from Fritz feefty tollars to-day;”
When the question arose, the note being made,
“Vich von holds dot baper until it vas baid?”
“You geeps dot,” says Fritz, “und den you vill know
You owes me dot money.” Says Hans, “Dot ish so:
Dot makes me remempers I half dot to bay,
Und I prings you der note und der money some day.”
A month had expired, when Hans, as agreed,
Paid back the amount, and from debt he was freed.
Says Fritz, “Now dot settles us.” Hans replies, “Yaw:
Now who dakes dot baper accordings by law?”
“I geeps dot now, aind’t it?” says Fritz; “den you see,
I alvays remempers you paid dot to me.”
Says Hans, “Dot ish so: it vas now shust so blain,
Dot I knows vot to do ven I porrows again.”
* * * * *
YAWCOB STRAUSS.¹
¹ Special Permission of the Author.
I HAF von funny leedle poy,
Vot gomes schust to mine knee;
Der queerest schap, der createst rogue,
As efer you dit see,
He runs, und schumps, und schmashes dings
In all barts off der house:
But vot off dot? he vas mine son,
Mine leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He get der measles und der mumbs,
Und eferyding dot’s oudt;
He sbills mine glass off lager bier,
Poots schnuff indo mine kraut,
He fills mine pipe mit Limburg cheese.――
Dot vas der roughest chouse:
I’d dake dot vrom no oder poy
But leedle Yawcob Strauss.
He dakes der milk-ban for a dhrum,
Und cuts mine cane in dwo,
To make der schticks to beat it mit.――
Mine cracious dot vas drue!
I dinks mine hed vas schplit abart,
He kicks oup sooch a touse:
But nefer mind; der poys vas few
Like dot young Yawcob Strauss.
He asks me questions sooch as dese:
Who baints mine nose so red?
Who vas it cut dot schmoodth blace oudt
Vrom der hair ubon mine hed?
Und vhere der plaze goes vrom der lamp
Vene er der glim I douse.
How gan I all dose dings eggsblain
To dot schmall Yawcob Strauss?
I somedimes dink I schall go vild
Mit sooch a grazy poy,
Und vish vonce more I gould haf rest,
Und beaceful dimes enshoy;
But ven he vas ashleep in ped,
So guiet as a mouse,
I prays der Lord, “Dake anyding,
But leaf dot Yawcob Strauss.”
* * * * *
MINE MODER-IN-LAW.¹
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
THERE vas many qveer dings in dis land of der free,
I neffer could qvite understand;
Der beoples dhey all seem so deefrent to me
As dhose in mine own faderland.
Dhey gets blendy droubles, und indo mishaps
Mitout der least bit off a cause;
Und vould you pelief it? dhose mean Yangee shaps
Dhey fights mit dheir moder-in-laws?
Shust dink off a vhite man so vicked as dot!
Vhy not gife der oldt lady a show?
Who vas it gets oup, ven der nighdt id vas hot,
Mit mine baby, I shust like to know?
Und dhen in dher vinter vhen Katrine vas sick
Und der mornings vas shnowy und raw,
Who made righdt avay oup dot fire so quick?
Vhy, dot vas mine moder-in-law.
Id vas von off dhose voman’s righdts vellers I been
Dhere vas noding dot’s mean aboudt me;
Vhen der oldt lady vishes to run dot masheen,
Vhy, I shust let her run id, you see.
Und vhen dot shly Yawcob vas cutting some dricks
(A block off der oldt chip he vas, yaw!)
Ef he goes for dot shap like some dousand off bricks,
Dot’s all righdt! She’s mine moder-in-law.
Veek oudt und veek in, id vas always der same,
Dot vomen vas boss off der house;
But, dehn, neffer mindt! I vas glad dot she came
She vas kind to mine young Yawcob Strauss.
Und ven dhere vas vater to get vrom der spring
Und firevood to shplit oup und saw
She vas velcome to do it. Dhere’s not anyding
Dot’s too good for mine moder-in-law.
* * * * *
YAWCOB’S DRIBULATIONS.¹
(SEQUEL TO “LEEDLE YAWCOB STRAUSS.”)
¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard.
MAYBE dot you don’d rememper,
Eighdeen――dwendy years ago,
How I dold aboudt mine Yawcob――
Dot young rashkell, don’t you know,
Who got schicken-box und measles;
Filled mine bipe mit Limburg sheeze;
Cut mine cane oup indo dhrum-schticks,
Und blay all sooch dricks as dhese.
Vell! dhose times dhey vas been ofer,
Und dot son off mine, py shings!
Now vas taller as hees fader,
Und vas oup to all sooch dhings
Like shimnasdic dricks und pase pall;
Und der oder day he say
Dot he boxes mit “adthledics,”
Somevheres ofer on Back Bay.
Times vas deeferent, now, I dold you,
As vhen he vas been a lad;
Dhen Katrine she make hees drowsers
Vrom der oldt vones off hees dad;
Dhey vas cut so full und baggy,
Dot id dook more as a fool
To find oudt eef he vas going,
Or vas coming home vrom school.
Now, dhere vas no making ofer
Off mine clothes to make a suit
For dot poy――der times vas schanged;
“Der leg vas on der oder boot;”
For vhen hees drowsers dhey gets dhin,
Und sort off “schlazy” roundt der knee,
Dot Mrs. Strauss she dake der sceessors
Und she cuts dhem down for me.
Shust der oder day dot Yawcob
Gife me von electric shock,
Vhen he say he vants fife-hundord
To invesht in railroadt schtock.
Dhen I dell him id vas beddher
Dot he leaf der schtocks alone,
Or some fellar dot vas schmardter
Dake der meat und leaf der bone.
Und vhen I vas got oxcited,
Und say he get “schwiped” und fooled,
Dhen he say he haf a “pointer”
Vrom soom frendts off Sage und Gould;
Und dot he vas on “rock bottom;”
Had der “inside drack” on “Atch――”
Dot vas too mooch fur hees fader,
Und I coom oup to der scratch.
Dhen in bolitics he dabbles,
Und all qvesdions, great und schmall,
Make no deeferent to dot Yawcob――
For dot poy he knows id all.
Und he say dot dhose oldt fogies
Must be laid oup on der shelf,
Und der governors und mayors
Should pe young men――like himself.
Vell! I vish I vas dransborted
To dhose days of long ago,
Vhen dot schafer beat der milk-ban,
Und schkydoodled droo der schnow.
I could schtand der mumbs und measles,
Und der ruckshuns in der house;
Budt mine presendt dribulations
Vas too mooch for Meester Strauss.
* * * * *
THE PUZZLED DUTCHMAN.¹
The copy for this selection was forwarded to us by the author
himself with the notation on the side, “My First Dialect Poem.”
¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard.
I’M a broken-hearted Deutscher,
Vots villed mit crief unt shame.
I dells you vot der drouble ish――
I doesn’t know my name.
You dinks it ferry vunny, eh?
Ven you der story hear,
You vill not wonder den so mooch,
It vas so shtrange und queer.
Mein mudder had dwo liddle dwins――
Dey vas me und mein brudder;
Ve lookt so very mooch alike
No von knew vich from toder.
Von of der poys was Yawcob
Und Hans der oder’s name;
But den it made no different――
Ve both got called der same.
Vell, von of us got tead――
Yaw, Mynheer, dat is so;
But vedder Hans or Yawcob,
Mein mudder she don’t know.
Und so I am in droubles;
I gan’t git droo mein hed
Vedder I’m Hans vot’s living,
Or Yawcob vot is tead.
* * * * *
DER OAK AND DER VINE.¹
¹ From “Dialect Ballads.” Copyright, 1887, by Harper
& Brothers.
I DON’D vas preaching voman’s righdts,
Or anyding like dot,
Und I likes to see all beoples
Shust gondented mit dheir lot;
Budt I vants to gondradict dot shap
Dot made dis leedle shoke;
“A voman vas der glinging vine,
Und man, der shturdy oak.”
Berhaps, somedimes, dot may be drue;
Budt, den dimes oudt off nine,
I find me oudt dot man himself
Vas peen der glinging vine;
Und ven hees friendts dhey all vas gone,
Und he vas shust “tead proke,”
Dot’s vhen der voman shteps righdt in,
Und peen der shturdy oak.
Shust go oup to der paseball groundts
Und see dhose “shturdy oaks”
All planted roundt ubon der seats――
Shust hear dheir laughs and shokes!
Dhen see dhose vomens at der tubs,
Mit glothes oudt on der lines;
Vhich vas der shturdy oaks, mine friendts,
Und vhich der glinging vines?
Ven sickness in der householdt comes,
Und veeks und veeks he shtays,
Who vas id fighdts him mitoudt resdt,
Dhose veary nighdts und days?
Who beace und gomfort alvays prings,
Und cools dot fefered prow?
More like id vas der tender vine
Dot oak he glings to, now.
“Man vants budt leedle here below,”
Der boet von time said;
Dhere’s leedle dot man he don’d vant,
I dink id means, inshted;
Und ven der years keep rolling on,
Dheir cares und droubles pringing,
He vants to pe der shturdy oak,
Und, also, do der glinging.
Maype, vhen oaks dhey gling some more,
Und don’d so shturdy peen,
Der glinging vines dhey haf some shance
To helb run life’s masheen.
In helt und sickness, shoy und pain,
In calm or shtormy veddher,
’Twas beddher dot dhose oaks und vines
Should alvays gling togeddher.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDGAR WILSON NYE.
(BILL NYE.)
AMONG those who have shaken the sides of the fun-loving citizens of
the United States and many in the old world with genuine wit and droll
humor, our familiar and purely American “Bill Nye” must be numbered.
Edgar Wilson Nye was a born “funny man” whose humor was as
irrepressible as his disposition to breathe air. The very face of the
man, while far from being homely, as is frequently judged from comic
pictures of him, was enough to provoke the risibility of the most
sedate and unsmiling citizens in any community. When Mr. Nye walked
out on the platform to exhibit in his plain manner a few samples of
his “Baled Hay,” or offer what he was pleased to term a few “Remarks,”
or to narrate one or more of the tales told by those famous creatures
of his imagination known as “The Forty Liars,”――before a word was
uttered an infectious smile often grew into a roaring laugh.
Edgar Wilson Nye was born at Shirley, Maine, 1850. His parents removed
to Wisconsin, and thence to Wyoming Territory when he was but a boy,
and he grew up amid the hardships and humorous aspects of frontier
life, which he has so amusingly woven into the warp and the woof of
his early “yarns.” Mr. Nye studied law and was admitted to the bar
in 1876; but practiced his profession only one year. Afterwards he
reported for the newspapers, and, in 1878, began to write regularly
a weekly humorous letter for the Sunday papers in the West. This
he continued to do for several years, receiving good compensation
therefor, and his reputation as a humorous writer grew steadily and
rapidly.
In 1884, Mr. Nye came to New York and organized the Nye Trust,
or Syndicate, through which a weekly letter from him should
simultaneously appear in the journals of the principal cities of the
Union. This increased his fame; and during the later years of his life
he was engaged much of his time on the lecture platform, sometimes
alone, and sometimes in company with other prominent authors. He and
the poet, James Whitcomb Riley, did considerable touring together
and were enthusiastically welcomed wherever they went, the people
invariably turning out in large numbers to enjoy a feast of fun and
good feeling which this pair of prominent and typical Westerners never
failed to treat them to.
Among the most humorous of Mr. Nye’s recent writings were his famous
letters from Buck’s Shoals, North Carolina, where, in his imagination,
he established himself as a southern farmer, and dealt out his rural
philosophy and comments on current events to the delight, not only of
the farmers――many of whom imagined that he was really one of them――but
of every class of readers throughout the country.
In 1894 Mr. Nye turned his attention to another branch of humor, and
brought out “Bill Nye’s History of the United States.” The drollery
and humor of this work is unsurpassed――the interest and delight of
the reader being greatly enhanced by the fact that he followed the
chronological thread of the real historic narrative on which he pours
the sidelights of his side-splitting humor. The success of this book
was so great that Mr. Nye was preparing to go abroad to write humorous
histories of England and other European countries when he suddenly
died in 1896, in the 47th year of his age.
After his death Mrs. Nye went abroad, stopping in Berlin for the
education of her children. The royalty on “Bill Nye’s” books brings an
ample support for his family.
* * * * *
THE WILD COW.
(CLIPPING FROM NEWSPAPER.)
WHEN I was young and used to roam around over the country, gathering
water-melons in the light of the moon, I used to think I could
milk anybody’s cow, but I do not think so now. I do not milk a cow
now unless the sign is right, and it hasn’t been right for a good
many years. The last cow I tried to milk was a common cow, born in
obscurity; kind of a self-made cow. I remember her brow was low, but
she wore her tail high and she was haughty, oh, so haughty.
I made a common-place remark to her, one that is used in the very best
of society, one that need not have given offence anywhere. I said,
“So”――and she “soed.” Then I told her to “hist” and she histed. But I
thought she overdid it. She put too much expression in it.
Just then I heard something crash through the window of the barn and
fall with a dull, sickening thud on the outside. The neighbors came to
see what it was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it
in getting through the window.
I asked the neighbors if the barn was still standing. They said it was.
Then I asked if the cow was injured much. They said she seemed to be
quite robust. Then I requested them to go in and calm the cow a little,
and see if they could get my plug hat off her horns.
I am buying all my milk now of a milkman. I select a gentle milkman
who will not kick, and feel as though I could trust him. Then, if he
feels as though he could trust me, it is all right.
* * * * *
MR. WHISK’S TRUE LOVE.
SO she said to him: “Oh, darling, I fear that my wealth hath taught
thee to love me, and if it were to take wings unto itself thou wouldst
also do the same.”
“Nay, Gwendolin,” said Mr. Whisk, softly, as he drew her head down
upon his shoulder and tickled the lobe of her little cunning ear with
the end of his moustache, “I love not thy dollars, but thee alone.
Also elsewhere. If thou doubtest me, give thy wealth to the poor. Give
it to the World’s Fair. Give it to the Central Pacific Railroad. Give
it to any one who is suffering.”
“No,” she unto him straightway did make answer, “I could not do that,
honey.”
“Then give it to your daughter,” said Mr. Whisk, “if you think I am
so low as to love alone your yellow dross.” He then drew himself up
to his full height.
She flew to his arms like a frightened dove that has been hit on the
head with a rock. Folding her warm round arms about his neck, she
sobbed with joy and gave her entire fortune to her daughter.
Mr. Whisk then married the daughter, and went on about his business.
I sometimes think that, at the best, man is a great coarse thing.
* * * * *
THE DISCOVERY OF NEW YORK.
FROM “BILL NYE’S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, 1894.”
_By Permission of J. B. Lippincott Co._
THE author will now refer to the discovery of the Hudson River and the
town of New York via Fort Lee and the 125th Street Ferry.
New York was afterwards sold for twenty-four dollars,――the whole
island. When I think of this I go into my family gallery, which I also
use as a swear room, and tell those ancestors of mine what I think of
them. Where were they when New York was sold for twenty-four dollars?
Were they having their portraits painted by Landseer, or their
disposition taken by Jeffreys, or having their Little Lord Fauntleroy
clothes made?
Do not encourage them to believe that they will escape me in future
years. Some of them died unregenerate, and are now, I am told, in a
country where they may possibly be damned; and I will attend to the
others personally.
Twenty-four dollars for New York! Why, my Croton-water tax on one
house and lot with fifty feet four and one-fourth inches front is
fifty-nine dollars and no questions asked. Why, you can’t get a voter
for that now.
Henry――or Hendrik――Hudson was an English navigator, of whose birth
and early history nothing is known definitely, hence his name is never
mentioned in many of the best homes of New York.
In 1607 he made a voyage in search of the North West Passage. In one
of his voyages he discovered Cape Cod, and later on the Hudson River.
This was one hundred and seventeen years after Columbus discovered
America; which shows that the discovering business was not pushed as
it should have been by those who had it in charge.
Hudson went up the river as far as Albany, but, finding no one there
whom he knew, he hastened back as far as 209th Street West, and
anchored.
He discovered Hudson Bay and Hudson Strait, and made other journeys
by water, though aquatting was then in its infancy. Afterwards his
sailors became mutinous, and set Hendrik and his son, with seven
infirm sailors, afloat.
Ah! Whom have we here?
It is Hendrik Hudson, who discovered the Hudson River.
Here he has just landed at the foot of 209th Street, New York, where
he offered the Indians liquor, but they refused.
Illustration: (‡ Pilgrims bargaining with Indians)
How 209th Street has changed!
The artist has been fortunate in getting the expression of the Indians
in the act of refusing. Mr. Hudson’s great reputation lies in the fact
that he discovered the river which bears his name; but the thinking
mind will at once regard the discovery of an Indian who does not drink
as far more wonderful.
Some historians say that this special delegation was swept away
afterwards by a pestilence, whilst others, commenting on the incident,
maintain that Hudson lied.
It is the only historical question regarding America not fully settled
by this book.
Nothing more was heard by him till he turned up in a thinking part in
“Rip Van Winkle.”
Many claims regarding the discovery of various parts of the United
States had been previously made. The Cabots had discovered Labrador;
the Spaniards the southern part of the United States; the Norsemen had
discovered Minneapolis; and Columbus had discovered San Salvador and
had gone home to meet a ninety-day note due in Palos for the use of
the Pinta, which he had hired by the hour.
But we are speaking of the discovery of New York.
About this time a solitary horseman might have been seen at West
209th Street, clothed in a little brief authority, and looking out to
the west as he petulantly spoke in the Tammany dialect, then in the
language of the blank-verse Indian. He began: “Another day of anxiety
has passed, and yet we have not been discovered! The Great Spirit
tells me in the thunder of the surf and the roaring cataract of the
Harlem that within a week we will be discovered for the first time.”
As he stands there aboard of his horse one sees that he is a chief in
every respect, and in life’s great drama would naturally occupy the
middle of the stage. It was at this moment that Hudson slipped down
the river from Albany past Fort Lee, and, dropping a nickle in the
slot at 125th Street, weighed his anchor at that place. As soon as he
had landed and discovered the city, he was approached by the chief,
who said: “We gates. I am on the committee to show you our little town.
I suppose you have a power of attorney, of course, for discovering us?”
“Yes,” said Hudson. “As Columbus used to say when he discovered San
Salvador, ‘I do it by the right vested in me by my sovereigns.’ ‘That
oversizes my pile by a sovereign and a half,’ says one of the natives;
and so, if you have not heard it, there is a good thing for one of
your dinner-speeches here.”
“Very good,” said the chief, as they jogged downtown on a swift Sixth
Avenue elevated train towards the wigwams on 14th Street, and going
at the rate of four miles an hour. “We do not care especially who
discovers us so long as we hold control of the city organization. How
about that, Hank?”
“That will be satisfactory,” said Mr. Hudson, taking a package of
imported cheese and eating it, so that they could have the car to
themselves.
“We will take the departments, such as Police, Street-cleaning, etc.,
etc., etc., while you and Columbus get your pictures on the currency
and have your graves mussed up on anniversaries. We get the two-moment
horses and the country châteaux on the Bronx. Sabe?”
“That is, you do not care whose portrait is on the currency,” said
Hudson, “so you get the currency.”
Said the man, “That is the sense of the meeting.”
Thus was New York discovered via Albany and Fort Lee, and five minutes
after the two touched glasses, the brim of the schoppin and the
Manhattan cocktail tinkled together, and New York was inaugurated.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS.
(“UNCLE REMUS.”)
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS has called himself “an accidental author,” for
while living on a plantation as a typesetter on a country newspaper
he became familiar with the curious myths and animal stories of the
negroes, and some time in the seventies he printed a magazine article
on these folk-lore stories, giving at the same time some of the
stories as illustration.
This article attracted attention and revealed to the writer the fact
that the stories had a decided literary value, and his main literary
work has been the elaboration of these myths.
The stories of “Uncle Remus” are, as almost everyone knows, not
creations of the author’s fancy, but they are genuine folk-lore
tales of the negroes, and strangely enough many of these stories are
found in varying forms among the American Indians, among the Indians
along the Amazon and in Brazil, and they are even found in India and
Siam, which fact has called out learned discussions of the origin and
antiquity of the stories and the possible connection of the races.
Our author was born in Eatonton, a little village in Georgia, December
9, 1848, in very humble circumstances. He was remarkably impressed,
while still very young, with the “Vicar of Wakefield,” and he
straightway began to compose little tales of his own.
In 1862 he went to the office of the “Countryman,” a rural weekly
paper in Georgia, to learn typesetting. It was edited and published
on a large plantation, and the negroes of this and the adjoining
plantations furnished him with the material out of which the “Uncle
Remus” stories came.
While learning to set type the young apprentice occasionally tried
his hand at composing, and not infrequently he slipped into the
“Countryman” a little article, composed and printed, without ever
having been put in manuscript form.
The publication of an article on the folk-lore of the negroes in
“Lippincott’s Magazine” was the beginning of his literary career, and
the interest this awakened stimulated him to develop these curious
animal stories.
Many of the stories were first printed as articles in the Atlanta
“Constitution,” and it was soon seen by students of myth-literature
that these stories were very significant and important in their
bearing on general mythology.
For the child they have a charm and an interest as “good stories,”
and they are told with rare skill and power, but for the student
of ethnology they have special value as throwing some light on the
probable relation of the negroes with other races which tell similar
folk-tales.
Mr. Harris has studied and pursued the profession of law, though
he has now for many years been one of the editors of the Atlanta
“Constitution,” for which many of his contributions have been
originally written.
He is also a frequent contributor both of prose and poetry to current
literature, and he is the author of the following books: “Uncle Remus,
His Songs and His Sayings; the Folk-lore of the Old Plantation” (New
York, 1880), “Nights With Uncle Remus” (Boston, 1883), “Mingo and
Other Sketches” (1883).
* * * * *
MR. RABBIT, MR. FOX, AND MR. BUZZARD.¹
(FROM “UNCLE REMUS.”)
¹ Copyright, George Routledge & Sons.
ONE evening when the little boy whose nights with Uncle Remus are as
entertaining as those Arabian ones of blessed memory, had finished
supper and hurried out to sit with his venerable patron, he found the
old man in great glee. Indeed, Uncle Remus was talking and laughing to
himself at such a rate that the little boy was afraid he had company.
The truth is, Uncle Remus had heard the child coming, and when the
rosy-cheeked chap put his head in at the door, was engaged in a
monologue, the burden of which seemed to be――
“Ole Molly Har’,
W’at you doin’ dar,
Settin’ in de cornder
Smokin’ yo’ seegyar?”
As a matter of course this vague allusion reminded the little boy of
the fact that the wicked Fox was still in pursuit of the Rabbit, and
he immediately put his curiosity in the shape of a question.
“Uncle Remus, did the Rabbit have to go clean away when he got loose
from the Tar-Baby?”
“Bless grashus, honey, dat he didn’t. Who? Him? You dunno nuthin’
’tall ’bout Brer Rabbit ef dat’s de way you puttin’ ’im down. Wat he
gwine ’way fer? He mouter stayed sorter close twel the pitch rub off’n
his ha’r, but twern’t menny days ’fo’ he wuz loping up en down de
naberhood same as ever, en I dunno ef he wern’t mo’ sassier dan befo’.
“Seem like dat de tale ’bout how he got mixt up wid de Tar-Baby got
’roun’ mongst de nabers. Leas’ways, Miss Meadows en de girls got win’
un’ it, en de nex’ time Brer Rabbit paid um a visit, Miss Meadows
tackled ’im ’bout it, en de gals sot up a monstus gigglement. Brer
Rabbit, he sot up des ez cool ez a cowcumber, he did, en let ’em run
on.”
“Who was Miss Meadows, Uncle Remus?” inquired the little boy.
“Don’t ax me, honey. She wuz in de tale, Miss Meadows en de gals wuz,
en de tale I give you like hi’t wer’ gun ter me. Brer Rabbit, he sot
dar, he did, sorter lam’ like, en den bimeby he cross his legs, he did,
and wink his eye slow, en up en say, sezee:
“‘Ladies, Brer Fox wuz my daddy’s ridin’-hoss for thirty year; maybe
mo’, but thirty year dat I knows un,’ sezee; en den he paid um his
specks, en tip his beaver, en march off, he did, dez ez stiff en ez
stuck up ez a fire-stick.
“Nex’ day, Brer Fox cum a callin’, and w’en he gun fer to laff ’bout
Brer Rabbit, Miss Meadows en de gals, dey ups and tells im ’bout w’at
Brer Rabbit say. Den Brer Fox grit his toof sho’ nuff, he did, en he
look mighty dumpy, but when he riz fer to go he up en say, sezee;
“‘Ladies, I ain’t ’sputing w’at you say, but I’ll make Brer Rabbit
chaw up his words en spit um out right yer whar you kin see ’im,’
sezee, en wid dat off Brer Fox marcht.
“En w’en he got in de big road, he shuck de dew off’n his tail, en
made a straight shoot fer Brer Rabbit’s house. W’en he got dar, Brer
Rabbit wuz spectin’ un him, en de do’ wuz shut fas’. Brer Fox knock.
Nobody ain’t ans’er. Brer Fox knock. Nobody ans’er. Den he knock
agin――blam! blam! Den Brer Rabbit holler out, mighty weak:
“‘Is dat you, Brer Fox? I want you ter run en fetch de doctor. Dat bit
er parsley w’at I e’t dis mawnin’ is gittin’ ’way wid me. Do, please,
Brer Fox, run quick,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee.
“‘I come atter you, Brer Rabbit,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘Dere’s gwinter
be a party up at Miss Meadow’s,’ sezee. ‘All de gals’ll be dere, en I
promus’ dat I’d fetch you. De gals, dey ’lowed dat hit wouldn’t be no
party ’ceppin I fotch you,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“Den Brer Rabbit say he wuz too sick, en Brer Fox say he wuzzent, en
dar dey had it up and down sputin’ en contendin’. Brer Rabbit say he
can’t walk. Brer Fox say he tote ’im. Brer Rabbit say how? Brer Fox
say in his arms. Brer Rabbit say he drap ’im. Brer Fox ’low he won’t.
Bimeby Brer Rabbit say he go ef Brer Fox tote ’im on his back. Brer
Fox say he would. Brer Rabbit say he can’t ride widout a saddle. Brer
Fox say he git de saddle. Brer Rabbit say he can’t set in saddle less
he have a bridle for to hol’ by. Brer Fox say he git de bridle. Brer
Rabbit say he can’t ride widout bline bridle, kaze Brer Fox be shyin’
at stumps ’long de road, en fling ’im off. Brer Fox say he git bline
bridle. Den Brer Rabbit say he go. Den Brer Fox say he ride Brer
Rabbit mos’ up to Miss Meadows’s, en den he could git down en walk de
balance ob de way. Brer Rabbit ’greed, en den Brer Fox lipt out atter
de saddle en de bridle.
“Co’se Brer Rabbit know de game dat Brer Fox wuz fixin’ fer ter play,
en he ’termin’ fer ter out-do ’im; en by de time he koam his h’ar en
twis’ his mustarsh, en sorter rig up, yer come Brer Fox, saddle and
bridle on, en lookin’ ez peart ez a circus pony. He trot up ter de do’
en stan’ dar pawin’ de ground en chompin’ de bit same like sho’ nuff
hos, en Brer Rabbit he mount, he did, en day amble off. Brer Fox can’t
see behime wid de bline bridle on, but bimeby he feel Brer Rabbit
raise one er his foots.
“‘W’at you doin’ now, Brer Rabbit?’ sezee.
“‘Short ain’ de lef stir’p, Brer Fox,’ sezee.
“Bimeby Brer Rabbit raise de udder foot.
“‘W’at you doin’ now, Brer Rabbit?’ sezee.
“‘Pullin’ down my pants, Brer Fox,’ sezee.
“All de time, bless grashus, honey, Brer Rabbit was puttin’ on his
spurrers, en w’en dey got close to Miss Meadows’s, whar Brer Rabbit
wuz to git off en Brer Fox made a motion fer ter stan’ still, Brer
Rabbit slap the spurrers inter Brer Fox flanks, en you better b’lieve
he got over groun’. W’en dey got ter de house, Miss Meadows en all de
girls wuz settin’ on de peazzer, en stidder stoppin’ at de gate Brer
Rabbit rid on by, he did, en den come gallopin’ down de road en up ter
de hoss-rack, w’ich he hitch Brer Fox at, en den he santer inter de
house, he did, en shake han’s wid de gals, en set dar, smokin’ his
seegyar same ez a town man. Bimeby he draw in long puff, en den let
hit out in a cloud, en squar hisse’f back, en holler out, he did:
“‘Ladies, ain’t I done tell you Brer Fox wuz de ridin hoss fer our
fambly? He sorter losin’ his gait now, but I speck I kin fetch ’im all
right in a mont’ or so,’ sezee.
“En den Brer Rabbit sorter grin, he did, en de gals giggle, en Miss
Meadows, she praise up de pony, en dar wuz Brer Fox hitch fas’ ter de
rack, en couldn’t he’p hisse’f.”
“Is that all, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy, as the old man
paused.
“Dat ain’t all, honey, but ’twont do fer to give out too much cloff
for ter cut one pa’r pants,” replied the old man sententiously.
When “Miss Sally’s” little boy went to Uncle Remus the next night, he
found the old man in a bad humor.
“I ain’t tellin’ no tales ter bad chilluns,” said Uncle Remus curtly.
“But, Uncle Remus, I ain’t bad,” said the little boy plaintively.
“Who dat chunkin’ dem chickens dis mawnin’? Who dat knockin’ out
fokes’s eyes wid dat Yaller-bammer sling des ’fo’ dinner? Who dat
sickin’ dat pinter puppy atter my pig? Who dat scatterin’ my ingun
sets? Who dat flingin’ rocks on top er my house, w’ich a little mo’
en one un em would er drap spang on my head!”
“Well, now, Uncle Remus, I didn’t go to do it. I won’t do so any more.
Please, Uncle Remus, if you will tell me, I’ll run to the house, and
bring you some tea-cakes.”
“Seein’ um’s better’n hearin’ tell un em,” replied the old man, the
severity of his countenance relaxing somewhat; but the little boy
darted out, and in a few minutes came running back with his pockets
full and his hands full.
“I lay yo’ mammy’ll ’spishun dat de rats’ stummucks is widenin’ in dis
naberhood w’en she come fer ter count up ’er cakes,” said Uncle Remus,
with a chuckle.
“Lemme see. I mos’ dis’member wharbouts Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit wuz.”
“The rabbit rode the Fox to Miss Meadows’s and hitched him to the
horse-rack,” said the little boy.
“Why co’se he did,” said Uncle Remus. “Co’se he did. Well, Brer Rabbit
rid Brer Fox up, he did, en tied ’im to de rack, en den sot out in
the peazzer wid de gals a smokin’ er his seegyar wid mo’ proudness
dan w’at you mos’ ever see. Dey talk, en dey sing, en dey play on de
peanner, de gals did, twel bimeby hit come time for Brer Rabbit fer
to be gwine, en he tell um all good-by, en strut out to de hoss-rack
same’s ef he was de king er der patter-rollers, en den he mount Brer
Fox en ride off.
“Brer Fox ain’t sayin’ nuthin’ ’tall. He des rack off, he did, en keep
his mouf shet, en Brer Rabbit know’d der wuz bizness cookin’ up fer
him, en he feel monstous skittish. Brer Fox amble on twel he git in
de long lane, outer sight er Miss Meadows’s house, en den he tu’n
loose, he did. He rip en he r’ar, en he cuss en he swar; he snort en
he cavort.”
“What was he doing that for. Uncle Remus?” the little boy inquired.
“He wuz tryin’ fer ter fling Brer Rabbit off’n his back, bless yo’
soul! But he des might ez well er rastle wid his own shadder. Every
time he hump hisse’f Brer Rabbit slap de spurrers in ’im, en dar dey
had it up en down. Brer Fox fa’rly to’ up de groun’, he did, en he
jump so high en he jump so quick, dat he mighty nigh snatch his own
tail off. Dey kep’ on gwine on dis way twel bimeby Brer Fox lay down
en roll over, he did, en dis sorter unsettle Brer Rabbit, but by de
time Brer Fox got en his footses agin, Brer Rabbit wuz gwine thoo de
underbresh mo’ samer dan a race hoss. Brer Fox, he lit out atter ’im,
he did, en he push Brer Rabbit so close, dat it wuz ’bout all he could
do fer ter git in a holler tree. Hole too little fer Brer Fox fer to
git in, en he hatter lay down en res’ en gadder his mine tergedder.
“While he wuz layin’ dar, Mr. Buzzard come floppin long, en seein’
Brer Fox stretch out on the groun’, he lit en view the premusses. Den
Mr. Buzzard sorter shake his wing, en put his head on one side, en say
to hisse’f like, sezee:
“‘Brer Fox dead, en I so sorry,’ sezee.
“‘No I ain’t dead, nudder,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. ‘I got ole man Rabbit
pent up in yer,’ sezee, ’en I’m gwineter git ’im dis time, ef it take
twel Chris’mus,’ sezee.
“Den, atter some mo’ palaver, Brer Fox make a bargain dat Mr. Buzzard
wuz ter watch de hole, en keep Brer Rabbit dar wiles Brer Fox went
atter his axe. Den Brer Fox, he lope off, he did, en Mr. Buzzard, he
tuck up his stan’ at de hole. Bimeby, w’en all get still, Brer Rabbit
sorter scramble down close ter de hole, he did, en holler out:
“‘Brer Fox! Oh! Brer Fox!’
“Brer Fox done gone, en nobody say nuthin.’ Den Brer Rabbit squall out
like he wuz mad:
“‘You needn’t talk less you wanter,’ sezee; ‘I knows youer dar, an
I ain’t keerin’, sezee. ‘I dez wanter tell you dat I wish mighty bad
Brer Tukkey Buzzard was here,’ sezee.
“Den Mr. Buzzard try to talk like Brer Fox:
“‘Wat you want wid Mr. Buzzard?’ sezee.
“‘Oh, nuthin’ in ’tickler, ’cep’ dere’s de fattes’ gray squir’l in yer
dat ever I see,’ sezee, ‘en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard was ’roun’ he’d be
mighty glad fer ter git ’im,’ sezee.
“‘How Mr. Buzzard gwine ter git him?’ sez de Buzzard, sezee.
“‘Well, dar’s a little hole, roun’ on de udder side er de tree,’ sez
Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘en ef Brer Tukkey Buzzard was here so he could
take up his stan’ dar’, sezee, ‘I’d drive dat squir’l out,’ sezee.
“‘Drive ’im out, den,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee, ‘en I’ll see dat Brer
Tukkey Buzzard gits’ ’im,’ sezee.
“Den Brer Rabbit kick up a racket, like he wer’ drivin’ sumpin’ out,
en Mr. Buzzard he rush ’roun’ fer ter ketch de squir’l, en Brer Rabbit,
he dash out, he did, en he des fly fer home.
“Well, Mr. Buzzard he feel mighty lonesome, he did, but he done
prommust Brer ♦Fox dat he’d stay, en he termin’ fer ter sorter hang
’roun’ en jine in de joke. En he ain’t hatter wait long, nudder, kase
bimeby yer come Brer Fox gallopin’ thoo de woods wid his axe on his
shoulder.
♦ ‘Eox’ replaced with ‘Fox’
“‘How you speck Brer Rabbit gittin’ on, Brer Buzzard?’ sez Brer Fox,
sezee.
“‘Oh, he in dar,’ sez Brer Buzzard, sezee. ‘He mighty still, dough. I
speck he takin’ a nap,’ sezee.
“‘Den I’m des in time fer te wake ’im up,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee. En wid
dat he fling off his coat, en spit in his han’s, en grab de axe. Den
he draw back en come down on de tree――pow! En eve’y time he come down
wid de axe――pow!――Mr. Buzzard, he step high, he did, en hollar out:
“‘Oh, he in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho.’
“En eve’y time a chip ud fly off, Mr. Buzzard, he’d jump, en dodge, en
hole his head sideways, he would, en holler:
“‘He in dar, Brer Fox. I done heerd ’im. He in dar, sho.’
“En Brer Fox, he lammed away at dat holler tree, he did, like a man
mauling’ rails, twel bimeby atter he done got de tree most’ cut thoo,
he stop fer ter ketch his bref, en he seed Mr. Buzzard laffin’ behind
his back, he did, en right den en dar, widout gwine enny fudder, Brer
Fox he smelt a rat. But Mr. Buzzard, he keep on holler’n:
“‘He in dar, Brer Fox. He in dar, sho. I done seed ’im.’
“Den Brer Fox, he make like he peepin’ up de holler, en he say, sezee:
“‘Run yer, Brer Buzzard, en look ef dis ain’t Brer Rabbit’s foot
hanging down yer.’
“En Mr. Buzzard, he come steppin’ up, he did, same ez ef he were
treddin’ on kurkle-burrs, en he stick his head in de hole; en no
sooner did he done dat dan Brer Fox grab ’im. Mr. Buzzard flap his
wings, en scramble roun’ right smartually, he did, but ’twan no use.
Brer Fox had de ’vantage er de grip, he did, en he hilt ’im right down
ter de groun’. Den Mr. Buzzard squall out, sezee:
“‘Lemme ’lone, Brer Fox. Tu’n me loose,’ sezee; ‘Brer Rabbit’ll git
out. Youer gittin’ close at ’im,’ sezee, ‘en leb’m mo’ licks’ll fetch
’im,’ sezee.
“‘I’m nigher ter you, Brer Buzzard,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘dan I’ll be
ter Brer Rabbit dis day,’ sezee. ‘Wat you fool me fer?’ sezee.
“‘Lemme ’lone, Brer Fox,’ sez Mr. Buzzard, sezee; ‘my ole ’oman
waitin’ for me. Brer Rabbit in dar,’ sezee.
“‘Dar’s a bunch er his fur on dat black-be’y bush,’ sez Brer Fox,
sezee, ‘en dat ain’t de way he come,’ sezee.
“Den Mr. Buzzard up’n tell Brer Fox how ’twuz, en he low’d, Mr.
Buzzard did, dat Brer Rabbit wuz de low-downest w’atsizname w’at he
ever run up wid. Den Brer Fox say, sezee:
“‘Dat’s needer here ner dar, Brer Buzzard,’ sezee. ‘I lef’ you yer
fer ter watch dish yer hole en I lef’ Brer Rabbit in dar. I comes back
en I fines you at de hole, en Brer Rabbit ain’t in dar,’ sezee. ‘I’m
gwinter make you pay fer’t. I done bin tampered wid twel plum down ter
de sap sucker’ll set on a log en sassy me. I’m gwinter fling you in a
bresh-heap en burn you up,’ sezee.
“‘Ef you fling me on der fier, Brer Fox, I’ll fly ’way,’ sez Mr.
Buzzard, sezee.
“‘Well, den, I’ll settle yo’ hash right now,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, en
wid dat he grab Mr. Buzzard by de tail, he did, en make fer ter dash
’im ’gin de groun’, but des ’bout dat time de tail fedders come out,
en Mr. Buzzard sail off like wunner dese yer berloons, en ez he riz,
he holler back:
“‘You gimme good start, Brer Fox,’ sezee, en Brer Fox sot dar en watch
’im fly outer sight.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ROBERT J. BURDETTE.
THE American people have a kindly feeling for the men who make
them laugh, and in no other country does a humorist have a more
appreciative public. The result has been, that in a country in which
the average native has a clearly marked vein of humor, the genuine
“funny man” is always sure of a hearty welcome. We have a long list of
writers and lecturers who have gained a wide popularity through their
mirth-provoking powers, and “Bob Burdette” holds an honorable place in
this guild of “funny men.”
He was born in Greensborough, Pennsylvania, July 30, 1844, though he
removed early in life to Peoria, Ill., where he received his education
in the public schools.
He enlisted in the Civil War and served as a private from 1862 to the
end of the war.
He began his journalistic career on the Peoria “Transcript,” and,
after periods of editorial connection with other local newspapers,
he became associate editor of the Burlington “Hawkeye,” Iowa. His
humorous contributions to this journal were widely copied and they
gave him a general reputation. His reputation as a writer had prepared
the way for his success as a lecturer, and in 1877 he entered the
lecture field, in which he has been eminently successful. He has
lectured in nearly all the cities of the United States, and he never
fails to amuse his listeners.
He is a lay preacher of the Baptist Church, and it is often a surprise
to those who have heard only his humorous sayings to hear him speak
with earnestness and serious persuasiveness of the deeper things of
life, for he is a man of deep experiences and of pure ideals.
His most popular lectures have been those on “The Rise and Fall of
the Mustache,” “Home,” and “The Pilgrimage of the Funny Man.” He has
published in book-form, “The Rise and Fall of the Mustache and Other
Hawkeyetems” (Burlington, 1877), “Hawkeyes” (1880), “Life of William
Penn” (New York, 1882), a volume in the series of “Comic Biographies;”
and “Innach Garden and other Comic Sketches” (1886).
He has been a frequent contributor to the _Ladies’ Home Journal_ and
other current literature, and he has recently written a convulsive
description of “How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle,” which appeared in
the _Wheelmen_.
He has for some years made his home at Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, and he
enjoys a large circle of friends.
* * * * *
THE MOVEMENT CURE FOR RHEUMATISM.¹
¹ Copyright, R. J. Burdette.
ONE day, not a great while ago, Mr. Middlerib read in his favorite
paper a paragraph copied from the _Præger Landwirthschaftliches
Wochenblatt_, a German paper, which is an accepted authority on such
points, stating that the sting of a bee was a sure cure for rheumatism,
and citing several remarkable instances in which ♦people had been
perfectly cured by this abrupt remedy. Mr. Middlerib did not stop to
reflect that a paper with such a name as that would be very apt to say
anything; he only thought of the rheumatic twinges that grappled his
knees once in a while, and made life a burden to him.
♦ ‘peo-’ replaced with ‘people’
He read the article several times, and pondered over it. He understood
that the stinging must be done scientifically and thoroughly. The bee,
as he understood the article, was to be gripped by the ears and set
down upon the rheumatic joint, and held there until it stung itself
stingless. He had some misgivings about the matter. He knew it would
hurt. He hardly thought it could hurt any worse than the rheumatism,
and it had been so many years since he was stung by a bee that he had
almost forgotten what it felt like. He had, however, a general feeling
that it would hurt some. But desperate diseases required desperate
remedies, and Mr. Middlerib was willing to undergo any amount of
suffering if it would cure his rheumatism.
He contracted with Master Middlerib for a limited supply of bees.
There were bees and bees, humming and buzzing about in the summer air,
but Mr. Middlerib did not know how to get them. He felt, however, that
he could depend upon the instincts and methods of boyhood. He knew
that if there was any way in heaven or earth whereby the shyest bee
that ever lifted a 200-pound man off the clover, could be induced to
enter a wide-mouthed glass bottle, his son knew that way.
For the small sum of one dime Master Middlerib agreed to procure
several, to-wit: six bees, age not specified; but as Mr. Middlerib was
left in uncertainty as to the race, it was made obligatory upon the
contractor to have three of them honey, and three humble, or in the
generally accepted vernacular, bumble bees. Mr. Middlerib did not tell
his son what he wanted those bees for, and the boy went off on his
mission, with his head so full of astonishment that it fairly whirled.
Evening brings all home, and the last rays of the declining sun fell
upon Master Middlerib with a short, wide-mouthed bottle comfortably
populated with hot, ill-natured bees, and Mr. Middlerib and a dime.
The dime and the bottle changed hands and the boy was happy.
Mr. Middlerib put the bottle in his coat pocket and went into the
house, eyeing everybody he met very suspiciously, as though he had
made up his mind to sting to death the first person that said “bee” to
him. He confided his guilty secret to none of his family. He hid his
bees in his bedroom, and as he looked at them just before putting them
away, he half wished the experiment was safely over. He wished the
imprisoned bees didn’t look so hot and cross. With exquisite care he
submerged the bottle in a basin of water, and let a few drops in on
the heated inmates, to cool them off.
At the tea-table he had a great fight. Miss Middlerib, in the artless
simplicity of her romantic nature said: “I smell bees. How the odor
brings up――――”
But her father glared at her, and said, with superfluous harshness and
execrable grammar:
“Hush up! You don’t smell nothing.”
“Whereupon Mrs. Middlerib asked him if he had eaten anything that
disagreed with him, and Miss Middlerib said: “Why, pa!” and Master
Middlerib smiled as he wondered.
Bedtime came at last, and the night was warm and sultry. Under
various false pretences, Mr. Middlerib strolled about the house until
everybody else was in bed, and then he sought his room. He turned the
night-lamp down until its feeble rays shone dimly as a death-light.
Mr. Middlerib disrobed slowly――very slowly. When at last he was ready
to go lumbering into his peaceful couch, he heaved a profound sigh, so
full of apprehension and grief that Mrs. Middlerib, who was awakened
by it, said if it gave him so much pain to come to bed, perhaps he had
better sit up all night. Mr. Middlerib checked another sigh, but said
nothing and crept into bed. After lying still a few moments he reached
out and got his bottle of bees.
It is not an easy thing to do, to pick one bee out of a bottle
full, with his fingers, and not get into trouble. The first bee Mr.
Middlerib got was a little brown honey-bee that wouldn’t weigh half an
ounce if you picked him up by the ears, but if you lifted him by the
hind leg as Mr. Middlerib did, would weigh as much as the last end of
a bay mule. Mr. Middlerib could not repress a groan.
“What’s the matter with you?” sleepily asked his wife.
It was very hard for Mr. Middlerib to say; he only knew his
temperature had risen to 86 all over, and to 197 on the end of his
thumb. He reversed the bee and pressed the warlike terminus of it
firmly against his rheumatic knee.
It didn’t hurt so badly as he thought it would.
It didn’t hurt at all!
Then Mr. Middlerib remembered that when the honey-bee stabs a human
foe it generally leaves its harpoon in the wound, and the invalid knew
then the only thing the bee had to sting with was doing its work at
the end of his thumb.
He reached his arm out from under the sheet, and dropped this disabled
atom of rheumatism liniment on the carpet. Then, after a second of
blank wonder, he began to feel around for the bottle, and wished he
knew what he had done with it.
In the meantime, strange things had been going on. When he caught
hold of the first bee, Mr. Middlerib, for reasons, drew it out in
such haste that for the time he forgot all about the bottle and its
remedial contents, and left it lying uncorked in the bed. In the
darkness there had been a quiet but general emigration from that
bottle. The bees, their wings clogged with the water Mr. Middlerib had
poured upon them to cool and tranquilize them, were crawling aimlessly
about over the sheet. While Mr. Middlerib was feeling around for it,
his ears were suddenly thrilled and his heart frozen by a wild,
piercing scream from his wife.
“Murder!” she screamed, “murder! Oh, help me! Help! help!”
Mr. Middlerib sat bold upright in bed. His hair stood on end. The
night was very warm, but he turned to ice in a minute.
“Where, oh, where,” he said, with pallid lips, as he felt all over the
bed in frenzied haste――“where in the world are those infernal bees?”
And a large “bumble,” with a sting as pitiless as the finger of scorn,
just then lighted between Mr. Middlerib’s shoulders, and went for his
marrow, and said calmly: “Here is one of them.”
And Mrs. Middlerib felt ashamed of her feeble screams when Mr.
Middlerib threw up both arms, and, with a howl that made the windows
rattle, roared:
“Take him off! Oh, land of Scott, somebody take him off!”
And when a little honey-bee began tickling the sole of Mrs.
Middlerib’s foot, she shrieked that the house was bewitched, and
immediately went into spasms.
The household was aroused by this time. Miss Middlerib, and Master
Middlerib and the servants were pouring into the room, adding to
the general confusion, by howling at random and asking irrelevant
questions, while they gazed at the figure of a man, a little on in
years, pawing fiercely at the unattainable spot in the middle of his
back, while he danced an unnatural, weird, wicked-looking jig by the
dim religious light of the night lamp.
And while he danced and howled, and while they gazed and shouted, a
navy-blue wasp, that Master Middlerib had put in the bottle for good
measure and variety, and to keep the menagerie stirred up, had dried
his legs and wings with a corner of the sheet, after a preliminary
circle or two around the bed, to get up his motion and settle down to
a working gait, fired himself across the room, and to his dying day Mr.
Middlerib will always believe that one of the servants mistook him for
a burglar, and shot him.
No one, not even Mr. Middlerib himself, could doubt that he was, at
least for the time, most thoroughly cured of rheumatism. His own boy
could not have carried himself more lightly or with greater agility.
But the cure was not permanent, and Mr. Middlerib does not like to
talk about it.
POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
Illustration: POPULAR WRITERS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
EDWARD S. ELLIS
MARTHA FINLEY • HORATIO ALGER JR.
“OLIVER OPTIC”
LOUISA M. ALCOTT • SARA JANE LIPPINCOTT
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.
AUTHOR OF “LITTLE WOMEN.”
THE famous author of “Little Women,” “Little Men,” and “Old-Fashioned
Girls,” made her beginning, as have many who have done any good or
acquired fame in the world, by depending on herself. In other words,
she was the architect of her own fortune, and has left behind her
works that will endure to gladden the hearts of millions of boys and
girls. But she has done more. She has left behind her a record of a
life within itself, a benediction and inspiration to every thoughtful
girl who reads it.
While Miss Alcott always considered New England her home, she was
actually born in Germantown, Philadelphia, November 29, 1832. Her
father, Amos Bronson Alcott, after his marriage in New England,
accepted a position as principal of a Germantown Academy, which he
occupied from 1831 to 1834, and afterwards taught a children’s school
at his own residence, but he was unsuccessful and he returned to
Boston in 1835, when Louisa was two years old.
From this time forward, Mr. Alcott was a close friend and associate of
the poet and philosopher Emerson, sharing with him his transcendental
doctrines, and joining in the Brook-Farm experiment of ideal communism
at Roxbury, Mass. The Brook-Farm experiment brought Mr. Alcott to
utter financial ruin, and after its failure he removed to Concord,
where he continued to live until his death. It was at this time that
Louisa, although a mere child, formed a noble and unselfish purpose
to retrieve the family fortune. When only fifteen years of age, she
turned her thoughts to teaching, her first school being in a barn
and attended by the children of Mr. Emerson and other neighbors.
Almost at the same time she began to compose fairy stories, which were
contributed to papers; but these early productions brought her little
if any compensation, and she continued to devote herself to teaching,
receiving her own education privately from her father. “When I was
twenty-one years of age,” she wrote many years later to a friend, “I
took my little earnings ($20) and a few clothes, and went out to seek
my fortune, though I might have sat still and been supported by rich
friends. All those hard years were teaching me what I afterwards put
into books, and so I made my fortune out of my seeming misfortune.”
Two years after this brave start Miss Alcott’s earliest book, “Fairy
Tales,” was published (1855). About the same time her work began to be
accepted by the “Atlantic Monthly” and other magazines of reputation.
During the winters of 1862 and ’63 she volunteered her services and
went to Washington and served as a nurse in the government hospitals,
and her experiences here were embodied in a series of graphic
letters to her mother and sisters. These letters she revised and
had printed in the “Boston Commonwealth” in the summer of 1863. They
were afterwards issued in a volume entitled “Hospital Sketches and
Camp-Fire Stories.” This was her second book, which, together with her
magazine articles, opened the way to a splendid career as an author.
Being naturally fond of young people, Miss Alcott turned her attention
from this time forward to writing for them. Her distinctive books
for the young are entitled “Moods” (1864); “Morning Glories” (1867);
“Little Women” (1868), which was her first decided success; “An
Old-Fashioned Girl” (1869); “Little Men” (1871); “Work” (1873); “Eight
Cousins” (1875), and its sequel, “Rose in Bloom” (1877), which perhaps
ranks first among her books; “Under the Lilacs” (1878); “Jack and
Jill” (1880), and “Lulu’s Library” (1885). Besides these she has put
forth, at different times, several volumes of short stories, among
which are “Cupid and Chow-Chow,” “Silver Pitchers” and “Aunt Joe’s
Scrap-bag.”
From childhood Miss Alcott was under the tutelage of the Emersonian
school, and was not less than her father an admirer of the “Seer of
Concord.” “Those Concord days,” she writes, “were among the happiest
of my life, for we had the charming playmates in the little Emersons,
Channings, and Hawthornes, with their illustrious parents, to enjoy
our pranks and join our excursions.”
In speaking of Emerson she also wrote to a young woman a few years
before her death: “Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson have done
much to help me see that one can shape life best by trying to build
up a strong and noble character, through good books, wise people’s
society, and by taking an interest in all reforms that help the world,
... believing always that a loving and just Father cares for us,
sees our weakness, and is near to help if we call.” Continuing she
asks: “Have you read Emerson? He is called a Pantheist, or believer in
nature, instead of God. He was truly a Christian and saw God in nature,
finding strength and comfort in the same sweet influence of the great
Mother as well as the great Father of all. I, too, believe this, and
when tired, sad or tempted, find my best comfort in the woods, the sky,
the healing solitude that lets my poor, weary soul find the rest, the
fresh hopes, the patience which only God can give us.”
The chief aim of Miss Alcott seemed to have been to make others happy.
Many are the letters treasured up by young authors who often, but
never in vain, sought her advice and kind assistance. To one young
woman who asked her opinion on certain new books, in 1884, she wrote:
“About books; yes, I’ve read ‘Mr. Isaacs’ and ‘Dr. Claudius,’¹ and
like them both. The other, ‘To Leeward,’ is not so good; ‘Little
Pilgrim’ was pretty, but why try to paint heaven? Let it alone and
prepare for it, whatever it is, sure that God knows what we need and
deserve. I will send you Emerson’s ‘Essays.’ Read those marked. I hope
they will be as helpful to you as they have been to me and many others.
They will bear study and I think are what you need to feed upon now.”
The marked essays were those on “Compensation,” “Love,” “Friendship,”
“Heroism,” and “Self-Reliance.”
¹ These are the books that made F. Marion Crawford famous.
Miss Alcott’s kindness for young people grew with her advancing years.
Being a maiden lady without daughters of her own, she was looked up to
and delighted in being considered as a foster-mother to aspiring girls
all over the land. How many times she wrote similar sentences to this:
“Write freely to me, dear girl, and if I can help you in any way be
sure I will.” This was written to one she had never seen and only four
years before her death, when she was far from well.
Miss Alcott died in Boston, March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-six
years, and just two days after her aged father, who was eighty-five
years old, and who had depended on her many years, passed away. Though
a great advocate of work for the health, she was, no doubt, a victim
of overwork; for it is said she frequently devoted from twelve to
fifteen hours a day to her literary labors, ... besides looking after
her business affairs and caring personally for her old father, for
many years an invalid. In addition to this, she educated some of her
poor relatives, and still further took the place of a mother to little
Lulu, the daughter of her sister, May, who died when the child was an
infant.
* * * * *
HOW JO MADE FRIENDS.¹
(FROM “LITTLE WOMEN.”)
¹ Copyright, Roberts Bros.
“THAT boy is suffering for society and fun,” she said to herself. “His
grandpa don’t know what’s good for him, and keeps him shut up all
alone. He needs a lot of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young
and lively. I’ve a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman
so.”
The idea amused Jo, who liked to do daring things, and was always
scandalizing Meg by her queer performances. The plan of “going over”
was not forgotten; and, when the snowy afternoon came, Jo resolved
to try what could be done. She saw Mr. Laurence drive off, and then
sailed out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused and took
a survey. All quiet; curtains down to the lower windows; servants out
of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on
a thin hand, at the upper window.
“There he is,” thought Jo; “poor boy, all alone, and sick, this dismal
day! It’s a shame! I’ll toss up a snowball, and make him look out, and
then say a kind word to him.”
Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing
a face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes
brightened, and the mouth began to smile. Jo nodded, and laughed, and
flourished her broom, as she called out,――
“How do you do? Are you sick?”
Laurie opened the window and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven,――
“Better, thank you. I’ve had a horrid cold, and have been shut up a
week.”
“I’m sorry. What do you amuse yourself with?”
“Nothing; it’s as dull as tombs up here.”
“Don’t you read?”
“Not much; they won’t let me.”
“Can’t somebody read to you?”
“Grandpa does, sometimes; but my books don’t interest him, and I hate
to ask Brooke all the time.”
“Have some one come and see you, then.”
“There isn’t any one I’d like to see. Boys make such a row, and my
head is weak.”
“Isn’t there some nice girl who’d read and amuse you? Girls are quiet,
and like to play nurse.”
“Don’t know any.”
“You know me,” began Jo, then laughed and stopped.
“So I do! Will you come, please?” cried Laurie.
“I’m not quiet and nice; but I’ll come, if mother will let me. I’ll go
ask her. Shut that window, like a good boy, and wait till I come....
“Oh! that does me lots of good; tell on, please,” he said, taking his
face out of the sofa-cushion, red and shining with merriment.
Much elevated with her success, Jo did “tell on,” all about their
plays and plans, their hopes and fears for father, and the most
interesting events of the little world in which the sisters lived.
Then they got to talking about books; and to Jo’s delight she found
that Laurie loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than
herself.
“If you like them so much, come down and see ours. Grandpa is out, so
you needn’t be afraid,” said Laurie, getting up.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” returned Jo, with a toss of the head.
“I don’t believe you are!” exclaimed the boy, looking at her with much
admiration, though he privately thought she would have good reason to
be a trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met him in some of his
moods.
The atmosphere of the whole house being summer-like, Laurie led the
way from room to room, letting Jo stop to examine whatever struck her
fancy; and so at last they came to the library, where she clapped her
hands, and pranced, as she always did when specially delighted. It was
lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting
little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and Sleep-Hollow
chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes; and, best of all, a great, open
fireplace, with quaint tiles all round it.
“What richness!” sighed Jo, sinking into the depths of a velvet chair,
and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. “Theodore
Laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world,” she added
impressively.
“A fellow can’t live on books,” said Laurie, shaking his head, as he
perched on a table opposite.
Before he could say any more, a bell rang, and Jo flew up, exclaiming
with alarm, “Mercy me! it’s your grandpa!”
“Well, what if it is? You are not afraid of anything, you know,”
returned the boy, looking wicked.
“I think I am a little bit afraid of him, but I don’t know why I
should be. Marmee said I might come, and I don’t think you are any the
worse for it,” said Jo, composing herself, though she kept her eyes on
the door.
“I’m a great deal better for it, and ever so much obliged. I’m afraid
you are very tired talking to me; it was so pleasant, I couldn’t bear
to stop,” said Laurie gratefully.
“The doctor to see you, sir,” and the maid beckoned as she spoke.
“Would you mind if I left you for a minute? I suppose I must see him,”
said Laurie.
“Don’t mind me. I’m as happy as a cricket here,” answered Jo.
Laurie went away, and his guest amused herself in her own way. She was
standing before a fine portrait of the old gentleman, when the door
opened again, and, without turning, she said decidedly, “I’m sure now
that I shouldn’t be afraid of him, for he’s got kind eyes, though his
mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own.
He isn’t as handsome as _my_ grandfather, but I like him.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said a gruff voice behind her; and there, to her
great dismay, stood old Mr. Laurence.
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WILLIAM TAYLOR ADAMS.
THE WELL-BELOVED WRITER FOR YOUNG PEOPLE.
PROBABLY no literary man in America has ministered to the pleasure of
a greater number of our young people than William Taylor Adams, who
is a native of Massachusetts and was born in Medway in 1822. He has
devoted his life to young people; for more than twenty years as a
teacher in the public schools of Boston, for many years a member of
the school board of Dorchester, and since 1850 as a writer of stories.
In his earlier life, he was the editor of a periodical known as “The
Student and Schoolmate.” In 1881 he began the publication of “Our
Little Ones,” and later “Oliver Optic’s Magazine for Boys and Girls.”
His first book was published in 1853; it was entitled “Hatchie, the
Guardian Slave,” and had a large sale. It was followed by a collection
of stories called “In Doors and Out,” and in 1862 was completed “The
Riverdale Series” of six volumes of stories for boys. Some of his
other books are “The Boat Club;” “Woodville;” “Young America Abroad;”
“Starry Flag;” “Onward and Upward;” “Yacht Club;” and “Great Western.”
In all he has written at least a thousand stories for newspapers,
and published about a hundred volumes. Among these are two novels for
older readers: “The Way of the World” and “Living Too Fast.”
Mr. Adams’ style is both pleasing and simple. His stories are
frequently based upon scenes of history and their influence is always
for good.
* * * * *
THE SLOOP THAT WENT TO THE BOTTOM.¹
(FROM “SNUG HARBOR,” 1883.)
¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard.
“STARBOARD your helm! hard a-starboard!” shouted Dory Dornwood, as he
put the helm of the “Goldwing” to port in order to avoid a collision
with a steam launch which lay dead ahead of the schooner.
“Keep off! you will sink me!” cried a young man in a sloop-boat, which
lay exactly in the course of the steam launch. “That’s just what I
mean to do, if you don’t come about,” yelled a man at the wheel of the
steamer. “Why didn’t you stop when I called to you?”
“Keep off, or you will be into me!” screamed the skipper of the sloop,
whose tones and manner indicated that he was very much terrified at
the situation.
And he had reason enough to be alarmed. It was plain, from his
management of his boat, that he was but an indifferent boatman; and
probably he did not know what to do in the emergency. Dory had noticed
the sloop coming up the lake with the steam launch astern of her. The
latter had run ahead of the sloop, and had come about, it now appeared,
for the purpose of intercepting her.
When the skipper of the sloop realized the intention of the helmsman
of the steamer, he put his helm to port; but he was too late. The
sharp bow of the launch struck the frail craft amidships, and cut
through her as though she had been made of cardboard.
The sloop filled instantly, and, a moment later, the young man in
her was struggling on the surface of the water. The boat was heavily
ballasted, and she went down like a lump of lead. It was soon clear to
Dory that the skipper could not swim, for he screamed as though the
end of all things had come.
Very likely it would have been the end of all things to him, if Dory
had not come about with the “Goldwing,” and stood over the place
where the young man was vainly beating the water with his feet and
hands. With no great difficulty the skipper of the “Goldwing,” who
was an aquatic bird of the first water, pulled in the victim of the
catastrophe, in spite of the apparent efforts of the sufferer to
prevent him from doing so.
“You had a narrow squeak that time,” said Dory Dornwood, as soon as
he thought the victim of the disaster was in condition to do a little
talking. “It is lucky you didn’t get tangled up in the rigging of your
boat. She went to the bottom like a pound of carpet-tacks; and she
would have carried you down in a hurry if you hadn’t let go in short
metre.”
“I think I am remarkably fortunate in being among the living at this
moment,” replied the stranger, looking out over the stern of the
“Goldwing.” “That was the most atrocious thing a fellow ever did.”
“What was?” inquired Dory, who was not quite sure what the victim
meant by the remark, or whether he alluded to him or to the man in the
steam launch.
“Why, running into me like that,” protested the passenger, with no
little indignation in his tones.
“I suppose you came up from Burlington?” said Dory, suggestively, as
though he considered an explanation on the part of the stranger to be
in order at the present time.
“I have just come from Burlington,” answered the victim, who appeared
to be disposed to say nothing more. “Do you suppose I can get that
boat again?”
“I should say that the chance of getting her again was not first-rate.
She went down where the water is about two hundred and fifty feet deep;
and it won’t be an easy thing to get hold of her,” replied Dory. “If
you had let him run into you between Diamond Island and Porter’s Bay,
where the water is not more than fifty or sixty feet deep, you could
have raised her without much difficulty. I don’t believe you will ever
see her again.”
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SARAH JANE LIPPINCOTT.
FAVORITE WRITER FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.
ONE of the earliest papers devoted especially to young children was
“The Little Pilgrim,” edited for a number of years under the name of
“Grace Greenwood,” by Mrs. Lippincott. It had a very wide popularity,
and its little stories, poems, and page of puzzles brought pleasure
into very many home circles. Mrs. Lippincott is the daughter of Doctor
Thaddeus Clarke. She was born in Pompey, New York, in September,
1823, and lived during most of her childhood in Rochester. In 1842 she
removed with her father to New Brighton, Pennsylvania, and in 1853 she
was married to Leander K. Lippincott, of Philadelphia. She had early
begun to write verses, and, in 1844, contributed some prose articles
to “The New York Mirror,” adopting the name “Grace Greenwood,” which
she has since made famous. Besides her work upon “The Little Pilgrim,”
she has contributed for many years to “The Hearth and Home,” “The
Atlantic Monthly,” “Harper’s Magazine,” “The New York Independent,”
“Times,” and “Tribune,” to several California journals, and to at
least two English periodicals. She was one of the first women to
become a newspaper correspondent, and her letters from Washington
inaugurated a new feature in journalism. She has published a
number of books: “Greenwood Leaves;” “History of My Pets;” “Poems;”
“Recollections of My Childhood;” “Haps and Mishaps of a Tour in
Europe;” “Merrie England;” “Stories from Many Lands;” “Victoria, Queen
of England,” and others.
Mrs. Lippincott has lived abroad a great deal, and has been made
welcome in the best literary circles in England and on the continent.
During the war she devoted herself to the cause of the soldiers, read
and lectured to them in camps and hospitals, and won the appreciation
of President Lincoln, who used to speak of her as “Grace Greenwood,
the Patriot.” Although devoted to her home in Washington, she has
spent much time in New York City, and has lived a life whose activity
and service to the public are almost unequalled among literary women.
* * * * *
THE BABY IN THE BATH-TUB.¹
(FROM “RECORDS OF FIVE YEARS,” 1867.)
¹ Copyright, Houghton, Mifflin & Co.
“ANNIE! Sophie! come up quick, and see baby in her bath-tub!” cries
a charming little maiden, running down the wide stairway of an old
country house, and half-way up the long hall, all in a fluttering
cloud of pink lawn, her soft dimpled cheeks tinged with the same
lovely morning hue. In an instant there is a stir and a gush of light
laughter in the drawing-room, and presently, with a movement a little
more majestic and elder-sisterly, Annie and Sophie float noiselessly
through the hall and up the soft-carpeted ascent, as though borne
on their respective clouds of blue and white drapery, and take their
way to the nursery, where a novel entertainment awaits them. It is
the first morning of the eldest married sister’s first visit home,
with her first baby; and the first baby, having slept late after its
journey, is about to take its first bath in the old house.
“Well, I declare, if here isn’t mother, forgetting her dairy, and
Cousin Nellie, too, who must have left poor Ned all to himself
in the garden, lonely and disconsolate, and I am torn from my
books, and Sophie from her flowers, and all for the sake of seeing a
nine-month-old baby kicking about in a bath-tub! What simpletons we
are!”
Thus Miss Annie, the _proude layde_ of the family; handsome, haughty,
with perilous proclivities toward grand socialistic theories,
transcendentalism, and general strong-mindedness; pledged by many a
saucy vow to a life of single dignity and freedom, given to studies
artistic, æsthetic, philosophic and ethical; a student of Plato, an
absorber of Emerson, an exalter of her sex, a contemner of its natural
enemies.
“Simpletons, are we?” cries pretty Elinor Lee, aunt of the baby on the
other side, and “Cousin Nellie” by love’s courtesy, now kneeling close
by the bath-tub, and receiving on her sunny braids a liberal baptism
from the pure, plashing hands of babyhood,――“simpletons, indeed! Did I
not once see thee, O Pallas-Athene, standing rapt before a copy of the
‘Crouching Venus?’ and this is a sight a thousand times more beautiful;
for here we have color, action, radiant life, and such grace as the
divinest sculptors of Greece were never able to entrance in marble.
Just look at these white, dimpled shoulders, every dimple holding
a tiny, sparkling drop,――these rosy, plashing feet and hands,――this
laughing, roguish face,――these eyes, bright and blue and deep as lakes
of fairy-land,――these ears, like dainty sea-shells,――these locks of
gold, dripping diamonds,――and tell me what cherub of Titian, what
Cupid of Greuze, was ever half so lovely. I say, too, that Raphael
himself would have jumped at the chance of painting Louise, as she
sits there, towel in hand, in all the serene pride and chastened
dignity of young maternity,――of painting her as _Madonna_.”
“Why, Cousin Nellie is getting poetical for once, over a baby in a
bath-tub!”
“Well, Sophie, isn’t it a subject to inspire _real_ poets, to call
out and yet humble the genius of painters and sculptors? Isn’t it
an object for the reverence of ‘a glorious human creature,’――such
a pure and perfect form of physical life, such a starry little soul,
fresh from the hands of God? If your Plato teaches otherwise, Cousin
Annie, I’m glad I’ve no acquaintance with that distinguished heathen
gentleman; if your Carlyle, with his ‘soul above buttons’ and babies,
would growl, and your Emerson smile icily at the sight, away with
them!”
“Why, Nellie, you goose, Carlyle is ‘a man and a brother,’ in spite
of his ‘Latter-day Pamphlets,’ and no ogre. I believe he is very
well disposed toward babies in general; while Emerson is as tender
as he is great. Have you forgotten his ‘Threnody,’ in which the sob
of a mortal’s sorrow rises and swells into an immortal’s pean? I see
that baby is very lovely; I think that Louise may well be proud of
her. It’s a pity that she must grow up into conventionalities and all
that,――perhaps become some man’s plaything, or slave.”
“O _don’t_, sister!――‘sufficient for the day is the _worriment_
thereof.’ But I think you and Nellie are mistaken about the _pride_.
I am conscious of no such feeling in regard to my little Florence, but
only of joy, gratitude, infinite tenderness, and solicitude.”
Thus the young mother,――for the first time speaking, but not turning
her eyes from the bath-tub.
“Ah, coz, it won’t go! Young mothers are the proudest of living
creatures. The sweetest and saintliest among you have a sort of
subdued exultation, a meek assumption, an adorable insolence, toward
the whole unmarried and childless world. I have never seen anything
like it elsewhere.”
“_I_ have, in a bantam Biddy, parading her first brood in the hen-yard,
or a youthful duck, leading her first little downy flock to the water.”
“Ha, blasphemer! are you there?” cries Miss Nellie, with a bright
smile, and a brighter blush. Blasphemer’s other name is a tolerably
good one,――Edward Norton,――though he is oftenest called “Our Ned.”
He is the sole male representative of a wealthy old New England
family,――the pride and darling of four pretty sisters, “the only son
of his mother, and she a widow,” who adores him,――“a likely youth,
just twenty-one,” handsome, brilliant, and standing six feet high in
his stockings. Yet, in spite of all these unfavorable circumstances,
he is a very good sort of a fellow. He is just home from the model
college of the Commonwealth, where he learned to smoke, and, I blush
to say, has a cigar in hand at this moment, just as he has been
summoned from the garden by his pet sister, Kate, half-wild with
delight and excitement. With him comes a brother, according to the law,
and after the spirit,――a young, slender, fair-haired man, but with an
indescribable something of paternal importance about him. He is the
other proprietor of baby, and steps forward with a laugh and a “Heh,
my little water-nymph, my Iris!” and by the bath-tub kneeling, catches
a moist kiss from smiling baby lips, and a sudden wilting shower on
shirt-front and collar, from moister baby hands.
Young collegian pauses on the threshold, essaying to look lofty and
sarcastic, for a moment. Then his eye rests on Nellie Lee’s blushing
face, on the red, smiling lips, the braids of gold, sprinkled with
shining drops,――meets those sweet, shy eyes, and a sudden, mysterious
feeling, soft and vague and tender, floods his gay young heart. He
looks at baby again. “’Tis a pretty sight, upon my word! Let me throw
away my cigar before I come nearer; it is incense too profane for
such pure rites. Now give me a peep at Dian-the less! How the little
witch revels in the water! A small Undine. Jolly, isn’t it, baby? Why,
Louise, I did not know that Floy was so lovely, such a perfect little
creature. How fair she is? Why, her flesh, where it is not rosy, is of
the pure, translucent whiteness of a water-lily.”
No response to this tribute, for baby has been in the water more
than long enough, and must be taken out, willy, nilly. Decidedly
nilly it proves; baby proceeds to demonstrate that she is not
altogether cherubic, by kicking and screaming lustily, and striking
out frantically with her little, dripping hands. But Madonna wraps her
in soft linen, rolls her and pats her, till she grows good and merry
again, and laughs through her pretty tears.
But the brief storm has been enough to clear the nursery of all save
grandmamma and Auntie Kate, who draw nearer to witness the process of
drying and dressing. Tenderly the mother rubs the dainty, soft skin,
till every dimple gives up its last hidden droplet; then, with many
a kiss, and smile, and coo, she robes the little form in fairy-like
garments of cambric, lace, flannel, soft as a moth’s wing, and
delicate embroidery. The small, restless feet are caught, and encased
in comical little hose, and shod with Titania’s own slippers. Then
the light golden locks are brushed and twined into tendril-like curls,
and lo! the beautiful labor of love is finished. Baby is bathed and
dressed for the day.
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Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HORATIO ALGER.
AS a writer of books at once entertaining and at the same time of a
healthy and earnest character a parent cannot recommend to his boys a
more wholesome author than Horatio Alger, Jr. Mr. Alger always writes
with a careful regard to truth and to the right principles. His heroes
captivate the imagination, but they do not inflame it, and they are
generally worthy examples for the emulation of boys. At the same
time he is in no sense a preacher. His books have the true juvenile
flavor and charm, and, like the sugar pills of the homœopathist,
carry the good medicine of morality, bravery, industry, enterprise,
honor――everything that goes to make up the true manly and noble
character, so subtly woven into the thread of his interesting
narrative that the writer without detecting its presence receives
the wholesome benefit.
Mr. Alger became famous in the publication of that undying book,
“Ragged Dick; or, Street Life in New York.” It was his first book for
young people, and its success was so great that he immediately devoted
himself to writing for young people, which he has since continued. It
was a new field for a writer when Mr. Alger began, and his treatment
of it at once caught the fancy of the boys. “Ragged Dick” first
appeared in 1868, and since then it has been selling steadily until
now it is estimated that over two hundred thousand copies of the
series have passed into circulation. Mr. Alger possesses in an eminent
degree that sympathy with boys which a writer must have to meet with
success. He is able to enter into their plans, hopes, and aspirations.
He knows how to look upon life as they do. He writes straight at them
as one from their ranks and not down upon them as a towering fatherly
adviser. A boy’s heart naturally opens to a writer who understands
him and makes a companion of him. This, we believe, accounts for the
enormous sale of the books of this writer. We are told that about
three-quarters of a million copies of his books have been sold and
that all the large circulating libraries in the country have several
complete sets of them, of which but few volumes are found on the
shelves at one time.
Horatio Alger, Jr., was born in Revere, Massachusetts, January 13,
1834. He graduated at Harvard University in 1852, after which he spent
several years in teaching and newspaper work. In 1864 he was ordained
as a Unitarian minister and served a Massachusetts church for two
years. It was in 1866 that he took up his residence in New York and
became deeply interested in the street boys and exerted what influence
he could to the bettering of their condition. His experience in this
work furnished him with the information out of which grew many of his
later writings.
To enumerate the various volumes published by this author would be
tedious. They have generally been issued in series. Several volumes
complete one subject or theme. His first published book was “Bertha’s
Christmas Vision” (1855). Succeeding this came “Nothing to Do,” a tilt
at our best society, in verse (1857); “Frank’s Campaign; or, What a
Boy Can Do” (1864); “Helen Ford,” a novel, and also a volume of poems
(1866). The “Ragged Dick” series began in 1868, and comprises six
volumes. Succeeding this came “Tattered Tom,” first and second series,
comprising eight volumes. The entire fourteen volumes above referred
to are devoted to New York street life of boys. “Ragged Dick” has
served as a model for many a poor boy struggling upward, while the
influence of Phil the fiddler in the “Tattered Tom” series is credited
with having had much to do in the abolishment of the _padrone_ system.
The “Campaign Series” comprised three volumes; the “Luck and Pluck
Series” eight; the “Brave and Bold” four; the “Pacific Series” four;
the “Atlantic Series” four; “Way to Success” four; the “New World”
three; the “Victory Series” three. All of these were published prior
to 1896. Since the beginning of 1896 have appeared “Frank Hunter’s
Peril,” “The Young Salesman” and other later works, all of which have
met with the usual cordial reception accorded by the boys and girls to
the books of this favorite author. It is perhaps but just to say, now
that Oliver Optic is gone, that Mr. Alger has attained distinction as
the most popular writer of books for boys in America, and perhaps no
other writer for the young has ever stimulated and encouraged earnest
boys in their efforts to rise in the world or so strengthened their
will to persevere in well-doing, and at the same time written stories
so real that every one, young and old, delights to read them. He not
only writes interesting and even thrilling stories, but what is of
very great importance, they are always clean and healthy.
* * * * *
HOW DICK BEGAN THE DAY.¹
(FROM “RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK.”)
¹ Copyright, Porter & Coates.
“WAKE up, there, youngster,” said a rough voice.
Ragged Dick opened his eyes slowly and stared stupidly in the face of
the speaker, but did not offer to get up.
“Wake up, you young vagabond!” said the man a little impatiently; “I
suppose you’d lay there all day if I hadn’t called you.”
“What time is it?” asked Dick.
“Seven o’clock.”
“Seven o’clock! I oughter’ve been up an hour ago. I know what ’twas
made me so precious sleepy. I went to the Old Bowery last night and
didn’t turn in till past twelve.”
“You went to the Old Bowery? Where’d you get your money?” asked the
man, who was a porter in the employ of a firm doing business on Spruce
Street.
“Made it on shines, in course. My guardian don’t allow me no money for
theatres, so I have to earn it.”
“Some boys get it easier than that,” said the porter, significantly.
“You don’t catch me stealing, if that’s what you mean,” said Dick.
“Don’t you ever steal, then?”
“No, and I wouldn’t. Lots of boys does it, but I wouldn’t.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you say that. I believe there’s some good in
you, Dick, after all.”
“Oh, I’m a rough customer,” said Dick. “But I wouldn’t steal. It’s
mean.”
“I’m glad you think so, Dick,” and the rough voice sounded gentler
than at first. “Have you got any money to buy your breakfast?”
“No; but I’ll soon have some.”
While this conversation had been going on Dick had got up. His
bed-chamber had been a wooden box, half full of straw, on which the
young bootblack had reposed his weary limbs and slept as soundly as
if it had been a bed of down. He dumped down into the straw without
taking the trouble of undressing. Getting up, too, was an equally
short process. He jumped out of the box, shook himself, picked out one
or two straws that had found their way into rents in his clothes, and,
drawing a well-worn cap over his uncombed locks, he was all ready for
the business of the day.
Dick’s appearance, as he stood beside the box, was rather peculiar.
His pants were torn in several places, and had apparently belonged
in the first instance to a boy two sizes larger than himself. He
wore a vest, all the buttons of which were gone except two, out of
which peeped a shirt which looked as if it had been worn a month. To
complete his costume he wore a coat too long for him, dating back, if
one might judge from its general appearance, to a remote antiquity.
Washing the hands and face is usually considered proper in commencing
the day; but Dick was above such refinement. He had no particular
dislike to dirt, and did not think it necessary to remove several
dark streaks on his face and hands. But in spite of his dirt and rags
there was something about Dick that was attractive. It was easy to
see that if he had been clean and well-dressed he would have been
decidedly good-looking. Some of his companions were sly, and their
faces inspired distrust; but Dick had a straightforward manner that
made him a favorite.
Dick’s business hours had commenced. He had no office to open. His
little blacking-box was ready for use, and he looked sharply in the
faces of all who passed, addressing each with, “Shine your boots,
sir?”
“How much?” asked a gentleman on his way to his office.
“Ten cents,” said Dick, dropping his box, and sinking upon his knees
on the sidewalk, flourishing his brush with the air of one skilled in
his profession.
“Ten cents! Isn’t that a little steep?”
“Well, you know ’taint all clear profit,” said Dick, who had already
set to work. “There’s the _blacking_ costs something, and I have to
get a new brush pretty often.”
“And you have a large rent, too,” said the gentleman, quizzically,
with a glance at a large hole in Dick’s coat.
“Yes, sir,” said Dick, always ready for a joke; “I have to pay such a
big rent for my manshun up on Fifth Avenue that I can’t afford to take
less than ten cents a shine. I’ll give you a bully shine, sir.”
“Be quick about it then, for I am in a hurry. So your house is on
Fifth Avenue, is it?”
“It isn’t anywhere else,” said Dick, and Dick spoke the truth there.
“What tailor do you patronize?” asked the gentleman, surveying Dick’s
attire.
“Would you like to go to the same one?” asked Dick, shrewdly.
“Well, no; it strikes me that he didn’t give you a very good fit.”
“This coat once belonged to General Washington,” said Dick, comically.
“He wore it all through the Revolution, and it got tore some, ’cause
he fit so hard. When he died he told his widder to give it to some
smart young fellow that hadn’t got none of his own: so she gave it to
me. But if you’d like it, sir, to remember General Washington by, I’ll
let you have it reasonable.”
“Thank you, but I wouldn’t like to deprive you of it. And did your
pants come from General Washington, too?”
“No, they was a gift from Lewis Napoleon. Lewis had outgrown ’em and
sent ’em to me; he’s bigger than me, and that’s why they don’t fit.
“It seems you have distinguished friends. Now, my lad, I suppose you
would like your money.”
“I shouldn’t have any objection,” said Dick.
* * * * *
And now, having fairly introduced Ragged Dick to my young readers, I
must refer them to the next chapter for his further adventures.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDWARD S. ELLIS.
WRITER OF POPULAR BOOKS FOR BOYS.
EDWARD S. ELLIS is one of the most successful of the large group of
men and women who have made it their principal business to provide
delightful books for our young people.
Mr. Ellis is a native of northern Ohio, born in 1840, but has lived
most of his life in New Jersey. At the age of seventeen, he began his
successful career as a teacher and was attached for some years to the
State Normal School of New Jersey, and was Trustee and Superintendent
of the schools in the city of Trenton. He received the degree of
A. M. from Princeton University on account of the high character of
his historical text-books; but he is most widely known as a writer of
books for boys. Of these, he has written about thirty and continues to
issue two new ones each year, all of which are republished in London.
His contributions to children’s papers are so highly esteemed that
the “Little Folks’ Magazine,” of London, pays him double the rates
given to any other contributor. Mr. Ellis’s School Histories have
been widely used as text-books and he has also written two books on
Arithmetic. He is now preparing “The Standard History of the United
States.”
Besides those already mentioned, the titles of which would make
too long a list to be inserted here, he has written a great many
miscellaneous books.
Mr. Ellis abounds in good nature and is a delightful companion, and
finds in his home at Englewood, New Jersey, all that is necessary to
the enjoyment of life.
* * * * *
THE SIGNAL FIRE.¹
(FROM “STORM MOUNTAIN.”)
¹ Copyright, Porter & Coates.
TALBOT FROST paused on the crest of Storm Mountain and looked across
the lonely Oakland Valley spread out before him.
He had traveled a clean hundred miles through the forest, swimming
rapid streams, dodging Indians and Tories, and ever on the alert for
his enemies, who were equally vigilant in their search for him.
He eluded them all, however, for Frost, grim and grizzled, was a
veteran backwoodsman who had been a border scout for a score of years
or more, and he knew all the tricks of the cunning Iroquois, whose
ambition was to destroy every white person that could be reached with
rifle, knife, or tomahawk.
Frost had been engaged on many duties for the leading American
officers, but he was sure that to-day was the most important of all;
for be it known that he carried, hidden in the heel of his shoe, a
message in cipher from General George Washington himself.
Frost had been promised one hundred dollars in gold by the immortal
leader of the American armies, if he would place the piece of cipher
writing in the hands of Colonel Nick Hawley, before the evening of the
tenth day of August, 1777.
To-day was the tenth, the afternoon was only half gone, and Fort
Defiance, with its small garrison under the command of Hawley, was
only a mile distant in Oakland Valley. The vale spread away for many
leagues to the right and left, and was a couple of miles wide at the
point where the small border settlement was planted, with its stockade
fort and its dozen families clustered near.
“Thar’s a good three hours of sunlight left,” muttered the veteran,
squinting one eye toward the sultry August sky, “and I orter tramp to
the fort and back agin in half that time. I’ll be thar purty quick,
if none of the varmints trip me up, but afore leavin’ this crest, I’d
like to cotch the signal fire of young Roslyn from over yender.”
General Washington considered the message to Colonel Hawley so
important that he had sent it in duplicate; that is to say, two
messengers concealed the cipher about their persons and set out by
widely different routes to Fort Defiance, in Oakland Valley.
Since the distance was about the same, and it was not expected that
there would be much variation in speed, it was believed that, barring
accidents, the two would arrive in sight of their destination within a
short time of each other.
The other messenger was Elmer Roslyn, a youth of seventeen, a native
of Oakland, absent with his father in the Continental Army, those two
being the only members of their family who escaped an Indian massacre
that had burst upon the lovely settlement some months before.
It was agreed that whoever first reached the mountain crest should
signal to the other by means of a small fire――large enough merely to
send up a slight vapor that would show against the blue sky beyond.
The keen eyes of Talbot Frost roved along the rugged mountain-ridge
a couple of miles distant, in search of the tell-tale signal. They
followed the craggy crest a long distance to the north and south of
the point where Roslyn had promised to appear, but the clear summer
air was unsustained by the least semblance of smoke or vapor. The day
itself was of unusual brilliancy, not the least speck of a cloud being
visible in the tinted sky.
“That Elmer Roslyn is a powerful pert young chap,” said the border
scout to himself. “I don’t think I ever seed his ekal, and he can
fight in battles jes’ like his father, Captain Mart, that I’ve heerd
Gineral Washington say was one of the best officers he’s got; but
thar’s no sense in his puttin’ himself agin an old campaignor like
_me_. I don’t s’pose he’s within twenty mile of Oakland yit, and he
won’t have a chance to kindle that ere signal fire afore to-morrer.
So I’ll start mine, and in case he should accidentally reach the
mountain-top over yender afore sundown, why he’ll see what a foolish
younker he was to butt agin me.”
Talbot Frost knew that despite the perils through which he had forced
his way to this spot, the greatest danger, in all probability, lay in
the brief space separating him from Fort Defiance in the middle of the
valley.
It was necessary, therefore, to use great care lest the signal fire
should attract the attention of unfriendly eyes.
“I’ll start a small one,” he said, beginning to gather some dry twigs,
“just enough for Elmer to obsarve by sarchin’――by the great Gineral
Washington!”
To explain this exclamation of the old scout, I must tell you that
before applying the flint and tinder to the crumpled leaves, Talbot
Frost glanced across the opposite mountain-crest, two miles away.
As he did so he detected a fine, wavy column of smoke climbing from
the rocks and trees. It was so faint that it was not likely to attract
notice, unless a suspicious eye happened to look toward that part of
the sky.
“By gracious! It’s him!” he exclaimed, closing his mouth and resuming
command of himself. “That ere young Roslyn is pearter than I thought;
if he keeps on at this rate by the time he reaches my years he’ll be
the ekal of me――_almost_. Wall, I’ll have to answer him; when we meet
I’ll explanify that I give him up, and didn’t think it was wuth while
to start a blaze.”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MARTHA FINLEY.
THE GIRLS’ FRIEND.
MARTHA FINLEY, author of the “Elsie Books,” etc., amounting in all
to about one hundred volumes, was born in Chillicothe, Ohio, April 26,
1828, in the house of her grandfather, Major Samuel Finley, of the
Virginia Cavalry, in the War of the Revolution, and a personal friend
of Washington, who, while President, appointed him “Collector of
Public Monies” for the Northwestern Territory of which Ohio was then
a part. In the war of 1812–14 Major Finley marched to Detroit to
the assistance of General Hull, at the head of a regiment of Ohio
volunteers in which his eldest son, James Brown Finley, then a lad
of eighteen, was a lieutenant. On Hull’s disgraceful surrender those
troops were paroled and returned to their homes in Ohio. James Finley
afterwards became a physician and married his mother’s niece, Maria
Theresa Brown. Martha was their sixth child. In the spring of 1836 Dr.
Finley left Ohio for South Bend, Indiana, where he resided until his
death in 1851.
Something more than a year later Martha joined a widowed sister in New
York city and resided there with her for about eighteen months. It was
then and there she began her literary career by writing a newspaper
story and a little Sunday-school book. But she was broken down in
health and half blind from astigmatism; so bad a case that the oculist
who years afterward measured her eyes for glasses, told her she would
have been excusable had she said she could not do anything at all.
But she loved books and would manage to read and write in spite of
the difficulty of so doing; and a great difficulty it was, for in
the midst of a long sentence the letters would seem to be thrown
into confusion, and it was necessary to look away from the book or
close her eyes for an instant before they would resume their proper
positions.
But orphaned and dependent upon her own exertions, she struggled
on, teaching and writing, living sometimes in Philadelphia with a
stepmother who was kind enough to give her a home, sometimes in
Phœnixville, Pa., where she taught a little select school. It was
there she began the Elsie Series which have proved her most successful
venture in literature. The twenty-second volume, published in 1897, is
entitled Elsie at Home. The author has again and again proposed to end
the series, thinking it long enough, but public and publishers have
insisted upon another and yet another volume. The books have sold
so well that they have made her a lovely home in Elkton, Maryland,
whither she removed in 1876 and still resides, and to yield her a
comfortable income.
But her works are not all juveniles. “Wanted a Pedigree,” and most of
the other works in the Finley Series are for adults, and though not so
very popular as the Elsie Books, still have steady sales though nearly
all have been on the market for more than twenty years.
* * * * *
ELSIE’S DISAPPOINTMENT.¹
(FROM “ELSIE DINSMORE.”)
¹ Copyright, 1893, Dodd, Mead & Co.
THE school-room at Roselands was a very pleasant apartment. Within sat
Miss Day with her pupils, six in number.
“Young ladies and gentlemen,” said she, looking at her watch, “I
shall leave you to your studies for an hour; at the end of which time
I shall return to hear your recitations, when those who have attended
properly to their duties will be permitted to ride out with me to
visit the fair.”
“Oh! that will be jolly!” exclaimed Arthur, a bright-eyed,
mischief-loving boy of ten.
“Hush!” said Miss Day sternly; “let me hear no more such exclamations;
and remember that you will not go unless your lessons are thoroughly
learned. Louise and Lora,” addressing two young girls of the
respective ages of twelve and fourteen, “that French exercise must be
perfect, and your English lessons as well. Elsie,” to a little girl
of eight, sitting alone at a desk near one of the windows, and bending
over a slate with an appearance of great industry, “every figure of
that example must be correct, your geography lesson recited perfectly,
and a page in your copy-book written without a blot.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the child meekly, raising a pair of large soft eyes
of the darkest hazel for an instant to her teacher’s face, and then
dropping them again upon her slate.
“And see that none of you leave the room until I return,” continued
the governess. “Walter, if you miss one word of that spelling, you
will have to stay at home and learn it over.”
“Unless mamma interferes, as she will be pretty sure to do,” muttered
Arthur, as the door closed on Miss Day, and her retreating footsteps
were heard passing down the hall.
For about ten minutes after her departure, all was quiet in the
school-room, each seemingly completely absorbed in study. But at
the end of that time Arthur sprang up, and, flinging his book across
the room, exclaimed, “There! I know my lesson; and if I didn’t, I
shouldn’t study another bit for old Day, or Night either.”
“Do be quiet, Arthur,” said his sister Louise; “I can’t study in such
a racket.”
Arthur stole on tiptoe across the room, and coming up behind Elsie,
tickled the back of her neck with a feather.
She started, saying in a pleading tone, “Please, Arthur, don’t.”
“It pleases me to do,” he said, repeating the experiment.
Elsie changed her position, saying in the same gentle, persuasive tone,
“O Arthur! _please_ let me alone, or I never shall be able to do this
example.”
“What! all this time on one example! you ought to be ashamed. Why, I
could have done it half a dozen times over.”
“I have been over and over it,” replied the little girl in a tone
of despondency, “and still there are two figures that will not come
right.”
“How do you know they are not right, little puss?” shaking her curls
as he spoke.
“Oh! please, Arthur, don’t pull my hair. I have the answer――that’s the
way I know.”
“Well, then, why don’t you just set the figures down. I would.”
“Oh! no, indeed; that would not be honest.”
“Pooh! nonsense! nobody would be the wiser, nor the poorer.”
“No, but it would be just like telling a lie. But I can never get it
right while you are bothering me so,” said Elsie, laying her slate
aside in despair. Then, taking out her geography, she began studying
most diligently. But Arthur continued his persecutions――tickling her,
pulling her hair, twitching the book out of her hand, and talking
almost incessantly, making remarks, and asking questions; till at last
Elsie said, as if just ready to cry, “Indeed, Arthur, if you don’t let
me alone, I shall never be able to get my lessons.”
“Go away, then; take your book out on the veranda, and learn your
lessons there,” said Louise. “I’ll call you when Miss Day comes.”
“Oh! no, Louise, I cannot do that, because it would be disobedience,”
replied Elsie, taking out her writing materials.
Arthur stood over her criticising every letter she made, and finally
jogged her elbow in such a way as to cause her to drop all the ink in
her pen upon the paper, making quite a large blot.
“Oh!” cried the little girl, bursting into tears, “now I shall lose my
ride, for Miss Day will not let me go; and I was so anxious to see all
those beautiful flowers.”
Arthur, who was really not very vicious, felt some compunction when he
saw the mischief he had done. “Never mind, Elsie,” said he, “I can fix
it yet. Just let me tear out this page, and you can begin again on the
next, and I’ll not bother you. I’ll make these two figures come right,
too,” he added, taking up her slate.
“Thank you, Arthur,” said the little girl, smiling through her tears;
“you are very kind, but it would not be honest to do either, and I had
rather stay at home than be deceitful.”
“Very well, miss,” said he, tossing his head, and walking away, “since
you won’t let me help you, it is all your own fault if you have to
stay at home.”
Elsie finished her page, and, excepting the unfortunate blot, it all
looked very neat indeed, showing plainly that it had been written with
great care. She then took up her slate and patiently went over and
over every figure of the troublesome example, trying to discover where
her mistake had been. But much time had been lost through Arthur’s
teasing, and her mind was so disturbed by the accident to her writing
that she tried in vain to fix it upon the business in hand; and before
the two troublesome figures had been made right, the hour was past and
Miss Day returned.
“Oh!” thought Elsie, “if she will only hear the others first;” but
it was a vain hope. Miss Day had no sooner seated herself at her desk
than she called, “Elsie, come here and say that lesson; and bring your
copy-book and slate, that I may examine your work.”
Elsie tremblingly obeyed.
The lesson, though a difficult one, was very tolerably recited; for
Elsie, knowing Arthur’s propensity for teasing, had studied it in her
own room before school hours. But Miss Day handed back the books with
a frown, saying, “I told you the recitation must be perfect, and it
was not. There are two incorrect figures in this example,” said she,
laying down the slate, after glancing over its contents. Then taking
up the copy-book, she exclaimed, “Careless, disobedient child! did I
not caution you to be careful not to blot your book? There will be no
ride for you this morning. You have failed in everything. Go to your
seat. Make that example right, and do the next; learn your geography
lesson over, and write another page in your copy-book; and mind, if
there is a blot on it, you will get no dinner.”
Weeping and sobbing, Elsie took up her books and obeyed.
During this scene Arthur stood at his desk pretending to study, but
glancing every now and then at Elsie, with a conscience evidently ill
at ease. She cast an imploring glance at him, as she returned to her
seat; but he turned away his head, muttering, “It’s all her own fault,
for she wouldn’t let me help her.”
As he looked up again, he caught his sister Lora’s eyes fixed on him
with an expression of scorn and contempt. He colored violently, and
dropped his upon his book.
“Miss Day,” said Lora, indignantly, “I see Arthur does not mean to
speak, and as I cannot bear to see such injustice, I must tell you
that it is all his fault that Elsie has failed in her lessons; for she
tried her very best, but he teased her incessantly, and also jogged
her elbow and made her spill the ink on her book; and to her credit
she was too honorable to tear out the leaf from her copy-book, or to
let him make her example right; both which he very generously proposed
doing after causing all the mischief.”
“Is this so, Arthur?” asked Miss Day, angrily.
The boy hung his head, but made no reply.
“Very well, then,” said Miss Day, “you too must stay at home.”
“Surely,” said Lora, in surprise, “you will not keep Elsie, since I
have shown you that she was not to blame.”
“Miss Lora,” replied her teacher, haughtily, “I wish you to understand
that I am not to be dictated to by my pupils.”
Lora bit her lip, but said nothing, and Miss Day went on hearing the
lessons without further remark.
In the meantime the little Elsie sat at her desk, striving to conquer
the feelings of anger and indignation that were swelling in her breast;
for Elsie, though she possessed much of “the ornament of a meek and
quiet spirit,” was not yet perfect, and often had a fierce contest
with her naturally quick temper. Yet it was seldom, very seldom that
word or tone or look betrayed the existence of such feelings; and it
was a common remark in the family that Elsie had no spirit.
The recitations were scarcely finished when the door opened and a lady
entered dressed for a ride.
“Not through yet, Miss Day?” she asked.
“Yes, madam, we are just done,” replied the teacher, closing the
French grammar and handing it to Louise.
“Well, I hope your pupils have all done their duty this morning, and
are ready to accompany us to the fair,” said Mrs. Dinsmore. “But what
is the matter with Elsie?”
“She has failed in all her exercises, and therefore has been told that
she must remain at home,” replied Miss Day with heightened color and
in a tone of anger; “and as Miss Lora tells me that Master Arthur was
partly the cause, I have forbidden him also to accompany us.”
“Excuse me, Miss Day, for correcting you,” said Lora, a little
indignantly; “but I did not say _partly_, for I am sure it was
_entirely_ his fault.”
“Hush, hush, Lora,” said her mother, a little impatiently; “how can
you be sure of any such thing; Miss Day, I must beg of you to excuse
Arthur this once, for I have quite set my heart on taking him along.
He is fond of mischief, I know, but he is only a child, and you must
not be too hard upon him.”
“Very well, madam,” replied the governess stiffly, “you have of course
the best right to control your own children.”
Mrs. Dinsmore turned to leave the room.
“Mamma,” asked Lora, “is not Elsie to be allowed to go too?”
“Elsie is not my child, and I have nothing to say about it. Miss Day,
who knows all the circumstances, is much better able than I to judge
whether or no she is deserving of punishment,” replied Mrs. Dinsmore,
sailing out of the room.
“You will let her go, Miss Day?” said Lora, inquiringly.
“Miss Lora,” replied Miss Day, angrily, “I have already told you I was
not to be dictated to. I have said Elsie must remain at home, and I
shall not break my word.”
“Such injustice!” muttered Lora, turning away.
Miss Day hastily quitted the room, followed by Louise and Lora, and
Elsie was left alone.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MARY MAPES DODGE.
EDITOR OF “ST. NICHOLAS” MAGAZINE.
IT would be difficult to name a writer of later years who has done
more to delight the children with bright and chatty sunny-day stories
than this estimable woman. While her mind has all the maturity, power,
good judgment and strength of our best writers, her heart seems never
to have grown out of the happy realm of childhood. It is for them that
she thinks, and it is for them that she writes her charming stories
when she is in her happiest moods. Not that she cannot write for grown
up people, for she has given them several books――very good ones too.
She edited “Hearth and Home” at one time, and many a mother remembers
her good advice in bright and cheerful editorials, on the art of
home-making, and on the care and training of children. She is also a
humorous writer of considerable ability. “Miss Maloney on the Chinese
Question” is one of her most amusing sketches. Mary Mapes was born
in New York city, in 1838. Prof. James Mapes, the scientist, was her
father. She married Mr. William Dodge, a lawyer, who lived only a
few years, and it was after his death that she began to write for
the “Hearth and Home” to which Donald G. Mitchell (Ik Marvel) and
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe were at that time, also, contributors.
In 1864 Mrs. Dodge’s first volume entitled, “Irving Stories,” for
children, appeared. It met with great success, and in 1865 she issued
her second volume, “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates,” a charming
story for boys and girls. The scene was laid in Holland. The book was
so popular that it was translated into French, German, Dutch, Russian
and other languages and became a little classic. She wrote a number
of other books, among which are “A Few Friends, and How They Amused
Themselves” (1869); “Rhymes and Jingles” (1874); “Theophilus and
Others;” “Along the Way,” a volume of poems, and “Donald and Dorothy.”
In 1873 the “St. Nicholas” Magazine for young folks was commenced and
Mrs. Dodge was made its editor, which position she still retains in
1897, and its popularity and brightness have given her a permanent
place in the hearts of the boys and girls for the last quarter century.
Mrs. Dodge has long been a leader in the literary and artistic circles
in New York, where she has a pleasant home. She had two fine boys
of her own and it is said her first stories were written for their
amusement. One of her sons died in 1881. The other, a successful
inventor and manufacturer, lives in Philadelphia.
* * * * *
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.¹
(FROM “DONALD AND DOROTHY.”)
¹ Copyright, Mary Mapes Dodge.
JUST as Donald and Dorothy were about to end the outdoor visit to the
Danbys, described in our last chapter, Coachman Jack was seen in a
neighboring field, trying to catch Mr. Reed’s spirited mare, “Lady,”
that had been let out to have a run. He had already approached her
without difficulty and slipped a bridle over her head, but she had
started away from him, and he, feeling that she had been allowed
playtime enough, was now bent on recapturing her.
Instantly a dozen Danby eyes were watching them with intense interest.
Then Donald and Ben, not being able to resist the impulse, scampered
over to join in the race, closely followed by Dan and Fandy. Gregory,
too, would have gone, but Charity called him back.
It was a superb sight to see the spirited animal, one moment standing
motionless at a safe distance from Jack, and the next, leaping about
the field, mane and tail flying, and every action telling of a defiant
enjoyment of freedom. Soon, two grazing horses in the same field
caught her spirit; even Don’s pony, at first looking soberly over a
hedge in the adjoining lot, began frisking and capering about on his
own account, dashing past an opening in the hedge as though it were as
solid a barrier as the rest. Nor were Jack and the boys less frisky.
Coaxing and shouting had failed, and now it was an open chase, in
which, for a time, the mare certainly had the advantage. But what
animal is proof against its appetite? Clever little Fandy had rushed
to Mr. Reed’s barn, and brought back in his hat a light lunch of oats
for the mare, which he at once bore into her presence, shaking it
temptingly, at the same time slowly backing away from her. The little
midget and his hatful succeeded, where big man and boys had failed.
The mare came cautiously up and was about to put her nose into the cap,
when Jack’s stealthy and sudden effort to seize the bridle made her
start sidewise away from him. But here Donald leaped forward at the
other side, and caught her before she had time to escape again.
Jack was too proud of Don’s quickness to appear surprised; so,
disregarding the hilarious shout of the Danby boys, he took the bridle
from the young master with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle
animal quietly towards the stable.
But Dorothy was there before him. Out of breath after her brisk run,
she was panting and tugging at a dusty side-saddle hanging in the
harness-room, when Jack and the mare drew near.
“Oh, Jack!” she cried, “help me to get this down! I mean to have some
fun. I’m going to ride that mare back to the field!”
“Not you, Miss Dorry!” exclaimed Jack. “Take your own pony, an’ your
own saddle, an’ it’s a go; but this ’ere mare’d be on her beam ends
with you in no time.”
“Oh, no, she wouldn’t, Jack! She knows me perfectly. Don’t you, Lady?
Oh, do, Jack! That’s a good Jack. _Please_ let me! Don’s there, you
know.”
Dorry said this as if Don were a regiment. By this time, the
side-saddle, yielding to her vigorous efforts, had clattered down
from its peg, with a peculiar buckle-and-leathery noise of its own.
“Won’t you, Jack? Ah, _won’t_ you?”
“No, miss, I won’t!” said Jack, resolutely.
“Why, Jack, I’ve been on her before. Don’t you know? There isn’t
a horse on the place that could throw me. Uncle said so. Don’t you
remember?”
“So he did!” said Jack, his eyes sparkling proudly.
“The Capt’n said them very words. An’,” glancing weakly at the mare,
“she’s standin’ now like a skiff in a calm. Not a breath in her
sails――”
“Oh, do――_do_, Jack!” coaxed Dorry, seizing her advantage, “quick!
They’re all in the lot yet. Here, put it on her!”
“I’m an old fool,” muttered Jack to himself, as, hindered by Dorry’s
busy touches, he proceeded to saddle the subdued animal; “but I can’t
never refuse her nothin’――that’s where it is. Easy now, miss!” as
Dorry, climbing up on the feed-box in laughing excitement, begged him
to hurry and let her mount. “Easy now. There! You’re on, high and dry.
Here” (tugging at the girth), “let me tauten up a bit! Steady now!
Don’t try no capers with her, Miss Dorry, and come back in a minute.
Get up, Lady!――get up!”
The mare left the stable so slowly and unwillingly, that Jack slapped
her flank gently as she moved off. Jog jog went Lady out through
the wide stable doorway, across the yard into the open field. Dorry,
hastily arranging her skirts and settling herself comfortably upon the
grand but dingy saddle (it had been Aunt Kate’s in the days gone by),
laughed to herself, thinking how astonished they all must be to see
her riding Lady back to them. For a moment she playfully pretended to
be unconscious of their gaze. Then she looked up.
Poor Dorry! Not a boy, not even Donald, had remained in the field!
He and the little Danbys were listening to one of Ben’s stories of
adventure. Even the two horses and Don’s pony were quietly nosing the
dry grass in search of green tufts.
“I don’t care,” she murmured gayly, overcoming her disappointment. “I
mean to have a ride, any way. Get up, Lady!”
Lady _did_ get up. She shook her head, pricked up her ears, and
started off at a beautiful canter across the fields.
“How lovely!” thought Dorry, especially pleased at that moment to see
several figures coming toward her from the Danby yard; “it’s just like
flying!”
Whether Lady missed her master’s firm grip upon the rein, or whether
she guessed her rider’s thought, and was inspired by the sudden shouts
and hurrahs of the approaching boys, can never be known. Certain
it is that by the next moment Dorry, on Lady’s back, was flying in
earnest,――flying at great speed round and round the field, but with
never an idea of falling off. Her first feeling was that her uncle and
Jack wouldn’t be pleased if they knew the exact character of the ride.
Next came a sense of triumph, because she felt that Don and the rest
were seeing it all, and then a wild consciousness that her hat was off,
her hair streaming to the wind, and that she was keeping her seat for
dear life.
Lady’s canter had become a run, and the run soon grew into a series of
leaps. Still Dorry kept her seat. Young as she was, she was a fearless
rider, and at first, as we have seen, rather enjoyed the prospect of
a tussle with Lady. But as the speed increased, Dorry found herself
growing deaf, dumb and blind in the breathless race. Still, if she
could only hold on, all would be well; she certainly could not consent
to be conquered before “those boys.”
Lady seemed to go twenty feet in the air at every leap. There was
no merry shouting now. The little boys stood pale and breathless.
Ben, trying to hold Don back, was wondering what was to be done, and
Charity was wringing her hands.
“Oh, oh! She’ll be thrown!” cried the girls.
“Not a bit of it!” insisted Donald. “I’ve seen Dot on a horse before.”
But his looks betrayed his anxiety. “See! the mare’s trying to throw
her now! But she can’t do it――she can’t do it! Dot understands herself,
I tell you,――Whoa-o!――Let me go!” and, breaking from Ben, he tore
across the field, through the opening in the hedge, and was on his
pony’s back in a twinkling. How he did it, he never knew. He had
heard Dorry scream, and somehow that scream made him and his pony one.
Together, they flew over the field; with a steady, calm purpose, they
cut across Lady’s course, and soon were at her side. Donald’s “Hold on,
Dot!” was followed by his quick plunge toward the mare. It seemed that
she certainly would ride over him, but he never faltered. Grasping his
pony’s mane with one hand, he clutched Lady’s bridle with the other.
The mare plunged, but the boy’s grip was as firm as iron. Though
almost dragged from his seat, he held on, and the more she struggled,
the harder he tugged,――the pony bearing itself nobly, and quivering
in eager ♦sympathy with Donald’s every movement. Jack and Ben were now
tearing across the field, bent on rescue; but they were not needed.
Don was master of the situation. The mare, her frolic over, had
yielded with superb grace, almost as if with a bow, and the pony was
rubbing its nose against her steaming side.
♦ ‘smypathy’ replaced with ‘sympathy’
“Good for you, Dot!” was Donald’s first word. “You held on
magnificently.”
Dorothy stroked Lady’s hot neck, and for a moment could not trust
herself to look up. But when Jack half-pulled, half-lifted her from
the saddle, and she felt the firm earth beneath her, she tottered and
would have fallen, had not Donald, frightened at her white face,
sprung to the ground just in time to support her.
“Shiver my timbers!” growled Jack, “if ever I let youngsters have
their way again!” But his eyes shone with a strange mixture of
self-reproach and satisfaction as he looked at Dorry.
NOTED JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS
Illustration: NOTED AMERICAN JOURNALISTS AND MAGAZINE CONTRIBUTORS.
HORACE GREELEY • MURAT HALSTEAD • ALBERT SHAW
LYMAN ABBOTT • CHAS. A. DANA • HENRY W. WATTERSON
WHITELAW REID • JULIAN HAWTHORNE • RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HORACE GREELEY.
THE FOUNDER OF MODERN JOURNALISM.
THE men of whom we love to read are those who stand for some great
principle, whose lives and deeds exemplify its power. When we think
of patriotism, the figure of Washington rises before us, as the man
whose life, above all others, was controlled by pure love of country.
Practical wisdom, shrewdness, and thrift are embodied in Benjamin
Franklin. Astor and Girard represent the power of accumulation;
Stewart, Carnegie, and Pullman, the power of organization; and so,
when we consider the power of the press, the image which comes up
before our mental view is that of Horace Greeley. In almost every
personal quality there have been men who far surpassed him,――men who
were greater as politicians, as organizers, as statesmen, as speakers,
as writers,――but in the one respect of influencing public opinion
through the press, of “making his mind the mind of other men,” no man
in America has ever wielded such power as the great editor and founder
of the New York “Tribune.”
Horace Greeley was one of the poor country boys who have afterward
become the bone and sinew of the Republic. He was born in Amherst,
New Hampshire, in 1811. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, was a struggling
farmer. He moved to Vermont in 1821, and a few years later to the
western part of Pennsylvania. Horace was a precocious child; and his
mother, Mary Woodburn, who was of Scotch-Irish stock, used to recite
to him ballads and stories, so that he really acquired a taste for
literature before the age at which many children conquer the alphabet.
In his fifteenth year Horace felt that he could endure farming no
longer, and at last procured from his father a reluctant consent
that he should definitely seek employment as a printer. He found the
longed-for opportunity at East Poultney, Vermont, in the office of the
“Northern Spectator.”
In 1830, before Horace’s apprenticeship ended, the “Spectator”
collapsed, and he was again set adrift. His father had removed to
Western Pennsylvania, and the boy turned his face in that direction.
After working for a few months on different country papers, he
resolved to try his fortune in New York, and went to that city in
August, 1831.
After two years of labor as a printer, so arduous that during much of
the time it extended to fourteen hours a day, Mr. Greeley commenced
his first editorial work upon a weekly paper called the “New Yorker”
of which he was part owner and which lasted until March, 1841, when it
went under, with a credit on its books of $10,000 due to Mr. Greeley
for editing the paper, all of which was sunk with the wreck.
In the famous campaign of 1840, when Harrison was “sung and shouted
into the presidential chair,” Greeley started a small weekly called
the “Log Cabin.” He threw all his spirit and energy into it; he made
it lively, crisp, and cheap. It attained an almost unheard-of success,
reaching editions of eighty and ninety thousand. It was continued for
several months after the triumphant election of Harrison, and then
merged into the New York “Tribune,” which Greeley started at this time,
the first issue appearing April 10, 1841.
The new enterprise soon became successful. It was helped at the
start by a bitter attack from the “Sun,” then in the hands of Moses
Y. Beach. The defense and rejoinders were equally pungent and amusing.
Mr. Greeley always throve best upon opposition. His spicy retorts, and
especially his partisan enthusiasm, forced the attention of the public,
and the subscription-list of the “Tribune” soon rose from hundreds to
thousands; by the third week in May it had 10,000 names on its books.
One thing in particular gave the “Tribune” eminence; that was
Greeley’s policy of employing as contributors the best writers of the
time. To name all the able men and women who thus won fame for both
themselves and the “Tribune,” would make a list too long to print; but
among them may be mentioned Bayard Taylor, whose “Views Afoot” first
appeared in the form of letters to the “Tribune;” Margaret Fuller,
whose articles gave her a wide reputation; George Ripley, Moncure D.
Conway, Sydney Howard Gay, and George W. Smalley; and for years Thomas
Hughes, the popular author of “Tom Brown at Oxford,” sent frequent
and able letters from London. The result of this liberal policy was
to make the “Tribune” indispensable to people of intelligence, even
though utterly opposed to its political views.
In 1848 Mr. Greeley was elected to Congress, but his strength was
as a journalist, not as a legislator. At the close of his brief term
he retired from Congress, and during the stormy decade preceding the
Civil War he made the “Tribune” a mighty power. He warmly espoused
the cause of freedom, and denounced the Fugitive Slave Law, the
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and the endless aggressions of the slave power
with a vigor and pertinacity which made him one of the best-hated men
in America. His course was not always consistent; and he often brought
upon his head the wrath of friends as well as enemies. Moreover, in
the conduct of a great daily paper much must be left to the judgment
of subordinates; and all their mistakes were, of course, laid to
the charge of their chief. Many of the old readers of the “Tribune”
supposed that every line in the paper was actually written by Horace
Greeley. He rarely took the trouble to justify or explain; and,
therefore, while in one sense one of the best-known men in the country,
he was one of the most misunderstood. Mr. Greeley had no time or
thought for personal explanations; he was bent upon saving the
country,――individuals could take care of themselves.
During the war Mr. Greeley’s course was somewhat erratic and unstable,
but he kept a hold upon a large class of readers who believed in him,
to whom he was a mental and moral lawgiver, who refused to believe
any evil of him; and, if some visitor to the city――for a large
proportion of “Tribune” readers were country, and particularly Western,
people――on coming back, reported that in an interview with Mr. Greeley
the editor had indulged in unlimited profanity, the unlucky individual
was incontinently discredited and voted a calumniator.
In the years following the war, Greeley’s pen was more busy than ever.
Beside his editorial writing in the “Tribune,” he prepared the second
volume of his war history, “The American Conflict,” and his delightful
autobiography, “Recollections of a Busy Life.” He was always intensely
interested in the growth of the West, where he had made a memorable
tour in 1859, extending to Salt Lake City; and now he unceasingly
advocated western emigration. His terse advice, “Go West, young man,
and grow up with the country,” became a sort of national watchword,
and many thousands of Eastern people resolved to turn their faces
toward the empire of the West.
In 1872 a curious political combination was made. Probably such a
surprise was never sprung upon the country as the nomination of Horace
Greeley for the Presidency, by a convention of “Liberal Republicans”
and bolting Democrats. That he should be defeated at the polls
was inevitable. He worked hard through the canvass, traveling and
addressing meetings; body and mind suffered from the fatigue and
excitement. To add to his troubles, Mrs. Greeley, who had been out
of health for a considerable time, died at this period; his health
gave way; he became unable to sleep; and sleeplessness was followed
by inflammation of the brain, which soon ended his life.
Horace Greeley sleeps in Greenwood Cemetery, Long Island, on a hill
overlooking the beautiful bay of New York, and within sight of the
great city where his busy life was spent.
* * * * *
A DEBTOR’S SLAVERY.
(FROM “RECOLLECTIONS OF A BUSY LIFE.”)
THE _New Yorker_ was issued under my supervision, its editorials
written, its selections made for the most part by me, for seven
years and a half from March 22, 1834. Though not calculated to enlist
partisanship, or excite enthusiasm, it was at length extensively liked
and read. It began with scarcely a dozen subscribers; these steadily
increased to 9,000; and it might under better business management
(perhaps I should add, at a more favorable time), have proved
profitable and permanent. That it did not was mainly owing to these
circumstances: 1. It was not extensively advertised at the start,
and at least annually thereafter, as it should have been. 2. It was
never really published, though it had half-a-dozen nominal publishers
in succession. 3. It was sent to subscribers on credit, and a large
share of them never paid for it, and never will, while the cost
of collecting from others ate up the proceeds. 4. The machinery of
railroads, expresses, news companies, news offices, etc., whereby
literary periodicals are now mainly disseminated, did not then exist.
I believe that just such a paper issued to-day, properly published
and advertised, would obtain a circulation of 100,000 in less time
than was required to give the _New Yorker_ scarcely a tithe of that
aggregate, and would make money for its owners, instead of nearly
starving them, as mine did. I was worth at least $1,500 when it was
started; I worked hard and lived frugally throughout its existence;
it subsisted for the first two years on the profits of our job-work;
when I, deeming it established, dissolved with my partner, he taking
the jobbing business and I the _New Yorker_, which held its own pretty
fairly thenceforth till the commercial revulsion of 1837 swept over
the land, whelming it and me in the general ruin.
I had married in 1836, deeming myself worth $5,000, and the master
of a business which would thenceforth yield me for my labor at least
$1,000 per annum; but, instead of that, or of any income at all, I
found myself obliged throughout 1837 to confront a net loss of about
$100 per week――my income averaging $100, and my inevitable expenses
$200. It was in vain that I appealed to delinquents to pay up; many of
them migrated; some died; others were so considerate as to order the
paper stopped, but very few of these paid; and I struggled on against
a steadily rising tide of adversity that might have appalled a stouter
heart. Often did I call on this or that friend with intent to solicit
a small loan to meet some demand that could no longer be postponed nor
evaded, and, after wasting a precious hour, leave him, utterly unable
to broach the loathsome topic. I have borrowed $500 of a broker late
on Saturday, and paid him $5 for the use of it till Monday morning,
when I somehow contrived to return it. Most gladly would I have
terminated the struggle by a surrender; but, if I had failed to pay
my notes continually falling due, I must have paid money for my weekly
supply of paper――so that would have availed nothing. To have stopped
my journal (for I could not give it away) would have left me in debt,
beside my notes for paper, from fifty cents to two dollars each, to at
least three thousand subscribers who had paid in advance; and that is
the worst kind of bankruptcy. If anyone would have taken my business
and debts off my hands, upon my giving him my note for $2,000, I would
have jumped at the chance, and tried to work out the debt by setting
type, if nothing better offered. If it be suggested that my whole
indebtedness was at no time more than $5,000 to $7,000, I have only
to say that even $1, 000 of debt is ruin to him who keenly feels his
obligation to fulfil every engagement yet is utterly without the means
of so doing, and who finds himself dragged each week a little deeper
into hopeless insolvency. To be hungry, ragged, and penniless is
not pleasant; but this is nothing to the horrors of bankruptcy. All
the wealth of the Rothschilds would be a poor recompense for a five
years’ struggle with the consciousness that you had taken the money or
property of trusting friends――promising to return or pay for it when
required――and had betrayed this confidence through insolvency.
I dwell on this point, for I would deter others from entering that
place of torment. Half the young men in the country, with many
old enough to know better, would “go into business”――that is, into
debt――to-morrow, if they could. Most poor men are so ignorant as to
envy the merchant or manufacturer whose life is an incessant struggle
with pecuniary difficulties, who is driven to constant “shinning,” and
who, from month to month, barely evades that insolvency which sooner
or later overtakes most men in business; so that it has been computed
that but one in twenty of them achieve a pecuniary success. For my
own part――and I speak from sad experience――I would rather be a convict
in a State prison, a slave in a rice swamp, than to pass through life
under the harrow of debt.
Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so
long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties, and is
substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt,
suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely
worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or
all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years,
the lesson which I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon
them is――“Never run into debt! Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would
pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more
for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it, and live on it, rather than
owe any man a dollar!” Of course I know that some men must do business
that involves risks, and must often give notes and other obligations,
and I do not consider him really in debt who can lay his hands
directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all that he
owes; I speak of _real_ debt――which involves risk or sacrifice on the
one side, obligation and dependence on the other――and I say, from all
such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore.
* * * * *
THE PRESS.
LONG slumbered the world in the darkness of error,
And ignorance brooded o’er earth like a pall;
To the sceptre and crown men abased them in terror,
Though galling the bondage, and bitter the thrall;
When a voice, like the earthquake’s, revealed the dishonor――
A flash, like the lightning’s, unsealed every eye,
And o’er hill-top and glen floated liberty’s banner,
While round it men gathered to conquer or die!
’Twas the voice of the Press, on the startled ear breaking,
In giant-born prowess, like Pallas of old;
’Twas the flash of intelligence, gloriously waking
A glow on the cheek of the noble and bold;
And tyranny’s minions, o’erawed and affrighted,
Sought a lasting retreat from its powerful control,
And the chains which bound nations in ages benighted,
Were cast to the haunts of the bat and the mole.
Then hail to the Press! chosen guardian of Freedom!
Strong sword-arm of justice! bright sunbeam of truth;
We pledge to her cause (and she has but to need them),
The strength of our manhood, the fire of our youth;
Should despots e’er dare to impede her free soaring,
Or bigot to fetter her flight with his chain,
We pledge that the earth shall close o’er our deploring,
Or view her in gladness and freedom again.
But no!――to the day-dawn of knowledge and glory,
A far brighter noontide-refulgence succeeds,
And our art shall embalm, through all ages, in story,
Her champion who triumphs――her martyr who bleeds,
And proudly her sons shall recall their devotion,
While millions shall listen to honor and bless,
Till there bursts a response from the heart’s strong emotion,
And the earth echoes deep with “Long Life to the Press!”
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
CHARLES A. DANA.
THE FAMOUS EDITOR OF THE “SUN.”
THE man who with Greeley made the New York “Tribune” one of the
greatest powers in the land, and who, from 1868 to 1897, was the chief
and managing editor of the New York “Sun,” is certainly entitled to
rank among our foremost men. Charles A. Dana lived a remarkable life,
a life of strenuous effort and of continuous and notable achievement.
He was born at Hinsdale, New Hampshire, in 1819, but his early life
was passed at the village of Gaines, in Western New York, in Buffalo,
and at Guildhall, Vermont. One of his earliest recollections was of
being tied to a post with his mother’s garter because he had run away
and gotten himself very muddy, thus displaying, at three years old,
the restless spirit of enterprise which did much to make him the man
he was. When he was eleven years old he returned to Buffalo to be
a clerk in his uncle’s dry goods store. He was very successful as a
salesman, and remained in the establishment until the failure of the
business, in 1837, when he determined to prepare himself for college.
He said that he found the elements of Latin very hard and disagreeable
work, and he had the greatest difficulty in remembering the paradigms.
Two winter terms at a country school, in his early boyhood, and
two years at Harvard completed Mr. Dana’s systematic education,
as too close application affected his eyesight, and he was obliged
to withdraw from college at the end of his sophomore year. He had
cultivated such a taste for languages, however, that no year since
passed which he did not devote in part to serious study, and he became
master of most spoken languages except the Slavonic and Oriental, and
he began, at the age of seventy-five, the study of Russian. Harvard
College afterward conferred upon him the degree which he was prevented
from earning in the regular way, and is proud to count him among her
most honored sons.
After leaving college Mr. Dana joined that remarkable body of men
and women who conducted the Brook Farm experiment. He distinguished
himself as one of the very few practical men among that band of
philosophers, and gained, while at Brook Farm, a little experience
in the newspaper business in conducting a publication known as “The
Harbinger,” which was the organ of the association.
In 1844 his eyes had sufficiently recovered to enable him to
do regular work, and he obtained employment under Elizur Wright,
better known as an insurance actuary than as an editor, but who then
conducted “The Chronotype,” an orthodox newspaper, which was a great
favorite with the Congregational ministers of New England. Mr. Wright
used to enjoy telling how “Dana always had a weakness for giving
people with fixed convictions something new to think about,” and
how he illustrated this weakness during the absence of his chief by
writing strong editorials against the doctrine of a bill. This piece
of enterprise involved the editor-in-chief in the labor of writing a
personal letter to each of his ministerial subscribers, and to many
others explaining how the paper “had been left in charge of a young
man without mellow journalistic experience.” Mr. Dana’s compensation
was five dollars per week, and at this amount it remained until 1847,
when he joined the staff of the New York “Tribune” at ten dollars,
a figure which was gradually increased to fifty dollars, which was
the highest salary he ever received on the “Tribune.” Many delightful
stories are told of the intercourse of Dana and Greeley. The part they
took in politics, the fight against slavery, the organization of the
Republican Party, Mr. Dana’s loyal support of Greeley’s aspirations
for political preferment, all these are a part of the political
history of our country. Just before joining the “Tribune” staff
Mr. Dana was married to Miss Eunice MacDaniel, of New York. Of his
delight in family life no testimony can be stronger than his own words
written during a brief interval of leisure: “I have been busy with my
children, drawing them about in old Bradley’s one-horse wagon, rowing
and sailing with them on the bay and sound, gathering shells on the
shore with them, picking cherries, lounging on the grass with the
whole tribe about me. There’s no delight like that in a pack of young
children of your own.... A house without a baby is inhuman.”
During these busy years Mr. Dana, together with Mr. Ripley, edited
“The American Cyclopedia,” a work which is a monument of his care
and learning and patient labor; and he also prepared and published
a “Household Book of Poetry,” one of the very best collections of
its kind, and one which has found its way into a very large number
of American homes and contributed in no small measure to further
the cause of good literature. In 1862 there came about a radical
difference between Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana as to the proper policy
of the “Tribune” in regard to the war. The result was Mr. Dana’s
withdrawal from the paper. He was immediately asked by Mr. Stanton to
audit a large number of disputed claims in the quartermaster’s office
at Cairo. This led to his appointment as Assistant Secretary of War,
which position he held until the end of the Rebellion. About one-third
of his time during this period was spent with the armies at the front.
In this way he served as the confidential agent of the administration,
and was once styled by Mr. Lincoln “the eyes of the Government at
the front.” His reports were remarkable for their unconventional
form, their brevity, and the completeness and accuracy with which they
placed Stanton and Lincoln in possession of the exact facts. “Miles of
customary military reports,” says a recent writer, “were worth less to
Lincoln than half a dozen of Dana’s vivid sentences.”
After the close of the war Mr. Dana spent one year in Chicago as
editor of “The Republican.” He had been deceived about the financial
basis of the enterprise, and was in no way responsible for its failure.
Returning to New York, he organized the company which purchased the
old “Sun” property, and started the paper on a long career of success
and of influence. He was probably the most independent man who ever
managed a great newspaper. He possessed the power of working without
that conscious effort which characterizes the activity of most men,
and which seems to be the source of so many early break-downs. He
was not easily disturbed. At the “Sun” office, they like to tell
a doubtful story of the old days when the work of the paper was
conducted in four small rooms. The city editor came hurriedly in
exclaiming, “Mr. Dana, there’s a man out there with a cocked revolver.
He is very much excited. He insists on seeing the editor-in-chief.”
“Is he very much excited?” said Mr. Dana, hardly looking up from
his work, “if you think it worth the space, ask Amos Cummings if he
will kindly see the gentleman and write him up.” A noted sensational
clergyman once volunteered to write, under an assumed name, for the
“Sun.” He foolishly tried to adapt himself to what he imagined was the
irresponsible tone of a Sunday paper, and there can be no doubt that
Mr. Dana enjoyed writing in blue pencil across the back of his first
article, “This is too wicked.”
During the winter the great editor occupied his house on Madison
Avenue and Sixtieth Street, but his summer house was on a little
island, two or three miles from Glen Cove, which his wide knowledge
of trees and fruits and flowers enabled him to make a singularly
delightful spot. In the summer of 1897, when Mr. Dana was approaching
his eightieth year, and still continued to manage his great newspaper,
surrounded by a corps of trained and efficient men, he was attacked
with a serious illness, and passed away on the afternoon of October
17th. It is doubted whether any other man has left his mark more
deeply on the nineteenth century than has the famous editor of the
“Sun.”
* * * * *
ROSCOE CONKLING.
(THE NEW YORK “SUN,” APRIL 18, 1888.)
THE most picturesque, striking, and original figure of American
politics disappears in the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike powerful
and graceful in person, he towered above the masses of men in the
elasticity of his talents and the peculiarities and resources of his
mental constitution as much as he did in form and bearing. Yet his
career cannot be called a great success, and he was not a great man.
But he was an object of great love and admiration to an extraordinary
circle of friends, including not alone those who shared his opinions,
but many who were utterly opposed to them. He was by nature a zealous
partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt the good sense and
the disinterestedness of those who were on the other side; but,
nevertheless, the strongest instinct of his nature was friendship, and
his attachments stood the test of every trial except such as trenched
upon his own personality. This he guarded with the swift jealousy of
most intense selfhood, and no one could in any way impinge upon it
and remain his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting and
more unchangeable than his friendships. This, in our judgment, was
the great weakness of the man. Who can say that in his innermost heart
Conkling did not deplore it? At any rate, the candid observer who
sums up his history must deplore it for him. “And the recording angel,
as he wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out
forever.”
For a long period Mr. Conkling was a great political power in New York
and in the country. This was during the culmination of General Grant.
Originally Conkling was not friendly to Grant, and when the latter
appointed his first Cabinet, the Senator’s condemnation was unreserved
and stinging. This attitude was maintained during nearly the whole
of Grant’s first year in the Presidency. At that time Senator Fenton
stood near the President and dispensed the political bounty of the
Administration. This Conkling could not endure, and when Congress
met in December, 1869, he was full of war. But it soon got abroad
that Fenton was a candidate for the Presidency. This settled the
difficulty and brought the rival Senator into intimate relations with
the President. This position he ever afterwards maintained, and it
formed the most successful and to him the most satisfactory portion
of his life. When Grant was finally defeated at Chicago in 1880, and
all hopes of his restoration to the White House was obliterated, the
Senator soon abandoned the field of his renown, and went back to the
disappointments and struggles of private life.
As we have said, friendship was the greatest positive force in
Mr. Conkling’s character, and there never was any hesitation or
any meanness in his bestowal of it. In this respect he was the most
democratic of men. He was just as warmly devoted to persons holding
low places in the social scale as to the great and powerful, and
he was just as scrupulous in his observation of all the duties of a
friend toward the one kind of people as toward the other. There was
nothing snobbish about him. He would go as far and exert himself as
greatly to serve a poor man who was his friend as to serve one who
was rich and mighty. This disposition he carried into politics. He
had very little esteem for office-giving as a political method; but if
a friend of his wanted a place, he would get it for him if he could.
But no important politician in New York ever had fewer men appointed
on the ground that they were his friends or supporters. His intense
and lofty pride could not thus debase itself.
It is esteemed a high thing that with all the powers he wielded and
the opportunities opened to him under a President the least scrupulous
ever known in our history as regards jobbery and corruption, Mr.
Conkling never pocketed a copper of indecent and dishonorable gain
in the course of his public life. It is a high thing, indeed, and his
bitterest enemies cannot diminish the lustre of the fact. The practice
of public robbery was universal. Thievery was rampant everywhere
in the precincts of the Administration. The Secretary of the Navy
plundered millions. The Secretary of War sold public places and put
the swag in his pocket. The Secretary of the Interior was forced
by universal indignation to resign his ill-used office. The private
secretaries of the President dealt in whiskey and defrauded the
revenue. The vast gambling scheme of Black Friday had its fulcrum
within the portals of the White House, and counted the President’s own
family among its conspirators. It was a period of shameless, ineffable,
unblushing villainy pervading the highest circles of public power.
And while all Republican statesmen, leaders, and journalists knew it,
condoned it, defended it even, the best they could, Mr. Conkling was
the special spokesman, advocate, and orator of the Administration
which was the creator of a situation so unprecedented and revolting.
But while he thus lived and moved in the midst of corruption, he was
not touched by it himself. The protector of brigands and scoundrels
before the tribunal of public opinion, he had no personal part in
their crimes and no share in their spoils. As the poet went through
hell without a smutch upon his garments, so the proud Senator, bent
chiefly upon the endurance of the Republican party, came out of that
epoch of public dishonesty as honest and as stainless as he entered it.
In the records of the higher statesmanship it can be said that
there is very much to the credit of Mr. Conkling’s account. As a
parliamentary champion he had perhaps no superior; but others appear
to have originated and perfected the measures to which in either House
of Congress he gave the support of potent logic, fertile illustration,
aggressive repartee, and scathing sarcasm. We do not recall a single
one of the great and momentous acts of Congress which were passed in
his time, of which he can certainly be pronounced the author. Yet his
activity was prodigious, and it was a strange freak of his complicated
character to bring before the House or Senate, through others,
propositions which he thought essential. His hand could often be
recognized in motions and resolutions offered on all sides of the
chamber, and often by members with whom he was not known to be
familiar.
The courage of Mr. Conkling, moral as well as personal, was of a
heroic strain. After his mind was made up, he feared no odds, and he
asked no favor. He dared to stand out against his own party, and he,
a Republican, had the nerve to confront and defy the utmost power of
a Republican administration. There was something magnanimous, too,
in the way he bore misfortune. After the death of a distinguished
man, with whom he had been very intimate, it was ascertained that his
estate instead of being wealthy, was bankrupt. Mr. Conkling was an
endorser of his notes for a large sum of money, and saying calmly,
“He would have done as much for me,” he set himself to the laborious
task of earning the means to pay off the debt. He paid it in no long
time, and we don’t believe that any man ever heard him murmur at the
necessity.
In social life Mr. Conkling endeared himself to his intimates,
not only by the qualities which we have endeavored to describe and
indicate, but by the richness of his conversation, and the wit and
humor――sometimes rather ponderous――with which it was seasoned, and
by the stores of knowledge which he revealed. His reading had been
extensive, especially in English literature, and his memory was
surprisingly tenacious. Many of the most impressive passages of
oratory and of literature he could repeat by heart. He was fond of
social discussion on all sorts of questions, and liked no one the less
who courteously disagreed with him.
As a lawyer, we suppose that his great ability was in
cross-examination and with juries. The exigencies and the discussive
usage of political life prevented that arduous, persevering
application to pure law which is necessary to make a great jurist; but
his intellectual powers were so vigorous and so accurate that he made
up the deficiency of training and habit and no one can doubt that, if
he had given himself to the law alone, he would have gained a position
of the very highest distinction. As it was, the most eminent counsel
always knew that he had a formidable antagonist when Mr. Conkling was
against him; and every court listened to his arguments, not merely
with respect, but with instruction.
We shall be told, of course, that the supreme fault of this
extraordinary mind was in perfection of judgment; and when we
consider how largely his actions were controlled by pride and passion,
and especially by resentment, we must admit that the criticism is
not wholly without foundation. There was also in his manner that
which might justify the belief that often he was posing for effect,
like an actor on the stage; and we shall not dispute that so at
times it may have been. But there are so few men who are entirely
free from imperfection, and so many who inherit from their ancestors
characteristics which ought to be disapproved, that we may well
overlook them when they are combined with noble and admirable
gifts. And after all has been said, even those whom he opposed most
strenuously, and scorned or resisted most unrelentingly, may remember
that we are all human, while they let fall a tear and breathe a prayer
to heaven as the bier of Roscoe Conkling passes on its way to the
grave.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
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LYMAN ABBOTT.
PASTOR OF PLYMOUTH CHURCH, EDITOR OF “THE OUTLOOK.”
WIDE sympathies and broad Christian charity are potent factors in
the uplifting of men, and there have been many in America who have
exhibited these characteristics, but few possess them to a greater
degree than the present pastor of the Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Lyman
Abbott. He comes of good New England stock, and was born December 18,
1835, at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He is the third son of Jacob Abbott,
so dear to the children of the past generation, as the author of
those books which were the delight of the childhood of many still
living――the “Rollo Books,” the “Jonas Books,” and the “Lucy Books.”
The plain, practical, broad common sense in Jacob Abbott, which
dictated the composition of these attractive realistic stories, has
been inherited in large measure by his son. Lyman Abbott was graduated
from the University of the City of New York, in 1853, then studied
law and was admitted to the bar. He soon found that the ministry had
greater attraction for him than the law, and after studying theology
with his uncle, John S. C. Abbott, so well-known as the author of the
“Life of Napoleon Bonaparte,” he was ordained in 1860, a minister of
the Congregational Church. He went the same year to take charge of a
congregation at Terre Haute, Indiana. After five years’ work he became
discouraged, for there seemed to be little or no fruit from his labors.
He came to the conclusion that, after all, he had mistaken his calling,
and so in 1865 he accepted the position of Secretary to the American
Freedman’s Commission, an office which took him to New York. Returning
to Terre Haute on a visit, he saw that his previous labors had not
been in vain, but had brought forth abundant fruit in the lives of
former members of his congregation. It was perhaps this fact that
induced him to re-enter the ministry, and for three years to be the
pastor of the New England Church in New York. He did not, however,
lay aside the literary work he had taken up while connected with
the Freedman’s Association. He conducted the “Literary Record” in
“Harper’s Monthly,” and became editor of “The Illustrated Christian
Weekly” in 1871. Resigning his connection with other papers he became
joint editor with Henry Ward Beecher of the “Christian Union” in
1876, and its chief editor in 1881. After some years the name of the
paper was changed to “The Outlook,” as indicating more nearly the
character of the journal. In October, 1887, after the death of Henry
Ward Beecher, he was chosen temporary Pastor of the Plymouth Church in
Brooklyn, and later he was invited to remain permanently at the head
of that large congregation. He has written much, and has published
a number of volumes, nearly all upon religious subjects, but his
influence has been chiefly exerted through the pulpit, and especially
through the columns of the “Christian Union” and “The Outlook,” one
of the most ably conducted weeklies in the country. Popular in its
presentation, trenchant in its comments upon contemporary men and
events, clear and unmistakable in its position, few papers have a
more decided influence upon their readers. Its tone is high, and its
view of what is going on in the world is wide and comprehensive. All
subjects are treated fearlessly and independently, and truth, purity,
and earnestness in religion and politics are insisted upon. Not the
least interesting columns of the paper are those devoted to “Notes
and Queries,” where, in a few well-chosen words, the difficulties of
correspondents are answered, and at the same time valuable lessons
are enforced. Lyman Abbott is one of the leaders of liberal Christian
thought, is sympathetic with every movement for the advancement of
mankind, a strong believer in practical Christianity, and a hater of
all kinds of cant.
As a speaker differing widely from his great predecessor in the
Plymouth pulpit, Lyman Abbott’s success is due to the clearness
with which he presents his subject, to his earnestness, and to his
practical way of putting things.
* * * * *
THE JESUITS.¹
(FROM “DICTIONARY OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
JESUITS is the popular name of a Society more properly entitled “The
Society of Jesus”――of all the Religious Orders of the Roman Catholic
Church the most important. The Society of Jesus was founded in 1554
by Ignatius Loyola. He was a Spanish cavalier; was wounded in battle;
was by his wounds, which impaired the use of one of his legs, deprived
of his military ambition, and during his long confinement found
employment and relief in reading a Life of Christ, and Lives of
the Saints. This enkindled a new ambition for a life of religious
glory and religious conquest. He threw himself, with all the ardor of
his old devotion, into his new life; carried his military spirit of
austerity and self-devotion into his religious career; exchanged his
rich dress for a beggar’s rags; lived upon alms; practiced austerities
which weakened his iron frame, but not his military spirit; and thus
he prepared his mind for those diseased fancies which characterized
this period of his ♦extraordinary career.
♦ ‘extraordinay’ replaced with ‘extraordinary’
He possessed none of the intellectual requirements which seemed
necessary for the new leadership which he proposed to himself. The
age despised learning, and left it to the priests; and this Spanish
cavalier, at the age of thirty-three, could do little more than read
and write. He commenced at once, with enthusiasm, the acquisition of
those elements of knowledge which are ordinarily acquired long before
that age. He entered the lowest class of the College of Barcelona,
where he was persecuted and derided by the rich ecclesiastics, to
whose luxury his self-denial was a perpetual reproach. He fled at
last from their machinations to Paris, where he continued his studies
under more favorable auspices. Prominent among his associates here
was Francis Xavier, a brilliant scholar, who at first shrunk from
the ill-educated soldier; yet gradually learned to admire his intense
enthusiasm, and then to yield allegiance to it and its possessor.
Several other Spaniards were drawn around the ascetic. At length, in
1534, Loyola, and five associates, in a subterranean chapel in Paris,
pledged themselves to a religious life, and with solemn rites made
sacred their mutual pledges to each other and to God.
Loyola introduced into the new order of which he was the founder,
the principle of absolute obedience which he had acquired in his
military career. The name given to its chief was the military title
of “General.” The organization was not perfected, so as to receive
the sanction of the Pope, until 1541. Its motto was _Ad Majorem Dei
Gloriam_――“To the greater Glory of God.” Its vows embraced not only
the obligations of Chastity, Poverty, and Obedience, but also a pledge
on the part of every member to go as missionary to any country which
the Pope might designate. Loyola was himself the first General of the
new Order. Its Constitution, due to him, is practically that of an
Absolute Monarchy. The General is elected by a General Congregation,
selected for the purpose by the whole body of professed members in
the various Provinces. He holds his office for life. A Council of
Assistants aid him, but he is not bound by their vote. He may not
alter the Constitution of the Society; and he is subject to deposition
in certain contingencies; but no instance of the deposition of a
General has ever occurred. Practically his will is absolute law, from
which there is no appeal.
The Jesuits are not distinguished by any particular dress or peculiar
practices. They are permitted to mingle with the world, and to conform
to its habits, if necessary for the attainment of their ends. Their
widest influence has been exhibited in political circles, where, as
laymen, they have attained the highest political positions without
exciting any suspicion of their connection with the Society of
Jesus; and in education they have been employed as teachers, in
which position they have exercised an incalculable influence over
the Church.... It should be added that the enemies of the Order
allege that, in addition to the public and avowed Constitution of
the Society, there is a secret code, called _Monita Secreta_――“Secret
Instructions”――which is reserved exclusively for the private guidance
of the more advanced members. But as this Secret Code is disavowed by
the Society――and since its authority is at least doubtful――it is not
necessary to describe it here in detail.
* * * * *
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN.¹
(FROM “OLD TESTAMENT SHADOWS.”)
¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.
THE story of Sodom and Gomorrah epitomizes the Gospel. Every act in
the great, the awful drama of life is here foreshadowed. The analogy
is so perfect that we might almost be tempted to believe that the
story is a prophetic allegory, did not nature itself witness its
historic truthfulness. The fertile plain contained, imbedded in its
own soil, the elements of its own destruction. There is reason to
believe that this is true of this world on which we live. A few years
ago an unusually brilliant star was observed in a certain quarter
of the heavens. At first it was thought to be a newly discovered
sun; more careful examination resulted in a different hypothesis. Its
evanescent character indicated combustion. Its brilliancy was marked
for a few hours――a few nights at most――then it faded, and was gone.
Astronomers believe that it was a burning world. Our own earth is
a globe of living fire. Only a thin crust intervenes between us and
this fearful interior. Ever and anon, in the rumbling earthquake,
or the sublime volcano, it gives us warning of its presence. These
are themselves gospel messengers. They say if we would but hear
them――“Prepare to meet thy God.” The intimations of science confirm
those of Revelation: “The heavens and the earth ... are kept in store,
reserved unto the fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition of
ungodly men.” What was true of Sodom and Gomorrah――what was true of
the earth we live on――is true of the human soul. It contains within
itself the instruments of its own punishment. There is a fearful
significance in the words of the Apostle: “After thy hardness and
impenitent heart treasureth up to thyself wrath against the day of
wrath.” Men gather, with their own hands, the fuel to feed the flame
that is not quenched; they nurture in their own bosoms the worm that
dieth not. In habits formed never to be broken; in words spoken,
incapable of recall; in deeds committed, never to be forgotten; in a
life wasted and cast away that can never be made to bloom again, man
prepares for himself his own deserved and inevitable chastisement.
“Son, remember!”――to the soul who has spent its all in riotous living,
there can be no more awful condemnation.
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HENRY WATTERSON.
EDITOR OF THE LOUISVILLE “COURIER-JOURNAL.”
FEW men connected with modern journalism have wider influence than
Henry Watterson. He was born in Washington, D. C., in 1850, and
because of defective eyesight, was educated chiefly by a private tutor.
Entering journalism, at first in Washington and later in Tennessee, he
made his reputation as editor of the “Republican Banner,” in Nashville.
He served in the Confederate Army in various capacities, being a
staff officer at one time and Chief of Scouts in General Joseph E.
Johnston’s army in 1864. After the war he returned to Nashville,
but soon removed to Louisville, Kentucky, where he succeeded George
D. Prentice as editor of the “Journal.” In the following year he
succeeded in uniting with the “Journal,” the “Courier” and the “Times,”
thus founding the “Courier-Journal,” of which he has since been
editor, and which, under his management, has come to be one of the
foremost papers of the country.
Mr. Watterson has taken a prominent part in politics, having been a
member of every Presidential convention beginning with 1876. He was
a personal friend and a resolute follower of Samuel J. Tilden. He
has often appeared as a public speaker, particularly in political
campaigns, and his judgment has had great weight in the councils of
the Democratic party. Mr. Watterson is a pronounced “free-trader,” but
has had no sympathy with the political movements under the leadership
of Grover Cleveland.
He has been a frequent contributor to periodicals and has edited
one or two books, notably that entitled “Oddities of Southern Life
and Character.” The sustained vigor of his mind, the force of his
personality and the wide-spread admiration for his abilities, make
Mr. Watterson one of the leading men, not only of his party, but of
the country.
* * * * *
THE NEW SOUTH.
(FROM “SPEECH AT THE NATIONAL BANKERS’ CONVENTION,
LOUISVILLE, KY., OCTOBER 11, 1883.”)
IT was not, however, to hear of banks and bankers and banking that you
did me the honor to call me before you. I am told that to-day you are
considering that problem which has so disturbed the politicians――the
South――and that you wish me to talk to you about the South. The
South! The South! It is no problem at all. I thank God that at last
we can say with truth, it is simply a geographic expression. The whole
story of the South may be summoned up in a sentence: She was rich, and
she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free,
and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than
ever before. You can see it was a groundhog case. The soil was here,
the climate was here, but along with them was a curse, the curse of
slavery. God passed the rod across the land and smote the people. Then,
in His goodness and mercy, He waved the wand of enchantment, and lo,
like a flower, His blessing burst forth! Indeed, may the South say,
as in the experience of men it is rare for any to say with perfect
sincerity:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity.”
The South never knew what independence meant until she was taught by
subjection to subdue herself. She lived from hand to mouth. We had
our debts and our niggers. Under the old system we paid our debts and
walloped our niggers. Under the new we pay our niggers and wallop our
debts. We have no longer any slaves, but we have no longer any debts,
and can exclaim with the old darkey at the camp-meeting, who, whenever
he got happy, went about shouting, “Bless the Lord! I’m gettin’ fatter
an’ fatter!”
The truth is, that behind the great ruffle the South wore to its shirt,
there lay concealed a superb manhood. That this manhood was perverted,
there is no doubt. That it wasted its energies upon trifles, is beyond
dispute. That it took a pride in cultivating what it called “the vices
of a gentleman,” I am afraid must be admitted. But, at heart, it was
sound; from that heart flowed honest Anglo-Saxon blood; and, when it
had to lay aside its “store-clothes” and put on its homespun, it was
equal to the emergency. And the women of the South took their place
by the side of the men of the South, and, with spinning-wheel and
ploughshare, together they made a stand against the wolf at the door.
That was fifteen years ago, and to-day there is not a reward offered
in a single Southern State for wolf-skins. The fact is, the very
wolves have got ashamed of themselves and gone to work.
I beg you to believe that, in saying this, my purpose is neither
to amuse nor mislead you. Although my words may seem to carry with
them an unbusiness-like levity, I assure you that my design is wholly
business-like. You can see for yourselves what the South has done;
what the South can do. If all this has been achieved without credit,
and without your powerful aid――and I am now addressing myself to the
North and East, which have feared to come South with their money――what
might not be achieved if the vast aggregations of capital in the
fiscal centres should add this land of wine, milk and honey to their
fields of investment, and give us the same chief rates which are
enjoyed by nearer, but not safer, borrowers? The future of the South
is not a whit less assured than the future of the West. Why should
money which is freely loaned to Iowa and Illinois be refused to
Alabama and Mississippi? I perfectly understand that business is
business, and that capital is as unsectional as unsentimental. I am
speaking from neither spirit. You have money to loan. We have a great
country to develop.
We need the money. You can make a profit off the development. When
I say that we need money, I do not mean the sort of money once
demanded by an old Georgia farmer, who, in the early days, came up to
Milledgeville to see General Robert Toombs, at the time a director of
the State Bank. “Robert,” says he, “the folks down our way air in need
of more money.” The profane Robert replied: “Well, how in ―――― are
they going to get it?” “Why,” says the farmer, “can’t you _stomp_ it?”
“Suppose we do _stomp_ it, how are we going to redeem it?” “Exactly,
Robert, exactly. That was just what I was coming to. You see the folks
down our way air agin redemption.” We want good money, honest money,
hard money, money that will redeem itself.
We have given hostages to fortune and our works are before you. I know
that the capital is proverbially timid. But what are you afraid of? Is
it our cotton that alarms you, or our corn, or our sugar? Perhaps it
is our coal and iron. Without you, in truth, many of these products
must make slow progress, whilst others will continue to lie hid in
the bowels of the earth. With you the South will bloom as a garden
and sparkle as a gold-mine; for, whether you tickle her fertile
plains with a straw or apply a more violent titillation to her fat
mountain-sides, she is ready to laugh a harvest of untold riches.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MURAT HALSTEAD.
JOURNALIST AND POLITICIAN.
THE editor of “The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette” may be ranked as
one of the greatest living journalists. He has directed the policy
first of “The Commercial” and then of “The Commercial Gazette” for a
space of forty years, and has wielded an influence over the people of
the vast region in which his paper circulates, and, indeed, upon the
whole nation, hardly second to that of any other single man. Sometimes
mistaken, but always honest, fearless and persistent, his work as
a journalist may be cited as a model of excellence, and he may well
be described as typical of the highest form of American manhood. He
is now sixty-seven years of age, but he bears his years with such
buoyancy and retains so fully his powers of mind and body that he
distinguished himself in 1896 by going as special correspondent to the
scene of the rebellion in Cuba, writing from that island, not only a
daily letter to “The New York Journal” on the military and political
situation, but also a series of daily articles in “The Standard-Union,”
describing the manners and customs of Havana, and relating incidents
of life in the tropics in a delightfully characteristic manner.
Mr. Halstead is a native of Butler County, Ohio, a locality which
has produced its full share of the notable men of our time. As the
inhabitants of the neighborhood were of Welsh extraction, with no one
of Irish descent among them, the name, “Paddy’s Run,” borne by their
Post Office, was a cause of great offence to them. A strong party,
however, among whom was Mr. Halstead, made consistent opposition to
every effort to change the name, but, though the struggle was long,
the whimsical title which referred to an almost forgotten incident
in General Wayne’s expedition had finally to be abandoned, and the
fastidious inhabitants now have their mail addressed to “Shandon.”
The Halstead family came from North Carolina at the time when so many
of her noble sons bore practical testimony to their belief in free
institutions by refusing to remain longer in a slave state, and making,
in many cases, the greatest sacrifices in order to live on free soil
in the Northwest Territory.
Murat Halstead grew up on a farm and made his way through the Farmer’s
College, at College Hill, Ohio, as so many men of his class have done,
by alternating college work with teaching a district school. He went
immediately from college into newspaper life, contributing a great
variety of articles to the Cincinnati papers, and in 1853 joined the
staff of “The Commercial.” He soon became part owner and controlling
editor. The success of his paper has been continuous from that time,
and the fact is due in greatest measure to the foresight, energy and
skill of Mr. Halstead. He became prominent in a national sense during
the presidential campaign of 1856, and he was probably the only man
who was present at all the national conventions of 1860, and one of
the very few who foresaw the terrible conflict which was to follow.
He had seen the hanging of John Brown, and reported it in vigorous
fashion for his paper, and he was the Washington correspondent of “The
Commercial” during the trying sessions of Congress which followed.
He served as correspondent at the front during a part of the war, and
“The Commercial” was no small factor in the national councils during
that stormy time. His independence of mind is shown in his frequent
criticism of the policy of the government. On one occasion he wrote a
long letter to Secretary Stanton censuring in the strongest terms the
measures which had been taken and outlining those which, in his
opinion, would result in success. The document was afterwards filed
away in the archives of the war department, bearing an inscription
characteristic of the grim humor of the great war secretary: “How to
Conduct the War――Halstead, M.”
He went to Europe in 1870 with the purpose of joining the French
armies, but not succeeding, managed to attach himself to those of the
Germans. The experiences thus obtained not only furnished the basis
of his newspaper correspondence at the time, but supplied the material
for a number of delightfully instructive magazine articles. He has
since visited Europe on several occasions, and in 1874 formed one of
a distinguished company which made a journey to Iceland and took part
in the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of its settlement.
In 1872 Mr. Halstead again demonstrated his independence by breaking
loose from the regular organization of the Republican party and taking
part in the bolt which resulted in the nomination of Greeley for
the Presidency. He was not long, however, in getting back into the
ranks, but his unwillingness to submit to party discipline and his
persistence in criticising men and measures when he considered that
they were opposed to the public interest, has probably been the means
of preventing him from election on at least one occasion to the United
States Senate. When he was nominated by President Harrison to be
Minister to Germany, it was undoubtedly the same cause which insured
his rejection in the Senate.
For many years the “Cincinnati Gazette” and the “Commercial” had
continued an energetic rivalry. Their political attitude was very much
the same, and there was everything to gain and little to lose by the
consolidation of the two papers which occurred early in the eighties,
with Mr. Halstead as editor-in-chief, and Mr. Richard Smith, of the
“Gazette,” as business Manager. Since 1884 Mr. Halstead has made his
headquarters in Washington or New York; his editorial contributions
going by telegraph to his paper and for several years past he has
been editor of the Brooklyn “Standard Union,” and has contributed very
largely to other papers, his signed articles upon the money question
in “The New York Herald” being notable examples of his ability as a
writer and of his grasp of the great questions of the time. The amount
of work turned off by such a writer is prodigious. He says that he has
undoubtedly written and published an average of more than a million
words a year for forty years. If put in book form this would make in
the aggregate some five hundred volumes of good size.
Mr. Halstead was married in 1857 to Miss Mary Banks. They have four
grown sons, all engaged in journalism; three younger ones, and three
daughters. Their family life has been all that such life should be,
and the present generation of the Halsteads bears every promise of
maintaining the high standard of honest thought and persistent effort
set by the florid faced man, whose large figure and massive head――hair
and beard long since snow white――seem likely to be conspicuous in
many presidential conventions yet to come, as they have been in almost
every one for nearly half a century.
* * * * *
TO THE YOUNG MAN AT THE DOOR.
(FROM ADDRESS ON “THE MAXIMS, MARKETS,
AND MISSIONS OF THE PRESS,”
DELIVERED BEFORE THE WISCONSIN PRESS ASSOCIATION, 1889.)
WE need to guard against ways of exclusiveness――against the assumption
that for some mysterious reason the press has rights that the people
have not; that there are privileges of the press in which the masses
and classes do not participate. The claim of privilege is a serious
error. One either gains or loses rights in a profession. We have the
same authority to speak as editors that we have as citizens. If we
use a longer “pole to knock the persimmons,” it is because we have
a larger constituency for our conversational ability; that doesn’t
affect rights. It simply increases responsibility. One can say of a
meritorious man or enterprise, or of a rascally schemer or scheme,
as an editor the same that he could as a citizen, a tax-payer, a
lawyer, minister, farmer, or blacksmith. It conduces to the better
understanding of our business to know that we are like other folks,
and not set apart, baptized, anointed, or otherwise sanctified, for
an appointed and exclusive and unique service.
It is in our line of occupation to buy white paper, impress ink upon
it in such form as may be expressive of the news and our views, and
agreeable to our friends or disagreeable to our foes, and sell the
sheet when the paper becomes, by the inking thereof, that peculiar
manufactured product, a newspaper, for a margin of profit. We are as
gifted and good as anybody, so far as our natural rights are concerned,
and are better or worse according to our behavior. It is our position
to stand on the common ground with the people, and publish the news,
and tell the truth about it as well as we can; and we shall, through
influences certain in their operation, find the places wherein we
belong. No one can escape the logic of his labor.
Communications from young gentlemen in, or fresh from college,
or active in other shops, who propose to go into journalism or
newspaperdom, and want to know how to do it, are a common experience,
for there is a popular fascination about our employment. There is
nothing one could know――neither faculty to perform nor ability to
endure――perfection of recollection, thoroughness in history, capacity
to apply the lessons of philosophy, comprehension of the law, or
cultivated intuition of the Gospel――that would not be of servicegoing
into newspaperdom. But it is beyond me to prescribe a course of study.
It is easier, when you have the knack, to do than to tell.
When the young man comes to say that he would be willing to undertake
to run a newspaper――and we know that young man as soon as we see his
anxious face at the door――and we sympathize with him, for we may
remember to have been at the door instead of the desk, and willing to
undertake the task of the gentleman who sat at the desk and asked what
was wanted――when, perhaps, the youth at the door had in his pocket
an essay on the “Mound Builders” that he believed was the news of the
day――and we don’t like to speak unkindly to the young man. But there
are so many of him. He is so numerous that he is monotonous, and it is
not always fair to utter the commonplaces of encouragement. It is well
to ask the young man, who is willing to come in and do things, what he
has done (and often he hasn’t done anything but have his being). What
is it that he knows how to do better than anyone else can do it? If
there be anything, the question settles itself, for one who knows how
to do right well something that is to do, has a trade. The world is
under his feet, and its hardness is firm footing. We must ask what the
young man wants to do? and he comes back with the awful vagueness that
he is willing to do anything; and that always means nothing at all. It
is the intensity of the current of electricity that makes the carbon
incandescent and illuminating. The vital flame is the mystery that is
immortal in the soul and in the universe.
Who can tell the young man how to grasp the magic clew of the globe
that spins with us? There is no turnpike or railroad that leads into
journalism. There are vacancies for didactic amateurs. Nobody is
wanted. And yet we are always looking out for somebody, and once in
awhile he comes. He does not ask for a place, but takes that which
is his. Do not say to the young man there are no possibilities. There
certainly are more than ever before. Young man, if you want to get
into journalism, break in. Don’t ask how. It is the finding of it out
that will educate you to do the essential thing. The young man must
enter the newspaper office by main strength and awkwardness, and make
a place for himself.
The machines upon which we impress the sheets we produce for the
market――and we all know how costly they are in their infinite variety
of improvements, for the earnings of the editor are swept away by
the incessant, insatiable requirements of the pressmaker――this facile
mechanism is not more changeable than the press itself, in its larger
sense――and the one thing needful, first and last, is man. With all the
changes, the intelligence of the printer and the personal force of the
editor are indispensable.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
WHITELAW REID.
EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK “TRIBUNE.”
THERE is an old adage which declares “fortune favors the brave.” This
seems to be eminently true in the case of Whitelaw Reid, than whose
life few in American literature are more inspiring to the ambitious
but poor youth struggling upward for recognition among his fellow-men;
for it was by dint of hard work, heroic energy and unflagging
perseverance that he has worked himself from the ranks of obscurity to
one of the most prominent and honorable positions in modern journalism.
Whitelaw Reid was born near Xenia, Ohio, October 27, 1837. The
principle of industry was early inculcated in his life; and, besides
doing his share in the work of the family, he found so much time for
study that he graduated from the Miami University before he was twenty
years of age and was actively engaged in journalism and politics
before his majority,――making speeches in the Fremont campaign on the
Republican side,――and was made editor of the “Xenian News” when only
twenty-one years of age. When the Civil War began, he had attained
such a reputation as a newspaper writer that the “Cincinnati Gazette”
sent him to the field as its special correspondent. He made his
headquarters at Washington, and his letters concerned not only the war,
but dwelt as well on the current politics. These attracted attention
by their thorough information and pungent style. He made excursions
to the army wherever there was prospect of active operation, was
aide-de-camp to General Rosecrans and was present at the battles of
Shiloh and Gettysburg. In 1863, he was elected Librarian of the House
of Representatives at Washington, in which capacity he served until
1866. After the war, he engaged for one year in a cotton plantation
in Louisiana and embodied the result of his observations in his first
book entitled “After the War” (1867).
One of the most important of all the State histories of the Civil
War is Mr. Reid’s “Ohio in the War,” which was issued in two volumes
in 1868. It contained elaborate biographies of the chief Ohio
participants of the army and a complete history of that State from
1861 to 1865. This work so attracted Horace Greeley, of the New York
“Tribune,” that he employed Mr. Reid as an editorial writer upon his
paper, and the latter removed to New York City in 1868, and after Mr.
Greeley’s death, in 1872, ♦succeeded as editor-in-chief and principal
owner of the “Tribune.” “Schools of Journalism” appeared in 1871, and
“Scholars in Politics” in 1873.
♦ ‘succeded’ replaced with ‘succeeded’
The Legislature of New York in 1878 manifested the popular esteem in
which Mr. Reid was held by electing him to be a regent of the State
University for life. He was also offered by President Hayes the post
of Minister to Germany and a similar appointment by President Garfield,
both of which he declined, preferring rather to devote his attention
to his paper, which was one of the leading organs of the Republican
Party in the United States. In 1879, Mr. Reid published a volume
entitled “Some Newspaper Tendencies,” and in 1881 appeared his book,
“Town Hall Suggestions.” During President Harrison’s administration,
though he had already twice declined a foreign portfolio, he accepted,
in 1889, the United States mission to France. At the Republican
Convention which met at Chicago in 1892, he was nominated for
Vice-President of the United States and ran on the ticket with
President Harrison.
Mr. Reid has a magnificent home in the vicinity of New York, where he
delights with his charming family, consisting of a wife and several
children, to entertain his friends. He has traveled extensively in
foreign countries and many of the celebrities of Europe have enjoyed
the hospitality of his palatial home. In 1897, Whitelaw Reid was
appointed a special envoy to represent the United States at the
celebration of the Queen’s Jubilee. His wife attended him on this
mission, and, in company with the United States Ambassador, Colonel
John Hay, they were the recipients of many honors, among which was an
invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Reid to visit the Queen on the afternoon of
July 6, when they dined with Her Majesty, and, at her special request,
slept that night in Windsor Castle. It may be of interest to state in
this connection that, though Mr. Reid was the United States’ special
envoy, he and his secretaries are said to have paid their own expenses.
This statement, if it be true, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. Reid
is a very wealthy man, evinces a liberality in the service of the
government which should not pass unnoticed.
* * * * *
“PICTURES OF A LOUISIANA PLANTATION.”¹
(FROM “SOME SOUTHERN REMINISCENCES.”)
¹ Copyright, Wm. F. Gill & Co.
I SPENT a year or two, after the close of the war in the Southern
States, mostly on Louisiana and Alabama cotton-plantations; and I
shall try to revive some recollections of that experience.
It was one of those perfect days which Louisianians get in February,
instead of waiting, like poor Massachusetts Yankees, till June
for them, when I crossed from Natchez to take possession of two or
three river plantations on which I dreamed of making my fortune in
a year. The road led directly down the levee. On the right rolled
the Mississippi, still far below its banks, and giving no sign of
the flood that a few months later was to drown our hopes. To the
left stretched westward for a mile the unbroken expanse of cotton
land, bounded by the dark fringe of cypress and the swamp. Through a
drove of scrawny cattle and broken-down mules, pasturing on the rich
Bermuda grass along the levee, under the lazy care of the one-armed
“stock-minder,” I made my way at last down a grassy lane to the
broad-porched, many-windowed cottage propped up four or five feet
from the damp soil by pillars of cypress, which the agent had called
the “mansion.” It looked out pleasantly from the foliage of a grove
of China and pecan trees, and was flanked, on the one hand by a
beautifully cultivated vegetable garden, several acres in extent, and
on the other by the “quarters,”――a double row of cabins, each with
two rooms and a projecting roof, covering an earthen-floored porch.
A street, overgrown with grass and weeds, ran from the “mansion” down
between the rows of cabins, and stopped at the plantation blacksmith
and carpenter shop. Behind each cabin was a little garden, jealously
fenced off from all the rest with the roughest of cypress pickets,
and its gate guarded by an enormous padlock. “Niggers never trust one
another about their gardens or hen-houses,” explained the overseer,
who was making me acquainted with my new home.
* * * * *
Illustration: A COTTON FIELD IN LOUISIANA.
I rode out first, that perfect day, among the gang of a hundred
and fifty negroes, who, on these plantations, were for the year
to compromise between their respect and their newborn spirit of
independence by calling me Mistah instead of Massa, there were no
forebodings. Two “plough-gangs” and two “hoe-gangs” were slowly
measuring their length along the two-mile front. Among each rode
its own negro driver, sometimes lounging in his saddle with one leg
lodged on the pommel, sometimes shouting sharp, abrupt orders to the
delinquents. In each plough-gang were fifteen scrawny mules, with
corn-husk collars, gunny-bags, and bedcord plough-lines. The Calhoun
ploughs (the favorite implement through all that region, then, and
doubtless still, retaining the name given it long before war was
dreamed of) were rather lazily managed by the picked hands of the
plantation. Among them were several women, who proved among the best
laborers of the gang. A quarter of a mile ahead a picturesque sight
presented itself. A great crowd of women and children, with a few aged
or weakly men among them, were scattered along the old cotton-rows,
chopping down weeds, gathering together the trash that covered the
land, and firing little heaps of it, while through the clouds of smoke
came an incessant chatter of the girls, and an occasional snatch of
a camp-meeting hymn from the elders. “Gib me some backey, please,”
was the first salutation I received. They were dressed in a stout
blue cottonade, the skirts drawn up to the knees, and reefed in a
loose bunch at the waists; brogans of incredible sizes covered their
feet, and there was a little waste of money on the useless decency
of stockings, but gay bandannas were wound in profuse splendor around
their heads.
The moment the sun disappeared every hoe was shouldered. Some took
up army-blouses or stout men’s overcoats, and drew them on; others
gathered fragments of bark to kindle their evening fires, and balanced
them nicely on their heads. In a moment the whole noisy crowd was
filing across the plantation towards the quarters, joining the
plough-gang, pleading for rides on the mules, or flirting with the
drivers, and looking as much like a troop flocking to a circus or
rustic fair as a party of weary farm-laborers. At the house the
drivers soon reported their grievances. “Dem women done been squabblin
’mong dei’ selves dis a’ternoon, so I’s hardly git any wuck at all
out of ’em.” “Fanny and Milly done got sick to-day; an’ Sally heerd
dat her husban’s mustered out ob de army, an’ she gone up to Natchez
to fine him.” “Dem sucklers ain’t jus’ wuf nuffin at all. ’Bout
eight o’clock dey goes off to de quarters of deir babies, an’ I don’
nebber see nuffin mo’ ob ’em till ’bout elebben. Den de same way in
de a’ternoon, till I’s sick ob de hull lot. De moody (Bermuda grass)
mighty tough ’long heah, an’ I could’nt make dem women put in deir
hoes to suit me nohow.” Presently men and women trooped up for
the ticket representing their day’s work. The women were soon busy
preparing their supper of mess pork and early vegetables; while the
plough-gang gathered about the overseer. “He’d done promise dem a
drink o’ wiskey, if dey’d finish dat cut, and dey’d done it.” The
whiskey was soon forthcoming, well watered with a trifle of Cayenne
pepper to conceal the lack of spirit, and a little tobacco soaked
in it to preserve the color. The most drank it down at a gulp from
the glass into which, for one after another, the overseer poured “de
lowance.” A few, as their turns came, passed up tin cups and went
off with their treasure, chuckling about “de splendid toddy we’s hab
to-night.” Then came a little trade with the overseer at “the store.”
Some wanted a pound or two of sugar; others, a paper of needles or
a bar of soap; many of the young men, “two bits’ wuf” of candy or a
brass ring. In an hour trade was over, and the quarters were as silent
as a churchyard. But, next morning, at four o’clock, I was aroused
by the shrill “driber’s horn.” Two hours later it was blown again,
and, looking from my window just as the first rays of light came
level across the field, I saw the women filing out, with their hoes,
and the ploughmen leisurely sauntering down to the stables, each
with corn-husk collar and bedcord plough-lines in his hands. The
passion for whiskey among the negroes seemed universal. I never saw
a man, woman or child, reckless young scapegrace or sanctimonious
old preacher, among them, who would refuse it; and the most had no
hesitancy in begging it whenever they could. Many of them spent half
their earnings buying whiskey. That sold on any of the plantations I
ever visited or heard of was always watered down at least one-fourth.
Perhaps it was owing to this fact, though it seemed rather an evidence
of unexpected powers of self-restraint, that so few were to be seen
intoxicated.
During the two or three years in which I spent most of my time among
them, seeing scores and sometimes hundreds in a day, I do not remember
seeing more than one man absolutely drunk. He had bought a quart of
whiskey, one Saturday night, at a low liquor shop in Natchez. Next
morning early he attacked it, and in about an hour the whiskey and
he were used up together. Hearing an unusual noise in the quarters, I
walked down that way and found the plough-driver and the overseer both
trying to quiet Horace. He was unable to stand alone, but he contrived
to do a vast deal of shouting. As I approached, the driver said,
“Horace, don’t make so much noise; don’t you see Mr. R.?” He looked
around as if surprised at learning it.
“Boss, is dat you?”
“Yes.”
“Boss, I’s drunk; boss, I’s ’shamed o’ myself! but I’s drunk! I ’sarve
good w’ipping. Boss,――boss, s-s-slap me in de face, boss.”
I was not much disposed to administer the “slapping;” but Horace kept
repeating, with a drunken man’s persistency, “Slap me in de face,
boss; please, boss.” Finally I did give him a ringing cuff on the ear.
Horace jerked off his cap, and ducked down his head with great respect,
saying, “T’ank you, boss.” Then, grinning his maudlin smile, he threw
open his arms as if to embrace me, and exclaimed, “Now kiss me, boss!”
Next morning Horace was at work with the rest, and though he bought
many quarts of whiskey afterwards, I never saw him drunk again.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ALBERT SHAW.
EDITOR OF THE “REVIEW OF REVIEWS.”
IT seems, sometimes, that the influence of the editor has departed,
and that notwithstanding the survival of a few men like Halstead
and Reid, who helped to make the papers which moulded public opinion
thirty years ago, the newspaper fills no such place as it did in
the day of their prime, but a different place, not a lower or a less
important one. Among the men who through the medium of the press are
doing most to promote the spread of intelligence, and particularly to
further the cause of good government and to elevate the civic life of
our country, Albert Shaw fills a prominent place.
Dr. Shaw is a young man of Western birth, tall and slender in figure,
with a keen eye, a quick and rather nervous manner, and features
expressing in an unusual degree intelligence, energy, and character.
Born in Ohio, the central West, Dr. Shaw represents a catholicity of
feeling and knowledge which very few Americans possess. He knows the
whole country. He is not distinctly an Eastern man, a Western man,
or a man of the Pacific slope: he is a man of America. He knows the
characteristics of each section, its strength and its weakness. With
New England blood in his veins, but with the energizing influences of
the West about his boyhood, Dr. Shaw graduated at Iowa College, the
oldest institution of its class west of the Mississippi. During his
college life the future journalist and writer devoted a great deal
of time to the study of literature and of literary style, disclosing
very early two qualities which are pre-eminently characteristic of him
to-day, lucidity and directness. After graduation Dr. Shaw began his
professional life as editor of “The Grinnell Herald,” a position which
enabled him to master all the mechanical and routine work of
journalism.
His aims were not the aims of the ordinary journalist. He saw with
unusual clearness the possibilities of his profession, and he saw also
that he needed a wider educational basis. His interest in social and
political topics was the interest of a man of philosophic mind, eager
to learn the principles and not simply to record the varying aspects
from day to day. In order the better to secure the equipment of which
he felt the need, he entered the Johns Hopkins University and took a
post-graduate course. It was during his residence in Baltimore that he
met Professor Bryce, who recognized his rare ability and intelligence,
and who used his unusually large knowledge of social and political
conditions in the country. While carrying on his special studies at
the Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Shaw joined the editorial staff of
the Minneapolis daily “Tribune.” After receiving the degree of Ph.D.
in 1884, he removed permanently to Minneapolis, and took his place
at the head of the staff of the “Tribune.” His work almost at once
attracted attention. Its breadth, its thoroughness, its candor, and
its ability were of a kind which made themselves recognized on the
instant. Four years later Dr. Shaw spent a year and a half studying
social and political conditions in Europe, traveling extensively
and devoting much time to the examination of the condition of
municipalities. It was this study which has borne fruit in the two
volumes on Municipal Government which have come from the press of
the Century Company, and which have given Dr. Shaw the first rank
as an authority on these matters. When the “Review of Reviews” was
established in this country in 1891, Dr. Shaw became its editor, and
his success in the management of this very important periodical has
justified the earlier expectations entertained by his friends, for he
has given the “Review of Reviews” a commanding position. He is one of
the very few journalists in this country who treat their work from the
professional standpoint, who are thoroughly equipped for it, and who
regard themselves as standing in a responsible relation to a great and
intelligent public. Dr. Shaw’s presentation of news is pre-eminently
full, candid, and unpartisan; his discussion of principles is
broad-minded, rational, and persuasive. He is entirely free from the
short-sighted partisanship of the great majority of newspaper editors,
and he appreciates to the full the power of intelligent, judicial
statement. His opinions, for this reason, carry great weight, and it
is not too much to say that he has not his superior in the field of
American journalism.
* * * * *
RECENT DEVELOPMENT OF THE WEST.
LET us imagine a man from the East who has visited the Northwestern
States and Territories at some time between the years 1870 and 1875,
and who retains a strong impression of what he saw, but who has not
been west of Chicago since that time, until, in the World’s Fair year
he determines upon a new exploration of Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas,
Minnesota and Wisconsin. However well informed he had tried to keep
himself through written descriptions and statistical records of
Western progress, he would see what nothing but the evidence of his
own eyes could have made him believe to be possible. Iowa in 1870
was already producing a large crop of cereals, and was inhabited by a
thriving, though very new, farming population. But the aspect of the
country was bare and uninviting, except in the vicinity of the older
communities on the Mississippi River. As one advanced across the State
the farmhouses were very small, and looked like isolated dry-goods
boxes; there were few well-built barns or farm buildings; and the
struggling young cottonwood and soft-maple saplings planted in close
groves about the tiny houses were so slight an obstruction to the
sweep of vision across the open prairie that they only seemed to
emphasize the monotonous stretches of fertile, but uninteresting
plain. Now the landscape is wholly transformed. A railroad ride
in June through the best parts of Iowa reminds one of a ride
through some of the pleasantest farming districts of England. The
primitive “claim shanties” of thirty years ago have given place to
commodious farm-houses flanked by great barns and hay-ricks, and the
well-appointed structures of a prosperous agriculture. In the rich,
deep meadows herds of fine-blooded cattle are grazing. What was once
a blank, dreary landscape is now garden-like and inviting. The poor
little saplings of the earlier days, which seemed to be apologizing
to the robust corn-stalks in the neighboring fields, have grown on
that deep soil into great, spreading trees. One can easily imagine,
as he looks off in every direction and notes a wooded horizon, that
he is――as in Ohio, Indiana, or Kentucky――in a farming region which
has been cleared out of primeval forests. There are many towns I might
mention which twenty-five years ago, with their new, wooden shanties
scattered over the bare face of the prairie, seemed the hottest place
on earth as the summer sun beat upon their unshaded streets and roofs,
and seemed the coldest places on earth when the fierce blizzards of
winter swept unchecked across the prairie expanses. To-day the density
of shade in those towns is deemed of positive detriment to health,
and for several years past there has been a systematic thinning out
and trimming up of the great, clustering elms. Trees of from six to
ten feet in girth are found everywhere by the hundreds of thousands.
Each farm-house is sheltered from winter winds by its own dense groves.
Many of the farmers are able from the surplus growth of wood upon
their estates to provide themselves with a large and regular supply
of fuel. If I have dwelt at some length upon this picture of the
transformation of the bleak, grain-producing Iowa prairies of thirty
years ago into the dairy and live-stock farms of to-day, with their
fragrant meadows and ample groves, it is because the picture is one
which reveals so much as to the nature and meaning of Northwestern
progress.
The tendency to rely upon united public action is illustrated in
the growth of Northwestern educational systems. The universities of
these commonwealths are State universities. Professional education
is under the State auspices and control. The normal schools and the
agricultural schools belong to the State. The public high school
provides intermediate instruction. The common district school,
supported jointly by local taxation and State subvention, gives
elementary education to the children of all classes. As the towns grow
the tendency to graft manual and technical courses upon the ordinary
public school curriculum is unmistakably strong. The Northwest, more
than any other part of the country, is disposed to make every kind of
education a public function.
Radicalism has flourished in the homogeneous agricultural society
of the Northwest. In the anti-monopoly conflict there seemed to
have survived some of the intensity of feeling that characterized
the anti-slavery movement; and a tinge of this fanatical quality
has always been apparent in the Western and Northwestern monetary
heresies. But it is in the temperance movement that this sweep of
radical impulse has been most irresistible. It was natural that the
movement should become political and take the form of an agitation
for prohibition. The history of prohibition in Iowa, Kansas and the
Dakotas, and of temperance legislation in Minnesota and Nebraska,
reveals――even better perhaps than the history of the anti-monopoly
movement――the radicalism, homogeneity, and powerful socializing
tendencies of the Northwestern people. Between these different
agitations there has been in reality no slight degree of relationship;
at least their origin is to be traced to the same general condition of
society.
The extent to which a modern community resorts to State action depends
in no small measure upon the accumulation of private resources. Public
or organized initiative will be relatively strongest where the impulse
to progress is positive but the ability of individuals is small. There
are few rich men in the Northwest. Iowa, great as is the Hawkeye State,
has no large city and no large fortunes. Of Kansas the same thing
may be said. The Dakotas have no rich men and no cities. Minnesota
has Minneapolis and St. Paul, and Nebraska has Omaha; but otherwise
these two States are farming communities, without large cities or
concentrated private capital. Accordingly the recourse to public
action is comparatively easy. South Dakota farmers desire to guard
against drought by opening artesian wells for irrigation. They resort
to State legislation and the sale of county bonds. North Dakota
wheat growers are unfortunate in the failure of crops. They secure
seed-wheat, through State action and their county governments. A
similarity of condition fosters associated action, and facilitates
the progress of popular movements.
In such a society the spirit of action is intense. If there are few
philosophers, there is remarkable diffusion of popular knowledge and
elementary education. The dry atmosphere and the cold winters are
nerve-stimulants, and life seems to have a higher tension and velocity
than in other parts of the country.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
THE POPULAR NOVELIST AND CONTRIBUTOR.
JULIAN HAWTHORNE has inherited much of his father’s literary ability.
His recent celebrity has been largely due to his success in portraying
to the readers of popular magazines facts of world-wide interest like
the famine in India, but to the special power of vivid statement which
belongs to the newspaper reporter, he joins the imaginative power
which enables him to recognize the materials of romance and the gift
of clear and graceful expression. He is the son of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
and was born in Boston in 1846. He traveled abroad with his parents,
returning and entering Harvard in 1863. His college life seems to have
been devoted more to athletics than to serious learning. He took up
the study of civil engineering and went to Dresden to carry it on, but
the Franco-Prussian war breaking out while he was visiting at home,
he found employment as an engineer under General George B. McClellan
in the department of docks in New York. He began soon after to write
stories and sketches for the magazines, and losing his position in
1872, he determined to devote himself to literature. He now went
abroad, living for several years, first in England and then in Dresden,
and again in England, where he remained until 1881, and then after a
short stay in Ireland, returned to New York. A number of his stories
were published while he was abroad. Of these the most important were
“Bressant” and “Idolatry.” For two years he was connected with the
London “Spectator,” and he contributed to the “Contemporary Review”
a series of sketches called “Saxon Studies,” which were afterwards
published in book form. The novel “Garth” followed and collections
of stories and novelettes entitled “The Laughing Mill;” “Archibald
Malmaison;” “Ellice Quentin;” “Prince Saroni’s Wife;” and the “Yellow
Cap” fairy stories. These were all published abroad, but a part
of them were afterward reprinted in America. Later he published
“Sebastian Strome;” “Fortune’s Fool,” and in 1884 “Dust” and “Noble
Blood.” On his return to America he edited his father’s posthumous
romance “Dr. Grimshaw’s Secret,” and prepared the biography of his
father and mother. Since that time he has contributed a large number
of stories and sketches to magazines. His most recent work has been
an expedition to India to write for American periodicals an account
of the famine in that country. One of our extracts is taken from
this account and will very adequately illustrate his power of
telling things so that his readers can see them with his eyes. Mr.
♦Hawthorne’s activity does not abate and his friends and admirers
expect from him even better work than he has yet done.
♦ “Hawthrone’s” replaced with “Hawthorne’s”
* * * * *
THE WAYSIDE AND THE WAR.¹
(FROM “NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE.”)
¹ Copyright, Ticknor & Co.
IT was a hot day towards the close of June, 1860, when Hawthorne
alighted from a train at Concord station, and drove up in the railway
wagon to the Wayside. The fields looked brown, the trees were dusty,
and the sun white and brilliant. At certain seasons in Concord
the heat stagnates and simmers, until it seems as if nothing but a
grasshopper could live. The water in the river is so warm that to
bathe in it is merely to exchange one kind of heat for another. The
very shadow of the trees is torrid; and I have known the thermometer
to touch 112° in the shade. No breeze stirs throughout the long sultry
day; and the feverish nights bring mosquitoes, but no relief. To come
from the salt freshness of the Atlantic into this living oven is a
startling change, especially when one has his memory full of cool,
green England. Such was America’s first greeting to Hawthorne, on his
return from a seven years’ absence; it was to this that he had looked
forward so lovingly and so long. As he passed one little wooden house
after another, with their white clap boards and their green blinds,
perhaps he found his thoughts not quite so cloudless as the sky. It
is dangerous to have a home; too much is required of it.
The Wayside, however, was not white, it was painted a dingy buff color.
The larches and Norway pines, several hundred of which had been sent
out from England, were planted along the paths, and were for the most
part doing well. The well-remembered hillside, with its rude terraces,
shadowed by apple-trees, and its summit green with pines, rose behind
the house; and in front, on the other side of the highway, extended
a broad meadow of seven acres, bounded by a brook, above which hung
drooping willows. It was, upon the whole, as pleasant a place as any
in the village, and much might be done to enhance its beauty. It had
been occupied, during our absence, by a brother of Mrs. Hawthorne; and
the house itself was in excellent order, and looked just the same as
in our last memory of it. A good many alterations have been made since
then; another story was added to the western wing, the tower was built
up behind, and two other rooms were put on in the rear. These changes,
together with some modifications about the place, such as opening up
of paths, the cutting down of some trees, and the planting of others,
were among the last things that engaged Hawthorne’s attention in this
life.
* * * * *
FIRST MONTHS IN ENGLAND.¹
FROM “NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE AND HIS WIFE.”
¹ Copyright, Ticknor & Co.
WE are told, truly enough, that goodness does not always command
good fortune in this world, that just hopes are often deferred until
it is too late to enjoy their realization, that fame and honor only
discover a man after he has ceased to value them; and a large and
respectable portion of modern fiction is occupied in impressing these
sober lessons upon us. It is pleasant, nevertheless, to believe that
sometimes fate condescends not to be so unmitigable, and that a cloudy
and gusty morning does occasionally brighten into a sunny and genial
afternoon. Too long a course of apparently perverse and unreasonable
accidents bewilders the mind, and the few and fleeting gleams of
compensation seem a mockery. One source of the perennial charm of
Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” is, I think, that in it the dividing
line between the good and the bad fortune is so distinctly drawn.
Just when a man has done his utmost, and all seems lost, Providence
steps in, brings aid from the most unexpected quarter, and kindles
everything into brighter and ever brighter prosperity. The action
and reaction are positive and complete, and we arise refreshed and
comforted from the experience.
It was somewhat thus with Hawthorne, though the picture of his career
is to be painted in a lower and more delicate tone than that of
Goldsmith’s brilliant little canvas. Up to the time of publication
of “The Scarlet Letter,” his external circumstances had certainly
been growing more and more unpromising; though, on the other hand,
his inner domestic life had been full of the most vital and tender
satisfactions. But the date of his first popular success in literature
also marks the commencement of a worldly prosperity which, though
never by any means splendid (as we shall presently see), at any
rate sufficed to allay the immediate anxiety about to-morrow’s
bread-and-butter, from which he had not hitherto been free. The three
American novels were written and published in rapid succession, and
were reprinted in England, the first two being pirated; but for the
last, “The Blithedale Romance,” two hundred pounds were obtained from
Messrs. Chapman and Hall for advance sheets. There is every reason to
believe that during the ensuing years other romances would have been
written; and perhaps they would have been as good as, or better than,
those that went before. But it is vain to speculate as to what might
have been. What actually happened was that Hawthorne was appointed
United States Consul to Liverpool, and for six years to come his
literary exercises were confined to his consular despatches and to six
or eight volumes of his English, French and Italian Journals. It was
a long abstinence; possibly it was a beneficent one. The production
of such books as “The Scarlet Letter” and “The House of Seven Gables”
cannot go on indefinitely; though they seem to be easily written
when they _are_ written, they represent a great deal of the writer’s
spiritual existence. At all events, it is better to write too little
than too much.
* * * * *
THE HORRORS OF THE PLAGUE IN INDIA.
(FROM THE “COSMOPOLITAN MAGAZINE.”)
I MET the local inspectors at the railway station leading a horse
which they had kindly provided for me. We made a tour of half a dozen
villages, alighting to investigate anything that appeared suspicious.
The first and largest of the villages rambles along on either side
of a street scarcely wider than an ordinary footpath. The houses were
mud huts, whitewashed, or built of a kind of rubble, with the roofs
of loose tiles common in India. Cocoa palms were numerous all over the
region, and there were solid groves of them outside the settlements,
coming down to the water’s edge. The inhabitants for the most part
professed the Roman Catholic faith; crosses stood at every meeting
of the ways, and priests in black gowns with wide-brimmed black hats
stole past us occasionally. Of native inhabitants, however, we saw
very few; those who were not in the graveyards had locked up their
houses and fled the town. All the houses in which death or sickness
had occurred had been already visited by the inspectors, emptied of
their contents and disinfected. Those which were still occupied were
kept under strict supervision. One which had been occupied the day
before was now found to be shut. The inspectors called up a native
and questioned him. From his replies it appeared that there had been
symptoms of the disease. We dismounted and made an examination. Every
door and window was fastened, but by forcing open a blind we were
able to see the interior. It was empty of life and of most of the
movable furniture; but the floor of dried mud was strewn with the dead
carcasses of rats. Undoubtedly the plague had been here. The house was
marked for destruction, and we proceeded.
* * * * *
Low, flat ledges of rock extended into the sea. A group of creatures
in loin-cloths and red turbans were squatting or moving about between
two or three heaps of burning timber. These were made of stout logs
piled across one another to a height of about four feet. Half-way
in the pile was placed a human body; it was not entirely covered by
the wood, but a leg projected here, an arm there. The flames blazed
up fiercely, their flickering red tongues contrasting with the pale
blue of the calm sea beyond. The smoke arose thick and unctuous, and,
fortunately, was carried seaward. One of the pyres had burnt down to
white ashes, and nothing recognizable as human remained. The people
whose bodies were here burned had died in the segregation huts the
night before.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS.
RICHARD HARDING DAVIS has shown a marvelous skill in seeing the
world, in travel, and of describing it as he sees it. He is not a
profound student of the mystery of the human mind, but he possesses
in high degree and in rare quality an instinct of selection, a clear
sense of an artistic situation in a group of more or less ordinary
circumstances and a gift in interesting description. He is, in short,
a very clever newspaper reporter who has transferred his field of
service from the region of the actual to the realm of the imaginary.
His reputation, however, is about equally divided between his works
of description and travel and his stories of a more imaginative order,
though in both classes of writings, he is above everything else a
describer of what he has seen.
He was born in Philadelphia in 1864, the son of L. Clark Davis, an
editor of reputation, and Rebecca Harding Davis, the author of many
good stories, so that the child had a literary inheritance and an
hereditary bent for letters. He studied for three years in Lehigh
University and one year in Johns Hopkins, after which he began
his interesting career as a journalist, serving successively “The
Record,” “Press,” and “Telegraph” of Philadelphia. On his return from
a European trip, he became connected with the New York “Evening Sun,”
for which he wrote the famous series of “Van Bibber Sketches.”
The story, however, which gave him his first real fame was
“Gallegher,” the scene of which is laid in Philadelphia, though,
as is true of all his stories, locality plays but little part in his
tales, modes of life and not scenery being the main feature.
He describes the happy-go-lucky life of the young club man, adventures
in saloons, and scenes among burglars with remarkable realism, for as
reporter he lived for a time among the “reprobates,” in disguise, to
make a careful study of their manner of life. Again when he describes
“The West from a Car Window,” he is giving scenes which he saw and
types of life which he closely observed. His books always have the
distinctive mark of spirit; they are full of life and activity,
everything moves on and something “happens.” This is as true of his
books of travel as of his stories. He has traveled extensively, and
he has given descriptions of most of his journeys.
Beside “The West from a Car Window” he has written, with the
same reportorial skill and fidelity to observed facts, a book
of descriptions of life and manners in the East, with scenes
and incidents at Gibraltar and Tangiers, in Cairo, Athens and
Constantinople.
He has also produced a book of travels in England, which touches
rather the surface of English life than the deeper traits of character
which Emerson has so faithfully described. Davis writes as reporter
of what is easily observed, while the other writes as philosopher. His
latest collection of stories which shows his storytelling faculties at
their best is called “The Exiles and Other Stories.” His most recent
service as a journalist was as correspondent of “The London Times,”
with the Greek forces during their recent humiliating conflict with
the Turks. The selection given below will illustrate his vigorous
style and the vivid character of his descriptions.
* * * * *
THE GREEK DEFENCE OF VELESTINO.
(FROM THE “LONDON TIMES.”)
THERE is a round hill to the north of the town, standing quite alone.
It has a perfectly flat top, and its proportions are exactly those of
a giant bucket set upside down. We found the upper end of this bucket
crowded with six mountain guns [there was one other correspondent with
Mr. Davis at the time], and the battery was protesting violently. When
it had uttered its protest the guns would throw themselves into the
air, and would turn a complete somersault, as though with delight at
the mischief they had done, or would whirl themselves upon one wheel
while the other spun rapidly in the air. Lieutenant Ambroise Frantzis
was in command of the battery. It was he who had repulsed a Turkish
cavalry charge of a few days before with this same battery, and he
was as polite and calm and pleased with his excitable little guns as
though they weighed a hundred tons each, and could send a shell nine
miles instead of a scant three thousand yards.
“From this hill there was nothing to be seen of the Turks but puffs
of smoke in the plain, so we slid down its steep side and clambered
up the ridges in front of us, where long rows of infantry were
outlined against the sky.... A bare-headed peasant boy, in dirty white
petticoats, who seemed to consider the engagement in the light of an
entertainment, came dancing down the hill to show us the foot-paths
that led up the different ridges. He was one of the villagers who had
not run away or who was not farther up the valley, taking pot-shots
at the hated Turks from behind rocks. He talked and laughed as he
ran ahead of us, with many gestures, and imitated mockingly the sound
of the bullets, and warned us with grave solicitude to be careful,
as though he was in no possible danger himself. I saw him a great
many times during the day, guiding company after company through the
gulleys, and showing them how to advance protected by the slope of the
hills――a self-constituted scout――and with much the manner of a landed
proprietor escorting visitors over his estate. And whenever a shell
struck near him, he would run and retrieve the pieces, and lay them
triumphantly at the feet of the officers, like a little fox-terrier
that has scampered after a stick and brought it to his master’s feet.
“The men in the first trench――which was the only one which gave
us a clear view of the Turkish forces――received us with cheerful
nods and scraped out a place beside them, and covered the moist
earth with their blankets. They exhibited a sort of childish pride
and satisfaction at being under fire; and so far from showing the
nervousness and shattered morale which had been prophesied for them
after the rout at Larissa, they appeared on the contrary more than
content. As the day wore on, they became even languidly bored with
it all, and some sang in a low crooning tone, and others, in spite of
the incessant rush of the shells, dozed in the full glare of the sun,
and still others lay humped and crouched against the earthworks when
the projectiles tore up the earth on the hill behind us. But when the
order came to fire, they would scramble to their knees with alacrity,
and many of them would continue firing on their own account, long
after the whistle had sounded to cease firing. Some of the officers
walked up and down, and directed the men in the trenches at their feet
with the air of judges or time-keepers at an athletic meeting, who
were observing a tug-of-war. Others exposed themselves in what looked
like a spirit of braggadocio, for they moved with a swagger and called
upon the men to notice how brave they were. Other officers rose only
when it was necessary to observe some fresh movement upon the part of
the enemy, and they did this without the least haste and simply as a
part of their work, and regarded the bullets that instantly beset them
as little as if they were so many flies.
“A Turkish soldier dragging a mule loaded with ammunition had appeared
a quarter of a mile below us, and at sight of him the soldiers at
once recognized that there was something tangible, something that
could show some sign if they hit it. The white smoke they had aimed at
before had floated away, but at the sight of this individual soldier
the entire line ceased firing at the enemy’s trenches, and opened on
the unhappy Turk and his mule, and as the dust spurted up at points
nearer and nearer to where he stood, their excitement increased in
proportion, until, when he gave the mule a kick and ran for his life,
there was a triumphant shout all along the line, as though they had
repulsed a regiment. That one man and his load of ammunition had for
a few minutes represented to them the entire Turkish army.
“As the Turks suddenly appeared below us, clambering out of a long
gully, it was as though they had sprung from the earth. On the moment
the smiling landscape changed like a scene at a theatre, and hundreds
of men rose from what had apparently been deserted hilltops, and
stood outlined in ♦silhouette against the sunset, waves of smoke ran
from crest to crest, spitting flashes of red flame, and men’s voices
shrieked and shouted, and the Turkish shells raced each other so
fiercely that they beat out the air until it groaned. It had come
up so suddenly that it was like two dogs springing at each other’s
throats, and, in a greater degree, it had something of the sound of
two wild animals struggling for life. Volley answered volley as though
with personal hate――one crashing in upon the roll of the other, or
beating it out of recognition with the bursting roar of heavy cannon;
and to those who could do nothing but lie face downwards and listen
to it, it seemed as though they had been caught in a burning building,
and that the walls and roof were falling in on them. I do not know
how long it lasted――probably not more than five minutes, although it
seemed much longer than that――but finally the death-grip seemed to
relax, the volleys came brokenly, like a man panting for breath, the
bullets ceased to sound with the hiss of escaping steam, and rustled
aimlessly by, and from hilltop to hilltop the officers’ whistles
sounded as though a sportsman were calling off his dogs. The Turks had
been driven back, and for the fourth day the Greeks had held Velestino
successfully against them.”
♦ ‘silhoutte’ replaced with ‘silhouette’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
GREAT ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS
Illustration: GREAT AMERICAN ORATORS AND POPULAR LECTURERS.
PATRICK HENRY • HENRY CLAY • DANIEL WEBSTER
HENRY WARD BEECHER • JOHN B. GOUGH • HENRY W. GRADY
CHAUNCY M. DEPEW • WENDELL PHILLIPS • EDWARD EVERETT
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
PATRICK HENRY.
THE GREATEST ORATOR OF COLONIAL TIMES.
I HEARD the splendid display of Mr. Henry’s talents as a popular
orator,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “they were great indeed, such as
I have never heard from any other man. He appeared to me to speak
as Homer wrote.”
Few men in the history of the world have possessed in a degree
equal to that of Patrick Henry, the power to move men’s minds and
to influence their actions, but it was not until he was twenty-seven
years old that his oratorical powers became known. He was a native
Virginian of distinguished parentage and good education. He married
very young, and tried farming and merchandising before he decided to
become a lawyer, when he came at once into a large practice. He was
engaged in 1763 to defend the Colony against the suit of a minister of
the Established Church, brought to recover his salary which had been
fixed at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco. A failure of the crop had
made the tobacco exceedingly valuable, and the Colonial Legislature
had passed a law requiring the ministers to take money payment at the
rate of two pence per pound. This act had not been approved by the
King, and in his speech on this occasion, Mr. Henry boldly proclaimed
the principles which afterward led to the Declaration of Independence,
declaring that “the King by disallowing acts of a salutary nature,
from being the father of his people, degenerates into a tyrant
and forfeits all rights to his subjects’ obedience.” From that day
the fame of Patrick Henry, as a popular orator, spread throughout
the Colonies. His famous speech, two years later, in the House of
Burgesses, resulted in the passing of resolutions defining the rights
of the Colonies and pronouncing the “Stamp Act” unconstitutional.
The public mind was so inflamed that open resistance was everywhere
made and the enforcement of the tax became impossible. Mr. Henry was
now the leader of his Colony. He was concerned in all the principal
movements during the trying times until 1774, when he was foremost in
the movement which resulted in the calling of the Continental Congress.
Being a delegate to the Congress, he opened its deliberations by a
speech in which he declared: “I am not a Virginian, but an American,”
and this broad patriotism characterized his speech and actions
throughout his life. On the outbreak of the war, he was made Commander
of the forces raised in Virginia; but when these troops became a part
of the Continental Army, his lack of military experience prevented his
continuance in so high a command and he retired to civil life.
He became the first Governor of Virginia and was re-elected several
times. Among his distinguished services was the sending out of the
expedition which conquered the territory northwest of the Ohio, which
territory now embraces the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Michigan and Wisconsin. He early saw the defects in the Articles of
Confederation and favored the formation of a stronger government.
He thought the plan of the Constitution gave too much power to
the general government; but his objections were largely removed
by the first eleven amendments and he gave a hearty support to the
administration of President Washington. When the Alien and Sedition
Laws were meeting with great opposition and there was danger of an
attempt on the part of Virginia to resist their further execution,
he strongly opposed such action, and, although he did not approve of
the laws, and urged the use of every possible means to effect their
repeal, he secured his election to the Legislature for the purpose
of advocating submission to the authority of the general government.
Before he had taken his seat, his life came to a close.
Mr. Henry was a devoted Christian and lived a life consistent with
that high profession. His services to the cause of civil liberty can
hardly be overstated. His powers have been testified to by many men
of great culture and ability, and John Randolph, of Roanoke, declared
that he was the greatest orator that ever lived and spoke of him as
“Shakespeare and Garrick combined.”
* * * * *
RESISTANCE TO BRITISH AGGRESSION.
Delivered before the Virginia Convention, March 23, 1775, in
support of resolutions he had introduced, providing that the
colony should immediately be put in a state of defence against
British aggression. Of the effect of this speech, Mr. Wirt says,
that, when Henry took his seat, at its close, “No murmur of
applause was heard. The effect was too deep. After the trance
of a moment, several members started from their seats. The cry
_to arms!_ seemed to quiver on every lip, and gleam from every
eye. They became impatient of speech. Their souls were on fire
for action.”
MR. PRESIDENT, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of
hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen
to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts. Is
this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for
liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes,
see not, and having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern
our temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may
cost, I am willing to know the whole truth,――to know the worst, and to
provide for it!
I have but one lamp, by which my feet are guided; and that is the lamp
of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the
past. And, judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been
in the conduct of the British ministry, for the last ten years, to
justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace
themselves and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our
petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a
snare to your feet! Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss!
Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports
with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken
our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and
reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled,
that force must be called in to win back our love?
Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war
and subjugation,――the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask
gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not
to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible
motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the
world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir,
she has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for no other.
They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the
British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose
to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that, for
the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject?
Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is
capable; but it has been all in vain.
Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms
shall we find which have not already been exhausted? Let us not,
I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we have done
everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming
on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated,
we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored
its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and
Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted, our remonstrances have
produced additional violence and insult, our supplications have been
disregarded, and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot
of the throne.
In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be
free,――if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges
for which we have been so long contending,――if we mean not basely to
abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and
which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious
object of our contest shall be obtained,――we must fight; I repeat it,
sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of Hosts, is all
that is left us!
* * * * *
THE WAR INEVITABLE, MARCH, 1775.
(_Continuation of the foregoing._)
THEY tell us, sir, that we are weak,――unable to cope with so
formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the
next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed,
and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we
gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the
means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and
hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have
bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use
of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in
such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force
which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight
our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies
of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.
The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant,
the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we
were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the
contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains
are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The
war is inevitable; and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!
It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, peace,
peace!――but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next
gale that sweeps from the North will bring to our ears the clash of
resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we
here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course
others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HENRY CLAY.
“THE GREAT PACIFICATOR.”
IT is impossible within the necessary limits of this article to give
anything like a satisfactory account of the life and services of the
“Great Pacificator.” For nearly fifty years he took a prominent part
in the discussion of every public question. In a time whose dangers
and difficulties were so great that the most far-seeing statesmen
almost despaired of the future of our country, it was to Henry
Clay that all eyes were turned, and it was to him that we owe the
postponement of the great conflict of 1861 almost for a generation.
Clay was a native of Hanover County, Virginia; born in 1777. His
father dying when he was four years old, the future statesman lived a
life of great hardship, toil and poverty. He had almost no education,
and at fourteen he was placed in a drug store in Richmond, where he
served for a year as errand boy. His mother having remarried, her
husband obtained for Henry a clerkship in the office of the Court of
Chancery. While here he studied law, and, believing that his chances
of success would be better in the West, he followed his mother and
stepfather to Kentucky, and opened an office in Lexington. His success
was immediate, and he was soon possessed of a lucrative practice and
of a position of great influence.
In 1799 Clay married Miss Lucretia Hart, the daughter of a gentleman
of prominent standing in the State. His prosperity rapidly increased,
and he was soon able to purchase “Ashland,” an estate of some six
hundred acres near Lexington, which afterwards became famous as the
home of Henry Clay. In 1806 Mr. Clay was elected to fill a vacancy
in the Senate of the United States. Returning to Kentucky, he became
a member of the Kentucky Legislature, where he took a leading part.
Again, in 1809, he was sent to the United States Senate, but it may
be said that his public life properly began in 1811 as a member of
the House of Representatives. He was immediately elected Speaker,
and so distinguished himself in that office that it is sometimes said
that he was the best presiding officer that any deliberative body in
America has ever known, even down to the present time. It was to him
more than to any other individual that we owe the War of 1812, and
when President Madison, discouraged at the failures of the National
armies in the first year of that war, was about to appoint Clay
commander-in-chief of the land forces, he was persuaded not to do so
because he could not be spared from the House of Representatives. In
1814 Mr. Clay was one of the commissioners to arrange the terms of
peace with England. Returning from Europe, he remained Speaker of the
House of Representatives until 1825, when he became Secretary of State
under John Quincy Adams. During this time the great conflict over
slavery began. The introduction of the cotton-gin had made slavery
profitable, and the sentiment of the South, which at the time of
the Revolutionary War had apparently favored the gradual doing away
with that system, now insisted upon its extension; but while Southern
sentiment had progressed in this way, the feelings of the North
had grown in the opposite direction, and the increasing importance
of the North and its approaching predominance in the government,
made Southern politicians anxious about the future of their peculiar
institution. The conflict broke forth in 1818, when Missouri asked to
be admitted to the Union. “It was,” said Thomas Jefferson, describing
the suddenness with which the danger appeared, “like the ringing of
a fire-bell in the night.” It was the most dangerous crisis which had
yet occurred in the history of the government. It was to the genius
of Henry Clay that the ship of State was successfully steered out
of these waters. The famous “Missouri Compromise” admitting one free
State――Maine――and one slave State――Missouri――at the same time and
enacting that no other slave State should be formed north of latitude
thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, which was the southern boundary
line of Missouri, seemed likely to solve the difficult question, and
certainly postponed the conflict.
The disappointment of Henry Clay’s life was his failure to be elected
President. He was a candidate in 1824, but with little hope of
success, and when his party, in 1840, found conditions favorable for
the election of their candidate, the popularity of General Jackson
had convinced the party managers that success demanded a military
hero as a candidate, and accordingly General Harrison took the place
which belonged by right to Clay. When he was again nominated, 1844,
the slavery question had again assumed so dangerous a form that
it prevented his election. He was a slave-holder, and so could
not receive the votes of the Liberty Party; he was opposed to the
extension of slavery, and, therefore, not satisfactory to the South.
Although the situation was evident to the party managers, a large
majority of the people expected Clay to be elected, and when the news
of his defeat came the public sorrow was greater than has ever been
manifested for such a cause.
Returning to the Senate, Mr. Clay completed his public services by
accomplishing the famous “Compromise of 1850,” which is believed to
have postponed for ten years the Civil War. He was now an old man,
but his labors for the preservation of the Union were untiring. On the
morning when he began the great speech of that session, he was so weak
that he had to be assisted to climb the steps of the Capitol. He was
aware that the exertion would probably shorten his life; but under
the fear that if he did not complete the speech at that time he would
never be able to resume it, he determined to continue. He spoke for
two days with the force, pathos and the grandeur possible only to the
greatest orators. The underlying thought of his speech was the unity
of the nation and the paramount allegiance owed by her citizens, not
to a single State; but to the country. Although he lived two years
longer, he never recovered from the effort.
Probably no man was ever more fondly loved, probably no man was so
nearly worshipped. An Englishwoman, traveling in America, in 1844,
wrote that three-quarters of all the boys born in that year must have
been named Henry Clay. “Whatever Clay’s weakness of character and
errors in statesmanship may have been,” says Carl Schurz, “almost
everything he said or did was illumined by a grand conception of
the destinies of his country, a glowing national spirit, a lofty
patriotism.” It was a just judgment which he pronounced upon himself
when he wrote, “If anyone desires to know the leading and paramount
object of my public life, the preservation of the Union will furnish
him the key.”
* * * * *
DEFENCE OF JEFFERSON, 1813.
NEXT to the notice which the opposition has found itself called upon
to bestow upon the French emperor, a distinguished citizen of Virginia,
formerly President of the United States, has never for a moment failed
to receive their kindest and most respectful attention. An honorable
gentleman from Massachusetts, of whom I am sorry to say, it becomes
necessary for me, in the course of my remarks, to take some notice,
has alluded to him in a remarkable manner. Neither his retirement from
public office, his eminent services, nor his advanced age, can exempt
this patriot from the coarse assaults of party malevolence. No, sir!
In 1801, he snatched from the rude hand of usurpation the violated
Constitution of his country,――and _that_ is his crime. He preserved
that instrument, in form, and substance, and spirit, a precious
inheritance for generations to come, and for _this_ he can never be
forgiven. How vain and impotent is party rage, directed against such
a man! He is not more elevated by his lofty residence, upon the summit
of his own favorite mountain, than he is lifted, by the serenity
of his mind and the consciousness of a well-spent life, above the
malignant passions and bitter feelings of the day. No! his own beloved
Monticello is not less moved by the storms that beat against its sides,
than is this illustrious man, by the howlings of the whole British
pack, let loose from the Essex kennel. When the gentleman to whom I
have been compelled to allude shall have mingled his dust with that of
his abused ancestors,――when he shall have been consigned to oblivion,
or, if he lives at all, shall live only in the treasonable annals of
a certain junto,――the name of Jefferson will be hailed with gratitude,
his memory honored and cherished as the second founder of the
liberties of the people, and the period of his administration will be
looked back to as one of the happiest and brightest epochs in American
history!
* * * * *
REPLY TO JOHN RANDOLPH.
(FROM SPEECH IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1834.)
SIR, I am growing old. I have had some little measure of experience
in public life, and the result of that experience has brought me to
this conclusion, that when business, of whatever nature, is to be
transacted in a deliberate assembly, or in private life, courtesy,
forbearance, and moderation, are best calculated to bring it to a
successful conclusion. Sir, my age admonishes me to abstain from
involving myself in personal difficulties; would to God that I could
say, I am also restrained by higher motives. I certainly never sought
any collision with the gentleman from Virginia. My situation at
this time is peculiar, if it be nothing else, and might, I should
think, dissuade, at least, a generous heart from any wish to draw me
into circumstances of personal altercation. I have experienced this
magnanimity from some quarters of the House. But I regret that from
others it appears to have no such consideration.
The gentleman from Virginia was pleased to say that in one point, at
least, he coincided with me――in an humble estimate of my grammatical
and philological acquirements. I know my deficiencies. I was born
to no proud patrimonial estate; from my father I inherited only
infancy, ignorance, and indigence. I feel my defects; but, so far as
my situation in early life is concerned, I may, without presumption,
say they are more my misfortune than my fault. But, however, I regret
my want of ability to furnish to the gentleman a better specimen of
powers of verbal criticism, I will venture to say, it is not greater
than the disappointment of this committee as to the strength of his
argument. It is not a few abstractions engrossed on parchment, that
make free governments. No, sir; the law of liberty must be inscribed
on the heart of the citizen: THE WORD, if I must use the expression
without irreverence, MUST BECOME FLESH. You must have a whole people
trained, disciplined, bred,――yea, and born,――as our fathers were, to
institutions like ours.
Before the Colonies existed, the Petition of Rights, that Magna Charta
of a more enlightened age, had been presented, in 1628, by Lord Coke
and his immortal compeers. Our founders brought it with them, and
we have not gone one step beyond them. They brought these maxims of
civil liberty, not in their libraries, but in their souls; not as
philosophical prattle, not as barren generalities, but as rules of
conduct; as a symbol of public duty and private right, to be adhered
to with religious fidelity; and the very first pilgrim that set his
foot upon the rock of Plymouth stepped forth a LIVING CONSTITUTION,
armed at all points to defend and to perpetuate the liberty to which
he had devoted his whole being.
* * * * *
ON RECOGNIZING THE INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE, 1824.
ARE we so low, so base, so despicable, that we may not express our
horror, articulate our detestation, of the most brutal and atrocious
war that ever stained the earth, or shocked high Heaven, with the
ferocious deeds of a brutal soldiery, set on by the clergy and
followers of a fanatical and inimical religion, rioting in excess of
blood and butchery, at the mere details of which the heart sickens;
if the great mass of Christendom can look coolly and calmly on, while
all this is perpetuated on a Christian people, in their own vicinity,
in their very presence, let us, at least, show that, in this distant
extremity, there is still some sensibility and sympathy for Christian
wrongs and sufferings; that there are still feelings which can kindle
into indignation at the oppression of a people endeared to us by every
ancient recollection, and every modern tie.
But, sir, it is not first and chiefly for Greece that I wish to see
this measure adopted. It will give them but little aid,――that aid
purely of a moral kind. It is, indeed, soothing and solacing, in
distress, to hear the accents of a friendly voice. We know this as a
People. But, sir, it is principally and mainly for America herself,
for the credit and character of our common country, that I hope to see
this resolution pass; it is for our own unsullied name that I feel.
What appearance, sir, on the page of history, would a record like
this make:――“In the month of January in the year of our Lord and
Saviour 1824, while all European Christendom beheld with cold,
unfeeling apathy the unexampled wrongs and inexpressible misery of
Christian Greece, a proposition was made in the Congress of the United
States,――almost the sole, the last, the greatest repository of human
hope and of human freedom, the representatives of a nation capable
of bringing into the field a million of bayonets,――while the freemen
of that nation were spontaneously expressing its deep-toned feeling,
its fervent prayer for Grecian success; while the whole Continent
was rising, by one simultaneous motion, solemnly and anxiously
supplicating and invoking the aid of Heaven to spare Greece, and
to invigorate her arms; while temples and senate-houses will be
resounding with one burst of generous sympathy;――in the year of our
Lord and Saviour,――that Saviour alike of Christian Greece and of us,
a proposition was offered in the American Congress to send a messenger
to Greece, to inquire into her state and condition, with an expression
of our good wishes and our sympathies;――and it was rejected!”
Go home, if you dare,――go home, if you can,――to your constituents,
and tell them that you voted it down! Meet, if you dare, the appalling
countenances of those who sent you here, and tell them that you shrank
from the declaration of your own sentiments; that, you cannot tell how,
but that some unknown dread, some indescribable apprehension, some
indefinable danger, affrighted you; that the spectres of scimitars and
crowns, and crescents, gleamed before you, and alarmed you; and that
you suppressed all the noble feelings prompted by religion, by liberty,
by national independence, and by humanity! I cannot bring myself to
believe that such will be the feeling of a majority of this House.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
DANIEL WEBSTER.
THE DEFENDER OF NATIONAL UNION.
AMONG the men who may properly be called the makers of the nation,
Daniel Webster holds a foremost place. If Washington was “the father
of his country,” and Lincoln its “saviour,” it may also be said
that it was Webster, more than any other one man, who laid down the
principles upon which it was made possible for the nation to endure;
for it was he who maintained that the Federal Constitution created not
a league, but a nation, thus enunciating far in advance the theories
which were wrought into our constitutional law at the expense of a
long and bloody Civil War.
The life of Daniel Webster extended from 1782 until 1852. His father
was one of the brave men who fought at Lexington, and Daniel was the
youngest of ten children who were compelled very early in life to
share in the labor of supporting the family on a rocky New Hampshire
farm. Working in his father’s sawmill, he used the time while the
saw was going through the log in devouring a book. His abilities were
very remarkable and the fame of “Webster’s boy” was known far and
wide. His memory was very extraordinary. In a competition between the
boys of his school in committing to memory verses in the Bible, the
teacher heard him repeat some sixty or seventy which he had committed
between Saturday and Monday and was then obliged to give up as Webster
declared that there were several chapters more that he had learned. By
means of great sacrifice on the part of the entire family, Daniel was
sent to Phillips Exeter Academy, and, by teaching school in vacations,
made his way through Dartmouth College. He took up the study of law
and was admitted to practice in 1805.
There was something in Mr. Webster’s appearance and bearing which
must have been very majestic. He seemed to everyone to be a giant;
but as his proportions were not those of an unusually large man, his
majestic appearance must have been due to something within which shone
out through his piercing eyes and spoke in his finely cut and noble
features. It is said that he never punished his children, but, when
they did wrong, he would send for them and silently look at them, and
the sorrow or the anger of the look was reproach enough.
Webster was a lawyer, an orator and a statesman. As a lawyer, his most
famous arguments are those in the “Dartmouth College Case,” the “White
Murder Case” and the “Steamboat Case,” as they are called. A part
of his speech in the “Murder Case” is still printed in the school
readers. The “Dartmouth College Case” is very famous. It was a suit
whose success would have destroyed the college, and, after trial in
the State Courts, it was appealed to the United States Supreme Court,
before which Mr. Webster made his argument. The interest was very
great and the details of the trial are among the most interesting in
the history of our jurisprudence. The eloquence with which Mr. Webster
described the usefulness of the institution, his love for it, and
the consequences which the precedent sought to be established would
involve, all contributed to make this one of the greatest oratorical
efforts of which we have any record.
“Sir,” said he, “you may destroy this little institution; it is weak;
it is in your hands! I know it is one of the lesser lights in the
literary horizon of our country. You may put it out, but, if you do
so, you must carry through your work! You must extinguish, one after
another, all those great lights of science which, for more than a
century, have thrown their radiance over our land.
“It is, sir, as I have said, a small college. And yet, there are those
who love it――――”
Here the feelings which he had thus far succeeded in keeping down
broke forth. His lips quivered; his firm cheeks trembled with emotion;
his eyes were filled with tears; his voice choked, and he seemed
struggling to the utmost simply to gain that mastery over himself
which might save him from an unmanly burst of feeling.
The court room, during these two or three minutes, presented an
extraordinary spectacle. Chief Justice Marshall, with his tall,
gaunt figure bent over as if to catch the slightest whisper, the
deep furrows of his cheeks expanded with emotion, and eyes suffused
with tears; Mr. Justice Washington at his side, with his small and
emaciated frame, and countenance like marble, leaning forward with
an eager, troubled look; and the remainder of the court, at the two
extremities, pressing, as it were, toward a single point, while the
audience below were wrapping themselves round in closer folds beneath
the bench to catch each look, and every movement of the speaker’s
face. If the painter could give us the scene on canvas――those forms
and countenances, and Daniel Webster as he then stood in the midst――it
would be one of the most touching pictures in the history of eloquence.
As an orator, Mr. Webster’s most famous speeches are the “Plymouth
Rock Address” in 1820, on the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Landing
of the Pilgrims, the “Bunker Hill Monument Address,” and his speech in
the Senate in reply to Hayne in 1830, and on “Clay’s Compromise Bill
of 1850.”
Upon Mr. Harrison’s inauguration in 1841, Mr. Webster became
Secretary of State, which office he held until 1843. During this time,
he negotiated the famous treaty with Lord Ashburton which settled
a long-standing dispute with England over the boundary of Maine. He
supported Clay for the presidency in 1804 and opposed the annexation
of Texas. In the debate on the “Compromise of 1850,” Mr. Webster
advocated the acceptance of the provisions for extending slavery into
the territory purchased from Mexico, and for the “Fugitive Slave Law,”
and in so doing gave great offense to his supporters in the North. In
1850, he was appointed Secretary of State, which office he held until
his death.
Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER’S HOME, MARSHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS.
He took great interest in the operations of his farm at Marshfield,
near Plymouth, Massachusetts, and delightful stories are told of the
pleasure he took in his cattle――how he might be seen breaking ears of
corn to feed to his oxen on the right and left declaring that he would
rather be there than in the Senate, and adding with a smile, “I think
it better company.” It was here, in 1852, that he was thrown from his
carriage and received severe injuries from which he did not recover.
In his last words, he manifested a desire to be conscious of the
approach of death and his last words were, “I still live.” In the vast
concourse which gathered at his funeral was a plain farmer who was
heard to say, as he turned from the grave, “Daniel Webster, without
you the world will seem lonely.”
* * * * *
SOUTH CAROLINA AND MASSACHUSETTS, JANUARY, 1830.
An extract from a speech by Mr. Webster, in reply to Mr. Hayne,
of South Carolina, in the Senate of the United States, January,
1830. This was probably the most remarkable speech ever made
in the American Congress. His peroration, comprised in the last
paragraph, under the succeeding heading, “Union and Liberty,”
for patriotic eloquence has not a counterpart, perhaps, in all
history. The speech is the more remarkable for the fact that
Mr. Webster had but a single night in which to make preparation.
THE eulogium pronounced on the character of the State of South
Carolina, by the honorable gentleman, for her Revolutionary and
other merits, meets my hearty concurrence. I shall not acknowledge
that the honorable member goes before me in regard for whatever of
distinguished talent or distinguished character South Carolina has
produced. I claim part of the honor, I partake in the pride of her
great names. I claim them for countrymen, one and all. The Laurenses,
the Rutledges, the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Marions,――Americans
all,――whose fame is no more to be hemmed in by State lines, than their
talents and patriotism were capable of being circumscribed within
the same narrow limits. In their day and generation, they served and
honored the country, and the whole country; and their renown is of the
treasures of the whole country. Him whose honored name the gentleman
himself bears,――does he suppose me less capable of gratitude for his
patriotism, or sympathy for his sufferings, than if his eyes had first
opened upon the light in Massachusetts, instead of South Carolina?
Sir, does he suppose it is in his power to exhibit a Carolina
name so bright as to produce envy in my bosom? No, sir; increased
gratification and delight, rather.
Sir, I thank God, that, if I am gifted with little of the spirit which
is said to be able to raise mortals to the skies, I have yet none,
as I trust, of that other spirit, which would drag angels down. When
I shall be found, sir, in my place here, in the Senate, or elsewhere,
to sneer at public merit, because it happened to spring up beyond the
little limits of my own State or neighborhood; when I refuse, for any
such cause, or for any cause, the homage due to American talent, to
elevated patriotism, to sincere devotion to liberty and the country;
or, if I see an uncommon endowment of heaven,――if I see extraordinary
capacity and virtue in any son of the South,――and if, moved by local
prejudice, or gangrened by State jealousy, I get up here to abate the
tithe of a hair from his just character and just fame, may my tongue
cleave to the roof of my mouth!
Sir, let me recur to pleasing recollections; let me indulge in
refreshing remembrance of the past; let me remind you that, in early
times, no States cherished greater harmony, both of principle and
feeling, than Massachusetts and South Carolina. Would to God that
harmony might again return! Shoulder to shoulder they went through
the Revolution, hand in hand they stood round the administration
of Washington, and felt his own great arm lean on them for support.
Unkind feeling, if it exist,――alienation and distrust,――are the growth,
unnatural to such soils, of false principles since sown. They are
weeds, the seeds of which that same great arm never scattered.
Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts;――she
needs none. There she is,――behold her, and judge for yourselves.
There is her history,――the world knows it by heart. The past, at least,
is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker
Hill,――and there they will remain forever. The bones of her sons,
fallen in the great struggle for Independence, now lie mingled with
the soil of every State from New England to Georgia,――and there they
will lie forever. And, sir, where American liberty raised its first
voice, and where its youth was nurtured and sustained, there it
still lives, in the strength of its manhood, and full of its original
spirit. If discord and disunion shall wound it,――if party strife and
blind ambition shall hawk at and tear it,――if folly and madness, if
uneasiness under salutary and necessary restraints, shall succeed
to separate it from that Union by which alone its existence is made
sure,――it will stand, in the end, by the side of that cradle in which
its infancy was rocked; it will stretch forth its arm, with whatever
vigor it may still retain, over the friends who gather round it; and
it will fall at last, if fall it must, amidst the proudest monuments
of its own glory, and on the very spot of its origin!
* * * * *
LIBERTY AND UNION, 1830.
(_Continuation of the foregoing._)
I PROFESS, sir, in my career hitherto, to have kept steadily in view
the prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the preservation
of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe our safety at home,
and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union we are
chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country.
That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues, in the
severe school of adversity. It had its origin in the necessities of
disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its
benign influences, these great interests immediately awoke, as from
the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its
duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings;
and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and
our population spread further and further, they have not outrun its
protection, or its benefits. It has been to us all a copious fountain
of national, social, personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union to see what
might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed
the chances of preserving liberty, when the bonds that unite us
together shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang
over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight,
I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard him as
a safe counsellor in the affairs of this government whose thoughts
should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union should be best
preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when
it shall be broken up and destroyed.
While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects
spread out before us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to
penetrate the veil. God grant that, in my day, at least, that curtain
may not rise! God grant that on my vision never may be opened what
lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last
time, the Sun in Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and
dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States severed,
discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched,
it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering
glance, rather, behold the gorgeous Ensign of the Republic, now known
and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms
and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased
or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing, for its motto,
no such miserable interrogatory as――_What is all this worth?_――nor
those other words of delusion and folly――_Liberty first and Union
afterwards_,――but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living
light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and
over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other
sentiment, dear to every true American heart, Liberty _and_ Union, now
and ♦forever, one and inseparable!
♦ ‘forver’ replaced with ‘forever’
* * * * *
THE ELOQUENCE OF ACTION.
WHEN public bodies are to be addressed on momentous occasions, when
great interests are at stake and strong passions excited, nothing
is valuable in speech, further than it is connected with high
intellectual and moral endowments. Clearness, force, and earnestness
are the qualities which produce conviction. True eloquence, indeed,
does not consist in speech. It cannot be brought from far. Labor and
learning may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and
phrases may be marshalled in every way, but they cannot compass it. It
must exist in the man, in the subject, and in the occasion. Affected
passion, intense expression the pomp of declamation, all may aspire
after it,――they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, like
the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or the bursting forth of
volcanic fires, with spontaneous, original, native force. The graces
taught in the schools, the costly ornaments and studied contrivances
of speech, shock and disgust men when their own lives, and the fate of
their wives, their children, and their country hang on the decision of
the hour. Then, words have lost their power, rhetoric is vain, and all
elaborate oratory contemptible. Even genius itself then feels rebuked
and subdued, as in the presence of higher qualities. Then, patriotism
is eloquent; then, self-devotion is eloquent. The clear conception,
outrunning the deductions of logic, the high purpose, the firm resolve,
the dauntless spirit, speaking on the tongue, beaming from the eye,
informing every feature, and urging the whole man onward, right onward,
to his object,――this, this is eloquence; or, rather, it is something
greater and higher than all eloquence,――it is action, noble, sublime,
godlike action.
* * * * *
THE TWENTY-SECOND OF FEBRUARY.
(SUITED TO WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.)
GENTLEMEN, a most auspicious omen salutes and cheers us this day.
This day is the anniversary of the birth of Washington. Washington’s
birthday is celebrated from one end of this land to the other.
The whole atmosphere of the country is this day redolent of his
principles,――the hills, the rocks, the groves, the vales, and the
rivers shout their praises and resound with his fame. All the good,
whether learned or unlearned, high or low, rich or poor, feel this day
that there is one treasure common to them all; and that is the fame
of Washington. They all recount his deeds, ponder over his principles
and teachings, and resolve to be more and more guided by them in the
future.
To the old and the young, to all born in this land, and to all whose
preferences have led them to make it the home of their adoption,
Washington is an exhilarating theme. Americans are proud of his
character; all exiles from foreign shores are eager to participate
in admiration of him; and it is true that he is, this day, here,
everywhere, all over the world, more an object of regard than on any
former day since his birth.
Gentlemen, by his example, and under the guidance of his precepts,
will we and our children uphold the Constitution? Under his military
leadership, our fathers conquered their ancient enemies; and, under
the outspread banner of the political and constitutional principles,
will we conquer _now_? To that standard we shall adhere, and uphold
it, through evil report and good report. We will sustain it, and meet
death itself, if it come; we will ever encounter and defeat error, by
day and by night, in light or in darkness――thick darkness――if it come,
till
“Danger’s troubled night is o’er,
And the star of peace return.”
* * * * *
AMERICA’S GIFTS TO EUROPE.
AMERICA has furnished to Europe proof of the fact that popular
institutions, founded on equality and the principle of representation,
are capable of maintaining governments, able to secure the rights
of person, property, and reputation. America has proved that it
is practicable to elevate the mass of mankind――that portion which
in Europe is called the laboring or lower class――to raise them to
self-respect, to make them competent to act a part in the great right
and great duty of self-government; and she has proved that this may
be done by education and the diffusion of knowledge. She holds out
an example, a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented
before, to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without
hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.
America has furnished to the world the character of Washington; and if
our American institutions had done nothing else, that alone would have
entitled them to the respect of mankind. Washington! “First in war,
first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” Washington
is all our own! The enthusiastic veneration and regard in which the
people of the United States hold him, prove them to be worthy of such
a country, while his reputation abroad reflects the highest honor on
his country.
I would cheerfully put the question to-day to the intelligence of
Europe and the world, “What character of the century, upon the whole,
stands out, in the relief of history, most pure, most respectable,
most sublime?” and I doubt not that, by a suffrage approaching to
unanimity, the answer would be, Washington!
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
EDWARD EVERETT.
THE GREAT CLASSIC ORATOR OF NEW ENGLAND.
GEORGE S. HILLARD, himself an orator of no slight renown, has
spoken with much critical insight and appreciation of the mental
characteristic and oratorical style of Edward Everett, the great
classic orator of Massachusetts: “The great charm of Mr. Everett’s
orations consists not so much in any single and strongly developed
intellectual trait as in that symmetry and finish which, on every page,
give token to the richly endowed and thorough scholar. The natural
movements of his mind are full of grace; and the most indifferent
sentence which falls from his pen has that simple elegance which
it is as difficult to define as it is easy to perceive. His style,
with matchless flexibility, rises and falls with his subject and is
alternately easy, vivid, elevated, ornamented, picturesque, ♦adapting
itself to the dominant mood of the mind, as an instrument responds
to the touch of a master’s hand. His knowledge is so extensive
and the field of his allusion so wide, that the most familiar
views, in passing through his hands, gather such a halo of luminous
illustrations that their likeness seems transformed, and we entertain
doubts of their identity.”
♦ ‘adpating’ replaced with ‘adapting’
He was born in Dorchester, Mass., April 11, 1794, and was graduated
from Harvard College with the highest honors in 1811. He entered the
ministry, and at the age of nineteen he was installed as pastor of the
Unitarian Church in Brattle Square, Boston, and only six years later
he preached a sermon in the Hall of Representatives at Washington,
which made a marvelous impression on all who heard it, and won him
great fame for eloquence.
He was chosen at the age of twenty to fill the Chair of Greek
Literature at Harvard College, and he spent four years abroad to
qualify himself for this position, and Victor Cousin said of him at
this period that he was one of the best Grecians he ever knew.
In 1820, crowded with honors and distinguished in many fields, he
became editor of the “North American Review;” during the four years
of his editorship he contributed fifty articles to this magazine.
He sat in Congress as Representative from Massachusetts from 1824
to 1834. In 1835, and for three years following, he was Governor of
Massachusetts, and in the election following he was defeated by one
vote.
While traveling abroad he received the appointment as Minister to
England, and during this period of sojourn he received from Oxford
the degree of D.C.L., and from Cambridge and Dublin that of LL.D.
For three years, from 1846 to 1849, he was President of Harvard
College, and in 1852 he succeeded Daniel Webster as Secretary of State,
becoming in the year following a member of the United States Senate,
which position he filled with great dignity, and rendered his country
honorable service. It was largely through his efforts that the money
was raised to purchase Mount Vernon. For this purpose the great orator
delivered one hundred and twenty-two times his oration on “Washington,”
from which more than $58,000 was realized, and he secured $10,000
from a series of articles in the New York “Ledger.”
His lecture on the “Early Days of Franklin,” and other lectures for
charitable purposes, brought in no less than $90,000.
His orations have been collected and published, and form one of
the most remarkable collections of graceful and eloquent addresses
ever produced in this country. They are as follows: “Orations and
Speeches on Various Occasions” (Boston, 1836); “Orations and Speeches
on Various Occasions from 1826 to 1850” (2 Vols., Boston, 1850);
“Orations and Speeches” (Boston, 1859). He is also the author of two
stirring poems, “Alaric the Visigoth” and “Santa Croce.”
Despite the fact that he and Daniel Webster were often on opposite
sides of great questions and issues, and frequently crossed swords in
the debate of the giants, they were life-long friends, and Mr. Webster
wrote to him three months before the death of the former in the
following touching words: “We now and then see stretching across the
heavens a clear, blue, cerulean sky, with no cloud or mist or haze.
And such appears to me our acquaintance from the time when I heard
you for a week recite your lessons in the little schoolhouse in Short
Street to the date hereof” [July 21, 1852].
In 1860, much against his will, Mr. Everett became the candidate for
the Vice-Presidency on the ticket of the Constitutional-Union Party,
which polled thirty-nine electoral votes.
He died at his home in Boston, January 15, 1865.
* * * * *
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PEACE.
While we act, sir, upon the maxim, “In peace prepare for war,” let us
also remember that the best preparation for war is peace. This swells
your numbers; this augments your means; this knits the sinews of your
strength; this covers you all over with a panoply of might. And, then,
if war must come in a just cause, no foreign state――no, sir, not all
combined――can send forth an adversary that you need fear to encounter.
But, sir, give us these twenty-five years of peace. I do believe, sir,
that this coming quarter of a century is to be the most important in
our whole history. I do beseech you to let us have these twenty-five
years, at least, of peace. Let these fertile wastes be filled up with
swarming millions; let this tide of emigration from Europe go on; let
the steamer, the canal, the railway, and especially let this great
Pacific railway, subdue these mighty distances, and bring this vast
extension into a span.
Let us pay back the ingots of California gold with bars of Atlantic
iron; let agriculture clothe our vast wastes with waving plenty; let
the industrial and mechanic arts erect their peaceful fortresses at
the waterfalls; and then, sir, in the train of this growing population,
let the printing office, the lecture-room, the village schoolhouse,
and the village church, be scattered over the country. And in these
twenty-five years we shall exhibit a spectacle of national prosperity
such as the world has never seen on so large a scale, and yet within
the reach of a sober, practical contemplation.
* * * * *
THE FATHER OF THE REPUBLIC.
TO be cold and breathless, to feel not and speak not――this is not the
end of existence to the men who have breathed their spirits into the
institutions of their country, who have stamped their characters on
the pillars of the age, who have poured their heart’s blood into the
channels of the public prosperity.
Tell me, ye who tread the sods of yon sacred height, is Warren dead?
Can you not still see him――not pale and prostrate, the blood of his
gallant heart pouring out of his ghastly wound, but moving resplendent
over the field of honor, with the rose of heaven upon his cheek and
the fire of liberty in his eye?
Tell me, ye who make your pious pilgrimage to the shades of Vernon,
is Washington indeed shut up in that cold and narrow house? That which
made these men, and men like these, cannot die.
The hand that traced the charter of independence is, indeed,
motionless; the eloquent lips that sustained it are hushed; but the
lofty spirits that conceived, resolved and maintained it, and which
alone, to such men, make it life to live――these cannot expire.
* * * * *
THE LAND OF OUR FOREFATHERS.
FOR myself, I can truly say that, after my native land, I feel a
tenderness and a reverence for that of my fathers. The pride I take
in my own country makes me respect that from which we are sprung.
The sound of my native language beyond the sea is a music to my ears
beyond the richest strains of Tuscan softness or Castilian majesty.
I am not――I need not say I am not――the panegyrist of England. I am not
dazzled by her riches nor awed by her power. The sceptre, the mitre
and the coronet, stars, garters and ribbons, seem to me poor things
for great men to contend for.
But England is the cradle and the refuge of free principles, though
often persecuted; the school of religious liberty, the more precious
for the struggles through which it has passed; she holds the tombs of
those who have reflected honor on all who speak the English tongue;
she is the birthplace of our fathers, the home of the Pilgrims; it is
these which I love and venerate in England.
I should feel ashamed of an enthusiasm for Italy and Greece did I not
also feel it for a land like this. In an American it would seem to
me degenerate and ungrateful to hang with passion upon the traces of
Homer and Virgil, and follow without emotion the nearer and plainer
footsteps of Shakespeare and Milton. I should think him cold in love
for his native land who felt no melting in his heart for that other
native country which holds the ashes of his forefathers.
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WENDELL PHILLIPS.
THE DEMOSTHENES OF AMERICA.
NO MORE majestic figure in the anti-slavery struggle for thirty
years――1835 to 1865――appeared on the American rostrum than the
“silvery tongued orator,” Wendell Phillips.
In 1830, William Lloyd Garrison wrote in the “Liberator,”――a journal
founded primarily by the abolitionists for the sole purpose of freeing
the slaves――“I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as
justice. I am in earnest; I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;
I will not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard.” But the
abolitionists remained many years a small and despised faction, and,
with all of Garrison’s determination, might never have amounted to
anything had he not enlisted in his cause such men and masters as
Wendell Phillips on the platform, Henry Ward Beecher in the pulpit,
Charles Sumner in the United States Senate, and Harriet Beecher Stowe
among novelists. It was a great day of promise when such educated
talent caught the spirit of Garrison’s zeal.
In 1835, an angry pro-slavery mob dragged William Lloyd Garrison
through the streets of Boston. A young man of twenty-four witnessed
this cruel treatment and determined to abandon the practice of law
and devote his life to the same cause. That man was Wendell Phillips.
He first came into prominence by his impassioned address in Faneuil
Hall, Boston, in 1837, at an indignation meeting called to condemn
the killing of Lovejoy, at Alton, Illinois, while defending his
anti-slavery newspaper office against a pro-slavery mob. The direct
and impassioned eloquence of the orator on this occasion was the
key-note to the forward movement toward the liberation of the black
man. It was the bugle-blast which cheered the pioneers in the movement,
and awoke the slumbering spirits in sympathy with it, but whose timid
hopes had not dared to dream of its possible ultimate success.
As Demosthenes aroused and fired the Athenians, so Phillips’ appeals
carried like an avalanche everything before them. The only way to
prevent his influence was to prevent his speaking, and accordingly
when he went to New York in 1847, there was such a prejudice against
the abolitionists, and such a predominant pro-slavery sentiment, that
he could not procure a hall in either of these cities in which to
speak. Finally, Henry Ward Beecher, who had recently become pastor of
Plymouth Church, prevailed upon his congregation to allow Phillips to
address the people from their pulpit.
From this memorable occasion Beecher, himself, it is said, became
a flaming torch, second only to Phillips in his efforts in the same
cause, while Plymouth Congregation seconded him with all its mighty
influence, a further account of which may be found under the treatment
of Henry Ward Beecher in this volume.
Wendell Phillips was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on the 29th day
of November, 1811, and died there February 2, 1884. His parents were
prominent in Boston society, his father at one time being Mayor of the
city. Phillips was educated at Harvard College, graduating in 1831,
after which he studied law at Cambridge and was admitted to the bar
in 1833; but his gift as an orator, in which he is regarded as second
only to Daniel Webster, and his overmastering zeal in the abolitionist
movement, required so much of his time that he did little practice
before the court. He was a most fascinating platform speaker outside
of politics, and was in constant demand as a lecturer. His most
celebrated addresses were “Toussaint l’Ouverture” and “The Lost
Arts,” the former being used as an argument of the native ability,
intelligence, and possibility of progress on the part of the negro
under proper opportunities.
The eloquence of Phillips was impassioned and direct, but his manner
was so pleasingly polished as not to give personal offence to his most
antagonistic hearers, while his English was singularly pure and simple,
and his delivery was characterized by a nervous sympathy that was
peculiarly magnetic.
Like most other great orators, Wendell Phillips has left behind him in
literature only his public speeches and letters. One volume of these
was published in Boston in 1862, another (largely a revision of the
first, with additions to the same) in 1869.
* * * * *
POLITICAL AGITATION.
ALL hail, Public Opinion! To be sure, it is a dangerous thing under
which to live. It rules to-day in the desire to obey all kinds of
laws, and takes your life. It rules again in the love of liberty,
and rescues Shadrach from Boston Court House. It rules to-morrow
in the manhood of him who loads the musket to shoot down――God be
praised!――the man-hunter Gorsuch. It rules in Syracuse, and the
slave escapes to Canada. It is our interest to educate this people
in humanity, and in deep reverence for the rights of the lowest and
humblest individual that makes up our numbers. Each man here, in fact,
holds his property and his life dependent on the constant presence of
an agitation like this of anti-slavery. Eternal vigilance is the price
of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna
of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten. The
living sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand
intrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or _esprit
de corps_, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual
oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening
into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept
sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in
material prosperity.
All clouds, it is said, have sunshine behind them, and all evils have
some good result; so slavery, by the necessity of its abolition, has
saved the freedom of the white race from being melted in the luxury or
buried beneath the gold of its own success. Never look, therefore, for
an age when the people can be quiet and safe. At such times Despotism,
like a shrouding mist, steals over the mirror of Freedom. The Dutch,
a thousand years ago, built against the ocean their bulwarks of willow
and mud. Do they trust to that? No. Each year the patient, industrious
peasant gives so much time from the cultivation of his soil and the
care of his children to stop the breaks and replace the willow which
insects have eaten, that he may keep the land his fathers rescued from
the water, and bid defiance to the waves that roar above his head, as
if demanding back the broad fields man has stolen from their realm.
* * * * *
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.
[Toussaint L’Ouverture, who has been pronounced one of the
greatest statesmen and generals of the nineteenth century,
saved his master and family by hurrying them on board a vessel
at the insurrection of the negroes of Hayti. He then joined
the negro army, and soon found himself at their head. Napoleon
sent a fleet with French veterans, with orders to bring him
to France at all hazards. But all the skill of the French
soldiers could not subdue the negro army; and they finally made
a treaty, placing Toussaint L’Ouverture governor of the island.
The negroes no sooner disbanded their army, than a squad of
soldiers seized Toussaint by night, and taking him on board a
vessel, hurried him to France. There he was placed in a dungeon,
and finally starved to death.]
IF I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from
the lips of French men, who find no language rich enough to paint the
great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story
of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,――you, who think
no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the Father of
his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint
L’Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it
from the reluctant testimony of his enemies, men who despised him
because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten
them in battle.
Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of
twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever
saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw
a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army――out
of what? Englishmen,――the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle
class of Englishmen,――the best blood of the island. And with it he
conquered what? Englishmen,――their equals. This man manufactured his
army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes,
debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred
thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to
speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed,
and, as you say, despicable mass he forged a thunderbolt and hurled it
at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him
home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and
put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English,
and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, at
least this man was a soldier.
Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your race, go back with me to the
commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please.
Let him be either American or European; let him have a brain the
result of six generations of culture; let him have the ripest training
of university routine; let him add to it the better education of
practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy
years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine
admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on
the brow of this negro,――rare military skill, profound knowledge of
human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust
a state to the blood of its sons,――anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty
years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before
any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the
record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired
black of St. Domingo.
Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those
fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask
them what they think of the negro’s sword.
I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over
broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word.
I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the
state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him
Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his
empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of
his dominions.
You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes but
with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing,
the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the
Roman, Hampden for England, Fayette for France, choose Washington
as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then,
dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue,
above them all, the name of the soldier, the stateman, the martyr,
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
THE GREATEST PULPIT ORATOR OF AMERICA.
IT may be safely said that as a pulpit and platform orator, Beecher
has had no superior. Nothing is studied or artificial about his
delivery. Naturalness, frankness, cordiality, fearlessness, clearness,
and depth of thought, expressed in the simplicity and beauty of
diction, and enlivened by a rich vein of pungent humor, were marked
characteristics of his speech.
Those familiar with the public career of this great orator and
reformer can scarcely conceive of him at four years of age sitting
in the Widow Kilbourn’s school occupied in saying his A B C’s twice
a day, and putting in the intervals between recitations in hemming
towels and aprons; yet such is the story told of Henry Ward Beecher’s
first school-days.
His father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was a Congregational minister, a
profound thinker and scholar, stationed at Litchfield, Connecticut,
where, on the then large salary of eight hundred dollars per year, he
and his wife and ten children lived. Henry Ward was born on the 24th
of June, 1813――the eighth child in the family.
Beecher tells many interesting stories of his childhood. Among others
are his accounts of the Sabbath-day struggles with the Catechism.
He declared it was a day of terror. Once on referring to it in his
Plymouth pulpit he said: “I think that to force childhood to associate
religion with such dry morsels is to violate the spirit not only of
the New Testament, but of common sense as well. I know one thing, that
if I am lax and latitudinarian, the Sunday Catechism is to blame for
part of it. The dinners I have lost because I could not go through
‘sanctification,’ and ‘justification,’ and ‘adoption,’ and all such
questions, lie heavily on my memory. One Sunday afternoon with my Aunt
Esther did me more good than forty Sunday mornings in church with my
father. He thundered over my head. She sweetly instructed me down in
my heart. The promise that she would read Joseph’s history to me on
Sunday was enough to draw a silver thread through the entire week.”
Dr. Beecher received a call to preach in Boston in 1825, and removed
his family there. The ships, the sea, and the stories Beecher here saw
and read of Lord Nelson and other naval heroes, and of Captain Cook’s
marvelous voyages and discoveries in new countries, determined him to
make a sailor of himself. He was at this time a shy boy with a thick
tongue and very indistinct speech. His father, while secretly opposing
his project to go to sea, apparently encouraged it by suggesting
that he go to Amherst College, where he would learn mathematics and
navigation, preparing himself to be a commander instead of a “common
Jack Tar.” Henry Ward readily consented to this.
At Amherst he studied elocution, and became not only an easy reader
and talker, but showed promise of distinction. This opened a new world
to him. The spirit of oratory found lodgment in his soul and he forgot
his old longing for the sea. Shortly after this, during a religious
revival in the college, Beecher determined to be a Christian, and,
as a biographer says of him, “Made a joyful consecration of himself
to the Lord. It was no doleful giving up to live a life of gloom and
sadness. He believed that a Christian life ought to be of all lives
the most joyful, and if he could not be a joyful Christian, he should
not be one at all.” These convictions followed him through life.
Mrs. Stowe, his sister, wrote of him: “He was never found sitting in
solemnized meditations in the depth of pine trees like the owl.”
Dr. Beecher was elected President of Lane Seminary, Cincinnati,
Ohio, in 1832, and removed to that city, whither Henry Ward followed
him after graduation at Amherst in 1836, and took his theological
course under his father and Prof. Stowe (who afterwards married his
sister, Harriet Beecher, the author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”). After
completing his theological course he entered upon his first pastorate
at Lawrenceburg, Indiana, at a salary of three hundred dollars per
annum, where, he said: “I did all the work of both sexton and pastor;
in fact, everything except come to hear myself preach――that much the
congregation had to do.”
One of his first steps after securing this position was to go back to
Massachusetts and marry Miss ―――― Bullard, his boyhood’s sweetheart,
to whom he had been engaged for many years. The young couple started
bravely in two rooms over a stable as their first home, and it is
doubtful if any young prince and princess have been more truly happy
than were these poor but true lovers in their humble nest in the
stable loft. Mrs. Beecher’s “Recollections of Henry Ward Beecher,”
written just before her death in 1897, furnishes a most delightful
description of these early days of privation and poverty, chills
and ague, but withal of such cheerfulness we almost envy them. Space
forbids that we dwell upon Beecher’s private life, interesting and
inspiring as it was. From Lawrenceburg he went to Indianapolis, where
he preached for eight years with great success and growing fame, until
August 24, 1847, when he was installed as pastor of Plymouth Church,
Brooklyn, New York.
From this point Beecher becomes a national figure, and until the
day of his death――a period of forty years――he was ever prominent in
the public eye. There was a time when the escutcheon of his moral
character was sullied by scandal,――but it was only scandal――which
he met boldly, his church standing by him, and before the most
scrutinizing investigation he remained steadfast, and in time the
world exonerated him――while his accuser fled to Paris, where he spent
his life in exile. Few people in the world now believe Beecher was
guilty of the charges Theodore Tilton brought against him.
Beecher early espoused the cause of the abolition of slavery and of
temperance. He considered both these doctrines a part of the gospel of
Christ, and preached them boldly from his pulpit. Thus Plymouth Church
rose grandly to the need of the age. Wendell Phillips, who in 1847
could find no audience room in New York or Brooklyn, was cordially
invited to Beecher’s church, and “from the day that Phillips made
his great anti-slavery speech from that pulpit until the Emancipation
Proclamation――nearly twenty years later――the Plymouth preacher became
a flaming advocate for liberty of speech and action on the question
of the national evil. If there was anything on earth to which he was
sensitive up to the day of his death, it was any form of denial to
liberty either in politics, religion, or literature.” With pen and
voice he ceased not to labor until the shackles fell from the black
man’s hands.
A number of slaves were sold from Plymouth pulpit, purchased by public
contributions and given their liberty, Mr. Beecher himself acting as
auctioneer. The dramatic scenes on such occasions have been vividly
recounted in Mrs. Beecher’s “Recollections,” and some of Mr. Beecher’s
auction speeches have been preserved.
When Fort Sumter’s guns announced the beginning of war, Beecher sent
back the echo from Plymouth pulpit in no uncertain sounds. His church
organized and equipped a regiment which he was pleased to call “My
own boys.” Mr. Beecher was in such constant demand as a public speaker
that early in 1862 his voice failed and his health gave way, and he
went to Europe and traveled in France and Switzerland. On invitation,
after regaining his health, he went to England, where he delivered
speeches――though England was in sympathy with the South――at Manchester,
Glasgow, London and Edinburgh. The opposition which he met in these
efforts would have completely overcome a man of less rugged physique,
or discouraged one of less imperious will. But Beecher――confident
in his own mind that he was right and his soul afire with
patriotism――faced, spoke to, and quieted the most vicious and howling
mobs into which he went often at personal peril. He describes his
experiences as being “like driving a team of runaway horses and making
love to a lady at the same time.”
After the war was over, Beecher preached as earnestly for forgiveness
and reconciliation toward the South as he had preached to abolish
slavery and retain the Southern States in the Union. His actions
throughout had been purely patriotic and from no hatred of the
people whose institution of slavery he fought. These principles made
him unpopular for a time at the North and even in his own church.
But he was ever the champion of the right, and did much toward the
restoration of harmony between the sections. He delivered the oration
at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1865, when the flag of the Union was
again raised over Fort Sumter, and in 1879 made a tour of the Southern
States, delivering lectures on popular topics, one of which was
entitled “The Reign of the Common People.”
Henry Ward Beecher died March 8, 1887. He retired on the evening of
March 3d apparently in usual health and fell into a sleep from which
he never awoke, but merged into an unconscious condition in which he
lingered until the morning of March 8th, when it is said as “a ray of
sunlight flashed full and strong into the room and fell upon the face
of the sufferer, who was surrounded by his family, calmly and without
a struggle the regular breathing ceased and the great preacher was
gone.” The eloquent tongue was silent forever.
The remains of Beecher were viewed by thousands, and many came who
could not see the bier for the crowds that thronged the house and
streets. It is doubtful if any private citizen’s funeral was ever so
largely attended. One of his admirers in writing of the occasion said:
“He loved the multitude, and the multitude came to his funeral; he
loved the flowers, and ten thousand buds breathed their fragrance and
clad his resting-place in beauty; he loved music, and the voice of
the organ rose, and the anthems which had delighted him again rolled
their harmonies to the rafters; he loved the sunshine, and it streamed
through the windows and was a halo around him.”
Within the beauty of this halo we would leave the memory of this great
man, hung as a portrait in a frame of gold from which his benign and
cheerful face shall continue to look down upon succeeding generations.
And as we read his encouraging “Lectures to Young Men;” his broad
and profound sermons from “Plymouth Pulpit;” his inspiring “Patriotic
Addresses;” his editorials in the “Christian Union;” his “Yale
Lectures on Preaching;” his “Star Papers;” his “Evolution and
Religion;” his novel “Norwood,” or his “Life of Jesus Christ: Earlier
Scenes,” on which he was engaged when he died (which are his chief
contributions to literature), we will often look up at the picture and
exclaim, “Oh! that those lips might speak again!”
* * * * *
PUBLIC DISHONESTY.
A CORRUPT public sentiment produces dishonesty. A public sentiment in
which dishonesty is not disgraceful; in which bad men are respectable,
are trusted, are honored, are exalted, is a curse to the young. The
fever of speculation, the universal derangement of business, the
growing laxness of morals is, to an alarming extent, introducing such
a state of things.
If the shocking stupidity of the public mind to atrocious dishonesties
is not aroused; if good men do not bestir themselves to drag the
young from this foul sorcery; if the relaxed bands of honesty are not
tightened, and conscience tutored to a severer morality, our night
is at hand――our midnight not far off. Woe to that guilty people who
sit down upon broken laws, and wealth saved by injustice! Woe to a
generation fed by the bread of fraud, whose children’s inheritance
shall be a perpetual memento of their father’s unrighteousness; to
whom dishonesty shall be made pleasant by association with the revered
memories of father, brother and friend!
But when a whole people, united by a common disregard of justice,
conspire to defraud public creditors, and States vie with States in an
infamous repudiation of just debts, by open or sinister methods; and
nations exert their sovereignty to protect and dignify the knavery of
the commonwealth, then the confusion of domestic affairs has bred a
fiend before whose flight honor fades away, and under whose feet the
sanctity of truth and the religion of solemn compacts are stamped down
and ground into the dirt. Need we ask the cause of growing dishonesty
among the young, the increasing untrustworthiness of all agents, when
States are seen clothed with the panoply of dishonesty, and nations
put on fraud for their garments?
Absconding agents, swindling schemes, and defalcations, occurring in
such melancholy abundance, have at length ceased to be wonders, and
rank with the common accidents of fire and flood. The budget of each
week is incomplete without its mob and runaway cashier――its duel and
defaulter, and as waves which roll to the shore are lost in those
which follow on, so the villainies of each week obliterate the record
of the last.
Men of notorious immorality, whose dishonesty is flagrant, whose
private habits would disgrace the ditch, are powerful and popular. I
have seen a man stained with every sin, except those which required
courage; into whose head I do not think a pure thought has entered
for forty years; in whose heart an honorable feeling would droop for
very loneliness; in evil, he was ripe and rotten; hoary and depraved
in deed, in word, in his present life and in all his past; evil when
by himself, and viler among men; corrupting to the young; to domestic
fidelity, recreant; to common honor, a traitor; to honesty, an outlaw;
to religion, a hypocrite――base in all that is worthy of man and
accomplished in whatever is disgraceful, and yet this wretch could
go where he would――enter good men’s dwellings and purloin their votes.
Men would curse him, yet obey him; hate him, and assist him; warn
their sons against him, and lead them to the polls for him. A public
sentiment which produces ♦ignominious knaves cannot breed honest men.
♦ ‘ignominous’ replaced with ‘ignominious’
We have not yet emerged from a period in which debts were insecure;
the debtor legally protected against the rights of the creditor; taxes
laid, not by the requirements of justice, but for political effect,
and lowered to a dishonest inefficiency, and when thus diminished,
not collected; the citizens resisting their own officers; officers
resigning at the bidding of the electors; the laws of property
paralyzed; bankrupt laws built up, and stay-laws unconstitutionally
enacted, upon which the courts look with aversion, yet fear to
deny them lest the wildness of popular opinion should roll back
disdainfully upon the bench to despoil its dignity and prostrate its
power. General suffering has made us tolerant of general dishonesty,
and the gloom of our commercial disaster threatens to become the pall
of our morals.
* * * * *
EULOGY ON GENERAL GRANT.
PART I.
ANOTHER name is added to the roll of those whom the world will not
willingly let die. A few years since, storm-clouds filled his heaven,
and obloquy, slander and bitter lies rained down upon him. The clouds
are all blown away; under a serene sky General Grant laid down his
life and the whole nation wept. The path to his tomb is worn by the
feet of innumerable pilgrims.
The mildewed lips of slander are silent, and even criticism hesitates
lest some incautious word should mar the history of the modest, gentle,
magnanimous warrior. The whole nation watched his passage through
humiliating misfortunes with unfeigned sympathy――the whole world
sighed when his life ended. At his burial the unsworded hands of those
whom he had fought lifted his bier and bore him to his tomb with love
and reverence.
* * * * *
The South had laid the foundation of her industry, her commerce, and
her very commonwealth upon slavery.
It was slavery that inspired her councils, that engorged her
philanthropy, that corrupted her political economy and theology, that
disturbed all the ways of active politics――broke up sympathy between
North and South. The hand that fired upon Sumter exploded the mine
under the Flood Rock of slavery and opened the way to civilization.
The spark that was there kindled fell upon the North like fire
upon autumnal prairies. Men came together in the presence of this
universal calamity with sudden fusion; the whole land became a
military school. But the Northern armies once organized, an amiable
folly of conciliation began to show itself. Some peaceable way out of
the war was hoped for. Generals seemed to fight so that no one should
be hurt. The South had smelted into a glowing mass; it believed in its
course with an infatuation that would have been glorious if the cause
had been better; it put its whole soul into it and struck hard. For
two years the war lingered, unmarked by great deeds. Lincoln, sad and
sorrowful, felt the moderation of his generals and longed for a man of
iron mould, who had but two words in his military vocabulary――victory
or annihilation. He was coming; he was heard from at Henry and
Donelson. Three great names were rising to sight,――Sherman, Thomas,
Sheridan, and, larger than any, Grant.
At the opening of the war his name was almost unknown. It was with
difficulty he could obtain a command. Once set forward, Donelson,
Shiloh, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania,
Petersburg, Appomattox――these were his footsteps! In four years
he had risen, without political favor, from the bottom to the very
highest command――not second to any living commander in all the world.
His plans were large, his undiscouraged will was patient to obduracy.
He was not fighting for reputation, nor for the display of generalship,
nor for a future Presidency. He had but one motive, and that as
intense as life itself――the subjugation of the rebellion and the
restoration of the broken Union. He embodied the feelings of the
common people; he was their perfect representative.
* * * * *
PART II.
The tidings of his death, long expected, gave a shock to the whole
world. Governments, rulers, eminent statesmen, and scholars from
all civilized nations gave sincere tokens of sympathy. For the hour
sympathy rolled as a wave over all our own land. It closed the last
furrow of war, it extinguished the last prejudice, it effaced the last
vestige of hatred, and cursed shall be the hand that shall bring them
back.
Johnson and Buckner on one side, Sherman and Sheridan upon the other,
of his bier, he went to the tomb, a silent symbol that liberty had
conquered slavery; patriotism, rebellion; and peace, war. He rests in
peace. No drum or cannon shall disturb his rest. Sleep, hero, until
another trumpet shall shake the heavens and the earth――then come forth
to glory and immortality!
* * * * *
FROM “THE SPARKS OF NATURE.”
PATRIOTISM, in our day, is made to be an argument for all public
wrong and all private meanness. For the sake of country a man is told
to yield everything that makes the land honorable. For the sake of
country a man must submit to every ignominy that will lead to the ruin
of the State through disgrace of the citizen. There never was a man so
unpatriotic as Christ was. Old Jerusalem ought to have been everything
to Him. The laws and institutions of His country ought to have been
more to Him than all the men in His country. They were not, and the
Jews hated Him; but the common people, like the ocean waters, moved
in tides towards His heavenly attraction wherever He went.
* * * * *
When men begin their prayers with, “O thou omnipotent, omnipresent,
all-seeing, ever-living, blessed Potentate, Lord God Jehovah!” I
should think they would take breath. Think of a man in his family,
hurried for his breakfast, praying in such a strain. He has a note
coming due, and it is going to be paid to-day, and he feels buoyant;
and he goes down on his knees like a cricket on the hearth, and piles
up these majestically moving phrases about God. Then he goes on to say
that he is a sinner; he is proud to say that he is a sinner. Then he
asks for his daily bread. He has it; and he can always ask for it when
he has it. Then he jumps up, and goes over to the city. He comes back
at night, and goes through a similar wordy form of “evening prayers;”
and he is called “a praying man!” A _♦praying man_? I might as well
call myself an ornithologist, because I eat chicken once in awhile for
my dinner.
♦ ‘prayiny’ replaced with ‘praying’
* * * * *
When I see how much has been written of those who have lived; how
the Greeks preserved every saying of Plato’s; how Boswell followed
Johnson, gathering up every leaf that fell from that rugged old oak,
and pasting it away,――I almost regret that one of the disciples had
not been a recording angel, to preserve the odor and richness of every
word of Christ. When John says, “And there are also many other things
which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I
suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that
would be written,” it affects me more profoundly than when I think
of the destruction of the Alexandrian Library, or the perishing of
Grecian art in Athens or Byzantium. The creations of Phidias were
cold stone, overlaid by warm thought; but Christ described His own
creations when He said, “The words that I speak unto you, they are
life.” The leaving out of these things from the New Testament, though
divinely wise, seems, to my yearning, not so much the unaccomplishment
of noble things as the destruction of great treasures, which had
already had oral life, but failed of incarnation in literature.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JOHN B. GOUGH.
NO one who ever heard this great natural orator of the Temperance
cause can forget the impression he made. It was not simply “a voice
crying,” it was a whole man speaking, out of his very life, and every
part of him contributed something to the effect. His face, his hands,
his body, all joined together with his voice to give expression to his
thoughts. Without education, with no elocutionary training, he was,
nevertheless, an orator of the first rank, for he knew how to play on
all the keys of human nature, and he moved all classes of listeners.
He was born in England in 1817. Having lost his father at the age
of twelve, he came to America to make his way. He was at first
successful, but later troubles heaped up on him, and he drifted into
a life of hopeless dissipation. He made a wretched living by going
from one drinking house to another, singing songs and giving comic
impersonations. He tried to get on the stage, for which he had a
passion, but his dissolute life made such a career impossible. In 1839
he married, and tried to work, but his old habits were too strong for
him, and a few years later he lost his wife and child and sank into a
woeful condition. He used to describe how, in the delirium which came
upon him at this period, the tools with which he tried to work became
serpents and crawled in his hands. In 1842, when at the lowest point
of dissipation, he received some kindness from a Quaker, who induced
him to sign the pledge. Once he broke it through the influence of old
companions, but he immediately recovered control and made a public
confession.
Possessed henceforth with a great desire to devote himself to the
cause of Temperance, he started out at once as a lecturer and tramped
from place to place, holding meetings and stirring his listeners with
his eloquence, which was of an unusual sort.
During the first year of his travels he spoke 386 times on the one
subject which lay at his heart. He possessed a remarkable power of
imitation, and he could move the audience to bursts of laughter,
or go down to the depths of pathos and draw tears from the hardest
hearts. His power on the platform steadily increased and he soon had
a national reputation.
Ten years after his change of life, he was invited to visit England
in the interests of Temperance Reform, and his first lecture in Exeter
Hall produced a sensation. The call for lectures came from all the
cities, and he spent two years in that country.
No event of his life showed his power more clearly than did his
address at Oxford, where his voice was at first drowned by the hisses
and cat-calls of the students. He, however, held his own and conquered
his audience and came through triumphantly, so that at a subsequent
visit at Oxford he was received with distinction. He addressed over
5,000 audiences during the first seventeen years of his lecture
travels, and he always succeeded in carrying deep conviction. He was
not a constructive reformer, but he used all his powers to reform
individuals by reaching their consciences and wills. In this work
he was eminently successful. Later in his life he also lectured on
other subjects, and became one of the most popular attractions for
lyceums. He always chose subjects which would give full scope for his
powers of eloquence, and he was almost certain to touch upon his great
life-theme. His most frequent lectures were on “Eloquence and Orators”
and “Peculiar People,” and he never failed to give a fund of anecdotes,
told with rare skill and imitation.
He lived for years at West Boylston, Massachusetts, and as he
prospered through his lecture-work he gathered books about him and
lived a joyous, happy life, writing and talking with his many friends.
His published works (some of which have been translated into French,
Dutch, Scandinavian and Tamil) are “Autobiography” (1846); “Orations”
(1854); “Temperance Addresses” (1870); “Temperance Lectures” (1879),
and “Sunlight and Shadow; or, Gleanings from My Life-Work” (1880).
While lecturing at Frankford, Pennsylvania, February 18, 1886, he was
stricken down with cerebral apoplexy and lapsed into unconsciousness,
soon followed by death. He had just uttered the words “Young man, keep
your record clean.”
* * * * *
WATER AND RUM.
The following apostrophe on Water and execration on Rum, by Mr.
John B. Gough, was never published in full till after his death.
He furnished it to a young friend many years ago, who promised
not to publish it while he was on the lecture platform.
WATER! There is no poison in that cup; no fiendish spirit dwells
beneath those crystal drops to lure you and me and all of us to ruin;
no spectral shadows play upon its waveless surface; no widows’ groans
or orphans’ tears rise to God from those placid fountains; misery,
crime, wretchedness, woe, want, and rags come not within the hallowed
precincts where cold water reigns supreme. Pure now as when it left
its native heaven, giving vigor to our youth, strength to our manhood,
and solace to our old age. Cold water is beautiful and bright and pure
everywhere. In the moonlight fountains and the sunny rills; in the
warbling brook and the giant river; in the deep tangled wildwood
and the cataract’s spray; in the hand of beauty or on the lips of
manhood――cold water is beautiful everywhere.
Rum! There is a poison in that cup. There is a serpent in that cup
whose sting is madness and whose embrace is death. There dwells
beneath that smiling surface a fiendish spirit which for centuries
has been wandering over the earth, carrying on a war of desolation
and destruction against mankind, blighting and mildewing the noblest
affections of the heart, and corrupting with its foul breath the tide
of human life and changing the glad, green earth into a lazar house.
Gaze on it! But shudder as you gaze! Those sparkling drops are murder
in disguise; so quiet now, yet widows’ groans and orphans’ tears and
maniacs’ yells are in that cup. The worm that dieth not and the fire
that is not quenched are in that cup.
Peace and hope and love and truth dwell not within that fiery circle
where dwells that desolating monster which men call rum. Corrupt now
as when it left its native hell, giving fire to the eye, madness to
the brain, and ruin to the soul. Rum is vile and deadly and accursed
everywhere. The poet would liken it in its fiery glow to the flames
that flicker around the abode of the damned. The theologian would
point you to the drunkard’s doom, while the historian would unfold
the dark record of the past and point you to the fate of empires and
kingdoms lured to ruin by the siren song of the tempter, and sleeping
now in cold obscurity, the wrecks of what once were great, grand
and glorious. Yes, rum is corrupt and vile and deadly, and accursed
everywhere. Fit type and semblance of all earthly corruption!
PART II.
Base art thou yet, oh, Rum, as when the wise man warned us of thy
power and bade us flee thy enchantment. Vile art thou yet as when thou
first went forth on thy unholy mission――filling earth with desolation
and madness, woe and anguish. Deadly art thou yet as when thy
envenomed tooth first took fast hold on human hearts, and thy serpent
tongue first drank up the warm life-blood of immortal souls. Accursed
art thou yet as when the bones of thy first victim rotted in a damp
grave, and its shriek echoed along the gloomy caverns of hell. Yes,
thou infernal spirit of rum, through all past time hast thou been, as
through all coming time thou shalt be, accursed everywhere.
In the fiery fountains of the still; in the seething bubbles of the
caldron; in the kingly palace and the drunkard’s hovel; in the rich
man’s cellar and the poor man’s closet; in the pestilential vapors of
foul dens and in the blaze of gilded saloons; in the hand of beauty
and on the lip of manhood, rum is vile and deadly and accursed
everywhere.
Rum, we yield not to thy unhallowed influence, and together we have
met to plan thy destruction. And by what new name shall we call thee,
and to what shall we liken thee when we speak of thy attributes?
Others may call thee child of perdition, the base-born progeny of
sin and Satan, the murderer of mankind and the destroyer of immortal
souls; but I will give thee a new name among men and crown thee with
a new horror, and that new name shall be the sacramental cup of the
Rum-Power, and I will say to all the sons and daughters of earth――Dash
it down! And thou, Rum, shalt be my text in my pilgrimage among men,
and not alone shalt my tongue utter it, but the groans of orphans in
their agony and the cries of widows in their desolation shall proclaim
it the enemy of home, the traducer of childhood, and the destroyer of
manhood, and whose only antidote is the sacramental cup of temperance,
cold water!
* * * * *
THE POWER OF HABIT.
(DESCRIPTIVE, SPIRITED AND DRAMATIC.)
I REMEMBER once riding from Buffalo to the Niagara Falls. I said to a
gentleman, “What river is that, sir?”
“That,” said he, “is Niagara river.”
“Well, it is a beautiful stream,” said I; “bright, and fair and glassy.
How far off are the rapids?”
“Only a mile or two,” was the reply.
“Is it _possible_ that only a mile from us we shall find the water in
the turbulence which it must show near the Falls?”
“You will find it so, sir.” And so I found it; and the first sight of
Niagara I shall never forget.
Now, launch your bark on that Niagara river; it is bright, smooth,
beautiful, and glassy. There is a ripple at the bow; the silver wake
you leave behind adds to your enjoyment. Down the stream you glide,
oars, sails, and helm in proper trim, and you set out on your pleasure
excursion.
Suddenly some one cries out from the bank, “Young men, ahoy!”
“What is it?”
“The rapids are below you!”
“Ha! ha! we have heard of the rapids; but we are not such fools as
to get there. If we go too fast, then we shall up with the helm, and
steer to the shore; we will set the mast in the socket, hoist the sail,
and speed to the land. Then on, boys, don’t be alarmed, there is no
danger.”
“Young men, ahoy there!”
“What is it?”
“The rapids are below you!”
“Ha! ha! we will laugh and quaff; all things delight us. What care we
for the future! No man ever saw it. Sufficient for the day is the evil
thereof. We will enjoy life while we may, we will catch pleasure as it
flies. This is enjoyment; time enough to steer out of danger when we
are sailing swiftly with the current.”
“Young men, ahoy!”
“What is it?”
“Beware! beware! The rapids are below you!”
“Now you see the water foaming all around. See how fast you pass that
point! Up with the helm! Now turn! Pull hard! Quick! quick! quick!
pull for your lives! pull till the blood starts from your nostrils,
and the veins stand like whip-cords upon your brow! Set the mast in
the socket! hoist the sail! Ah! ah! it is too late! Shrieking, howling,
blaspheming, over they go.”
Thousands go over the rapids of intemperance every year, through _the
power of habit_, crying all the while, “_When I find out that it is
injuring me, I will give it up!_”
* * * * *
WHAT IS A MINORITY?
WHAT is a minority? The chosen heroes of this earth have been in a
minority. There is not a social, political, or religious privilege
that you enjoy to-day that was not bought for you by the blood and
tears and patient suffering of the minority. It is the minority
that have vindicated humanity in every struggle. It is a minority
that have stood in the van of every moral conflict, and achieved all
that is noble in the history of the world. You will find that each
generation has been always busy in gathering up the scattered ashes
of the martyred heroes of the past, to deposit them in the golden
urn of a nation’s history. Look at Scotland, where they are erecting
monuments――to whom?――to the Covenanters. Ah, _they_ were in a minority.
Read their history, if you can, without the blood tingling to the tips
of your fingers. These were in the minority, that, through blood, and
tears, and bootings and scourgings――dying the waters with their blood,
and staining the heather with their gore――fought the glorious battle
of religious freedom. Minority! if a man stand up for the right,
though the right be on the scaffold, while the wrong sits in the seat
of government; if he stand for the right, though he eat, with the
right and truth, a wretched crust; if he walk with obloquy and scorn
in the by-lanes and streets, while the falsehood and wrong ruffle it
in silken attire, let him remember that wherever the right and truth
are there are always
“Troops of beautiful, tall angels”
gathered round him, and God Himself stands within the dim future, and
keeps watch over His own! If a man stands for the right and the truth,
though every man’s finger be pointed at him, though every woman’s lip
be curled at him in scorn, he stands in a majority; for God and good
angels are with him, and greater are they that are for him, than all
they that be against him.
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CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW.
AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS AFTER-DINNER ORATOR.
IT is impossible in a sketch like this to do justice to the remarkable
versatility of Mr. Depew. His admirable addresses would fill several
bulky volumes. As an after-dinner speaker, he is without a peer, and
his wit, logic and eloquence never fail him. What could be more apt
than his words, when, upon entering a public hall where a number of
leading men were straining themselves to prove the Christian religion
a delusion and a sham, and there were instant and clamorous calls for
him, he said: “Gentlemen, my mother’s Bible is good enough for me;
have you anything better to offer?” And then with touching pathos
and impassioned words he made an appeal for the religion which they
reviled, which must have pierced the shell of more than one agnostic
heart.
Chauncey Mitchell Depew was born at Peekskill, New York, April 23,
1834. His remote ancestors were French Huguenots, who founded New
Rochelle, in Westchester County. His father, Isaac Depew, was a
prominent and highly esteemed citizen of Peekskill, and his mother,
Martha Mitchell, was a representative of the distinguished New England
family, one of whose members, Roger Sherman, was a signer of the
Declaration of Independence.
Chauncey spent his boyhood in Peekskill, where he prepared for
college. He was a bright student, and at the age of eighteen entered
Yale College, from which he was graduated in 1856, with one of the
first honors of his class. In June, 1887, Yale conferred upon him the
degree of LL.D. It will be noted that Mr. Depew reached his majority
at about the time of the formation of the Republican Party. Although
of Democratic antecedents, he had been a close student of politics and
his sympathies were with the aims of the new political organization,
to which he speedily gave his allegiance.
Mr. Depew studied law in his native village, and was admitted to
the bar in 1858. In the same year, he was elected as a delegate to
the Republican State Convention, this being an acknowledgment of
the interest he had taken in the party, and the skill and energy he
had shown in advocating its policy. He began the practice of law in
1859, and was highly successful from the first. In his early manhood,
his striking power as a stump speaker, his readiness at repartee,
and his never-failing good humor, made him a giant in politics, to
which he was literally forced to give attention. But with all these
extraordinary gifts, he could launch the thunderbolts of invective
against wrong and stir the profoundest depths of emotion by his
appeals. He loved liberty and hated oppression, and has always
believed that the United States of America is the happiest and
greatest country upon which the sun ever shone. His patriotic speeches
are models of eloquence and power.
In 1860 he took the stump for Abraham Lincoln and added greatly to his
reputation as a ready, forceful, and brilliant pleader for that which
he believed to be right. It cannot be denied that he contributed much
to the success of that memorable election.
In 1861 Mr. Depew was nominated for the Assembly in the Third
Westchester County District, and, although the constituency was
largely Democratic, he was elected by a handsome majority. He fully
met all the high expectations formed, and was re-elected in 1862. By
his geniality, wit, integrity and courtesy he became as popular among
his political opponents as among his friends. He was made his party’s
candidate for Secretary of State, directly after the Democrats had
won a notable triumph by the election of Horatio Seymour as Governor;
but by his dash and brilliancy and his prodigious endurance (he
spoke twice a day for six weeks), he secured a majority of 30,000. So
admirably did he perform the duties of the office that he was offered
a renomination, but declined.
During the administration of President Johnson, Secretary of State
Seward appointed Mr. Depew Minister to Japan, but after consideration,
the offer was declined. He seemed to have decided to withdraw from
politics and to devote his time and energies to his profession. That
shrewd railway man and financier, Commodore Vanderbilt, had watched
the career of Depew, and had formed a strong admiration for him,
while the eldest son, William H. Vanderbilt, became his firm friend.
In 1866 Mr. Depew was appointed the attorney for the New York and
Harlem Railroad Company, and three years later, when that road was
consolidated with the New York Central, he was made the attorney of
the new organization, being afterward elected a member of the Board
of Directors.
As other and extensive roads were added to the system, Mr. Depew, in
1875, was promoted to be general counsel for them all, and elected
to a directorship in each of the numerous organizations. The year
previous the Legislature had made him Regent of the State University,
and one of the Commissioners to build the Capitol at Albany.
In 1884 the United States senatorship was tendered to Mr. Depew, but
he was committed to so many business and professional trusts that
he felt compelled to decline the honor. Two years before, William H.
Vanderbilt had retired from the presidency of the New York Central,
and in the reorganization Mr. Depew was made Second Vice-President.
The President, Mr. Rutter, died in 1885, and Mr. Depew was elected to
the presidency, which office he still holds.
At the National Republican Convention of 1888, New York voted solidly
for Mr. Depew as its candidate for the Presidency, but he withdrew
his name. At the convention at Minneapolis in 1892 he was selected
to present the name of President Harrison, and made one of the best
speeches of his life. When Mr. Blaine resigned as Secretary of State,
President Harrison urged Mr. Depew to accept the place, but after
a week’s deliberation he felt obliged to decline the honor. He has,
however, continued to take an active interest in politics.
During the last ten years Mr. Depew has been frequently abroad, and
some of his happiest speeches have been delivered on board steamers
and in foreign banqueting halls, where he never forgets to speak in
words of patriotic praise of America.
* * * * *
THE PILGRIMS.
THEY were practical statesmen, these Pilgrims. They wasted no time
theorizing upon methods, but went straight at the mark. They solved
the Indian problem with shotguns, and it was not General Sherman, but
Miles Standish, who originated the axiom that the only good Indians
are the dead ones. They were bound by neither customs nor traditions,
nor committals to this or that policy. The only question with them was,
Does it work? The success of their Indian experiment led them to try
similar methods with witches, Quakers, and Baptists. Their failure
taught them the difference between mind and matter. A dead savage was
another wolf under ground, but one of themselves persecuted or killed
for conscience sake sowed the seed of discontent and disbelief. The
effort to wall in a creed and wall out liberty was at once abandoned,
and to-day New England has more religions and not less religion, but
less bigotry, than any other community in the world.
In an age when dynamite was unknown, the Pilgrim invented in the cabin
of the “Mayflower” the most powerful of explosives. The declaration
of the equality of all men before the law has rocked thrones and
consolidated classes. It separated the colonies from Great Britain
and created the United States. It pulverized the chains of the
slaves and gave manhood suffrage. It devolved upon the individual the
functions of government and made the people the sole source of power.
It substituted the cap of liberty for the royal crown in France, and
by a bloodless revolution has added to the constellation of American
republics, the star of Brazil. But with the ever-varying conditions
incident to free government, the Puritan’s talent as a political
mathematician will never rust. Problems of the utmost importance
press upon him for solution. When, in the effort to regulate the
liquor traffic, he has advanced beyond the temper of the times and the
sentiment of the people in the attempt to enact or enforce prohibition,
and either been disastrously defeated or the flagrant evasions of the
statutes have brought the law into contempt, he does not despair, but
tries to find the error in his calculation.
If gubernatorial objections block the way of high license, he will
bombard the executive judgment and conscience by a proposition to
tax. The destruction of homes, the ruin of the young, the increase of
pauperism and crime, the added burdens upon the taxpayers by the evils
of intemperance, appeal with resistless force to his training and
traditions. As the power of the saloon increases the difficulties of
the task, he becomes more and more certain that some time or other and
in some way or other he will do that sum too.
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HENRY WOODFIN GRADY.
THE BRILLIANT SOUTHERN ORATOR AND JOURNALIST.
IT is only a few times in a century that some unselfish soul, coupled
with a towering genius of mind, rises in grandeur and goodness so far
above his fellows as to command their almost worshipful admiration and
love. Such a man was Henry W. Grady. No written memorial can indicate
the strong hold he had upon the Southern people, nor portray that
peerless personality which gave him his marvelous power among all men
with whom he came into contact.
Grady was, perhaps, above all other prominent political leaders of his
times, devoid of sectional animosities, and did more, by voice and pen,
than any other man, during the decade of his prominence, to bridge the
bloody chasm between the North and South, which designing politicians
on both sides were endeavoring to keep open. Notwithstanding the
fact that his father was a Southern slaveholder, and lost his life
in fighting for the cause of secession, young Grady recognized the
providence of God in the failure of that cause, and rejoiced in the
liberation of the black man, though with his fallen shackles lay
the wrecked fortune of himself, his widowed mother and his beloved
Southland. The Union was the pride of Grady’s life. Daniel Webster
was not more loyal to its Constitution or bolder in defending its
principles. In writing or speaking on any subject to which he was
moved by an inspiring sense of patriotism or conviction of duty, he
was always eloquent, logical, aggressive and unanswerable. It was with
logic, earnest honesty of conviction and a tongue of tender pathos
and burning eloquence, together with a personal magnetism that always
accompanies a great orator, that he literally mastered his audiences,
regardless of their character, chaining them to the train of his
thought, and carrying them captive to his convictions. Such a man
could not be held within the narrow limits of any section. Wherever
he went the power of his individuality quickly made him known, and his
splendid genius needed only an opportunity to make him famous.
Like Patrick Henry, his great fame as an orator rested principally
upon three speeches. One was made before the New England Society, at
a banquet held in New York, in 1889, in which his theme was “The New
South” and its message to the North. Another was at the State Fair
at Dallas, Texas; but the most magnificent and eloquent effort of
his life was delivered in Boston, December 13, 1889, just ten days
before he died. The theme of this address was “The Race Problem,”
and it is accorded by all who heard it, or have read it, as the most
soul-stirring speech, and, withal, the fairest and most practical
discussion of this vexed subject which has yet been presented by any
man.
Henry Woodfin Grady was born in Atlanta, Georgia, May 17, 1851, and
died there December 23, 1889. His father was a merchant in that city
before the war, and Henry was the oldest of a family of three children.
His mother, whose maiden name was Gartrell, was a woman of strong
mind, quick intelligence, deep religious convictions, sweetness of
disposition, and force of character happily blended. Grady was a boy
of promise, and his youth was a fair index of his after-life. He was
always brilliant, industrious, patriotic, enterprising, conscientious,
and devoted to his parents to a marked degree. The tragic death of
his father, when the boy was fourteen, profoundly affected him, but
it, perhaps, hastened his own precocious growth by leaving him as the
mainstay of his mother in providing for the family.
At the age of seventeen Henry Grady was graduated at the University
of Georgia (1868); but he subsequently attended the University of
Virginia, where he took his degree before he was twenty years old,
and in less than a year was married to the sweetheart of his youth.
His majority found him occupying the position of editor and part owner
of the Rome (Georgia) “Commercial.” This failed, and cost the young
editor nearly all his savings. Soon after this he removed to Atlanta,
and connected himself with the Atlanta “Herald,” the columns of
which he made the brightest in the South; but misfortune overtook its
financial management and consumed all the remainder of Grady’s fortune.
Thus, at twenty-three years of age, he had failed twice and was almost
despairing when the old adage, “A friend in need is a friend indeed,”
was now verified to him. Cyrus W. Field loaned the penniless young man
twenty thousand dollars to buy a controlling interest in the Atlanta
“Constitution.” He made it the greatest paper in the South.
Besides the editorial work on his own paper, Mr. Grady contributed
much to others, among them the New York “Ledger,” to which he
contributed a series of articles on “The New South,” the last of which
was published only a few days before his death. When his brilliant
and beneficent career was cut short at the early age of thirty-eight,
the whole country had become interested in his work, and joined in
common mourning over his loss. A fund of over twenty thousand dollars,
contributed from all parts of the country, was quickly collected to
build a monument to his memory. It was erected in Atlanta, Georgia,
and unveiled with imposing ceremonies on October 21, 1891.
One who knew Henry W. Grady well thus writes of him: “He had a
matchless grace of soul that made him an unfailing winner of hearts.
His translucent mind pulsated with the light of truth and beautified
all thought. He grew flowers in the garden of his heart and sweetened
the world with the perfume of his spirit. His endowments are so
superior, and his purposes so unselfish that he seemed to combine all
the best elements of genius and live under the influence of an almost
divine inspiration. When building an aircastle over the framework
of his fancy, or when pouring out his soul in some romantic dream,
or when sounding the depths of human feeling by an appeal for sweet
charity’s sake, his command of language was as boundless as the realm
of thought, his ideas as beautiful as pictures in the sky, and his
pathos as deep as the well of tears.”
* * * * *
THE NEW SOUTH.¹
¹ Copyright, H. C. Hudgins, publisher of “Life of Grady.”
THERE was a South of secession and slavery――that South is dead. There
is a South of Union and freedom――that South is living, breathing,
growing every hour.
I accept the term, “The New South,” as in no sense disparaging to the
Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my
people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old,
but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please,
new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself. You
have just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant armies of
the North, and the grand review at Washington. I ask you, gentlemen,
to picture, if you can, the foot-sore soldier, who, buttoning up
in his faded gray jacket the parole which was taken, testimony to
his children of his fidelity and faith, turned his face southward
from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved,
heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds. Having fought to
exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades,
and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the
graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his
brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find?――let
me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find all the welcome you
had justly earned, full payment for your four years’ sacrifice――what
does he find, when he reaches the home he left four years before?
He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves freed,
his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money
worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away,
his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the
burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his
very traditions gone, without money, credit, employment, material, or
training――and, besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem
that ever met human intelligence――the establishing of a status for the
vast body of his liberated slaves.
What does he do――this hero in gray with a heart of gold――does he sit
down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely, God, who had
scourged him in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity! As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter.
The soldiers stepped from the trenches into the furrow; the horses
that had charged upon General Sherman’s line marched before the plow,
and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with
the harvest in June. From the ashes left us in 1864, we have raised
a brave and beautiful city; and, somehow or other, we have caught
the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have builded
therein not one single ignoble prejudice or memory.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in
this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the
uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate South――misguided, perhaps,
but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always.
On the records of her social, industrial, and political restoration we
await with confidence the verdict of the world.
* * * * *
REGARD FOR THE NEGRO RACE.
From speech on the Race Problem, at annual banquet of the
Boston Merchants’ Association, Dec., 1889.
THE resolute, clear-headed, broad-minded men of the South――the men
whose genius made glorious every page of the first seventy years of
American history――whose courage and fortitude you tested in four years
of the fiercest war――realize, as you cannot, what this race problem
means――what they owe to this kindly and dependent race. Nor are they
wholly to blame for the presence of slavery. The slave-ships sailed
from your ports――the slaves once worked in your fields, and you sold
them to the South. Neither of us now defends the traffic, nor the
institution.
The love the whites of the South feel for the negro race you cannot
measure nor comprehend. As I attest it here, the spirit of my old
black mammy from her home up there looks down to bless, and through
the tumult of this night steals the sweet music of her croonings as
thirty years ago she held me in her black arms and led me smiling
into sleep. This scene vanishes as I speak, and I catch a vision of
an old Southern home, with its lofty pillars, and its white pigeons
fluttering down through the golden air. I see women with strained and
anxious faces, and children alert yet helpless. I see night come down
with its dangers and its apprehensions, and in a big homely room I
feel on my tired head the touch of loving hands――now worn and wrinkled,
but fairer to me yet than the hands of mortal woman, and stronger
yet to lead me than the hands of mortal man――as they lay a mother’s
blessing there while at her knees――the truest altar I yet have
found――I thank God that she is safe in her sanctuary, because her
slaves, sentinel in the silent cabin or guard at her chamber door,
puts a black man’s loyalty between her and danger.
I catch another vision. The crisis of battle――a soldier struck,
staggering, fallen. I see a slave, scuffling through the smoke,
winding his black arms about the fallen form, reckless of the hurtling
death――bending his trusty face to catch the words that tremble on
the stricken lips, so wrestling meantime with agony that he would lay
down his life in his master’s stead. I see him by the weary bedside,
ministering with uncomplaining patience, praying with all his humble
heart that God will lift his master up, until death comes in mercy
and in honor to still the soldier’s agony and seal the soldier’s life.
I see him by the open grave, mute, motionless, uncovered, suffering
for the death of him who in life fought against his freedom. I see him
when the mound is heaped and the great drama of his life is closed,
turn away and with downcast eyes and uncertain step start out into
new and strange fields, faltering, struggling, but moving on, until
his shambling figure is lost in the light of this better and brighter
day. And from the grave comes a voice saying, “Follow him! Put your
arms about him in his need, even as he put his about me. Be his friend
as he was mine.” And out into this new world――strange to me as to him,
dazzling, bewildering both――I follow! And may God forget my
people――when they forget these.
* * * * *
APPEAL FOR TEMPERANCE.¹
(In no cause in which his sympathies were enlisted was Mr.
Grady more active and earnest than in that of temperance. The
following extract is from one of his speeches delivered during
the exciting local campaign in Georgia in 1887.)
¹ Copyright, C. H. Hudgins & Co.
MY friends, hesitate before you vote liquor back into Atlanta, now
that it is shut out. Don’t trust it. It is powerful, aggressive and
universal in its attacks. To-night it enters an humble home to strike
the roses from a woman’s cheek, and to-morrow it challenges this
Republic in the halls of Congress. To-day it strikes a crust from
the lips of a starving child, and to-morrow levies tribute from the
government itself. There is no cottage in this city humble enough
to escape it――no palace strong enough to shut it out. It defies the
law when it cannot coerce suffrage. It is flexible to cajole, but
merciless in victory. It is the mortal enemy of peace and order. The
despoiler of men, the terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face
of children, the demon that has dug more graves and sent more souls
unshrived to judgment, than all the pestilences that have wasted life
since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the wars since Joshua
stood beyond Jericho. O my countrymen! loving God and humanity, do
not bring this grand old city again under the dominion of that power.
It can profit no man by its return. It can uplift no industry, revive
no interest, remedy no wrong. You know that it cannot. It comes to
turn, and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your sons and mine. It
comes to mislead human souls and crush human hearts under its rumbling
wheels. It comes to bring gray-haired mothers down in shame and sorrow
to their graves. It comes to turn the wife’s love into despair and her
pride into shame. It comes to still the laughter on the lips of little
children. It comes to stifle all the music of the home and fill it
with silence and desolation. It comes to ruin your body and mind, to
wreck your home, and it knows that it must measure its prosperity by
the swiftness and certainty with which it wreaks this work.
FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS
Illustration: FAMOUS WOMEN ORATORS AND REFORMERS
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD • SUSAN B. ANTHONY
FRANCES WILLARD • MARY A. LIVERMORE • JULIA WARD HOWE
ELIZABETH C. STANTON • ANNA DICKINSON
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
JULIA WARD HOWE.
AUTHOR OF THE “BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.”
ON Beacon Street, Boston, in an old-fashioned home, lives a woman
mingling the twilight of her eventful life with the evening of the
closing century, who has been a potent factor in its progress and
developments. In her unpretentious little home have sat and talked
the greatest men of America, and many of the European celebrities who
have visited this country. Even the casual visitor to the home of this
aged woman feels in the atmosphere of the place, with its mementoes of
great men and women, some indefinable flavor, like a lingering perfume
which tells him there has been high thinking and noble speech within
the walls which surround him.
This noted poet, author, and philanthropist was born in New York City
on May 27, 1819. Her father was Samuel Ward, and she numbers among
her ancestors the famous General Marion, of South Carolina; Governor
Samuel Ward, of Rhode Island; and Roger Williams, the apostle of
religious tolerance. F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, is the son of
her sister, who married Mr. Crawford, the artist. Mrs. Howe’s mother
died when she was only five years of age, and her father five years
later. But he had been a prosperous banker and provided to give her
every advantage of a liberal education, which provision was carried
out――her instructions including music, German, Greek, and French. She
began to write verses while very young.
In 1843 Miss Ward was married to Doctor Samuel G. Howe. They went
abroad on their wedding tour, spending a year in the Old World.
Again, in 1850, she went to Europe, passing the winter in Rome with
her two youngest children. The next year she returned to Boston,
and in 1852 and 1853 published her first volume of poems, entitled
“Passion Flowers,” which attracted much attention. At the same time
her “Words for the Hour, a Drama in Blank Verse,” was produced in a
leading theatre in New York and also in Boston. Her interest in the
anti-slavery question began in 1851. In 1857 she visited Havana,
and published her observations in a book, entitled “A Trip to Cuba,”
which so vigorously attacked the degrading institutions of the Spanish
rule that its sale has since been prohibited on that island. In 1861
appeared her famous “Battle Hymn of the Republic” with the chorus
“John Brown’s Body, etc.,” which was published in her third volume,
entitled “Later Lyrics.” The song and chorus at once became known
throughout the country and was sung everywhere. In 1867 Mrs. Howe and
her husband visited Greece, and won the gratitude of that nation by
aiding them in the effort they were making for national independence.
Her book “From Oak to Olive” was written after her visit to Athens. In
1868 Mrs. Howe joined the Woman Suffrage Movement, and the next year,
before the Legislature in Boston, made her first speech urging its
principles; and from that time forward has been officially connected
with the movement.
Mrs. Howe visited England in 1872, where she lectured in favor of
arbitration as the means of settling national and international
disputes. At the same time she held, in London, a series of
Sunday-evening services, devoted to Christian missionary work.
During the same year she attended, as a delegate, the Congress for
Prison Reform, held in London. On her return to the United States she
organized or instituted the Woman’s Peace Festival, which still meets
every year on the twenty-second of June.
Since her husband’s death, in 1876, Mrs. Howe has preached, lectured
and traveled much in all parts of the United States, the most popular
of her lectures being “Is Polite Society, Polite?” “Greece Revisited,”
and “Reminiscences of Longfellow and Emerson.” In 1878 Mrs. Howe
made another journey abroad, and spent over two years in travel in
England, France, Italy, and Palestine. She was one of the presiding
officers of the Woman’s Rights Congress, which met at Paris, and
she lectured in that city and in Athens on the work of the various
women’s associations in America. She has served as President in
the Association of Advancement for Women for several years, and,
notwithstanding her advanced age, retains her connection with this
organization, and is an earnest promoter of their interest. She has
formed a number of social Women’s Clubs, having for their object,
mental improvement, in which the members study Latin, French, German,
literature, botany, political economy and many other branches. She has
been a profound student of philosophy, and has written numerous essays
on philosophical themes.
Mrs. Howe’s three living daughters, all of whom are married, have been
followers of her theories concerning woman’s freedom. One of them,
Mrs. Laura Richards, is a well-known writer of stories for children,
some of them being classics of their kind. “Captain January” is her
best-known book. Mrs. Maud Howe Elliot, the third daughter, is a
successful lecturer and also a novelist. Mrs. Florence Howe Hall,
another daughter of Mrs. Howe, is a writer of acknowledged ability on
social topics.
* * * * *
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.
MINE eye hath seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are
stored:
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift
sword;
His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling
camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel;
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall
deal;”
Let the Hero born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel,
Since God is marching on.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
* * * * *
OUR COUNTRY.
ON primal rocks she wrote her name,
Her towers were reared on holy graves,
The golden seed that bore her came
Swift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.
The Forest bowed his solemn crest,
And open flung his sylvan doors;
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest
To clasp the wide-embracing shores;
Till, fold by fold, the broidered Land
To swell her virgin vestments grew,
While Sages, strong in heart and hand,
Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.
O Exile of the wrath of Kings!
O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!
The refuge of divinest things,
Their record must abide in thee.
First in the glories of thy front
Let the crown-jewel Truth be found:
Thy right hand fling with generous wont
Love’s happy chain to furthest bound.
Let Justice with the faultless scales
Hold fast the worship of thy sons,
Thy commerce spread her shining sails
Where no dark tide of rapine runs.
So link thy ways to those of God,
So follow firm the heavenly laws,
That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed,
And storm-sped angels hail thy cause.
O Land, the measure of our prayers,
Hope of the world, in grief and wrong!
Be thine the blessing of the years,
The gift of faith, the crown of song.
* * * * *
THE UNSPEAKABLE PANG.
(FROM “A TRIP TO CUBA, 1860.”)
WHO are these that sit by the long dinner-table in the forward cabin,
with a most unusual lack of interest in the bill of fare? Their
eyes are closed, mostly, their cheeks are pale, their lips are quite
bloodless, and to every offer of good cheer, their “No, thank you,”
is as faintly uttered as are marriage-vows by maiden lips. Can they
be the same that, an hour ago, were so composed, so jovial, so full of
dangerous defiance to the old man of the sea? The officer who carves
the roast beef offers at the same time a slice of fat; this is too
much; a panic runs through the ranks, and the rout is instantaneous
and complete....
To what but to Dante’s Inferno can we liken this steamboat-cabin,
with its double row of pits, and its dismal captives? What are those
sighs, groans, and despairing noises, but the _alti guai_ rehearsed by
the poet? Its fiends are the stewards who rouse us from our perpetual
torpor with offers of food and praises of shadowy banquets,――“Nice
mutton-chop, sir? roast-turkey? plate of soup?” Cries, of “No, no!”
resound, and the wretched turn again and groan. The philanthropist
has lost the movement of the age,――keeled up in an upper ♦berth,
convulsively embracing a blanket――what conservative more immovable
than he? The great man of the party refrains from his large theories,
which, like the circles made by the stone thrown into the water, begin
somewhere and end nowhere. As we have said, he expounds himself no
more, the significant forefinger is down, the eye no longer imprisons
yours. But if you ask him how he does, he shakes himself as if like
Farinata――
“averse l’inferno in gran dispetto,”
“he had a very contemptible opinion of hell.”
♦ ‘birth’ replaced with ‘berth’
Let me not forget to add, that it rains every day, that it blows every
night, and that it rolls through the twenty-four hours till the whole
world seems as if turned bottom upwards, clinging with its nails to
chaos, and fearing to launch away.... But all things have an end, and
most things have two. After the third day, a new development manifests
itself. Various shapeless masses are carried up-stairs and suffered
to fall like snow-flakes on the deck, and to lie there in shivering
heaps. From these larvæ gradually emerge features and voices,――the
luncheon-bell at last stirs them with the thrill of returning
life. They look up, they lean up, they exchange pensive smiles of
recognition,――the steward comes, no fiend this time, but a ministering
angel; and lo! the strong man eats broth, and the weak woman clamors
for pickled oysters.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MRS. MARY ASHTON RICE LIVERMORE.
FAMOUS SCHOLAR, TEACHER, ARMY NURSE, EDITRESS,
LECTURER, ABOLITIONIST AND WOMAN’S SUFFRAGIST.
IT seems almost incredible,” says a writer, “that a woman now so
famous made mud pies in her childhood, was often sent supperless
to bed, and was frequently bounced down into a kitchen chair with
an emphasis that caused her to see stars.” When a young girl,
struggling to support herself, she took in shop-work, made shirts, and
subsequently learned the trade of a dressmaker, at which she worked
for twenty-five cents a day. At eighteen she ran away from home like
a boy, and spent three eventful years on a Southern plantation――years
full of comedy and tragedy, and packed with thrilling experiences.
Here were nearly five hundred slaves, with whom, and with their white
masters, she was brought face to face daily. Here she witnessed scenes
as tragic as any described in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Her description of
the whipping of negro Matt, the cooper; his agonizing but unavailing
plea for mercy; her subsequent visit alone to his cabin, when she
entreated him to “run away, Matt, I’ll help you,” and his lonely death,
will bring tears to the eyes of every reader.
Mrs. Livermore was the daughter of Timothy Rice, and was born in
Boston, December 19, 1821. Notwithstanding the above reference to her
early experiences, Mrs. Livermore had and improved all the advantages
of the time for a thorough education. She graduated from the public
schools of Boston at the age of fourteen, receiving a medal for good
scholarship, and afterwards completed a four years’ course in the
seminary at Charleston, Mass., in two years, and was elected a member
of the faculty as a teacher of Latin and French. While performing
these duties she continued the study of Greek and metaphysics under
private tutors, and at the age of eighteen, as above suggested,
she left home and went South to take charge of a family school on a
plantation in Southern Virginia, remaining there nearly thee years.
Her experiences in the South made her a most radical abolitionist,
and on her return North she actively seconded every movement for the
freedom of the slaves. She opened a select school for young ladies
from fourteen to twenty years, at Duxbury, Mass., but relinquished
it in 1845 on her marriage to Dr. D. P. Livermore, a Universalist
minister, in Falls River, Mass. She made a most excellent minister’s
wife, organizing literary clubs among the membership, and wrote many
hymns and songs for church and Sunday-school books. She was also an
active temperance worker, organizing a cold-water army of 1500 boys
and girls, whom she delighted with temperance stories which she wrote
and read to them. These stories were published in 1844 under the title
of the “Children’s Army.” In 1857 she removed with her husband to
Chicago, where Mr. Livermore became the editor of the Universalist
organ for the Northwest, with his wife as assistant editor. During
her husband’s absence in his church work she had charge of the entire
establishment, paper, printing office and publishing house included,
and wrote for every department of the paper except the theological, at
the same time furnishing stories and sketches to Eastern publications,
and was also active and untiring in Sunday-school, church and
charitable work. At the convention in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln
was nominated, she was the only woman reporter who had a place among
the hundred or more of men. During the Civil War she made her name
famous by resigning all positions, save that on her husband’s paper,
even securing a governess for her children, and devoting herself
entirely to the work of relief and assistance to the soldiers through
the United States Sanitary Commission. She organized Soldiers’ Aid
Societies, delivered public addresses, wrote circulars, bulletins
and reports, and made trips to the front with sanitary stores, giving
personal attention to the distribution of the same, and bringing back
numbers of invalid soldiers, accompanying many of them in person to
their homes. She organized and conducted Sanitary Fairs, detailed
nurses for the hospitals and accompanied them to their posts, and at
the close of the war published her reminiscences, entitled “My Story
of the War,” which is regarded as the most complete record of the
hospital and sanitary work in the Northern army during this great
fratricidal struggle.
Returning home after the war Mrs. Livermore became an ardent supporter
of the Woman’s Suffrage movement as the best means not only of
improving the condition of women, but with the broad, philanthropic
idea of giving them a greater opportunity for doing good. Before the
war she had opposed the placing of the ballot in the hands of women,
but her experiences in the army taught her differently. She arranged
for the first Woman’s Suffrage Convention in Chicago, elicited the
aid of the leading clergymen of the city, and secured the attendance
of the most prominent advocates of the cause from various parts of
the country. The association was duly organized with Mrs. Livermore
as its first president. “The Agitator,” a Woman’s Suffragist paper,
was started by her in 1869 at her own expense and risk, in which she
espoused the temperance cause, as well as woman’s suffrage. In 1870
she became the editor of the “Woman’s Journal” of Boston, and the
family removed to Melrose, Massachusetts. Mrs. Livermore, however,
retained the editorship but two years, resigning it, in 1872, that
she might give her more undivided time to the lecture field.
During the last quarter century she has been heard in the lyceum
courses of this country, visiting almost every State in the Union,
and also lecturing at many points in Europe. The volume “What Shall
We Do with Our Daughters and Other Lectures,” published in 1883, and a
subsequent of the same character comprise her most important published
discourses. The charm of Mrs. Livermore’s manner and the eloquence
of her delivery have been equalled by few modern speakers. “At her
feet,” writes one of her eulogists, “millions of people have sat and
listened in admiration and wonder. The rich and poor, the high and
low, the learned and unlearned, have been alike thrilled and moved
by her burning words. She has swayed brilliant audiences of fashion;
has spoken in State prisons, jails and penitentiaries; to audiences
composed of outcasts; and to audiences numbering thousands of children.
With untold wealth of mental resources, and a brain teeming with
soul-stirring thoughts, these lectures overflow with grand principles;
while the extraordinary scenes, thrilling stories, and remarkable
facts given in them illustrate those principles with great clearness
and force. Throughout her public speeches, whatever the theme, the
listener never tires, but is rather uplifted by the ‘golden thoughts’
and ‘living truths’ that enrich them from beginning to end.”
During this period her pen was not idle. Her articles have appeared
in the “North American Review,” the “Arena,” the “Chautauquan,”
“Independent,” “Youth’s Companion,” “Christian Advocate,” “Woman’s
Journal” and other high-class periodicals. She is identified with the
Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, for ten years being president of
the Massachusetts branch of that organization. She is also president
of the American Woman’s Suffrage Association, of the Beneficent
Society of the New England Conservatory of Music, and was the first
president for two years of the Woman’s Congress. Mrs. Livermore,
notwithstanding her advanced age, keeps steadily at work with voice,
pen and influence. After she was seventy-five years of age, at the
earnest request of many prominent friends and admirers throughout the
United States, she wrote her autobiography, a large volume of over
700 pages, issued in 1897.
We cannot better close this article than by quoting, from Mrs.
Livermore herself, a retrospective paragraph with a prospective
closing which is beautiful to witness in one standing, as she now
does, in the twilight of a long and eventful career: “I cannot say
that I would gladly accept the permission to run my earthly race once
more from beginning to end. I am afraid it would prove wearisome――‘a
twice-told tale.’ And so while rejoicing in the gains of the past and
in the bright outlook into the future, I prefer to go forward into
the larger life that beckons me further on, where I am sure it will
be better than here. And when the summons comes, although the world
has dealt kindly with me, I shall not be sorry to lift the latch and
step out into ‘that other chamber of the King, larger than this and
lovelier.’”
* * * * *
USEFUL WOMEN.¹
(FROM “WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH OUR DAUGHTERS,” 1883.
LECTURES ON “_Superfluous Women_.”)
¹ Copyright, Lee & Shepard, Boston, Mass.
ROSA BONHEUR has achieved world-wide fame and pecuniary independence
as one of the most skilful painters of animals; the boldness and
independence of her own character inspiring her pencil, and her
faithfulness to nature giving great force to her work. The whole
civilized world does homage to her genius; and, during the siege of
Paris in the Franco-Prussian War, the Crown Prince of Prussia gave
orders that her studio and residence at Fontainebleau should be spared
and respected.
Florence Nightingale, well born, highly educated, and brilliantly
accomplished, gave herself to the study of hospitals, and of
institutions for the diseased, helpless, and infirm. Appreciating
the work of the Sisters of Charity in the Catholic Church, she felt
the need of an institution which should be its counterpart in the
Protestant Communion. She visited civil and military hospitals all
over Europe, studied with the Sisters of Charity in Paris their system
of nursing and hospital management, and went into training as a nurse
in the House of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserwerth on the Rhine.
For ten years she served an apprenticeship, preparing for the great
work of her life. Her opportunity came during the war in the Crimea,
when through incompetence, and utter disregard of sanitary laws,
the rate of mortality in the English hospitals surpassed that of the
fiercest battles. Horror and indignation were felt throughout England.
Miss Nightingale offered her services to the government with a corps
of trained nurses, was accepted, and went to Constantinople.
The disorder, the want――while storehouses were bursting with the
needed hospital supplies――the incompetence, the uncleanliness,
the suffering and death created general dismay. Unappalled by the
shocking chaos, Miss Nightingale ordered the storehouses at Scutari
to be broken open, when want gave place to abundance; and soon her
executive skill and rare knowledge transformed the hospitals into
models of order and comfort. She spared herself no labor, sometimes
standing twenty hours in succession giving directions, and refusing
to leave her post, even when she broke down with hospital-fever. Sadly
overworked, her patience and cheerfulness were unfailing, winning
the love of the roughest soldiers; and, as she walked the wards, men
too weak to speak plucked her gown with feeble fingers, or kissed her
shadow as it fell athwart their pillow. She expended her own vitality
in this work, and returned to England an invalid for life. But not
an idle invalid, for from her sick-room there have gone plans for the
improvement of hospitals and the training of nurses wrought out by her
busy brain and pen.
Caroline Herschel, sister of the great astronomer, was his constant
helper and faithful assistant, in this character receiving a salary
from the king. In addition she found time to make her own independent
observations, discovering comets, remarkable nebulæ, and clusters
of stars, and receiving from the Royal Society a gold medal in
recognition of her work.
Charlotte Bronté’s portion in life was pain and toil and sorrow. Her
experience was a long struggle with every unkindness of fate, and she
lacked every advantage supposed necessary to literary work. Her force
of character and undismayed persistence triumphed over all hindrances.
She put heart and conscience into books that held the literary world
in fascination. In them she rent the shams of society by her keen
analyses. She depicted life as she had known it, shorn of every
illusion, and then beautified it by unflinching loyalty to duty, and
unwavering fidelity to conscience. The publication of “Jane Eyre”
marked an era in the literary world not soon to be forgotten.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
BELVA ANN LOCKWOOD.
FIRST WOMAN LAWYER BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES.
FOR heroic perseverance, strength of intellect, dignity and power of
mind, logic and eloquence,――and withal true womanliness of character,
the sisterhood of the world perhaps could present no counterpart in
any single woman, of any age, to Belva A. Lockwood. Had she devoted
her life to literature the profoundness of her writings must have
impressed the world. The fragments of her speeches which remain
are worthy to live. She has had one idea in life――to enfranchise
woman――and while earning her living in a profession, for recognition
in which she had to fight and conquer the United States, she has,
from every advanced step, held back the helping hand to her more
timid sisters. If her ideal is ever realized, she will live in future
history as one of the emancipators and greatest benefactors of her sex.
Belva Ann Bennett was born in Niagara County, New York, October 24,
1830, on her father’s farm. Her early education was received at a
district school and in the academy of her native town. At fourteen
years of age she began to teach in summer, attending school in winter.
At eighteen she married a young farmer, Uriah H. McNall, who died in
1853, leaving one daughter. The young widow entered Genesee College
in Lima, New York, the same year, from which she graduated with the
degree of A. B. four years later. She was immediately elected to a
position in the Lockport Academy, where she manifested her progressive
principles by introducing declamation and gymnastics for young ladies,
conducting the classes herself. This was in addition to her duties
as professor of higher mathematics, logic, rhetoric, and botany. Four
years later she became proprietor of McNall Seminary in Oswego, New
York, which she conducted until the close of the Civil War, at which
time she removed to Washington, D. C., and in March, 1868, married
Rev. Ezekiel Lockwood, a Baptist minister and chaplain during the war.
Dr. Lockwood died in 1877. At this late date Mrs. Lockwood resumed her
studies, entering the Syracuse University at New York, from which she
graduated with the degree of A. M. She had previous to this studied
law in Washington, graduating from the National University Law School
with the degree of D. C. L. in May, 1873. In the same year she was
admitted to practice in the highest court of the District, and in
1875 applied for admission to the Court of Claims, which was refused;
first, on the ground that she was a woman, and afterwards that she
was a married woman. In 1876 she applied for admission to the Supreme
Court of the United States. This was denied her because there was no
English precedent. It was in vain that she pleaded that Queens Eleanor
and Elizabeth had both been supreme chancellors of the realm, that
Countess Ann had sat with the judges on the bench at the Assizes of
Appleby. Finally she drafted a bill and secured its introduction into
both houses of Congress, which was passed in 1879, admitting women
to the Court, by which means she accomplished her purpose, and since
that time she has enjoyed an active and lucrative practice, being
privileged to appear before any Court in the United States. Nine other
women have since been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court under
the above Act.
Among the services which Mrs. Lockwood has rendered her sex may
be mentioned the bill passed by Congress in 1870, giving to the
women employees of the government, of whom there are many thousands,
the same pay as men receive for similar work. She also secured the
passage of a bill appropriating $50,000 for the aid of sailors and
mariners. She has frequently appeared before congressional committees
in the cause of women, her arguments always looking to the final
enfranchisement of woman. An extract from one of these addresses
succeeds this article. Mrs. Lockwood is also an intense advocate of
temperance and labor reform.
When President Garfield died in 1881, he was considering her
application for appointment as minister to Brazil. In 1884 and again
in 1888, she was nominated for President of the United States by
the Equal Rights Party of San Francisco, California, and though
knowing that her candidacy would only subject her to the ridicule
of the masses, it afforded an opportunity for the preaching of her
theory of woman suffrage, and she accepted the nomination, and made
a canvass that awakened the people of the United States to no small
consideration of the subject. The popularity given her by these
several movements has called her largely to the lecture platform and
into newspaper correspondence during the last fifteen years. She was a
delegate to the International Congress of Peace in Paris, and made one
of the opening speeches, and presented a paper in the French language
on “International Arbitration,” which was well received. In 1890 she
was again a delegate to the same convention in London, and her paper
there on “Disarmament” was widely commented upon. Even at this late
date her thirst for knowledge again evinced itself, for she remained
in London to take a course of University Extension lectures at Oxford.
In 1891 she was again a delegate to the Peace Congress at Rome, where
her influence was equally as conspicuous as before.
Of late years Mrs. Lockwood, in addition to her law practice,
has acted as assistant editor of the “Peacemaker,” a Philadelphia
magazine, all the time pursuing her studies and contributing no
small modicum of encouragement, both by her pen and lectures, to the
furtherance of the University Extension idea. It may be said, however,
that her interest and labor in all forward movements are mainly due
to her confidence in the aid they will contribute toward the final
enfranchisement of woman.
* * * * *
ADDRESS BEFORE THE COMMITTEE OF THE HOUSE OF DELEGATES WASHINGTON,
IN SUPPORT OF WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE.
GENTLEMEN of the Committee: We come before you to-day, not with any
studied eloquence, far-fetched erudition, or new theories for the
metamorphosis of our government, or the overthrow of our social
economy and relations, but we come, asking for our whole commonwealth,
for the fathers who begat us, and the brothers at our side――for the
mothers who bore us, and the sisters who go hand in hand with us;
for the orphan and the widow unprotected; for the wretched inebriate
and the outcast Magdalene; for the beggars who throng our streets
and the inmates of our jails and asylums――for these we ask you that
we too may have a hand and a voice, a share in this matter which so
nearly concerns not only our temporal but even our eternal salvation.
We ask you that we may have an interest that shall awaken from its
apathy fully one-half of the moral and intellectual resources of the
country, fully one-half of its productive interest――an interest which
contains in the germ the physical power and vital force of the whole
nation. Weakness cannot beget power, ignorance cannot beget wisdom,
disease cannot produce health. Look at our women of to-day, with
their enfeebled bodies, dwarfed intellects, laxness of moral force,
without enough of healthy stimulus to incite to action, and compare
them with our grandmothers of the Revolution and the Martha Washington
school. Here you find a woman who dared to control her own affairs;
who superintended a farm of six hundred acres; giving personal
instructions to the workmen, writing her own bills and receipts, and
setting an example of industry and frugality to the neighboring women
who called to see her.
I need not, gentlemen, enumerate to you to prove what I wish to
prove to-day, the countless numbers of women who have participated
creditably in government from the days of our Saviour until the
present time. You know that Victoria rules in England; and the
adoration of the English heart to-day for its Queen, found expression
but a few weeks since in one of our popular lecture halls, when the
audience, composed partly of Englishmen, were asked to sing “God
Save the Queen.” The wisdom of the reign of Elizabeth, “good Queen
Bess,” as she has been called, gave to England her prestige――the proud
pre-eminence which she holds to-day among the nations of the earth.
Isabella I. of Spain, the patron saint of America, without whose
generosity our country to-day might have been a wilderness, was never
nobler than when after Ferdinand’s refusal, after the refusal of the
crowned authority of England, the disapproval of the wise men of her
own kingdom, she rose in her queenly majesty, and said, “I undertake
it for my own crown of Castile, and will pledge my jewels to raise
the necessary funds.” Maria Theresa, of Austria, who assumed the reins
of government with her kingdom divided and disturbed, found herself
equal to the emergency, brought order out of chaos, and prosperity
to her kingdom. Christine, of Sweden, brought that kingdom to the
zenith of its power. Eugenie, Empress of the French, in the late
disastrous revolution, assumed the regency of the Empire in defiance
of her ministry, and, when forced to flee, covered her flight with a
shrewdness that would have done credit to Napoleon himself. Florence
Nightingale brought order and efficiency into the hospitals of the
Crimea, and Clara Barton, with her clear head and generous heart,
has lifted up the starving women of Strassburg, and made it possible
for them to be self-sustaining. I need not cite to you Catharine,
of Russia, Cleopatra, or the Queen of Sheba, who came to admire the
wisdom of Solomon; or the Roman matrons, Zenobia, Lucretia, Tullia;
or revert to the earliest forms of government when the family and the
church were lawgivers; remind you of Lydia, the seller of purple and
fine linen, who ruled her own household, called to the church; of
Aquilla and Priscilla, whom Paul took with him and left to control
the church at Ephesus, after they had been banished from Rome by the
decree of Claudius; or of Phebe, the deaconess. It is a well-known
fact that women have been sent as ministers and ambassadors, the
latter a power fuller than our country grants, to treat on important
State matters between the crowned heads of Europe. In many cases they
have represented the person of the monarch or emperor himself. France,
since the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., through the period of
the ascendency of Napoleon I. down to the reign of Napoleon III., has
employed women in diplomacy. Instances may be found recorded in a work
entitled “Napoleon and His Court,” by Madame Junot, and also in our
own consular works. The late Empress of France has been said to be
especially gifted in this respect. It has been the custom of Russia
for the past century, and still continues to be, to send women on
diplomatic errands. In this empire, also, where the voting is done by
households, a woman is often sent to represent the family.
Women are now writing a large proportion of the books and newspapers
of the country, are editing newspapers and commanding ships. They
are admitted to law schools, medical schools, and the higher order of
colleges, and are knocking at Amherst and Yale. Yea, more, they are
admitted to the practice of law, as in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Wyoming
and Utah; admitted to the practice of medicine everywhere, and more
recently to consultation. One hundred women preachers are already
ordained and are preaching throughout the land. Women are elected
as engrossing and enrolling clerks in Legislatures, as in Wisconsin,
Missouri and Indiana; appointed as justices of the peace, as in Maine,
Wyoming and Connecticut; as bankers and brokers, as in New York and
St. Louis. They are filling as school teachers three-fourths of the
schools of the land.
This is more than true of our own city. Shall we not then have women
school trustees and superintendents? Already they are appointed in the
East and in the West, and women are permitted to vote at the school
elections. Who has a deeper interest in the schools than the mothers.
Look at the hundreds of women clerks in the government departments.
They are all eligible, since the passage of the Arnell bill, to
the highest clerkships. Look at the postmistresses throughout the
land. Each one a bonded officer of the government, appointed by the
President and confirmed by the Senate, the highest executive power in
the land. “The power of the President to appoint, and of the Senate to
confirm, has never been questioned by our highest courts. Being bonded
officers, they must necessarily qualify before a judicial officer.”
And now, gentlemen of the Committee on Laws and Judiciary, whatever
may be your report on these bills for justice and equality to women,
committed to your trust, I hope you will bear in mind that you have
mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who will be affected by your
decision. They may be amply provided for to-day, and be beggared
to-morrow. Remember that “life is short and time is fleeting,”
but principles never die. You hold in your hands a power and an
opportunity to-day to render yourselves immortal――an opportunity that
comes but once in a lifetime. Shakespeare says, “There is a tide in
the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
Gentlemen, the flood-tide is with you! Shall this appeal be in vain?
I hold in my hands the names of hundreds of men and women of our city
pledged to this work, and they will not relax their efforts until it
is accomplished.
“Truth crushed to earth will rise again;
The eternal years of God are hers;
But ♦Error, wounded, writhes in pain
And dies amid her worshippers.”
♦ ‘Errror’ replaced with ‘Error’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
FOUNDER OF THE FIRST WOMEN’S TEMPERANCE ORGANIZATION.
AMONG the famous names of our time, history will, no doubt,
record that of Susan B. Anthony with the greatest of reformers and
progressive thinkers. Once held in derision, she now enjoys the reward
of being esteemed and loved by her fellow men, while she is looked up
to, by those of her own sex who believe in woman suffrage as one of
the pioneers whose herculean efforts will eventually place the ballot
in the hands of the women of the United States.
Miss Anthony was born in South Adams, Mass., February 15, 1820. She
was brought up in New York under the most religious influence of a
Baptist mother and a Quaker father. From her childhood her character
has been strongly marked by individuality and native strength.
Mr. Anthony was a manufacturer and a wealthy man. He fitted his
daughters and sons for teachers, and at the age of fifteen Susan began
to teach in a Quaker family, her salary being one dollar per week and
board. In 1837, a financial crash caused the failure of her father,
who was, after this, aided in his efforts to retrieve his fortune
by his children. Susan was particularly successful and progressive
in her work, and identified herself actively with the New York
Teachers’ Association, rendering herself conspicuous by pleading in
the conventions for higher wages and equal rights for women in all
the honors and responsibilities of the association. The women teachers
throughout America owe her a debt of gratitude for their improved
position and compensation to-day.
The subject of temperance also claimed Miss Anthony’s attention from
the time of her childhood. In 1852, she organized the New York State
Women’s Temperance Association, which was the first open temperance
organization of women, and the foundation for the modern society known
as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
was president, and Miss Anthony for several years secretary, of this
first organization. It was in this work that Miss Anthony discovered
the impotency of women to advance the cause of temperance without the
ballot, and she at once became an ardent woman suffragist. She was
also a pronounced and active abolitionist; and, during the war, with
her friend and co-worker, Mrs. Stanton, and others, she presented
a petition to Congress for the abolition of slavery, bearing nearly
400,000 signatures from all parts of the country. These petitions
were so powerful in arousing the people, and also Congress, that
Charles Sumner urged Miss Anthony to continue in the work. “Send on
the petitions,” he wrote, “they furnish the only background for my
demands.”
The most dramatic event of Miss Anthony’s life was her arrest and
trial for voting at the presidential election of 1872. When asked by
the judge, “You voted as a woman, did you not?” she replied, “No, sir,
I voted as a citizen of the United States.” Before the date set for
the trial Miss Anthony thoroughly canvassed her county and instructed
the people in citizen’s rights, intending in this way to have the
jurors, whoever they might be, well instructed in advance. To her
chagrin change of venue was ordered to another county, setting the
date three weeks ahead. Miss Anthony was equal to the emergency; in
twenty-four hours dates were set and appointments made for a series
of meetings in that county, and the country was thoroughly aroused in
Miss Anthony’s behalf. The jury would no doubt have acquitted her, but
the judge took the case out of their hands saying it was a question of
law and not of fact, and pronounced Miss Anthony guilty and fined her
$100.00 and costs. “I shall never pay a penny of this unjust claim,”
she said. “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.” She intended
to take the case to the Supreme Court, and further to help her cause
did not desire to give bond, preferring to be imprisoned, but her
counsel gave bond and thus frustrated her purpose of carrying it to
the Supreme Court. The inspectors who received the ballot from her and
her friends were fined and imprisoned, but were pardoned by President
Grant. Miss Anthony steadfastly adhered to her vow and never paid the
fine.
Miss Anthony has always been in great demand on the platform and has
lectured in almost every city and hamlet in the North. She has made
constitutional arguments before congressional committees and spoken
impromptu in all sorts of places. Wherever a good word in introducing
a speaker, or a short speech to awaken a convention, or a closing
appeal to set people to work was needed she always knew how to
say the right thing, and never wearied her audience. There was no
hurry, no superfluity in her discourse, and it was equally devoid of
sentiment or poetry. She was remarkably self-forgetful and devoted to
the noblest principles. A fine sense of humor, however, pervaded her
logical arguments. She had the happy faculty of disarming and winning
her opponents. She possessed a most wonderful memory, carrying in her
mind the legislative history of each state, the formation and progress
of political parties, and the public history of prominent men in our
national life, and in fact whatever has been done the world over to
ameliorate the condition of women. She is said to be a most congenial
and instructive companion, and her unfailing sympathy makes her as
good a listener as talker.
It must be consolingly comforting and pleasant for this ardent worker,
who has stemmed a violent tide of opposition throughout a long life,
to have the tide of popular esteem turn so favorably toward her last
years. Once it was the fashion of the press to ridicule and jeer, but
at last the best reporters were sent to interview her and to put her
sentiments before the world with the most respectful and laudatory
personal comment. Society, too, threw open its doors, and into
many distinguished gatherings she carried a refreshing breath of
sincerity and earnestness. Her seventieth birthday was celebrated by
the National Woman Suffrage Association with an outburst of gratitude
which is perhaps unparalleled in the history of any living woman. In
1892 she was elected president of this association, at which time,
though seventy-two years of age, she was still of undiminished vigor
and activity. Standing at the head of this organization, of which she
was forty years before among the founders, Susan B. Anthony is one of
the most heroic figures in American history.
* * * * *
WOMAN’S RIGHT TO SUFFRAGE.
After its delivery, this address was printed and distributed
in Monroe and Ontario counties prior to her trial, in June,
1873, the charge against her being that she had violated the
law by voting in the presidential election in November, 1872.
This address is necessarily argumentative; but it contains
occasional passages which exhibit the power of her oratory.
_Copied from an account of the trial published in Rochester,
New York, 1874._
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS: I stand before you to-night, under
indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last
Presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It
shall be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting,
I not only committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my
_citizen’s right_, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens
by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.
* * * * *
The preamble of the federal constitution says:
“We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure _domestic_ tranquility, provide
for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the
blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this constitution for the United States of America.”
It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we,
the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And
we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them;
not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to
the whole people――women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery
to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while
they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided
by this democratic-republican government――the ballot.
The early journals of Congress show that when the committee reported
to that body the original articles of confederation, the very first
article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting
equality of suffrage. Article IV. said:
“The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse
between the people of the different States of the Union, the free
inhabitants of each of the States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives
from justice excepted,) shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of the free citizens of the several States.”
Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of
the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to
all――in order to produce the desired result――a harmonious union and
a homogeneous people.
* * * * *
B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days’ discussion in the
United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan’s motion to strike male
from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:
“Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I
stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle,
do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of
race or sex.”
* * * * *
Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the thirteenth
amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the
United States Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights――the right
to vote and to be voted for.
* * * * *
Article 1 of the New York State Constitution says:
“No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the
rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law
of the land or the judgment of his peers.”
And so carefully guarded is the citizen’s right to vote that the
Constitution makes special mention of all who may be excluded. It says:
“Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons
who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny or any infamous
crime.”
* * * * *
“The law of the land” is the United States Constitution, and there
is no provision in that document that can be fairly construed into
a permission to the States to deprive any class of their citizens of
their right to vote. Hence, New York can get no power from that source
to disfranchise one entire half of her members. Nor has “the judgment
of their peers” been pronounced against women exercising their right
to vote; no disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or juror,
and none but disfranchised persons can be women’s peers; nor has
the Legislature passed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or
lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, larceny or any
infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no constitutional ground for
the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the State of New York.
No barriers whatever stand to-day between women and the exercise of
their right to vote save those of precedent and prejudice.
* * * * *
For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the
disfranchisement of one entire half of the people is to pass a bill
of attainder, or an _ex post facto_ law, and is therefore a violation
of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are
forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this
government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed.
To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It
is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most hateful
aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy
of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning,
where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of
race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this
oligarchy of sex, which makes father, brothers, husband, sons the
oligarchs over the mother and sisters, the wife and daughters of
every household; which ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects;
carries dissension, discord and rebellion into every home of the
nation.
* * * * *
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person,
in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.
Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth amendment, by which slavery
was forever abolished, and black men transformed from _property_ to
_persons_, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in
harmony with these definitions. To be a _person_ was to be a _citizen_,
and to be a _citizen_ was to be a _voter_.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And
I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say
they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no State
has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall
abridge their ♦privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination
against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States is
to-day null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes.
♦ ‘priviliges’ replaced with ‘privileges’
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
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ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
FOUNDER OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT.
AMONG the few women who have shown themselves the polemic equals of
the most trained and brilliant men of their times, the subject of this
sketch stands prominently with the first. Mrs. Stanton was always a
vigorous woman of commanding size with the mental force of a giant.
In public debates and private arguments, she has shown herself to be
an orator, forceful, logical, witty, sarcastic and eloquent. Like all
great orators, she is imbued with one great idea which presses to the
front in all she says or does and has been the moving force of her
life. She believes that social and national safety lies alone in the
purity of individuals and in the full and free bestowal upon every
individual, regardless of sex, of all the rights and privileges of
citizenship. In other words, whatever other excellencies or merits she
may possess, she is primarily a Woman Suffragist.
Elizabeth Cady was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady and was born
in Johnstown, N. Y., November 12, 1815. She was a child of marked
intelligence and was thoroughly educated by her parents and graduated
in Troy, N. Y., in 1832. She was learned in Latin and Greek, was
a great lover of sports and, it is said that in early life she
frequently complained that she had been born a girl instead of a boy.
She used to discuss law in her father’s office and always insisted
that no law was just which denied to women an equal right with men.
She was anxious to complete her education in Union College where her
brother had been educated, and her indignation was unbounded when
she was refused entrance because girls were not admitted to that
institution. Thus it will be seen how she became a Woman’s Rights
believer, and with her strong and cultured mind it was only natural
that she should become one of its chief advocates. At the age of
twenty-five, in 1840, she married Henry B. Stanton, an Anti-slavery
orator, journalist and author. Thus she became an Abolitionist and
entered, with her usual force and zeal, into that movement. She was
a delegate to the World’s Anti-slavery Convention, which met the next
year in London. With Lucretia Mott, she signed the first call for a
Woman’s Rights Convention, which met in Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the
19th of July, 1848. Mrs. Stanton received and cared for the visitors,
wrote the resolutions, declarations and aims of the organization,
and had the satisfaction of being ridiculed throughout the United
States. Even her father, Judge Cady, imagined that she had gone crazy
and journeyed all the way to Seneca Falls in order to endeavor to
reason her out of her position; but she remained unshaken. Since that
convention, Mrs. Stanton has been one of the leaders of the movement
in the United States.
In 1854, Mrs. Stanton addressed the New York Legislature, endeavoring
to bring about such a change in the constitution as would enfranchise
women, an extract from which, we insert in this volume. She delivered
another address to the same body in 1860 and again in 1867. In Kansas
and in Michigan in ’67 and ’74, when those states were submitting the
question of “Woman’s Suffrage” to the people, she did heroic work by
canvassing and speaking throughout both of these Commonwealths. Until
the year of 1890, she was President of the National Woman’s Suffrage
Association. In 1868, she ventured to run as candidate for Congress
and, in her speech to the electors of the district, she announced her
creed to be “Free speech, free press, free men and free trade.”
The “New York Herald” ventured to support her in this effort; but of
course she was defeated, as she expected, her object being only to
emphasize and advertise the principle of “Woman Suffrage.”
The literary works of Mrs. Stanton consist of her contributions to
“The Revolution,” a magazine published in New York City, of which she
became editor in 1868, Susan B. Anthony being the publisher. She was
also joint-author of the “History of Woman’s Suffrage” of which three
volumes have appeared. She has, also, lectured much and contributed to
the secular press.
Mrs. Stanton, with all her public works, has been a thoroughly
domestic woman. She has a family of seven children, five sons and two
daughters, all of whom were living up to a recent date and some of
them have inherited the talents of their mother and bid fair to become
famous. Mrs. Stanton possesses conversational powers of the highest
order. In the light of recent developments, the retrospect of her long
career must afford her unusual pleasure. She was met with bitterness,
ridicule and misrepresentation at the beginning of her crusade.
She has lived down all of this and has seen her cherished ambition
fruited here and there, while many of the leading men of the age in
all sections of the country have been brought to look upon “Woman
Suffrage” as something to be desired; while in the minds of the
public generally, the seed of thoughts sown by her are so fast rooting
themselves and springing up, that she looks with confidence forward to
the early realization of her hopes――the enfranchisement of woman.
* * * * *
A PLEA FOR EQUAL RIGHTS.
Delivered at Seneca Falls, N. Y., on the assembling of the
first Woman-Suffragist Convention, July 19, 1848. Mrs. Stanton
begins by saying:
I SHOULD feel exceedingly diffident to appear before you at this time,
having never before spoken in public, were I not nerved by a sense of
right and duty.
[After delivering a masterly and eloquent argument of nearly
two hours length announcing the principles and setting forth
the arguments which have since signalized the movement, Mrs.
Stanton closed in the following eloquent strain:]
Our churches are multiplying on all sides, our missionary societies,
Sunday Schools, and prayer meetings and innumerable charitable and
reform organizations are all in operation, but still the tide of vice
is swelling, and threatens the destruction of everything, and the
battlements of righteousness are weak against the raging elements of
sin and death. Verily the world waits the coming of some new element,
some purifying power, some spirit of mercy and love. The voice of
woman has been silenced in the state, the church, and the home,
but man cannot fulfill his destiny alone, he cannot redeem his race
unaided. There are deep and tender cords of sympathy and love in
the hearts of the down-fallen and oppressed that woman can touch
more skilfully than man. The world has never yet seen a truly great
and virtuous nation, because in the degradation of woman the very
fountains of life are poisoned at their source. It is vain to look
for silver and gold from the mines of copper and lead. It is the wise
mother that has the wise son. So long as your women are slaves you may
throw your colleges and churches to the winds. You can’t have scholars
and saints so long as your mothers are ground to powder between the
upper and nether millstone of tyranny and lust. How seldom, now, is
a father’s pride gratified, his fond hopes realized, in the budding
genius of his son. The wife is degraded, made the mere creature of
caprice, and the foolish son is heaviness to his heart. Truly are the
sins of the father visited upon the children to the third and fourth
generation. God, in his wisdom, has so linked the whole human family
together, that any violence done at one end of the chain is felt
throughout its length, and here, too, is the law of restoration,
as in woman all have fallen, so in her elevation shall the race
be recreated. “Voices” were the visitors and advisers of Joan of
Arc. Do not “voices” come to us daily from the haunts of poverty,
sorrow, degradation and despair, already too long unheeded. Now is
the time for the women of this country, if they would save our free
institutions, to defend the right, to buckle on the armor that can
best resist the keenest weapons of the enemy――contempt and ridicule.
The same religious enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work
nerves us to ours. In every generation God calls some men and
women for the utterance of the truth, a heroic action, and our work
to-day is the fulfilling of what has long since been foretold by
the prophet――Joel ii. 28, “And it shall come to pass afterward, that
I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy.” We do not expect our path will be strewn
with the flowers of popular applause, but over the thorns of bigotry
and prejudice will be our way, and on our banners will beat the dark
storm-clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched themselves
behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and authority, and who have
fortified their position by every means, holy and unholy. But we
will steadfastly abide the result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft.
Undauntedly we will unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm
cannot rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more
clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it, “Equality of
Rights.”
“Then fear not thou to wind thy horn,
Though elf and gnome thy courage scorn.
Ask for the Castle’s King and Queen,
Though rabble rout may rush between,
Beat thee senseless to the ground,
And in the dark beset thee round,
Persist to ask and it will come,
Seek not for rest in humbler home,
So shalt thou see what few have seen;
The palace home of King and Queen.”
* * * * *
MRS. STANTON’S ADDRESS TO THE LEGISLATURE OF NEW YORK.
UNDER THE SANCTION OF THE STATE WOMAN’S RIGHTS CONVENTION.
FEBRUARY 14, 1854.
_To the Legislature of the State of New York_:
THE tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the bar of Common Sense.
His majesty no longer awes the multitude――his sceptre is broken――his
crown is trampled in the dust――the sentence of death is pronounced
upon him. All nations, ranks and classes have, in turn, questioned
and repudiated his authority; and now, that the monster is chained and
caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes to look him in the face, and to
demand of her brave sires and sons, who have struck stout blows for
liberty, if, in this change of dynasty, she, too, shall find relief.
Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the nineteenth century,
we, the daughters of the revolutionary heroes of ’76, demand at
your hands the redress of our grievances――a revision of your state
constitution――a new code of laws.... We demand the full recognition
of all our rights as citizens of the Empire State. We are persons;
native, free-born citizens; property-holders, tax-payers; yet we are
denied the exercise of our right to the elective franchise. We support
ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges, churches, your
poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the navy, the whole machinery
of government, and yet we have no voice in your councils. We have
every qualification required by the constitution, necessary to
the legal voter; but the one of sex. We are moral, virtuous and
intelligent, and in all respects quite equal to the proud white man
himself, and yet by your laws we are classed with idiots, lunatics and
negroes;... in fact, our legal position is lower than that of either;
for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a voter if he possess
himself of $250; the lunatic can vote in his moments of sanity, and
the idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more than nine-tenths a
fool; but we, who have guided great movements of charity, established
missions, edited journals, published works on history, economy and
statistics; who have governed nations, led armies, filled the
professor’s chair, taught philosophy and mathematics to the savants
of our age, discovered planets, piloted ships across the sea, are
denied the most sacred rights of citizens, because, forsooth, we came
not into this republic crowned with the dignity of manhood!... Now,
gentlemen, we would fain know by what authority you have disfranchised
one-half of the people of this state?... Would that the men who can
sanction a constitution so opposed to the genius of this government,
who can enact and execute laws so degrading to womankind, had sprung,
Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, that the matrons of
this republic need not blush to own their sons!... Again we demand in
criminal cases, that most sacred of all rights, trial by a jury of our
own peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of so early a date
that its beginning is lost in antiquity; but the right of trial by
a jury of one’s own peers is a great, progressive step of advanced
civilization.... Would it not, in woman’s hour of trial at the
bar, be some consolation to see that she was surrounded by the wise
and virtuous of her own sex; by those who had known the depth of a
mother’s love and the misery of a lover’s falsehood; to know that
to these she could make her confession, and from them receive her
sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands and make such a
change in your laws as will secure to every woman tried in your courts,
an impartial jury. At this moment among the hundreds of women who are
shut up in the prisons of this state, not one has enjoyed that most
sacred of all her rights――that right which you would die to defend for
yourselves――trial by a jury of one’s peers.
(After referring to the law relating to woman’s inability to
make contracts; to own property and to control the property
of her children after her husband’s death (except by special
provision in his will); the inability of the wife to protect
the family property against the drunken husband; her inability
to prevent her children from being bound out for a term of
years against her express wishes,――Mrs. Stanton closes her
address in the following words:)
For all these, then, we speak. If to this long list you add all
the laboring women, who are loudly demanding remuneration for their
unending toil――those women who teach in our seminaries, academies and
common schools for a miserable pittance, the widows, who are taxed
without mercy; the unfortunate ones in our work-houses, poor-houses
and prisons; who are they that we do not now represent? But a small
class of fashionable butterflies, who, through the short summer days,
seek the sunshine and the flowers; but the cool breezes of autumn and
the hoary frosts of winter will soon chase all these away; then; they
too will need and seek protection, and through other lips demand, in
their turn, justice and equity at your hands.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
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FRANCES E. WILLARD.
THE ORGANIZER AND HEAD OF THE W. C. T. U.
WITH the latter years of this century a new power has made itself felt
in the world――the power of organized womanhood. Fifty years ago such
a body as the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union was not only unknown,
but impossible; and fifty years ago the woman who has done more than
any other to bring it into being was a bright, healthy child of five
years, living at Oberlin, Ohio, whither her father and mother had
moved from Monroe County, New York, where she was born in September,
1839. In 1846 there was another move westward, this time to Forest
Home, near Janesville, Wisconsin. Here Miss Willard spent twelve years,
in which she grew from a child to a woman. She had wise parents, who
gave free rein to the romping, freedom-loving girl, and let her grow
up “near to nature’s heart.” She could ride a horse or fight a prairie
fire “just as well as a man.”
After twelve years of life on Wisconsin prairies, the Willard family
moved to Evanston, on the shore of Lake Michigan, just north of
Chicago. Here Miss Willard began her work as a teacher, which she
pursued in different institutions until 1870, when she was chosen
president of Evanston College for Ladies. This place she filled until
1874, when she finally gave up teaching to enter upon a new and still
larger work.
In 1873 occurred in Ohio the memorable “Women’s Crusade” against the
rum shops. Bands of devoted women besieged the saloons for days and
weeks together, entreating the saloon-keepers to cease selling liquor,
praying and singing hymns incessantly in bar-rooms or on the sidewalks,
until the men who kept them agreed to close them up, and in many cases
emptied barrels of liquor into the gutters. This movement at once
arrested Miss Willard’s attention. She saw in it the germ of a mighty
power for good. She resigned her position as president of the college
at Evanston, and threw all her energies into the anti-liquor movement.
With her customary thoroughness she entered upon a systematic study
of the subject of intemperance and the sale of liquor, and of the
different measures which had been undertaken to abate this mighty evil.
She sought the counsel of Neal Dow and other leaders in the temperance
cause. She joined in the crusade against liquor-selling in Pittsburgh,
kneeling in prayer on the sawdust-covered floors of the saloons, and
leading the host in singing “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” and “Rock of
Ages,” in strains which awed and melted the hearts of the multitude
thronging the streets. The result of her work was a determination to
combine in one mighty organization the many separate bands of women
temperance workers which had sprung up over the country; and this was
achieved in the autumn of 1874, in the organization at Cleveland of
that wonderful body, the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
The resolution which was adopted at that meeting, written by Miss
Willard herself, beautifully expresses the spirit in which they
entered upon the work. It read as follows:――
“_Resolved_, That, recognizing that our cause is and will be
contested by mighty, determined, and relentless forces, we will,
trusting in Him who is the Prince of Peace, meet argument with
argument, misjudgment with patience, denunciation with kindness,
and all our difficulties and dangers with prayer.”
From that time Miss Willard’s life is the history of the Woman’s
Christian Temperance Union. Like the “handful of corn in the tops of
the mountains,” all over this and in other lands it has taken root
and grown until the fruit does indeed “shake like Lebanon.” In almost
every corner of the United States is a subordinate organization of
some sort, a local union, a children’s band, a young woman’s circle,
or perhaps all of these. It has built the great “Temperance Temple,”
one of the largest of the immense business buildings in Chicago. It
has organized a large publishing business, from whose busy presses
temperance literature is constantly being circulated in all parts of
the country. It has by its political power made and unmade governors,
senators, and representatives; and it has done much to hasten the time
when women shall take an equal share in the government of church and
state. In all this work the head and guiding spirit has been Frances
E. Willard.
Overwork has of late somewhat impaired her health, and made travel
and rest abroad necessary. But in whatever corner of the world she may
dwell, there is always a warm corner kept for her in the many thousand
hearts and homes that have been cheered and brightened by her work
“for God and home and native land.”
Miss Willard’s friend and co-worker, Hannah Whitall Smith, says of
her: “Miss Willard has been to me the embodiment of all that is lovely
and good and womanly and strong and noble and tender in human nature.
She has done more to enlarge our sympathies, widen our outlook, and
develop our gifts, than any man or any other woman of our time.”
* * * * *
HOME PROTECTION.
(FROM AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PHILADELPHIA, 1876.)
LONGER ago than I shall tell, my father returned one night to the
far-off Wisconsin home where I was reared, and sitting by my mother’s
chair, with a child’s attentive ear I listened to their words. He
told us of the news that day had brought about Neal Dow, and the great
fight for Prohibition down in Maine, and then he said: “I wonder if
poor, rum-cursed Wisconsin will ever get a law like that?” And mother
rocked awhile in silence, in the dear old chair I love, and then she
gently said: “Yes, Josiah, there’ll be such a law all over the land
some day, when women vote.”
My father had never heard her say as much before. He was a great
conservative; so he looked tremendously astonished, and replied, in
his keen, sarcastic voice: “And pray, how will you arrange it so that
women shall vote?” Mother’s chair went to and fro a little faster for
a minute, and then, looking not into his face, but into the flickering
flames of the grate, she slowly answered: “Well, I say to you, as
the Apostle Paul said to his jailor: ‘You have put us into prison,
we being Romans, and you must come and take us out.’”
That was a seed-thought in a girl’s brain and heart. Years passed on,
in which nothing more was said upon this dangerous theme. My brother
grew to manhood, and soon after he was twenty-one years old he went
with father to vote. Standing by the window, a girl of sixteen years,
a girl of simple, homely fancies, not at all strong-minded, and
altogether ignorant of the world, I looked out as they drove away, my
father and brother, and as I looked I felt a strange ache in my heart,
and tears sprang to my eyes. Turning to my sister Mary, who stood
beside me, I saw that the dear little innocent seemed wonderfully
sober, too. I said, “Don’t you wish that we could go with them when
we are old enough? Don’t we love our country just as well as they do?”
and her little frightened voice piped out: “Yes, of course we ought.
Don’t I know that; but you mustn’t tell a soul――not mother, even; we
should be called strong-minded.”
In all the years since then, I have kept those things, and many others
like them, and pondered them in my heart; but two years of struggle in
this temperance reform have shown me, as they have ten thousand other
women, so clearly and so impressively, my duty, that I have passed the
Rubicon of Silence, and am ready for any battle that shall be involved
in this honest declaration of the faith that is within me. “Fight
behind masked batteries a little longer,” whisper good friends and
true. So I have been fighting hitherto; but it is a style of warfare
altogether foreign to my temperament and mode of life. Reared on the
prairies, I seemed pre-determined to join the ♦cavalry force in this
great spiritual war, and I must tilt a free lance henceforth on the
splendid battlefield of this reform; where the earth shall soon be
shaken by the onset of contending hosts, where legions of valiant
soldiers are deploying; where to the grand encounter marches to-day
a great army, gentle of mien and mild of utterance, but with hearts
for any fate; where there are trumpets and bugles calling strong souls
onward to a victory which Heaven might envy, and
“Where, behind the dim Unknown,
Standeth GOD within the shadow,
Keeping watch above His own.”
♦ “calvary” replaced with “cavalry”
I thought that women ought to have the ballot as I paid the
hard-earned taxes upon my mother’s cottage home――but I never said as
much――somehow the motive did not command my heart. For my own sake,
I had not courage, but I have for thy sake, dear native land, for
thy necessity is as much greater than mine as thy transcendant hope
is greater than the personal interest of thy humble child. For love
of you, heart-broken wives, whose tremulous lips have blessed me;
for love of you, sweet mothers, who in the cradle’s shadow kneel this
night, beside your infant sons; and you, sorrowful little children,
who listen at this hour, with faces strangely old, for him whose
footsteps frighten you; for love of you, have I thus spoken.
Ah, it is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune.
Out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved, with
fearful odds against them, with snares that men have legalized and
set for them on every hand. Beyond the arms that held them long,
their boys have gone forever. Oh! by the danger they have dared; by
the hours of patient watching over beds where helpless children lay;
by the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted from their gentle lips
to Heaven, I charge you give them power to protect, along life’s
treacherous highway, those whom they have so loved. Let it no longer
be that they must sit back among the shadows, hopelessly mourning over
their strong staff broken, and their beautiful rod; but when the sons
they love shall go forth to life’s battle, still let their mothers
walk beside them, sweet and serious, and clad in the garments of power.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
LYDIA MARIA CHILD.
AUTHOR OF “AN APPEAL IN BEHALF OF THAT CLASS OF AMERICANS
CALLED AFRICANS.”
NEXT to Harriet Beecher Stowe, no woman, perhaps, has contributed
more to the liberation of the black man than has the subject of
this sketch. It was Lydia Maria Child who wrote the famous reply
to Governor Wise, of Virginia, after the hanging of John Brown,
and it was to her that the wife of the Senator from Massachusetts,
the author of the “Fugitive Slave Law,” wrote, threatening her with
future damnation for her activity against the operation of that law.
Mrs. Child’s reply to Governor Wise, of Virginia, and Mrs. Mason
was published with their letters in pamphlet form, and three hundred
thousand copies were quickly distributed throughout the North. On the
altars of how many thousand hearts they kindled the fires of universal
liberty of person can never be known; but it is certain that after the
appearance of this pamphlet, and Mrs. Stowe’s immortal book, the fate
of slavery in the United States was sealed, and the rising star of the
black man’s liberty and the setting sun of the accursed institution
simultaneously rose and fell.
But Lydia M. Child was more than an abolitionist. She was one of the
most prolific and varied writers of the second and third quarters
of the nineteenth century, as subsequent reference to her books and
letters will show.
Lydia M. Francis was born in Medford, Massachusetts, February 11,
1802, and was the daughter of David Francis. Her early education was
received at the hands of an odd, old woman and her brother, Converse
Francis, afterwards Professor of Theology in Harvard College. After
leaving private instruction, she studied in public schools, and
subsequently spent a year in the seminary. From 1814 to 1820 she
lived with her married sister in Maine. At the age of eighteen she
returned to Watertown, Massachusetts, to live with her brother.
He discovered her literary ability and encouraged her to study and
write. In 1823 “Hobomok,” her first story, was published. This proved
to be successful, and she issued another book, under the title of
“Rebels,” which was also well received. She then brought out, in rapid
succession, “The Mother’s Book,” “The Girl’s Book,” “The History of
Women,” and “The Frugal Housewife.” The first passed through twelve
English and one German editions, while the last reached thirty-five
editions. In 1826 she began to write for children, and published
her “Juvenile Miscellanies.” In 1828 she became the wife of David
Lee Child, a lawyer, and removed to Boston, Massachusetts, where
they settled. In 1831 both wife and husband became interested in the
then new “Anti-Slavery Movement.” Mr. Child became the leader of the
Anti-Slavery Party; and, in 1833, Mrs. Child published her famous
book, entitled “An Appeal in Behalf of that Class of Americans Called
Africans.” When this work appeared, Dr. Channing, it is said, was so
delighted with it that he at once walked from Boston to Roxbury to see
the author, though a stranger to him, and thank her for it. This was
nearly twenty years before “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared, and, so far
as the writer is aware, was the first book ever published――in America
at least――opposing the institution of slavery.
There were at this time in the North very few people who were openly
opposed to slavery, and the appearance of the book cut Mrs. Child
loose from the friends of her youth. Both social and literary circles,
which had formerly welcomed her, now shut their doors against her
entrance. She was at this time editing a magazine, which had a large
subscription, and her books were selling well. Suddenly, the sale of
her books fell off, subscriptions were withdrawn from her paper, and
her life became one of ostracized isolation and a battle for existence.
The effect of this, was, however, to stimulate rather than intimidate
her zeal in the cause which she espoused. Through it all she bore her
trouble with the patience and courage worthy of a heroine, and in the
midst of her disappointment and labors found time to produce the “Life
of Madame Roland” and “Baroness de Staël,” and also her Greek romance
“Philothea.” At the same time, with her husband, she editorially
supervised the “Anti-Slavery Standard,” in which was published those
admirable “Letters from New York,” and, during the same troublous
times, prepared her three-volumed work on “The Progress of Religious
Ideas,” which evinces a depth of study and inquiry into the history of
various religions from the most ancient Hindoo records to recent times
that perhaps no woman in more modern times has approached. In 1840
Mr. and Mrs. Child removed to New York City, where they resided until
1844, when they removed to Wayland, Massachusetts, where she continued
to reside for the next thirty-six years of her life, dying there
October 20, 1880, in the seventy-eighth year of her age. She lived
to see a reversal of the opinions that greeted her first plea for
the personal liberty of all mankind, and became once more the honored
centre of a wide circle of influential friends.
The books of Mrs. Child are numerous. We mention beside those referred
to above “Flowers for Children,” three volumes (1844–1846); “Fact and
Fiction” (1846); “The Power of Kindness” (1851); “A True Life of Isaac
P. Hopper” (1853); “Autumnal Leaves” (1856); “Looking Toward Sunset”
(1864); “The Freedman’s Book” (1865); “Maria” (1867); and “Aspirations
of the World” (1878), which was the last work of the long and busy
life of the grand, old woman――issued just three years before her
death. In 1882, two years after her demise, a volume of her letters
was published with an introduction by the Anti-Slavery poet, Whittier,
and an appendix by the Anti-Slavery orator, Wendell Phillips.
* * * * *
A LITTLE WAIF.
(FROM “LETTERS FROM NEW YORK.”)
THE other day I went forth for exercise merely, without other hope
of enjoyment than a farewell to the setting sun, on the now deserted
Battery, and a fresh kiss from the breezes of the sea, ere they passed
through the polluted city, bearing healing on their wings. I had not
gone far, when I met a little ragged urchin, about four years old,
with a heap of newspapers, “more big than he could carry,” under
his little arm, and another clenched in his small red fist. The
sweet voice of childhood was prematurely cracked into shrillness by
screaming street cries, at the top of his lungs, and he looked blue,
cold and disconsolate. May the angels guard him! How I wanted to warm
him in my heart.
I stood looking after him as he went shivering along. Imagination
followed him to the miserable cellar where he probably slept on dirty
straw. I saw him flogged after his day of cheerless toil, because he
had failed to bring home pence enough for his parents’ grog; I saw
wicked ones come muttering, and beckoning between his young soul and
heaven; they tempted him to steal to avoid the dreaded beating. I
saw him years after, bewildered and frightened, in the police-office
surrounded by hard faces. Their law-jargon conveyed no meaning to
his ear, awakened no slumbering moral sense, taught him no clear
distinction between right and wrong; but from their cold, harsh tones,
and heartless merriment, he drew the inference that they were enemies;
and as such he hated them. At that moment, one tone like a mother’s
voice might have wholly changed his earthly destiny; one kind word of
friendly counsel might have saved him――as if an angel, standing in the
genial sunlight, had thrown to him one end of a garland, and gently
diminishing the distance between them, had drawn him safely out of
the deep and tangled labyrinth, where false echoes and winding paths
conspired to make him lose his way. But watchmen and constables were
around him, and they have small fellowship with angels. The strong
impulses that might have become overwhelming love for his race are
perverted to the bitterest hatred. He tries the universal resort of
weakness against force; if they are too strong for _him_, he will
be too cunning for _them_. _Their_ cunning is roused to detect _his_
cunning; and thus the gallows-game is played, with interludes of
damnable merriment from police reports, whereat the heedless multitude
laugh; while angels weep over the slow murder of a human soul. God
grant the little shivering carrier-boy a brighter destiny than I have
foreseen for him.
* * * * *
TO WHITTIER ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY.
I THANK thee, friend, for words of cheer,
That made the path of duty clear,
When thou and I were young and strong
To wrestle with a mighty wrong.
And now, when lengthening shadows come,
And this world’s work is nearly done,
I thank thee for thy genial ray
That prophesies a brighter day
When we can work, with strength renewed,
In clearer light, for surer good.
God bless thee, friend, and give thee peace,
Till thy fervent spirit finds release;
And may we meet, in worlds afar,
My Morning and my Evening Star!
* * * * *
POLITENESS.
IN politeness, as in many other things connected with the formation
of character, people in general begin outside, when they should begin
inside; instead of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to
form the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust the heart to
chance influences. The _golden rule_ contains the very life and soul
of politeness. Children may be taught to make a graceful courtesy or
a gentlemanly bow; but unless they have likewise been taught to abhor
what is selfish, and always prefer another’s comfort and pleasure
to their own, their politeness will be entirely artificial, and used
only when it is their interest to use it. On the other hand, a truly
benevolent, kind-hearted person will always be distinguished for
what is called native politeness, though entirely ignorant of the
conventional forms of society.
* * * * *
FLOWERS.
HOW the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed
round the cradle, the marriage-altar, and the tomb. The Persian in the
far East delights in their perfume, and writes his love in nosegays;
while the Indian child of the far West clasps his hands with glee,
as he gathers the abundant blossoms,――the illuminated scripture of
the prairies. The Cupid of the ancient Hindoos tipped his arrows
with flowers; and orange-buds are the bridal crown with us, a nation
of yesterday. Flowers garlanded the Grecian altar, and they hang in
votive wreaths before the Christian shrine.
All these are appropriate uses. Flowers should deck the brow of the
youthful bride; for they are in themselves a lovely type of marriage.
They should twine round the tomb; for their perpetually renewed beauty
is a symbol of the resurrection. They should festoon the altar; for
their fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worship before
the Most High.
* * * * *
UNSELFISHNESS.
(From: “Letters from New York.”)
I FOUND the Battery unoccupied, save by children, whom the weather
made as merry as birds. Every thing seemed moving to the vernal tune
of
“Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair,
And Greta woods are green.”――_Scott’s Rokeby._
To one who was chasing her hoop, I said, smiling, “You are a nice
little girl.” She stopped, looked up in my face, so rosy and happy,
and, laying her hand on her brother’s shoulder, exclaimed, earnestly,
“And _he_ is a nice little boy, too!” It was a simple, childlike
act, but it brought a warm gush into my heart. Blessings on all
unselfishness! on all that leads us in love to prefer one another!
Here lies the secret of universal harmony; this is the diapason which
would bring us all into tune. Only by losing ourselves can we find
ourselves. How clearly does the divine voice within us proclaim this,
by the hymn of joy it sings, whenever we witness an unselfish deed
or hear an unselfish thought. Blessings on that loving little one!
She made the city seem a garden to me. I kissed my hand to her, as
I turned off in quest of the Brooklyn ferry. The sparkling waters
swarmed with boats, some of which had taken a big ship by the hand,
and were leading her out to sea, as the prattle of childhood often
guides wisdom into the deepest and broadest thought.
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.
IN 1861, a young girl of nineteen years, sprang like a Minerva fully
armed into the moral and political arena, and for a time stirred the
hearts of those who fell under her influence, as few other speakers
have done. From the day she first appeared before the public, she
feared not to utter the boldest truths and most scathing rebukes of
sin in high places. Whether the principle for which she strove is
right or wrong the world of course will judge for itself, but that
this woman was honest, logical, sincere, and eloquent in advocacy, no
one who ever listened to her earnest appeals or read what she wrote
could for one moment doubt.
Anna E. Dickinson was born October 28, 1842, in the city of
Philadelphia. When she was two years old her father died, leaving
the family in straightened circumstances. Her parents belonged to
the Society of Friends, and Anna was sent in her early years to the
Friends’ Free School. At the same time she had little ways of her own
in earning money, which she carefully husbanded and spent for books.
When fourteen years old she made her appearance before the public by
writing an article on slavery, which was published in “The Liberator,”
and in 1857 made her debut as a public speaker by replying to a man
who had delivered a tirade against women. From that time she spoke
frequently on the subjects of slavery and temperance. In 1859 and 1860
she taught a country school, and in 1861 became an employee in the
Philadelphia Mint, from which position she was soon dismissed, because
in a speech in West Chester she declared the battle of Ball’s Bluff
had been lost through the treason of General McClellan. Thus cast
upon the world she entered immediately the lecture platform. William
Lloyd Garrison heard one of her addresses and named her “The Girl
Orator.” He invited her to speak in Boston, Massachusetts, where she
delivered a famous address on the “National Crisis” in Music Hall.
From there she entered upon a lecture tour, speaking in New Hampshire,
Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania, and until the close of the
war devoted her time to lecturing. In Washington, D. C., in 1864, the
proceeds of one of her lectures, amounting to a thousand dollars, she
devoted to the Freedmen’s Relief Society. She was frequently called
to the hospitals and the camps, where she addressed the soldiers.
After the war she took up the cudgel in favor of woman’s suffrage.
She visited Utah to inquire into the condition of women there, and
returning delivered her famous lecture on the “Whited Sepulchres.”
Other prominent lectures were entitled “Demagogues and Workingmen,”
“Joan of Arc,” “Between Us Be Truth,” “Platform and Stage.”
Miss Dickinson made the mistake of her life when she deserted the
platform for the stage in 1877. She wrote a play entitled “A Crown
of Thorns,” in which she attempted to “star.” She next assayed
Shakespearian tragic roles, including “Hamlet” and others, and
afterwards gave dramatic readings. In all of these attempts she was
out of her element, therefore, unsuccessful, and returned to the
lecture platform, but continued to write plays. The only one of
these, however, which was even moderately popular with the masses was
entitled “The American Girl,” played by Fanny Davenport. The noted
actor, John McCullough, was preparing to produce her “Aurelian,” when
the failure of his powers came and it was never put upon the stage.
Miss Dickinson also wrote a number of books. Among them we mention the
novel “What Answer;” “A Paying Investment,” and “A Ragged Register of
People, Places and Opinions,” the latter being a sort of diary, and
perhaps the most valuable of the lot.
The last ten years added other mistakes and misfortunes which have
tended to detract from the well-earned fame of her earlier life. These
difficulties began with a suit brought against the Republican managers
in 1888 for services rendered in the Harrison presidential campaign.
Following this came family difficulties. Her health failed and she was
placed by her relatives for a time in an insane asylum, from which she
was eventually released, but was involved in further law-suits. Let
it be said to her credit, however, that while she acquired an ample
fortune from her lectures, she has given away the bulk of it to all
kinds of charities, and it is from the money that she has made and
her liberal disposition to dispose of it for the benefit of humanity,
rather than to her relatives, which has involved her in much of the
family trouble.
As an orator Miss Dickinson was a woman of singular powers. Together
with a most excellent judgment, and a keen, analytic mind, enabling
her to dissect theories and motives, she was a mistress of sarcasm,
pathos and wit, and possessed that rare eloquence and dramatic fervor
which go to make the great orator, and which can be understood only by
those who have heard her on the platform. In her work she was always
unique, and while as a whole her books and plays were not popular
successes they contain passages of undisputed marks of genius.
* * * * *
WHY COLORED MEN SHOULD ENLIST IN THE ARMY.
Extract from speech delivered at a mass meeting held in
Philadelphia, July 6, 1863, for the promotion of enlistment of
colored men in the Union Army. The efficiency of colored troops
having been demonstrated by recent battles in the Southwest,
several hundred gentlemen of Philadelphia addressed a memorial
to the Secretary of War, asking authority to raise three
regiments for three years of the war, from among the colored
population of Pennsylvania. Permission to this effect was
promptly given. Accordingly a mass meeting was called to arouse
the colored people to prompt action. Judge Kelly and Frederick
Douglass spoke at the same meeting, but Miss Dickinson’s
appeal was the oratorical feature of the occasion. We quote
the extract below as a specimen of her eloquence.
TRUE, through the past we have advocated the use of the black man. For
what end? To save ourselves. We wanted them as shields, as barriers,
as walls of defence. We would not even say to them, fight _beside_ us.
We would put them in the _front_; their brains contracted, their souls
dwarfed, their manhood stunted; mass them together; let them die! That
will cover and protect us. Now we hear the voice of the people, solemn
and sorrowful, saying, “We have wronged you enough; you have suffered
enough; we ask no more at your hands; we stand aside, and let you
fight for your own manhood, your future, your race.” (Applause.)
Anglo-Africans, we need you; yet it is not because of this need that I
ask you to go into the ranks of the regiments forming to fight in this
war. My cheeks would crimson with shame, while my lips put the request
that could be answered, “Your soldiers? why don’t you give us the same
bounty, and the same pay as the rest?” I have no reply to _that_.
(Sensation.)
But for yourselves; because, after ages of watching and agony, your
day is breaking; because your hour is come; because you hold the
hammer which, upheld or falling, decides your destiny for woe or
weal; because you have reached the point from which you must sink,
generation after generation, century after century, into deeper depths,
into more absolute degradation; or mount to the heights of glory and
fame.
The cause needs you. This is not our war, not a war for territory; not
a war for martial power, for mere victory; it is a war of the races,
of the ages; the stars and stripes is the people’s flag of the world;
the world must be gathered under its folds, the black man beside the
white. (Cheers and applause.)
Thirteen dollars a month and bounty are good; liberty is better.
Ten dollars a month and no bounty are bad; slavery is worse. The two
alternatives are put before you; you make your own future. The to
be will, in a little while, do you justice. Soldiers will be proud
to welcome as comrades, as brothers, the black men of Port Hudson
and Milliken’s Bend. Congress, next winter, will look out through
the fog and mist of Washington, and will see how, when Pennsylvania
was invaded and Philadelphia threatened, while white men haggled over
bounty and double pay to defend their own city, their own homes, with
the tread of armed rebels almost heard in their streets; black men,
without bounty, without pay, without rights or the promise of any,
rushed to the ♦beleaguered capital, and were first in their offers
of life or of death. (Cheers and applause.) Congress will say, “These
men are soldiers; we will pay them as such; these men are marvels
of loyalty, self-sacrifice, courage; we will give them a chance of
promotion.” History will write, “Behold the unselfish heroes; the
_eager_ martyrs of this war.” (Applause.) You hesitate because you
have not all. Your brothers and sisters of the South cry out, “Come
to help us, we have nothing.” Father! you hesitate to send your boy
to death; the slave father turns his face of dumb entreaty to you,
to save his boy from the death in life; the bondage that crushes soul
and body together. Shall your son go to his aid? Mother! you look with
pride at the young manly face and figure, growing and strengthening
beside you! he is yours; your own. God gave him to you. From the
lacerated hearts, the wrung souls of other mothers, comes the wail,
“My child, my child; give me back my child!” The slave-master heeds
not; the government is tardy; mother! the prayer comes to _you_; will
you falter?
♦ “beleagured” replaced with “beleaguered”
Young man, rejoicing in the hope, the courage, the will, the thews and
muscles of young manhood――the red glare of this war falls on the faces
and figures of other young men, distorted with suffering, writhing in
agony, wrenching their manacles and chains――shouting with despairing
voices to you for help――shall it be withheld? (Cries of No! No!)
The slave will be freed――with or without you. The conscience and heart
of the people have decreed that. (Applause.) Xerxes scourging the
Hellespont, Canute commanding the waves to roll back, are but types
of that folly which stands up and says to this majestic wave of public
opinion, “Thus far.” The black man will be a citizen, only by stamping
his right to it in his blood. Now or never! You have not homes!――gain
them. You have not liberty!――gain it. You have not a flag!――gain it.
You have not a country!――be written down in history as the race who
made one for themselves, and saved one for another. (Immense cheering.)
MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES AND CHOICE GEMS
Illustration: (‡ decoration)
MISCELLANEOUS MASTERPIECES,
FROM VARIOUS AMERICAN AND ANONYMOUS AUTHORS,
CHOSEN WITH A VIEW TO THEIR GENERAL POPULARITY OR ADAPTATION
FOR READING AND RECITATION
* * * * *
HOME, SWEET HOME.
JOHN HOWARD PAYNE, the author of the following beautiful and
perhaps most widely known song in the world, was born in New
York, on the ninth of June, 1792. His remarkable career as an
actor and dramatist belongs to the history of the stage. As a
poet he will be known only by a single song. He died at Tunis,
in 1852, where he was for some time Consul for the United
States.
MID pleasures and palaces though we may roam,
Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home!
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,
Which, seek through the world, is ne’er met with elsewhere.
Home! home, sweet home!
There’s no place like home!
An exile from home, splendor dazzles in vain,
Oh, give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing gayly that come at my call:
Give me these, and the peace of mind, dearer than all.
Home! sweet, sweet home!
There’s no place like home.
* * * * *
THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER.
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY, the author of the following patriotic
poem, was born in Frederick County, Maryland, August 1, 1779.
He was a very able and eloquent lawyer, and one of the most
respectable gentlemen whose lives have ever adorned American
society. He was a man of much literary cultivation and taste,
and his religious poems are not without merit. He died very
suddenly at Baltimore on January 11, 1843. In 1814, when
the British fleet was at the mouth of the Potomac River, and
intended to attack Baltimore, Mr. Key and Mr. Skinner were sent
in a vessel with a flag of truce to obtain the release of some
prisoners the English had taken in their expedition against
Washington. They did not succeed, and were told that they would
be detained till after the attack had been made on Baltimore.
Accordingly, they went in their own vessel, strongly guarded,
with the British fleet, and when they came within sight of Fort
McHenry, a short distance below the city, they could see the
American flag flying on the ramparts. As the day closed in, the
bombardment of the fort commenced, and Mr. Key and Mr. Skinner
remained on deck all night, watching with deep anxiety every
shell that was fired. While the bombardment continued, it was
sufficient proof that the fort had not surrendered. It suddenly
ceased some time before day; but as they had no communication
with any of the enemy’s ships, they did not know whether
the fort had surrendered and their homes and friends were in
danger, or the attack upon it had been abandoned. They paced
the deck the rest of the night in painful suspense, watching
with intense anxiety for the return of day. At length the light
came, and they saw that “our flag was still there,” and soon
they were informed that the attack had failed. In the fervor
of the moment, Mr. Key took an old letter from his pocket, and
on its back wrote the most of this celebrated song, finishing
it as soon as he reached Baltimore. He showed it to his friend
Judge Nicholson, who was so pleased with it that he placed it
at once in the hands of the printer, and in an hour after it
was all over the city, and hailed with enthusiasm, and took
its place at once as a national song. Thus, this patriotic,
impassioned ode became forever associated with the “Stars and
Stripes.”
O! SAY, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming;
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous
fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there;
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep
As it fitfully blows, half-conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam;
Its full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
’Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is the band who so vauntingly swore,
Mid the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country they’d leave us no more?
Their blood hath wash’d out their foul footsteps’ pollution;
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
O! thus be it ever, when freeman shall stand
Between our loved home and the war’s desolation;
Bless’d with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be our motto, “In GOD is our trust,”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN FLAG.
BY JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE.
Born in New York, August 17, 1795; died September 21, 1820.
WHEN Freedom from her mountain height,
Unfurled her standard to the air,
She tore the azure robe of night,
And set the stars of glory there!
She mingled with its gorgeous dyes
The milky baldric of the skies,
And striped its pure celestial white
With streakings of the morning light;
Then, from his mansion in the sun,
She called her eagle-bearer down,
And gave into his mighty hand
The symbol of her chosen land!
Majestic monarch of the cloud!
Who rear’st aloft thy regal form,
To hear the tempest trumping loud,
And see the lightning lances driven,
When strive the warriors of the storm,
And rolls the thunder-drum of heaven――
Child of the sun! to thee ’tis given
To guard the banner of the free,
To hover in the sulphur smoke,
To ward away the battle-stroke,
And bid its blendings shine afar,
Like rainbows on the cloud of war,
The harbingers of victory!
Flag of the brave! thy folds shall fly,
The sign of hope and triumph high!
When speaks the signal-trumpet tone,
And the long line comes gleaming on,
Ere yet the life-blood, warm and wet,
Has dimmed the glistening bayonet,
Each soldier’s eye shall brightly turn
To where thy sky-born glories burn,
And, as his springing steps advance,
Catch war and vengeance from the glance.
And when the cannon-mouthings loud
Heave in wild wreaths the battle shroud,
And gory sabres rise and fall
Like shoots of flame on midnight’s pall,
Then shall thy meteor glances glow,
And cowering foes shall shrink beneath
Each gallant arm that strikes below
That lovely messenger of death.
Flag of the seas! on ocean wave
Thy stars shall glitter o’er the brave
When death, careering on the gale,
Sweeps darkly round the bellied sail,
And frighted waves rush wildly back
Before the broadside’s reeling rack,
Each dying wanderer of the sea
Shall look at once to heaven and thee,
And smile to see thy splendors fly
In triumph o’er his closing eye.
Flag of the free heart’s hope and home,
By angel hands to valor given!
Thy stars have lit the welkin dome,
And all thy hues were born in heaven.
Forever float that standard sheet!
Where breathes the foe but falls before us!
With freedom’s soil beneath our feet,
And freedom’s banner streaming o’er us!
* * * * *
BLIND MAN AND THE ELEPHANT.
BY JOHN GODFREY SAXE.
Born in Vermont, June 2, 1816; died in Albany, N. Y., March 31,
1887.
IT was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant
(Though all of them were blind,)
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the elephant,
And, happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
“God bless me! but the elephant
Is very like a wall!”
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried: “Ho! what have we here
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me ’tis mighty clear
This wonder of an elephant
Is very like a spear!”
The Third approached the animal,
And, happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant
Is very like a snake!”
The Fourth reached out his eager hand,
And felt about the knee,
“What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain,” quoth he;
“Tis clear enough the elephant
Is very like a tree!”
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: “E’en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an elephant,
Is very like a fan!”
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than, seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
“I see,” quoth he, “the elephant
Is very like a rope!”
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
MORAL.
So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them has seen!
* * * * *
HAIL, COLUMBIA!
BY JOSEPH HOPKINSON.
Born 1770; died 1842. The following interesting story is told
concerning the writing of this now famous patriotic song.
“It was written in the summer of 1798, when war with France
was thought to be inevitable. Congress was then in session in
Philadelphia, deliberating upon that important subject, and
acts of hostility had actually taken place. The contest between
England and France was raging, and the people of the United
States were divided into parties for the one side or the other,
some thinking that policy and duty required us to espouse the
cause of republican France, as she was called; while others
were for connecting ourselves with England, under the belief
that she was the great conservative power of good principles
and safe government. The violation of our rights by both
belligerents was forcing us from the just and wise policy of
President WASHINGTON, which was to do equal justice to both,
to take part with neither, but to preserve a strict and honest
neutrality between them. The prospect of a rupture with France
was exceedingly offensive to the portion of the people who
espoused her cause; and the violence of the spirit of party
has never risen higher, I think not so high, in our country, as
it did at that time, upon that question. The theatre was then
open in our city. A young man belonging to it, whose talent
was as a singer, was about to take his benefit. I had known
him when he was at school. On this acquaintance, he called on
me one Saturday afternoon, his benefit being announced for the
following Monday. His prospects were very disheartening; but
he said that if he could get a patriotic song adapted to the
tune of the ‘President’s March’, he did not doubt of a full
house; that the poets of the theatrical corps had been trying
to accomplish it, but had not succeeded. I told him I would
try what I could do for him. He came the next afternoon, and
the song, such as it was, was ready for him. The object of
the author was to get up an _American spirit_, which should be
independent of and above the interests, passions, and policy
of both belligerents, and look and feel exclusively for our own
honor and rights. No allusion is made to France or England, or
the quarrel between them, or to the question which was most in
fault in their treatment of us. Of course the song found favor
with both parties, for both were Americans: at least, neither
could disavow the sentiments and feelings it inculcated. Such
is the history of this song, which has endured infinitely
beyond the expectation of the author, as it is beyond any merit
it can boast of, except that of being truly and exclusively
patriotic in its sentiments and spirit.”
HAIL, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoy’d the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;
Ever grateful for the prize;
Let its altar reach the skies.
Firm――united――let us be,
Rallying round our liberty;
As a band of brothers join’d,
Peace and safety we shall find.
Immortal patriots! rise once more;
Defend your rights, defend your shore;
Let no rude foe, with impious hand,
Let no rude foe with impious hand,
Invade the shrine where sacred lies
Of toil and blood the well-earn’d prize.
While offering peace sincere and just,
In Heaven we place a manly trust,
That truth and justice will prevail,
And every scheme of bondage fail.
Firm――united, etc.
Sound, sound the trump of Fame!
Let WASHINGTON’s great name
Ring through the world with loud applause,
Ring through the world with loud applause;
Let every clime to Freedom dear
Listen with a joyful ear.
With equal skill and godlike power,
He governs in the fearful hour
Of horrid war; or guides, with ease,
The happier times of honest peace.
Firm――united, etc.
Behold the chief who now commands,
Once more to serve his country stands,――
The rock on which the storm will beat,
The rock on which the storm will beat;
But, arm’d in virtue firm and true,
His hopes are fix’d on Heaven and you.
When Hope was sinking in dismay,
And glooms obscured Columbia’s day,
His steady mind, from changes free,
Resolved on death or liberty.
Firm――united, etc.
* * * * *
BETTY AND THE BEAR.
HUMOROUS.
IN a pioneer’s cabin out West, so they say,
A great big black grizzly trotted one day,
And seated himself on the hearth, and began
To lap the contents of a two-gallon pan
Of milk and potatoes,――an excellent meal,――
And then looked about to see what he could steal.
The lord of the mansion awoke from his sleep,
And, hearing a racket, he ventured to peep
Just out in the kitchen, to see what was there,
And was scared to behold a great grizzly bear.
So he screamed in alarm to his slumbering _frow_,
“Thar’s a bar in the kitchen as big’s a cow!”
“A what?” “Why, a bar!” “Well, murder him, then!”
“Yes, Betty, I will, if you’ll first venture in.”
So Betty leaped up, and the poker she seized,
While her man shut the door, and against it he squeezed.
As Betty then laid on the grizzly her blows,
Now on his forehead, and now on his nose,
Her man through the key-hole kept shouting within,
“Well done, my brave Betty, now hit him agin,
Now a rap on the ribs, now a knock on the snout,
Now poke with the poker, and poke his eyes out.”
So, with rapping and poking, poor Betty _alone_,
At last laid Sir Bruin as dead as a stone.
Now when the old man saw the bear was no more,
He ventured to poke his nose out of the door,
And there was the grizzly stretched on the floor.
Then off to the neighbors he hastened to tell
All the wonderful things that that morning befell;
And he published the marvelous story afar,
How “_me_ and my Betty jist slaughtered a bar!
O yes, come and see, all the neighbors hev sid it,
Come see what we did, ME and Betty, we did it.”
ANONYMOUS.
* * * * *
Illustration: Visit of Sᵗ Nicholas
BY CLEMENT C. MOORE.
Born in New York, July 15, 1779; died in Rhode Island, July 10,
1863.
TWAS the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of sugar-plums danced through their heads;
And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below;
When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer! and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”
Illustration: (‡ Fireplace with stockings)
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With a sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
Illustration: (‡ Santa with reindeer)
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face, and a little round belly
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump――a right jolly old elf――
And I laughed, when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye, and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to the sleigh, to the team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!”
Illustration: (‡ Santa getting into chimney)
* * * * *
WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE.
BY GEORGE P. MORRIS.
Born in Pennsylvania in 1802; died in 1864.
WOODMAN, spare that tree!
Touch not a single bough!
In youth it sheltered me,
And I’ll protect it now.
’Twas my forefather’s hand
That placed it near his cot;
There, woodman, let it stand,
Thy axe shall harm it not!
That old familiar tree,
Whose glory and renown
Are spread o’er land and sea,
And wouldst thou hew it down?
Woodman, forbear thy stroke!
Cut not its earth-bound ties;
O, spare that aged oak,
Now towering to the skies!
When but an idle boy
I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
Here too my sisters played.
My mother kissed me here;
My father pressed my hand――
Forgive this foolish tear,
But let that old oak stand!
My heart-strings round thee cling,
Close as thy bark, old friend!
Here shall the wild-bird sing,
And still thy branches bend.
Old tree! the storm still brave!
And, woodman, leave the spot;
While I’ve a hand to save,
Thy axe shall hurt it not.
* * * * *
SANCTITY OF TREATIES, 1796.
BY FISHER AMES.
An American Statesman and writer; born in Dedham, Massachusetts,
1758, and died July 4, 1808.
WE are either to execute this treaty or break our faith. To expatiate
on the value of public faith may pass with some men for declamation:
to such men I have nothing to say.
What is patriotism? Is it a narrow affection for a spot where a
man was born? Are the very clods where we tread entitled to this
ardent preference, because they are greener? No, sir; this is not
the character of the virtue. It soars higher for its object. It is
an extended self-love, mingling with all the enjoyments of life, and
twisting itself with the minutest filaments of the heart. It is thus
we obey the laws of society because they are the laws of virtue. In
their authority we see, not the array of force and terror, but the
venerable image of our country’s honor. Every good citizen makes that
honor his own, and cherishes it, not only as precious, but as sacred.
He is willing to risk his life in its defence, and is conscious that
he gains protection while he gives it.
What rights of a citizen will be deemed inviolable, when a State
renounces the principles that constitute their security? Or, if his
life should not be invaded, what would its enjoyments be, in a country
odious in the eye of strangers, and dishonored in his own? Could he
look with affection and veneration to such a country, as his parent?
The sense of having one would die within him; he would blush for his
patriotism, if he retained any,――and justly, for it would be a vice.
He would be a banished man in his native land.
I see no exception to the respect that is paid among nations to the
law of good faith. It is the philosophy of politics, the religion of
governments. It is observed by barbarians. A whiff of tobacco smoke
or a string of beads gives not merely binding force, but sanctity, to
treaties. Even in Algiers, a truce may be bought for money; but when
ratified, even Algiers is too wise, or too just, to disown and annul
its obligation.
* * * * *
THE BLOOM WAS ON THE ALDER AND THE TASSEL ON THE CORN.
BY DONN PIATT.
Born in Ohio in 1819.
I HEARD the bob-white whistle in the dewy breath of morn;
The bloom was on the alder and the tassel on the corn.
I stood with beating heart beside the babbling Mac-o-chee,
To see my love come down the glen to keep her tryst with me.
I saw her pace, with quiet grace, the shaded path along,
And pause to pluck a flower or hear the thrush’s song.
Denied by her proud father as a suitor to be seen,
She came to me, with loving trust, my gracious little queen.
Above my station, heaven knows, that gentle maiden shone,
For she was belle and wide beloved, and I a youth unknown.
The rich and great about her thronged, and sought on bended
knee
For love this gracious princess gave, with all her heart, to
me.
So like a startled fawn before my longing eyes she stood,
With all the freshness of a girl in flush of womanhood.
I trembled as I put my arm about her form divine,
And stammered, as in awkward speech, I begged her to be mine.
’Tis sweet to hear the pattering rain, that lulls a dim-lit
dream――
’Tis sweet to hear the song of birds, and sweet the rippling
stream;
’Tis sweet amid the mountain pines to hear the south winds
sigh,
More sweet than these and all beside was the loving, low reply.
The little hand I held in mine held all I had of life,
To mould its better destiny and soothe to sleep its strife.
’Tis said that angels watch o’er men, commissioned from above;
My angel walked with me on earth, and gave to me her love.
Ah! dearest wife, my heart is stirred, my eyes are dim with
tears――
I think upon the loving faith of all these bygone years,
For now we stand upon this spot, as in that dewy morn,
With the bloom upon the alder and the tassel on the corn.
* * * * *
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
BY J. Q. ADAMS.
John Quincy Adams, the sixth President of the United States,
was born at Quincy, Massachusetts, July 11, 1767. He died at
Washington in 1848.
THE Declaration of Independence! The interest which, in that paper,
has survived the occasion upon which it was issued,――the interest
which is of every age and every clime,――the interest which quickens
with the lapse of years, spreads as it grows old, and brightens as it
recedes,――is in the principles which it proclaims. It was the first
solemn declaration by a nation of the only legitimate foundation of
civil government. It was the corner-stone of a new fabric, destined
to cover the surface of the globe. It demolished, at a stroke, the
lawfulness of all governments founded upon conquest. It swept away all
the rubbish of accumulated centuries of servitude. It announced, in
practical form to the world, the transcendent truth of the inalienable
sovereignty of the people. It proved that the social compact was no
figment of the imagination, but a real, solid, and sacred bond of the
social union.
From the day of this declaration, the people of North America were no
longer the fragment of a distant empire, imploring justice and mercy
from an inexorable master, in another hemisphere. They were no longer
children, appealing in vain to the sympathies of a heartless mother;
no longer subjects, leaning upon the shattered columns of royal
promises, and invoking the faith of parchment to secure their rights.
They were a nation, asserting as of right, and maintained by war, its
own existence. A nation was born in a day.
“How many ages hence
Shall this, their lofty scene, be acted o’er,
In States unborn, and accents yet unknown?”
It will be acted o’er, fellow-citizens, but it can never be repeated.
It stands, and must forever stand, alone; a beacon on the summit
of the mountain, to which all the inhabitants of the earth may turn
their eyes, for a genial and saving light, till time shall be lost in
eternity and this globe itself dissolve, nor leave a wreck behind. It
stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men, a light
of salvation and redemption to the oppressed. So long as this planet
shall be inhabited by human beings, so long as man shall be of a
social nature, so long as government shall be necessary to the great
moral purposes of society, so long as it shall be abused to the
purposes of oppression,――so long shall this declaration hold out, to
the sovereign and to the subject, the extent and the boundaries of
their respective rights and duties, founded in the laws of nature and
of nature’s God.
* * * * *
WASHINGTON’S ADDRESS TO HIS SOLDIERS
BEFORE THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND, 1776.
BY GEORGE WASHINGTON.
Born 1732; died 1799.
THE time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether
Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any
property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are
to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of
wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate
of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and
conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only
the choice of a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We
have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or to die.
Our own, our country’s honor, calls upon us for a vigorous and manly
exertion; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous
to the whole world. Let us, then, rely on the goodness of our cause,
and the aid of the Supreme Being, in whose hands victory is, to
animate and encourage us to great and noble actions. The eyes of all
our countrymen are now upon us; and we shall have their blessings
and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from
the tyranny meditated against them. Let us, therefore, animate
and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a freeman
contending for liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish
mercenary on earth.
Liberty, property, life, and honor are all at stake. Upon your courage
and conduct rest the hopes of our bleeding and insulted country. Our
wives, children and parents, expect safety from us only; and they have
every reason to believe that Heaven will crown with success so just a
cause. The enemy will endeavor to intimidate by show and appearance;
but remember they have been repulsed on various occasions by a few
brave Americans. Their cause is bad,――their men are conscious of it;
and, if opposed with firmness and coolness on their first onset, with
our advantage of works, and knowledge of the ground, the victory is
most assuredly ours. Every good soldier will be silent and attentive,
wait for orders, and reserve his fire until he is sure of doing
execution.
* * * * *
THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE STATES.
BY ALEXANDER HAMILTON.
Born in Nevis, one of the West India Islands, in 1757; was
killed by Aaron Burr, in a duel, in 1804.
This speech was delivered in the New York Convention, on the
adoption of the Constitution, 1788.
MR. CHAIRMAN, it has been advanced as a principle, that no government
but a despotism can exist in a very extensive country. This is a
melancholy consideration, indeed. If it were founded on truth, we
ought to dismiss the idea of a republican government, even for the
State of New York. But the position has been misapprehended. Its
application relates only to democracies, where the body of the people
meet to transact business, and where representation is unknown. The
application is wrong in respect to all representative governments,
but especially in relation to a Confederacy of States, in which
the Supreme Legislature has only general powers, and the civil and
domestic concerns of the people are regulated by the laws of the
several States. I insist that it never can be the interest or desire
of the national Legislature to destroy the State Governments. The
blow aimed at the members must give a fatal wound to the head, and
the destruction of the States must be at once a political suicide.
But imagine, for a moment, that a political frenzy should seize
the government; suppose they should make the attempt. Certainly,
sir, it would be forever impracticable. This has been sufficiently
demonstrated by reason and experience. It has been proved that the
members of republics have been, and ever will be, stronger than the
head. Let us attend to one general historical example.
In the ancient feudal governments of Europe, there were, in the first
place, a monarch; subordinate to him, a body of nobles; and subject to
these, the vassals, or the whole body of the people. The authority of
the kings was limited, and that of the barons considerably independent.
The histories of the feudal wars exhibit little more than a series of
successful encroachments on the prerogatives of monarchy.
Here, sir, is one great proof of the superiority which the members
in limited governments possess over their head. As long as the
barons enjoyed the confidence and attachment of the people, they had
the strength of the country on their side, and were irresistible.
I may be told in some instances the barons were overcome; but how
did this happen? Sir, they took advantage of the depression of
the royal authority, and the establishment of their own power, to
oppress and tyrannize over their vassals. As commerce enlarged, and
wealth and civilization increased, the people began to feel their own
weight and consequence; they grew tired of their oppressions; united
their strength with that of their prince, and threw off the yoke of
aristocracy.
These very instances prove what I contend for. They prove that in
whatever direction the popular weight leans, the current of power
will flow; whatever the popular attachments be, there will rest
the political superiority. Sir, can it be supposed that the State
Governments will become the oppressors of the people? Will they
forfeit their affections? Will they combine to destroy the liberties
and happiness of their fellow-citizens, for the sole purpose of
involving themselves in ruin? God forbid! The idea, sir, is shocking!
It outrages every feeling of humanity and every dictate of common
sense!
* * * * *
WHAT SAVED THE UNION.
BY GENERAL U. S. GRANT.
Born 1822; died 1885. From a speech delivered on the Fourth of
July at Hamburg.
I SHARE with you in all the pleasure and gratitude which Americans so
far away should feel on this anniversary. But I must dissent from one
remark of our consul, to the effect that I saved the country during
the recent war. If our country could be saved or ruined by the efforts
of any one man, we should not have a country, and we should not now
be celebrating our Fourth of July. There are many men who would have
done far better than I did, under the circumstances in which I found
myself during the war. If I had never held command, if I had fallen,
if all our generals had fallen, there were ten thousand behind us who
would have done our work just as well, who would have followed the
contest to the end, and never surrendered the Union. Therefore, it is
a mistake and a reflection upon the people to attribute to me, or to
any number of us who hold high commands, the salvation of the Union.
We did our work as well as we could, so did hundreds of thousands of
others. We demand no credit for it, for we should have been unworthy
of our country and of the American name if we had not made every
sacrifice to save the Union. What saved the Union was the coming
forward of the young men of the nation. They came from their homes and
fields, as they did in the time of the Revolution, giving everything
to the country. To their devotion we owe the salvation of the Union.
The humblest soldier who carried a musket is entitled to as much
credit for the results of the war as those who were in command. So
long as our young men are animated by this spirit there will be no
fear for the Union.
* * * * *
THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON.
BY RUFUS CHOATE.
Born 1799; died 1858.
THE birthday of the “Father of his Country!” May it ever be freshly
remembered by American hearts! May it ever reawaken in them filial
veneration for his memory; ever rekindle the fires of patriotic regard
to the country he loved so well; to which he gave his youthful vigor
and his youthful energy, during the perilous period of the early
Indian warfare; to which he devoted his life, in the maturity of his
powers, in the field; to which again he offered the counsels of his
wisdom and his experience, as President of the Convention that framed
our Constitution; which he guided and directed while in the Chair
of State, and for which the last prayer of his earthly supplication
was offered up, when it came the moment for him so well, and so
grandly, and so calmly, to die. He was the first man of the time in
which he grew. His memory is first and most sacred in our love; and
ever hereafter, till the last drop of blood shall freeze in the last
American heart, his name shall be a spell of power and might.
Yes, gentlemen, there is one personal, one vast felicity, which no
man can share with him. It was the daily beauty and towering and
matchless glory of his life, which enabled him to create his country,
and, at the same time, secure an undying love and regard from the
whole American people. “The first in the hearts of his countrymen!”
Yes, first! He has our first and most fervent love. Undoubtedly there
were brave and wise and good men, before his day, in every colony. But
the American nation, as a nation, I do not reckon to have begun before
1774. And the first love of that young America was Washington. The
first word she lisped was his name. Her earliest breath spoke it. It
still is her proud ejaculation; and it will be the last gasp of her
expiring life!
Yes, others of our great men have been appreciated,――many admired by
all. But him we love. Him we all love. About and around him we call up
no dissentient and discordant and dissatisfied elements,――no sectional
prejudice nor bias,――no party, no creed, no dogma of politics. None
of these shall assail him. Yes, when the storm of battle blows darkest
and rages highest, the memory of Washington shall nerve every American
arm and cheer every American heart. It shall relume that promethean
fire, that sublime flame of patriotism, that devoted love of country,
which his words have commended, which his example has consecrated.
Well did Lord Byron write:
“Where may the wearied eye repose,
When gazing on the great,
Where neither guilty glory glows,
Nor despicable state?――
Yes――one――the first, the last, the best,
The Cincinnatus of the West,
Whom envy dared not hate,
Bequeathed the name of Washington,
To make man blush, there was but one.”
* * * * *
OH! WHY SHOULD THE SPIRIT OF MORTAL BE PROUD?
BY WILLIAM KNOX.
A favorite poem with Abraham Lincoln, who often repeated it to
his friends.
OH! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, and the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.
The infant a mother attended and loved;
The mother that infant’s affection who proved;
The husband that mother and infant who blessed,――
Each, all, are away to their dwellings of rest.
The maid on whose cheek, on whose brow, in whose eye,
Shone beauty and pleasure,――her triumphs are by;
And the memory of those who loved her and praised
Are alike from the minds of the living erased.
The hand of the king that the sceptre hath borne;
The brow of the priest that the mitre hath worn;
The eye of the sage, and the heart of the brave,
Are hidden and lost in the depth of the grave.
The peasant whose lot was to sow and to reap;
The herdsman who climbed with his goats up the steep;
The beggar who wandered in search of his bread,
Have faded away like the grass that we tread.
The saint who enjoyed the communion of heaven;
The sinner who dared to remain unforgiven;
The wise and the foolish, the guilty and just,
Have quietly mingled their bones in the dust.
So the multitude goes, like the flowers or the weed
That withers away to let others succeed;
So the multitude comes, even those we behold,
To repeat every tale that has often been told.
For we are the same our fathers have been;
We see the same sights our fathers have seen;
We drink the same stream, and view the same sun,
And run the same course our fathers have run.
The thoughts we are thinking our fathers would think;
From the death we are shrinking our fathers would shrink;
To the life we are clinging they also would cling;
But it speeds for us all, like a bird on the wing.
They loved, but the story we cannot unfold;
They scorned, but the heart of the haughty is cold;
They grieved, but no wail from their slumbers will come;
They joyed, but the tongue of their gladness is dumb.
They died, aye! they died; and we things that are now,
Who walk on the turf that lies over their brow,
Who make in their dwelling a transient abode,
Meet the things that they met on their pilgrimage road.
Yea! hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
We mingle together in sunshine and rain;
And the smiles and the tears, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
’Tis the wink of an eye, ’tis the draught of a breath,
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud,――
Oh! why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
* * * * *
COLUMBUS IN CHAINS.
BY MISS JEWSBURY.
AND this, O Spain! is thy return
For the new world I gave!
Chains!――this the recompense I earn!
The fetters of the slave!
Yon sun that sinketh ’neath the sea,
Rises on realms I found for thee.
I served thee as a son would serve;
I loved thee with a father’s love;
It ruled my thought, and strung my nerve,
To raise thee other lands above,
That thou, with all thy wealth, might be
The single empress of the sea.
For thee my form is bowed and worn
With midnight watches on the main;
For thee my soul hath calmly borne
Ills worse than sorrow, more than pain;
Through life, what’er my lot might be,
I lived, dared, suffered, but for thee.
My guerdon!――’Tis a furrowed brow,
Hair gray with grief, eyes dim with tears,
And blighted hope, and broken vow,
And poverty for coming years,
And hate, with malice in her train:――
What other guerdon?――View my chain!
Yet say not that I weep for gold!
No, let it be the robber’s spoil.――
Nor yet, that hate and malice bold
Decry my triumph and my toil.――
I weep but for Spain’s lasting shame;
I weep but for her blackened fame.
No more.――The sunlight leaves the sea;
Farewell, thou never-dying king!
Earth’s clouds and changes change not thee,
And thou――and thou,――grim, giant thing,
Cause of my glory and my pain,――
Farewell, unfathomable main!
* * * * *
THE BIVOUAC OF THE DEAD.
BY THEODORE O’HARA.
Born in Danville, Kentucky, 1820; died in Alabama, 1867. This
famous poem was written in honor of a comrade of the author, a
Kentucky soldier, who fell mortally wounded in the battle of
Buena Vista.
THE muffled drum’s sad roll has beat
The soldier’s last tattoo;
No more on life’s parade shall meet
The brave and fallen few.
On fame’s eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And glory guards with solemn round
The bivouac of the dead.
No rumor of the foe’s advance
Now swells upon the wind,
No troubled thought at midnight haunts
Of loved ones left behind;
No vision of the morrow’s strife
The warrior’s dream alarms,
No braying horn or screaming fife
At dawn shall call to arms.
Their shivered swords are red with rust,
Their plumed heads are bowed,
Their haughty banner trailed in dust
Is now their martial shroud――
And plenteous funeral tears have washed
The red stains from each brow,
And the proud forms by battle gashed
Are free from anguish now.
The neighboring troop, the flashing blade,
The bugle’s stirring blast,
The charge, the dreadful cannonade,
The din and shout are passed――
Nor war’s wild note, nor glory’s peal,
Shall thrill with fierce delight
Those breasts that never more may feel
The rapture of the fight.
Like the fierce northern hurricane
That sweeps his great plateau,
Flushed with the triumph yet to gain
Came down the serried foe――
Who heard the thunder of the fray
Break o’er the field beneath,
Knew well the watchword of that day
Was victory or death.
Full many a mother’s breath hath swept
O’er Angostura’s plain,
And long the pitying sky has wept
Above its moldered slain.
The raven’s scream, or eagle’s flight,
Or shepherd’s pensive lay,
Alone now wake each solemn height
That frowned o’er that dread fray.
Sons of the dark and bloody ground,
Ye must not slumber there,
Where stranger steps and tongues resound
Along the heedless air!
Your own proud land’s heroic soil
Shall be your fitter grave;
She claims from war its richest spoil――
The ashes of her brave.
Thus ’neath their parent turf they rest,
Far from the gory field,
Borne to a Spartan mother’s breast
On many a bloody shield.
The sunshine of their native sky
Shines sadly on them here,
And kindred eyes and hearts watch by
The heroes’ sepulchre.
Rest on, embalmed and sainted dead!
Dear as the blood ye gave;
No impious footstep here shall tread
The herbage of your grave!
Nor shall your glory be forgot
While fame her record keeps,
Or honor points the hallowed spot
Where valor proudly sleeps.
Yon marble minstrel’s voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanished year hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter’s blight,
Nor time’s remorseless doom,
Can dim one ray of holy light
That gilds your glorious tomb.
* * * * *
ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF GETTYSBURG CEMETERY.
BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Born 1809; died 1865. Mr. Lincoln always spoke briefly and
to the point. The following short oration, delivered at the
dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, is universally regarded
as one of the greatest masterpieces, of brief and simple
eloquence, in the realm of oratory.
FOURSCORE and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in
a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so
conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as
the final resting-place of those who here gave their lives that that
nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in
a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot
hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,
have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world
will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never
forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather
for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,
that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause
for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, and that
the nation shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the
government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not
perish from the earth.
* * * * *
MEMORY.
BY JAMES A. GARFIELD.
Born 1831; died 1881. The following poem was ♦written by the
late President Garfield during his senior year in Williams
College, Massachusetts, and was published in the Williams
“Quarterly” for March, 1856.
♦ “writen” replaced with “written”
TIS beauteous night; the stars look brightly down
Upon the earth, decked in her robe of snow.
No lights gleam at the windows, save my own,
Which gives its cheer to midnight and to me.
And now with noiseless step, sweet memory comes
And leads me gently through her twilight realms.
What poet’s tuneful lyre has ever sung,
Or delicatest pencil e’er portrayed
The enchanted, shadowy land where memory dwells;
It has its valleys, cheerless, lone, and drear,
Dark-shaded by the mournful cypress tree;
And yet its sunlit mountain-tops are bathed
In heaven’s own blue. Upon its craggy cliffs,
Robed in the dreamy light of distant years,
Are clustered joys serene of other days.
Upon its gently sloping hillsides bend
The weeping willows o’er the sacred dust
Of dear departed ones; yet in that land,
Where’er our footsteps fall upon the shore,
They that were sleeping rise from out the dust
Of death’s long, silent years, and round us stand
As erst they did before the prison tomb
Received their clay within its voiceless halls.
The heavens that bend above that land are hung
With clouds of various hues. Some dark and chill,
Surcharged with sorrow, cast their sombre shade
Upon the sunny, joyous land below.
Others are floating through the dreamy air,
White as the falling snow, their margins tinged
With gold and crimson hues; their shadows fall
Upon the flowery meads and sunny slopes,
Soft as the shadow of an angel’s wing.
When the rough battle of the day is done,
And evening’s peace falls gently on the heart,
I bound away, across the noisy years,
Unto the utmost verge of memory’s land,
Where earth and sky in dreamy distance meet,
And memory dim with dark oblivion joins;
Where woke the first remembered sounds that fell
Upon the ear in childhood’s early morn;
And, wandering thence along the rolling years,
I see the shadow of my former self
Gliding from childhood up to man’s estate;
The path of youth winds down through many a vale.
And on the brink of many a dread abyss,
From out whose darkness comes no ray of light,
Save that a phantom dances o’er the gulf
And beckons toward the verge. Again the path
Leads o’er the summit where the sunbeams fall;
And thus in light and shade, sunshine and gloom,
Sorrow and joy this life-path leads along.
* * * * *
ALL QUIET ALONG THE POTOMAC.
BY ETHELINDA ELLIOTT BEERS.
Born in New York, 1827; died in New Jersey, 1879. The following
poem first appeared in “Harper’s Weekly” in 1861, and being
published anonymously its authorship was, says Mr. Stedman,
“falsely claimed by several persons.”
ALL quiet along the Potomac, they say,
“Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
’Tis nothing; a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost――only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle.”
All quiet along the Potomac to-night,
Where the soldiers lie peacefully dreaming;
Their tents in the rays of the clear autumn moon,
Or the light of the watchfires, are gleaming.
A tremulous sigh, as the gentle night-wind
Through the forest leaves softly is creeping;
While stars up above, with their glittering eyes,
Keep guard――for the army is sleeping.
There’s only the sound of the lone sentry’s tread
As he tramps from the rock to the fountain.
And he thinks of the two in the low trundle-bed,
Far away in the cot on the mountain.
His musket falls slack; his face, dark and grim,
Grows gentle with memories tender,
As he mutters a prayer for the children asleep,
For their mother――may Heaven defend her!
The moon seems to shine just as brightly as then,
That night when the love yet unspoken
Leaped up to his lips――when low, murmured vows
Were pledged to be ever unbroken;
Then drawing his sleeve roughly over his eyes,
He dashes off tears that are welling,
And gathers his gun closer up to its place,
As if to keep down the heart-swelling.
He passes the fountain, the blasted pine-tree――
The footstep is lagging and weary;
Yet onward he goes, through the broad belt of light,
Toward the shades of the forest so dreary.
Hark! was it the night-wind that rustled the leaves?
Was it moonlight so wondrously flashing?
It looked like a rifle: “Ha! Mary, good-by!”
And the life-blood is ebbing and plashing.
All quiet along the Potomac to-night――
No sound save the rush of the river;
While soft falls the dew on the face of the dead――
The picket’s off duty forever.
* * * * *
A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE.
BY EPES SARGENT.
Born 1813; died 1880. The following beautiful and popular song,
sung all over the world, like “Home, Sweet Home,” is by an
American author. It is one of those bits of lyric verse which
will perpetuate the name of its writer longer, perhaps, then
any of the many books which he gave to the world.
A LIFE on the ocean wave,
A home on the rolling deep;
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!
Like an angel caged I pine,
On this dull, unchanging shore:
O, give me the flashing brine,
The spray and the tempest’s roar!
Once more on the deck I stand,
Of my own swift-gliding craft:
Set sail! farewell to the land;
The gale follows fair abaft.
We shoot through the sparkling foam,
Like an ocean-bird set free,――
Like the ocean-bird, our home
We’ll find far out on the sea.
The land is no longer in view,
The clouds have begun to frown;
But with a stout vessel and crew,
We’ll say, “Let the storm come down!”
And the song of our hearts shall be,
While the winds and the waters rave,
A home on the rolling sea!
A life on the ocean wave!
* * * * *
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY.
BY F. M. FINCH.
Born in Ithaca, N. Y., 1827. Many of the women of the South,
animated by noble sentiments, have shown themselves impartial
in their offerings made to the memory of the dead. They have
strewn flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate and of
the National soldiers.
BY the flow of the inland river,
Whence the fleets of iron have fled,
Where the blades of the grave-grass quiver,
Asleep on the ranks of the dead:
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the one, the Blue,
Under the other, the Gray.
These in the robings of glory,
Those in the gloom of defeat,
All with the battle-blood gory,
In the dusk of eternity meet:――
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the laurel, the Blue,
Under the willow, the Gray.
From the silence of sorrowful hours,
The desolate mourners go,
Lovingly laden with flowers,
Alike for the friend and the foe:――
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the roses, the Blue,
Under the lilies, the Gray.
So, with an equal splendor,
The morning sun-rays fall,
With a touch impartially tender,
On the blossoms blooming for all:――
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Broidered with gold, the Blue,
Mellowed with gold, the Gray.
So, when the summer calleth,
On forest and field of grain
With an equal murmur falleth
The cooling drip of the rain:――
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Wet with the rain, the Blue,
Wet with the rain, the Gray.
Sadly, but not with upbraiding,
The generous deed was done;
In the storm of the years that are fading,
No braver battle was won:――
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Under the blossoms, the Blue,
Under the garlands, the Gray.
No more shall the war-cry sever,
Or the winding rivers be red;
They banish our anger forever
When they laurel the graves of our dead!
Under the sod and the dew,
Waiting the judgment day;
Love and tears for the Blue,
Tears and love for the Gray.
* * * * *
ROLL-CALL.
BY NATHANIEL P. SHEPHERD.
Born in New York, 1835; died 1869.
CORPORAL GREEN!” the orderly cried;
“Here!” was the answer, loud and clear,
From the lips of the soldier who stood near――
And “here!” was the word the next replied.
“Cyrus Drew!”――then a silence fell――
This time no answer followed the call;
Only his rear-man had seen him fall,
Killed or wounded, he could not tell.
There they stood in the failing light,
These men of battle, with grave, dark looks,
As plain to be read as open books,
While slowly gathered the shades of night.
The fern on the hillsides was splashed with blood,
And down in the corn where the poppies grew
Were redder stains than the poppies knew;
And crimson-dyed was the river’s flood.
For the foe had crossed from the other side
That day, in the face of a murderous fire
That swept them down in its terrible ire;
And their life-blood went to color the tide.
“Herbert Kline!” At the call there came
Two stalwart soldiers into the line
Bearing between them this Herbert Kline,
Wounded and bleeding, to answer his name.
“Ezra Kerr!” and a voice answered, “here!”
“Hiram Kerr!”――but no man replied.
They were brothers, these two; the sad winds sighed,
And a shudder crept through the cornfield near.
“Ephraim Deane!”――then a soldier spoke:
“Deane carried our regiment’s colors,” he said;
“Where our ensign was shot, I left him dead,
Just after the enemy wavered and broke.
“Close to the roadside his body lies;
I paused a moment and gave him drink;
He murmured his mother’s name, I think,
And death came with it and closed his eyes.”
’Twas a victory; yes, but it cost us dear――
For that company’s roll, when called at night,
Of a hundred men who went into the fight,
Numbered but twenty that answered, “Here!”
* * * * *
THEOLOGY IN THE QUARTERS.
BY J. A. MACON.
Born in Alabama, 1851.
_Author of “Uncle Gab Tucker.”_
The following dialect verses are a faithful reproduction,
not only of the negro dialect of the cotton sections of the
South; but the genius of Mr. Macon has subtly embodied in this
and other of his writings a shadowy but true picture of the
peculiar and original philosophy and humor of the poor but
happy black people of the section with which he is so familiar.
NOW, I’s got a notion in my head dat when you come to die,
An’ stan’ de ’zamination in de Cote-house in de sky,
You’ll be ’stonished at de questions dat de angel’s gwine to
ax
When he gits you on de witness-stan’ an’ pin you to de fac’s;
’Cause he’ll ax you mighty closely ’bout your doin’s in de
night,
An’ de water-milion question’s gwine to bodder you a sight!
Den your eyes’ll open wider dan dey ebber done befo’
When he chats you ’bout a chicken-scrape dat happened long
ago!
De angels on the picket-line erlong de Milky Way
Keep a-watchin’ what you’re dribin’ at, an’ hearin’ what you
say;
No matter what you want to do, no matter whar you’s gwine,
Dey’s mighty ap’ to find it out an’ pass it ’long de line;
An’ of’en at de meetin’, when you make a fuss an’ laugh,
Why, dey send de news a-kitin’ by de golden telegraph;
Den, de angel in de orfis, what’s a settin’ by de gate,
Jes’ reads de message wid a look an’ claps it on de slate!
Den you better do your juty well an’ keep your conscience
clear,
An’ keep a-lookin’ straight ahead an’ watchin’ whar you steer;
’Cause arter while de time’ll come to journey fum de lan’,
An’ dey’ll take you way up in de a’r an’ put you on de stan’;
Den you’ll hab to listen to de clerk an’ answer mighty
straight,
Ef you ebber’ spec’ to trabble froo de alaplaster gate!
* * * * *
RUIN WROUGHT BY RUM.
(TEMPERANCE SELECTION.)
GO, feel what I have felt,
Go, bear what I have borne;
Sink ’neath a blow a father dealt,
And the cold, proud world’s scorn.
Thus struggle on from year to year,
Thy sole relief the scalding tear.
Go, weep as I have wept
O’er a loved father’s fall;
See every cherished promise swept,
Youth’s sweetness turned to gall;
Hope’s faded flowers strewed all the way
That led me up to woman’s day.
Go, kneel as I have knelt;
Implore, beseech and pray.
Strive the besotted heart to melt,
The downward course to stay;
Be cast with bitter curse aside,――
Thy prayers burlesqued, thy tears defied.
Go, stand where I have stood,
And see the strong man bow;
With gnashing teeth, lips bathed in blood,
And cold and livid brow;
Go, catch his wandering glance, and see
There mirrored his soul’s misery.
Go, hear what I have heard,――
The sobs of sad despair,
As memory’s feeling fount hath stirred,
And its revealings there
Have told him what he might have been,
Had he the drunkard’s fate foreseen.
Go to my mother’s side,
And her crushed spirit cheer;
Thine own deep anguish hide,
Wipe from her cheek the tear;
Mark her dimmed eye, her furrowed brow,
The gray that streaks her dark hair now,
The toil-worn frame, the trembling limb,
And trace the ruin back to him
Whose plighted faith in early youth,
Promised eternal love and truth,
But who, forsworn, hath yielded up
This promise to the deadly cup,
And led her down from love and light,
From all that made her pathway bright,
And chained her there ’mid want and strife,
That lowly thing,――a drunkard’s wife!
And stamped on childhood’s brow, so mild,
That withering blight,――a drunkard’s child!
Go, hear, and see, and feel, and know
All that my soul hath felt and known,
Then look within the wine-cup’s glow;
See if its brightness can atone;
Think of its flavor would you try,
If all proclaimed,――_’Tis drink and die_.
Tell me I hate the bowl,――
_Hate_ is a feeble word;
I loathe, abhor, my very soul
By strong disgust is stirred
Whene’er I see, or hear, or tell
Of the DARK BEVERAGE OF HELL!
ANONYMOUS.
* * * * *
TO A SKELETON.
The MS. of this poem was found in the Museum of the Royal
College of Surgeons, in London, near a perfect human skeleton,
and sent by the curator to the “Morning Chronicle” for
publication. It excited so much attention that every effort
was made to discover the author, and a responsible party went
so far as to offer fifty guineas for information that would
discover its origin. The author preserved his incognito, and,
we believe, has never been discovered.
BEHOLD this ruin! ’Twas a skull,
Once of ethereal spirit full.
This narrow cell was life’s retreat,
This space was thought’s mysterious seat.
What beauteous visions filled this spot,
What dreams of pleasure long forgot?
Nor hope, nor joy, nor love, nor fear,
Have left one trace of record here.
Beneath this moldering canopy
Once shone the bright and busy eye;
But start not at the dismal void;
If social love that eye employed,
If with no lawless fire it gleamed,
But through the dews of kindness beamed,――
That eye shall be forever bright
When stars and sun are sunk in night.
Within this hollow cavern hung
The ready, swift, and tuneful tongue;
If falsehood’s honey it disdained,
And when it could not praise was chained;
If bold in virtue’s cause it spoke,
Yet gentle concord never broke,――
This silent tongue shall plead for thee
When time unveils eternity!
Say, did these fingers delve the mine,
Or with the envied rubies shine?
To hew the rock or wear a gem
Can little now avail to them.
But if the page of truth they sought,
Or comfort to the mourner brought,
These hands a richer meed shall claim
Than all that wait on wealth and fame.
Avails it whether bare or shod
These feet the paths of duty trod?
If from the bowers of ease they fled,
To seek affliction’s humble shed;
If grandeur’s guilty bribe they spurned,
And home to virtue’s cot returned,――
These feet with angel wings shall vie,
And tread the palace of the sky!
* * * * *
PLEDGE WITH WINE.
(A TEMPERANCE SELECTION.)
PLEDGE with wine――pledge with wine!” cried the young and thoughtless
Harry Wood. “Pledge with wine,” ran through the brilliant crowd.
The beautiful bride grew pale――the decisive hour had come,――she
pressed her white hands together, and the leaves of her bridal wreath
trembled on her pure brow; her breath came quicker, her heart beat
wilder. From her childhood she had been most solemnly opposed to the
use of all wines and liquors.
“Yes, Marion, lay aside your scruples for this once,” said the judge
in a low tone, going towards his daughter, “the company expect it; do
not so seriously infringe upon the rules of etiquette;――in your own
house act as you please; but in mine, for this once please me.”
Every eye was turned towards the bridal pair. Marion’s principles were
well known. Henry had been a convivialist, but of late his friends
noticed the change in his manners, the difference in his habits――and
to-night they watched him to see, as they sneeringly said, if he was
tied down to a woman’s opinion so soon.
Pouring a brimming beaker, they held it with tempting smiles toward
Marion. She was very pale, though more composed, and her hand shook
not, as smiling back, she gratefully accepted the crystal tempter and
raised it to her lips. But scarcely had she done so, when every hand
was arrested by her piercing exclamation of “Oh, how terrible!” “What
is it?” cried one and all, thronging together, for she had slowly
carried the glass at arm’s length, and was fixedly regarding it as
though it were some hideous object.
“Wait,” she answered, while an inspired light shone from her dark
eyes, “wait and I will tell you. I see,” she added, slowly pointing
one jeweled finger at the sparkling ruby liquid, “a sight that beggars
all description; and yet listen; I will paint it for you if I can: It
is a lonely spot; tall mountains, crowned with verdure, rise in awful
sublimity around; a river runs through, and bright flowers grow to the
water’s edge. There is a thick, warm mist that the sun seeks vainly
to pierce; trees, lofty and beautiful, wave to the airy motion of the
birds; but there, a group of Indians gather; they flit to and fro with
something like sorrow upon their dark brows; and in their midst lies a
manly form, but his cheek, how deathly; his eye wild with the fitful
fire of fever. One friend stands beside him, nay, I should say kneels,
for he is pillowing that poor head upon his breast.
“Genius in ruins. Oh! the high, holy-looking brow! Why should death
mark it, and he so young? Look how he throws the damp curls! see him
clasp his hands! hear his thrilling shrieks for life! mark how he
clutches at the form of his companion, imploring to be saved. Oh!
hear him call piteously his father’s name; see him twine his fingers
together as he shrieks for his sister――his only sister――the twin of
his soul――weeping for him in his distant native land.
“See!” she exclaimed, while the bridal party shrank back, the
untasted wine trembling in their faltering grasp, and the judge fell,
overpowered, upon his seat; “see! his arms are lifted to heaven; he
prays, how wildly, for mercy! hot fever rushes through his veins. The
friend beside him is weeping; awe-stricken, the dark men move silently,
and leave the living and dying together.”
There was a hush in that princely parlor, broken only by what seemed
a smothered sob, from some manly bosom. The bride stood yet upright,
with quivering lip, and tears stealing to the outward edge of her
lashes. Her beautiful arm had lost its tension, and the glass, with
its little troubled red waves, came slowly towards the range of her
vision. She spoke again; every lip was mute. Her voice was low, faint,
yet awfully distinct: she still fixed her sorrowful glance upon the
wine-cup.
“It is evening now; the great white moon is coming up, and her beams
lie gently on his forehead. He moves not; his eyes are set in their
sockets; dim are their piercing glances; in vain his friend whispers
the name of father and sister――death is there. Death! and no soft
hand, no gentle voice to bless and soothe him. His head sinks back!
one convulsive shudder! he is dead!”
A groan ran through the assembly, so vivid was her description, so
unearthly her look, so inspired her manner, that what she described
seemed actually to have taken place then and there. They noticed also,
that the bridegroom hid his face in his hands and was weeping.
“Dead!” she repeated again, her lips quivering faster and faster, and
her voice more and more broken: “and there they scoop him a grave; and
there, without a shroud, they lay him down in the damp, reeking earth.
The only son of a proud father, the only idolized brother of a fond
sister. And he sleeps to-day in that distant country, with no stone to
mark the spot. There he lies――my father’s son――my own twin brother! a
victim to this deadly poison. Father,” she exclaimed, turning suddenly,
while the tears rained down her beautiful cheeks, “father, shall I
drink it now?”
The form of the old judge was convulsed with agony. He raised his head,
but in a smothered voice he faltered――“No, no, my child; in God’s name,
no.”
She lifted the glittering goblet, and letting it suddenly fall to the
floor it was dashed into a thousand pieces. Many a tearful eye watched
her movements, and instantaneously every wine-glass was transferred
to the marble table on which it had been prepared. Then, as she looked
at the fragments of crystal, she turned to the company, saying: “Let
no friend, hereafter, who loves me, tempt me to peril my soul for
wine. Not firmer the everlasting hills than my resolve, God helping
me, never to touch or taste that terrible poison. And he to whom I
have given my hand; who watched over my brother’s dying form in that
last solemn hour, and buried the dear wanderer there by the river in
that land of gold, will, I trust, sustain me in that resolve. Will you
not, my husband?”
His glistening eyes, his sad, sweet smile was her answer.
The judge left the room, and when an hour later he returned, and with
a more subdued manner took part in the entertainment of the bridal
guests, no one could fail to read that he, too, had determined to dash
the enemy at once and forever from his princely rooms.
Those who were present at that wedding can never forget the impression
so solemnly made. Many from that hour forswore the social glass.
* * * * *
SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS AT CAPUA.
BY ELIJAH KELLOG.
Born in Portland, Maine, 1813. Spartacus was a Thracian soldier,
who was taken prisoner by the Romans, made a slave, and trained
as a gladiator. He escaped with a number of fellow-gladiators,
an incident to which this speech is supposed to refer to. He
was killed in battle 71 B. C., while leading the Servile War
against Rome.
IT had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus, returning with
victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the
amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city.
The shouts of revelry had died away; the roar of the lion had ceased;
the last loiterer had retired from the banquet; and the lights in
the palace of the victor were extinguished. The moon, piercing the
tissue of fleecy clouds, silvered the dewdrops on the corslet of the
Roman sentinel, and tipped the dark waters of the Vulturnus with a
wavy, tremulous light. No sound was heard, save the last sob of some
retiring wave, telling its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach;
and then all was as still as the breast when the spirit has departed.
In the deep recesses of the amphitheatre, a band of gladiators were
assembled; their muscles still knotted with the agony of conflict,
the foam upon their lips, the scowl of battle yet lingering on their
brows; when Spartacus, arising in the midst of that grim assembly,
thus addressed them:
“Ye call me chief; and ye do well to call _him_ chief who, for twelve
long years, has met upon the arena every shape of man or beast the
broad empire of Rome could furnish, and who never yet lowered his arm.
If there be one among you who can say that ever, in public fight or
private brawl, my actions did belie my tongue, let him stand forth
and say it. If there be three in all your company dare face me on
the bloody sands, let them come on. And yet I was not always thus,――a
hired butcher, a savage chief of still more savage men! My ancestors
came from old Sparta, and settled among the vine-clad rocks and citron
groves of Syrasella. My early life ran quiet as the brooks by which
I sported; and when, at noon, I gathered the sheep beneath the shade,
and played upon the shepherd’s flute, there was a friend, the son of
a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same
pasture, and partook together our rustic meal. One evening, after the
sheep were folded, and we were all seated beneath the myrtle which
shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon
and Leuctra; and how, in ancient times, a little band of Spartans,
in a defile of the mountains, had withstood a whole army. I did not
then know what war was; but my cheeks burned, I knew not why, and I
clasped the knees of that venerable man, until my mother, parting the
hair from off my forehead, kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me
go to rest, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That
very night the Romans landed on our coast. I saw the breast that had
nourished me trampled by the hoof of the war-horse; the bleeding body
of my father flung amidst the blazing rafters of our dwelling!
“To-day I killed a man in the arena; and, when I broke his
helmet-clasps, behold! he was my friend. He knew me, smiled faintly,
gasped, and died;――the same sweet smile upon his lips that I had
marked, when, in adventurous boyhood, we scaled the lofty cliff to
pluck the first ripe grapes, and bear them home in childish triumph.
I told the prætor that the dead man had been my friend, generous and
brave; and I begged that I might bear away the body, to burn it on a
funeral pile, and mourn over its ashes. Ay! upon my knees, amid the
dust and blood of the arena, I begged that poor boon, while all the
assembled maids and matrons, and the holy virgins they call Vestals,
and the rabble, shouted in derision, deeming it rare sport, forsooth,
to see Rome’s fiercest gladiator turn pale and tremble at sight of
that piece of bleeding clay! And the prætor drew back as if I were
pollution, and sternly said: ‘Let the carrion rot; there are no noble
men but Romans!’ And so, fellow-_gladiators_, must you, and so must I,
die like dogs. O, Rome! Rome! thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Ay,
thou hast given to that poor, gentle, timid shepherd lad, who never
knew a harsher tone than a flute-note, muscles of iron and a heart of
flint; taught him to drive the sword through plaited mail and links
of rugged brass, and warm it in the marrow of his foe;――to gaze into
the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion, even as a boy upon
a laughing girl! And he shall pay thee back, until the yellow Tiber
is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies
curdled!
“Ye stand here now like giants, as ye are! The strength of brass is
in your toughened sinews; but to-morrow some Roman Adonis, breathing
sweet perfume from his curly locks, shall with his lily fingers pat
your red brawn, and bet his sesterces upon your blood. Hark! hear ye
yon lion roaring in his den? ’Tis three days since he tasted flesh;
but to-morrow he shall break his fast upon yours――and a dainty meal
for him ye will be! If ye are _beasts_, then stand here like fat
oxen, waiting for the butcher’s knife! If ye are _men_,――follow me!
Strike down yon guard, gain the mountain-passes, and there do bloody
work, as did your sires at Old Thermopylæ! Is Sparta dead? Is the old
Grecian spirit frozen in your veins, that you do crouch and cower like
a belabored hound beneath his master’s lash? O comrades! warriors!
Thracians!――if we must fight, let us fight for _ourselves_! If we must
slaughter, let us slaughter our _oppressors_! If we must die, let it
be under the clear sky, by the bright waters, in noble, honorable
battle!”
* * * * *
THE CRABBED MAN.
BY T. DE WITT TALMAGE.
(_Extract from a Lecture._)
Born 1832. One of the most eminent orators of the American
pulpit.
OF all the ills that flesh is heir to, a cross, crabbed, ill-contented
man is the most unendurable, because the most inexcusable. No occasion,
no matter how trifling, is permitted to pass without eliciting his
dissent, his sneer, or his growl. His good and patient wife never yet
prepared a dinner that he liked. One day she prepares a dish that she
thinks will particularly please him. He comes in the front door, and
says: “Whew! whew! what have you got in the house? Now, my dear, you
know that I never did like codfish.” Some evening, resolving to be
especially gracious, he starts with his family to a place of amusement.
He scolds the most of the way. He cannot afford the time or the money,
and he does not believe the entertainment will be much, after all. The
music begins. The audience are thrilled. The orchestra, with polished
instruments, warble and weep, and thunder and pray――all the sweet
sounds of the world flowering upon the strings of the bass viol, and
wreathing the flageolets, and breathing from the lips of the cornet,
and shaking their flower-bells upon the tinkling tambourine.
He sits motionless and disgusted. He goes home saying: “Did you see
that fat musician that got so red blowing that French horn? He looked
like a stuffed toad. Did you ever hear such a voice as that lady
has? Why, it was a perfect squawk! The evening was wasted.” And his
companion says: “Why, my dear!” “There, you needn’t tell me――you are
pleased with everything. But never ask me to go again!” He goes to
church. Perhaps the sermon is didactic and argumentative. He yawns.
He gapes. He twists himself in his pew, and pretends he is asleep,
and says: “I could not keep awake. Did you ever hear anything so dead?
Can these dry bones live?” Next Sabbath he enters a church where the
minister is much given to illustration. He is still more displeased.
He says: “How dare that man bring such every-day things into his
pulpit? He ought to have brought his illustrations from the cedar of
Lebanon and the fir-tree, instead of the hickory and sassafrass. He
ought to have spoken of the Euphrates and the Jordan, and not of the
Kennebec and Schuylkill. He ought to have mentioned Mount Gerizim
instead of the Catskills. Why, he ought to be disciplined. Why, it is
ridiculous.” Perhaps afterward he joins the church. Then the church
will have its hands full. He growls and groans and whines all the
way up toward the gate of heaven. He wishes that the choir would sing
differently, that the minister would preach differently, that the
elders would pray differently. In the morning, he said, “The church
was as cold as Greenland;” in the evening, “It was hot as blazes.”
They painted the church; he didn’t like the color. They carpeted
the aisles; he didn’t like the figure. They put in a new furnace; he
didn’t like the patent. He wriggles and squirms, and frets and stews,
and worries himself. He is like a horse, that, prancing and uneasy
to the bit, worries himself into a lather of foam, while the horse
hitched beside him just pulls straight ahead, makes no fuss, and
comes to his oats in peace. Like a hedge-hog, he is all quills. Like a
crab that, you know, always goes the other way, and moves backward in
order to go forward, and turns in four directions all at once, and the
first you know of his whereabouts you have missed him, and when he is
completely lost he has gone by the heel――so that the first thing you
know you don’t know anything――and while you expected to catch the crab,
the crab catches you.
So some men are crabbed――all hard-shell and obstinacy and opposition.
I do not see how he is to get into heaven, unless he goes in backward,
and then there will be danger that at the gate he will try to pick a
quarrel with St. Peter. Once in, I fear he will not like the music,
and the services will be too long, and that he will spend the first
two or three years in trying to find out whether the wall of heaven is
exactly plumb. Let us stand off from such tendencies. Listen for sweet
notes rather than discords, picking up marigolds and harebells in
preference to thistles and coloquintida, culturing thyme and anemones
rather than night-shade. And in a world where God has put exquisite
tinge upon the shell washed in the surf, and planted a paradise of
bloom in a child’s cheek, and adorned the pillars of the rock by
hanging tapestry of morning mist, the lark saying, “I will sing
soprano,” and the cascade replying, “I will carry the bass,” let us
leave it to the owl to hoot, and the frog to croak, and the bear to
growl, and the grumbler to find fault.
* * * * *
PUTTING UP O’ THE STOVE; OR,
THE RIME OF THE ECONOMICAL HOUSEHOLDER.
THE melancholy days have come that no householder loves,
Days of taking down of blinds and putting up of stoves;
The lengths of pipe forgotten lie in the shadow of the shed,
Dinged out of symmetry they be and all with rust are red;
The husband gropes amid the mass that he placed there anon,
And swears to find an elbow-joint and eke a leg are gone.
So fared it with good Mister Brown, when his spouse remarked:
“Behold!
Unless you wish us all to go and catch our deaths of cold,
Swift be yon stove and pipes from out their storing place
conveyed,
And to black-lead and set them up, lo! I will lend my aid.”
This, Mr. Brown, he trembling heard, I trow his heart was sore,
For he was married many years, and had been there before,
And timidly he said, “My love, perchance, the better plan
’Twere to hie to the tinsmith’s shop and bid him send a man?”
His spouse replied indignantly: “So you would have me then
To waste our substance upon riotous tinsmith’s journeymen?
‘A penny saved is twopence earned,’ rash prodigal of pelf,
Go! false one, go! and I will black and set it up myself.”
When thus she spoke the husband knew that she had sealed his
doom;
“Fill high the bowl with Samian lead and gimme down that
broom,”
He cried; then to the outhouse marched. Apart the doors he hove
And closed in deadly conflict with his enemy, the stove.
ROUND 1.
They faced each other; Brown, to get an opening sparred
Adroitly. His antagonist was cautious――on its guard.
Brown led off with his left to where a length of stovepipe
stood,
And nearly cut his fingers off. (_The stove allowed first
blood._)
ROUND 2.
Brown came up swearing, in Græco-Roman style,
Closed with the stove, and tugged and strove at it a weary
while;
At last the leg he held gave way; flat on his back fell Brown,
And the stove fell on top of him and claimed the _First
Knock-down_.
* * * The fight is done and Brown has won; his hands are
rasped and sore,
And perspiration and black-lead stream from his every pore;
Sternly triumphant, as he gives his prisoner a shove,
He cries, “Where, my good angel, shall I _put_ this blessed
stove?”
And calmly Mrs. Brown to him she indicates the spot,
And bids him keep his temper, and remarks that he looks hot,
And now comes in the sweat o’ the day; the Brown holds in his
gripe
And strives to fit a six-inch joint into a five-inch pipe;
He hammers, dinges, bends, and shakes, while his wife
scornfully
Tells him how _she_ would manage if only she were he.
At last the joints are joined, they rear a pyramid in air,
A tub upon the table, and upon the tub a chair,
And on chair and supporters are the stovepipe and the Brown,
Like the lion and the unicorn, a-fighting for the crown;
While Mistress Brown, she cheerily says to him, “I expec’
’Twould be just like your clumsiness to fall and break your
neck.”
Scarce were the piteous accents said before she was aware
Of what might be called “a miscellaneous music in the air.”
And in wild crash and confusion upon the floor rained down
Chairs, tables, tubs, and stovepipes, anathemas, and――Brown.
There was a moment’s silence――Brown had fallen on the cat;
She was too thick for a book-mark, but too thin for a mat;
And he was all wounds and bruises, from his head to his foot,
And seven breadths of Brussels were ruined with the soot.
“O wedded love, how beautiful, how sweet a thing thou art!”
Up from her chair did Mistress Brown, as she saw him falling,
start,
And shrieked aloud as a sickening fear did her inmost
heartstrings gripe,
“Josiah Winterbotham Brown, have you gone and smashed that
pipe?”
Then fiercely starts that Mr. Brown, as one that had been
wode,
And big his bosom swelled with wrath, and red his visage
glowed;
Wild rolled his eye as he made reply (and his voice was sharp
and shrill),
“I have not, madam, but, by――by――by the nine gods, I will!”
He swung the pipe above his head; he dashed it on the floor,
And that stovepipe, as a stovepipe, it did exist no more;
Then he strode up to his shrinking wife, and his face was
stern and wan,
And in a hoarse, changed voice he hissed:
“_Send for that tinsmith’s man!_”
* * * * *
THE POOR INDIAN!
I KNOW him by his falcon eye,
His raven tress and mien of pride;
Those dingy draperies, as they fly,
Tell that a great soul throbs inside!
No eagle-feathered crown he wears,
Capping in pride his kingly brow;
But his crownless hat in grief declares,
“I am an unthroned monarch now!”
“O noble son of a royal line!”
I exclaim, as I gaze into his face,
“How shall I knit my soul to thine?
How right the wrongs of thine injured race?
“What shall I do for thee, glorious one?
To soothe thy sorrows my soul aspires.
Speak! and say how the Saxon’s son
May atone for the wrongs of his ruthless sires!”
He speaks, he speaks!――that noble chief!
From his marble lips deep accents come;
And I catch the sound of his mighty grief,――
“_Ple’ gi’ me tree cent for git some rum?_”
* * * * *
JENKINS GOES TO A PICNIC.
MARIA ANN recently determined to go to a picnic.
Maria Ann is my wife――unfortunately she had planned it to go alone,
so far as I am concerned, on that picnic excursion; but when I heard
about it, I determined to assist.
She _pretended_ she was very glad; I don’t believe she was.
“It will do you good to get away from your work a day, poor fellow,”
she said; “and we shall so much enjoy a cool morning ride on the cars,
and a dinner in the woods.”
On the morning of that day, Maria Ann got up at five o’clock. About
three minutes later she disturbed my slumbers, and told me to come
to breakfast. I told her I wasn’t hungry, but it didn’t make a bit of
difference, I had to get up. The sun was up; I had no idea that the
sun began his business so early in the morning, but there he was.
“Now,” said Maria Ann, “we must fly around, for the cars start at
half-past six. Eat all the breakfast you can, for you won’t get
anything more before noon.”
I could not eat anything so early in the morning. There was ice to be
pounded to go around the pail of ice cream, and the sandwiches to be
cut, and I thought I would never get the legs of the chicken fixed so
I could get the cover on the big basket. Maria Ann flew around and
piled up groceries for me to pack, giving directions to the girl about
taking care of the house, and putting on her dress all at once. There
is a deal of energy in that woman, perhaps a trifle too much.
At twenty minutes past six I stood on the front steps, with a basket
on one arm and Maria Ann’s waterproof on the other, and a pail in each
hand, and a bottle of vinegar in my coat-skirt pocket. There was a
camp-chair hung on me somewhere, too, but I forget just where.
“Now,” said Maria Ann, “we must run or we shall not catch the train.”
“Maria Ann,” said I, “that is a reasonable idea. How do you suppose I
can run with all this freight?”
“You must, you brute. You always try to tease me. If you don’t want a
scene on the street, you will start, too.”
So I ran.
I had one comfort, at least. Maria Ann fell down and broke her parasol.
She called me a brute again because I laughed. She drove me all the
way to the depot at a brisk trot, and we got on the cars; but neither
of us could get a seat, and I could not find a place where I could set
the things down, so I stood there and held them.
“Maria,” I said, “how is this for a cool morning ride?”
Said she, “You are a brute, Jenkins.”
Said I, “You have made _that_ observation before, my love.”
I kept my courage up, yet I knew there would be an hour of wrath when
we got home. While we were getting out of the cars, the bottle in
my coat-pocket broke, and consequently I had one boot half-full of
vinegar all day. That kept me pretty quiet, and Maria Ann ran off with
a big whiskered music-teacher, and lost her fan, and got her feet wet,
and tore her dress, and enjoyed herself so much, after the fashion of
picnic-goers.
I thought it would never come dinner-time, and Maria Ann called me a
pig because I wanted to open our basket before the rest of the baskets
were opened.
At last dinner came――the “nice dinner in the woods,” you know. Over
three thousand little red ants had got into our dinner, and they were
worse to pick out than fish-bones. The ice-cream had melted, and there
was no vinegar for the cold meat, except what was in my boot, and,
of course, that was of no immediate use. The music-teacher spilled a
cup of hot coffee on Maria Ann’s head, and pulled all the frizzles out
trying to wipe off the coffee with his handkerchief. Then I sat on a
piece of raspberry-pie, and spoiled my white pants, and concluded I
didn’t want anything more. I had to stand up against a tree the rest
of the afternoon. The day offered considerable variety, compared to
everyday life, but there were so many drawbacks that I did not enjoy
it so much as I might have done.
* * * * *
SEWING ON A BUTTON.
BY J. M. BAILEY.
IT is bad enough to see a bachelor sew on a button, but he is
the embodiment of grace alongside of a married man. Necessity has
compelled experience in the case of the former, but the latter has
always depended upon some one else for this service, and fortunately,
for the sake of society, it is rarely he is obliged to resort to the
needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds her right hand or
runs a sliver under the nail of the index finger of that hand, and it
is then the man clutches the needle around the neck, and forgetting
to tie a knot in the thread commences to put on the button. It is
always in the morning, and from five to twenty minutes after he is
expected to be down street. He lays the button exactly on the site of
its predecessor, and pushes the needle through one eye, and carefully
draws the thread after, leaving about three inches of it sticking
up for a leeway. He says to himself,――“Well, if women don’t have the
easiest time I ever see.” Then he comes back the other way, and gets
the needle through the cloth well enough, and lays himself out to find
the eye, but in spite of a great deal of patient jabbing, the needle
point persists in bucking against the solid parts of that button, and,
finally, when he loses patience, his fingers catch the thread, and
that three inches he had left to hold the button slips through the eye
in a twinkling, and the button rolls leisurely across the floor. He
picks it up without a single remark, out of respect to his children,
and makes another attempt to fasten it. This time when coming back
with the needle he keeps both the thread and button from slipping by
covering them with his thumb, and it is out of regard for that part of
him that he feels around for the eye in a very careful and judicious
manner; but eventually losing his philosophy as the search becomes
more and more hopeless, he falls to jabbing about in a loose and
savage manner, and it is just then the needle finds the opening, and
comes up through the button and part way through his thumb with a
celerity that no human ingenuity can guard against. Then he lays down
the things, with a few familiar quotations, and presses the injured
hand between his knees, and then holds it under the other arm, and
finally jams it into his mouth, and all the while he prances about the
floor, and calls upon heaven and earth to witness that there has never
been anything like it since the world was created, and howls, and
whistles, and moans, and sobs. After awhile, he calms down, and puts
on his pants, and fastens them together with a stick, and goes to his
business a changed man.
* * * * *
CASEY AT THE BAT.
(Often recited by DeWolf Hopper, the comic opera singer,
between the acts.)
THERE was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place,
There was pride in Casey’s bearing, and a smile on Casey’s
face;
And when responding to the cheers he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ’twas Casey at the bat.
Ten thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with
dirt,
Five thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his
shirt;
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance glanced in Casey’s eye, a sneer curled Casey’s lip.
And now the leather-covered sphere came whirling thro’ the
air,
And Casey stood a-watching it in haughty grandeur there;
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped.
“That ain’t my style,” said Casey, “Strike one,” the umpire
said.
From the benches, black with people, there went up a muffled
roar,
Like the beating of storm waves on a stern and distant shore;
“Kill him! kill the umpire!” shouted some one on the stand.
And it’s likely they’d have killed him had not Casey raised
his hand.
With a smile of Christian charity great Casey’s visage shone,
He stilled the rising tumult, he bade the game go on;
He signalled to the pitcher, and once more the spheroid flew,
But Casey still ignored it, and the umpire said, “Strike two.”
“Fraud!” cried the maddened thousands, and the echo answered,
“Fraud!”
But the scornful look from Casey, and the audience was awed;
They saw his face grow stern and cold, they saw his muscles
strain,
And they knew that Casey wouldn’t let that ball go by again.
The sneer is gone from Casey’s lips, his teeth are clenched in
hate,
He pounds with cruel violence his bat upon the plate;
And now the pitcher holds the ball, and now he lets it go.
And now the air is shattered by the force of Casey’s blow.
Oh! somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Mudville――mighty Casey has struck out.
* * * * *
THE MAGICAL ISLE.
THERE’S a magical isle in the River of Time,
Where softest of echoes are straying;
And the air is as soft as a musical chime,
Or the exquisite breath of a tropical clime
When June with its roses is swaying.
’Tis where memory dwells with her pure golden hue
And music forever is flowing:
While the low-murmured tones that come trembling through
Sadly trouble the heart, yet sweeten it too,
As the south wind o’er water when blowing.
There are shadowy halls in that fairy-like isle,
Where pictures of beauty are gleaming;
Yet the light of their eyes, and their sweet, sunny smile,
Only flash round the heart with a wildering wile,
And leave us to know ’tis but dreaming.
And the name of this isle is the Beautiful Past,
And we bury our treasures all there:
There are beings of beauty too lovely to last;
There are blossoms of snow, with the dust o’er them cast;
There are tresses and ringlets of hair.
There are fragments of song only memory sings,
And the words of a dear mother’s prayer;
There’s a harp long unsought, and a lute without strings――
Hallowed tokens that love used to wear.
E’en the dead――the bright, beautiful dead――there arise,
With their soft, flowing ringlets of gold:
Though their voices are hushed, and o’er their sweet eyes,
The unbroken signet of silence now lies,
They are with us again, as of old.
In the stillness of night, hands are beckoning there,
And, with joy that is almost a pain,
We delight to turn back, and in wandering there,
Through the shadowy halls of the island so fair,
We behold our lost treasures again.
Oh! this beautiful isle, with its phantom-like show,
Is a vista exceedingly bright:
And the River of Time, in its turbulent flow,
Is oft soothed by the voices we heard long ago,
When the years were a dream of delight.
* * * * *
STRAY BITS OF CHARACTER.
BY WILL CARLETON.
_With original illustrations by Victor Perard._
Illustration: THE TOURIST.
IN art, as well as literature, there should be a vast variety of
methods, for a good many kinds of people wait to be instructed and
pleased. Besides, there is frequently a great diversity of moods in
the same person――all of which must be ministered to, at one time and
another.
Illustration: AT THE LUNCH STAND.
Some people, and perhaps all, when in certain states of mind, are
fond of pictures brought out with photographic accuracy; every detail
attended to; everything provided for; every incident faithfully
related. Others prefer only the salient points――a mere suggestion of
items is sufficient. They have no time for anything more――they want
the spirit, the soul, of the scene and situation.
Victor Perard’s work upon these pages will minister most to the latter
class of people and moods. As one orator can give in ten words the
story that another one has struggled with much voice and many gestures
for an hour to make plain, so this silent story-teller dashes his
pencil across the paper a few times, and behold! you see just what you
already may have noticed again and again, but never before recognized
in all its possibilities. You now have before you for a steady gaze,
that of which you have had only a glimpse, a sketch that supplies the
place of memory, shakes hands with imagination, and enables you to
enjoy the scene at leisure.
Illustration: THE STREET TO THE SEA.
Illustration: IN WAIT.
These are pictures that explain themselves, or at least permit
the gazer to furnish his own explanation――and that is the most
complimentary of all imaginative work, and produces a species of
gratitude in the minds of the audience.
Illustration: THE OILER.
Victor Perard is one of the younger artists of our country. His name
would indicate him to be of French descent; but he is, I believe,
a native of the Greater America, which has thus far shown such a
cheerful willingness to assimilate the best brain of the world. He has,
however, lived in Paris, and contributed to some of the leading French
illustrated journals. He is now living a quiet domestic life in our
American metropolis, and has done much good work for its periodicals.
In “The Tourist,” one notices with every line of the solemn-looking
individual an intense desire to get over the ground promptly and see
everything possible on the way. There is something in the painful
though unstudied diligence with which he keeps his carpet bag close to
his person, that may enable a lively imagination to peep through its
sides and detect notes for a forthcoming book.
Illustration: EXPECTING A CALLER.
Illustration: A VETERAN OF THE RANKS.
Illustration: A WIDE-REACHING AFFAIR.
“At the Lunch Stand” is Whittier’s “Barefoot Boy,” transferred to the
city. His lips are not “redder still, kissed by strawberries on the
hill;” nor may he be coated with “outward sunshine,” or full of “inner
joy.” The luxurious bowl of milk and bread which our Quaker poet
describes, is not his, even with the wooden dish and pewter spoon;
but he seems happy for the moment with the cup of more or less hot
coffee which he imbibes. His jaunty, independent attitude shows that
he is bound to get all the good of his powerful and perhaps palatable
beverage; that he earned it, and is entitled to it.
“The Street to the Sea” is in fact a picture of the sea, although the
same is hardly in sight. Everything shows that we are approaching the
great Country of the Waters. The villas in view; the wheel-harrowed
road, admirably foreshortened; the deep shadows upon each side of the
way; human figures looming faintly in the distance; everything, in
fact, is somehow telling us a tale of the ocean, and we do not need
our too sparse glimpse of the “solemn main” to tell what majestic
voice will soon bring us to a halt; we almost smell the salt air.
Illustration: “WHO’S THAT COMING?”
Illustration: LEISURE.
The lazy fisherman who has hung out his latch-string and is
waiting for a dinner to call upon him, is Perard with a godsend of
material――of the kind he likes. There could scarcely be found a better
wedding of shiftlessness and ingenuity. The primitive character of the
man’s garments is apparently not due to the climate alone; he takes
no thought of the morrow, and not much of the current day, so far as
its temporal affairs are concerned. But the crude marks of mechanical
ability are all over and around him; one suspender is induced, by its
oblique trend, to do service for two; an elaborate coil of line gives
opportunity of play for the largest of fin-bearers; the stick in the
sand guarantees that his expected caller shall not go away without
experiencing the fisherman’s peculiar hospitality; and there is
considerable chance that if a “bite” occurs, the line will waken him,
as it gradually warms the interstice between his toes.
Illustration: McCLELLAN SADDLE.
Illustration: SHOOTING THE STEAM ARROW.
“A Veteran of the Ranks” might almost be Kipling’s Mulvaney himself.
The fatigue-cap, which in its jaunty pose seems to have vegetated and
grown there; the drooping mustache; the capacious pipe; are all what
might have been characteristics of that renowned Hibernian warrior
of India. The picture finally centres, however, in the eyes; which
contain a world, or at least two hemispheres, of shrewdness, of
that sort which only gets about so far in life, but is terribly
correct within its own scope. They also possess a certain humanity
and generosity, which would be likely to act as winsome daughters of
his regiment of martial qualities, even upon the battle-field.
Illustration: “GRACIOUS GOODNESS!”
“Miniature Men and Women” include a number of the most interesting
of the genus Baby. As everyone knows, there are babies and babies,
except to the parents of one. The infant is the true teacher and
object-lesson combined; it shows us the grace, although not always
the mercy and peace, of unconscious action. It has not been away
from Heaven long enough to learn the deceit of this crooked world,
is unaware that there is anything in life to conceal, and acts
accordingly, until taught better, or, perhaps, worse. These babies,
or this baby (for the same infant has so many different ways of acting
and appearing, that these may all be pictures of the same) can be
said to exhibit grace in every attitude and every position, from
the symmetrical fragment of humanity on the mother’s arm, to the tot
just contemplating a walking-lesson. All of them have a dignified
simplicity.
Illustration: ON WINGS OF HOOFS.
“Bon Voyage” shows the different attitudes which men will take while
intently gazing at the same object. It does not necessarily follow
that the “she” referred to is a lady; it may be and probably is, a
ship, upon which all of our captured gazers have friends. Each one
takes his own peculiar posture of observation; and their characters
can be read from them.
Illustration: MINIATURE MEN AND WOMEN.
“Waiting for Orders” is a faithful and almost pathetic presentation
of that patient, long-suffering, but unreliable beast, whose lack of
pride and hope have passed into a proverb. One is curious, seeing him
standing there, how life can ever manage to wheedle him into the idea
that it is worth living; but the same curiosity arises in regard to
some men. We often find that these have stowed away upon their persons
certain grains of comfort, concerning which we at first failed to take
note. Our utterly opaque friend here has pleasanter experiences in the
world than that of acting as a locomotive to a cart. The dashes of the
breeze, the transports of the sun-bath, the pull at the water-bucket,
the nourishment in the manger, all yield him tribute in a certain
amount of pleasure; he has no responsibility upon his mind, excepting
that he is to pull when told to; and although occasionally suffering
maltreatment from the superior race in which he recognizes many of his
own characteristics, there is no knowing how soon he may revenge it
all, in the twinkling of a pair of heels.
Illustration: BON VOYAGE!
Illustration: WAITING ORDERS.
Mr. Perard discovers himself in these sketches to be a facile
technician, a shrewd and sympathetic observer, and several different
kinds of a man――all good kinds. Observe one thing about him: he is
healthy and sound all through. His work is calm, firm, and kind. There
is heart in it. There is quite as warm a corner in that heart for the
ragamuffin as there is for the howling swell.
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