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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + + + + + +Etext prepared for Gutenberg by David Widger, < widger@cecomet.net > + + + + + +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 maybe 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,--alight 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 o£ 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 art ranging 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 be 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 be +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 be +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 be 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. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Passages from an Old Volume of Life, by Holmes + |