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diff --git a/2699-0.txt b/2699-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..16d8baf --- /dev/null +++ b/2699-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5116 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pages From an Old Volume of Life +by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. + +[The Physician and Poet, Not the Jurist, O. W. Holmes, Jr.] + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Pages From an Old Volume of Life + A Collection Of Essays + +Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. + +Release Date: August 16, 2006 [EBook #2699] +Last Updated: February 18, 2018 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE *** + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + +PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE + +A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS + +By Oliver Wendell Holmes + + + +CONTENTS: + + BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER + MY HUNT AFTER “THE CAPTAIN” + THE INEVITABLE TRIAL + CINDERS FROM ASHES + THE PULPIT AND THE PEW + + + + +BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER. + +(September, 1861.) + +This is the new version of the Panem et Circenses of the Roman populace. +It is our ultimatum, as that was theirs. They must have something to +eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have something to eat, and +the papers to read. + +Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our +carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip +to Europe sine die. If we live in a small way, there are at least new +dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with. +If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, +its respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a +caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed +nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one, +if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take +a pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only bread and the +newspaper we must have, whatever else we do without. + +How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We live on our emotions, +as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his +fever. Our ordinary mental food has become distasteful, and what would +have been intellectual luxuries at other times, are now absolutely +repulsive. + +All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have +experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later +betray itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among +us. We cannot forget Corvisart's observation of the frequency with which +diseases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the terrible +emotions produced by the scenes of the great French Revolution. Laennec +tells the story of a convent, of which he was the medical director, +where all the nuns were subjected to the severest penances and schooled +in the most painful doctrines. They all became consumptive soon after +their entrance, so that, in the course of his ten years' attendance, all +the inmates died out two or three times, and were replaced by new ones. +He does not hesitate to attribute the disease from which they suffered +to those depressing moral influences to which they were subjected. + +So far we have noticed little more than disturbances of the nervous +system as a consequence of the war excitement in non-combatants. Take +the first trifling example which comes to our recollection. A sad +disaster to the Federal army was told the other day in the presence +of two gentlemen and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sudden +feeling at the epigastrium, or, less learnedly, the pit of the stomach, +changed color, and confessed to a slight tremor about the knees. The +lady had a “grande revolution,” as French patients say,--went home, and +kept her bed for the rest of the day. Perhaps the reader may smile +at the mention of such trivial indispositions, but in more sensitive +natures death itself follows in some cases from no more serious cause. +An old gentleman fell senseless in fatal apoplexy, on hearing of +Napoleon's return from Elba. One of our early friends, who recently +died of the same complaint, was thought to have had his attack mainly in +consequence of the excitements of the time. + +We all know what the war fever is in our young men,--what a devouring +passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire +of it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of +adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of +participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal +distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which +we often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most +ardent of our soldiers. But something of the same fever in a different +form reaches a good many non-combatants, who have no thought of losing +a drop of precious blood belonging to themselves or their families. Some +of the symptoms we shall mention are almost universal; they are as plain +in the people we meet everywhere as the marks of an influenza, when that +is prevailing. + +The first is a nervous restlessness of a very peculiar character. Men +cannot think, or write, or attend to their ordinary business. They +stroll up and down the streets, or saunter out upon the public places. +We confessed to an illustrious author that we laid down the volume +of his work which we were reading when the war broke out. It was as +interesting as a romance, but the romance of the past grew pale before +the red light of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long +afterwards, he confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time +that we had closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth +century any more than we could read about it, while the nineteenth was +in the very agony and bloody sweat of its great sacrifice. + +Another most eminent scholar told us in all simplicity that he had +fallen into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic +dispatches over and over again in different papers, as if they were +new, until he felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same +thing, and does not often do it still, now that the first flush of the +fever is over? Another person always goes through the side streets on +his way for the noon extra,--he is so afraid somebody will meet him and +tell the news he wishes to read, first on the bulletin-board, and then +in the great capitals and leaded type of the newspaper. + +When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps repeating itself +in our minds in spite of all we can do. The same trains of thought go +tramping round in circle through the brain, like the supernumeraries +that make up the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes +round through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will have worn as +deep a track as one which has passed through it once a week for twenty +years. This accounts for the ages we seem to have lived since the +twelfth of April last, and, to state it more generally, for that ex post +facto operation of a great calamity, or any very powerful impression, +which we once illustrated by the image of a stain spreading backwards +from the leaf of life open before as through all those which we have +already turned. + +Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in times like these! Yet, not +wholly blessed, either; for what is more painful than the awaking from +peaceful unconsciousness to a sense that there is something wrong, we +cannot at first think what,--and then groping our way about through the +twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, which, like +some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which sits waiting for us +on its perch by our pillow in the gray of the morning? + +The converse of this is perhaps still more painful. Many have the +feeling in their waking hours that the trouble they are aching with is, +after all, only a dream,--if they will rub their eyes briskly enough and +shake themselves, they will awake out of it, and find all their supposed +grief is unreal. This attempt to cajole ourselves out of an ugly fact +always reminds us of those unhappy flies who have been indulging in the +dangerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use. + +Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,--at least, he suspects +himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,--let us just rub our +fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs +his hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar +twisting movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not +quite right yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it +ought to be. Let us settle that where it should be, and then we shall +certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old +lady adjusts her cap, and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten +washing herself. Poor fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he has +to deal with. If he could read the letters at the head of the sheet, he +would see they were Fly-Paper.--So with us, when, in our waking misery, +we try to think we dream! Perhaps very young persons may not understand +this; as we grow older, our waking and dreaming life run more and more +into each other. + +Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of +old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be +had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must +go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner +nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand +on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine +right of its telegraphic dispatches. + +War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this generation of +Americans. Our own nearest relation in the ascending line remembers the +Revolution well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her doll, +which was left behind, when she was carried out of Boston, about that +time growing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from +the neighboring heights at all hours,--in token of which see the tower +of Brattle Street Church at this very day? War in her memory means +'76. As for the brush of 1812, “we did not think much about that”; +and everybody knows that the Mexican business did not concern us much, +except in its political relations. No! war is a new thing to all of us +who are not in the last quarter of their century. We are learning many +strange matters from our fresh experience. And besides, there are new +conditions of existence which make war as it is with us very different +from war as it has been. + +The first and obvious difference consists in the fact that the whole +nation is now penetrated by the ramifications of a network of iron +nerves which flash sensation and volition backward and forward to and +from towns and provinces as if they were organs and limbs of a single +living body. The second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it +were, move the limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. What was +the railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th +of April but a contraction and extension of the arm of Massachusetts +with a clenched fist full of bayonets at the end of it? + +This perpetual intercommunication, joined to the power of instantaneous +action, keeps us always alive with excitement. It is not a breathless +courier who comes back with the report from an army we have lost sight +of for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know +for a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly paragraphs, laden +with truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always +for the last fact or rumor they are telling. And so of the movements +of our armies. To-night the stout lumbermen of Maine are encamped under +their own fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they are among the +tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned +like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times; +now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. +And this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another +singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We +may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed +a week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would +have been in a whole season before our national nervous system was +organized. + + “As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea, + Thou only teachest all that man can be!” + +We indulged in the above apostrophe to War in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of +long ago, which we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler's beautiful +prolonged lyric delivered at the recent anniversary of that Society. + +Oftentimes, in paroxysms of peace and good-will towards all mankind, we +have felt twinges of conscience about the passage,--especially when one +of our orators showed us that a ship of war costs as much to build and +keep as a college, and that every port-hole we could stop would give us +a new professor. Now we begin to think that there was some meaning in +our poor couplet. War has taught us, as nothing else could, what we can +be and are. It has exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and driven us +all back upon our substantial human qualities, for a long time more +or less kept out of sight by the spirit of commerce, the love of art, +science, or literature, or other qualities not belonging to all of us as +men and women. + +It is at this very moment doing more to melt away the petty social +distinctions which keep generous souls apart from each other, than the +preaching of the Beloved Disciple himself would do. We are finding out +that not only “patriotism is eloquence,” but that heroism is gentility. +All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery. +The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like +a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of +Crecy and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his +straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or +leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs +as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with labor. + +Even our poor “Brahmins,”--whom a critic in ground-glass spectacles (the +same who grasps his statistics by the blade and strikes at his +supposed antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the “bloated +aristocracy;” whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized, +shy, sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for +learning,--even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, subvirates +of an organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their +courage is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely about their +slender figures. + +A young man was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our +windows. A few days afterwards a field piece was dragged to the water's +edge, and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who +looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to “break the gall,” + he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange +physiological fancy and a very odd non sequitur; but that is not our +present point. A good many extraordinary objects do really come to the +surface when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they roared +over Charleston harbor. + +Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable +grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with +the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and +unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of +fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed +by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us. + +It is a shame to own it, but there were persons otherwise respectable +not unwilling to say that they believed the old valor of Revolutionary +times had died out from among us. They talked about our own Northern +people as the English in the last centuries used to talk about the +French,--Goldsmith's old soldier, it may be remembered, called one +Englishman good for five of them. As Napoleon spoke of the English, +again, as a nation of shopkeepers, so these persons affected to consider +the multitude of their countrymen as unwarlike artisans,--forgetting +that Paul Revere taught himself the value of liberty in working upon +gold, and Nathaniel Greene fitted himself to shape armies in the labor +of forging iron. These persons have learned better now. The bravery of +our free working-people was overlaid, but not smothered; sunken, but not +drowned. The hands which had been busy conquering the elements had only +to change their weapons and their adversaries, and they were as ready to +conquer the masses of living force opposed to them as they had been to +build towns, to dam rivers, to hunt whales, to harvest ice, to hammer +brute matter into every shape civilization can ask for. + +Another great fact came to the surface, and is coming up every day in +new shapes,--that we are one people. It is easy to say that a man is a +man in Maine or Minnesota, but not so easy to feel it, all through our +bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave +Winthrop, marching with the city elegants, seems to have been a little +startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the +Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or +ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is +distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to +think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up +turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-ninth, to show us +that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New +Hampshire, or of Broadway, New York. + +Here, too, side by side in the same great camp, are half a dozen +chaplains, representing half a dozen modes of religious belief. When the +masked battery opens, does the “Baptist” Lieutenant believe in his +heart that God takes better care of him than of his “Congregationalist” + Colonel? Does any man really suppose, that, of a score of noble young +fellows who have just laid down their lives for their country, the +Homoousians are received to the mansions of bliss, and the Homoousians +translated from the battle-field to the abodes of everlasting woe? War +not only teaches what man can be, but it teaches also what he must not +be. He must not be a bigot and a fool in the presence of that day of +judgment proclaimed by the trumpet which calls to battle, and where a +man should have but two thoughts: to do his duty, and trust his Maker. +Let our brave dead come back from the fields where they have fallen for +law and liberty, and if you will follow them to their graves, you will +find out what the Broad Church means; the narrow church is sparing of +its exclusive formulae over the coffins wrapped in the flag which the +fallen heroes had defended! Very little comparatively do we hear at +such times of the dogmas on which men differ; very much of the faith and +trust in which all sincere Christians can agree. It is a noble lesson, +and nothing less noisy than the voice of cannon can teach it so that it +shall be heard over all the angry cries of theological disputants. + +Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our friends, and to +get at their principles of judgment. Perhaps most, of us, will +agree that our faith in domestic prophets has been diminished by the +experience of the last six months. We had the notable predictions +attributed to the Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused +to fulfil themselves. We were infested at one time with a set of +ominous-looking seers, who shook their heads and muttered obscurely +about some mighty preparations that were making to substitute the rule +of the minority for that of the majority. Organizations were darkly +hinted at; some thought our armories would be seized; and there are not +wanting ancient women in the neighboring University town who consider +that the country was saved by the intrepid band of students who stood +guard, night after night, over the G. R. cannon and the pile of balls in +the Cambridge Arsenal. + +As a general rule, it is safe to say that the best prophecies are those +which the sages remember after the event prophesied of has come to pass, +and remind us that they have made long ago. Those who, are rash enough +to predict publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope, or what +they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of their own, or some +guess founded on private information not half so good as what everybody +gets who reads the papers,--never by any possibility a word that we can +depend on, simply because there are cobwebs of contingency between every +to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate when fifty of +them lie woven one over another. Prophesy as much as you like, but +always hedge. Say that you think the rebels are weaker than is commonly +supposed, but, on the other hand, that they may prove to be even +stronger than is anticipated. Say what you like,--only don't be too +peremptory and dogmatic; we know that wiser men than you have been +notoriously deceived in their predictions in this very matter. + + Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis. + +Let that be your model; and remember, on peril of your reputation as a +prophet, not to put a stop before or after the nunquam. + +There are two or three facts connected with time, besides that already +referred to, which strike us very forcibly in their relation to the +great events passing around us. We spoke of the long period seeming to +have elapsed since this war began. The buds were then swelling which +held the leaves that are still green. It seems as old as Time himself. +We cannot fail to observe how the mind brings together the scenes of +to-day and those of the old Revolution. We shut up eighty years into +each other like the joints of a pocket-telescope. When the young men +from Middlesex dropped in Baltimore the other day, it seemed to bring +Lexington and the other Nineteenth of April close to us. War has always +been the mint in which the world's history has been coined, and now +every day or week or month has a new medal for us. It was Warren that +the first impression bore in the last great coinage; if it is Ellsworth +now, the new face hardly seems fresher than the old. All battle-fields +are alike in their main features. The young fellows who fell in our +earlier struggle seemed like old men to us until within these few +months; now we remember they were like these fiery youth we are cheering +as they go to the fight; it seems as if the grass of our bloody hillside +was crimsoned but yesterday, and the cannon-ball imbedded in the +church-tower would feel warm, if we laid our hand upon it. + +Nay, in this our quickened life we feel that all the battles from +earliest time to our own day, where Right and Wrong have grappled, are +but one great battle, varied with brief pauses or hasty bivouacs upon +the field of conflict. The issues seem to vary, but it is always a +right against a claim, and, however the struggle of the hour may go, a +movement onward of the campaign, which uses defeat as well as victory +to serve its mighty ends. The very implements of our warfare change less +than we think. Our bullets and cannonballs have lengthened into bolts +like those which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with +weapons, such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a +newly invented head-gear as old as the days of the Pyramids. + +Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, +and, we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our +narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and +shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by +the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for. +For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you +ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this +world, that the generations to follow you may inherit a whole country +whose natural condition shall be peace, and not a broken province which +must live under the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence, +of war and all that war brings with it? If we are all ready for this +sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object +must be won. + +Heaven is very kind in its way of putting questions to mortals. We are +not abruptly asked to give up all that we most care for, in view of the +momentous issues before us. Perhaps we shall never be asked to give up +all, but we have already been called upon to part with much that is dear +to us, and should be ready to yield the rest as it is called for. The +time may come when even the cheap public print shall be a burden our +means cannot support, and we can only listen in the square that was once +the marketplace to the voices of those who proclaim defeat or victory. +Then there will be only our daily food left. When we have nothing +to read and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable moment to offer a +compromise. At present we have all that nature absolutely demands,--we +can live on bread and the newspaper. + + + + +MY HUNT AFTER “THE CAPTAIN.” + +In the dead of the night which closed upon the bloody field of Antietam, +my household was startled from its slumbers by the loud summons of a +telegraphic messenger. The air had been heavy all day with rumors of +battle, and thousands and tens of thousands had walked the streets with +throbbing hearts, in dread anticipation of the tidings any hour might +bring. + +We rose hastily, and presently the messenger was admitted. I took the +envelope from his hand, opened it, and read: + +HAGERSTOWN 17th + +To__________ H ______ + +Capt H______ wounded shot through the neck thought not mortal at +Keedysville WILLIAM G. LEDUC + +Through the neck,--no bullet left in wound. Windpipe, food-pipe, +carotid, jugular, half a dozen smaller, but still formidable vessels, a +great braid of nerves, each as big as a lamp-wick, spinal cord,--ought +to kill at once, if at all. Thought not mortal, or not thought +mortal,--which was it? The first; that is better than the second would +be.--“Keedysville, a post-office, Washington Co., Maryland.” Leduc? +Leduc? Don't remember that name. The boy is waiting for his money. A +dollar and thirteen cents. Has nobody got thirteen cents? Don't keep +that boy waiting,--how do we know what messages he has got to carry? + +The boy had another message to carry. It was to the father of +Lieutenant-Colonel Wilder Dwight, informing him that his son was +grievously wounded in the same battle, and was lying at Boonsborough, +a town a few miles this side of Keedysville. This I learned the next +morning from the civil and attentive officials at the Central Telegraph +Office. + +Calling upon this gentleman, I found that he meant to leave in the +quarter past two o'clock train, taking with him Dr. George H. Gay, an +accomplished and energetic surgeon, equal to any difficult question or +pressing emergency. I agreed to accompany them, and we met in the cars. +I felt myself peculiarly fortunate in having companions whose society +would be a pleasure, whose feelings would harmonize with my own, and +whose assistance I might, in case of need, be glad to claim. + +It is of the journey which we began together, and which I finished +apart, that I mean to give my “Atlantic” readers an account. They must +let me tell my story in my own way, speaking of many little matters that +interested or amused me, and which a certain leisurely class of elderly +persons, who sit at their firesides and never travel, will, I hope, +follow with a kind of interest. For, besides the main object of my +excursion, I could not help being excited by the incidental sights +and occurrences of a trip which to a commercial traveller or a +newspaper-reporter would seem quite commonplace and undeserving of +record. There are periods in which all places and people seem to be in +a conspiracy to impress us with their individuality, in which every +ordinary locality seems to assume a special significance and to claim +a particular notice, in which every person we meet is either an old +acquaintance or a character; days in which the strangest coincidences +are continually happening, so that they get to be the rule, and not the +exception. Some might naturally think that anxiety and the weariness of +a prolonged search after a near relative would have prevented my taking +any interest in or paying any regard to the little matters around me. +Perhaps it had just the contrary effect, and acted like a diffused +stimulus upon the attention. When all the faculties are wide-awake +in pursuit of a single object, or fixed in the spasm of an absorbing +emotion, they are oftentimes clairvoyant in a marvellous degree in +respect to many collateral things, as Wordsworth has so forcibly +illustrated in his sonnet on the Boy of Windermere, and as Hawthorne +has developed with such metaphysical accuracy in that chapter of his +wondrous story where Hester walks forth to meet her punishment. + +Be that as it may,--though I set out with a full and heavy heart, though +many times my blood chilled with what were perhaps needless and unwise +fears, though I broke through all my habits without thinking about them, +which is almost as hard in certain circumstances as for one of our +young fellows to leave his sweetheart and go into a Peninsular campaign, +though I did not always know when I was hungry nor discover that I was +thirsting, though I had a worrying ache and inward tremor underlying all +the outward play of the senses and the mind, yet it is the simple truth +that I did look out of the car-windows with an eye for all that passed, +that I did take cognizance of strange sights and singular people, that +I did act much as persons act from the ordinary promptings of curiosity, +and from time to time even laugh very much as others do who are +attacked with a convulsive sense of the ridiculous, the epilepsy of the +diaphragm. + +By a mutual compact, we talked little in the cars. A communicative +friend is the greatest nuisance to have at one's side during a railroad +journey, especially if his conversation is stimulating and in itself +agreeable. “A fast train and a 'slow' neighbor,” is my motto. Many +times, when I have got upon the cars, expecting to be magnetized into an +hour or two of blissful reverie, my thoughts shaken up by the vibrations +into all sorts of new and pleasing patterns, arranging themselves in +curves and nodal points, like the grains of sand in Chladni's famous +experiment,--fresh ideas coming up to the surface, as the kernels do +when a measure of corn is jolted in a farmer's wagon,--all this without +volition, the mechanical impulse alone keeping the thoughts in motion, +as the mere act of carrying certain watches in the pocket keeps them +wound up,--many times, I say, just as my brain was beginning to +creep and hum with this delicious locomotive intoxication, some dear +detestable friend, cordial, intelligent, social, radiant, has come +up and sat down by me and opened a conversation which has broken my +day-dream, unharnessed the flying horses that were whirling along +my fancies and hitched on the old weary omnibus-team of every-day +associations, fatigued my hearing and attention, exhausted my voice, and +milked the breasts of my thought dry during the hour when they should +have been filling themselves full of fresh juices. My friends spared me +this trial. + +So, then, I sat by the window and enjoyed the slight tipsiness +produced by short, limited, rapid oscillations, which I take to be the +exhilarating stage of that condition which reaches hopeless inebriety +in what we know as sea-sickness. Where the horizon opened widely, it +pleased me to watch the curious effect of the rapid movement of near +objects contrasted with the slow motion of distant ones. Looking from +a right-hand window, for instance, the fences close by glide swiftly +backward, or to the right, while the distant hills not only do not +appear to move backward, but look by contrast with the fences near at +hand as if they were moving forward, or to the left; and thus the whole +landscape becomes a mighty wheel revolving about an imaginary axis +somewhere in the middle-distance. + +My companions proposed to stay at one of the best-known and +longest-established of the New-York caravansaries, and I accompanied +them. We were particularly well lodged, and not uncivilly treated. The +traveller who supposes that he is to repeat the melancholy experience of +Shenstone, and have to sigh over the reflection that he has found “his +warmest welcome at an inn,” has something to learn at the offices of +the great city hotels. The unheralded guest who is honored by mere +indifference may think himself blessed with singular good-fortune. If +the despot of the Patent-Annunciator is only mildly contemptuous in his +manner, let the victim look upon it as a personal favor. The coldest +welcome that a threadbare curate ever got at the door of a bishop's +palace, the most icy reception that a country cousin ever received at +the city mansion of a mushroom millionaire, is agreeably tepid, compared +to that which the Rhadamanthus who dooms you to the more or less +elevated circle of his inverted Inferno vouchsafes, as you step up to +enter your name on his dog's-eared register. I have less hesitation +in unburdening myself of this uncomfortable statement, as on this +particular trip I met with more than one exception to the rule. +Officials become brutalized, I suppose, as a matter of course. One +cannot expect an office clerk to embrace tenderly every stranger who +comes in with a carpet-bag, or a telegraph operator to burst into tears +over every unpleasant message he receives for transmission. Still, +humanity is not always totally extinguished in these persons. I +discovered a youth in a telegraph office of the Continental Hotel, in +Philadelphia, who was as pleasant in conversation, and as graciously +responsive to inoffensive questions, as if I had been his childless +opulent uncle and my will not made. + +On the road again the next morning, over the ferry, into the cars with +sliding panels and fixed windows, so that in summer the whole side of +the car may be made transparent. New Jersey is, to the apprehension of a +traveller, a double-headed suburb rather than a State. Its dull red dust +looks like the dried and powdered mud of a battle-field. Peach-trees are +common, and champagne-orchards. Canal-boats, drawn by mules, swim by, +feeling their way along like blind men led by dogs. I had a mighty +passion come over me to be the captain of one,--to glide back and +forward upon a sea never roughened by storms,--to float where I could +not sink,--to navigate where there is no shipwreck,--to lie languidly +on the deck and govern the huge craft by a word or the movement of a +finger: there was something of railroad intoxication in the fancy: but +who has not often envied a cobbler in his stall? + +The boys cry the “N'-York Heddle,” instead of “Herald”; I remember that +years ago in Philadelphia; we must be getting near the farther end of +the dumb-bell suburb. A bridge has been swept away by a rise of the +waters, so we must approach Philadelphia by the river. Her physiognomy +is not distinguished; nez camus, as a Frenchman would say; no +illustrious steeple, no imposing tower; the water-edge of the town +looking bedraggled, like the flounce of a vulgar rich woman's dress that +trails on the sidewalk. The New Ironsides lies at one of the wharves, +elephantine in bulk and color, her sides narrowing as they rise, like +the walls of a hock-glass. + +I went straight to the house in Walnut Street where the Captain would be +heard of, if anywhere in this region. His lieutenant-colonel was there, +gravely wounded; his college-friend and comrade in arms, a son of the +house, was there, injured in a similar way; another soldier, brother +of the last, was there, prostrate with fever. A fourth bed was waiting +ready for the Captain, but not one word had been heard of him, though +inquiries had been made in the towns from and through which the father +had brought his two sons and the lieutenant-colonel. And so my search +is, like a “Ledger” story, to be continued. + +I rejoined my companions in time to take the noon-train for Baltimore. +Our company was gaining in number as it moved onwards. We had found upon +the train from New York a lovely, lonely lady, the wife of one of our +most spirited Massachusetts officers, the brave Colonel of the __th +Regiment, going to seek her wounded husband at Middletown, a place lying +directly in our track. She was the light of our party while we were +together on our pilgrimage, a fair, gracious woman, gentle, but +courageous, + + --“ful plesant and amiable of port, + --estatelich of manere, + And to ben holden digne of reverence.” + +On the road from Philadelphia, I found in the same car with our party +Dr. William Hunt of Philadelphia, who had most kindly and faithfully +attended the Captain, then the Lieutenant, after a wound received at +Ball's Bluff, which came very near being mortal. He was going upon an +errand of mercy to the wounded, and found he had in his memorandum-book +the name of our lady's husband, the Colonel, who had been commended to +his particular attention. + +Not long after leaving Philadelphia, we passed a solitary sentry keeping +guard over a short railroad bridge. It was the first evidence that we +were approaching the perilous borders, the marches where the North and +the South mingle their angry hosts, where the extremes of our so-called +civilization meet in conflict, and the fierce slave-driver of the Lower +Mississippi stares into the stern eyes of the forest-feller from the +banks of the Aroostook. All the way along, the bridges were guarded more +or less strongly. In a vast country like ours, communications play a far +more complex part than in Europe, where the whole territory available +for strategic purposes is so comparatively limited. Belgium, for +instance, has long been the bowling-alley where kings roll cannon-balls +at each other's armies; but here we are playing the game of live +ninepins without any alley. + +We were obliged to stay in Baltimore over night, as we were too late for +the train to Frederick. At the Eutaw House, where we found both comfort +and courtesy, we met a number of friends, who beguiled the evening hours +for us in the most agreeable manner. We devoted some time to procuring +surgical and other articles, such as might be useful to our friends, or +to others, if our friends should not need them. In the morning, I found +myself seated at the breakfast-table next to General Wool. It did not +surprise me to find the General very far from expansive. With Fort +McHenry on his shoulders and Baltimore in his breeches-pocket, and the +weight of a military department loading down his social safety-valves, I +thought it a great deal for an officer in his trying position to select +so very obliging and affable an aid as the gentleman who relieved him of +the burden of attending to strangers. + +We left the Eutaw House, to take the cars for Frederick. As we stood +waiting on the platform, a telegraphic message was handed in silence to +my companion. Sad news: the lifeless body of the son he was hastening +to see was even now on its way to him in Baltimore. It was no time for +empty words of consolation: I knew what he had lost, and that now was +not the time to intrude upon a grief borne as men bear it, felt as women +feel it. + +Colonel Wilder Dwight was first made known to me as the friend of a +beloved relative of my own, who was with him during a severe illness in +Switzerland; and for whom while living, and for whose memory when dead, +he retained the warmest affection. Since that the story of his noble +deeds of daring, of his capture and escape, and a brief visit home +before he was able to rejoin his regiment, had made his name familiar to +many among us, myself among the number. His memory has been honored by +those who had the largest opportunity of knowing his rare promise, as +a man of talents and energy of nature. His abounding vitality must have +produced its impression on all who met him; there was a still fire about +him which any one could see would blaze up to melt all difficulties and +recast obstacles into implements in the mould of an heroic will. These +elements of his character many had the chance of knowing; but I shall +always associate him with the memory of that pure and noble friendship +which made me feel that I knew him before I looked upon his face, and +added a personal tenderness to the sense of loss which I share with the +whole community. + +Here, then, I parted, sorrowfully, from the companions with whom I set +out on my journey. + +In one of the cars, at the same station, we met General Shriver of +Frederick, a most loyal Unionist, whose name is synonymous with a hearty +welcome to all whom he can aid by his counsel and his hospitality. He +took great pains to give us all the information we needed, and expressed +the hope, which was afterwards fulfilled, to the great gratification of +some of us, that we should meet again when he should return to his home. + +There was nothing worthy of special note in the trip to Frederick, +except our passing a squad of Rebel prisoners, whom I missed seeing, as +they flashed by, but who were said to be a most forlorn-looking crowd of +scarecrows. Arrived at the Monocacy River, about three miles this side +of Frederick, we came to a halt, for the railroad bridge had been blown +up by the Rebels, and its iron pillars and arches were lying in the bed +of the river. The unfortunate wretch who fired the train was killed by +the explosion, and lay buried hard by, his hands sticking out of the +shallow grave into which he had been huddled. This was the story they +told us, but whether true or not I must leave to the correspondents of +“Notes and Queries” to settle. + +There was a great confusion of carriages and wagons at the +stopping-place of the train, so that it was a long time before I could +get anything that would carry us. At last I was lucky enough to light on +a sturdy wagon, drawn by a pair of serviceable bays, and driven by +James Grayden, with whom I was destined to have a somewhat continued +acquaintance. We took up a little girl who had been in Baltimore during +the late Rebel inroad. It made me think of the time when my own mother, +at that time six years old, was hurried off from Boston, then occupied +by the British soldiers, to Newburyport, and heard the people saying +that “the redcoats were coming, killing and murdering everybody as they +went along.” Frederick looked cheerful for a place that had so recently +been in an enemy's hands. Here and there a house or shop was shut up, +but the national colors were waving in all directions, and the general +aspect was peaceful and contented. I saw no bullet-marks or other sign +of the fighting which had gone on in the streets. The Colonel's lady was +taken in charge by a daughter of that hospitable family to which we +had been commended by its head, and I proceeded to inquire for wounded +officers at the various temporary hospitals. + +At the United States Hotel, where many were lying, I heard mention of an +officer in an upper chamber, and, going there, found Lieutenant Abbott, +of the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers, lying ill with what looked +like typhoid fever. While there, who should come in but the almost +ubiquitous Lieutenant Wilkins, of the same Twentieth, whom I had met +repeatedly before on errands of kindness or duty, and who was just from +the battle-ground. He was going to Boston in charge of the body of the +lamented Dr. Revere, the Assistant Surgeon of the regiment, killed +on the field. From his lips I learned something of the mishaps of the +regiment. My Captain's wound he spoke of as less grave than at first +thought; but he mentioned incidentally having heard a story recently +that he was killed,--a fiction, doubtless,--a mistake,--a palpable +absurdity,--not to be remembered or made any account of. Oh no! but what +dull ache is this in that obscurely sensitive region, somewhere below +the heart, where the nervous centre called the semilunar ganglion lies +unconscious of itself until a great grief or a mastering anxiety +reaches it through all the non-conductors which isolate it from ordinary +impressions? I talked awhile with Lieutenant Abbott, who lay prostrate, +feeble, but soldier-like and uncomplaining, carefully waited upon by a +most excellent lady, a captain's wife, New England born, loyal as the +Liberty on a golden ten-dollar piece, and of lofty bearing enough +to have sat for that goddess's portrait. She had stayed in Frederick +through the Rebel inroad, and kept the star-spangled banner where it +would be safe, to unroll it as the last Rebel hoofs clattered off from +the pavement of the town. + +Near by Lieutenant Abbott was an unhappy gentleman, occupying a small +chamber, and filling it with his troubles. When he gets well and plump, +I know he will forgive me if I confess that I could not help smiling +in the midst of my sympathy for him. He had been a well-favored man, +he said, sweeping his hand in a semicircle, which implied that his +acute-angled countenance had once filled the goodly curve he described. +He was now a perfect Don Quixote to look upon. Weakness had made him +querulous, as it does all of us, and he piped his grievances to me in +a thin voice, with that finish of detail which chronic invalidism alone +can command. He was starving,--he could not get what he wanted to eat. +He was in need of stimulants, and he held up a pitiful two-ounce phial +containing three thimblefuls--of brandy,--his whole stock of that +encouraging article. Him I consoled to the best of my ability, and +afterwards, in some slight measure, supplied his wants. Feed this poor +gentleman up, as these good people soon will, and I should not know him, +nor he himself. We are all egotists in sickness and debility. An +animal has been defined as “a stomach ministered to by organs;” and the +greatest man comes very near this simple formula after a month or two of +fever and starvation. + +James Grayden and his team pleased me well enough, and so I made a +bargain with him to take us, the lady and myself, on our further journey +as far as Middletown. As we were about starting from the front of the +United States Hotel, two gentlemen presented themselves and expressed +a wish to be allowed to share our conveyance. I looked at them and +convinced myself that they were neither Rebels in disguise, nor +deserters, nor camp-followers, nor miscreants, but plain, honest men on +a proper errand. The first of them I will pass over briefly. He was +a young man of mild and modest demeanor, chaplain to a Pennsylvania +regiment, which he was going to rejoin. He belonged to the Moravian +Church, of which I had the misfortune to know little more than what +I had learned from Southey's “Life of Wesley.” and from the exquisite +hymns we have borrowed from its rhapsodists. The other stranger was a +New Englander of respectable appearance, with a grave, hard, honest, +hay-bearded face, who had come to serve the sick and wounded on the +battle-field and in its immediate neighborhood. There is no reason why I +should not mention his name, but I shall content myself with calling him +the Philanthropist. + +So we set forth, the sturdy wagon, the serviceable bays, with James +Grayden their driver, the gentle lady, whose serene patience bore up +through all delays and discomforts, the Chaplain, the Philanthropist, +and myself, the teller of this story. + +And now, as we emerged from Frederick, we struck at once upon the trail +from the great battle-field. The road was filled with straggling and +wounded soldiers. All who could travel on foot,--multitudes with slight +wounds of the upper limbs, the head, or face,--were told to take up +their beds,--a light burden or none at all,--and walk. Just as the +battle-field sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so +does it drive everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce +centripetal forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than +a week there had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the +streets of Frederick, through Crampton's Gap, over South Mountain, +sweeping at last the hills and the woods that skirt the windings of the +Antietam, the long battle had travelled, like one of those tornadoes +which tear their path through our fields and villages. The slain of +higher condition, “embalmed” and iron-cased, were sliding off on the +railways to their far homes; the dead of the rank and file were being +gathered up and committed hastily to the earth; the gravely wounded were +cared for hard by the scene of conflict, or pushed a little way along to +the neighboring villages; while those who could walk were meeting us, as +I have said, at every step in the road. It was a pitiable sight, truly +pitiable, yet so vast, so far beyond the possibility of relief, that +many single sorrows of small dimensions have wrought upon my feelings +more than the sight of this great caravan of maimed pilgrims. The +companionship of so many seemed to make a joint-stock of their +suffering; it was next to impossible to individualize it, and so bring +it home, as one can do with a single broken limb or aching wound. Then +they were all of the male sex, and in the freshness or the prime of +their strength. Though they tramped so wearily along, yet there was rest +and kind nursing in store for them. These wounds they bore would be the +medals they would show their children and grandchildren by and by. Who +would not rather wear his decorations beneath his uniform than on it? + +Yet among them were figures which arrested our attention and sympathy. +Delicate boys, with more spirit than strength, flushed with fever or +pale with exhaustion or haggard with suffering, dragged their weary +limbs along as if each step would exhaust their slender store of +strength. At the roadside sat or lay others, quite spent with their +journey. Here and there was a house at which the wayfarers would stop, +in the hope, I fear often vain, of getting refreshment; and in one place +was a clear, cool spring, where the little bands of the long procession +halted for a few moments, as the trains that traverse the desert rest by +its fountains. My companions had brought a few peaches along with them, +which the Philanthropist bestowed upon the tired and thirsty soldiers +with a satisfaction which we all shared. I had with me a small flask of +strong waters, to be used as a medicine in case of inward grief. From +this, also, he dispensed relief, without hesitation, to a poor fellow +who looked as if he needed it. I rather admired the simplicity with +which he applied my limited means of solace to the first-comer who +wanted it more than I; a genuine benevolent impulse does not stand on +ceremony, and had I perished of colic for want of a stimulus that night, +I should not have reproached my friend the Philanthropist, any more than +I grudged my other ardent friend the two dollars and more which it cost +me to send the charitable message he left in my hands. + +It was a lovely country through which we were riding. The hillsides +rolled away into the distance, slanting up fair and broad to the sun, +as one sees them in the open parts of the Berkshire Valley, at +Lanesborough, for instance, or in the many-hued mountain chalice at the +bottom of which the Shaker houses of Lebanon have shaped themselves like +a sediment of cubical crystals. The wheat was all garnered, and the land +ploughed for a new crop. There was Indian corn standing, but I saw no +pumpkins warming their yellow carapaces in the sunshine like so many +turtles; only in a single instance did I notice some wretched little +miniature specimens in form and hue not unlike those colossal oranges of +our cornfields. The rail fences were somewhat disturbed, and the cinders +of extinguished fires showed the use to which they had been applied. The +houses along the road were not for the most part neatly kept; the garden +fences were poorly built of laths or long slats, and very rarely of +trim aspect. The men of this region seemed to ride in the saddle very +generally, rather than drive. They looked sober and stern, less curious +and lively than Yankees, and I fancied that a type of features familiar +to us in the countenance of the late John Tyler, our accidental +President, was frequently met with. The women were still more +distinguishable from our New England pattern. Soft, sallow, succulent, +delicately finished about the mouth and firmly shaped about the chin, +dark-eyed, full-throated, they looked as if they had been grown in +a land of olives. There was a little toss in their movement, full of +muliebrity. I fancied there was something more of the duck and less of +the chicken about them, as compared with the daughters of our leaner +soil; but these are mere impressions caught from stray glances, and +if there is any offence in them, my fair readers may consider them all +retracted. + +At intervals, a dead horse lay by the roadside, or in the fields, +unburied, not grateful to gods or men. I saw no bird of prey, no +ill-omened fowl, on my way to the carnival of death, or at the place +where it had been held. The vulture of story, the crow of Talavera, the +“twa corbies” of the ghastly ballad, are all from Nature, doubtless; +but no black wing was spread over these animal ruins, and no call to the +banquet pierced through the heavy-laden and sickening air. + +Full in the middle of the road, caring little for whom or what they met, +came long strings of army wagons, returning empty from the front after +supplies. James Grayden stated it as his conviction that they had a +little rather run into a fellow than not. I liked the looks of these +equipages and their drivers; they meant business. Drawn by mules mostly, +six, I think, to a wagon, powdered well with dust, wagon, beast, and +driver, they came jogging along the road, turning neither to right +nor left,--some driven by bearded, solemn white men, some by careless, +saucy-looking negroes, of a blackness like that of anthracite or +obsidian. There seemed to be nothing about them, dead or alive, that was +not serviceable. Sometimes a mule would give out on the road; then he +was left where he lay, until by and by he would think better of it, and +get up, when the first public wagon that came along would hitch him on, +and restore him to the sphere of duty. + +It was evening when we got to Middletown. The gentle lady who had graced +our homely conveyance with her company here left us. She found her +husband, the gallant Colonel, in very comfortable quarters, well cared +for, very weak from the effects of the fearful operation he had been +compelled to undergo, but showing calm courage to endure as he had shown +manly energy to act. It was a meeting full of heroism and tenderness, +of which I heard more than there is need to tell. Health to the +brave soldier, and peace to the household over which so fair a spirit +presides! + +Dr. Thompson, the very active and intelligent surgical director of the +hospitals of the place, took me in charge. He carried me to the house of +a worthy and benevolent clergyman of the German Reformed Church, where I +was to take tea and pass the night. What became of the Moravian chaplain +I did not know; but my friend the Philanthropist had evidently made up +his mind to adhere to my fortunes. He followed me, therefore, to the +house of the “Dominie,” as a newspaper correspondent calls my kind host, +and partook of the fare there furnished me. He withdrew with me to the +apartment assigned for my slumbers, and slept sweetly on the same pillow +where I waked and tossed. Nay, I do affirm that he did, unconsciously, +I believe, encroach on that moiety of the couch which I had flattered +myself was to be my own through the watches of the night, and that I +was in serious doubt at one time whether I should not be gradually, but +irresistibly, expelled from the bed which I had supposed destined for +my sole possession. As Ruth clave unto Naomi, so my friend the +Philanthropist clave unto me. “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where +thou lodgest, I will lodge.” A really kind, good man, full of zeal, +determined to help somebody, and absorbed in his one thought, he +doubted nobody's willingness to serve him, going, as he was, on a purely +benevolent errand. When he reads this, as I hope he will, let him be +assured of my esteem and respect; and if he gained any accommodation +from being in my company, let me tell him that I learned a lesson from +his active benevolence. I could, however, have wished to hear him laugh +once before we parted, perhaps forever. He did not, to the best of +my recollection, even smile during the whole period that we were in +company. I am afraid that a lightsome disposition and a relish for humor +are not so common in those whose benevolence takes an active turn as in +people of sentiment, who are always ready with their tears and abounding +in passionate expressions of sympathy. Working philanthropy is a +practical specialty, requiring not a mere impulse, but a talent, with +its peculiar sagacity for finding its objects, a tact for selecting its +agencies, an organizing and arranging faculty, a steady set of nerves, +and a constitution such as Sallust describes in Catiline, patient of +cold, of hunger, and of watching. Philanthropists are commonly grave, +occasionally grim, and not very rarely morose. Their expansive social +force is imprisoned as a working power, to show itself only through +its legitimate pistons and cranks. The tighter the boiler, the less it +whistles and sings at its work. When Dr. Waterhouse, in 1780, travelled +with Howard, on his tour among the Dutch prisons and hospitals, he +found his temper and manners very different from what would have been +expected. + +My benevolent companion having already made a preliminary exploration +of the hospitals of the place, before sharing my bed with him, as above +mentioned, I joined him in a second tour through them. The authorities +of Middletown are evidently leagued with the surgeons of that place, for +such a break-neck succession of pitfalls and chasms I have never seen in +the streets of a civilized town. It was getting late in the evening when +we began our rounds. The principal collections of the wounded were in +the churches. Boards were laid over the tops of the pews, on these +some straw was spread, and on this the wounded lay, with little or +no covering other than such scanty clothes as they had on. There were +wounds of all degrees of severity, but I heard no groans or murmurs. +Most of the sufferers were hurt in the limbs, some had undergone +amputation, and all had, I presume, received such attention as was +required. Still, it was but a rough and dreary kind of comfort that the +extemporized hospitals suggested. I could not help thinking the patients +must be cold; but they were used to camp life, and did not complain. The +men who watched were not of the soft-handed variety of the race. One +of them was smoking his pipe as he went from bed to bed. I saw one poor +fellow who had been shot through the breast; his breathing was labored, +and he was tossing, anxious and restless. The men were debating about +the opiate he was to take, and I was thankful that I happened there at +the right moment to see that he was well narcotized for the night. Was +it possible that my Captain could be lying on the straw in one of these +places? Certainly possible, but not probable; but as the lantern was +held over each bed, it was with a kind of thrill that I looked upon the +features it illuminated. Many times as I went from hospital to hospital +in my wanderings, I started as some faint resemblance,--the shade of a +young man's hair, the outline of his half-turned face,--recalled the +presence I was in search of. The face would turn towards me, and the +momentary illusion would pass away, but still the fancy clung to me. +There was no figure huddled up on its rude couch, none stretched at the +roadside, none toiling languidly along the dusty pike, none passing in +car or in ambulance, that I did not scrutinize, as if it might be that +for which I was making my pilgrimage to the battlefield. + +“There are two wounded Secesh,” said my companion. I walked to the +bedside of the first, who was an officer, a lieutenant, if I remember +right, from North Carolina. He was of good family, son of a judge in +one of the higher courts of his State, educated, pleasant, gentle, +intelligent. One moment's intercourse with such an enemy, lying helpless +and wounded among strangers, takes away all personal bitterness towards +those with whom we or our children have been but a few hours before in +deadly strife. The basest lie which the murderous contrivers of this +Rebellion have told is that which tries to make out a difference of race +in the men of the North and South. It would be worth a year of battles +to abolish this delusion, though the great sponge of war that wiped +it out were moistened with the best blood of the land. My Rebel was of +slight, scholastic habit, and spoke as one accustomed to tread carefully +among the parts of speech. It made my heart ache to see him, a man +finished in the humanities and Christian culture, whom the sin of his +forefathers and the crime of his rulers had set in barbarous conflict +against others of like training with his own,--a man who, but for the +curse which our generation is called on to expiate, would have taken his +part in the beneficent task of shaping the intelligence and lifting the +moral standard of a peaceful and united people. + +On Sunday morning, the twenty-first, having engaged James Grayden +and his team, I set out with the Chaplain and the Philanthropist for +Keedysville. Our track lay through the South Mountain Gap, and led us +first to the town of Boonsborough, where, it will be remembered, Colonel +Dwight had been brought after the battle. We saw the positions occupied +in the battle of South Mountain, and many traces of the conflict. In one +situation a group of young trees was marked with shot, hardly one having +escaped. As we walked by the side of the wagon, the Philanthropist left +us for a while and climbed a hill, where, along the line of a fence, he +found traces of the most desperate fighting. A ride of some three hours +brought us to Boonsborough, where I roused the unfortunate army surgeon +who had charge of the hospitals, and who was trying to get a little +sleep after his fatigues and watchings. He bore this cross very +creditably, and helped me to explore all places where my soldier might +be lying among the crowds of wounded. After the useless search, I +resumed my journey, fortified with a note of introduction to Dr. +Letterman; also with a bale of oakum which I was to carry to that +gentleman, this substance being employed as a substitute for lint. We +were obliged also to procure a pass to Keedysville from the Provost +Marshal of Boonsborough. As we came near the place, we learned that +General McClellan's head quarters had been removed from this village +some miles farther to the front. + +On entering the small settlement of Keedysville, a familiar face and +figure blocked the way, like one of Bunyan's giants. The tall form and +benevolent countenance, set off by long, flowing hair, belonged to the +excellent Mayor Frank B. Fay of Chelsea, who, like my Philanthropist, +only still more promptly, had come to succor the wounded of the great +battle. It was wonderful to see how his single personality pervaded this +torpid little village; he seemed to be the centre of all its activities. +All my questions he answered clearly and decisively, as one who knew +everything that was going on in the place. But the one question I had +come five hundred miles to ask,--Where is Captain H.?--he could not +answer. There were some thousands of wounded in the place, he told +me, scattered about everywhere. It would be a long job to hunt up my +Captain; the only way would be to go to every house and ask for him. +Just then a medical officer came up. + +“Do you know anything of Captain H. of the Massachusetts Twentieth?” + +“Oh yes; he is staying in that house. I saw him there, doing very well.” + +A chorus of hallelujahs arose in my soul, but I kept them to myself. +Now, then, for our twice-wounded volunteer, our young centurion whose +double-barred shoulder-straps we have never yet looked upon. Let us +observe the proprieties, however; no swelling upward of the mother,--no +hysterica passio, we do not like scenes. A calm salutation,--then +swallow and hold hard. That is about the programme. + +A cottage of squared logs, filled in with plaster, and whitewashed. A +little yard before it, with a gate swinging. The door of the cottage +ajar,--no one visible as yet. I push open the door and enter. An old +woman, Margaret Kitzmuller her name proves to be, is the first person I +see. + +“Captain H. here?” + +“Oh no, sir,--left yesterday morning for Hagerstown,--in a milk-cart.” + +The Kitzmuller is a beady-eyed, cheery-looking ancient woman, answers +questions with a rising inflection, and gives a good account of the +Captain, who got into the vehicle without assistance, and was in +excellent spirits. Of course he had struck for Hagerstown as the +terminus of the Cumberland Valley Railroad, and was on his way to +Philadelphia, via Chambersburg and Harrisburg, if he were not already in +the hospitable home of Walnut Street, where his friends were expecting +him. + +I might follow on his track or return upon my own; the distance was the +same to Philadelphia through Harrisburg as through Baltimore. But it was +very difficult, Mr. Fay told me, to procure any kind of conveyance to +Hagerstown; and, on the other hand, I had James Grayden and his wagon to +carry me back to Frederick. It was not likely that I should overtake the +object of my pursuit with nearly thirty-six hours start, even if I +could procure a conveyance that day. In the mean time James was getting +impatient to be on his return, according to the direction of his +employers. So I decided to go back with him. + +But there was the great battle-field only about three miles from +Keedysville, and it was impossible to go without seeing that. James +Grayden's directions were peremptory, but it was a case for the higher +law. I must make a good offer for an extra couple of hours, such as +would satisfy the owners of the wagon, and enforce it by a personal +motive. I did this handsomely, and succeeded without difficulty. To +add brilliancy to my enterprise, I invited the Chaplain and the +Philanthropist to take a free passage with me. + +We followed the road through the village for a space, then turned off +to the right, and wandered somewhat vaguely, for want of precise +directions, over the hills. Inquiring as we went, we forded a wide creek +in which soldiers were washing their clothes, the name of which we did +not then know, but which must have been the Antietam. At one point we +met a party, women among them, bringing off various trophies they had +picked up on the battlefield. Still wandering along, we were at last +pointed to a hill in the distance, a part of the summit of which was +covered with Indian corn. There, we were told, some of the fiercest +fighting of the day had been done. The fences were taken down so as to +make a passage across the fields, and the tracks worn within the last +few days looked like old roads. We passed a fresh grave under a tree +near the road. A board was nailed to the tree, bearing the name, as well +as I could make it out, of Gardiner, of a New Hampshire regiment. + +On coming near the brow of the hill, we met a party carrying picks and +spades. “How many?” “Only one.” The dead were nearly all buried, then, +in this region of the field of strife. We stopped the wagon, and, +getting out, began to look around us. Hard by was a large pile of +muskets, scores, if not hundreds, which had been picked up, and were +guarded for the Government. A long ridge of fresh gravel rose before us. +A board stuck up in front of it bore this inscription, the first part +of which was, I believe, not correct: “The Rebel General Anderson and 80 +Rebels are buried in this hole.” Other smaller ridges were marked with +the number of dead lying under them. The whole ground was strewed +with fragments of clothing, haversacks, canteens, cap-boxes, bullets, +cartridge-boxes, cartridges, scraps of paper, portions of bread and +meat. I saw two soldiers' caps that looked as though their owners had +been shot through the head. In several places I noticed dark red patches +where a pool of blood had curdled and caked, as some poor fellow poured +his life out on the sod. I then wandered about in the cornfield. It +surprised me to notice, that, though there was every mark of hard +fighting having taken place here, the Indian corn was not generally +trodden down. One of our cornfields is a kind of forest, and even when +fighting, men avoid the tall stalks as if they were trees. At the edge +of this cornfield lay a gray horse, said to have belonged to a Rebel +colonel, who was killed near the same place. Not far off were two dead +artillery horses in their harness. Another had been attended to by +a burying-party, who had thrown some earth over him but his last +bed-clothes were too short, and his legs stuck out stark and stiff +from beneath the gravel coverlet. It was a great pity that we had no +intelligent guide to explain to us the position of that portion of the +two armies which fought over this ground. There was a shallow trench +before we came to the cornfield, too narrow for a road, as I should +think, too elevated for a water-course, and which seemed to have been +used as a rifle-pit. At any rate, there had been hard fighting in and +about it. This and the cornfield may serve to identify the part of the +ground we visited, if any who fought there should ever look over this +paper. The opposing tides of battle must have blended their waves at +this point, for portions of gray uniform were mingled with the “garments +rolled in blood” torn from our own dead and wounded soldiers. I picked +up a Rebel canteen, and one of our own,--but there was something +repulsive about the trodden and stained relics of the stale +battle-field. It was like the table of some hideous orgy left uncleared, +and one turned away disgusted from its broken fragments and muddy +heeltaps. A bullet or two, a button, a brass plate from a soldier's +belt, served well enough for mementos of my visit, with a letter which +I picked up, directed to Richmond, Virginia, its seal unbroken. “N. C. +Cleveland County. E. Wright to J. Wright.” On the other side, “A few +lines from W. L. Vaughn.” who has just been writing for the wife to her +husband, and continues on his own account. The postscript, “tell John +that nancy's folks are all well and has a verry good Little Crop of corn +a growing.” I wonder, if, by one of those strange chances of which I +have seen so many, this number or leaf of the “Atlantic” will not +sooner or later find its way to Cleveland County, North Carolina, and +E. Wright, widow of James Wright, and Nancy's folks, get from these +sentences the last glimpse of husband and friend as he threw up his arms +and fell in the bloody cornfield of Antietam? I will keep this stained +letter for them until peace comes back, if it comes in my time, and my +pleasant North Carolina Rebel of the Middletown Hospital will, perhaps +look these poor people up, and tell them where to send for it. + +On the battle-field I parted with my two companions, the Chaplain and +the Philanthropist. They were going to the front, the one to find his +regiment, the other to look for those who needed his assistance. We +exchanged cards and farewells, I mounted the wagon, the horses' heads +were turned homewards, my two companions went their way, and I saw them +no more. On my way back, I fell into talk with James Grayden. Born in +England, Lancashire; in this country since he was four years old. Had +nothing to care for but an old mother; didn't know what he should do if +he lost her. Though so long in this country, he had all the simplicity +and childlike lightheartedness which belong to the Old World's people. +He laughed at the smallest pleasantry, and showed his great white +English teeth; he took a joke without retorting by an impertinence; he +had a very limited curiosity about all that was going on; he had small +store of information; he lived chiefly in his horses, it seemed to me. +His quiet animal nature acted as a pleasing anodyne to my recurring fits +of anxiety, and I liked his frequent “'Deed I don't know, sir.” better +than I have sometimes relished the large discourse of professors and +other very wise men. + +I have not much to say of the road which we were travelling for the +second time. Reaching Middletown, my first call was on the wounded +Colonel and his lady. She gave me a most touching account of all +the suffering he had gone through with his shattered limb before he +succeeded in finding a shelter; showing the terrible want of proper +means of transportation of the wounded after the battle. It occurred to +me, while at this house, that I was more or less famished, and for the +first time in my life I begged for a meal, which the kind family with +whom the Colonel was staying most graciously furnished me. + +After tea, there came in a stout army surgeon, a Highlander by birth, +educated in Edinburgh, with whom I had pleasant, not unstimulating +talk. He had been brought very close to that immane and nefandous +Burke-and-Hare business which made the blood of civilization run cold in +the year 1828, and told me, in a very calm way, with an occasional +pinch from the mull, to refresh his memory, some of the details of those +frightful murders, never rivalled in horror until the wretch Dumollard, +who kept a private cemetery for his victims, was dragged into the light +of day. He had a good deal to say, too, about the Royal College of +Surgeons in Edinburgh, and the famous preparations, mercurial and the +rest, which I remember well having seen there,--the “sudabit multum,” + and others,--also of our New York Professor Carnochan's handiwork, a +specimen of which I once admired at the New York College. But the doctor +was not in a happy frame of mind, and seemed willing to forget the +present in the past: things went wrong, somehow, and the time was out of +joint with him. + +Dr. Thompson, kind, cheerful, companionable, offered me half his own +wide bed, in the house of Dr. Baer, for my second night in Middletown. +Here I lay awake again another night. Close to the house stood an +ambulance in which was a wounded Rebel officer, attended by one of their +own surgeons. He was calling out in a loud voice, all night long, as +it seemed to me, “Doctor! Doctor! Driver! Water!” in loud, complaining +tones, I have no doubt of real suffering, but in strange contrast with +the silent patience which was the almost universal rule. + +The courteous Dr. Thompson will let me tell here an odd coincidence, +trivial, but having its interest as one of a series. The Doctor and +myself lay in the bed, and a lieutenant, a friend of his, slept on +the sofa, At night, I placed my match-box, a Scotch one, of the +Macpherson-plaid pattern, which I bought years ago, on the bureau, just +where I could put my hand upon it. I was the last of the three to rise +in the morning, and on looking for my pretty match-box, I found it was +gone. This was rather awkward,--not on account of the loss, but of the +unavoidable fact that one of my fellow-lodgers must have taken it. I +must try to find out what it meant. + +“By the way, Doctor, have you seen anything of a little plaid-pattern +match-box?” + +The Doctor put his hand to his pocket, and, to his own huge surprise and +my great gratification, pulled out two match-boxes exactly alike, both +printed with the Macpherson plaid. One was his, the other mine, which he +had seen lying round, and naturally took for his own, thrusting it into +his pocket, where it found its twin-brother from the same workshop. In +memory of which event, we exchanged boxes, like two Homeric heroes. + +This curious coincidence illustrates well enough some supposed cases +of plagiarism of which I will mention one where my name figured. When a +little poem called “The Two Streams” was first printed, a writer in the +New York “Evening Post” virtually accused the author of it of borrowing +the thought from a baccalaureate sermon of President Hopkins of +Williamstown, and printed a quotation from that discourse, which, as +I thought, a thief or catch-poll might well consider as establishing a +fair presumption that it was so borrowed. I was at the same time wholly +unconscious of ever having met with the discourse or the sentence which +the verses were most like, nor do I believe I ever had seen or heard +either. Some time after this, happening to meet my eloquent cousin, +Wendell Phillips, I mentioned the fact to him, and he told me that he +had once used the special image said to be borrowed, in a discourse +delivered at Williamstown. On relating this to my friend Mr. Buchanan +Read, he informed me that he too, had used the image,--perhaps referring +to his poem called “The Twins.” He thought Tennyson had used it also. +The parting of the streams on the Alps is poetically elaborated in +a passage attributed to “M. Loisne,” printed in the “Boston Evening +Transcript” for October 23, 1859. Captain, afterwards Sir Francis Head, +speaks of the showers parting on the Cordilleras, one portion going to +the Atlantic, one to the Pacific. I found the image running loose in my +mind, without a halter. It suggested itself as an illustration of +the will, and I worked the poem out by the aid of Mitchell's School +Atlas.--The spores of a great many ideas are floating about in the +atmosphere. We no more know where all the growths of our mind came from, +than where the lichens which eat the names off from the gravestones +borrowed the germs that gave them birth. The two match-boxes were just +alike, but neither was a plagiarism. + +In the morning I took to the same wagon once more, but, instead of James +Grayden, I was to have for my driver a young man who spelt his name +“Phillip Ottenheimer” and whose features at once showed him to be an +Israelite. I found him agreeable enough, and disposed to talk. So I +asked him many questions about his religion, and got some answers that +sound strangely in Christian ears. He was from Wittenberg, and had +been educated in strict Jewish fashion. From his childhood he had read +Hebrew, but was not much of a scholar otherwise. A young person of his +race lost caste utterly by marrying a Christian. The Founder of our +religion was considered by the Israelites to have been “a right smart +man and a great doctor.” But the horror with which the reading of the +New Testament by any young person of their faith would be regarded was +as great, I judged by his language, as that of one of our straitest +sectaries would be, if he found his son or daughter perusing the “Age of +Reason.” + +In approaching Frederick, the singular beauty of its clustered spires +struck me very much, so that I was not surprised to find “Fair-View” + laid down about this point on a railroad map. I wish some wandering +photographer would take a picture of the place, a stereoscopic one, if +possible, to show how gracefully, how charmingly, its group of steeples +nestles among the Maryland hills. The town had a poetical look from a +distance, as if seers and dreamers might dwell there. The first sign +I read, on entering its long street, might perhaps be considered as +confirming my remote impression. It bore these words: “Miss Ogle, Past, +Present, and Future.” On arriving, I visited Lieutenant Abbott, and the +attenuated unhappy gentleman, his neighbor, sharing between them as my +parting gift what I had left of the balsam known to the Pharmacopoeia as +Spiritus Vini Gallici. I took advantage of General Shriver's always open +door to write a letter home, but had not time to partake of his offered +hospitality. The railroad bridge over the Monocacy had been rebuilt +since I passed through Frederick, and we trundled along over the track +toward Baltimore. + +It was a disappointment, on reaching the Eutaw House, where I had +ordered all communications to be addressed, to find no telegraphic +message from Philadelphia or Boston, stating that Captain H. had arrived +at the former place, “wound doing well in good spirits expects to leave +soon for Boston.” After all, it was no great matter; the Captain was, no +doubt, snugly lodged before this in the house called Beautiful, +at -- Walnut Street, where that “grave and beautiful damsel named +Discretion” had already welcomed him, smiling, though “the water stood +in her eyes,” and had “called out Prudence, Piety, and Charity, who, +after a little more discourse with him, had him into the family.” + +The friends I had met at the Eutaw House had all gone but one, the lady +of an officer from Boston, who was most amiable and agreeable, and whose +benevolence, as I afterwards learned, soon reached the invalids I had +left suffering at Frederick. General Wool still walked the corridors, +inexpansive, with Fort McHenry on his shoulders, and Baltimore in his +breeches-pocket, and his courteous aid again pressed upon me his kind +offices. About the doors of the hotel the news-boys cried the papers in +plaintive, wailing tones, as different from the sharp accents of their +Boston counterparts as a sigh from the southwest is from a northeastern +breeze. To understand what they said was, of course, impossible to any +but an educated ear, and if I made out “Starr” and “Clipp'rr,” it was +because I knew beforehand what must be the burden of their advertising +coranach. + +I set out for Philadelphia on the morrow, Tuesday the twenty-third, +there beyond question to meet my Captain, once more united to his brave +wounded companions under that roof which covers a household of as noble +hearts as ever throbbed with human sympathies. Back River, Bush River, +Gunpowder Creek,--lives there the man with soul so dead that his memory +has cerements to wrap up these senseless names in the same envelopes +with their meaningless localities? But the Susquehanna,--the broad, +the beautiful, the historical, the poetical Susquehanna,--the river of +Wyoming and of Gertrude, dividing the shores where + + “Aye those sunny mountains half-way down + Would echo flageolet from some romantic town,”-- + +did not my heart renew its allegiance to the poet who has made it lovely +to the imagination as well as to the eye, and so identified his fame +with the noble stream that it “rolls mingling with his fame forever?” + The prosaic traveller perhaps remembers it better from the fact that a +great sea-monster, in the shape of a steamboat, takes him, sitting +in the car, on its back, and swims across with him like Arion's +dolphin,--also that mercenary men on board offer him canvas-backs in the +season, and ducks of lower degree at other periods. + +At Philadelphia again at last! Drive fast, O colored man and brother, to +the house called Beautiful, where my Captain lies sore wounded, waiting +for the sound of the chariot wheels which bring to his bedside the face +and the voice nearer than any save one to his heart in this his hour of +pain and weakness! Up a long street with white shutters and white steps +to all the houses. Off at right angles into another long street with +white shutters and white steps to all the houses. Off again at another +right angle into still another long street with white shutters and white +steps to all the houses. The natives of this city pretend to know one +street from another by some individual differences of aspect; but the +best way for a stranger to distinguish the streets he has been in from +others is to make a cross or other mark on the white shutters. + +This corner-house is the one. Ring softly,--for the Lieutenant-Colonel +lies there with a dreadfully wounded arm, and two sons of the family, +one wounded like the Colonel, one fighting with death in the fog of a +typhoid fever, will start with fresh pangs at the least sound you can +make. I entered the house, but no cheerful smile met me. The sufferers +were each of them thought to be in a critical condition. The fourth bed, +waiting its tenant day after day, was still empty. Not a word from my +Captain. + +Then, foolish, fond body that I was, my heart sank within me. Had he +been taken ill on the road, perhaps been attacked with those formidable +symptoms which sometimes come on suddenly after wounds that seemed to be +doing well enough, and was his life ebbing away in some lonely cottage, +nay, in some cold barn or shed, or at the wayside, unknown, uncared +for? Somewhere between Philadelphia and Hagerstown, if not at the latter +town, he must be, at any rate. I must sweep the hundred and eighty miles +between these places as one would sweep a chamber where a precious pearl +had been dropped. I must have a companion in my search, partly to help +me look about, and partly because I was getting nervous and felt lonely. +Charley said he would go with me,--Charley, my Captain's beloved +friend, gentle, but full of spirit and liveliness, cultivated, social, +affectionate, a good talker, a most agreeable letter-writer, observing, +with large relish of life, and keen sense of humor. He was not well +enough to go, some of the timid ones said; but he answered by packing +his carpet-bag, and in an hour or two we were on the Pennsylvania +Central Railroad in full blast for Harrisburg. + +I should have been a forlorn creature but for the presence of my +companion. In his delightful company I half forgot my anxieties, which, +exaggerated as they may seem now, were not unnatural after what I had +seen of the confusion and distress that had followed the great battle, +nay, which seem almost justified by the recent statement that “high +officers” were buried after that battle whose names were never +ascertained. I noticed little matters, as usual. The road was filled in +between the rails with cracked stones, such as are used for macadamizing +streets. They keep the dust down, I suppose, for I could not think of +any other use for them. By and by the glorious valley which stretches +along through Chester and Lancaster Counties opened upon us. Much as I +had heard of the fertile regions of Pennsylvania, the vast scale and the +uniform luxuriance of this region astonished me. The grazing pastures +were so green, the fields were under such perfect culture, the cattle +looked so sleek, the houses were so comfortable, the barns so ample, the +fences so well kept, that I did not wonder, when I was told that this +region was called the England of Pennsylvania. The people whom we saw +were, like the cattle, well nourished; the young women looked round and +wholesome. + +“Grass makes girls.” I said to my companion, and left him to work out my +Orphic saying, thinking to myself, that as guano makes grass, it was +a legitimate conclusion that Ichaboe must be a nursery of female +loveliness. + +As the train stopped at the different stations, I inquired at each +if they had any wounded officers. None as yet; the red rays of the +battle-field had not streamed off so far as this. Evening found us in +the cars; they lighted candles in spring-candle-sticks; odd enough I +thought it in the land of oil-wells and unmeasured floods of kerosene. +Some fellows turned up the back of a seat so as to make it horizontal, +and began gambling, or pretending to gamble; it looked as if they were +trying to pluck a young countryman; but appearances are deceptive, +and no deeper stake than “drinks for the crowd” seemed at last to +be involved. But remembering that murder has tried of late years to +establish itself as an institution in the cars, I was less tolerant of +the doings of these “sportsmen” who tried to turn our public conveyance +into a travelling Frascati. They acted as if they were used to it, and +nobody seemed to pay much attention to their manoeuvres. + +We arrived at Harrisburg in the course of the evening, and attempted to +find our way to the Jones House, to which we had been commended. By some +mistake, intentional on the part of somebody, as it may have been, or +purely accidental, we went to the Herr House instead. I entered my name +in the book, with that of my companion. A plain, middle-aged man stepped +up, read it to himself in low tones, and coupled to it a literary title +by which I have been sometimes known. He proved to be a graduate of +Brown University, and had heard a certain Phi Beta Kappa poem delivered +there a good many years ago. I remembered it, too; Professor Goddard, +whose sudden and singular death left such lasting regret, was the +Orator. I recollect that while I was speaking a drum went by the church, +and how I was disgusted to see all the heads near the windows thrust out +of them, as if the building were on fire. Cedat armis toga. The clerk +in the office, a mild, pensive, unassuming young man, was very polite +in his manners, and did all he could to make us comfortable. He was of a +literary turn, and knew one of his guests in his character of author. At +tea, a mild old gentleman, with white hair and beard, sat next us. He, +too, had come hunting after his son, a lieutenant in a Pennsylvania +regiment. Of these, father and son, more presently. + +After tea we went to look up Dr. Wilson, chief medical officer of +the hospitals in the place, who was staying at the Brady House. A +magnificent old toddy-mixer, Bardolphian in hue, and stern of aspect, as +all grog-dispensers must be, accustomed as they are to dive through the +features of men to the bottom of their souls and pockets to see whether +they are solvent to the amount of sixpence, answered my question by +a wave of one hand, the other being engaged in carrying a dram to his +lips. His superb indifference gratified my artistic feeling more than it +wounded my personal sensibilities. Anything really superior in its line +claims my homage, and this man was the ideal bartender, above all vulgar +passions, untouched by commonplace sympathies, himself a lover of the +liquid happiness he dispenses, and filled with a fine scorn of all those +lesser felicities conferred by love or fame or wealth or any of +the roundabout agencies for which his fiery elixir is the cheap, +all-powerful substitute. + +Dr. Wilson was in bed, though it was early in the evening, not having +slept for I don't know how many nights. + +“Take my card up to him, if you please.” + +“This way, sir.” + +A man who has not slept for a fortnight or so is not expected to be as +affable, when attacked in his bed, as a French Princess of old time +at her morning receptions. Dr. Wilson turned toward me, as I entered, +without effusion, but without rudeness. His thick, dark moustache was +chopped off square at the lower edge of the upper lip, which implied a +decisive, if not a peremptory, style of character. + +I am Dr. So-and-So of Hubtown, looking after my wounded son. (I gave my +name and said Boston, of course, in reality.) + +Dr. Wilson leaned on his elbow and looked up in my face, his features +growing cordial. Then he put out his hand, and good-humoredly excused +his reception of me. The day before, as he told me, he had dismissed +from the service a medical man hailing from ******, Pennsylvania, +bearing my last name, preceded by the same two initials; and he +supposed, when my card came up, it was this individual who was +disturbing his slumbers. The coincidence was so unlikely a priori, +unless some forlorn parent without antecedents had named, a child after +me, that I could not help cross-questioning the Doctor, who assured me +deliberately that the fact was just as he had said, even to the +somewhat unusual initials. Dr. Wilson very kindly furnished me all +the information in his power, gave me directions for telegraphing to +Chambersburg, and showed every disposition to serve me. + +On returning to the Herr House, we found the mild, white-haired old +gentleman in a very happy state. He had just discovered his son, in a +comfortable condition, at the United States Hotel. He thought that he +could probably give us some information which would prove interesting. +To the United States Hotel we repaired, then, in company with our +kind-hearted old friend, who evidently wanted to see me as happy as +himself. He went up-stairs to his son's chamber, and presently came down +to conduct us there. + +Lieutenant P________, of the Pennsylvania __th, was a very fresh, +bright-looking young man, lying in bed from the effects of a recent +injury received in action. A grape-shot, after passing through a post +and a board, had struck him in the hip, bruising, but not penetrating or +breaking. He had good news for me. + +That very afternoon, a party of wounded officers had passed through +Harrisburg, going East. He had conversed in the bar-room of this hotel +with one of them, who was wounded about the shoulder (it might be the +lower part of the neck), and had his arm in a sling. He belonged to the +Twentieth Massachusetts; the Lieutenant saw that he was a Captain, by +the two bars on his shoulder-strap. His name was my family-name; he was +tall and youthful, like my Captain. At four o'clock he left in the train +for Philadelphia. Closely questioned, the Lieutenant's evidence was as +round, complete, and lucid as a Japanese sphere of rock-crystal. + +TE DEUM LAUDAMUS! The Lord's name be praised! The dead pain in the +semilunar ganglion (which I must remind my reader is a kind of stupid, +unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of the stomach, common to man and +beast, which aches in the supreme moments of life, as when the dam loses +her young ones, or the wild horse is lassoed) stopped short. There was +a feeling as if I had slipped off a tight boot, or cut a strangling +garter,--only it was all over my system. What more could I ask to +assure me of the Captain's safety? As soon as the telegraph office opens +tomorrow morning we will send a message to our friends in Philadelphia, +and get a reply, doubtless, which will settle the whole matter. + +The hopeful morrow dawned at last, and the message was sent accordingly. +In due time, the following reply was received: “Phil Sept 24 I think +the report you have heard that W [the Captain] has gone East must be an +error we have not seen or heard of him here M L H.” + +DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI! He could not have passed through Philadelphia +without visiting the house called Beautiful, where he had been so +tenderly cared for after his wound at Ball's Bluff, and where those +whom he loved were lying in grave peril of life or limb. Yet he did pass +through Harrisburg, going East, going to Philadelphia, on his way +home. Ah, this is it! He must have taken the late night-train from +Philadelphia for New York, in his impatience to reach home. There is +such a train, not down in the guide-book, but we were assured of the +fact at the Harrisburg depot. By and by came the reply from Dr. +Wilson's telegraphic message: nothing had been heard of the Captain at +Chambersburg. Still later, another message came from our Philadelphia +friend, saying that he was seen on Friday last at the house of Mrs. +K_______, a well-known Union lady in Hagerstown. Now this could not be +true, for he did not leave Keedysville until Saturday; but the name +of the lady furnished a clew by which we could probably track him. A +telegram was at once sent to Mrs. K_______, asking information. It +was transmitted immediately, but when the answer would be received was +uncertain, as the Government almost monopolized the line. I was, on the +whole, so well satisfied that the Captain had gone East, that, unless +something were heard to the contrary, I proposed following him in the +late train leaving a little after midnight for Philadelphia. + +This same morning we visited several of the temporary hospitals, +churches and school-houses, where the wounded were lying. In one of +these, after looking round as usual, I asked aloud, “Any Massachusetts +men here?” Two bright faces lifted themselves from their pillows and +welcomed me by name. The one nearest me was private John B. Noyes of +Company B, Massachusetts Thirteenth, son of my old college class-tutor, +now the reverend and learned Professor of Hebrew, etc., in Harvard +University. His neighbor was Corporal Armstrong of the same Company. +Both were slightly wounded, doing well. I learned then and since from +Mr. Noyes that they and their comrades were completely overwhelmed +by the attentions of the good people of Harrisburg,--that the ladies +brought them fruits and flowers, and smiles, better than either,--and +that the little boys of the place were almost fighting for the privilege +of doing their errands. I am afraid there will be a good many hearts +pierced in this war that will have no bulletmark to show. + +There were some heavy hours to get rid of, and we thought a visit to +Camp Curtin might lighten some of them. A rickety wagon carried us to +the camp, in company with a young woman from Troy, who had a basket of +good things with her for a sick brother. “Poor boy! he will be sure to +die,” she said. The rustic sentries uncrossed their muskets and let us +in. The camp was on a fair plain, girdled with hills, spacious, well +kept apparently, but did not present any peculiar attraction for us. The +visit would have been a dull one, had we not happened to get sight of a +singular-looking set of human beings in the distance. They were clad in +stuff of different hues, gray and brown being the leading shades, +but both subdued by a neutral tint, such as is wont to harmonize the +variegated apparel of travel-stained vagabonds. They looked slouchy, +listless, torpid,--an ill-conditioned crew, at first sight, made up of +such fellows as an old woman would drive away from her hen-roost with a +broomstick. Yet these were estrays from the fiery army which has given +our generals so much trouble,--“Secesh prisoners,” as a bystander told +us. A talk with them might be profitable and entertaining. But they were +tabooed to the common visitor, and it was necessary to get inside of the +line which separated us from them. + +A solid, square captain was standing near by, to whom we were referred. +Look a man calmly through the very centre of his pupils and ask him for +anything with a tone implying entire conviction that he will grant it, +and he will very commonly consent to the thing asked, were it to commit +hari-kari. The Captain acceded to my postulate, and accepted my friend +as a corollary. As one string of my own ancestors was of Batavian +origin, I may be permitted to say that my new friend was of the Dutch +type, like the Amsterdam galiots, broad in the beam, capacious in the +hold, and calculated to carry a heavy cargo rather than to make fast +time. He must have been in politics at some time or other, for he made +orations to all the “Secesh,” in which he explained to them that the +United States considered and treated them like children, and enforced +upon them the ridiculous impossibility of the Rebels attempting to do +anything against such a power as that of the National Government. + +Much as his discourse edified them and enlightened me, it interfered +somewhat with my little plans of entering into frank and friendly talk +with some of these poor fellows, for whom I could not help feeling a +kind of human sympathy, though I am as venomous a hater of the Rebellion +as one is like to find under the stars and stripes. It is fair to take +a man prisoner. It is fair to make speeches to a man. But to take a man +prisoner and then make speeches to him while in durance is not fair. + +I began a few pleasant conversations, which would have come to something +but for the reason assigned. + +One old fellow had a long beard, a drooping eyelid, and a black clay +pipe in his mouth. He was a Scotchman from Ayr, dour enough, and little +disposed to be communicative, though I tried him with the “Twa Briggs,” + and, like all Scotchmen, he was a reader of “Burrns.” He professed to +feel no interest in the cause for which he was fighting, and was in the +army, I judged, only from compulsion. There was a wild-haired, unsoaped +boy, with pretty, foolish features enough, who looked as if he might be +about seventeen, as he said he was. I give my questions and his answers +literally. + +“What State do you come from?” + +“Georgy.” + +“What part of Georgia?” + +“Midway.” + +--[How odd that is! My father was settled for seven years as pastor +over the church at Midway, Georgia, and this youth is very probably a +grandson or great grandson of one of his parishioners.] + +“Where did you go to church when you were at home?” + +“Never went inside 'f a church b't once in m' life.” + +“What did you do before you became a soldier?” + +“Nothin'.” + +“What do you mean to do when you get back?” + +“Nothin'.” + +Who could have any other feeling than pity for this poor human weed, +this dwarfed and etiolated soul, doomed by neglect to an existence but +one degree above that of the idiot? + +With the group was a lieutenant, buttoned close in his gray coat,--one +button gone, perhaps to make a breastpin for some fair traitorous bosom. +A short, stocky man, undistinguishable from one of the “subject race” by +any obvious meanderings of the sangre azul on his exposed surfaces. He +did not say much, possibly because he was convinced by the statements +and arguments of the Dutch captain. He had on strong, iron-heeled shoes, +of English make, which he said cost him seventeen dollars in Richmond. + +I put the question, in a quiet, friendly way, to several of the +prisoners, what they were fighting for. One answered, “For our homes.” + Two or three others said they did not know, and manifested great +indifference to the whole matter, at which another of their number, a +sturdy fellow, took offence, and muttered opinions strongly derogatory +to those who would not stand up for the cause they had been fighting +for. A feeble; attenuated old man, who wore the Rebel uniform, if such +it could be called, stood by without showing any sign of intelligence. +It was cutting very close to the bone to carve such a shred of humanity +from the body politic to make a soldier of. + +We were just leaving, when a face attracted me, and I stopped the +party. “That is the true Southern type,” I said to my companion. A young +fellow, a little over twenty, rather tall, slight, with a perfectly +smooth, boyish cheek, delicate, somewhat high features, and a fine, +almost feminine mouth, stood at the opening of his tent, and as we +turned towards him fidgeted a little nervously with one hand at the +loose canvas, while he seemed at the same time not unwilling to talk. He +was from Mississippi, he said, had been at Georgetown College, and was +so far imbued with letters that even the name of the literary humility +before him was not new to his ears. Of course I found it easy to come +into magnetic relation with him, and to ask him without incivility what +he was fighting for. “Because I like the excitement of it,” he answered. +I know those fighters with women's mouths and boys' cheeks. One such +from the circle of my own friends, sixteen years old, slipped away from +his nursery, and dashed in under, an assumed name among the red-legged +Zouaves, in whose company he got an ornamental bullet-mark in one of the +earliest conflicts of the war. + +“Did you ever see a genuine Yankee?” said my Philadelphia friend to the +young Mississippian. + +“I have shot at a good many of them,” he replied, modestly, his woman's +mouth stirring a little, with a pleasant, dangerous smile. + +The Dutch captain here put his foot into the conversation, as his +ancestors used to put theirs into the scale, when they were buying furs +of the Indians by weight,--so much for the weight of a hand, so much for +the weight of a foot. It deranged the balance of our intercourse; there +was no use in throwing a fly where a paving-stone had just splashed into +the water, and I nodded a good-by to the boy-fighter, thinking how +much pleasanter it was for my friend the Captain to address him with +unanswerable arguments and crushing statements in his own tent than it +would be to meet him upon some remote picket station and offer his fair +proportions to the quick eye of a youngster who would draw a bead on him +before he had time to say dunder and blixum. + +We drove back to the town. No message. After dinner still no message. +Dr. Cuyler, Chief Army Hospital Inspector, is in town, they say. Let us +hunt him up,--perhaps he can help us. + +We found him at the Jones House. A gentleman of large proportions, but +of lively temperament, his frame knit in the North, I think, but +ripened in Georgia, incisive, prompt but good-humored, wearing his +broad-brimmed, steeple-crowned felt hat with the least possible tilt on +one side,--a sure sign of exuberant vitality in a mature and dignified +person like him, business-like in his ways, and not to be interrupted +while occupied with another, but giving himself up heartily to the +claimant who held him for the time. He was so genial, so cordial, so +encouraging, that it seemed as if the clouds, which had been thick all +the morning, broke away as we came into his presence, and the sunshine +of his large nature filled the air all around us. He took the matter in +hand at once, as if it were his own private affair. In ten minutes he +had a second telegraphic message on its way to Mrs. K at Hagerstown, +sent through the Government channel from the State Capitol,--one so +direct and urgent that I should be sure of an answer to it, whatever +became of the one I had sent in the morning. + +While this was going on, we hired a dilapidated barouche, driven by an +odd young native, neither boy nor man, “as a codling when 't is almost +an apple,” who said wery for very, simple and sincere, who smiled +faintly at our pleasantries, always with a certain reserve of suspicion, +and a gleam of the shrewdness that all men get who live in the +atmosphere of horses. He drove us round by the Capitol grounds, white +with tents, which were disgraced in my eyes by unsoldierly scrawls in +huge letters, thus: THE SEVEN BLOOMSBURY BROTHERS, DEVIL'S HOLE, and +similar inscriptions. Then to the Beacon Street of Harrisburg, which +looks upon the Susquehanna instead of the Common, and shows a long front +of handsome houses with fair gardens. The river is pretty nearly a mile +across here, but very shallow now. The codling told us that a Rebel spy +had been caught trying its fords a little while ago, and was now at Camp +Curtin with a heavy ball chained to his leg,--a popular story, but a +lie, Dr. Wilson said. A little farther along we came to the barkless +stump of the tree to which Mr. Harris, the Cecrops of the city named +after him, was tied by the Indians for some unpleasant operation of +scalping or roasting, when he was rescued by friendly savages, who +paddled across the stream to save him. Our youngling pointed out a very +respectable-looking stone house as having been “built by the Indians” + about those times. Guides have queer notions occasionally. + +I was at Niagara just when Dr. Rae arrived there with his companions and +dogs and things from his Arctic search after the lost navigator. + +“Who are those?” I said to my conductor. + +“Them?” he answered. “Them's the men that's been out West, out to +Michig'n, aft' Sir Ben Franklin.” + +Of the other sights of Harrisburg the Brant House or Hotel, or whatever +it is called, seems most worth notice. Its facade is imposing, with a +row of stately columns, high above which a broad sign impends, like a +crag over the brow of a lofty precipice. The lower floor only appeared +to be open to the public. Its tessellated pavement and ample courts +suggested the idea of a temple where great multitudes might kneel +uncrowded at their devotions; but from appearances about the place where +the altar should be, I judged, that, if one asked the officiating priest +for the cup which cheers and likewise inebriates, his prayer would not +be unanswered. The edifice recalled to me a similar phenomenon I had +once looked upon,--the famous Caffe Pedrocchi at Padua. It was the same +thing in Italy and America: a rich man builds himself a mausoleum, +and calls it a place of entertainment. The fragrance of innumerable +libations and the smoke of incense-breathing cigars and pipes shall +ascend day and night through the arches of his funereal monument. What +are the poor dips which flare and flicker on the crowns of spikes that +stand at the corners of St. Genevieve's filigree-cased sarcophagus to +this perpetual offering of sacrifice? + +Ten o'clock in the evening was approaching. The telegraph office would +presently close, and as yet there were no tidings from Hagerstown. Let +us step over and see for ourselves. A message! A message! + +“Captain H. still here leaves seven to-morrow for Harrisburg Penna Is +doing well Mrs HK--.” + +A note from Dr. Cuyler to the same effect came soon afterwards to the +hotel. + +We shall sleep well to-night; but let us sit awhile with nubiferous, or, +if we may coin a word, nepheligenous accompaniment, such as shall gently +narcotize the over-wearied brain and fold its convolutions for slumber +like the leaves of a lily at nightfall. For now the over-tense nerves +are all unstraining themselves, and a buzz, like that which comes over +one who stops after being long jolted upon an uneasy pavement, makes +the whole frame alive with a luxurious languid sense of all its inmost +fibres. Our cheerfulness ran over, and the mild, pensive clerk was +so magnetized by it that he came and sat down with us. He presently +confided to me, with infinite naivete and ingenuousness, that, judging +from my personal appearance, he should not have thought me the writer +that he in his generosity reckoned me to be. His conception, so far as +I could reach it, involved a huge, uplifted forehead, embossed with +protuberant organs of the intellectual faculties, such as all writers +are supposed to possess in abounding measure. While I fell short of +his ideal in this respect, he was pleased to say that he found me by no +means the remote and inaccessible personage he had imagined, and that I +had nothing of the dandy about me, which last compliment I had a modest +consciousness of most abundantly deserving. + +Sweet slumbers brought us to the morning of Thursday. The train from +Hagerstown was due at 11.15 A. M: We took another ride behind the +codling, who showed us the sights of yesterday over again. Being in +a gracious mood of mind, I enlarged on the varying aspects of the +town-pumps and other striking objects which we had once inspected, as +seen by the different lights of evening and morning. After this, we +visited the school-house hospital. A fine young fellow, whose arm had +been shattered, was just falling into the spasms of lock-jaw. The beads +of sweat stood large and round on his flushed and contracted features. +He was under the effect of opiates,--why not (if his case was desperate, +as it seemed to be considered) stop his sufferings with chloroform? It +was suggested that it might shorten life. “What then?” I said. “Are a +dozen additional spasms worth living for?” + +The time approached for the train to arrive from Hagerstown, and we went +to the station. I was struck, while waiting there, with what seemed to +me a great want of care for the safety of the people standing round. +Just after my companion and myself had stepped off the track, I noticed +a car coming quietly along at a walk, as one may say, without engine, +without visible conductor, without any person heralding its approach, so +silently, so insidiously, that I could not help thinking how very near +it came to flattening out me and my match-box worse than the Ravel +pantomimist and his snuff-box were flattened out in the play. The +train was late,--fifteen minutes, half an hour late, and I began to get +nervous, lest something had happened. While I was looking for it, +out started a freight-train, as if on purpose to meet the cars I was +expecting, for a grand smash-up. I shivered at the thought, and asked +an employee of the road, with whom I had formed an acquaintance a few +minutes old, why there should not be a collision of the expected train +with this which was just going out. He smiled an official smile, and +answered that they arranged to prevent that, or words to that effect. + +Twenty-four hours had not passed from that moment when a collision did +occur, just out of the city, where I feared it, by which at least +eleven persons were killed, and from forty to sixty more were maimed and +crippled! + +To-day there was the delay spoken of, but nothing worse. The expected +train came in so quietly that I was almost startled to see it on the +track. Let us walk calmly through the cars, and look around us. + +In the first car, on the fourth seat to the right, I saw my Captain; +there saw I him, even my first-born, whom I had sought through many +cities. + +“How are you, Boy?” + +“How are you, Dad?” + +Such are the proprieties of life, as they are observed among us +Anglo-Saxons of the nineteenth century, decently disguising those +natural impulses that made Joseph, the Prime Minister of Egypt, weep +aloud so that the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh heard, nay, which +had once overcome his shaggy old uncle Esau so entirely that he fell +on his brother's neck and cried like a baby in the presence of all the +women. But the hidden cisterns of the soul may be filling fast with +sweet tears, while the windows through which it looks are undimmed by a +drop or a film of moisture. + +These are times in which we cannot live solely for selfish joys or +griefs. I had not let fall the hand I held, when a sad, calm voice +addressed me by name. I fear that at the moment I was too much absorbed +in my own feelings; for certainly at any other time. I should have +yielded myself without stint to the sympathy which this meeting might +well call forth. + +“You remember my son, Cortland Saunders, whom I brought to see you once +in Boston?” + +“I do remember him well.” + +“He was killed on Monday, at Shepherdstown. I am carrying his body back +with me on this train. He was my only child. If you could come to my +house,--I can hardly call it my home now,--it would be a pleasure to +me.” + +This young man, belonging in Philadelphia, was the author of a “New +System of Latin Paradigms,” a work showing extraordinary scholarship and +capacity. It was this book which first made me acquainted with him, and +I kept him in my memory, for there was genius in the youth. Some time +afterwards he came to me with a modest request to be introduced to +President Felton, and one or two others, who would aid him in a course +of independent study he was proposing to himself. I was most happy to +smooth the way for him, and he came repeatedly after this to see me and +express his satisfaction in the opportunities for study he enjoyed +at Cambridge. He was a dark, still, slender person, always with a +trance-like remoteness, a mystic dreaminess of manner, such as I never +saw in any other youth. Whether he heard with difficulty, or whether his +mind reacted slowly on an alien thought, I could not say; but his answer +would often be behind time, and then a vague, sweet smile, or a few +words spoken under his breath, as if he had been trained in sick men's +chambers. For such a young man, seemingly destined for the inner life of +contemplation, to be a soldier seemed almost unnatural. Yet he spoke to +me of his intention to offer himself to his country, and his blood must +now be reckoned among the precious sacrifices which will make her soil +sacred forever. Had he lived, I doubt not that he would have redeemed +the rare promise of his earlier years. He has done better, for he has +died that unborn generations may attain the hopes held out to our nation +and to mankind. + +So, then, I had been within ten miles of the place where my wounded +soldier was lying, and then calmly turned my back upon him to come +once more round by a journey of three or four hundred miles to the same +region I had left! No mysterious attraction warned me that the heart +warm with the same blood as mine was throbbing so near my own. I thought +of that lovely, tender passage where Gabriel glides unconsciously by +Evangeline upon the great river. Ah, me! if that railroad crash had been +a few hours earlier, we two should never have met again, after coming so +close to each other! + +The source of my repeated disappointments was soon made clear enough. +The Captain had gone to Hagerstown, intending to take the cars at once +for Philadelphia, as his three friends actually did, and as I took it +for granted he certainly would. But as he walked languidly along, some +ladies saw him across the street, and seeing, were moved with pity, +and pitying, spoke such soft words that he was tempted to accept their +invitation and rest awhile beneath their hospitable roof. The mansion +was old, as the dwellings of gentlefolks should be; the ladies were some +of them young, and all were full of kindness; there were gentle cares, +and unasked luxuries, and pleasant talk, and music-sprinklings from the +piano, with a sweet voice to keep them company,--and all this after the +swamps of the Chickahominy, the mud and flies of Harrison's Landing, the +dragging marches, the desperate battles, the fretting wound, the jolting +ambulance, the log-house, and the rickety milk--cart! Thanks, uncounted +thanks to the angelic ladies whose charming attentions detained him +from Saturday to Thursday, to his great advantage and my infinite +bewilderment! As for his wound, how could it do otherwise than well +under such hands? The bullet had gone smoothly through, dodging +everything but a few nervous branches, which would come right in time +and leave him as well as ever. + +At ten that evening we were in Philadelphia, the Captain at the house +of the friends so often referred to, and I the guest of Charley, my kind +companion. The Quaker element gives an irresistible attraction to these +benignant Philadelphia households. Many things reminded me that I was +no longer in the land of the Pilgrims. On the table were Kool Slaa and +Schmeer Kase, but the good grandmother who dispensed with such quiet, +simple grace these and more familiar delicacies was literally ignorant +of Baked Beans, and asked if it was the Lima bean which was employed in +that marvellous dish of animalized leguminous farina! + +Charley was pleased with my comparing the face of the small Ethiop known +to his household as “Tines” to a huckleberry with features. He also +approved my parallel between a certain German blonde young maiden whom +we passed in the street and the “Morris White” peach. But he was so +good-humored at times, that, if one scratched a lucifer, he accepted it +as an illumination. + +A day in Philadelphia left a very agreeable impression of the outside +of that great city, which has endeared itself so much of late to all the +country by its most noble and generous care of our soldiers. Measured by +its sovereign hotel, the Continental, it would stand at the head of our +economic civilization. It provides for the comforts and conveniences, +and many of the elegances of life, more satisfactorily than any American +city, perhaps than any other city anywhere. Many of its characteristics +are accounted for to some extent by its geographical position. It is the +great neutral centre of the Continent, where the fiery enthusiasms of +the South and the keen fanaticisms of the North meet at their outer +limits, and result in a compound which neither turns litmus red nor +turmeric brown. It lives largely on its traditions, of which, leaving +out Franklin and Independence Hall, the most imposing must be considered +its famous water-works. In my younger days I visited Fairmount, and +it was with a pious reverence that I renewed my pilgrimage to that +perennial fountain. Its watery ventricles were throbbing with the same +systole and diastole as when, the blood of twenty years bounding in +my own heart, I looked upon their giant mechanism. But in the place of +“Pratt's Garden” was an open park, and the old house where Robert +Morris held his court in a former generation was changing to a public +restaurant. A suspension bridge cobwebbed itself across the Schuylkill +where that audacious arch used to leap the river at a single bound,--an +arch of greater span, as they loved to tell us, than was ever before +constructed. The Upper Ferry Bridge was to the Schuylkill what the +Colossus was to the harbor of Rhodes. It had an air of dash about it +which went far towards redeeming the dead level of respectable average +which flattens the physiognomy of the rectangular city. Philadelphia +will never be herself again until another Robert Mills and another Lewis +Wernwag have shaped her a new palladium. She must leap the Schuylkill +again, or old men will sadly shake their heads, like the Jews at the +sight of the second temple, remembering the glories of that which it +replaced. + +There are times when Ethiopian minstrelsy can amuse, if it does not +charm, a weary soul, and such a vacant hour there was on this same +Friday evening. The “opera-house” was spacious and admirably ventilated. +As I was listening to the merriment of the sooty buffoons, I happened to +cast my eyes up to the ceiling, and through an open semicircular window +a bright solitary star looked me calmly in the eyes. It was a strange +intrusion of the vast eternities beckoning from the infinite spaces. +I called the attention of one of my neighbors to it, but “Bones” was +irresistibly droll, and Arcturus, or Aldebaran, or whatever the +blazing luminary may have been, with all his revolving worlds, sailed +uncared-for down the firmament. + +On Saturday morning we took up our line of march for New York. Mr. +Felton, President of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore +Railroad, had already called upon me, with a benevolent and sagacious +look on his face which implied that he knew how to do me a service and +meant to do it. Sure enough, when we got to the depot, we found a couch +spread for the Captain, and both of us were passed on to New York with +no visits, but those of civility, from the conductor. The best thing I +saw on the route was a rustic fence, near Elizabethtown, I think, but I +am not quite sure. There was more genius in it than in any structure +of the kind I have ever seen,--each length being of a special pattern, +ramified, reticulated, contorted, as the limbs of the trees had grown. +I trust some friend will photograph or stereograph this fence for me, +to go with the view of the spires of Frederick, already referred to, as +mementos of my journey. + +I had come to feeling that I knew most of the respectably dressed people +whom I met in the cars, and had been in contact with them at some time +or other. Three or four ladies and gentlemen were near us, forming +a group by themselves. Presently one addressed me by name, and, on +inquiry, I found him to be the gentleman who was with me in the pulpit +as Orator on the occasion of another Phi Beta Kappa poem, one +delivered at New Haven. The party were very courteous and friendly, and +contributed in various ways to our comfort. + +It sometimes seems to me as if there were only about a thousand people +in the world, who keep going round and round behind the scenes and then +before them, like the “army” in a beggarly stage-show. Suppose that +I should really wish; some time or other, to get away from this +everlasting circle of revolving supernumeraries, where should I buy a +ticket the like of which was not in some of their pockets, or find a +seat to which some one of them was not a neighbor. + +A little less than a year before, after the Ball's Bluff accident, the +Captain, then the Lieutenant, and myself had reposed for a night on our +homeward journey at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where we were lodged on the +ground-floor, and fared sumptuously. We were not so peculiarly fortunate +this time, the house being really very full. Farther from the flowers +and nearer to the stars,--to reach the neighborhood of which last the +per ardua of three or four flights of stairs was formidable for any +mortal, wounded or well. + +The “vertical railway” settled that for us, however. It is a giant +corkscrew forever pulling a mammoth cork, which, by some divine +judgment, is no sooner drawn than it is replaced in its position. This +ascending and descending stopper is hollow, carpeted, with cushioned +seats, and is watched over by two condemned souls, called conductors, +one of whom is said to be named Igion, and the other Sisyphus. + +I love New York, because, as in Paris, everybody that lives in it feels +that it is his property,--at least, as much as it is anybody's. My +Broadway, in particular, I love almost as I used to love my Boulevards. +I went, therefore, with peculiar interest, on the day that we rested +at our grand hotel, to visit some new pleasure-grounds the citizens had +been arranging for us, and which I had not yet seen. The Central Park +is an expanse of wild country, well crumpled so as to form ridges which +will give views and hollows that will hold water. The hips and elbows +and other bones of Nature stick out here and there in the shape of rocks +which give character to the scenery, and an unchangeable, unpurchasable +look to a landscape that without them would have been in danger of being +fattened by art and money out of all its native features. The roads were +fine, the sheets of water beautiful, the bridges handsome, the swans +elegant in their deportment, the grass green and as short as a fast +horse's winter coat. I could not learn whether it was kept so by +clipping or singeing. I was delighted with my new property,--but it +cost me four dollars to get there, so far was it beyond the Pillars of +Hercules of the fashionable quarter. What it will be by and by depends +on circumstances; but at present it is as much central to New York as +Brookline is central to Boston. + +The question is not between Mr. Olmsted's admirably arranged, but remote +pleasure-ground and our Common, with its batrachian pool, but between +his Excentric Park and our finest suburban scenery, between its +artificial reservoirs and the broad natural sheet of Jamaica Pond. I say +this not invidiously, but in justice to the beauties which surround our +own metropolis. To compare the situations of any dwellings in either +of the great cities with those which look upon the Common, the Public +Garden, the waters of the Back Bay, would be to take an unfair advantage +of Fifth Avenue and Walnut Street. St. Botolph's daughter dresses in +plainer clothes than her more stately sisters, but she wears an emerald +on her right hand and a diamond on her left that Cybele herself need not +be ashamed of. + +On Monday morning, the twenty-ninth of September, we took the cars for +home. Vacant lots, with Irish and pigs; vegetable-gardens; straggling +houses; the high bridge; villages, not enchanting; then Stamford: then +NORWALK. Here, on the sixth of May, 1853, I passed close on the heels +of the great disaster. But that my lids were heavy on that morning, my +readers would probably have had no further trouble with me. Two of my +friends saw the car in which they rode break in the middle and leave +them hanging over the abyss. From Norwalk to Boston, that day's journey +of two hundred miles was a long funeral procession. + +Bridgeport, waiting for Iranistan to rise from its ashes with all its +phoenix-egg domes,--bubbles of wealth that broke, ready to be blown +again; iridescent as ever, which is pleasant, for the world likes +cheerful Mr. Barnum's success; New Haven, girt with flat marshes that +look like monstrous billiard-tables, with hay-cocks lying about +for balls,--romantic with West Rock and its legends,--cursed with +a detestable depot, whose niggardly arrangements crowd the track so +murderously close to the wall that the peine forte et dare must be the +frequent penalty of an innocent walk on its platform,--with its neat +carriages, metropolitan hotels, precious old college-dormitories, +its vistas of elms and its dishevelled weeping-willows; Hartford, +substantial, well-bridged, many--steepled city,--every conical spire an +extinguisher of some nineteenth-century heresy; so onward, by and across +the broad, shallow Connecticut,--dull red road and dark river woven +in like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting engine; +then Springfield, the wide-meadowed, well-feeding, horse-loving, +hot-summered, giant-treed town,--city among villages, village +among cities; Worcester, with its Daedalian labyrinth of crossing +railroad-bars, where the snorting Minotaurs, breathing fire and smoke +and hot vapors, are stabled in their dens; Framingham, fair cup-bearer, +leaf-cinctured Hebe of the deep-bosomed Queen sitting by the seaside on +the throne of the Six Nations. And now I begin to know the road, not by +towns, but by single dwellings; not by miles, but by rods. The poles of +the great magnet that draws in all the iron tracks through the grooves +of all the mountains must be near at hand, for here are crossings, and +sudden stops, and screams of alarmed engines heard all around. The +tall granite obelisk comes into view far away on the left, its bevelled +cap-stone sharp against the sky; the lofty chimneys of Charlestown and +East Cambridge flaunt their smoky banners up in the thin air; and now +one fair bosom of the three-pilled city, with its dome-crowned summit, +reveals itself, as when many-breasted Ephesian Artemis appeared with +half-open chlamys before her worshippers. + +Fling open the window-blinds of the chamber that looks out on the waters +and towards the western sun! Let the joyous light shine in upon the +pictures that hang upon its walls and the shelves thick-set with the +names of poets and philosophers and sacred teachers, in whose pages our +boys learn that life is noble only when it is held cheap by the side +of honor and of duty. Lay him in his own bed, and let him sleep off his +aches and weariness. So comes down another night over this household, +unbroken by any messenger of evil tidings,--a night of peaceful rest and +grateful thoughts; for this our son and brother was dead and is alive +again, and was lost and is found. + + + + +THE INEVITABLE TRIAL + +[An Oration delivered before the City Authorities of Boston, on the 4th +of July, 1863.] + +It is our first impulse, upon this returning day of our nation's birth, +to recall whatever is happiest and noblest in our past history, and to +join our voices in celebrating the statesmen and the heroes, the men of +thought and the men of action, to whom that history owes its existence. +In other years this pleasing office may have been all that was required +of the holiday speaker. But to-day, when the very life of the nation +is threatened, when clouds are thick about us, and men's hearts are +throbbing with passion, or failing with fear, it is the living question +of the hour, and not the dead story of the past, which forces itself +into all minds, and will find unrebuked debate in all assemblies. + +In periods of disturbance like the present, many persons who sincerely +love their country and mean to do their duty to her disappoint the hopes +and expectations of those who are actively working in her cause. They +seem to have lost whatever moral force they may have once possessed, +and to go drifting about from one profitless discontent to another, at +a time when every citizen is called upon for cheerful, ready service. +It is because their minds are bewildered, and they are no longer truly +themselves. Show them the path of duty, inspire them with hope for +the future, lead them upwards from the turbid stream of events to the +bright, translucent springs of eternal principles, strengthen their +trust in humanity and their faith in God, and you may yet restore them +to their manhood and their country. + +At all times, and especially on this anniversary of glorious +recollections and kindly enthusiasms, we should try to judge the weak +and wavering souls of our brothers fairly and generously. The conditions +in which our vast community of peace-loving citizens find themselves +are new and unprovided for. Our quiet burghers and farmers are in the +position of river-boats blown from their moorings out upon a vast ocean, +where such a typhoon is raging as no mariner who sails its waters ever +before looked upon. If their beliefs change with the veering of the +blast, if their trust in their fellow-men, and in the course of Divine +Providence, seems well-nigh shipwrecked, we must remember that they +were taken unawares, and without the preparation which could fit them to +struggle with these tempestuous elements. In times like these the faith +is the man; and they to whom it is given in larger measure owe a special +duty to those who for want of it are faint at heart, uncertain in +speech, feeble in effort, and purposeless in aim. + +Assuming without argument a few simple propositions,--that +self-government is the natural condition of an adult society, +as distinguished from the immature state, in which the temporary +arrangements of monarchy and oligarchy are tolerated as conveniences; +that the end of all social compacts is, or ought to be, to give every +child born into the world the fairest chance to make the most and the +best of itself that laws can give it; that Liberty, the one of the two +claimants who swears that her babe shall not be split in halves and +divided between them, is the true mother of this blessed Union; that +the contest in which we are engaged is one of principles overlaid by +circumstances; that the longer we fight, and the more we study the +movements of events and ideas, the more clearly we find the moral nature +of the cause at issue emerging in the field and in the study; that +all honest persons with average natural sensibility, with respectable +understanding, educated in the school of northern teaching, will have +eventually to range themselves in the armed or unarmed host which fights +or pleads for freedom, as against every form of tyranny; if not in +the front rank now, then in the rear rank by and by;--assuming these +propositions, as many, perhaps most of us, are ready to do, and +believing that the more they are debated before the public the more they +will gain converts, we owe it to the timid and the doubting to keep the +great questions of the time in unceasing and untiring agitation. They +must be discussed, in all ways consistent with the public welfare, by +different classes of thinkers; by priests and laymen; by statesmen +and simple voters; by moralists and lawyers; by men of science and +uneducated hand-laborers; by men of facts and figures, and by men of +theories and aspirations; in the abstract and in the concrete; discussed +and rediscussed every month, every week, every day, and almost every +hour, as the telegraph tells us of some new upheaval or subsidence of +the rocky base of our political order. + +Such discussions may not be necessary to strengthen the convictions of +the great body of loyal citizens. They may do nothing toward changing +the views of those, if such there be, as some profess to believe, who +follow politics as a trade. They may have no hold upon that class of +persons who are defective in moral sensibility, just as other persons +are wanting in an ear for music. But for the honest, vacillating minds, +the tender consciences supported by the tremulous knees of an infirm +intelligence, the timid compromisers who are always trying to curve the +straight lines and round the sharp angles of eternal law, the continual +debate of these living questions is the one offered means of grace and +hope of earthly redemption. And thus a true, unhesitating patriot may be +willing to listen with patience to arguments which he does not need, +to appeals which have no special significance for him, in the hope that +some less clear in mind or less courageous in temper may profit by them. + +As we look at the condition in which we find ourselves on this fourth +day of July, 1863, at the beginning of the Eighty-eighth Year of +American Independence, we may well ask ourselves what right we have to +indulge in public rejoicings. If the war in which we are engaged is an +accidental one, which might have been avoided but for our fault; if it +is for any ambitious or unworthy purpose on our part; if it is hopeless, +and we are madly persisting in it; if it is our duty and in our power +to make a safe and honorable peace, and we refuse to do it; if our free +institutions are in danger of becoming subverted, and giving place to an +irresponsible tyranny; if we are moving in the narrow circles which are +to ingulf us in national ruin,--then we had better sing a dirge, +and leave this idle assemblage, and hush the noisy cannon which are +reverberating through the air, and tear down the scaffolds which are +soon to blaze with fiery symbols; for it is mourning and not joy that +should cover the land; there should be silence, and not the echo of +noisy gladness, in our streets; and the emblems with which we tell our +nation's story and prefigure its future should be traced, not in fire, +but in ashes. + +If, on the other hand, this war is no accident, but an inevitable result +of long incubating causes; inevitable as the cataclysms that swept away +the monstrous births of primeval nature; if it is for no mean, unworthy +end, but for national life, for liberty everywhere, for humanity, for +the kingdom of God on earth; if it is not hopeless, but only growing to +such dimensions that the world shall remember the final triumph of right +throughout all time; if there is no safe and honorable peace for us but +a peace proclaimed from the capital of every revolted province in +the name of the sacred, inviolable Union; if the fear of tyranny is a +phantasm, conjured up by the imagination of the weak, acted on by the +craft of the cunning; if so far from circling inward to the gulf of our +perdition, the movement of past years is reversed, and every revolution +carries us farther and farther from the centre of the vortex, until, by +God's blessing, we shall soon find ourselves freed from the outermost +coil of the accursed spiral; if all these things are true; if we may +hope to make them seem true, or even probable, to the doubting soul, +in an hour's discourse, then we may join without madness in the day's +exultant festivities; the bells may ring, the cannon may roar, the +incense of our harmless saltpetre fill the air, and the children who +are to inherit the fruit of these toiling, agonizing years, go about +unblamed, making day and night vocal with their jubilant patriotism. + +The struggle in which we are engaged was inevitable; it might have come +a little sooner, or a little later, but it must have come. The disease +of the nation was organic, and not functional, and the rough chirurgery +of war was its only remedy. + +In opposition to this view, there are many languid thinkers who lapse +into a forlorn belief that if this or that man had never lived, or if +this or that other man had not ceased to live, the country might have +gone on in peace and prosperity, until its felicity merged in the +glories of the millennium. If Mr. Calhoun had never proclaimed his +heresies; if Mr. Garrison had never published his paper; if Mr. +Phillips, the Cassandra in masculine shape of our long prosperous Ilium, +had never uttered his melodious prophecies; if the silver tones of Mr. +Clay had still sounded in the senate-chamber to smooth the billows of +contention; if the Olympian brow of Daniel Webster had been lifted from +the dust to fix its awful frown on the darkening scowl of rebellion,--we +might have been spared this dread season of convulsion. All this is but +simple Martha's faith, without the reason she could have given: “If Thou +hadst been here, my brother had not died.” + +They little know the tidal movements of national thought and feeling, +who believe that they depend for existence on a few swimmers who ride +their waves. It is not Leviathan that leads the ocean from continent to +continent, but the ocean which bears his mighty bulk as it wafts its +own bubbles. If this is true of all the narrower manifestations of human +progress, how much more must it be true of those broad movements in the +intellectual and spiritual domain which interest all mankind? But in +the more limited ranges referred to, no fact is more familiar than that +there is a simultaneous impulse acting on many individual minds at once, +so that genius comes in clusters, and shines rarely as a single star. +You may trace a common motive and force in the pyramid-builders of the +earliest recorded antiquity, in the evolution of Greek architecture, and +in the sudden springing up of those wondrous cathedrals of the twelfth +and following centuries, growing out of the soil with stem and bud and +blossom, like flowers of stone whose seeds might well have been the +flaming aerolites cast over the battlements of heaven. You may see the +same law showing itself in the brief periods of glory which make the +names of Pericles and Augustus illustrious with reflected splendors; in +the painters, the sculptors, the scholars of “Leo's golden days”; in the +authors of the Elizabethan time; in the poets of the first part of this +century following that dreary period, suffering alike from the silence +of Cowper and the song of Hayley. You may accept the fact as natural, +that Zwingli and Luther, without knowing each other, preached the same +reformed gospel; that Newton, and Hooke, and Halley, and Wren arrived +independently of each other at the great law of the diminution of +gravity with the square of the distance; that Leverrier and Adams felt +their hands meeting, as it were, as they stretched them into the outer +darkness beyond the orbit of Uranus, in search of the dim, unseen +Planet; that Fulton and Bell, that Wheatstone and Morse, that Daguerre +and Niepce, were moving almost simultaneously in parallel paths to the +same end. You see why Patrick Henry, in Richmond, and Samuel Adams, +in Boston, were startling the crown officials with the same accents of +liberty, and why the Mecklenburg Resolutions had the very ring of the +Protest of the Province of Massachusetts. This law of simultaneous +intellectual movement, recognized by all thinkers, expatiated upon +by Lord Macaulay and by Mr. Herbert Spencer among recent writers, +is eminently applicable to that change of thought and feeling which +necessarily led to the present conflict. + +The antagonism of the two sections of the Union was not the work of this +or that enthusiast or fanatic. It was the consequence of a movement in +mass of two different forms of civilization in different directions, +and the men to whom it was attributed were only those who represented it +most completely, or who talked longest and loudest about it. Long before +the accents of those famous statesmen referred to ever resounded in the +halls of the Capitol, long before the “Liberator” opened its batteries, +the controversy now working itself out by trial of battle was foreseen +and predicted. Washington warned his countrymen of the danger of +sectional divisions, well knowing the line of cleavage that ran through +the seemingly solid fabric. Jefferson foreshadowed the judgment to fall +upon the land for its sins against a just God. Andrew Jackson announced +a quarter of a century beforehand that the next pretext of revolution +would be slavery. De Tocqueville recognized with that penetrating +insight which analyzed our institutions and conditions so keenly, that +the Union was to be endangered by slavery, not through its interests, +but through the change of character it was bringing about in the people +of the two sections, the same fatal change which George Mason, more than +half a century before, had declared to be the most pernicious effect of +the system, adding the solemn warning, now fearfully justifying itself +in the sight of his descendants, that “by an inevitable chain of causes +and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.” + The Virginian romancer pictured the far-off scenes of the conflict which +he saw approaching as the prophets of Israel painted the coming woes of +Jerusalem, and the strong iconoclast of Boston announced the very year +when the curtain should rise on the yet unopened drama. + +The wise men of the past, and the shrewd men of our own time, who warned +us of the calamities in store for our nation, never doubted what was +the cause which was to produce first alienation and finally rupture. The +descendants of the men “daily exercised in tyranny,” the “petty tyrants” + as their own leading statesmen called them long ago, came at length +to love the institution which their fathers had condemned while they +tolerated. It is the fearful realization of that vision of the poet +where the lost angels snuff up with eager nostrils the sulphurous +emanations of the bottomless abyss,--so have their natures become +changed by long breathing the atmosphere of the realm of darkness. + +At last, in the fulness of time, the fruits of sin ripened in a sudden +harvest of crime. Violence stalked into the senate-chamber, theft and +perjury wound their way into the cabinet, and, finally, openly organized +conspiracy, with force and arms, made burglarious entrance into a chief +stronghold of the Union. That the principle which underlay these acts +of fraud and violence should be irrevocably recorded with every needed +sanction, it pleased God to select a chief ruler of the false government +to be its Messiah to the listening world. As with Pharaoh, the Lord +hardened his heart, while he opened his mouth, as of old he opened +that of the unwise animal ridden by cursing Balaam. Then spake Mr. +“Vice-President” Stephens those memorable words which fixed forever the +theory of the new social order. He first lifted a degraded barbarism to +the dignity of a philosophic system. He first proclaimed the gospel of +eternal tyranny as the new revelation which Providence had reserved +for the western Palestine. Hear, O heavens! and give ear, O earth! The +corner-stone of the new-born dispensation is the recognized inequality +of races; not that the strong may protect the weak, as men protect women +and children, but that the strong may claim the authority of Nature and +of God to buy, to sell, to scourge, to hunt, to cheat out of the reward +of his labor, to keep in perpetual ignorance, to blast with hereditary +curses throughout all time, the bronzed foundling of the New World, upon +whose darkness has dawned the star of the occidental Bethlehem! + +After two years of war have consolidated the opinion of the Slave +States, we read in the “Richmond Examiner”: “The establishment of the +Confederacy is verily a distinct reaction against the whole course +of the mistaken civilization of the age. For 'Liberty, Equality, +Fraternity,' we have deliberately substituted Slavery, Subordination, +and Government.” + +A simple diagram, within the reach of all, shows how idle it is to +look for any other cause than slavery as having any material agency in +dividing the country. Match the two broken pieces of the Union, and you +will find the fissure that separates them zigzagging itself half +across the continent like an isothermal line, shooting its splintery +projections, and opening its reentering angles, not merely according to +the limitations of particular States, but as a county or other limited +section of ground belongs to freedom or to slavery. Add to this the +official statement made in 1862, that “there is not one regiment or +battalion, or even company of men, which was organized in or derived +from the Free States or Territories, anywhere, against the Union”; +throw in gratuitously Mr. Stephens's explicit declaration in the speech +referred to, and we will consider the evidence closed for the present on +this count of the indictment. + +In the face of these predictions, these declarations, this line of +fracture, this precise statement, testimony from so many sources, +extending through several generations, as to the necessary effect of +slavery, a priori, and its actual influence as shown by the facts, few +will suppose that anything we could have done would have stayed its +course or prevented it from working out its legitimate effects on the +white subjects of its corrupting dominion. Northern acquiescence or even +sympathy may have sometimes helped to make it sit more easily on the +consciences of its supporters. Many profess to think that Northern +fanaticism, as they call it, acted like a mordant in fixing the +black dye of slavery in regions which would but for that have washed +themselves free of its stain in tears of penitence. It is a delusion +and a snare to trust in any such false and flimsy reasons where there is +enough and more than enough in the institution itself to account for its +growth. Slavery gratifies at once the love of power, the love of money, +and the love of ease; it finds a victim for anger who cannot smite back +his oppressor; and it offers to all, without measure, the seductive +privileges which the Mormon gospel reserves for the true believers on +earth, and the Bible of Mahomet only dares promise to the saints in +heaven. + +Still it is common, common even to vulgarism, to hear the remark that +the same gallows-tree ought to bear as its fruit the arch-traitor and +the leading champion of aggressive liberty. The mob of Jerusalem was not +satisfied with its two crucified thieves; it must have a cross also for +the reforming Galilean, who interfered so rudely with its conservative +traditions! It is asserted that the fault was quite as much on our side +as on the other; that our agitators and abolishers kindled the flame for +which the combustibles were all ready on the other side of the border. +If these men could have been silenced, our brothers had not died. + +Who are the persons that use this argument? They are the very ones who +are at the present moment most zealous in maintaining the right of free +discussion. At a time when every power the nation can summon is needed +to ward off the blows aimed at its life, and turn their force upon its +foes,--when a false traitor at home may lose us a battle by a word, +and a lying newspaper may demoralize an army by its daily or weekly +stillicidium of poison, they insist with loud acclaim upon the +liberty of speech and of the press; liberty, nay license, to deal with +government, with leaders, with every measure, however urgent, in any +terms they choose, to traduce the officer before his own soldiers, and +assail the only men who have any claim at all to rule over the country, +as the very ones who are least worthy to be obeyed. If these opposition +members of society are to have their way now, they cannot find fault +with those persons who spoke their minds freely in the past on that +great question which, as we have agreed, underlies all our present +dissensions. + +It is easy to understand the bitterness which is often shown towards +reformers. They are never general favorites. They are apt to interfere +with vested rights and time-hallowed interests. They often wear an +unlovely, forbidding aspect. Their office corresponds to that of +Nature's sanitary commission for the removal of material nuisances. It +is not the butterfly, but the beetle, which she employs for this duty. +It is not the bird of paradise and the nightingale, but the fowl of dark +plumage and unmelodious voice, to which is entrusted the sacred duty of +eliminating the substances that infect the air. And the force of obvious +analogy teaches us not to expect all the qualities which please the +general taste in those whose instincts lead them to attack the moral +nuisances which poison the atmosphere of society. But whether they +please us in all their aspects or not, is not the question. Like them or +not, they must and will perform their office, and we cannot stop them. +They may be unwise, violent, abusive, extravagant, impracticable, but +they are alive, at any rate, and it is their business to remove abuses +as soon as they are dead, and often to help them to die. To quarrel with +them because they are beetles, and not butterflies, is natural, but far +from profitable. They grow none the less vigorously for being trodden +upon, like those tough weeds that love to nestle between the stones +of court-yard pavements. If you strike at one of their heads with the +bludgeon of the law, or of violence, it flies open like the seedcapsule +of a snap-weed, and fills the whole region with seminal thoughts which +will spring up in a crop just like the original martyr. They chased one +of these enthusiasts, who attacked slavery, from St. Louis, and shot him +at Alton in 1837; and on the 23d of June just passed, the Governor of +Missouri, chairman of the Committee on Emancipation, introduced to the +Convention an Ordinance for the final extinction of Slavery! They hunted +another through the streets of a great Northern city in 1835; and within +a few weeks a regiment of colored soldiers, many of them bearing the +marks of the slave-driver's whip on their backs, marched out before +a vast multitude tremulous with newly-stirred sympathies, through the +streets of the same city, to fight our battles in the name of God and +Liberty! + +The same persons who abuse the reformers, and lay all our troubles +at their door, are apt to be severe also on what they contemptuously +emphasize as “sentiments” considered as motives of action. It is +charitable to believe that they do not seriously contemplate or truly +understand the meaning of the words they use, but rather play with +them, as certain so-called “learned” quadrupeds play with the printed +characters set before them. In all questions involving duty, we act +from sentiments. Religion springs from them, the family order rests upon +them, and in every community each act involving a relation between any +two of its members implies the recognition or the denial of a sentiment. +It is true that men often forget them or act against their bidding in +the keen competition of business and politics. But God has not left +the hard intellect of man to work out its devices without the constant +presence of beings with gentler and purer instincts. The breast of woman +is the ever-rocking cradle of the pure and holy sentiments which will +sooner or later steal their way into the mind of her sterner companion; +which will by and by emerge in the thoughts of the world's teachers, and +at last thunder forth in the edicts of its law-givers and masters. +Woman herself borrows half her tenderness from the sweet influences of +maternity; and childhood, that weeps at the story of suffering, that +shudders at the picture of wrong, brings down its inspiration “from +God, who is our home.” To quarrel, then, with the class of minds that +instinctively attack abuses, is not only profitless but senseless; to +sneer at the sentiments which are the springs of all just and virtuous +actions, is merely a display of unthinking levity, or of want of the +natural sensibilities. + +With the hereditary character of the Southern people moving in one +direction, and the awakened conscience of the North stirring in +the other, the open conflict of opinion was inevitable, and equally +inevitable its appearance in the field of national politics. For what +is meant by self-government is, that a man shall make his convictions +of what is right and expedient regulate the community so far as his +fractional share of the government extends. If one has come to the +conclusion, be it right or wrong, that any particular institution or +statute is a violation of the sovereign law of God, it is to be expected +that he will choose to be represented by those who share his belief, and +who will in their wider sphere do all they legitimately can to get +rid of the wrong in which they find themselves and their constituents +involved. To prevent opinion from organizing itself under political +forms may be very desirable, but it is not according to the theory or +practice of self-government. And if at last organized opinions become +arrayed in hostile shape against each other, we shall find that a just +war is only the last inevitable link in a chain of closely connected +impulses of which the original source is in Him who gave to tender and +humble and uncorrupted souls the sense of right and wrong, which, after +passing through various forms, has found its final expression in the use +of material force. Behind the bayonet is the law-giver's statute, behind +the statute the thinker's argument, behind the argument is the tender +conscientiousness of woman, woman, the wife, the mother,--who looks upon +the face of God himself reflected in the unsullied soul of infancy. +“Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength, +because of thine enemies.” + +The simplest course for the malcontent is to find fault with the order +of Nature and the Being who established it. Unless the law of moral +progress were changed, or the Governor of the Universe were dethroned, +it would be impossible to prevent a great uprising of the human +conscience against a system, the legislation relating to which, in the +words of so calm an observer as De Tocqueville, the Montesquieu of our +laws, presents “such unparalleled atrocities as to show that the laws of +humanity have been totally perverted.” Until the infinite selfishness +of the powers that hate and fear the principles of free government +swallowed up their convenient virtues, that system was hissed at by all +the old-world civilization. While in one section of our land the attempt +has been going on to lift it out of the category of tolerated wrongs +into the sphere of the world's beneficent agencies, it was to be +expected that the protest of Northern manhood and womanhood would grow +louder and stronger until the conflict of principles led to the conflict +of forces. The moral uprising of the North came with the logical +precision of destiny; the rage of the “petty tyrants” was inevitable; +the plot to erect a slave empire followed with fated certainty; and the +only question left for us of the North was, whether we should suffer the +cause of the Nation to go by default, or maintain its existence by the +argument of cannon and musket, of bayonet and sabre. + +The war in which we are engaged is for no meanly ambitious or unworthy +purpose. It was primarily, and is to this moment, for the preservation +of our national existence. The first direct movement towards it was a +civil request on the part of certain Southern persons, that the Nation +would commit suicide, without making any unnecessary trouble about it. +It was answered, with sentiments of the highest consideration, that +there were constitutional and other objections to the Nation's laying +violent hands upon itself. It was then requested, in a somewhat +peremptory tone, that the Nation would be so obliging as to abstain from +food until the natural consequences of that proceeding should manifest +themselves. All this was done as between a single State and an isolated +fortress; but it was not South Carolina and Fort Sumter that were +talking; it was a vast conspiracy uttering its menace to a mighty +nation; the whole menagerie of treason was pacing its cages, ready to +spring as soon as the doors were opened; and all that the tigers of +rebellion wanted to kindle their wild natures to frenzy, was the sight +of flowing blood. + +As if to show how coldly and calmly all this had been calculated +beforehand by the conspirators, to make sure that no absence of malice +aforethought should degrade the grand malignity of settled purpose into +the trivial effervescence of transient passion, the torch which was +literally to launch the first missile, figuratively, to “fire the +southern heart” and light the flame of civil war, was given into the +trembling hand of an old white-headed man, the wretched incendiary +whom history will handcuff in eternal infamy with the temple-burner of +ancient Ephesus. The first gun that spat its iron insult at Fort Sumter, +smote every loyal American full in the face. As when the foul witch used +to torture her miniature image, the person it represented suffered all +that she inflicted on his waxen counterpart, so every buffet that fell +on the smoking fortress was felt by the sovereign nation of which that +was the representative. Robbery could go no farther, for every loyal man +of the North was despoiled in that single act as much as if a footpad +had laid hands upon him to take from him his father's staff and his +mother's Bible. Insult could go no farther, for over those battered +walls waved the precious symbol of all we most value in the past and +most hope for in the future,--the banner under which we became a nation, +and which, next to the cross of the Redeemer, is the dearest object of +love and honor to all who toil or march or sail beneath its waving folds +of glory. + +Let us pause for a moment to consider what might have been the course +of events if under the influence of fear, or of what some would name +humanity, or of conscientious scruples to enter upon what a few please +themselves and their rebel friends by calling a “wicked war”; if under +any or all these influences we had taken the insult and the violence +of South Carolina without accepting it as the first blow of a mortal +combat, in which we must either die or give the last and finishing +stroke. + +By the same title which South Carolina asserted to Fort Sumter, Florida +would have challenged as her own the Gibraltar of the Gulf, and Virginia +the Ehrenbreitstein of the Chesapeake. Half our navy would have anchored +under the guns of these suddenly alienated fortresses, with the flag of +the rebellion flying at their peaks. “Old Ironsides” herself would have +perhaps sailed out of Annapolis harbor to have a wooden Jefferson Davis +shaped for her figure-head at Norfolk,--for Andrew Jackson was a hater +of secession, and his was no fitting effigy for the battle-ship of the +red-handed conspiracy. With all the great fortresses, with half the +ships and warlike material, in addition to all that was already stolen, +in the traitors' hands, what chance would the loyal men in the Border +States have stood against the rush of the desperate fanatics of the +now triumphant faction? Where would Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, +Tennessee,--saved, or looking to be saved, even as it is, as by +fire,--have been in the day of trial? Into whose hands would the +Capital, the archives, the glory, the name, the very life of the nation +as a nation, have fallen, endangered as all of them were, in spite of +the volcanic outburst of the startled North which answered the roar of +the first gun at Sumter? Worse than all, are we permitted to doubt that +in the very bosom of the North itself there was a serpent, coiled but +not sleeping, which only listened for the first word that made it safe +to strike, to bury its fangs in the heart of Freedom, and blend +its golden scales in close embrace with the deadly reptile of the +cotton-fields. Who would not wish that he were wrong in such a +suspicion? yet who can forget the mysterious warnings that the allies +of the rebels were to be found far north of the fatal boundary line; and +that it was in their own streets, against their own brothers, that the +champions of liberty were to defend her sacred heritage? + +Not to have fought, then, after the supreme indignity and outrage we had +suffered, would have been to provoke every further wrong, and to furnish +the means for its commission. It would have been to placard ourselves +on the walls of the shattered fort, as the spiritless race the proud +labor-thieves called us. It would have been to die as a nation of +freemen, and to have given all we had left of our rights into the hands +of alien tyrants in league with home-bred traitors. + +Not to have fought would have been to be false to liberty everywhere, +and to humanity. You have only to see who are our friends and who are +our enemies in this struggle, to decide for what principles we are +combating. We know too well that the British aristocracy is not with +us. We know what the West End of London wishes may be result of this +controversy. The two halves of this Union are the two blades of the +shears, threatening as those of Atropos herself, which will sooner or +later cut into shreds the old charters of tyranny. How they would exult +if they could but break the rivet that makes of the two blades one +resistless weapon! The man who of all living Americans had the best +opportunity of knowing how the fact stood, wrote these words in March, +1862: “That Great Britain did, in the most terrible moment of our +domestic trial in struggling with a monstrous social evil she had +earnestly professed to abhor, coldly and at once assume our inability to +master it, and then become the only foreign nation steadily contributing +in every indirect way possible to verify its pre-judgment, will probably +be the verdict made up against her by posterity, on a calm comparison of +the evidence.” + +So speaks the wise, tranquil statesman who represents the nation at the +Court of St. James, in the midst of embarrassments perhaps not less than +those which vexed his illustrious grandfather, when he occupied the same +position as the Envoy of the hated, newborn Republic. + +“It cannot be denied,”--says another observer, placed on one of our +national watch-towers in a foreign capital,--“it cannot be denied that +the tendency of European public opinion, as delivered from high places, +is more and more unfriendly to our cause”; “but the people,” he adds, +“everywhere sympathize with us, for they know that our cause is that of +free institutions,--that our struggle is that of the people against +an oligarchy.” These are the words of the Minister to Austria, whose +generous sympathies with popular liberty no homage paid to his genius by +the class whose admiring welcome is most seductive to scholars has ever +spoiled; our fellow-citizen, the historian of a great Republic which +infused a portion of its life into our own,--John Lothrop Motley. + +It is a bitter commentary on the effects of European, and especially of +British institutions, that such men should have to speak in such terms +of the manner in which our struggle has been regarded. We had, no doubt, +very generally reckoned on the sympathy of England, at least, in a +strife which, whatever pretexts were alleged as its cause, arrayed upon +one side the supporters of an institution she was supposed to hate in +earnest, and on the other its assailants. We had forgotten what her +own poet, one of the truest and purest of her children, had said of his +countrymen, in words which might well have been spoken by the British +Premier to the American Ambassador asking for some evidence of kind +feeling on the part of his government: + + “Alas I expect it not. We found no bait + To tempt us in thy country. Doing good, + Disinterested good, is not our trade.” + +We know full well by this time what truth there is in these honest +lines. We have found out, too, who our European enemies are, and why +they are our enemies. Three bending statues bear up that gilded seat, +which, in spite of the time-hallowed usurpations and consecrated wrongs +so long associated with its history, is still venerated as the throne. +One of these supports is the pensioned church; the second is the +purchased army; the third is the long-suffering people. Whenever the +third caryatid comes to life and walks from beneath its burden, the +capitals of Europe will be filled with the broken furniture of palaces. +No wonder that our ministers find the privileged orders willing to see +the ominous republic split into two antagonistic forces, each paralyzing +the other, and standing in their mighty impotence a spectacle to courts +and kings; to be pointed at as helots who drank themselves blind and +giddy out of that broken chalice which held the poisonous draught of +liberty! + +We know our enemies, and they are the enemies of popular rights. We know +our friends, and they are the foremost champions of political and social +progress. The eloquent voice and the busy pen of John Bright have both +been ours, heartily, nobly, from the first; the man of the people has +been true to the cause of the people. That deep and generous thinker, +who, more than any of her philosophical writers, represents the higher +thought of England, John Stuart Mill, has spoken for us in tones to +which none but her sordid hucksters and her selfish land-graspers can +refuse to listen. Count Gasparin and Laboulaye have sent us back the +echo from liberal France; France, the country of ideas, whose earlier +inspirations embodied themselves for us in the person of the youthful +Lafayette. Italy,--would you know on which side the rights of the people +and the hopes of the future are to be found in this momentous conflict, +what surer test, what ampler demonstration can you ask--than the eager +sympathy of the Italian patriot whose name is the hope of the toiling +many, and the dread of their oppressors, wherever it is spoken, the +heroic Garibaldi? + +But even when it is granted that the war was inevitable; when it is +granted that it is for no base end, but first for the life of the +nation, and more and more, as the quarrel deepens, for the welfare of +mankind, for knowledge as against enforced ignorance, for justice as +against oppression, for that kingdom of God on earth which neither the +unrighteous man nor the extortioner can hope to inherit, it may still be +that the strife is hopeless, and must therefore be abandoned. Is it +too much to say that whether the war is hopeless or not for the North +depends chiefly on the answer to the question, whether the North has +virtue and manhood enough to persevere in the contest so long as its +resources hold out? But how much virtue and manhood it has can never +be told until they are tried, and those who are first to doubt the +prevailing existence of these qualities are not commonly themselves +patterns of either. We have a right to trust that this people is +virtuous and brave enough not to give up a just and necessary contest +before its end is attained, or shown to be unattainable for want of +material agencies. What was the end to be attained by accepting the gage +of battle? It was to get the better of our assailants, and, having done +so, to take exactly those steps which we should then consider necessary +to our present and future safety. The more obstinate the resistance, the +more completely must it be subdued. It may not even have been desirable, +as Mr. Mill suggested long since, that the victory over the rebellion +should have been easily and speedily won, and so have failed to develop +the true meaning of the conflict, to bring out the full strength of the +revolted section, and to exhaust the means which would have served it +for a still more desperate future effort. We cannot complain that +our task has proved too easy. We give our Southern army,--for we must +remember that it is our army, after all, only in a state of mutiny,--we +give our Southern army credit for excellent spirit and perseverance in +the face of many disadvantages. But we have a few plain facts which show +the probable course of events; the gradual but sure operation of the +blockade; the steady pushing back of the boundary of rebellion, in spite +of resistance at many points, or even of such aggressive inroads as that +which our armies are now meeting with their long lines of bayonets,--may +God grant them victory!--the progress of our arms down the Mississippi; +the relative value of gold and currency at Richmond and Washington. If +the index-hands of force and credit continue to move in the ratio of the +past two years, where will the Confederacy be in twice or thrice that +time? + +Either all our statements of the relative numbers, power, and wealth of +the two sections of the country signify nothing, or the resources of our +opponents in men and means must be much nearer exhaustion than our own. +The running sand of the hour-glass gives no warning, but runs as freely +as ever when its last grains are about to fall. The merchant wears as +bold a face the day before he is proclaimed a bankrupt, as he wore at +the height of his fortunes. If Colonel Grierson found the Confederacy “a +mere shell,” so far as his equestrian excursion carried him, how can we +say how soon the shell will collapse? It seems impossible that our own +dissensions can produce anything more than local disturbances, like the +Morristown revolt, which Washington put down at once by the aid of his +faithful Massachusetts soldiers. But in a rebellious state dissension is +ruin, and the violence of an explosion in a strict ratio to the pressure +on every inch of the containing surface. Now we know the tremendous +force which has compelled the “unanimity” of the Southern people. There +are men in the ranks of the Southern army, if we can trust the evidence +which reaches us, who have been recruited with packs of blood-hounds, +and drilled, as it were, with halters around their necks. We know what +is the bitterness of those who have escaped this bloody harvest of the +remorseless conspirators; and from that we can judge of the elements of +destruction incorporated with many of the seemingly solid portions of +the fabric of the rebellion. The facts are necessarily few, but we can +reason from the laws of human nature as to what must be the feelings of +the people of the South to their Northern neighbors. It is impossible +that the love of the life which they have had in common, their glorious +recollections, their blended histories, their sympathies as Americans, +their mingled blood, their birthright as born under the same flag and +protected by it the world over, their worship of the same God, under the +same outward form, at least, and in the folds of the same ecclesiastical +organizations, should all be forgotten, and leave nothing but hatred and +eternal alienation. Men do not change in this way, and we may be quite +sure that the pretended unanimity of the South will some day or other +prove to have been a part of the machinery of deception which the +plotters have managed with such consummate skill. It is hardly to +be doubted that in every part of the South, as in New Orleans, in +Charleston, in Richmond, there are multitudes who wait for the day of +deliverance, and for whom the coming of “our good friends, the enemies,” + as Beranger has it, will be like the advent of the angels to the +prison-cells of Paul and Silas. But there is no need of depending on the +aid of our white Southern friends, be they many or be they few; there is +material power enough in the North, if there be the will to use it, +to overrun and by degrees to recolonize the South, and it is far from +impossible that some such process may be a part of the mechanism of its +new birth, spreading from various centres of organization, on the plan +which Nature follows when she would fill a half-finished tissue with +blood-vessels or change a temporary cartilage into bone. + +Suppose, however, that the prospects of the war were, we need not say +absolutely hopeless,--because that is the unfounded hypothesis of those +whose wish is father to their thought,--but full of discouragement. Can +we make a safe and honorable peace as the quarrel now stands? As honor +comes before safety, let us look at that first. We have undertaken +to resent a supreme insult, and have had to bear new insults and +aggressions, even to the direct menace of our national capital. The +blood which our best and bravest have shed will never sink into the +ground until our wrongs are righted, or the power to right them is +shown to be insufficient. If we stop now, all the loss of life has been +butchery; if we carry out the intention with which we first resented the +outrage, the earth drinks up the blood of our martyrs, and the rose of +honor blooms forever where it was shed. To accept less than indemnity +for the past, so far as the wretched kingdom of the conspirators can +afford it, and security for the future, would discredit us in our own +eyes and in the eyes of those who hate and long to be able to despise +us. But to reward the insults and the robberies we have suffered, by the +surrender of our fortresses along the coast, in the national gulf, and +on the banks of the national river,--and this and much more would surely +be demanded of us,--would place the United Fraction of America on a +level with the Peruvian guano-islands, whose ignoble but coveted soil is +open to be plundered by all comers! + +If we could make a peace without dishonor, could we make one that would +be safe and lasting? We could have an armistice, no doubt, long enough +for the flesh of our wounded men to heal and their broken bones to knit +together. But could we expect a solid, substantial, enduring peace, +in which the grass would have time to grow in the war-paths, and the +bruised arms to rust, as the old G. R. cannon rusted in our State +arsenal, sleeping with their tompions in their mouths, like so many +sucking lambs? It is not the question whether the same set of soldiers +would be again summoned to the field. Let us take it for granted that we +have seen enough of the miseries of warfare to last us for a while, and +keep us contented with militia musters and sham-fights. The question is +whether we could leave our children and our children's children with any +secure trust that they would not have to go through the very trials we +are enduring, probably on a more extended scale and in a more aggravated +form. + +It may be well to look at the prospects before us, if a peace is +established on the basis of Southern independence, the only peace +possible, unless we choose to add ourselves to the four millions +who already call the Southern whites their masters. We know what the +prevailing--we do not mean universal--spirit and temper of those people +have been for generations, and what they are like to be after a long and +bitter warfare. We know what their tone is to the people of the North; +if we do not, De Bow and Governor Hammond are schoolmasters who +will teach us to our heart's content. We see how easily their social +organization adapts itself to a state of warfare. They breed a superior +order of men for leaders, an ignorant commonalty ready to follow them +as the vassals of feudal times followed their lords; and a race of +bondsmen, who, unless this war changes them from chattels to human +beings, will continue to add vastly to their military strength in +raising their food, in building their fortifications, in all the +mechanical work of war, in fact, except, it may be, the handling +of weapons. The institution proclaimed as the corner-stone of their +government does violence not merely to the precepts of religion, but +to many of the best human instincts, yet their fanaticism for it is as +sincere as any tribe of the desert ever manifested for the faith of +the Prophet of Allah. They call themselves by the same name as the +Christians of the North, yet there is as much difference between their +Christianity and that of Wesley or of Channing, as between creeds that +in past times have vowed mutual extermination. Still we must not +call them barbarians because they cherish an institution hostile to +civilization. Their highest culture stands out all the more brilliantly +from the dark background of ignorance against which it is seen; but +it would be injustice to deny that they have always shone in political +science, or that their military capacity makes them most formidable +antagonists, and that, however inferior they may be to their Northern +fellow-countrymen in most branches of literature and science, the +social elegances and personal graces lend their outward show to the best +circles among their dominant class. + +Whom have we then for our neighbors, in case of separation,--our +neighbors along a splintered line of fracture extending for thousands +of miles,--but the Saracens of the Nineteenth Century; a fierce, +intolerant, fanatical people, the males of which will be a perpetual +standing army; hating us worse than the Southern Hamilcar taught his +swarthy boy to hate the Romans; a people whose existence as a hostile +nation on our frontier is incompatible with our peaceful development? +Their wealth, the proceeds of enforced labor, multiplied by the +breaking up of new cottonfields, and in due time by the reopening of the +slave-trade, will go to purchase arms, to construct fortresses, to fit +out navies. The old Saracens, fanatics for a religion which professed to +grow by conquest, were a nation of predatory and migrating warriors. +The Southern people, fanatics for a system essentially aggressive, +conquering, wasting, which cannot remain stationary, but must grow by +alternate appropriations of labor and of land, will come to resemble +their earlier prototypes. Already, even, the insolence of their language +to the people of the North is a close imitation of the style which those +proud and arrogant Asiatics affected toward all the nations of Europe. +What the “Christian dogs” were to the followers of Mahomet, the +“accursed Yankees,” the “Northern mud-sills” are to the followers of +the Southern Moloch. The accomplishments which we find in their choicer +circles were prefigured in the court of the chivalric Saladin, and +the long train of Painim knights who rode forth to conquest under the +Crescent. In all branches of culture, their heathen predecessors went +far beyond them. The schools of mediaeval learning were filled with +Arabian teachers. The heavens declare the glory of the Oriental +astronomers, as Algorab and Aldebaran repeat their Arabic names to the +students of the starry firmament. The sumptuous edifice erected by the +Art of the nineteenth century, to hold the treasures of its Industry, +could show nothing fairer than the court which copies the Moorish palace +that crowns the summit of Granada. Yet this was the power which Charles +the Hammer, striking for Christianity and civilization, had to break +like a potter's vessel; these were the people whom Spain had to utterly +extirpate from the land where they had ruled for centuries. + +Prepare, then, if you unseal the vase which holds this dangerous Afrit +of Southern nationality, for a power on your borders that will be to you +what the Saracens were to Europe before the son of Pepin shattered their +armies, and flung the shards and shivers of their broken strength upon +the refuse heap of extinguished barbarisms. Prepare for the possible +fate of Christian Spain; for a slave-market in Philadelphia; for the +Alhambra of a Southern caliph on the grounds consecrated by the domestic +virtues of a long line of Presidents and their exemplary families. +Remember the ages of border warfare between England and Scotland, closed +at last by the union of the two kingdoms. Recollect the hunting of the +deer on the Cheviot hills, and all that it led to; then think of the +game which the dogs will follow open-mouthed across our Southern border, +and all that is like to follow which the child may rue that is unborn; +think of these possibilities, or probabilities, if you will, and +say whether you are ready to make a peace which will give you such +a neighbor; which may betray your civilization as that of half the +Peninsula was given up to the Moors; which may leave your fair border +provinces to be crushed under the heel of a tyrant, as Holland was left +to be trodden down by the Duke of Alva! + +No! no! fellow-citizens! We must fight in this quarrel until one side or +the other is exhausted. Rather than suffer all that we have poured out +of our blood, all that we have lavished of our substance, to have been +expended in vain, and to bequeath an unsettled question, an unfinished +conflict, an unavenged insult, an unrighted wrong, a stained escutcheon, +a tarnished shield, a dishonored flag, an unheroic memory to the +descendants of those who have always claimed that their fathers were +heroes; rather than do all this, it were hardly an American exaggeration +to say, better that the last man and the last dollar should be followed +by the last woman and the last dime, the last child and the last copper! + +There are those who profess to fear that our government is becoming a +mere irresponsible tyranny. If there are any who really believe that +our present Chief Magistrate means to found a dynasty for himself and +family, that a coup d'etat is in preparation by which he is to become +ABRAHAM, DEI GRATIA REX,--they cannot have duly pondered his letter of +June 12th, in which he unbosoms himself with the simplicity of a rustic +lover called upon by an anxious parent to explain his intentions. The +force of his argument is not at all injured by the homeliness of his +illustrations. The American people are not much afraid that their +liberties will be usurped. An army of legislators is not very likely to +throw away its political privileges, and the idea of a despotism resting +on an open ballot-box, is like that of Bunker Hill Monument built on the +waves of Boston Harbor. We know pretty well how much of sincerity there +is in the fears so clamorously expressed, and how far they are found +in company with uncompromising hostility to the armed enemies of the +nation. We have learned to put a true value on the services of the +watch-dog who bays the moon, but does not bite the thief! + +The men who are so busy holy-stoning the quarterdeck, while all hands +are wanted to keep the ship afloat, can no doubt show spots upon it +that would be very unsightly in fair weather. No thoroughly loyal man, +however, need suffer from any arbitrary exercise of power, such as +emergencies always give rise to. If any half-loyal man forgets his code +of half-decencies and half-duties so far as to become obnoxious to the +peremptory justice which takes the place of slower forms in all centres +of conflagration, there is no sympathy for him among the soldiers who +are risking their lives for us; perhaps there is even more satisfaction +than when an avowed traitor is caught and punished. For of all men who +are loathed by generous natures, such as fill the ranks of the armies +of the Union, none are so thoroughly loathed as the men who contrive +to keep just within the limits of the law, while their whole conduct +provokes others to break it; whose patriotism consists in stopping +an inch short of treason, and whose political morality has for its +safeguard a just respect for the jailer and the hangman! The simple +preventive against all possible injustice a citizen is like to suffer +at the hands of a government which in its need and haste must of course +commit many errors, is to take care to do nothing that will directly or +indirectly help the enemy, or hinder the government in carrying on the +war. When the clamor against usurpation and tyranny comes from citizens +who can claim this negative merit, it may be listened to. When it comes +from those who have done what they could to serve their country, it +will receive the attention it deserves. Doubtless there may prove to be +wrongs which demand righting, but the pretence of any plan for changing +the essential principle of our self-governing system is a figment +which its contrivers laugh over among themselves. Do the citizens of +Harrisburg or of Philadelphia quarrel to-day about the strict legality +of an executive act meant in good faith for their protection against +the invader? We are all citizens of Harrisburg, all citizens of +Philadelphia, in this hour of their peril, and with the enemy at work +in our own harbors, we begin to understand the difference between a good +and bad citizen; the man that helps and the man that hinders; the man +who, while the pirate is in sight, complains that our anchor is dragging +in his mud, and the man who violates the proprieties, like our brave +Portland brothers, when they jumped on board the first steamer they +could reach, cut her cable, and bore down on the corsair, with a habeas +corpus act that lodged twenty buccaneers in Fort Preble before sunset! + +We cannot, then, we cannot be circling inward to be swallowed up in the +whirlpool of national destruction. If our borders are invaded, it is +only as the spur that is driven into the courser's flank to rouse his +slumbering mettle. If our property is taxed, it is only to teach us that +liberty is worth paying for as well as fighting for. We are pouring out +the most generous blood of our youth and manhood; alas! this is always +the price that must be paid for the redemption of a people. What have we +to complain of, whose granaries are choking with plenty, whose streets +are gay with shining robes and glittering equipages, whose industry +is abundant enough to reap all its overflowing harvest, yet sure of +employment and of its just reward, the soil of whose mighty valleys is +an inexhaustible mine of fertility, whose mountains cover up such stores +of heat and power, imprisoned in their coal measures, as would warm all +the inhabitants and work all the machinery of our planet for unnumbered +ages, whose rocks pour out rivers of oil, whose streams run yellow over +beds of golden sand,--what have we to complain of? + +Have we degenerated from our English fathers, so that we cannot do and +bear for our national salvation what they have done and borne over and +over again for their form of government? Could England, in her wars with +Napoleon, bear an income-tax of ten per cent., and must we faint under +the burden of an income-tax of three per cent.? Was she content to +negotiate a loan at fifty-three for the hundred, and that paid in +depreciated paper, and can we talk about financial ruin with our +national stocks ranging from one to eight or nine above par, and the +“five-twenty” war loan eagerly taken by our own people to the amount +of nearly two hundred millions, without any check to the flow of the +current pressing inwards against the doors of the Treasury? Except in +those portions of the country which are the immediate seat of war, or +liable to be made so, and which, having the greatest interest not to +become the border states of hostile nations, can best afford to suffer +now, the state of prosperity and comfort is such as to astonish those +who visit us from other countries. What are war taxes to a nation which, +as we are assured on good authority, has more men worth a million +now than it had worth ten thousand dollars at the close of the +Revolution,--whose whole property is a hundred times, and whose +commerce, inland and foreign, is five hundred times, what it was then? +But we need not study Mr. Still's pamphlet and “Thompson's Bank-Note +Reporter” to show us what we know well enough, that, so far from having +occasion to tremble in fear of our impending ruin, we must rather blush +for our material prosperity. For the multitudes who are unfortunate +enough to be taxed for a million or more, of course we must feel deeply, +at the same time suggesting that the more largely they report their +incomes to the tax-gatherer, the more consolation they will find in +the feeling that they have served their country. But,--let us say it +plainly,--it will not hurt our people to be taught that there are other +things to be cared for besides money-making and money-spending; that the +time has come when manhood must assert itself by brave deeds and noble +thoughts; when womanhood must assume its most sacred office, “to warn, +to comfort,” and, if need be, “to command,” those whose services their +country calls for. This Northern section of the land has become a +great variety shop, of which the Atlantic cities are the long-extended +counter. We have grown rich for what? To put gilt bands on coachmen's +hats? To sweep the foul sidewalks with the heaviest silks which the +toiling artisans of France can send us? To look through plate-glass +windows, and pity the brown soldiers,--or sneer at the black ones? +to reduce the speed of trotting horses a second or two below its old +minimum? to color meerschaums? to flaunt in laces, and sparkle in +diamonds? to dredge our maidens' hair with gold-dust? to float through +life, the passive shuttlecocks of fashion, from the avenues to the +beaches, and back again from the beaches to the avenues? Was it for +this that the broad domain of the Western hemisphere was kept so long +unvisited by civilization?--for this, that Time, the father of empires, +unbound the virgin zone of this youngest of his daughters, and gave her, +beautiful in the long veil of her forests, to the rude embrace of the +adventurous Colonist? All this is what we see around us, now, now while +we are actually fighting this great battle, and supporting this great +load of indebtedness. Wait till the diamonds go back to the Jews of +Amsterdam; till the plate-glass window bears the fatal announcement, For +Sale or to Let; till the voice of our Miriam is obeyed, as she sings, + + “Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms!” + +till the gold-dust is combed from the golden locks, and hoarded to buy +bread; till the fast-driving youth smokes his clay-pipe on the platform +of the horse-cars; till the music-grinders cease because none will pay +them; till there are no peaches in the windows at twenty-four dollars +a dozen, and no heaps of bananas and pine-apples selling at the +street-corners; till the ten-flounced dress has but three flounces, +and it is felony to drink champagne; wait till these changes show +themselves, the signs of deeper wants, the preludes of exhaustion and +bankruptcy; then let us talk of the Maelstrom;--but till then, let +us not be cowards with our purses, while brave men are emptying their +hearts upon the earth for us; let us not whine over our imaginary ruin, +while the reversed current of circling events is carrying us farther and +farther, every hour, out of the influence of the great failing which +was born of our wealth, and of the deadly sin which was our fatal +inheritance! + +Let us take a brief general glance at the wide field of discussion we +are just leaving. + +On Friday, the twelfth day of the month of April, in the year of our +Lord eighteen hundred and sixty-one, at half-past four of the clock +in the morning, a cannon was aimed and fired by the authority of South +Carolina at the wall of a fortress belonging to the United States. Its +ball carried with it the hatreds, the rages of thirty years, shaped and +cooled in the mould of malignant deliberation. Its wad was the charter +of our national existence. Its muzzle was pointed at the stone which +bore the symbol of our national sovereignty. As the echoes of its +thunder died away, the telegraph clicked one word through every office +of the land. That word was WAR! + +War is a child that devours its nurses one after another, until it is +claimed by its true parents. This war has eaten its way backward through +all the technicalities of lawyers learned in the infinitesimals of +ordinances and statutes; through all the casuistries of divines, experts +in the differential calculus of conscience and duty; until it stands +revealed to all men as the natural and inevitable conflict of two +incompatible forms of civilization, one or the other of which must +dominate the central zone of the continent, and eventually claim the +hemisphere for its development. + +We have reached the region of those broad principles and large axioms +which the wise Romans, the world's lawgivers, always recognized as +above all special enactments. We have come to that solid substratum +acknowledged by Grotius in his great Treatise: “Necessity itself which +reduces things to the mere right of Nature.” The old rules which were +enough for our guidance in quiet times, have become as meaningless “as +moonlight on the dial of the day.” We have followed precedents as long +as they could guide us; now we must make precedents for the ages which +are to succeed us. + +If we are frightened from our object by the money we have spent, +the current prices of United States stocks show that we value our +nationality at only a small fraction of our wealth. If we feel that we +are paying too dearly for it in the blood of our people, let us recall +those grand words of Samuel Adams: + +“I should advise persisting in our struggle for liberty, though it were +revealed from heaven that nine hundred and ninety-nine were to perish, +and only one of a thousand were to survive and retain his liberty!” + +What we want now is a strong purpose; the purpose of Luther, when he +said, in repeating his Pater Noster, fiat voluntas MEA,--let my will +be done; though he considerately added, quia Tua,--because my will is +Thine. We want the virile energy of determination which made the oath +of Andrew Jackson sound so like the devotion of an ardent saint that the +recording angel might have entered it unquestioned among the prayers of +the faithful. + +War is a grim business. Two years ago our women's fingers were busy +making “Havelocks.” It seemed to us then as if the Havelock made half +the soldier; and now we smile to think of those days of inexperience and +illusion. We know now what War means, and we cannot look its dull, dead +ghastliness in the face unless we feel that there is some great and +noble principle behind it. It makes little difference what we thought +we were fighting for at first; we know what we are fighting for now, and +what we are fighting against. + +We are fighting for our existence. We say to those who would take back +their several contributions to that undivided unity which we call the +Nation; the bronze is cast; the statue is on its pedestal; you cannot +reclaim the brass you flung into the crucible! There are rights, +possessions, privileges, policies, relations, duties, acquired, +retained, called into existence in virtue of the principle of absolute +solidarity,--belonging to the United States as an organic whole, which +cannot be divided, which none of its constituent parties can claim as +its own, which perish out of its living frame when the wild forces of +rebellion tear it limb from limb, and which it must defend, or confess +self-government itself a failure. + +We are fighting for that Constitution upon which our national existence +reposes, now subjected by those who fired the scroll on which it was +written from the cannon at Fort Sumter, to all those chances which the +necessities of war entail upon every human arrangement, but still the +venerable charter of our wide Republic. + +We cannot fight for these objects without attacking the one mother cause +of all the progeny of lesser antagonisms. Whether we know it or not, +whether we mean it or not, we cannot help fighting against the system +that has proved the source of all those miseries which the author of the +Declaration of Independence trembled to anticipate. And this ought to +make us willing to do and to suffer cheerfully. There were Holy Wars of +old, in which it was glory enough to die, wars in which the one aim +was to rescue the sepulchre of Christ from the hands of infidels. The +sepulchre of Christ is not in Palestine! He rose from that burial-place +more than eighteen hundred years ago. He is crucified wherever his +brothers are slain without cause; he lies buried wherever man, made in +his Maker's image, is entombed in ignorance lest he should learn the +rights which his Divine Master gave him! This is our Holy War, and we +must fight it against that great General who will bring to it all the +powers with which he fought against the Almighty before he was cast down +from heaven. He has retained many a cunning advocate to recruit for him; +he has bribed many a smooth-tongued preacher to be his chaplain; he +has engaged the sordid by their avarice, the timid by their fears, the +profligate by their love of adventure, and thousands of nobler natures +by motives which we can all understand; whose delusion we pity as we +ought always to pity the error of those who know not what they do. +Against him or for him we are all called upon to declare ourselves. +There is no neutrality for any single true-born American. If any seek +such a position, the stony finger of Dante's awful muse points them to +their place in the antechamber of the Halls of Despair,-- + + “--With that ill band + Of angels mixed, who nor rebellious proved, + Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves + Were only.” + + “--Fame of them the world hath none + Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both. + Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.” + +We must use all the means which God has put into our hands to serve him +against the enemies of civilization. We must make and keep the great +river free, whatever it costs us; it is strapping up the forefoot of the +wild, untamable rebellion. We must not be too nice in the choice of our +agents. Non eget Mauri jaculis,--no African bayonets wanted,--was well +enough while we did not yet know the might of that desperate giant we +had to deal with; but Tros, Tyriusve,--white or black,--is the safer +motto now; for a good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad +color. The iron-skins, as well as the iron-clads, have already done us +noble service, and many a mother will clasp the returning boy, many a +wife will welcome back the war-worn husband, whose smile would never +again have gladdened his home, but that, cold in the shallow trench of +the battle-field, lies the half-buried form of the unchained bondsman +whose dusky bosom sheathes the bullet which would else have claimed that +darling as his country's sacrifice. + +We shall have success if we truly will success, not otherwise. It may be +long in coming,--Heaven only knows through what trials and humblings we +may have to pass before the full strength of the nation is duly arrayed +and led to victory. We must be patient, as our fathers were patient; +even in our worst calamities, we must remember that defeat itself may be +a gain where it costs our enemy more in relation to his strength than it +costs ourselves. But if, in the inscrutable providence of the Almighty, +this generation is disappointed in its lofty aspirations for the race, +if we have not virtue enough to ennoble our whole people, and make it a +nation of sovereigns, we shall at least hold in undying honor those +who vindicated the insulted majesty of the Republic, and struck at her +assailants so long as a drum-beat summoned them to the field of duty. + +Citizens of Boston, sons and daughters of New England, men and women of +the North, brothers and sisters in the bond of the American Union, you +have among you the scarred and wasted soldiers who have shed their blood +for your temporal salvation. They bore your nation's emblems bravely +through the fire and smoke of the battle-field; nay, their own bodies +are starred with bullet-wounds and striped with sabre-cuts, as if to +mark them as belonging to their country until their dust becomes a +portion of the soil which they defended. In every Northern graveyard +slumber the victims of this destroying struggle. Many whom you remember +playing as children amidst the clover-blossoms of our Northern fields, +sleep under nameless mounds with strange Southern wild-flowers blooming +over them. By those wounds of living heroes, by those graves of +fallen martyrs, by the hopes of your children, and the claims of your +children's children yet unborn, in the name of outraged honor, in the +interest of violated sovereignty, for the life of an imperilled nation, +for the sake of men everywhere and of our common humanity, for the glory +of God and the advancement of his kingdom on earth, your country calls +upon you to stand by her through good report and through evil report, in +triumph and in defeat, until she emerges from the great war of Western +civilization, Queen of the broad continent, Arbitress in the councils of +earth's emancipated peoples; until the flag that fell from the wall +of Fort Sumter floats again inviolate, supreme, over all her ancient +inheritance, every fortress, every capital, every ship, and this warring +land is once more a United Nation! + + + + +CINDERS FROM THE ASHES. + +The personal revelations contained in my report of certain +breakfast-table conversations were so charitably listened to and +so good-naturedly interpreted, that I may be in danger of becoming +over-communicative. Still, I should never have ventured to tell the +trivial experiences here thrown together, were it not that my brief +story is illuminated here and there by a glimpse of some shining figure +that trod the same path with me for a time, or crossed it, leaving +a momentary or lasting brightness in its track. I remember that, in +furnishing a chamber some years ago, I was struck with its dull aspect +as I looked round on the black-walnut chairs and bedstead and bureau. +“Make me a large and handsomely wrought gilded handle to the key of that +dark chest of drawers,” I said to the furnisher. It was done, and that +one luminous point redeemed the sombre apartment as the evening star +glorifies the dusky firmament. So, my loving reader,--and to none other +can such table-talk as this be addressed,--I hope there will be lustre +enough in one or other of the names with which I shall gild my page to +redeem the dulness of all that is merely personal in my recollections. + +After leaving the school of Dame Prentiss, best remembered by infantine +loves, those pretty preludes of more serious passions; by the great +forfeit-basket, filled with its miscellaneous waifs and deodauds, and +by the long willow stick by the aid of which the good old body, now +stricken in years and unwieldy in person could stimulate the sluggish +faculties or check the mischievous sallies of the child most distant +from his ample chair,--a school where I think my most noted schoolmate +was the present Bishop of Delaware, became the pupil of Master William +Biglow. This generation is not familiar with his title to renown, +although he fills three columns and a half in Mr. Duyckinck's +“Cyclopaedia of American Literature.” He was a humorist hardly robust +enough for more than a brief local immortality. I am afraid we were +an undistinguished set, for I do not remember anybody near a bishop in +dignity graduating from our benches. + +At about ten years of age I began going to what we always called the +“Port School,” because it was kept at Cambridgeport, a mile from the +College. This suburb was at that time thinly inhabited, and, being much +of it marshy and imperfectly reclaimed, had a dreary look as compared +with the thriving College settlement. The tenants of the many beautiful +mansions that have sprung up along Main Street, Harvard Street, and +Broadway can hardly recall the time when, except the “Dana House” and +the “Opposition House” and the “Clark House,” these roads were almost +all the way bordered by pastures until we reached the “stores” of Main +Street, or were abreast of that forlorn “First Row” of Harvard Street. +We called the boys of that locality “Port-chucks.” They called us +“Cambridge-chucks,” but we got along very well together in the main. + +Among my schoolmates at the Port School was a young girl of singular +loveliness. I once before referred to her as “the golden blonde,” but +did not trust myself to describe her charms. The day of her appearance +in the school was almost as much a revelation to us boys as the +appearance of Miranda was to Caliban. Her abounding natural curls were +so full of sunshine, her skin was so delicately white, her smile and +her voice were so all-subduing, that half our heads were turned. Her +fascinations were everywhere confessed a few years afterwards; and when +I last met her, though she said she was a grandmother, I questioned +her statement, for her winning looks and ways would still have made her +admired in any company. + +Not far from the golden blonde were two small boys, one of them very +small, perhaps the youngest boy in school, both ruddy, sturdy, quiet, +reserved, sticking loyally by each other, the oldest, however, beginning +to enter into social relations with us of somewhat maturer years. One of +these two boys was destined to be widely known, first in literature, +as author of one of the most popular books of its time and which is +freighted for a long voyage; then as an eminent lawyer; a man who, if +his countrymen are wise, will yet be prominent in the national councils. +Richard Henry Dana, Junior, is the name he bore and bears; he found it +famous, and will bequeath it a fresh renown. + +Sitting on the girls' benches, conspicuous among the school-girls of +unlettered origin by that look which rarely fails to betray hereditary +and congenital culture, was a young person very nearly of my own age. +She came with the reputation of being “smart,” as we should have called +it, clever as we say nowadays. This was Margaret Fuller, the only one +among us who, like “Jean Paul,” like “The Duke,” like “Bettina,” + has slipped the cable of the more distinctive name to which she was +anchored, and floats on the waves of speech as “Margaret.” Her air to +her schoolmates was marked by a certain stateliness and distance, as if +she had other thoughts than theirs and was not of them. She was a +great student and a great reader of what she used to call “naw-vels.” I +remember her so well as she appeared at school and later, that I regret +that she had not been faithfully given to canvas or marble in the day +of her best looks. None know her aspect who have not seen her living. +Margaret, as I remember her at school and afterwards, was tall, fair +complexioned, with a watery, aqua-marine lustre in her light eyes, +which she used to make small, as one does who looks at the sunshine. +A remarkable point about her was that long, flexile neck, arching and +undulating in strange sinuous movements, which one who loved her would +compare to those of a swan, and one who loved her not to those of +the ophidian who tempted our common mother. Her talk was affluent, +magisterial, de haut en bas, some would say euphuistic, but surpassing +the talk of women in breadth and audacity. Her face kindled and reddened +and dilated in every feature as she spoke, and, as I once saw her in a +fine storm of indignation at the supposed ill-treatment of a relative, +showed itself capable of something resembling what Milton calls the +viraginian aspect. + +Little incidents bear telling when they recall anything of such a +celebrity as Margaret. I remember being greatly awed once, in our +school-days, with the maturity of one of her expressions. Some themes +were brought home from the school for examination by my father, among +them one of hers. I took it up with a certain emulous interest (for I +fancied at that day that I too had drawn a prize, say a five-dollar one, +at least, in the great intellectual life-lottery) and read the first +words. + +“It is a trite remark,” she began. + +I stopped. Alas! I did not know what trite meant. How could I ever judge +Margaret fairly after such a crushing discovery of her superiority? I +doubt if I ever did; yet oh, how pleasant it would have been, at about +the age, say, of threescore and ten, to rake over these ashes for +cinders with her,--she in a snowy cap, and I in a decent peruke! + +After being five years at the Port School, the time drew near when I +was to enter college. It seemed advisable to give me a year of higher +training, and for that end some public school was thought to offer +advantages. Phillips Academy at Andover was well known to us. We had +been up there, my father and myself, at anniversaries. Some Boston boys +of well-known and distinguished parentage had been scholars there +very lately, Master Edmund Quincy, Master Samuel Hurd Walley, Master +Nathaniel Parker Willis,--all promising youth, who fulfilled their +promise. + +I do not believe there was any thought of getting a little respite of +quiet by my temporary absence, but I have wondered that there was not. +Exceptional boys of fourteen or fifteen make home a heaven, it is +true; but I have suspected, late in life, that I was not one of the +exceptional kind. I had tendencies in the direction of flageolets and +octave flutes. I had a pistol and a gun, and popped at everything that +stirred, pretty nearly, except the house-cat. Worse than this, I would +buy a cigar and smoke it by instalments, putting it meantime in the +barrel of my pistol, by a stroke of ingenuity which it gives me a grim +pleasure to recall; for no maternal or other female eyes would explore +the cavity of that dread implement in search of contraband commodities. + +It was settled, then, that I should go to Phillips Academy, and +preparations were made that I might join the school at the beginning of +the autumn. + +In due time I took my departure in the old carriage, a little modernized +from the pattern of my Lady Bountiful's, and we jogged soberly +along,--kind parents and slightly nostalgic boy,--towards the seat of +learning, some twenty miles away. Up the old West Cambridge road, now +North Avenue; past Davenport's tavern, with its sheltering tree and +swinging sign; past the old powder-house, looking like a colossal +conical ball set on end; past the old Tidd House, one of the finest +of the ante-Revolutionary mansions; past Miss Swan's great square +boarding-school, where the music of girlish laughter was ringing through +the windy corridors; so on to Stoneham, town of the bright lake, then +darkened with the recent memory of the barbarous murder done by its +lonely shore; through pleasant Reading, with its oddly named village +centres, “Trapelo,” “Read'nwoodeend,” as rustic speech had it, and the +rest; through Wilmington, then renowned for its hops; so at last into +the hallowed borders of the academic town. + +It was a shallow, two-story white house before which we stopped, just +at the entrance of the central village, the residence of a very worthy +professor in the theological seminary,--learned, amiable, exemplary, but +thought by certain experts to be a little questionable in the matter of +homoousianism, or some such doctrine. There was a great rock that showed +its round back in the narrow front yard. It looked cold and hard; but +it hinted firmness and indifference to the sentiments fast struggling +to get uppermost in my youthful bosom; for I was not too old for +home-sickness,--who is: The carriage and my fond companions had to leave +me at last. I saw it go down the declivity that sloped southward, then +climb the next ascent, then sink gradually until the window in the back +of it disappeared like an eye that shuts, and leaves the world dark to +some widowed heart. + +Sea-sickness and home-sickness are hard to deal with by any remedy but +time. Mine was not a bad case, but it excited sympathy. There was +an ancient, faded old lady in the house, very kindly, but very deaf, +rustling about in dark autumnal foliage of silk or other murmurous +fabric, somewhat given to snuff, but a very worthy gentlewoman of the +poor-relation variety. She comforted me, I well remember, but not +with apples, and stayed me, but not with flagons. She went in her +benevolence, and, taking a blue and white soda-powder, mingled the same +in water, and encouraged me to drink the result. It might be a specific +for seasickness, but it was not for home-sickness. The fiz was a +mockery, and the saline refrigerant struck a colder chill to my +despondent heart. I did not disgrace myself, however, and a few days +cured me, as a week on the water often cures seasickness. + +There was a sober-faced boy of minute dimensions in the house, who began +to make some advances to me, and who, in spite of all the conditions +surrounding him, turned out, on better acquaintance, to be one of the +most amusing, free-spoken, mocking little imps I ever met in my life. +My room-mate came later. He was the son of a clergyman in a neighboring +town,--in fact I may remark that I knew a good many clergymen's sons at +Andover. He and I went in harness together as well as most boys do, I +suspect; and I have no grudge against him, except that once, when I was +slightly indisposed, he administered to me,--with the best intentions, +no doubt,--a dose of Indian pills, which effectually knocked me out of +time, as Mr. Morrissey would say,--not quite into eternity, but so near +it that I perfectly remember one of the good ladies told me (after I had +come to my senses a little, and was just ready for a sip of cordial and +a word of encouragement), with that delightful plainness of speech which +so brings realities home to the imagination, that “I never should look +any whiter when I was laid out as a corpse.” After my room-mate and I +had been separated twenty-five years, fate made us fellow-townsmen +and acquaintances once more in Berkshire, and now again we are close +literary neighbors; for I have just read a very pleasant article, signed +by him, in the last number of the “Galaxy.” Does it not sometimes +seem as if we were all marching round and round in a circle, like the +supernumeraries who constitute the “army” of a theatre, and that each +of us meets and is met by the same and only the same people, or their +doubles, twice, thrice, or a little oftener, before the curtain drops +and the “army” puts off its borrowed clothes? + +The old Academy building had a dreary look, with its flat face, bare and +uninteresting as our own “University Building” at Cambridge, since the +piazza which relieved its monotony was taken away, and, to balance the +ugliness thus produced, the hideous projection was added to “Harvard +Hall.” Two masters sat at the end of the great room,--the principal and +his assistant. Two others presided in separate rooms, one of them the +late Rev. Samuel Horatio Stearns, an excellent and lovable man, who +looked kindly on me, and for whom I always cherished a sincere regard, a +clergyman's son, too, which privilege I did not always find the warrant +of signal virtues; but no matter about that here, and I have promised +myself to be amiable. + +On the side of the long room was a large clock-dial, bearing these +words: + + YOUTH IS THE SEED-TIME OF LIFE. + +I had indulged in a prejudice, up to that hour, that youth was the +budding time of life, and this clock-dial, perpetually twitting me with +its seedy moral, always had a forbidding look to my vernal apprehension. + +I was put into a seat with an older and much bigger boy, or youth, +with a fuliginous complexion, a dilating and whitening nostril, and a +singularly malignant scowl. Many years afterwards he committed an act of +murderous violence, and ended by going to finish his days in a madhouse. +His delight was to kick my shins with all his might, under the desk, not +at all as an act of hostility, but as a gratifying and harmless pastime. +Finding this, so far as I was concerned, equally devoid of pleasure +and profit, I managed to get a seat by another boy, the son of a very +distinguished divine. He was bright enough, and more select in his +choice of recreations, at least during school hours, than my late +homicidal neighbor. But the principal called me up presently, and +cautioned me against him as a dangerous companion. Could it be so? +If the son of that boy's father could not be trusted, what boy in +Christendom could? It seemed like the story of the youth doomed to be +slain by a lion before reaching a certain age, and whose fate found +him out in the heart of the tower where his father had shut him up for +safety. Here was I, in the very dove's nest of Puritan faith, and out of +one of its eggs a serpent had been hatched and was trying to nestle +in my bosom! I parted from him, however, none the worse for his +companionship so far as I can remember. + +Of the boys who were at school with me at Andover one has acquired great +distinction among the scholars of the land. One day I observed a new +boy in a seat not very far from my own. He was a little fellow, as +I recollect him, with black hair and very bright black eyes, when at +length I got a chance to look at them. Of all the new-comers during my +whole year he was the only one whom the first glance fixed in my memory, +but there he is now, at this moment, just as he caught my eye on the +morning of his entrance. His head was between his hands (I wonder if he +does not sometimes study in that same posture nowadays!) and his eyes +were fastened to his book as if he had been reading a will that made him +heir to a million. I feel sure that Professor Horatio Balch Hackett +will not find fault with me for writing his name under this inoffensive +portrait. Thousands of faces and forms that I have known more or less +familiarly have faded from my remembrance, but this presentment of +the youthful student, sitting there entranced over the page of his +text-book,--the child-father of the distinguished scholar that was to +be,--is not a picture framed and hung up in my mind's gallery, but a +fresco on its walls, there to remain so long as they hold together. + +My especial intimate was a fine, rosy-faced boy, not quite so free of +speech as myself, perhaps, but with qualities that promised a noble +manhood, and ripened into it in due season. His name was Phinehas +Barnes, and, if he is inquired after in Portland or anywhere in the +State of Maine, something will be heard to his advantage from any honest +and intelligent citizen of that Commonwealth who answers the question. +This was one of two or three friendships that lasted. There were other +friends and classmates, one of them a natural humorist of the liveliest +sort, who would have been quarantined in any Puritan port, his laugh was +so potently contagious. + +Of the noted men of Andover the one whom I remember best was Professor +Moses Stuart. His house was nearly opposite the one in which I resided +and I often met him and listened to him in the chapel of the Seminary. +I have seen few more striking figures in my life than his, as I +remember it. Tall, lean, with strong, bold features, a keen, +scholarly, accipitrine nose, thin, expressive lips, great solemnity and +impressiveness of voice and manner, he was my early model of a classic +orator. His air was Roman, his neck long and bare like Cicero's, and his +toga,--that is his broadcloth cloak,--was carried on his arm, whatever +might have been the weather, with such a statue-like rigid grace that he +might have been turned into marble as he stood, and looked noble by the +side of the antiques of the Vatican. + +Dr. Porter was an invalid, with the prophetic handkerchief bundling his +throat, and his face “festooned”--as I heard Hillard say once, speaking +of one of our College professors--in folds and wrinkles. Ill health +gives a certain common character to all faces, as Nature has a fixed +course which she follows in dismantling a human countenance: the noblest +and the fairest is but a death's-head decently covered over for the +transient ceremony of life, and the drapery often falls half off before +the procession has passed. + +Dr. Woods looked his creed more decidedly, perhaps, than any of the +Professors. He had the firm fibre of a theological athlete, and lived to +be old without ever mellowing, I think, into a kind of half-heterodoxy, +as old ministers of stern creed are said to do now and then,--just as +old doctors grow to be sparing of the more exasperating drugs in their +later days. He had manipulated the mysteries of the Infinite so long +and so exhaustively, that he would have seemed more at home among the +mediaeval schoolmen than amidst the working clergy of our own time. + +All schools have their great men, for whose advent into life the world +is waiting in dumb expectancy. In due time the world seizes upon these +wondrous youth, opens the shell of their possibilities like the valves +of an oyster, swallows them at a gulp, and they are for the most part +heard of no more. We had two great men, grown up both of them. Which +was the more awful intellectual power to be launched upon society, we +debated. Time cut the knot in his rude fashion by taking one away +early, and padding the other with prosperity so that his course was +comparatively noiseless and ineffective. We had our societies, too; one +in particular, “The Social Fraternity,” the dread secrets of which I am +under a lifelong obligation never to reveal. The fate of William Morgan, +which the community learned not long after this time, reminds me of the +danger of the ground upon which I am treading. + +There were various distractions to make the time not passed in study a +season of relief. One good lady, I was told, was in the habit of asking +students to her house on Saturday afternoons and praying with and for +them. Bodily exercise was not, however, entirely superseded by spiritual +exercises, and a rudimentary form of base-ball and the heroic sport of +football were followed with some spirit. + +A slight immature boy finds his materials of though and enjoyment in +very shallow and simple sources. Yet a kind of romance gilds for me the +sober tableland of that cold New England hill where I came in contact +with a world so strange to me, and destined to leave such mingled and +lasting impressions. I looked across the valley to the hillside where +Methuen hung suspended, and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village +paradise. I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with facilis +descensus on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating sed revocare +gradum. I wandered' in the autumnal woods that crown the “Indian Ridge,” + much wondering at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers +believed with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, not less +curious, perhaps, since we call it an escar, and refer it to alluvial +agencies. The little Shawshine was our swimming-school, and the great +Merrimack, the right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of +a morning stroll. At home we had the small imp to make us laugh at his +enormities, for he spared nothing in his talk, and was the drollest +little living protest against the prevailing solemnities of the +locality. It did not take much to please us, I suspect, and it is a +blessing that this is apt to be so with young people. What else could +have made us think it great sport to leave our warm beds in the middle +of winter and “camp out,”--on the floor of our room,--with blankets +disposed tent-wise, except the fact that to a boy a new discomfort in +place of an old comfort is often a luxury. + +More exciting occupation than any of these was to watch one of the +preceptors to see if he would not drop dead while he was praying. He had +a dream one night that he should, and looked upon it as a warning, and +told it round very seriously, and asked the boys to come and visit him +in turn, as one whom they were soon to lose. More than one boy kept his +eye on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling +the man had who followed Van Amburgh about with the expectation, let us +not say the hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later. + +Let me not forget to recall the interesting visit to Haverhill with my +room-mate, and how he led me to the mighty bridge over the Merrimack +which defied the ice-rafts of the river; and to the old meetinghouse, +where, in its porch, I saw the door of the ancient parsonage, with the +bullet-hole in it through which Benjamin Rolfe, the minister, was shot +by the Indians on the 29th of August, 1708. What a vision it was when +I awoke in the morning to see the fog on the river seeming as if it +wrapped the towers and spires of a great city!--for such was my fancy, +and whether it was a mirage of youth or a fantastic natural effect I +hate to inquire too nicely. + +My literary performances at Andover, if any reader who may have survived +so far cares to know, included a translation from Virgil, out of which +I remember this couplet, which had the inevitable cockney rhyme of +beginners: + + “Thus by the power of Jove's imperial arm + The boiling ocean trembled into calm.” + +Also a discussion with Master Phinehas Barnes on the case of Mary, +Queen of Scots, which he treated argumentatively and I rhetorically and +sentimentally. My sentences were praised and his conclusions adopted. +Also an Essay, spoken at the great final exhibition, held in the large +hall up-stairs, which hangs oddly enough from the roof, suspended +by iron rods. Subject, Fancy. Treatment, brief but comprehensive, +illustrating the magic power of that brilliant faculty in charming life +into forgetfulness of all the ills that flesh is heir to,--the gift +of Heaven to every condition and every clime, from the captive in his +dungeon to the monarch on his throne; from the burning sands of the +desert to the frozen icebergs of the poles, from--but I forget myself. + +This was the last of my coruscations at Andover. I went from the Academy +to Harvard College, and did not visit the sacred hill again for a long +time. + +On the last day of August, 1867, not having been at Andover, for many +years, I took the cars at noon, and in an hour or a little more +found myself at the station,--just at the foot of the hill. My first +pilgrimage was to the old elm, which I remembered so well as standing +by the tavern, and of which they used to tell the story that it held, +buried in it by growth, the iron rings put round it in the old time to +keep the Indians from chopping it with their tomahawks. I then began the +once familiar toil of ascending the long declivity. Academic villages +seem to change very slowly. Once in a hundred years the library burns +down with all its books. A new edifice or two may be put up, and a new +library begun in the course of the same century; but these places +are poor, for the most part, and cannot afford to pull down their old +barracks. + +These sentimental journeys to old haunts must be made alone. The story +of them must be told succinctly. It is like the opium-smoker's showing +you the pipe from which he has just inhaled elysian bliss, empty of the +precious extract which has given him his dream. + +I did not care much for the new Academy building on my right, nor for +the new library building on my left. But for these it was surprising +to see how little the scene I remembered in my boyhood had changed. +The Professors' houses looked just as they used to, and the stage-coach +landed its passengers at the Mansion House as of old. The pale brick +seminary buildings were behind me on the left, looking as if “Hollis” + and “Stoughton” had been transplanted from Cambridge,--carried there in +the night by orthodox angels, perhaps, like the Santa Casa. Away to my +left again, but abreast of me, was the bleak, bare old Academy building; +and in front of me stood unchanged the shallow oblong white house where +I lived a year in the days of James Monroe and of John Quincy Adams. + +The ghost of a boy was at my side as I wandered among the places he +knew so well. I went to the front of the house. There was the great rock +showing its broad back in the front yard. I used to crack nuts on +that, whispered the small ghost. I looked in at the upper window in the +farther part of the house. I looked out of that on four long changing +seasons, said the ghost. I should have liked to explore farther, but, +while I was looking, one came into the small garden, or what used to be +the garden, in front of the house, and I desisted from my investigation +and went on my way. The apparition that put me and my little ghost to +flight had a dressing-gown on its person and a gun in its hand. I think +it was the dressing-gown, and not the gun, which drove me off. + +And now here is the shop, or store, that used to be Shipman's, after +passing what I think used to be Jonathan Leavitt's bookbindery, and here +is the back road that will lead me round by the old Academy building. + +Could I believe my senses when I found that it was turned into a +gymnasium, and heard the low thunder of ninepin balls, and the crash +of tumbling pins from those precincts? The little ghost said, Never! It +cannot be. But it was. “Have they a billiard-room in the upper story?” I +asked myself. “Do the theological professors take a hand at all-fours +or poker on weekdays, now and then, and read the secular columns of the +'Boston Recorder' on Sundays?” I was demoralized for the moment, it is +plain; but now that I have recovered from the shock, I must say that the +fact mentioned seems to show a great advance in common sense from the +notions prevailing in my time. + +I sauntered,--we, rather, my ghost and I,--until we came to a broken +field where there was quarrying and digging going on,--our old base-ball +ground, hard by the burial-place. There I paused; and if any thoughtful +boy who loves to tread in the footsteps that another has sown with +memories of the time when he was young shall follow my footsteps, I need +not ask him to rest here awhile, for he will be enchained by the +noble view before him. Far to the north and west the mountains of New +Hampshire lifted their summits in along encircling ridge of pale blue +waves. The day was clear, and every mound and peak traced its outline +with perfect definition against the sky. This was a sight which had more +virtue and refreshment in it than any aspect of nature that I had looked +upon, I am afraid I must say for years. I have been by the seaside now +and then, but the sea is constantly busy with its own affairs, running +here and there, listening to what the winds have to say and getting +angry with them, always indifferent, often insolent, and ready to do a +mischief to those who seek its companionship. But these still, serene, +unchanging mountains,--Monadnock, Kearsarge,--what memories that name +recalls!--and the others, the dateless Pyramids of New England, the +eternal monuments of her ancient race, around which cluster the homes of +so many of her bravest and hardiest children,--I can never look at them +without feeling that, vast and remote and awful as they are, there is a +kind of inward heat and muffled throb in their stony cores, that brings +them into a vague sort of sympathy with human hearts. It is more than a +year since I have looked on those blue mountains, and they “are to me as +a feeling” now, and have been ever since. + +I had only to pass a wall and I was in the burial-ground. It was thinly +tenanted as I remember it, but now populous with the silent immigrants +of more than a whole generation. There lay the dead I had left, the two +or three students of the Seminary; the son of the worthy pair in whose +house I lived, for whom in those days hearts were still aching, and by +whose memory the house still seemed haunted. A few upright stones were +all that I recollect. But now, around them were the monuments of many of +the dead whom I remembered as living. I doubt if there has been a more +faithful reader of these graven stones than myself for many a long day. +I listened to more than one brief sermon from preachers whom I had +often heard as they thundered their doctrines down upon me from the +throne-like desk. Now they spoke humbly out of the dust, from a +narrower pulpit, from an older text than any they ever found in Cruden's +Concordance, but there was an eloquence in their voices the listening +chapel had never known. There were stately monuments and studied +inscriptions, but none so beautiful, none so touching, as that which +hallows the resting-place of one of the children of the very learned +Professor Robinson: “Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is +well.” + +While I was musing amidst these scenes in the mood of Hamlet, two old +men, as my little ghost called them, appeared on the scene to answer to +the gravedigger and his companion. They christened a mountain or two for +me, “Kearnsarge” among the rest, and revived some old recollections, of +which the most curious was “Basil's Cave.” The story was recent, when +I was there, of one Basil, or Bezill, or Buzzell, or whatever his name +might have been, a member of the Academy, fabulously rich, Orientally +extravagant, and of more or less lawless habits. He had commanded a cave +to be secretly dug, and furnished it sumptuously, and there with +his companions indulged in revelries such as the daylight of that +consecrated locality had never looked upon. How much truth there was in +it all I will not pretend to say, but I seem to remember stamping over +every rock that sounded hollow, to question if it were not the roof of +what was once Basil's Cave. + +The sun was getting far past the meridian, and I sought a shelter under +which to partake of the hermit fare I had brought with me. Following +the slope of the hill northward behind the cemetery, I found a pleasant +clump of trees grouped about some rocks, disposed so as to give a +seat, a table, and a shade. I left my benediction on this pretty little +natural caravansera, and a brief record on one of its white birches, +hoping to visit it again on some sweet summer or autumn day. + +Two scenes remained to look upon,--the Shawshine River and the Indian +Ridge. The streamlet proved to have about the width with which it +flowed through my memory. The young men and the boys were bathing in +its shallow current, or dressing and undressing upon its banks as in +the days of old; the same river, only the water changed; “The same boys, +only the names and the accidents of local memory different,” I whispered +to my little ghost. + +The Indian Ridge more than equalled what I expected of it. It is well +worth a long ride to visit. The lofty wooded bank is a mile and a half +in extent, with other ridges in its neighborhood, in general running +nearly parallel with it, one of them still longer. These singular +formations are supposed to have been built up by the eddies of +conflicting currents scattering sand and gravel and stones as they swept +over the continent. But I think they pleased me better when I was taught +that the Indians built them; and while I thank Professor Hitchcock, +I sometimes feel as if I should like to found a chair to teach the +ignorance of what people do not want to know. + +“Two tickets to Boston.” I said to the man at the station. + +But the little ghost whispered, “When you leave this place you leave me +behind you.” + +“One ticket to Boston, if you please. Good by, little ghost.” + +I believe the boy-shadow still lingers around the well-remembered scenes +I traversed on that day, and that, whenever I revisit them, I shall find +him again as my companion. + + + + +THE PULPIT AND THE PEW. + +The priest is dead for the Protestant world. Luther's inkstand did not +kill the devil, but it killed the priest, at least for us: He is a loss +in many respects to be regretted. He kept alive the spirit of reverence. +He was looked up to as possessing qualities superhuman in their nature, +and so was competent to be the stay of the weak and their defence +against the strong. If one end of religion is to make men happier +in this world as well as in the next, mankind lost a great source of +happiness when the priest was reduced to the common level of humanity, +and became only a minister. Priest, which was presbyter, corresponded +to senator, and was a title to respect and honor. Minister is but the +diminutive of magister, and implies an obligation to render service. + +It was promised to the first preachers that in proof of their divine +mission they should have the power of casting out devils and talking in +strange tongues; that they should handle serpents and drink poisons +with impunity; that they should lay hands on the sick and they should +recover. The Roman Church claims some of these powers for its clergy and +its sacred objects to this day. Miracles, it is professed, are wrought +by them, or through them, as in the days of the apostles. Protestantism +proclaims that the age of such occurrences as the apostles witnessed is +past. What does it know about miracles? It knows a great many records of +miracles, but this is a different kind of knowledge. + +The minister may be revered for his character, followed for his +eloquence, admired for his learning, loved for his amiable qualities, +but he can never be what the priest was in past ages, and is still, in +the Roman Church. Dr. Arnold's definition may be found fault with, but +it has a very real meaning. “The essential point in the notion of a +priest is this: that he is a person made necessary to our intercourse +with God, without being necessary or beneficial to us morally,--an +unreasonable, immoral, spiritual necessity.” He did not mean, of course, +that the priest might not have all the qualities which would recommend +him as a teacher or as a man, but that he had a special power, quite +independent of his personal character, which could act, as it were, +mechanically; that out of him went a virtue, as from the hem of his +Master's raiment, to those with whom his sacred office brought him in +contact. + +It was a great comfort to poor helpless human beings to have a tangible +personality of like nature with themselves as a mediator between them +and the heavenly powers. Sympathy can do much for the sorrowing, the +suffering, the dying, but to hear God himself speaking directly +through human lips, to feel the touch of a hand which is the channel of +communication with the unseen Omnipotent, this was and is the privilege +of those who looked and those who still look up to a priesthood. It +has been said, and many who have walked the hospitals or served in the +dispensaries can bear witness to the truth of the assertion, that the +Roman Catholics know how to die. The same thing is less confidently to +be said of Protestants. How frequently is the story told of the most +exemplary Protestant Christians, nay, how common is it to read in the +lives of the most exemplary Protestant ministers, that they were beset +with doubts and terrors in their last days! The blessing of the viaticum +is unknown to them. Man is essentially an idolater,--that is, in bondage +to his imagination,--for there is no more harm in the Greek word eidolon +than in the Latin word imago. He wants a visible image to fix his +thought, a scarabee or a crux ansata, or the modern symbols which are +to our own time what these were to the ancient Egyptians. He wants a +vicegerent of the Almighty to take his dying hand and bid him godspeed +on his last journey. Who but such an immediate representative of the +Divinity would have dared to say to the monarch just laying his head on +the block, “Fils de Saint Louis, monte au ciel”? + +It has been a long and gradual process to thoroughly republicanize the +American Protestant descendant of the ancient priesthood. The history of +the Congregationalists in New England would show us how this change has +gone on, until we have seen the church become a hall open to all sorts +of purposes, the pulpit come down to the level of the rostrum, and the +clergyman take on the character of a popular lecturer who deals with +every kind of subject, including religion. + +Whatever fault we may find with many of their beliefs, we have a right +to be proud of our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers among the clergy. They +were ready to do and to suffer anything for their faith, and a faith +which breeds heroes is better than an unbelief which leaves nothing +worth being a hero for. Only let us be fair, and not defend the creed +of Mohammed because it nurtured brave men and enlightened scholars, or +refrain from condemning polygamy in our admiration of the indomitable +spirit and perseverance of the Pilgrim Fathers of Mormonism, or justify +an inhuman belief, or a cruel or foolish superstition, because it +was once held or acquiesced in by men whose nobility of character we +heartily recognize. The New England clergy can look back to a noble +record, but the pulpit has sometimes required a homily from the pew, and +may sometimes find it worth its while to listen to one even in our own +days. + +From the settlement of the country to the present time, the ministers +have furnished the highest type of character to the people among whom +they have lived. They have lost to a considerable extent the position +of leaders, but if they are in our times rather to be looked upon as +representatives of their congregations, they represent what is best +among those of whom they are the speaking organs. We have a right to +expect them to be models as well as teachers of all that makes the best +citizens for this world and the next, and they have not been, and are +not in these later days unworthy of their high calling. They have worked +hard for small earthly compensation. They have been the most learned men +the country had to show, when learning was a scarce commodity. Called +by their consciences to self-denying labors, living simply, often +half-supported by the toil of their own hands, they have let the light, +such light as shone for them, into the minds of our communities as the +settler's axe let the sunshine into their log-huts and farm-houses. + +Their work has not been confined to their professional duties, as a few +instances will illustrate. Often, as was just said, they toiled like +day-laborers, teasing lean harvests out of their small inclosures of +land, for the New England soil is not one that “laughs when tickled with +a hoe,” but rather one that sulks when appealed to with that persuasive +implement. The father of the eminent Boston physician whose recent loss +is so deeply regretted, the Reverend Pitt Clarke, forty-two years pastor +of the small fold in the town of Norton, Massachusetts, was a typical +example of this union of the two callings, and it would be hard to +find a story of a more wholesome and useful life, within a limited and +isolated circle, than that which the pious care of one of his children +commemorated. Sometimes the New England minister, like worthy Mr. Ward +of Stratford-on-Avon, in old England, joined the practice of medicine +to the offices of his holy profession. Michael Wigglesworth, the poet of +“The Day of Doom,” and Charles Chauncy, the second president of Harvard +College, were instances of this twofold service. In politics their +influence has always been felt, and in many cases their drums +ecclesiastic have beaten the reveille as vigorously, and to as good +purpose, as it ever sounded in the slumbering camp. Samuel Cooper sat +in council with the leaders of the Revolution in Boston. The three +Northampton-born brothers Allen, Thomas, Moses, and Solomon, lifted +their voices, and, when needed, their armed hands, in the cause of +liberty. In later days, Elijah Parish and David Osgood carried politics +into their pulpits as boldly as their antislavery successors have done +in times still more recent. + +The learning, the personal character, the sacredness of their office, +tended, to give the New England clergy of past generations a kind of +aristocratic dignity, a personal grandeur, much more felt in the +days when class distinctions were recognized less unwillingly than at +present. Their costume added to the effect of their bodily presence, +as the old portraits illustrate for us, as those of us who remember the +last of the “fair, white, curly” wigs, as it graced the imposing figure +of the Reverend Dr. Marsh of Wethersfield, Connecticut, can testify. +They were not only learned in the history of the past, but they were +the interpreters of the prophecy, and announced coming events with a +confidence equal to that with which the weather-bureau warns us of a +coming storm. The numbers of the book of Daniel and the visions of the +Revelation were not too hard for them. In the commonplace book of the +Reverend Joel Benedict is to be found the following record, made, as +it appears, about the year 1773: “Conversing with Dr. Bellamy upon +the downfall of Antichrist, after many things had been said upon the +subject, the Doctor began to warm, and uttered himself after this +manner: 'Tell your children to tell their children that in the year 1866 +something notable will happen in the church; tell them the old man says +so.'” + +The “old man” came pretty near hitting the mark, as we shall see if we +consider what took place in the decade from 1860 to 1870. In 1864 the +Pope issued the “Syllabus of Errors,” which “must be considered by +Romanists--as an infallible official document, and which arrays the +papacy in open war against modern civilization and civil and religious +freedom.” The Vatican Council in 1870 declared the Pope to be the bishop +of bishops, and immediately after this began the decisive movement of +the party known as the “Old Catholics.” In the exact year looked forward +to by the New England prophet, 1866, the evacuation of Rome by the +French and the publication of “Ecce Homo” appear to be the most +remarkable events having Special relation to the religious world. +Perhaps the National Council of the Congregationalists, held at Boston +in 1865, may be reckoned as one of the occurrences which the oracle just +missed. + +The confidence, if not the spirit of prophecy, lasted down to a later +period. “In half a century,” said the venerable Dr. Porter of Conway, +New Hampshire, in 1822, “there will be no Pagans, Jews, Mohammedans, +Unitarians, or Methodists.” The half-century has more than elapsed, and +the prediction seems to stand in need of an extension, like many other +prophetic utterances. + +The story is told of David Osgood, the shaggy-browed old minister of +Medford, that he had expressed his belief that not more than one soul +in two thousand would be saved. Seeing a knot of his parishioners in +debate, he asked them what they were discussing, and was told that they +were questioning which of the Medford people was the elected one, the +population being just two thousand, and that opinion was divided whether +it would be the minister or one of his deacons. The story may or may not +be literally true, but it illustrates the popular belief of those days, +that the clergyman saw a good deal farther into the councils of the +Almighty than his successors could claim the power of doing. + +The objects about me, as I am writing, call to mind the varied +accomplishments of some of the New England clergy. The face of the +Revolutionary preacher, Samuel Cooper, as Copley painted it, looks upon +me with the pleasantest of smiles and a liveliness of expression which +makes him seem a contemporary after a hundred years' experience of +eternity. The Plato on this lower shelf bears the inscription: “Ezroe +Stiles, 1766. Olim e libris Rev. Jaredis Eliot de Killingworth.” Both +were noted scholars and philosophers. The hand-lens before me was +imported, with other philosophical instruments, by the Reverend John +Prince of Salem, an earlier student of science in the town since +distinguished by the labors of the Essex Institute. Jeremy Belknap holds +an honored place in that unpretending row of local historians. And +in the pages of his “History of New Hampshire” may be found a chapter +contributed in part by the most remarkable man, in many respects, +among all the older clergymen preacher, lawyer, physician, astronomer, +botanist, entomologist, explorer, colonist, legislator in state and +national governments, and only not seated on the bench of the Supreme +Court of a Territory because he declined the office when Washington +offered it to him. This manifold individual was the minister of +Hamilton, a pleasant little town in Essex County, Massachusetts,--the +Reverend Manasseh Cutler. These reminiscences from surrounding objects +came up unexpectedly, of themselves: and have a right here, as showing +how wide is the range of intelligence in the clerical body thus +accidentally represented in a single library making no special +pretensions. + +It is not so exalted a claim to make for them, but it may be added +that they were often the wits and humorists of their localities. Mather +Byles's facetie are among the colonial classic reminiscences. But these +were, for the most part, verbal quips and quibbles. True humor is an +outgrowth of character. It is never found in greater perfection than in +old clergymen and old college professors. Dr. Sprague's “Annals of the +American Pulpit” tells many stories of our old ministers as good as Dean +Ramsay's “Scottish Reminiscences.” He has not recorded the following, +which is to be found in Miss Larned's excellent and most interesting +History of Windham County, Connecticut. The Reverend Josiah Dwight was +the minister of Woodstock, Connecticut, about the year 1700. He was not +old, it is true, but he must have caught the ways of the old ministers. +The “sensational” pulpit of our own time could hardly surpass him in the +drollery of its expressions. A specimen or two may dispose the reader +to turn over the pages which follow in a good-natured frame of mind. “If +unconverted men ever got to heaven,” he said, “they would feel as +uneasy as a shad up the crotch of a white-oak.” Some of his ministerial +associates took offence at his eccentricities, and called on a visit +of admonition to the offending clergyman. “Mr. Dwight received their +reproofs with great meekness, frankly acknowledged his faults, and +promised amendment, but, in prayer at parting, after returning thanks +for the brotherly visit and admonition, 'hoped that they might so hitch +their horses on earth that they should never kick in the stables of +everlasting salvation.'” + +It is a good thing to have some of the blood of one of these old +ministers in one's veins. An English bishop proclaimed the fact before +an assembly of physicians the other day that he was not ashamed to say +that he had a son who was a doctor. Very kind that was in the bishop, +and very proud his medical audience must have felt. Perhaps he was not +ashamed of the Gospel of Luke, “the beloved physician,” or even of the +teachings which came from the lips of one who was a carpenter, and the +son of a carpenter. So a New-Englander, even if he were a bishop, need +not be ashamed to say that he consented to have an ancestor who was a +minister. On the contrary, he has a right to be grateful for a probable +inheritance of good instincts, a good name, and a bringing up in a +library where he bumped about among books from the time when he was +hardly taller than one of his father's or grandfather's folios. What are +the names of ministers' sons which most readily occur to our memory +as illustrating these advantages? Edward Everett, Joseph Stevens +Buckminster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George Bancroft, Richard Hildreth, +James Russell Lowell, Francis Parkman, Charles Eliot Norton, were all +ministers' boys. John Lothrop Motley was the grandson of the clergyman +after whom he was named. George Ticknor was next door to such a descent, +for his father was a deacon. This is a group which it did not take a +long or a wide search to bring together. + +Men such as the ministers who have been described could not fail to +exercise a good deal of authority in the communities to which they +belonged. The effect of the Revolution must have been to create a +tendency to rebel against spiritual dictation. Republicanism levels in +religion as in everything. It might have been expected, therefore, that +soon after civil liberty had been established there would be conflicts +between the traditional, authority of the minister and the claims of +the now free and independent congregation. So it was, in fact, as for +instance in the case which follows, for which the reader is indebted to +Miss Lamed's book, before cited. + +The ministerial veto allowed by the Saybrook Platform gave rise, in the +year 1792, to a fierce conflict in the town of Pomfret, Connecticut. +Zephaniah Swift, a lawyer of Windham, came out in the Windham “Herald,” + in all the vehemence of partisan phraseology, with all the emphasis of +italics and small capitals. Was it not time, he said, for people to look +about them and see whether “such despotism was founded in Scripture, in +reason, in policy, or on the rights of man! A minister, by his vote, +by his single voice, may negative the unanimous vote of the church! Are +ministers composed of finer clay than the rest of mankind, that entitles +them to this preeminence? Does a license to preach transform a man into +a higher order of beings and endow him with a natural quality to govern? +Are the laity an inferior order of beings, fit only to be slaves and to +be governed? Is it good policy for mankind to subject themselves to such +degrading vassalage and abject submission? Reason, common sense, and the +Bible, with united voice, proclaim to all mankind that they are all born +free and equal; that every member of a church or Christian congregation +must be on the same footing in respect of church government, and that +the CONSTITUTION, which delegates to one the power to negative the +vote of all the rest, is SUBVERSIVE OF THE NATURAL RIGHT OF MANKIND AND +REPUGNANT TO THE WORD OF GOD.” + +The Reverend Mr. Welch replied to the lawyer's attack, pronouncing him +to be “destitute of delicacy, decency, good manners, sound judgment, +honesty, manhood, and humanity; a poltroon, a cat's-paw, the infamous +tool of a party, a partisan, a political weathercock, and a ragamuffin.” + +No Fourth-of-July orator would in our day rant like the lawyer, and no +clergyman would use such language as that of the Reverend Moses Welch. +The clergy have been pretty well republicanized within that last two or +three generations, and are not likely to provoke quarrels by assertion +of their special dignities or privileges. The public is better bred +than to carry on an ecclesiastical controversy in terms which political +brawlers would hardly think admissible. The minister of religion is +generally treated with something more than respect; he is allowed to say +undisputed what would be sharply controverted in anybody else. Bishop +Gilbert Haven, of happy memory, had been discussing a religious subject +with a friend who was not convinced by his arguments. “Wait till you +hear me from the pulpit,” he said; “there you cannot answer me.” The +preacher--if I may use an image which would hardly have suggested itself +to him--has his hearer's head in chancery, and can administer punishment +ad libitum. False facts, false reasoning, bad rhetoric, bad grammar, +stale images, borrowed passages, if not borrowed sermons, are listened +to without a word of comment or a look of disapprobation. + +One of the ablest and most conscientiously laborious of our clergymen +has lately ventured to question whether all his professional brethren +invariably give utterance to their sincerest beliefs, and has been +sharply criticised for so doing. The layman, who sits silent in his +pew, has his rights when out of it, and among them is the right of +questioning that which has been addressed to him from the privileged +eminence of the pulpit, or in any way sanctioned by his religious +teacher. It is nearly two hundred years since a Boston layman wrote +these words: “I am not ignorant that the pious frauds of the ancient, +and the inbred fire (I do not call it pride) of many of our modern +divines, have precipitated them to propagate and maintain truth as well +as falsehoods, in such an unfair manner as has given advantage to the +enemy to suspect the whole doctrine these men have profest to be nothing +but a mere trick.” + +So wrote Robert Calef, the Boston merchant, whose book the Reverend +Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, burned publicly in the +college yard. But the pity of it is that the layman had not cried out +earlier and louder, and saved the community from the horror of those +judicial murders for witchcraft, the blame of which was so largely +attributable to the clergy. + +Perhaps no, laymen have given the clergy more trouble than the doctors. +The old reproach against physicians, that where there were three of them +together there were two atheists, had a real significance, but not that +which was intended by the sharp-tongued ecclesiastic who first uttered +it. Undoubtedly there is a strong tendency in the pursuits of the +medical profession to produce disbelief in that figment of tradition +and diseased human imagination which has been installed in the seat of +divinity by the priesthood of cruel and ignorant ages. It is impossible, +or at least very difficult, for a physician who has seen the perpetual +efforts of Nature--whose diary is the book he reads oftenest--to heal +wounds, to expel poisons, to do the best that can be done under the +given conditions,--it is very difficult for him to believe in a world +where wounds cannot heal, where opiates cannot give a respite from pain, +where sleep never comes with its sweet oblivion of suffering, where +the art of torture is the only science cultivated, and the capacity for +being tormented is the only faculty which remains to the children of +that same Father who cares for the falling sparrow. The Deity has often +been pictured as Moloch, and the physician has, no doubt, frequently +repudiated him as a monstrosity. + +On the other hand, the physician has often been renowned for piety as +well as for his peculiarly professional virtue of charity,--led upward +by what he sees to the source of all the daily marvels wrought before +his own eyes. So it was that Galen gave utterance to that psalm of +praise which the sweet singer of Israel need not have been ashamed of; +and if this “heathen” could be lifted into such a strain of devotion, we +need not be surprised to find so many devout Christian worshippers among +the crowd of medical “atheists.” + +No two professions should come into such intimate and cordial relations +as those to which belong the healers of the body and the headers of the +mind. There can be no more fatal mistake than that which brings them +into hostile attitudes with reference to each other, both having in view +the welfare of their fellow-creatures. But there is a territory always +liable to be differed about between them. There are patients who +never tell their physician the grief which lies at the bottom of their +ailments. He goes through his accustomed routine with them, and thinks +he has all the elements needed for his diagnosis. But he has seen no +deeper into the breast than the tongue, and got no nearer the heart than +the wrist. A wise and experienced clergyman, coming to the patient's +bedside,--not with the professional look on his face which suggests +the undertaker and the sexton, but with a serene countenance and a +sympathetic voice, with tact, with patience, waiting for the right +moment,--will surprise the shy spirit into a confession of the doubt, +the sorrow, the shame, the remorse, the terror which underlies all the +bodily symptoms, and the unburdening of which into a loving and pitying +soul is a more potent anodyne than all the drowsy sirups of the world. +And, on the other hand, there are many nervous and over-sensitive +natures which have been wrought up by self-torturing spiritual exercises +until their best confessor would be a sagacious and wholesome-minded +physician. + +Suppose a person to have become so excited by religious stimulants +that he is subject to what are known to the records of insanity as +hallucinations: that he hears voices whispering blasphemy in his ears, +and sees devils coming to meet him, and thinks he is going to be torn +in pieces, or trodden into the mire. Suppose that his mental conflicts, +after plunging him into the depths of despondency, at last reduce him to +a state of despair, so that he now contemplates taking his own life, and +debates with himself whether it shall be by knife, halter, or poison, +and after much questioning is apparently making up his mind to commit +suicide. Is not this a manifest case of insanity, in the form known as +melancholia? Would not any prudent physician keep such a person under +the eye of constant watchers, as in a dangerous state of, at least, +partial mental alienation? Yet this is an exact transcript of the mental +condition of Christian in “Pilgrim's Progress,” and its counterpart +has been found in thousands of wretched lives terminated by the act of +self-destruction, which came so near taking place in the hero of the +allegory. Now the wonderful book from which this example is taken is, +next to the Bible and the Treatise of “De Imitatione Christi,” + the best-known religious work of Christendom. If Bunyan and his +contemporary, Sydenham, had met in consultation over the case of +Christian at the time when he was meditating self-murder, it is very +possible that there might have been a difference of judgment. The +physician would have one advantage in such a consultation. He would +pretty certainly have received a Christian education, while the +clergyman would probably know next to nothing of the laws or +manifestations of mental or bodily disease. It does not seem as if any +theological student was really prepared for his practical duties until +he had learned something of the effects of bodily derangements, and, +above all, had become familiar with the gamut of mental discord in the +wards of an insane asylum. + +It is a very thoughtless thing to say that the physician stands to the +divine in the same light as the divine stands to the physician, so +far as each may attempt to handle subjects belonging especially to +the other's profession. Many physicians know a great deal more about +religious matters than they do about medicine. They have read the Bible +ten times as much as they ever read any medical author. They have heard +scores of sermons for one medical lecture to which they have listened. +They often hear much better preaching than the average minister, for he +hears himself chiefly, and they hear abler men and a variety of them. +They have now and then been distinguished in theology as well as in +their own profession. The name of Servetus might call up unpleasant +recollections, but that of another medical practitioner may be safely +mentioned. “It was not till the middle of the last century that the +question as to the authorship of the Pentateuch was handled with +anything like a discerning criticism. The first attempt was made by a +layman, whose studies we might have supposed would scarcely have led him +to such an investigation.” This layman was “Astruc, doctor and professor +of medicine in the Royal College at Paris, and court physician to +Louis XIV.” The quotation is from the article “Pentateuch” in Smith's +“Dictionary of the Bible,” which, of course, lies on the table of the +least instructed clergyman. The sacred profession has, it is true, +returned the favor by giving the practitioner of medicine Bishop +Berkeley's “Treatise on Tar-water,” and the invaluable prescription of +that “aged clergyman whose sands of life”----but let us be fair, if not +generous, and remember that Cotton Mather shares with Zabdiel Boylston +the credit of introducing the practice of inoculation into America. +The professions should be cordial allies, but the church-going, +Bible-reading physician ought to know a great deal more of the subjects +included under the general name of theology than the clergyman can be +expected to know of medicine. To say, as has been said not long since, +that a young divinity student is as competent to deal with the latter +as an old physician is to meddle with the former, suggests the idea that +wisdom is not an heirloom in the family of the one who says it. What a +set of idiots our clerical teachers must have been and be, if, after +a quarter or half a century of their instruction, a person of fair +intelligence is utterly incompetent to form any opinion about the +subjects which they have been teaching, or trying to teach him, so long! + +A minister must find it very hard work to preach to hearers who do not +believe, or only half believe, what he preaches. But pews without heads +in them are a still more depressing spectacle. He may convince the +doubter and reform the profligate. But he cannot produce any change on +pine and mahogany by his discourses, and the more wood he sees as +he looks along his floor and galleries, the less his chance of being +useful. It is natural that in times like the present changes of faith +and of place of worship should be far from infrequent. It is not less +natural that there should be regrets on one side and gratification on +the other, when such changes occur. It even happens occasionally that +the regrets become aggravated into reproaches, rarely from the side +which receives the new accessions, less rarely from the one which is +left. It is quite conceivable that the Roman Church, which considers +itself the only true one, should look on those who leave its communion +as guilty of a great offence. It is equally natural that a church which +considers Pope and Pagan a pair of murderous giants, sitting at the +mouths of their caves, alike in their hatred to true Christians, should +regard any of its members who go over to Romanism as lost in fatal +error. But within the Protestant fold there are many compartments, and +it would seem that it is not a deadly defection to pass from one to +another. + +So far from such exchanges between sects being wrong, they ought to +happen a great deal oftener than they do. All the larger bodies of +Christians should be constantly exchanging members. All men are born +with conservative or aggressive tendencies: they belong naturally with +the idol-worshippers or the idol-breakers. Some wear their fathers' old +clothes, and some will have a new suit. One class of men must have their +faith hammered in like a nail, by authority; another class must have +it worked in like a screw, by argument. Members of one of these classes +often find themselves fixed by circumstances in the other. The late +Orestes A. Brownson used to preach at one time to a little handful of +persons, in a small upper room, where some of them got from him their +first lesson about the substitution of reverence for idolatry, in +dealing with the books they hold sacred. But after a time Mr. Brownson +found he had mistaken his church, and went over to the Roman Catholic +establishment, of which he became and remained to his dying day one of +the most stalwart champions. Nature is prolific and ambidextrous. While +this strong convert was trying to carry us back to the ancient faith, +another of her sturdy children, Theodore Parker, was trying just as hard +to provide a new church for the future. One was driving the sheep into +the ancient fold, while the other was taking down the bars that kept +them out of the new pasture. Neither of these powerful men could do the +other's work, and each had to find the task for which he was destined. + +The “old gospel ship,” as the Methodist song calls it, carries many who +would steer by the wake of their vessel. But there are many others who +do not trouble themselves to look over the stern, having their eyes +fixed on the light-house in the distance before them. In less figurative +language, there are multitudes of persons who are perfectly contented +with the old formulae of the church with which they and their fathers +before them have been and are connected, for the simple reason that they +fit, like old shoes, because they have been worn so long, and mingled +with these, in the most conservative religious body, are here and there +those who are restless in the fetters of a confession of faith to which +they have pledged themselves without believing in it. This has been true +of the Athanasian creed, in the Anglican Church, for two centuries more +or less, unless the Archbishop of Canterbury, Tillotson, stood alone in +wishing the church were well rid of it. In fact, it has happened to the +present writer to hear the Thirty-nine Articles summarily disposed of +by one of the most zealous members of the American branch of that +communion, in a verb of one syllable, more familiar to the ears of the +forecastle than to those of the vestry. + +But on the other hand, it is far from uncommon to meet with persons +among the so-called “liberal” denominations who are uneasy for want of +a more definite ritual and a more formal organization than they find in +their own body. Now, the rector or the minister must be well aware that +there are such cases, and each of them must be aware that there are +individuals under his guidance whom he cannot satisfy by argument, and +who really belong by all their instincts to another communion. It seems +as if a thoroughly honest, straight-collared clergyman would say frankly +to his restless parishioner: “You do not believe the central doctrines +of the church which you are in the habit of attending. You belong +properly to Brother A.'s or Brother B.'s fold, and it will be more manly +and probably more profitable for you to go there than to stay with us.” + And, again, the rolling-collared clergyman might be expected to say to +this or that uneasy listener: “You are longing for a church which will +settle your beliefs for you, and relieve you to a great extent from the +task, to which you seem to be unequal, of working out your own salvation +with fear and trembling. Go over the way to Brother C.'s or Brother +D.'s; your spine is weak, and they will furnish you a back-board which +will keep you straight and make you comfortable.” Patients are not the +property of their physicians, nor parishioners of their ministers. + +As for the children of clergymen, the presumption is that they will +adhere to the general belief professed by their fathers. But they do +not lose their birthright or their individuality, and have the world +all before them to choose their creed from, like other persons. They are +sometimes called to account for attacking the dogmas they are supposed +to have heard preached from their childhood. They cannot defend +themselves, for various good reasons. If they did, one would have to say +he got more preaching than was good for him, and came at last to feel +about sermons and their doctrines as confectioners' children do about +candy. Another would have to own that he got his religious belief, not +from his father, but from his mother. That would account for a great +deal, for the milk in a woman's veins sweetens, or at least, dilutes an +acrid doctrine, as the blood of the motherly cow softens the virulence +of small-pox, so that its mark survives only as the seal of immunity. +Another would plead atavism, and say he got his religious instincts +from his great-grandfather, as some do their complexion or their temper. +Others would be compelled to confess that the belief of a wife or a +sister had displaced that which they naturally inherited. No man can +be expected to go thus into the details of his family history, and, +therefore, it is an ill-bred and indecent thing to fling a man's +father's creed in his face, as if he had broken the fifth commandment in +thinking for himself in the light of a new generation. Common delicacy +would prevent him from saying that he did not get his faith from his +father, but from somebody else, perhaps from his grandmother Lois and +his mother Eunice, like the young man whom the Apostle cautioned against +total abstinence. + +It is always the right, and may sometimes be the duty, of the layman to +call the attention of the clergy to the short-comings and errors, not +only of their own time, but also of the preceding generations, of which +they are the intellectual and moral product. This is especially true +when the authority of great names is fallen back upon as a defence +of opinions not in themselves deserving to be upheld. It may be very +important to show that the champions of this or that set of dogmas, some +of which are extinct or obsolete as beliefs, while others retain their +vitality, held certain general notions which vitiated their conclusions. +And in proportion to the eminence of such champions, and the frequency +with which their names are appealed to as a bulwark of any particular +creed or set of doctrines, is it urgent to show into what obliquities or +extravagances or contradictions of thought they have been betrayed. + +In summing up the religious history of New England, it would be just +and proper to show the agency of the Mathers, father and son, in the +witchcraft delusion. It would be quite fair to plead in their behalf the +common beliefs of their time. It would be an extenuation of their acts +that, not many years before, the great and good magistrate, Sir Matthew +Hale, had sanctioned the conviction of prisoners accused of witchcraft. +To fall back on the errors of the time is very proper when we are trying +our predecessors in foro conscientace: The houses they dwelt in may have +had some weak or decayed beams and rafters, but they served for their +shelter, at any rate. It is quite another matter when those rotten +timbers are used in holding up the roofs over our own heads. Still more, +if one of our ancestors built on an unsafe or an unwholesome foundation, +the best thing we can do is to leave it and persuade others to leave +it if we can. And if we refer to him as a precedent, it must be as a +warning and not as a guide. + +Such was the reason of the present writer's taking up the writings of +Jonathan Edwards for examination in a recent essay. The “Edwardsian” + theology is still recognized as a power in and beyond the denomination +to which he belonged. One or more churches bear his name, and it +is thrown into the scale of theological belief as if it added +great strength to the party which claims him. That he was a man of +extraordinary endowments and deep spiritual nature was not questioned, +nor that he was a most acute reasoner, who could unfold a +proposition into its consequences as patiently, as convincingly, as a +palaeontologist extorts its confession from a fossil fragment. But it +was maintained that so many dehumanizing ideas were mixed up with his +conceptions of man, and so many diabolizing attributes embodied in +his imagination of the Deity, that his system of beliefs was tainted +throughout by them, and that the fact of his being so remarkable +a logician recoiled on the premises which pointed his inexorable +syllogisms to such revolting conclusions. When he presents us a God, +in whose sight children, with certain not too frequent exceptions, “are +young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers;” when he +gives the most frightful detailed description of infinite and endless +tortures which it drives men and women mad to think of prepared for “the +bulk of mankind;” when he cruelly pictures a future in which parents are +to sing hallelujahs of praise as they see their children driven into the +furnace, where they are to lie “roasting” forever,--we have a right to +say that the man who held such beliefs and indulged in such imaginations +and expressions is a burden and not a support in reference to the creed +with which his name is associated. What heathenism has ever approached +the horrors of this conception of human destiny? It is not an abuse +of language to apply to such a system of beliefs the name of Christian +pessimism. + +If these and similar doctrines are so generally discredited as some +appear to think, we might expect to see the change showing itself in +catechisms and confessions of faith, to hear the joyful news of relief +from its horrors in all our churches, and no longer to read in the +newspapers of ministers rejected or put on trial for heresy because they +could not accept the most dreadful of these doctrines. Whether this be +so or not, it must be owned that the name of Jonathan Edwards does at +this day carry a certain authority with it for many persons, so that +anything he believed gains for them some degree of probability from that +circumstance. It would, therefore, be of much interest to know whether +he was trustworthy in his theological speculations, and whether he ever +changed his belief with reference to any of the great questions above +alluded to. + +Some of our readers may remember a story which got abroad many years ago +that a certain M. Babinet, a scientific Frenchman of note, had predicted +a serious accident soon to occur to the planet on which we live by the +collision with it of a great comet then approaching us, or some such +occurrence. There is no doubt that this prediction produced anxiety and +alarm in many timid persons. It became a very interesting question with +them who this M. Babinet might be. Was he a sound observer, who had made +other observations and predictions which had proved accurate? Or was +he one of those men who are always making blunders for other people to +correct? Is he known to have changed his opinion as to the approaching +disastrous event? + +So long as there were any persons made anxious by this prediction, so +long as there was even one who believed that he, and his family, and his +nation, and his race, and the home of mankind, with all its monuments, +were very soon to be smitten in mid-heaven and instantly shivered into +fragments, it was very desirable to find any evidence that this prophet +of evil was a man who held many extravagant and even monstrous opinions. +Still more satisfactory would it be if it could be shown that he had +reconsidered his predictions, and declared that he could not abide by +his former alarming conclusions. And we should think very ill of any +astronomer who would not rejoice for the sake of his fellow-creatures, +if not for his own, to find the threatening presage invalidated in +either or both of the ways just mentioned, even though he had committed +himself to M. Babinet's dire belief. + +But what is the trivial, temporal accident of the wiping out of a planet +and its inhabitants to the infinite catastrophe which shall establish +a mighty world of eternal despair? And which is it most desirable for +mankind to have disproved or weakened, the grounds of the threat of M. +Babinet, or those of the other infinitely more terrible comminations, so +far as they rest on the authority of Jonathan Edwards? + +The writer of this paper had been long engaged in the study of +the writings of Edwards, with reference to the essay he had in +contemplation, when, on speaking of the subject to a very distinguished +orthodox divine, this gentleman mentioned the existence of a manuscript +of Edwards which had been held back from the public on account of some +opinions or tendencies it contained, or was suspected of containing +“High Arianism” was the exact expression he used with reference to it. +On relating this fact to an illustrious man of science, whose name +is best known to botanists, but is justly held in great honor by the +orthodox body to which he belongs, it appeared that he, too, had heard +of such a manuscript, and the questionable doctrine associated with it +in his memory was Sabellianism. It was of course proper in the writer of +an essay on Jonathan Edwards to mention the alleged existence of such a +manuscript, with reference to which the same caution seemed to have +been exercised as that which led, the editor of his collected works to +suppress the language Edwards had used about children. + +This mention led to a friendly correspondence between the writer and one +of the professors in the theological school at Andover, and finally +to the publication of a brief essay, which, for some reason, had +been withheld from publication for more than a century. Its title is +“Observations concerning the Scripture OEconomy of the Trinity and +Covenant of Redemption. By Jonathan Edwards.” It contains thirty-six +pages and a half, each small page having about two hundred words. The +pages before the reader will be found to average about three hundred +and twenty-five words. An introduction and an appendix by the editor, +Professor Egbert C. Smyth, swell the contents to nearly a hundred pages, +but these additions, and the circumstance that it is bound in boards, +must not lead us to overlook the fact that the little volume is nothing +more than a pamphlet in book's clothing. + +A most extraordinary performance it certainly is, dealing with the +arrangements entered into by the three persons of the Trinity, in as +bald and matter-of-fact language and as commercial a spirit as if the +author had been handling the adjustment of a limited partnership +between three retail tradesmen. But, lest a layman's judgment might be +considered insufficient, the treatise was submitted by the writer to +one of the most learned of our theological experts,--the same who once +informed a church dignitary, who had been attempting to define his +theological position, that he was a Eutychian,--a fact which he seems +to have been no more aware of than M. Jourdain was conscious that he +had been speaking prose all his life. The treatise appeared to this +professor anti-trinitarian, not in the direction of Unitarianism, +however, but of Tritheism. Its anthropomorphism affected him like +blasphemy, and the paper produced in him the sense of “great disgust,” + which its whole character might well excite in the unlearned reader. + +All this is, however, of little importance, for this is not the work +of Edwards referred to by the present writer in his previous essay. The +tract recently printed as a volume may be the one referred to by Dr. +Bushnell, in 1851, but of this reference by him the writer never heard +until after his own essay was already printed. The manuscript of the +“Observations” was received by Professor Smyth, as he tells us in his +introduction, about fifteen years ago, from the late Reverend William +T. Dwight, D. D., to whom it was bequeathed by his brother, the Reverend +Dr. Sereno E. Dwight. + +But the reference of the present writer was to another production of +the great logician, thus spoken of in a quotation from “the accomplished +editor of the Hartford 'Courant,'” to be found in Professor Smyth's +introduction: + +“It has long been a matter of private information that Professor Edwards +A. Park, of Andover, had in his possession an published manuscript +of Edwards of considerable extent, perhaps two thirds as long as his +treatise on the will. As few have ever seen the manuscript, its contents +are only known by vague reports.... It is said that it contains a +departure from his published views on the Trinity and a modification +of the view of original sin. One account of it says that the manuscript +leans toward Sabellianism, and that it even approaches Pelagianism.” + +It was to this “suppressed” manuscript the present writer referred, and +not to the slender brochure recently given to the public. He is bound, +therefore, to say plainly that to satisfy inquirers who may be still +in doubt with reference to Edwards's theological views, it would be +necessary to submit this manuscript, and all manuscripts of his which +have been kept private, to their inspection, in print, if possible, so +that all could form their own opinion about it or them. + +The whole matter may be briefly stated thus: Edwards believed in +an eternity of unimaginable horrors for “the bulk of mankind.” His +authority counts with many in favor of that belief, which affects great +numbers as the idea of ghosts affected Madame de Stall: “Je n'y crois +pas, mais je les crains.” This belief is one which it is infinitely +desirable to the human race should be shown to be possibly, probably, +or certainly erroneous. It is, therefore, desirable in the interest +of humanity that any force the argument in its favor may derive from +Edwards's authority should be weakened by showing that he was capable +of writing most unwisely, and if it should be proved that he changed +his opinions, or ran into any “heretical” vagaries, by using these facts +against the validity of his judgment. That he was capable of writing +most unwisely has been sufficiently shown by the recent publication +of his “Observations.” Whether he, anywhere contradicted what were +generally accepted as his theological opinions, or how far he may have +lapsed into heresies, the public will never rest satisfied until it sees +and interprets for itself everything that is open to question which may +be contained in his yet unpublished manuscripts. All this is not in +the least a personal affair with the writer, who, in the course of his +studies of Edwards's works, accidentally heard, from the unimpeachable +sources sufficiently indicated, the reports, which it seems must have +been familiar to many, that there was unpublished matter bearing on +the opinions of the author through whose voluminous works he had been +toiling. And if he rejoiced even to hope that so wise a man as Edwards +has been considered, so good a man as he is recognized to have been, +had, possibly in his changes of opinion, ceased to think of children as +vipers, and of parents as shouting hallelujahs while their lost darlings +were being driven into the flames, where is the theologian who would not +rejoice to hope so with him or who would be willing to tell his wife or +his daughter that he did not? + +The real, vital division of the religious part of our Protestant +communities is into Christian optimists and Christian pessimists. The +Christian optimist in his fullest development is characterized by a +cheerful countenance, a voice in the major key, an undisguised enjoyment +of earthly comforts, and a short confession of faith. His theory of the +universe is progress; his idea of God is that he is a Father with all +the true paternal attributes, of man that he is destined to come into +harmony with the key-note of divine order, of this earth that it is +a training school for a better sphere of existence. The Christian +pessimist in his most typical manifestation is apt to wear a solemn +aspect, to speak, especially from the pulpit, in the minor key, to +undervalue the lesser enjoyments of life, to insist on a more extended +list of articles of belief. His theory of the universe recognizes this +corner of it as a moral ruin; his idea of the Creator is that of a +ruler whose pardoning power is subject to the veto of what is called +“justice;” his notion of man is that he is born a natural hater of God +and goodness, and that his natural destiny is eternal misery. The line +dividing these two great classes zigzags its way through the religious +community, sometimes following denominational layers and cleavages, +sometimes going, like a geological fracture, through many different +strata. The natural antagonists of the religious pessimists are the men +of science, especially the evolutionists, and the poets. It was but a +conditioned prophecy, yet we cannot doubt what was in Milton's mind when +he sang, in one of the divinest of his strains, that + + “Hell itself will pass away, + And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.” + +And Nature, always fair if we will allow her time enough, after giving +mankind the inspired tinker who painted the Christian's life as that of +a hunted animal, “never long at ease,” desponding, despairing, on the +verge of self-murder,--painted it with an originality, a vividness, a +power and a sweetness, too, that rank him with the great authors of +all time,--kind Nature, after this gift, sent as his counterpoise the +inspired ploughman, whose songs have done more to humanize the hard +theology of Scotland than all the rationalistic sermons that were ever +preached. Our own Whittier has done and is doing the same thing, in a +far holier spirit than Burns, for the inherited beliefs of New England +and the country to which New England belongs. Let me sweeten these +closing paragraphs of an essay not meaning to hold a word of bitterness +with a passage or two from the lay-preacher who is listened to by a +larger congregation than any man who speaks from the pulpit. Who will +not hear his words with comfort and rejoicing when he speaks of “that +larger hope which, secretly cherished from the times of Origen and Duns +Scotus to those of Foster and Maurice, has found its fitting utterance +in the noblest poem of the age?” + +It is Tennyson's “In Memoriam” to which he refers, and from which he +quotes four verses, of which this is the last: + + “Behold! we know not anything + I can but trust that good shall fall + At last,--far off,--at last, to all, + And every winter change to spring.” + +If some are disposed to think that the progress of civilization and the +rapidly growing change of opinion renders unnecessary any further effort +to humanize “the Gospel of dread tidings;” if any believe the doctrines +of the Longer and Shorter Catechism of the Westminster divines are so +far obsolete as to require no further handling; if there are any who +thank these subjects have lost their interest for living souls ever +since they themselves have learned to stay at home on Sundays, with +their cakes and ale instead of going to meeting,--not such is Mr. +Whittier's opinion, as we may infer from his recent beautiful poem, “The +Minister's Daughter.” It is not science alone that the old Christian +pessimism has got to struggle with, but the instincts of childhood, +the affections of maternity, the intuitions of poets, the contagious +humanity of the philanthropist,--in short, human nature and the advance +of civilization. The pulpit has long helped the world, and is still one +of the chief defences against the dangers that threaten society, and it +is worthy now, as it always has been in its best representation, of all +love and honor. But many of its professed creeds imperatively demand +revision, and the pews which call for it must be listened to, or the +preacher will by and by find himself speaking to a congregation of +bodiless echoes by and by find himself speaking to a congregation of +bodiless echoes. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Pages From an Old Volume of Life +by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PAGES FROM AN OLD VOLUME OF LIFE *** + +***** This file should be named 2699-0.txt or 2699-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/6/9/2699/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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